The Heights March 19, 2018

Heights

The

The Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College

EST. 1919

www.bcheights.com

Monday, March 19, 2018

Hitting High Notes ARTS

Goodbye Garden SPORTS

Stavros Piperis, winner of 2018’s Sing it to The Heights’ and MCAS ’19, discusses his musical voyage.

Men’s hockey squandered a two-goal lead against BU and ended its season in overtime of the Hockey East semifinals.

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Cost of Attendance for 2018-19 Nears $70K Trustees have increased financial aid by 8.1 percent.

The Trustees have additionally increased the total amount of resources allocated toward financial aid to $131.3 million, a significant 8.1 percent jump from last year’s figure of $120.5 million.

The total allocation of funds toward financial aid for the 2017-18 year represented was a 5.1 percent increase from the year before.

Sixty-seven percent of undergraduates currently receive financial aid, with the average aid package awarded projected to reach $45,000 for 2018-19.

BC is need-blind in the undergraduate admissions process. International undergraduate students, however, are required to pay full tuition.

“This budget will enable Boston

By Charlie Power Asst. News Editor

Kaitlin meeks / heights editor

Daryl Watts won the Patty Kazmaier Award, becoming the sport’s first freshman to ever be crowned national player of the year, B1.

Boston College announced Thursday that undergraduate tuition for the 2018-19 academic year will be $54,600, an increase from last year’s figure of $52,500. The total cost of attendance, including fees and room and board, will rise to $69,942, increasing 3.6 percent from the 2017-18 level.

Last year’s total cost of attendance for undergraduates was $67,488, which was also a 3.6 percent increase from the year before.

TOTAL TUITION AND FINANCIAL AID

TUITION $56K

RubberHub Mails Students Condoms SSH launched a new service to bring free condoms to campus.

By Abigail Hunt Copy Editor Last month, 94 percent of voters on a student body-wide referendum indicated that they support allowing the sexual and reproductive health advocacy group Students for Sexual Health (SSH) to distribute contraceptives on campus.

The University later issued a statement indicating that it will not being changing its policy of prohibiting the public distribution of condoms on campus.

In response, SSH has announced that it will continue working to support BC students’ sexual health needs with a new service: RubberHub. According to Connor Kratz, SSH co-chair and MCAS ’18, RubberHub is a free condom delivery service oper-

ated off campus in Chestnut Hill by BC student volunteers organized under SSH. Students only need to provide their name and address, and RubberHub will ship condoms directly to their campus mailboxes at no cost.

Orders will be delivered twice a month and must be placed before noon the day prior to a delivery. The service comes at no cost to students in the BC community, and it is subsidized by public health grants, Kratz said in an emailed statement. The program made its first delivery on Friday.

During the first first few weeks of the program, RubberHub will only be able to fill its first 300 orders per delivery cycle due to the limited number of student volunteers it currently has. The program intends to raise its order capacity as it recruits more student volunteers, who will be able to work with flexible time commitments ranging from two to three hours per month.

“We look forward to introducing

more students to this community resource and expanding its positive impact on sexual health at Boston College,” Kratz said.

In addition to RubberHub, SSH also announced in a Facebook post that it will have a new tabling location at Boyden Park on St. Thomas More Rd. set up to distribute condoms once a month. Kratz has confirmed that this green space is public property, managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, and that it is considered part of the Chestnut Hill Reservation.

“We are expanding contraceptive access to lower campus to show students we are still striving to serve them following our tremendous victory in the UGBC referendum,” he said.

The group began distributing at the new location on Friday. It will also continue to distribute condoms at its other tabling location on College Road outside of McElroy Dining Hall once a month. n

Inaugural Racial Justice Symposium Held The student-run event explored how to address racial trauma.

By Cole Dady News Editor On Friday morning, the Boston College School of Social Work’s Umoja, a student organization for people of color, hosted the inaugural Racial Justice Symposium, a studentrun event dedicated to providing social workers and scholars with an understanding of how to combat manifestations of racism and racial oppression. The Research in Social, Economic, and Environmental Equity (RISE3) collaborative sponsored the event, as well as the Office of the Dean of SSW. Following a few brief introductory activities to the symposium, which prepared the crowd to listen to difficult topics, Ruth McCoy, director of the RISE3 collaborative and Donahue and DiFelice Professor of Social

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Work, briefly recounted the goal of her initiative, which is to work toward dismantling racism on a micro and macro level.

“Overall, these research reports demonstrated that race, ethnicity, and income each had an impact on one’s access to and also use of child care, and the proportion of one’s income spent on each,” McCoy said.

Following McCoy’s speech, Dean of SSW Gautam Yadama moderated a panel on the history and effects of racism and racial trauma, which featured sociology professor Shawn McGuffey, Polly Hanson-Grodsky, the associate director of “Project Place” and a part-time SSW faculty member; and Philippe Copeland, a clinical assistant professor at the Boston University School of Social Work.

McGuffey spoke first, discussing the structure of racial trauma, which was defined as the negative effect that racism has on the lives of people of color. Racial trauma commonly emerges through historical events, ranging from the state-sponsored per-

FEATURES: Prof. Richardson

Heather Cox Richardson shares her unique brand of history................................................A8

secution of Native Americans through the Trail of Tears to present-day police brutality against African Americans.

It has become ingrained in our cultural system, according to McGuffey, in the language and symbols that used to represent things.

“Sociologists argue that culture directs action both by the oppressor and the oppressed,” McGuffey said.

“These symbols have meaning, and they guide us to do certain things, whether explicitly or implicitly.”

Following McGuffey’s presentation, Hanson-Grodsky discussed how trauma often manifests itself through history and is passed down from generation to generation. She gave the example of Eric Fischl’s “Tumbling Woman” statue, which depicts a woman falling from the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 attacks and received backlash because it was deemed offensive and hard to deal with. So too, she asserted, is racism something people have a collective

See Race Symposium, A3

NEWS: Eagle Escort

The Council for Students with Disabilities is trying to reform the Eagle Escort Service.....A3

See Tuition, A3

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FINANCIAL AID $54,600 $52,500 $50,480

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CSOM Students, Faculty React to Grade Inflation Students vary on whether the problem needs to be addressed.

By Charlie Power Asst. News Editor The Carroll School of Management (CSOM) compiled a report earlier this year that demonstrated grade inflation within the classes in school. This will push professors to grade on the same standard across different sections of the same course, according to Ronnie Sadka, CSOM’s senior associate dean for faculty.

Following this development, The Heights asked various CSOM students and faculty

about their perceptions over whether grade inflation is a problem that should be addressed.

Students appeared to fall on both sides of the issue.

“In general I don’t find grade inflation a big thing in CSOM,” said Jenny Liang, CSOM ’20. “For the classes I have taken so far, the freshman year Portico is an easy A, but other than that I find the grade reflects the effort pretty accurately.”

Dan Paulos, CSOM ’19, agreed, feeling that the grading process within classes he has taken has been consistent with the level of effort he puts in. Others feel there is a significant discrepancy between different

See Grade Inflation, A3

Keith Carroll / Heights editor

Boston hosted its annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday, A5 INDEX

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Vol. XCIX, No. 9 MAGAZINE..................A4 SPORTS......................B1 © 2018, The Heights, Inc. METRO........................ A5 ARTS..........................B8 www.bchelghts.com 69

The Heights

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things to do on campus this week

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Patrick Downes, BC ’05, will lecture on campus in the Yawkey Athletics Center, Murray Function Room tonight at 7:30 p.m. Downes, who was injured in the Boston Marathon bombing, will give the Ignatian Society’s inaugural AMDG lecture. The event is open to all students.

Monday, March 19, 2018

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Samantha Power, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, will give a talk entitled “The State of the World: Challenges and Opportunities,” which will begin at 4 p.m. on Thursday in the Heights Room. Power is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and has worked as a war correspondent.

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The 35th Annual Conference of the American Society for the Study of Islamic Societies will take place on Friday and Saturday.

The event is co-sponsored by the Institute for the Liberal Arts and the Clough Center. See the BC Events Calendar for a full schedule of events and

NEWS Haynes Analyzes Trump-Era Immigration Debate BRIEFS

By Jaehun lee

Research on Solar Catalyst

Dunwei Wang, a Boston College chemistry professor, was one of the lead authors of a report on the development of a new dual-atom catalyst that could serve as a platform for artificial photosynthesis.

The study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, details the synthesization of an iridium catalyst with two metal centers which the researchers hope will have the capability of serving as a productive platform for future investigation on solar fuels.

“Our research concerns the technology for direct solar energy storage,” Wang said to BC News.

“It addresses the critical challenge that solar energy is intermittent.

It does so by directly harvesting solar energy and storing the energy in chemical bonds, similar to how photosynthesis is performed but with higher efficiencies and lower cost.”

According to the report, the catalyst shows outstanding stability and high activity toward water oxidation, an essential process in natural and artificial photosynthesis.

The research team was surprised by the simplicity and durability of the catalyst—next steps include further optimization of the substance for practical use.

Some of the research was conducted at Lawrence Berkeley National L aborator y ’s Advance d Light Source. The site possesses advanced instruments that assisted the researchers in determining the structure of the iridium catalyst.

Funding for the study came from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and Chinese scientific agencies.

Prof. Receives NIA Grant Boston College sociology professor Sara Moorman received a National Institute on Aging grant to study the factors in childhood and adolescence, including socioeconomic status, that influence cognitive function in the later stages of life.

“Better understanding childhood socioeconomic status (SES) as a potential risk or protective factor for later life cognitive health is essential for furthering early detection, prevention, and treatment strategies,” Moorman told BC News.

“Our grant looks at the relationships between early-life factors, particularly socioeconomic status in one’s family of origin, and cognitive function in one’s 60s and 70s.

“We have a fantastic dataset of 10,000 people who began participating in a longitudinal study when they were in high school, and now they are in their 70s,” she said.

Moorman believes programs that invest in early childhood education, such as Medicaid and Head Start, will yield long-term cognitive benefits for participants. It is clear that those who do not have the same experiences are disadvantaged.

“Rural kids, kids who grew up poor, and kids who went to lowquality schools continue to be behind their peers cognitively over 50 years later,” she said.

As a faculty member, Moorman teaches Sociology of Health and Illness, Aging and Society, and Survey Methodology and Topics in Multivariate Statistics.

Moorman’s other areas of research include end-of-life medical decision-making and negative psychological experiences in personal relationships.

Heights Staff

Dina Haynes, professor of law at the New England School of Law, gave a lecture on Friday entitled “Retaliation Nation: How government action aimed at restricting immigration intrudes on foundational democratic principles.” Her appearance was a part of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice’s Rights in Conflict luncheon discussion series.

Haynes began by explaining the topic’s impact and importance, before explaining and analyzing several recent events that highlight a dramatic shift in immigration enforcement agents’ behavior following new executive orders and initiatives by President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Haynes first noted that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services removed “nation of immigrants” from its masthead, suggesting a normalization of nativism, which she believes is a precursor to genocide and ethnic cleansing.

With this in mind, Haynes stressed the importance of not remaining silent, calling it “the greatest threat to democracy.”

She then went into more detail about specific shifts in action by immigration enforcement agents, specifically those undertaken by departments that answer to the executive branch.

First, she talked about U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is responsible for enforcing immigration laws at the borders. She noted that it was taking excessive, inhumane action that was not called for by Trump’s Executive Order 13769, rattling off many examples of young children or infants being separated from their parents for long hours.

“These are just human beings with jobs … who are not required to do those

Photo Courtesy of New England school of Law

Dina Haynes discussed the role that various government agencies are playing in the nationwide debate on immigration.

things to carry out the refugee ban, but decided to,” Haynes said. “It’s … troubling to those in immigration law. We detain a lot of people in the United States who have committed no crime—and when they’re detained, they’re handcuffed and shackled, wear prison jumpsuits, having committed no crime.”

Next, she pointed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying its dramatically increased commitment to finding and deporting illegal immigrants and gang members infringes on our rights protected in the Fourth Amendment, triggering fear in many both for themselves and their loved ones. Haynes found the fact that ICE agents were going to places they did not used to and speaking to children about their parents to be especially troubling.

“What ICE is doing is … to just cast

the net as wide as they can to get information from children about their own family members,” she said. “Schools, hospitals, USCIS offices, churches—they all used to be considered sensitive locations where ICE wasn’t showing up to seek this kind of information.”

A clear issue driving these changes was the fact that not much about what is and is not allowed is dictated in the rules.

“All of the branches of DHS have broad discretion,” Haynes said. “And we’ve just come to realize … that we have a lot of grey areas in the law and the Constitution, a lot of which we ignored because people just didn’t cross those lines: We operated on a certain level of values that we all agreed on … without realizing it …

All of these things we’ve counted on for hundreds of years—there aren’t any laws

saying they need to be done.”

Whatever the causes may be, Haynes emphasized the importance of dealing with these issues as quickly as possible, as the fear triggered by these new practices—such as indicating immigration status on the census—prevents all citizens from going out to exercise their civic duties, like voting. Ultimately, she believes that this causes a democratic deficit, which is an “insufficient level of democracy in political institutions and procedures in comparison with a theoretical ideal of a democratic government.”

“It’s a new world out there in terms of things the government is willing to do,” Haynes said. “For what purpose? Why are they trying to do this? I think only through understanding what their endgame is can we fight it effectively and try to protect the people who are most impacted by it.” n

International Assistants Ease Transition to Life at BC

By Colleen Martin Copy Editor The International Assistant Program, which matches incoming international students with an upperclassman at Boston College, has opened its application for student assistants until March 28.

The program is a year-long commitment, serving as an opportunity for students to act as a resource to international students and help them adjust to life at BC, in Boston, and in America.

International students currently comprise 7 percent of the BC undergraduate population.

Founded in 1980, the program was originally started by a Taiwanese student who wanted to provide a better support system for international

students. During its first decade in operation, there were about 30 IAs matched with 30 incoming freshmen.

Today there are 75 IAs that are matched with two international freshmen and two international exchange students each—there are now over 300 international students in the program.

The IA position is especially crucial for the first month of the school year, as students are learning to adjust to life at BC. All IAs are required to return to campus by Aug. 18 in order to attend International Student Orientation. IAs also attend programs run through the Office of International Students and Scholars throughout the year, including welcome socials, a homemade Thanksgiving dinner, a

holiday social, a Red Sox game, and a Celtics game.

In addition to program-wide events, there are specific gatherings for “cluster groups”—the entire group is split up into nine clusters, each with two returning IAs to organize events for the rest of the students.

While the program was formed primarily to serve as a resource for the international students, it allows the BC students involved to create friendships globally without ever leaving campus.

Krissy Malonne, IA and LSOE ’19, was a freshman when she became friends with an Australian exchange student in one of her classes. He spoke fondly about his IA, and his happiness with the program inspired her to apply for the next year.

“That friendship was like ‘oh

wow, there are so many people from so many cool places’,” Malone said.

“I wanted to have more friendships like that.”

That feeling is mutual among BC and international students alike.

Many students coming into BC find the social scene difficult to navigate, and the IA program is there to assist.

“The IA program was the best start to my Boston College experience,” Thomas Dijkman, a Fall 2017 exchange student, said. “During orientation I met some of my best friends who I spent my semester in America with. My IA was always open for questions and to help me out.

The social aspect of the IA program is something I truly appreciate as it gave me the best welcome at BC that I could have wished for.” n

POLICE BLOTTER: 3/14/18 – 3/15/18 Wednesday, Mar. 14

Thursday, Mar. 15

4:11 p.m. - A report was filed regarding an elevator entrapment at Welch Hall.

12:46 a.m. - A report was filed regarding damage to property by graffiti in Stokes Hall.

11:26 p.m. - A report was filed regarding damage to property by graffiti in Middle Campus.

8:56 a.m. - A report was filed regarding an elevator entrapment in Gasson Hall.

11:07 a.m. - An officer filed a report regarding damage to property with grafitti.

12:48 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a fire alarm at 129 Lake Street.

8:02 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a suspicious person at Stuart Hall.

8:24 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a property confiscation at Stayer Hall.

8:31 p.m. - A report was filed regarding property confiscation at Cushing Hall.

11:47 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a suspicious circumstance.

—Source: The Boston College Police Department

CORRECTIONS How Did You Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? “I went to a friend’s house and wore a green shirt and green necklace.”

—Alex Stopkey, CSOM ’21 “I went out to eat with my friends.”

—Mariana Jimenez, CSOM ’21

“I don’t celebrate because I’m Protestant.

—Catherine Zhang, MCAS ’21

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

“I went out with my friends wearing a green shirt and a shamrock sticker on my face.”

—Aly Dunnington, MCAS ’20

The Heights

Monday, March 19, 2018

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Students Share Thoughts on Grade Inflation Grade Inflation, from A1

Kaitlin Meeks / Heights Editor

Symposium Considers Effect of Racial Trauma Race Symposium, from A1 trauma around, as many deny its existence, keep secrets, and possess shame and guilt about their own race. As a result, the trauma remains, stifling the work of racial justice.

Copeland, the final speaker on the panel, then explained racial trauma with what he called an “abolition frame.” He said that a healthy mind is a type of freedom individuals affected by racial trauma do not enjoy, and he discussed the idea of racial capitalism, which he defined as the use of racism and nationalism to generate and concentrate wealth. Race, he said, is solely a social construct, created to generate wealth for a select few individuals. It also allows us to think about racial trauma both as an outcome and instrument of racial capitalism.

“Nations are no more real than race is,” Copeland said. “They were literally created by the same people for the same reasons—some of it over coffee.”

He cited the 1968 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, which concluded that the country is moving toward two societies—one black, one white—that are separate, but not equal. It explained that discrimination and segregation have long permeated American life and ultimately threaten American unity and basic democratic values.

Copeland brought up a variety of startling statistics, such as that black workers make up 82.5 percent for every dollar made by white workers, and the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family.

“I’d like to suggest to you all that this is one of the ways that racial capitalism looks,” he said. “It’s also one of the ways that racial trauma looks, because it’s a business.”

Copeland suggested the solution to this situation may come through the practice of “abolition democracy,” a term developed by scholar and activist Angela Davis from W.E.B. DuBois. He connects the abolitions of slavery, of the death penalty, and of prisons themselves to the possibility of democracy in the United States and globally. Davis thereby suggests that the prevention of and recovery from racial trauma will come through the eventual cooperation of the entire population, regardless of differences, into American life, ending racial capitalism and achieving social justice.

“People are waking up, they are rising up, and we are gonna get free,” Copeland said. “The cry is always the same. We want to be free. If we cannot get free, we can never get well.”

The day’s second panel, entitled “Racial Healing: Dismantling Racial Trauma in Research, Policy, & Practice in Social Work,” focused on how social workers can tackle issues of race in the field.

Tiziana Dearing, co-director of the Center for Social Innovation, moderated the panel, which featured Janet Helms, Lynch School of Education Augustus Long Professor; Dennie Butler-MacKay, clinical consultant to community programs at the

Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center; Abigail Ortiz, director of community health programs at the Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center; and Ilyitch Tábora, deputy director of the Office of Fair Housing and Equity for the City of Boston.

Helms spoke first, laying out the role that therapy and education can play in lessening the effect of racism on society. She deemed “white heterosexual male privilege” a primary cause of racism, as it allows a select group of people to determine the laws and economic policy that govern society. Racism, she said, ultimately serves as a protector of white privilege and manifests itself in three ways: institutionally, intrapersonally, and interpersonally.

As such, she highlighted the need to train racially competent therapists that would be able to address the needs of individuals who have suffered racial trauma in one of these ways. She emphasized how examining the types of racial identity present in society, having discussions on issues of racism and ethnoviolence, and creating continuing education programs related to these issues will be important in helping to combat societal racism After Helms spoke, Butler-MacKay and Ortiz gave a joint presentation on the Racial Reconciliation and Healing Project, an initiative, which educates a group of young adults of all racial backgrounds on how to discuss issues of race and come up with proactive solutions for them.

“Oftentimes when we are talking about racism, it is seen as a people of color problem,” Butler-MacKay said. “But its not. We didn’t create it. We don’t benefit from it. We are not trying to sustain it. Therefore, it’s not our primary responsibility to dismantle it in all white spaces. And quite frankly, it’s not our primary responsibility to have to educate white folks.”

Her view is that white individuals should work with people of color to dismantle the way in which white supremacy has created divisions between people, hence the methodology behind the Racial Reconciliation and Healing Project.

Lastly, Tábora described how racial justice work can be enacted in the government, saying that, in the space she works, diversification is needed. Although progress has been made in recent years, she urged community activists to continue advocating for the changes they deem necessary.

Various methods of improving the City of Boston’s structure that have been enacted during Tábora’s tenure include creating a hiring toolkit and employee evaluations with a racial equity lens, and responding to the demands of the community. She found in her experience that sometimes being the “race person” is necessary for beginning the conversation on tough issues.

“Government is really about responding to the demands and needs of the community,” she said. “Be that advocate in your work and in your space. Know that you have a role to play in how your the government helps the communities you’re trying to serve. Empower them to voice their concerns.” n

professors.

“It’s also pretty clear that some professors in CSOM are significantly easier than others, but I think that’s pretty natural and that you’d find that in pretty much any college course that has multiple professors,” said Noah Clark, CSOM ’19.

Liang shared this opinion, explaining that the grading system doesn’t appear to be standardized among different professors for some of her classes. She noted a few instances in which she and one of her friends taking the same course with different professors weren’t held to the same standards.

Mohit Aayusha, CSOM ’20, also commented on the discrepancies between the material different professors cover in talking to friends taking the same classes as he does.

Aayusha explained that he and one of his friends, both of whom are enrolled in Basic Finance, appear to be studying different content. In his class, he is currently studying STRIP bonds. But when Aayusha asked his friend, who is supposedly taking the “harder” professor, he was unable to help.

“We have a couple professors in com-

mon, but most of us are in different classes, and we always talk about how our topics are different,” he said. “Not only that, but tests that are supposed to be somewhat departmental vary a lot in terms of difficulty.”

Juan Montes, assistant professor of the practice in the management and organization department, sees more nuance within the issue of grade inflation. He explained that some courses are more demanding than others, while others concentrate a larger population of high achievers than others.

“I don’t want to see my students fail, I want them perceive themselves as competent and professional. My preoccupation is not just in the higher end of the curve, but in the lower end too,” he said in an email.

There is also a persistent attitude that CSOM classes are easier than courses in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, according to Clark.

“I’ve noticed that the average grade in most of my CSOM classes tends to be around a B+, whereas my computer science classes [in MCAS] usually curve to around a B or B- average, with higher expectations in workload,” he said. “This type of grade behavior encourages students to try to stick

to classes purely in CSOM and punishes students for taking on majors and minors in A&S.” Madison Choo, CSOM ’20, takes a different perspective. She believes that higher grades could be a sign that students and professors are “doing their jobs correctly,” and should, therefore, be awarded higher grades.

“CSOM students put in a lot of work to understand class material, and if they are able to learn it and do A-worthy work, then they should get the A,” she said. “Shouldn’t professors and CSOM be happy that there are a lot of As in classes? Doesn’t that mean that they have excelling students and renowned professors? Doesn’t that mean that everyone is doing their best work?”

Regardless of the efforts to diminish grade inflation within CSOM, Montes still believes the grading standards will inevitably vary among courses taught by the same professor.

“I think having general principles and boundaries is a good policy, but there should be always room for flexibility depending on the circumstances and particular cases,” he said. n

Tuition, Financial Aid Continue Growth Tuition, from A1 College to increase financial aid for undergraduate students by $10.7 million, while maintaining our commitment to need-blind admissions and meeting the full demonstrated need of our students,” Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley said to BC News.

The University also announced tuition levels for graduate programs. BC Law School’s tuition is now $54,750, surpassing

last year’s level of $52,640, and a full-time MBA through the Carroll School of Management is $51,200, rising from $49,230.

The Board of Trustees aims to direct its financial resources toward the University’s strategic priorities and increase its financial aid offerings, allowing for “enhanced interdisciplinary collaboration, research that addresses societal needs, and formative education,” Executive Vice President Michael Lochhead told BC News.

“We are mindful of the sacrifices that families make in order to send their children to Boston College, and make every effort to limit tuition increases in recognition of those sacrifices,” Lochhead said. “Our goal in setting tuition this year was to fund programs that enable the University to provide the best possible educational experience for our students while, at the same time, ensuring that BC remains an affordable option for families, regardless of their financial need.” n

CSD Advocates to Improve Eagle Escort Heidi Dong Investigative Editor Almost a year ago, the Undergraduate Government of Boston College Student Assembly (SA) passed “A Resolution Concerning Eagle Escort and Disability Assistance” with a unanimous vote.

The resolution was sponsored by Brendan Ferguson, Georgetown ’20 and previously MCAS ’20, and cosponsored by Hailey Boyan, MCAS ’18, and called for the “University to improve the Eagle Escort service by expanding resources to the service and increasing student access” to the vans. It also urged the “University to take the necessary steps to ensure efficient and quality transportation services” for students.

While the resolution has no concrete action items for the University to take, the purpose of the resolution was largely to demonstrate student desire for a change in the service. Today, the Council for Students with Disabilities (CSD) continues to advocate and work with administration members to better the service. CSD is currently working on releasing a survey to the student body to obtain concrete data on student demand for the service to show administrators.

According to its website, Eagle Escort Services’ mission is to provide safety services to all members of BC’s community when traveling in and around campus, but is not meant to be used as a substitute for public transportation. There are currently two Eagle Escort vans, but only one is active while the other serves as a backup.

The Eagle Escort van currently shuttles students from the Primary Care Center to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital seven times a day, five days a week, in 90-minute intervals. The program also provides medical transportation services to students with a permanent medical or temporary disability who have

registered to be on the medical transport list. Students on the list can be dropped off and picked up on Middle Campus once a day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Additionally, the van provides safety and medical-related transportation for students who are traveling within a 2.5 mile radius of main campus.

Mary Royer, the previous chair of the CSD and LSOE ’17, was a guest speaker during the SA meeting, and provided testimonies that she had received from students about the inefficiencies Eagle Escort.

According to Royer, a student who needed immediate appendicitis assistance waited 40 minutes for an Eagle Escort van to arrive.

Students who have injuries and need Eagle Escort to transport them to main campus often miss or are late to classes, events, and meetings. Royer had also received student testimonies of temporarily disabled students missing or being late to a class due to having to wait for an Eagle Escort van.

The current chair of CSD, Clair Chatellier, MCAS ’19, said that the efforts to expand and reform Eagle Escort’s services and resources have been primarily based on anecdotes that CSD has received from students.

The Heights was unable to verify these anecdotes.

Chatellier had also helped with working on the resolution, and she spoke about how conversations with BC administrators have progressed since then.

“We’ve been working pretty extensively with the administration from prior to the resolution, I would say,” she said. “And our work with the administration hasn’t changed that much because we’ve been talking with them in passing.”

Among the proposed changes to the program include creating a separate shuttle specifically to take students to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, adding another active van so there

are two vans in service at all times, and using student drivers. Currently, according to an email from John King, executive director of public safety and chief of BCPD, the Eagle Escort program is staffed by Campus Security personnel on a daily basis.

From past conversations, Chatellier said that CSD has recognized that to call for any action, it must present concrete data to BC Police Department and the administration that substantiates its proposals for expanding resources for the program.

“Semester by semester, there is a need to revisit the cache of details we have regarding this issue, and in the past, at least to my knowledge, there hasn’t been as much polling as I think there should have been,” said Rohit Banchani, director of policy for CSD and CSOM ’19.

Chatellier also explained that many times students will want to remain anonymous when speaking about disabilities, which she respects and understands, but cites this trend as another difficulty CSD faces when trying to gauge and communicate student demand for the service, as well as most common uses for the service.

“Something that we always have to keep in mind is that a lot of the time information can be legally confidential, and a lot of the time we can’t really ask the community that we’re serving about disabilities,” Chatellier said. “That can be an additional obstacle when trying to reach our constituents.”

CSD has been focused on working with Dean of Students Thomas Mogan to create and roll out a survey to the student body to collect data on student demand for the service, reactions from students who have used the program, the most used aspect of the service, and more.

“The survey will go out to students with disabilities by the end of the semester,” Banchani said. n

The Heights

A4

Monday, March 19, 2018

Ann Wolbert Burgess is the Mind Behind the Mindhunter

By Olivia Tobin For The Heights “That’s her,” said Holden Ford, FBI special agent, to Bill Tench as a yellow taxi pulled up.

Out steps the professor, Wendy Carr, to consult on Ford’s project and help with the classification of subjects in the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit. Her introduction comes after Ford states she “has something,” prompting the gruff Tench to comment on Carr’s beauty only to be refuted by Ford’s excitement at her interest in the project. Carr pointed out the admiration for, and prominence of various sociopaths in the world—pointing to the examples of Andy Warhol and Richard Nixon. Carr then states, “Thats why this work is so vital—it goes so much further than the FBI.” Carr is the constant voice in Netflix’s series, Mindhunter, reminding the eager agents to remember science in all of their work with serial killers. Exciting and flashy, the show is partially based on one of the Connell School of Nursing’s own, Ann Wolbert Burgess.

“That’s her,” I thought, as soon as I walked into her office, Maloney 371.

I could tell that the woman sitting at the desk, absorbed in thought, was not the kind of person to mince words or waste time. Burgess had scheduled our interview for 2:40 p.m., not 2:30, not 3—something only people who know the true value of every minute of their time do.

Maybe all of her superstar would have been intimidating, if I wasn’t met by an immediate and welcoming invitation to come inside her office and make myself comfortable. She gave me a moment to get settled, and then, with a smile that gently reminded me that there is no time like the present, said, “Well, then, let’s get started.”

Burgess, who was a nurse, applied the conventions of her primarily female field to the male-dominated fields she found herself in. The woman sitting before me managed to forge a path, past inherent sexism, in the treatment of victims of trauma. She co-founded one of the first hospital crisis response programs, then worked with FBI Academy special agents to study serial killers. Called a “Living Legend” by the American Academy of Nursing, she has received various honors, including, but not limited to, the Sigma Theta Tau International Audrey Hepburn Award, the American Nurses’ Association Hildegard Peplau Award, and the Sigma Theta Tau International Episteme Laureate Award. Her most recent and popularly known honor is, of course, having a character based on her in Mindhunter.

In the blood-pumping series, working simultaneously in the man’s world and an arena of violence, Burgess’s

character, Wendy Carr, works for the FBI in helping connect sex crimes to serial killers—universalizing databases and leading to connection of all the data for prevention of further offenses.

Burgess herself has spent the majority of her career as a forensic nurse. Her profession comes as no surprise, as she hails from an accomplished family of doctors and nurses.

“My uncle was in a kind of rural area in Maryland, and I’d go out with him, out to the houses, and he’d deliver babies ... The next week there’d be a basket of apples or potatoes on the back porch— that’s how he got paid,” she said.

Burgess’s homegrown and unconventional initial exposure to medicine inspired her to go on to earn her bachelor’s degree from Boston University, her master’s degree from the University of Maryland, and her doctorate of nursing sciences, also from BU. When Burgess began teaching at Boston College in the 1980s, she initially did not have any knowledge of research focused on rape, as few academics had published research on sexual violence.

She was approached by sociology professor Lynda Holmstrom to start a new kind of research in order to help female rape victims. As a nurse, Burgess had access to hospitals and could act as a trustworthy figure for said victims—this would become essential to her and Holmstrom’s research, as Holmstrom could then interview the patients Burgess found and collect honest data.

Finding and speaking with victims during this time was an incredibly daunting task—“not that it’s any easier now,” she quickly acknowledged—and it was only through the careful interviewing of selected victims that Burgess and Holmstrom’s studies resulted in such success.

Her work aided the development of the universal method of diagnosing and assessing victims of rape. Now, police and doctors are more accurately able to determine the severity of a victim’s trauma and prescribe the most effective response.

“We put trauma on the map,” she said.

After her initial research into the diagnosis of victims, Burgess took what she had learned and began to look at the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes.

“This is, of course, is where the FBI came in,” she said in anticipation of the inevitable question about the methodologies she developed that became the inspiration for Netflix’s newest original series Mindhunter.

Burgess speaks about her research and accomplishments in such a way that makes them understandable for anyone not well-versed in forensic victimology, but not so simplified that you miss the

Sam zhai / Heights staff

Professor Ann Wolbert Burgess helps stretch the minds of her students in CSON as they work to become future mindhunters. complexity and importance of the work.

She started by explaining the lack of sophistication of forensics at the time—she did, after all, begin her work in a time before the use of DNA as evidence, when police relied on blood type in order to catch offenders, which is far too broad to be at all reliable.

It was from this frustration that she and her FBI team—special agents Bob Ressler and Holden Ford—started to work backwards from crime scenes in order to identify the personality traits of offenders, such as the tendency of serial killers and rapists to “hunt” in the same area or for the same type of woman, as opposed to physical ones, such as blood type.

“All you have at a crime scene is the body,” she explained, and though that seems like an obvious statement, acknowledgment and leverage of the body and crime scene as a psychological resource for solving crimes was the first major step that needed to be taken in order for her work at the FBI to occur at all.

Of course, it was this interest in catching these serial offenders that led to Burgess, Ressler, and Ford conducting the interviews and studying the cases that inspired Mindhunter and their development of cutting-edge methods for crime scene analyzation. When asked about the accuracy of the show, Burgess is quick to state that it is the portrayal of the cases that is most accurate on the show, as opposed to her own personal stories.

She gives the specific example of the Jerry Brudos case—Brudos brutally murdered several women and fetishized red high-heel shoes. She described how the introduction of a high-heeled shoe to Brudos’s subject interview on the show

was fictitious but based on a different case where Ressler brought detective magazine covers into an interview with a subject who had an obsession with them in order to get the subject to talk about why he committed his heinous crimes, which was highly successful.

Burgess, Ressler, and Ford were in perpetual pursuit of the “whys” behind serial killings, and their work helped law enforcement begin to understand the seemingly unknowable motivations of America’s most dangerous criminals.

Though the research featured on the show was highly accurate, Burgess said that a lot of the personal information and interactions featured on the show were not. One of the big issues for Burgess was that the show portrays her as a psychologist instead of a forensic nurse. “I got that corrected as quickly as I could,” she said. It is easy to understand her frustration.

In addition to being miscredited in the context of her career, Burgess addressed the glaringly obvious plot line of overt sexism by FBI agents toward the character that she inspired on the show, and gave a surprising answer when asked, “What was your experience in the boys’ club that was the FBI?” “Honestly, I really thought about this, and it didn’t matter [that I’m a woman],” she passionately attested. She acknowledged that it was “95 percent men” during her time at Quantico and that most women were in more administrative roles as opposed to being agents, but insists that everyone was still treated as an equal in the workplace. She spoke with great fondness of her time with the FBI. All of the research was on the workers’ own time, and out of pocket, so she and her fellow researchers truly bonded and worked as equals—she even goes so

far as to call them her “brothers.”

Her daughter and partner on a handful of FBI cases, administrative assistant for the Gabelli Presidential Scholars Program Sarah Gregorian, confirmed how much of a family affair it was for Burgess to work on cases with her partners. Burgess’s partners often came and worked at her house on projects, and Gregorian got even more involved in her mother’s work when she interned with her at the FBI offices in Quantico, Va. Burgess moved on from her work at the FBI and dove even further into the depths of forensic nursing, which has garnered her international recognition and acclaim. She has been asked to do talks and has completed interviews about feminism and being a prominent professional as a woman in countries including Iceland and Greece, and has also been asked to discuss her research in a talk at the Department of Justice.

It’s really no surprise that the writers and directors of Mindhunter used Burgess as a source of inspiration for the show—she has worked for decades on some of the most taboo and controversial topics in our society, and she has acted as a voice for the victims of sexual assault and rape that were unable to speak up for themselves. She worked collaboratively both here at BC and at the FBI in order to achieve her goals, and she is still working hard every day for her causes.

Burgess is relentlessly inquisitive, passionate, and humble—never boasting or seeming to care that her work is winning her awards as long as it is useful.

When asked if there was one thing about her mother that she would want to share with the world, Gregorian answered, “She never sits down, and never lets anything stand in her way.” n

A Girl in the Boy’s Club: Judge Stefanie Martinez BC ’93

By Colleen Martin Copy Editor Judge Stefanie Martinez, BC ’93, is living in a man’s world.

According to a report by the National Women’s Law Center that was published on Oct. 13, 2016, there are only six court districts out of the 94 in the United States that have never had a female judge. When she was appointed in 2013, Martinez was the first Hispanic judge in Nebraska and the first female judge in her district.

She’s paving the way for others to follow suit, something that she has already seen in practice, as another female judge was appointed in her district in September. Some see it as a step in the right direction. Martinez sees it as coming too late.

“It was about time,” she said.

Martinez works in the second Judicial District in Nebraska, a region just outside of Omaha. Martinez considers it to be a metropolitan area, but it lacks some of the progressive characteristics that most cities have in common.

Martinez has managed to break through the glass ceiling and onto the bench, but her time in the courts hasn’t been all smooth sailing. She feels that she and her female colleague have not been treated the same as their male counterparts. For example, her colleague once shared with her that she had been with male colleagues as they whispered about their lunch plans in an attempt to exclude

the women in the office.

“It’s horrific to me that that’s the culture that we’re dealing with in this day and age,” Martinez said.

Martinez has made it her personal mission to pull other women up into the stations and statuses that she has been able to enter. She looks to the very basic level for people to help: high school debate teams and law school students. She encourages students to reach out to her for anything she can help them with. Her community-oriented spirit is nothing new—she first cultivated her passion for public service while at Boston College.

She was part of the PULSE program, which combines learning in the classroom with community service in the Boston area.

Her placement with the Big Sister program cultivated her compassion, her listening skills, and the creativity to address problems that she has used throughout her career. It was this kind of education, centered in more than just acquiring the basic skills necessary to graduate and get a job, that attracted Martinez to BC in the first place.

Raised in New Jersey by a Cuban father and an Italian mother, Martinez was introduced to religion at a very young age.

As she looked for colleges, she wanted to go somewhere that supported and maintained those values that her parents had instilled in her.

Both of her parents had received

religious educations: Her father attended the University of Scranton, and her mother was raised going to Catholic schools and earned her degree from Marywood College.

“The Jesuit experience was something that my parents had had,” Martinez said. “They thought very highly of it, and I fell in love with BC the minute that I went there.”

Although Martinez didn’t know what she wanted to major in when she was applying to colleges, she always knew that she wanted to be a lawyer.

In high school, she had a history teacher who was enrolled in Seton Hall Law School. The teacher would tell them about the interesting cases she was learning about every morning in class, and it fascinated Martinez.

It wasn’t until she had an internship with Bronx County Supreme Court justice Patricia Williams that she knew that she wanted to find her way to the bench.

After attending New York Law School, Martinez decided she wanted to try to go far away from home and see something new. When a friend from law school told her he had connections in Nebraska, she moved.

One husband, four kids, and 20 years later, Martinez is still loving the Midwestern values and atmosphere Nebraska offers that feel so similar to how she was raised on the East Coast.

Martinez started her career at a family law firm before becoming a public defender. When she first moved

to Nebraska, she spoke with someone at Creighton University’s career development office. Since it was a Jesuit school, they had the resources to connect her to the local Sacred Heart parish, where she met a woman that introduced her to to a job at the public defender’s office. Martinez stresses that everything that she’s been able to do has come from being open to taking advantage of every opportunity that has presented itself to her.

Most of the people that she met and networked with were individuals that she just happened upon through exploring her new city and its judicial system.

Without her mentors, Martinez says, she would not be in the position that she is right now. Without even realizing it, she became a mentor to other people. She recently spoke to someone that she had met years ago, when the girl was a high school student and Martinez was a public defender.

Martinez had let the girl shadow her and put her in touch with a judge that she knew. That girl told Martinez that it was the experience she had that day that inspired her to go to law school.

“Sometimes you don’t even know that you’re being a mentor,” Martinez said. “Just offering your time and consideration to somebody might be enough.”

Although she gets joy from being able to provide younger people with the guidance that she was afforded

by her mentors, successfully residing over a case involving children is the most rewarding part of her job.

It’s very emotionally taxing, but if she can resolve a familial interest so that a child is leaving with two loving parents and a stable home, she’s happy, she says. It’s the cases where the damage has already been done to the child that are hardest to leave at the office.

Martinez explained that in the case of abuse or human trafficking, even if you make a decision that pleases everyone, you can never change what happened to an innocent child.

She’s committed to getting more women and minorities into the office and making it a positive space for everyone to work in. She believes the best way to do that is talking to her female colleague and having an open dialogue with their male counterparts to express how she perceives their behavior toward the two of them She doesn’t want to leave and go somewhere more liberal, and possibly more accepting. She knows that every place has its own problems, even if it can sometimes feel overwhelming where she is.

With continued mentorship, and pushing for women in every field, Martinez won’t be lonely in law for long.

But for now, all she can do is hold her ground and push other women to succeed.

“There’s a boys club—and there’s me,” she said. n

The Heights

Monday, March 19, 2018

TOP

3

things to do in Boston this week

1

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will participate in a panel at Harvard’s Institute of Politics on Tuesday at 6 p.m. called #NEVERAGAIN: How Parkland Students are Changing the Conversation on Guns. Tickets were distributed via a lottery system, but the event will be live streamed.

A5

2

The March for Our Lives will take place in Boston on Saturday. It is a nationwide demonstration in protest of gun violence with the end goal of pushing Congress to enact gun control legislation. The march seeks to make safety a priority following recent mass school shootings.

3

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will host a concert on Thursday as part of its RISE music series, creating a whole new way for audiences to connect with pop, rock, and hiphop artists. The show will feature soul, funk, and R&B group The A-Beez

METRO Theatre Production Takes Candid Look at Suicide BRIEFS

By Colleen Martin Copy Editor

Ice cream. Water fights. Staying up past your bedtime to watch TV. These are the first three reasons that a little girl (Adrianne Krstansky) gives her mother to stay alive after her first suicide attempt in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of Every Brilliant Thing. The show tracks the unnamed girl as she grows into a teenager, a college student, and finally an adult. With a candid look at suicide, the stigma surrounding it, and the depression that may accompany it, Every Brilliant Thing captures the viewer’s attention using only the relatability and resilience of the human spirit that Krstansky so incredibly channels.

It requires no set, only chairs arranged in a square looking down at the floorspace where Krstansky spends most of her time throughout the production—although she was not averse to running behind the rows of chairs filled with audience members watching her every move. They had to be paying attention, otherwise they might miss their cues.

As people file into the theater, they’re handed small slips of construction paper cut out into stars, post-it notes, and old scraps of paper. On each of them is a number and a short phrase. Throughout the production, Krstansky will call out a number and the audience member with the corresponding card reads aloud.

201. Hammocks 1000. When someone lends you books

1857. Planning a declaration of love 2000. Coffee The lists grow as the narrator does, as she calls on the people closest to her to help her understand and cope with the mental illness affecting her mother and ultimately herself. She asks her father, the older gentleman with glasses and a British accent sitting in the second row; her school counselor, the second British audience member, who enthusiastically accepts her role to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if she were actually a counselor; and finally her boyfriend, the younger guy sitting in the front row.

It seems intimidating. Some of the audience is forced to completely improvise—when the narrator asks the counselor if she was happy as a little girl, she gives her no cue as to what she’s supposed to say.

At first it seems dangerous. How can they expect a random person to come up with a thoughtful answer on such short notice?

Perhaps that’s the point. Maybe we’re supposed to realize that anyone could ask us heavy questions and we might have to come up with something sensitive and supportive on the spot. Even if you aren’t the person under pressure at the theater, you’re thinking about what you would say if that were you. For many people seeing Every Brilliant Thing, sitting in that theater might be the first time they ever considered their answers to these difficult questions.

No one would have blamed the father and the counselor and the boyfriend if they couldn’t come up with good answers. I didn’t expect anything outstanding—they were just people expecting to see a play, af-

DeLeo Under Fire Over NDAs

Photo by Colleen martin / Heights Editor

Each audience member was given a slip of paper with a number and a short phrase.

ter all. But they answered with enthusiasm, eloquence, and insight that was inspiring to see—so much so that it elicited applause from the rest of the crowd.

“We celebrate you,” director Marianna Bassham said of the people chosen to improvise. “We clap for you, we love you, and we can’t believe you just did that. It’s so great.”

What might be the most powerful piece of the play is its relatability—sitting in the chairs listening to someone list all of the things that they love and realizing you love all of the same things, no matter how general or specific it may get, is something that doesn’t happen often.

997. Cycling downhill 9997. Being cooked for 9998. Watching someone watch your favorite film “That familiarity is really great to ground the play,” Bassham said.

Every Brilliant Thing was written by

British playwright Duncan MacMillan and was first produced in 2013 at the Ludlow Fringe Festival. It’s running in Boston from March 2 to March 31, in the round in the Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

After every Thursday evening performance, there is a panel featuring a doctor from the McLean Hospital and one representative from Massachusetts National Alliance on Mental Illness’s In Our Own Voice Program. All speakers from that program are individuals who have experienced mental illness, are in recovery, and are willing to share their stories.

“It’s really good to have an actual conversation with somebody about that stuff, because it’s hard,” Bassham said. “I think one of the themes of the play is like ‘We can talk about this. We can all just be in a room and have a conversation, and we will all take care of eachother.’” n

Living on the Edge: My First Experience at Grafitti Alley Photo by Keith Carroll / Heights Editor

St. Patrick’s Day Parade Follows Shortened Route

By Keely Dickes For The Heights

Crowds of green f looded the streets of South Boston Sunday for the 117th St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Neon green wigs and hats of various kinds spotted the sidewalk. Three little girls clumped together in the front row, hair dyed green, each with a headband of a Leprechaun hat or two four-leafed clovers.

Parents and families clustered on porches of houses behind the sidewalk, talking in groups and giving out the occasional cheer.

There was some concern over whether the parade would follow its usual route—3.2 miles beginning at the Broadway T Station and ending at the Andrew T Stop—or an adapted one due to the recent snowstorm.

The parade organizers, the Allied War Veterans’ Council of South Boston (AWVCSB), pushed for the traditional route, citing its historical significance and the fact that it ran successfully in harsher weather conditions than was expected for Sunday. Ultimately it was Mayor Marty Walsh’s decision: He opted for the shortened route.

“Our number one priority will always be to keep our residents safe at all times,” said Walsh, BC ’09, in an official statement.

The adapted route began at the same place and ended at Farragut Road, 1.4 miles shorter than the original.

The MBTA provided free bus rides from the T station to the parade, helping to transport the masses. It

was a cold, bright day and spirits were high.

Crowds were so thick at some places that it was difficult to walk, but they thinned out at others along the road and allowed for clear viewing. A total of 250 groups marched, including 75 floats and 35 bands. The groups were as diverse as they were numerous: a bagpipe band, a float with cartoon characters such as a minion and a dancing Pikachu, Miss Boston, a creature made of balloons, and many more.

Pe ople che ere d from behind yellow rope on both sides of East Broadway as the parade passed by, accepting high-fives from participants or holding up their hands to catch green necklaces.

Kids bent down to pick up lollipops as people tossed candy from floats. Enthusiasts flocked to the event to celebrate Irish heritage, have fun with friends, or just to enjoy the scene.

“It’s a really good bonding experience,” said Javier Diaz, MCAS ’21.

“Especially for people from BC, so they get a good taste of what Boston is like.

It was Liz Deluca of Brooklyn, N.Y.’s first time seeing the parade in Boston, but she had been to the one in Savannah, G.A. She was impressed by the attendees’ ability to brave the cold, barely giving any indication that they minded it.

“I haven’t seen too much rowdiness or anything like that,” Deluca said. “Overall everybody’s having a good time. Everybody’s been really friendly.” n

Isabel Fenoglio I don’t know why I was nervous.

When I first caught sight of the stainless steel cage consuming the center of the art store, I couldn’t help but start fidgeting.

So I decided to take a lap. While pretending to browse the scrapbook aisle, I pulled out my phone and whispered, “Siri, how old do you have to be to buy spray paint?”

Siri confirmed for the tenth time that day that, yes, I was old enough.

“This is ridiculous,” I muttered to myself. “Don’t be a baby, suck it up.”

“What was that?” Siri asked.

Luckily, no one else was in the scrapbook aisle to witness this unfold.

I put my phone away in shame, determined to get my paint and leave.

I found a nice looking employee, who unlocked the cage and gave me a can.

Everything was going smoothly until checkout, when the lady at the counter put down the scanner and casually asked the one question I couldn’t answer.

“What do you need the spray paint for?”

My face flushed, and I started smiling maniacally like a crazy person.

Ask anyone who knows me and they will confirm that I’m a terrible liar. I looked from the can of spray paint back to the cashier and stuttered, “Oh, um, nothing. Just a poster board for a, umm, school project.”

Somehow the lie worked, and I walked out of the store suspiciously clutching a paper bag like the criminal I was about to become. I did not buy the spray paint for a school project—I was on my way to graffiti a wall.

In between 565 and 567 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge is an alleyway dedicated to street art. A 24 hour open air gallery, its entrance is identified by two signposts, one reading “Richard B. ‘Rico’ Modica Way,” and the other “Graffiti Alley.” Visitors enter to find a passageway bursting with life.

Decorated in graffiti, the alleway high-

lights the beauty of ephemerality, and celebrates the vibrancy and creativity of the people of Boston.

One side features a mural commissioned by the city in 1997, consisting of a collage of black-and-white photos of people and places around Central Square. The other side serves as an empty canvas for artists and visitors to paint freely, bursting with bold shapes, scribbles, and drawings that are constantly being updated. A plastic “stained -glass ceiling” adorns the alley and casts colorful shadows onto the already lively walls.

Graffiti Alley attracts everyone, from artists, to tourists, to locals, who use the passage as a shortcut to the public parking lot on the other side of the street. The site is referred to by many as one of the Boston’s “most Instagrammable” spots and is a perfect location for updating one’s social media with “edgy” pictures.

By the time I got there the sun was beginning to set. Gazing at the wall in front of me, I looked for an empty space to leave my mark. Selecting a spot near the bottom, I took out the can and pressed down. A soft spray of paint released, quickly covering the wall with a new layer of color. I had no idea what to draw, and have zero artistic ability, so I quickly scribbled a lopsided smiley face and signed my name.

After I finished, I stepped back cautiously, and looked from side to side. I was surrounded by people, but no one looked angry or upset at what I had done. So I put the can back in the paper bag, and headed onto Massachusetts.

Ave. Before I rounded the corner, I turned to look back down Graffiti Alley.

At the bottom of the wall, my smiley face was already lost amid the chaos of colors surrounding it. I don’t know how long it will last before another drawing takes its place, but that smiley face will forever connect me to the city.

Next time I go back, I won’t be afraid to leave my mark, and, hopefully, I’ll come up with something a little

more creative to add to the wall.

Isabel Fenoglio is the assistant metro editor for The Heights. She can be reached at metro3@bcheights.com.

Democrat Massachusetts House Representatives Diana DiZoglio and Angelo M. Scaccia called out House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo on Thursday for not disclosing “improprieties” through the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), according to The Boston Globe.

DeLeo claimed initially that although NDAs were used by the House, they were not related to sexual harassment claims. DiZoglio revealed on the House floor that one of the NDAs was her own and it pertained to a sexual harassment complaint she filed. She qualified her response by telling the Globe that the writers of the NDAs used specific wording so as not to indicate the NDA was about sexual harassment issues.

Scaccia questioned how much money DeLeo’s House had spent to keep signees quiet and called for an investigation by the Attorney General’s office.

DeLeo responded to his colleagues’ complaints in a statement to the Globe, saying the comments were “irresponsible speculation.”

He went on to say new House rules regarding sexual harassment policy refuted the lawmakers’ claims.

DeLeo also does not believe an investigation is necessary. A day later, DeLeo went on to defend his actions further, as in new House rules, the use of NDAs is not strictly prohibited.

MBTA to Hike Rates in 2019 The Massachusetts Bay Transp or tation Authority (MBTA) announced on Wednesday that it will raise fares in July 2019 when the fiscal year begins. According to CommonWealth Magazine, rising expenses will require the rate hike, since further reducing costs would affect service.

“It’s more helpful for the traveling public to see modest fare increases over time than what has been a pattern in the past,” Joseph Aiello, chairman of the Fiscal and Management Control Board, told CommonWealth. In the past, prices would increase by 10 or 12 percent, whereas the current law is that increases cannot be more than 7 percent.

Boston College Transportation and Parking services told The Heights that it expects the discount for students at BC to remain the same as it is now—11 percent of posted pass prices—when the rate hike occurs.

Baker Reveals Climate Budget Governor Charlie Baker released a $1.4 billion bond bill, which, if passed, “would authorize spending on climate change preparedness and environmental protection,” according to masslive.com.

The bill would pay for many of the repairs required after another tough winter season and also serves as an investment commitment in regards to preparing the region for further effects derived from climate change.

Conservation activists indicated their support for the bill. The candidate Baker will run against this fall, Democrat Setti Warren, “questioned Baker’s decision to file a bond bill rather than actually allocating new money.

The Heights

A6

EDITORIAL

Monday, March 19, 2018

QUOTE OF THE DAY

SSH Offers Rational Compromise for Contraceptive Distribution

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

- Abraham Lincoln

After Students for Sexual campus location in Chestnut nature, students are neither presHealth (SSH) released the results Hill. Students can sign up for the sured by SSH nor discouraged by of a survey that revealed a fraction service through a Google Form, the University to participate in of Boston College students’ sex- posted on the group’s website and RubberHub. The free service is a ual health practices, the student Facebook page, by noon the day reasonable compromise between group organized a referendum prior to the delivery date. How- SSH and the University: It is not to determine the level of student ever, with a limited number of associated with BC nor does it support for contraceptive dis- volunteers, SSH can only deliver publicly distribute contraceptives tribution on campus. Indicating contraceptives to 300 students in on campus, and it equips intersignificant student support, the one delivery cycle. With more vol- ested students with the means to referendum was ultimately inef- unteers, the group would likely be practice safe sex. fective in compelling the Because RubberHub is University to act, since it completely student-run, it has announced its decision “Moreover, it is a pragmatic mimics the 1993 “BC conto uphold its policy that dom,” which was sold door solution to students’ interest in to door in dorms by a single prevents students from distributing contraceptives receiving contraceptives and the student—SSH, however, on campus. This decision, appropriately avoids afhowever, did not deter SSH University’s Jesuit Catholic Values.” filiating this effort with the from its efforts to provide University. While the stufree and convenient condent group has distributed traceptives to students. able to distribute more condoms and will continue to distribute On March 13, the organization more efficiently. condoms every two weeks from announced on Facebook that its Offering a beneficial com- alternating public locations near new student-run condom deliv- promise between SSH and the campus, RubberHub offers stuery service, RubberHub, would University, this service encour- dents a free, discreet service that launch the following Friday. Twice ages students to practice safe doesn’t pressure students who a month, RubberHub will provide sex without imposing on the aren’t interested. Moreover, it is students with free contraceptives Catholic values of BC, as well as a pragmatic solution to students’ that can either be delivered to students who do not support the interest in receiving contracepstudents’ mailboxes or retrieved distribution of contraceptives tives and the University’s Jesuit by students from from an off- on campus. Due to its discrete Catholic values.

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The Heights

Monday, March 19, 2018

A7

Accept Leaflets, Generate Change (Not So) Smart Cities 69

69

Mahiima Menghani parades - Parades are just masses of people watching large organized groups walking and sitting on vehicles going irritatingly slowly down a relatively short predetermined path for approximately three miles. But there’s still something so exciting about going to a parade, whether you’re in it or just watching it.

What’s really great about parades is that they can celebrate literally anything: There are so many events that are celebrated with parades that increase the happiness and excitement surrounding them. Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade brings everyone together because of the strong Irish identity in the city and creates friendly atmosphere, even if the temperature never grows past the 20s. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is one of the most celebrated parades, even though it seems contradictory to express gratitude with such extravagance. New Orleans introduces Mardi Gras with weeks of parades and beads and colors and unreasonable superstitions like not being able to pick beads up from the ground. No matter what, whether you’re watching from the side or actually participating in the organized chaos, parades bring people together to celebrate something in undefiled delight (and pretty often drunkenness).

69

Early in the fall semester, I searched for clubs to join at the annual Student Involvement Fair and signed up for as many as I could alongside other eager students. When I passed the table for Boston College Animal Advocates (BCAA), a club supporting animal welfare, an upperclassman handed me a pamphlet that sought to persuade readers to believe in the club’s cause.

As a vegetarian and an animal-lover, I perused through the flyer and felt all the rage that I was meant to feel. Photos of malnourished chickens jammed into battery cages, pigs alone in crates unable to move, and calves separated from their mothers for veal production succeeded in appealing to my emotions. This flyer not only encouraged me to join BCAA in its efforts to raise awareness of animal welfare issues but also pushed me to make more conscientious food choices in the dining halls, even to consider veganism. But how many of us actually even bother to look through pamphlets on real, pressing issues with factory farming? How many of us could educate ourselves on how food reaches our plates, but choose, instead, to remain in blissful ignorance?

I’m guilty of this, too. Like others, I’m quick to disregard the many pamphlets that have been handed out to me about religious groups and charity events because I believe that my time is simply too valuable to be spent reading a flyer that doesn’t immediately interest me. The unwillingness of people to change their beliefs or sacrifice minutes of their time explains why leafleting, coupled with the stigma surrounding vegan activism, seems an ineffective “call to action” strategy for groups like PETA and Vegan Outreach, who should expect to sway the opinions of only two individuals out of every 100 that are handed the informa-

tion. With the opportunity costs of time, transportation, and money spent on printouts, the advancement of social change through leaflets appears an inefficient tactic that leads to piles of papers in trash bins and wasted efforts of club members. But when the benefits are measured in the number of animals’ lives saved by an occasional conversion to vegetarianism along with conversations sparked on campus by a group’s actions, the costs are worth it.

Still, education remains a the central tenet of the BCAA, and pamphlets prove effective in drawing attention to problems with unjust farming practices that are still widely unknown by many meat-eaters. Outreach groups like BCAA and Vegan Outreach make this information readily accessible to students so that the abuses of industrial meat production may be confronted and eventually lessened through collective action. Even if just one BC student decides to cut down on meat consumption throughout the week after reading a pamphlet, that choice helps reduce the University’s indirect contribution to factory farms. Taking the initiative with simple methods of persuasion, like leafleting, can bring about the necessary conversation on campus that spreads awareness of the suffering and hidden negative externalities exacerbated by the current factory farming model.

Too often I listen to my peers ridiculing animal rights groups for their pushiness, or criticizing them for evoking guilt from those who glance at their pamphlets. Animal advocacy groups like BCAA recognize, however, that without eye-catching, impassioned statements and graphic images, society may never understand the true costs of cheap meat. If students feel guilt while looking at flyers, they exhibit the intended response and may feel defensive, since heightened awareness leads to disillusionment or targets long-held beliefs. It’s understandable why we are slow to accept the cruel consequences of industrialization—those who empathize with suffering animals may be forced to

come to terms with a harsh reality, while those who remain closed-off to lifestyle changes may feel annoyed by the repeated attempts groups make to try to change behaviors.

My point here isn’t that everyone should become a vegetarian, but rather that students should take a few minutes to educate themselves on factory farming as well as other issues outlined in the pamphlets that we receive and discard so frequently without a second thought. It is admittedly painful to learn about the inhumane conditions that livestock are subjected to, and equally painful to try to question the values we have held throughout our lives. Still, turning a blind eye to the plight of animals—or to any of the controversial issues surrounding society today—does not provide a solution. When we become more open-minded toward educating ourselves and willing to reflect on our own behaviors, we may finally make an informed decision in regards to aligning our food consumption patterns to our principles.

As students, we are responsible for educating ourselves as much as possible over the next four years and eventually adopting changes, even in just our eating habits, that echo our concerns for the world’s problems.

Diet shifts do not address all animal welfare abuses, but every decision has an impact, including the decision to read through a flyer and to start a conversation about the topic thereafter.

Without knowledge of animal welfare issues, we may never begin to devise a solution and, as a result, will continue to ignore the problems that are not visible to us on a daily basis. Thus, I advise all students to read pamphlets in the future and to remain receptive to the increased knowledge that may then guide our personal decisions as well as our ethical standards. Only then may we wield our decision-making power to shape production practices consciously rather than carelessly.

Mahima Menghani is an op-ed columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

Frustrations in College Recruiting BC’s Toasters - How do you like your toast? Untoasted and warm, or so burnt that you’d break your teeth trying to bite into it? At BC, those are your only options. You put a slice of bread through the toaster three times and its crunchiness barely changes. Now, you have this slice of bread that lies lukewarm and limp on your plate as you stare at it and loathe its lack of texture.

This resentment for your “toast” will translate to other aspects of your life and at this point, you’re so irritated it will affect you for the rest of your life. Next time, you set the conveyor to go as slow as possible. But then, your bread is only halfway through the toaster when suddenly you see smoke pouring out of all of the openings in the toaster. You scramble to turn the dial that increases the speed of the conveyor so that your toast doesn’t burst into flames, cause the toaster to explode, and the fire alarm in Mac to go off for the third time that week. Then, after the whole building evacuates and they figure out that your burnt toast caused such an irritating inconvenience in everyone’s day, you’ll never eat toast again because of the PTSD it now triggers. No matter what, you will be disappointed in the toasters at BC. But hey, go ahead and try to make toast, what’s the worst that could happen, right?

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Jack Nelson The recent scandal that rocked college basketball gave the public a window into the corrupt practices that lure the nation’s top talent to big-time schools. Players are receiving cash and cars, and recruiting visits are replete with strippers and raucous parties.

Like it or not, perhaps this is the reality for the top echelon of recruits.

But for the other 99 percent of college athletes, the recruiting process plays out much differently. For non-revenue sports such as baseball, recruiting is far less glamorous, yet every bit as stressful. Moreover, no two recruiting experiences are the same.

Players progress at different rates and commit at different times. There is no structural framework or ideal roadmap. It is an inexact science that can completely consume an athlete.

For me personally, the recruiting process was extremely frustrating. My freshman year of high school I decided I wanted to play college baseball, but I also prioritized attending a school with an elite academic reputation. I began to compile a fairly narrow list of schools that I wanted to attend and began to work toward my goal. Schools often begin to identify potential prospects around their sophomore year of high school. As a player, you desire the maximum exposure possible, which means that, in addition to high school baseball, you play a pretty heavy summer tournament circuit. I attended tournaments all along the East Coast, from Connecticut and upstate New York all the way down to Georgia.

Along the way, I would diligently email coaches, explaining my interest and

hopefully persuading them to come watch me pitch.

Despite my persistence, I had little success finding my ideal match in a school. I was very naive in the beginning: I thought it would be easy to attract attention. As the summer after my junior year of high school (the prime time for college commitments) was winding down, I stood without even a nibble from my top choices.

I didn’t speak to the coaches at Boston College until late spring of my senior year—incredibly late in the recruiting process for any prospective BC athlete. My saving grace was that I had maintained my grades and scored well on the SAT. As a student, I was accepted to BC, and this gave me the opportunity to achieve my goal of playing baseball at a higher level. My academic strengths bought me the time I needed to catch up athletically and become a viable option for colleges.

For others, recruiting can be much more accelerated, and although they may have more options than I did, it is no less stressful. Some coaches put deadlines on scholarship offers, leaving recruits and families in a difficult bind. Scheduling on-campus visits around games, work, and finances further complicates matters. It is an important decision that has been thrust upon players at younger ages than before, as some schools secure pledges from kids as young as 14 and 15.

Though I am now a junior in college, the memory of my recruiting experience still sticks with me. I think, above all else, I have come to realize that if you work hard and follow your gut feeling, eventually good things will come. Maybe you can create your own luck: If you bet on yourself and truly train toward the goal, when your opportunity arises you will be in position to seize it. So much depends on

how you perform when the right eyes are watching, so you always have to be prepared—how you do anything is how you do everything. College and professional scouts quickly write off players for lack of effort or mental focus.

It is also important to never give up on the dream. There were a few times that I considered settling for a school when deep down, I knew I could do better. The easy way out was tempting, especially as I watched many of my friends and teammates commit to their dream schools. As much as it hurt in the moment, I am extremely grateful that I never gave up on what I truly wanted. I always told myself that if I’m good enough, someone will find me.

Finally, I have learned that, as an athlete, you have to continuously prove yourself. All college athletes were studs on their high school teams, but it is a blank slate in college. Gone are all the accolades, the prestige, the aura of a “D1 baseball commit.” In my three years of college baseball, I have come to realize that it is the guys that put their egos aside and embrace the grind of climbing up the totem pole that truly succeed and grow. I know that once I graduate and transition to the working world I will be a small fish once again, and I will have to prove myself in my given profession. And that excites me.

I don’t miss the days of college recruiting, but I am glad I had the experience I did. It has made me who I am, as a student and an athlete. I think it has helped me appreciate BC more than I probably would have. I’ve written before how proud I am to represent BC on the baseball field. Putting on the jersey tastes just a bit sweeter when I recall my journey to the Heights, with all its twists and turns, and how close it was to never happening.

Jack Nelson is an op-ed columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

The opinions and commentaries of the op-ed 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.

Marta Seitz

With the increase in digital technology over the past few decades comes the explosive popularity of “smart” technology: smart phones offering a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips, smart homes enabling us to control temperature and lighting remotely, and even smart robots like the Amazon Echo with its voice command capabilities. In my Managing for Social Impact course, we learned of an effort to push this one step further to a comprehensive “smart city.”

The idea behind a smart city is to record and analyze data gathered by smart phones and other personal devices such as GPS, Fitbits, and Nest home systems.

This data would then connect to trillions of digital sensors distributed among the city to enable interaction among various transportation, communication, pollution, and sanitation systems. Smart city advocates hope that this technology can learn citizens’ behaviors and develop more efficient ways to operate. The most classic smart city example relates to traffic jams.

Sensors placed near traffic lights could not only monitor traffic flow and calibrate to congestion accordingly, but also learn and adapt to expected traffic patterns over time. This specific technology could even communicate the behavior to cars so drivers could know the exact timing of traffic lights and plan for the most efficient route.

Amid the excitement surrounding the potential of “smart cities” to study and improve living conditions with modern technology, I feel skeptical. Certainly the concept offers great potential for us to better understand systems within our city, but at what point are we overstepping boundaries and encroaching on citizens’ privacy?

What about individuals who don’t feel comfortable having every aspect of their lives recorded, monitored, and watched?

By redefining society in increasingly technological terms, participation in the smart city—whether voluntary or not—seems almost inescapable. People who might want to “opt out” can’t if they still want to drive cars and make phone calls.

Cases of security breaches, hackings, and information theft have demonstrated that digital is not always better. The 2013 attack on over 3 billion Yahoo accounts and the theft of over 40 million credit cards in a Target hack are examples of the dangerous consequences technology can have when we fail to monitor appropriate security measures. These are isolated incidents, but I wonder if consolidating too many technological systems into one streamlined smart city makes us more vulnerable to larger scale threats from more points of entry. A city that enables hackers to access our driving patterns from our GPS data stored in public sensors or purchase history from Amazon Echo records suddenly doesn’t seem so “smart.”

Critics of smart cities have raised questions of equality and fairness among the citizens it seeks to serve. In an interview with Government Technology magazine, urban scholar Frederico Caprotti analyzes some of the potential drawbacks that smart cities could face. He warns that the smart city concept risks reducing human beings to mere “providers of data” and inherently favors those on the right side of the digital divide. If citizens do, as Caprotti suggests, just become “providers of data,” could this not create the false impression that certain citizens matter more just because they produce more data? Perhaps policymakers would even focus disproportionately more on the needs of those who are highly connected simply because their needs are more heavily advertised than digitally excluded demographics. In this regard, Caprotti believes that smart cities could actually worsen the lives of their citizens by exacerbating urban inequality.

We need to consider that technology does not reach everyone equally, and people with disabilities, older age, or lower incomes could disproportionately suffer if their needs are not as publicized in digital records. As former NYC chief of urban design Alexandros Washburn says, “the light cannot turn green in both directions.

The elevator cannot be waiting at every floor. Decisions have to be made and those decisions, even in small ways, effectively create winners and losers.”

Marta Seitz is an op-ed columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

The Heights

A8

Monday, March 19, 2018

Twitter’s Historian: Professor Heather Cox Richardson In a tumultuous political era, Richardson offers a perspective on current affairs through a historical lens.

By Timmy Facciola Asst. Magazine Editor Like Ulysses S. Grant, Daniel Webster, David Rockefeller and so many more historical figures she has spent her life studying, Heather Cox Richardson got her start in the hallowed halls of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., where she was a member of one of the first coed classes in the early 1970s.

Perhaps it was spending her formative years in the same classrooms as such giants that has afforded Richardson the ability to discuss history with a distinct air of familiarity. In her column at Salon and her articles in The Guardian, Richardson analyzes the news through the lense of an academic, blending Ph.D.-level knowledge with everyday vernacular and presenting it on Facebook and Twitter.

The classrooms at Exeter have never had neat rows of individual desks typical of the average American high school. Instead, students sit around what’s called the Harkness Table—a large oval table across which ideas flow freely and naturally. Without raising their hands, students discuss what in the text they find most intriguing, curious, and allusive to larger, transcendent ideas.

Richardson’s experience in high school, which she says is still the most intellectually impressive setting in which she’s studied, continues to inform her teaching style today.

“The concept that I don’t have an endpoint to the course, that I’m throwing the material at you and I want to see what you do with it, it’s something I find BC students get terrified by because I’m not looking for them to figure out what’s in my head.

I want to figure out what’s in their head,” Richardson said.

For some students, many of whom have been trained in the art of scantron by the time they reach Richardson’s upper-level history courses, her relaxed approach is refreshing.

“She doesn’t come to class with a textbook plan. Rather, she brings a group of ideas she’s passionate about, and then does a really good job of presenting them to the students,” said history major Nick Russell, MCAS ’18.

On a recent Thursday in a class she teaches called The Plains Indians, she lectured on three Native American translators—Sacajawea, Quanah Parker, and Charles Eastman—each of whom lived remarkable lives but now receive palpably different amounts of reverence in our American story.

The lecture did not posit why Sacajawea earned a spot on a coin and Parker received a town inTexas, or why no student had even heard of Eastmann, who went to Dartmouth College and Boston University Medical School. Instead, Richardson presented objective facts about each’s story and then asked her students why they thought they had only learned about Sacajawea growing up, and learned about her not as a 15-yearold girl with a newborn baby, but as a strong, independent woman. While they mulled it over, she opened a word document on her laptop, which was projected on the board.

Richardson called on each student and wrote down their thoughts impartially.

“Okay,” “Maybe,” “Interesting,” and “Ooo,” was all she said—just enough to keep students engaged and comments flowing, but not so much as to pull the discussion in any one direction.

Naturally, debate blossomed. One student theorized that Parker received a Texas town because of his entrepreneurship, while Eastmann was irrelevant because he was a doctor, which was an important job, the student said, but how would anyone know this doctor’s name if most don’t even know the name of the guy who made penicillin?

But many people do know his name, Richardson pointed out. She called on another girl who was eager to refute the point just made. As she listened and typed

Photo Courtesy of Heather Cox Richardson

Professor Richardson was among the first coed classes of Phillips Exeter Academy.

the girl’s opinion on the board, Richardson smiled. She had accomplished her goal.

Although she wasn’t a rule-breaker in high school, Richardson has never been a fan of a regimented lifestyle. To this day, she prefers to toil with ideas and texts for as long as she sees fit, only moving on when she feels she’s exhausted the material.

“The idea that I should stop my English homework because I had to do my math was very difficult for me,” Richardson said.

After Exeter, Richardson went on to Harvard University, but she soon grew disillusioned by it all. She watched the rat race going on around her but hesitated to join her classmates.

“It just seemed kind of pointless to me.

My parents said ‘just finish,’” Richardson said.

But one morning, to conduct research for an approaching paper, Richardson decided to journey down into the dark, cold room in which microfilms were stored. There, from 10 a.m. until late in the afternoon, Richardson read the entire Chicago Tribune for the years of the American Civil War. “I lived the whole war, and finally, Lee surrenders. Of course I knew the story but I was like ‘Oh my God, it’s finally over,’” Richardson said. “I went on. There was a black bordered page and they killed Abraham Lincoln. Of course I knew, but it was alive to me. I thought, ‘I want to bring this alive for everyone else.’”

After earning her B.A., Richardson stayed at Harvard to pursue an M.A. There, she studied under the late David Herbert Donald, two-time Pulitzer Prize Winner, noted Lincoln biographer, and one of the most notable historians of the American Civil War and Reconstruction period. But after her now ex-husband accepted a job in Oklahoma, she joined him, and took a break from grad school to become a waitress.

“I was the only person on the floor who was not a born-again Christian,” Richardson said.

Although they spent their Sundays differently, Richardson became acquainted with the people of the town, and grew close with many of the women. She was struck by how fiercely her new friends despised Democrats—whom they dismissed as freeloaders—and how blindly they loved President Ronald Reagan. After revealing that she had gone to Harvard, Richardson remembers one Okie calling her ‘the antichrist.’ But, she wasn’t discouraged and refused to dismiss them as simple or uneducated.

“I’m from a very small town with very poor people in it. I’ve always had a foot in both camps, and a foot in neither in a way,” Richardson said. “I get it when rural people talk about Donald Trump in a way that my Exeter and Harvard education suggests I shouldn’t.”

Richardson was fascinated by the contrast between the image the Okies had of Reagan and the reality his policies were going to enact. To her, they weren’t just naive people with silly ideas– they clearly thought this way for a reason. Richardson wanted to

find out why.

She returned to Harvard and continued studying for her M.A. and after that, her Ph.D., all under the guidance of Donald.

Her dissertation explored the economic policies of the Republican Party during the Civil War and contended that such policies made the Gilded Age possible. After earning her Ph.D., Richardson published her first book–The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War, which was largely based on her dissertation.

After that, she went on to teach at MIT, where she taught a wide range of history classes, including both halves of a survey of American history, the American West, American Women’s History, and, of course, the Civil War. While at MIT, Richardson found herself in a dark microfilm room again, this time reading The New York Times archives for the years of the Civil War. “The story that jumped out at me was entirely different than the story I read in the textbook. I just wrote down what I saw.

It was not rocket science, but what I said is that in 19th century, and possibly always, America’s always been racist, so racism is constant,” Richardson said. “You can’t use it to explain historical change. What explains historical change during the Reconstruction years ... is the way white Americans in the north thought about class.”

This is the argument of her second book, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901. Richardson heard that a professor needed to publish a second work in order to earn tenure. So, she wrote her second book convinced nobody would read it, but hoped it would earn her a spot on the faculty.

Ironically, she was denied tenure, but received a wide readership and high praise from fellow historians. She left MIT and published a third book, West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After the Civil War, which also received praise from her peers. Richardson began working in educational consulting and freelanced along the way, which earned her job offers to return to academia.

But, because Richardson had not been tenured at her last job at MIT, she was not being offered as much money as the male candidates who had been previously tenured.

“I frankly said straight up ‘I will not take a job for less money than a man would make in the same position,’” Richardson said.

Eventually, she found a job at UMass Amherst in 2004 to test it out, fearing that if she stopped listening to her invitations, people would stop inviting her. While at UMass Amherst, she published Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre and continued teaching.

In 2010, she received attention from Boston College and was hired the following year. Since being hired she wrote another book, To Make Men Free: A History of the

Republican Party, an ironic prelude to her past two years of stardom.

On Nov. 21, 2016, two years after publishing her most recent book, a conservative group by the name of Turning Point USA launched a new website called Professor Watchlist, on which it listed close to 200 college professors who it claimed had, “records of targeting students for their viewpoints, forcing students to adopt a certain perspective, and/or abuse or harm students in any way for standing up for their beliefs.”

Richardson, who was briefly included on the list, was more annoyed than upset—that her hard work was dismissed as leftist propaganda, that her credibility was in-question, and, most of all, that the forum of academic debate was shamed and discouraged from its pursuit of truth.

The day after being added to the list, Richardson posted a response on her Facebook page, which she uses as a blog for personal writings.

“It is even more ironic that the list would label me ‘anti-American.’ In fact, I do what I do—all the teaching, writing, speeches, and media—because I love America,” she wrote. “I am staunchly committed to the principle of human selfdetermination, and have come to believe that American democracy is the form of government that comes closest to bring that principle to reality.”

The next day, she was removed from the list, and since then, Richardson has been a beacon for objective, historical observations of the ongoings of American politics. She’s launched Werehistory.org, a history blog that publishes 1000-word articles relating current affairs to past ones and then infusing often unknown history to suggest a different perspective.

Richardson just wrapped up an NPR podcast series she started in December 2017 with Pulitzer-Prize winning author Ron Suskind, called Freak Out and Carry On. On it, the duo analyzed the Trump presidency through a academic historical lense, branching out beyond the archetypical American story.

“What makes her so unique is her ability to be a normal human being and express those brilliant remarks in a way that everyone can understand,” said Colin Notis-McConarty, a third year Ph.D. student in history at BC. In one episode, they compared Trump’s style of speech to that of Richard Nixon, Reagan, and Bill Clinton. Another episode draws connections between the Trump resistance movement and the women’s suffrage movement that Susan B. Anthony began in 1884.

During such a tumultuous political era, Richardson finds comfort in returning to history to read how Americans of the past preserved the republic.

“If you start to look at your history with clear eyes, you will be more likely to look at the world with clear eyes,” said Richardson. n

City Hall Tells Tale of Women’s History Through Art Gallery

The ‘March Four Women’ exhibit celebrates Women’s History Month and the four female artists showcased.

By Chloe McAllaster Assoc. Metro Editor Walking past the main lobby information desk and through a series of glass doors on the way to an important meeting, it would be easy to miss a small gallery of prints in the hustle and bustle of Boston City Hall. These prints hang small and large on the brick walls and cement columns of the open gallery, exhibiting exclusively female artists and their portrayals of women’s issues.

In honor of Women’s History month, Boston City Hall is featuring the work of four female members of the Boston Printmakers Association in its Scollay Square Gallery. The name of the exhibit—March Four Women—references both March being Women’s History Month and the four female artists showcased in the gallery.

The opening reception at City Hall on March 2 was part of the Boston Printmakers 70th Anniversary Symposium. City Hall was one of 15 venues throughout Boston and Cambridge, Mass. to hold special events, exhibitions, and receptions on printmaking for the celebration. The prints will remain in the gallery for public view through March 31.

The artists’ prints vary in their styles and subject matter, with some being more overtly related to women’s issues than others, but they all share in their

figurative nature. According to Rhoda Rosenberg, a member of the Boston Printmakers Association board of directors, this shared characteristic was purely incidental.

After deciding which artists to showcase, Rosenberg and fellow board of directors member Susan Schmidt noticed that all four women reference the human figure in some manner in their work.

They did not, however, intentionally exclude abstract or minimalist styles from the exhibition.

“All these prints [that] deal with the human body, are figurative, so to speak,” Rosenberg said.

The four female artists—Clara Lieu, Emily Lombardo, Carolyn Muskat, and Debra Olin—are members of the Boston Printmakers living in the Boston area, but March Four Women is the first time they have exhibited their work together.

The artists work in etching, lithography, relief printmaking, and mono printing.

“All four of these women are working artists—they all have jobs, they teach, they have families, they have children, some of them,” Rosenberg said. “I think all prints have to do with issues that we’re about as human beings, whether a woman or a man, but some are more specific than others.”

Lieu’s work is not specifically related to women’s issues, but her prints have a deeply personal element that connects them to the theme of Women’s History

Month.

“They’re very personal and they’re very deep prints that have a lot of psychology about herself,” said Rosenberg.

In terms of scale, Lombardo’s prints are the smallest of the four artists’ work.

She was inspired by Spanish artist Francisco Goya’s series of 80 etchings called “Los Caprichos” that were created in the 1790s. Lombardo turned each one the etchings into a print related to women.

“If you look at the prints you’ll see they’re the same compositions and they’re the same statements, but she’s turned all the characters into women and made them about women’s issues,” Rosenberg said.

She emphasized how Lombardo’s prints, like Lieu’s, are connected to personal psychology, but do connect to commentary as well.

“Emily Lombardo’s prints deal with social issues, and they’re very political,” Rosenberg said.

Each of Lombardo’s pieces is accompanied by a sentence or phrase that calls attention to the social issue portrayed.

For example, a print of a woman laying abandoned on a bench is captioned “Because she was susceptible.”

There was no question of whether Muskat would be showcased in the exhibit, as Rosenberg called her the “strongest lithographer” known to the Boston Printmakers at the moment. Her work is less explicitly related to women’s

Chloe McAllaster / Heights Editor

The exhibit features works of Clara Lieu, Carolyn Muskat, Emily Lombardo, and Debra Olin. issues, focusing on space, water, and light instead.

“She is just a beautiful, strong mono printer,” Rosenberg said.

Muskat’s prints feature heavily images of nature, such as tree roots and images of water. The March Four Women exhibit is the first time this series of Muskat’s work has been showcased in a gallery.

Olin’s prints are the largest of the four women’s work, taking up nearly an entire wall of the gallery.

She created four relief wood carvings that depict the internal structure of the female body surrounded by natural

elements.

“She deals with internal components of the body and maybe how they relate to the outside,” Rosenberg said. “I would say Debra’s are more figurative and they’re more bodily.”

Although Olin and Lombardo may seem to more explicitly address topics specific to women compared to Lieu and Muskat, the fact that all four are working woman printmakers unites them.

“We’re women,” Rosenberg said. “We make work, we have jobs, we struggle, we just keep making prints. We’re working printmakers.” n

SPORTS

MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2018

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@HEIGHTSSPORTS

The ACC is Overrated

MEN’S HOCKEY

ANDY BACKSTROM

got to the game just a minute after it had started, you would have missed all of the first period action the Eagles’ offense had to offer.

Although BC had just five of the 18 shots taken between the two teams through the first 20 minutes of play, it was only the first one that mattered. Connor Moore stunned just about everyone in TD Garden with his wrist shot from the blue line just 46 seconds into the game that somehow squeaked past Jake Oettinger.

BU (20-13-4, 13-8-4) would go on to record 13 shots on goal during the period, but most were the result of pucks being loosely thrown at the net, and most importantly, none went in. The Terriers were, by definition, playing from behind, and it showed on the ice. Even though BU finished with nearly three times as

Aside from a 5-year-old, a boatload of alumni, that guy who picks every upset, and the people who make their selections based on mascots—come on, who doesn’t love a good golden retriever—no one had University of Maryland, Baltimore County beating top-ranked Virginia in the first round of this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

First and foremost, a No. 1 seed had never lost to a No. 16. The odds that UVA—the highest-rated team in the nation and top seed in the field of 68—would be the first to suffer that kind of defeat were incredibly low. In fact, entering Friday, one seeds were 135-0 against 16 seeds. Not only that, but the Cavaliers were battle tested. UVA, a school that statistician Ken Pomeroy deemed the most efficient defensive team in the country, rolled to a 31-2 record, including a 17-1 mark in ACC competition this season. Through its ACC Tournament victory, head coach Tony Bennett’s team had proven that its regular season performance was no fluke.

So when the Retrievers, 20-point underdogs and all, handed the Cavaliers a 20-point loss, everyone freaked out, myself included. It wasn’t like most upsets in March—the game didn’t go down to the wire, there was no buzzer beater or overtime finish. UMBC controlled the court from start to finish, shutting down UVA’s offense.

Everyone was shocked—partly because the David vs. Goliath matchup finally unfolded like the tale itself, but more so because UVA was the culprit.

Last week, FiveThirtyEight was back at it again—according to the site’s Elo ratings—a metric system that measures a team’s strength based on who it’s defeated and margin of victory—Pennsylvania was the best 16 seed of all-time. Given Kansas’ reputation as a choke artist in the March, there was reason to think that the Quakers

See NOTE vs. BU, B3

See ACC is Overrated, B2

KAITLIN MEEKS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Originally picked to finish fourth in the HEA, men’s hockey came within one game of an NCAA Tournament appearance, only to lose to BU in the conference semifinals.

BY BRADLEY SMART Assoc. Sports Editor BOSTON — Boston College men’s hockey had woken up. After squandering an early two-goal lead and playBoston University 4 ing much Boston College 3 of the game in their defensive zone, the Eagles had Boston University on its heels in overtime of the Hockey East Tournament Semifinals.

Then, just like that, it was over.

Terriers forward Patrick Curry scored with four minutes and 20 seconds left in the extra frame, completing a 4-3 win that not only punched BU’s (20-13-4, 12-8-4 Hockey East) ticket to the championship, but effectively ended the No. 15 Eagles’ (20-14-3, 18-5-0) season—likely keeping them out of the tournament for the second-straight year.

Curry deftly finished a feed from

Shane Bowers to Joseph Woll’s right, slotting the puck past him after BC committed a turnover behind the net. The scoring play capped off a back-and-forth affair that ran long, punctuated by Northeastern fans arriving for the nightcap and heckling both teams.

“That was a classic rivalry game,” head coach Jerry York said after. “It was played for high stakes at a major venue, and I’m very proud of how our team played. We got better as the game went on.”

The Eagles had built an early 2-0 lead that lasted until midway through the second period, when the Terriers came roaring back. After knotting it up, BC’s Christopher Brown answered amid a scrum of BU skaters, flicking a wrister through a defender’s legs to take the lead.

It didn’t last: BU answered under

See MHOK vs. BU, B3

BY BEN THOMAS Asst. Sports Editor BOSTON — On Friday night, Hockey East got turned upside down at TD Garden. Not only did both semifinal underdogs prevail, but they did so in unique fashion.

Despite outshooting Boston College men’s Hockey, 27-12, through two periods, it took overtime for the Terriers to put the game away, doing so while getting significantly outshot themselves. The 4-3 overtime win for BU prevents BC from collecting the Hockey East Tournament crown for a sixth-straight season.

Three Up 1) Hot Start Just looking at the shot chart after the first period, it would’ve been impossible to know that No. 15 BC (20-14-3, 18-7-0 Hockey East) held a 1-0 lead. In fact, if you WOMEN’S HOCKEY

BC Erupts for 16 Second-Half Goals in Victory Over Louisville

BY NICOLE PLA Heights Staff For just the second time all year, Boston College lacrosse entered halftime trailing on Saturday afternoon. Not only that but Louisville held Boston College 19 the Eagles—the Louisville 10 second-highest scoring team in the nation—to a season-low three first-half goals. But it was only a matter of time before BC’s attackers found their footing. Sure enough, the Eagles bounced back in the second period, erupting for a season-best 16 second-half goals, running away with a 19-10 victory, their 10th-straight win.

With their perfect season so far, the

No. 2 Eagles (10-0, 2-0 Atlantic Coast) have matched their longest winning streak in program history and are one of four top-20 teams to have an undefeated season so far.

BC took control of Saturday’s game quickly. The first few minutes of the game were quiet, but the Eagles made sure to keep the ball on Louisville’s (6-4, 0-3) side of the field. Hannah Hyatt took the first shot of the game and tried to bounce it into the net, but Louisville scooped it up and trotted down the field. Soon enough, BC regained possession and challenged Cardinals goalie Lexie Ball.

The Eagles took an early lead after Dempsey Arsenault wove her way through a sea of Louisville defenders and whipped a shot on net. Shortly after, BC increased its lead, thanks to a Tess Chandler scoring play.

Its lead was cut in half, though, after the Cardinals responded to the two early BC goals. Madison Hoover took a shot that sailed over Lauren Daly’s shoulder, putting Louisville on the board. The Eagles had a chance to restore their two-goal lead when Kaileen Hart took a free-position shot. Her attempt was narrowly blocked by Ball, but a foul call gave the senior a second chance on net. Once again, Hart’s shot was blocked, this time by defenders, and the Eagles came up short in Louisville’s half. Moments later, Caroline Blalock netted her first goal of the game, knotting the game up at two goals apiece.

The tie was short-lived, though—ArseLIZZY BARRETT / HEIGHTS SENIOR STAFF

See Lax vs. Louisville, B3

Kaileen Hart was one of two Eagles to record four goals and five points on Saturday.

LACROSSE

Watts Becomes First Freshman to Win Patty Kazmaier Award

BY ANDY BACKSTROM Sports Editor

KEITH CARROLL / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Daryl Watts tallied 42 goals and 40 assists this season and leads the nation with 82 points.

INSIDE SPORTS

Two days after being named an American Hockey Coaches Association FirstTeam All-American, Boston College women’s hockey forward Daryl Watts reached a new milestone—in fact, she did something that no one in the sport has ever done before.

On Saturday morning at the University of Minnesota’s McNamara Alumni Center, the U.S.A. Hockey Foundation announced that Watts is the 21st winner of the Patty Kazmaier Award—otherwise known as the national player of the year honor—becoming the first underclassmen, let alone freshman, ever receive the accolade. The Toronto, Ontario native, who led the nation

in scoring, beat out Boston University’s Victoria Bach and Clarkson’s Loren Gabel for the prestigious distinction.

“I’m so humbled and honored to be named the Patty Kazmaier Award winner,” Watts said, per BCEagles.com. “Being mentioned in the same conversation as the women and legends who’ve won this award in the past—some of whom I’ve looked up to for years—is a lot to take in.”

One of those legends is Alex Carpenter, BC ’16—the Eagles’ second all-time leading scorer and only other player to win the award. But, in reality, the news has been a long time coming. From start to finish, Watts dominated college hockey this season, racking up 82 points—seven more than any other skater in the country and the second-most ever logged by a fresh-

BASEBALL: BC Snags One Game at UVA SOFTBALL: Eagles Swept in ACC Opener The Eagles won their first road game ever against the No. 21 Cavaliers, but dropped the next two......................B3

BC lost three games in a row in Durham, falling to the Blue Devils by a combined three runs.......................................... B4

man, all-time.

While she lit the lamp 42 times, tying Julie Chu, Harvard ’07, for the most goals recorded by a freshman in NCAA history, the forward was much more than just a scorer. En route to nine weekly Hockey East honors and four conference Player of the Month awards, Watts dialed up 40 assists—14 of which came on game-winning scoring plays—finishing the year as just the seventh player to ever post a 40-goal, 40-assist campaign.

The Patty Kazmaier Award is the latest addition to the freshman’s increasingly large trophy case. Already crowned the Hockey East Player and Rookie of the Year, Watts’ first year on the Heights has turned into one of the more memorable individual performances in school history. 

SPORTS IN SHORT................................... B2 BASEBALL.............................................. B3 POINT/COUNTERPOINT........................ B4

The Heights

B2

Monday, March 19, 2018

BASEBALL

Eagles Get By With One Dominant Win Against Ranked Virginia

By Jimmy Mitchell For the Heights

After another Nor’easter that postponed last Tuesday’s home opener against Holy Cross, Boston College baseball hit the road again for its second conference series of the year against Virginia. Despite further pitching struggles, the Eagles won their first game in Charlottesville in program history before dropping the next two.

In the series finale on Sunday, the Eagles rallied from an early deficit, but their bullpen cost them, blowing lead after lead before faltering, 10-9, in extra innings.

No. 21 UVA (13-7, 3-3 Atlantic Coast) struck first in the bottom of the second, with Nate Eikhoff leading the inning off with a solo shot to right center. Then, with two outs, Devin Ortiz drove in Alex Tappen with a single, and an inning later, with two outs and runners on the corners, UVA executed a double steal, as Eikhoff took second and Andy Weber raced home to put the Eagles (7-10, 2-4) in a 3-0 hole.

BC would rally, chasing Cavaliers starter Evan Sperling in the fourth with four runs to take the lead, all with two outs. Sperling hit two batters and Brian Dempsey brought in a run with a single to put the Eagles on the board.

Mitch Bigras followed that with an RBI double and Jake Palomaki plated two more on a single and an error, ending the day for Sperling.

BC’s two-out magic continued in the sixth. With runners on the corners, Dante Baldelli came through with a clutch RBI single, then the Eagles returned the favor with a wellexecuted double steal as Palomaki scored.

BC’s bullpen couldn’t hold on, though. Reliever Thomas Lane surrendered a two-run double to Brendan Rivoli, then replacement Sean Hughes gave up another—this one to Tanner Morris—which put the Cavaliers up one.

UVA took the lead into the ninth, entrusting Andrew Abbott to finish it off. The Eagles, however, didn’t go down quietly. Chris Galland reached on a one-out single and stole second base, then scored the game-tying run to force extra innings after a Weber error.

The Eagles were in business in the top of the 10th, as Palomaki led off with a single and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt, bringing the powerful Gian Martellini to the plate. Martellini took the first pitch he saw from Abbott and sent it over the right field wall to put BC ahead, again.

BC brought Jack Nelson on to close it out for the save, but he was

unable to record a single out. Nelson imploded, hitting Ortiz, giving up a single to Morris, and allowing Justin Novak to reach when he couldn’t field a sacrifice bunt. Matt Gill came on and didn’t fare much better, as Weber tied the game with a two-run double and Charlie Cody walked it off.

Sophomore Dan Metzdorf took the ball for the Eagles in the middle game of the series on Saturday, opposing Virginia’s Daniel Lynch. The Cavaliers got off to a fast start in the bottom of the first, stringing together three hits, including a two-out RBI single

by Eikhoff to plate the first run.

Although Metzdorf would go on to pitch four shutout innings, it ended up being a tough day for BC’s bullpen.

Redshirt freshman Joey Walsh was the first arm to appear and he struggled with his command, allowing the first two batters to reach on a hit by pitch and a walk. After a sacrifice bunt that moved both runners into scoring position for the first out, it was Tappen with a productive out, grounding to shortstop while scoring the runner from third to extend the lead.

Next out of the bullpen for the Eagles was junior right-hander John Witkowski in what would be a disastrous seventh inning. A wild pitch and an overthrow from Alu on a sacrifice bunt brought in another run, yet Witkowski’s replacements failed to control the game any

better.

Caleb Knight’s double off Brendan Spagnuolo gave Virginia a 4-0 lead and forced BC to bring in Zach Stromberg with the bases loaded and nobody out.

Stromberg’s first pitch skipped to the backstop to score Weber, and Virginia’s Cody capped off the huge inning by bringing home two more. Four different BC relievers combined to allow five runs in the inning.

On the other side, Lynch was absolutely dominant for the Cavaliers and shut down BC’s lineup all afternoon. He went 7.2 shutout innings, allowing just four hits and two walks while striking out 11. The Eagles were only able to begin a rally with two outs in the ninth inning against Kyle Whitten. Bigras prevented the shutout with an RBI single to center that advanced runners to second and third after a bobble by Ortiz in center field. Virginia’s bullpen issued three consecutive walks leading to two more runs for BC, but Andrew Abbott shut the door for a 7-3 win when Scott Braren, the tying run, struck out for the fourth time on the day with the bases loaded to end the game.

The Eagles sent their ace Jacob Stevens to the mound in the Friday afternoon opener against Virginia’s Derek Casey, and it proved to be a historic day at the ballpark—BC pulled away in the seventh inning for a 6-2 win, the program’s first ever in Charlottesville.

Stevens was his usual self and kept the Cavaliers’ bats fairly quiet, but he ran into trouble in the third inning. A two-out triple down the first base line scored Morris, yet Stevens wouldn’t allow another run, going six strong innings while striking out five.

The score remained tied until the seventh inning when BC’s Jack Cunningham hammered a double off the center field wall to bring home Galland.

Soon after, Palomaki grounded one past first base to score Cunningham and end the day for Casey. Martellini capped off the inning with a two-run blast over the left field wall, putting the Eagles up 5-1.

The Eagles tacked an insurance run in the ninth on an RBI single by Palomaki, and Lane came on in the bottom of the ninth to close it out with a comfortable lead. Although he struggled with his control, surrendering three walks and a wild pitch that led to another Virginia run, Lane limited further damage and secured the win.

While the Eagles managed to take one of the three games, their sloppy defense and command struggles in the bullpen contributed to many selfinflicted wounds that allowed Virginia to put runs on the board. Overall, BC can find plenty of positives from the series, though, as it recorded its first ever win at Davenport Field against a ranked conference foe. n

For Second Year in a Row, March Exposes ACC’s Vulnerability ACC is Overrated, from B1 Quakers had a shot to knock off Bill Self’s team. Even if the Jayhawks staved off the Ivy League foe there was still a good chance another 16 seed could make history—not because of talent, but because of who it was playing.

Xavier was tabbed as one of the weakest one seeds in recent history, and, coupled with Kansas, the two weighed down Villanova and UVA to the point where the group of one seeds was deemed the worst foursome since 2002, with a 6.5 ranking, per KenPom. The Musketeers were coming off a Big East Tournament loss to fifth-seeded Providence and had never played an NCAA Tournament game as a one seed before. Compared to Villanova, Kansas, and UVA, Xavier—Pomeroy’s lowest-rated one seed since Washington, back in 2005—was nothing more than an afterthought.

The fact that the Musketeers cruised past Texas Southern, and the Cavaliers couldn’t buy a basket against the University of Maryland’s satellite school was mind-boggling. After all, UVA was the best of the ACC, a conference that’s often regarded as the toughest league in the country.

But is it really?

For the second year in a row, the ACC sent nine teams, more than any other conference in the nation, to the Big Dance. Once again, the league has failed to live up to its expectations. Last year, the ACC posted an 11-8 tournament record, an above-average mark, at least at face value. When you look a little closer, however, the perception changes. Without North Carolina’s National Championship run—an added six wins—the conference’s tournament record plummets to 5-8. Of the nine ACC teams that reserved a spot in the field of 68, eight were bounced on the first weekend, five of which were five seeds or higher.

The teams haven’t fared much better

this time around. Four of the nine ACC representatives—three of which were higher seeds than their opponents—were ousted in the first round of play. UVA’s unprecedented collapse steals the spotlight, but sixth-seeded Miami dropped its opening game to Sweet Sixteen-bound Loyola Chicago, despite leading for all but one minute of the second half. And don’t forget Virginia Tech, that, because of foul trouble and a dry spell in the final minutes of regulation, fell to a 19-win Alabama team that was firmly positioned on the bubble two weeks ago.

To make matters worse, secondseeded UNC was shredded by seventhseeded Texas A&M on Sunday, suffering a 21-point blowout—the Tar Heels’ worst loss of the season—practically in its own backyard. Prior to the start of the game, head coach Roy Williams’ team was an unblemished 12-0 when playing NCAA Tournament games in Charlotte, N.C. Now, the ACC is responsible for two of the three No. 1 or No. 2 seeds that have failed to make it to the Sweet Sixteen this year.

Yes, 11th-seeded Syracuse knocked off third-seeded Michigan State hours earlier, but we’re all too familiar with head coach Jim Boeheim’s resume—when the calendar turns to March, he’s better than just about anyone else to have ever held a clipboard. Fifth-seeded Clemson also advanced to the third round of play, embarrassing fourth-seeded Auburn. But the 31-point massacre is more attributable to a reeling Auburn—a team that finished the season 2-4 and barely escaped its tournament opener—than the quality of the ACC itself.

There’s something to be said about the Justin Jackson-led UNC team that rattled off six-consecutive victories en route to last season’s national title. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Duke ends up hoisting the trophy in early April—actually, before all this madness started, I picked the Blue Devils to win it all. The conference’s

heavyweights and storied programs are just as talented, if not more so than the rest of the field. But, quite frankly, as a whole, it’s been overrated the past couple of years.

When all was said and done, the ACC’s 2017-18 average non-conference strength of schedule clocked out at 230th in the nation—the second-lowest mark among the Power Five. A third of the league’s teams’ non-conference schedules were ranked 300th or worse. To put that in perspective, the Big Ten was the only other conference that came close to matching that total, and it only had four teams inside that category.

The fact of the matter is we really don’t know how good these teams are until they step foot in their respective regions for the NCAA Tournament. Most of them play a couple meaningful games, if any, the first few months of the season, and then they kick off their 18-game pseudo roundrobin. Once you reach February, you’ll see your fair share of transitive victory wheels, showcasing the apparent strength of the conference. This season alone, the bottom four teams in the league, with the exception of winless Pittsburgh, defeated an ACC opponent that at one point this season was ranked inside the top 25. Just as the parity can be used to argue on behalf of the conference’s balance, it can also be used to support its supposed vulnerability.

It’s obvious that the Selection Committee buys into the mantra of the ACC. Of late, the conference has swallowed up more than a quarter of the at-large bids in the tournament. Even though it only won 20 games in the regular season while losing to the likes of Wake Forest and Georgia Tech in conference play, Syracuse weaseled its way into the field. If not for the Orange, 19-win Notre Dame or 20win Louisville would be all but guaranteed a spot in the tournament. Meanwhile, teams like Saint Mary’s, Southern California—the Pac-12 runner ups—and Middle Tennessee—a Conference U.S.A. representative with 16 league victories and

a top-35 RPI—were snubbed.

It’s not even as if Notre Dame and Louisville have made noise in the NIT. Although the schools entered the secondtier tournament with two of the top seeds in the bracket, only one has impressed.

After advancing to the second round of play, the Fighting Irish—the No. 1 overall seed in the entire tournament—fell to fourth-seeded Penn State. Louisville, on the hand, topped Middle Tennessee on Sunday night. That said, all NIT victories are relative—Georgia Tech followed up last year’s championship appearance with a 13-19 campaign, despite retaining all three of its leading scorers.

Whether or not you believe in stats, Pomeroy’s rankings are telling. The ACC only has four teams inside the top 30, three more than the Pac-12, but one less than the SEC, Big Ten, and the Big East, the forgotten conference in today’s college basketball.

As far as the ACC is concerned, it’s possible that overseeding can be traced back to the attention that surrounds the conference. With 15 high-profile schools, there are bound to be stars, both on the sidelines and on the floor. Mike Krzyzewski (Duke), Roy Williams (UNC), and Jim Boeheim (Syracuse) are three of the 15 all-time winningest coaches to ever suit up. That kind of resume pulls in a frenzy of talent, and it’s only natural for other heralded recruits to want to play against those marquee teams and pro prospects. As a result, the conference is decked out in ESPN 100 and McDonald’s All-American recruits, guys who have the letters N, B, and A in the back of their minds even before they arrive on campus.

Six of the top-15 players selected in last year’s draft were from ACC schools—no other conference had more than three. Each of the past four seasons, someone from the ACC has been drafted somewhere in the top three. As the draft approaches, the excitement concern-

ing the conference’s pro prospects skyrockets. There’s nothing better than watching guys that could be wearing your favorite NBA team’s uniform in the coming months light up the scoreboard in March—that has to cross the Selection Committee’s mind.

Undoubtedly, it’s even more intriguing when you have one-and-dones in the tournament. Not only is their team’s season on the line, but, in reality, so is their college career. Without a doubt, the drama makes for good television. Conveniently, the ACC has had at least one one-and-done picked in the NBA lottery in each of the last eight years. Granted, Duke—which has reluctantly adopted the one-and-done mentality—and the league’s other powerhouses account for the majority of these selections, but the whole conference reaps the benefits due to the fact that they all face off against the conference’s most talented teams.

For one thing, the NCAA knows that these schools are moneymakers. People will push aside work and even family activities just to see them play. It’s hardly a coincidence that they’re on opposite sides of the bracket. Most ACC teams have the same effect. With national audiences, the 15 teams are often fan favorites. Win or lose, their mere appearance in the tournament is good for the NCAA—not necessarily for the integrity of the game.

Don’t get me wrong, the ACC holds a special place in my heart. It’s home to some of the most entertaining basketball in the country with a host of guys who are slated to defend the Demar Derozans, Kawhi Leonards, and Joel Embiids of the NBA. But that doesn’t mean that it’s the best conference, or even the toughest, in the country, year in and year out—it certainly isn’t this season. n

Andy Backstrom is the sports editor for The Heights. He can be reached on Twitter @AndyHeights.

SPORTS in SHORT ACC women’s Lacrosse

Numbers to know

Conference

overall

2-0

10-0

Virginia Tech

2-0

6-3

North Carolina

1-0

6-2

Virginia

1-1

5-2

Duke

1-1

5-3

Notre Dame

1-2

5-3

Syracuse

0-1

5-2

Louisville

0-3

6-4

Boston College

2

Consective seasons in which men’s hockey has missed the NCAA Tournament, the first time since 1995-97.

6.66

Collective earned run average for baseball, the worst mark in the ACC.

8.78

Average number of goals per game that lacrosse has outscored its opponents by through its first 10 games.

QUote of the week

“They’re a national powerhouse for a reason.”

— Louisville head coach Scott

Teeter, after losing a halftime lead to women’s lacrosse Saturday afternoon.

The Heights

Monday, March 19, 2018

B3

MEN’S HOCKEY

Terriers Effectively End BC’s Season in Hockey East Semis MHOK vs. BU, from B1 a minute later. Drew Melanson carved out space in front of the net and was an easy target for teammate Jordan Greenway, who placed the puck at Melanson’s stick where he finished easily to tie the game up.

After that, though, the Eagles impressed in overtime. They built an early 11-1 shot advantage and kept their foot on the gas, bringing plenty of pressure on Terriers goaltender Jake Oettinger, who finished with 36 saves. However, none of BC’s shots found the back of the net, and Curry sent the Eagles faithful home disappointed.

It spoiled an impressive effort from Woll, who turned away 41 shots and kept his team in the game for much of what could’ve been a blowout—BC was outshot by its opponents for the thirdstraight game.

“He’s had some terrific games,” York said. “He’s been very hot down the stretch.

The other player, Oettinger, was also good.

We’ve got two of the premier goaltenders in the country.”

After the opening goal from Connor Moore just 46 seconds into the game, BC was on its heels for much of the first period, struggling to get the puck out of its own defensive third. Despite the struggles, Woll and the defense escaped the first frame with a lead.

The Eagles only added to it at the start of the second, scoring just over three minutes in. BC’s Logan Hutsko was called for a slash and BU’s Greenway was handed an embellishment call at the same time, so the Eagles were able to space out the ice and score during the 4-on-4. Julius Mattila buried a one-timer from the low slot, finishing off an excellent pass from David Cotton, who had situated himself behind the cage.

The rest of the second period, though, was thoroughly dominated by the Terriers. They bested BC in nearly every facet of the game—doubling the Eagles’ shot total, winning more faceoffs, and most importantly, controlling the scoreboard.

BU scored twice in a span of less than three minutes to erase BC’s early two-goal lead, which seemed lucky at the time.

After some extracurriculars between Brady Tkachuk and J.D. Dudek— the Eagles’ forward was called for interference, while BU’s enforcer took exception and drove him into the ice for a cross-checking call—the Terriers amped up their offensive attack. They couldn’t score on a 4-on-3 advantage, nor on the ensuing 5-on-4, but they threatened. After the Eagles’ Julius Matilla had his team’s last real chance of the period, BU scored.

A costly turnover in the defensive zone from Michael Karow led to two quick passes and a Terrier goal. Hank Crone and Patrick Curry set up Ty Amonte, who sliced in front of Woll, deked to his right, and slotted the puck home. A few minutes later, another defensive breakdown doomed the Eagles—they lost track of forward David Farrance. He skated down the right side of the ice, was left alone at the

right circle, and buried a wrister off a cross-ice pass from Chad Krys.

With the momentum firmly in hand, BU kept pushing and forcing Woll to make tough save after tough save. Shane Bowers got a good look on net, as did Crone after receiving a backhand pass from Amonte, but neither could beat Woll. The shot advantage for the Terriers continued to climb, reaching 15 by the end of the period, but the score remained knotted up at two apiece.

The momentum carried over to the third period, with much of the fans in attendance anticipating a quick goal. Just under a minute in, the goal lamp went off for BU—but it was quickly clear that the shot had just hit the side netting.

Then, the horn sounded for real when Greenway gathered a puck in the slot and rifled it into the back of the cage, but the goal was called back when Tkachuk was revealed to be standing in the crease and interfering with Woll.

The rest of the period was characterized by big chances for both teams,

the product of a breakneck pace up and down the ice. More so for BU, but the Eagles still had a share of potential game-winning opportunities.

BC’s Brown had a good look on a three-man rush, while Bowers nearly scored on the other end with a deflection to Woll’s right. Nothing went, though, setting the stage for the dramatic overtime period.

“I thought our overtime was outstanding in terms of creating chances,” York said. “Credit to BU, they bounced back.”

The Eagles managed to kill a penalty during overtime, but then were left staring at the TD Garden rafters as Curry and BU celebrated around them.

Further results left them sitting on the outside of the NCAA tournament looking in, a disappointing spot to be in, although there’s still cause for some optimism. York has a strong recruiting class and young talent, so the streak of missed tournament appearances should be brief. n

Kaitlin Meeks / Heights Editor

After being outshot, 38-25, over the course of the first three periods of play, the Eagles rattled off 11 of the game’s 12 shots in the extra frame, but couldn’t light the lamp, ultimately fallling victim to BU.

Ironically, More Looks on Net Mean Fewer Goals for Eagles NOTE vs. BU, from B1 many shots in the period, it still found itself looking up at the Eagles. BC’s defensive perseverance may have let up at times throughout the rest of the contest, but starting the second period with the lead certainly wasn’t the issue.

2) Great Woll of Boston How can you keep a game close when an opponent doubles your shot total through two periods? For BC, the answer was goaltender Joseph Woll. The sophomore made 25 saves through two periods and had the biggest impact on the game of any player. Manning the net for over 75 minutes against one of the premier teams in Hockey East is no easy task, and credit Woll for amassing a save percentage of .911 percent by the game’s end.

Seventeen different players took at least one shot for BU over the course of the game, with slapshots, wristers, and one-timers coming from everywhere on the ice. While the majority of Oettinger’s saves came from the low slot, Woll faced a balanced diet of 19 shots from beyond the faceoff circle

and 26 shots within it. The lefthander was constantly forced to adjust his approach, making saves with his glove, his stick, and even with his body in a sprawled out position.

3) Tempers Flaring In the third matchup between the Commonwealth Avenue rivals this season, players finally reached their boiling points. As tension rose, defensemen and forwards alike were hit with roughing, slashing, cross-checking, and embellishment penalties. The difference was that all but one of these calls went against BU. Perhaps it was built up frustration coming from a lack of early goal scoring, but nonetheless the Terriers were their own worst enemy when they let their emotions get in the way of the game. Overall, BC was able to go up on the power play a total of four times due to undisciplined play from BU, and while they weren’t able to cash in directly with the advantage, the Eagles did score one of their goals in a four-onfour scenario and another immediately after a power play had ended.

Brady Tkachuk was responsible for the majority of his team’s undisciplined

play. Beyond the roughing and crosschecking penalties he received, the 6-foot-3 freshman often instigated lots of the chippy play observed on the ice.

On three separate occasions in regulation, Tkachuk and a BC skater were seen going at it after the whistle, and his attitude did not appear to positively influence his teammates.

Three Down 1) Falling Apart While the Eagles were able to take the first lead of the game in the blink of an eye, the Terriers were able to get back into the game just as quickly. A momentary lapse in the second period by BC allowed BU to close its two-score gap entirely. A goal for the Terriers seemed inevitable after accumulating so many shots, and they got multiple in the span of just two minutes.

The thing was, the two shots from Ty Amonte and David Farrance that found the net for BU were neither well calculated nor well struck. The two had combined for just 14 points entering the game and didn’t have to do anything special to find the net. A slow-developing Eagles transition defense was the

difference over two even strength minutes, as BC’s backline was outskated to the puck for two fastbreak goals.

2) Absence of Youth Throughout the entire season, Jerry York has been able to rely of his younger players to win games. The freshman combination of Logan Hutsko, Jacob Tortora, and Christopher Grando has dominated all season with a combined 62 points, but Friday night it didn’t log a single one. The only first-year player to tally a point was Aapeli Räsänen, who recorded an assist on Moore’s quick strike.

Tortora and Hutsko were the only freshman Eagles to launch a shot on net. While Hutsko recorded a gamehigh eight shots, he also had the lowest plus/minus of any player and was not on the ice for a single one of his team’s goals. Meanwhile, Tortora’s lone shot came from an improbable angle on the far side of the boards in overtime, and BU would go on to score just minutes later.

3) Up All Night to Get Unlucky If there’s one thing to be learned from this game it’s that shot total

rarely ever tells the tale of a game. In the nearly 16 minutes of overtime that were played, it seemed like BC needed just one more offensive rush to put the game away. In fact, the Eagles recorded 14 shots during the shortened extra frame, more than they had recorded in any of the previous three periods, and doubled the Terriers’ shot total. Hutsko, who had scored incredibly clutch goals for his team all season, had four shots alone in overtime, more than half as many as BU’s entire team.

Yet, as the UMBC Retrievers would go on to prove later that night against Virginia, history often fails to repeat itself in the most unexpected ways.

In the blink of an eye, a frantic and well-contested shot from Terrier Shane Bowers in front of the net resulted in a rebound chance for Patrick Curry.

For Curry—who had recorded just one shot in the entire game up to that point— it was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and as a result BC was sent home wondering how its improved play in overtime could have possibly produced lesser results. n

LACROSSE

Hart, Chandler Headline Scoring Attack Against Cardinals

10

BC goals in final 12 minutes

12

draw controls won by Dempsey Arsenault, a program record

6

multi-point Eagles scorers

Lax vs, Louisville, from B1 nault answered with a goal of her own, megging Ball in the process. Yet Louisville retaliated, equalizing the game with another Hoover goal. The Cardinals took the lead for the first time of the game after Tessa Chad broke through the Eagles’ defense and fired a shot past Daly. With five seconds left in the period, Louisville netted its third-straight goal of the half.

After controlling the ball for the majority of the half, the Eagles headed to the locker rooms, trailing their ACC rivals by a pair of goals.

As the second half began, it was clear BC was unfazed by the late Louisville goals.

In due time, Hart cut the deficit down to one. After that, the Eagles couldn’t be stopped. Taylor Walker tied things up with her first goal of the game. Then, both Chandler and Hart netted goals of their own to slingshot the Eagles back into the lead.

Julia Wood responded to cut the BC

lead, but her attempt to inspire Louisville was ineffective. Two more Arsenault and Cara Urbank scoring plays gave the Eagles a three-goal lead—at the time, their largest of the game. Wood narrowed the lead again after picking up a pass from Blalock and immediately rifling a shot past Daly. Louisville drew within one of goal of BC when Chad scored on a free-position attempt. It was the closest the Cardinals would get to matching the Eagles’ scoring total.

After Chandler upped BC’s lead with a free-position attempt, the Eagles’ offense put Louisville to bed. Following Chandler’s goal, Emma Schurr slated her first goal of the game. Shortly after, Hart ran up the right side of the field and blasted a shot past Ball. Sam Apuzzo connected for her first goal of the game, and Schurr netted two goals immediately after to cap a threegoal scoring spurt, spanning just a minute of game time.

With less than five minutes left in the contest, the Eagles had a six-goal advan-

tage. BC couldn’t be upended after both Arsenault and Walker poured on two more goals. Following eight-consecutive Eagles goals, Louisville finally showed some signs of life with three minutes remaining in regulation. Then, BC resumed the blowout: Hyatt was fouled in the crease, and she charged toward Ball and bounced the ball into the back of the net. Emily Howell scored the Cardinals’ 10th and final goal, but the scoring play hardly affected the end result.

Hart, Apuzzo, and Chandler have each notched a goal in every game of the season, but it was Arsenault who turned heads throughout the afternoon.

She set a career high of 12 draw controls, breaking the program record set

by Apuzzo in the team’s matchup with Brown earlier in the season. Regardless of the caliber of opponent, it’s apparent that BC is loaded with superstars—the only recurring question is, which one will steal the headline? n

The Heights

B4

Monday, March 19, 2018

SOFTBALL

Despite Three Close Games, Eagles Swept by Duke in Durham

By Marc Occhipinti For the Heights In the sixth inning of Boston College softball’s weekend finale Sunday afternoon, the Eagles were on the cusp of their first ACC win. After dropping the first two contests to Duke, BC was hanging tough.

Jessica Dreswick was tossing a shutout, but with two outs, BC was in its first big jam of the game, as Blue Devils stood on the corners. Up to bat was Jill Ferraro, who nearly let Dreswick off the hook by hitting a weak ground ball to second base. Yet the first run of the game scored when Carly Severini momentarily took her eye off the ball while trying to field and tag the base runner headed toward second in one motion.

The error was representative of the Eagles’ weekend in Durham—one that consisted of three heartbreaking one-run

losses.

On Sunday’, much of the game was flawless for both Dreswick and Blue Devils (16-10, 3-3 Atlantic Coast) starter Amelia Wiercioch. BC (9-15, 0-3) threatened to score early but couldn’t get the timely hit it needed, leaving runners on. Dreswick had to escape danger in the bottom of the third with two baserunners.

Dreswick was dealing in the middle innings, retiring seven in a row, despite logging just one strikeout. Duke’s Peyton St. George came in to start the fourth frame and picked up right where Wiercioch left off.

The righthander got the win by completing the shutout, handing Dreswick the loss even though she didn’t allow an earned run.

Saturday consisted of better offensive showings from both teams, with BC drawing first blood. Lexi DiEmmanuele led off with a bunt single on the first pitch of the game,

Chloe Sharabba followed with a single, and Severini brought in a run with a single to right field.

However, the Eagles’ lead wouldn’t last long. In the bottom half of the frame, Kavel led off with a double, before coming around on a wild pitch from BC starter Allyson Frei.

Raine Wilson walked, and St. George, doing damage at the plate this time, singled her home when BC first-basemen Cami Sellers’ delivered an errant cut-off throw.

Frei and Duke starter Katherine Huey settled in, throwing scoreless second and third innings. BC’s offense broke out in the fourth, benefitting from small ball and Duke miscues. Singles by Sellers and Jordan Chimento, coupled with a Duke error, loaded the bases and set the stage for Moore—who brought in two with a squeeze bunt. Chimento scored on a wild pitch, and Sharabba singled home Moore, giving BC a lead.

Once again, the Blue Devils responded, loading the bases. An error by Sharabba at short brought in a run, and a clutch two-out single by Rachel Abboud brought home two more, chasing Frei. Dreswick came on to record the final out to escape further danger, but Duke had already tied the game at five.

The Eagles would then strand two in scoring position, which would come back to haunt them, as another timely two-out hit by Duke’s Wilson would plate the deciding run.

Friday’s opener was just as nail-biting. In her first ACC contest of the year, Dreswick struggled to settle in. Kavel and Abboud scored in the first inning, thanks to RBIs from Ferraro and Brianna Butler and an Eagles error, staking Duke to the early advantage.

BC’s Cook answered with a RBI double in the second, but Duke matched, extend-

ing its lead to 3-1 on a Wilson RBI single.

It could have been worse, though, as the Blue Devils left the bases loaded to cap the inning. The Eagles offense responded in the fifth, this time getting a clutch two-out hit of their own—Annie Murphy had a gametying, two-run single.

Frei was on the mound for the bottom of the seventh, hoping to send the contest to extra innings. Despite allowing a double, there were two outs, and Frei was almost out of the inning—but disaster struck. Moore, BC’s catcher, let a low changeup slip by her glove. Jazmine Moreno scrambled home for the oh-so-rare walk off passed ball.

It was a frustrating start to ACC play for an Eagles team that arguably outplayed the Blue Devils in the series. BC lacked timely hitting and made costly defensive mistakes—the small things proved to be the difference in all three games. n

MENS HOCKEY

York Named Hockey East Coach of the Year For Fourth Time

By Bradley Smart Assoc. Sports Editor Year in and year out, Boston College men’s hockey head coach Jerry York is tasked with manning the helm of a youthful ship. The Eagles are consistently one of the youngest teams in the country—they boasted an average age of 20 years, eight months at the start of the year—but York makes it work.

Despite entering the season picked to finish fourth in Hockey East, York guided BC to a 20-13-3 record, claiming a conference regular season title with an 18-6-0 mark in league play. The longtime coach earned Hockey East Coach of the Year honors for the fourth time as a result, while one of his young stars, Logan Hutsko, claimed the Pro Ambitions Rookie of the Year award.

Hutsko thrived down the stretch and

truly broke out in February. He scored a pair of goals against Massachusetts Lowell, then followed with a hat trick in the Beanpot consolation loss to Harvard. It was the first two games of an impressive four-game stretch where he recorded two-plus points in each contest.

The freshman finished the year with 31 points, leading the team with 12 goals and 19 assists. His late-season surge helped the Eagles fend off plenty of challengers in the Hockey East standings, keeping enough distance from the likes of Northeastern and Providence.

BC didn’t win a non-conference game, but York and his roster found plenty of success in the conference. The Eagles came together well and won their last six games entering Friday’s semifinal matchup with rival Boston University, which they dropped in overtime.

His run of success is nothing short of impressive. York has now posted 20-win seasons for nine years in a row, second only to Denver (17) as the longest active streak in Division I college hockey. He claimed Coach of the Year honors three prior times, winning in 2004, 2011, and 2014. The Eagles won the Hockey East Tournament in 2011, but failed to come away with it in the other three years, including this year.

York didn’t just oversee the league’s top freshman, but also the ‘47 Brand Best Defensive Defenseman Award winner in Casey Fitzgerald. The junior played excellently in front of Joe Woll in the defensive zone and was a threat at times on offense as well, scoring six goals and chipping in 13 assists.

The Eagles are young and have gone through plenty of ups and downs, but under York’s watch, they’re always in position to JULIA HOPKINs / Heights SENIOR STAFF Jerry York is the winningest active coach in NCAA men’s hockey with 1,053 career wins. make a run. n

POINT COUNTERPOINT

ENCOURAGING? 2017-18 BC MEN’S HOCKEY

EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS MISSED THE TOURNAMENT

By Bradley Smart Assoc. Sports Editor At the start of the season, Boston College men’s hockey was picked to finish fourth in Hockey East—slotted behind the likes of Boston University, Massachusetts Lowell, and Providence. It drew just one first-place vote—the product of a youthful roster that returned zero seniors and had more question marks than answers.

And for the first seven games of the year, it sure seemed like the Eagles were destined for a shaky season. They went 1-5-1, splitting a series with the aforementioned Friars while getting blown out by national title contenders Denver, St. Cloud State, and Wisconsin. BC managed just one goal in four of the games and struggled to protect goaltender Joseph Woll, who was called on for 30-plus saves three times.

So expectations weren’t particularly high around the Heights and campus for conference play—but the youngest team in the country flipped a switch for head coach Jerry York. The Eagles rattled off seven straight wins, impressing in sweeps of Vermont and Merrimack before downing Northeastern.

It was a remarkable turnaround, but what followed says more about the encouraging potential on York’s roster.

The Eagles were simply in a slump and looked like they were going to go out with a whimper. They went winless at the Ice Vegas Invitational and dropped two of three entering the Beanpot, where they flamed out with two losses—the second time they went winless at the historic tournament in as many years.

But, instead of watching its Hockey East pole position spot fade away, BC rallied. Despite ending the year with a Senior Night in which there were no seniors to honor for their guidance, the Eagles won four games in a row to enter the postseason as the regular season champions—a far cry from fourth. Next, they swept Merrimack with relative ease (despite being outshot, they had premier performances from Woll to boost them), and took BU, the conference’s preseason favorite, to overtime in the semifinals.

Granted, the semifinal loss was particularly brutal—the Eagles were outplayed for much of the game, lost a two-goal lead, then, even while playing some of their best hockey in overtime, they saw

their season end in heartbreaking fashion when the Terriers’ Patrick Curry slotted the game-winner home. Still, they weren’t even supposed to be there, and the play down the stretch should give fans of the program optimism heading into next year.

Here’s why: York now has a crop of young players that developed very well this year, an Olympic-caliber goaltender, and a group of very talented recruits coming in that should mesh will with the current roster. Losing in overtime to spoil any chances at further postseason play is a tough, tough thing to go through, but now with that under their belt, guys like Logan Hutsko and Julius Mattila can continue to take steps forward.

Hutsko earned Pro Ambitions Rookie of the Year honors in the Hockey East, and really came on as a multi-faceted player as the year progressed. He went through a midseason lull after a strong start, then truly erupted as the team’s top offensive threat—five straight games with multiple points was evidence of that. Alongside him, Mattila almost doubled his point total from the year before, while Graham McPhee also flourished and more than doubled his scoring output. The defense was bolstered by the conference’s top defenseman in junior captain Casey Fitzgerald, who locked things down in front of the more than capable Woll—the offense’s thriving down the stretch is a sign of things to come, especially considering the group of recruits York has assembled.

The Eagles will boast an offensive attack that should be feared in Hockey East is poised to break out. With Hutsko, McPhee and Mattila all excelling, they’ll have to take several talented forwards under their wings and push them forward. Several pieces arriving in Chestnut Hill have been on the national radar for years, with NHL Draft Scouting ranking Patrick Giles the 19th-best prospect in his class, while Jack McBain is no slouch at 29th. Both are capable of scoring in high quantities and should impress when they arrive.

Overall, BC obviously had a season of ups and downs—it didn’t win a non-conference game, after all. But, one can’t look at the body of work, the growth of several key players, and plenty of incoming talent without being encouraged about what’s to come in 2018-19. n

By Ben Thomas Asst. Sports Editor A loss to Boston University on Friday night marked the fifth time in six years Boston College men’s hockey failed to advance to the Hockey East Final. In the six years prior to that span, the Eagles won the tournament a total of five times. While BC certainly didn’t have the same expectations going into this season as it did before its 2012 Championship run, head coach Jerry York and Co. have failed to reach the bar this year.

For starters, after a Princeton victory over Clarkson in the ECAC Final on Saturday, the Eagles were officially eliminated from postseason contention. BC has now failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament for just the fourth time in the past 20 years.

One would think that a team that finishes in first place in one of the more competitive conferences in the NCAA would be able to make some noise in the tournament, but the achieb vement is extremely deceiving.

To begin the season, BC was slated in the USCHO preseason poll to finish fourth in Hockey East. By that standard, it greatly exceeded predictions, but conference standings don’t tell the whole tale. The Eagles finished with just the fourth-most overall wins of all Hockey East teams and only ended up with the fifth-most goals scored. They were even jumped by Northeastern in the poll during the season, and for good reason.

Despite the fact that the Eagles won three times as many conferences games as they lost, they came up with few wins when it mattered most. Including its 3-0 loss to Northeastern in the Beanpot and the Hockey East semifinal game versus the Terriers, BC had a losing record of 4-5 against Providence, BU, and Northeastern—the three Hockey East teams that still have more to play for this season and have more overall wins than the Eagles. In those nine games, the Eagles were outscored, 30-23.

The difference in competition resembles the team’s play of late. While the Eagles skated past lowly Merrimack in two-consecutive games at Kelley Rink, they got into trouble at TD Garden. BC nearly came away with the win against BU, but didn’t look like the same team that had won six-straight conference games dating back to Feb. 15.

It’s important to note, though, in those matchups, the Eagles played teams with a combined Hockey East record of 26-39.

The reason BC was on the bubble in the

first place was because of its putrid performance against non-conference competition.

The Eagles didn’t record a single win outside of Hockey East this season. Granted, they played a relatively competitive non-conference schedule, but these games are given to them in the hopes that they will be quality contests. They were not. Four-consecutive losses in October to Wisconsin, St. Cloud Stated (twice), and Denver by a combined 13 goals foreshadowed what has been a long year for BC against unfamiliar opponents.

Had just one of those games gone the other way, it could have been a completely different season for BC. The Eagles played the most difficult opponents of any Hockey East team, in terms of strength of schedule.

They had a tremendous opportunity to justify their record with at least one impressive win. Instead, BC failed each and every time. In fact, despite their top spot in Hockey East, the Eagles recorded two fewer non-conference wins than any other team below them.

When obser ving Pair wise rankings—the metric that determines NCAA Tournament seeding—it becomes clear how much BC struggled outside of its conference. Although its worst losses came against the three aforementioned teams, many of its non-conference blunders came against opponents that shouldn’t have posed much of a threat. Using the Eagles’ rank of 16 as a marker, it’s inexplicable how the team couldn’t hold off so many inferior opponents. Games that should have been wins—home contests against 28th-ranked Harvard and 32nd-ranked Quinnipiac—ended up as ties, and a 5-4 loss to the Crimson in the Beanpot consolation game to end non-conference play was the icing on the cake.

At the end of the day, BC fell short of the NCAA Tournament, which alone should deem this season a failure. Their fatal flaws outside of the conference make it clear why the Eagles weren’t likely to be in consideration for an atlarge bid even before conference tournament play began. They couldn’t even win a game outside New England this year, how could they have been expected to win one in Minneapolis in the Frozen Four? BC is young and should be back in the tournament as soon as next season, but a variety of factors make it hard to believe that the Eagles are happy with how things have gone this year. n

BY THE NUMBERS

0

No n - c o n fe re n c e wins

2

Consecutive missed NCAA Tournaments

3

Straight games having been outshot

4th

Preseason spot in HEA Coaches Poll

1st

Place finish in Hockey East

2.92

Goals per game

0.86

Points per game for Logan Hutsko

THE HEIGHTS

B6

MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2018

‘Tomb Raider’ Digs Itself Into Narrative Grave

BY JACOB SCHICK Arts Editor In terms of video game movies, the bar has been set very low. Films like Assassin’s Creed, Warcraft, and Resident Evil have apparently doomed video game movies to mediocrity or worse, but fortunately Tomb Raider has not hit the depths set by these other films. This film probably marks the best video game movie that has ever been made and it’s not even that good. Fortunately, Tomb Raider has a lot of good things going for it: It’s very enjoyable, it’s accessible to people who haven’t played the video games, and it’s a pretty good action movie—even if it’s not a great movie in general.

Alicia Vikander stars as the protagonist, Lara Croft, of Tomb Raider. She takes over the role from Angelina Jolie in this modern remake of the action-puzzle film version of the acclaimed video games. Luckily for this version, Tomb Raider (2018) is much better than the previous film-adaptations.

Vikander is arguably a better actress, and the movie seems to play seriously well, instead of as a campy action flick.

The movie begins with Lara working as a bicycle courier. She bikes around London, delivering food. It is later revealed that Lara is the heir to a huge fortune and to the company owned by the Croft family. She refuses to sign the paper that would grant her ownership, however, because she believes

FILM

TOMB RAIDER ROAR UTHAUG DISTRIBUTED BY WARNER BROS. RELEASE MAR. 16, 2018 OUR RATING

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that it would acknowledge the death of her father—a man who went missing seven years ago and is presumed dead.

Through a series of puzzles, Lara comes to understand that her father went missing in search of Himiko, an ancient queen of Japan who is rumoured to have cursed everyone she touched with death. She befriends a sailor in Hong Kong, Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), and convinces him to take her to a mysterious and uncharted island in the middle of the Devil’s Sea, where her father believed Himiko was buried alive.

Once on the island, the plot of Tomb Raider begins to really take shape. The story of this action movie is not groundbreaking, or even particularly original, but it is presented in a very refreshing and actionpacked manner. Vikander excels at portraying the intelligent action heroine, solving the puzzles and problems she is presented with in much the same way as players would solve puzzles in the video games. In this way, Tomb Raider is unique: The movie can be viewed through the lens of a video game.

Croft solves puzzles, just like in the games, and the story progresses through scenes outside of the puzzles, much like cutscenes in the video games. Yet, unlike other movies based on video games, Tomb Raider is not absolutely horrible—the effect works very well for fans of the games as well as newcomers to the world of Tomb Raider.

The action is quite good throughout.

There are fight scenes, gun battles, and tense moments that all feel fairly realistic when viewed with a small suspension of disbelief.

The mythology of this world, along with the callbacks made to previous scenes, feels very genuine for a run-of-the-mill action movie.

Vikander does a good job portraying the character of Lara Croft. She, as an actress, seems to have the remarkable ability to lend credibility and interest to any character she plays, providing entertainment and fun for the audience in spite of the movie around her. She does not, however, escape the action movie trope of the generic protagonist who acts as a near stand-in for the audience. This is not a problem specific to Tomb Raider— rather, it is a problem with action movies in general. While the secondary characters have more compelling motivations for their actions, Croft’s character makes sense in the context of the film.

Tomb Raider won’t be winning any awards, but it is a pretty good generic action movie. These days, those are pretty difficult to come by, considering the Taken franchise. Tomb Raider isn’t breaking any new ground in terms of plot, characterization, or execution, but it does present an interesting opportunity for a new breed of action movies with puzzles. The film feels reminiscent of the Indiana Jones movies, especially The Last Crusade, in terms of the difficult challenges that Croft must think her way through. 

Fratellis Come Out Strong With ‘In Your Own Sweet Time’

BY JACOB SCHICK Arts Editor

On March 16, the British indie-rock group The Fratellis dropped another album, In Your Own Sweet Time, to the likely delight of their long-time fans and the ignorance of most everyone else. In Your Own Sweet Time’’s release wasn’t greatly publicized outside of indie-rock circles and will likely fly under the radar of mainstream music listening. This is not to say, however, that The Fratellis’ album isn’t worth listening to. In Your Own Sweet Time provides quite a few straightforward but enjoyable songs.

This isn’t groundbreaking work for the band, but the album is a solid contribution to their discography that most people would have a good time listening to. The Fratellis seem to be aware of this considering the album’s title—listen to this when you get around to it.

In Your Own Sweet Time starts off strong with “Stand up Tragedy.” The song is lively and delectably sweet. It opens on a high note with energizing guitar riffs and high-pitched vocals. Backed by this guitar, along with striking piano keystrokes and drum fills, the song describes the duality of love. Someone might seem like the most amazing person in the world from afar, but the façade is lifted when they come into focus. “Stand up Tragedy” is a pushback against one-sided relationships. The singer has been steamrolled by a previous partner and is taking this song as a chance to air his grievances against her. He sings “I don’t need your red wine-covered sympathy / Just

another punchline in your stand up tragedy.”

This chorus is interspersed well within the other verses, providing a refreshing refrain wherever it appears.

The Fratellis keep it up, following with “Starcrossed Losers.” The song is sung by the same voice, but from the point of view of two characters in the story. “Starcrossed Losers” tells a twisted version of the classic Romeo and Juliet story. In this one, there is clearly chemistry between the two, but “Romeo” keeps pushing Juliet away, claiming that he “was only passing through” while Juliet pleads in the chorus “Romeo, Romeo, tell me where you’ve been / I would be complete if you’d only let me in / I’m here, right here.”

These lyrics lend the song a very sad effect, as the listener hopes in vain that the lovers will get together. But they don’t.

After this, however, In Your Own Sweet Time falters a little with “Sugartown.” The album slows down, as the singer serenades his love. He begs her to give him a chance, promising anything, as he sings “I’ll be your one man band, I’ll be at your command / Just say the word and I’ll be your renaissance man / I swear I’ll go where you don’t dare / I’ll bury this affair deep down in / Sugartown.”

The song is as plodding as it is pleading, marking a departure from the faster and livelier “Stand up Tragedy” and “Starcrossed Losers” that came before it.

In Your Own Sweet Time meanders back and forth from misstep to solid contribution.

None of these missteps are bad songs, by any means, they are simply not up to par with the high standard set by the beginning of the album. “Told You So” and “I’ve Been

Blind” leave listeners wanting just a little more, while “The Next Time We Wed” and “Laughing Gas” stand in contrast as very fun and enjoyable songs.

The 11-track album wraps up with “Advaita Shuffle,” “I Guess… I Suppose…,” “Indestructible,” and “I Am That.” Among these, “Advaita Shuffle” stands out. The song takes on tones of multiple genres as it progresses. It begins with what can almost be described as a twang. It alternates this with a South Asian string instrumentation.

These back and forth contrasts lend the song a very unique quality on the album.

“I Guess… I Suppose…” also seems to borrow from other genres and artists, most notably from the funk sounds of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” with an intro of funky guitar licks. The Fratellis play these

guitar notes in a faster and fuzzier way than Wonder’s funk landmark, but the effect of the intro is striking. The rest of the song is a chanted rock song, and it is another of the strong tracks on the album.

“Indestructible” and “I Am That” work together to round the album out on a high note. In Your Own Sweet Time is sort of a bell curve in terms of quality. The front two and the back four songs are all very good, while the middle five are hit-or-miss. This works in the band’s favor, drawing listeners in with two very enjoyable songs, satisfying them every other song for the middle of the album, and then hooking them again with

Arts Editor

Did anyone want a remake of a bad 1974 movie about a dog who saves two kidnapped children? Did anyone even remember that movie existed? [Editor’s Note: They did not.]

These rhetorical questions didn’t stop Netflix from bringing the live-action animal movies—not the ones where they CGI the mouth moving so animals can talk like Beverly Hills Chihuahua or Disney’s new version of The Jungle Book— straight into the 21st century. No, Netflix subscribers were not so lucky. Instead, Benji popped up on suggested movies for basically anyone whose children use the same Netflix profile as they do. At least

the dog is pretty cute.

Benji is a children’s movie about a small, yet tough dog who befriends two young children. When these children are kidnapped by the most annoying criminals in the world, Benji the dog will stop at nothing to save them (read: through the most contrived and convenient plot devices since ancient Greek theatre).

The problem—well, one of them at least—with this movie is that it is just mostly fine. The child actors are mostly fine. The other characters are mostly fine.

Everything in this movie is either pretty tolerable or fairly annoying. For children, this will be a decent movie to put on in order to while away the hours until something good comes out. For everyone

FILM

BENJI BRANDON CAMP PRODUCED BY BLUMHOUSE PRODUCTIONS RELEASE MAR. 16, 2018

BLUMHOUSE PRODUCTIONS

EMILY HIMES

‘REARVIEW TOWN’ JASON ALDEAN

Songs about hometowns are usually delightfully reminiscent.

Not for Jason Aldean—his new single, “Rearview Town,” demonstrates spiteful enmity.

Unfortunately, Aldean never explains why he feels this way.

What did this town ever do to him? Not only is the song vaguely bitter for no apparent reason, but the lyrics don’t even make it worth trying to make sense of.

It’s chock-full of stereotypical country song references—a dashboard, a rear-view mirror (six times!), dust clouds, plows, and a truck.

The music itself is generic—the song can’t be described as catchy, nor does it have any mentionable sonic qualities. At one point, Aldean hints at why he doesn’t want to go back with a sly, quick mention of a girl.

“Too much of her to run into / And too much road to somewhere new,” Aldean sings, alluding to failed relationships and a desire for adventure, which probably came with his newfound worldliness after becoming famous. Instead of stomping on the town that he presumably grew up in (and undeniably supports him in all his big-time endeavors), he should show it a little more love.

But for right now, it seems like nothing will change Aldean’s mind. 

MUSIC VIDEO EMILY HIMES

the final four tracks. In Your Own Sweet Time is a very good recent addition to British indie-rock and is a definite must-listen for fans of the genre. 

MUSIC

‘MOST PEOPLE ARE GOOD’ LUKE BRYAN

IN YOUR OWN SWEET TIME THE FRATELLIS DISTRIBUTED BY COOKING VINYL RELEASE MAR. 16, 2018 OUR RATING

COOKING VINYL

‘Benji’ Remake Barks Up All the Wrong Trees

BY JACOB SCHICK

SINGLE REVIEW

else, it’s just annoying and blessedly short (80 minutes).

But, since a lot of this movie is pretty generic, let’s point out all the bad things.

This movie begins with an attempt at seriousness. It does not succeed with this attempt. Instead, the opening scene is one of the most absurdly funny parts of this movie. After an opening credit by Blumhouse Productions—the production company known best for producing horror movies—Benji begins.

It was a dark night when the dogcatcher came to the bad part of town. The camera pans down to reveal a flickering neon sign that casts a gloomy shadow over the darkened and dirty alleyway.

The door to the truck opens, and two boots hit the ground—aside: Yhe force which this person had to have exerted in order to make the boots hit the ground so loudly and so strongly as to kick up all of this dust would have necessitated them jumping off the roof of the car—in a very “sinister” manner.

A scruffy dog barks at the out-of-focus dogcatcher, who brandishes a catcher pole. A struggle ensues. The dog is locked away in the truck, while the tiny face of a puppy watches from the trash pile as his parent is taken away.

Dun dun.

After a montage of walking, Benji the dog arrives in New Orleans, as one does. He befriends a young boy named

Carter (Gabriel Bateman) who is bullied at school (of course). Carter leads Benji home where he and his sister Frankie (Darby Camp) fall in love with our intrepid protagonist. They try in vain to hide him from their overworked mother Whitney (Kiele Sanchez).

Because this is a movie, and it has to have some conflict, their mother forces the children to get rid of the dog.

In a cliché to end all clichés, Carter takes Benji into the pouring rain and tells him to “just go.”

Luckily for Carter and Frankie, Benji decides to stick around. In a contrived and unbelievable turn of events, the two children are kidnapped. Benji follows them and manages to outmaneuver and trick another “evil” dog and both of these adult men. Benji is preternaturally intelligent, but the movie plays this off as Benji being “a good boy.”

Nothing could possibly be spoiled in a movie like this, so obviously Benji eventually saves the day and the children.

Everyone becomes friends, the two bad guys are locked up, and all’s well that ends well. Things get a little dicey when Benji takes a pretty bad hit, but the power of love from Carter and Frankie brings him back to life, good as new.

The worst part about Benji is that it’s just generic. If you’ve seen a kids movie about animals, you’ve seen this one. Don’t waste your time with another. 

Luke Bryan’s new video for his hit single “Most People Are Good” is meant to be uplifting, and for the most part, it is. While the song itself is inspirational, the video is downright low-quality.

Bryan stands in a mysterious space surrounded by large video panels showcasing different snippets of ordinary, compassionate people such as firefighters in the California wildfires, families, and children running through fields. In some instances, they even step out of the screens to join Bryan as he sings about their virtue. The song itself is so much better than the video—the lyrics are heartwarming and clever, much-needed facets in this day and age. The touching words deserve a better video. “I believe most people are good / and most Mamas ought to qualify for sainthood” is a sweet line, but panning a video screen with a picture of a mother and daughter on it doesn’t really do the words justice. The video could be improved in simple ways—instead of showing seemingly random pictures and videos of families, it could use more issues our country deals with today. One of the best scenes of the video included the California fires and the firemen who worked to tame them—there are so many other people who are unsung heroes in this world, from teachers in classrooms to the students who are taking a stand on gun control in the wake of the Parkland shooting. Artists are not obligated to address political issues in their music, by any means. But when an artist records a song called “Most People Are Good” it has implications, and those are not confronted in the video. With all the modern technology we utilize today, this music video seems outdated. By the looks of it, this could have been made in a few hours. 

The Heights

Monday, March 19, 2018

B7

A Three-Way Tie in BC’s ‘Battle of the Bands’ Musical Inebriation

By Tristan St. Germain Heights Staff

As the crowd clapped and roared, Rachel Moon, MCAS ’19, ran off the stage and into the audience, where she thrashed on her guitar while dancing with students.

Her performance was full of the carefree pep and energy that defines college music scenes, and which ruled over the competitive atmosphere of Battle of the Bands last Thursday evening in the Cabaret Room at Vanderslice.

Shady Lady opened the night with an indie-folk extravaganza. On songs like “Bed Bugs,” which expressed themes of lovesickness and anxiousness, the band progressed from distant and melancholy soundscapes to fast-paced and ecstatic finales that impactfully conveyed the emotion of liberating oneself from teenage angst—nonetheless keeping a perfect balance between vulnerable intimacy and cool detachedness. Between the hauntingly subdued and country-twanged vocals of

Katie Kelleher, CSOM ’18, and those of her bandmate Nicole Rodger, MCAS ’19, who added to the set with tambourine jingles and other eclectic instruments, the band showcased a diverse range of singing styles, all of which contributed to a cohesive and compelling aesthetic vision.

While Shady Lady hammered home the image of a folkish female band, The Backyard Astronauts took the audience floating among an atmosphere of glitchy computer sounds and laid-back electronica. The band cycled through drum-loops using a simple Korg-pad whose programming complexity was evident in the increasingly intricate percussion the keyboardist sprinkled over the bass-brimming synthesizers. Acoustic guitars on the second single provided slick string-plucks to the steely and impersonal atmosphere that belied the band’s emotionally vulnerable subject matter. Less of a crutch than an aesthetic decision, the Astronauts delivered a spacey minimalism reminiscent of such Gothic-tinged R&B acts as the XX, James Blake, and Spooky Black.

Sam Zhai / Heights Staff

Jaclyn Chan, MCAS ’18, of Funky Giant, waves to the crowd in the middle of her set.

But if it were a competition for coolness, no doubt Funky Giant would be the winner. Through jamming piano keys and wobbling bass-slaps, the band evoked the simultaneous grind and languor familiar to any funk-loving drifter. Vocalist Jaclyn Chan, MCAS ’18, warned the audience that the group’s first track, “Funk Love,” contained some swearing, before proceeding to jam out a slow and sensual melody about romantic partners getting high and doing exactly what the title implies.

The build-up was completely organic, as pianist Chris Vu, MCAS ’17, and guitarist Matt Chilton, CSOM ’18, played off each other’s passionate riffing. Bassist Nicholas Giordano, MCAS ’18, was the definition of a man lost in the music, sliding his fingers along the bassstrings as his face contorted in all possible expressions, culminating in a wild solo the whole crowd applauded.

Little Saturday opened with “Sunny Nights,” a slow and steamy throwback to the mist-filled city corridors of ’70s detective movies. With Isaiah Rawlinson, MCAS ’18, on the tenor sax, the band orchestrated an epic combination of Phish-inspired jamrock and electric-guitar driven crescendos.

The second track, “Running,” captured the paranoia of a comical character lost in some bizarre Halloween-themed nightmare. Vocalist Andrew Hammond, MCAS ’18, was quick to gather the crowd’s participation, putting on a high-key “class-act” as one anonymous audience member called it. The best moments were indeed when the band ended in a perfectly timed silence, giving Hammond space to chant his impassioned lyrics without interference.

The musical manifesto of Common Wealth, a self-proclaimed “Neo-communist” band seeking the free-distribution of

music, put off some listeners who did not at first understand the smartly satirical synthesis of edgy politics and ear-grating sludge-metal. Vocalist Stephen Porritt, MCAS ’18, complemented his grimoire bass-guitar with operatic singing that bordered between hilariously whiny and profoundly moving.

On the first track he sang about the difficulties of boyhood, and the shock that life does not get any better with manhood.

The second track, which Porritt confessed they had written the night prior, was like the soliloquy of a dying cow being shipped to a meat-processing plant. But the band came back with its triumphant single “Don’t Pinch,” in which Porritt repeatedly howled the lyrics “It doesn’t mean a thing / Everything points toward the end.”

Rapper Phenom V and DJ Xtremesounds stole the night with a completely wild combination of cloud-rap and rockmusic. Phenom V’s enthusiastic stagepresence cannot be understated. At times appearing as if he were about to leap out of his body, the Boston-based rapper sent the audience into a dancing frenzy as he shouted heart-pounding anthems and interacted on stage with the other musicians—the guitarist at one moment falling onto his knees while shredding a gnarly solo. In the background was Xtremesounds who provided an ear-shattering barrage of bass-kicks and well-timed explosions.

Toward the end of the performance, Phenom V spoke of his Haitian heritage and a recent conversation with his mother during which she told him to pursue school against his wishes of pursuing music. The last track represented his reconciliation of his mother’s wishes and his own—lending to a truly poignant finale. n

Bostonians Fill Room With Audience and Voices

By Austin Hord Heights Staff

It was clear Friday night at the Bostonians’ Spring Café that they’re not only one of the most popular student groups, but also among the most talented. The audience filled every single seat in Gasson 100, and even people who arrived on time were forced to line the walls. Rowdy students showed up in mass quantities to support their friends and roommates in the show, and the atmosphere was ecstatic and deafening as the singers entered the room.

The Bostonians opened the show with a couple of lesser-known songs, but then the majority of the group left the stage, and this semester’s new members—Jake Abrams, LSOE ’20; Michael Considine, MCAS ’21; and Creel Ng Cashin, MCAS ’21—performed their “newby project.” In this Bostonians tradition, they cleverly combined songs like Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours,” Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi,” and Alicia Keys’s “No One.” The way the

new members tackled the project was admirable, especially considering they’ve only been part of the group for a couple of months. But this part wasn’t purely a cappella: Abrams also played acoustic guitar to accompany their vocals. This trend of multi-faceted talent would continue in later parts of the show, as other members played instruments too. “It’s truly a crazy experience to be surrounded by and perform with such talented people,” Abrams said. “I’m just happy to be a part of it.”

Highlights of the show included solos by Hannah Crowley, MCAS ’18; Chris Cheeseman, CSOM ’20; and Dalton Letorney, MCAS ’21. They all seemed to hit every single note and fill the room with their impressive and powerful voices. Also, the vocal accompaniment from the ensemble was beautiful and supported the soloists very well. In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, Will Sutor, MCAS ’20, gave a heartfelt performance of a traditional Irish love song all by himself.

Austin Hord / Heights staff

The Bostonians recreate “Paparazzi” and “Love the One You’re With” with their voices.

Toward the end of the show, duet performances of Sia’s “Titanium” and Adele’s “Skyfall” were particularly beautiful as they were accompanied

by Letorney’s skillful and smooth piano playing.

Letorney caught the audience a little off guard—particularly the parents—with his T-Pain medley, including “Buy U a Drank,” “Best Love Song,” and “I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper),” but

it was a great performance.

Some of the members embraced more of a band setting for their rendition of John Mayer’s “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room,” which included Mayer’s guitar solo, but performed on saxophone. The group ended the show by bringing up some Bostonians alumni from the audience for an animated and lighthearted performance of “Love the One You’re With.” n

‘Majesty’ Takes Dance Ensemble to New Heights

By Emily Himes Asst. Arts Editor

The Boston College Dance Ensemble (BCDE), a student-run organization allowing about 30 dancers the chance to perform and choreograph throughout their college years, hosted Majesty, one of its biannual performances, at Robsham Theater this weekend. All proceeds from the show were donated to the BC Campus School, which educates differently-abled students ages 3 to 21.

The show itself was dramatic, with a comically ominous voice announcing the names of each upcoming song. First up was a performance of a set called Run the World, choreographed by the officers, that included a fiery remix of “Waiting Game”

by Banks, “Piece of Me” by Britney Spears,

“Lady Powers” by Vera Blue, and “Run the World (Girls)” by Beyoncé. The entire Dance Ensemble donned the stage in blue leotards, and at the end a single dancer was crowned.

Following was Adele’s “Best for Last,” choreographed by Olivia Hoffmann, MCAS ’18. In the program, she described why she picked the song—“Adele’s title perfectly describes my feelings about this DE show … best one for last!” “Best for Last” was a bright and fun tap dance. The dancers were clad in dark purple dresses that stood out against the bright orange backdrop. The upbeat performance was definitely one of the best of the show.

Following “Best for Last” was “Woman”

by Kesha, choreographed by Gabriella Rubert, MCAS ’20. The fun and colorful performance was extremely energetic. The

Katie Genirs / Heights Editor

Dance Ensemble mixes classical styles like ballet with modern music to great effect.

dancers wore red crop tops and shorts, adding more brightness to the exuberantly dizzying set.

Juliette Swersky, MCAS ’19, choreographed “What About Us” by P!nk. The unique set featured some storytelling—at the beginning of the song, the dancers wore dreary black sweatshirts, but halfway through they flung them off to reveal colorful shirts underneath. The vibrant, colorful performance was engrossing and expertly executed. The story-like character of the song was delightful to watch.

Next up was “Dance With Me Tonight”

by Olly Murs. Choreographed by seniors Katie Sweeney, MCAS ’18, and Olivia Hoffman, MCAS ’18, “Dance With Me Tonight” was a lively tap dance featuring pink and black dresses and BC Irish Dance (BCID) dancers Kellyn Berrigan, MCAS ’18; Maeve Clancy, CSOM ’20; Erin Gonzalez, MCAS ’18; Camille Homa, MCAS ’18; Lizzy Kroll, MCAS ’20; and Katie Sweeney, MCAS ’18.

The dance was fun and upbeat, and the mixture of tap and Irish dancing was unique and intriguing.

Later in the show came “Dream On,” choreographed by Abby Funari, MCAS ’18.

Funari did a great job at putting a graceful spin on the Aerosmith classic. The lighting was also well done, as the set opened up with the dancers’ silhouettes shining against the blue backdrop. During this performance, it was apparent that one of the dancers was trying to fly, as the others attempted to help her. It was a greatly unique take on an unexpected rock hit. BCID performed again,

this time without BCDE present. During this jazzy performance, the members were dressed in red with shiny top hats and suspenders. The swanky set showcased their incredible talent as Irish dancers, and it was evident they truly enjoyed illustrating their fun and fancy moves.

After the intermission, select dancers from BCDE performed Justin Timberlake’s classic “Sexyback.” Choreographed by Kristen Brandenburg, CSOM ’18, this performance exemplified the group’s amazing coordinational talent. Donning red leotards, the group was able to really collaborate on rhythmic moves during this crowd-pleaser.

“Slip” by Elliot Moss was choreographed

by Madeline Jenkins, MCAS ’20. The calm performance featured interesting movements that flowed along with the unexpected rhythm of the song. The blackand-white costumes, mixed with the sleek dancing, made this performance one of the highlights of the night.

One of the last performances was “Can’t Be Tamed” by Miley Cyrus featuring Lil Jon, choreographed by Jenny Keenan, MCAS ’19. The dance featured amazing and skillful flips and cartwheels. Second to last was the Senior Dance, choreographed by the Class of 2018. The seniors wore blue leotards with yellow capes and danced throughout the audience in preparation for the finale, “Majesty.” BCDE’s Majesty was an extremely successful performance—it was able to raise money for a great cause and showcase the immense talent housed at BC. n

Kaylie Ramirez

I was standing in the light pouring in from the open window of the first floor guest room of my aunt’s beach house in Grover Beach, Calif., while cleansing my Spotify “Beach” playlist of stale songs from summer days passed when I came across Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life.” I gave into the natural human urge to sing along to the opening doo-doodoos before glancing down at the nifty “Behind The Lyrics” pop-up that everyone ignores yet some intern is still working tirelessly to create for every somewhat popular song on the streaming service.

“Third Eye Blind’s ‘Semi-Charmed Life’ sounds like a fun bop, but this iconic ’90s hit is about crystal meth addiction,” the screen read.

This was an eye-opening realization for me. Having sung along to the song on road trips my family reluctantly (and probably regrettably) allowed me to aux, I was surprised my mother and I unknowingly bopped to an unapologetic song about meth. Now entranced by the once annoying pop-up, I read the lyrics while the upbeat song played. Third Eye Blind bluntly shares its message with the line “Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break.” This made me wonder how many other happy-go-lucky beats were deceiving me into singing about drugs.

There are many songs that are open about recreational drug use: Eric Clapton’s head rush from a different type of rock in “Cocaine,” Tom Petty’s relaxed high on “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” and Lana Del Rey’s lethargic shot of “Heroin” are a few of my favorite drug dealing anthems.

As a devoted fan of The 1975, I knew the band’s lighthearted radio hit “Chocolate” used the sugary substance as a euphemism for marijuana. It was fun to be in on the secret when the song innocently played in ice cream shops, retail stores, and other public places full of parents who lie to their kids about their pot-smoking youth.

The band stepped beyond the gateway drug for its sophomore album with “UGH!,” a song in which front man Matty Healy chases a quickly dissipating cocaine high to the sound of a poppy dance tune.

The songs are admittedly much more covert about their drug references than “Semi-Charmed Life.”

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are known for their willingness to discuss the band members’ incessant drug abuse. In 1991, radio stations across the nation promoted drug deals obscured by “Under The Bridge.” Listeners wouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that the song is about Kiedis mourning former Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak’s untimely fatal heroin overdose given the sound of the heavenly choir and winding bassline.

In Anthony Kiedis’s autobiography Scar Tissue (a book I highly recommend if you are looking to vicariously experience the rush of the rock star lifestyle without periodic stints in rehab), the lead singer discusses his longtime addiction to crack and heroin and the even longer road to recovery.

What’s probably more shocking is that the band’s Stadium Arcadium hit “Snow (Hey Oh)” isn’t about cocaine, but rather starting anew with sobriety.

Of course The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is a song about the hippie-favorite hallucinogenic LSD, made clear by the song’s tell-tale initials. The song takes a trip through an alternate universe filled with images one might dream up while under the influence of the world-altering drug: “Cellophane flowers” grow to unprecedented heights around the “newspaper taxis” that transport the users during their quest to find the “girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”

While some artists do openly write lines of lyrics about lines of coke, others are more tight-lipped about their pill-popping antics. Knowing and understanding the subtle and not-so-subtle innuendos encrypted in a song’s lyrics can either help straight-laced citizens avoid toked-up tunes, or make the listening experience a lot more enjoyable. The dopey double entendres of our favorite artists sometimes act as little inside jokes, a mockery of the modern consumer’s mindless music taste.

Kaylie Ramirez is the assoc. arts editor for The Heights. She can be reached at arts@bcheights.com.

ARTS

B8

MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2018

@BCHEIGHTSARTS

KAITLIN MEEKS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

BY KAYLIE RAMIREZ Assoc. Arts Editor Stavros Piperis, MCAS ’19, took the stage in front of three Jesuit judges and a packed Robsham Theater on the evening of March 1 with two things on his mind: the lyrics to Zac Brown Band’s “Colder Weather” and the make-it-or-break-it importance of the loop pedal beside his foot.

Having just been moved from the green room to the wings of the stage for the Sing It to the Heights performance before his, Piperis was taking in the size of the audience for the first time—it was much larger than the audiences he had encountered while performing at open mic nights hosted by local dive bars and quaint restaurants throughout Boston. Standing behind the mic with his acoustic guitar, however, Piperis was unshaken by the many faces fixated on his performance.

“When I’m playing in a smaller venue, it’s harder to know where to put my eyes because people are like right in front of you,” Piperis said. “But [in Robsham] it was easier to detach a little bit [and] take it all in.”

Piperis delivered an impeccable performance of the popular country song, stripping the song to the combined sound of his acoustic guitar and vulnerable voice. The singer complemented the emotional lyrics of the Zac Brown Band ballad with the sincerity of every sound that poured from his guitar strings and voice to captivate the hearts and secure the votes of the audience members.

Votes sent via text message toward the close of the night declared Piperis the winner of 14th annual Sing It to the Heights—a feat freshman Piperis could not have imagined.

Piperis auditioned to compete in Sing It to the Heights two years earlier but was not selected to perform. Two years

filled with performances throughout the greater Boston area and his hometown of Omaha, Neb., however, prepared him for a second shot at the singing competition.

Piperis was selected to compete in the Boston College version of American Idol after auditioning with an original song titled “Delicate.” He decided to retreat to the catalog of other artists for the competition and settled on Zac Brown Band’s “Colder Weather” due to the potential Piperis saw in the song.

“In terms of writing [the song] is gorgeous,” Piperis said. “Also it left enough room for me to do something with the arrangement—it’s usually performed with a full band but there was a lot of room around the bridge to build up and make it more explosive. It has potential to be memorable, I think.”

The skilled guitar playing that Piperis exhibited onstage is not something that will soon be forgotten by the audience.

The audience hung onto every note as the guitarist looped and layered riffs around the bridge, creating an unexpected electricity with the acoustic guitar. Piperis recorded one of his riffs and, with a kick of the pedal beside the microphone, played it back to the audience. While the mechanism sounds simple to use, the successful implementation requires near perfect playing.

“It’s always risky,” Piperis said. “If you mess up just a little bit, you’ll hear it for the rest of the performance.”

Piperis has been looping riffs in his live performances for about a year now and credits Ed Sheeran with introducing him to the intricate art. Piperis took note of the acoustic aficionado of soft pop’s use of the loop pedal to make his otherwise lonely guitar riffs more full.

The young guitarist also looks up to John Mayer for pairing “accessible” pop-song concepts with “intricate instrumental aspects, especially the guitar.”

On the vocal front, Piperis greatly admires the work of Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay who has consistently pumped out hits like “Viva La Vida” and heartbreaking ballads like “The Scientist” over his 21-year career.

When asked which artist, dead or alive, he would collaborate with if he had the chance, Piperis responded with “Chris Martin” after a brief moment of contemplation. Piperis sang the praises of the legendary front man’s “ear for tune,” calling him the “best pop melody writer” in Piperis’s lifetime. Out of all the songs in the band’s illustrious catalog, Piperis cites A Rush of Blood to the Head’s “Amsterdam” as the most complete embodiment of the genius of Martin.

Despite household name influences like Sheeran, Mayer, and Martin, the student singer finds unique artistic authenticity in performing songs he wrote himself. “ Th e m o s t au th e nt i c w ay o f performing is doing something that you wrote, something that you understand fully,” Piperis said.

There are distinct drawbacks to performing original material for a new audience—Piperis has found that introducing an original song is “asking a lot” of the audience. It may be hard for the audience to process music they have not heard before. For Piperis, the reward of baring his soul for a new audience is seeing them begin to “access and appreciate” his music, which he characterizes as acoustic pop.

Pinpointing the precise inspiration behind Piperis’s original pieces is difficult for the budding artist. He finds that his art is often inspired by the art of others.

“The thing that pushes me to write the most is hearing other people’s music that I kinda wish I had written,” Piperis said. “I think the biggest obstacle for me

KAITLIN MEEKS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Stavros Piperis, MCAS ’19, accepts the first place prize of $300 for his win at 2018’s ‘Sing it to the Heights’ competition.

INSIDE SCENE

‘Battle of the Bands’

Boston College bands faced off against each other for a night of incredible music and performances....................................B7

is feeling like everything has been done before.”

Creating his own music doesn’t stop Piperis from experimenting with the works of others. On a less serious note than reworking one of Zac Brown Band’s most emotional ballads for Sing It to the Heights, Piperis gets a kick out of creating eccentric acoustic covers of well-known hip-hop songs. T-Pain’s “Bartender” is a staple for Piperis, who likes to pump up the audience by starting his sets with nostalgic, low-stakes songs.

Performers at Sing It to the Heights only get one song to capture the affection of the audience—this is certainly not a lowstakes competition. Piperis immediately recognized the high level of talent he would be up against in the competition, having already been rejected from it once. This prompted hours of practice that often took place in his room or in the practice rooms of Lyons Hall. Because Piperis was a longtime fan of Zac Brown Band and already knew the lyrics of “Colder Weather” well, much of his time practicing was spent perfecting the guitar parts he embellished on the song.

The practice clearly paid off—Jesuit judge Rev. Ignatius Idoko, S.J., described the “goosebumps” Piperis’s performance left him with.

For Pip er i s , prac tice st ar te d much earlier than these past couple months. Piperis was raised in a musical household: His father’s family was informally musical, having impromptu jam sessions often, while his mother was formally trained in piano. Like his mother, Piperis plays piano, but he first started singing when he was 14, around the same time he began playing guitar. Early inspirations for Piperis include a “wholesome” mix of Christian gospel songs and Disney soundtracks, particularly that of Beauty and the Beast, a musical score that remains among his favorites today.

Piperis is certain music will always play a significant role in his life, but is unsure whether he will ever pursue music as a career. A political science major, Piperis is faced with two starkly different career options: the disciplined intellectual pursuit of a law degree and a resultant lifetime in courtrooms or perhaps even on the House or Senate floor, or the tumultuous pursuit of a career in the ever-exclusive music industry.

“To take a serious shot at [a career in music] would need a lot more investment, time, money, just energy in general, and that’s hard to do with class” Piperis said.

Piperis remains serious about his music nonetheless, and does not rule out the possibility of pursuing music in a professional context, while confronting the challenges of such an endeavor.

“Music is something that, regardless of what I do, is always going to be at the center of my life,” Piperis said. “But the form that takes is really hard to predict.”

Dance Ensemble ‘Majesty’

BC Dance Ensemble, along with BCID and Synergy, stunned the crowd with impressive dance choreography..................B7

A clear interest in music does not translate to his choice of on-campus activities, however. When Piperis isn’t reading Locke and Hobbes or plucking the strings of his guitar, he participates in Hellenic Society of BC, an on-campus club that celebrates Greek culture.

Piperis was almost named after one of the most famous Greeks—Piperis was almost “Aristotle Piperis” according to his fun fact at Sing It to the Heights.

Piperis is no stranger to the Jesuit Catholic aspects of BC’s unique oncampus culture. Having attended a Jesuit high school, Piperis was already familiar with focusing on service and reflection in everyday life. Piperis just returned from a Spring Break service trip as a part of Appalachia Volunteers. Being one of the lucky few chosen ones to participate in a Kairos retreat is another standout experience from Piperis’s three years at BC. During the notoriously secretive retreat, students are asked to reflect on their lives. While Piperis says he’s “not the best at reflecting,” he does think understanding purpose has made valuable contributions to the manner in which he approaches songwriting, however transient the specific inspirations for each song.

Piperis says the reason he doesn’t participate in any of the on-campus clubs devoted to music is because he spends so much of his time practicing music. He wanted to bolster his college experience by indulging in some of his other interests as well. Piperis prefers to practice his craft performing at open mic nights presented by Music Guild and in bars around Boston.

Piperis’s favorite performance involves an unexpected collaboration with a violinist. Under the lights of the basement of Article 24, a bar and restaurant in Brighton, Piperis accepted the offer of a fellow open mic participant to provide backing violin during his set. Piperis remembers walking away from that performance with a feeling of euphoria—the combined sound of his acoustic guitar and the generous woman’s violin during the performance of one of his original songs not only stunned the audience, but Piperis as well.

Experiences like this have also left Piperis with a yearning to connect to musical members of the BC community.

Sing It to the Heights provided Piperis with the opportunity to interact with talented BC students of similar interests.

Aside from being able to raise funds for nearby school St. Columbkille’s music program, listening to the voices of other BC students was the highlight of participating in Sing It to the Heights for Piperis.

“Most of the performing I’ve done in Boston has been pretty isolated, and [that] gets lonely,” Piperis said.

“My favorite thing about Sing It to the Heights is being able to both share the stage and just enjoy and witness all these other artists on campus.” 

‘Tomb Raider’................................................ B6 ‘In Your Own Sweet Time’................................ B6 ‘Benji’.......................................................... B6