The Heights March 26, 2018

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MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2018

BC Accepts 27% of 2022 Applicants The mean ACT and SAT scores increased for the incoming class.

BY COLE DADY News Editor Boston College accepted 8,400 students out of over 31,000 total applications for admission to the Class of 2022, making for a 27 percent acceptance rate, said Director of Undergraduate Admission John Mahoney. Last year, BC accepted 9,200 students, with an acceptance rate of 32 percent.

In total, the number of applications for the Class of 2022 increased 9 percent from last year. The accepted number combines the Early Action admission pool with the Regular Decision pool. In December, the University admitted 3,170 students, for an Early Action acceptance rate of 31 percent.

The mean SAT for accepted students was 1448. Last year, the middle 50 percent of SAT test takers admitted to BC scored between 1310 and 1450.

The mean ACT score this year was 33, one point higher than last year.

Mahoney said that the Office of Undergraduate Admission is aiming for a class size of 2,300 students.

Accepted students hail from all 50 states, and about 10 percent are international. In the Class of 2021, international students come from 41 different countries and make upare 8 percent of the class.

BC’s combined undergraduate and graduate international student population has risen significantly in recent years, growing from 1,606 last year to 1,751 this year, a new record for the University, while total enrollment has remained relatively stable at just above 14,000 students.

Mahoney also said that over 30 percent of accepted students are of AHANA backgrounds. BC’s Class of 2021 is the most diverse in the University’s history, with AHAHA students constituting 31 percent of the freshman class.

The Office of Undergraduate Admission will spend the month of April ensuring that it enrolls the highest quality Class of 2022 and attains the yield it hopes for. It plans to hold 15 yield receptions across the country and two Admitted Eagle Days on campus. Special programming will also happen every Tuesday and Thursday at 11 a.m., with an information session, panel, and tour for admitted students. The Student Admission Program will also begin calling all admitted students. ď Ž

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Thousands March in Boston On Saturday, 50,000 joined the rally against gun violence.

BY COLLEEN MARTIN

RICH KALONICK / CATHOLIC EXTENSION

Leahy Receives 2018 Spirit of Francis Award The award recognizes the partnership with Catholic Extension.

BY ANTHONY REIN Assoc. News Editor Catholic Extension, a fundraising organization that supports dioceses and parishes across the United States, awarded University President Rev. William P. Leahy, S.J., with the 2018 Spirit of Francis Award on Tuesday night at a dinner in his honor at the Mandarin Oriental in Boston. Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago and chancellor of Catholic Extension, presented the award.

The Spirit of Francis Award recognizes an individual or group for their commitment “to reach out to the margins of society� in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis,

NICOLE CHAN / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Ed Markey Urges Students to Stay Active After March The Mass. Senator spoke to students on Sunday afternoon.

BY JACK MILLER Assoc. Investigative Editor U.S. Senator Ed Markey, BC ’68 and BC Law ’72, spoke Sunday afternoon in Devlin 008, a day after joining other politicians in the March for Our Lives.

Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller introduced Markey and was joined

by Ruth Balser, who represents the 12th Middlesex District in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

In her opening remarks, Fuller en-

couraged the audience members to embrace their role as change makers going forward. “You’re seeing the local level, the state level, and the national level, and there are ways to get involved in all three and bring your passion to whichever idea or issues means a lot to you,� she said. “What the last three months have shown is that in fact we need to be listening to you and following in your footsteps.�

When Markey began speaking, he recalled his seven years at Boston College, which started with Sister Therese Donovan’s Introduction to Western Civilization class in the very

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BY CHARLIE POWER Asst. News Editor Jorge Mejia, MCAS ’19, was awarded the Archbishop Oscar A. Romero Scholarship at an award ceremony on Saturday night. The dinner featured Bolivian cuisine and culture, as well as performances by Caporales de San Simon New England.

Juan A. Arteaga received the Rev. John A. Dineen, S.J., Hispanic Alumni Community Service Award.

Mejia, a political science major with minors in Latin American studies and history, is a research fellow at the Global Leadership Institute and the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. He is also involved with the Organization of Latin American Affairs, and in the summer of 2017 worked at the West Bronx Housing (WBH) and Neighborhood Resource Center, working with low-income tenants. “I hope we’ll take a moment to step back and consider how might we better envision, how might we re-envision, our lives so that we are better people, so we are doing more

See Romero Scholarship, A3

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SCULPTED SHADOW ARTS Stevie Gleason, MCAS ’18, translates song frequencies to the luminosity of sculptures made of folded paper.

Lacrosse extends programrecord winning streak with victory over No. 5 North Carolina.

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SPORTS: NFL Pro Day

About 30 scouts poured into the bubble to evaluate nine BC prospects..........................B1

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for our fellow citizens, residents, members of the Boston College community—people who are part not only of the United States, but of our world,� said University President Rev. William P. Leahy, S.J., who presented the scholarship to Mejia.

This is the scholarship’s 26th year being awarded, and it serves as a celebration of Romero’s life. The committee narrows down the applicants to three finalists from a large pool, based on academic achievement, leadership, community service, and involvement in the Latino community. “On this very day, March 24 in 1980, Archbishop Romero was assassinated,�

Leahy said. “We are here tonight, and we remember him. I hope we also use this occasion and all the examples and words we have heard of encouragement to rededicate ourselves to those values and those commitments that animated his life.�

Eve Spangler, a sociology professor, who introduced Mejia, talked about how he was determined to leave his hometown of the Bronx when he was growing up. But his worldview changed as he encountered other BC students with a passion for social justice, inspiring him to seek “the conversion of career into a vocation,� as he wrote in his

and Catholic Extension founder Rev. Francis Clement Kelly, a press release explained. “I accept this award on behalf of Boston College and all the students, faculty, staff, administrators, and alumni who help BC live out its mission,� Leahy said. “It is truly a community effort.�

Leahy accepted the award in the presence of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, BC ’09, and Archbishop of Boston Cardinal SeĂĄn Patrick O’Malley. Also in attendance were prominent figures in the BC community, such as Peter Markell, chair of the Board of Trustees and BC ’77; Joseph Hooley, vice chair of the Board of Trustees and BC ’79; John Fish, chair of the Board of Regents and a trustee; and Jack Connors, a longtime trustee and BC ’63. “What I see in Father Leahy is an individual who is curious about others,â€? Cupich

THE STREAK SPORTS

INSIDE

AND ISABEL FENOGLIO

Thousands flooded the streets of Boston on Saturday to participate in the March for Our Lives and subsequent rally to protest against gun violence. According to reports by the Boston Police Department, as many as 50,000 people participated, but protest organizers claim this number to be much larger.

The march in Boston was one of more than 800 protests organized by high school students that took place across the country and worldwide.

March for Our Lives is a movement calling for stricter gun laws, started by survivors of the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) in Parkland, Fla. last month.

The rally began at 9 a.m. in Roxbury at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School. Protesters congregated outside of the school armed with posters, noisemakers, bubbles, and smiles, and starting at 11 a.m., began the three mile march down Columbus Ave. to Boston Common.

The sound of jingling bells and drum beats filled the air. Some marchers held up speakers and played songs ranging from “We Shall Overcome� to “God’s Plan.� A man on stilts weaved in and out of the tightly packed crowd, dancing to the music.

Leading the march was a line of student protesters, packed together, holding signs and chanting. Several students broke off from the group as the march came to a pause and turned to face their peers. They called out, “Tell me what democracy looks like,� to which the crowd responded “this is what democracy looks like.�

Scattered throughout the march were Boston College students. “As college students we have tremendous ability to organize and show our support for better sense gun laws,� said Matthew Lynch, president of College Democrats of Boston College (CDBC) and MCAS ’20.

In partnership with BC’s Young Democratic Socialists of America club, CDBC created a Facebook event to organize a group of students to attend the march. Of the 91 who responded “interested,� as many as 50 attended, Lynch said. “We are marching to protest the Second Amendment and the government’s stance on upholding the Second Amendment,� he added. “No, we’re not necessarily protesting the Second Amendment,� interjected Leo Confalone, vice president of CDBC,

Mejia Awarded 2018 Romero Scholarship He received the 26th Archbishop Oscar A. Romero Scholarship

Copy Editor

NEWS: Frontis to be VPDI

Taraun Frontis, CSOM ’19, was appointed next year’s VP of Diversity and Inclusion..............A3

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things to do on campus this week

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On Tuesday the Boston College Career Center will host a Green Careers Night from 5 to 8 p.m. in the Heights Room. Alumni in careers with a sustainability focus will be present. Some of the featured organizations include Ceres, Innox, Synapse Energy Economics, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Monday, March 26, 2018

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Bojan Bugaric, professor of law at the University of Ljubjana will give a lecture entitled ‘Europe’s Descent into Authoritarian Populism: Lessons for Democracy in America.’ The event will take place Tuesday at 12 p.m., and is hosted be the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy. Lunch will be served. Go to BC Events

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There will be a Real Estate Law Workshop for undergraduates on Wednesday from 5 to 7 p.m in Fulton 220. Hosted by Adam Weisenburg, a real estate attorney, the workshop is for students who have an interest in the careers of real estate and law.

Registration is required and space is limited.

NEWS Nguyen Encourages Remembering Refugees’ Stories BRIEFS

By Jaehun Lee

BC Grad Schools Ranked

In the 2019 U.S. News and World Report “Best Graduate Schools” ranking, released March 20, the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work performed the best among BC’s graduate programs, achieving an 11thplace ranking.

The Lynch School of Education placed the highest of any Catholic education school, ranking 21st, with its Student Counseling and Personnel Services program ranked ninth in the nation. The school is the highest ranked program for education of any Jesuit or Catholic university.

The BC Law School ranked 27th among law schools and performs particularly well in the area of tax law, where it ranked 13th. In the 2018 edition of the rankings, BC Law ranked 26th. It ranked 30th in the 2017 edition.

The Connell School of Nursing achieved the 32nd spot this year, with its nursing anesthesia program ranked 22nd out of the programs surveyed.

The Carroll School of Management ranked 48th for full-time MBA programs. Last year, CSOM was ranked 44th. The part-time MBA program rose 21 points to place 25th in the new edition of the rankings.

This year, U.S. News only reranked Ph.D. programs in the natural sciences.

Biology placed 112th, Chemistry 52nd, and Physics 71st.

According to U.S. News, “The Best Graduate Schools rankings in these areas are based on two types of data: expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students.”

In their comprehensive rankings of national universities back in September, BC was ranked 32nd overall. BC was ranked 31st in 2017.

New Seats Added to SA On Tuesday, the Student Assembly (SA) of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College passed a resolution to ensure representation of the Montserrat Executive Board and First-Generation Club in the SA. Entitled, “A Resolution Concerning the Addition of Student Assembly Seats Representing the Montserrat Executive Board and the First-Generation Club,” it was developed in collaboration with the Montserrat Executive Board and was sponsored by Reed Piercey, MCAS ’19, and co-sponsored by Ignacio Fletcher, MCAS ’20; Sam Szemerenyi, MCAS ’20; Madeleine McCullough, MCAS ’20; and Hugh McMahon, MCAS ’20.

The Montserrat Coalition Executive Board will allow one or more of its members each year to serve as a Montserrat senator in the SA, a key point of Piercey and Fletcher’s campaign platform. The First-Generation Club will also allow one or more members to hold the position of First-Generation senator. If more than one student is nominated by the Montserrat Executive Board or the First-Generation Club for each group’s respective seat, the winners will be determined by the general student body in the annual SA election.

These additions will go into effect at the beginning of the spring 2018 SA elections. The student elected to serve as Montserrat senator shall become a member of the Montserrat Executive Board, if they are not already.

“We want to emphasize that any student in these organizations can run for these positions,” Piercey said.

Noah Jusilla, co-director of the First-Generation Club and MCAS ’20 and Jesse Rascon, founder and president of the First-Generation Club and MCAS ’19, hope to implement initiatives such as providing more financial assistance to students who cannot afford textbooks.

Heights Staff

Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prizewinning writer and Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California, spoke on Wednesday evening as part of the Lowell Humanities Series. He has written numerous critically acclaimed books, including The Sympathizer, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, and The Refugees.

Nguyen’s talk focused on how his identity as a refugee appears in and drives his writing. From the beginning of his talk, he emphasized the importance of not forgetting one’s past and identity prematurely, an especially pertinent idea in modern times.

“One may argue that because of the person that I’ve become, and the way that I look, and the profession that I occupy, I shouldn’t call myself a refugee anymore,” Nguyen said. “But it seems to me that there’s a necessity for [continuing to be called a refugee] because the impetus for erasing the refugee histories.”

He posited that the fear surrounding refugees stems from their seeming inability to fit in the American Dream.

Immigrants come to America on their own free will to achieve it, he argued, whereas refugees do not. He noted that while the United States calls Asians the “model minority,” it also initially did not want them.

“If you knew anything about Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and 80s,

you would know that we were really good at cheating welfare and getting in insurance fraud,” Nguyen said. “But we’ve forgotten that in 1975, when the United States took in 135,000 Vietnamese refugees, the majority of Americans did not want [them] … Why can’t Syrians become model minorities?”

While he was hailed as a voice for the voiceless by critics following his debut novel The Sympathizer, he did not see it as a compliment, claiming that it exhibited the work we had remaining to listen to refugees’ histories and to truly understand them. He argued that people prefer to have him be the voice for the voiceless because it does all the listening work for them. In a sense, his latest book of short stories, The Refugees, attempts to solve this issue by offering a diverse, truthful collection of voices.

“I was worried about being called the ‘voice for the voiceless,’ so I wanted as many voices as possible,” Nguyen recalled. “The Refugees is about the diversity of Vietnamese people … and … the people they’ve encountered.”

Nguyen criticized a one-lane, streamlined perspective set by the dominant American culture for driving this disregard for the narratives and stories of refugees, which Nguyen fights in his work. He was also sure to remind the audience that refugees remain affected even after the event that forced them to flee.

“The war is actually not over for so many people,” Nguyen said. “People remain traumatized. People remain shaped … All wars are fought twice: first … on the battlefield, and a second time in memory.”

Celine Lim / Heights Staff

Viet Than Nguyen was the 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction in 2016.

Moving on from such histories too soon had negative effects for the United States—notably exhibited in Charlottesville, Va. in August—but also for refugees who have stopped calling themselves such, as they tend to forget their roots and turn their backs on newer refugees. He firmly believes that literature cannot solve this problem on its own: Action also has to follow literature. As a parent, he makes sure his son is aware of his Vietnamese heritage and his father’s refugee past.

“We don’t have to completely shield [children] from the difficulties of the world,” Nguyen said. “It’s important to remind them of what they have, what they don’t have, and the histories.”

Nevertheless, he acknowledged the power of literature to help us remember histories before they are forgotten.

When the City of San Jose wanted to build a new city hall, it forced Nguyen’s parents to sell their grocery store. When Nguyen returned to the area to receive commendation from the city, he noticed that there was no acknowledgement of his parents’ store having ever existed—a parking lot now stands in its place.

Nguyen points to experiences such as these as the impetus for his novels, arguing that if we truly remembered refugees’ stories and listened to their voices, we would not be so quick to judge or dismiss them.

“That is why I’m a writer,” he said.

“Because if I didn’t write and there were other people who didn’t write, these stories would be gone… forgotten. This erasure would never be known… The point was simply this: The most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.” n

Power Outlines Way Forward for U.S. Foriegn Policy

By Celia Carbone Heights Staff Samantha Power, current Anna Lindh Professor of Practice at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School, chronicled her years in public service and reflected on contemporary politics at a Clough Colloquium address on Thursday, entitled The State of the World: Challenges and Opportunities. An audience of nearly 300 people gathered to listen to her speak about U.S. foreign policy and the country’s relationship with the international community.

As a young journalist, Power witnessed horrors in Bosnia and what was Yugoslavia, later publishing a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide. She also worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and as the youngest-ever U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

She began her talk by outlining the four main premises that influence the state of the world today: the international community and the importance of U.S. leadership, the rise of China, diplomacy as an essential

tool to deal with crises, and domestic polarization.

“The international community is in many ways more of an ideal than it is a reality, and in order for it to work and become something of a reality, it requires U.S. leadership,” Power said.

Power cited how the international community came together during the Ebola crisis from 2014 to 2016. Countries often run into major inertia when faced with crises and the United States’ efforts influenced how the world responded. Aiding the infected regions of West Africa involved joint efforts on the part of the United States and its allies to mobilize health workers and distribute supplies.

While this is one example of the international community coming together, countries are often in competition with one another. Particularly, Power believes the United States must acknowledge the ever-increasing power that China possesses and understand how that will impact U.S. foreign policy.

When it comes to those policies and the discourse surrounding them in this country,

China and Russia are often talked about in a similar manner, Power said, except for the fact that China is far more influential economically. China’s GDP is eight times that of Russia and is likely to surpass the America’s in the next 10 to 15 years.

“China is a great force that the U.S. hasn’t confronted or found a way to coexist with in our history,” she said. “We have to find a way to develop a foundation for a partnership with China that is mutually beneficial.”

In developing a partnership with China, she said it can be tempting to reflexively fight its rise and to whitewash its “deeply problematic” domestic, regional, and global policies. She argued that while China wants other countries to accept its domestic governance, the United States has a great interest in the spreading and strength of democracy globally.

“Diplomacy is the cornerstone of our ability to pursue American interests in the world,” Power said. “Diplomacy as a tool to deal with crises is essential.”

Today on a national level, however, the United States is divided on matters of

diplomacy, she said. She presented a series of statistics related to this polarization, and brought to light the disturbing discovery that only 33 percent of Republicans agree with the statement “good diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace.”

“There is no greater threat that I can think of to our national security than our domestic polarization,” Power said.

Power underlined that now is the time for young people with international interests to enter the diplomatic world to be part of U.S. global outreach. To do so, she claimed it is necessary to exercise U.S. leadership within international institutions.

She encouraged young people to prepare for the foreign service exam. Hiring declined by more than one third from 2016 to 2017 in foreign service, and the number of young applicants has declined even more significantly, bringing forth the need to introduce the next generation of diplomats.

“We need to bring in professionals from all walks of life—diplomacy can’t be left to just the foreign service types,” Power said. n

POLICE BLOTTER: 3/21/18 – 3/23/18 Wednesday, Mar. 21

9:41 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a larceny in O’Neill Library

12:37 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a vehicle stop on Campanella Way.

1:11 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a larceny on Campanella Way.

Thursday, Mar. 22

9:32 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a larceny in O’Neill Library

1:07 a.m. - A report was filed regarding a medical incident in Hardey.

3:45 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a suspicious circumstance in Heffernan House.

3:55 p.m. - A report was filed regarding vandalism.

Friday, Mar. 23 1:23 a.m. - A report was filed regarding a medical incident in Rubenstein.

—Source: The Boston College Police Department

CORRECTIONS How are you spending Easter Break?

“I’m going home. On Easter I’ll spend time with my extended family.”

—Erin McGahan, ’21

“I am going home and spending time with my family. I’ll also catch up with friends from high school.”

—Bella Dinelli, CSOM ’21

“I’m going to Vermont, and I’m going skiing.”

—Tyler Wetzel, MCAS ’21

“I’m staying at BC. I’m going to do some studying while I’m here” —Bojun Li, MCAS ’20

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

The Heights

Monday, March 26, 2018

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Leahy Receives Catholic Extension Award Leahy, from A1

Kaitlin Meeks / Heights Editor

2018 Romero Scholarship Presented to Jorge Mejia Romero Scholarship, from A1 scholarship essay.

Mejia’s work at the WBH imparted on the him the importance of the human dimension in public policy.

“This served as a kind of capstone experience where he integrated the formational and research experience he was having at Boston College,” she said.

“He realized that he could never leave the Bronx behind.”

Mejia believes his gifts come with a responsibility to work for the marginalized. Calling himself a scholar, global citizen, and child of God, he pointed to the importance of using himself to combat wrongs in the Bronx.

“To me, the Romero Scholarship is not a spotlight, but a reminder,” Mejia said. “A reminder of my and our duty as humans to realize that we are agents of history, and in our hands are the tools to rectify injustices.”

The University will fund 75 percent of Mejia’s tuition next year. The two other finalists, Roberto Garcia, LSOE ‘19, and Kimberly Lozano, MCAS ’19, will split the 25 percent tuition scholarship. The three students will also divide a $5,000 gift certificate to the BC Bookstore.

Lozano volunteers with the Carpenter’s Shop and Sacred Heart Community, in addition to holding leadership roles in the

Organization of Latin American Affairs and the Bowman Advocates for Inclusive Culture. She is majoring in international studies and plans to apply for a Fulbright Scholarship next year.

Garcia is pursuing a degree in applied psychology and human development in the Lynch School of Education. He has worked as an orientation leader and is a recipient of the Advanced Study Grant.

In his acceptance speech, Mejia praised his professors, mentors, and friends at BC, who helped him evolve out of being an insecure freshman. He also thanked his parents, who were undocumented immigrants until last year, for the example they set.

“They have showed me the definition of grit, resilience, and excellence,” he said.

Arteaga was awarded the Romero Scholarship while attending the University. He then went on to attend Columbia Law School. His speech centered around Dineen’s legacy and how best to honor it, which he said can be done by getting involved in the immigration debate.

“I know what side of the debate Fr. Dineen and Oscar Romero would have been on,” Artega said. “In accepting this award, I pledge to work just as hard as they would to ensure that this debate results in an immigration system that shows respect for our laws, but also shows compassion for those individuals living under the laws.” n

Experts in Law Outline Implications of Free Speech Myroslav Dobroshynskyi Heights Staff On Tuesday at Boston College Law School, a panel of experts discussed the implications of free speech on college campuses at an event sponsored by the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy.

Michael Cassidy, a BC Law professor and the faculty director of the Rappaport Center, introduced the panel moderator, Kent Greenfield, also a BC Law professor.

In his opening remarks, Greenfield offered some examples of contentious incidents regarding free speech on campuses in the United States, and asked whether society has gone “too far” in protecting speech, or has done “too little” to preserve the free expression of ideas in a college setting.

Erwin Chemerinsky, an expert in constitutional law and the dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, delivered the keynote address. He began by presenting a brief history of the dynamics regarding free speech on American college campuses. As student attitudes toward free speech have shifted over time, Chemerinsky noted that many students don’t understand the history behind free speech. “[Some students don’t] realize the extent to which free speech was integral in advancing the rights of groups they cared most about,” he said.

Chemerinsky said that his students were remarkably trusting in letting campus officials decide which messages should be allowed and which should be prohibited. In his view, this might be due to the fact that the current generation of college students hasn’t had to confront the issue of free speech in the same manner that students in the 1960s and ’70s did, engulfed in debates about civil rights and the Vietnam War. “I realized that the anti-Vietnam War protests that were going on when I was in college, and the civil rights protests, were long ago for my students, as World War I was for me,” he said.

Chemerinsky then proceeded to offer three basic standards that are, in his view, crucial to understanding the conversation surrounding free speech on college

campuses. The first guideline is that “all ideas and views can be expressed at a college or university.” The second and third standards, however, complicate this principle. He said that not only is freedom of speech not absolute, as there are various categories of unprotected speech, but also that universities can use time, place, and manner restrictions when there is reasonable concern.

Nancy Leong, a professor at University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, advocated for a more nuanced approach to discussing freedom of expression on college campuses. In her view, there should be a clear distinction between four lenses that people often use when discussing free speech on campus: the First Amendment, norms related to free speech, strategy, and manners.

“I think it’s important to conceptually separate those four things, even though they often overlap, or intersect, with one another,” she said.

Mary-Rose Papandrea, the Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law, spoke next about the effects of Supreme Court decisions pertaining to the subject of free speech on college campuses, as well as decisions concerning K-12 schools, which may have implications for institutions of higher education.

She argued that when it comes to the question of free speech on campuses, it’s quite unclear what decisions the Supreme Court will make if there are more cases in the future specifically pertaining to expression in a college setting. She also noted that it’s unclear whether the Court would uphold some of the standards it has previously set in regards to the K-12 setting.

Chemerinsky ended on the note that colleges should strive to create inclusive communities.

“There’s so much that colleges and universities can do, so as to make sure that it’s an inclusive community for all students,” he said. “I think it’s important that colleges have principles of community, even if they are not enforceable, that can express what types of speech are thought of as appropriate, and what are inappropriate.” n

said. “He is willing to stretch himself, extend himself ... That really is at the heart of what Catholic Extension is about. It is about the Church extending itself, stretching itself, being curious about those who are in need, not thinking that they’re going to impoverish us because they need our help and assistance.”

Leahy spoke about the partnership BC has with Catholic Extension, which began in 2012 and provides educational opportunities for participants in a number of its programs. Since 2012, religious sisters, young adults, and lay leaders from underresourced mission dioceses have had the opportunity to study at BC’s School of Theology and Ministry, as well as the Woods College of Advancing Studies.

“The partnership has enabled Catholic

Extension to offer scholarships to young adult leaders who serve in parish, diocesan and campus ministries throughout the United States to earn master degrees in theology and ministry,” the press release read.

The program also allows Hispanic lay leaders to attend summer programs and pursue graduate certificates in Hispanic ministry. With the benefit of the Woods College’s new Spanish-language program, sisters can receive educational opportunities often lacking in their own communities.

“This evening, we acknowledge in a very special way the partnership between Boston College and Catholic Extension, a partnership that has grown and matured and that has allowed religious women, young adults, [and] lay Catholics to come and develop their talents and use those

talents for the good of others,” Leahy said.

The award has previously been given to other Catholic religious leaders, such as Rev. John Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame; Rev. Joseph P. Parkes, S.J., president of Cristo Rey New York High School; and Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick.

Leahy’s speech also cited the need for committed Catholics and organizations like Catholic Extension to carry out the message of Christianity and Catholicism.

“Each of us can carry out that mission of preaching and living the Gospel by the quality of our lives, and it’s how we show our faith in action, how we are people motivated by what has gone on in our lives … and the gifts that our shared, gifts given to us,” Leahy said. “We are to be signs of faith so that we can extend the message of Christ and the Church.” n

Frontis to Serve as VPDI Next Year Cole Dady News Editor Reed Piercey, MCAS ’19, and Ignacio Fletcher, MCAS ’20, next year’s president and executive vice president, respectively, of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College, now have a Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion (VPDI): Taraun Frontis, CSOM ’19, their competitor in the recent presidential election. The Executive Council is in the midst of filling its other available VP positions.

Frontis has a number of goals for DI in the upcoming year, and he feels that this position is a natural step up from being the chair of the AHANA+ Leadership Council (ALC), the role that he currently fills. He feels that the

division could do better at emphasizing intersectionality and helping the BC community realize the resources DI currently offers. This could mean having all subdivisions, such as ALC, the Council for Students with Disabilities, and the GLBTQ+ Leadership Council, present at cultural shows, town halls, and other similar events around campus.

Piercey told The Heights that the Executive Council is fortunate to have Frontis on board for the upcoming year.

“In choosing next year’s VPDI, we were looking for someone who was known and respected for their leadership, had a history of working with UGBC’s Diversity and Inclusion councils, and who displayed a keen knowledge of the issues faced by the

marginalized communities they would represent,” he said. “We’re looking to have our VPDI take a more active role within the Executive Council than they have in the past.

“Taraun not only possesses all these qualities and more, but he has also been uniquely prepared for this leadership role by his experience as ALC Chair, a Bowman Advocate, and a Compass Mentor.”

Frontis also expressed satisfaction with Piercey living up to his campaign promises.

“Overall, it’s good to see that Reed is living up to what he says with not having representation on his team, but making sure it’s shown through his VPs,” he said.

“I’m glad that everything is going in the right direction.” n

Boston Bombing Survior Discusses Faith Jaehun Lee Heights Staff Patrick Downes, a Boston Marathon bombing survivor and BC’05, gave the Ignatian Society’s inaugural AMDG (ad maiorem Dei gloriam) Lecture on Monday night. The event will now be held annually, with the goal of inviting “a speaker who—in word and deed—truly embodies the spirit of the Jesuit mission,” according to its president Bobby Hally, CSOM ’19.

Downes’s lecture focused on the revelations and reflections he has undergone since the marathon bombing five years ago. While he had an idea of what living a Jesuit life meant before the bombing, he came to fully and powerfully understand the meaning of the Jesuit ideals through the tragedy and his encounters with a variety of people following it.

He began his talk by analyzing a photo from his engagement shoot with his wife Jessica Kensky, which served as a reminder of how life was before the bombing. Downes recalled how free their lives, bodies, and relationship were back then.

“We’d popped out of bed that day… with…no medical devices,” Downes said. “We didn’t need to help each other get ready for the day. We bounded down four flights of stairs … to meet our photographer and spent hours walking around the square taking pictures, never running out of energy or feeling pain in our bodies. It was a really special time for us.”

This sense of freedom and boundless energy would forever be lost on April 15, 2013, when the bombs went off on Boylston Street. Downes said that the bombing showcased humanity’s capacity for extreme hate, but also extreme love.

“These two guys took days or weeks or months to plan out this one instance of hate: that one moment when those bombs went off and killed three people and injured hundreds,” Downes said.

“In the split second after that, all these people rushed toward us without any planning or any premeditation. In fact, some who rushed toward us were veterans, who [knew that] when one bomb goes off, there’s likely a second—which there was—but they ran toward us anyway: total selflessness.”

He remembered the many people who helped him through the long and difficult recovery process, including doctors and fellow patients at Bostonarea hospitals and the Walter Reed Medical Center, and fellow victims of

Jake Evans / Heights Staff

Patrick Downes, BC ‘05, is a survivor of the 2013 Boston Marthon bombings. the bombing. He and Kensky found that everything that had once been so easy and automatic now took immense amounts of time, energy, and focus.

“About two weeks after the bombing, Jess was stable enough to come visit me for about an hour or two,” Downes said. “I needed all these people to help bring her into my room, rotate her bed, bring her next to me so that I could touch her and kiss her—very different from the first picture I showed you of us in Harvard Square.”

These difficult experiences helped Downes and Kensky to develop a strong bond with fellow victims.

He felt particular attachment to the “Boylston Street family” of marathon bombing victims. As he expressed deep gratitude for his support group, he called on his audience to be the support for those who need it.

“They were all telling me—and all of us—that they had our backs, they cared about us … I don’t know what I’d do without them,” Downes said. “And … I think about someone who’s going through … trauma and tragedy by themselves … do they have that kind of support? Is there a slogan their city has rallied around? Is there a shared sense of meaning about what their injuries represent? Is there a fund of millions of dollars to support their medical care? A lot of cases, no.”

Along the road to recovery, Downes also realized the exclusion from society disabled people face. When the Boston Athletic Association, which organizes the Boston Marathon, attempted to bar Walter Reed veterans from handc ycling the marathon, Downes wrote a Boston Globe op-ed in which he cited the new perspective he had gained from his experience with fellow victims and patients at Walter Reed to advocate for allowing

the veterans to participate.

“They’re excluded from coffee shops…housing…and races…because we don’t feel comfortable around them,” Downes said. “They make us uneasy. I love these guys…for everything they’ve been through…how they look now…heir resilience in the face of all this stuff. And I think anyone would love them if they had the opportunity to understand them and to know…and appreciate their stories.”

The severe injuries Downes and Kensky suffered required them to find new ways to love and celebrate their bodies. Despite the changes, Downes remained grateful for having been able to complete the marathon, which he and his wife did by handcycle a year after the bombing.

He admitted that obstacles remain. While the couple did not suffer injuries preventing childbearing, their injuries raise doubts about the feasibility of raising a child. They will, however, remain actively involved in the lives of kids. Downes is a godfather, Kensky is planning to become involved health care again, and the two have written a children’s book, spoken at schools, and interact with kids on a daily basis in the city. And with the various support groups they have become a part of along the way, Downes and Kensky know they will always be surrounded by those who love and care.

“Love and belonging and our responsibility for one another have incredible power—way more powerful than hate will ever have,” he concluded. “These last five years have taught me what it means to really be a person for others: It may sound initially like a tagline…but once it’s put into action, it’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen.” n

The Heights

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Monday, March 26, 2018

Across the Pond and to the Pulpit: Rev. Hafferty, S.J.

By Colleen Martin Copy Editor For Rev. Oliver P. Rafferty, S.J., coming to terms with his role in life didn’t take very long. Named after the Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, he assumed his position in the religious order with the confidence and surety only a child can have.

When his headmaster asked him on his very first day of school what his name was, Rafferty had an answer.

“I pulled myself up to my full height and declared ‘Blessed Oliver Plunkett Rafferty.’”

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1956, Rafferty grew up in a predominantly Catholic community in the throes of protest and discontent between religious groups.

As children, he and his three brothers and four sisters were told by local Protestants that they would never be able to get jobs due to their family’s Catholic faith. A teenager growing up during the Troubles, a time when the Catholic minority wished to be a part of the Republic of Ireland while the Protestant majority wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom, Rafferty saw the conflict in all its power. Several people in his year at school were killed during the Troubles, and one even starved himself to death during the IRA hunger strike of 1981.

“The violence of these issues touched me personally,” Rafferty said.

Despite the violence and unrest related to religion that he witnessed during his formative years, Rafferty never doubted what he wanted to do as an adult. When asked what he envisioned himself growing up to be when he was a young child, he didn’t even take a breath before responding.

“A priest.”

As Catholic families typically had many children, it wasn’t uncommon for one of them to join a religious order. Nowadays, as people have smaller families, the number of young people looking to join is dwindling.

“To have priests and nuns in the family was to be regarded as a mark of esteem,” Rafferty said of the past. “There’s been a shift in the culture.”

During his time as a professor, he’s only come across one student that he knew was interested in becoming a priest, but not a Jesuit. While he doesn’t think that it’s necessarily a concern among the Jesuit

community, he does say that it is becoming difficult to fully staff the 28 Jesuit colleges in the United States.

His greater concern with education lies not within who is teaching, but in how students are learning. Rafferty went to England for three years to study at Heythrop College at the University of London—a school run

by Jesuits. His workload consisted of one paper per week, which didn’t count for a grade—it only served to develop his skills and increase his knowledge of the subjects he studied. His only formal exams were at the end of his three-year university career.

“It’s probably more difficult for people in the American system to cultivate a love for their subject,” he said.

Rafferty went to college with the goal of learning what he believed was important, and he picked the school that reflected his ideas on that. When he went to Heythrop, he studied the only two majors offered: theology and philosophy.

“I tended to be a shy person,” he said.

“I read somewhere that a good means of overcoming this would be to study philosophy.”

Despite his hope that philosophy would “broaden his mind and take him out of himself,” Rafferty found that he didn’t quite take to the subject. He favored theology—after three years, he joined the Jesuit order.

Because of his college degree, Rafferty was ordained within eight years of joining.

As an academic, he most wanted to teach at the elementary level. He had very specific ideas of what and how children should be taught—he had visions of himself teaching Greek and Latin to 7-yearolds—but he was appointed as the head tutor at Oxford University. After beginning his career in the academic sector, Rafferty decided he wanted a change of pace for his first sabbatical.

“I thought, I will not have any other opportunity in my life to function as a priest,” Rafferty explained.

What was supposed to last one year ended up taking three—his contact person in Guyana, the South American country that he decided to do pastoral work in—convinced him that the extra time in the interior of the country would allow him to better connect to the indigenous people that he was living and talking with.

The work was isolating. Guyana is roughly the size of England and had only

50 villages. Rafferty spent only a week in each village before packing his bags, saying goodbye, and traveling on his own to the next location. Even if his visits hadn’t been so short, there was still one other thing in his way: the language barrier.

Rafferty joked that the old ladies in the village didn’t mind that he couldn’t understand them—they were just happy that they were giving confession to someone who couldn’t understand their sins.

“Those who had English, and that was true of many of them, I made them say their confessions in English,” Rafferty said with a laugh.

Although he had wanted to escape the world of academia for a short while, Rafferty did stay connected to the professional world while abroad by editing several books.

And when it was time for him to return to his career, he persuaded his provincial that North America would be the best place for him. After a one-year teaching stint at the College of the Holy Cross, however, Rafferty returned to Heythrop for five years.

Coming back to his work, Rafferty was different than he was before his sabbatical, if only in the sense that he knew what kind of academic he wanted to be.

“That gives you a different view of yourself,” he said. “A different view of the life, a different view of what you’re doing as a teacher and researcher and writer.”

He knew that he wanted to explore teaching Irish history, since he had only done religious history before. When University President Rev. William P. Leahy, S.J., found out that Rafferty was potentially on the market, he invited him to visit Boston College. After giving a lecture, Rafferty said he was invited out to dinner.

“They took me out to dinner to see that I had proper manners whilst eating,” Rafferty said.

When Rafferty was offered a position to teach, he accepted—BC boasts a collection of books on Irish history and literature that Rafferty says could compete with a library in Ireland. He thought it would be the perfect fit. He quickly realized the way BC students operate after he only had six students in his first class—one must never sign up for class with a professor that doesn’t have a rating on PEPS yet. During his second year, a coworker was unable to teach a class and Rafferty was able to step in, earning his reputation and forging new relationships

Sam zhai / Heights staff

Hafferty grew up around religious violence, but always knew he wanted to be a preist. with students. He found that American universities require something of students and professors that isn’t as prevalent elsewhere: friendliness. He has certainly been successful in achieving a high level of respect and admiration among his students.

“He’s just a really genuine guy,” said James Wills-Singley, MCAS ’19, who had Rafferty for a sophomore history class last spring. “He’s a historian, but what attracted me to all his classes is just him telling these stories that are funny and entertaining.”

Being a priest, a figure that people often have high expectations for, Rafferty is conscious of the way students perceive him. The Jesuit professors at BC are asked to wear their traditional religious garb while teaching. Rafferty says that it serves as an extra reminder of the way he should act toward his students—he makes sure to always be open to his students by being kindly disposed.

“As a teacher and a professor he loves to make people laugh,” Singley said. “He’s lecturing for an hour and within that hour he’s telling these hilarious stories about these important figures that kind of bring levity.”

Even though Rafferty loves the time he gets to spend with his students, sometimes cooking dinner for them in the kitchen of another Jesuit’s house on campus, there’s one thing that really makes him feel that he’s in his element.

“Being on my own and reading books.”

Rafferty has published seven books

himself. His most recent—Religion, Politics, and Violence in Ireland—explores the topics that he first became interested in back in his teen years during the Troubles. He’s currently working on three articles—one was supposed to be due the day after we spoke. Rafferty sort of laughed when he told me the deadline, and then said that he didn’t anticipate finishing for another week.

As for his future works, Rafferty would love to write a detailed account of Christianity in Ireland from inception to current day—a large feat that he has casually begun to collect information for, but hasn’t formally started researching or writing. He’s currently working on a book about the relationship between church and state in Ireland that he hopes to finish by the end of his next sabbatical, which begins in about three years time. Where he’ll be in three years, however, is unknown.

“I have a visa that Mr. Trump decides he doesn’t like,” he said with a dry sort of laugh.

When Rafferty’s visa expires in November of this year, it’s possible that he will be required to return to England or Ireland.

He’s currently working, with the help of the University, to get it extended for three more years or apply for a green card. Although he is slightly anxious about being forced to leave, he recognizes that his work can take him anywhere.

“I will never be out of a job as a priest,” Rafferty said. “If I have to go back across the pond, I’ll find things to do there." n

Emma Hammack: A Lover of Wordsworth and the Wild

By Andrea Pita For The Heights Blonde-haired, blue eyed, nomadic, Oxford graduate, Ph.D. student Emma Hammack can tell you what a ptarmigan is and what dendrophilous means. She can tell you the difference between a dolphin and a porpoise. But there’s one word that is not in her vocabulary: “disinterest.” She learns with the awe and enthusiasm of a giggling baby seeing her reflection in the mirror for the first time.

Hammack was born in San Diego. With her father in the military, the family lived in Arizona, Germany, New Mexico, Florida, before ending up back in San Diego, where she attended high school.

From a young age, Hammack was curious, always asking questions and trying to understand the unknown. One day during her childhood, her mother was worried that something was wrong with her. So she took Hammack and her sister, Molly, to the doctor’s office where she explained her concerns. While Molly was calm and quiet, Hammack climbed the medicine cabinet and outstretched her arm, reaching for the skull that rested on the edge of the table.

“I was pretty precocious and always wanted to go out and look at things, always incredibly curious,” she said.

Books have fostered her imagination since childhood. On family camping trips, Hammack’s favorite activity was reading the Goosebumps book in the dark woods.

Her mother quickly learned to bring a few extra books for when her eager daughter exhausted the ones she packed. Whether it was the books she read—such as Earl Stein’s—or things she wrote, Hammack was eager to analyze the plot and its characters.

Her passion for exchanging ideas and delving into a text eventually translated into her research in literature.

As professional educators, both her parents were adamant supporters of intellectual exploration, especially in literature.

But, Hammack takes all the credit discovering her love of science. She was interested in science as a kid, and saw the outdoors as her playground. Hammack was always playing with trees and animals, trying to unlock the marvels of nature. Growing up she hoped to become two things: a teacher and a zoologist for National Geographic. These desires still guide her career today as well as her goals for the future. The dichotomous nature of the two professions is emblematic of how Hammack’s mind processes her surroundings: at an academic level and a level based more in the day to day realities, the nuances of which can get lost in the removed nature of the classroom.

Her constant desire for making connections sparked her interest in both disciplines. She has always wanted the opportunity to work in the Amazon or be in the Kalahari. Through literature, she has the opportunity to discover these destinations in the reading she does.

“A mistake that a lot of people—stu-

Sam zhai / Heights staff

Hammack has always been equally intrigued with both her passions, science and literature.

dents, educators, whomever—make is not realizing that kind of art is a science to a certain degree,” Hammack said.

According to Hammack, analysis is a scientific process that serves to uncover the intellectual nature of individuals. For this reason, she proudly acknowledges that the discipline of literature is greatly interrelated with that of science.

Enjoying this connection, she went on to pursue a zoology degree at the University of Hawaii. Surrounded by both mountains and oceans, Hawaii served as a great inspiration for her research, reminding her of childhood experiences in nature that first piqued her interest in science.

Hammack describes her experience as both incredible and taxing as she was deciphering what she wanted to learn and how she was going to do it. Being on an island far away from home was especially difficult for her. And of course, like any freshman in college, she was trying to figure out how to survive on her own.

After transferring from the University of Hawaii, she completed her undergraduate education at the University of Santa Barbara. While her friends surfed, Hammack would sit by the rocks, working through her readings.

“For me, you always kind of have to integrate the natural world with your internal world,” she said.

Her education did not stop there. In order to process her degree and figure out her next career steps, she took some time off. She traveled around Mexico, Europe, and Canada. Hammack then decided to continue her education at the University of Oxford in England, where she earned her masters degree in English literature. At Oxford, she was in awe of the rich tradition that surrounded her.

“There is something about tradition that is incredibly encouraging towards, I think, education and towards trying to reach higher levels,” Hammack said.

The contrast between the modern culture and the antiquated buildings that surrounded the city was profound. She found herself listening to Akon while walking around buildings constructed in 1737.

Hammack had the pleasure of meeting so many interesting people and traveling to a variety of new locations.

After experiencing both the education system in America and the United Kingdom, she noted significant differences in the way that they structure their curriculum.

She particularly loves the “interdisciplinary awareness” that American education systems employ. In the U.S. system, students typically take a core of different classes before declaring a major, while in the U.K., students have a more narrow study focused on their major.

Her appetite for knowledge is what constantly draws her back to school. She is passionate about the teacher-student interchange.

“I learn as much from my students as they learn from me,” Hammack said.

After working for a publishing company for a few years, Hammack decided to move to Boston to continue her involvement with education. She knew that she wanted to live on the East Coast and loved Boston, so it was an easy decision. She describes her experience as a “great, lucky dynamic” between living on the east coast and studying and working at BC. Currently, she is completing her Ph.D. in literature at BC. Her fascination for 19thcentury authors has inspired her current work: Hammack is writing a piece on the connection between walking through nature and the poems of writers like Williams Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Interestingly, through her work, she has concluded that nature indeed affects the utilities of the brain.

Hammack is teaching a unique elective course at BC this semester called Solitary Genius: Transatlantic Romanticism in the 19th Century. Based on the exchange of ideas within the literary genre between 19th-century Britain and America, it focuses on the notion of the solitary genius or “mad man” as she describes it. Along with her students, she seeks to explore the connections between different literary masters, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry Thoreau, within their particular time and place.

She doesn’t teach alone, however. She has a furry teaching assistant, a “big ol’ mutt” named Bear.

Her students react wonderfully to having him in class. She believes it relieves the pressure of a college classroom and gives

students space to say that thing they’ve been itching to say but maybe were afraid to. Surprisingly, this beloved dog reacts to class discussions. “[He] puts his two cents in every once in while. He really likes Coleridge, does not like Wordsworth,” she said.

Hammack strongly believes that interacting with animals is beneficial for both mental and physical health. Along with teaching, Hammack is working at BC as an instructional technology consultant. She helps the faculty navigate sites like Canvas and tests out new programs. With faculty members, she discusses social media platforms like Snapchat, Twitter, and even “why Vine is dead.” She enjoys her work in that it differs from the traditional question-answer method of teaching that she employs within the classroom. It’s an excellent way of understanding technology and how it can be used more efficiently throughout BC. While she has a lot on her plate at the moment, Hammack has a whole agenda of noteworthy goals she wants to achieve in future.

“I have more plans than I have time or resources for … For the next couple of years, I will be a bit like an ostrich, head stuck in the sand,” she said.

After finishing her doctorate at BC, she would like to continue teaching. She intends to keep writing and to dedicate herself more fully to research and to learning more about neuroscience and cognitive theory.

Academics aside, Hammack also plans to continue her travels throughout the world.

But, more than anything, she still hopes to work for National Geographic one day.

Hammack is grateful for her “tenacity and resiliency,” as it has helped her remained focused in the face of the ups and downs that life has thrown her way.

She has no regrets, firmly believing that with failure comes the opportunity for growth. Failure has allowed her to be bolder and more outspoken in the way she defends herself and asks questions.

Most of all, Hammack relies on her awareness. She strongly believes that “education is self-motivated” but one has to maintain a certain type of awareness to move forward in their studies, constantly evaluating themselves and paying attention to their passions. n

The Heights

Monday, March 26, 2018

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things to do in Boston this week

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The Cambridge Winter Farmers Market will be open on Saturday from 10 to 2 pm. It will offer a variety of fresh produce from over two dozen local vendors, and breakfast and lunch will be offered. Those paying with SNAP credit are welcome and encouraged to attend.

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On March 29 at the Loring-Greenough House, retired elementary school teacher Mary Smoyer will present a lecture titled “Women in Public Art in Boston.” The discussion will feature six women honored with statues in Boston, with special attention paid to Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley, and Lucy Stone.

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On Monday, Berklee College of Music’s Songwriting Depar tment is hosting an open-mic night with the Red Room at Cafe 939. All current Berklee students are welcome to play one original song. Doors open at 6 p.m. and admission is free.

METRO Students Lead Thousands in March for Our Lives BRIEFS March, from A1

MCAS ’20, and former opinions editor of The Heights. “We’re protesting the extrapolation of the Second Amendment to mean that anyone can have an assault rifle for no reason. That’s all. Not the Second Amendment itself.”

“Yeah. The egregious amount of gun deaths that happen in a civilized country like the United States is what we’re protesting I’d say,” added Max Houghton, communication director of CDBC and MCAS ’20.

Students met on the steps of St. Ignatius before departing collectively for the march. “We took advantage of Lyft’s promotion for free rides to the march. It’s a really cool thing on their part.” said Houghton.

Arriving at Boston Common shortly before 2 p.m., protesters milled about in the muddy grass and complimented each other on clever sign ideas. An array of posters flapped steadily against the chilly breeze, reading messages like “Enough is Enough” and “Gun Supplies not School Supplies.” A little girl sat on her dad’s shoulders waving a sign decorated in rainbow bubble letters and glitter, reading “Arms are for Hugging.”

The crowd certainly wasn’t limited to young protesters, as a group from Brookhaven at Lexington, a retirement home, demonstrated.

Anne Scott and Jean Olson stood at the entrance to the Common with other residents holding signs that said “Grandmothers on the march!” and “Growling Grandmothers Work to Grind Down the NRA.” They had organized a bus to take them from the retirement home to the march to show their support for the young people that they saw taking point on the issue of gun violence.

“I think these kids from Florida have just done such a marvelous, brave thing,” Olson said. “I just want to be here for support.”

Scott agreed, adding, “We seem to not be able to do anything, and the kids can.”

To enhance the voices of these po-

tentially very powerful kids, a pair of women walked throughout the masses of people asking if anyone wanted to register to vote in Massachusetts.

This effort was targeted at the young marchers, which constituted the majority of the crowd. Students held signs that read “Voters for 2020,” signifying the coming of age of many of the people who have pushed this movement forward.

Throughout the walk and the rally, a common chant was “Vote them out,” as many participants expressed a dissatisfaction with the current government leadership and its handling of gun violence issues and policies.

Marchers chanted “Hey hey ho ho, the NRA has got to go,” and many wore orange tags with $1.05 written on them, signifying the amount of money Marco Rubio received from the NRA in the last campaign cycle if it were measured per student in the state of Florida.

“Essentially it is a price on life that our government and representatives are willing to take,” explained Jacob Ricco, finance director of CDBC and MCAS ’21 as he began to pass out the tags to protestors.

“Would you like a tag? How about you?” Chris Sykes, communications director of CDBC and MCAS ’20, asked attendees.

A little after 2 p.m., the Common fell silent, and speakers from MSD, Northeastern University, Harvard University, and the local Rockland High School took to the stage. Leslie Chiu, a graduate of MSD and current student at Northeastern, addressed the crowd with tears in her eyes.

“My school will now always be remembered for what took place on Feb. 14, 2018,” she said. “But it will also be known to people across the country that it is a school that started the movement that we are a part of today. We are here, we are angry, and we are strong.”

Chiu went on to introduce sisters Leonor and Beca Muno. Leonor is a senior from Stoneman Douglas who survived the shooting on Feb. 14, and Beca is an MSD alumna and current

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Colleen Martin / Heights Editor

Residents of a local retirement home organized a group to support student efforts.

sophomore at Northeastern.

Leonor recounted the horrors of that day.

“I remember needing to tell my family that I was alive and barely being able to send the text because I was in real danger and they couldn’t stop it or help me,” she said.

“I remember receiving a text from my younger sister saying ‘I’m safe. Code red. School shooter. Do not call,’” said Beca.

“I will always remember ever y single detail. My trauma is not going away,” Leonor screamed to the crowd.

She turned to look at her sister and squeezed her hand. They faced the crowd and said in unison, “And neither are we.”

The sisters went on to stress that this movement is about more than just Parkland. “Gun violence did not start on Feb. 14. We are not the first students to be fighting for this,” said Leonor.

“The thing that sets the people of Parkland apart is our wealth and the color of our skin,” said Beca. “We cannot be complacent with a system that designates certain areas as safe while communities of color continue to be neglected, abused, and discriminately affected by gun violence.”

“Especially here is Boston, where 80 percent of people in Roxbury will experience gun violence in their lifetime.

Just a mile away in the Back Bay, which is predominately white, that number drops down to 10 percent,” she said. n

Scout Design Studio Builds Creative Collaboration

By Alessandro Zenati Metro Editor

Tucked away in room 307 of Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media, and Design (CAMD), students busily tap on their computers, answering emails from clients, changing graphic attributes, or browsing for artists on Spotify.

The feel is one of free-flowing collaboration, where both aspiring designers as well as students from seemingly unrelated disciplines interested in learning about design principles can interact. While the space is quite small relative to the number of people working in it, this has been a welcomed sign of growing interest within the university community and beyond.

Scout is Northeastern’s only entirely student-led design studio on campus and has been formally in operation since spring 2014 when its current office space was secured in Ryder Hall.

The students who created this group intended to foster an active and engaged design community at Northeastern through meaningful exposure to client work, speaker series, and interactive workshops.

The impetus for the creation of Scout was initially to provide a way for students to experience the way in which design can be knit into the entrepreneurial world.

At the time, there were few opportunities for collaboration and creative interaction between students. In an attempt to fill this void, Scout was created and began as a small group of about 10 friends with the same goal: to make design a more tangible and accessible resource for students to engage with in practical ways.

“A hugely important experience that Scout provides is direct interaction with clients,” said Brennan Caruthers, operations director at Scout.

“Our teams have weekly meetings with clients and get to have feedback from

Alessandro Zenati / Heights Editor

Scout encourages current and former Northeastern students to collaborate creatively.

them directly and basically see how it works in the real world.”

As Scout has continued to grow its brand on campus and Northeastern has enjoyed a boost in its rankings, the talent pool available to the studio has improved, leading to a steady growth in its membership. The team at Scout takes on a number of project contracts each semester and annually, depending on the type of work.

Applications for the Scout Studio program are accepted each semester and typically involve commercial clients. Some examples of past clients include local coffee shop Commonwealth Coffee Co. and photo-sharing app Blurr. In many cases, much of their work is sought after by current Northeastern students and alumni who want to build their businesses.

This creates an encouraging cycle of collaboration between current and former students, strengthening relationships and allowing students interested in the world of design to get a feel for the practical dimensions associated with it outside of the classroom.

Another program offered by Scout is Scout Labs, an annual social innovation initiative, leveraging humancentered design thinking strategies to devise timely solutions to social issues in the Boston community.

The interdisciplinary team behind this work engages in a yearlong endeavour in close collaboration with other departments at Northeastern, local businesses, community based organizations, and the people of Boston. Scout’s approach involves defining the challenge, empathizing with those impacted, ideating, iterating, and implementing.

Throughout the process , this

aspect of collaboration across disciplines, industries, and community lines has often emerged as a considerable challenge that involves a steep learning curve. Molly O’Neill, executive director at Scout, sees this challenge as an opportunity for growth that encourages members to become conversant in a wide range of fields that design ultimately touches.

“You’re talking to a lot of people outside of CAMD and outside of the design world,” O’Neill said. “Being able to articulate the importance of design in other areas [of expertise] and making the stories real. I think that has been a really valuable thing.”

Presently, Scout has around 40 members divided across seven operational teams. While this division of labor does allow for a more organized approach to the execution of projects, a prevailing sense of open conversation and brainstorming filters through Scout’s intimate office space.

Team members work remotely or in the office, allowing for Scout to host regular drop-in office hours that serve as opportunities for the wider Northeastern community to get advice on design strategies.

This reciprocative component of Scout’s work is a model that encourages a continuity of values between people, and positions design as a shared resource open to all. With a keen eye for detail sharpened by empathy, design has the power to change the social dynamics that exist around us.

“Design at its core is about being very deliberate and thinking through why you are doing something...design has so much practice and useful function,” Caruthers said. n

On March 15, the Boston Planning and Development Agency board voted to approve $5 million in tax breaks for Amazon’s planned expansion in the Seaport, according to The Boston Globe. This decision is contingent upon the expectation that the company will create 2,000 jobs by 2025. The deal also offers Amazon another $5 million if it leases two buildings and adds twice the amount of jobs. Amazon has yet to sign the lease, however, and there is still the potential for state tax incentives to be put on the table.

Separate from the Seaport expansion, Boston is also among the 20 finalist regions for the location of Amazon’s second headquarters, “HQ2,” which could employ up to 50,000 people. Since the naming of the finalists, state and city officials have remained quiet about what they have discussed with the company, including whether they will offer any potential subsidies for the project.

According to the Globe, while the silence is partially a result of Amazon making its finalists sign agreements not to disclose any of the private information it shares with the candidates during the search process, it is also a way for these officials to avoid doing anything that might alienate the company or revealing proposal details that might give the other finalists an advantage. Recently, the Globe was denied a public records request for a questionnaire Amazon sent out to the finalist cities. Director of Public Records Shawn Williams stated that sharing the document “would put Boston at a disadvantage by permitting other competing communities to see the unique questions posed by Amazon to Boston.”

Baker Defends Heffernan Hires On March 18 The Boston Globe reported that, during his 15-month tenure as commissioner of the Department of Revenue starting in May 2016, current Administration and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan provided high-paying jobs to six of his associates—including former co-workers, fellow Wellesley Country Club members, and donors to his failed state campaign for state treasurer. Some of the jobs, according to the article, were created during a hiring freeze imposed by Governor Charlie Baker.

Following the report, Baker, who on the campaign trail had pledged to end preferential treatment in state hiring practices, defended Heffernan’s hires, according to masslive.com, saying that he had full confidence in Heffernan and that “every single one of those people was qualified to do their job.”

Halt to SelfDriving Cars After a pedestrian was killed by a self-driving Uber vehicle in Arizona, Boston officials have asked local selfdriving car companies Optimus Ride and nuTonomy to temporarily halt their ongoing testing on public streets in the Seaport District, which they had been doing under an agreement with local officials, according to The Boston Globe. While Mayor Marty Walsh said that the suspension will likely only last “a couple of days” as city officials work with the companies to review their safety procedures, he called for clear regulations and standards for the autonomous car industry in light of the Arizona incident.

The Heights

A6

EDITORIAL

Monday, March 26, 2018

QUOTE OF THE DAY

UGBC Resolution is Inclusive and Valuable, Frontis Good VPDI

“Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age.”

- Dr. Seuss

O n Tu e s d ay n i g ht , R e e d each group’s respective seat, Montserrat Coalition and the Piercey, president-elect of the the winner of each position will First-Generation Club are imUndergraduate Government be determined by the general portant organizations at BC that of Boston College MCAS ’19, student body in the annual SA haven’t had much recognition sponsored a resolution to bring election. These positions will within UGBC, and this resoluseats to the Student Assembly open in the spring 2018 election, tion rightly ensures that they will (SA) for the Montserrat Execu- and members of either group can receive representation. tive Board and First-Generation run for the spots.

The Sunday prior, Piercey and Club. Entitled “A Resolution The advancement of this Fletcher appointed Taraun FronConcerning the Addition of incentive, which Piercey and tis, CSOM ’19, to the position of Student Assembly Seats Vice President of DiverRepresenting the Montsity and Inclusion (VPDI). serrat Executive Board “...this resolution rightly Piercey and Fletcher were and the First-Generation criticized at times during Club,” the resolution was ensures that they will receive their campaigning for lackdeveloped in collaboraing representation of sturepresentation.” tion with the Montserrat dents of color. In seeking Executive Board and was to add diverse perspectives co-sponsored by Ignacio to the Executive Council, Fletcher, MCAS ’20; Sam Sze- Fletcher had presented in their Frontis is a logical and approprimerenyi, MCAS ’20; Madeleine campaign platform, shows the ate appointee. His qualifications McCullough, MCAS ’20; and next UGBC president and ex- include experience as AHANA+ Hugh McMahon, MCAS ’20. ecutive vice president following Leadership Council (ALC) chair, With this motion, the Mont- through on their proposals. The a Bowman Advocate, and a Comserrat Exe cutive B oard and inclusion of these groups in the pass Mentor. After his defeat in First-Generation Club will al- SA will hopefully illuminate this year’s UGBC presidential low one of their members each the resources currently avail- election, Frontis’s willingness year to serve as a Montserrat able and initiate new incentives to be a part of his opponent’s senator in the SA. If more than beneficial to these students in Executive Council shows his one student is nominated by the order to combat the social cul- dedication to intended UGBC Montserrat Executive Board or ture at BC that tends to exclude initiatives combating discrimithe First-Generation Club for lower income students . The nation.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR In Response to: “Carroll School Moves to Combat Grade Inflation”

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Grading is an oft-debated, rarely changed, and extremely important part of our education system. Inconsistencies across subjects and professors makes it an ineffective form of evaluating students’ knowledge.

Some professors are harder than others. Maybe those students’ grades should be raised. However, there should be a point where we care more about whether or not these students will be successful rather than how high their GPA is. Current grading practices fail to promote learning, causing stress and over-fixation on memorizing how to cater to a particular professor as opposed to understanding the material.

Should a prestigious business school really have a significant number of students with poorer grades? If admissions is doing its job, most Carroll School of Management students should be receiving high grades. The reduction of a raw grade sets students up for self-doubt and reduces their ability to get an internship or job and, ultimately, will reduce the esteem of alumni and (the thing Boston College cares about) their ability to donate back to the school.

This is not to say that grades should necessarily be inflated. However, reducing them only sets up failure for both students and the University.

Statistically, some classes will and should be smarter than others. Professor LaCombe brought up the point that a true analysis of grades would factor in students’ backgrounds. This

report does not consider the idea that today’s BC student may actually be smarter than one 15 years ago, also coming in with the experience and knowledge allowed for in the modern world.

Personally, I have been investing since middle school as markets and financial data are easily accessible on the internet. AP classes taught me macro- and microeconomics. Curving of any kind only exacerbates initial knowledge gaps among students .

Students should get the grade they earn, independent of the experiences and knowledge of anyone else in their class.

No grading system will be perfect, but one that intentionally reduces grades is harmful to students.

I support a relative standardization in regards to different sections of the same course, though all professors teach and grade to their own best ability. Arbitrarily reducing students’ grades is too great a cost for standardization.

Especially if it plans to implement new policy, CSOM should release its report. Failure to do so would only reinforce a general lack of transparency at BC. Hopefully, in the future, time and money will be spent on improving learning outcomes rather than on ineffective evaluations of students’ intelligence.

Kyle Rosenthal CSOM ’21

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The Heights

Monday, March 26, 2018

A7

Forging Meaningful Relationships What Does UGBC Do? 69

69

Matthew Kelly

Easter break - I know this is a given, but think about it for a second. Some schools don’t get any days off around Easter, and that’s really tragic. We take advantage of this wonderful thing we have. Because we are a Catholic university, Easter Break is expected, but imagine the rest of the spring semester without it: we (at least I) would be hopelessly stuck in a never-ending stream of exams and papers and would probably go insane. It’s a nice weekend to relax, spend time with your family, and bring home half of the stuff that you have at school and don’t actually use but keep here just in case. But even if you’re not going home, it’s just a helpful break before the end of the year even though it’s only been two and a half weeks since Spring Break, and that’s an oddly short amount of time to be back at school. It’s just a glorified five-day weekend, but we could also take it as compensation for the fact that we don’t have Fall Break (although we are getting an extra day off next semester so BC can call Columbus Day weekend “Fall Break”—take that as you will).

Ignoring the fact that some schools have both Fall and Easter Break, think about the schools that don’t have either (Northeastern).

69

In this new era of hyper-sharing and social media, many of us are painstakingly aware of just how many “friends” the individuals around us hold. Yet delving within the nucleus of so many of these relationships reveals a bitter truth: Most of these absurd associations lack any substance whatsoever. Most of these “friendships” are not only born of convenience and necessity, but continue to live on in that way, never solidifying into relationships of real gravitas. Alas, not every acquaintance of ours is meant to blossom into a lifelong friend, but certainly we should possess a desire to forge relationships that envelop a truer and deeper connection than just that of circustamstance. Within Boston College, there is a grave harm that so many of our relationships with friends, professors, and significant others are constantly on the fringe of futility—so devoid of real connection that they can seem to vanish at any time. Thus, we must endeavor to labor within our relationships, to scrutinize them, in search of compatibility, and find truer weight behind our friendships. Either we can do that, or we can choose to embrace an illusion, an illusion of comfort and security, an illusion where our friends are those who are closest in proximity, not those truly closest to us—yet this illusion may prove to be more capricious than the “relationships” that make it up.

When we are reminded of the volatile nature of these shoddy relationships and the atmosphere of illusion dissipates, it is then that we realize how starved we are for genuine connection. Often the juxtaposition of a myriad of unsubstantial friendships with the discovery of a single palpable one underscores just how great the need for substantial connection is.

Otherwise, residing within—or worse,

embracing—the illusion, leads to inevitable baneful mecuriality of a life without stability. When true attachment is absent in one’s life, one’s closest cohorts change with the seasons, and someone becomes anyone in the search for temporary comfort. It is in this way, with our own formation paramount, that we must aim to rid ourselves of this delusion and strive towards the particular.

The crux of the problem certainly lies within the meaning in our conversations, or lack thereof. How many conversations between “friends” can be overheard that completely lack any sort of conversational opulence? That is to say, many friendships persist only within the realm of “small-talk” and whimsical quips brought forth only by the happenstance of adjacency.

Certainly, at an institution of such repute and stature, we should be able to alleviate all the friendships and conversations “stuck in the doldrums,” between the seas of nonexistence and the actualization of meaningfulness. Yet within an atmosphere of self awareness, which often—but not always—follows intellectuality, individuals are commonly harried away from expression of their true selves, thus permitting the existence of a high quantity of relationships absent of quality. The mitigation of this problem is solely an individual expedition, in which internally we must choose to resist the hallucinatory pleasures of conformity.

At BC, this absence of substance manifests itself in every facet of our lives. It is realized in the brief, dull conversations with our freshman year RA, in an awkward exchange with a former professor in the elevator, within the passing glance and “BC lookaway” of that girl you met last Friday night. And the malignity of time so often washes away the potential we hold to improve our struggling relationships. Yet, here at BC, with such pressures to form ourselves, to become the actualization of our potential, it is paramount that we seek out needles from these haystacks of passersby. Never again will we be so

fully immersed in a sea of dormant relationships that can only be awoken via our own banishing of complacency and acceptance of mediocrity.

To harp on an earlier example, that of professors, this type of mentor-mentee relationship is often undervalued and under-pursued.

Always older than us, and often wiser too, the friendships we could obtain with professors are perhaps the most beneficial, yet often the rarest. Commonly in the times of their lives where loose-ends have been tied and hollow relationships filled or scorned, professors have already trodden many of the paths that we walk along while here at BC. We would be fools to never attempt to garner wisdom from them, and at that even a friendship itself. In this vein, both counterparts should be willing and open to the possibility of friendship despite the stark contrast in their positions, as there is a certain wisdom that each can impart on the other. That being said, the reality of this friendship can be deeper and more concrete than that between peers.

Having now received an invitation to dissect and rebuild the relationships surrounding us, all must work towards breaking the illusions in which they reside, recognizing and breaching the mirage perpetuated by the Instagram likes and Twitter followers. Continually, we must bring to fruition the possibility out of the latent reality of our relationships. It is in doing so that we begin to cultivate our best selves and the best selves of those around us. When we fully decide to gravitate towards that which is true and concrete, we steady many of our own inner turmoils and find ourselves enhancing our most admirable attributes. And when we are exemplifying our best selves, and those around us are doing likewise, we can extract more happiness from life than ever before. After all, who would be against that?

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

The Magic at Movie Theaters Nor’easters that don’t happen - Nothing can kill your spirit quite like a fake snowstorm. The potential for a snow day really lifts everyone’s spirit and immensely contributes to a atmosphere of hopeful camaraderie, but when absolutely nothing happens, it feels like a punch to the gut. I think the worst part was that meteorologists consistently predicted that the storm would hit Boston, but it never came. They said it would start Wednesday afternoon—it didn’t. They said it would start at midnight—it didn’t. They said a lot of things that they obviously didn’t mean. Who can even trust meteorologists anymore? No one has ever let me down so much (last week). I can’t think of anything that happened that excited me more than the snowstorm and possibility for a snow day, and I know that nothing disappointed me as much as the utter miscalculation of the storm’s path. It complete ripped everyone’s happiness away after it created so much hope. I guess the weather gods are completely against us after they let us have that one snow day during the last Nor’easter.

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Kelly Christ Audrey Hepburn once said, “Everything I learned, I learned from the movies.” In this age of seemingly endless individualized technology, it may seem that the magic of movie theaters has been lost. Most people would rather spend their time binge-watching the latest television dramas than go out to watch a movie. With around 60 percent of young adults relying mainly on digital streaming to watch television, even the traditional experience of watching television shows live is on its way out. But I would like to encourage everyone, young people in particular, to venture out and do one incredible thing: Go to the movies.

Even if someone rarely visits an actual movie theater, many of us do in fact watch movies regularly. The yearly fanfare of the Academy Awards and other ceremonies dedicated solely to outstanding achievements in film prove that the global fascination with cinema has not been lost. But I’m sure almost everyone who watched at least some of the movies nominated this year did so after they had already been taken out of theaters, the posters removed, the doors closed, the titles off the marquee. We often watch these films long after the buzz has had enough time to develop. Our movie-watching lives center around sites like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.

Recently, I went to see Love, Simon, a coming-of-age drama centered around a 17-year-old boy struggling to gather the courage to come out to his friends and family. I read the novel that the movie was based on and absolutely loved it, so I was undoubtedly eager to see it come to life on screen. I ventured all the way out of the beloved BC bubble to a movie theater

near Fenway Park. With its massive size and lively location, it really does have that classic sense of cinematic “magic:” As soon as you enter, you are bombarded with life-size posters featuring characters from the latest blockbusters. But the real magic is found within the individual theaters themselves.

This magic is what made me love going to see the movie adaptations of my favorite novels. There is something thrilling about the constant back and forth between “this is the best thing I have ever seen” and “I want to walk out right now” every other scene, based on the details they changed or kept the same.

Love, Simon was no different. It brought me back to the years I saw every Hunger Games movie adaptation at the first midnight showing. Even that tradition is slowly fading away, with 7 p.m. showings of highly anticipated films the Thursday before their public release being the most current trend.

We went to see the film at 4 p.m. on the Friday that it opened, so I was not expecting the same craziness in those midnight screenings. But in many ways, I was wrong. With every moment of excitement, the crowd roared. With every joke, laughter filled the air. When the movie revealed the answer to its biggest mystery, many even screamed and cheered. This raw and contagious emotion is the true magic of the moviegoing experience. The movie came off the screen as the characters found their way into the hearts of each viewer. This random assortment of people in the midst of darkness had become a united front. All distractions were put aside, and we dedicated our focus to experiencing this film together.

We are living in an amazing time for the arts: Movies, literature, and television are more diverse than ever, telling captivating stories that have the power to teach us how to better imagine each other. Streaming services, in particular, have taken specific measures to promote

diversity and inclusion in their story-telling. In fact, according to Netflix’s vice president of original content Cindy Holland, the popular streaming service works to develop diverse teams behind each of its productions and strives to create “programming for diverse and eclectic tastes and for an increasingly global audience.”

These decisions allow for more voices to share their stories and create more compelling art than ever before. Furthermore, this year’s Oscars ceremony demonstrated how this push for diversity has bled into the world of cinema. Movies such as Get Out, Ladybird, and Call Me by Your Name all take on subjects that deviate from the usual nominees and showcase the talent of actors, directors, and writers from a variety of backgrounds and identities. The combination of unique voices often results in works that are more universal than we may have ever imagined.

In today’s society, the primary purpose of technology is convenience. The ability to have so many movies and television programs at the tips of your fingers in the comfort of your own home allows convenience in the most obvious sense.

Television originates in the home, and these streaming services can enhance the traditional notion of the family gathered around the television together. Movies, on the other hand, originate in theaters.

They are meant to be watched in a shared setting: an experience aided by the energy of those around you, enhanced by the vastness of the large, dark theater. We are called to face the daunting task of actually turning off our cell phones for a while and truly disconnect, thus opening ourselves up to the influence of the film. So the next time you’re searching for a way to spend your weekend, I strongly encourage you to journey out of the BC bubble and into the boundless realm of imagination at the movies.

Kelly Christ is an op-ed columnist for The Heights. She 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.

Austin Bodetti

There are two kinds of people: those who do their homework, and those who write shitty columns for shittier student publications. You know which kind I am.

“Please work on me!” my thesis about the viability of peace talks with the Taliban cries as I burn it in my living-room fire pit, with the sirens of BCPD blaring in the distance. “Never!” I scream, throwing another two chapters into the pit. “There will never be a political settlement to the War in Afghanistan!” I got a little carried away.

This week, we’re investigating what the Undergraduate Government of Boston College actually does, even though we already know that the answer is nothing.

“Austin seems to be getting lazier every week,” the 5.4 people who read my columns are probably thinking. “What happened to the days when he took on giant corporations like Mattress Firm?” I’ve become old and jaded since then—and really tired because I don’t sleep anymore. I can tell this column is going to be terrible.

With that frame of mind, I decided to interview Reed Piercey, the only UGBC official whose phone number I have and, conveniently, the president-elect of BC’s student government. I worried that Reed might refuse, given that I had endorsed his candidacy in my newsletter by comparing him to Donald Trump, which Reed had not taken well even though Trump, like Reed, won the election.

“Hello,” I texted Reed, whose first name is pronounced like the present tense of the verb read, or the plant. The pronunciation of his last name remains unclear.

“Hello,” Reeed texted me back. The interview was off to a good start. Once Reeeed agreed to it, I asked whether he knew the typical style of my columns. He replied that he was only talking to me because of my Mattress Firm fame. In fact, Reeeeed has not given an interview to any other journalist since his election, considering me the only one important enough for the task. Don’t fact-check that statement.

“Can you describe what UGBC does?”

I asked. “The Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC) is a student government created to enrich the lives of students attending Boston College,” said Reeeeeed, literally quoting the UGBC website. “Its purpose is to serve on behalf of students’ interests and to help cultivate an engaged and caring student community. Furthermore, the student government works to actualize the rights and responsibilities of students to the greater community, while promoting growth academically, socially, and spiritually.”

“In practice,” Reeeeeeed continued, not plagiarizing this time, “that means hosting events on a variety of current issues to educate the student body, carrying out campus improvement projects, and pushing for legislative and policy change within the BC administration that we believe will best uphold the dignity of our community.” His quotes were extremely long, but my word count is extremely high.

“So you’re a lobbyist,” I concluded.

“Not the way I would’ve put it, but sure,” Reeeeeeeed agreed. “Lobbyist implies we have high levels of influence in the halls of power. I wish that were true.” He then inquired if I wanted to interview anyone else, such as the current UGBC president or vice president-elect. “LOL, no,” I responded, laughing out loud as I did so.

My interview with Reeeeeeeeed was telling. I’ve often wondered why UGBC existed, considering it had never affected my life in any noticeable way. I participated in one UGBC election—only because Reeeeeeeeeeeed had told me to vote for him, or he’d cancel the Islamic civilization and societies program, which could have affected as many as 15 students.

Gradually, though, I realized why UGBC exists. It’s not just so that those social justice warriors majoring in international affairs and political science can feel important. UGBC acts as a rubber stamp for the BC administration, just like all those dictatorships that have parliaments so they can pretend to be democratic. Did you know that China has a congress? It’s basically Chinese UGBC. I hope that my thesis won’t be this bad at least. In fact, that’s our mystery for next week: “Will Austin finish his thesis?”

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

The Heights

A8

Monday, March 26, 2018

Sen. Markey Talks Net Neutrality, EPA, and Gun Control Markey, from A1 room he was speaking in—Devlin 008.

He credited her course for teaching him about being on the right side of history, even if it took a long time to work out. He pointed to the March for Our Lives movement as the embodiment of such persistence.

“The NRA really thought that they controlled the Republican House and Senate and Presidency with a vice-like grip. And they have,” Markey said.

“However, over time, inextricably, inevitably, the turning point is reached.

And it is now young people telling adults that they are fed up.”

He believes that the movement now lies within the political system, but that the efforts cannot stop there.

He urged students to become a politically active in the 2018 midterms through sustained pressure on elected officials, pointing to the volunteers helping students register to vote just outside.

“People kind of doubt millennials and below politically,” Markey said.

“Are they actually going to turn the cognitive into the operational? It’s one thing being on campus. It’s another thing to be off the campus, doing what you know has to be done in order to make democracy work.”

He compared today’s college environment to his own, when students came together to discuss issues like the Civil Rights Movement, the Viet-

nam War, feminism in the ’60s and ’70s, and the start of environmental activism. He remembered seeing these topics evolve from conversations in the cafeteria to national issues.

“Every one of these issues pretty much didn’t exist on my first day in college and were full-blown debates in America,” he said.

He then moved to challenge President D onald Tr ump on climate change and his administration’s apparent disregard for science, offering a warning against allowing the United States to step back from such a pressing international issue. He argued that the country must engage in preventative care, employing wind and solar energy, electric vehicles, and other methods of energy conservation to prevent the planet from overheating.

“As we all know here, the planet is dangerously warming—the planet is running a fever,” Markey said.

“There are no emergency rooms for planets.”

He cited Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, as emblematic of the administration’s problematic approach.

Pruitt, in his former position of Attorney General of Oklahoma, sued the agency over environmental regulations 14 times.

“In his confirmation hearing, I said to him, ‘Will you recuse yourself from

Celine Lim / Heights staff

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, BC ’68 and BC Law ’72, criticized Trump’s pick for the Environmental Protection Agency. any of the decisions which are related to the cases you brought against the EPA?’ Markey said. “And then he said to me, in the hearing, ‘No.’ So I said to him, ‘Well that would make you the plaintiff, the defendant, the judge, and the jury, with the decision already being predetermined.’”

Expanding on his plans in the Sen-

Celine Lim / Heights staff

Markey said that one of the reasons March for Our Lives was so moving was because it focused on the next generation of leaders.

ate, Markey laid out his goals for the upcoming Secretary of State confirmation hearings of now-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who many on the left see as a potential warhawk.

“We’re going to have to work very hard, and I’m going to be cross-examining him in the confirmation hearing,” he said. “So we can absolutely get on the record what his views are going to be in terms of a preemptive nuclear strike against North Korea, a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran, knowing that the consequences are going to be catastrophic.”

One of the biggest reactions from the crowd came after Markey laid out his plans to protect net neutrality, which was recently repealed by Trump’s FCC. He explained that he introduced the resolution to overturn Trump’s decision, which the Senate will likely vote on in the next four or five weeks.

He said this would ensure that every senator is put on record to ensure that Americans know where their respective senators stand on the issue of net neutrality.

Markey also called on young voters to stop discrimination, whether it comes in the form of action against climate scientists at the EPA or civil injustices.

“What Donald Trump has decided to do is to reintroduce every one of these issues that we thought was settled,” Markey said. “So that means it’s your generational challenge to do something about it to protect the country.”

He explained that part of the reason the March for Our Lives was so powerful was that it focused entirely on the next generation of leaders.

“I marched for three and a half hours yesterday,” Markey said. “Elizabeth Warren and I are the two senators from Massachusetts, we have the two votes, and I didn’t give a speech yesterday. I didn’t say a word because it was the young people and teachers that were given the leadership.”

Markey finished his discussion by expressing pride at BC’s progress socially since his enrollment—a time when the University wouldn’t allow women to be political science majors.

In the same breath, he emphasized the danger of complacency among the student body.

“Like a baton, it keeps getting passed on, generation after generation,” he said. “What you have to do is try to help to lift the gaze of everyone to the constellation of possibilities for themselves, for their families, for our country, and for the nation.”n

Monthly RISE Series Strengthens Music Community in Boston

March’s edition featured the husband-and-wife duo, A-Beez, that weaved their personal stories into creative melodies.

By Mary Wilkie Opinions Editor

Gift bags containing USB drives with the A-Beez’s new album and discounted passes to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum rested on every seat in ISG Museum’s Calderwood Hall on Thursday, as the museum presented its monthly installment of the RISE music series.

This month, the event hosted a Boston-based husband-and-wife duo, the A-Beez, for the release of their second studio album entitled Say Goodbye. Local singer Camille Merendail and Berklee College of Music alum Emily Elbert opened the show.

Within the series, this performance emanated an intense sense of community as it showcased musicians who represent the musical talent enriching Boston.

The original music performed was very personal to the artists. Before they began officially working on this album, Amy co-wrote a song with a friend of hers—a London-based musician who passed away four years ago. On the album, the song features an old recording of his vocals layered over recent recordings of new instrumental parts.

Even before the A-Beez performed, however, Elbert’s music manifested personal events and feelings of her own. Before she began each piece, Elbert briefly explained the people, places, and things that inspired its development. Her most recent song, “True Power,” is a significant critique of President Donald Trump. Once she received immense support from the crowd after she introduced this piece, Elbert and her D’Angelo delivered a sound that echoed Jimi Hendrix’s

intense guitar subdued by her own guitar’s mellow tone.

“I believe really deeply in the power of music to help hold a mirror up to society, looking at the way music has help catalyze shifts in our culture throughout the last century,” Elbert said.

In their music, bassist Aaron Bellamy and keyboardist Amy Bellamy manipulate up to eight instruments in arrangements that encompass genres from soul and R&B to funk and jazz.

Their performance immediately created a lively energy among the audience members. Just as curators Shea Rose and Simone Scazzocchio instructed the crowd to do, the audience moved around, voiced their support, and interacted with the performers: The band’s energy emanated from the constant soulful rhythm of the guitar, percussion, and bass supplemented by the jazzy voices of the saxophone and trumpet and the funky melodies of the keyboard.

These musicians not only find that they have a responsibility to deliver true and authentic music, but they also take pride in their sounds and the way in which they deliver them.

For three years, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has been hosting intimate musical performances through the RISE music series with popular musicians from around the country. This season began on Sep. 7 and includes a partnership with Berklee College of Music, so that current and former students have the opportunity to open for the main acts.

Rose and Scazzocchio, both Berklee alumni, organize the series by inviting talented musicians of various contemporary genres to perform for intimate audiences in the museum’s modern

Mary Wilkie / Heights Editor

A-Beez, made up of the couple Amy Bellamy on the keyboard and Aaron Bellamy on the bass, performed last Thursday. performance hall.

As they observed the performance from the same area as the audience members, the curators were just as, if not more, enthusiastic and excited about the show. The three acts—Merendail, Elbert, and the A-Beez—have all developed their musical abilities in Boston and are dear to Rose and Scazzocchio. Respectively a student, classmate, and inspiration to at least one of the curators, these relationships centered around music compelled them to deliver unscripted yet intimate introductions for each performer that contributed to the show’s laid-back atmosphere.

The sense of unity and respect among the musicians displays their unadulterated appreciation for passionate and authentic music. Their support for one another radiated out of their instruments —when one of them had a solo, the others

encouraged the performer with just as much passion as if they were performing themselves. They showed no tension or nervousness, only respect, energy, and a pure passion for their music. Whoever occupied the stage—whether the curators or performers—interacted so casually with the audience that the event felt less like an organized concert and more like an intimate soirée.

The structure of Calderwood Hall also contributed to this comfortable energy: Geometrically constructed to enhance the performances both audibly and visually, the cubic space has four levels of balconies. Each balcony, however, only has two rows of seating that completely surrounds the room so that audience members can obser ve every angle of these performances from above at entirely different angles.

Because of the physical proximity

between the audience and musicians in addition to the A-Beez local fan base, the ambiance was ver y relaxed and casual. This city, home to countless institutions that foster the growth of so many young and talented people, cultivates an environment that encourages and motivates those who reside here. Bringing together performers for whom Boston holds so much significance, Rose and Scazzocchio orchestrated an engaging album release party for the A-Beez representative of the talent and support in this city.

“Boston, for me, represented such a renaissance in my own life, and I think it does that for a lot of people,” Elbert said. “It’s this place where, no matter where you’re coming from, there’s this ability to be around all of these students and teachers and people committed to education. It is a really powerful experience.” n

SPORTS

MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2018

B1

@HEIGHTSSPORTS

LACROSSE

Move Lax to Alumni

ON THE HEELS

BEN THOMAS With a 17-11 win over No. 5 North Carolina Saturday afternoon—its first against the Tar Heels since 2015—Boston College lacrosse now boasts a perfect record through 12 games. The No. 2 Eagles are off to their best start in program history, but the only Superfans that are really able to see one of the nation’s best in action without a headache live in Duchesne, Hardy-Cushing, or Keyes residence halls.

That’s right. Realistically, the only students that have the opportunity to make it to BC’s lacrosse and soccer field live on Newton Campus, the site of men’s and women’s soccer and lacrosse games. Other than the 40 percent of freshmen that live there—a tenth of all students—a 15-minute bus ride is required to see top-15 point scorers Sam Apuzzo, Dempsey Arsenault, and Kaileen Hart. Frankly, this is a trip that most students would only make if they accidentally hopped on the wrong shuttle from Main Campus.

Lacrosse deserves better than this.

Families, alumni, and team enthusiasts packed the Newton Campus facility stands for the team’s Red Bandana Game on Saturday, with many fans spilling out into the walkways, but even then, few upperclassmen could be found other than the ones playing in the game.

A change in scenery for the secondbest team in the nation is overdue. With a new athletic director, new athletic complexes, and a team that has a great standing among the alumni, families, and youth of the community, one solution to draw student interest is apparent: a relocation to Alumni Stadium.

If you go to the 44,500-seat venue right now, you’d be confused. Currently, a ginormous $2 million bubble sits atop the playing field. From December through March, “The Bubble” hosts “indoor” practices for 11 different varsity sports on campus, but that’s all set to change.

A $200 million investment in new athletic facilities on campus will produce, among other things, a state-of-the-art athletics field house that will essentially replace the functionality of the bubble.

See Lax Relocation, B2

ANDY BACKSTROM / HEIGHTS EDITOR

OF GREATNESS

Still undefeated, BC lacrosse beat No. 5 North Carolina on Saturday afternoon for the first time since 2015, marking the team’s fifth win over a ranked opponent this year.

BY ANDY BACKSTROM Sports Editor With only 10 and a half minutes left in the first half of Saturday afternoon’s top-five matchup between Boston North Carolina 11 College Boston College 17 lacrosse and North Carolina, the Tar Heels rattled off three-consecutive goals in a span of just 127 seconds, more than doubling their scoring total

in the process. All of a sudden, the Eagles were trailing and in danger of entering the break without a lead for the third-straight game. Not only that, but Sam Apuzzo—the nation’s top scorer—had yet to get on the board.

Even though the junior came into the weekend with 11 more points than everyone else in the country, the dry spell wasn’t all that surprising, considering that she had been held scoreless during

the first half of BC’s previous two outings. “[Sam’s] just always really composed,” Eagles head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said. “If she has a couple of goals, she stays composed, if she doesn’t, she just stays composed and knows exactly when to step up.”

Right on cue, Apuzzo, who ended the game with nine points, scored or assisted on the final three goals of the half, slingshotting BC

right back into the driver’s seat.

The teams traded goals throughout the opening 15 minutes of the second half, but the momentum had shifted. It was only a matter of time before Kaileen Hart jump-started a 6-0 run that all but put the 17-11 victory to bed, securing the Eagles’ first win over UNC since 2015.

No. 2 BC (12-0, 3-0 Atlantic Coast) couldn’t have gotten off to a

See Lax vs. UNC, B3

SOFTBALL

Dreswick’s Perfect Game Headlines BC’s Sweep of Virginia

BY PETER KIM ForThe Heights With Boston College softball holding a slim lead over Virginia in the seventh inning of its weekend finale, Eagles head coach Ashley Obrest didn’t shy away from keeping the ball in the hands of Jessica Dreswick—the staff ace who was looking to complete her second shutout of the weekend.

She didn’t disappoint, pitching a scoreless seventh inning to secure a 3-0 win for BC (12-15, 3-3 Atlantic Coast), capping off a series sweep of the Cavaliers (9-22, 1-8).

Dreswick played a big role in the successful weekend, hurling a perfect game—the first in program history—then bouncing back from a shaky second start with a series-

ending shutout.

BC’s offense had been on fire in Friday’s doubleheader, scoring a combined 18 runs to begin the series, and though runs were slightly harder to come by in Saturday’s finale, the Eagles still came through with enough timely hits to win.

On Saturday, the scoring started in the first inning, with Chloe Sharabba leading off the game with a double. An attempted sacrifice bunt by Lexi DiEmmanuele turned into a run for the Eagles, as a throwing error resulted in Sharabba scoring from second.

Annie Murphy drove in DiEmmanuele with an RBI single, giving BC an early two-run lead it wouldn’t relinquish.

The Eagles tacked on another insurance run in the third inning. Once again,

Sharabba opened an inning with a hit, lacing a single up the middle. After she advanced to third on a stolen base and a groundout, Murphy brought her in with a single, capping the scoring spurt.

The only time the Cavaliers threatened Dreswick was in the fourth when Olivia Gott hit a deep double to right-center with two outs, putting a Cavalier in scoring position. Dreswick came back to force a groundout to third base, though, escaping the jam. She scattered three hits and a pair of walks during the shutout, her fourth of the year—and ninth of her career, good for third in BC history.

Weather-related concerns forced the Ea-

CELINE LIM / HEIGHTS STAFF

See Softball vs. UVA, B3

Jessica Dreswick threw two shutouts against UVA, including the program’s first perfect game.

FOOTBALL

Landry, Defense Make Their Case for 2018 NFL Draft at Pro Day

BY BEN THOMAS Asst. Sports Editor With more than 20 pairs of NFL eyes locked on him from 40 yards away, Boston College football’s Kamrin Moore remained still on all fours.

The senior cornerback adjusted his position on the 10-yard line once, twice, and then a third time before ultimately standing right back up to shake out the jitters. Eventually, Moore got back on the hash marks

INSIDE SPORTS

and, this time, blazed past all the scouts in under four and a half seconds.

Of the eight Eagles to participate in on-field activities during the team’s Pro Day, seven ran the 40 yard dash.

Moore, Charlie Callinan, Gabe McClary, Noa Merritt, Thadd Smith, Isaac Yiadom, and recent graduate Patrick Towles each took a turn in the race against the clock. The one man not to participate in the drill?

Harold Landry.

The senior defensive end may not

have ran the event’s most exhilarating drill, but he stole the show in every other area. Landry and Merritt participated in individual lineman drills toward the end of the session, and each time, the North Carolina native drew more attention toward himself.

While Merritt certainly held his own in each activity, his presence also represented a standard that showed just how athletic Landry really is.

Landry looked more like a tight end than a lineman as he performed agility and footwork drills, leaping and

high stepping over padded obstacles with ferocity. Only in one drill did Landry slip up: a ladder-like agility drill in which he tripped and crashed hard to the ground. He appeared to twist his ankle—a sore sight considering the senior missed four games this past season due to an ankle injury.

Wednesday afternoon though, Landry got right back up to try the drill again, as if to prove he is now 100 percent healthy, something he stressed during post-workout interviews.

One motivator for Landry and

LACROSSE: Eagles Rally to Defeat Yale BASEBALL: BC Drops Inaugural Home Game

Merritt during the Pro Day was Brendan Daly. The New England Patriots’ defensive assistant was heard barking out at his guys during drills, and it was clear that he has been very influential on the careers of the two four-year standouts.

“He’s a very intense guy,” Landry said. “I definitely could see the culture of the Patriots within him.”

Landry will be hoping to hear his name called early on April 26, the first

See Pro Day, B3

SPORTS IN SHORT................................... B2

Down one at intermission, BC bounced back to score 10 The Eagles played five and half hours and 18 innings, only NFL PRO DAY.......................................... B3 goals in the second half and beat the Bulldogs..............B3 to watch Northeastern escape with a win......................B4 BASEBALL............................................. B4

The Heights

B2

Monday, March 26, 2018

BASEBALL

In Home Opener, Eagles Fall to Huskies in 18-Inning Marathon

By Bradley Smart Assoc. Sports Editor

A week removed from snow pushing back Boston College baseball’s home opener at newly constructed Brighton Field, the Eagles Northeastern 7 finally opened Boston College 4 up the ballpark on Tuesday afternoon against Northeastern. And as a way of apologizing for the postponement of a much-anticipated day, the baseball gods seemed to decide, “let’s play two.”

The result was an 18-inning marathon, spanning five hours and 24 minutes, stretching deep into the evening, more than long enough for the lights—a new thing for fans of BC baseball—to turn on.

Unfortunately for the Eagles, a three-run frame from the Huskies would send them home with a disappointing 7-4 loss.

Northeastern (11-5) right fielder Charlie McConnell, who led the way with a 5-for-9 day from the leadoff spot,

opened the 18th against BC (7-11, 2-4 Atlantic Coast) reliever Matt Gill. Cam Walsh, who entered the decisive frame a woeful 0-for-7, singled through the left side for what would be the game-winning run.

Gill gave up two more runs, the first on an RBI single to Ryan Solomon and the second via a double steal. The Eagles would go on to load the bases in the bottom of the frame against Huskies reliever David Stiehl, who pitched four scoreless innings.

Back-to-back singles from Jake Alu and Chris Galland with one out sparked hope that the game would just continue to roll on, but a fielder’s choice from Jack Cunningham pushed BC to the brink.

After Stiehl walked Brian Dempsey, Anthony Maselli—hitless in his 18 previous at bats on the year—had a chance to come through in the clutch and erase his sluggish start.

He didn’t, finishing 0-for-3 on the night as he flew out to left field on a 1-1

pitch. The loss was tough, but the blow was lessened by the facts that it came down to the wire against a tough Northeastern squad that entered the day ranked in the top 10 of RPI and that the new field was everything it was chalked up to be.

“That was tough, but I think we battled every pitch and every inning,” senior shortstop Jake Palomaki told BCEagles. com. “It’s great to be on the new field. It’s been a long time coming and everyone did a great job on it.”

Northeastern built an early 1-0 lead through the first three innings, the product of an unearned run—Nolan Lang reached on an error and McConnell singled to right center. Eagles starter Jack Nelson left after three innings of work, beginning the parade of seven different pitchers.

BC tied the game up in the fourth on a sacrifice fly from Gian Martellini after Palomaki doubled and reached third following a collision in the outfield. That sparked a back-and-forth swing over the

next two-plus innings, setting the stage for a lengthy standstill.

The Huskies scored twice off Eagles righty John Witkowski in the fifth, as Jake Farrell singled in a run, then came around and scored later off a groundout from Zach Perry. BC managed to tie it up over the next two innings, again, getting a run off both starter Brian Christian and Andrew Misiaszek. Jack Cunningham had an RBI double, and then Alu knocked a single up the middle.

The tie would last until the 14th, as the Eagles’ best chance—two runners on in the bottom of the ninth—was squandered. Northeastern took a one-run lead on the strength of an RBI single from Ian Fair, but fittingly, the edge wouldn’t last.

BC rallied, with Cunningham reaching on a single, then moving to third via a Dempsey bunt and Maselli groundout.

Palomaki came through in the clutch, blooping the game-tying single to extend the game an extra four innings.

Ultimately, the Huskies’ bullpen out-

matched BC’s. Kyle Murphy gave up the lone run in the 14th but was otherwise methodical, working five important innings and striking out four, while Stiehl had his share of trouble but didn’t allow a run. The Eagles got a stellar effort from freshman Will Hesslink, who struck out four and didn’t allow a run over four and a third, but Walsh and Gill both cracked down the stretch.

The loss, with BC playing the equivalent of two games in one day, is a tough pill to swallow. Opening up a new ballpark with the usual pomp and circumstance only to lose to a nearby rival is also far from ideal. Still, there should be plenty of optimism around future wins at Brighton—Palomaki has reached base in 13-straight games, Nelson and Hesslink pitched solid innings, Galland has been a gem of a freshman—the list goes on.

Tuesday’s game proved there’s a lot of potential and talent surrounding the Eagles—it’s just a matter of putting the pieces together. n

LACROSSE

BC Tops Yale, Wins Record-Breaking 11th-Consecutive Game

By Caroline Claar For The Heights

Three days removed from picking up its first win at Louisville in school history, Boston College lacrosse reached a new milestone. On Boston College 13 Tuesday afterYale 9 noon, the Eagles rallied from a one-goal, halftime deficit, behind Sam Apuzzo’s second-half hat trick, and pulled away from Yale for a 13-9 victory—BC’s program record-breaking 11th-straight win.

Yale (6-3, 2-0 Ivy League) kicked off the game at Reese Stadium with two quick shots on goal, but Eagle goalkeeper Lauren Daly easily stopped those two attempts.

Just five minutes into the game and on Yale’s third shot attempt, Izzy Nixon recorded her 13th goal of the season, drawing first blood. No. 2 BC (11-0, 2-0 Atlantic Coast) couldn’t grab control of the draw following Nixon’s goal, but BC defender Christina Walsh forced a quick turnover, leading to an Apuzzo shot—unfortunately for the Eagles, the ball hit the post.

A Nixon turnover led to a ground ball pickup by Kaileen Hart. The senior got a shot off, playing a man down, and found

the back of the net, recording her 21st goal of the season and tying the game.

The teams traded possessions, with just a handful of turnovers on both sides of the field. With 13 minutes left to go in the first half, Carly Bell picked up a yellow card and another foul was then called on Apuzzo, giving Yale the one-man advantage. The Bulldogs didn’t miss out on their opportunity, scoring with just under 11 minutes left to play in the half on a Nixon goal—her second of the day—assisted by Sam Higgins.

BC knew that it had to answer, and it did so without hesitation. After the Nixon goal, Dempsey Arsenault took control of the draw and brought it downfield to score her 31stt goal of the season, equalizing the game at two a piece.

But, it didn’t take long for the Eagles to pick up another foul—Bell was the culprit for the second time. Eight seconds later, Yale’s Vanessa Vu gained control of the ball and fired a shot on net, less than 30 seconds after the Eagles tied it up, giving the Bulldogs the 3-2 advantage with less than 10 minutes to play in the first half.

A foul on Vu led to a Hart free-position attempt, but Yale goalie Sydney Marks was there for the save. Soon, thanks to

the toughness of Madeleine Gramigna, BC’s Taylor Walker coughed up the ball, allowing Yale to temporarily maintain possession.

While the pattern of the game would have suggested that the Eagles score the next goal and knot it all up, the Bulldogs made things interesting and put one in to the back of the net after a BC shot clock violation. Emily Granger recorded her 14th goal of the season with just five minutes left in the first half, extending Yale’s lead to 4-2.

Less than a minute later, senior Tess Chandler recorded her 21st goal of the season after Elizabeth Miller gained control of the draw. The half ended with the Bulldogs on top of the Eagles by one.

The second half began with a pair of yellow cards administered to both Nixon and Walker. Bell was called for a foul right after the Walker yellow card, and Yale’s Gramigna scored off a free-position shot while BC was playing a man down, giving Yale the 5-3 advantage.

Two minutes later, Walker redeemed herself, putting one past Marks. Just a minute after that, Yale came right back down the field with another Gramigna goal. That’s when Apuzzo—who was held

scoreless in the first half for the second game in a row—came into her own, scooping up the draw and logging her 45th goal of the season.

The Eagles really got into a rhythm and, just two minutes later, fired down the field and scored again after a foul was called on Yale’s Cooper Hall, tying the game at six.

Then, Nixon picked up a ground ball and passed it to Higgins, who dished it out to Barrett Carlson for a goal, giving Yale the lead again.

With so many lead changes and ties going back and forth, the second half was quickly turning into a high-scoring affair.

Three successive Apuzzo goals gave the Eagles a two-goal lead, but it didn’t last long. The Bulldogs came right back and recorded two goals in just one minute, tying the game back up, 9-9.

All of a sudden, the teams hit a dry spell—neither side scored over the course of the ensuing five minutes. Eventually, the Eagles were the first to break the silence, giving themselves a 10-9 lead, thanks to another goal from Arsenault while playing a man up. Arsenault didn’t stop there, though. Less than a minute later she received a pass from Apuzzo and flung a shot into the back of the cage, tying the

Eagles’ largest lead of the game. BC took a timeout to regroup after the goal with 6:34 left to go.

Exactly a minute after the timeout, Hart scored, extending the Eagles’ lead to three. Yale cleared the ball after Marks finally stopped Apuzzo, and the Bulldogs proceeded to use a timeout to come up with a game plan with just 2:45 left on the clock.

Yale held onto the possession until Emily Granger’s shot hit the post and was picked up by the Eagles. A quick foul was called on Higgins, and BC was given a free-position attempt with 44 seconds remaining in regulation. The Eagles were able to capitalize on the attempt and extended their lead to four with a Walker goal, effectively sealing the game.

When all was said and done, BC dominated the statsheet, tallying 14 more shots than Yale, despite the Eagles’ poor first-half performance. BC has blown through its non-conference slate and finds itself in the same position that it was when it started: undefeated. With only one more non-conference game remaining, the Eagles’ focus now shifts toward the ACC, needing two more wins to clinch their first winning league record in three years. n

Alumni Stadium is the Perfect Future Home for BC Lacrosse Lax Relocation, from B1 This opens the door for Alumni to be used during the spring. In the fall, field hockey and soccer are stuck on Newton Campus as long as football reigns supreme, but lacrosse could provide students a much-needed opportunity to support their peers in maroon and gold.

Football, hockey, and basketball are the money makers for BC in the fall and winter, respectively, but in the spring, it’s hard to find a single major sport on main campus. Both baseball and softball play in Brighton, tennis is hidden in a nook behind the Plex, and believe it or not, track and field is stuck at Harvard. For this reason, lacrosse in Alumni could easily gain traction as a popular spring sport for Eagles fans.

As of now, BC is home to a lacrosse facility that its own website

describes as an “intimate atmosphere for contests,” and its seating capacity can’t even be found anywhere online. The 1,521 that came to see the Eagles and Tar Heels face off on Saturday squeezed into the 10-row metal grandstand and then some, as about a third of all fans were forced to either sit on the grass or stand by the entrance. From these numbers, it can be estimated that the Newton Campus field comfortably seats just over 1,000 fans.

Compared to other top programs, this number is embarrassingly low.

The current No. 1 team in the country, Stony Brook, can hold over 12,000 fans in LaValle Stadium. Among the other top-10 teams and even those that compete in the ACC, few have seating even close to as low as BC, and more importantly, none are stuck on a satellite campus. No. 5 UNC’s Fetzer field holds over 5,000 fans, and No.

8 Loyola has its own stadium with a concession area and upper and lower levels that seat 6,000. The only team with a “stadium” close to as small as the Eagles’ is Louisville, but deservedly so: The Cardinals are the newest program in the ACC, established in 2008, and have never reached the NCAA Final Four.

For players and coaches, the chance to play closer to home would also make game day preparation much less of a pain. On Newton, the Eagles and their opponents are forced to use an RV-Trailer-looking shed of about 100 square feet as a locker room.

Meanwhile, the No. 6 Florida Gators have their own 12,000-square-foot locker facility that includes workout and equipment rooms.

If the sport was moved to Alumni, most players would barely have to travel to their home games at all, and minimal renovations to the locker

rooms already in place would make for a much more respectable game day experience.

BC wouldn’t be the first team to use its football stadium as a lacrosse arena. Syracuse uses the Carrier Dome for both its men’s and women’s lacrosse teams, and each boasts high attendance year after year.

Although women’s sports traditionally don’t garner as much attention as men’s, that’s not an excuse for BC going forward, a school that doesn’t even have its own men’s lacrosse team. Still, first-year Director of Athletics Martin Jarmond has already instituted a variety of innovative programs across BC Athletics. Within his first few months at BC, Jarmond had implemented an alcohol sales policy at sporting events that was very well received throughout the fall semester. More recently, he established a new ticket program for young

alumni that will allow former students to attend Eagles’ football, basketball, and men’s hockey games for cheap. It makes sense then that the guy making refreshing changes to Chestnut Hill would be the same one to pioneer an extremely valuable change in women’s sports.

Sure, the project would require an initial investment, but with a rise in attendance and the addition of concessions, the decision would pay dividends over time.

Why should the team with the most wins in all of women’s lacrosse be stuck on the worst home field? As the athletic field house nears completion, Jarmond shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to provide what is currently his most successful program a true home-field advantage.

Ben Thomas is the assistant sports editor for The Heights. He can be reached on Twitter @Ben_Heights.

SPORTS in SHORT ACC ATLANTIC BASEBALL

Numbers to know

Conference

overall

N.C. State

7-2

20-4

Clemson

4-3

17-5

Florida State

5-4

20-5

Notre Dame

4-4

10-11

Wake Forest

4-4

10-13

Boston College

4-5

9-12

Louisville

3-4

17-5

5:24

Duration of baseball’s home opener against Northeastern at the newly baptized Brighton Field.

3

Lacrosse players that rank inside the nation’s top-15 scoring chart.

108

Strikeouts that softball pitcher Jessica Dreswick has recorded through 24 games pitched this season.

QUote of the week

“Of course, [the win] means everything.”

— Acacia Walker-Weinstein

on her team’s six-goal victory over No. 5 North Carolina, its first win over the Tar Heels since 2015.

The Heights

Monday, March 26, 2018

B3

LACROSSE

BC Pulls Away in Second Period, Takes Down No. 5 UNC Lax vs. UNC, from B1 better start. About two and a half minutes in, Tar Heels midfielder Olivia Ferrucci lofted a cross-field pass into the air. Unfortunately for No. 5 UNC (6-3, 1-1), Taylor Walker was all over it. The Eagles midfielder picked off the pass and went coast-to-coast for the game-opening goal. Soon after, Hart delivered a pass to a streaking Emma Schurr, who promptly netted an over-theshoulder shot.

BC was up two goals on its ACC rival, but, more importantly, netminder Lauren Daly and Co. hadn’t allowed the Tar Heels—the 16th-highest scoring team in the nation—to find the back of the cage once. The shutout didn’t last much longer, though.

In fact, two minutes after Schurr extended the Eagles’ lead, UNC erased it.

Following a clear attempt, Maggie Bill slotted her fifth goal of the season. Then, Ally Mastroianni beat Daly for the equalizer,

tying the game up at two.

Near the midway point of the half, Cara Urbank restored the Eagles’ advantage. But BC was out of sync, turning the ball over and even committing a shot clock violation on one of its ensuing offensive possessions.

Even worse, the Tar Heels won three of the next four draw controls and made a home for themselves inside Eagles territory. Once there, UNC made its presence known, stringing together a 3-0 run, assuming a two-goal lead.

That’s when Apuzzo kicked it into gear.

In a matter of minutes, the junior cut inside the 18 and drew a foul on her way to the net. UNC head coach Jenny Levy was livid: The two-time National Coach of the Year pleaded to the referees that they should have called offensive charging. Nonetheless, Apuzzo—who was noticeably amped up—took her anger out on the ensuing free-position shot. The junior accelerated, rifled a shot past Tar Heels goalie Elise Hennessey, threw her stick to the ground, and

celebrated with her teammates.

Less than two minutes later, Apuzzo was back it, turning a Dempsey Arsenault pass into her 50th goal of the season. Then, in the waning seconds of the period, the team’s leading scorer scooped up a ground ball, sprinted down the field, and set up Walker for the go-ahead goal.

“Going out so strong right before the second half started was something we needed for momentum for the second half,” Apuzzo said.

The scoring spurt certainly carried over to the next frame. Seventeen seconds after UNC’s Marisa DiVietro knotted it all up at six goals apiece, Apuzzo won the draw, sprinted down the field, wrapped around the net, and flicked a pass to Schurr, who went far side to reclaim the lead—one that the Eagles wouldn’t concede for the rest of the game. The run-and-gun scoring play was just the start of a 4-1 BC run that created some distance between the two teams.

Yet the Tar Heels weren’t going to go down that easy—immediately after Urbank was administered a green card, Katie Hoeg capitalized on the one-man advantage, ripping twine. Apuzzo countered with her fourth and final goal of the game, only to see Marie McCool score two in a row, cutting UNC’s deficit to one.

Approaching the 11:50 mark, Walker-Weinstein, albeit a man-up, called a timeout—just what the Eagles needed to get their heads straight. Out of the break, Hart got the best of Hennessey, recording her first goal of the afternoon. Just as BC regained its confidence, UNC shot itself in the foot.

Over the course of the next six or so minutes, the Tar Heels committed four more fouls—two of which warranted yellow cards. The Eagles took full advantage of an overly physical UNC squad that finished the game with 22 fouls—nine more than BC. Led by Hart, five different Eagles, including Arsenault and Tess Chandler, piled on goals,

tying off a six-score run to break open the floodgates.

From that point forward, Apuzzo, Hart, and Arsenault milked the clock, holding the ball behind the net and working it around the perimeter to close out the game. Bill scored once more prior to the horn sounding, but it didn’t take anything away from the Eagles’ dominant second half. As soon as the clock struck zero, BC’s bench—donning paisley-branded red shirts in honor of Welles Crowther—sprinted toward to their teammates on the other end of the field.

The Eagles rejoiced, as if they had pulled the upset. And in a way, they did.

Despite being undefeated, a national runner-up, and the No. 2 team in the nation, Walker-Weinstein’s crew is still an underdog, at least in its own mind.

“Of course, [the win] means everything,” she said. “It’s a big game. Every ACC game is a huge uphill battle—especially being Boston College where I think we’re still trying to earn respect.” n

Andy backstrom / Heights Editor

After entering the half with a one-score lead and exchanging goals over the course of the opening 15 minutes of the second frame, the Eagles exploded for six-straight goals, distancing themselves from their conference rival.

SOFTBALL

Eagles Make Up Ground in ACC Standings in Charlottesville Softball vs. VTech, from B1 gles to play a doubleheader on Friday.

Though both teams would slow down offensively in Saturday’s contest, the late game on Friday featured plenty of offensive firepower on both sides. BC trailed by a run entering the final three frames, but pulled out a 10-6 win after a pair of multi-run innings.

The back-and-forth affair saw the Eagles draw first blood in the top of the first inning.

A double to left field by DiEmmanuele and an RBI single from Murphy staked the Eagles to the early lead. After a pair of wild pitches and a walk put runners on second and third with one out, Carly Severini and C.C. Cook hit back-to-back singles to drive in two more.

After being held hitless earlier in the day, the Cavaliers finally cracked the Dreswick puzzle in the second. Dreswick issued a leadoff walk, Ashlee Davis singled, and Erika Osherow doubled in a pair of runs to snap the six-inning scoreless stretch. An error plated Osherow to tie the game at three.

The Eagles, however, reclaimed the lead in the bottom of the frame when Sharabba led off with a triple to center field, and UVA shortstop Hayley Busby committed an error, yielding an unearned run.

BC would extend its lead on a Sharabba single in the third, but UVA answered. After a pair of runners reached, Kate Covington tied the game with a triple to right. A single

to left by Allison David would bring her in, chasing Dreswick from the game and putting her in line for the loss. She exited after just three and two-thirds, having allowed six runs, five earned, with just two strikeouts.

Dreswick’s replacement, Allyson Frei, managed to lock down the Cavaliers for the rest of the game. She finished off the evening, allowing just one hit while striking out three batters and, most importantly, giving the Eagles’ offense a chance to respond—which it did. BC loaded the bases in the fifth, setting up Sharabba to draw an RBI walk, and a DiEmmanuele fielder’s choice gave the Eagles a 7-6 lead.

Inspired yet again by Cook, who finished Friday’s doubleheader a perfect 5-for-5, the Eagles tacked on three more runs in the sixth. A leadoff triple by Cook and a Jordan Chimento single upped BC’s lead to two, and Sharabba followed with a two-run double to deep center field, essentially putting a nail in the coffin.

Friday’s early contest was more than a perfect start to the weekend for the Eagles.

Backed by an impressive outpouring and pure dominance on the mound from Dreswick, BC rolled to an 8-0 shutout of the Cavaliers.

The scoring started in the second inning when the Eagles plated five runs—all with two outs. After loading the bases, DiEmmanuele drove in two runs with a single, then Murphy followed with a two-run triple

into left field. Cami Sellers wrapped up the inning with a double to center.

The Eagles added a run in the third inning. Once again, it was Cook getting the rally started with her first career triple. After a walk to Olivia Markopoulos put runners at the corners with zero outs, Moore grounded out to shortstop, driving in BC’s sixth run of the game. It added two more runs in the fifth, as Allyson Moore drew a bases-loaded walk and, shortly afterwards, Chimento recorded an RBI single, ending the game by mercy rule.

Though the Eagles’ offense was clicking on all cylinders Friday, they could have scored one run, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Dreswick added yet another accolade to her distinguished career. In addition to not allowing a hit or walk through five innings, she also struck out seven batters for her eighth complete game of the season—a brilliant pitching performance that reflected an outstanding team effort in the first game of the series.

Coming off a frustrating first ACC series against Duke, the Eagles showed resolve to fight back and sweep UVA, using strong pitching performances from Dreswick and Frei and getting the timely hits that they lacked last weekend against the Blue Devils.

When the pitching is clicking and the bats are alive, it’s easy to feel optimistic about BC as it continues conference play. n

21 runs scored by BC in the series

5 runs batted in by senior Annie Murphy over the weekend

1.67 BC’s ERA during the sweep

FOOTBALL

Close to 30 Scouts Venture to the Heights to Evaluate BC’s Best Pro Day, from B1

Kaitlin Meeks / Heights EditoR

This year, Isaac Yiadom (top) and Harold Landry (bottom) are BC’s highest-rated NFL prospects.

day of the NFL draft. One Detroit Lions scout took significant interest in the senior, and it would be fitting that with the 20th pick in the draft, Landry would end up rejoining his former defensive line coach Paul Pasqualoni in the Motor City. Still, it’s possible that one of the top-ranked defensive linemen in the NCAA is expecting to be selected even sooner.

“I’m excited for it all,” he said. “I won’t get too into it, but it should be a good day for me come draft day.”

Joining Moore and L andr y in defensive drills was Yiadom, an NFL hopeful who, unlike Moore, didn’t enter the day on the draft bubble.

Yiadom has seen his draft stock rise dramatically in the past year. The cornerback spent three solid years on the Heights before exploding for 53 tackles and seven pass breakups in 2017—the second most on the team.

The lengthy 6-foot-1 senior proved his height—above average for many cornerbacks—was not a significant concern. Yiadom looked good run-

ning the 40-yard dash and was able to get low and show excellent quickness during cone drills.

Moore and Yiadom led a secondary that was ranked third in the nation in pass efficiency defense. Their football futures are currently up in the air, but with the spotlight honed in on them, they each performed marvelously.

While Yiadom is currently projected as a third-round selection in the draft, Moore is just hoping to make an NFL roster and is expected to be taken in the sixth or seventh round. Although the two have different styles of play, both took the time to express what they found to be one of the most fascinating parts of their journey towards the pros, specifically mentioning a certain NFL head coach.

“Even at the combine I’m walking right next to [Bill] Belichick,” Yiadom explained. “I’m like, ‘Dang!’ It’s crazy.”

Moore expressed the same sentiment saying, “I definitely got a little starstruck when I saw Bill Belichick for sure,” before adding a laugh.

Whether or not the decorated New England coach ends up giving either

defensive back a call, both players will certainly be happy to hear from any of the 32 coaches that can make their NFL dreams come true.

Not to be forgotten is Smith, the senior wideout who fired up his younger teammates standing on the sidelines after sprinting the 40 at what had to have been the fastest time of the day.

Smith had some highlight touchdown plays this past season for BC, and his speed and athleticism alone could allow him to squeeze his way into an NFL training camp.

Wrapping up each drill was Towles, a familiar face at a new position. The former Eagles quarterback was practicing with the Houston Texans under center as recently as last year, but he took snaps at tight end on Wednesday.

The Kentucky native may not have had the fastest times or shown the most athleticism, but his heart was there.

Towles will not be taken in the draft this year, but the position switch will allow him to rejuvenate his football career and perhaps make a name for himself in the summer as a body on an NFL practice squad. n

The Heights

B4

Monday, March 26, 2018

BASEBALL

Eagles Split Double Header Thanks to Baldelli’s Late Heroics

By Ben Thomas Asst. Sports Editor You wouldn’t know it from the final score, but the first game of a doubleheader for Boston College baseball against Virginia Tech was a nailbiter.

The Eagles’ offense entered the bottom of the ninth in a 2-2 stalemate, but tripled its score for the win on just one swing of the bat. A walk-off grand slam to left center for Dante Baldelli clinched the series for BC after its win the previous night.

Despite the 6-2 win, the Eagles couldn’t keep the bats going in Game Two and sputtered, ultimately dropping the series finale, 5-2.

Brian Rapp took the mound for B C (9-12, 4-5 Atlantic Coast) in its second game and pitched phenomenally for all but two pitches.

Through six innings, Rapp allowed just three hits to VTech (10-12, 4-5), but also carried four earned runs to his name.

After Jake Owens—the first batter of the game—reached base on a walk and advanced to second on a fielder’s choice, three-hole hitter Luke Horanski stepped to the plate. The

designated hitter crushed the only hit Rapp would concede for three innings—a home run to right field.

The fourth inning was much of the same. After retiring the first two batters, Rapp allowed what appeared to be a harmless single up the middle to J.D. Mundy. The very next batter though, Sam Fragale, scored what would be the winning run in an instant. The third baseman sent Rapp’s very next pitch well over the left field wall, putting BC in a four run hole.

“It was just a matter of their power hitters getting it done at the perfect time,” said head coach Mike Gambino.

Rapp didn’t get much help from his offense the entire game and ended up claiming the loss. The Eagles recorded exactly one hit in each of the game’s first seven innings, never stringing enough power together to get anything on the scoreboard.

It wasn’t until the eighth inning— after Owens had already added another insurance run on an RBI single in the seventh—that BC was able to put up a crooked number of its own.

With Nic Enright on the mound, Gian Martellini lined a double to left center

field that brought Jack Cunningham home for the Eagles’ first run. Martellini was eventually able to score after an off-balanced throw from Hokies shortstop Jojo Odachowski couldn’t find first base.

While the risky throw from Odachowski may have cost his team a run, in the end it didn’t matter. Jake Alu started the bottom of the ninth with a double deep in right center, but Graham Seitz was able to retire the next three batters for the save.

Baldelli may have ended Game Two on a strikeout swinging, but his ninth-inning heroics just three hours earlier had given BC a much needed win.

It was Dan Metzdorf on the mound for the Eagles to start the day, and the lefty didn’t come out until the very end. Metzdorf struck out 13 Hokies over eight innings—the most for BC in 11 years—not walking a single batter.

The power hitting for BC was also present in this one, as the Eagles recorded three homers in the game.

In the third inning, back-to-back homeruns from Mitch Bigras and Jake Palomaki put the Eagles up two

Lucas Bassoli / Heights Staff

Dante Baldelli (top) hit a walk-off grand slam in Game One Saturday afternoon. early on, and they didn’t look back until the ninth.

VTech got its first run of the game off a wild pitch from Metzdorf in the fifth and tagged reliever Sean Hughes for one more in the ninth. The Hokies loaded the bases with one out, but could only accumulate one run after Hughes walked Darion Jacoby, tying the game.

In the bottom half it was all Baldelli, the same guy who had robbed VTech of a homerun in center field minutes earlier in the eighth. After a walk, an intentional walk, and a hit by pitch, Baldelli recorded the first home run of his career in clutch fashion. The win gave BC its first conference series win of the season, and Baldelli a moment he will never forget. n

Cunningham’s Field Day Powers BC Past Virginia Tech

By Marc Occhipinti For The Heights Tuesday’s debut of Brighton Field was historic, given that it hosted the secondlongest game in Boston College baseball history. Friday’s Virginia Tech 4 game, on the Boston College 7 other hand, was memorable for other reasons.

The Eagles outlasted Virginia Tech, picking up their third ACC win of the season, and, more importantly, their first at the brand new stadium.

This day has been a long time coming, especially after the tail end of a New England winter postponed BC’s first few home games. On Friday, the inaugural home victory finally came, as the Eagles came back to defeat Virginia Tech, 7-4, thanks to late heroics from Jack Cunningham, who recorded a career-high four RBIs. BC pitching bent but did not break, allowing eight hits and stranding nine Hokie runners.

The Eagles’ (8-11, 3-4 Atlantic Coast) ace, Jacob Stevens, came out looking dominant in the top of the first, needing just 12 pitches to retire the side. After two quick flyouts, the junior pitched VTech (9-11, 3-4) three-hole hitter Luke Horanski backwards, starting with two backdoor breaking balls before getting a weak swingand-a-miss on an outside fastball.

After falling behind, 2-0, to Jake Palomaki, VTech starter Connor Coward settled in to match Stevens with a one-twothree inning of his own. Dante Baldelli just

missed one, sending a 1-0 fastball to deep left center before it was pulled in just shy of the warning track.

Stevens surrendered the first hit of the game in the second—a two-out flare to Sam Fragale—but Gian Martellini picked up his pitcher by gunning down Fragale as he tried to steal second.

Both teams threatened in the third, when a base hit and a hit by pitch gave the Hokies their first chance with a runner in scoring position. Stevens buckled down, however, forcing the VTech leadoff hitter, Tom Stoffel, to pop up a 2-0 fastball, escaping the jam.

The Eagles loaded the bases in the bottom half of the frame—the rally started with a two-out single by Anthony Maselli, who finally broke an 0-for-19 start to the season. Palomaki reached on an infield single, and a free pass to Baldelli set the stage for Cunningham.

“Well, I struck out my first at-bat, and looked pretty silly, so I was going up there, had some runners on,” Cunningham said.

“I was just looking for something to barrel up to get the job done, and I got a pitch to hit.”

The sophomore took Coward to a full count and, with the runners in motion, ripped a bases-clearing double to stake the Eagles to a three-run advantage.

It was a welcome sign to see Maselli playing a vital role to jumpstart the team’s offense. The senior only had four starts prior to Friday, but head coach Mike Gambino didn’t hesitate to turn to him in

this game.

“The kid’s always ready,” Gambino said.

“He’s an ultimate team guy, and every time we put him here he has great at-bats.”

The Hokies immediately started chipping away at the deficit in the top of the fourth, benefitting from a Fragale two-out double that barely slipped past the glove of Eagles’ third baseman Jake Alu. A Darion Jacoby leadoff double in the fifth and a subsequent sacrifice bunt allowed Jack Owens to drive in another run with a groundout, cutting the BC lead to one. VTech was drawing deep counts as opposed to BC attacking early in the sequence. After five innings, Stevens had thrown 72 pitches, compared to just 58 for Coward.

BC had the opportunity to extend its lead in the bottom of the fifth, when Mitch Bigras was hit by a pitch, and Palomaki drew a base on balls. A heads-up steal with Coward focused on the batter gave the Eagles two runners in scoring position with Cunningham at the plate. This time, however, Coward got Cunningham to chase a breaking ball in the dirt to keep the deficit at one.

In the top of the sixth, Cam Irvine and J.D. Mundy recorded back-to-back singles, the sixth and seventh hits off Stevens. Relying on small ball to tie the game, Fragale squared around, laying down a safety squeeze that brought Stevens just far enough off the mound to score Irvine.

Stevens stranded the runner on second by striking out Nick Menken.

Coward logged another shutdown in-

ning in the sixth, but not without a little drama. After a walk, Alu attempted to advance to second on a pitch in the dirt. The throw clearly beat him, and Alu slid hard, taking out Hokie second baseman Owens.

VTech head coach John Szefc argued for Alu’s ejection, to no avail.

After a leadoff hit by pitch in the seventh, and another bunt to get Jacoby to second base, Gambino went to his bullpen. He called on the big righty Sean Hughes—BC’s best reliever this season, as far as ERA is concerned. But Hughes immediately surrendered a hit to Owens, and in deja-vu fashion, Stoffel laid down a safety squeeze just off the first base line to give the Hokies their first lead of the game. After pitching around and walking the strong Horanski, Hughes, who would ultimately get the win, averted danger by forcing Irvine to fly out.

In the bottom of the frame, BC struck in unusual fashion. Brian Dempsey drew a leadoff walk, chasing Coward. Reliever Andrew McDonald faced just two batters, hitting Bigras and walking Maselli, both of whom were trying to bunt to move the runner over. Nic Enright came on in the hardest possible situation: bases loaded with no outs.

The pitch after Palomaki hit a frozen rope that landed two feet to the wrong side of the right field foul line, he tied the game on a sacrifice fly. But Bigras was another victim of aggressive baserunning, getting thrown out at third trying to advance on another dirt ball. Now with two outs,

Baldelli took four balls and made his way to first.

Cunningham came through yet again, muscling a single into short center field, bringing home the go-ahead run and notching his fourth RBI of the afternoon.

Even though the Eagles made two baserunning mistakes in the previous two frames, the Hokies couldn’t capitalize, all because of two defensive miscues. A throwing error on a first-and-third steal play brought home one, and a passed ball from Horanski capped off BC’s four-run, one-hit inning.

BC relievers Will Hesselink and Thomas Lane combined for an eventful, but scoreless, eighth. They combined to walk three, but Lane fanned Owens with the bases loaded to preserve the threerun lead.

Lane stayed on for the ninth, and in a game that featured so many base runners, it was a relief for Eagles fans to see him retire the side in order, securing the BC’s first victory on the turf of Brighton field.

All season, the Eagles have been leaning on their offense, but on Friday, the pitching staff—although far from perfect—pulled through when it mattered most. That said, VTech’s four runs are slightly misleading. Its eight hits, on the other hand, are an indication that the ACC foe has the potential to get the bats going at any time, as evidenced by its four 10-plus run performances this year.

Whether or not BC records its first ACC series victory of the year could very well come down to the hill. n

Lucas Bassoli / Heights Staff

Jack Cunningham (left) recorded four RBI in the win and combined with Jake Palomaki (right) for three of BC’s four total hits, as well as two stolen bases that both led to critical runs in the middle innings.

Young Hitters Have Impressed, but Bullpen Has Work to Do

By Bradley Smart Assoc. Sports Editor On Saturday afternoon, in the first game of a doubleheader, looking to claim Boston College baseball’s first conference series win of the year, Dante Baldelli strode to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs. The 6-foot-4, 175-pound sophomore entered this season having hit just .085 in 71 plate appearances a season ago, recording a measly five hits.

He promptly teed off, launching a walkoff grand slam well over the left field fence, the perfect reflection of the steps the Eagles’ (9-12, 4-5 Atlantic Coast) offense has taken this year. Baldelli has been one of many success stories in the BC lineup, thriving at the plate in his

second year—he now has six multi-hit games in his last nine, and boasts the fourth-best average (.313) on the team.

Some players haven’t needed a year under their belt, which is especially clear in the case of Chris Galland. The freshman quickly won a starting spot and ran with it, piling up 25 hits in his first 16 games and an impressive 13for-13 mark on stolen bases. The usual suspects are thriving as well, such as Jake Palomaki—the senior boasts a .418 mark and 13 extra-base hits.

O verall, the Eagles are hitting .274/.362/.375, with their batting average ranking among the highest marks in head coach Mike Gambino’s tenure. They hit almost 20 points lower last season and haven’t cracked .270 over the course of a

season since 2011-12, Gambino’s second year at the helm. The record of that team, though, was just 22-33, the reason being that the pitching staff coughed up almost 40 more runs then they scored.

In the context of this season, BC faces a similar dilemma. The pitching staff has a clear and stark divide between the rotation and the bullpen, and it’s causing plenty of problems. The rotation of Jacob Stevens, Brian Rapp, and Dan Metzdorf has pitched well so far, but the back end of games has been an adventure to say the least. Starters boast an ERA of 4.30 almost four full points lower than the relievers (7.95), a serious contrast that reflects the struggles the Eagles have had with protecting what should be unattainable leads.

Take this statistic for instance: In games that BC scores 11 runs, it is a perfect 3-0. In games that it plates eight, nine, or 10 runs, its record dips to just 14. The Eagles are in slugfests on a regular basis and can’t seem to pull them out.

Another problem emerges when you look at BC’s underlying statistics on offense. Yes, the Eagles rank fifth in the conference in batting average, but other numbers reflect poorly. They’re one of the least patient teams, currently last in walk percentage. They also don’t get on base consistently, sitting 11th in on-base percentage, or hit for power—11th in slugging percentage as well.

BC manufactures runs the old fashion way, leading the league in stolen bases and, is middle of the pack in sacrifice

hits, but it hasn’t always worked. Despite moments like Baldelli’s walk-off home run, the Eagles are still just 10th in the league in scoring thus far. With a pitching staff that is dead last in a lot of categories, from ERA to batting average against, it is easy to be pessimistic.

At the end of the day, however, through 21 games—the Eagles are right on pace with where they should be in terms of record. They have a minus-13 run differential, which, per Bill James’ Pythagorean Theorem of Baseball, would place them right around nine and a half wins at this point in the season. The path forward is clear: In order to make a postseason run, the pitching needs to elevate to where the hitting has been through the first month or so of the year. n

THE HEIGHTS

B6

MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2018

‘Pacific Rim: Uprising’ Falls into Action Clichés

BY LUIS FIALHO Heights Staff Pacific Rim: Uprising is a film about gigantic robots (with pilots) beating up inter-dimensional space monsters with sci-fi weaponry.

If the above description sounds like something you’d like to see, you will not be disappointed with this newest addition to the budding Pacific Rim franchise.

With a plotline that is so incredibly over-the-top it’s laughable, the movie sacrifices much in the way of writing and cohesion, but in the end it doesn’t really matter.

Directed by Steven S. DeKnight, this loud and visually arresting film does exactly what is expected.

Once again, Kaiju (giant sea monsters) rise up and threaten the fate of all of humanity, with Earth’s only defense being dual-piloted skyscrapersized robots called Jaegers.

This film differs from its predecessor in some of the plot details, providing a few surprising twists and turns in an otherwise familiar narrative, but is still the same gigantic wonderful mess.

John Boyega pulled much of the movie together, his cocky wit providing a welcome relief to Scott

FILM

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PICTURES RELEASE MAR. 23, 2018 OUR RATING

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Eastwood’s emotionless squints and groans as he played the “gruff-butkind” Lambert to Boyega’s suave Pentecost. Charlie Day provided the other stand-out performance as the jittery and comical Dr. Giezler (Newt)—he and Boyega provided two of the few strong performances in the film. As a result, the movie struggled to form any emotional attachments with the audience—the simple writing and all-too-familiar moments making any scene that wasn’t a fight seem awkwardly out of place.

In contrast, the visuals were stunning, with incredible detail on the monsters and textures of the Jaegers. With such grand proportions it becomes easy to forget about the monstrous scale, but this film made you sure you always knew just how BIG this battle is.

Supported by a roaring soundtrack with phenomenal sound design, this movie is an auditory and visual treat, caring for the senses much more than it cared for the sensibilities.

Yet, for a film with such structural flaws, Pacific Rim: Uprising still managed to keep me interested. The prospect of seeing (and hearing) the battles between Kaiju and Jaeger was enough to keep my attention for the entire film.

Even if some of the battles were underwhelming (as a few tended to be), they were still epically-proportioned, still a visual buffet. Yes, the writing could be physically painful at times.

Yes, the movie struggled to create any genuine emotional connection.

And yes, one could call this a “bad movie” and have a lot of evidence to support their opinion. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter—the film was entertaining becasue of its ludicrousness and was quite simply a fun movie to watch. Pacific Rim: Uprising is certainly one of the “turn your brain off ” movies that actually requires the audience to do no critical thinking whatsoever. That might not appeal to very many people, but for those who enjoy these kinds of movies, Uprising is a pretty good choice. It’s not a good movie, it’s a fun movie.

To the potential audience member who is debating whether to see this film, simply ask yourself what you want to see. If one wants to see a well-acted and written film with a successful blend of action and emotional drama, one may find Uprising disappointing.

If one wishes to see giant piloted robots fighting giant space lizards, however, then this is the movie to see. 

Jack White’s Album Exemplifies Inherent Weirdness

BY AUSTIN HORD Heights Staff

Jack White is by far one of the most eccentric and, frankly, weirdest artists alive today. There’s no way around it. His new solo album Boarding House Reach confirms the fact that he’s getting weirder and weirder with each new song he writes. It still includes hints of his classic fuzzed-out rock awesomeness, but it’s updated by an electronic and experimental spin that will leave some listeners scratching their heads.

First of all, there’s a lot of instrumental prowess in the album that you don’t have to dig too deep to find—this is Jack White we’re talking about. For example, “Over and Over and Over” features a catchy fuzz-guitar riff throughout the whole song, and it’s the only track on the album that really makes you want to get up and dance. It harkens back to White’s White Stripes and Raconteurs era with its closer adherence to his more traditional rock sound, and its tone is reminiscent of his 2014 solo album Lazaretto, particularly its title track—just listen to the first few seconds of both.

“Hypermisophoniac” is an interesting track in how it seems to blend White’s new unorthodox endeavor with music that won’t leave his listeners too confused. The song builds and evolves tremendously over the course of its three and a half minutes: It begins with an arrhythmic pitch-bending synth riff that sounds bizarre and out of place at first, but as the rest of the song fills in around it, becomes an attractive and characterizing embodiment of the song. Cool solos on

guitar and piano sprinkled throughout also contribute to making “Hypermisophoniac” one of the highlights of Boarding House Reach. “Corporation” is a track that settles into more of a groove than most of the others. At the 23-second mark, you’re hit abruptly with a jumpy, teeter-tottering funk piano riff that sounds like it’s played on a super overdriven Rhodes, and this repeating riff is one of the more musically tasteful and pleasing parts of the album.

White demonstrates his versatility when he essentially raps on “Ice Station Zebra,” and while the song’s musicality isn’t particularly impressive or memorable, its social commentary is.

White’s lyrics argue that it’s a waste of time and creativity to blame someone for copying small things from their creative influences: “Everyone creating is a member of the family / Passing down genes and ideas in harmony / The players and the cynics might be thinking it’s odd / But if you rewind the tape, we’re all copying God.” Though there’s some instrumental talent on display, the vast majority of the songs on Boarding House Reach don’t come across as conducive for a live performance setting.

There are a lot of monologue interlude tracks such as “Abulia and Akrasia” and “Ezmerelda Steals the Show” that come across as boring and hard to understand.

Some other tracks stick out from the crowd, but not necessarily in a good way. “Respect Commander” sounds like it’s straight out of a spy movie scene, and “Everything You’ve Ever Learned” begins with an unsettling dystopian repetition of “Hello, welcome to

Everything You’ve Ever Learned—brought to you by …” that sounds like a broken record.

It quickly turns into an edgy, head-thrashing exhibit of fast-paced, harsh garage rock, however that’s equally unsettling.

White takes an especially strange turn for the last couple of tracks, which seem out of place, even on such a bizarre album.

“What’s Done is Done” includes a curious dichotomy between its sweeter, countrysounding melody and its dark, melancholy lyrics, in which White croons, “What’s done is done / I just can’t fight it no more / So I’m walkin’ downtown to the store / And I’m buying a gun.” White then concludes the album with the stripped-down, folk-sounding “Humoresque.”

Your opinion of the album might come down to your thoughts on whether art-

ist have a duty to their listeners to create conventionally listenable music. White has accrued quite the fan base over the course of his extensive and prosperous career in the rock industry, and perhaps some of his more avid fans will embrace it. After all, weirdness is an inherent part of White’s music that you can’t really ignore—he comes as a packaged deal.

But many people who appreciate his music might be turned away by paths he’s been taking more recently. People on the other side of this argument would say that, as a professional musician making a lot of money, White is indeed obligated to consider his listeners and what they would want, but his release of an album like this serves to make the statement that he doesn’t really care what people think. 

MUSIC

Heights Staff

There have been many famous (and some infamous) comedic adaptations of otherwise serious movies—the 1987 classic Spaceballs comes to mind. But few parodies have so grievously stumbled over their source-material, or even spoofed a work so irrelevant and arbitrary, as the new effort from the comedy troupe behind Workaholics: Game Over, Man! Comprised of comics Blake Andersen, Adam Devine, and Anders Holmes, the Workaholics (referred to as the “Dew’d Crew”) spoof Bruce Willis’ Die Hard in a mishmash of sex, violence, and painfully irreverent pop-cultural references. Substituting actual humor for pitifully-languid dick-jokes, and a fleshed-out narrative for

embarrassing rehashes of uninspired tropes, Game Over, Man! proves a mediocrity that tailors toward the lowest common denominator: the pockets of a morally impoverished youth.

The trio work as housekeepers at an L.A. hotel, devising ideas for trendy video games and entrepreneurial schemes that reek of every adolescent’s millionaire fantasies. A private party held by Bey Awadi, the spoiled son of a Saudi-Arabian billionaire—famous for a sadistic Instagram showcasing the party-fiend’s ridiculously depraved exploits—provides a perfect opportunity to gain funding for an iPad app the crew is developing. As the title suggests, Game Over, Man! attempts to fit itself into the template of a video game. Chiptune electronica cringingly clashes with flavor of the

FILM

GAME OVER, MAN! KYLE NEWACHECK PRODUCED BY NETFLIX RELEASE MAR. 23, 2018 OUR RATING

NETFLIX

CANNON FEW

‘PRISTINE’ SNAIL MAIL

Maryland suburbanite Lindsey Jordan, on her current project, Snail Mail, takes the beauty (and exasperation) from adolescence and transcribes it into fearless, guitar-driven anthems.

With one EP under its belt, Snail Mail plans to release its debut album Lush this summer, and leading the way is Snail Mail’s recent single, “Pristine.”

In the song, Jordan muses over adolescent love, coming to terms with oneself, and the monotony of life.

“Pristine” opens up with the strumming of a slightly distorted, syncopated guitar progression and builds into the marquee hook featuring Jordan’s earnestness asking, “Don’t you like me for me? / Is there any better feeling than coming clean?”

Jordan’s response to an unrequited love, similar to her response to pretty much everything else, is a search for the authentic. In the outro, she muses, “I could be anyone / But I’m so entwined.” The expressiveness of Jordan’s unique voice relies on her ability to sound so weary and yet so youthful.

“Pristine” is like one long, pensive sigh you had when you were younger. Lindsey Jordan’s music is so sobering because it takes you back to the first time you really asked yourself, “what the hell is going on?” 

MUSIC VIDEO ISABELLA DOW

‘NUMB’

CARLOS VARA

IN YOUR OWN SWEET TIME JACK WHITE DISTRIBUTED BY THIRD MAN RECORDS RELEASE MAR. 23, 2018 OUR RATING

THIRD MAN RECORDS

The Game’s Over For Lackluster Netflix Comedy

BY TRISTAN ST. GERMAIN

SINGLE REVIEW

month trap music, while Alex (Devine) and crew used gamer-logic to “pick up weapons” and “climb the levels” that will lead them to the terrorists. Kill count is a currency (at one point Alex shouts enthusiastically “By the way, I get next kill!”). Angry men with guns are automatically deigned “bad-guys”.

Unfortunately, Game Over conflates this elementary-school plotline with other unnecessary elements that never bloom into what they promise. The Die Hard parody is essential for only a few moments, such as when the terrorist team’s tech dude awkwardly comments “Well, you didn’t bring me along cause I look like the black nerd from Die Hard.”

Beyond just structural issues, Game Over lacks a coherent comedic direction.

Villian dialogue is for the most part restricted to cheesy one-liners like “Party’s over!” and “I have a question: Do you want to die?” Any attempt at complexity, such as secret-ringleader Mr. Ahmad’s unconvincing inferiority complex, comes off as unfinished: the bad guy forces a stutter for no apparent reason. Game Over’s lack of a selfimposed censorship or modesty renders the superfluous sex-jokes bland and unfunny.

Autoerotic asphyxiation and condom-selfies become expected rather than shocking. The propensity for violence also teeters between sickening and boring. Whereas masterful slapstick clashes confidence with humiliating injury, Game Over thinks simple gore is a formula for laughter. Perhaps the film’s

greatest fault is the absolute lack of a single sympathetic or endearing character. Alex, Darren, and Joel are pressured to exert a constant inauthenticity that often hampers any audience investment. Alex undercuts his few efforts at sentiment or genuineness with a ludicrous baby-face and distorted squabbling. Darren’s addiction to salvia, which reduces him to an inarticulate and eye-rolling mess, is less amusing than it is sadly pathetic. Worst of all is the lack of a moral center. Whereas the antagonist represents the conservative approach to excess and money, Bey is a hedonistic bully without dimension or any semblance of an interior life. Yet we’re meant to relate to the factitial aspects of his wealth and trendiness to find his millennial pseudo-patriotism admirable: “I love America!” Bey exclaims. “I’m here to have fun—drink, pop molly. What’s more American than that?”

Game Over’s tendency to explicate the most paper-thin values and motivations through dispassionate speeches and contrived development reminds us that the movie, despite its profanity, was most likely not designed for anyone over the age of fourteen. Young kids will delight in the quotidian vulgarity and slew of cheap cultural references that may appear obscure or cool to the smartphone generation. From this perspective, we cannot actively hate the Workaholics troupe’s most recent Netflix pet project—though we can certainly throw it into the trash where it belongs. 

Carlos Vara features his debut single “Numb” in his latest music video, and in it, the 20-year-old pop-soul singersongwriter brings his best. The video has an undeniably moody aesthetic and integrates the song’s musical content seamlessly with the accompanying visual.

What’s more, Vara’s emotive personality shines throughout the track, and the video uses nuanced imagery to keep the scene engaging.

Most of the visual centers on Vara reeling from his emotional turmoil, writhing around on his bed as the poster child for angst. There are numerous shots alternating between Vara lying around lifelessly and Vara whipping blankets, pounding his hands on his nightstand, thrashing with a fervor, and pouring more drink refills. What’s more, the song manages to demonstrate how an excess of emotion can feel more like the numb absence of it. On occasion, the lighting flickers, and the room flashes between red and steel blue.

The effect increases the borderline hysterical intensity and perfectly complements lyrics like “What you do to me is criminal,” where the visual looks like flashing police lights.

The video also repeatedly overlays frames onto the main picture, so that two or three different images are present onscreen at the same time. Gone are the cyclical transitions to spectacular places that show the artist in a myriad of flashy outfits.

In this video, Vara never leaves his bedroom. Keeping the song in one space makes the video seem more organic, as if viewers are witnessing this outpouring of emotion in its natural habitat. It also allows the space to be explored in-depth and presents Vara everywhere from fitfully lounging along his wall to brooding as he stares out and leans against his floor-to-ceiling window.

Overall, the spectrum of emotion and its spot-on portrayal makes Vara’s “Numb” video an enjoyable, if not heartbreaking, visual experience. 

The Heights

Monday, March 26, 2018

Gaelic Roots Series Features Live Irish Band Coast to Coast

By Colleen Martin Copy Editor

Less than a week after Boston’s favorite holiday, the Gaelic Roots Series hosted Open the Door for Three for people who didn’t get their fill of Irish jigs and merry music on St. Patrick’s Day. Held in the Cadigan Alumni Center on Boston College’s Brighton Campus on Thursday, the concert featured lively beats and old Irish tunes from the trio based in Portland, Maine.

The group performs traditional Irish music that was written centuries ago, as well as tunes that band members Liz Knowles, Kieran O’Hare, and Pat Broaders composed themselves. They perform songs inspired by their own childhood favorites alongside those that they believe have not been played in over 200 years.

Broaders, the guitarist and vocalist for

the trio, introduced them and spoke about the first three songs they would be playing that evening. His brogue set the tone for the theme of the evening as he introduced “Boiling Water,” “Let Us Leave That As It Is,” and “Happy to Part.” The beginning of the evening picked up with the fiddle, and O’Hare switched from playing the whistle to the uilleann pipes, the national bagpipe of Ireland.

As O’Hare played the whistle, he shut his eyes and felt the music. He wasn’t the only one getting into the tunes—people in the audience tapped their feet to the music, and one gentleman wearing a green shirt in the second row clapped his hands on his legs along to the rhythm.

Throughout the show, people let out sighs after a long fiddle solo or whistle part, and could be seen smiling and moving to the music.

After the opening number, Broaders

kRISTIN sALESKI / Heights Staff

Open the Door for Three brings Irish music into the present in the Gaelic Roots series.

spoke about the next piece they would be performing. While reading through a book in Ireland, he came across a piece that he thought seemed familiar. After further research, he realized that it was something his father used to play when Broaders was a child. He continued on to sing “Carrig River,” a song that has a melancholy sound, appropriate for its lyrics about the deaths of people during the Irish rebellion.

The group played “The Joyful Hour” next, the song inspiring the title of its most recent album. The whistle had a prominent part in this piece, the tone of which was as cheerful as the name might suggest. O’Hare switched from the whistle to the uilleann pipes about halfway through, offering a unique sound that may be unfamiliar to those that do not often listen to Irish music. Throughout this song, O’Hare and Knowles, the fiddle and hardanger player, would look up and smile at one another, especially after one completed what appeared to be a challenging section of the song.

They continued on to play a double jig that they said would feel instantly familiar for anyone who has listened to Irish music before. The song that followed, “Church Hill,” had a sort of nostalgic sound as the uilleann pipes opened it up before it shifted into “The Monaghan Jig”—a piece that Open the Door for Three arranged to fit its own tastes, cherry-picking variations and changes that it heard performed by other groups. The fiddle part picked up, going so fast that when the song finally ended, Knowles said “that’s over with,” drawing laughter from the crowd.

Knowles then introduced the next song they would be playing, one that she said she makes sure to always explain before they play. “The Golden Glove,” also known as “Her Dog and Her Gun,” tells the tale of a young woman in Ireland who is engaged to a squire, but is in love with a local farmer. Knowles said that she loves this song because, unlike in other Irish tunes, the woman is actually happy in the end.

The tragedy in traditional music could be seen in “Miles Weatherhill”—after Miles is caught with his girlfriend, she’s sent home to live with family, prompting Miles to go on a killing rampage, eventually murdering everyone in the town.

“So it’s a love song,” O’Hare said.

Playful comments such as this were common throughout the evening, and they were always met by the approval of the audience.

The listeners were an older crowd, and many were familiar with each other from attending Irish events in the community together. When the group concluded its final number, people rose to their feet in approval of the last two hours of music, until the group returned to play one extra song.

When it was truly done and had to leave the stage, the group stayed around to chat with the guests and sell its latest album, The Joyful Hour. After they browsed the display of CDs on the front table, people talked about the talent displayed that evening as they pulled on their coats and wished each other well until the next Gaelic Roots performance. n

‘Stop Kiss’ Analyzes Modern Discrimination

By Emily Himes Asst. Arts Editor

Stop Kiss, which centers on a love affair between two women, highlights the harshness and severity of the reactions of others toward being gay, even as recently as 20 years ago. Since then, we have come a long way in the world of LGBTQ+ rights, but this play serves as a painful reminder of a horrifying reality.

Directed by Taylor Tranfaglia, MCAS ’18, BC’s version of Stop Kiss last weekend created a painfully broken, yet real, world set in the late ’90s in New York City’s West Village. The play was written by Diana Son and originally performed OffBroadway in 1998 in New York City.

The play’s unique structure allows it to fully captivate the audience in a powerful way. Stop Kiss is performed as if it were a puzzle with jumbled pieces. Even the first few seconds of the play were moving—as the lights dimmed into a deep blackness in the Bonn Studio, the audience was forced to use senses other than eyesight to draw conclusions about what was happening. As you sat there in this complete darkness, you listened to a heartbeat and sirens, the noises of city streets during times of utter stress. The noises envel-

oped the audience members. Their brains were racing to analyze what they were hearing as it blared from the speakers, but their bodies sat completely still, with goosebumps all over their arms and legs (because there isn’t one person on earth who enjoys the sound of a heartbeat for any prolonged amount of time).

This minute or so of sounds seemed to drag on forever, mainly because of their unpleasant nature. But this introduction shaped the entire play—it evoked a complete emotional response from the audience. When something sad or scary or disgusting happens onstage, a person can look down or around at something else.

But the audience couldn’t even see their own hands—there was no escape from the ominous sounds and sensations.

After this unique introduction, the play proceeded to jump backwards and forwards on a timeline—it is almost impossible to map it out mentally. From the start, the audience knows somebody is in the hospital just by hearing the heartbeat and mundane beeping of machinery. It flips back and forth between how the two main characters, Callie (Elizabeth Koennecke, MCAS ’19) and Sara (Deborah Aboaba, MCAS ’21), meet, become friends, and eventually fall in love, and the

aftermath of a brutal hate crime targeting the two once they are a couple.

It was a small, simple production, which made it all the more personal to every person in the audience. The cast consisted of just six people—Callie and Sara, as well as George, Callie’s ex-boyfriend (Nick Barbolla, MCAS ’21); Peter, Sara’s ex (Andrew Meck, MCAS ’18); Detective Cole (Peter Dunn, MCAS ’19); and Mrs. Winsley/Nurse (Samuela Nematchoua, MCAS ’18). The intimacy between the cast and audience was woven together through phenomenal acting on all parts.

The set itself was incredibly well made. It only consisted of Callie’s living room, the police station, and the hospital—but that’s all it needed. The entire play switched back and forth between these three locations, with the exception of a New York City street moments before the assault occurred. This simplicity gave a certain dimension of focus to the audience, which was trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle using just these few locations and eerie sonic flashbacks.

As the play went along, it became easier to follow the storyline—from the perspective of someone who came in knowing nothing about Stop Kiss, at

first it was jumbled and confusing, but it quickly began to flow much better. The exemplary performances by the entire cast, but by Koennecke and Aboaba in particular, created a completely realistic and believable ambiance that was both intriguing and terrifying.

Stop Kiss makes viewers pause and think about the hostile (but improving) world we live in today. Hate crimes still occur, but thankfully, they are not as prevalent as they used to be. But it was clear that the violent acts against the couple in the play were not the only thing affecting them—the way other characters talked to them and referred to their relationship clearly drove their insecurities through the roof.

In the program for Stop Kiss, Tranfaglia says that the play is “meant to invoke questions and start meaningful conversations.” Stop Kiss will definitely make head waves at Boston College, especially during this time of debate about funding on-campus LGBTQ+ groups. Between the impeccable acting, intrinsically unique sensory experience for the audience, beautifully simple set design, and powerful storyline, Stop Kiss will surely be remembered at BC for years to come. n

McMullen Museum Dives Into the Floating World

By Tristan St. Germain Heights Staff

On Thursday, Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art showcased 18th- to 19th-century Japanese prints and paintings taken from its permanent collection of 3,000 art objects. Led by museum curator Diana Larson and her three assistants, the event, Into the Collection: Japanese Works on Paper, provided a vast wealth of knowledge on the “ukiyo-e” genre. Translated into “pictures of the floating world,” ukiyo-e illustrates the hedonistic lifestyle that proliferated during the Edo period. From depictions of beautiful courtesans and prostitutes to panoramic mountainscapes and vistas, the exhibition covered a broad range of cultural artifacts evocative of serene atmospheres.

Ukiyo-e was incredibly popular among

Japan’s then-emerging merchant class.

While the artists were responsible for designing the artwork, a carver cut the design into woodblocks, and the printer made impressions of the woodblock on paper. Many ukiyo-e printers created a separate woodblock for every color and then imposed the colors on top of one another—a technique referred to as “nishiki-e” (“brocade”). The method represented a large step forward from previous methods that only enabled greys and monochromes.

The first work presented was by the woodblock artist Katsukawa Shunshō.

Formatted according to the “pillar-print” style, which measures 70 centimeters by 12 centimeters, the work depicts a woman holding a fan looking onto a harbor outside of her window. The way the woman ties her “obi,” or sash, signifies she is a prostitute.

sAM zHAI / Heights STAFF

The curators of McMullen provide a closer look at Japanese works on paper.

That the piece is set in Yoshiwara, Edo’s redlight district, also alludes to this fact. The ships in the distance are possibly her clients.

Characteristic of ukiyo-e are the strong, flat bold lines, vertical versus horizontal relationships, asymmetry (for example, Shunshō crops half the body of the woman from this woodprint), and serpentine postures of beauty.

Kitagawa Utamaro was born in 1752, significantly later than his contemporaries Shunshō and Kiyonaga. Due to the sheer volume and versatility of his work, having produced over 2,000 known prints, Utamaro is considered the most important master of the woodblock print. Beyond the scope of Japan, he was also hugely influential to European artists of the period—such as Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Henri de ToulouseLautrec, and Mary Cassatt. The one-panel strip that was presented conforms to the “okubi-e” style, portraits showing only the head of the figure. In this case the subject is a “wakashu,” a young boy exiting childhood to take on an apprenticeship—also commonly referred to as the “third gender”. The wakashu plays a string instrument called the “shamishan,” though only a portion of this unique and aesthetically pleasing instrument is visible.

The demonstration then progressed on to the 1800s, when ukiyo-e artists began emphasizing natural landscapes. On display was Rose Fuji, a work by Hokusai, the illustrator of what is perhaps the most recognizable piece of Japanese art in the world, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The piece

in question was part of Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, an immensely popular series of prints that depicted the great summit from a multitude of breathtaking angles.

Influenced by works from Holland, Hokusai brought newness to an old symbol by seeding people, temples, and actions around the stereotyped mountain. The piece’s blistering red color schema is genuine: When viewed at dawn during late summer, the mountain explodes into the rose of the title.

The final print exhibited was print 39 of a collection of landscapes by Hiroshige titled The Fifty-Three Stations of Tokaido, considered the last great master of ukiyo-e.

Hiroshige depicts a bridge spanning the Yahagi River, the longest bridge (1,248 feet) on the Tokaido Road—one of the main travel and transport roads between Kyoto and Tokyo. In the distance is the Okazaki Castle, part of a flourishing cattle town.

If there was any work that conveyed the most about cultural norms in Edo Japan through the most economical means possible, it was undoubtedly this last painting by an unknown artist.

Tiny details like the presence of eyebrows on the courtesan reveal she is not the mother of the child in the painting—mothers shaved their eyebrows after giving birth. A yellow yamabuki flower, which only blooms in late summer, gives a specific time to the painting.

The painting is imposed over a cloud-patterned textile that folds into a scroll. Even the manner in which one ties the scroll is specific, doubling back the rope to create a little loop. n

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Emily Himes

There is no ongoing American regional divide quite like the East Coast vs. West Coast debate. What started as a hip-hop rivalry in the 90s isn’t really confined by the genre anymore—it can be applied to many things, even outside the realm of music. Sure, there are some major differences between the Atlantic and Pacific, such as the pace of life (I guess you could say California is pretty chill), dress code (are Bean Boots and Patagonia fleeces even a thing out there?), and driving (I’m looking at you, Massholes).

It’s tradition versus freedom, history versus science, Boston versus Silicon Valley. We’re talking Daisy Dukes versus J. Crew wool coats, kids. It’s the battle of the coasts, but there’s one question—does the divide really apply to music, too? How much damage can 3,000 miles and a threehour time difference really do?

Main characters in the original debate were Los Angeles’ Tupac Shakur (and his record label, Death Row Records) and New York City’s The Notorious B.I.G. (with Bad Boy Records). Both rappers were shot and killed in drive-by shootings.

Not long before his death, Tupac was shot in Manhattan, and it is suspected Biggie and his label might be to blame.

Hip-hop emerged in the Bronx in the 1970s. Throughout the next decade, New York City remained at the forefront of the industry, with famous rappers like LL Cool J, Salt-n-Pepa, and the Beastie Boys making it their home. The genre became popular on the West Coast with the emergence of Ice-T and, shortly after, N.W.A.,(Straight Outta Compton). By this time, the West Coast hip-hop movement was in full force.

People from both coasts took sides— the mysterious, likely gang-related deaths of two rappers created one of music’s most intense rivalries. But was the music produced that different? Sure, to a certain extent—East Coast carries a more aggressive sound, while West Coast hip-hop is more laid back. The West Coast scene also popularized g-funk, which is a fusion between hip-hop and funk music.

Writing this article has been funny for me—if you know me at all, you know there aren’t many rap songs I can say I actually like. Really, I can’t stand much of it. Of course, this article isn’t news to me—I know who Tupac and Biggie Smalls are, but I couldn’t name one of their songs for the life of me. To me, Dr. Dre is the name written on the box my headphones came in and LL Cool J is the guy who hosts the Grammys every year.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize the East Coast-West Coast divide is actually everywhere. New York and Miami pull just as many great artists as Los Angeles. Alicia Keys, Blondie, Carole King, Talking Heads, Pitbull, Lady Gaga—they’re all East Coast musicians.

But then there’s Maroon 5, P!nk, Metallica, the Grateful Dead, and Jason Mraz—all from California. There’s no difference in quality—you might be able to argue more jazzy, soulful music comes from New York while more pop is produced in L.A., but in reality it’s hard to tell. In 2018, the Grammys moved from L.A. to Madison Square Garden in New York—and the Big Apple has asserted that it is reclaiming the right to be called America’s music capital.

People tend to have a more old-fashioned outlook on artistry and music on the East Coast, and the traditionalism is attractive to many, but masses of musicians still reside in L.A., giving the city a leg up in the debate. But the truth of the matter is that no matter the appeal of California, New York City still houses 72 digital music companies, while there are only 35 in Los Angeles. New York’s music industry has generated upwards of 30,000 jobs and $13.7 billion in recent years.

The jury might be out on this one—statistically, New York City is gaining momentum in the realm of music productivity, but it may not be able to beat out the creativity and atmosphere of California—both have their pros and cons.

So, whether you like to surf or sail, walk slow or fast, it’s safe to say that the musical debate from the ’90s is over. While the two coasts are different in culture, the divide has little to no effect on the arts.

Emily Himes is the asst. arts editor for The Heights. She can be reached at arts@bcheights.com.

ARTS

B8

MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2018

@BCHEIGHTSARTS

Songs of Sculpted Shadow How Stevie Gleason, MCAS ’18, translates musically layered songs into huge sculptures of folded paper.

Gleason created this scupture using the ratios of frequencies in “Hideaway” by Jacob Collier to reflect luminosity of a folded sheet of paper that stretches over 22 feet.

BY JACOB SCHICK Arts Editor Fo r a s t u d i o a r t m a j o r w h o incorporates music into his art, dropping a music minor in the second semester of senior year might seem counterintuitive.

But not for Stevie Gleason, MCAS ’18. He is dropping his music minor, “ironically, to play more music.” In doing so, Gleason can avoid getting too bogged down in the required classes that focus on music theory. Proficient when it comes to playing music, Gleason has already figured out how to apply his musical talents to his artwork.

The classes he would need to take for the minor are fairly difficult, and for Gleason, his artwork takes precedence.

This precedence is very important, too, especially as it applies to the type of art that Gleason creates. It’s very complicated, as evidenced by the great deal of time he took to explain it.

Gleason begins with music.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to music and you get chills from it,” Gleason said. “Or if you dance to it and it’s like ‘Damn, this is so good,’ and I start with that.”

The song he chooses has to speak to him, to inspire him, and to fascinate him. For his most recent piece, he chose “Hideaway” by Jacob Collier, a tour de force of musical talent. The song features dozens of instruments (all played by Collier) and multiple voice layering (all sung by Collier) along with chord progressions and time signature changes—all written by Collier. In Gleason’s opinion, Collier is one of the most talented musicians working today.

Gleason chose this song because the structure appeals to him on a deeper level: Gleason can use the intricate details of this song to construct his intricately crafted artwork.

Ever y thing ab out this song is what inspires Gleason. He cites “the architecture of the music, down to even the frequency of it.” Gleason takes into account the space in which he listens to the music and the people with whom he listens to it. All of this raw data— frequency, structure, instrumentation—

is what Gleason uses to make his art.

And he does it all with paper.

Admittedly, translating musical structure into paper-based artwork sounds difficult, but Gleason has created a system in which he can do this with relative efficiency.

“This is where it gets a little more dense,” Gleason said. He’s not wrong.

“It’s basically a translation process.

Once I get this distilled version of the song, this very mathematical version of the song, I try to translate it into something that’s very visual.”

Gleason uses paper for a ver y specific reason. He is fascinated with the interplay between light and shadow, and white paper does a good job of reflecting light in different ways. Gleason uses this quality of luminosity—how bright the light is reflected—as one axis of a graph.

The other axis is the frequency, or hertz, of the music. By plotting these against each other, Gleason can move from music to sculpture and back. Gleason devised this correlation between hertz and luminosity. By folding huge sheets of paper at different angles, Gleason can change the luminosity of various sections (from small to large) of the paper in accordance with the graphical representation of the song.

G l e a s o n’s s c u l p t u r e s e n d u p stretching to 20 or 30 feet in length.

He suspends them from the walls and ceilings in giant rooms in order to fully display his art. But even in the physical act of creating these giant sculptures, Gleason is moved by music.

“It’s kind of a dance in itself,” Gleason said. “Folding a piece of paper that’s 22 feet long requires you to move a lot.”

The musicality of his art is helped along by Gleason’s “blasting” of music in the art studio while he makes the sculpture. He compares this undertaking to the interplay between three different languages: the language of the dance he does in creating the sculpture, the heavily visual language that is created by the paper, and the auditory language of the music he uses.

While Gleason’s work might appear mathematical and rigid, he finds that art is a spiritual process for him. In fulfilling his core requirements, Gleason had to take theology classes where he was introduced to Paul Tillich, a Christian philosopher who, in Gleason’s words,

described the presence of G od as “being radically amazed by

something.”

“And I’m radically amazed by light and very physical beauties in the world, like a beautiful sunset,” he said. “I remember driving back from New Hampshire a few weeks ago with my friends in the car and I was literally so enthralled by the beauty of the sunset, which sounds weird.”

But while a spiritual appreciation of the earth’s beauty in light and shadow and a mathematical representation of musical frequencies may sound incongruous, Gleason has folded them together to create stunning and complex works of art.

In the most concise way he can put it, manipulating light and shadow is the closest he can get to accessing that “ineffable” force that permeates existence. He isn’t religious, but his art is an exercise in spirituality as much as mathematical precision.

In terms of time commitment, most of Gleason’s work is done in the design and translation. Folding the paper to actually create the sculpture usually doesn’t take Gleason more than five days, but he has dedicated his entire second semester to the research of one piece.

This entails the conceptual work he does in figuring out how he wants to sculpt the music. He plans to ask a physics professor how he can translate certain aspects of the luminosity component to his artwork.

Gleason initially chose “Hideaway” as the song on which he would base a sculpture construction for a few reasons.

First, he had a little help from Spotify.

When Spotify released its year-end summaries of the top songs that people listened to, as well as the songs that were most listened to by individual subscribers, “Hideaway” was at the top of Gleason’s 2017 list. He had played it so many times, it seemed like the next logical step to make a sculpture from it.

While the song appears dauntingly complex, Gleason maintains that it is actually fairly simple.

“This song is literally just in D Major 7, it’s just one long chord pretty much,” Gleason said. “But it’s this overlapping sonic texture that almost has a physical presence when he plays it.”

The instrumental layering that Collier

KAITLIN MEEKS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

INSIDE SCENE

‘Stop Kiss’

The student-directed play presents a modern story of love and discrimination against relationships................................B7

incorporates into the song made sense to Gleason, graphically speaking. This is something that Gleason doesn’t find often. He isn’t synesthetic—he doesn’t experience different sensory impressions when he listens to music—but listening to “Hideaway” left him with a visual feeling of the song that he felt he needed to put to sculpture.

When one sees pictures of his art, Gleason’s words start to coalesce into the understanding that, while this may sound very complex, he has actually accomplished what he has been describing.

One piece is a large rectangular frame of paper that surrounds dozens of peaked indentations and raised points of folded paper.

These points are layered into each other, and the source of light casts them all into complex and different levels of shadow.

Another piece is one huge ribbon of paper, with hundreds of folded marks that twist and wind around the twirled sculpture.

Again, the contrast between the brightness and shadow of different areas works to convey the intricate frequencies of the music that inspired it.

Gleason draws inf luence from artists, but more often, he’s inspired by architects. Rem Koolhas, Zaha Hadid, and James Turrell are among the artists and architects that Gleason cited as contemporary working creators that he admires and tries to learn from.

Gleason’s understanding of music has helped him in his past sculptures, like the one based on “Hideaway,” but for his next piece, he will be taking a more hands-on approach.

Gleason plays the guitar, drums, and piano—he has been known to jam with Boston College band staple Funky Giant when he can find the time in his schedule. In his upcoming artwork, he will be the one playing the music.

But he’ll be using the music in a slightly different way.

In Devlin Hall, there is a skylight that Gleason is enamored with. The way sunlight moves through the skylight and around the room as the day goes from morning to night is beautiful, and Gleason has chosen this interplay of light and shadow as the starting point for his new piece.

“I took a timelapse of how the light and shadows move within that skylight,” he said. “I’m building a sculpture that responds to it and writing a soundtrack that mimics it.”

Once this is complete, Gleason will be able to play the soundtrack that he has written, essentially having created a piece of music from the light of a room at BC. In this way, Gleason is “reversing” the translation process that he usually uses.

As of yet, it’s difficult to say what this might sound like, but genre or type of music isn’t much a problem for Gleason.

He likes “everything.”

In a stunning turn of events—when taking into account the way BC students usually use this phrase—“everything”in Gleason’s case includes country music.

“If it’s well done, and somebody else enjoys it too, someone that I’m with, I’ll enjoy it.” Gleason said. “That’s funny that you asked the ‘country’ thing, because for a while I d i d n’t l i k e c o u nt r y, a n d i t w a s partly because my mom loved

Open the Door for Three

The Boston College Gaelic Roots Series features the Irish band Open the Door for Three.................................................B7

it and was always shoving it down my throat , but as so on as I got away from my mom [going to college], I was like ‘I miss my mom,’ and now I love countr y.”

There is one genre that Gleason rarely listens to, however. He doesn’t often find himself tuning to heavy metal, but Gleason cites an immense respect for the talent and precision that heavy metal artists use—he respects the genre more than he enjoys it.

In terms of playing music, Gleason tries to take influence from a variety of genres. He finds pop music very fun to play, and he enjoys listening to and playing music from genres like blues and funk. “Blues-y” stuff, as Gleason puts it, is great to listen to while playing the guitar, because it has a lot of opportunities to solo over the music.

“As much as I’d like to say jazz, because that’s what I try to study, it’s so hard,” Gleason said. “Claiming that I can play jazz would be a lie, because every time I learn something new in jazz, I realize how much I don’t know.”

He’s been playing music all his life— his parents got him a drum set when he was 8.

In high school, he picked up piano and guitar. Gleason has also been working on incorporating singing into his music.

He has been taking voice lessons from a coach, and he has been trying to sing in a falsetto.

By developing his voice, Gleason can develop his musical flexibility.

Gleason is also looking to expand his artistic repertoire. Right now, he is using paper—it’s an easily and readily accessible medium.

But, he is excited by the prospect of moving into different materials— especially light itself.

For a future piece, somewhere down the road, Gleason would be interested in using lasers and mirrors to create the crisp and clean interplay between light and shadow that would signify a musical composition.

While Gleason has a lot of ideas as to developing his musical and artistic enterprises, he doesn’t have a well-developed answer in regards to his art’s meaning.

“I was struck by how many people asked me ‘What does it mean?’ People expect it to have a meaning—it’s abstract art. It’s not important for me to have people really understand what’s going on. I care about these things [music, light, shadow, form], and so I build it. I don’t want people to think of my art as this pretentious heady thing—I’m just interested in these things.” 

‘Pacific Rim: Uprising’..................................... B6 ‘Boarding House Reach’................................ B6 ‘Game Over, Man!’........................................ B6