The Heights 09/25/14

A STAR REBORN

HER CLOSET BOSTON SWEATER WEATHER

SPORTS

METRO

SCENE

Ex-BC basketball star Chris Herron speaks about his struggle with drug abuse, A10

Hilary Marino talks her new Brookline boutique, B8

BC students layer up in style for the fall season, B3

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HEIGHTS

THE

The Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College

established

1919

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Vol. XCV, No. 31

Research hub on Jesuits opens at BC

BC IGNITES

BC creates new center for advanced Jesuit resources

Breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health

BY CONNOR FARLEY News Editor

Orphaned at a young age, he was tasked with paying his own way through his collegiate education. A co-op program offered during his undergraduate years allowed him to earn money to put toward tuition while allowing him to get experience at growing companies that have become modern giants, such as IBM and General Electric. After working in multiple sales jobs following his graduation, he became the vice president of sales at a digital storage company in Boston in the early 1990s. It was a constant sense of discomfort while in this role, however, that led Davis to start an entrepreneurial venture.

“It was just a really uncomfortable place to be, but at that point I had a mortgage and kids,” he said. “It’s a tough thing to do when

After its launch this summer, the newly formed Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College—a center begun within the University that aims to collect, archive, share, and publish historical and scholarly materials relating to the Order of the Society of Jesus—will finalize its residence at 9 Lake St. on Brighton Campus in November after a temporary stay in Stokes Hall.

Having developed this past July, the institute was led under the direction of Rev. Casey Beaumier, S.J., the institute’s director and GCAS ’13; Associate Director and associate professor of history Robert Maryks; and Assistant Director Seth Meehan, GCAS ’14. The three-man staff now seeks to work in conjunction with not only the immediate Jesuit community at BC, but also with all colleges within the University and fellow Jesuit institutions across the country, according to Beaumier.

“The catalyst for this new initiative is the University itself, it seems to me,” Beamier said in an email. “Boston College is an excellent university—and the ‘advanced’ dimension of the new institute exists solely because of BC. We intend to partner with the School of Theology and Ministry [STM], CSOM, Lynch, Arts and Sciences in order to create courses, workshops, publications, and scholarly symposia.”

The newly created institute has not yet formed any official partnerships with other Jesuit universities, but intends to serve as an unprecedented source for institutions to use in studying the Jesuit mission.

“While there hasn’t [been] formal partnerships with other Jesuit schools— we certainly intend to be resourceful for them—our hope is that BC will be the ‘go to’ for Jesuit studies,” Beamier said.

The center will include both scholarly materials and educational opportunities such as student programs, workshops, courses, and workshops, among other channels for students to gain a fuller understanding of the Jesuit identity, and will be accessible for all students—regardless of undergraduate or graduate academic status.

“There will be opportunities for BC faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students to work with the new institute,” Beaumier said. “For example, we will be piloting a program this coming summer for rising junior and senior high school students to have them come to BC to experience something of the charism of the Jesuits’ spirituality and how it relates to a great university like Boston College.”

“Our hope is to have BC students help to facilitate this program,” he said.

“We will offer a variety of publications through the new institute and as we get established, I intend to have students contribute to the development of these works—as interns, copy editors, [and] book review writers. We hope to collaborate with the University in offering courses in Jesuit history, spirituality, and pedagogy—there will be a lot of opportunity for our students.”

Beaumier noted a goal of the institute is to also collaborate with teaching faculty across schools in offering courses

See Davis, A3

See IAJS, A3

DREW HOO / HEIGHTS STAFF

BY CAROLYN FREEMAN Heights Staff

Last night at this semester’s installment of BC Ignites, students gathered on O’Neill Plaza to listen to talks about mental illness as part of a growing campus initiative to catalyze conversations about mental health at Boston College.

This year, the Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC) has enacted a Be Conscious campaign to help erase the stigma surrounding mental illness. Part of this campaign was Wednesday night’s BC Ignites. Ignites is a public forum series wherein a keynote speaker and students share their perspectives on an issue. The theme of this semester’s event was mental illness. In addition to Ignites, UGBC recently launched the Mental Health Initiative blog, which takes contributions from BC students regarding their experi-

ences with mental illness.

The current UGBC administration is dedicated to removing the stigma surrounding mental illness on campus. When Nanci Fiore-Chettiar, UGBC president and Chris Marchese, UGBC vice president, both A&S ’15 ran for their positions this past year, they emphasized mental health as part of their platform.

UGBC hopes Ignites will spark students’ interest and involvement in the MHI blog, Marchese said.

“We thought Ignites would really start the conversation and that would motivate a lot of students to share more stories with us for our blog,” he said.

The website provides a way for students who may be struggling to access information easily. It was launched over the summer, when the Be Conscious team began building content and talking with administrators. UGBC has partnered with The Gavel to reproduce its Authentic Eagles series on the blog. The series is written by stu-

dents and focuses on problems students have that are not obvious to everyone. It can be difficult for students to come to UGBC, so this blog is a way for UGBC to come to the students, Marchese said.

“What we really like about the Authentic Eagles pieces is that when you are reading them, you are like, ‘I could’ve written this, this could’ve been me’,” he said.

“We wanted students to have a resource where they feel like they are not alone.”

In addition to the Authentic Eagles series, pieces on the blog will range from mental health, mental wellbeing, stress, time management, and anxiety. The only requirement of a contributor is that he or she is a BC student. Thomas McGuinness, director of University Counseling Services, will also read submissions to the blog to ensure that they do not contain triggering lan-

See BC Ignites, A3

Accessibility information streamlined on new BC site

BY ALLISON OLIVIERI For The Heights Over the summer, Judy Ferres, associate director of the Office for Institutional Diversity (OID), helped create a website that provides students with disabilities one central location where they can access information about how to get around on campus. Students with disabilities typically face a unique set of challenges when navigating campus, including entering the dining halls, retrieving the necessary course materials, and requesting accommodations, Ferres noted.

“Hopefully increased awareness will help people understand that we all have a right to work and to be educated and that we all come with our different abilities,” she said.

Prior to Boston College displaying information about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on its website, the OID had a section on its own website for accessibility. It took approximately three months to create the accessibility website, but with the assistance of the Disability Services Coordinating Committee and the Information Technology Services (ITS) group, the University was able to produce a site that houses, organizes, and makes available resources for students with disabilities. The University’s site had already contained links to all of the in-

formation now displayed on its website, but that information was not centralized or publicly available in detail on an online platform, making it less likely for students with disabilities to find the necessary literature on ADA accessibility across campus, Ferres said.

“We’re hoping that this will help them to have one spot to go to and figure out what they need in order to become the best student they can be here at BC,” she said.

The committee that worked on the ADA accessibility website said it is open to suggestions and feedback on what it can do to make the website better.

Many departments at BC are providing the committee with input on how the University can become a more inclusive environment. This collaboration of ideas from different departments, Ferres said, will ultimately enhance the functionality and resourcefulness of the website.

Throughout the past few months, several accessibility updates have been installed throughout parking garages, as well as additional handicap signs around campus in order to accommodate those with disabilities, according to Ferres.

“The new image is to have a moving wheelchair so people don’t subconsciously think that a person with a disability in a wheelchair can’t do

See ADA Website, A3

KEMENG FAN / HEIGHTS STAFF

Yesterday, Highland Capital’s Bob Davis spoke at the latest Winston Center event.

Veteran investor Bob Davis talks tech, venture capital

BY MUJTABA SYED Heights Editor In the latest installment of the “Lunch with a Leader” series organized by the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics, Bob Davis of Highland Capital Partners spoke in the Fulton Honors Library on Wednesday afternoon. Davis, a bestselling author, veteran of high-growth technology firms, and former board member of several public and private companies, spoke about his career experiences as well as life lessons he gleaned along the way.

Beginning with a short description of his educational background, Davis explained how his unique education at Northeastern University led him to the first segment of his career, which involved sales-heavy roles.

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things to do on campus this week

The Heights Today at 4 p.m. in Merkert 130, Iowa State University chemistry professor Ning Fang will lead a seminar discussion, the “Science of Rock ‘N’ Roll,” as part of the chemistry department’s lecture series. The talk will focus on single molecule and nanoparticle imaging.

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Thursday, September 25, 2014

Rev. James Martin, S.J., editor-at-large of America and a frequent social and religious commentator on The Colbert Report, The O’Reilly Factor, and NBC programs, will deliver a lecture about the historical life of Jesus this evening at 6:30 p.m. in Robsham.

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The Boston Pops will return to campus tomorrow to perform at Conte Forum as part of Parent’s Weekend’s annual Pops on the Heights Scholarship Gala. Before the University Chorale joins the Pops at 8 p.m., various student groups will perform on stage.

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Everyday Healthapalooza stresses healthy beginning activists

A Guide to Your Newspaper The Heights Boston College – McElroy 113 140 Commonwealth Ave. Chestnut Hill, Mass. 02467 Editor-in-Chief (617) 552-2223 Editorial General (617) 552-2221 Managing Editor (617) 552-4286 News Desk (617) 552-0172 Sports Desk (617) 552-0189 Metro Desk (617) 552-3548 Features Desk (617) 552-3548 Arts Desk (617) 552-0515 Photo (617) 552-1022 Fax (617) 552-4823

Alex Gaynor If you are even relatively connected to the Internet world, chances are you have heard about Emma Watson’s speech on feminism at the United Nations this past weekend.

I have seen the Harry Potter star’s support of the HeForShe movement, which urges males worldwide to fight for gender equality as well as for women to own their rights as fellow human beings, shared over 30 times on my newsfeed, and I’m definitely not complaining about it. Among the many items she advocates for surrounding gender equality, Watson touched on the idea of this particular issue’s pressing nature. She asked the audience: if she doesn’t take up the issue at this moment, then who will step up?

I’m not here to just preach about feminism. What I find to be one of the most compelling arguments underneath the speech, however, is the imperative of the present. Now is the time to take action on the social ills that bind us into set paths as human beings, gender-related or not. Watson was not arguing for a massive overhaul of the system, but she was looking for simple acts of acknowledgement of the gender equality movement, support for its correction, and a pledge to do whatever little one can. This “everyday activism” is achievable by people from all walks of life, and it can be spurred by simple, ordinary actions.

As a self-identified and unashamed Harry Potter fan, while watching the speech, I couldn’t help but remember the everyday activism and small changes that Watson’s character Hermione sought to participate in during her time at Hogwarts. From her care for the wellbeing of the Hogwarts house elves, to ensuring that Harry did not fail out of school each year, to cracking riddles and clues every step of the way, Hermione was a model of this type of everyday activism just as much as her portrayer seems to be.

There are many ways that we, as college students—and specifically Boston College students—can live by this ideal of everyday activism and engagement. If you want to save the planet from the ills of global warming, cutting down on your everyday electric or water consumption is a way to be an everyday activist. If gender equality is more your sphere of interest, then debunking antifeminist myths and calling out your peers when they make misogynistic comments is another route to take.

Or, if you’re worried about the global food crisis, then find ways to cut down on food waste and galvanize your roommates to do the same.

You don’t have to be Emma Watson, Bono, Nicholas Kristof, or Martin Luther King, Jr. to be an activist. The fight starts with the everyday actions, and how we treat one another as human beings in a national and global context.

Community and social engagement on a basic level may not move mountains immediately, but it does lead to simple victories and small steps toward equality and justice.

Through continuous attention to global injustices, prejudices, and wrongs and by utilizing one’s individual talents to engage these issues daily, perhaps everyone can one day play a role in destroying Voldemort.

Or, if overthrowing an evil man without a nose isn’t in your grand plan, global equality and world peace would suffice, as well.

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

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Arthur Bailin / Heights staff

Offices from across the University came together on Monday to engage students on health and safety, and to spread awareness about campus resources.

By Jennifer Heine Heights Staff The Office of Health Promotion (OHP) kicked off the fall semester with its fourth annual Healthapalooza event. Held on O’Neill Plaza, the event drew from a variety of Boston College departments and programs dedicated to health, wellness, and safety.

“We at OHP recognize that we’re not the only office dedicated to health and safety on campus, and so by pulling in our other partners who have programs and services to offer to students, we’re able to put on a one-day event that is both engaging and collaborative,” said OHP Administrative Assistant Betsy Cook Other contributors included the Office of Residential Life, University Health Ser vices , Healthy You, Campus Ministry, University Counseling Services, the Women’s Center, the OHP, Campus Recreation, the Office of Emergency Management, Boston College Police Department, Environmental Health and Safety, Eagle EMS, and Dining Services.

Cook and her Healthapalooza co-director, OHP Associate Director Robyn Priest, emphasized the importance of activity in their planning. “The goal is not to just give out information but to engage students in wellness that day by inviting them to participate in healthy activities and

learn different skills,” she said.

“The Emergency Management table had a bingo game considering what to do in a crisis, and they created an app that has BC-specific emergency response information,” Priest said. “Students also learned how to use a fire extinguisher to put out a real fire at the Environmental Health and Safety table, and how to use an EpiPen at the Eagle EMS table.

These are practical skills they

“Healthapalooza is a great way of showing the student community that there are many student ambassadors of health and wellness on campus.”

- Robyn Priest, associate director, Office of Health Promotion might need to use someday.”

“Some activities are of a more reflective type, where we engage students in thinking about their health, while other activities help to build self-efficacy and confidence in their skills,” Cook

POLICE BLOTTER Tuesday, Sept. 23 9:42 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a non BC-affiliate who was transported to a medical facility by ambulance from Conte Forum.

vided to a BC student who was transported to a medical facility from Gonzaga Hall.

Wednesday, Sept. 24

3:26 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a larceny from Gonzaga Hall.

5:09 p.m. - A report was filed regarding vandalism to a non-residence building.

3:26 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a unsecured office in Higgins Hall.

goals,” Cook said.

In particular, having student representatives for these organizations helped to dispel the myth that only official organizations are concerned with these issues, Priest said.

“Healthapalooza is a great way of showing the student community that there are many student ambassadors of health and wellness on campus—many students who are models of healthy and safe living and who want to help their peers,” Priest said.

“That’s one of our goals—to engage student leaders on these issues and show the rest of the student community that there are many students who care about health, wellness, and safety and devote their time to trying to make the BC community a safer and stronger place,” she said.

Ultimately, they hope that the event is only the beginning of a healthy and safe year.

“Healthapalooza really kicks off our year,” Cook said. “It helps make students aware of our office and other offices so that throughout the fall and into the spring, students are hopefully interested in and engaged with our programs and services.

“We often collaborate with our partner offices on different events throughout the year, so this event is definitely the start of a collaborative year of programming with our community partners on a smaller scale,” she said. n

Clarifications / Corrections The Heights strives to provide its readers with complete, accurate, and balanced information. If you believe we have made a reporting error, have information that requires a clarification or correction, or questions about The Heights standards and practices, you may contact Eleanor Hildebrandt, Editor-inChief, at (617) 552-2223, or email eic@bcheights.com.

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

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

9/23/14 - 9/24/14

1:47 a.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance provided to a BC student who was transported to a medical facility from Keyes South.

10:15 p.m. - A report was filed regarding medical assistance pro-

said. “For instance, the fact that you would know how to use a fire extinguisher should push come to shove, or hands-only CPR. Gaining familiarity and confidence in these areas is a great thing.”

The organizers even offered incentives for students who completed these activities. Dividing the tables from these organizations into four colors, they distributed passports to students entering the event and colored stickers to each table so that participants were able to keep track of how many activities they had completed. Those who participated in an activity at a table of each color were eligible to receive a free t-shirt, and those who participated in activities at all 12 tables were entered into a raffle to win an iPad Mini.

In addition to these official tables, Healthapalooza offered whole grain food samples and fresh local apples, as well as free five to 10 minute chair massages.

Because the organizations represented varied from faculty-oriented—such as Healthy You—to student-run—like the Women’s Resource Center and Eagle EMS—the event targeted the entire campus, as per the Healthapalooza tagline, “Healthy, Safe, Together.”

“It demonstrates that we as an entire BC community, including students, faculty, and staff, are really committed to health and to supporting one another in health

Arts Events For future arts events, email a detailed description of the event and contact information to the Arts Desk.Call John Wiley, Arts and Review Editor, at (617) 552-0515, or email arts@bcheights.com.

—Source: The Boston College Police Department

What is the first thing you are going to hide before Who is your Dining yourfavorite parentsBC arrive thisemployee? weekend?

“My graded papers.”

—Arsydl Sakti, CSOM ’18

“Alcohol ... Can I say that?”

—Sam Lawson, A&S ’14

“Substances.”

—Ben Hur, A&S ’17

“I have nothing to hide.”

—Max Gaudio, A&S ’17

Thursday, September 25, 2014

The Heights

A3

BC launches center for Jesuit scholasticism IAJS, from A1

Drew hoo / Heights staff

Speakers at this semester’s BC Ignites focused on reducing the stigma surrounding peer-to-peer conversations about mental health issues.

BC Ignites opens dialogue on mental health BC Ignites, from A1 guage or messages, Marchese said.

“We’re aiming to be something that’s very comprehensive,” he said.

Mental health affects everyone, either indirectly or directly. UGBC’s mental health initiative (MHI), or Be Conscious Campaign, hopes to spark the desire for education about mental health and in doing so, make it less of a taboo topic, said Cassidy Gallegos, the coordinator of the Be Conscious team.

“I want to diminish the stigma completely, so that someone can just as easily say, ‘I can’t get out of bed because of my depression this morning, will you just sit with me?’ as they can, ‘I can’t get out of bed because of how bad my head and throat hurt, can you bring me to the doctor?’” she said.

The MHI blog takes advantage of social media to publicize everything that the Be Conscious campaign is working on. Gallegos hopes it will become a hub where students can share their stories and find resources.

“It would be great if the website becomes known by all students in the future,” she said. “I’m really hopeful and confident in the BC student body and super inspired by the support and desire students have to partake in this conversation, and to take part in spreading that hope to other students who may need a little bit of it.”

In prior years, UGBC has not made mental health a priority. This year, Marchese hopes the efforts of the Be Conscious campaign will spark a lasting conversation. Students need to talk about mental health every year, he said. BC does a good job of reaching a

certain population of students, but not in reaching everyone, he said, adding that mental health is not something that can be touched upon briefly.

“I love one-week events like Love Your Body week, but the issue with one-week events is that that conversation usually stops on Friday,” he said.

“Mental health is way too important to stop on Friday.”

In order to further the conversation, the Be Conscious campaign is working on increasing the amount of students who know that University Counseling Services is a resource for them. All of the mental health initiatives this year will focus on connecting students to mental health resources on campus, Fiore-Chettiar said.

“My greatest hope for BC Ignites, Be Conscious, and the student body as a whole, is that we will begin to see a shift in conversations about mental health,” she said. “We want an open and honest dialogue to change the way that we as a student body collectively think about and react to mental health issues.”

Although Be Conscious hopes to connect even more students to mental health resources, a significant number of students do utilize UCS, said Associate Director Craig Burns.

Last year, 1,800 distinct students came into the counseling center, with 11,000 visits in total. In any one year, the center sees about 13 percent of the student body. Across a four-year span, 25 percent of undergraduate students come to UCS at some point, Burns said.

“We here at BC feel very fortunate to be well supported by the administration and pretty well connected

throughout the University and also very well utilized by students,” he said.

“The last thing we want is someone feeling like they can’t access services that would be helpful.”

This year, UGBC opted to host Ignites in the fall in order to open up the dialogue about mental health as soon as possible. In addition to Ignites, the Be Conscious campaign will be hosting more events this semester, including the What I Be photo campaign, which aims to promote security through highlighting insecurities, and a speaking event with Kevin Breel, a stand-up comedian who struggled with depression.

Mental illness is a prevalent issue on campus, but many students are afraid to reach out, said Elizabeth Farrenkopf, director of Ignites.

“We think it’s a really important issue that affects so many students, but so many students are either afraid to reach out or don’t really know what resources are available,” she said. “We thought this would be a great way to bring awareness to campus.”

McGuinness was the keynote speaker at last night’s Ignites. The college years are developmentally critical because there is so much going on in students’ lives intellectually, socially, spiritually, and physically, he said.

“There are a lot of challenges, great friendships, and you have a lot of fun doing exciting things, but it’s also a time of stress, uncertainty, and self-doubt,” he said. “It’s a time when things can get overwhelming for students.”

There are three main reasons that students come to the counseling center, he said. Students come for developmental issues, like navigating

new relationships, situational crises, like illness or death in the family, or ongoing mental health problems, like depression and anxiety, he said.

According to a recent survey, 5 percent of BC undergrads reported having made a suicide attempt at some point in their lives, and 13 percent of BC undergrads reported having seriously considered committing suicide—this means about 450 students have made suicide attempts, and 1,380 seriously considered killing themselves, McGuinness said.

“It’s important students understand the scope of the problem. It’s important to know how to seek help. It’s important to know to intervene with a friend who is struggling,” he said. “I hope that tonight’s Ignites sparks conversations with each other.”

After McGuinness’ keynote speech, seven undergraduate students shared their own stories. Kate Lewis, A&S ’15, spoke on her struggle with depression and anxiety and noted that she was not alone. One-third of college students report feeling so depressed that it is difficult to function—that is two and one-half students in every eight-man, she said.

“At a school where the prevalent lookaway makes it clear that we’re not interested in particularly deep social interactions on a day-to-day basis, it’s easier to say ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ than to get into the details of how sad we’re feeling,” she said. “A little honesty could go a long way. It’s not an easy thing to do, but the first step in breaking down our mental health stigma starts with ourselves—the simple mindfulness of what’s making you unhappy.” n

in Jesuit spirituality, history, and pedagogy.

A major bolster for the institute came when the Institute of Jesuit Sources (IJS)—an innovative hub focused on collecting and publishing English-speaking literature on the Society of Jesus—was acquired by the University this past July. The former IJS, which began in 1961 at St. Louis University and remained at the university until its move this past summer, pioneered the idea of housing historical materials and generating publications on the Jesuit order.

After more than 50 years in Missouri, IJS has now been absorbed into the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, where its collections will continue to serve at a frontier space for Jesuit scholasticism.

“IJS has been looking for a new home, and Boston College seemed to be a perfect place for Jesuit Sources to continue its mission of providing English translations of Jesuit source material,” Beaumier said. “As we developed our vision, the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies emerged, and Jesuit Sources from Saint Louis is a key part of the overall work of the new institute at BC.” Still in its initial stages, the

institute will offer five primary resources and programs for students including scholarly texts, publication opportunities through Jesuit literary outlets, a biannual International Symposium on Jesuit Studies, an online bibliography of works in Jesuit studies, and a summer immersion program. The first of the slated international symposiums will take place next June 10-14.

The institute, in collaboration with STM, also initiated its inaugural program through a summer immersion trip that led participants on a 10-day pilgrimage throughout Spain and Rome, where the group visited the sites of Ignatius Loyola and other historical beginnings of the Jesuits, according to Beamier.

“We then returned to BC and offered courses in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius and the history of the Jesuits,” he said. “It was a great success, and we hope to expand the program in the coming summer.”

Next week, the center will host an event for the end of the current Burns Library exhibition The Mastery And Majesty Of It: Jesuit Spirituality in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, during which English professor Paul Mariani will speak on the exhibition’s closing. n

University centralizes ADA policies online ADA Website, from A1 anything,” Ferres said, noting that the mobility symbol has a greater likelihood of communicating that individuals with disabilities are capable of more than was previously conveyed.

Facilities Services has been working for the past six months to ensure that the Bapst Library door is always accessible to individuals with disabilities, addressing the issue that, although an accessible door had existed, it was often locked due to lack of use.

Ferres, along with those with whom she works, said she cares

about inclusion and places a strong emphasis on ensuring all are provided adequate accessibility on campus, regardless of race, ethnicity, or disability for both students and faculty.

“It’s always been an interest of mine to make sure that we don’t have barriers to employment or to promotions for faculty and staff,” Ferres said.

“I think it’s great that we have accessibility on our ‘About’ page because it allows people to see that Boston College believes in working with people with disabilities no matter what contingency they’re coming from,” she said. n

Highland Capital’s Bob Davis talks investing and startup ventures Davis, from A1 you’re in your mid-30s to jump away and do something different.” After working at the storage company for three years, Davis received a call from a friend working as an investor—someone who placed bets on the first few techs firms trying to master the concept of the Internet.

“My friend had found this technology down at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh that was allowing people to search the web,” Davis said, recalling the steps that led to his first company in 1994. “There was a researcher that had invented this software … he didn’t want any part of it being a business. He wanted

to sell it off, and my friend and I worked on buying this technology called Lycos.”

Using venture capital funding up front to purchase the technology, Davis founded Lycos, Inc. with his partner and worked to build the business as one of the pioneering websites helping early Internet users search the web.

“It was Google before Google existed,” he said. “It dominated the Internet by a large margin, with about 100 million people who visited the site every day.” After the company’s birth in 1995, Davis led Lycos to the fastest IPO in Nasdaq history just nine months later.

It went on to exceed Wall Street

analysts’ expectations for 22 straight quarters, becoming a global media entity before being sold to Spanish telecom giant Telefonica for $5.5 billion in late 2000, shortly before the Internet bubble burst and market values crashed.

“I sold the business for a whole lot of reasons, but most principally, I felt that the Internet at that point in time was grossly overvalued,” he said. “Right after the sale—we were really lucky with the timing—the stock market crashed.”

Although he agreed to serve as the chief executive officer of the newly formed Terra Lycos postsale, Davis left after six months to pursue a career in venture capital

at Highland Capital Partners. An early-stage-focused firm, Highland makes bets on young ideas with massive potential, with an average investment length of nine years.

Focusing the next portion of his talk on the work he has done and continues to do at Highland, Davis illuminated the daunting odds facing both investors and entrepreneurs looking to build businesses. Indicating that on average, 80 percent of startup ventures result in investors earning less return than they originally put in, he explained that the two successes out of every 10 investments are critical for venture capital firms. As an investor who knows these odds

well, Davis looks for entrepreneurial ventures that have the potential to become big players in multibilliondollar industries. Market analysis, however, does not rank anywhere close to the top of Davis’ most important factors in analyzing an entrepreneur’s pitch.

“Chemistry is what this is all about,” he said, indicating that a sincere relationship between the entrepreneur and the investor must be at the heart of a solid venture capital investment. He also spoke to the infectious energy and presence commanded by special entrepreneurs, saying they regularly create “magic moments” and help inject energy into any room they enter.

Davis closed his talk by emphasizing the opportunities abundant for students and young professionals to differentiate themselves and pursue their interests. Before offering advice to aspiring entrepreneurs in the room, he noted that while he hardly holds any regrets, one is that he waited a number of years before becoming an entrepreneur.

“The time to [start a business] is when you wake up in the morning and have that passion,” he said.

Offering a mix of both life lessons and tools specific to success in venture capital and entrepreneurship, Davis urged attendees to make the best of themselves as well as their talents. n

Thursday, January 17, 2014 A4

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

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

The Heights The Heights

B5 A5

The Heights

A6

Editorials

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Improving the dialogue on mental health As many of the speakers at yesterday’s BC Ignites pointed out, the topic of mental health has often been difficult to discuss at Boston College. So much is made of the fact that students at BC are high-achieving and wellrounded men and women for others that, often, the atmosphere seems prohibitive when students need to talk about stress, anxiety, depression, or other facets of their mental health.

Mental illness is often considered a shameful weakness or failure, and because of this stigma, many students who are struggling think that they are alone in their experiences.

The statistics from University Counseling Services (UCS) tell a different story. As Director of UCS Thomas McGuinness said in his keynote speech last night, 1,800 students visited UCS over the past year, for a total of over 10,000 contacts with the office’s professional staff. According to Craig Burns, the associate director of UCS, about 25 percent of BC students use counseling services at least once before they graduate.

Often, the way mental health is discussed—or not discussed—at BC means that only issues seen as dramatic or immediately pressing are considered legitimate, both as ailments and as topics of conversation. Brief, highintensity efforts to unload mental and emotional strain, such as the groupbased, confessional-esque “Fish Bowl” at 48Hours retreats, can have a positive short-term effect—but such efforts tend to be isolated and rarely extend beyond the immediate context.

This reticence to sustain a discussion about the presence and complexity of mental health issues is highly problematic. In his speech, McGuinness noted that students visit UCS for both diagnosed clinical problems and more typical adolescent struggles—including but not limited to the transitions into and away from BC—and that all students should feel like BC’s counseling services are available to them.

Public encouragement from administrators is positive, but it only addresses one part of the stigma. In addition to the discomfort around seeking professional help, there is often a sense of shame that accompanies discussing these issues with friends.

Not all students may feel compelled to share this part of their personal lives with their peers, and this abstention is legitimate as well—no one should feel socially prohibited from starting

a discussion, however.

In recent years, students at BC have made substantial, positive steps toward de-stigmatizing mental health issues.

The Silver Week that was introduced through UGBC’s Asian Caucus took the initiative to have open, frank conversations and relay students’ own stories about struggles with stress and mental illness. This semester alone, the BC chapter of To Write Love on Her Arms (BC-TWLOHA) made efforts to publicly drum up awareness for National Suicide Prevention Week, including hosting a panel whose participants explicitly stated that discussion is crucial to eliminating mental health’s stigma.

This year’s UGBC administration has also made a significant push to increase the opportunities for dialogue on campus, under the aegis of its Mental Health Initiative (MHI).

This semester, it launched the Be Conscious campaign, which includes a new website with student stories, a list of events related to mental health, and a summary of available resources.

This is a positive development that may decrease students’ reticence to share their own experiences, as they have personal, yet anonymous, examples to which they can turn. Given the sensitive nature of the material being discussed, the site’s administrators have prudently decided to ask McGuinness to vet every post for the language that it uses and the picture it paints before the post goes online.

As a part of MHI, UGBC is bringing the “What I Be” project to campus in October. Launched in 2010, this campaign will offer students the opportunity to acknowledge their insecurities publicly in photographs on campus.

Although this is one method to address the problem of fear and self-doubt, it is not necessarily the right method for everyone. The leaders of the project should be sure not to dismiss students who decide that they do not want to broadcast their insecurities publicly.

The speakers who stood up and shared their stories and opinions last night at BC Ignites brought the issues of mental health into the open at BC—quite literally, hosting the event in O’Neill Plaza meant that it was impossible for passersby to miss. It will take consistent and mindful effort on the part of administrators and students alike to ensure that this discussion continues, but this week has set campus on the right path.

The advancement of Jesuit studies Over the summer, the University founded the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies (IAJS) to promote the research of the history and work of Jesuits in the U.S., collect literature on the Society of Jesus, and host events—such as an international symposium and a summer immersion program—that showcase the United States’ rich Jesuit history.

The launch of this center, which is led by Rev. Casey Beaumier, S.J., GCAS ’13, is an encouraging development for Boston College, which would like to see itself as the flagship Jesuit university in the U.S. On a more immediate level, this center will certainly establish BC as the hub of research on American Jesuits, through the Institute of Jesuit Sources (IJS). Formerly housed at St. Louis University, IJS has over 50 years’ worth of English-language

literature about the Society of Jesus and will provide researchers interested in studying the Jesuits a single location in the U.S. where they can find the resources they need, and it is an integral part of completing the mission of IAJS. In addition to the sources that the institute will provide academics, IAJS will offer programs and access to undergraduate and graduate students alike. The decision to open the center to undergraduates and not only graduate students is commendable, and students should take advantage of the resources that the institute has to offer.

The establishment of IAJS represents a serious commitment of BC to its Jesuit roots. This worthwhile investment shows promise to meld the University’s spiritual and academic missions—a truly Jesuit thing to do.

The views expressed in the above editorials represent the official position of The Heights, as discussed and written by the

Editorial Board. A list of the members of the Editorial Board can be found at BCHeights. com/opinions.

Heights

The

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

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Editorial

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

When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.

-Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962), German-Swiss poet, novelist, and Nobel literature laureate

Emily Devlin / Heights Illustration

Letter to the Editor Climate Justice at BC’s RSO application unjustly rejected Fighting for a cause that requires radical change is always difficult. It requires unwavering dedication and the refusal to give up, even against the strongest of resistance. Its fuel is an intense passion that gives power to the reason to keep fighting. Most of all, fighting requires a cohesive team of diverse individuals. Climate Justice at Boston College, formerly known as BC Fossil Free, has this team: a group of ardent, hard-working, concerned students.

Even with this incredible group of people, however, CJBC has twice been refused recognition by the administration as a registered student organization on BC’s campus.

The administration has identified CJBC as having the qualities of passion and dedication, a notably kind gesture for which we thank their recognition. We want to take these characteristics and make a difference in the world. Already, CJBC has worked toward many positive accomplishments: having John Kerry devote most of his 2014 commencement speech to addressing climate change, educating BC students on the urgency of climate change, and raising awareness of the social injustices that accompany a warming world. The Office of Student Involvement, perhaps unaware of our 2-year fight, stated in their rejection, “your ideas may be best executed through a few events per year rather than an effort that can be sustained for the entire year and in years to come.” This is not the case, however, as the fight for climate justice is a constant battle.

It will be ongoing for years to come and thus the issues we’re confronting will be prevalent throughout our future.

BC’s campus could benefit from CJBC because our goals are much more oriented toward the

future. Though BC has made tremendous efforts to immediately reduce its carbon footprint on campus, we need people to be concerned with the longevity and expanse of this global problem.

On-campus changes are important and necessary, but what CJBC wants to do is foster change on the global scale. This is a public interest that concerns the life of every person at BC—we refuse to let it be a forbidden topic.

As an additional reason for our second rejection as an RSO, the administration claims it does not approve of us working alongside alumni and graduate students to accomplish our goals. We believe, however, that a wide base of support further defends our purpose; that there are dedicated people from all walks of life who care about BC’s views on climate change, and want to urge the administration to make the right choices. Out of the other major college campuses in Massachusetts, we are facing the most opposition in terms of becoming a registered student organization.

MIT, Suffolk, BU, Northeastern, and Tufts have not had issues with this.

We can only hope that students will understand the mission of CJBC: We are fighting for our own futures, for every student’s future, as well as every other person’s on this planet. Our determination will not be diminished by a second refusal to be recognized as a student group. We will continue our movement towards a just and stable future. We will look back in 20 years and call ourselves lucky and proud to be part of a group that helped to save the world.

Maggie Stack Member, Climate Justice at BC A&S ’15

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THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, September 25, 2014

A7

In defense of good music

VICTORIA MARICONTI CHICKEN AND WAFFLES - We first consumed this delectable dish in downtown Atlanta at Gladys Knight and Ron Winan’s. There, our eyes were opened to a whole new world of culinary delights. Now, that fantastic dish has made its way to Boston College.

Good move, BC Dining, good move.

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT - Tuesday was National Voter Registration Day, as our Vice President for Student Affairs Barbara Jones so kindly informed us. We support this effort to register voters. As educated citizens, we have a responsibility to participate in the wonderful democracy that the U.S. offers us.

REAL VERMONT MAPLE SYRUP - If this is not the ambrosia of the gods, we don’t know what is. We prefer it when it comes fresh out of a tree. It’s even better when we tap it ourselves.

I know that what I have to say will come off as snobbery to some. I admit that what I am about to do is a little cruel, but as one wise madman said, “I must be cruel only to be kind.”

Read the following excerpt from a music review published in one student paper last year. References to the source have been excluded to maintain the anonymities of the writer and publication.

The final performance before intermission also contained a number of solos. It began with a low, strumming string base …

Following intermission, audiences finally got to hear … all-time jazz legend Duke Ellington—the band performed “Such Sweet Thunder,” a smooth, sly tune. The trumpets took the lead on this number, which was a nice change of pace … It was great that bOp! included a piece like this one—bop is often best performed on the trumpet because it can give both a jazz and swing aspect….

That’s funny, I’ve never heard of the “string base.” Nor was I aware that an ensemble could play to multiple “audiences” in one theater. I had no idea that “bop,” or “bebop,” or “hard bop,” was best played on the trumpet—too bad for Charlie Parker, Ray Brown, Max Roach, and Art Blakey.

And can someone explain to me what “both a jazz and swing aspect” is supposed to mean, and how a trumpet can “give” it. Oh, and Ellington did not write bop-style tunes.

Sarcasm is a mean, poor substitute for legitimate critique, so I’ll be frank. Why was this act of music butchery published?

That article is the worst instance of the journalistic bystander effect I have ever encountered. The editor—let alone the author—did not even catch that a main-

AUNT JEMIMA - We are offended that this is ever put on pancakes. It is a disgrace to waffles, to breakfast, and to the entire state of Vermont. It is uncomfortably thick. You think she is a sweet lady, but it’s all an act.

CREAMER DISPENSER - This is Week Two without a functional creamer dispenser in Lower. For two weeks, we have suffered through the indignity of having no French Vanilla and no Hazlenut creamer to put in our coffee. Our coffee is the fuel that keeps us functioning and we simply cannot bear to drink it unflavored.

EAGLE’S NEST COOKIES - What is going on here? Why have you taken away our everyday chocolate chip cookie? Now you only offer us prepackaged jumbo cookies. What is this, a cafeteria for elephants? We just want a regular cookie.

SALT - We have unsubscribed from your listserv so many times. Why will you not take us off?!? It’s like the damn Hotel California.

OIP EMAILS - In case you haven’t noticed, various email policies of University departments really irk us.

This might be the only theme that is a constant throughout our TU/TD columns. This is the 2014th year of our Lord—you can do so much better. This is a classic case of insensitivity toward seniors. Why, pray tell, are you emailing seniors about study abroad opportunities? For those of us who did not go abroad, you are rubbing salt (see what we did there?) into an open wound. For those of us who did go abroad, you are evoking a strong nostalgia for a better time and a better place, when we were happier, freer, and actually slept.

BEES OUTSIDE OF HILLSIDE - Just because we’re paranoid it doesn’t mean that nothing is out to get us. In this case, it’s the bees. We swear that the bees that dwell in the foliage on the patio of Hillside have a vendetta against us. What did we ever do?

Why have we invoked your wrath?

Why will you not let us eat our New England Classic in peace?

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Follow us @BCTUTD

stream instrument was misnamed. Now, I understand the difficulties in composing a good music review. Music is ineffable—it defies accurate description, and even the best reviewers rely heavily on adjectives to supplement their professional knowledge.

To this extent, I sympathize with the writer.

I take exception, however, to the attitudes that produced and permitted the blatant errors in that article.

If a piece concerning University President William P. Leahy, S.J., were to be published, wouldn’t the writer and editor exert extra effort to have the facts right and present them clearly? Or, if a sports reporter were charged to cover the football team, wouldn’t he use the correct terminology in an intelligible way? Writers treat “important” people, “important” events, and “important” cultural practices with the respect and thoroughness that they deserve.

Music and the arts, at least in student publications on this campus, do not receive the same meticulous care. I would not dare to write a piece on, say, the stock market without serious research and consultation with experienced financial reporters. Why, then, do writers with no more musical experience than an iTunes library assume they can rhapsodize on the complex history, use, and practice of music?

I am not only troubled by the careless way we write and talk about art and music, but also by the songs and genres we privilege as important and relevant on campus.

Another columnist complacently observed the pervasiveness of bad pop music a few weeks ago. A few fellow musicians asked me to write a response, so I’m going to try—but I maintain all respect for the other author and his thoughts. We are opinions columnists, after all.

It was encouraging to read that he acknowledged bad pop as bad, but I wasn’t satisfied with the conclusion—it’s bad, but oh well, because the artists are rich, we get to think about ourselves more when we listen, and we can act out shady emotions and

sexual desires. Of course we need catharsis, especially in a social context, but is an overdose of this music the healthiest route to it?

Personally, I believe that pop is embraced on campus for the same reason that alcohol and noncommittal sex are popular—all three alter that which makes us most human, our consciousness. Before I continue, I should acknowledge that I, too, plug into Top-40 and hip-hop, typically when I work out. I use it to access the more animalistic and non-reasoning levels of consciousness so I can push my body to its physical limits.

I tell you this because I, too, recognize the ease of using pop as a method of escape or a means to facilitate those late-night interactions. But why must we binge drink it? Why are pop and the occasional alternative or indie track the only musics worthy of our attention and of our parties?

The state of music writing and the use of pop on campus sadden and frustrate me as a musician because both indicate a sharp drop in the desire to pursue wonderment or to use music to encourage, rather than stifle, the lives of our minds. “Good music”— funk, jazz, R&B, some rap, neo-soul, swing, classical, folk, sacred, bop, Afro-Cuban, Arabic, you name it—has the capacity to access the whole spectrum of emotions and take you outside of yourself. If, as the other columnist pointed out, bad but cathartic music allows us to shut the world out, good music teaches us how to transcend and how to recognize beauty and mastery in the world. Good music is worth a grown man or woman’s time and is worthy of respectful listeners and reviewers. Find the styles and artists that bring you to life, rather than the same deadening Saturday night cocktails of songs that distance you from it.

One final PSA: Your fellow musicians on campus simply ask that no one write anything more about string “bases.” Please.

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

Death of the novel?

SEAN MCGOWAN In a society of diminishing attention spans and with a heightened desire for immediate, easily accessible entertainment, have the finest years of the novel as a mode of creative expression come and gone? Are the proclamations of its death, irrelevance, and futility merely lamentations from a generation in its twilight, or is the form actually well on its way to becoming obsolete?

In the words of Phillip Roth, prolific author of American Pastoral and Goodbye, Columbus who has shifted in the later years of his career from one of the novel’s finest practitioners to the harbinger of its extinction, “the book can’t compete with the screen; it couldn’t compete with the movie screen, it couldn’t compete with the television screen, and now it can’t compete with the computer screen.” The problem, he suggests throughout an interview with The Daily Beast, is the medium itself—print.

He speaks of a future in which traditional, bound fictional narratives will have become obscure objects with little more than a small, cult following, alike in relevance and readership to Latin poetry or contemporary classical music. Novelists Will Self and Tom Wolfe have predicted similar ends for the novel, attributing its fall to the end of the Guttenberg Era of printing and the advent of New Journalism, respectively. To most of the reading public, the notion does seem—initially, at least—a bit drastic and inflammatory.

Roth has been answered, with varying degrees of eloquence and disdain, by just about every small literary blog and print magazine in the world that still holds the novel as a sacred object. Book-loving bloggers, everywhere from Gawker to terribleminds.com, defend the printed novel as one might protect a weak, younger sibling

from bullies, largely from a romantic and sentimentally optimistic position.

The passion is clear, but these are the people who have been taught to love the novel already. If anything, their replies help to paint an eerily accurate portrait of Roth’s predictions.

His unsettling future of a dying print industry and a cultic readership isn’t on its way—it’s already here.

Although the screen of which Roth speaks hasn’t quite killed anything, it has left us in something of a cathartic state of excitable passivity, nearly ruined for the enjoyable consumption of literature. The computer screen serves us well as our main source of information, entertainment, and communication—often all at once. It provides a virtually unbreakable link to the outside world, filling any empty spaces in a user’s neural pathways with music, news, or bits of text from other people for as long as one is able to stay attached. Through constant contact with the computer or television screen, human beings have come closer than ever before to eliminating their most primal fear of being alone.

Quelled by constant technological contact, this fear has spread, transmuting like a cancer into a paranoid dread of disconnection. One finds it nearly impossible to locate a public room without several charging stations and a WiFi signal, saved from any technological shortcomings that might have provided a few moments of seclusion.

With such constant access, the American adult has been habituated to believe that immediate entertainment is her intrinsic, inalienable right, to be sought after at all hours of the day. It has become possible, with the advent of broadband Internet, to switch between videos and articles in the time it takes to blink. If any of them should cease to provide immediate and prolonged stimulation, another is never further than three seconds away.

This unsettling primacy of cheap, quick entertainment is natural—the unfortunate result of a culture predicated largely upon the most hedonistic and utilitarian facets

of Western philosophy. There is a crack in the foundations of our ethical reasoning, expanding rapidly and spreading with it a belief that the well-being and internal balance of a human being is dependent solely on the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain.

This is not a problem with print, but the setting and state of mind required for its consumption. A novel begs for a significant block of uninterrupted time and a quiet room, without a news feed or an app at the top for contact with anyone else. It’s a situation that has come to cause anxiety from the outset, and one that many would rather escape as quickly as possible.

The frivolousness and immediacy of electronically mediated entertainment and social interaction have provided a safe haven to which we may run when any feelings of discomfort arise, making loneliness rare and all the more terrifying. That immediacy has taken away the need to “sit in one place and, like, hurt,” as David Foster Wallace put it in Infinite Jest. When feelings of discomfort become imminent, a screen is never far away for distraction.

Good fiction disturbs the comfortable, though it may only do so if the comfortable give up the illusion that comfort is sustainable.

Any future in which the novel can survive—the elusive “literary” novel, at the very least—must correct this misconception and learn once again to view the concepts of pleasure and pain as not being mutually exclusive, but equally important means to a constructive end.

The ability to derive meaning from narrative or joy from the aesthetics of language is not one that anyone is born with, but one that must be cultivated over a lifetime with fair amounts of loneliness, hardship, and frustration. If we can learn to love these again, the audience for novels will only grow.

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

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The opinions and commentaries of the staff columnists and cartoonists appearing on this page represent the views of the author or artist of that particular piece, and not necessarily the views of The Heights. Any of the columnists and artists for the Opinions section of The Heights can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

Moving past careers WILLIAM FLAUTT Late last Thursday afternoon, I took a lap around the Career Fair more because I could than because I felt I should. By the time I got there, the representatives from the big, international financial firms seemed visibly tired of the well-dressed undergraduates who were still flocking to their tables disproportionally compared to their less well-known neighbors. There was an eagerness in the air—an obligated eagerness, the kind that sweeps over many students as they begin their last year of college. After talking with some representatives and stealing company pens, I stepped back to admire the view and saw something bizarre. The companies down on the floor and around the perimeter of Conte Forum had formed an enormous crock-pot that had been on slow-cook since 3 p.m. The collective shape was brimming with new flavors of students throwing themselves into the fray every minute, swirling themselves around, and getting a taste of the corporate world. Maybe I was just hungry, but that career crock-pot is what I saw. At their most basic level, these career fairs make many people wonder what they want to do with their lives. Uncertainty was bubbling to the surface as people scoured the concourse in search of their personal recipes for career success. A funny question kept leaping to my mind, though—do careers even exist anymore?

Even the fanciest of business and finance jobs struggle to retain the college wonderkids they recruit. Talking to friends who have entered this sector, the overwhelmingly consistent narrative goes something along the lines of, “this is a good gig for a few years.” The statistics confirm this sentiment—across the board, over 60 percent of millennials will leave the company at which they work in fewer than three years. Thirty-year career-men are relics from generations past. Younger generations have developed occupational ADD that makes traditional careers an unlikely fit for the labor that they supply. But the issue lies partly in the labor that is demanded, too.

Many of the most well-known companies today—such as Facebook, Twitter, Uber, and other Bay Area tech startups—did not even exist 10 years ago, let alone 30. Despite the evanescent nature of current companies and jobs, there is an overwhelming pressure to become career-oriented before even graduating college. While acknowledging that some age-old professions will continue to exist, we must acknowledge that the explosion of information and innovation that we have at our fingertips has changed the world and will continue to do so.

Almost every sector of the economy is in flux. Take a look at education, and you see a boom in online universities and the rise of master teachers, the most inspiring and effective in their subjects, who command audiences of tens of thousands of video viewers, instead of students in the traditional classroom setting. The energy sector is in constant motion toward sustainability, fueled by technological advancements in all sorts of energy sources—in solar energy’s case, the price of panels has dropped almost 70 percent in the last five years due to these advancements.

Even money as we know it is changing. Digital money technologies like Google Wallet and Apple Pay are continuing the trend toward the obsolescence of cash that began with credit cards. That doesn’t even take into account actual digital money, like Bitcoin. Globalization has given a whole new meaning to the word “merger” and put national tax policies into an international context. Public transportation is all the rage in cities, and personal cars are even less of a necessity with the rise of companies like Uber and Lyft.

Thinking about a career in the old sense of the word is a futile endeavor because of how quickly many industries are changing. But even in more stable, traditional industries like insurance or finance—the types seen most at career fairs—occupational ADD makes recent graduates move on after a few years.

Howard Thurman once said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” While career fairs are decent representatives of what parts of the world need, they seem to fail in producing these awakened, working souls. They serve as road signs, not a guiding North Star. Few people would argue about the necessity of road signs. There is, however, an overlooked value in checking your compass before hitting the road.

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

The Heights

A8

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Colorado State comes in off rest week

By Celina Daniel For The Heights

The Colorado State Rams are looking to get a win east of the Mississippi.

While the Rams have not had an abysmal start—they are 2-1 with wins over the Colorado Buffaloes and UC Davis—they suffered a 37-24 loss at Boise State.

Colorado State University has not played Boston College since the teams’ first and only encounter at the San Francisco Bowl in 2003, where Boston College got the win. The Mountain West Conference team has not even traveled this far east since 1959, when it played Army.

Although the Rams are coming off a bye week and are arriving in Boston on Thursday—a day earlier than usual just to get time at the New England Patriots’ practice field—many on the outside are still reluctant to give the Rams serious consideration as a dangerous opponent for BC. This may be largely due to the fact that much of their offensive line is scrambling to pick up the pieces because of injuries.

Jake Bennett—the most recent player sidelined—injured his knee in practice last week. Head Coach Jim McElwain could not confirm what type of knee injury was sustained, but is positive that Bennett will be out for the season, according to CSU game notes.

Senior tackle Mason Hathaway

succumbed to a knee injury before the start of the season, leaving him out of the game as well—and tackle Jordan Finley, who had ACL surgery back in the spring, is still at least a week away from heading back onto the field.

This could lead to trouble for the rest of the team—without some of its strongest players, the Rams may have a hard time adjusting to the added pressures of BC’s defense.

Despite the increasing numbers of injured players, Colorado State does have its strong points.

Senior quarterback Garrett Grayson has had back-to-back 400-yard games—the first CSU QB to accomplish this since Terry Nugent in 1983.

While the Rams lost, Grayson produced a career-best 434 passing yards at Boise State.

He has thrown 40 touchdowns in his career, which is the third-most alltime at CSU. The Rams’ QB is not the their only strength, though.

Wide receivers Rashard Higgins and Jon Hansley both had 100-yard receiving days against Boise State, which is also a first since 2005.

CSU’s wide receivers have also made university history by becoming the first two wide receivers to have back-to-back 100-yard games (Higgins and Hansley against Boise State, and Higgins and Elroy Masters Jr. against UC Davis).

“I think Coach McElwain has done an unbelievable job with his program,”

BC head coach Steve Addazio said in a teleconference on Wednesday.

“I’ve watched them, they’re really well coached in all three phrases. On offense they’re very explosive with their quarterback. He’s got a great arm, and they’ve got a couple of really good running backs and receivers, very talented team on defense, real stout inside, two two techniques that are explosive guys.”

With the Eagles coming off of two back-to-back wins—one of course being the victory against USC—and the Rams arriving in Boston with a loss to Boise State under their belt, the Eagles are riding high on momentum coming into Saturday.

As the majority of the BC community knows little to nothing about CSU, it’s easy to assume that the Rams won’t have much to offer in this game. With many predicting the Eagles’ win, one can’t help but wonder what Colorado State must do to go into the game determined to get that long-awaited revenge in Chestnut Hill.

BC, on the other hand, will simply try to keep the wins coming.

“So very, very good football team coming in here off of a bye week with an extra week to prepare, and so we’ve got to play our ‘A’ game,” Addazio said.

“We’ve got to really rally together here and to have a great finish or a great week of preparation so we can take this team on and give ourselves an opportunity to get our fourth win.” n

Emily Fahey / Heights Editor

BC head coach Steve Addazio isn’t underestimating the Rams’ offensive weapons.

While DC Brown would never say it, BC’s defense has excelled From CSU, A10 will come with a whole different arsenal, however. CSU is currently 11th in the nation in passing yards per game, with 340 yards per game. If BC is able once again to suffocate its opponent’s ground game, Keyes and the others will be able to pin their ears back and run directly at CSU quarterback Garrett Grayson, forcing him into decisions that might delight

Eagles fans (and parents).

Offensively, much has been made about Addazio’s seemingly endless supply of rushers. Between quarterback Tyler Murphy and running backs Myles Willis, Tyler Rouse, Jon Hilliman, Marcus Outlow, and rushing-prone wide receiver Sherman Alston, the Eagles have six (yes, six) rushers with more than 100 yards just a third of the way through the season.

Murphy, Hilliman, and Willis lead the

way, each with more than 200 yards. The offense, helmed by Murphy, has topped 500 yards in each of the Eagles’ three wins, and the read-option has the ability to befuddle defenses and empower BC to wear down its opponents throughout the game. The aerial attack is less than fear-inducing, but it is serviceable. The big bodies of Josh Bordner, Shakim Phillips, Charlie Callinan, and Dan Crimmins provide able targets for Murphy, whose

accuracy is still shaky, and they allow the Eagles to gain leverage on outside runs against smaller defensive backs.

BC’s offense should have no problem keeping the CSU Rams on their heels all day on Saturday—a steady diet of six talented runners will eventually break down any opposing defense. Where they could face issue is on the defensive end, where the Rams will look to throw it all over the yard against the BC defensive backfield.

Keyes says the Eagles are ready to face whatever CSU brings to Alumni Stadium.

“It’s a big game, a matchup game,” he said.

“We’ve just got to go out there, and play very well and execute, and get that win, and go into the bye week at 4-1.” In the days leading up to the Eagles’ next game against NC State, however, expect to hear Don Brown’s dulcet tones emanating from Shea Field, no matter the outcome of this Saturday’s game. n

ROUND U p

BY JOHN PUGH | FOR THE HEIGHTS

gOLF WHIFFS AT HARTFORD BC Men’s Golf has just returned from the Hartford Hawk Invitational at the Bull’s Bridge Golf Club, where it placed sixth of 19 competitors.

John Jackopsic led the team in the first round and shot a 72. He continued his success by shooting a 77 in the second round, and a 74 in the final round. The tournament would end with Jackopsic shooting seven strokes over par combined over the three rounds, allowing him to tie for 11th place overall.

Freshman Connor Greenleaf placed 29th overall in the tournament, shooting a 74 in the first round, followed by a 75 and a 77 in the second and third rounds, respectively. Greenleaf finished 10 strokes over par, just edging out Junior Nick Pandelena, the team’s leader in the previous tournament, who finished 11 strokes over par.

Pandelena began slowly with high score on the first round of 80. His first outing was succeeded by better numbers: he shot a 74 on the second round and a 73 on the third.

BC’s golfers, excluding Jackopsic,

finished with roughly the same numbers, and Patrick Hallisey was the finished in the low teens as well, finishing just behind Greenleaf and Pandelena with a plus-12 overall.

BC finished seventh place after the first round before placing eighth in the second.

The third round had BC in eighth place as well. BC might have been placed lower in the rankings had it not been for the first round’s sufficient performance and the trouble URI and Hofstra both experienced in the preliminary round. Bryant notably fell apart in the second round with a score of 310.

The Eagles would finish the third round with a combined score of 902, resulting in an overall team score of plus-38, 28 strokes behind the tournament’s leader, Hartford, who won the event with 874 combined strokes.

The spread was even throughout, with the Eagles just barely beating a threeway tie for seventh between University of Rhode Island, Bryant University, and Hofstra University. The team showed the consistency of its top golfers, and the result proved that BC’s men’s golf is a team to watch in upcoming tournaments. n

Emily Fahey / Heights Editor

Don’t sound like an idiot, trust me instead From Column, A10 Eagles lose their highest-profile recruit to the Blue Jackets, and all is lost. What you have to realize in this situation, though, is that just significantly less than infinity is still a lot. There’s no arguing with the fact that those three guys were most of BC’s offense last year, but they were also three of the most senior members on a team of 15 underclassmen. Freshmen scored 49 goals for the Eagles last year, and, in case this wasn’t clear, that was when they were rookies, which they are no longer. With a year of experience under their belts, the large class of 2017 has the chance to make serious strides on offense this year, without the support of Gaudreau’s cushion. That’s not even to mention the more experienced members of the team that stuck around.

4. BC field hockey will definitely advance in the NCAA tournament.

Again, this one looks pretty reasonable. This team is pulling upset after upset. Ranked at No. 13, the Eagles knocked off No. 10 UMass in their home opener.

Then, a week later, BC took UConn to strokes, with Leah Settipane making 12 saves and the Eagles pulling their second upset of the season. Last week, BC upset No. 4 Syracuse in yet another overtime result. The problem with this, though, is that the Eagles did similar things last year during the regular season, only to be knocked off early in the tournament. Syracuse upset? Check. Connecticut upset?

Check. The only difference that comes up is that No. 19 BC lost to No. 14 UMass early last season. This may be offset by two extremely narrow losses to teams in

the top five, making this current season very comparable to the last one. I’m not saying that the Eagles won’t advance in the tournament, but historical data shows that it takes a lot more than a successful season to do so.

5. BC basketball will most definitely finish the season at the bottom of the ACC. Olivier Hanlan made the conscious decision to forgo the NBA for at least another year to return to this team, despite the hiring of a new coach who will implement a new offensive system and … well … You know what? No. I’m sticking with this one.

Marly Morgus is the Asst. Sports Editor for The Heights. She can be reached at sports@bcheights.com

THE HEIGHTS

EDITORS’ EDITORS’PICKS PICKS

Thursday, September 25, 2014 The Week Ahead

Standings

Women’s soccer will look to recover from its weekend loss to the Seminoles when it plays Pittsburgh on Thursday night. A battle with Colorado State serves as football’s last non-conference game before it hits the meat of its ACC schedule. Field hockey plays North Carolina on Friday.

Liverpool faces Everton in a Merseyside derby between two struggling sides.

A9

Recap from Last Picks

MARLY MORGUS

10-4

ALEX FAIRCHILD

10-4

CONNOR MELLAS

9-5

HEIGHTS STAFF

8-6

Game of the Week

A 2-0 defeat to No.5 Florida State prevented women’s soccer from avenging its loss in last year’s Elite Eight. No. 9 Louisville beat men’s soccer 3-2 in overtime. The football team handled Maine in a 40-10 victory despite a sluggish start, and the Washington Redskins suffered a 37-34 defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Field Hockey

Boston vs. North College Carolina

Guest Editor: Kayla Famolare Copy Editor

“Just cause there’s a goalie doesn’t mean I can’t score.”

CONNOR MELLAS

This Week’s Games

Sports Editor

MARLY MORGUS Assoc. Sports Editor

ALEX FAIRCHILD

KAYLA FAMOLARE Copy Editor

Asst. Sports Editor

Women’s Soccer: BC vs. Pittsburgh

BC

BC

BC

BC

Football: BC vs. Colorado State

BC

BC

BC

BC

Field Hockey: No. 6 BC vs. No. 1 UNC

BC

UNC

UNC

UNC

Everton

Draw

Draw

Liverpool

EPL: Liverpool vs. Everton

After an early-season loss at the hands of Lafayette, the field hockey team got its season on the right track. The Eagles have won six straight games heading into their clash with the nation’s No. 1 team, the Tar Heels, on Friday. Eight games into the season, Brittany Sheenan tops BC’s goalscoring charts having put away six, while Emma Plasteras has chipped in with three goals and four assists. UNC enters the game coming off a 3-0 victory over Miami (OH), but has just lost to conference foe Louisville. Charlotte Caraddock and Loren Shealy will lead the visitors’ attack.

Friday, 4 p.m.

Herren discusses his confusing, difficult time at Boston College From Herren, A10 Boston College basketball arrived on the national scene Wednesday, on what has been called coach Jim O’Brien’s most important day here at BC. With the signing of The Boston Globe’s Division 1 player of the year, Chris Herren, O’Brien and his staff have put together one of the top five early-signing recruiting groups in the nation. –The Heights, Nov. 15, 1993 About three years ago, ESPN Films chronicled Herren’s story in the 30 for 30 Unguarded. Equal parts horrifying and inspiring, Unguarded details Herren’s journey from star high school basketball player, to prized recruit, to drug-addicted pro, to heroin junkie, to the motivational speaker he is today.

The one exception in the group may be 1994 McDonald’s All-American point guard Chris Herren out of Durfee High in Fall River, MA, who may just end up being the Eagles’ point guard for the next four years. – The Heights, Nov. 14, 1994 He was featured on a Sports Illustrated spread and thrown out of BC. Herren starred at Fresno State, and checked into rehab during his junior season. He married his childhood sweetheart and became a father. The Nuggets drafted him 33rd overall in the 1999 NBA Draft before trading him to the Boston Celtics, at which point he became addicted to Oxycontin. After getting injured, he was cut by the Celtics and embarked on a career as an international journeyman, falling deep into the darkness of a heroin addiction. Switching to needles over time, he shot up for six years, overdosing and dying for 30 seconds on June 4, 2008.

Herren collected seven felonies. He spent every single dollar he made from basketball on drugs, and pawned anything he could find in his house. He overdosed four times in total. And yet, somehow,

Herren climbed out of the abyss. On Aug. 1, 2008, he got sober.

For one of the most incredible stories to ever reside—albeit very briefly—on Lower Campus, Herren’s anonymity among BC’s collective consciousness is utterly astonishing. If Herren’s story ended with his terrible spiral into drug and alcohol addiction, forgetting him would be less remarkable—that tale’s been told a thousand times. But it didn’t end there, and a defining part of it began at BC. Back in high school, Herren drank alcohol, popped some medicine-cabinet painkillers with his friends, and smoked marijuana. Shortly after beginning his career in Chestnut Hill, Herren tried cocaine for the first time in a BC dorm room. He sat down at a table, snorted a line with a dollar bill, and became an addict. Instantly, Herren was flying down a whole new, entirely sinister path, with a paralyzing inability to slow his descent.

His problems snowballed quickly. In his first and only game as an Eagle in Conte Forum, Herren excelled—putting up 14 points in 21 minutes. Then he fell, breaking his wrist. He knew he was in trouble.

Three failed drug tests later, Herren was done at BC. Boston College men’s basketball was dealt a severe blow last week when it was announced that freshman guard Chris Herren will miss the rest of the season.

Herren, the heralded guard from, Fall River, MA, will undergo surgery tomorrow to repair ligament damage to his left wrist, according to an announcement

by BC head coach Jim O’Brien. -The Heights, Dec. 5, 1994 Taking a seat and laughing, Herren shakes my hand and jokingly asks if this interview doubles as a peace offering with BC. It is. At a fit 6-foot-2, 195 lbs, Herren is a bit bigger than he was as

an 18-year-old freshman—but given the pharmaceutical hell his body was subjected to, the resemblance to the old photos is striking. Wearing jeans, a white v-neck, and a blue and black blazer, Herren leans back in his chair. I tell him I want to talk about his time at BC, and his face becomes more solemn—he’s told these stories countless times before, but the memories remain painful.

The Heights: Would you mind talking about your BC time at all? I know you’ve probably talked about it a lot, obviously—but if you wouldn’t mind just kind of telling me what that was like, going back to then.

Herren: Confusing. I wasn’t ready at 18 years old to accept the responsibility of being a big-time college basketball player and being a college student at the same time. It was extremely hard being local and rooted in this area and staying focused at the same time. I had a lot of outside influence around me back then.

The Heights: Out of curiosity, where did you live on campus?

Herren: I was supposed to live in a freshman dorm on Upper Campus, and I walked into my dorm room and [my roommate], who was a Canadian scholarship athlete, had life-sized pictures of The Crow on the wall. So I checked out and got a single across from the new cafeteria.

The Heights: On Lower?

Herren: On Lower Campus. But I spent most of my nights in Edmond’s on the first floor, corner window.

The Heights: I’ve seen Unguarded and I thought it was extremely inspirational—so I guess that’s when things really started to get out of control.

What was your relationship like with Dick Kelley at that time?

Herren: Dick Kelley was way more than a SID. He was concerned about my wellbeing more so than my ability.

We had many, many meetings in his room, in his office, where we discussed the issues. As I said in articles—he was one of the first people I called when I celebrated a year sober. Because he was one of the first people that understood how hard my addiction was. He was right there on the front lines with me in the beginning.

The Heights: Other than breaking your wrist, what do you remember from that first game, that single game?

Herren: You know, it was a blur to me. People told me the stats, but I don’t remember scoring, I don’t remember any of that stuff. Any time you come from Durfee High School, playing in front of that many people, you’re Massachusetts Player Of The Year three years, you’re a McDonald’s All American, and now it’s time to put up or shut up on the big stage—the emotions were through the roof. I remember the injury. I remember falling that night, and knowing that this was probably going to be the end of it.

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

On Tuesday, Herren spoke to kids from Boston’s Play Ball! Foundation about his addiction.

W. Soccer

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The Heights: You could tell with that much certainty, at that point?

Herren: As far as basketball. Addiction is like a very personal journey, lonely

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EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Over the last four years, Herren has addressed over 500,000 kids, speaking 250 times a year. journey. And I knew young, and I just told NPR, that I was on a self-destruct path when I was at Boston College. And it had nothing to do with Boston College, and it had everything to do with me. I often feel bad that it happened at Boston College because BC gave me such an amazing opportunity to not only be an athlete locally—a free education, a great education—and I blew it. And I take full responsibility for that. It would have happened at Harvard, it would have happened at MIT, and it would have happened at UCLA. I would have opened that dorm room door somewhere, because that’s who I was in a sense, that’s the path I was on.

suspend—rather than, why not treat?

Why not treat? We send these athletes away to these centers, out of their element, for 30 days, and then we throw them right back on to a college campus and say, “stay sober.” Like, did you stay sober at Boston College?

The Heights: After the first failed test, what happened on BC’s side, how did they reach out for you—did they reach out for you? And then after the other tests as well?

Herren: You know honestly, I think back then it was pretty uncommon. It wasn’t as much of an issue as it is today, so when it happened, a lot of people didn’t know how to really handle it, as well as myself and the staff at BC. The trainers tried tremendously to help me. I just wasn’t ready, I mean it was not gonna happen. I don’t remember the exact way they took care of it. We’re talking 20 years ago, and a lot happened in them 20 years, my man, you know what I mean? My memory’s shot, my back’s shot, brother.

But, you know, I think we all could have handled it better. I know I could have.

Do I think BC could have handled it differently? Absolutely. Do I think if it was 2014—I think it would have been addressed a little differently. Drug addiction in athletics—and it still is to a certain extent—is treated very punitively. We punish, we punish, we punish. We suspend, we suspend, we

The Heights: And I guess especially when basketball’s out of the equation—I’m sure you had a lot of free time, obviously.

Herren: I broke my wrist, which was a nightmare. But I didn’t handle it right.

I’d walked into BC with a chip on my shoulder, with an air of cockiness that helped me on the court but was not going to help me in the culture. And just living on Edmond’s as a freshman, living in Edmond’s as a freshman—big mistake.

I remember playing Wiffle Ball in the Mods, and people walking by saying, ‘Dude, don’t you have class?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m playing Wiffle Ball.’ But, like, the Mods are seniors getting ready to graduate. And I’m like starting off my college career learning how to throw to hit the corner of the chair in the Mods.

You know what I mean? That’s a bad start. But I love the Mods.

The Heights: I think everybody does.

Herren: Exactly.

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MURPHY 229 A.P. YDS COLLINS 103 A.P. YDS

The Heights: Nope.

Herren: Right. You know what I mean? It’s the hardest place to ask somebody—anybody—to go spend four years of your life on a college campus and don’t drink alcohol. And don’t do drugs. I mean, it’s difficult. Especially for someone like me, it was a very difficult thing to try to do.

Editor’s Note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. 

VOLLEYBALL BC HAR

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DUNHAM 2 SVS WILLIAMS 1 G

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Newton, MANY11/09 HAMILTON, 9/21 PLASTERAS 2 G 1 A JONES 1 G 1 A

SPORTS

A10

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Clearing up my calls on BC athletics MARLY MORGUS About a week ago, when I was having a conversation with The Heights’ assistant sports editor, I said something completely stupid.

Mind you, this happens a lot. I’m not really one to think of the implications of my words before I express an opinion. Rather, I usually go with my gut reaction, and then tend to regret it immediately as someone points out the obvious flaw in what I just said.

So yes, it’s not surprising that, as I was discussing Boston College football with a kid who has followed the Eagles since he was in diapers, I managed to look like a complete idiot. We were talking about the BC offense, and I got excited and decided to profess how I like the heavy run game and how I think “It’s so BC.” I got a look for that one, and I immediately backtracked.

“OK, no—I know it’s not classic BC.” At this point, I’m completely lying. I had no idea what classic BC was.

“It’s just so now BC. It’s so Addazio BC.” At this point, I’ve feel like I’ve covered my tracks, concealing my complete lack of knowledge about BC football’s heyday and stringing something together that might actually make sense.

Scarred by that experience, I looked into what BC football really is. Turns out, it isn’t really about running the ball. Instead, BC’s known for the o-line—some guys who protect our very pass-oriented quarterbacks (the name Matt Ryan should ring a bell).

Reflecting on the experience compelled me to think about what other completely idiotic things I’ve said about BC sports recently that have little to no basis in reality.

For your sake, I’ve compiled them here.

Hopefully you’ll read these and manage to have a conversation about sports in which you don’t look like a massive idiot, as I usually do.

1. There’s no chance that BC’s taking the USC game.

In my defense, this wasn’t an entirely stupid thing for me to say—I probably would have sounded like more of an idiot had I gone the other direction, but my entire column the week before the USC game was about how BC has no shot at beating USC but we should all go and have fun and delude ourselves into thinking BC could win for a while. Guess it wasn’t delusion.

Sorry, guys.

2. It’s not a big deal that BC only moves the ball on the ground.

This one I said rashly in defense when a friend of mine mentioned how he wished BC would run a pro-style offense because it’s so much more fun to watch. I stand by part of my argument. Pro-style offenses are not more fun to watch. They may be prettier, and I’m not saying I don’t appreciate a good passing play, but I think you can get the same kind of excitement from a run game. What I was wrong about is the claim that BC can get by this season by relying solely on its RB core. Last year was fun and all, but even with the massive performances from Andre Williams, it would be hard to say that season couldn’t have been better if the Eagles had some more depth in its receivers. The problem with being a one-trick pony (or, if you want to count a couple more ponies this year, as the run game is clearly more diversified), is that your opponents only have a few patterns that they need to learn on defense. What’s the best way to eliminate risk? Diversification. So yes, BC can keep running the ball, but if it wants to keep beating high profile opponents like USC (keep? I can’t believe I just wrote that), it needs to diversify its offense, making it harder to read.

3. BC hockey will be seriously lacking on offense this year.

But Johnny is gone! And Kevin, too!

That doesn’t even begin to mention the Sonny Milano debacle! This one has to be true! This is an easy one to let slip. All of the evidence seems to be in your favor—the top three point-earners for BC made up three of the top five in the NCAA last year, and every single one of them is gone. Then the

See Column, A8

JORDAN PENTALERI / HEIGHTS GRAPHIC

Rediscovering the star BC lost and the kid it forgot

BY CONNOR MELLAS Sports Editor

When Chris Herren came to BC, everyone expected great things. But after only one game in a BC uniform, his career here is apparently over … A lot has been speculated, and much has been written about the situation. But the bottom line is that Chris Herren missed an opportunity, and he will be fortunate to get another. –The Heights, May 1, 1995 It’s the first day of fall, Sept. 23, 2014. A hint of autumnal crispness marks the air, but the lingering humidity of late summer is securely trapped inside the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Roxbury, Mass. In front of a set of bleachers filled with 300 football-jersey sporting, junior-high kids from some of the roughest neighborhoods in Boston, Chris Herren is in his element.

Turning to his left and right, Herren makes eye contact with every corner of his audience. Then, after a long pause, he asks, “What is it about me on Friday and Saturday nights that I have to change myself?”

Over the last four years, Herren has told his story and posed a question like this to more than 500,000 kids. The middle schoolers in front of him now are part of Boston’s Play Ball! Foundation, and just like every other group of kids Herren’s stood in front of, he does his best to save them from a nightmare by sharing his own.

His tale is one of throat-welling desperation and eventual, incredible salvation, and despite his tragic link to BC, most students have never even heard of Herren.

See Herren, A9

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

BC prepares for Colorado State as a defensive unit

BY TOMMY MELORO

and started yelling at each other.” Keyes indicated that their next film session highlighted the fact that the defense was Sometimes, the whole is greater than playing as individuals instead of as a unit. the sum of its parts. Sometimes, the “We sat down on Sunday, and we saw all whole is less than the sum of its parts. the mistakes, and we saw the part of the That second statement happens when game we were missing was we weren’t parts don’t mesh well. Those parts may playing well as a team,” he said. creak, they may clank, they may rub Whatever defensive coordinator Don against each other and screech, and they Brown has said and done since that film may break down and destroy the whole. session has clearly left an impression on Sometimes, when those parts break, they his players. When approaching Shea Field give up 303 yards rushing. That was the is- for football practice, there are two voices sue the Boston College defense faced just that can be heard clearly above the contwo weeks ago as it tried to pick up the stant whistles and clattering of pads. One pieces after an embarrassvoice is that of head coach ing performance against the Steve Addazio. The other is Pittsburgh Panthers. that of the never-satisfied No matter how formiBrown, who has transdable a rusher James Conformed this BC defense ner has turned out to be, into a pressure-generating the Eagles weren’t happy machine.

SEPT. 27. 2014 with their performance Brown might never adBC vs. CSU against Pitt’s mountain of mit that he’s been pleased a back. The past two weeks, 12:30 p.m. ET NESN with his defense’s perforthey have emphasized the mances these past two need to play better and to play together. weeks, but it wouldn’t be crazy to assume Linebacker Josh Keyes has been essen- he is. After all, the Eagles have surrential to the massive turnaround for the dered just 36 rushing yards total over the Eagles’ defense, especially the front seven. last two weeks. As Reign Of Troy, a USC Against USC and Maine, Keyes amassed blog, put it, “Maine is going to finish their 13 tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss, and two game at Boston College with 16 rushing sacks. Keyes doesn’t view his success as yards. So maybe 20 wasn’t that bad.” This his own, however. weekend’s opponent, Colorado State, “Versus Pitt we didn’t really play as a team,” Keyes said. “We got flustered See CSU, A8 Heights Staff

I NSIDE SPORTS THIS ISSUE

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Josh Keyes has been an integral part of a devensive unit that’s dominated the last two weeks.

Men’s Golf: Eagles struggle in Hartford tourney

The Boston College men’s golf team placed sixth out of 19 teams at the Bull’s Bridge Golf Club early this week...........................................................A8

Scoreboard...........................................................................................................A9 Editors’ Picks.........................................................................................................A9

WILEY’S FOLLIES

The Tinder Games

WHAT I LEARNED TRYING TO GAME THE NEFARIOUS DATING APP, PAGE B2 ALBUM REVIEW

MEET SEAN CASEY

Gaga Meets Bennett

THE POP ICON JOINS FORCES WITH THE JAZZ LEGEND, PAGE B4

Beyond ‘Happy’

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CREATOR OF BC’S VIRAL SENSATIONS, B2

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

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The Heights

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Thursday, September 25, 2014

Wiley’s Follies

Let the Tinder Games begin

John Wiley One point per match. Two points if she messages back. Three points if she messages first. Twenty-five mile radius max. Pick your gender preference, and stick with it. Swipe right at will. The rules were set, and the first official Tinder Games ready to begin.

It was still early, a Saturday night.

Two roommates and I had set out on a simple mission: to game the world’s most nefarious dating app. We put together our profiles, and loaded them with colorful lies and manipulative detail.

We had no intention of meeting any of our matches, and with that, absolutely no reason to be honest about anything.

Indeed, the matches wouldn’t have the chance to ask me just how I became CEO of a successful startup at the age of 20, or question just how far I was into writing my novel, for that matter. The anonymity was empowering. Wearing it as a cloak, we marched off to the great unknown.

Amused by the contest, a female friend of mine consulted with me on what pictures to include. One nice photo, she instructed, preferably shot with a DSLR camera. Add a group picture. It’ll let them know you’re not too creepy—and put yourself in the middle, so your potential matches don’t have to do the guesswork. And then a funny shot: this is your chance to show off your personality, or whatever semblance of one you can communicate in a 15-second pitch. Easy enough, I thought. As a measure of good faith, I added a photo of myself with a dog, and then it was off to the war zone.

The inception of dating apps like Tinder have adjusted the way we approach relationships. What was once considered a matter of complex chemistry has been simplified to a binary decision: swipe right, swipe left. Yes or no. The concept can be trouble, and for me, it was easy enough at first to write off the technology entirely. When I first heard of it late last year, I pictured little more than a swath of lonely people, laying out intimate information to be drawn out into the waters of digital oblivion. But as more and more stories begin to crop up about couples meeting each other through the app—and then going on to find they have an awful lot in common— I began to look less dismissively at it.

If nothing else, Tinder can be an antidote to the isolation many digital natives experience, and in an odd way, it’s teaching Generation Y how to take risks again. If my little Tinder Experiment proved anything, it’s that you lose 100 percent of the connections you never make. The collective wisdom of the financial industry—that with greater risk comes greater return—was surprisingly relevant to strategizing in the Tinder Games.

But then, it doesn’t stop with Tinder.

The latest generation of Smartphone apps is teaching us to open ourselves back up to risk, and in turn, begin trusting other people again. Airbnb, for example, lets you rent out your house to travelers. Uber makes it possible to get into a perfect stranger’s car, and trust the transaction will just work. On the more bizarre end of the spectrum, an app called Cuddlr is now arranging cuddles between strangers. Now, I sincerely doubt there’s any real value in Cuddlr, but its mere existence does lend itself to this important cultural narrative: people are desperate to start interacting with each other again.

Social media gave us a new way to be lonely, and now, it’s giving us a way out. When I first heard of Tinder, what disturbed me most about it was how the app encouraged people to actually meet each other. This thinking was outdated.

What should creep us out is any network that encourages users to actually interact with people less, distrust strangers, and segment the world into friend circles.

Did you ever wake up on a Sunday morning and slowly piece together that, the night before, you were “that guy”?

Well, I was “that guy.” I had turned people into points and made a game of a platform that people, evidently, are actually learning to trust—and in some cases, taking quite seriously. As quickly as they started, the Tinder Games ended, as soon as my roommates and I caught on that there’s a fair deal of responsibility associated with the personas we keep online.

And then, that Sunday felt different. Faces passing by, strangers, friends, acquaintances I lost touch with: they all looked a little closer, maybe even a little more real. We were one swipe away.

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

john wiley / heights editor

Sean Casey, video producer for the Office of News and Public Affairs, draws inspiration for his work from the University’s sense of spirit and community.

Meet

sean casey

Creator of BC’s ‘Happy’ and ‘The First Two Weeks’

By Sean Keeley Heights Senior Staff When Boston College debuted the “Happy” video on its YouTube channel last February, it became a viral sensation, emerging in the middle of winter as the perfect antidote to midterm-season gloom. The video, which brought together over 100 BC students, faculty and staff for a lipsync rendition of the hit Pharrell Williams song, seemed to come out of nowhere, a fully-formed testament to school spirit released just in time for Spring Break.

For Sean Casey, though, “Happy” had a much different origin: it began in his nightmares.

Casey, a native of Los Angeles and a 2012 grad of BC, recalled watching Williams’ original music video to lift his spirits during a particularly harsh Boston winter. One night, though, the two realities mingled in his dreams.

“It was that video—the original Pharrell video, which is all based in Los Angeles—but it was based here in Boston,” Casey recalled. “It was almost hellish, in the sense that the song was playing and there’s, like, someone in a huge parka standing waiting for the T in negative degree weather, being buried under a blizzard.”

The next morning, as he joked about the dream to co-workers at the Office of News and Public Affairs, an idea formed in Casey’s mind: why not make a BC version of the video?

Casey was the idea man for “Happy,” but as the video producer for BC, his role hardly ends there. He conceives, shoots, and edits videos for the offices of News and Public Affairs and Marketing and Communications, overseeing the process from start to finish. Sometimes he works within a very defined, limited format, like the 30-second “Ever to Excel” PSA that debuted

earlier this month, or the annual Pops on the Heights video, which is consuming his attention this week. Other times, the rules are unwritten.

“Happy” is the prime example of a video that emerged organically, and quickly—after his initial inspiration, Casey recalled scrambling to finish the video in six days, so that its release would coincide with the beginning of Spring Break and the song’s performance at the Oscars. A more recent example is “The First Two Weeks,” a two-minute video highlighting major campus events early this semester, from the Mass of the Holy Spirit to the football team’s upset victory over USC. When he talks about his work, though, Casey is keen to emphasize the spirit of collaboration that goes into each video. “It takes a village” to make a video, Casey said, and whether brainstorming initial concepts or fine-tuning soundtrack choices, he often turns to his colleagues as a sounding board.

The Office of News and Public Affairs guides his work in more strategic ways, too. Much of the office’s video strategy is driven by detailed analytics and social media data. Casey cited Deputy Director Patricia Delaney and Social Media Manager Melissa Beecher as key partners in distributing the videos and launching them at optimal times.

After a video’s release, analytics are scrutinized to examine its penetration into target demographics.

Casey talked about these matters with the air of a seasoned professional, stressing that the distribution models are at least as important as content.

“You can be Spielberg and create the next Best Picture or the next Citizen Kane,” he said, “but if you don’t have a way to distribute that video, no one will ever see it, no one will ever care.”

Yet the ultimate key to BC’s video operation, Casey suggested, lies in something more intangible than analytics. It’s in the spirit of the campus

itself—a spirit of community and family that he believes is unique to BC. Having briefly worked for the video team at Northeastern after graduation, Casey attested that there is something fundamentally different about the attitude at BC—a friendly and participatory atmosphere that makes his job much easier, and which made a video like “Happy” possible in the first place. Indeed, the spirit that produced “Happy” now seems to be spreading on campus. Just this week, students involved in the Church in the 21st Century Center produced a BC version of Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off ” for Agape Latte. Casey watched a rough cut and offered some pointers to the younger filmmakers ahead of the video’s release on Wednesday.

Casey demonstrates real enthusiasm when talking about such student initiatives, perhaps recalling his own time as an undergraduate film student at BC. During those years, Casey helped produce videos for News and Public Affairs, while simultaneously working at 40 Shades Media, an independent media company run by his brother Kevin, BC ’04. He describes the film community at BC as small but tight-knit—they may not have had the kind of equipment that USC film students enjoyed, but such constraints actually contributed to their creativity.

Now he gets to play with slightly more expensive toys, including a recently acquired camera drone, which was used extensively in “The First Two Weeks.” But such technologies are a means to an end, and not an end in themselves. “The only rule of film is, whatever works,” said Casey, who always has his camera set on the story of BC—or rather, the many stories that make up life on this campus.

“That’s the beauty of it, is there’s never a shortage of good things to film, of stories to tell,” he said. “It’s our hope to continue to tell them.” n

This weekend in arts

By: Ariana Igneri | Associate Arts & Review Editor

1. ArtWeek Boston (Through 10/5)

5. Musicians Unite (thursday 9/25, 7 p.m.)

Boston is getting artsy this week, celebrating the community’s creativity with its biannual, 10-day-long festival. A wide range of events are being hosted in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, most of which are free. For a detailed schedule and full calendar, see artweekboston.org.

Get stoked for the Music Guild’s first open mic night of the year, as student singers, musicians, and rappers showcase their talents outdoors on the Stokes Amphitheater for the evening. The event is free.

6. Pops on the Heights (friday 9/26, 8 p.m.)

2. A Tribute to Robin Williams (thursday 9/25, 6:30 and 9:30 p.m.)

In memory of his death, Cambridge’s Brattle Theater is screening some of Robin Williams’ most beloved films.

The tribute concludes this evening with showings of Hook and Insomnia playing back to back. Single feature student tickets are available for $8 at brattlefilm.org.

3. Enrique Iglesias & Pitbull Concert (Saturday 9/27, 7:30 p.m.)

“Hero” singer Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull are performing at TD Garden on Saturday. Tickets for the concert start at $41.40 at ticketmaster.com.

PHOTO courtesy of diablo glass school

4. glass fridays (friday 9/26, 6:30 p.m.)

On the last Friday of every month, things really heat up at Diablo. The glass blowing school welcomes guests to an evening of workshops, demonstrations, socializing, and wine in their Boston flame-working studio. Tickets for the 21-plus event are $95 at diabloglassschool.com.

This weekend, Boston College is pulling out all the stops for its annual scholarship gala in Conte Forum. Moms and pops visiting the Heights who already have tickets to the concert dinner can check out The Boston Pops Orchestra, performing with a special guest.

7. Zoo Clue Challenge (saturday 9/27, 2 p.m.)

Go wild at the Franklin Park Zoo’s first Zoo Clue Challenge, a scavenger hunt designed for adults 18 and older. The cost is $50 for each team of four, and a camera or smart phone is required for the game. Prizes will be awarded and light refreshments will be served. For more information, visit zoonewengland.org.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

THE HEIGHTS

B3

OUTSIDE THE LINES

When September Ends

Life as a picture book

JOHN WILEY. ARTS & REVIEW EDITOR | ARIANA IGNERI, ASSOC. ARTS & REVIEW EDITOR | MICHELLE TOMASSI, ASST. ARTS & REVIEW EDITOR

MICHELLE TOMASSI

“I already get cold at night, and it’s only like 40, but that’s as cold as it ever gets in California.”

-Annalise Deal, A&S ’18 Atherton, Calif.

“I like organic fashion—going with the elements. The change of colors should be expressed on your body.”

-Julia Hirsch, A&S ’15 Scarsdale, N.Y.

“I like to have an organized fashion schedule, so I like to wear a tie and something nice on Tuesdays.”

-Collin Pratt, A&S ’17 St. Louis, Mo.

The Chocolate Bar has been serving pumpkin spice lattes for a little while now, but on Tuesday, it became official: the fall season has begun. Aside from pumpkin spice, apple picking, Instagrams of colorful foliage, and more pumpkin spice, the cooler weather adds new flavor to campus style. As temps start to drop, students are layering up—and fully embracing the sweater weather. In honor of the autumnal arrival, The Scene showcases the various stylings of Boston College students, and their own unique takes on the fall fashion scene.

“Who cares? It’s just fashion.”

-John Lamoureux, A&S ’16 Tampa, Fla.

Playing with texture This season, it’s all about texture. The high-waisted shorts of summer are being traded for printed pants, knitted tights, and colorful pants and leggings. Guys and girls alike are breaking out the flannels, wrapping up in chunky sweaters, and mixing textiles in their outerwear. Lace and leather? Flowy cottons and structured denim? Any combination is fair game.

Lace it up As it starts to get chilly, students will have to abandon their summer sandals and Sperrys and pull out their fall boots. We’re seeing Timbs, combat boots, knee-high riding boots, and stylish booties to accompany the dressier looks. Thankfully, a Bean Boot has yet to be spotted. Hopefully we haven’t spoken too soon.

“I’m a fan of the big, ugly Christmas sweaters.”

-Alex Ojugbeli, A&S ’17 Syracuse, N.Y.

Accessorize Fall may arguably be the best time to experiment with accessories—from light scarves and layered necklaces to matching belts and handbags. Vests are popping up everywhere, and students are donning more than just the everyday baseball cap. We’ve also seen an impressive amount of color coordination—perhaps the changing leaves are inspiring bolder color choices. Let’s hope the brightness doesn’t fade once September ends.

“In Mexico, it’s totally different. We’ll walk around wearing relaxed stuff. ” -Galassia Grassetto, CSOM ’15 Mexico City, Mexico

“Scarves are important—I like to wear them on my head. They keep it warm.”

-Alex Gaynor, A&S ’15 Nutley, N.J.

Sweaters are just better Breaking the Boston wind can be a challenge, but what first seems an obstacle of high fashion in actuality can lend itself to it. A broad, hideous, and strangely collared sweater collection is a must here at BC. The more it smells like mothballs, the more respect you’ll be earning as you itch your way through autumn. If your favorite sweater isn’t plastered to your skin by the end of the season, you’re doing it wrong.

“In China, people wear more clothes in the fall because the fall is very short.”

-Xirong Lin, GA&S 1st Year Ph.D. Fuzhou, China

“People think I dress up too nice for BC, and I guess it’s true.”

-Alan Lipchin, CSOM ’15 Chestnut Hill, Mass.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Definitely orange.”

-Andrew Heimerman, A&S ’18 Appleton, Wis.

I was curled up on the bed, ready for every child’s favorite time of the day: story time. She had two books that day—one called Splash!, with a bright yellow cover and a friendly-looking elephant, and the other called I’m the Best, featuring a happy dog dressed in colorful plaid pants. Within minutes, I was immersed in a world of colorful pictures, five-word sentences, and friendly animals jumping off the pages.

I felt completely at ease, allowing myself to fall into her pleasant reading voice without a care in the world.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any memories of my parents reading me bedtime stories as a child. This anecdote, surprisingly, was not from my time as a 5-year-old. It happened just last Saturday, as I sat lazily on my roommate’s bed after returning from the football game. The reader was my other roommate, who was writing a paper on the two books as part of her children’s literature course. As she read the stories with exuberance, I found myself longing for the days of “circle time” in my elementary school classrooms. I recalled my own favorite picture books—pretty much every Eric Carle book, such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Grouchy Ladybug. Now, it’s rare to find even a small sketch in the books that I read, so to have books completely filled with colorful images was quite the treat.

When my roommate finished her storytelling, I could have just clapped and thanked her for bringing me back to childhood, even if it was only for a few moments. Being the English major that I am, however, I couldn’t help but ask: how was she planning on writing a paper from a 10-page picture book? I expected her to talk about the (somewhat questionable) moral lessons in the books—how Dog’s incessant claim that he was “the best” made his friends very sad, but ultimately they realized that everyone is the best at something.

From my poetry and narrative classes, I am accustomed to extracting as much meaning as possible from even a few words, and I assumed that my roommate’s paper would consist of much the same. A discussion of repetition, syntax, and punctuation usage (why so many exclamation points?) is obviously how one would analyze a children’s book.

Instead, my roommate talked about the pictures: how the colors were more vibrant when Dog was happy, and how the pages became filled with gloomy, grey colors when Dog was sad. She discussed how emotions were conveyed through the images, and I realized that the beauty of picture books is how they communicate to children in simple, yet powerful ways. Story time is often the first introduction that a child has into the literary world—and those books arguably serve as the first form of “high art” that children encounter. When I recall the pages of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, filled with brilliantly colored and textured images, there’s no doubt that Carle’s collage technique merits attention as a true art form. It’s simple, vibrant, and beautiful—the type of art that I love the most.

Sometimes, it’s a welcome relief to take a break from over-analyzing the world—and story time with my roommates allowed me to remember how much joy I find in the simple things.

Call it cliche, but I think it’s something most of us needed to be reminded of in the midst of our stressful lives.

And with the first day of fall just past, I already feel as though my childhood picture books are coming to life—as if the insta-worthy foliage were illustrated

by Carle himself. My life may not actually be a picture book, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a full-fledged novel, either. In between the pages of language overflow, in between the days of constant analyzing, it might be nice just to add a few pages with pictures.

Michelle Tomassi is the Asst. Arts & Review Editor for The Heights. She can be reached at arts@bcheights.com.

THE HEIGHTS

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Thursday, September 25, 2014

Bennett and Gaga sing ‘Cheek to Cheek’ on jazz collaboration

BY MARIAN WYMAN For The Heights When one thinks of jazz musicians, the stereotypically sweet romancer comes to mind: effortless, natural musicality, classic style. Lady Gaga probably does not. Whether she is wearing a meat dress or hundreds of plastic bubbles, Gaga has never been afraid to make a spectacle of herself. Her pop persona—which has garnered millions of fans—is a showy one—it’s theatrical and ostentatious in a way that jazz just isn’t.

What we learn from her newest project, though, is that Gaga is so much more than that one-dimensional stage persona. Behind the electronic beats and autotune, Gaga can be a raw, talented musician. She was so respected by jazz legend Tony Bennett that he worked on not one, but two projects with her. After a successful collaboration on “The Lady is a Tramp,” which was featured on his album Duets II, Bennett and Gaga decided they weren’t done with each other just yet.

Cheek to Cheek is an incredible example of two drastically different artists coming together to make a cohesive album. These songs are all unquestionably jazz—there are virtually no pop influences in the entirety of the collaboration. Instead, Gaga shows how absolutely she can separate herself from one genre and launch into another (although the cover art is eccentric in a way one has come to expect from Gaga). The album’s

title track, “Cheek to Cheek,” begins unrecognizably. Lady Gaga’s vocals here are stunning, and she wastes no time in showing her chops as a genuinely gifted jazz musician. As the song progresses, Tony Bennett’s voice joins Gaga’s, and it becomes clear why this album is such a success. The two have different vocal qualities, to be sure—Gaga’s is full and far-reaching, while Bennett’s is more natural and smooth—but there is a uniformity in their style. Whether sassily singing the song’s chorus, or later scatting together, Bennett and Gaga play off each other with ease.

This same musical togetherness is present throughout various songs on the record, in which the differences in their vocal styles are overshadowed by the similarities in their soulfulness. “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” is a single the duo released before Cheek to Cheek’s debut, probably because it shows off the playful chemistry that defines the rest of the album. Amid some retro instrumentation and bluesy interpretation, this song perfectly showcases the collaboration’s strengths. Gaga and Bennett sing with the same soul, and their songs read like fluid conversations between the two of them.

“Firefly,” too, becomes a narrative for the relationship of Gaga and Bennett, as he introduces her with a playful verse, and she responds. A short song, “Firefly” is entirely about the woman it describes—in this case, Gaga. The song introduces Gaga’s jazz persona, and here, she truly shines.

Bennett sings that it is she who “radiates moonglow,” and Gaga, in turn, sings and shouts with a soulful spirit throughout the track.

Although Cheek to Cheek is primarily comprised of upbeat jazz standards, there also are some deeper, more longing tunes that show off the pair’s serious side. In the slow, smooth performance of “Nature Boy,” Gaga displays how she can hold her own alongside a musical legend in a way that few other pop stars can. “But Beautiful” is another soft, romantic standard on which Bennett and Gaga enchant with powerful, emotional vocals. The song feels glamorous, soft, and acts to balance out the excitement of all the other tunes.

It would be ignorant, though, to review this album only talking about the vocals. The instrumentation in Cheek to Cheek is phenomenal. Bennett’s band here is the same he works with on all his major projects, and it stands as an impressive backdrop for the stong vocal tunes. Talented instrumental soloists also enhance a great many of the songs (“Nature Boy” has an unreal jazz flute solo, and there is a magical, Latin-inspired solo in “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.”)

Ultimately, these songs bring back an appreciation for Big Band music, and they also bring out the dual nature of this Bennett-Gaga collaboration: timeless musicality and modern appeal. Cheek to Cheek makes it cool to

love jazz again. Just as much as the record is about the powerful vocals, it stands as a display of might in the instrumental department. The band’s flawless interpretation of these classics makes it that much better, and it provides the record with uniformity and cohesion.

Cheek to Cheek serves as a glowing sample of Gaga’s musical worth and speaks to her staying power as a performer. It shows that her talent extends far beyond the realm of rather tacky, vapid pop music. “Little Monsters” and Tony Bennett fans alike will relish in the soulful appeal of this collaboration—the jazz legend strikes a playful balance with the eccentric popstar. 

CHEEK TO CHEEK TONY BENNETT & LADY GAGA PRODUCED BY COLUMBIA RECORDS RELEASED SEPT. 19, 2014 OUR RATING

CHART TOPPERS TOP SINGLES

1 All About That Bass Meghan Trainor 2 Shake It Off Taylor Swift 3 Bang Bang Jessie J, Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj 4 Anaconda Nicki Minaj 5 Black Widow Iggy Azalea feat.

Rita Ora 6 Stay With Me Sam Smith 7 Break Free Ariana Grande feat.

Zedd

TOP ALBUMS

PHOTO COURTESY OF COLUMBIA RECORDS

Lady Gaga leaves her pop persona behind and showcases her vocal talent alongside Tony Bennett on ‘Cheek to Cheek.’

1 Partners Barbra Streisand 2X Chris Brown 3 Sundown Heaven Town Tim McGraw 4 The Cowboy Rides Away George Strait Source: Billboard.com

Chesney’s latest has a ‘Big’ country sound but revives nothing

BY PHOEBE FICO For The Heights When it comes to country music, the topics that one can cover are pretty limited: girls, drinking, being sick of your job, and dirt back-roads. The narrowness of these topics is amplified, it seems, if you are a modern-day, male country singer. In recent years, male country artists have fallen far behind their female counterparts.

The women of country will often sing with truth and honesty about what it is like to grow up in small country towns, and at the same time, they will challenge the tropes of their culture.

Kenny Chesney’s new album, The Big Revival, does nothing to lessen this gap between male and females in the country scene—in fact, the subjects of his songs drip with cliches. That said, he does create an album of truly enjoyable tunes.

The first song and title track begins a cappella, with Chesney announcing the coming of the big revival—which, in southern terms, is the revival of a small southern church and its congregation. Then comes the traditional country banjo. The most shocking part of the song comes after this by way of the guitar and lyrics. The guitar is less Townes Van Zandt and more

Aerosmith. It gives the song a sense of excitement every time it comes in at the chorus. The lyrics too are impressive. They perfectly paint the picture of what it is like to be in a southern church, with lines like “Reverend Jones struts and dances / While the guitar plays ‘Amazing Grace,’” and “He testifies in tongues of fire / With tears of joy running down his face.” These images provide a look into what these churches are like for someone who has never been, and they may prove extremely relatable to someone who is in the first pew every Sunday.

The ability to be relatable—even more so than his male country counterparts—comes through most evidently in the album’s first single, “American Kids.” The lyrics paint picture of small-town American life, from the “Baptist church parkin’ lot, tryin’ not to get caught” to the “Yellow dog school bus kickin’ up red dust.”

While the lyrics are ringing of white bread Americana, the instrumentation, and in particular the percussion, pick of the eccentricities and little oddities of this kind of life.

Similarly, “‘Til it’s Gone” borrows the soft and loud dynamic of the pixies to create great rock-pop-country tension. While “Wild Child” finally slows it down, it is ultimately lackluster and

wastes a truly great voice in Grace Potter. But what makes both of these songs interesting—and the rest of the album interesting—is when Chesney dips into his lower register. There, he sounds like a true country superstar, a Johnny Cash. This color in his voice only lasts a few seconds, so if you’re not listening, you’ll miss it.

The shining moment of the album, however, is its last track. In “If This

Bus Could Talk,” Chesney reminisces about the old days and makes the listener feel as though he or she is being let in on a secret—what those walls have seen, the times they “danced with the devil,” and when they “prayed to the Lord.”

The problem with The Big Revival is the lack of variety. He sticks to country songs within a pop song structure.

That way, every song is catchy and

sing-along-in-your-car good, but there are times when the listener wants and should be challenged. Chesney wants to please, and please he does, but even pleasure can get boring without something to mix it up.

Chesney does not do anything revolutionary on this new record, and therefore, one may wonder if it warrants its title. It may not “revive” anything, but it surely is a good time. 

With such a wide range of indie bands currently hitting the charts, there is quite the disarray in sounds coming from the genre. To set themselves apart, many of these alternative artists take on a more experimental sound. Some don’t succeed. Over the last three years, however, Alt-J (also known as ∆) has skyrocketed into

popularity. The experimental indie band from England has become one of the most well-known alternative groups not only the United Kingdom, but in the United States as well.

The band’s recently released album This Is All Yours takes many risks, and the payoff is impressive.

The album features a darker array of songs, written in minor key, with a heavy mix of sounds. Deviating at times from the band’s usual airy,

BY RHODA MORRISON

“YOU RUIN ME” THE VERONICAS

THE BIG REVIVAL KENNY CHESNEY PRODUCED BY BLUE CHAIR RECORDS RELEASED SEPT. 23, 2014 OUR RATING

PHOTO COURTESY OF BLUE CHAIR RECORDS

Chesney keeps to what he knows on ‘Big Revival,’ an album of guitar-driven tracks about cars and other country themes.

Alt-J gives up electro-rock vibe for variety on ‘All Yours’

BY EILEEN KAO For The Heights

MUSIC VIDEO OF THE WEEK

electronic sound, Alt-J has shown its versatility in This Is All Yours. Often applying tribal rhythms, the record switches smoothly from electric instrumentals to pianos, demonstrating an understanding of many different instrumental platforms.

Following the precedent of Alt-J’s first album An Awesome Wave, this record also begins with an “Intro” track, setting the mood for the project to follow. There’s a noticeable musi-

THIS IS ALL YOURS ALT-J PRODUCED BY INFECTIOUS RECORDS RELEASED SEPT. 22, 2014 OUR RATING

PHOTO COURTESY OF INFECTIOUS RECORDS

‘This Is All Yours,’ the second album from indie rock band Alt-J, combines diverse instrumentals but lacks consistency.

cal narrative running through the record—“Arrival in Nara,” “Nara,” and “Leaving Nara” are all predominantly instrumental pieces. The three songs tell a story, with “Nara” having barely audible words, and a lighter feeling to it, “Arrival in Nara” having a somber and more dramatic instrumental, and finally “Leaving Nara” leaving us off in a mood of redemption.

Another thread running through the album is that few lyrics are included. Alt-J will throw some words into its songs, but it’s mostly just to make quick references. This is evident in tracks like “Bloodflood Pt. II”—which is considerably darker than “Bloodflood,” its predecessor. There is a reference made to the movie Aliens in the song “The Gospel of John Hurt.”

Although a good tribute to the movie, it doesn’t quite seem to fit in with the other pieces of the album, which stick with themes of love and loss.

“Hunger of the Pine”—a more electronica-based song—randomly throws in Miley Cyrus’ vocals halfway through the song. It seems to lose its purpose and become a typical pop song, squandering Alt-J’s talent.

Tracks like “Garden of England” and “Let Hand Free” don’t really fit into the album. The former features

a more traditional folk song tune, and the latter, more of a commercial sound. These are the big letdowns of the album—they try to show how the band can have more than one sound, but seem to just hurt the project.

The rest of the songs feel closer together in concept. They all seem to link back to the title of the album, which basically suggests the listener is free to make what he or she will of it all. This last block of tracks links back to the idea of the love and loss. Here, songs such as “Pusher” and “Warm Foothills” take on a lighter tone.

Reflecting back on This is All Yours, the album seems to fit together, even with its faults. It was clearly hard for Alt-J to resist the temptation of becoming more “pop,” but the English band seems to have generally pulled it off well. This Is All Yours shows off a wide array of instruments, and it mostly keeps with the same themes throughout the album. Vocally—considering how few words are spoken—Alt-J is able to shine. Hopefully in the band’s next album, it can keep even more closely to its own style. The album’s title might suggests this album is “all yours,” but really, Alt-J could’ve made it more its own. 

After half a decade out of the spotlight, there was a great deal of pressure felt by Australian duo, The Veronicas, to come back bigger and better than before. Their new single, “You Ruin Me”—which is to be the lead single of their new album—makes their return to the music scene a powerful and passionate one. The music video, on the other hand, although stunning for the most part, somewhat undermines the pure emotion on which the song’s meaning is based.

The opening moments of the video are reminiscent of Disney’s The Haunted Mansion: we make our way through eerie corridors with flickering candles and apparitions. While this builds an atmosphere, I can’t help but expect the invasion of phantoms or five floating heads bursting into a chorus of “Grim Grinning Ghosts.”

This mysterious opening, which, jokes aside, does introduce a beautiful theatrical setting, is interrupted by the two sisters driving a car, wearing matching sunglasses and “rocking up” to their own show—displaying the same cheesy, rebellious attitude they possessed back in 2007 when they appeared on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.

Thankfully, with this out of their system, the video then takes a mesmerizing turn into what seems to be a celebration of the arts. The girls become part of a fairytale world where roses are delivered to your dressing room and a piano starts playing just as you feel the urge to sing. The romantic imagery of ballet dancers and chandeliers complements the hypnotizing quality of the girls’ voices perfectly. The two are a match made in heaven—so much so that the inclusion of the ridiculous Black Swan-esque, “lover’s revenge” subplot which runs throughout the video feels unnecessary when observed alongside this spectacular demonstration of beautiful vocals, stunning orchestration, and killer ball gowns. 

SINGLE REVIEWS BY RYAN DOWD KENDRICK LAMAR “i”

JASON ALDEAN “Tonight Looks Good On You” Set to an Isley Brothers’ sample and rolling guitar rifts, the Compton rapper reasserts his beat dominance over the rest of his hip-hop cohorts. His “Control” verse was brash, almost antagonistic. This single is defined by a smooth instrumental background, as Kendrick buzzes his way with a controlled reckless abandon. Like it or not, we’re living in m.A.A.D. City.

The latest single from his upcoming album, “Tonight Looks Good On You” is an alarmingly unoriginal country song. It breeds a “good lookin’ girl” and some moonlight to paint a picture we’ve heard time and time again. It’s a shame, because Aldean can do this better than anyone. At least his previous hits like “Night Train” had some fire, but here it’s all but sizzled.

SEAVER’S EXPRESS “2x2” Boston College’s Seaver’s Express continues to cultivate its local sound. The band has gone from sounding ambient, far away to immediate, right in your dorm. “2x2” is breezy (“all [it] wants to do is ride along the California seacoast with you”). The same easy chords are there, but they’ve been melded in with everything else, as the chorus goes “two by two by two.”

Thursday, January 17, 2014 Thursday, September 25, 2014

The Heights The Heights

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The Heights

B6

Bennet’s Banter

The city and its weirdness

Bennet Johnson There’s no denying it—we are all a little weird.

Maybe you frequently talk to yourself, have a strange obsession with birds, or feel the need to check behind the shower curtain every time you go to the bathroom.

But did you know that being weird could be the edge in creating a life-changing business? Best-selling author and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell shared this message last week during his keynote speech at the annual HubSpot Inbound conference in South Boston.

Thousands of marketing and technology professionals gathered at the Inbound conference to learn the latest ways to interact with customers.

During his speech, Gladwell explained that the most successful entrepreneurs responsible for vast technological changes share much more than merely using similar skills and resources—they share the same “habits of mind,” according to BetaBoston.

Put another way, these people are very weird.

From reading many of his books—including The Tipping Point, Blink, and the more recently published David and Goliath—it is clear that Gladwell loves to illustrate his points with historical anecdotes.

Per usual, he summoned a number of biographical examples to illustrate his point that Bostonians should embrace unconventional ideas.

One running example during his speech was about Malcolm McLean, a key figure in the freight industry who began by asking his boss at the gas station if he could make a fuel delivery trip. He was astounded one day at the cost and amount of time it took to unload shipments from one location to another, and he went on in 1956 to create the first detachable shipping container, reducing the shipping cost from $5 per ton to 15 cents.

“It’s not enough to simply have great ideas,” Gladwell said in his keynote speech. “You also need to be the kind of person who can tune out the naysayers.”

When McLean first approached the container problem, everyone thought he was crazy. In his position, he required the approval of his peers in order to do something that was completely new, and instead he erased the existing boundaries.

Whether you are a student or an entrepreneur, in order to transform something, you need to have ideas that are so great that people think you are crazy.

Boston is home to one of the biggest startup capitals of the world, and it is no coincidence that our city is full of individuals whom many would call crazy or weird.

But what is so special about Boston?

Disregarding its great location, transportation system, or food options, the city is the education hub of America. The city is able to attract famous speakers like Gladwell because of the plethora of young students who go on to become entrepreneurs and completely change industries.

If you are doing something revolutionary instead of embracing your ideas, the world may call you a weirdo. Being a weirdo is what distinguishes successful students, entrepreneurs, or businesses from from everyone else.

Without this type of thinking, many recent Boston-based companies like Facebook, Zipcar, or TripAdvisor may never have been introduced to the world.

So we, as students, should take advantage of what Gladwell described to thousands of young professionals last week in South Boston: Let’s get weird.

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

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Marino opens Her Closet Boston in Coolidge Corner HCB, from B8 Marino took the position at Macy’s.

“It was a very numbers-oriented role, but I would still be able to work with the buyer some,” she said. “It was my responsibility to see how much of things to bring in, how to spread it out over the coming months, and to make sure we were on track with our margin.”

“I liked it but it was too ‘numbers’ for me, and I missed being able to use my creative side,” Marino said regarding her position as merchandise planner. “Even though it was a really great company and I loved everyone that I worked with, I just didn’t feel happy—deep down it didn’t feel right.”

After three years, Marino left her full time job to move back home with her parents and figure out what her next step would be.

While considering either another corporate job or taking some time off to travel, Marino stumbled upon one of the wholesale websites she used to supply her eBay account with and began to think about what would become HCB. “I started HCB on a whim,” she said. “The website was even better than I imagined—better clothes, better prices—so of course my entrepreneurial side was itching and I just had to try it out again.”

Marino began HCB with an inventory of six items and from there began to reinvest the money she made into more styles. “From there it just really snowballed,” she said. “I had customers asking for more of the pieces because they liked my style.”

Photo Courtesy of HCB

Hilary Marino opened Her Closet Boston (HCB) in Coolidge Corner after years spent selling merchandise online, saying she always wanted a storefront.

Six items turned into an entire online boutique as Marino moved off of eBay and created her standalone website, shophcb.com, in September of 2012. Highlights in multiple, prominent online blogs quickly led to digital success for Marino and by that holiday season she began to consider the possibility of not needing to look for another job.

Despite online success, Marino always kept the idea of a storefront in the back of her mind. “I wanted a store because I have always liked the idea of interacting with people and merchandising,” she said. “Even though in today’s world everything seems to be going digital, there is something so personal about clothes

and shopping at a store where you can touch and feel everything,” After running the website for one year, she moved to Washington Square in the summer of 2013. Although taken with the area, Marino noticed it was missing an affordable market that HCB could fill. “There are so many things here but nothing in the price range that HCB is working with, so I decided that it was a perfect fit­—and after looking for spaces, here we are,” she said.

Although the adjustment to a storefront was exciting, Marino has had to take on some new responsibilities that her online boutique did not account for. Now, on top of keeping up with the latest trends and finding

them at affordable prices, she manages five part-time employees as well as the finances of her metropolitan location.

“When I started HCB I had a young city girl in mind—she was a young professional, and she was working hard but also wanted to have fun and she needed a wardrobe to reflect that but didn’t want to spend her whole paycheck to look cute,” Marino said. “But since I have opened the store I see that the HCB girl can be anyone. We get customers ranging from high school and college students all the way up to young moms and even cute, hip grandmothers. There is really something for everyone in a lot of ways.”

Coolidge Corner and Washington Square have already shown a positive response to HCB, with many from the neighborhood telling Marino that they have been waiting for a place like this, she said.

Marino looks excitedly toward the future of the HCB storefront, which not only offers a boutique shopping experience but also personal shopping services, a student discount, and monthly shopping perks.

“I’m really trying to create a place that’s the best of both worlds,” she said. “I want people to come in and be able to have that small boutique experience with great customer service, but not with the prices that usually go along with that experience.”n

Chef Marc Ladner looks to meet gluten-free demand Pasta Flyer, from B8 from materials without gluten.

For instance, it takes the combination of seven or eight different ingredients to achieve the same binding effect of gluten. On the other hand, Ladner stated that, unlike pasta that contains gluten, gluten-free pasta can be successfully cooked in microwaves.

Utilizing Kickstarter and hopping on the gluten-free train are only a few ways in which Ladner appeals to the younger generation. Wearing trendy glasses and a signature Del Posto baseball cap, Ladner has a laid-back sort of swagger that could convince any one of the students in his audience to enter the food service industry. He also made a few blunt comments atypical of industry representatives, even telling the audience that some of Del Posto’s gluten free offerings are less than stellar—he added, though, that he finds solace in the fact that if people can’t eat gluten, they don’t know what they’re missing.

Ladner insisted that glutenfree dining isn’t simply a trend.

“I think 30 percent of gluten-free is a fad,” he said. He blamed the quality of American wheat on the ever-growing dietary intolerance of gluten, and believes that the future of food lies in treating indigenous grains and grasses responsibly. He also noted the need for fresher milling practices,

as many American grocery stores are selling flour that is too old for consumption and filled with preservatives to make it last.

“Europe would never use a lot of the things we call food here,” he said. “There isn’t enough focus on the importance of safe food [in the U.S.].”

Ladner is able to achieve this focus through Del Posto. In terms of its welcoming nature toward gluten-free, Ladner cited his motto: Adapt or die.

“I think more people are paying attention to it, so it’s whatever the public demands,” he said. “At Del Posto, we take all types of dietary restrictions with the same seriousness.”

As gluten-free options become more and more popular with the growing influence of social media, Ladner noted, people can voice criticisms to a much larger audience—since the traditional press is less critical, this supplementary form of feedback raises the bar.

He also stated that with so many mediums for diners to express their criticisms, “you can’t slip.”

It makes sense that Ladner chose Har vard as one of the sights for his Pasta Flyer college tour—he started his career making pizza at a restaurant in Harvard Square. When asked about the current state of Boston’s food scene, Ladner was positive.

“I love the food scene here,” he said. “Alden and Harlow is

great. I recently went to Rialto in the Charles Hotel, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary.”

Pasta Flyer will be on Harvard’s campus until Wednesday night, and then will head to Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island, as well as Drexel next month.

While the flyer mainly focuses on being gluten-free, its menu items also avoid fish, shellfish, seafood, and nuts. On its website, the flyer describes the quick-service fare as a “pasta bowl that marries traditional Italian culture with Japanese ramen efficiency.”

Customers at Pasta Flyer have the option of three different types of noodles, sauces like “garlicky pesto” or tomato marinara, and creative toppings such as a truffled poached egg or gluten-free meatballs. And while the flyer may have an issue with maintaining the heat of the pasta—all three servings tested were a little cold—the effort is unparalleled.

Sitting with Ladner one-onone is no different than hearing him speak in front of hundreds of people; he seems genuinely passionate about his craft, spending as much time talking to professors and the event organizers as he did to students and parents.

It seems, furthermore, that his work is deeply personal—he even brought his mother and a large number of his Del Posto staff to come hear him speak. n

Grace Godvin / For the heights

Marc Ladner’s new project, Pasta Flyer, serves gluten-free pasta dishes.

THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, September 25, 2014

B7

Last Boston Calling offering of season launches tonight

BY MAGGIE MARETZ Heights Staff

Those who are familiar with life in New England know that the summer months here are fleeting. There is, therefore, an annual pressure that rolls around in May and remains until September to make the best out of this beautiful, warm season before it slips away. It can be difficult to figure out how to do so, however.

Mike Snow, co-founder of Boston Calling, wanted to remedy that problem with the Boston Calling Music Festival—once in May and once in September. Ideally, there would be a venue that gave Bostonians the opportunity to enjoy music and have a drink outside after work throughout the summer.

With that, the Boston Calling Block Party Series was born. The series, which originally began in 2010, is a summertime string of concert events every Thursday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Boston Calling, in partnership with Crash Line Productions, the Boston Improvement District, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway, has brought in a variety of local musicians and bands to entertain Bostonians after the workday ends.

“The Boston Calling Block Party series is a great way for us here at Boston Calling to try to slot more local people and bands,” Snow said. “We want to support the local music community all sum-

mer, versus just at our two festivals.”

Boston Calling reached out to its followers on social media to determine what people wanted to see, and compiled a lineup of local bands and performers for each week. The series this summer featured artists such as Nemes and Absolute Gentleman.

The concerts are intended to be a source of fun for residents of Boston, but also ser ve a higher purpose in maintaining and supporting the work of the Boston Improvement District (BID). BID is a group that was organized and funded by various organizations, businesses, and restaurants in downtown Boston to make sure the area was properly changed from what it used to be years ago.

“If you were from this area, you remember that 10 years ago, you couldn’t go down there,” Snow said. “Now they’ve got ambassadors going through and providing extra cleaning services and educating tourists on what’s available in the area and different places to eat and whatnot,” BID has been a big factor in helping to continue the production of the events each summer, Snow said.

Although the Boston Calling Block Party series used to take place at Downtown Crossing, the space became unavailable, and it took place for the first time this year in Dewey Square. Snow explained that, while this is a relatively under-the-radar location within Boston,

industry with connections to the bar and restaurant scene, Manning realized that the duo would have to go beyond the idea of just reserving a stool to sell the idea to bars.

“What we found was that it is so important to focus on the hospitality aspect of this, so we went from ‘Oh, you can reserve a barstool,’ to ‘Oh, this is a new service that enriches hospitality for both busy and non-busy times by being better able to connect to you,’” Manning said.

While Manning admits he has a very romantic idea of what a bar should be, he still feels that it is important for bartenders to create a comfortable en-

vironment for the patrons. If bartenders do not engage in conversations with their customers, they are far less likely to stay engaged in the scene, and might not even come back.

“Bars are pubs, and pub is short for public house,” Manning explained. “A public house is a place where strangers can come in and feel comfortable, and engage with the local people who are around them.”

Bars reser ve a few select stools during both their non-premium and premium times. At 5 p.m. on a Tuesday, bars are largely empty. To attract more customers, bars partnering with SnagaStool offer a free appetizer to customers who reserve a seat. Since the bar is already paying for the overhead

EMILY FAHEY / HEIGHTS EDITOR

The organizers of Boston Calling hosted events throughout summer on the Greenway. it is a great spot, located right across from South Station, next to the Boston Public Market, and not far from Faneuil Hall. “When you add it all up and look around at what this city has to offer,” Snow said, “it seemed like a great balance between green space, activities, landmarks, and a high-traffic area.”

The series, which is sponsored by Shock Top and Radio BDC—the online radio of The Boston Globe—started back in May as more of a social outdoor event than a concert. “When it started, I think people were just happy to get outside, enjoy a beverage, and sit in the Adirondack chairs,” Snow said. “But as it

progressed, it got more and more about the bands that were playing.”

As the summer went on, he explained, he began to receive direct messages on social media inquiring about what bands were playing, and some would even suggest a friend or relative’s band for the event. The staffers at Boston Calling, Snow said, had been hoping to achieve a genuine appreciation of the local music in addition to creating a fun environment.

The last event in the series will take place today starting at 5 p.m., and will mark the last of Boston Calling’s events until May. 

costs of operating the bar, they are willing to spend a few dollars and provide exemplary service to get a customer in the door.

During premium hours—Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, along with big sports games—bars might not think they would need to offer reserved seats since the bar will be packed anyway.

Manning said, however, that if someone is walking past a full bar, he or she probably will not even walk in and he or she will move on to his or her next choice.

“Even if the bar doesn’t think they need it when they’re busy now, the more and more people that walk by and look in and know it’s busy and keep walking by, that’s more people they’re losing and

losing, and it’s a slow bleed and before you know it, they’re empty and it’s too late,” he said.

SnagaStool is currently partnered with four bars—three in Boston and one in Florida—but Manning said that their slow start has been conditional on perfecting what he calls a “seamless customer experience and incredible customer experience.” Within the next six months, Manning wants to be in at least 50 bars.

“The first few bars are hard, but you prove a good model and you get a few more because they tell their friends,” Manning said. “And then you start to get that critical mass where people are like ‘Oh my God, if I’m not on SnagaStool, people won’t come to my bar.’” 

BOSTON FOODIE Jo Jo Taipei brings Taiwanese taste to Allston Near to several local colleges, restaurant lends cozy space

BY EILEEN KAO For the Heights The front desk of Jo Jo Taipei, a Taiwanese eatery in Allston, is decorated in the casual way that makes it look comfortably haphazard—colorful flowers sit in a vase alongside a figurine of a monkey, toothpicks, and mints, with yellow lights dangling above the desk’s surface.

Not many people know the differences between the signature dishes of different Asian foods, but going to Jo Jo Taipei will certainly introduce a great variety of new foods, including three cups chicken, stinky tofu, beef noodle soup, or Taiwanese meatballs.

While these names might appear strange, these foods are not all that different from those with which people are generally more familiar. Three cups chicken, for example, is three cups of liquids—sesame oil, rice wine, and soy sauce—combined to give the chicken flavor. Stinky tofu, on the other hand, is tofu soaked in a fermented brine of vegetables, herbs, and meats. The tofu

EILEEN KAO / FOR THE HEIGHTS

acquires the scent of the brine, which leads to its unusual name. Although they have unual names, the dishes taste better than one might expect.

Wanting to bring authentic Taiwanese cuisine to Boston, the owner, Sherry Liu, originally had owned a store in a different part of Boston, but opened up the new restaurant, Jo Jo Taipei—a name which literally translates to “long long Taipei”—in Allston.

“She loves to get to know the college kids here,” said long-time employee Liz Chen. “She sits down with the kids while they’re having food and always loves to chat, whether it’s speaking in Chinese or English. She gets ideas from the students and gets feedback about the different

LOCATION: 103 Brighton Ave. CUISINE: Taiwanese

The honesty inherent in unmade beds MAGGIE POWERS

A slow start for SnagaStool, but founders look to grow SnagaStool, from B8

THE HEART OF THE CITY

dishes as well. It’s why she opened the restaurant here as well. You have Boston College on one side, Boston University on another, and you have MIT and Harvard in the area as well.

“I started off working here when [Liu] just opened up around the area,” Chen said. “[Liu] is one of the best ladies there is, and she’s very hardworking as well.”

According to Chen, Liu has lived in Boston for some time, and, knowing what was around in the local food scene, wanted to put a new spin on cuisine in the area.

Due to the closeness of the employees, Chen said, they avoid using formal, designated titles for themselves around the eatery.

“We’re all very close to each other,” she said.

Jo Jo Taipei has been open for seven years and still stands strong, with a diverse clientele—one will not only hear Chinese spoken here. The restaurant has a cozy and intimate environment, with only about 14 tables that

fit about six people per table. Aside from Liu sitting down to chat with customers, the staff always welcomes customers by the door, often striking up conversations about the local happenings. The location is convenient as well, about 15 minutes by car or 25 minutes by the B-line from BC. Because of the smaller setting, everyone is seated closely to each other, which is similar to restaurants in Taiwan where dining is an intimate activity, and where family and friends usually share the same plates of food. College students can receive a five percent discount by showing a valid college ID, and a 10 percent discount if they pay in cash. “[Liu] wants to try to help out the college students too,” Chen said of the discount.

With a strong community of not only college students eating at Jo Jo Taipei, the restaurant continues to serve authentic Taiwanese cuisine in an intimate atmosphere. 

There is something about an unmade bed that conveys a certain sense of honesty.

In the vulnerable moments of sleep, the indents and creases become a chronicling of the tossing and turning, rest and unrest of its owner, until the next morning when it is all tucked in and smoothed over again.

In 2013, Boston’s homeless population rose almost 4 percent, according to the 34th Annual Homeless Census.

This means that there are roughly 7,000 unmade beds on the streets of Boston, all infinitely more open and raw and honest than any unmade bed in a cozy apartment throughout the rest of Boston.

This summer, I commuted from my beautiful home in the pristine suburbs of Hingham, Mass. to South Station. Every morning, about three yards from the mouth of the station, the stream of suits and Starbucks would part for a moment.

There, in the middle of the sidewalk, I would see the same woman. She didn’t look too much older than me, maybe in her late 20s. Most mornings she stood relatively stoically, Dunkin’ Donuts cup outstretched with a tattered cardboard sign that simply said, “Mother of two, please help.”

She smiled at those who passed, thanked those who gave, and ignored those who almost ran her over because they could not possibly take their eyes off their iPhones for the two seconds it would take to realize there was a human standing still in the path who was not following the masses into the high rises. She stood always with a sense of purpose and, in my opinion, certain bravery.

She was not there every morning, nor was I, but she became a fixture of my summer. I often wondered if I became one to her—not that I deserved to be remembered any more that the next person. Sure, I stopped and gave her money sometimes.

But there were also mornings when I was late or lazy and simply averted my gaze and walked straight past her. To think she would remember me would be self-flattery.

I’m sure dozens of 20-somethings in Tory Burch shoes passed her every morning. For some reason, she stuck in my mind despite the 18 or so other homeless figures I passed every morning on my walk from South Station, through Chinatown, to the Back Bay. One normal morning, the current of normal professionals parted in their normal way in the normal place. But I did not see the top of her bun from afar, as I normally did. After a few tiers of people passed down the sidewalks, I breathed that little sigh of relief that comes when your daily routine is still as it should be. She was there that day.

But that day was different.

She was seated on a busted milk crate, sleeping bag bunched around her waist, despite the muggy, Boston summer day.

Nothing else was different. Same sign, same Dunkin’ Donuts cup. But she looked so … exposed.

This was her unmade bed—a rumpled, stained, honest, forest green look at where she rests. And it left me unsettled, almost insecure. The simple shift from her standing, working in her own way, to sitting in her bedding was a much-needed reminder that she was indeed homeless.

This was her bed—there was no more for me to see. It robbed her of a certain agency I naively gave her in my head, this idea I had that she made the choice to stand among the swarm of commuters. While in a literal sense she was making that choice, the overriding status of homelessness forced her into that position.

I never saw more of her life than a slice of the morning and a few smiles in exchange for some handfuls of change.

But in an honest moment in her unmade bed, I was reminded of one of the ugly realities of living in a city. She is one of almost 4,000 adults on the streets of Boston. I never saw her kids, but thought about them every time I saw her sign as part of over 1,000 homeless families.

There are 7,000 honest, unmade beds on the street of Boston, which we all walk by with only passing thoughts. Their exposure often betrays their owners, inviting only the mental projections of passersby, like me. Despite the unintentional candor, each makeshift bed deserves to be looked at as just as human as the unmade bed in a Southie apartment. Each honest, unmade bed should continue to be counted until that very number decreases by year.

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

METRO

B8

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

EDGE OF TOWN

Tradition at the racetrack RYAN TOWEY I knew that I hadn’t won a dime.

My horse had finished somewhere in the middle of the pack as I watched from behind glass at the Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey. At least I wasn’t subject to gloating—my friend Nick hadn’t fared any better. Our girlfriends stood next to us, talking with each other, uninterested in our loss.

Bored after my bad luck, I tapped Nick’s shoulder and tilted my head at a strange character standing outside along the edge of the track—a mannish woman, or a womanish man with a straw hat on. We chuckled and tried to guess.

It was the middle of our last summer home before college, but we could already feel it waning—we were engaging in old home rituals, asking ourselves each time about when the last time would be. We ate too often at the local Chipotle, made extra efforts to get the “whole group” together, hung out in familiar basements, reminded each other of the jokes that we had accumulated over years of friendship, tried to disentangle what had taken a lifetime to knot.

But a visit to the racetrack—that was new.

Nick had wanted to go all summer, and we somehow convinced the girls to come with us. It felt strange to be experiencing something new when we had spent weeks rehashing what was old. The whole gambling thing—for which I had little taste—smacked of adulthood, which, in my eyes, was mostly marked by the potential to lose and be the only one directly taking a hit. It was no fun.

But here’s the thing: I was fascinated by horses. In that regard, the visit was bringing out the child in me, and I was thankful for the reprieve. Cowboy decorations on the walls of my boyhood bedroom. Riding my bike around the cul-de-sac, pretending it was a horse that all of the neighborhood kids envied. Watching Dances with Wolves repeatedly and wishing to live in a time when horses were the vehicles of choice.

I asked the others if they wanted to go down closer to the racetrack—ostensibly to identify the gender of the mysterious individual with the straw hat on. Ha ha ha, we all laughed. Inside, I was glad that I had convinced them to follow me. I wanted to be as close as possible to these unbelievable animals, to see their hooves pounding against the dirt, their tiny riders exhorting them to be faster, go faster, win.

I’ve never been to see the races at Suffolk Downs, and when news broke on Tuesday that Oct. 4 will be the last day for horseracing at Suffolk Downs, I regretted this deeply. After the state gambling commission approved a Wynn Resorts casino in Everett over a Mohegan Sun proposal that would have secured the future of racing at Suffolk Downs, management considered it the only recourse to prepare to end the races. My regret at having never yet visited the track, however, is muted by my wonderment at the pain those behind the scenes at Suffolk Downs must be undergoing.

Few would dedicate their lives to horses unless it was out of the deepest love. It is a livelihood, yes, and that is the most immediate loss, but time spent with a horse almost always leads to a bond—they have to say goodbye. I cannot know what is like to spend my whole life caring for these simultaneously powerful and gentle creatures, but I know what I was doing midsummer before my freshman year of college as I stood on the precipice of some vague sense of adulthood: I was leaning against the railing of the Meadowlands Racetrack like a child.

Nick tapped my shoulder, nodded toward the person with the straw hat on. “It’s a guy, I think,” he said.

I nodded with only token laughter, my bored unkindness forgotten—I was enthralled.

We stood next to each other, gripping the railings, holding on to a tradition far older than any of our own.

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

BRECK WILLS / HEIGHTS GRAPHIC

SARAH MOORE | HEIGHTS EDITOR Although it has only been three short weeks since owner and Concord native Hilary Marino opened the doors to her Coolidge Corner boutique, Her Closet Boston (HCB), the new storefront has already seen immediate success.

On Sept. 2, Marino expanded her online boutique to a 500-square foot location at 234 Harvard St. in Brookline. Embellished with the latest trends in clothing and accessories, it is no surprise that the popularity of HCB’s digital store was transitioned to its new storefront.

“I was that little girl who always loved shopping,” Marino said on her passion for style and love of fashion. “I was only seven years old when my mom had to practically cut me off.”

Although Marino only recently opened her boutique and founded her online store in 2012, she has a long history of finding a balance between work and her draw to fashion. At just 25 years old, Marino left her full-time position as a merchandise planner for Macy’s in New York to become a small business owner.

“For me this all just happened kind of naturally—I have always been doing things like this,” Marino said. “Between countless lemonade stands and trying to sell my crafts to parents and neighbors, it has just always been in my blood to do something entrepreneurial, and with all of my attempts related to fashion, something like this just seems to follow the trend.”

With the help of her father, Marino set up her first eBay account at age 13 to sell small items like Beanie Babies and personalized address labels that she would design and print. Throughout high school she quickly transitioned from smaller items to selling wholesale jewelry that she bought online, and eventually in college began to sell jewelry that she made on Etsy.

After graduating from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania with a degree in Finance and minors in both Entrepreneurship and Psychology,

Hilary Marino has loved clothes since childhood — now she has her own boutique in Coolidge Corner

See HCB, B6

PHOTO COURTESY OF MIKE DISKIN

App founders look to save seats at local bars SnagaStool founders strive to improve hospitality at bars

BY GUS MERRELL Heights Staff GRACE GODVIN / FOR THE HEIGHTS

Pasta Flyer, Marc Ladner’s new project, served gluten-free pasta dishes at Harvard.

Chef Ladner strives to meet demand for gluten-free food

BY GRACE GODVIN For the Heights Since Friday afternoon, a large silver vehicle has sat outside Harvard’s Science Center, serving students and locals alike its gluten-free pasta fare. Pasta Flyer is the passion project of Mark Ladner, the executive chef at Mario Batali’s Italian eatery, Del Posto, located in the meatpacking district of New York City.

At Del Posto, Ladner has made quite a name for himself in gluten-free circles.

Along with its prestigious Michelin-star rating, Del Posto features a gluten-free option as an alternative for each one of its 10 pasta dishes.

Backed by a Kickstarter campaign,

I NSIDE METRO THIS ISSUE

Pasta Flyer is Ladner’s response to an ever-growing demand for more accessible gluten-free dining options. While not gluten-free himself, Ladner recognizes the shifting focus toward this trend, and has made it his mission to create a “much more cooperative experience with gluten-free dining,” he said. “The primary challenge of Del Posto right now is dietary restrictions,” according to Ladner, which have mostly surfaced during the past five years.

At his lecture on Monday night as part of Harvard’s Science and Cooking Lecture Series, Ladner spoke on the advantages and disadvantages of making pasta

See Pasta Flyer, B6

Boston Calling Block Parties

Jamie Manning and Adriano Varassin both loved their motorcycles. Each had multiple bikes, and Varassin was actually a big Harley guy. But when they needed money to fund their new startup, SnagaStool, both agreed to sell one bike each. It was their own safeguard against quitting, because if they quit, then it would be the same as giving away a Harley. And no one would just give away a Harley.

SnagaStool, a startup Manning and Varassin launched earlier this year, can be likened to the popular app OpenTable, but instead of reserving tables at a restaurant, users can reserve a barstool at participating bars. During both premium and non-premium times at the bar, customers will be treated with VIP-style service: the bartender will know their name ahead of time, have their preferred game on the TV, know their preferences, and make an effort to get to know them.

“When you snag a stool, this bar knows you’re coming, and what they could do is say, ‘Hey, we know you’re coming in tomorrow, let us know if

The Boston Calling organizers want to bring you music more than twice a year—and they’re doing so on the Greenway ..............................................B7

you have any questions,’” Manning said. “That sort of point of contact in the hospitality industry is where all of the value lies.”

Manning and Varassin came up with the idea for their app when they were trying to watch a Bruins playoff game last year. They bounced from bar to bar around the city, but everywhere they went, the bars were packed—even the grungiest dive bar they tried was full. On the cab ride home, Manning remarked that he would have happily paid someone $20 for their seat at the bar, and it was then that the idea for SnagaStool came to be.

“Eighty percent of people we surveyed said they would actually be willing to pay the bar in order to get a barstool,” Manning said. “Seventy percent of people who have walked into a bar when there were no stool available have actually left the bar. That’s opportunity cost, because you’re losing people that have walked into the bar and left because you couldn’t take care of them.”

While SnagaStool is primarily seen as a way to reserve a seat at the bar, Manning said, it’s also about the enhanced customer experience that comes along with the reservation. During some of the initial meetings with bars, some managers were apprehensive about the idea of allowing people to reserve stools when the bar was already full.

After hiring someone in the hospitality

See SnagaStool, B7

Boston Foodie: Jojo Taipei ............................................................................B7 Column: Bennet’s Banter.........................................................................................B6