2017 Person of the Year

Momentum Awards

May 4, 2017

In the final issue of the academic year, The Heights recognizes those who have made a meaningful contribution to the University.

These recipients set themselves apart by making BC better for everyone.

2017

Graduate Student Union | Louise Lonabocker John Walsh | Kevin Sullivan & Sazan Dauti Unheralded Upperclassmen | Juice

The Heights Momentum Awards

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May 4, 2017

OH, THE PLACES SHE’S BEEN

LIZZY BARRETT / HEIGHTS EDITOR

By going beyond Chestnut Hill and maintaining a patient, flexible personality, Louise Lonabocker has fostered an environment at BC that strives for innovation.

Alec Greaney | A1 Editor

L

ouise Lonabocker has been “everywhere.” That’s her word, and it’s hardly an exaggeration.

She has travelled with other people and on her own—she’s happy either way. She has planned trips and tagged along. She has trekked both across the country and across the world. Add in some rhymes and her adventures could read as a Dr. Seuss story.

She has been to Southeast Asia, South America, and Central America.

She has travelled through the Middle East, at a time when that was more feasible. She heads to the Berkshires every weekend over the summer, back to the area where she grew up. She recently returned from visiting relatives in Houston over Easter—another annual tradition.

“Now I go to kinda obscure places that other people often don’t want to go to, but it doesn’t stop me,” Lonabocker said.

Nothing really does. Not her packed schedule and responsibilities as the executive director of Student Services, an office that tackles everything from financial aid, to scheduling, to parking tickets. Certainly not her stature, where she still hasn’t quite reached 5 feet.

“Here’s this petite woman, doing all this travel—I’m actually in fear for some of her escapades,” laughed Billy Soo, vice provost for faculties. “But

Chestnut Hill, a place she first arrived at nearly 50 years ago—and one she’ll be sad to leave as she wraps up her tenure this month. She moved to Boston from Western Massachusetts, searching for a place to work. Knowing she wanted to start her career in a college setting, she set her sights on Boston University. But when she arrived, she couldn’t find the human resources office. So she hopped back on the T and rode it till the end of the line.

There, on the hilly campus of Boston College, it didn’t take her nearly as long to locate HR, or make an impression on those already there. Since she was seeking a secretary job, she was given a typing test—something that was more than in her wheelhouse.

“A lot of people will say something about, ‘Oh, you’ve been very successful.’ I’m just productive,” she said, laughing. “I can just do things faster sometimes than other people can.”

One of those things was rising through the ranks at BC. Those administering that initial typing test were so blown away, according to Bill Griffith, Lonabocker’s boss for a period in the 1970s, that they didn’t even record exactly how fast it was. (Lonabocker says she could average around 90 words per minute at the time.) A week after that interview, she started as a secretary in the admissions office. After a few years in different positions, she moved to the

Besides serving as registrar during a couple-decade period where the entire process changed dramatically—from punch cards, to students lining up for computer registration in Gasson, to self-service by the early ’90s—she helped form Student Services into the mega-office it is today.

That form of Students Services, a hub in Lyons that provides most non-admission services a BC student needs, has only existed for the past 20 years. Prior to that, different services—for registration, for financial aid, for Eagle One cards—were scattered in different locations across campus. As part of Project Delta in the 1990s, these were all consolidated into one office.

It was a radical change at the time.

Most universities would eventually do something similar, centralizing services to make them more efficient. But BC was one of the first, leading the pack with Fordham and Carnegie Mellon only a short ways ahead.

Early on, it caused more than a few headaches. Bringing a variety of services to one place may have made it easier for students to know where to go, but it created a substantial learning curve for employees who never previously had to handle the new variety of student queries. Where members of different offices could specialize in their department’s purpose before

“She’s one of the those personalities, people that have grown and built Boston College into what it is.”

-Billy Soo, vice provost for faculties

good for her. I’m truly happy and envious of what she does.”

Lonabocker is too humble to brag about all her adventures openly to her coworkers in Lyons Hall. But it’s no secret, and everyone asks anyway. She takes a big trip the same week or two every year after grades are in at Christmastime, and by now, everyone knows that it’s coming. According to Soo, they “just sort of hold [their] breath and wait for her to come back.”

“When people come see me, they’re like, ‘Oh, where are you going next?’”

Lonabocker said, laughing. “So I always feel like I have to go someplace to uphold my reputation.”

It’s also not enough for her to go somewhere that might be expected.

“I can’t just say I’m going to Paris, that’s too easy,” she explained. “It has to be Dubai, or Rio, or Dijon … But I really like to immerse myself in one place, rather than hop around a lot.”

Out of all the places she has been, she has immersed herself most in

registrar’s office to work under Griffith, the second-ever University-wide registrar.

“I liked her right off the bat,” he said. “She seemed like somebody who was really conscientious and liked BC. It wasn’t just the fact she could type really fast.”

Four years later, Griffith vacated his post to return to graduate school. At just 30 years old, Lonabocker became the University’s third registrar.

It was a natural fit for Lonabocker, who describes herself as a naturally organized person. That was especially necessary for the job at the time.

Self-service registration was more than a decade away, and before 1982, students registered by running around to different departments and collecting punchcards.

Things have changed quite a bit since then. Largely thanks to Lonabocker, BC has been on the early brink of innovation in certain areas for much of the last couple decades.

the consolidation, the people working there now needed to provide a general service. In other words, they needed to know everything.

“So they were learning, and teaching the other people at the same time what they knew, so it was a little chaotic at first,” Lonabocker said.

Not everyone was a fan of it. There was high turnover for a brief period from 1997 to 1999, Lonabocker said, as those who preferred to remain specialized relocated to different schools.

But within two calendar cycles with Lonabocker at the helm as director, Student Services found its groove.

And then she got to do what she enjoys most: tinkering with more changes to move ahead and make things better.

That’s not to say Lonabocker takes pleasure in change for the sake of change. If something works well, she’ll stick by it and defend it. She just isn’t satisfied with accepting the status quo and assuming things can’t be better.

“She always asks the question,

‘That’s the way we do it now, is that the way to do it in the future?’” Linda McCarthy said.

The technology director of Student & Academic Application Services has seen this process firsthand. McCarthy heads a team that supports UIS and course registration. As the former registrar, registration is still Lonabocker’s bread and butter. While UIS itself has not changed much, most other aspects of registration have undergone some degree of evolution. Course numeration, for example.

The original system of course numbers built into UIS included just two letters and three numbers, which had been more than enough at the time it was written. By the 2010s, some departments struggled to find numbers that had never been used before. So Lonabocker, with a committee, went and figured out standards for how other top institutions set up their system.

When she had a plan in place—one that we applauded for making “course registration far easier”—she took strides to ensure a smooth transition.

“That was scary for people,” McCarthy said. “She went out and talked with people and explained what we were doing.”

Lonabocker’s sharp mind is always searching for these new ideas, new ways to make processes more efficient.

Now that many of the things provided

by Student Services have become so accessible online, her role has become more data-driven. Data are something else she has always been interested in—and probably part of the reason why she agreed to operate the scoreboard for men’s basketball games in the mid-’90s.

She’s also constantly looking for ways to get rid of paper, McCarthy says, and boost automation to give everyone a better experience. When she has success in finding something that works, she isn’t afraid to share it.

She has written and edited sections of multiple books on higher education, including Breakthrough Systems in Student Access and Registration: Student Access and Registration and Leadership Lessons: Vision and Values for a New Generation. It allowed her to pass on her knowledge, and tout BC’s innovative efforts. She became involved with committees and taskforces for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) early on in her career.

She served on the board of directors, had a stint as president around 2000, and was editor-in-chief of College and University, the AACRAO’s quarterly journal, for over 10 years.

“I realized that by writing something about [a topic], you had to kind of dig in and learn more about it,” she said, laughing.

That’s another thing about Lonabocker—she’s always laughing. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a casual interview in her corner office in Lyons, or a stressful meeting where everyone is dealing with a touchy issue.

“She’ll give this factoid, and she’ll laugh,” Soo said, himself laughing at the thought of it. “She has this expression that really puts everyone at ease,

because you know she’s doing it with true sincerity and really true understanding of where you’re coming from.”

At the same, she has never been one to mess around. If ideas drifted away in a direction she believed wasn’t worthwhile, she would rein in the conversation.

“If Louise thought something was illogical, she’d tell you,” Griffith said.

“Which is what you want if you’re sitting down and planning something.

She would not keep quiet if somebody was planning on doing something foolish.”

Lonabocker remains in consistent contact with McCarthy to keep planning for Student Services to take the most efficient route. McCarthy, meanwhile, is eager to reap as much knowledge from the longest-tenured BC administrator as possible before she leaves. Lonabocker announced in April that she plans to retire at the end of this semester.

“We’re really going to miss her.

She’s one of the those personalities, people that have grown and built Boston College into what it is,” Soo said.

“For those of us who have been very, very lucky to have worked with her, she’s going to be irreplaceable.”

Lonabocker still has plenty to do away from Lyons to keep herself busy.

She is a regular volunteer in a souvenir shop at Tanglewood, a music venue in the Berkshires and the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

She has worked with the Brookline Food Pantry, including doing some of the scheduling. She is a big film fan, according to Joseph Appleyard, the first vice president for University Mission and Ministry, who would go with her for movies and pizza.

And oh, the places she’ll go.

She has never visited Western Canada before, and she has already scouted out a couple areas in France that she hasn’t immersed herself in yet. Overall, she feels she has covered a good amount of ground.

“I’ve really been everywhere … except Australia, because that’s so far, and I always thought I would do that in retirement, but now I’m kind of done with the 15-hour flights,” she said— laughing, naturally.

She still remembers the first trip she ever went on. One of the staff members she worked for, way back around the time before she became the registrar, attended grad school at the University of Durham. So Lonabocker and two others crossed the pond to England to visit the staffer in February. It was freezing.

“They had no central heating,” she recalled. “But I loved it.”

It’s a bit ironic that her first trip came as a product of working at BC. As everything has moved around during her 46 years on campus, she has remained remarkably rooted. Besides a temporary stint on Newton during renovations, she has always worked out of Lyons or Gasson Hall, the latter only back when she worked for admissions.

She—and Boston College as a result—have come quite a ways since then. 

The Heights Momentum Awards

May 4, 2017

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WHAT YOU CAN’T STEAL

When John Walsh’s apartment was robbed, he lost almost everything he owned. But the one thing left behind sparked his passion for visual storytelling.

Taylor St. Germain | Managing Editor

J

ohn Walsh lived in a small apartment on South Street during his junior year, tucked away from the hotspots on Foster and Gerald Street.

Looking at the quaint apartment building with blue awnings, there were no bars on anyone’s windows. No one locked their three deadbolts before leaving for class, and there were no alarms or guards waiting at the door. No tenant there could imagine being the victim of a home invasion.

It was still the fall semester when Walsh’s apartment was wiped clean. Within a single night, he and his roommates lost pretty much everything they owned—TVs, laptops, cash, watches, you name it.

“Our laundry quarters were probably the worst part,” Walsh, CSOM ’17, said, half-laughing, half-grimacing at the memory.

A little lost, a little confused, and now very broke, Walsh and the guys searched their room for any personal possessions that may have been missed or passed over.

The roommates spent the night searching through their picked-clean apartment, opening cupboards and drawers, looking for something of value left behind.

The only thing that had been tossed to the side was something that Walsh hadn’t picked up in almost a year: his Sony Camcorder. While Walsh had lost most of the physical things that mattered to him that afternoon, the small, old, “super-cheap” video camera gave Boston College’s soonto-be star videographer something new to care about. alsh didn’t grow up with an affection for art or an interest in snapping photos—he was an athlete. As a kid, his schedule consisted of basketball practices and baseball games. He was always the star of his soccer and Little League teams, and went on to play three varsity sports in high school.

His brother, James, recalls his childhood with John—shooting hoops in the yard for hours on end, or hanging out on the couch playing Madden.

Put simply, Walsh was a jock.

“It’s funny because if you ask my mom, she would have never expected this,” Walsh said.

Walsh’s mother, on the other hand, did have a knack for photography. He recalls her lugging a camera to each of his basketball, baseball, and soccer games, standing on the sideline and following him up and down the court. He never really paid much attention to her hobby throughout his teenage years, often shaking her off as she showed him her latest action shots.

In the spring of 2013, Walsh was admitted to the Carroll School of Management.

From the moment he received his acceptance letter, Walsh thought that he had his college career pretty much figured out.

He would get a degree in accounting, play some intramurals along the way, and land a job in finance by graduation—following the path of the typical “ex-athlete.”

Instead, he got dragged to Agape Latte.

On just the third day of his sophomore year, a friend convinced Walsh to tag along to the first meeting of the year. The group was discussing strategies for how it might spread the word about Espresso Your Faith week. While some underclassmen might have been too timid to partake, Walsh did not let his new-kid nature keep him from speaking up.

The sophomore raised his hand and proposed that the group make a music video. His idea caught on fast. Within three days, Walsh started filming.

But before they could focus on procuring footage, Karen Kiefer, the associate

director of the C21 Center, and Walsh needed a song. They wanted something that would convey the message of the week: “shaking off ” worries, fears, and insecurities. They realized Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off ” was the easy choice.

Walsh traveled around campus for the project. He filmed an economics class in Devlin 008, recorded dance groups practicing, and captured would-be studiers dancing on tables in Bapst. Students, professors, and administrators all ended up contributing to the video.

“That’s what introduced me to the fact that BC is a special community,” Walsh said. “People are willing to go out of their comfort zones and be a part of something bigger than themselves.”

His first published compilation came together, and rose to the national stage.

Not only was it a hit with BC students over Facebook, but it also caught Swift’s eye when she tweeted at BC, thanking students for their work.

He might have settled back down after that experience to follow the prescribed

me some money on Christmas gifts, so thanks John,” James Walsh said.

All in all, it was a huge success for Walsh. The film-bug had finally gotten him after that first Christmas, and he knew how to satiate his new desire and record the stories happening in front of his eyes.

He went and looked up the man who had created a “Happy” video at BC, the inspiration for Walsh’s first viral hit. Sean Casey, BC ’12, had graduated and become the senior creative director for the Office of University Communications.

Walsh and Casey set a time to go film together in the small, black box theater in Robsham. Walsh was eager to learn formal technique, and Casey was willing to share.

In the midst of shooting on set, Casey turned to Walsh and asked if he was familiar with the “f-stop.” Walsh nodded yes eagerly and was sent to work. It wasn’t for another five or 10 minutes that Walsh turned to Casey apologizing profusely and said: “That means nothing to me, I know nothing about what you just said.”

the fact he and Walsh share a room in Rubenstein Hall probably didn’t hurt.

“Walsh has been big in showing the group the potential of what digital marketing can do for us,” Scordino said. “We saw a big increase in audience at the shows and even just people talking around campus.”

Walsh works closely with Casey and the Office of University Communications to make promotional videos for BC. The footage that he has contributed over the last year has been instrumental in bringing media attention to the University. His videos still go viral on Facebook, averaging around 30,000 views.

While most students were building snowmen, having snowball fights, or catching up on schoolwork during Winter Storm Niko this past February, Walsh spent the day off from school doing something that was just typical John: filming. Out on the quad and in the Mods, with his camera in tow, Walsh stood as a bystander—a storyteller—rather than a participant. The video that he produced that day has been viewed on Facebook over 111,000 times.

eos?”

Walsh is currently composing his senior thesis. For his final film project, he is following the story of a college senior caught between pursuing his passion and continuing with a career that will provide him with financial stability. The story sounds eerily familiar.

Over the last couple of years, Walsh has tested the waters in the film industry.

He recently interned at Hill Holliday, a marketing and communications agency, and helped to shoot the Bank of America web campaign “The Value of Time.” He worked with and learned from other professional directors, padding his portfolio along the way.

But perhaps his most meaningful project was for Dorian Murray. The Rhode Island boy was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at the age of 4. When the disease was determined irreparable, his family stopped treatment and decided to live the rest of Dorian’s life to the fullest.

Dorian’s last dying wish, however, was “to be famous.”

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JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

CSOM path after all. He could bask in his five minutes of fame and brag about the T-Swift shoutout at the Mods every weekend till Commencement. But then he got robbed. hristmas 2015 snuck up on Walsh almost faster than finals after the break-in that fall. He was still in recovery mode, and far too short on cash to buy his mother a Christmas gift. Down to the wire, completely broke, and desperate for something meaningful to stick under the tree, Walsh decided to use the only resource left—that tossed-to-the-side, undesired camcorder.

Walsh rallied his siblings, aunts, and uncles to create a one-of-a-kind Christmas movie for his mother. He featured some candid shots of the family around the house, a couple quick interviews on “What Mom means to you,” and compiled the clips into his mother’s dream gift. The last-minute medley has now become a tradition in the Walsh household. Walsh spent even more hours compiling the 2016 “Walsh Christmas video,” which debuted on Christmas Day. “He combined his passion and saved

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111k

Views on John Walsh’s “Snow Day” video, posted on Facebook on Feb. 10, 2017

This was the last time Walsh failed to ask Casey for clarification.

Walsh and Casey’s relationship was founded off question and answer—Casey describes Walsh as the “kid with a thousand questions.” Throughout the last two years, Casey has been coaching Walsh on technique and lingo, but Walsh has kept bringing ideas to the table.

The two guys will sit and scroll through Vimeo for hours on end, looking for new shots, angles, and techniques. Walsh is known for walking into Casey’s office on a Friday afternoon, just to drop off tape.

He’ll end up chatting for hours.

“He’s made me late for quite a few dates in my life,” Casey said while laughing about their Friday afternoon chats.

He still turns to Casey for approval, even if he has already made the permanent shift from “John the jock” to “John the film kid.” With two and a half weeks to go until his graduation, his name has become well-known on campus. There are few places that you could turn to avoid a “John Walsh project.”

He has worked with dozens of on-campus groups ranging from Agape Latte, to Asinine Sketch and Improv Comedy, to just about every dance group imaginable.

He has become the guy that every student or group turns to when they are in need of a video. It doesn’t matter whether they need a commercial, satirical, or serious film— Walsh has proven that he can do it all.

He has gone on to work with the Women’s Center to promote Embrace Your Body Week, and BC Dance Marathon to document the annual event. John Robert Scordino, Asinine president and MCAS ’17, has even named Walsh an “honorary member” of the comedy group—though

Walsh currently has 23 videos published on his online portfolio, including commercials, music videos, narratives, and BC promotional videos. But his time doesn’t need to be formally contracted.

Walsh jumps around, also shooting for professors, athletes, and his buddies. He has come through for really whoever has asked, and certainly more than his portfolio indicates.

“Most people have not seen all my videos,” Walsh said.

It is rare that Walsh will publish a video and not go back to see what he could have done differently. He is constantly trying to capture new angles, tell different stories, and share messages in new and radical ways. Walsh is an innovator, and that shines through in his videos.

This desire to improve does not come without hours of hard work. James has a typical “John image” ingrained in his mind: waking up around 7 a.m. to head off to work, still seeing his 6-foot-tall brother slumped over the same computer screen he’d left him at seven hours before.

Rather than being too exhausted to speak after pulling an all-nighter, Walsh would call James over to show him the progress he had made over the course of the night.

It’s not just students or family that recognize Walsh’s tireless efforts. Kiefer asks Walsh the same two questions every time he walks into her office: Have you slept? And when are you planning to sleep?

“John is a perfectionist, in the most powerful way,” Kiefer said. s Walsh preps for graduation this month, Casey is asking a question on a lot of people’s minds: “Will he continue making these vid-

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Videos took off all over New England.

Celebrities, school groups, and athletes began making short clips for Dorian, making him “famous” in his last days.

Lea Nelligan, CSON ’18, was from the same hometown as Dorian—South Kingstown, R.I. She came to Agape Latte one afternoon, hoping that the group would follow in the media campaign and make a short “D-Strong” video. They filmed a 10-second clip that meeting, all chanting “You’re famous at Boston College, Dorian.”

But this was only the beginning for Walsh. It wasn’t enough for him to share Dorian’s story—Walsh wanted to spread the message to all of BC and bring the entire student body in on it. He went from classrooms, to Appalachia meetings, to random students in the quad, asking them to hold up signs reading “D-Strong” and “You’re famous at Boston College.”

The video took off once again, and was sent back to Dorian’s family. Even though Dorian passed away early last year, Walsh is still connected with his mother and father.

He has invited Dorian’s mother to speak at BC, and continues to work with them to make videos and spread his story.

“It’s never about John, it’s about holding other people up,” Kiefer said.

Through that small, unwanted camcorder that didn’t seem to have any value, Walsh fell in love with telling stories—stories like Dorian’s. Even with graduation upon him and the real world at his doorstep, this does not seem like the end of Walsh’s tale. He hopes to, in some way, incorporate his passion for film into his adult life. He is a storyteller, and he doesn’t plan to let that part of him go anytime soon.

No one can steal that from him. 

The Heights Momentum Awards

4

May 4, 2017

PERSON OF THE YEAR:

The Graduate Employees Union As the NLRB prepares to deliver a verdict, BC’s graduate workers are poised to make waves.

Connor Murphy | News Editor

I

n mid-January 2015, an email arrived in the inboxes of graduate students across Boston College. The Provost’s Office, they are told, has agreed to fund health insurance for those within the first five years of a Ph.D. program, plus students on Dissertation Fellowships. Then followed a bit of a surprise.

“We will no longer fund health insurance for [master’s] students or PhD students beyond their fifth year (with the exception of Dissertation Fellows),” the email read.

“This commitment is for the 2015-16 academic year.”

By the time that message was sent out, Jordan Theriault, GMCAS ’17, had already worked with some other students to try to organize a student government among graduate students in arts and sciences as part of an effort to supplement the Graduate Student Association (GSA). That came, in part, out of graduate students in psychology not getting paid more to teach courses than they made as TAs. “The line was that we were lucky to have the privilege, that it was a good learning opportunity,” Theriault said. “But we weren’t going to get paid for it.”

It was a success, he said, and they negotiated a pay raise after they learned that other departments paid more for the additional effort. After they formed GASA, the acronym for the arts and sciences graduate student government, he got involved with the BC Graduate Employees Union, which started in spring 2015. They got that email around the same time, which opened a lot of eyes to something big: nothing was guaranteed. All grad students had was an acceptance letter, with benefits and compensation that could in theory change at a moment’s notice.

“Nobody promises anything, but they say ‘If you come here, this is likely what will happen,” said Betsy Pingree, a first-year history Ph.D. student who was in the master’s program at the time. “So it was kind of like, ‘Oh wait, I’m not going to have health care?

Or I’m going to have to continue to pay for it? That’s really terrifying.’”

Having to pay for health care would mean a sudden $5,000 expense taken out of a $20,000 stipend, she said.

“The rug sort of got pulled out from under us, and it was just a mad scramble to figure out what’s going to happen,” Theriault said. His group talked with administrators, but made little headway—they found the avenues for dealing with the policy change were pretty narrow. Eventually BC conceded that as long as the University was paying Ph.D. students a stipend, the students would still have their health insurance covered.

But master’s student employees, who had previously received insurance and tuition remission in addition to their stipends, suddenly went without. It’s not even clear how much influence the students had in the negotiations to secure Ph.D. employees’ benefits, because they ended up largely out of the loop.

“Unless you have something that brings people to the table, and you have a contract to make sure that your rights are protected, that you know what’s gonna be happening going forward, it’s very hard to be secure,” Theriault said.

Maybe more than anything, that’s what the Graduate Employees Union is about—security, a seat at the table, a say in what’s happening. It’s an attempt to prevent that email, or at the very least to

know about it before it’s sent. It’s about grassroots organizers and young parents.

It’s about the grad students who form the backbone of the academic experience at BC, grading exams and planning lessons for undergrads while they juggle their own lives and work through their own degrees.

It’s about all those things, and it’s why The Heights’ Person of the Year for 2016-17 is not one, but many. hen the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled in August 2016 that graduate student employees at Columbia University and private universities in general have collective bargaining rights, the Graduate Employees Union (BCGEU) had already been laying the groundwork for over a year. It started with initial interest meetings in the spring of 2015 to get a sense of how other schools’ unions operate. The union expected the NLRB’s ruling, and started planning accordingly, trying to build up enough support to file for an election. In order for that to happen, 30 percent of graduate student workers needed to fill out an anonymous Authorization Card indicating their support for unionization.

Then, in early March, they filed with the NLRB for an election, starting a process of hearings between union members, the

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were to overturn the Columbia decision by ruling against BC, it’d be a major precedent that would likely then be overturned by the D.C. branch. Besides, Sessions estimates that they already have 50 percent support.

A collective bargaining agreement is probably imminent. At this point, it’s a waiting game. One of the reasons they filed for the election now is that if President Donald Trump can make enough appointments to the NLRB, a new ruling could overturn graduate students’ collective bargaining rights. Late last month, Trump appointed Philip Miscimarra, a Republican who has expressed anti-collective bargaining views, as the NLRB’s new chair. He’s still in the minority on the board, but that could change with time.

And as interviews with a dozen graduate student employees suggest, from improved compensation and benefits to transparency and free expression rights, a collective bargaining agreement could make waves on campus and in students’ personal lives. ay for Ph.D. students differs across departments. In history, for example, it’s around $20,000 a year, while in some of the sciences and economics, it can be about $30,000 or a bit higher. For many people, it’s not enough to live on in Boston—Caliesha Comley, a third-year Ph.D. student in sociology, has five paying jobs just to keep up with the bills. In his program, Chad Olle, LGSOE

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Boston, and it’s still a struggle to pay rent, eat, and have money left over. He has had to take out tens of thousands of dollars in federal loans. Several students highlighted the fact that their stipends don’t increase at the same rate as the cost of living in the area.

In contrast, Aaron Rose, GMCAS ’17, lives in graduate student housing at MIT. His wife is a Ph.D. student in engineering, and the two live for far cheaper than non-university housing would be in Brighton. Non-BC students like Rose’s wife can make $35,000 or more in science or engineering fields.

A general assumption about graduate students, Berard said, is that for somebody to apply to a Ph.D. program, they must come from money and can therefore get family support to supplement the low pay.

He argues that that assumption harms diversity among students by eliminating working-class people who can’t afford to make so little money for years.

Comley grew up in rural Kentucky in a working-class family, and she said most of the students she has class or works with come from similar lower-income backgrounds. As a grad worker at BC, her experience with job insecurity and a low stipend has pretty much been the same as when she was growing up.

“I would say it’s an insecure time for a lot of us,” she said.

Grad students at BC also don’t have

“[For] a Ph.D., you’re not a student. You have a job, especially after those first couple years.”

-Peter Berard, GMCAS ’17 United Auto Workers, and BC’s lawyers, and then a waiting period while the NLRB made its decision about whether BC can have an election. BCGEU was at first optimistic that the election—which requires 50 percent support from graduate student workers to establish bargaining rights with BC—would be held this semester, but the official NLRB ruling has not yet been released.

BC, just as Harvard, Northeastern, and other schools have done in recent months, put forward its case for why the union shouldn’t get collective bargaining rights.

According to BC’s general counsel, Joe Herlihy, the University’s post-hearing brief argues for three reasons that the NLRB lacks jurisdiction over the relationship between BC and its graduate employees. First, the University argues that the Columbia case was wrongly decided, because graduate employees are primarily students and their work is part of their education. Second, BC provides a lot of teaching resources to its graduate students, including the Center for Teaching Excellence, “making more clear than was the case in Columbia, that the relationship between graduate student assistants and Boston College is educational.”

And third, BC argued that graduate student employees contribute to the University’s religious mission, setting up a possible First Amendment violation if the government were to become involved.

But it doesn’t really matter anymore.

David Sessions, one of the organizers and GMCAS ’22, said that if the Boston NLRB

’17, makes an $18,000 stipend for nine months, all but requiring students to find other sources of funding or work during the summer. In the Law School, where the employment structure is much different, Ian Gillespie, BC Law ’18, makes $11 an hour doing a research job for which a lawyer could make far more.

BC maintains that its students are paid stipends competitive with peer institutions.

“Boston College has long enjoyed positive relationships with its graduate students and is grateful for their participation in the life of the University,” Associate Dean for Admissions and Administration Robert Howe said in an email.

But many of the students interviewed discussed the challenges caused by low pay. Some said making ends meet would be challenging without the support of a partner’s salary. Pingree’s husband, for example, is a Navy veteran on the G.I. Bill and receives disability payments from the government, enabling them to live in Boston.

“Having to rely on your spouse being injured in the military so that you can survive is kind of messed up,” she said.

And for master’s student employees, pay is effectively cancelled out by tuition, which often leads to student loans or forces students to depend on their families.

Low pay also impacts where students can live. Peter Berard, GMCAS ’17, lives in Watertown because it’s within rough striking distance of BC and, with roommates, is affordable. Olle lives in Brighton, one of the least expensive places to live around

dental insurance, so Olle, for example, forgoes the semi-annual cleanings he’d have had before coming to BC. When he needs to see a dentist he goes through Tufts, which is a little cheaper because it has a dental school—still, he has to pay out of pocket.

“It’s one of those things that if you don’t have the support from elsewhere you kind of have to sacrifice,” he said. “Which sucks, because that’s your health.”

Mikayla Robinson, GMCAS ’17, started at BC just as the new policy on master’s students’ health care and tuition remission took effect, making it a little tougher at first when she was trying to figure out housing.

She searched on Craigslist for weeks to find an apartment that required a bit less money up front, because she didn’t have much in savings to offset the cost of moving.

Another issue is that graduate TAs in history don’t get their first paycheck until Sept. 15, after they’ve had to pay a month’s rent, meaning they need a big lump sum right off the bat. They also don’t get paid in January, so they have to budget their money to get them from Dec. 15 to Feb. 15 without a paycheck. A goal for the union’s contract could be to revise the pay schedule, whether to negotiate biweekly payments or to move up paychecks to the very beginning of the school year.

Besides the low pay, some Ph.D. students, Sessions said, are teaching three or four sections in addition to their coursework or research, stretching them really thin.

“It’s also bad for [undergraduates],” he said. “Right now I have two discussion sections. I know everybody’s names, I know what they look like. It’s just much better. I feel like they’re getting closer to the education they come here to get.”

“Making sure we’re the best teachers we can be, making sure we’re the best students we can be, doing the best research we can do, in order to graduate in five years, which is a really compressed time frame—it’s exhausting,” Pingree said.

It can get to the point that Ph.D. students spend so much time working that it takes them longer to finish. As Pingree said, the official length of the history Ph.D. program is five years, but it can easily take more, which was one of the biggest issues with the 2015 email that would have cut off health insurance past the fifth year. Rose estimated the average Ph.D. completion time in physics at somewhere over six years, for example.

“Even though the department would like us to graduate in five, it’s not super realistic, it’s not the national average, especially if you’re involved in experiments that could take seven or eight years,” said Victoria Gabriele, a first-year Ph.D. student in physics.

In some science labs, Rose said, the expectation is that you work 12 hours a day, six days a week—virtually all the time.

Federal law dictates that international students can only work 20 hours a week, but he said nobody really wants to cut hours. But for students who are coming in on Saturdays, he thinks limits on extremes are a possibility.

“I don’t really want anything to be standardized, but there are definitely students who are overworked, and who it’s expected of them to be overworked,” he said. “There are other students who overwork themselves and it’s not necessarily expected.”

In the humanities, graduate student employees are critical to the smooth operations of their departments, especially in history, where core classes can cater to 300 students each.

“Almost all of us teach for the majority of our careers here,” Berard, a history Ph.D. student, said. “And, you know, the Core runs on our labor—us and the other graduate student employees, as well as the research element, which is very important in the sciences. You wouldn’t have all these people getting grants and awards in physics or biology or chemistry without grad student labor.”

He thinks the argument BC made about its grad students not being employees is a fiction for the simple reason that they create value for the institution with the work they do.

“At the end of the day, structurally they want to get the most work out of people that they can at the most affordable price,” he added. “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”

Sessions said some people who graduated from the BC program have told him they had to do more work than their competitors for jobs in academia, which has a slow job market as is, with National Science Foundation data showing increased competition across the board.

Rose initially got involved with the union when he and his wife were interested in having a baby. He wanted to explore ways of obtaining some family friendly benefits, be it assistance with childcare or paternity leave. He said some members of GASA, the student government Theriault had helped start, approached administrators about a potential policy but hadn’t really gotten

JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

May 4, 2017

anywhere. He saw the union as a channel to help families.

Day care is offered to BC employees, but he said it’s hard to get into and not really geared toward infants. The price, he said, is pretty average—around the same cost as a one- or two-bedroom apartment.

Rose and his wife joined the Peace Corps after undergrad, so they were applying to grad schools about four years later than other students, meaning they are a little older for their programs. Before they had their baby, they saved money for a year to make sure they could afford three or four months of full-time daycare, which is about $2,000 per month. He and his wife will both graduate within the next couple of months, but if they were to be set back a year, they could run out of savings.

“That just doesn’t make sense to me ... especially this late in the game—we’re mature adults,” he said. “A Ph.D., you’re not a student. You have a job, especially after those first couple years. So you shouldn’t have to push off having a child.”

Pingree has a friend in the history department who just found out she is pregnant. Over the course of three months, she had a lot of meetings with administrators to figure out what her pregnancy and post-pregnancy tuition and benefits will look like, because there’s no policy currently in place. At a basic level, her friend was trying to ensure that she will not lose her position in the program or lose funding.

She eventually sorted it out, but only after months of discussions.

“I think that that is the pinnacle of why a union could help us, because we could bargain in our contracts that a policy exists for all graduate workers, and make sure that those kinds of protections are in place as part of procedure, instead of going to the dean and pleading your case and hoping that that works for you,” Pingree said.

(Pingree’s friend did not respond to a request to comment for this story.)

Despite the low pay, lack of benefits, and often-challenging conditions for these students, it’s not all bad, which is an important note that union members take care to stress.

“At the same time, I left behind a job that paid probably three times what I get paid here,” Sessions said. “But I did it because that’s what I wanted to do. … It’s not like anyone expects it to be the same as a professional career, but there should be some balance.”

A collective bargaining agreement would be as much about making sure benefits and compensation are secure as about improving either. It’s unclear what a union contract would cost BC, although an FAQ page put together by Harvard’s grad union claims that there is no precedent for a school making budget cuts because of unionization among grad students. The initial negotiations would likely not stipulate a massive raise.

Specific gains in benefits or compensation are also just one part of the equation for the union: they represent the material aspect. But there’s another, more general side of their goals. Many see the union as a vehicle for furthering other activist efforts on campus, for improving transparency, and for improving representation among grad students. This is the political side. It could prove even more impactful. arlier this spring, the union released a statement on its Facebook page in solidarity with its counterpart at Northeastern, where an administrator had sent a letter to grad students alleging that the United

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The Heights Momentum Awards

Auto Workers (UAW) was playing on the post-election fears of international students to get them to join the union.

Many in BC’s union saw it as a common tactic used by employers to prevent unionization, and part of understanding the grad employees union is understanding what role the UAW has to play.

“While the international union supports us, graduate employee unions are fueled by us—our issues, our needs, our goals, and our hard work,” the union’s solidarity statement reads.

Gabriele said the perception on a lot of campuses is that the UAW is some kind of outside force that comes in to organize things for the students. In her experience, though, most of what she’s been observing is a grassroots effort led by graduate students. Robinson, for example, will graduate this spring with her master’s and then will actually go to work for the UAW, staying in the Boston area and continuing to help schools with their graduate student workers.

“After the elections this fall, I just realized how limited academia can be in creating change, or educating others,” she said. “I see the academic institution as a very privileged institution, and in that way it’s limited.”

Robinson also felt a lot of limitations because she’s a woman and identifies as a person of color, she added. “I wanted to do more hands-on work with people, and at least trying to make some positive change

a clipboard and thought to be organizing the demonstration, or who was mentioned in coverage by The Heights.

“And that can have devastating consequences for my material realities at BC— my health insurance, my compensation— and it’s definitely had a huge impact on my relationships, my attempts to actually work on projects at BC that aren’t in the extra-institutional realm,” Simmons said.

“It certainly feels like we don’t necessarily have advocates outside ourselves. … I was hoping and continue to hope that the union is one of those mechanisms that allows for some type of legally binding rights and protections that I thought we initially had.”

Olle was also sanctioned for his involvement in a demonstration, and said that one issue is that the students don’t have any say over what the policies are. The perception is that administrators get to change them at a whim.

“It didn’t feel like a process where the burden of proof was on them, or anything like that,” he said. “It was a very sort of unequal, undemocratic process.”

With an institutionalized mechanism like a union, students could get representation. Maybe they could make changes to the code of conduct or get a student representative in conduct hearings, Olle said.

Theriault’s experience has been that even at the department level, nothing is set in place to make sure students have an advocate. Right now it’s a lot of developing relationships with the right people. A union

“I would say it’s an insecure time for a lot of us.”

-Caliesha Comley, a third-year Ph.D. student in society,” she said.

Many see the union as a way of obtaining or expanding rights. Two graduate student town halls this spring were built around ways in which different activist groups can work together, and one thing that’s come up is the possibility that a union contract could in theory negotiate some of the issues groups have organized around—it could stipulate that single-stall bathrooms should be gender-neutral, for example, an issue that the Graduate Pride Alliance has supported.

A contract could also be critical to free expression. Earlier this year, members of Eradicate BC Racism were sanctioned for their involvement in two unregistered demonstrations, which were in response to Trump’s election in November. Since the sanctions were administered to seven students, members of Eradicate and other students have held a series of meetings to try to clarify and make recommendations for changes to BC’s free expression policy, which requires that demonstrations must be registered either by individuals or by groups that are recognized by the University. Eradicate has said it will not seek to become a recognized student group because its “undocumented” status allows it to create a space of resistance.

Cedrick-Michael Simmons, a sociology Ph.D. candidate, hopes a contract could specify and ensure his rights and protections in addition to compensation.

He received probation for participating in one of the demonstrations, a candlelight vigil. Sometimes disciplinary hearings were assigned based on who was holding

contract could standardize and democratize that structure.

“There will be transparency and democracy in the conditions of our labor,” Berard said. “We’ll have a contract that we agreed on with the administration … and things will be above-board in a way that has been democratically decided.”

Pingree studies labor and immigration history in the U.S., and she views unions as a vehicle for workplace democracy. She sees this as a much larger thing, both nationally right now and historically.

And then there’s the fun part, too. For Robinson, one of the biggest takeaways has been how the union has opened up lines of communication across departments. They can be siloed and isolated to the point that it can get lonely. Pingree said she would never meet sociologists like Comley if not for the union. One of Comley’s favorite aspects of her union work has been the strong female leadership among the organizers. And for Theriault, amid students’ concerns and struggles, the union has emerged as one of the best experiences in his six years at BC. “This process of meeting people from other departments and sharing what’s going on there, and getting to build something from the ground up with people from across BC has been super rewarding,” Theriault said. “It’s a little trite to say it, but it really has been one of the more fulfilling parts of being at BC. I love doing research, I love working on what I’m working on, but being able to build something that’s going to last and make BC a better place, in my opinion, has been a big part of what’s been enjoyable about graduate school.” 

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JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

The Heights Momentum Awards

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May 4, 2017

APPETITE FOR INNOVATION Kevin Sullivan and Sazan Dauti created two apps that benefit students at Boston College, and they haven’t asked for a cent in return.

AMELIE TRIEU / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Joan Kennedy | Assoc. Copy Editor

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bunch of runners stand in an airport. They’re playing a waiting game, desperate to run out of the terminal and through the finish line, to hear the crowd go wild. Meanwhile, strangers whip by with the precision of sharks past the baggage claim. Everyone has places to be and things to do. Amid the chaos, Kevin Sullivan, MCAS ’17, gets a phone call.

“Yeah, this is Kevin. Okay, thanks.

I’m excited.”

His voice disappears in the flurry of flights and departures. There were thousands of phone calls made in that singular moment—a thousand “hello’s,” a thousand “goodbye’s,” and maybe a million nags from nervous parents. There was only one call to a then junior at Boston College getting a job offer from PricewaterhouseCoopers. And from Sullivan’s tone, you’d probably have never guessed the news he was hearing.

He didn’t shout or scream, and no one shouted or screamed for him. He got the job and didn’t need the glory.

“He knows everything is in his power,” said Tyler Hanson, MCAS ’17, one of Sullivan’s track and field teammates.

With electricity in his eyes, Hanson notes how Sullivan takes everything personally, in a good way.

Whether it’s a friend’s problem or a coding conundrum, Sullivan takes it in, makes it his own, attempts to truly understand it, and works to solve it.

His brain is wired to see problems not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity.

“He’s a guy that loves knowing things and loves to be informed,” Hanson said. “His own energy perpetuates him.”

From a very young age, it was evident Sullivan had a natural technical mind. In the third grade, he was tasked with coming up with an activity to teach the bones of the skeleton to his class. Sullivan decided the best way to get it done was to create an online game that would show pictures to be identified. The final result was super basic, but it got the wheels turning on his problem-solving mind.

Many students’ most stressful moments on the Heights are those spent rushing to register for classes.

Sullivan echoes the sentiments of his classmates concerning registration: UIS is old. Though he didn’t have the magic key to fix UIS and its stirrings of woes, Sullivan still saw an opportunity to improve the registration process and allow for more students to take the classes they want—regardless of what pick time they received.

Sullivan, who has a concentration in accounting and information systems, never had much formal education in coding, but taught himself on the side as a hobby. Faced with an undesirable pick time freshman year, Sullivan used his interest in and knowledge of coding from his own endeavors to change that. He created

a basic system that would email him when a spot opened up in one of his dream classes. In the summer before junior year, Sullivan decided it was time to spread his personal tool. With the help of Richard Lucas, BC ’15, Sullivan created EagleScribe.

Because of EagleScribe, students have easier access to classes. If a student does not get the one he or she desires at registration, they can download EagleScribe and monitor up to three classes at a time. If a spot opens up in one of those classes, everyone who subscribed will get a notification on their phone. For fairness’ sake, Sullivan designed it in such a way that all who subscribe will get a notification at the same time—close friends or early birds don’t get an exception.

Sullivan says that if he can help one person take a class they love instead of being forced into one they’ll hate, all his efforts are worth it. He remembers when he first witnessed someone he did not know using his app, pointing to that as the moment he knew he was having an impact on campus. Now, 4,500 people are subscribed to the app, all of their lives easier thanks to Sullivan. Pursuing an interest and entertaining a hobby as Sullivan did can cause a lot of good.

“It is a fine line between boom and bust, you see that in the industry all the time,” Sullivan said. “But pursuing something, if you’re passionate about it and even if it doesn’t work out—it’s worth the effort, and even if it’s not great, you learn a lot from it.”

Though he graduates this spring, Sullivan’s commitment to the BC community hasn’t faltered. He continues to look for ways to improve EagleScribe, such as providing more details in searches, adding a “suggested classes” aspect to the service, and working with BC to create ways for students to get on a waitlist. Sullivan hopes to use the app to show BC where students’ interests lie, collecting data to show which classes are most popular. Someday, he hopes, BC can add sections accordingly by looking at the number of requests for the most subscribed-to classes—an example of data the University would not have through its own systems.

One of the things that makes Sullivan’s character and commitment to serving others evident is his refusal to make students pay for the app, or have to deal with pesky ads, even though it comes at his own expense.

“Just for fun. We’re not making any money off of it,” Sullivan said. azan Dauti, the creator of EagleEats—another app engineered to make the lives of BC students easier—feels the same way.

“I don’t really want to monetize a student app, I just don’t feel that’s right,” Dauti said.

Dauti started his app empire in the seventh grade. When the iPhone App Store was launched in 2008, his

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interest was piqued right away. While most of his friends were playing Modern Warfare, Dauti decided he’d rather spend his time building games.

“I was like the lone-wolf,” he said.

Once Dauti started using apps, he became aware of the new ease of distribution. Instead of going through separate distributors, as with Xbox or Playstation, creators could now release directly to the App Store. “I realized that if I just do that I could release it to millions of people instantly.”

To build an iPhone app you need a Mac and an iOS development system called “Xcode.” When he told his parents about his interest in coding, they made sure he was serious—then drove him to the Apple Store. Soon enough, Dauti built his first app—a replica of Doodle Jump—and has only jumped higher since then.

Dauti had the idea for EagleEats his freshman year, but he never got around to creating the app—he had plenty on his plate at the time.

During TechTrek, a course that combines classroom learning with a week-long trip to Silicon Valley, Dauti approached his roommate, Joseph Bauer, CSOM ’18, about the concept and found he had been thinking about the same thing. A match made in heaven, the pair had complementary talents and the same vision. Dauti built the app from scratch and Bauer did the marketing. In total, creation took about a month, with the design of the app itself taking three combined working days and the system taking two. Dauti and Bauer had a target of 2,000 downloads—they reached it quickly, with over 700 downloads in the first two days.

“When you set goals you don’t really expect to get them right away and when I did hit it, I thought it was pretty cool,” he said.

Dauti has created a variety of apps in both hackathons and on his own time. He has a line of games, like Sheep Jump, a Doodle Jump replica, and Flappy Pig, a spinoff of the popular Flappy Bird. He has created more utility-purpose apps, such as FastWatch. The Chrome extension and iPhone app, which was intended to quicken the process of watching videos, earned him first place in DubHacks, a hackathon with more than 100 competing teams. Most recently, he has been building upon his zeal for the restaurant industry. He launched the app GrubSpot last year, which allows users to see restaurants along their chosen routes.

“When I came to BC I didn’t really like the food, so I actually didn’t use my meal plan freshman or sophomore year at all—I just ordered out every day,” Dauti said. “I’m from a small town so when I saw all these restaurants I thought ‘what in the world’ and I realized the potential the restaurant business has—especially in a big city.”

And then, of course, he moved on to EagleEats. With his creation of

the app in Jan. 2017, Dauti brought BC Dining to the palms of thousands of students. The app, which has had thousands of downloads, allows students to view which dining halls are open, what they are serving, and the nutritional value of menu items. The app allows students to see which dining hall is nearest to them and add “favorites” to be notified when a user arrives at a specific location—none of which is possible through the basic menu displayed by BC Dining.

“I had the tools to do it on my own, so I thought, ‘Why not, it’s a cool project,’” Dauti said. “So I did it on my own.”

The burgeoning tech mogul hopes to bring a new food-related idea to fruition this summer. Dauti wants to improve on the app for OpenTable, which allows consumers to make reservations at restaurants with the flick of a finger, but imposes costs on participating eateries. Dauti’s innovative mind, and belief that “competition fuels innovation,” saw a better way to do it. He thinks it is possible to circumvent costs by creating an app which makes reservation calls automatically, so that participating restaurants do not have to use the costly service.

Meanwhile, consumers still get the benefit of an easier, user-friendly system.

Dauti clearly has a passion for coding, but what is most special is his fervor for helping others. He does hold any copyrights for his designs and codes, but rather passes down his knowledge to anyone he can. John Gallaugher, associate professor of the information systems department, has gotten to know Dauti over the years and is amazed at his service-driven attitude. He calls Dauti a “linch-pin of [his] T.A. team,” citing him as “the guy with the app experience” who hosts extra office hours.

“He has a passion for technology and an eagerness to share it with others and say ‘Hey you can do it, too,’” Gallaugher said. “He uses technology as a way to help the community.”

Dauti is an innovator hellbent on bringing BC into the future, pushing its motto of “men and women for others” into the world of technology while making sure he aids others in gaining the tools they need to do so, too. Dauti thinks there is room for technological improvement at BC, but has taken on this mission in his own way. Besides the creation of EagleEats, he has created an app for WZBC, allowing users to listen mobily, view the weekly schedule, and show descriptions. Dauti wants to create a new product-development club. In the club, members would go through the entire process of building something from beginning to end, including marketing, thus expanding their breadth of knowledge to the real world beyond the classroom.

“If you’re going to class and you don’t like it, switch your major,” Dau-

ti offered as advice to his peers, “if you’re going to class and you love it, learn some more in your free time.” ou wouldn’t know it from the way they shrug off praise in the Chocolate Bar but Dauti and Sullivan are two of BC’s unassuming heroes.

“Coding is really the only true superpower, and Sazan is using his superpowers for good,” Gallaugher said.

“We’re going to have a lot of heroes at BC in years to come.”

As Gallaugher suggested, Dauti and Sullivan have paved the way for innovation at BC. With expanding interest in the computer science department, the two have made it obvious that being a student is not enough.

Though academic achievement is important, innovation does not happen in the confines of a classroom—it’s about what you do outside of the halls.

“Here at BC a lot of computer science students just do their classwork and leave it. To become a better computer scientist and good entrepreneur, or anything in general you have to do work on your own time,” Dauti said. “There’s no way I could’ve used only the knowledge I learned at BC to do what I did. I had to invest my own time into it.”

Sullivan thinks people should look for opportunities to create everywhere, especially in the campus community where there is a group of people congregated with commonalities in their specific needs. Dauti encourages all to just get out there and make something. Both stress the need for greater technological advances on the BC campus—and the selflessness to innovate without looking for a physical return.

Refusal on the part of both Dauti and Sullivan to monetize their respective apps highlights their commitment to the community, especially because they both plan to keep supporting and improving their apps after they graduate. Dauti aims to find a successor among the younger ranks of BC’s computer science department to carry on EagleEats’ legacy. In return for all the hours they spent identifying problems, collecting data, laying out the aesthetics, getting approval from Apple, and maintaining their apps’ structural integrity while the user base grows, Dauti and Sullivan got a pat on the back from a couple of friends. But that’s all they need. They thrive off the thrill of knowing they’ve made the lives of their fellow students easier. Sullivan says he is pleased with his work if he can help just one student take a class they really want to.

As Dauti and Sullivan have proved, there’s no age requirement on innovation—unlike Mary Ann’s or Agoro’s, you don’t need a “21+” ID to get in on it. You just need a vision, and the drive to get there—everyone has the power to change the world around them.

“Innovate or die,” Sullivan said. 

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The Heights Momentum Awards

May 4, 2017

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SOARING UNDER THE RADAR

Not all BC students spend their days in the spotlight. Here are four underclassmen whose “normal” days are anything but.

Shannon Kelly | Asst. Features Editor

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here are roughly 9,100 undergraduates at Boston College, most of whom make it to Alumni Stadium four years later to hoist their diplomas above their heads. The road to Commencement is paved with good intentions in the form of held-open doors, failed tests, steak and cheeses, and Cronin dates. For most students, classes are punctuated by the inspired spark of a professor’s lecture, the sweat of athletic competition, a leadership position or two, and the nearly inevitable changing of majors. No one is just one thing.

Combined, this student body is a mix of talents, of intellectuals and artists, musicians and soccer players, executives and servants. The Heights’ annual Momentum Awards are typically reserved for students whose lives are befitting of the cover of a BC brochure, going above and beyond in areas that are popularly intriguing and glamorous.

But there are plenty of others who continue their toil without recognition in flashy recruitment videos. It doesn’t mean they put in any less work, or are any less important to the evolution of the University.

Here are four of these such students who convey the passion and drive that all BC students seem to have. imothy Victorio, MCAS ’18, is hunched over a table, rendering the chair next to him unusable by another student. It is organized chaos in Rubenstein #7—a gridded cutting board, a strange-looking ruler, and bits of balsa wood are strewn about. And then there are papers, all kinds, from cut-out cardstock to sheets of sketches, worked and reworked.

For someone who lives off campus, Victorio spends a lot of time in Hillside, working in a room through a door that leads to the theatre department offices. Victorio is a student in Stage Design, a course that teaches students how to create models of sets and their accompanying drafting on paper, all in 1/4-inch scale. He is currently working on the sets for a three-act play, Rusalka. It requires hours of work, from the concept to the final product, three scene changes of miniature furniture. It’d be madness enough for most people, but Victorio isn’t even a theatre major. He’s studying biology at BC. Oh, but he wants to be an architect.

Victorio began his freshman year on the pre-med track with plans to become an orthopedic surgeon. He loves science—don’t let the career change fool you.

“It’s super hard to understand it and learn it and stay with it, but I just find it really interesting,” he said. “It just blows my mind.”

As his interest in orthopedic surgery waned, he changed to pre-dental. But one of BC’s core requirements, typically dreaded by students for some subject or another, shifted his focus elsewhere. He decided to take Drawing I to fill his fine arts requirement in sophomore year. The next semester, he took Drawing II, and by then, he had made his decision to forgo dental school to pursue architecture after college.

For those who major in architecture as undergraduates at other universities, the leg work involved is mostly finished by graduation. But without the major at BC, not to mention his credits already spent on Molecules and Cells, Genetics and Genomics, and his other biology classes, Victorio’s path to being a professional architect will take six or seven years, including a year after graduation before a three-year graduate program and internships. To even apply to a graduate school, Victorio has to build up a portfolio as part of his application. That’s where Stage Design came in. Building tiny furniture and learning the proper drawing techniques for laying out his plans gives Victorio the experience he needs for his portfolio.

His work isn’t confined to a mockup of the Robsham Main Stage made of foam board, however. With the help of Crystal Ti-

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ala, the chair of the theatre department and Victorio’s Stage Design professor, he will take his talents to full-scale productions.

After finding his skill in the course, Victorio began working in the scene shop for Evita, using tools to create the larger-than-life opulence of 1940s Argentina under Peronism.

“When I work in the scene shop, it’s work, but it’s still enjoyable,” he said. “Even if it’s just a ledge for someone to stand on, it’s still really cool to do something with my hands rather than to sit there and think and write something out.”

Next semester, he will take on more responsibility as Tiala’s assistant for the theatre department’s production of Chicago. By second semester of his senior year, Victorio will have gone from having no experience in stage design—save for helping out with his siblings’ high school plays—to standing at the helm of design for No Exit in the Bonn Studio. efore college, Meghan Dumser, MCAS ’17, wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life.

What she did know was that she wanted to play soccer—but where, exactly, wasn’t clear. In her sophomore year of high school, Dumser made a verbal commitment to Lehigh University, a Division-I school in the Patriot League. The competitive club team she played on as part of the Players Development Academy sent girls to elite programs across the country. But Dumser wanted more than that. Her sister, who is eight years older, attended BC, making the school a part of her life from childhood. It was always in the back of her mind when considering colleges, and Dumser realized she didn’t want the cutthroat nature of competing for playing time and tenuous relationships to follow her to the next chapter of her life. So she decided on BC instead.

Despite closing the book on playing at the highest amateur level, Dumser wasn’t done with soccer. She came to campus to try out for BC’s club team, getting right into it during the first weekend of freshman year.

Out of the more than 120 women who tried out, only four were taken. Dumser was one of them. Activities tend to wax and wane as a college career goes on, swapping high school interests for clubs friends are in or groups that can make a résumé shine. But for Dumser, the team fostered a relationship among its players that made it feel like a family, which she held onto throughout her four years.

“If I wasn’t with my team during the fall season, that wasn’t right, there was something wrong about that,” she said.

“My friends have a joke, they’re like ‘In the fall you never see Meg because she’s always with the soccer girls. Always.’”

Dumser spent two days a week in the fall practicing for upcoming games, which fell on Saturdays when football was on the road, sometimes leading to doubleheaders or Sunday tournaments.

She traveled with the team, driving to other states in the area for games against other universities in the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association.

When the team made it to the Women’s Open in the National Tournament in 2015, it flew down to Phoenix, Ariz. and played in the semifinal, falling to James Madison University. As much as Dumser loves competition, though, just getting to play is fun enough.

While she missed out on her junior season to study abroad in Galway, Ireland—a decision that was tough for her, but ultimately an experience she couldn’t miss—her team still recognized her for her loyalty and leadership. When she returned in the spring, she was elected a captain with three other rising seniors.

They began planning for the season in June, making sure everything fell into place.

On top of her devotion to the team, Dumser struggled with her academic future. She applied to Morrissey College

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of Arts and Sciences, hoping to be a lawyer, but quickly discovered upon her arrival that it was not the right fit for her.

Left at the hands of the Carroll School of Management, which only this year is reopening applications for internal transfers, she settled for the economics major, with a minor in management and leadership. For now, she’s going to take her talents to Deloitte, working in New York City. While her academic success has led her this far, her favorite aspect of BC is her team.

“You come here, and you’re a freshman, and you kind of make friends in your dorm, but you decide what you involve yourself in … it becomes a social bubble, and it’s amazing,” she said. livia Spadola, CSON ’17, sounds cool and collected when talking about a nearly 3,000-mile move to Bend, Ore., uprooting her life in the Northeast to join Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) Northwest, the original nonprofit that spawned a national extension and an international offshoot. For Spadola, the yearlong commitment to service was a choice she had not considered until her final year at BC. The original plan, to go to graduate school and become a nurse practitioner, was challenged after she found herself enraptured by the service programs she participated in, taking her around the world and back again.

“It doesn’t really feel like I’m moving far away, for some reason,” she said. “It just feels like I’m taking the right next step for myself.”

Spadola threw herself into community service the moment she stepped on campus, signing up for the PULSE program at orientation. Since she wouldn’t have nursing clinicals until the following year, Spadola decided on a placement that would allow her to test the waters.

At the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center, she worked with doctors in an emergency setting and also tutored a 9-year-old girl. Her love for giving herself to others only grew as she traveled to Guatemala on an Arrupe trip over Winter Break her sophomore year.

The following year, she journeyed a bit farther, settling in The Philippines through Casa Bayanihan, a program run through the University of San Francisco that stresses “accompaniment.” Rather than playing into the narrative of volunteers coming in to “save” locals through service, the students act as equals with the community members in order to learn from them the best ways to help.

In the fall, Spadola went on an overnight event whose sole purpose is to help seniors determine whether they want to continue service full-time after graduation. After wrestling with the question herself for several months, she found others’ input to be the push she needed to decide. She then applied to JVC Northwest, was accepted, and found a job working for the Deschutes County Health Services Department. A departure from the clinical work that takes up much of her time, Spadola will be serving in a more public health-related role in the realm of maternal and child nursing, ensuring that patients have the proper insurance, care, and possible home visits.

While most seniors tend to ease up a little in their second semester, Spadola has done anything but. She is the president of the Red Cross affiliate on campus, arranging the blood drives. She just recently had her last shift for BC EMS, on which she was a team leader that supervised in the case of an emergency. Spadola gets up at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesdays to arrive at her clinical at Boston Children’s Hospital for her pediatric rotation, which runs from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. On Thursdays, she gets to sleep in—until 6:30 a.m.—before heading to her community population health

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SHANNON KELLY | LIZZY BARRETT / HEIGHTS EDITORS

clinical at the Cambridge Health Alliance at the Zinberg Clinic. She works with people with infectious diseases, including HIV and Hepatitis C. On Mondays and Wednesdays, she gets to rest until 9 in the morning and has her regular course load. Fridays, up until April 14, were reserved for workouts and long runs to prepare Spadola for the Boston Marathon, in which she raised $7,000 for the Red Cross.

“This is making my life look so easy,” Spadola said when she mentioned that her first class on Monday is at 1:30. Well, to each her own.

While some might consider a year of community service to be a break from adult life, Spadola couldn’t disagree more. For her, the passion she feels in her work only propels her to give it a more concrete meaning.

“I think one of the important distinctions for me was that this was by no means a gap year and then a return to a normal job, or a year off from the real world,” she said.

“I think this for me is the real world, and this is what I want to sink my teeth into and carry on the work of for the rest of my life.” he BC lookaway is renowned for its ability to get one out of social interaction with an acquaintance, while also adding to the discomfort of the situation when it is seen by the exact person you wished to avoid. But if there’s one person who hates it, it’s Suneer Sood.

Sood, CSOM ’17, emanates cheerfulness and courtesy, nodding in encouragement when he listens to someone speak.

He laughs in the face of the lookaway—if he knows you and he spots you from far away, he’ll make sure to give you a “hello” when he finally passes you. He puts everyone he meets at ease. That’s probably why he was picked to be an orientation leader for the summer of his sophomore year.

There’s a stereotype with CSOM students—that they are so cutthroat and competitive that they feel the need to get an internship with Goldman Sachs the day after they finish their freshman year. Sood, however, decided to take the time to pass on some of the wisdom he had acquired from upperclassmen and alumni to incoming freshmen, as well as meet the 42 other orientation leaders that would bring new perspectives to his life.

“For the rest of my life I’m probably going to be doing business in varying degrees, and I really just wanted to have the summer to myself and grow through the orientation program,” he said.

His mentorship experience extends past the summer he spent meeting the entire

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freshman class and all 112 transfer students that year. After participating in the Freshman League as a first-year, he interned for the program the following year and became a captain as a junior. He also led Halftime, as well as the BC Holy Grail of retreats, Kairos, just a few weeks ago.

Starting in his sophomore year, Sood became involved with BC Enactus, the school’s chapter of a nationwide organization that is devoted to providing funds and guidance to companies seeking to make a difference. Sood appreciates the concrete results he sees through the projects he works on. Two years ago, he worked with a company called Shanti & Deva, which produces handmade ethnic jewelry. With Enactus’ help, Shanti & Deva donated 10 percent of its revenue to Kiva, a microfinance company that offers loans to people in developing countries. Sood loved getting updates on the woman from Cambodia that had used the money to start a grocery store. His experience with Enactus, of which he was president of last year and is now co-president, has helped him figure out what he wants to do next.

During Sood’s own orientation, he was inspired by the “three key questions” from Rev. Michael Himes:” what are you good at, what brings you joy, and what does the world need you to be? A thoughtful and inquisitive person, Sood immediately read the rest of Himes’ work to figure out what it could mean for himself. He’s applying the same questions for determining his career.

Though he has not secured a full-time position yet, Sood will be working as a summer associate at a private-equity firm that gives out capital growth packages only to companies working in the energy, sustainability, and innovation sectors.

“It’s a slam dunk for what the world needs you to do,” he said. “I don’t know whether or not I’m super good at it yet, but I’ve been enjoying the experience so far, and at least it’s bringing me closer to the right answer.”

For someone who seems so unsure of things, he knows a lot. Anything that comes across his mind becomes a topic for research. He reads articles upon articles related to his interests, including the art of fragrance. He has even taught a BC Splash course on perfumes and colognes, all of which stemmed out of a desire to impress a girl when he was in middle school. It’s quirky, but it’s a part of his personality. He’s not afraid to put himself on the line when it comes to making friends—it’s the reason the BC lookaway will never be for him. 

The Heights Momentum Awards

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May 4, 2017

BUILDING BC’S BAND From Duchesne East to the Big Apple, Juice has paved the way for future artists at BC. Grace Gvodas Asst. Copy Editor

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n the fall of 2013, Michael Ricciardulli walked down the slender fourthfloor hallway of Gonzaga Hall, where the smell of freshmen sweat mixed with too much Old Spice permeated the air. Per usual, he carried his guitar in hand. Christian Rougeau, ever-vibrant like the sound of his electric violin, spotted the tall, San Diego-looking surfer kid. Rougeau invited Ricciardulli to come “jam with these cats on Newton” sometime, a musician’s equivalent of asking someone to play FIFA and throw back some beers. The cats in question were Dan Moss and Miles Clyatt.

Over on Newton, Clyatt was busy distancing himself from the epidemic of icebreakers, which, like for many other freshmen, had dominated his first month at Boston College. As he stacked his bed atop his roommate’s, making room for instruments other than his drumkit, he was forming a niche that would incorporate his childhood passion. In the narrow double in Duchesne East, sandwiched among rooms filled with pre-med insomniacs and pseudo-intellectuals nodding to Pink Floyd, began Juice, BC’s most famous band. uice played its first show as the eight-man band it is today in the Superfan Zone in Alumni Stadium. On a muggy September day, the guys jammed out to a cover of Kanye West’s “Hey Mama” and Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.”

Most notably, the group debuted its original “How You Gonna Do Me Like That,” characterized by guitarist Burton and violinist Rougeau doubling as rappers.

“It was kind of a janky show, and we’ve come a long way since then,” bassist Rami El-Abidin said, chuckling across the table at Chris Vu and Ricciardulli.

That year was plagued with chaos. Ricciardulli’s guitar was knocked off its stand minutes before their first performance at Brighton Music Hall that February, rendering it unplayable. A performance during the intermission of a fashion show in the Rat started an hour earlier than expected, and without Vu, their pianist.

But the band figured it out. Juice eventually synchronized, in an Ocean’s Eleven fashion, to make a perfect harmony. The Heights called Juice as BC as Gasson two years ago. The guys poured their way into the playlists of dark and sweaty off-campus basements on a Foster Street Saturday night and through a two-time victory at Arts Fest’s Battle of the Bands, which led to opening for Hoodie Allen and Ludacris at Modstock; Andy Grammer in Robsham; a packed Commencement Ball; and eventually beyond Chestnut Hill.

In the summer of 2015, Juice secured its first coveted gig in New York. The band was set to play at Parkside Lounge, a dive bar in

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Juice packed its things and, with a mob of friends and fans, trekked down the street to perform at Mercury—a sweaty and hurried example of what gives Juice its flavor. The band members had reached New York through their network of friends and word of mouth, and now they were pouring down Houston Street, accompanied by the same support base that got them there in the first place, to play the biggest show of their careers up to that point.

In two years, Juice had transformed the way BC viewed not only independent artists, but the arts in general. The band’s popularity evolved from a few friends piling into a Newton dormroom to a pair of packed shows in the Big Apple. Juice was one of the first groups to truly secure its prominence on a campus often known for its general apathy toward the arts, and has made the dream of a successful college band a reality. It just took them some time to come together. ever out of sync in instrumentation but seemingly always a bit offbeat in the daily routine, Ricciardulli was sitting in his Intro to Music class back in fall 2013, engrossed in the intricacies of his nail bed. He had never really spoken to Vu, who donned an unwrinkled, white button-down and had claimed a seat in the back of the class since the semester began. Little did Ricciardulli know that the kid was already one of the most talented and diligent musicians at BC. As extra credit, students were given the option to perform in front of the class, and Vu decided to go for it. He navigated down the stairs in the amphitheater-style classroom on the fourth floor of Lyons, through the wobbly desks, and down to the front of the room. He placed his hands to the keys and the meticulous rapidity of the Brazilian piece “Tico Tico” began to fly off his fingers.

Ricciardulli, pushing his wavy mane of hair behind away from his face, realized that he had found another cat to add to the posse.

Juice is no easy combination. With an electric violin, a piano, a bass, drums, lead vocals, and three guitars, there is a lot at play.

Thomas Lee, a professor in the music department who has taught Vu, Rougeau, Stevens, and Ricciardulli, notes not just the group’s differences in terms of instrumentation, but also in terms of its approach to music itself. Vu brings to the group his meticulous work ethic grounded in years of classical training on the piano, while violinist Rougeau and vocalist Stevens, albeit also classically trained, perform primarily through their explosion of raw talent. Ricciardulli, meanwhile, brings a more visceral and emotionally driven piece on the guitar.

Donald “Big D” Spongeberg, a sound

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forming live, according to El-Abidin. Each member of Juice grew up as a live performer, so the transition to the recording studio was challenging and humbling, yet also an opportunity that allowed each member to become closer to the music.

“We got away with having so much energy on stage and everyone was always having fun when they watch us,” El-Abidin said. “And we had to really learn how to mature and pare it down and just have the song do the talking instead of just like, ya know, going super hard on stage.”

Despite the challenges of Juice’s first recordings of “Where I Wanna Be,” “Gold,” and Kanye West’s “Gold Digger”—not to mention the $15,000 the group raised to do it, a total it reached in just 11 days—Juice released its first full and recorded eponymously titled album in April 2016. With stand-out pieces like “How You Gonna Do Me Like That,” in which Rougeau shreds his violin like he’s buttering toast, and “Pineapple Groove,” which peaks with rising crescendos, Juice continued landing gigs—and a $20,000 victory at Summerfest in Wisconsin this past summer.

But even with their rising success, the guys haven’t forgotten their friendship.

Or that it’s what really allowed the guys to mix such an eclectic array of talents into the organic hip-hop, funk, soul, and R&B masterpiece that it is today.

“It has really been at the heart of Juice since the beginning,” Ricciardulli said.

It has turned into a brotherhood, according to Luke Urbanczyk and Ciaran Cleary, both CSOM ’17 and roommates of members of Juice. It is the turbine behind the undeniable energy of their live shows.

From the posts in the BC Class of 2017 Facebook page where Rougeau and Clyatt first connected to Ricciardulli consistently jamming on his unplugged guitar while in his underwear, Juice has become like mind readers, following the ebb and flow of each other’s movements as effortlessly as each member jams to his own part.

For Cleary, it has a little more to do with than just their friendship and mutual musical familiarity with one another.

“They’re smiling. And they’re all handsome,” Cleary said. “And they’re all like feeding off each other’s handsome and smiling.” n the spring of 2014, Ben Stevens arrived at BC and unpacked his things—right down the hall from Moss and Clyatt on Newton. He arrived second semester after an unsuccessful stint in Los Angeles with The Voice, in which he was told moments before he was scheduled to perform before judges Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, Christina Aguilera, and CeeLo Green, that there were no longer any available spots left on the show. But he

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“They’re smiling. And they’re all handsome. And they’re all like feeding off each other’s handsome and smiling.”

-Ciaran Cleary, CSOM ’17 East Village. After the event began blowing up on Facebook, the guys were invited to ditch that gig for a juicier location right down the street: Mercury Lounge.

“We respectfully said no,” Vu recalled.

“Ya know, we had already committed to the Parkside thing.”

But when they showed up in New York, they walked by Mercury Lounge and saw “Juice” as the scheduled headliner. Entering the lounge to clear up the confusion, Juice ended up with another gig for the night.

“They ended up saying, ‘Do you guys just want to play anyways, after your show?’”

Vu said.

After finishing its 10 p.m. set at Parkside,

JOHN WILEY / HEIGHTS ARCHIVE | JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITIOR

engineer who has worked with Juice since its first-ever recording of “Where I Wanna Be,” and describes the band’s sound as “Dave Matthews Band meets Frank Ocean,” says that the differences are what truly reveal Juice’s genuine talent.

“To be able to take that amount of people and that amount of instruments and that amount of ideas and still write fresh and creative songs is very, very interesting and just shows how talented they actually are,” Spongeberg said.

Still, Juice’s compelling cohesiveness is hard to capture in a recording. Engineering eight individual pieces in the studio into one is a long process, and nothing like per-

perserved.

Donning white, fitted pants, tan boots, and a black button-down, Stevens took the stage at BC Idol, which has since been renamed Sing it to the Heights. He was accompanied by Vu, who he met through his Newton hallmates. As they took the stage, Vu received a pat on the back from Stevens before taking his seat behind the the keys.

In their performance, Vu’s meticulous piano playing and Stevens’ melodic vocals, reminiscent of Sam Smith, intertwined to create a captivating cover of Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You.” The two claimed not only the BC Idol title, but the attention of those who came in second place—Rougeau and

Kamau Burton, an acoustic guitarist, who Rougeau met at orientation. The Newton jam sessions expanded as the group embraced Stevens and Burton, its sixth and seventh cats.

C is not the Berklee School of Music. There is not nearly as large of a focus on the arts, or as many opportunities for artists to perform—Berklee boasts a vigorous 1,500 concerts and events each year for students, faculty, and alumni to perform. Every other student participates in some sort of band, or two. But maybe that’s why Juice has become what it is today.

“Being at BC is an advantage for us because we’re a band that the entire school can rally behind,” Vu said.

And it did. This past March, Juice performed for a sold-out Brighton Music Hall. Opening with an effervescent guitar melody, flowing through crowd-favorites “Shoot Me Down,” and “Gold,” and closing with Kanye West’s “Gold Digger,” the eight guys realized just how far they have come.

In the crowd are not just their classmates and friends, but people who enjoy good music on a Friday night.

“When I see them at Brighton Music Hall with a bunch of people that aren’t BC people and a bunch of people who are just regular people I realize that this is an act.

This entertainment value that they bring is good enough to go anywhere,” Cleary said.

“There are people here who don’t know them, who are listening to their songs for the first time, and enjoying it and loving it.”

Though graduation is near—five of its seven members will depart BC this May, while Stevens and Rougeau will finish out in December—Juice has no intention of stopping. The band plans to move to Rye, N.Y., 40 minutes outside of Manhattan, to continue writing, recording, and performing. ater in the spring of 2014, Stevens, Clyatt, Moss, Vu, Ricciardulli, Rougeau, Burton, and bassist Jack Godfrey, an exchange student from the U.K. who Clyatt had met through a class, continued their jam sessions in the bunk-bed double in Duchesne East. The band at this point had found its structure: four guitarists, including bass and acoustic, a drummer, a pianist, an electric violinist, and an enthralling vocalist. In those early days, none of the members of Juice could have predicted just how far they would go.

That spring, Juice, a name characteristic of its composition of talents squeezed into one, was formally introduced to the BC community at Battle of the Bands at Arts Fest.

“Seeing the transition from just a group of friends hanging out not really knowing where this is going, to a band with songs that is competing is a really cool, interesting transition,” Urbanczyk said.

El-Abidin was a junior at the time, playing bass guitar with another jazz and neo-oriented band that had never gigged outside of BC or recorded an album called The Mints. And after losing to the band in the first round of the competition, ElAbidin knew that Juice had something special.

“I came to the finals and saw them win it and I was blown away by how good they were,” El-Abidin said.

As a junior in a band of seniors who were about graduate, and with the knowledge that Godfrey would soon be returning to the U.K., El-Abidin reached out to Burton to see if Juice was in need of a new bassist.

Burton answered yes, and El-Abidin began jamming with Juice in the boiling August heat in the non-air-conditioned dorms of Walsh.

“And that’s pretty much how Juice formed,” Vu said. “After that, we all started jamming together more.”

And jam they did. 

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