The Heights 10/31/2013

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The Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College

HEIGHTS

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Thursday, October 31, 2013

Vol. XCIV, No. 39

UGBC CAMPAIGNS FOR RESPECTFUL COSTUMES JUSEUB YOON / FOR THE HEIGHTS

Rena Finder, who survived the Holocaust with the help of Oscar Schindler, spoke on Tuesday.

Holocaust survivor shares story with BC community

BY NICOLE SUOZZO For The Heights

JORDAN PENTALERI / HEIGHTS GRAPHIC

The UGBC ‘Dress with Respect’ campaign encourages students to consider whether their Halloween costumes are offensive.

BY ELEANOR HILDEBRANDT News Editor This year marks the second iteration of UGBC’s “Dress with Respect” campaign, intended to encourage BC students to be aware of the connotations of costumes that they don for Halloween. According to Natali Soto, vice president for diversity and inclusion and A&S ’14, during her sophomore year she and others on the AHANA Leadership Council (ALC) began to notice a trend of racially and

religiously offensive costumes worn during Halloween celebrations, both at BC and elsewhere in the U.S. “We had a conversation about what makes a costume offensive, what makes it not,” Soto said. “The following year, I was in the policy department in [ALC], and decided to create a campaign, because I loved the conversation we had had the previous year, but I wanted to be proactive about it and engage students in a conversation on the issue.”

Soto worked with other members of the ALC policy staff to create a

proactive conversation that would take place before Halloween in order to get students thinking about potentially offensive interpretations of various costumes.

“Our purpose isn’t to tell students what to wear and what not to wear, but rather to encourage students to have a conversation about this before they put on their costumes, because some costumes, while they may not be offensive to you, may be offensive

See Dress with Respect, A3

“I remember being aware immediately of a horrible stench,” said Rena Finder, a Schindler’s List Holocaust survivor. “There was such stench in Auschwitz. And it was November. It was cold and we were very thirsty and we saw that it was snowing—so we tried to catch some of the snowflakes.

And then we realized that it was not snow, these were ashes. And I remember we were running and ahead of us there were big outlines of what looked like chimneys. And even though it was so dark, you could see the smoke—you could see fire. We didn’t believe it. How could you?”

Finder shared her story with the Boston College community on Tuesday evening in a talk sponsored by the Emerging Leaders Program, the Shaw Leadership Program, the Sankofa Leader Program, and BC Hillel.

Finder was born in Krakow, Poland in 1929, but life as she knew it ended abruptly with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. She survived the Holocaust

BY SARA DOYLE For The Heights With different perspectives and different backgrounds, a panel of speakers shared their thoughts on the Boston Strong Movement on Tuesday night as part of an event put on by the Presidential Scholars’ Class of 2016. The event, “Boston Strong and Becoming Stronger,” was meant to give panelists, as well as students, the opportunity to reflect on April’s Marathon bombings and ask questions about the response of the city.

Nate Schwann, A&S ’16, is one of the 16 students working on the Sophomore Social Justice Project.

“Some people have very strong opinions about Boston Strong, and questioning what it means,” Schwann said. “We want this [event] to be focused on the conversation, not the project … We’d be really happy if this developed into something broader at

the Boston College level, compared to just 16 students putting on an event. We think it could be really enriching, especially to a University like BC, to reflect on this.”

The panel of speakers featured injured marathon runner Dave Fortier, Boston Globe photographer John Tlumacki, Boston Herald reporter Dave Wedge, executive director of Haley House Kathe McKenna, and BC philosophy professor Aspen Brinton, all of whom shared different reactions to the Marathon bombing and the events that followed.

“The strength of a city can be judged and measured in many ways,” Brinton said.

“The slogan in itself is a measure of solidarity that had to already be here before the bombing to have happened so quickly.”

Tlumacki recalled being at the event as a photographer and his initial feelings about his duty as a reporter.

“I knew I was there, it was my responsibility as a journalist to cover that story,” Tlumacki said. “I saw things that I hope nobody in this room ever sees. The images I took haunted me in my sleep. I felt a necessity to talk about it.”

See Boston Strong, A3

SPO aims to restrict ‘double-dipping’

BY ANDREW SKARAS ALEX GAYNOR / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Markey gave the keynote address at last week’s Sesquicentennial symposium on energy.

particular interest is in the factors contributing to the success of Latino immigrants in their receptive societies.

“Research shows that Latinos do not have the best experiences dealing with social services,” Calvo said. “The LLI prepares future social workers to become aware of this reality and provides them with specific tools to ensure that they empower their clients.”

The administration and faculty have

See LLI, A3

See SOFC and SA, A3

Markey considers past, future of US energy policy

BY NATHAN MCGUIRE Heights Staff In 1973, just as the U.S. was dealt its first oil embargo by the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Edward J. Markey was starting his career in politics as the state representative to Massachusetts’ 16th Middlesex district.

For The Heights Following a 2007 report from the Council of Social Work Education, the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work (GSSW) established the Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) last year. The report, which found that social workers were unprepared to handle the rapidly growing Latino demographic, prompted the School of Social Work to develop a way to better prepare students to handle this growing

demographic. The program, which is part of the Masters in Social Work program, is designed to prepare students going into social work to work with a diverse population.

The LLI approaches this task by expanding both the language competency and the cultural understanding of students so they will be able to work effectively with Latino communities, both within the U.S. and abroad. Students enrolled in the program take courses designed to help them develop a better understanding of

the needs of their Latino clients. While some courses in the program are offered in English, others are offered in Spanish in order to help students communicate about current cultural issues effectively in the native language of their clients.

Assistant professor Rocio Calvo is a native of Spain, worked in Latin America before joining the GSSW, and has conducted research on the incorporation of immigrants. In 2012, she taught one of the first two LLI courses offered in Spanish, Diversity and Cross Cultural Issues. Her

Asst. News Editor One unique facet of student life at Boston College is the emphasis that is placed on retreats. Through many different offices, programs, and other avenues, student have the opportunity to attend retreats, starting freshman year with 48 Hours and continuing throughout their four years at BC. In addition to the retreats sponsored through the University, many registered student organizations (RSOs) also host retreats for their members throughout the year. Given the high costs associated with holding a retreat, funding has always been a great concern for these events.

In the past, the established practice has been for RSOs to go first to the Student Organizations Funding Committee (SOFC).

If the RSOs need more money than SOFC would provide, they would then go to the former Senate—now the Student Assembly (SA)—in hopes of receiving a disbursement of funds out of the SA budget in a process that has been called “double dipping.”

A few weeks ago, the Student Programs Office (SPO), which oversees both UGBC and SOFC, made it clear that they would be enforcing the dormant policy prohibiting RSOs from requesting funding from the SA for any event that had already received funding from SOFC. “The events impacted the most by this are retreats,” said Matt Alonsozana, UGBC executive vice president and A&S

On Friday, now-Senator Markey (DMass.) gave the keynote address to about 250 members of the Boston College community at the Sesquicentennial Symposium on Energy.

Markey, BC ’68, Law ’72, has long been considered a congressional leader on energy and climate change. He was first elected to

See Markey, A3

Calvo heads GSSW’s new Latino Leadership Initiative

BY SARA DOYLE

See Finder, A5

RSO funding called into question

Panelists consider strength of Boston post-Marathon Participants reflect on bombings, city’s response in aftermath

with the help of German industrialist Oscar Schindler, whose efforts to assist his Jewish workers is documented in the award-winning film Schindler’s List. According to Finder, the depiction of Schindler in this film was, “Just the way I remember him.”

Rena imagined the war like being at a baseball or football game. Finder said, “Actually, my grandparents lived right across the street from a football stadium, and I used to watch the games from their window. And that’s what I imagine the war would be like. I’d be watching from the window and there would be the enemy on one side and the Polish on the other side and they would fight.” According to Finder, when the German army marched in, with their uniforms and shining boots, it was apparent the Polish army never had a chance.

The first thing that the Germans did was deal with the so-called “Jewish questions.” Orders came that anyone under the age of 12 or over the age of 55 would not be able to stay in Krakow. Finder was

TopTHREE

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Thursday, October 31, 2013

A Guide to Your Newspaper

things to do on campus this week

1 2 3 Guatemalan Activist

Global Governance

Today Time: 12 p.m.

Location: Newton Room

Sponsored by the BC Center for Human Rights and Justice, Guatemalan activist Claudia Samayoa is presenting about the climate surrounding the trial of Efrain Rios Montt for genocide during the civil war in the 1980s.

BC bOp!

Friday Time: 2 p.m.

Location: Stokes 195S

Cristina Lafont, the Wender-Lewis Research and Teaching professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, will present on the responsibilities of governments regarding human rights, sponsored by the Clough Center.

Friday Time: 8 p.m.

Location: Gasson 100

BC bOp!, BC’s award-winning instrumental and vocal jazz ensemble, will be performing its first show of the academic year in Gasson Hall on Friday. The performance will feature Sebastian Bonaiuto as the conductor.

FEATURED EVENT

McKibben discusses deadlock on global warming

BY SEAN KEELEY Heights Editor “For 25 years our best scientists have been going up to Capitol Hill, year after year after year, and explaining that the worst thing that ever happened on Earth is in the process of happening,” said Bill McKibben to a full McGuinn 121 audience. “We’ve won the argument—a long time ago—but we’ve lost the fight. So the question is why, and what do we do about it?”

Speaking last Thursday night in a lecture co-sponsored by the Lowell Humanities Series and the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics, McKibben addressed the extent of the global warming crisis and the growing movement to combat climate change. McKibben has a long history with the cause, after writing the first book on climate change for a general audience, The End of Nature, in 1989. In recent years, McKibben has placed himself on the national front lines of environmental activism, as the leader of the global environmental organization 350.org, an organizer for protests surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline, and an advocate for divestment from fossil fuel companies.

McKibben began his talk by addressing the scientific realities of climate change. He explained that what was an “abstract and theoretical problem” 25 years ago has become all too real. Citing evidence that the planet has warmed by one degree Celsius since 1989, McKibben said that the change could become four

TATIANA PETROVICK / FOR THE HEIGHTS

McKibben, an environmental activist, discussed the political realities of climate change. or five degrees if we stay on the same path.

Mentioning last year’s drought in the Midwest, rainfall records in Japan, and widespread wildfires in Australia, McKibben argued that global warming’s recent effects have been visible across the globe.

In the political sector, McKibben argued that lack of will in Washington and the influence of money from the fossil fuel industries prevented progress. “We’ve had a 25-year bipartisan effort to accomplish virtually nothing, and it’s been highly successful,” he said.

Such frustration led McKibben to found 350.org with seven of his students. The organization takes its inspiration from scientist Jim Hansen, who identified 350 parts-per-million of CO2 in the atmosphere as the acceptable upper bound to avoid a climate tipping point.

The movement soon took off internationally,

as McKibben showed with pictures submitted from climate activists on an International Day of Climate Action in 2009.

From children on the streets of Ethiopia to religious communities in Cape Town to burqa-clad women in Yemen, the pictures showed activists from across the globe.

McKibben theorized that the story became so popular because “people didn’t look the way they thought environmentalists should look.” While showing the pictures, McKibben stressed that many of the poorest faces seen would be hit hardest by climate change, despite not having contributed significantly to the problem.

As 350 expanded globally, McKibben focused his domestic attention on opposing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Using methods of civil disobedience, activists

POLICE BLOTTER

10/25/13-10/27/13

Friday, October 25 9:06 a.m. - A report was filed regarding a fire alarm activation in Stayer Hall.

6:29 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a larceny from the Flynn Sports Complex.

10:32 p.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was transported to a medical facility from Robsham Theater.

2:14 a.m. - A report was filed regarding a traffic incident on Campanella Way. 4:01 p.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was tranported to a medical facility from an off-campus location.

Sunday, October 27

Saturday, October 26

12:30 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was transported to a medical facility from 90 St. Thomas More Hall.

1:50 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was tranported to a medical facility from an off-campus location.

12:35 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was transported to a medical facility from Kostka Hall.

1:54 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was tranported to a medical facility from Keyes North.

12:44 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was transported to a medical facility from Campanella Way.

College Corner NEWS FROM UNIVERSITIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY

BY ANDREW SKARAS Asst. News Editor Two weekends ago was Homecoming for the University of Ohio in Athens, Ohio, and in the midst of late night revelry, two students were caught on camera engaging in sexual acts in a public place. According to The Columbus Dispatch, on Oct. 13, the woman involved in the act filed a report with the police that the act was nonconsensual.

On Monday, an Athens county grand jury did not find enough of a reason to issue an indictment, according to the county prosecutor.

In his statement, the prosecutor did condemn the act as inappropriate and gave warning about how everything done in public had the potential to be recorded. He also said that neither student knew that they were being recorded by other people.

According to The New York Daily News, a crowd gathered around the pair and recorded parts of the inci-

protested outside the White House and many were arrested, leading President Barack Obama to reconsider fast-tracking the pipeline.

Still, McKibben acknowledged, “we’re not actually going to stop climate change one pipeline at a time, any more than we’re going to stop it one lightbulb at a time. We’re also going to have to play some offense, we’re also going to have to go after the fossil fuel industry.” This logic informed McKibben’s current campaign, which seeks to hit fossil fuel companies in the wallet by encouraging divestment.

Referencing his 2012 Rolling Stone article on the math of global warming, McKibben pointed out that fossil fuel companies already have five times as much carbon in their reserves as is considered safe to burn.

As the lecture concluded, McKibben urged Boston College to set an example for other Catholic institutions by divesting, and commended the work of the student organization BC Fossil Free.

During a Q&A session, audience members questioned McKibben about potential economic solutions to the problem and the negative effects of high-energy prices on working families. Meanwhile, members of 350.org’s Massachusetts branch and BC Fossil Free passed around sign-up sheets and information about upcoming events.

To conclude the evening, McKibben affirmed the necessity of collective tactics to address climate change. “There’s no way to address it by yourself,” he said. “It’s got to be everyone doing what they can, where they can.” 

dent via various forms of social media, including Twitter and Instagram. The county prosecutor’s report detailed the events of the evening prior to the incident. According to the report, they had both been consuming alcohol at a bar earlier in the night, and the woman involved told the police that she had no memory of the events that transpired. It was also reported that the man had asked her if they should stop when a crowd formed around them and that she had said no.

The president of Ohio University released a statement stating that the university would hold its own investigation. According to The Post, the student newspaper of the University of Ohio, the students may face punishment from the university, but that it would not release any other information. The vice president for student affairs told the paper that he would not confirm whether or not they would also look into the underage drinking that had transpired that night. 

1:30 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was transported to a medical facility from Vanderslice Hall.

2:23 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was transported to a medical facility from Higgins Hall.

8:58 p.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was transported to a medical facility from Shea Field.

10:30 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a fire alarm activation in Ignacio Hall.

—Source: The Boston College Police Department

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VOICES FROM THE DUSTBOWL “What is the best Halloween costume you’ve ever seen?”

“Aaron Carter.”

—Omar Bennani, A&S ’16

“A student loan.”

—John Harnon, LSOE ’17

“A kissing booth.”

—Nick Benevenia, A&S ’14

“Barbie and Ken in boxes.”

—Chris Losco, A&S ’17

The Heights

Thursday, October 31, 2013

A3

SPO to cut down on RSO ‘double-dipping’ SOFC and SA, from A1 ’14. “Many retreats for culture clubs exceed the guidelines from SOFC.” According to Joe Rocco, SOFC chairman and CSOM ’14, SOFC has strict guidelines for how it funds retreats. An RSO can receive $50 per person going on the retreat, up to a maximum of $2,500, if 50 people or more are attending.

This policy is limiting for some culture RSOs that have a membership in excess of 150 people, such as the Korean Students Association (KSA). Woogeon Kim, president of KSA and A&S ’14, has seen the demand by members to participate in the retreat increase dramatically since it was able to lower the price this year.

“The retreat has a cap of 110,” Kim said.

“We had a waiting list of 65 people this year.

This year, the retreat price was brought down from $60 to $40. I think it is fair to say that lowering the price did significantly improve retreat attendance.”

One of Kim’s concerns with the retreat price was accessibility for students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds. In organizing its retreat, KSA emphasizes taking a large number of people, as it thinks that it adds value to the retreat experience. Because it receives the maximum amount of funding from SOFC—$2,500—this means that each additional person attending the retreat drives up the cost per person.

In the SA, George Yang, senator rep-

resenting culture clubs and CSOM ’16, worked on the funding problem with Joseph Mignoli, senator and CSOM ’14. They reached out to culture club presidents to come up with solutions to present to SPO, which they did last week. One option, which Yang credited to Mignoli, was for the SA to give some of its yearly government $37,000 to SOFC for the sole purpose of funding retreats.

Gus Burkett, director of SPO, emphasized that the policy was not a new one and the problem for SPO was not with money going toward retreats, but with the manner in which it, and other funding, was handled by the SA. “I don’t disagree with the idea that they have of supplementing for retreats,” Burkett said. “Retreats are such a core part of the BC experience and it’s such a unique thing to BC and Catholic, Jesuit education. They can be so arbitrary at funding. They don’t have a system in place to manage this type of request. And, that’s not the purpose of why they are allocated the money. There is one student organization funding body and that is SOFC, not UGBC.” Burkett further explained that this system came into place after UGBC was stripped of the power to fund RSOs in the ’90s. Because of problems with UGBC’s management and distribution of funds, SOFC was created in order to allocate funds to student organizations.

One aspect of the situation that caused

confusion for many senators and club presidents was the fact that the policy was not a new one. Although it had been in place for many years, it has not been enforced and organizations had come to rely on the former Senate and current SA as a source of funds.

“The relationship with the SA is not the same as it was in the past,” Burkett said. “We are a little more aware of their happenings and doings. We are present and significantly more available than we were in the past. Now, when we see things that are against guidelines and policies, we can point that out. In the past, we found out after the fact or we didn’t find out at all. We are holding them more accountable and they are holding us more accountable.”

At the end of last week, representatives from SOFC and UGBC met with Burkett and other SPO employees to discuss what would be done for the rest of the year. They came to a short-term fix that will be in place for the rest of the year, while they continue to work on a better long-term solution.

“The Student Assembly will continue to fund retreats of clubs that have 50 or more retreatants, in addition to the funds that they receive from the SOFC,” Alonsozana said. “Those are the only allocations that the Student Assembly will be making without being a direct collaborator, but the caveat to that is, in February, the chair and vice chairdesignate of SOFC and the president and vice-president-elect of UGBC will meet to decide on a more equitable distribution of the Student Activities Fund.” n

Panelists debate value of Boston Strong Boston Strong, from A1 Tlumacki also described forming relationships with the victims on whom he reported, noting that some get a sense of closure from seeing his photographs.

“When people want to tell their story, it’s our obligation to tell that story,” Tlumacki said. “I needed to give back what I took away in those photos.”

Wedge agreed that opening up about the events does give closure to the victims.

“It helps them to talk about it,” Wedge said.

“They want to be together. You can’t go back to the way your life used to be. You can’t move on until you accept where you are.”

Wedge said that when he was a BC student, the Marathon always was the beginning of spring and a time to celebrate. “The Marathon always was and always will be a great thing,” he said. “It is to me.”

As a runner injured in the event, Fortier described the inspirational charity runners whose stories he could read as he ran. He said that he believes Boston is strong, and that the strength comes from everyone’s support. “I’ve been contacted by people I don’t know sending well wishes,” Fortier said. “It’s a sense of community.”

McKenna offered a different perspective and words of caution about the Boston Strong movement. “There was initially a sense of coming together to help people who were suffering, but then there was a push to imply ‘We’re strong, we’re tough, and we’re going to take care of the bad guys,’” McKenna said. “I’m not at all convinced that going after bad guys is the way to remedy terrorism or other violent acts that have happened.”

McKenna also described her work with former prisoners trying to assimilate, and

noted that they felt as though people responded to Marathon victims and did not acknowledge their struggles to be accepted into the community.

The discussion ended with a video interview of BC alum Brittany Loring, who was injured in the explosion. Loring stated her beliefs that the community should reach out to all marginalized peoples and not to forget the lessons that were learned. “The Boston Strong movement is only as good as the actions behind it,” she said.

The sophomores who organized the event plan to continue with this project in the future. “This event is getting the ball rolling on our larger goal, which is to get a publication on the year anniversary of the Marathon which highlights some of the unique perspectives in Boston that we feel make Boston Strong, and … release it to the BC population at large,” Schwann said. n

tiffany law / heights staff

Members of Tuesday’s ‘Boston Strong and Becoming Stronger’ panel considered the city’s response to the April Marathon bombings.

UGBC promotes respectful Halloween attire Dress with Respect, from A1 to some of our peers,” she said.

Soto and the other campaign members started using Proxe stations in order to poll students informally on what costumes they did or did not find personally offensive. An example Proxe station featured pictures of various costumes that had garnered online attention, such as a “guido” and a person wearing an orange jumpsuit, an alien mask, and holding a green card. Students were asked to place stickers indicating whether they thought the costume was offensive, not offensive, or were not sure.

“A lot of students would ask, ‘Is this a trick question?’ or ‘Am I supposed to find them all offensive?,’ ‘Does it make me racist if I don’t find some of them offensive?’—and that’s not our purpose at all,” Soto said. “Our purpose is, to encourage students to think about what they personally find offensive, why they do or do not, and then have them compare their responses to the rest of those who participated.” The stations, Soto said, are simply intended to get students to start thinking about what is or is not offensive, and be aware that other students might have a different reaction to a particular costume.

This year, the Dress with Respect campaign has ramped up its online presence, using a Facebook page to publicize the

campaign, handing out stickers and buttons with the Dress with Respect logo, and asking student leaders and administrators to participate by taking a pledge online or in person to dress respectfully for Halloween.

The campaign members—Anne Joseph, A&S ’14; Kate Saxton, A&S ’15; Mike Rosella, A&S ’15; Seamus Cassidy, A&S ’16; Grace Lee, CSOM ’17; Adisa Duke, A&S ’15; Jaime Tang, A&S ’16; and Kay McCoy, A&S ’16;—also added a contest for best respectful costume that students can enter for the chance to win gift cards.

“Last year was the very first year we did it—we were learning the ropes as the campaign was going on,” Soto said. “Our message was misconstrued by several students—especially with the term respect, we mean respect in terms of respecting your peers’ cultures, sexual orientation, religious identities, etc.” Soto said. She said that initially, some students misconstrued the message to dress in a culturally and religiously respectful fashion with a directive from UGBC to avoid racy Halloween costumes.

Soto said that while the campaign went well last year, it didn’t receive as much attention before Halloween as the planning committee had intended.

“I think ‘Hypersensitive Halloween’ was actually more of a positive for us, because it generated a lot of attention to the issue,”

she said. “Administrators picked up on it … they had a conversation about it, so many students were having conversations about, Is Halloween actually turning into a hypersensitive issue? Is it something that we actually need to talk about?” Soto said, however, that because the column was published after Halloween, the discussion that it generated was too late to affect students’ costume choices—she mentioned that students have been more aware of the campaign this year, though, as they still remember the response to “Hypersensitive Halloween.”

Soto acknowledged that the question of respectful Halloween costumes has become a hot topic across the U.S., but their campaign in particular has garnered attention from other schools. “We’ve talked about possibly copyrighting ‘Dress with Respect,’ because students from other colleges, specifically American University, have reached out to us to see if they can use our logo and ideas,” Soto said. She said that while the campaign members support the use of the slogan, they want to ensure that other universities link back to the UGBC campaign in order to preserve the intended message.

“We’re not trying to lecture at students, or tell them what to wear or what not to wear, we’re just trying to make it a fun campaign, reminding students to be cognizant of what they wear on Halloween and how it might affect your peers,” Soto said. n

alex gaynor / heights editor

Senator Ed Markey (above) spoke at Friday’s symposium on U.S. energy resources.

Markey talks energy future Markey, from A1 Congress as a representative of Massachusetts’s seventh congressional district in 1976, and served in the House until this June, when he was elected to serve out the remainder of Secretary of State John Kerry’s term in the Senate.

In the House, Markey served on the Energy Committee and Natural Resources Committee for 36 years.

Markey began his address Friday afternoon with a recollection of OPEC’s oil embargo that cut exports to the U.S. and other allies of Israel in the wake of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War, a 19-day war that began when an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria attacked Israeli occupied territories on Yom Kippur.

“In retaliation to America’s support of Israel, the nations in charge of OPEC launched an oil embargo against the United States,” Markey said. “The spigots were closed for months, oil prices shot up, and the economic stagnation that followed were the punishments for a nation that had not developed a comprehensive energy plan.”

In the wake of the oil embargo, Congress passed legislation to increase the fuel economy of cars, and President Jimmy Carter even put a solar panel on the roof of the White House, he said.

Congress’ efforts were minimal and shortlived, though, and the U.S. continued to be mostly dependent on foreign energy sources for decades. That dependence peaked in 2005, when the U.S. imported more than 60 percent of its oil, about 13 million barrels per day, with nearly half of it coming from OPEC. In 2007, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) established the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, she made Markey the chairman. The committee conducted hearings on energy independence and studied issues of climate change.

“I think it is important for us to note now how far we have come,” Markey said.

“Our dependence on foreign oil has declined from more than 60 percent in 2005 to 35 percent today,” he said. “We have cut our dependence on foreign oil in half since 2005.

We are now importing 6 million fewer barrels of oil per day.”

When companies are deciding where to locate their manufacturing factories and plants, energy prices are a bigger factor in their decision. Markey said fertilizer, steel, and petro-chemical companies, in particular, are coming back to the U.S. because our natural gas and oil prices are lower than they are in other countries.

“But we can’t just drill our way to a new future,” he said. “We still have to move toward energy efficiency and renewable sources.”

In the last six years, the U.S. has installed 56,000 new megawatts of wind and solar power. In 2012 alone, 12,000 new megawatts of wind power and 3,000 new megawatts of solar power were installed. Markey said that he expects more installations to continue this year.

He acknowledged the failures that some solar companies have faced. Solyndra, a California-based solar panel company, for instance, filed for bankruptcy in 2011 after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. He said the company went bankrupt, though, because the price of solar power became so low that it couldn’t get a return on its investment.

“That’s great for consumers,” he said.

“There are winners and losers in capitalism, but if you focus on the failures and don’t focus on the broadband revolution, then you miss the storyline. You need failure as a big component in capitalism if you want success.”

Markey said sectors that have benefitted from traditional sources of energy are uneasy about the push toward renewable energy.

National Grid, a London based electricity and gas utility company that serves the Northeast, recently agreed to purchase 565 megawatts of power from six new wind energy projects in Maine and New Hampshire.

In 2009, Markey and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) introduced the American Clean Energy and Security Act, now known as the Waxman-Markey bill. It would have created a government-mandated cap on carbon dioxide emissions, and called for an 80 percent reduction in U.S. emissions by 2050.

The bill passed the House, but was defeated in the Senate.

Though the legislation never became law, the U.S. has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent since 2005, Markey said. n

LLI prepares GSSW grads for work with Latinos LLI, from A1 noted that, in the not-so-distant future, current minority groups will make up most of the U.S. population, and the Latino population is expected to be the predominant group. Calvo believes that being able to communicate with Latino clients in Spanish is an important skill that graduate students will find deepens the ability to empathize and understand the clients.

Nate Radomski, GSSW ’14, has been involved with the LLI since its inception last year. Radomski had lived in Spain for three years and worked in Ecuador, and has found that the program addresses both the language barrier and the more complicated issues associated with effective cross-cultural communication.

“The courses have been really fundamental in shaping my cultural understanding,” Radomski said. “There’s this myth that if you speak Spanish or you are Latino, you can automatically work with Latinos, and that’s not true. The mistake we often make is assuming that Latinos are just one big group. There are some similarities, but it’s more complicated than that.”

Radomski has also done research with Calvo, studying immigrant populations in Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, and Madrid to learn more about their experiences with social services.

“It’s been extremely interesting to see their viewpoints and their experiences,” he said. “There’s a misconception that Latinos want to come and take jobs and

stay here for life. Most Latinos want to make money and go back to their country of origin. However, most of them come here, and they’re stuck.”

Radomski recalls a saying that Calvo taught in the classroom. “‘It’s like the air we breathe,’” he said. “‘You can’t stop breathing, but you can filter it.’ We need to be reflective with our biases and how they affect the way we work with different populations.”

According to Radomski, the LLI has shaped the way he views working with Latino populations and has prepared him for working in social services in invaluable ways, even allowing him to reflect on his past experiences.

“Coming into the program, I felt fairly confident working with Latinos, but I don’t necessarily know that I had the words or the academic understanding, and certainly not the tools,” he said.

“You start to look back on experiences you had and say ‘Oh, that’s why that happened that way.’ I look back on it now, and I would have made a totally different decision.”

Calvo said that she has found that not only the individual students, but the community of Boston College has benefited from the LLI since its inception.

“I think the initiative benefits the BC community because it has increased the diversity of our student population, as it is attracting Latino and Latina students as well as students that have worked with Latino populations to our program,” Calvo said. “This has been very enriching for us.” n

THE HEIGHTS

A4

Thursday, October 31, 2013

McAleese challenges historical intolerance

Recognizing similarites

BY TARA BLOTNICK For The Heights

DANIEL LEE This year, I made a shift in my Heights journalism experience from photography to writing. I used to have a fear of writing something in perfect English because of my imperfect tri-linguistics. This year, I finally fully enjoy writing more than photography, which I got tired of recently.

The shift was possible when I found a similarity (media of information) and a difference (depth of expression).

I need to add to what I talked about last week—the significance of understanding differences. From last Sunday’s homily, I realized that recognizing similarities should occur prior to understanding differences.

As we tend to forget about what’s on our doorstep, we exclusively focus on finding differences most of the time.

This tendency extends in international relations.

In the beginning of the Cold War in 1945, ideological differences divided the Korean peninsula in half. Since then, both Koreas have forgotten that they are the same people, both ethically and ethnically.

The strong recognition of political differences has been solidified for far too long—the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) has remained the heaviest military border in the world, even after the end of the Cold War. Of course, the existing military tension comes from the empirical diplomatic patterns of Pyongyang against Seoul and the rest of the world. I’m not denying the validity of the dominant realism of international relations— what I’m suggesting is to recount the unity before the political split.

South Koreans should remember that the North Koreans, including the notorious leaders in Pyongyang, are the people South Koreans will have to embrace in the near future.

Used to the long division, two Koreas gave up a belief that their foundations in shared blood could lead to peace once again. Instead, the Koreas have only focused on finding and eliminating the differences without accepting the fundamental. A reason for the failure of the Sunshine policy comes from the wrong approach that attempts to eliminate poverty by giving out cash in the hopes that this would end the hostility. The policy only bought Pyongyang bullets and nuclear warheads, however.

In my last article, I wrote about how the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Ford Fraker, told a story of how President George W. Bush and King Abdullah, who was unhappy with negotiations then, built an instant personal bond over mutual family values and religious beliefs, despite the differences we think of when we consider these countries. The mutual national interests perhaps played a major role to even open up a one-on-one conversation. Nonetheless, the point is that recognizing similarities leads to a smoother understanding of differences.

Sometimes, we need to temporarily eliminate a key variable—realism—to see the other versions of a political equation. For example, in approaching the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans should, for a moment, forget about their ties with the AIPAC and Tel Aviv to see the common ground of Arab Muslims, Jewish Israelis, Palestinians, Christians, and eventually Americans. We might share more moral values and national interests than we used to think.

One of my reasons for studying politics is to think of practical solutions for political disputes among nations. Realism is a dominant, plausible model in explaining political phenomena around the world. I have an impression, however, that the current international thinking is limited to just explaining the situations, rather than drawing solutions.

Well, the scholars would know my point. The vicious cycle of realism is that this realization gets buried within the cycle by a fear of breaking the rule and a fear of failure.

Someone strong needs to take a step though. If not, what’s the point of watching CNN and reading WSJ, knowing that nothing will change?

Daniel Lee is a senior-staff columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at news@bcheights.com.

TIFFANY LAW / FOR THE HEIGHTS

Indiana University history professor Ellen Wu discussed the origins of Asian-American sterotypes in U.S. culture.

Wu considers the ‘model minority’

BY JENNIFER HEINE Heights Staff The Boston College Asian American Studies Program, Asian Caucus, Phi Alpha Theta, and American Studies Program welcomed Indiana University history professor Ellen Wu to campus last Thursday. In her lecture, Wu offered a preview of her upcoming book, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Model Minority, which seeks to explore the origins of the Asian-American, and particularly the Chinese-American, stereotype as a “model minority.”

“The driving question behind this project was, how did America get from the Yellow peril—in which Asians were seen as aliens and ineligible for citizenship—to Tiger Mom, a very extreme and very surprising shift that seems almost unparalleled for any other racial group in American histor y, at least in the 20th century,” Wu said.

In her book, Wu traces the development of this identity, beginning with the “ Yellow Peril,” a time of governmentsanctioned and culturally entrenche d prejudice against Asian-Americans. Although many Asian-American studies scholars trace the origins of the “model minority” primarily to two magazine articles published in 1966, Wu rejects this model: “As a historian, I was ver y skeptical of this explanation,” she said. “How could it be, that

these two articles could have that much power? That’s when I started to do the digging into this project.”

She also rejects the theory of imposition, which claims that the concept was forced onto Asian-Americans by the white population. “I hope to emphasize the role of Asian Americans, not just in this process, but in the broader debates and struggles and conversations about race in the middle of the 20th century in the United States,” Wu said.

She began with the reconstruction of racial order after the era of Asian exclusion, during which Asians were barred from participating in mainstream American life. “In deciding to get rid of Asian exclusion, that really posed a problem for America’s racial order, and its boundaries of citizenship,” Wu said. “Under exclusion, the status of Asians in American society was very clear.

“In my book, I argue that host of stakeholders resolved this dilemma by the 1960s with a new stereotype of AsianAmericans as the so-called model minority,” she said.

The new perception emerged during World War II, amid the movement to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act. “The Chinese and Chinatown were seen to represent all that was deviant in the public imagination,” Wu said. “Opium smoking , gambling, prostitution: these were common associations Americans had with China-

town. So Chinese-Americans and their allies really tried to overturn these unflattering images that justified exclusion of the Chinese.

“They understood that there were strong connections in American p olitical culture between white middle-class norms and values and access to the full entitlements of citizenship,” Wu said. “So white racial liberals basically changed the conversation about the Chinese by championing the concept of the model Chinese-American household.”

During the war, the image became useful to promote racial diversity and to draw support for the Chinese, America’s ally in the Pacific. In this way, the image of Chinese-Americans, and in turn Asian-Americans, began to evolve.

This image reached its peak with the perceived spike in juvenile delinquency. “A lot of Americans at this time are seeking a remedy to this problem, and they really grab onto this existing notion of ChineseAmerican non-delinquency,” she said. “All of a sudden, you see people celebrating Chinatown.”

In this way, the stereotype also celebrated American values over those of Communist nations during the Cold War. “The narratives enjoyed a broad appeal in the ’50s by resonating strongly with Americans’ celebration of nuclear home life as

See Model Minority, A5

Former president of Ireland Mary McAleese, the Burns visiting scholar for the fall semester, grew up in Belfast, where her parents and those in previous generations were silenced by the city’s political and historical systems. McAleese’s generation brought forth a movement of discussion and debate concerning ideas that deviated from those that Catholicism and educational structures had discouraged from conversation.

O n T h u r s d a y, O c t . 2 8 , McAleese addressed the issue of inequality due to gender and sexual orientation. McAleese was the second female president of Ireland and the first from Northern Ireland. Her presidency centered on ideas of equality, inclusion, justice, and understanding.

Initially, McAle ese sp oke about her family background and the historic reference to inequality in Ireland before her upbringing. Her parents were raised with the unquestionable idea of following the dictations of the Catholic Church and societal norms.

This unquestioning manner, however, didn’t sit well with McAleese or the generation of intellectuals that followed. “A culture of speaking down became a culture of speaking up,” she said.

This speaking up evolved and progressed varyingly for different individuals. McAleese characterized this as each individual finding his or her own opening or space to improve societal inequalities.

McAle e se discovere d the opening which she could best provide change was initially within the legal and political spheres of Ireland. “No matter how difficult things are, you look for a space—a legal space for me was where I could work,” she said.

McAleese thus worked to provide progressive transformation for women and the GLBTQ community. As a founding member and legal advisor of the Campaign for Homosexual Reform in the

1970s, she began her career attempting to challenge historical intolerance. She was also the first person in Ireland to state on public radio that she supported same-sex marriage. From there she returned to her alma mater, Queen’s University, as director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies in 1987, where she addressed the lack of women working within the University.

W h e n el e c te d p re s i d e nt , McAleese stood by her views of tolerance and equality. She continued her intertwining ideas of Catholicism and social tolerance before and after her presidency.

When asked if we should change those 200-year-old systems, McAleese easily replied, “Yes—if it’s wrong, then it should be changed.” These changes can occur by continuing to take small steps as individuals, in the hope that these steps will add up to a cultural step away from these flawed systems, she said. McAleese highlighted these changes in the strides Ireland has made legally, politically, and socially toward acceptance.

Currently, the Irish government is openly addressing issues concerning homophobic bullying.

“Although I talked about gay marriage 30 years ago, I never imagined those traditional walls would fall down,” McAleese said.

McAleese concluded her speech with a reference to the late Rory Couhanam, a Catholic judge in Northern Ireland who was assassinated in 1983 for his Catholic affiliation. Couhanam left McAleese with the motivation to “keep soul in constant state of grace.”

This constant state of grace is achieved for McAleese by placing “all things on the table for discussion.” McAleese insisted that individuals should be placing issues on the table to identify cultural and social issues of exclusion.

“Remarks that are homophobic and anti-Semitic are not right,” she said. “Don’t simply sit and smile. I would say, ‘Excuse me, I won’t sit in the company of that language.’” 

Athletic Director Brad Bates talks leadership and values

BY DANIEL PEREA-KANE For The Heights BC Director of Athletics Brad Bates has been to athletic competitions including Super Bowls, the Olympics, and National Championships, yet the best game he ever attended was a small softball game between Kent State and Miami University in Ohio, a game he attended while serving as athletic director at Miami.

Including Bates, there were 27 people in attendance at the game. For 20 years prior to the game, Miami had finished near or at the bottom of the standings.

Now, in the third game of a series against Kent State, Miami’s softball team had to win to continue their season.

Down one run, Miami had two outs in its last out of the last inning with the bases loaded. “This is the way it’s supposed to be,” a Miami player said to her coach during a brief timeout. She then stepped up

to the plate, fouled off two balls, laid off the next pitch, and hit the fourth for a grand slam, in the process securing a Miami win.

Bates addressed students in the Fulton Honors Library on Wednesday, Oct. 30 as part of the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics program, Lunch with a Leader. Bates used the story to illustrate his belief that leadership is both a natural and developed trait. He related the development of leadership qualities to education. “You can be incredibly demanding as a leader if your team trusts you,” he said.

Bates is a childhood educator with many family members who are teachers themselves. “I’ve been surrounded by educators my entire life,” he said. Bates was also a walk-on for the University of Michigan football team in college.

“I had an opportunity to go to smaller schools, but did not want to spend my whole life wondering what-if,” he said.

After college and graduate school at Michigan, Bates became a strength and conditioning coach at Vanderbilt University. He later served as a senior associate in the athletics department of Vanderbilt, where he obtained his doctorate in education. “It really wasn’t until I was at Vandy that I decided to become an administrator,” he said.

Still, Bates believes that the seed for sports administration was planted in the eighth grade when he attempted to create a year-long athletics program for his school after the state cut funding for physical education.

In his speech, Bates emphasized the importance of the team.

“Collective efforts are more important than individual ones,” he said. “You’re surrounded by really smart people here. We can all learn from one another.”

Bates also talked about the unique nature of combining aca-

demics and athletics in American education and why collegiate sports appeal to him for this reason. “The only justification for this combination is that education is the ultimate goal of athletics curricula,” he said. “These athletes must reach maximum development. That’s why winning is important to me. There’s a set of skills and a mindset that comes from winning.”

Bates then told another story from his time at Miami about a 2007 game between Akron and Miami, in which a Miami player made a game-winning shot to win Miami’s conference tournament. “The gift of that shot is a gift that transcends the rest of their lives,” Bates said.

In the Q&A following Bates’ speech, Bates compared and contrasted Miami and Boston College, discussed BC’s switch to the Atlantic Coast Conference, and focused especially on how the athletics department can further

the mission of the University.

In a brief pause from questions, Bates asked students to consider a game in which Derek Jeter misled an umpire to believe he was hit by a pitch that in fact only hit his bat. Some students made the conclusion that he did the wrong thing while others said that it was unclear. Still others faulted the umpire.

Bates then posed a question about the incident that he attempted to answer. “Is something like this okay at the college level?” he asked. “In so many ways, sports compromise our values. We must ground our winning in good values.”

Bates’ final thoughts went even broader. “Every experience should promote growth,” he said. “I’m a big believer in liberal arts education, I think there are advantages to more specifically geared educations too, but liberal arts education transcends academics.” 

CONTENT SPONSORED BY EAGLE EMS OF BOSTON COLLEGE

Eagle EMS kicks off the year

Eagle EMS of Boston College is an entirely student-run, volunteer organization which functions to provide emergency medical coverage to the Boston College community. So far this year, Eagle EMS has welcomed 45 new members to its ranks, provided more than 2,200 man hours of campus coverage, and provided care to over 125 patients. Within the organization, Eagle EMS strives to educate its members in order to provide the best possible training for all types of scenarios. Eagle EMS offers several classes each month ranging from sports trauma, to cardiac emergencies, to skills review sessions.

Eagle EMS has developed two disaster response teams to plan for and respond to large scale incidents on campus, such as last year’s Snowstorm Nemo and the Boston Marathon bombings. The disaster response teams work closely with the Office of Emergency Management through regular drill training alongside the Campus Emergency Response Team.

In addition to medical care, Eagle EMS is committed to educating communities of all ages and academic capabilities. Through on and off-campus outreach programs such as school visits at Thomas A. Edison and Mount Alvernia Academy, Healthapalooza, and BC Splash we aim to increase health awareness and provide students with basic first aid skills. For more information, to request coverage, or to contact Eagle EMS of Boston College please visit our website (www.bc.edu/eagleems).

- SPONSORED CONTENT -

Sophomore Director of Education Joseph Pereira teaches CPR and AED use at annual Healthapalooza.

The Heights

Thursday, October 31, 2013

A5

Shikaki offers glimpse into Palestinian public opinion, political differences

By Eleanor Hildebrandt News Editor “Palestinian voices, I think, are often absent from the U.S. media, and when they are present, they are often presented as though they’re some type of unitary consensus,” said Peter Krause, an assistant professor in the political science department, as he introduced Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki to an audience in Devlin 008 on Wednesday evening.

“The reality, obviously, is far more complex.

In this country, I think we often know quite little about the real ambitions and alliances within Palestinian politics and society—the real thoughts, hopes, and fears that Palestinian civilians hold. We often see Palestinians purely through their relations to us in the United States, rather than to each other and how they define themselves.”

Krause introduced Shikaki as the top expert in the world on Palestinian public opinion—since 1993, Shikaki has conducted over 100 polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He conducted his first poll of Palestinians in 1993, and the findings were released just as the Oslo Agreement was signed in Washington, D.C. “I can tell you that the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, insisted that we keep him appraised of Palestinian attitudes,” Shikaki said. “Month after month, I had to write a summary for Arafat. Every single month, a one-page summary of attitudes regarding the peace process.”

According to Shikaki, Arafat would be upset if he ever read reports of the polls in

the newspaper before seeing the numbers himself, and insisted that Shikaki fax his reports directly.

Shikaki told the audience, a mixture of students and professors, that he would generally address four questions during his talk: factors that account for changes in Palestinian politics; factors that influence the two major Palestinian forces, the Islamists and the nationalists; the impact of the division within Palestine on major issues—focusing on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process; and what would be necessary for the two political systems within Palestine to be integrated.

Shikaki identified two factors that he called “drivers” within Palestinian politics: religiosity and tradition. The more conservative or traditional people, he said, are more likely to think that politics and religion ought to go together. “These are the ones who would insist that a woman’s place is home, that God is the source of all legislation in the political system, that in matters of foreign policy, just like domestic politics, Islam is the ultimate—you cannot make decisions based on pragmatic considerations.”

Speaking broadly, Shikaki said that conservatives, who generally have more Islamist values, tend to vote for Hamas, while those who vote for Fatah tend to be more nationalist. Those who identify as “slightly conservative” are more or less split between the two parties.

Shikaki addressed the way in which Palestinians view democracy. “A lot of Palestinians support democracy—a lot of Palestinians support democratic values,” he said. “The

overwhelming majority of Palestinians say democracy is really, really bad—but it’s the best system in the world.” According to a graph Shikaki showed, 83 percent of Palestinians polled support democracy, with 40 percent identifying as Islamist democrats—those who support the implementation of sharia law—and 43 percent identifying as secular democrats, supporting a more liberal democracy. Of the remaining 17 percent who did not support democracy, 10 percent identified as secular and the remaining 7 percent identified as Islamist.

He moved on to discuss the relative popularity of Hamas and Fatah. After the first Palestinian elections in 1996, enthusiasm about democracy was high, Shikaki said, but quickly waned as discontent with the Palestinian Authority and the lack of a peace treaty with Israel grew. Many people initially voted for Hamas because it was meant to fight corruption and be more democratic than Fatah had been—it was also expected to form a Palestinian state and normalize relations with Israel. Hamas did not, however, recognize Israel as at all legitimate, and in fact declared a two-state solution impossible, which led to its decline in popularity, especially in the public sector.

After concluding his lecture, Shikaki took questions from the audience. Ali Banuazizi, a professor in the political science department, asked Shikaki whether he thought public opinion, as opposed to discussions between elites, significantly influenced the success or failure of the peace process. “Well, I’m likely to be biased … my answer is of course it does,” he said. n

margaret lapre / for the heights

Preeminent pollster Khalil Shikaki visited Boston College on Wednesday evening to speak about splits within Palestinian society.

Wu describes origins of ‘model minority’ Model Minority, from A4 bastions of security against the dangers and uncertainties of this outside world,” Wu said. “Commentators celebrated America’s Chinatowns as some of the few remaining repositories of Confucianism: a venerable culture that had regrettably been destroyed in Communist China.”

According to Wu, this type of identification with American values largely enabled the Chinese to escape the fate of the WWII-era Japanese when Communist China entered the Korean War against the Americans. “I want to stress that Chinese-Americans were a very important part of this story,” Wu said.

“They themselves helped to spread this non-delinquency concept, and the reason they did this because it was politically useful.”

Although she acknowledged the

tiffany law / for the heights

Last week, Wu described the transformation of the Asian stereotype in the United States. difficulty of eliminating the stereotype from modern culture, Wu remains optimistic. “What is so exciting for me, is in the last 10 years we’ve really seen a huge shift,” she said. “Partly it’s just about a lot

more visibility in American culture.

“All of us, on the ground, need to be more informed about what we do and how we act,” she said. “Maybe we’ll change that slowly.” n

juseub yoon / for the heights

Finder visited on Tuesday night to share the story of her past with the BC community.

Finder recalls Schindler, ‘tiny human victories’ Finder, from A1 10 years old, but her parents were able to change her birth certificate.

She remembers the day her family went into the city to receive their permits. Surrounded by what seemed like 100 soldiers, trucks came in and took children away from their parents and vice versa. All around them the Polish people went about their business. Finder remembers a feeling of betrayal. She said, “Neighbors, people that knew us, how could they do that?”

Finder and her family were given three weeks to move out of their house and into the ghetto. Each family was allowed a pushcart and each family member was allowed a small suitcase. Finder remembers how her mother made her polish the mail slot before they locked the door. How her mother wanted to make sure they left the house in perfect condition. They had knocked on the doors of neighbors to say goodbye, but no one answered. Finder later saw them peering behind closed windows.

“Nobody had the guts to say goodbye,” she said. “Those were neighbors of ours that my parents knew for years and years.”

As she walked through the streets of her beloved city, people of all ages threw stones at her family and screamed, “We are so happy to get rid of you, you Jews don’t ever come back.” In the ghetto, the kitchen had a sink that reminded Finder of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. “It was not real,” Finder said. “It was like we went to a place that did not exist.”

They were required to work in the ghetto. “We were all very happy because as long as we were working we would be [a] good work force, we would be slaves because we weren’t paid, so the Germans would make a lot of money off us and let us live,” Finder said. “Many times, however, people went to work and did not come back. Eventually her grandparents were taken away and her father was arrested and accused of working with the resistance, which was a lie. She never saw them again.

According to Finder, Schindler was an ambitious young man. He desperately wanted to make a lot of money.

Although he was a member of the Nazi party, he did not have the heart of a Nazi. He regarded the people who worked for him as friends. And he realized much earlier than everyone else what the German soldiers were planning on doing with the Jews. He would say he wanted Jewish workers because he only had to pay them 50 cents a day as opposed to a dollar a day for Polish people.

Eventually, the people of Krakow were used to build a concentration

camp atop three Jewish cemeteries in the area. Finder remembered sitting in a long line of women with one of her friends, Stella. She had a brother with MS, so her parents and her brother were some of the first people taken away. All of a sudden Stella fell. Finder said, “And I remember I put my hand behind her, and I whispered, ‘Get up, get up, Amon Goeth is right behind us.’ And all of a sudden I realized my hand was warm, wet. He had killed her.”

Finder doesn’t remember how or why her mother heard that Schindler was going to need more women to come and work for him, but she sent her to the man who was in charge of the list.

While at the factory, Schindler became a father to Finder.

Germany was losing the war, however, so Schindler’s workers were put into boxcars.

“There were like 150 women in each boxcar when you really couldn’t put more than 20,” Finder said. “I remember how we stood like sardines—you couldn’t turn, you couldn’t move. And so many women were unconscious they were just standing there because there was no place for them to fall.” They arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau, were shoved into a barrack, and asked to take off their clothes. They were shaved from head to toe, sometimes cut at the scalp due to poor instruments, and disinfected with powder before being showered. According to Finder, when they shaved her hair, she felt so dehumanized, humiliated, and traumatized, that she just couldn’t believe that she was alive.

One time, an officer in charge slapped a girl standing next to Finder because she said she was talking. Finder spoke up and said that the girl was not in fact speaking. She was forced to kneel near a stove in the barrack until she apologized, but Finder refused.

“She could steal my hair and she could take my body, but she wasn’t going to steal my soul,” she said. Eventually, after about five hours, it was time for roll call and she let Finder go. She recalled it as her tiny victory as a human being.

The women on Schindler’s list remained in Auschwitz for three weeks before orders came for them to be sent to one of his new factories. According to Finder, another few days and she is sure they would have been sent to the gas chambers. “There are no words really to express the feeling of happiness to be with Oscar Schindler again,” she said.

“Because during the last seven months of the war, when hundreds of thousands of her brothers and sisters perished on the death march, murdered when they couldn’t keep up, those of us on Schindler’s list were kept warm.” n

BCAAUP discusses provost search committee, faculty representation

By Soo Jung Rhee Heights Staff

“We haven’t been fixing all the problems, but we’re heading in the right direction,” said Susan Michalczyk, assistant director of the A&S Honors Program and president of the Boston College chapter of the American Association of University Professors (BCAAUP), the day after a BCAAUP Chapter meeting that took place this Tuesday at Fulton 230. Adding onto the heated hour-and-a-half long discussion from Tuesday afternoon, she reinforced the organization’s key missions and clarified the struggles she and her colleagues have been going through since the organization’s inception in 2010. Despite low turnout, the meeting addressed several critical issues that directly influence both the faculty and student body of the University.

A discussion of the provost search

with Catherine Cornille, co-chair of the provost search committee, marked the beginning of the conversation among faculty members in the room. Cornille gave a brief overview of what the committee has been focusing on and how it will be operating in the near future before leaving the meeting. While emphasizing the fact that the committee is still in its beginning stages, she explained that although there will be no open meetings for faculty members to take part in the election, through a thorough selection process, three or four candidates will become part of the committee in early December. Several points were made by the listeners, including Michalczyk, who showed dismay at the lack of faculty governance options at BC. “We may be small in number, 103 or so, but many of our members are also in various University committees … so we do represent larger faculty votes,” Michalczyk

said. Paul Gray from the sociology department agreed.

“I hope that the person, whoever she or he is when hired, will feel a sense of importance or urgency about getting to know many of us and what our concerns are,” he said. Other listeners also engaged in the conversation as they expressed their hope for effective two-way communication and transparency. They asked for a sympathetic and respectful communicator to be selected so that they could feel reassured about the policies made by the committee.

Following the discussion was a faculty survey report by Gray. Introducing it as the third survey completed since the acknowledgement of the BCAAUP in 2010, Gray shared the results and expounded on the implications of each statistic. He stated that the faculty members as well as the BCAAUP members are members of the larger community who wish to

provide constructive criticism for the betterment of all those who are part of the University, including students.

Among different statistics, Gray pointed to the extremely low level of satisfaction of faculty members in their participation in decision-making. While 66 percent of the faculty surveyed was satisfied at the department level, only 27 percent and 19 percent felt satisfaction at the school and University level, respectively.

“What you find is the closer to home the decisions are, the more satisfied people are,” Gray said. He also discovered that 50 percent of the faculty surveyed found the leadership and administration at the University level to be dissatisfying while 26 percent expressed dissatisfaction with the leadership at the school level and 15 percent at the department level.

Addressed for the first time in the 2012 survey, retirement planning, an

issue directly related to the faculty’s future decisions, turned out to be a widely unknown policy, with 95 percent of the faculty members answering that they did not know or were unsure whether there is a standard retirement plan. Other questions included physical environment, classroom facilities, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Only 14 percent believed faculty morale has improved, which Gray noted seemed not to match the prestige and popularity of the University itself.

“This is a big, very popular, prosperous university that has high hopes for the future,” Gray said. “How can it be that only 14 percent of its own faculty think that morale has improved?”

The phenomenon of bullying, which was also addressed in the survey, accompanied some criticism from the surveyors, suggesting that bullying is a loaded concept that should not describe the way any professional treats others. n

THE HEIGHTS

A6

SOFC alone should field RSO funding requests

Thursday, October 31, 2013

QUOTE OF THE DAY You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.

-Wayne Gretzky (1961-), Canadian ice hockey legend

Portion of NOTH’s budget should be reallocated to SOFC, allowing for more RSO-driven programming Controversy has emerged recently over the funding process for retreats for culture clubs and other Registered Student Organizations (RSOs). In the past, such groups have been able to appeal to both the Student Organization Funding Committee (SOFC) and the Student Assembly (SA) for funds, despite the fact that this process was technically not allowed under existing Student Programs Office (SPO) funding guidelines. The controversy that has come about is the result of a decision

by SPO to begin enforcing this policy, no longer permitting these organizations to “double-dip” from the Student Activities Fee (SAF), which provides funding for both SOFC and SA. Currently, the controversy has been mediated by a stopgap measure which allows an RSO to appeal to the SA for funding in excess of the $50 per person for up to 50 people—$2,500 in total—that they are allocated from SOFC under the current guidelines, if that RSO has more than 50 people attending a retreat.

This stopgap measure is a good temporary solution for a problem that arose as a surprise, but it does not make sense to continue the practice in the long run.

It is unreasonable and inefficient for a single event—in this case, a retreat—to be funded by two different organizations that draw funds from the same source. In addition, why should requests for additional funds be cut off arbitrarily at 50 people?

Decisions regarding funding for retreats should take into consideration the total cost of attending the retreat, the number of people interested, and the amount given to other, similar retreats.

To streamline the process of funding retreats, and indeed all monetary requests made by RSOs, funding for these organizations should come solely from SOFC. The portion of the SA budget that currently provides funding for RSOs should be redistributed to SOFC in next year’s budget, in order to provide the maximum amount of money to student groups as efficiently as possible.

There are several reasons for this. First, SOFC is an independent body, whose members are bound by a strict set of guidelines and specific conflict of interest regulations. They are non-biased and are not permitted to be leaders in RSOs that request funding, and they do an excellent job each year of allocating the portion of the SAF for which they are responsible fairly and appropriately. They already deal with a significant portion—over $500,000—of the SAF, managing requests made by BC’s numerous RSOs, working within guidelines designed to ensure the fairest possible distribution.

As of this academic year, several members of the SA are representatives

of culture clubs, which poses a significant conflict of interest for funding requests from those groups. Clearly, members of a certain organization should not be voting on funding requests for their particular organization. Culture club representatives can weigh in via the mandatory documentation that is required for each SOFC funding request, but having them vote on decisions regarding funding requests in the SA borders on unethical.

Giving the money that the SA currently uses to fund requests to SOFC will allow a single body to provide funding for all requests, streamlining a process that has clearly been confusing in the past.

If this change were made, RSOs would be able to go to a single organization to fund their retreats, and that organization would fund requests from all RSOs fairly and equitably.

This change would not affect the funding given to divisions in UGBC’s executive branch like Student Initiatives or Diversity and Inclusion. These divisions put on meaningful programs throughout the year, and obviously need funding to host these programs. The money given to SOFC would include only the discretionary fund that the SA has traditionally used for funding requests from RSOs. Part of the reason that the funding of retreats has caused such a controversy is simply because these retreats are so popular. They provide a meaningful time of reflection and bonding for the students who are able to attend them. It is very important that these trips are funded, in order to permit all interested students to attend, regardless of their economic situations.

Despite their greatest efforts to mitigate costs, many culture clubs host retreats that require students to pay as much as $60 to attend, even after maximum funding.

Along with reallocating the funds from the SA to SOFC, in the future, the administration should consider appropriating additional funds for SOFC, and thus, for all RSOs, from Nights on the Heights (NOTH). For several years, this paper has argued against the exorbitant funding NOTH receives for events that are generally not attended as well as events hosted by RSOs or by UGBC. Allocating some of NOTH’s more than $500,000 to individual RSOs will better allow student leadership to develop programming organically, specifically engaging students interested in particular issues. Money for RSOs is not unlimited, and SOFC’s operating guidelines will obviously continue to apply in the future. But by reallocating the money that students provide through the activities fee, the administration, UGBC, and SOFC can work together to allow for more effective and formative programming on campus.

EMILY DEVLIN / HEIGHTS ILLUSTRATION

‘Boston Strong’ speakers prompt needed reflection The panel gave varied takes on Boston’s new motto, urging students to think critically about its meaning

The sophomore class of the Presidential Scholars Program hosted an event on Tuesday night that sought to engage the “Boston Strong” motto in a critical fashion.

They invited a panel of five members of the Boston community to speak about their connection to the Marathon, what the motto means to them, and how the motto should be understood moving forward.

Among the panelists were John Tlumacki, the Boston Globe photographer who took many of the widely publicized images at the finish line, Dave Fortier, a first-time marathoner injured at the blast, and Kathe McKenna, the co-founder of Haley House, a homeless shelter and employment program in the South End. The questions posed to the panelists and their varied responses successfully brought to light the conflicting sentiments that surround the “Boston Strong” motto and the other responses to the Marathon tragedies, forcing all those in attendance to evaluate what they take the motto to mean and consider the implications of that meaning. Several members on the panel spoke of the comfort “Boston Strong” brings them, and their belief that it conjures a sense of unity and fortitude.

McKenna, however, raised an issue that often goes overlooked: for many of the people she serves every day, as well as for others counted among the marginalized communities of Boston, the motto and the One Fund have highlighted their sense of isolation. Members of these communities see death and suffering regularly in their neighborhoods and among their friends and loved ones, yet they often feel that Boston does not sufficiently respond to their plight.

The event successfully honored the Marathon and those affected, and celebrated the resilience of Boston after the tragedy, but also challenged the audience to think about what the motto really means and how Boston can become even stronger. Many members of the BC student body frequently engage with the marginalized communities of which McKenna spoke, and are therefore aware of the ways in which Boston is not strong. This event reminds students that there is always more to be done, and an inspirational slogan, though powerful and comforting, should be seen not as the answer to a city’s problems, but as a pledge to fix them.

HEIGHTS

THE

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The Heights

Thursday, October 31, 2013

A7

The abroad decision

Kristy Barnes Mischief Managed - We were recently informed that the state of New Jersey, besides being home to Bruce Springsteen and (debatably) the world’s largest theme park, is home to another wonderful thing: the tradition of Mischief Night. We apologize for not bringing this to your attention earlier (because unfortunately, at this point, it’s too late), but we ourselves just learned of it yesterday, on Mischief Night itself.

Mischief Night occurs every year on Oct. 30, when young New Jerseyans take to the streets and cause good-natured devilry. While we mature college students may admittedly be a tad too old to be TPing nearby residences, it’s a fun thing to know about nevertheless. So file this away for next year, because at the very least, it’s a reason to celebrate one more day, and who doesn’t need that?

The Happiest day Of The Year - Happy Halloween everyone! Today is college’s favorite day. Finally a theme for parties that everyone can get behind. Halloween brings out everyone’s creativity and joyfulness. Professors hand out candy and random, mundane events become costume contests. You eat as much candy as you can get your hands on—which is inevitably more than you should, from the aforementioned professors and familial care packages.

And even when it’s over, you get to start looking forward to Thanksgiving! There are no downsides, except potentially the weather, but if you’re dressing respectfully, that shouldn’t be an issue.

To go abroad or not to go abroad: the extremely difficult question.

Boston College panelists and tour guides always speak of how easy it is to go abroad. I too, am guilty of this accusation. I can clearly remember standing by the statue of St. Ignatius one crisp fall day sophomore year telling the prospective students that yes, it was easy to go abroad and that I was one to know, as I was just starting the process. Unfortunately, I lied. In fact, we all do. Of course this isn’t intentional, as a naive fall-semester sophomore I did not know the perils and struggles that lay ahead, but nonetheless, what we say is just not true. Each tour we give, we misguide not only the wide-eyed high school seniors and their respective inquisitive family members, but also ourselves. Now, as it comes time for freshmen, sophomores, and last-minute juniors to make their own decisions, let’s look at the truth behind the tangled relationship of BC and studying abroad.

First comes the decision: While freshman year is spent trying to figure out what you will be involved with at BC and finding that group of friends that just “get you,” sophomore year is when the dust settles. It is not a misconception that sophomores run this school, for it is in the second year that leadership positions are doled out, awards are won, and friendships are solidified. This is also the time when the Office of International Programs (OIP) starts to email you ferociously and your friends start to talk about which country they want to see. Just as you finally get your feet on the ground, you begin to wonder if you can give up the perfect

life you have formed among the halls of Gasson and Stokes. Won’t you miss your friends and family? What will you do without seeing the leaves change over Bapst Lawn or the stream of runners on Marathon Monday? At the time, these internal struggles seem like the hardest part of going abroad. Yet amid the self-doubt and confusion, you make the decision. Time to start looking at programs!

Next comes the reaction to the decision: My experience was similar to many others. My friends took my choice personally, the clubs and organizations I cared about denied me important roles for junior year, and let’s not even get into housing issues. One can quickly see the culture at BC is just not made for students to take a semester away.

This seems strange, right? They say over 40 percent of students go abroad during their junior year, yet the whole social structure is designed to punish you if you do. I, along with many of my friends, lost leadership positions while others stayed behind simply so they wouldn’t. There are few things I dislike about BC, but this tops my list.

Then comes the fight with the Hovey House: What do you mean this course won’t count toward my major? Why can’t you fax this for me—it will take weeks for it to get over the ocean? Why can’t I study where I actually want to? The Hovey House claims to be this beacon of light when it comes to navigating international programs, but be warned, that is only if you have done all the work yourself and have chosen an internal program. To say they were useless would mean they did nothing, when in reality they simply made the whole task so much harder. The paperwork and little information they actually provide makes you feel alone and lost, not to mention the initial picture they take of you is bound to look terrible and haunt you for the rest of your BC career.

Finally there is the hardest part: Right now, I’m still in the honeymoon phase. I am living abroad and have finally managed to find a balance when it comes to communicating with friends back at BC. The toughest part is yet to come: the return home. This is an inevitable trap for all those who go abroad, for those who did not leave will not understand that it is hard to re-acclimate, and that those who did leave are baffled when they learn their clubs and activities, along with their friend group, did just fine without them. This return to an environment heavily influenced by the social group you partake in will be scary and lonely, since many of the important aspects which make up your BC experience were taken away the second you decided to go abroad.

Oh, and now you have to go back to the heavy workload and schedule only a madman would commit to, so add that on top of it all.

Yet somewhere between the tug of war with the Hovey House and returning home, there is a moment of clarity.

Yes, the struggle is real, but it is worth it. Maybe it’s the moment when you can give correct directions in a foreign city and language. Maybe it’s the moment when your new flatmates inform you that you are not allowed to go home come winter because they would miss you too much. It could be after you step off an hour-long plane and realize you are in a different country, or the first time you leave your Euro-trip weekend getaway to go “home.” Each person will have a different moment, yet its significance will be the same. You will come to realize this was worth it—the perpetual struggle with paperwork, the fights with friends, and the terrifying thought of the unknown back home, are all worth the hassle. Because, truth be told, this really is the time of your life.

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

Bidding farewell to a rock legend Daunting Doors - The amount of stairs on BC’s campus gets a lot of attention, and rightly so, for how difficult it can make getting around campus, especially for the poor visiting prospective students and their parents who look at the campus map and are duped into believing that Higgins is located about ten feet away from Conte Forum. (Seriously, look at that map. It’s egregiously misleading.) But we are here to bring to light a seldom talked about issue that makes trekking across campus additionally tasking: the doors. Each door on this campus weighs about 1.5 tons, a fact all students seem to forget as they lightly approach the next doorway and nonchalantly grab the handle to fling it open (and then of course stand there and hold it for the next seven people).

But, time and again, they find that fling quite significantly below the energy threshold needed to actually open the door far enough to get through it, and they must plant their feet, optimize their torque by assuming a perfectly perpendicular angle, and try again.

Your hands are full and you’re trying to pull the Higgins door open with just your pinky while keeping your coffee from spilling? Forget about it. Not going to happen.

They Lack the Crack(ers) - The cheese plate is a welcome occasional graband-go alternative to the turkey and swiss on multigrain or pesto chicken pasta salad, and we enjoy the wedge of brie to no end, but there is no denying the fatal flaw of the cheese plate that perpetually relegates it to the role of occasional alternative: the three crackers. There is enough cheese in one of those plates to fill about 25 crackers, but how many are we given? Three. Yes, there are apples and grapes, which we understand are healthier than crackers, but have you ever tried putting cheese on a grape? It doesn’t work. So while we do enjoy the cheese plate, it’s given a Thumbs Down because not too long after you’ve cracked it open, you find yourself looking down at a plate that contains about eight cheese squares and three grapes, so you toss it aside, and make a mental note to go for the turkey and swiss next time you’re in a grab-and-go situation.

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Ryan McGuill I have never been a huge fan of Lou Reed or the Velvet Underground.

I can’t name more than a handful of songs by him or the band he helmed, and I normally mistake them for the awesomely awkward Guns ‘N’ Roses/ Stone Temple Pilots mash-up Velvet Revolver. The Velvet Underground probably didn’t make the cut during my uber-exclusive 7th grade classic rock period because it wasn’t as psychedelic as Pink Floyd and it wasn’t as loud as AC/DC and its t-shirts weren’t as cool as those of Led Zeppelin (many thanks to Hot Topic for providing my wardrobe through these formative years).

But last Sunday, I was informed by a number of news outlets that Lou Reed, a “Rock ‘N’ Roll Legend,” had passed away at the age of 71.

I was initially callous to the news, so I decided to check out a few of his more popular songs, because I’m stubborn and I refuse to let a significant social event pass by without reacting to it in some profound or meaningful way. A few recognizable tunes struck a chord in my mind (pun very much intended), like “Walk on the Wild Side,” a transsexual druggie ballad that was famously sampled by A Tribe Called Quest in “Can I Kick It?” I could envision some of these Velvet Underground songs, like “Heroin,” “Sweet Jane,” and “Satellite of Love” being played in a stuffy vinyl shop, while other songs had me clearing my throat in a vicarious attempt to cure Reed’s raspy vocals.

So, I’m still not a huge fan of Reed.

But Reed’s death has implications beyond the realm of what my peers and I might consider melodiously enjoyable, as his life and music have

Lecture Hall

far-reaching influences.

If you’ve ever belted out the high note in U2’s “With or Without You,” bobbed your head to “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads, or stared at a ceiling in a post-breakup daze while listening to Nirvana’s “Come as You Are,” then you’re listening to a byproduct of the Velvet Underground’s sound.

In fact, if you consider your musical tastes to fall anywhere in the ambiguous sphere of today’s “Indie Rock,” then you can tip a cap to Reed. While Bob Dylan raked in the most commercial success for a singer/songwriter in the 1960s,

[Lou] Reed’s death has implications beyond the realm of what my peers and I might consider melodiously enjoyable, as his life and music have far-reaching influences.

Lou Reed was expanding this form of art into avant-garde and experimental territories. His trademark monotone over stinging guitar riffs and simple, yet profound lyrics were the battle cry of a drugged-out generation seeking meaning in the mundane.

Raised in suburban Long Island, Reed’s childhood would set into momentum the everlasting grumpiness and tough guy mentality for which he was known. For personal reasons, the view of an ideal and cheery world abandoned Reed at a young age. While the songwriter hated school and revered rock ‘n’ roll, Reed’s disapproving parents had him undergo electroshock therapy in an attempt to “cure” his bisexuality.

Reed struggled with heroin and amphetamine addictions throughout his entire musical career. Many of his songs

painted a debauched and cynical view of New York City, like the aforementioned “Walk on the Wild Side,” which raised quite a few eyebrows over its transsexual subject matter and oral sex references. Essentially, Reed gave listeners a reason to ponder the possibility of an explicit content tag. I guess that means 2 Chainz and Lil’ B can jot him down as a significant influence.

Andy Warhol, the eccentric pop-art artist known for his iconic images of Marilyn Monroe and his bleach-blonde mane of hair, recognized Reed’s talent alongside the rest of the Velvet Underground and became the band’s manager in 1965. For the band’s first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Warhol created an equally iconic cover image with the printed yellow banana (another staple t-shirt in Hot Topic that I never understood until recently). However, it was the free-reign that Warhol allowed over the album that stands out as one of the most salient memories in ’60s music culture. While the album only sold 30,000 copies, the famous producer Brian Eno claimed, “every person who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”

Lou Reed’s death may not have had an astounding impact on the way that I go about my daily business. His work probably won’t factor into any major life decisions I’m forced to make in the future. What I’ve learned over the last few days is that Reed’s genre-shifting, disruptive music will play on forever, through a legacy imprinted in the jumpy drone of his voice and the stern lines under his frown. Reed proved that the people who portray our cities, our families, and our world in an earnest and sincere way will have a more enduring legacy than those who replicate generic formulas and slide into convention.

And for all of that, Mr. Reed, I thank you.

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

BY PAT HUGHES

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.

Collegiate nomads Lucy Smukler I’ll be honest, sometimes I dread coming back to school. It’s not that I hate Boston College or wish I was back in high school, but I always seem to struggle with the transition between school and home. Every Thanksgiving break or beginning of a new semester, I grapple with where home is for me and where I’m rooted. Just when I start to get used to the routine, the feel, the ease of one place, it’s time to go back to the other. Maybe it’s the six-hour car journey or the well-established “BC Bubble” that can often feel like another world, but as a college student it can be challenging to define home because it can seem so ever-changing. Your old childhood room has been converted into your mom’s new office, and your freshman year “home” in Kostka is now inhabited by strangers given an entirely new room code. I guess we’re always taught home is where the heart is, but what if your heart is in two places? Or more than two places? Does one place become the “home away from home?”

Which one is which? Now you see my point—the life of a college student can often feel like a nomadic existence.

For many, this can be liberating and almost spontaneous. Between a semester abroad and a summer job in a new city, say, a BC student could potentially lay claim to four or five different zip codes in a year. This reality can be thrilling and exciting, yet simultaneously exhausting and overwhelming.

These turbulent times certainly come with a silver lining, though. The people we associate with “home” (wherever that may be) come to define it and make it our place. Roommates, siblings, parents, friends—the people we care about, related to us or not, become our family,

Between a semester abroad and a summer job in a new city, say, a BC student could potentially lay claim to four or five different zip codes in a year. our amorphous home. This seems like a pretty trivial concept, but in practice it holds a lot of weight. The life of a collegiate nomad can get lonely. It’s an interesting paradox—surrounded by and living with 9,000 of our peers, one could ask how it’s even possible to feel alone.

But it happens, whether you’re sitting by yourself in Mac for a meal or walking from your house off campus to Bapst on your own, and perhaps it’s a side effect of this “wanderer” persona we college students adopt.

Bear in mind, I don’t think we’re all wanderers in the sense that we’re completely lost. Sure, some of us may not know what we want to do once we graduate, or even what we’re majoring in. I think it’s safe to say, though, that we aren’t just chickens running around with our heads cut off. We each have an idea of what we want, whether we know it or not. It’s not that we’re lost, we can just be found in many different places, both geographically and in where our passions lie. In the process of testing out classes, new clubs, and groups over the course of a college career, a BC student can seem all over the map, sometimes spread very thin.

This can be a bit of a struggle in itself, but it’s important to realize that we should try to embrace the volatile period that is college. I see it as sort of a “rite of passage,” and for someone (like me) who’s not the greatest at going with the flow, it can be a challenge. As much as it pains me to do this (because, believe me, there are far more quotable people out there), I think Taylor Swift hits on something that explains what I mean in her song “22.” In the chorus, she sings “we’re happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time / it’s miserable and magical.” Like I said, I don’t think Ms. Swift should be used as a valuable source for everything, but these lyrics are a working depiction of what it feels like to be a college kid sometimes. We may hate the turbulent unknown, bouncing from one place to the next, but it’s okay. This is a time in our lives when home can be wherever we want it to be, from our parents’ house to our best friend’s Mod and everything in between.

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

The Heights The Heights

A2 A8

CLASSIFIEDS Thursday, January 17, 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

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Personal Assistant needed to organize and help.

Basic computer skills needed, good with organization. Willing to pay $300 per week. Interested person should contact: lizzyjones06@ outlook.com.

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Directions: The Sudoku is played over a 9x9 grid. In each row there are 9 slots, some of which are empty and need to be filled.

Each row, column and 3x3 box should contain the numbers 1 to 9. You must follow these rules: · Number can appear only once in each row · Number can appear only once in each column · Number can appear only once in each 3x3 box · The number should appear only once on row, column or area.

YOU JUST BLEW $10,000.

Buzzed. Busted. Broke.

Get caught, and you could be paying around 10,000 in fines, legal fees and increased

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insurance rates.

Buzzed driving is drunk driving. buzzeddriving.adcouncil.org

That 9 dollar lunch is worth more than you think.

Like 19,000 dollars more.

Pack your own lunch instead of going out. $6 saved a day x 5 days a week x 10 years x 6% interest = $19,592. That could be money in your pocket.

Small changes today. Big bucks tomorrow. Go to feedthepig.org for free savings tips.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

The Heights

A9

It Takes Some Courage, But Saving Money Is Worth The Leap.

Get Free Savings Tips

Put Away A Few Bucks.

Feel Like A Million Bucks.

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THE HEIGHTS

A10

Thursday, October 31, 2013

VIRGINIA TECH VS. BC

Passing attack is looking for more weapons to step up Football, from A12

KEYS TO THE GAME BOSTON COLLEGE PROTECT THE BALL VT is first in the country in interceptions with 17 and second in sacks with 28, posing a turnover threat to BC’s offensive game plan.

CONTAIN THOMAS Though the Hokie signal-caller has struggled at times, the 6’6” Thomas combines physicality with a dual-threat approach with the ball.

VIRGINIA TECH KEEP RETTIG OFF-BALANCE Expect the Virginia Tech defense to come out swinging against Rettig, who is coming off one of the worst statistical games of his career.

ATTACK THE END ZONE Virginia Tech has struggled to put points on the board recently, averaging just 16 over its past two games and only 10 in last week’s loss to Duke.

Other BC receivers couldn’t get open, and when they did Rettig either couldn’t hit them or the ball was dropped. The quarterback struggled to get rolling, taking four sacks while holding on to the ball late without finding an option down the field.

Protection isn’t an issue like it was last season, when Rettig got beat up for sacks and rushed throws consistently.

Now, with a loaded box of defenders focused on Williams, the challenge for Rettig is simply who to get the ball to and how to get it to them.

That challenge will be enormous this week. Although Virginia Tech is coming off an upset at the hands of Duke, the defense still ranks in the top 10 by almost every important statistical measure.

The Hokies are fifth in scoring defense, allowing fewer than 15 points per game. They’re fifth in rushing defense and second in pass defense. They rank second in sacks per game and first in interceptions—and all of those statistics take into account Virginia Tech’s 35-10 loss to Alabama to start the year.

“Let’s make no mistake about it,”

Addazio said. “This is probably the best defense, if not the best, then [among] the top five in the country.”

Although Addazio has talked up other defenses, such as USC, Clemson, and Florida State, heading into big matchups, he thinks the Hokies will be

“This defense is better than all the defenses we’ve faced and that’s a fact. That’s not just coachspeak.”

-Steve Addazio BC offense’s toughest test yet.

“I’ve told you before that we were playing good defenses with these other teams,” Addazio said. “But this defense is better than all the defenses we’ve faced and that’s a fact. That’s not just coachspeak. That’s just the way it is.

They’re legit.’’

The Eagles’ best playmakers for attacking Virginia Tech through the air may not come from the receiving corps, but from the backfield instead.

David Dudeck will likely be moved to wide receiver to try to replace Evans, and freshman Myles Willis has shown flashes of big-play ability.

“Dave might be one of the best competitors on our football team,” Addazio said. “He’s the guy that took every snap at pre-season camp, tailback receiver, et cetera.

“He’s a highly accountable guy. Dave is going to go out there and do his job, be where he’s supposed to be, catch the ball if the ball is thrown to him. We’re going to rely on him heavily as not only a receiver but a punt returner. I know Dave will get that job done.”

Addazio echoed that same confidence in Willis that he showed in the sophomore Dudeck.

“Myles has really developed quite well, is an explosive player, kind of a complement to Andre because they have different running styles,” Addazio said.

“Myles, he’s really quick and has sharp cuts. Andre is a big, strong, powerful, fast guy. Myles is a little more elusive.

They complement each other a little bit. We have complete faith in Myles.

You have seen Myles in the game and you’ll continue to see him even more in the game.”

While traditional throws down the field may be taken away, Willis gives BC the option to convert quick screens out of the backfield to throw the defense off balance. It’s an option Rettig will need to hit if it’s available, and although he had a poor performance last week, Addazio’s faith in his senior quarterback isn’t shaken.

“You’ve got to have great confidence and you’ve got to understand going in that it’s not always going to go right and mistakes are going to happen and those things are going to get magnified,” Addazio said of Rettig. “But at the end of the day, the guys on the team know who prepares hard every day, they know who competes hard every day. So that’s all you can do. And try not to get too caught up in all that stuff.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Chase gives us our best opportunity to win right now. He’s an experienced veteran player and a game manager. Chase is where it’s at right now and we’re going to move forward with Chase.” 

PLAYERS TO WATCH BOSTON COLLEGE CHASE RETTIG WEIGHT: 206 HEIGHT: 6’3” POSITION: QB YEAR: Senior

KASIM EDEBALI WEIGHT: 246 HEIGHT: 6’3” POSITION: DE YEAR: Senior

VIRGINIA TECH LOGAN THOMAS WEIGHT: 254 HEIGHT: 6’6” POSITION: QB YEAR: Senior

DADI NICOLAS

WEIGHT: 224 HEIGHT: 6’3” POSITION: DE YEAR: Sophomore

OUTCOMES BOSTON COLLEGE WILL WIN IF...

The Eagles can find a way to score on Virginia Tech’s talented defense, which is fifth in the country in points allowed per game and will be keyed in on Williams.

VIRGINIA TECH WILL WIN IF...

Thomas finds a rhythm in the passing game and attacks BC’s secondary early on, while complementing it with the run.

NUMBERS TO KNOW BOSTON COLLEGE

340 177

Total Yards/g Rush Yards/g

163 1.3

Pass Yards/g Turnovers/g

VIRGINIA TECH

336 125 Total Yards/g Rush Yards/g

211

2.0

Pass Yards/g Turnovers/g

GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS EDITOR

While the Eagles struggle to get production from receivers behind Alex Amidon, running backs David Dudeck (left) and Myles Willis (right) have shown their abilities as playmakers.

Virginia Tech’s offense searches for consistency at BC

BY MARLY MORGUS Asst. Sports Editor

In the first sentence of his opening statement on the ACC’s weekly teleconference, Virginia Tech head coach Frank Beamer made it clear exactly what was on his mind while his team prepares for its matchup with Boston College this Saturday.

“Really impressed with Andre Williams and this Boston College football team,” he said.

So far this season, the Hokies have made their way near the top of the ACC Coastal division, coming in second just behind the 7-0 Miami Hurricanes.

With just two losses—the first coming in Virginia Tech’s home opener against No. 1 Alabama, and the second just last weekend as Duke pulled off an upset—Beamer and his team are looking to rebound off of last week’s disappointment.

Despite putting up 387 yards to Duke’s 198, Cody Journell, the Hokies’ kicker, missed two field goals and the team committed four turnovers on its way to a three-point loss, a first for them in the ACC after a six-game winning streak since the first loss against Alabama.

After last Saturday’s blow, Beamer was not worried about Journell’s performance heading into the next week.

“What I told people, I told him yesterday, I’ve seen him kick too many good balls right down the middle to overanalyze,” he said. “He kicked well yesterday. He’s too good a kicker. I just believe he’s going to come back stronger than ever.”

Those extra points and ability to capitalize on offense will be essential as Virginia Tech hopes to put up points on BC’s dynamic defense.

“I think you really can go back to just lack of execution. I mean, I told our people, are we asking you to do something you’re not capable of doing,” Beamer said. “I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s a matter of concentrat-

ing, being right time after time after time, being consistent time after time after time.”

So far this year, the Hokies are averaging 336 yards of total offense per game and holding their opponents to 249, with their efficient numbers making them the No. 5 rushing defense and No. 2 passing defense in the country, allowing 91 yards per game and 158 yards per game, respectively. Meanwhile, BC has put up 340 yards and allowed 417. While this brings up warning flags, especially for the BC defense, the Hokies, as Beamer showed he was well aware, haven’t faced

Williams yet this year and know how much of a force he can be on offense.

“Well, he’s strong, number one,” Beamer said, “then he’s got that quick step, that little juke step. Doesn’t take him long to change directions. You put power with that quickness, you got you a good back.”

Williams is coming off of a big weekend at the University of North Carolina, where despite BC’s loss, he posted 172 yards rushing and had the Eagles’ only touchdown. Williams sits at sixth in the nation in terms of total yards rushing with 1,010 on the season, and has

GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Virginia Tech quarterback Logan Thomas is looking to bounce back after a loss to Duke.

consistently been one of BC’s biggest contributors and a player that opposing teams target as a big threat.

Virginia Tech will have to rely on its top defensive contributors if it hopes to stymie Andre Williams and the rest of the run game. At the helm of the defensive effort will be Jack Tyler, a red shirt senior whose wealth of experience at linebacker leads the team in tackles with 63. The next five of the top contributors are all upperclassmen, an example exhibiting the Hokies’ wealth of experience that they passes on both sides of both sides of the ball.

There is also young talent on the Virginia Tech roster, as Beamer made the call to play true freshmen in the secondary.

“Well, I think the further you get away from the ball, the quicker you can play,” he said. “I do believe that. If you got athletic ability, good nose for the football, I think you can come in and play in the secondary.”

With such a strong defense, there is also a solid offensive core led by quarterback Logan Thomas and Demitri Knowles, who has 415 receiving yards on the season.

“On offense, their quarterback, Logan Thomas, I think is just a heck of a football player,” BC head coach Steve Addazio said. “Big, strong guy that can throw it. Receivers that can catch it.

They’re a scary offense that can certainly send the ball down the field on you.”

Although Virginia Tech will be the visitors, Beamer is looking forward to playing in front of the fans at Alumni Stadium on Saturday.

“I think it’s a good stadium myself, great fan support,” he said. “They get into it. I personally like playing when the fans are interested in what’s going on and they’re there to cheer on their team.”

With an impressive record and impressive defensive numbers, the Hokies will present a huge challenge for BC this weekend in Chestnut Hill as BC hopes to capture its fourth win of the season. 

THE HEIGHTS

EDITORS’ EDITORS’PICKS PICKS

Thursday, October 31, 2013 The Week Ahead

Standings

Women’s soccer will host the Syracuse Orange on Friday. Men’s hockey will play a series against Northeastern, playing one game at Conte and one game at Northeastern. Football hosts Virginia Tech on Saturday. Volleyball travels to Duke to play the Blue Devils on Saturday. The NFL enters Week 9 with the Patriots hosting the Steelers.

Chris Grimaldi

21-19

Heights Staff

21-19

Marly Morgus

19-21

Austin Tedesco

19-21

A11

Recap from Last Week

Game of the Week

Women’s soccer fell to Notre Dame on the road. Men’s hockey tied the first game then fell to Minnesota 6-1 during its weekend series. Football dropped its second straight to UNC on Saturday. Volleyball remains winless in the ACC with a loss to Clemson. The Miami Heat opened their season with a win against the Chicago Bulls.

Women’s Soccer

Guest Editor: Kendra Kumor

Syracuse

Copy Editor

“I feel comfortable using legal jargon in everday life.”

This Week’s Games

Marly Morgus Asst. Sports Editor

Kendra Kumor Copy Editor

Austin Tedesco Sports Editor

Chris Grimaldi Assoc. Sports Editor

BC

Syracuse

Syracuse

BC

Women’s Soccer: BC vs. Syracuse Men’s Hockey: No. 8 BC vs. No. 19 Northeastern

Split

BC

BC

BC

Football: BC vs. Virginia Tech

VT

BC

VT

VT

Volleyball: BC @ No. 12 Duke

Duke

Duke

Duke

Duke

Patriots

Patriots

Patriots

Steelers

NFL: Patriots vs. Steelers

vs.

Boston College

Coming off an exciting overtime win against Maryland last Sunday, the women’s soccer team will return home to face the Syracuse Orange. Going into the game, the Eagles are 9-8-1, 5-5-1 in the ACC, and will look to add to their at-home win record, currently set at 45-1. It will be the final ACC matchup for both teams.

The Orange comes into the game fresh off of a loss to Maryland last week. At 7-10-1, Syracuse’s overall record is just behind the Eagles, but they have struggled in the ACC with just three wins. As the regular schedule winds down, both teams will be hoping to make a final positive impact to cap off their seasons.

Tonight, 4 p.m.

ROUNDUP

Eagles keep up pace at invitational

BY MARLY MORGUS Asst. Sports Editor

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS STAFF

Chris Ager and the Eagle offense were unable to execute around the net, despite outshooting Brown 12-11 throughout regulation. Giulano Frano’s late goal prevented a Brown shutout.

BC falls by one score in physical contest against Brown Men’s Soccer, from A12 Giuliano Frano managed to spoil Brown’s shutout, sneaking his third goal of the season past Weiner to make the score 1-2.

Zeiko Lewis assisted the goal and paced the Eagles offensively with four shots, two on goal, in the game in addition to his assist.

Brown committed seven of the 10 fouls of the game, but BC failed to capitalize on those opportunities, scoring only one goal, and the score remained 2-1 as the referee blew the final whistle to end stoppage time.

Earlier in the week, after a loss on the road to Clemson, head coach Ed Kelly had stressed the importance of his team win-

ning in order to improve the team’s chances of entering the NCAA tournament and build momentum heading into ACC post season play.

“We need to win all three games,” he said of his team.

Needless to say, that goal won’t be realized with the loss to Brown coming in the first of those final three games.

The road doesn’t get much easier for the men’s soccer team after returning home from Providence. With BC’s hopes of running the table through the final three games dashed, next week’s contests, a home game against Virginia Tech and a visit to Charlottesville to take on Virginia to close the season, will hold even more importance for the Eagles. 

Eagles can earn share of the spotlight with winning Column, from A12 the gridiron. After all, BC basketball has the task of trying to make noise in one of the country’s toughest conferences. Then how can the Eagles keep pace with a Celtic squad that has tallied 17 NBA titles? And as good as head coach Jerry York’s squad has been for the past two decades, could it ever fill TD Garden like the Bruins do every home game?

In other words, “How can BC overcome being in a pro-sports town?”

This is the question that athletic director Brad Bates responded to in Tuesday’s edition of “From the Desk of the AD” on BCEagles.com.

He doesn’t use BC’s seventh-wheel status as an excuse for being slighted by media coverage, or an impediment standing in the way of the Eagles’ notoriety. Rather, Bates frames it as an honor in a blunt question to fans.

“Why would we want to overcome something that distinguishes us?”

Being a Jets fan, I’d love the excuse to blame Bill Belichick for stealing attention away from my school’s football program. And it’s enticing to imagine how much bigger a deal BC sports would be if its campus were situated in the sticks somewhere (yeah Notre Dame, I’m looking at you) instead of right outside a major city.

But I still stand with Bates.

The BC athletic director is under-

standably diplomatic in his positive spin. After all, what college athlete wouldn’t want to “share a common vision of excellence” with professionals?

As a typical junior in college whose greatest athletic achievements have come in backyard wiffle ball games, I may not be the most qualified when it comes to interpreting a Division I AD’s words or give advice to college athletes, but I’m going to do it anyway.

If you want to make a name in a city that’s crowded with professional teams, then win.

There’ll always be the diehards in gold Superfan t-shirts who keep the faith through 2-10 seasons and heartbreaking losses, regardless of the sport. But those dedicated individuals are few and far between.

Filling the empty seats and generating the absent energy means winning over the crowd that’s chased away by losing. It means delivering in front of a national audience that doesn’t have the stomach for games decided by a last-second foul shot. I know it sounds shallow, but it’s true.

And the Eagles can fight their way into the conversation by winning.

Take a look inside of Alumni Stadium during the 2007 season, when Matt Ryan’s BC squad reached the program’s pinnacle with a 7-0 start and a No. 2 national ranking. See a lot of empty seats? Didn’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong—the fan who expects every season to result in a

W. Hockey

scoreboard fff

BC sU

Syracuse, ny 10/25

1 4

field hockey

BC duke

1 2

national title is delusional, and every collegiate powerhouse goes through ups and downs at some point. Yet when winnable games are won and those last-second shots rim in instead of out, it won’t matter how many Tom Bradys and Big Papis run this city.

Chris Grimaldi is the Assoc. Sports Editor for The Heights. She can be reached at sports@bcheights.com.

DANIEL LEE / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

Brad Bates sees the presence of six pro sports teams in Boston as a benefit to BC’s squads.

volleyball

Duke 1 g BC christus 1 G gT

washington, d.c. 10/26

minneapolis, mn 10/27 m. swimming

m. hockey

leary 1 g bc remault 2 a um chestnut hill, ma 10/26

BC will have its place at the table, and will remain there for all to see.

1 6

richardson 1 g BC condon 1 g 1 a georgetown Chestnut hill, ma 10/27 w. soccer

2 3

Workman 17 K BC Percy 13 K md

washington, 10/26 Boston,d.c.

Ma 11/11

w. swimming

147.5 BC 151.53 georgetown College park, md 10/27

1 0

The Boston College women’s cross country team participated in a field of six teams at the Rothenberg Invitational last week in East Greenwich, R.I. BC came in third place with four runners in the top 20, but the Eagles’ efforts were not enough to overcome Dartmouth, whose five runners in the top 15 were good enough for second place, and Brown, which finished with all five of its scoring runners in the top 10 for the win.

Elizabeth O’Brien paced the Eagles on the five-kilometer course, finishing with a time of 18:07. She was followed closely by Danna Levin just 25 seconds later, then Meagan Roecker, Margaret Mullins, and Claire Smith, all within just over a minute.

The men’s swim team was also in action as it traveled to Washington, D.C. to take on Georgetown last weekend.

Though it was a highly contested meet, BC suffered its first loss of the season by a narrow margin of just four points—the final score coming to 151.5 to 147.5 in favor of the Hoyas.

Andrew Stranick had two first place finishes in the 100 and 200 yard breaststroke and Nick Henze won the 100 yard freestyle and came in second in the 200 yard freestyle by less than a second.

The women’s swim team was also battling Georgetown. Senior diver Kathryn Oskar placed in the three meter diving event and Maureen Barron won the 50 yard freestyle for the Eagles, but their efforts could not overcome the Hoyas with a final score of 162.5-135.5 The men’s tennis team also had competitions this weekend as it participated in the Florida Gulf Coast University Fall Invitational. The tournament was comprised of an eight team field with three singles draws and two doubles draws, players from BC playing in each of them.

Eight different players participated for B C , top performers being the doubles team of Phil Nelson and Aidan McNulty, who had two wins, along with the team of Alexander Thirouin, and Jonathan Raude, who also had two victories. As for singles, Phil Nelson had two wins to qualify for the blue singles semi-final, and Matt Wagner had three wins. Also participating for BC were Kyle Childree, AJ Aziz, and Christian McKean.

The women’s tennis team was also at work last weekend at the Northeast Regional Championships in Cambridge.

Lexi Borr and Jessica Wacnik made it to the semi finals of the doubles draw, a field that consisted of 64 teams. The duo of Katya Vasilyev and Wan Yi Sweeting, participating in the same draw, made it through to the round of 16.

In the singles draw, Borr and Wacnik both advanced to the round of 16, while Vasilyev saw her road end in the round of 32, with Emily Safron, Heini Salonen, and Sweeting losing in the first round. 

Newton, MAri11/09 providence, 10/29

m. soccer

lombard 1 G bc beanlands 3 sV brown

135.5 162.5

1 2

Frano 1 g long 1 g

SPORTS THE HEIGHTS

A10

A12

Thursday, October 31, 2013

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2013

VIRGINIA TECH PREVIEW

Calling for help After losing Spiffy Evans, BC is searching even more desperately for receiving threats

GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS EDITOR

BY AUSTIN TEDESCO

lack of balance this weekend.

“They’re going to play man coverage, they’re going to lock you down, they’re Steve Addazio’s two biggest concerns really physical, they’re really powerful [on heading into the 2013 season are quickly the] interior, so yardage will be tough to converging on his team, as Boston College come by,’’ Addazio said. “You’re going to prepares to face one of the nation’s top have to play the field position game, and defenses in Virginia Tech this Saturday. you’re going to get your cracks in there, it The Eagles haven’t had enough playmakers will happen.” stand out to thrive through the air offenAmidon has made up 49 percent of BC’s sively, and depth issues aren’t making that total receptions, 51 percent of receiving any easier. yards, and 30 percent of receiv“The numbers in the reing touchdowns. Throughout ceiver corps are okay, but we’ve the Eagles’ first seven games, got to get some guys to step up,” Rettig has worked to connect the BC head coach said at the with any other target without end of spring practice. “[Senior much success. The outlook NOV. 2, 2013 BC vs. Virginia Tech receiver Alex] Amidon had became even more bleak when 12:00 ON ABC/ESPN2 a great spring. [quarterback] one potential option, junior Chase Rettig had a great spring. [Running Spiff y Evans, was ruled out for the season back] Andre Williams had a great spring. with a fractured clavicle suffered at UNC The offensive line took major strides last week. forward … there was real encouragement This is the nightmare scenario Addazio there. But we don’t have four established warned of before Week 1. playmakers on the perimeter, we don’t have “We’re very shorthanded on playmakthree established tailbacks, you know what ers so when guys aren’t in there our level I mean? That’s where the issues are.” drops,” Addazio said before BC opened And halfway through the season, that’s the season against Villanova. “But when where the issues remain. After striking a our guys are in there we can make plays decent balance early in the season, the BC on offense and defense. We can.” offense has skewed toward an effective run Although Williams broke free for 172 game with inefficient passing lately. Ami- yards and a touchdown, surpassing the don has continued his impressive play from 1,000-yard mark seven games into the sealast season, accumulating 585 receiving son, Rettig was held to just 57 yards against yards and three touchdowns on 46 recep- the Tar Heels—the second lowest total tions, but BC has been short on playmakers of his long career. UNC, like many other through the air outside of the star senior. defenses this year, locked in on Amidon.

The Hokies and their talented defensive See Football, A10 players will look to take advantage of that Sports Editor

GRAHAM BECK / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Taking more than his share

Alex Amidon has been BC’s main receiving threat.

These graphics show his totals compared to the rest of the team combined.

49%

51%

30%

Receptions

Yards

Touchdowns

PASSING IT UP While attempting to bring more balance to the offense, BC has become more efficient but less prolific through the air this year compared to 2012.

2013 Season 2012 Season

Yards/g

Attempts/g

Pct.

Yards/Att

INT/g

Tds/g Rating

163.1

21.7

61.8

7.5

.57

1.43

141.4

259.3

39.4

54.1

6.6

1.1

1.5

116.5

Eagles continue slide with road loss to Brown

BY MIKE KOTSOPOULOS For The Heights

On Tuesday night, the BC men’s soccer team suffered another frustrating loss, this time falling to Brown in Providence. Entering the match 2 Brown with a balanced Boston College 1 record of 6-6-2, the Eagles were hoping to come back after a close home loss to Clemson and give themselves a boost heading into the last two games of their ACC schedule. With 10 fouls recorded by the two teams, the game had a physical tone from the get-go.

Within the first 10 minutes of the game, BC appeared to control the tempo, recording three shots in the first seven minutes, but Brown drew blood first in the 14th minute. From 15 yards out, Jose Salama drilled a pass from Daniel Taylor just past the reach of BC goalie Alex Kapp to give Brown the lead, giving Salama his third tally

of the season.

The Eagles struggled to answer back, failing to take advantage of the constant fouls called on Brown while looking to overcome fouls of their own. In the 39th minute, Tyler Long gave Brown a 2-0 lead with his first goal of the season. Despite controlling the tempo for the remainder of the half, BC failed to score on multiple shot attempts by Isaac Normesinu. Each shot sailed wide, keeping Brown goalie, Josh Weiner, out of danger.

Throughout the game, the Eagles kept up with the Bears offensively, outshooting them 12-11. BC put six of those shots on net, with Weiner saving five of them.

As the teams moved into the second half, Brown’s defense continued to hold tight.

With two saves in the second half alone, Weiner proved unbeatable until the game’s waning minutes. In the 90th minute, junior

See Men’s Soccer, A11

I NSIDE SPORTS THIS ISSUE

Seventh-wheeling it, on the field and around Boston

CHRIS GRIMALDI

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS STAFF

Keeper Alex Kapp and the Eagles gave up two goals to Brown in a loss on Tuesday.

Virginia Tech prepares for BC

The Hokies’ top defense has its eye on Andre Williams and the BC offense....A10

When it comes to going out with friends, nobody enjoys being the third wheel.

Now imagine what it would feel like to be the seventh.

I’m not talking about that person who flies solo to a party with three other couples (but really, bless his or her perseverant soul). Rather, I’m referring to Boston College Athletics finding a maintainable market in a city with six professional sports franchises.

Roundup: Women’s cross country

The Eagles came in third of six teams in the Rothenberg Invitational..............A11

If that doesn’t sound daunting, then add in the caveat that you’re the college competing for attention with teams that have combined for countless playoff appearances and eight championship trophies in the 21st century. Still wondering who you are?

You’re BC. It’s easy to attribute empty seats in Alumni Stadium on game day to BC football’s second-banana status in the greater Boston Area—despite being one of the only FBS team in New England. Just sit along press row at a Saturday gameday on the Heights and you’ll hear writers talking about the Red Sox playoff run, the upcoming Pats game, or the Celtics’ latest preseason matchup.

Yes, I said preseason matchup.

The argument isn’t only made for

See Column, A11

Editors’ Picks......................A11 BC Notes............................A11

A2CRITICAL CURMUDGEON

RIP LOU REED

THE PUNK ICON IS GONE BUT FAR FROM FORGOTTEN, PAGE B2 FASHION FORWARD

COSTUME CONTROVERSY JULIANNE HOUGH OFFENDS WITH USE OF BLACKFACE, PAGE B4

THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, January 17, 2013

ALBUM REVIEW

‘REFLEKTOR’

ARCADE FIRE FOLLOWS UP ITS GRAMMMYWINNING TRIUMPH ‘THE SUBURBS’ WITH AN AMBITIOUS NEW DOUBLE ALBUM, B5

CREATURE FEATURES of monsters and Music Videos

By Sean Keeley, Arts & Review Editor i Ariana Igneri, Assoc. Arts & Review Editor i John Wiley, Asst. Arts & Review Editor See tombstone tunes, B3 JOHN WILEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

THE HEIGHTS

B2

KEELEY’S CORNER

More than meets the eye

Thursday, October 31, 2013

SCENE AND HEARD

BY: BRIDGET GALVIN

SEAN KEELEY This past weekend, I finally got around to seeing Gravity, the sci-fi blockbuster that has dominated the box office charts week after week. As I entered the theater, I bought my ticket and took my 3D glasses with a mixture of excitement and skepticism. The reasons for excitement are clear enough: with the countless 4-star reviews, the 97 percent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes, and the presence of Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) in the director’s chair, my expectations were exceptionally high. But there was also a nagging skepticism in my head—partly instilled by friends who had complained to me about the movie’s redundancy, its faulty logic, and its cliched script. But the skepticism was also of a more fundamental sort, and it boiled down to this question: how could you make an entire movie out of an astronaut free-floating in space?

When it comes to evaluating movies, the conventional wisdom places a premium on storytelling, and on that basis alone Gravity seemed to have a handicap. Gravity does not tell a great story. It’s a movie about two astronauts adrift in space, and their struggle to survive. A movie pitch does not get more basic than that. In the minimalism of its schema, Gravity resembles another recent critics’ favorite: All is Lost, the lost-at-sea drama starring Robert Redford and … nobody else. Like Gravity, the plot of the movie is so basic that it’s surprising an entire feature was squeezed out of it. Indeed, despite all the rave reviews, both movies have elicited audience grumbles that “nothing happens” over the course of the movie.

And yet, films like Gravity and All is Lost prove that defining movies by the stories or plots they depict is a fool’s errand.

When watching Gravity, I was reminded once again that the experience of a movie is so much larger than the narrow confines of its plot. In the hands of a master like Cuaron, even the simplest story can become exhilarating.

On one hand, the success of the movie lies largely in its technique. Gravity is the rare effects-driven movie that still has the capacity to create a sense of awe and wonder. When I watch a massive CGI spectacle like The Avengers, I feel impressed in the short term but ultimately rather numbed. How many times can we see a city being annihilated before the effect loses its “special” quality? Gravity, though, is something different. The movie integrates its style with its subject, rather than having the effects serve as window dressing. With the camera gliding through space in long takes, and the 3D effects simulating floating objects and satellites, Cuaron creates the most genuinely immersive portrayal of space—not to mention the best argument for the 3D format—that I have ever seen on screen.

On a more fundamental level, though, the appeal of movies like Gravity goes far beyond technique. Oftentimes films with limited and focused plots prove to be, oddly enough, more engaging than narrative-driven movies. Rather than rushing through a checklist of plot points, movies with a singular focus allow viewers to breathe, to spend time with the characters and to explore variations on a theme. Think of Cast Away. Half of the movie is concerned with a man talking to a volleyball on a desert island. In some sense, “nothing happens,” but the movie’s patience and its willingness to spend time with its main character (not to mention Tom Hanks’ terrific lead performance) make the payoff incredibly affecting. I think the same is true of Gravity. Admittedly, the movie gets a little treacly toward the end, delivering its life-affirming message rather literally, but Sandra Bullock’s performance and Cuaron’s direction make it work. Having spent so much time with Bullock’s character—often taking on her subjective perspective in the movie’s most tense scenes—the audience becomes invested in her fate and feelings.

One of the paradoxes of Gravity is that it is at once a big film and a small one. It has its cake and eats it too. It’s an expensive blockbuster, of course, replete with innovative special effects and conceived on a massive scale. But it’s also, at its core, a small and intimate movie: lean and quick and focused, with few characters and a simple plot.

Perhaps Hollywood could take a cue or two from Cuaron. In an age full of sprawling comic book epics like The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, and convoluted sci-fi films like Inception and Looper, here is a movie boiled down to its essentials. It’s a timely reminder of the virtues of simplicity in movies, and a reminder, too, that beneath the simplest concept there may be much more than meets the eye.

Sean Keeley is the Arts & Review Editor for The Heights. He can be reached at arts@bcheights.com.

1. CROSSING THE LINE

2. PAST THEIR BLOOM

Julianne Hough went as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren from the Netflix hit series Orange Is the New Black for a party on Oct. 25.

She wore blackface and an orange jumpsuit. This move proved very controversial, and mortified by the backlash, she tweeted: “I am a huge fan of the show Orange Is the New black, actress Uzo Aduba, and the character she has created. It certainly was never my intention to be disrespectful or demeaning to anyone in any way.” Her brother, Derek Hough, stated “Obviously, it wasn’t her brightest moment in her life, but hopefully we can move on.”

Lord of the Rings actor Orlando Bloom and Victoria Secret model Miranda Kerr announced this week they have separated. After six years together, the couple split amicably. The two married in 2010, and have a two-year-old son named Flynn. The couple have been living separately for a while but recently announced their separation formally. The couple’s press told E News that “despite this being the end of their marriage, they love, support and respect each other as both parents of their son and as family.”

4. COURAGEOUS COSTUMES

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady matched with supermodel wife Gisele Bundchen as characters from The Wizard of Oz for Halloween. Gisele dressed as Dorothy while Tom whipped out some fuzzy attire dressing as the Cowardly Lion. Gisele posted a picture of them kissing with the caption “Having fun with my Lion last night! #thewizardofoz #Dorothy #2013 #halloween #fun #love.” Brady has yet to find the courage to retweet the image.

3. BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?

5. BEYONCE PHOTO BOMB

The Jonas Brothers called it quits three weeks after announcing they were cancelling their tour due to “a deep rift between the band.” Joe said to People that it was a “unanimous decision” to break and that there are no personal problems with the brothers. While Jonas Brothers fans might not be ready to throw away their leftover concert apparel from eighth grade just yet, the boy band itself seems to be burning up, and by most accounts, will not be going to the year 3,000 together.

While performing in Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne Park on Friday, Oct. 25., Beyonce surprised everyone at the concert by photo-bombing a selfie.

A 15-year-old near the front row was taking a selfie, when Beyonce spotted the girl mid-song and photo-bombed the picture. The girl described on Tumblr what happened in gripping prose, declaring “OMG OMG OMG I CANT BELIEVE IT HAPPENED TO ME.”

THE CRITICAL CURMUDGEON

@MOUNTAIN_GOATS (THE MOUNTAIN GOATS, BAND)

“SO WHILE I DON’T DO A LOT OF RIP STUFF HERE I WANT TO SAY I AM LITERALLY POURING LIBATIONS OUT ONTO MY DRIVEWAY FOR LOU REED” PHOTO COURTESY OF GOOGLE IMAGES

The Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed, who died on Sunday, was an exemplar of literary ambition as well as a punk rock innovator.

Lou Reed: From the wild side to the other side MATT MAZZARI To any of my readers in tune with recent music news, I’m afraid that today’s column will be perhaps the most predictable installment of the “Critical Curmudgeon” ever. If you read my columns, you probably know that Lou Reed, former lead singer/writer/guitarist for The Velvet Underground, was a huge deal to me. This weekend, Reed passed away at 71 due to health issues relating to a recent liver transplant. As far as I can remember, I don’t think any celebrity death has ever affected me as much as his.

Reed’s work was always so raw, so personal, and so relevant to my life that I honestly felt that I’d known the guy. It’s as if we’d been having a one-sided, musical conversation for a large chunk of my life, and I’m sure many others feel the same.

His music has been affecting people since the ’60s, and his willingness to put his soul into each record made that effect very real and poignant. Fans will continue to revel in the legacy he left behind: a beautiful, full, and fascinating life preserved in sound. VU listeners will also note the bittersweet irony of the fact that Reed died on a Sunday morning, “Sunday Morning” being the opening track to his band’s firstever album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. Even in death, Reed had a preternatural sense for poetry.

So, in light of Reed’s passing, I want to talk about a subject that was very important to him and his tremendous contribution to rock and roll: the fragile connection between lyricism and literature and

the communication between the two.

Reed himself was a very literary musician, which is to say that he drew inspiration not only from great prior music but also from great books. He once said that his primary goal as a musician was to “make an album that would speak to people the way Shakespeare [and] Joyce speak to me.”

His prosaic style of lyricism was imitated by many, but successfully achieved by few.

Between his influence and Bob Dylan’s, rock lyrics were opened up to a whole new potential for artistry and experimentalism that would blur the lines not only between a song and a poem, but an LP and a novel.

What differentiates an average pop song from a song that aspires to literature? It’s not always a matter of accessibility. Reed was always an advocate for rock music as a simple, clear-cut, visceral genre: as he once said, “One chord is fine.

Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.” He didn’t always follow his own rule, but he certainly preferred his instrumentals to be “barebones.”

Even though The Velvet Underground’s work was among the most avant-garde of the decade, the early Velvet Underground albums demonstrated almost none of the elaborate layering or vibrant, explosive color that you can see on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pet Sounds, or even VU’s later album, Loaded. So how did Reed’s early songs manage to pack so much punch while seeming so scarce?

People sometimes credit Reed with dragging pseudo-intellectualism into rock music, but that’s just not the whole story. The Velvet Underground wasn’t

about picking your brain so much as it was about picking your gut. Reed’s lyrics take you to a seedy, deviant, and sublime underworld, a haven for addicts, outcasts, and self-destructive behaviors. When Reed laughs in the middle of “Heroine,” just as he declares “It’s my wife and it’s my life,” he’s pointing to something hysterically beautiful and heartrendingly tragic about people, a dark absurdity in humanness (particularly in youth) that desires to escape from reality with the same desperation that it desires to stay attached to it. The narrator in this song has formed an irreversible bond, a marriage, with the very substance he turned to in order to divorce himself from life.

Velvet Underground & Nico isn’t about drugs. It’s not just about love, and it’s not even about Reed. It’s about the nature of people, how fear paralyzes us, and how hope frees us.

So what makes music into literature is an investigation of the artist’s emotion that reflects a broader, universal truth about the reader or listener’s own soul.

In experiencing it, the creator and the observer form a bond, and through that bond discover something larger than themselves.

If you haven’t already, I strongly suggest checking out The Velvet Underground. What Reed was capable of changed the face of music forever, and his talent will be sorely missed.

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

@SIMONPEGG (SIMON PEGG, ACTOR, ‘THE WORLD’S END’)

“GERARD BUTLER, MORGAN FREEMAN AND AARON ECKHART ARE RETEAMING FOR THE SLIGHTLY LESS ACTION PACKED ‘GRANDMA HAS FALLEN’.” @AARONPAUL8 (AARON PAUL, ACTOR, ‘BREAKING BAD’)

“‘@UBERFACTS: THERE IS A VILLAGE IN ENGLAND CALLED BITCHFIELD.’ I KNOW WHERE I’M SPENDING CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR.” @JIMGAFFIGAN (JIM GAFFIGAN, COMEDIAN)

“MY 7-YEAR-OLD: DAD, IF I WAS MEAN I WOULD SAY YOU DON’T EVEN NEED A COSTUME.” HAVE A FAVORITE TWEET THIS WEEK? TWEET IT FOR CONSIDERATION AT @BCHEIGHTSARTS

THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, October 31, 2013

B3

TOMBSTONE TUNES sean keeley, arts & review editor ariana igneri, assoc. arts & review editor john wiley, asst. arts & review editor “Crazy Clown Time,” David Lynch How to describe the music video for David Lynch’s “Crazy Clown Time?” In some sense, it is indescribable, a “see it to believe it” kind of video. But I would hate to make anyone watch this video.

It’s a disturbing, surrealist nightmare, seemingly ripped straight from David Lynch’s id.

The scene is a backyard at nighttime, strewn with beer cans and cluttered with cookout equipment and an old TV. The players are a strange assortment of types: a Goth with a Mohawk, a dude decked out in full football gear, a good-looking suburbanite man.

Then Suzy, a voluptuous blond, struts forward and takes her shirt off in front of the men. Suddenly things get really weird. Over a steady beat, Lynch’s high-pitched, shrilly robotic voice tells the story. Over the course of seven minutes, Suzy pleasures herself while getting doused with beer, the Goth sets his hair on fire, and everyone involved runs around the backyard in a drugged-out stupor, smoking and screaming and setting things on fire. The images themselves would be creepy enough, but the relentless music and Lynch’s voice shrieking out “It was really fun!” completes the sensation.

Should we have expected anything else from David Lynch?

The man made his name with violent surrealist movies like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, which explore the dark underbelly of American life. The video for “Crazy Clown Time”—a song featured on his 2011 musical debut of the same name, a thoroughly weird electronic effort—does the same thing, investing a barbecue with images of dreadful sadism. But a little bit of Lynch can go a long way. Check out the video if you dare, but don’t be surprised if you find it replaying in your nightmares. – S.K.

“Bonfire,” Childish Gambino Donald Glover awakes in a dark wood with a noose around his neck. He looks up, and sees that he was cut down from a tree, seemingly escaping his own death. With a look of horror on his face, he begins to cough up blood, removed the noose from his neck, and tries to run away, only to stumble to the ground. In the distance, he sees what appears to be the man who tried to kill him, walking through the woods with a noose and a knife, approaching a group of campers sitting around a fire listening to a ghost story.

Glover runs to their defense, discovering he too has a knife. When Glover tries warning them of the approaching killer, however, he finds that they cannot see or hear him, as he waves around his knife in desperation. The suspect killer approaches, scaring the campers, revealing himself as their friend. They walk away, leaving Glover to repeat the loop, awaking again in the woods, a noose around his neck. Donald “Childish Gambino” Glover’s 2011 video “Bonfire” is reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense,, as it is implied that Glover is the ghost the campers are talking about. The music video reflects, in an offhanded way, the racial themes of the song, evoking imagery of the lynching of African-Americans. Glover presents the true American horror story, one of a society often ignoring these ghosts of slavery as they run through perpetual loops—“Bonfire” is a sophisticated, powerful take on Halloween-relative music videos, originally released Nov. 1, 2011. – J.W.

“Thriller,” Michael Jackson With its skulking zombies and bloodthirsty werecats, Michael Jackson’s music video for “Thriller” shocked audiences when it was first released in 1983. Three decades later, the video is now heralded as the most influential pop music video of all time. Selling nine million copies worldwide, it has even been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress—“Thiller” is the first video ever to receive this honor.

The 13-minute long video opens innocently enough, with a young teenage couple on a romantic date, but the plot takes an unexpected twist when Jackson suddenly transforms into a monstrous beast beneath the light of the full moon. Long, dirty nails emerge from his fingers, and wiry whiskers grow out of his cheeks. His eyes glow, beady and yellow, terrifying the girl he was with and causing her to run away in terror.

As “Thriller” progresses, the settings shift—from a dark alley, to a gloomy graveyard, and eventually to an abandoned house—all while the line between fantasy and reality is blurred, which helps give the video its eerie edge. Even by the video’s end, viewers don’t know whether the supernatural creatures were part of a movie, part of a dream, or part of what really happened. It’s all quite unsettling.

Directed by John Landis, the music video represented a then unprecedented merging of music and film. This, combined with its weird subject matter, unusual dance moves, and gripping costumes, makeup, and special effects, added to “Thriller’s” wild success 30 years ago. And even now, Jackson’s video is still iconic. It’s a creepy classic, standing the test of time and proving that “no mere mortal can resist the evil of the thriller.” – A.I.

“Monster,” Kanye West Kanye West, Bon Iver, Jay Z, Nicki Minaj, and Rick Ross—question: what do these things all have in common? Apparently they’re all mother-expletive-ing “monsters.” Kanye West’s “Monster” music video opens with the warning, “The following content is in no way to be interpreted as misogynistic or negative towards any groups of people. It is an art piece and it shall be taken as such.” Take it as you will. To give some insight on the warning, the video opens with three dead models hanging from the ceiling as Rick Ross smokes a cigar below. So it happens, the video is set in a mansion full of dead models, some with their heads missing. Some critics were quick to slam the horrific misogyny in this imagery, but this seems the point. The video features a standout performance from rapper Nicki Minaj, in which her Roman alter-ego sexually tortures her Barbie persona. The video is disgusting, thoughtful, cutting, attacking the common practice of hip-hop video to use models as nonliving, sexual objects.

“Monster” explores the darker components of pop culture, depicting a house full of indifferent “monsters” standing in front of what appear to be the corpses of victims, as frenzied fans attempt to claw into the mansion. The artistic ambition to the 2011 project rivals that of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Beneath its mask of repulsive content, “Monster” exposes the glaring deformity of the face of pop culture. – J.W.

“Werewolf Bar Mitzvah,” Tracy Morgan “My Immortal,” Evanescence Evanescence’s 2003 music video for their single “My Immortal” is chilling—not in the goblins and witches sort of way, but more in a depressing, haunted kind of way. Shot entirely in black and white, the video features the band’s lead singer Amy Lee aimlessly wandering around and listlessly laying about the streets of the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona. She wears a billowing, white dress, and her hands and feet are wrapped in tattered bandages. Her long, black hair, strewn with a garland of flowers, and her smoky eye makeup contrast with her pale visage, making her a spectral sight to behold. Like a ghost, Lee is depicted almost as if she were floating throughout the city. She’s never filmed on ground level.

Rather, she’s shot either sitting in a tree, perched on a roof, or resting on top of the roof of a car, conveying the idea that she’s no longer connected to or part of this physical world.

The video for “My Immortal” reflects the dismal but insightful lyrics of the song, visually portraying how the memories or the spirit of a loved person can be tormenting after his or her death. With her sad, lingering voice, Lee sings on the bridge, “I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone / But though you’re still with me / I’ve been alone all along.” The vocals and the lyrics are made even more powerful by the song’s instrumentals—the simple minor-key piano progression eventually builds into an emotionally evocative rock ballad featuring the rest of the band.

This controlled musical progression, in combination with Lee’s vocals, the track’s lyrics, and the video’s themes, makes “My Immortal” a deeply moving music video to watch. It touches on dark ideas and feelings that can often be frightening to think about. – A.I.

For all its symbols of horror and violence, Halloween has always been the silliest of holidays. Despite their fright factor, creatures like zombies, vampires, and werewolves have become so commonplace that they are often used to comedic ends. Humor is the flip side of terror, after all, and over time, celebrations of Halloween have come to embrace both.

It’s fitting, then, that one of the most quintessential Halloween videos is a comedic one. “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” debuted as a brief gag on 30 Rock in October 2007, but the full song was released afterward and took on a viral life of its own. The video, designed to look like an artifact of the 1980s, features Tracy Morgan in werewolf getup, dancing alongside two werewolf friends on a moonlit forest set. “I was working late on my Haftorah / When I heard a knock on my bedroom-doorah,” sings Morgan, and there commences one of the strangest, and catchiest, comedic songs in recent memory. The lyrics are hilariously inane, but good luck trying to get them out of your head. “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, spooky scary / Boys becoming men, men becoming wolves,” Morgan sings in an aggressive closeup as the werewolves do a mechanical dance that clearly parodies “Thriller.”

It’s hard to identify precisely what is so funny about the video: its uncanny evocation of ’80s music video cliches, the sheer randomness of mixing a werewolf story with a Jewish coming-of-age ritual, or simply the sight of Tracy Morgan leering at us in full werewolf garb. Somehow, though, what began as a six-second joke became a sensation. The sketch inspired t-shirts, dance remixes, theme parties, and even a 2007 New York Times article charting its influence. Spooky scary, indeed. – S.K.

THE HEIGHTS

B4

Thursday, October 31, 2013

WILEY’S FOLLIES

MUSIC VIDEO OF THE WEEK BY DMITRY LARIONOV

‘Massachusetts’ reveals a troubling state of Ylvis’ humor The Mods: BC’s best mistake TITLE: “Massachusetts” ARTIST: Ylvis DIRECTED BY: Ole Martin Hafsmo WHY: Ylvis has shared significant evidence on what the fox says, but “Massachusetts” gives a sense of what Ylvis has to say: evidently, not much.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SBS DISCOVERY

Ylvis, the Norwegian pop duo that brought us “What Does the Fox Say?” a few weeks ago is back to capitalize on their recent popularity with the tribute to our humble state of Massachusetts. But goddamn, this Broadway ballad is out of touch. With so many valid criticisms of Massachusetts—the bankrupt transit system, the 2 a.m. curfew on our “nightlife,” the “justgot-my-license” syndrome of our drivers—Ylvis can’t seem to find a realistic direction for their satire, instead vying for a crude line of homophobic humor and simple gags that lack the sophistication of most playground humor. Not to mention, somebody whose home country has towns called “Stjordalshalsen,” “Sandnessjoen,” and “Sogn og Fjordane,” is in no place, figuratively and geographically, to criticize the spelling of “Massachusetts.”

Ylvis also knocks on Massa-

chusett’s reputation as a haven for gay marriage. Fine, it’s comedy, who cares. But it’s the same tired meta-humor seen so often before: “Just because you’re kissing a man doesn’t make you gay.” I thought that kind of joke was Apollo-caliber in middle school, but that was, well, more than a couple years ago. Lame. Try harder next time, Sooerseng’aardennghijiiihk, or whatever your name is.

Bottom line: “What Does the Fox Say?” was a one-off. I can’t blame the group for cashing in on the hit, but I would hold off on The Lonely Island comparisons for now.

If you’re not in the mood for an exhausted line-up of jokes, and would rather some humor at Boston’s expense, check out the promotional music video made by the MBTA (which was financed, of course, by recent fare hikes).

Yes, it’s real. 

FASHION FORWARD

The haunting tradition of blackface Julianne Hough’s costume revived questions of Halloween and race

THERESE TULLY I wasn’t going to talk about Halloween at all, because I am not the biggest fan—but then Julianne Hough wore blackface as a part of her costume this year, and the world panicked. It seems as though celebs just cannot avoid stirring the sartorial pot and public consciousness these days. But is the conversation really worth having? Or is the answer to all of the celeb antics to simply ignore them? And also, what is the point of dressing up on Halloween these days? Is it to be the most accurate in our portrayals, the most revealing, the most clever, or the most political? Each of these answers is unfortunately charged and makes me hate the holiday even more.

The facts are as follows: Hough dressed as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes,” Warren from HBO’s newly popular Orange is the New Black. If you have missed the photos, they are currently buzzing all over the Internet. Her costume included an orange jumpsuit with a long-sleeved grey undershirt, lots of topknots, a nametag, and the offending makeup choice. Hough darkened her skin with what appears to be some sort of bronzing product.

One vein of the Internet is trying to lessen Hough’s indictment by saying that she clearly just used a lot of self-tanner, and that she didn’t technically use blackface. The other camp argues that the intent was the same as if she had donned traditional blackface.

Essentially, the product used is itself irrelevant and that the message is the same. Hough’s brother, awardwinning dancer Derek Hough, has spoken out in his sister’s defense stating how sorry she is, and how stupid she feels. Similarly, Hough’s Dancing With the Stars costars have largely stepped up to speak on behalf of her innocence and sincerity.

Julianne apologized via Twitter stating that she is a big fan of Uzo Aduba, the actress who plays Crazy Eyes, and the show in general. It is not surprising that someone would want to dress up as Suzanne for Halloween. Orange is the New Black garnered a tightly knit cult following this past year, and Crazy Eyes ranks as a viewer favorite. Though she was at first viewed as a delusional, seemingly simple, “crazy” woman, viewer perception would eventually change as the show exposed her for what she really was, one of the most heartbreaking ladies of the prison.

Whether you are a Crazy Eyes fan or not, one must question exactly when Halloween costumes

go too far. Where do we draw the line between having fun and being politically correct? I think most people would draw that line somewhere around blackface, to be honest. In a country whose issues with race relations are not something of the distant past, ignorance cannot be claimed in the face of this sort of thing. Next time, skip the blackface, Julianne, I am begging you.

What could have been a fun and timely Halloween costume has turned into another media circus. I would love to know Aduba’s thoughts on the incident, but she has remained silent throughout the coverage.

As a white woman, can Hough darken her skin to improve the ‘accuracy’ of her representation of Crazy Eyes? If she had not darkened her skin, would the costume still ring as offensive in the public sphere?

On what I consider to be a far more horrifying note, Buzzfeed tracked down a tweeted picture from Oct. 27 from user @jamievandekamp who posted a picture of himself captioned, “I’m Trayvon Martin for Halloween.” In the photo, the offending man is wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt with a bloodstain and a thick layer of blackface. Two friends accompany him in the photo, one, wearing a t-shirt with the words “Neighborhood Watch” printed on it, is using his fingers to mime holding a gun to “Trayvon’s” head.

Even without the blackface, this would be a horrific Halloween costume.

Halloween’s evolution has always interested me.

From costumes meant to frighten away spirits, to scantily clad lady nurses, to the increasingly political state of things, there may be no more dramatic and controversial sartorial choice you make all year.

Boston College once again has its own “Dress with Respect,” campaign this Halloween that basically asks students to think before they dress, and to make choices that aren’t hurtful to anyone else. It seems that this is not entirely unwarranted.

I always love to see what Heidi Klum cooks up for Halloween every year. If you haven’t ever seen Klum’s Halloween costumes, they are definitely worth the look. You might imagine that the 5-footnine blonde beauty would be wearing next to nothing, and no one would say a word about it. Instead, Klum typically goes all out for Halloween, picking extravagant and over-the-top costumes where she is often completely unrecognizable. My favorite is her 2011 costume where she dressed as the human body.

More muscular system than ghoul, the costume transformed Klum to an unrecognizable object straight out of the Bodies exhibit.

There are plenty of ways to have fun transforming yourself this Halloween. Race should not be one of them.

Therese Tully is a senior staff columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at arts@ bcheights.com.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF GOOGLE IMAGES

Heidi Klum’s 2011 human body costume (top) serves as an example of how costumes can be sensational without turning to race. Julianne Hough (below) made headlines this week by dressing in blackface, in an attempt to dress as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren from ‘Orange is the New Black.’

THIS WEEKEND in arts

BY: ARIANA IGNERI | ASSOCIATE ARTS & REVIEW EDITOR

Friday

Saturday

1 . BOSTONIANS HALLOWEEN INVITATIONAL (FRIDAY, 11/1 7:00PM)

Ongoing

4. DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (ONGOING) A gripping drama featuring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, and Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club tells the story of a Texas electrician fighting pharmaceutical companies for treatment after he is diagnosed with AIDS. The movie opens Friday.

The Boston College Bostonians are hosting their annual Halloween themed a capella concert in McGuinn 121 this weekend. BC’s Shaan and Boston University’s Treblemakers will also perform. Admission is free.

2. GODSPELL (FRIDAY, 11/1 7:30PM)

3. THE HEAD AND THE HEART CONCERT (SATURDAY, 11/2 6:00PM)

5. INVASION: DIARIES AND MEMORIES OF WAR IN IRAQ EXHIBIT (ONGOING)

Presented by the Boston College Dramatics Society, Godspell is a musical based on a number of parables from the gospel of St. Matthew.

The show will be staged in the Bonn Studio Theatre. Tickets are $10 through Robsham.

The Head and the Heart, an indie-folk rock band from Seattle, Wash., are playing at the Royale Boston on Friday and Saturday night to promote their new album, Let’s Be Still. Tickets are $30.50 through Ticketmaster.

Displaying a collection of diary pages with pictures, maps, and poems, this highly personal, multimedia exhibit is built around the war accounts of Marine Lt. Timothy McLaughlin, a BC Law graduate. Invasion will run though November.

JOHN WILEY By the time installation of the “largest modular concept in the country” started in September 1970, over 600 Boston College students had already volunteered to live in the new housing—a response that “pleasantly surprised” then-housing director Kevin P. Duffy.

Administrators imagined the pre-fabricated units would be a tough sell, and likely would have to serve as housing for freshmen.

The initial decision to construct this modular housing was a knee jerk response to the city of Boston’s rejection of the University’s plan to acquire a variance to use Brighton’s Towne Estates as dormitories—apparently, the good people of Lake Street weren’t too fond of BC’s expansion then either. The construction was the cost-cutting alternative to the $6 million dormitory proposed by architectural firm Hugh Stubbins and Associates, which would have used the area for state-of-the-art living spaces overlooking an expansive green.

But as it happened, by the time the University had completed filling in a large part of the Chestnut Hill Reservoir to create space for the dormitory, the Stubbins Plan had fallen through. Newsweek published an article titled “The Beggar’s War” on the dilemma, describing the BC administration as being “in desperation.” The University came to the decision to construct the Mods in no more than four days—a plan with no formal architect, contradicting nearly every aspect of the vision for Lower Campus. I am convinced that this was the defining moment in BC’s history, a final, cathartic blow to the highfalutin vision of architect Donagh Magginis, who first drafted his plan for BC as a “city upon a hill” in 1908.

If we consider upper campus the “city upon a hill,” then surely the Mods are the valley of the devil—a cradle of all sinfulness, a pre-fabricated wasteland dedicated to the pursuits of hedonists and miscreants.

The construction of the modular housing is the best mistake BC has ever made. I imagine no sooner than days after administrators realized what they had done, they began drafting elaborate lies to temper the concerns of parents. The Mods have been forecasted to come down in “three to five years” for at least 30, with talk of their destruction beginning in the 1980s.

There’s this myth that the Mods were meant to be temporary, and while this has been the prevailing view of all administrators following the 1970 dream team’s marathon modular run, it’s largely fiction.

Rev. F. X. Shea, S.J., executive vice president of BC at the time of the Mods’ unveiling, declared as the 43 modular units, designed by Arbor Homes, were nearing full installation, that he never saw BC constructing traditional dorms again.

Clearly now we can recognize Shea’s belief as hilariously shortsighted. In 1973, construction began on Ignacio and Rubenstein Halls.

Today, Lower Campus continues to grow. In 2017, the University expects to complete a new dormitory on the site of More Hall, across from St. Ignatius Church. Along this trajectory, Edmond’s Hall will be torn down soon thereafter, and we will see University President Rev. William P. Leahy, S.J.’s master plan for BC begin to eat away at the old architectural fabric of Lower Campus. In 10 years, the Mods might be just a memory.

A case must be made for the allowance of some chaos in the design of our Chestnut Hill campus. We cannot allow our architectural history to be choked by uniform quadrangles and generic dorm structures. This summer, we saw the rich, chaotic space in front of Fulton Hall converted into what is essentially a set of utilitarian pathways, so linear in design that it has successfully starved anything communal about the quad. While perhaps it is fair to impose Upper Campus with such sharp forms—Magginis’ plan certainly subscribed itself to such concerns of functionality—I urge the administration not to confuse its “city upon a hill” with our “valley of the devil.”

Lower Campus has thrived because of its chaotic, communal spaces. It’s a place of celebration. Following last semester’s capture of the Boston Marathon bomber, hundreds of students rushed the Mods, waving American flags, and cheering for police officers as they drove by. The Stubbins Plan would have created no such space.

It’s difficult to describe the students’ attraction to the Mods, and near impossible to explain their 43 years of survival. The Mods are offensive to all reason, but remarkably appealing to our sense of what it means to be an Eagle—we see this in our alumni, who flock back to the Mods before every football home game. The Mods grew BC from a commuter college. Somehow in their low form, they helped elevate this Jesuit institution to stand among the nation’s best, blessing it with chaos and community.

The master plan for BC, in all its goodness, has one glaring error. As the 43-year-old modular structures continue to age, this institution would be unwise to attempt to erase its accident. I challenge BC instead to remake its best mistake, and make room in the master plan to rebuild the Mods.

John Wiley is the Asst. Arts & Review Editor for The Heights. He can be reached at arts@bcheights.com.

THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, October 31, 2013

B5

Arcade Fire’s musical evolution reflected on new album

BY SEAN KEELEY

Arts & Review Editor Even when its audience was small, Arcade Fire has always been big. Many things have changed for the band since its earliest days in the indie rock circles of Montreal, but its commitment to chasing the big sound remains undiminished.

From “Wake Up” to “The Suburbs,” Arcade Fire has always been more in the business of writing anthems than pop songs.

Two years after The Suburbs won a Grammy for Album of the Year, Arcade Fire is back with its fourth LP, Reflektor. As may be expected, it’s an expansive and ambitious affair, its 13 tracks spanning two discs and 75 minutes. All the usual Arcade Fire elements are here: lengthy anthems, multiple iterations of songs, tracks that build from muted openings to bombastic conclusions, darkly portentous lyrics, and highbrow allusions. Yet even as the album feels consistent with Arcade Fire’s earlier discography, Reflektor marks a departure in tone and style. The album shows a playful side to Arcade Fire, as the band loosens up musically, experimenting with longer tracks and funkier grooves, while lightening up lyrically. Reflektor does not mark a drastic change in Arcade Fire’s style, but it does represent a broadening of the band’s musical horizons.

The title track is a complicated and beautifully layered piece of work.

A song full of dark bass grooves, tinkly piano strokes, a sinister horn

part, and overlapping multilingual voices (including an appearance from David Bowie), “Reflektor” is a tale of love frustrated by deflected signals and unclear intentions. “I thought, I found a way to enter / It’s just a Reflektor,” sings lead vocalist Win Butler as his wife Regine Chassagne harmonizes. For nearly eight minutes, the song manages to find new ways to explore its mirror imagery and to orchestrate its various components.

“Reflektor” makes it clear from the start that Arcade Fire will not be resting on its musical laurels.

The album’s first half delivers on that promise, track after track. “We Exist” and “Normal Person” are two early highlights, both rock songs with alienated protagonists struggling to assert themselves in a world of conformity. “Normal Person” is especially powerful, beginning with the provocative lines, “Is anything as strange as a normal person? / Is anyone as cruel as a normal person?”

With a foot-tapping riff, a lively keyboard part, and some expressive guitar solos, the song gradually builds up in intensity and shifts meaning, revealing itself as a romantic comeon. It’s one of Arcade Fire’s purest, most satisfying rock songs, and an undeniable album highlight.

Still, the band works outside of its comfort zone on “Here Comes The Night Time,” a strange little track that is re-worked in a second version later in the album. The first iteration is a slow-paced, groovy six-minute track that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1970s disco club, though it oc-

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1 Royals Lorde 2 Roar Katy Perry 3 Wrecking Ball Miley Cyrus 4 Wake Me Up Avicii 5 Hold On, We’re Going Home Drake 6 Holy Grail Jay Z feat. Justin Timberlake 7 Applause Lady Gaga 8 Counting Stars OneRepublic

REFLEKTOR ARCADE FIRE PRODUCED BY MERGE RECORDS RELEASED OCT. 29, 2013 OUR RATING APHOTO COURTESY OF MERGE RECORDS

Arcade Fire’s newest release, ‘Reflektor,’ is an ambitious effort, at once highly experimental and surprisingly laid-back. casionally breaks into faster tempos before settling back into its laid-back vibes. “Laid back,” of course, is not a phrase often associated with Arcade Fire’s brand of music, but with “Here Comes the Night Time” the band cuts loose and has some fun working in a new genre.

Arcade Fire is sometimes accused of being overly self-serious, but it’s hard to lobby that accusation against Reflektor. Even the tracks with the potential for pretension—a pair of songs about the mythical lovers Orpheus and Eurydice, and another about Joan of Arc, or an-

other called “Afterlife”—avoid the trap. The album is characterized by quizzical playfulness rather than artrock grandstanding. The songs are filled with curious, often funny little experimental touches: the female chorus that shouts “Hey Orpheus” like a group of cheerleaders, or the French verses that weave throughout the album, or the occasional spoken word intro and sound clippings interspersed throughout. The lyrics, too, embody this experimental spirit, more often asking questions than answering them. Arcade Fire seems less interested in building every song

toward a single grand theme—as on The Suburbs—than in exploring a number of intersecting ideas while pulling new sounds out of its musical toolbox.

Ultimately, it is this spirit of “anything goes” that animates and distinguishes Reflektor. By surrendering some measure of control, allowing themselves to play fast and loose with song structures and genres, Arcade Fire has not lost its identity. Rather, they have continued to evolve, re-asserting their relevance with one of the best albums of the year. 

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Los Campesinos! struggle to find a consistent tone on ‘No Blues’

BY CAMERON HARDING For The Heights British indie rock band, Los Campesinos! is back with the release of its fifth studio album No Blues.

The first single, “What Death Leaves Behind,” was released as a free down-

load and was followed by their second single, “Avocado, Baby,” which was used for the album’s first music video.

The six-membered band provides fans with 10 tracks for an overall upbeat and interesting album, but with some painfully cliche “indie” elements.

The overall production and com-

position of No Blues is solid. Despite its relatively short length, clocking in at only 41 minutes, this album has plenty going on. Each track has a distinctly happy tone that repeatedly alternates between calm and chaotic.

Many of the songs start off with a trippy vibe, usually consisting of spa-

NO BLUES LOS CAMPESINOS! PRODUCED BY WICHITA RECORDINGS RELEASED OCT. 29, 2013 OUR RATING C+

PHOTO COURTESY OF WICHITA RECORDINGS

The latest from indie rockers Los Campesinos! is full of contrasts, with a tone that is both upbeat and melancholy.

cy keyboards, robotic sounds, barely audible voices. Despite the dense collisions of noise that frequently erupt through the album, each instrument is distinct and sometimes captivating. It can be easy to get hooked on a single instrument—the bass parts in “For Flotsam” are an outstanding example. The band does tip-toe around being poppy and cheesy enough that some new listeners may be disillusioned.

The interesting thing about No Blues is the constant contrasts that proliferate the album. Many of the songs take interesting turns in pace and energy, while maintaining a mostly exuberant vibe. Los Campesinos! deliver some nice surprises. The tone can easily switch from dreamy and synthetic to rocking and energetic. Some moments come across as completely anomalous. This includes a breakdown in “Avocado, Baby” that sounds like a remnant of a cheesy ’80s hip-hop song. Despite its dynamics, the album frequently has a cheerful atmosphere. To put it bluntly, the music often just sounds plain happy.

Still, despite how upbeat parts of

No Blues sound, there’s a melancholic undertone and some really dark and depressing lyrics. Many of the lines habitually allude to death or conjure morbid imagery, such as when the band sings on “Avocado, Baby,” “may she who casts the first fist of dirt across the casket have mourners lick the mud from her fingernails.”

The lyrics and vocals are where this album is inconsistent. Some may find Gareth David’s delivery particularly over-the-top and silly.

Although older fans won’t be disappointed by any dramatic changes in singing, new listeners may become quickly turned off. Some may find that there are particular moments when the vocals border on both cringe-worthy and laughable at the same time. This, thankfully, seems to be most prominent in the verses and does not pollute other areas of the song. In addition, there are some excellent background and harmony vocals that often do a superb job complementing the lead vocals and adding another atmospheric layer to the songs.

One can easily get through these songs without giving many of the

lines too much thought. A closer listen to the lyrics, however, may raise some eyebrows and roll some eyes.

Unfortunately, listening closely to the lyrics can be downright distracting and confusing. They tend to alter between morbidly dark and ridiculously corny when they aren’t sporadically devolving into indie nonsense. An example of dismal lyrics can be found particularly at the end of “A Portrait of the Trequartista As A Young Man.” Its last few lines sound almost nihilistic, “We all know we’re gonna die, we’re a speck of dust in a bad God’s eye.” Whether some of the lyrics are cliched or compelling, is, admittedly, a matter of taste.

Although it arguably has issues with lead vocals and lyrics, the rest of No Blues is genuinely interesting at worst and enjoyable at best. Longtime fans may be surprised by the extra kick of exuberance, but nonetheless pleased with a solid release. Musically, there are a lot of great twists and turns—too many to list. New listeners of Los Campesinos! still have plenty of room to enjoy the album as well, but may have to approach it with a pinch of open-mindedness. 

Dubstep remixes fail to energize Linkin Park songs on ‘Recharged’

BY RYAN DOWD Heights Staff One of the most commercially successful rock bands of its generation, Linkin Park returns just a year after its gold-certified Living Things. This go round, Linkin Park unveils Recharged, a series of remixes, or “reinterpretations” as the band terms them, to songs originally featured in Living Things. By “reinterpretation,” the band seemingly means swapping guitars for dubstep, because unfortunately, that’s all that really goes on here.

Linkin Park has made a career toeing the line between rock and rap. Its debut album, Hybrid Theory, was an impressive, imaginative tour de force of rock music and happens to also be one of the most commercially successful debut albums of all time. Linkin Park’s 2004 collaborative EP with Jay Z, Collision Course, showed a band truly stretching its imagination. Those hoping for a Collision Course-like set of remixes here will be sorely disappointed, and

not only because of the absence of Jay Z. In Collision Course the band actually brought new material to the table, along with Jay Z, who gave a different, reimagined meaning to old Linkin Park tracks.

Recharged simply doesn’t work.

Flipping the band’s blend of rock and hip-hop for pure dubstep does not lend any new meaning here, unless the meaning we’re to glean is that Linkin Park is fresh out of inspiration. Linkin Park has remained successful over the years not because it has retained the same sound over 13 years, but because it has slowly, carefully implemented new techniques album after album. The general rhythm and structure of a Linkin Park song has remained the same.

Minutes to Midnight, Linkin Park’s third album, has a lighter, less chaotic sound than Hybrid Theory, but songs on both albums follow the same general rhythm—that of tight, careful verses or rapping which build up to a dramatic, some might say screeching, chorus. This same structure is prevalent in Recharged. Aside from “A Light That

Never Comes” the album is only a series of remixes, after all. But the sin of Recharged is drowning out this rhythm and structure Linkin Park fans have grown accustomed to with a smattering of ho-hum dubstep. Dubstep itself is not a sin when used imaginatively. The problem with Recharged is that dubstep and imagination do not implicitly go hand in hand.

Recharged is not a total mess.

Pusha T’s short appearance in “I’ll Be Gone” is an easy highlight.

Pusha T raps that “dope keep calling / asking me what’s my legacy / I just want to die balling.”

Appearing in a Linkin Park song is surely his definition of balling, but sarcasm aside, Pusha T’s tone suggests he’s not having a whole lot of fun. If Pusha T is not having fun on your album, is it a worthy album? Probably not. “Powerless” is really the only remix that works, perhaps only because the original lends itself to dubstep more than the other tracks. “Powerless” feels like a Calvin Harris song, and that’s not a bad place to start for a band trying to edge its way

into the dubstep game. The only original on the album, “A Light That Never Comes,” is an indication of where Linkin Park has decided to go. Clocking in at just under four minutes, it’s one of the shorter tracks on the album. Like most Linkin Park tracks, it flips between measured verses and a

reverberating chorus, but dubstep actually works here, because the track was seemingly conceived and produced with dubstep in mind. The song takes the casual Linkin Park listener to territory that’s a bit unsettling at first, but makes sense for a band always testing out new forms.

While it misses the mark, Recharged is only a chapter in the continuous evolution of Linkin Park . Fans of dubstep won’t love this album. Fans of Linkin Park won’t love this album. But Linkin Park will be back next time, with yet another tool in its stylistic belt. 

RECHARGED LINKIN PARK PRODUCED BY WARNER BROS. RECORDS RELEASED OCT. 29, 2013 OUR RATING D

PHOTO COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. RECORDS

Linkin Park’s latest album ‘Recharged’ is a misguided experiment, remixing old material in uninspired fashion.

SINGLE REVIEWS BY CONNOR FARLEY One Direction “Story of My Life”

Eminem “Rap God” “Rap God” is one of 2013’s best rap songs, and perhaps one of the best in Eminem’s career.

Unlike Kanye’s “I Am a God,” it doesn’t use experimental beats or lazily delivered lines as a substitute for meaningful verses. Instead, it relies on extensive practice and reverent lyricism— combining light-speed rhymes and controlled passion to create a break from cookie-cutter rap.

M.I.A. “Y.A.L.A.” I’d love to cut One Direction a break. But those artificially enhanced bastards just can’t move beyond exerting strenuous amounts of energy and attention on girls only to have their hearts broken (as if that has ever been the case for any member of the group). The song so homogenously blends in with all of 1D’s other wishy-washy lovesick ballads that it’s insulting.

In evaluating modern pop, it seems necessary to ignore content and judge purely on “feeling” for the next here-and-gone party anthem. “Y.A.L.A.” (“You Always Live Again”), however, pushes the limits of patience for painfully trite pop. The 38-year-old’s return to the electro-pop sphere will please the masses, but will do so safely, not deviating from Drake or Ke$ha-inspired pop.

B6

THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, October 31, 2013

THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, October 31, 2013

B7

THIS WEEK IN...

BY SARAH MOORE | FOR THE HEIGHTS

EDUCATION

POLITICS

TECH

On Friday, to the enj oy ment of b oth parents and students, a piano fell six stories from an MIT dorm-room roof in the name of tradition. This annual event has characterized the last day students are able to drop classes for the past 41 years. This year, the Baker House Piano Drop was moved to signal the kick-off of family weekend so parents could participate in the fun as well. Parents, students, and alumni packed Memorial Drive to hear a “Bruno,” the MIT-termed unit of volume that results from “a piano falling six stories onto Amherst Alley from the roof of the Baker House,” named for the first student brave enough to push a piano off of the Baker roof.

This year, in an effort to create a new tradition, the doomed piano was filled with Halloween candy, becoming a pinata-esque trick-ortreating preview.

Last Monday, Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis announced his resignation after seven years of service.

Davis gained national recognition after his involvement with the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings and local praise as the city saw a 30 percent decrease in violent crimes during his time as commissioner. Davis’ explanation was a simple need for change, both for him and the city. He plans to pursue a fellowship with the Harvard Institute of Politics, which aims to encourage and further careers in politics and public service, where he will both teach undergraduates as well as take courses. Though there are rumors that Davis’ name may be in the running for the leadership of the federal Department of Homeland Security, he said that he has no intention of leaving Boston at this time. His official resignation will occur within the next 30 to 60 days.

This week , Starbucks has brought the capabilities of social media to a new level by announcing its latest program: “Tweet-a-coffee.”

Now Twitter users, after syncing to a Starbucks account and linking that to a credit card, can send five-dollar gift certificates to their friends and followers through social media. In order to promote “Tweet-a-coffee,” Starbucks is giving gift certificates to the first 100,000 users who link their accounts with Visa cards. Though this seems like a convenient way to correct the occasional forgotten birthday wish, the app allows Starbucks to access the entirety of the user’s twitter account. This includes the ability to both read and send tweets, view followers, and update the user’s profile. Starbucks has yet to announce how extensively this opportunity will be used, however, it can be expected to only account for a few promotional tweets or follows.

CUISINE SPORTS O n Tu e s d a y , New England-headquartered ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s teamed up with Anchorman to release a new flavor based off of the movie’s infamous news anchor, Ron Burgundy. The latest pint, “Scotchy Scotch Scotch,” is butterscotch ice cream with butterscotch swirls. It promotes Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which is set to premiere Dec. 20. Beyond simply adorning ice cream flavors with the public’s favorite celebrities, Ben & Jerry’s uses the proceeds from pints of “Scotchy Scotch Scotch” to promote environmental sustainability and a commitment to EPA-regulated practices. The company is involved with various local and global efforts to promote holistically better production processes including dependence on small, Vermont dairy farms as well as support of fair-trade efforts.

On Sunday, less than an hour after the New England Patriots beat the Miami Dolphins, Miami center Mike Pouncey, 24, was served with a grand jury subpoena by the Massachusetts State Police.

The subpoena surrounds the ongoing investigation into Aaron Hernandez’s involvement in two July 2012 murders.

This questioning is not unprecedented: in 2007 they, along with Pouncey’s twin brother and other teammates, were both involved in and questioned about an altercation-turned-shooting in Florida. Authorities are also investigating Hernandez’s participation in interstate gun trafficking in three states. Though the extent of Pouncey’s involvement is currently in question, police do have reports of extensive transactions between him and his former teammate. Both a Dolphins spokesperson and Pouncey declined to comment on the situation, and he traveled back home with the team on Sunday night.

RESTAURANT REVIEW

BBQ brings southern comfort

ZACHARY COHEN / FOR THE HEIGHTS

B Y Z ACHARY C OHEN For The Heights

HOUSE AD

When you sit down and find a roll of paper towels on the table and wet napkin packages on the floor, you know you are at the right kind of barbecue restaurant. Nestled in the heart of the historic-looking Brookline Village right off of the D line, Village Smokehouse has been serving locals some of the best barbecue for over 25 years, and it is easy to see why.

The service strives to give a sense of southern hospitality and to make their customers feel right at home.

The decor of the restaurant was a bit corny, but not atypical for this kind of cuisine. The tables had a red and white, checkered pattern under a hard, plastic cover, which assists the bussers in their clean up efforts from the mess that will inevitably be made. The bright, red walls are lined with various types of southern memorabilia that include black and white pictures of cowboys, pastel paintings of the Alamo, and signs related to Texas. The inventive idea to create salt and pepper shakers from Corona bottles really sets the tone for this joint.

The food options included everything that one would expect from an establishment like this one, such as brisket, chicken, pork, and more. While there are some other types of entrees like steak and burgers, all should primarily consider choosing a barbecue item, because the Village Smokehouse has been ranked among the best in the immediate area.

The evening started off with the waitress bringing over some corn bread that was simply amazing. Served with melted butter, the warm bread was not dry and had a sweet taste. The firm outside coupled with the soft inside made for a great combination.

The speedy staff brought out the entrees shortly after ordering. The sausage fajita was an interesting twist on a common Mexican dish. The sausage was prepared “Texas” style and had a smokier taste compared to the more common Italian sausage. Served in a sizzling-hot cast-iron pan over red peppers and caramelized onions, this barbecue-inspired meal was made even better with guacamole,

tomatoes, and lettuce on the side. The BBQ sauce on the side may be a little different, but it made the fajitas all the more enjoyable.

Another great entree was a special that allows customers to choose two of the restaurant’s popular dishes, which is similar to an even bigger special that allows diners to choose three different choices. The pulled pork and the baby back pork ribs went rather well together. The pulled pork was perfectly shredded and thick. The meat was very tender and there was a copious amount served that would satisfy any hungry patron. The house BBQ sauce that was served on the side had a bold flavor with a slightly sweet mix. The baby LOCATION: 1 Harvard Street CUISINE: American Barbecue SIGNATURE DISH: Rack of Ribs ATMOSPHERE: 8/10 AVERAGE MEAL: $25 OVERALL EXPERIENCE: Aback pork ribs were falling off of the bone with their tenderness. The meat was smothered with the house sauce, which made these ribs memorable.

Baked beans and potato salad were served with the entrees. The brown sugar sauce accompanying the beans had a sweetness comparable to that of straight sugar. It made the relatively unoriginal beans taste almost like candy. The potato salad was delicious, as the potatoes were firm instead of undesirably mushy as is common in many potato salads.

The amount of mayonnaise was appropriate—not too much to make it overly runny and not too little to make the potatoes dry.

Overall, there are few complaints to be made about the Village Smokehouse. The service made the experience feel comfortable, the food was awesome, and the location is ideal. Everybody who loves barbecue food should try to make an effort to visit the Village Smokehouse. 

The Heights

B8

Bookish Bostonian

Boston is not just a mini NYC Ryan Towey

I was talking with a friend over the weekend who is an excellent writer, and she told me that she has recently been hearing about Grub Street in Boston.

What street? Maybe I had not heard her correctly over the music—the street did not sound familiar, but she explained that Grub Street is an independent creative writing center in Boston. I figured that it must be rather new—surely I would have heard of it otherwise.

But no, Grub Street was founded in 1997 by Eve Bridburg, and it is the second largest independent creative writing center in the United States What kind of ignorant schlep am I, sitting here writing a column once a week called “Bookish Bostonian” without ever having heard of this integral part of Boston’s literary community?

(Then again, maybe my ignorance is just part of the schtick here, like a bad case of using Yiddish to seem conversational, but I digress.)

Last month, a group led by Grub Street was given a two-year planning grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council that amounts to $42,500.

With this money, the group hopes to create the nation’s first cultural literary district in the heart of Boston. The Boston Book Festival and the Boston Public Library are among the groups working with Grub Street to make this cultural district a reality. While the exact boundaries of this district have yet to be decided, The Boston Globe reports that it will likely include the Boston Public Library, the Public Garden, and sections of Washington St., which is the former home to many literary talents.

The prospect of Boston developing a literary district is important to me.

After its literary dominance in the 18th and 19th centuries, its literary power dispersed to other cultural centers, especially to New York, a fact made all too evident by The Globe article about the formation of the literary district. More than one quote in the article compares the hope of a literary district to life in New York.

Henriette Lazaridis Power, editor of the auditory literary magazine, The Drum, compared the planned literary district to “a Broadway for writers” in that “Broadway is a loosely defined geographic area of New York and everyone knows that’s where you go to find theater,” and she argues that a literary district would do something similar for the written word in Boston. While I cannot deny that this comparison is a valuable one, it still inexplicably grinds my gears.

Why must a Boston creation be validated by a comparison to a New York creation? I am fully aware—and would agree—that New York is the premier American city, and it certainly sets the bar for any number of urban staples, but that does not mean that Boston should not be able to stand without a comparison to this great city.

Another person in the article said that the recent renaissance in Boston’s literary scene has made living in Boston “almost like living in New York.”

But why? Why can living in Boston not just be exactly like living in Boston?

Before I came to school at Boston College, I received some variation of this comment a number of times: “You’re going to love Boston—it’s like a little New York!”

Having now enjoyed and experienced both cities, I can respond to this statement with an emphatic, “No, it’s not.”

Boston is a place that has a distinct culture, population, and structure. And this is coming from a person who happens to also love New York. Boston is not a smaller version of that great city, it is an exactly right-sized Boston.

I commend the efforts of Boston’s literary community for doing something great for this city, but ask that its members claim the accomplishment as their own without tirelessly comparing it to those of other cities. If Boston successfully creates a literary cultural district, it will be the first city in the nation to do so.

And that’s something pretty big.

Ryan Towey is the Asst. Metro Editor for The Heights. He can be reached at metro@bcheights.com.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Candidates talk tech with Boston’s innovators Connolly and Walsh share views with voters over coffee B y T ricia T iedt Metro Editor Last Friday morning, Boston Innovation (BostInno) and the New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA) hosted “Coffee with Connolly and Walsh,” a two-hour question and answer session featuring the final two candidates in the running for Boston’s next mayor. The event, which numbered close to 100 in attendance, was held in the newly opened District Hall, a new hotspot for those in the Innovation District in South Boston. Moderated by Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital and Steve Kraus of Bessemer Venture Partners, both members of the NEVCA, the candidates were questioned on their vision for the future of innovation in Boston.

Each candidate was given approximately 45 minutes with the audience, which primarily consisted of members of the innovation and technology community. The two men were never in the room at the same time, which provided a more lax setting for candidates to converse with voters instead of sparring behind podiums. The format catered to the audience: questions were submitted from those physically present and those tuning in online via Twitter using the hashtag #NextBosMayor.

Candidate Marty Walsh began the session identifying himself as a Bostonian through and through—despite the late start, he managed to catch the end of the Sox game the night before.

Walsh connected with Boston locals on multiple levels, seen in his contingency plan for keeping 20-somethings in the city: open the bars until 3 a.m. “There is a war for talent in the city,” a moderator said. With competition such as New York and Silicon Valley, how does a city “retain young talent?”

Walsh outlined four main strategies

tricia tiedt / Heights Editor

Mayoral candidate Marty Walsh, left, talks tech / innovation with moderator Jeff Bussgang. Candidate Connolly, right, followed soon after. for Boston: keep the T open late, keep the nightlife open late, bring hot companies to Boston, and provide housing for all involved in this master plan.

“A new mayor after 20 years is a good thing,” Walsh said. “We need to take our city into the 21st century.”

When asked the same question, Connolly outlined the same steps an hour later. In fact, both candidates have strikingly similar plans for the city: the struggle throughout election season has been identifying the candidates’ differences. Connolly stressed a “robust arts agenda” necessary in updating the cultural and social scene of Boston, linking the artistic community to the innovation community. In other words, “It’s about more than liquor licenses.”

According to BostInno, Walsh left audience members “hungry for policybased specifics.” While he claimed that “innovation is the future of the country” and the “next mayor has the opportunity to grow the Innovation District” in Boston, the 46-year-old aged himself with a jukebox reference and admit-

ted his tech skills were less than savvy.

Walsh is a likeable character, connected to his fellow citizens, yet had no real vision for the innovative community going forward.

Connolly, on the other hand, caught the attention of techies in the room with one of the most noteworthy statements of the morning: “I want people to feel like they’re walking into the Apple store when they walk into City Hall.” As a “champion for the innovation community,” Connolly cited regionalization as a key component for technological progress.

Since Boston is a city of neighborhoods, the mayor has influence over several surrounding communities, including those across the Charles River.

According to Connolly, collaboration with local officials in Cambridge is integral to his success.

When pressed on the heart of their campaign, both candidates left behind the buzzwords of the morning. Instead, one particular phrase presented itself in both campaign’s “big ideas:” the

achievement gap. Specifically, both Connolly and Walsh talked of “closing the achievement gap,” which entails providing every child in Boston with a quality education. Walsh, a former union leader, focused on the gap from a monetary standpoint: his goal is to “help kids out of poverty” by economic growth. As City Councilor, former teacher, and Boston Public School parent, Connolly has been deemed the “education candidate.” Boston has the “capacity to leverage partnerships, transform on arts and culture, and front the spirit of innovation,” Connolly said in closing. “But, it’s about the achievement gap.”

Due to the unique audience and intimate setting, the event sparked dialogue unspoken in the mayoral race thus far. Connolly and Walsh showed their likeness in policies to enact as mayor of Boston, yet differentiated themselves by delivery and making connections to the voters. The final election will take place next Tuesday, November 5. n

Halloween hotspots include Salem and Mike’s Maze Halloween, from B10 different events at different times to give visitors a variety of things to do throughout the day. For Halloween, Salem brings in singers to perform and liven up the environment. They have tours around the city as well as haunted houses and museums, filled with both things that are seen as modern staples of Halloween and artifacts related to the

history of Salem.

In B oston, many restaurants are changing their look to fit the Halloween spirit, such as by changing the lighting in the restaurant or using an alternate logo for one night. Some restaurants are taking a different approach, encouraging both their staff and customers to take part in this holiday, either by dressing up or participating in a special activity. For example, Beehive, a restaurant and bar, is

adding a new element by hosting a zombie prom. All the staff of the restaurant will be dressed up as zombies themselves, serving a special menu for that night from 5:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. The Beehive will provide live music, all from the ’80s, to keep the customers entertained throughout the night. At the end of the night, they will provide a prize for the customer with the best costume.

Another activity for this Halloween

outside of Boston is at Mike’s Maze, which is a maze created from cornfields inspired by a famous picture, which is changed every year. Around Halloween, Mike’s Maze offers an additional event to their daily maze called Mike’s Mystery Maze. Only open for this Friday and Saturday, Mike’s Maze exclusively opens it maze from 7 to 10 p.m., providing both flashlights and snacks for all participators. n

President defends ACA Obama, from B10 Democrats standing by his side. The president’s choice to speak in this location served to reflect a bipartisan effort to work on the healthcare issue, according to officials.

Obama chose to address both the benefits and the difficulties of the healthcare law in Massachusetts, where the state’s healthcare coverage provided the model for the federal health insurance overhaul.

The president cited early problems with the Massachusetts law as he tried to lower expectations for the initial enrollment in the federal system.

“There’s no denying it. Right now, the website is too slow, too many people have gotten stuck. And I am not happy about it … There’s no excuse for it. And I take full responsibility for making sure it gets fixed ASAP,” Obama said. “Healthcare reform in this state was a success, that doesn’t mean it worked right away. There were problems that needed to be solved.”

The president highlighted how only about 100 people signed up during the first month of open enrollment in Massachusetts.

But that figure ultimately rose, with 36,000 people signing up by the end of the one-year open enrollment.

“All the parade of ‘horribles,’ the worst predictions about healthcare reform in Massachusetts never came true,” he said.

“They’re the same arguments that you’re hearing now.”

The president then proceeded to point out benefits already available under the 3year-old healthcare law, including ending discrimination against children with preexisting conditions and permission to keep young people on their parents’ insurance plans until they turn 26.

“It’s because you guys had a proven model that we built the Affordable Care Act on this template of proven bipartisan success,” Obama said. “Your law was the model for the nation’s law.”

The president also addressed recent reports that his administration misled the public when he promised Americans who like their healthcare plans would be able to keep them during his push for passage of the bill. “There has been a lot of confusion

and misinformation about this,” he said. “If you have one of those sub-standard plans and you really like that plan, you are able to keep it. That’s what I said when I was running for office. That’s part of the promise we made.”

Obama said a main goal of the Affordable Care Act was not only to help the uninsured, but also the underinsured, meaning there would be minimum requirements that all plans must include. Since the law passed, he said, some Americans with plans that do not meet the new minimum requirements have gotten letters informing them that their plans would be cancelled.

“It is the Massachusetts experience that shows you what happens when people put politics aside and make sure that people are covered,” said David Simas, a White House deputy senior advisor who has overseen aspects of the healthcare rollout. “Faneuil Hall, and that historic setting, is a perfect backdrop to show Democrats and Republicans working together.”

After his speech, Obama also attended a fundraiser for DCCC in Weston, Mass. yesterday to raise funds for the DCCC alongside Steve Israel and Nancy Pelosi at the home of Alan and Susan Solomont. Alan is a major Democratic donor and former ambassador to Spain under Obama.

Also this week, administration officials and Cabinet secretaries will continue a series of appearances across the country to push enrollment in 10 areas with the highest rates of the uninsured.

In addition to Obama’s visit yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified before Congress on glitches with the government’s healthcare website, according to the Associated Press. Healthcare.gov has been visited more than 20 million times since its launch. Only roughly 700,000 Americans have been able to successfully submit applications, however, according to a weekly address Saturday by Obama.

“Our focus 24/7 right now is just on fixing this website, throwing everything we have at it,” said Simas, also a former aide to Governor Deval Patrick. “That’s what the president’s demanded, and that’s what’s happening.” n

Charlie riedel / ap photo

The Red Sox began celebrations in Fenway Park immediately after the end of Game Six.

Sox successful in Series Red Sox, from B10 ebration began when he jumped into the arms of catcher David Ross. The Sox won 108 of the 178 total games they played this season.

The series has been marked by close calls and exciting endings. Game 3 was played on Saturday night in St. Louis. The game was tied 4-4 at the Cardinal’s last at-bat in the bottom of the ninth. Allen Craig, on base for St. Louis, was sliding into third base at the same time that Red Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks was trying to field a wide throw from catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Craig tripped over the legs of a fallen Middlebrooks as he was making his way toward home plate. Left fielder Daniel Nava threw the ball to home plate, where Saltalamacchia tagged Craig out. Third base umpire Jim Joyce, however, called an obstruction on Middlebrooks and granted Craig home plate.

The Cardinals stormed the field to congratulate Craig and celebrate their 2-1 lead in the series, while Red Sox players and managers came out to argue the call with the umpires. Joyce and other officials said in a later interview with The Washington Post that they had never seen a World Series game end that way.

A second strange ending came in Game 4, played at Busch Stadium on Sunday night in St. Louis. The Red Sox were up 4-2, thanks in part to Jonny Gomes. The bearded left fielder was added to the roster for Game 4 only a few hours before the game after Shane Victorino reported back problems. Gomes then hit a three-run homer in the sixth inning. In the bottom of the ninth, Allen Craig hit a single into right field. The injuries that Craig had sustained

in Game 3 left him with a limp, and the Cardinals replaced him with pinch runner Kolten Wong. There were two outs, and Cardinals postseason powerhouse hitter Carlos Beltran had just come up to bat when Red Sox closer Koji Uehara caught Wong too far off base and made the last out of the inning. The Red Sox tied the series, 2-2.

In Game 5 on Monday night, the last game of the series to be played in St. Louis, pitcher Jon Lester pitched for almost eight full innings and only allowed one run from the Cardinals. David Ortiz continued an impressive streak of hits throughout the series with three hits in Game 5, bringing his batting average for the series up to .733 (11 for 15). Red Sox catcher David Ross’ hit in the seventh inning allowed the team to break a 1-1 tie and beat the Cardinals 3-2. Closer Koji Uehara had his seventh save of the postseason, tying the record for most postseason saves.

In preparation for Game Six, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino issued a statement urging Bostonians to enjoy the events of the next few days, but to do so with common sense.

“As the Red Sox work to close out an amazing season, Bostonians have been tremendous in showcasing our city on the national stage,” he said. “This week I just ask that we stay the course.” Police and security were out in full force after the win, clearing the streets around Fenway and Kenmore Square within an hour of the victory. A wall of Boston Police bikes drove celebrations away from the finish line and attempted to clear Boylston Street altogether after at least one car was flipped near Fenway. Hundreds of fans remained on the field at Fenway until the early hours of the morning. n

THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, October 31, 2013

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Danvers student charged with teacher’s murder Philip Chism, 14, will be tried as an adult for the murder of teacher Colleen Ritzer

BY BENNET JOHNSON For The Heights On Tuesday, Oct. 22, Danvers High School teacher Colleen Ritzer, 24, asked a 14-year-old student to stay after school so she could help him prepare for a test.

Massachusetts police say they linked Philip Chism, a freshman at Danvers, to the murder of the highly-praised math teacher through video surveillance and his own words.

“He just gave a nod,” said Rania Rhaedoui, a freshman who typically sat near Chism. “There was a test coming up, and she wanted to know if he had any questions.”

Chism was charged with first-degree murder. He was ordered to be held without bail last Wednesday afternoon in Salem, Mass.

“He was doodling and listening to music during his Algebra I class in the school’s final period,” said Cambria Cloutier, one of Chism’s fellow students, according to CNN. Creating drawings during class was unusual for Chism, who Cloutier said was “a really good student.”

While moving between two afterschool meetings, Cloutier said she looked into the same classroom and saw Ritzer standing by her computer and Chism sitting in a chair about five to 10 feet away. The teacher

smiled at her, Cloutier recalled.

Later in the afternoon, Ritzer went to a girls’ bathroom on the second floor, because someone was in the locked faculty bathroom. Chism allegedly followed her in. There, Ritzer was punched repeatedly before being killed with a box cutter around 3:30 p.m., a source said.

Her body went into a recycling bin, then outside the school and into the woods.

Before police found Ritzer, they had started to look for Chism.

Chism had recently moved to Danvers from Tennessee and was new to the school.

He had a spot on the junior varsity soccer squad.

Teammates reported to The Boston Globe that Chism is the leading scorer on the JV soccer team, and missed the usual practice on Tuesday at 4 p.m. and a regular team dinner at 6 p.m. that is held at a teammate’s home.

While they were looking for him, police received a call around 11:20 p.m. on Tuesday about Ritzer being missing.

She was not home, nor had she answered her phones.

Chism was found and arrested for murder, based on the surveillance and testimony given by Chism, which also led them to Ritzer’s body in the woods.

“Based on his statements and the cor-

has benefited from around $300,000 of outside money.

Connolly questioned Walsh’s independence from the unions, pointing out that Walsh was a paid union official while serving in the state legislature and advocated for legislation that would eliminate the requirement that the City Council approve arbitration awards for public safety officials. Walsh responded by sticking to his guns and maintaining that his relationship with unions should not be cause for voters’ concern.

“I certainly have expressed many times on this trail my independence from organized labor,” Walsh said. “I am proud of

who I support … but I also know that I can stand up to them when I have to.”

Walsh then used the opportunity to launch an attack of his own against Connolly and his background as a lawyer.

“We don’t need another lawyer in City Hall right now, watching our purse strings in the city of Boston,” Walsh said. “Let me be clear: I will be able to get to a negotiation because of the experience I have, because I have trust on the other side of the table.”

Beyond these points of contention, the candidates agreed on issues such as the need for more diversity in the Boston Police Department and support for charter schools as a facet of education reform.

When asked about whether they would support the proposed construction of a

PHOTO COURTESY OF GOOGLE IMAGES

roborating evidence found at multiple scenes at the Danvers High School and surrounding wooded area, [he] was subsequently placed into custody and booked for murder,” a source said according to NBC News.

Chism allegedly did not drink or do drugs and came from a good family, according to one of his closest friends. He described Chism as a good athlete who was shy at first but eventually warmed up to people, adding that he had not been acting strangely before the murder.

Danvers senior Mitchell Bussone, 17, was among the kids who went looking for Chism on Tuesday night. “What went through my head was ‘how could this happen?’” Bussone said. “That’s what everyone is asking.”

Chism’s legal situation was influenced

by a 2012 Supreme Court decision, which struck down mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles.

Philip Chism was charged as an adult and is currently being held without bail for the murder.

The motive for the killing remains unknown, investigators said.

“I don’t know why she had to die,” freshman Spencer Wade said of Ritzer.

“She was such a wonderful person.”

Approximately 1,000 people attended Ritzer’s funeral on Monday, flooding St. Augustine’s Church in Ritzer’s hometown of Andover, Mass. 400 of the attendees were students from Danvers High School.

More details on the pending trial and investigation are to come in the following days. 

casino at Suffolk Downs, both candidates attempted to steer their answers away from the question.

Walsh ultimately said that he would vote for the casino if he lived in the affected area, and Connolly argued that it was up to the residents of East Boston to decide.

The latest polls indicate that Connolly maintains a narrow lead over Walsh, yet both campaigns are in the mindset that it is still anybody’s race.

“It’s a statistical dead heat,” Connolly told campaign staff Monday, as reported

by The Boston Globe. “I feel good. We knew this was going to be tight, tighter than we wanted it to be.”

The Globe also reported that Walsh,

speaking at a campaign event Monday, told supporters that he can “feel it on the street” that the race is a dead heat.

An important factor to consider in the final days before the election will be both candidates’ ability to garner the support of the 70,000 Boston voters that did not choose either of them in the preliminary election.

“We’ve gone beyond social media, we’ve gone beyond the Web page,” State Representative Jeffrey Sanchez of Jamaica Plain told The Globe. “It’s going to be about how these two candidates get to people’s hearts, and not through their platform page. Both of them have done a lot of it. Their strategies and the individuals are different.” 

COLLEGIATE ROUND-UP

BY LAUREN TOTINO | HEIGHTS STAFF

EMERSON COLLEGE

Patriots player visits social media marketing class New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman visited a social media and marketing class at Emerson College on Oct. 24. Students in the class launched a Twitter campaign to catch the attention of the Pats player, who is somewhat of a Twitter aficionado, with 119,820 followers. Edelman tweets primarily about non-football related topics, including the television shows Top Chef and Chopped, fashion, and movies.

After the students did some research and discovered that Edelman usually spends time on Twitter during Bruins games, they executed their campaign using the handle “@EmersonBuzz” to tweet to Edelman expressing interest in him coming to visit.

Last Thursday, Edelman showed up in the class with bags of UBurger, quoting the phrase he made popular on Twitter, “Burger time, anyone?” The Pats player then

HARVARD Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is leaving Harvard University’s governing board next year as new rules limiting the terms for fellows take effect. On June 30, 2014, Robert Reischauer, former president of the Urban Institute and the Harvard Corporation’s senior fellow, will join Rubin in stepping down after 12 years on the board. William F. Lee, an intellectual property attorney at the law firm Wilmer Hale, was elected by his corporation colleagues to become senior fellow as of July 1, 2014. Harvard revamped its governance rules for the corporation, formally known as the President and Fellows of Harvard College, in 2010 following a series of financial miscalculations and losses. After seeing its endowment investments plunge 27 percent, Harvard paid almost $1 billion to terminate wrong-way bets it made in interest-rate swaps. Changes to the corporation include adding seats for the first time since 1650, expanding the body from seven to 13, and introducing 12-year term limits for fellows.

A city pulls together for the Red Sox

Ritzer was found dead in the woods near Danvers High School on Tuesday, Oct. 22.

With one week left, candidates fire in final debate Mayoral Election, from B10

BOSTON UNCOMMON

spent about an hour answering questions, from which the students gained insight to Edelman’s perspective as a professional football player and a Twitter user. Social media, Edelman said, is a way “to show his personal side and connect with supporters.” To distinguish himself from other professional athletes, Edelman emphasized that he uses the social media website to share what he is really thinking at a given time, not to promote products through a sponsorship deal. He also makes an effort to respond to as many tweets as he can to show his appreciation for the support.

Edelman was the first Patriot to visit the college, as fellow Patriot Rob Gronkowski and former Patriot Chad Johnson (Ochocinco) were also convinced by Emerson communication students in the past to stop by their class.

NORTHEASTERN In the spirit of Halloween, and in the spirit of research, a haunted house open to the public was held last Friday in Newtonville. A squad of Northeastern University psychology researchers played the part of monsters and ghouls in the basement of the “haunted” Victorian house in order to probe what happens in the brain when people experience visceral feelings. In one of the rooms of the haunted house, for example, a human head on a platter slowly came to life and mouthed the words “Help me,” something that professor Lisa Feldman Barrett said causes viewers to experience simulation, or the feeling that they, too, are in distress.

The researchers used the haunted house experience of frightening both children and adults alike to observe their reactions and take ideas back to the laboratory for developing and testing research questions. This annual haunted house, or “fear induction,” according to the Northeastern scientists, is a charity event that raises more than $1,000 each year for the Greater Boston Food Bank.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BOSTON INNOVATION

BOSTON UNIV. It has been just over six months since the Boston Marathon bombings that claimed the life of BU graduate student Lu Lingzi, who was studying statistics and dreamed of becoming a financial analyst. At a campaign meeting just days after the attack, BU trustee Kenneth Feld, chair of the Campaign for BU, founded the Lu Lingzi Memorial Scholarship Fund, which immediately got $560,000 in pledges from the other trustees. The scholarship fund in Lingzi’s name has just reached its $1 million goal thanks to support of more than 1,300 donors all over the world. “It was the fastest fundraising I’ve ever seen,” said Scott Nichols, senior vice president for development and alumni relations.

International students enrolled in a full-time master’s degree program will be eligible for the scholarship, with preference given to students from China, like Lingzi. Each scholarship will provide an annual stipend and full tuition for up to two years.

SAM COSTANZO It’s 8:30 p.m. on just about any day earlier this week. I turn on the TV, settle in with my laptop and notebooks, and try to get some homework done while listening to the Red Sox game. As my roommates are well aware, though, I’m probably going to do more yelling than working in the next three hours.

There’s the crack of a bat, and I jerk my head up to watch the ball sail into the outfield. I know, of course, that no one on that little screen can hear me, but that doesn’t stop me from shouting “GET BACK GET BACK GET BACK” at whichever Red Sox player is trying to catch it. With the out safely recorded, I go back to pretending to do my homework while my roommates probably wonder about my sanity.

Thank goodness I’m not the only one, though. I missed Saturday’s game but was walking back to my dorm room right at the end of it. The agonized shrieks I heard coming from an open window in Rubenstein could only mean one thing—something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. That was the game with the controversial obstruction call that let the St. Louis Cardinals score another run and win the game, and even though I didn’t see it happen, the next day I was there with all the other head-shakers who were decrying such sloppy playing.

I didn’t have to see the play to be able to connect with everyone who had.

Sports, especially in Boston, create a community unlike any other. The fans will sit around yelling at the TV, talk about the dramas of the night before, and swap stories about how they can’t watch the game or can’t wear their cap because if they do, they’ll surely jinx the team. The ones who have to deal with the fans may shrug their shoulders and say, “I don’t follow baseball, but I still hope the Red Sox win.” There’s no getting away from sports here in Boston.

The Bruins were the first professional team to resume playing after the Marathon bombings earlier this year.

As far as I can tell, people talk as much about how beautiful it was to listen to that crowd singing the National Anthem than any other story of the Marathon’s heroes. The Red Sox still keep a “B Strong” graphic on the iconic Green Monster as a constant reminder of that day. I still remember, in the days after the Marathon, seeing a huge number of students wearing Boston sports gear. I know I wore my Sox jersey the day of the lockdown, because somehow, it made sense to me. It’s all I had, really, to show how much I loved my adopted city and to feel like it was still intact.

I’ve always known that sports had the power to bring people together, but I don’t think I ever knew to what extent until I got to Boston. I grew up a Dodgers fan but, of course, couldn’t skip over cheering for the Red Sox just as hard once I moved to Boston. Now that I’ve been here for a full season, in fact, I know more about them than about my old team back home. It amazes me that out here, I can’t walk down the street without spotting a few people wearing Red Sox hats or shirts. Of course, that number has probably gone way up since the team has made it to the World Series, but I’m still not sure if the displays of team spirit would be as intense in L.A. if the Dodgers were still in the playoffs.

Yes, Bostonians have a reputation for being stubborn, obnoxious, and loud—especially when it comes to their sports teams. But they also seem like a rather loyal bunch. As long as their teams are playing well, Bostonians will stick around and watch the games. If they start to slip, well, that love dies down a bit. Despite the Bruins’ heartbreaker of a loss in the last game of the championships last season, however, I haven’t seen anyone swear off cheering for them this season. We want to bring the World Series trophy back to Fenway not because it’s fun to win, but because in Boston, the sports teams represent the city. As cold as Bostonians may seem to the rest of the country, they certainly won’t give up a chance to come together. Especially if it’s because of the Red Sox.

Sam Costanzo is an editor for The Heights. She can be reached at metro@ bcheights.com.

METRO THE HEIGHTS

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Thursday, October 31, 2013

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2013

BREAKING BOUNDARIES

RED SOX WIN WORLD SERIES

What a mayor does

Sox take Cardinals in six games with 6-1 finish at Fenway

BY BRENNA CASS Heights Staff

TRICIA TIEDT “So, why can’t you vote for me again?”

These were the first words spoken to me

by John Connolly, one of the two final candidates in the race to be Boston’s next mayor.

The audience chuckled, I blushed. After catching my breath, I resumed, my clarification heard through the microphone.

Last Friday morning, I had the opportunity to attend “Coffee with Connolly and Walsh,” a forum put on by Boston Innovation and the New England Venture Capital Association. The discussion was attended by approximately 100 up-and-coming business leaders and members of the rapidly growing innovation and technology community in Boston.

The conversation focused around the future of innovation in Boston, as well as the crucial role young people play within the city—and how to retain them.

Aside from my fellow Heights editor, Julie Orenstein, I was the youngest person in the room.

And frankly, there was nowhere else I would have rather been.

I have followed the Boston mayoral election since Thomas M. Menino, the current mayor of Boston, announced he would not be running for a sixth term last March.

Whichever man wins the election next Tuesday has the ability to change the legacy of the city of Boston.

And there we were, the youngest kids in the room.

I have admired the Connolly campaign from afar for quite some time. John Connolly, a graduate of BC Law, has been deemed “the education guy.’” When asked for his defining qualities at the discussion, Connolly cited his position as a Boston City Councilor, having given “parents and students a voice for the past six years.” Connolly is a former teacher and current parent within the Boston Public School system.

Flattery aside, I had a bone to pick with Mr. Education.

“Mr. Connolly, I’m a resident of Boston and a member of this community—and I can’t vote for you for mayor. What do you have to say to us, the young people you’re so focused on, who may not even be able to vote in local elections? How do you establish a connection with the students who will call Boston home for at least four years?”

And thus began my tete a tete with John Connolly.

Specifics aside, his final answer left me speechless (something which does not happen often). It has stayed in my mind the past six days, and I believe it will become a marker of my time in Boston, however long that may be.

“This city is just as much yours as it is anyone else’s.”

He turned the conversation back around on the youngest in the room.

“Once you graduate, I want you to stay here, get a job here, buy a home here, start a family here … It’s on you [to] make life in Boston something to consider … It’s up to you to seize your place in it.”

Okay, Mr. Connolly. Challenge accepted.

The moderators continued their questioning for almost another half hour.

Mine was the only question asked by an audience member.

As I scribbled down more of Connolly’s responses, my final thoughts on the Boston mayoral race began to gel.

I like Marty Walsh. He is the more dynamic candidate, the better speaker, the “fight for the little guy” politician, the most Boston of all Bostonians.

But I believe in John Connolly.

John Connolly is not afraid of a tough question—better yet, he’s not afraid to give a tough answer. John Connolly knows where this city is, and he has a plan to get Boston to where it needs to be. Finally, John Connolly knows where he needs to be in order to do so.

“I was never in a position to make these decisions before. That’s what a mayor does.”

Yes, Mr. Connolly, it is.

Tricia Tiedt is the Metro Editor for The Heights. She can be reached at metro@bcheights.com.

DANIEL LEE / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

Fans celebrated throughout Boston as the Sox won the World Series at Fenway Park.

Last night, Fenway Park celebrated a World Series win for the first time in 95 years.

The new “Kings of Baseball” overcame what seemed impossible, going from worst in the AL East to first in the MLB. The Boston Red Sox have now claimed the title of World Series champions eight times, three of which have been in the past ten years.

Game Six of the 2013 World Series was

played in Boston, with a final score of 6-1 over the St. Louis Cardinals.

The win proved especially poignant for the city of Boston. Casual and diehard baseball fans alike have rallied around the Sox, who have adopted the phrase “Boston Strong,” originally incepted after April’s Marathon bombings.

David Ortiz received his first MVP award for a steady offensive performance throughout the Series.

It was not until the third inning that Boston got on the board. With the bases loaded, Shane Victorino hit a double to the Green Monster that boosted the Sox 3-0. Until that at bat, Victorino had been 0-10 in the series.

Closing pitcher Koji Uehara ended the night by striking out Matt Carpenter. The cel-

See Red Sox, B8

Halloween in Boston Boston, Salem offer events and attractions throughout Halloween B Y C LARA L EE

For The Heights The changing leaves , the chilly weather, and the end of October can only mean two things for college students: the approaching end of the midterm season and Halloween.

From classic costumes, like witches or super heroes , to more original costumes like Miley Cyrus and the BC Banana, people of all ages will flood the streets in celebration of this holiday. As night falls, pumpkins will line the streets, bags will be filled with candy, and screams will permeate the air.

This Halloween, people around Boston will prepare and host many events, both new and old, to add to this year’s Halloween experience.

Ghosts have become a common decorative tradition during the Halloween season, and people have added the telling of ghost stories to modern folklore.

One Boston tradition during Halloween is the Haunted Bos-

ton Ghost Tours. Every night of the Halloween weekend, until Nov. 10, people join at the Boston Common to embark on a 90minute tour through Boston’s historic streets. Led by tour guides in the night, people hear an array of stories about ghosts that have once or still haunt the streets of Boston. Ranging from stories about Colonial Boston to the present day, people of all ages can learn about the history of Boston while still enjoying their night listening to spooky tales. Throughout the years, the stories told during the tours have been reprinted in reviews

by The Boston Globe and The Daily Free Press.

One of the most popular attractions throughout Massachusetts during Halloween is Salem. By either taking a bus or a ferry, people can easily get to Salem from Boston for these festive activities. From 4 to 11 p.m., restaurants, gardens, and museums all around Salem hold

See Halloween, B8

PHOTO COURTESY OF GOOGLE IMAGES

In final days of campaign, candidates spar in debate B Y J ULIE O RENSTEIN Heights Editor One week before the people of Boston head to the polls to choose their next mayor, City Councilor John R. Connolly, BC Law ’01, and State Representative Martin J. Walsh, BC ’09, met face-to-face Tuesday in what appeared to be their final significant opportunity to sway undecided voters.

The last of three main debates between Connolly and Walsh was broadcast widely on four television stations throughout the Boston area, likely reaching more viewers than previous debates due to the absence of a Boston Red Sox playoff game being broadcast simultaneously.

Keeping with the major themes of the race thus far, the candidates sparred on negative campaigning and Walsh’s relationship with union and labor interests, while also agreeing for the most part on several smaller issues.

In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 5 election, conflict has erupted between the candidates over negative ads sent by organized labor interests bashing Connolly and his upbringing. Connolly

I NSIDE METRO THIS ISSUE

was quick to raise the issue as the debate began, pointing to Walsh’s refusal to sign a pledge barring money from outside interests in the campaign as a spark for the negative ads that “savagely attacked” him and his family.

“Representative Walsh opened the door to this type of campaign when he wouldn’t sign an agreement to get outside money out of this race,” Connolly said.

In response, Walsh charged Connolly with similar negative tactics, accusing his campaign of conducting “push polling,” which involves people pretending to conduct surveys over the phone while spreading negative information about the opposing candidate.

Connolly denied Walsh’s claims.

The debate over negative campaigning opened the door for a related debate that the candidates have clashed on throughout the race—the influence of unions and labor interests on Walsh’s campaign. So far, outside groups representing labor interests have spent nearly $2 million on ads supporting Walsh, while Connolly ’s campaign

See Mayoral Election, B9

Collegiate Round-up

CHARLES DHARAPAK / AP PHOTO

Obama chose Boston as his speech location because of Mass. ties to healthcare reform.

Obama defends healthcare law in Faneuil Hall speech

BY SHANNON INGLESBY Heights Staff Yesterday afternoon, President Barack Obama defended the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at Faneuil Hall in Boston. Met by a mix of support, opposition, and confusion, the president discussed the act’s weaknesses and the road ahead. Obama stated he was “not happy” with the problems with online process of purchasing healthcare and

Highlights from other prestigious universities and colleges in the greater Boston area.........................................................................................B9

addressed concerns many citizens raised about the act.

The president spoke downtown in Faneuil Hall as part of a nationwide tour to defend and discuss the ACA. Faneuil Hall is where Obama’s rival in the 2012 presidential election, former Massachusetts Republican Governor Mitt Romney, signed the state’s landmark healthcare law in 2006, with top

See Obama, B8

Restaurant Review: Village Smokehouse.......................................B7 Danvers Student Charged with Teacher’s Murder..........................B9