Buzzsaw Magazine

DEC14/JAN15

BACK IN THE DAY

W A S Z Z

BU

HAIR

Marriage & Millennials pg. 24

Led Zeppelin IV pg. 33

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News & Views

Midterm Elections pg. 6

CUT

Buzzsaw presents...

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

EDITORS’ COMMENT

The Throwback Issue Whether triggered by personal nostalgia or realized through an article, interacting with the past is as important as it is unavoidable. Some memories are welcomed back, while others would rather be forgotten, but throwing it back is often invaluable.

Considering that modern society is nothing more than a culmination of past progress, taking a chapter out of history is often the best way to understand the causes and possible outcomes of the issues and situations faced on a daily basis.

So we invite you back with us. Jump in our DeLorean, speed up to 88 miles-per-hour and see where society once was in order to understand how far we have come and how much further we have to go.

From students studying abroad to avid world travelers, Americans have increasingly ventured beyond the now stereotypical Western Europe and Caribbean islands. However, with this desire to cross more borders has also come less of a tendency among travelers to fully immerse themselves in foreign cultures (Travel in the 21st Century, pg. 19).

Much of U.S. freedom and government policy has its roots in a strong history of mass social movement. However, in recent years, the act of protesting has been normalized in American society to such an extent that its broad acceptance has the potential to jeopardize its effectiveness as a vehicle for change (A State of Protest, pg. 16).

History always repeats itself, and fashion is not exempt. Luckily thrift shops exist so people can stay on top of the latest repeated trends without breaking the bank. Style comebacks tend to follow the pattern of 40 years for a vintage feel and 20 years for that 20-something throwback to youth (Fashion on Repeat, pg. 31).

Keeping with the tradition of protesting injustice, Ithaca College students held a vigil in November honoring Michael Brown, local Sean Greenwood, and the countless others who have lost their lives due to police brutality. Following the verdicts to not indict the officers in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, students staged other on-campus protests (No Justice No Peace, Seesaw).

BUZZSAW News & Views Upfront Ministry of Cool Prose & Cons Sawdust Layout Art Website Seesaw Social Media

Copy Editors Production

Advisor Founders

Taylor Barker Jessica Corbett Katelyn Harrop Kellen Beck Robert S. Hummel Rachel Maus Chelsea Hartman Lizzie Cox Lexie Farabaugh Jennifer Jordon John Jacobson

Jodi Silberstein Alexa Salvato Aidan Quigley Natalie Shanklin Will Uhl Ryan Opila Grace Rychwalski Jeff Cohen Abby Bertumen Kelly Burdick Bryan Chambala Sam Costello Thom Denick

Buzzsaw is published with support from Generation Progress / Center for American Progress (online at GenProgress.org).

Buzzsaw is also funded by the Ithaca College Student Government Association and the Park School of Communications.

Vanguard Printing is our press. (Ithaca, N.Y.) Buzzsaw uses student-generated art and photography and royalty-free images.

Section dividers and Table of Contents photography

by Benjamin Bishop.

Views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editorial staff or of Ithaca College.

Feedback and contributions should be sent to buzzsawmag@gmail.com.

Benjamin Bishop is sophomore film, photo and visual arts major.

He likes his photos to seem as though they could be stills for a movie, Front and back cover art by Lizzie Cox giving a story to each one. He also likes to work with vibrant colors but Center spread art courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski on Flikr obviously that won’t come across with these particular shots.

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Write Us Our magazine exists to inspire thoughtful debate and open up the channels through which information is shared. Your comments and feedback are all a part of this process. Reach the editors by email at: buzzsawmag@gmail.com

Table of Contents Seesaw ..........................................................5 Print media is dead, check out multimedia on the web.

News & Views .................................................6 Current events, local news & quasi-educated opinions.

Upfront .......................................................13 Selected dis-education of the month.

Ministry.of.Cool ........................................28 Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Prose & Cons ............................................36 Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

Satire threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

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BUZZSAW News & Views

Sawdust .......................................................42

buzzcuts

Birth Control Through

the Years

Dong quai roots were drank in tea to induce abortions.

If papaya seeds were taken daily, they were beleived to reduce sperm count.

Lemon juice and lemon rinds were used as a spermicide.

THEN

vs.

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

NOW The origami condom is expected to hit the market in 2015. It is the first non-rolled condom with sensation from the inside.

Vasalgel, a “polymer hydrogel,� is expected to be available in 2017.

It is inserted in the vas deferens to blocke sperm.

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Indonesia claims to have developed a male birth contorl pill that is 99 percent effective.

No Justice No Peace Following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Ithaca College students gathered in November to host a vigil for him as well as countless others, including local Sean Greenwood, who lost their lives to police brutality. In lieu of the decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson in Brown’s case, on-campus protests occurred on December 1st and 4th.

Vintage T's: Ithaca is Gorges

Have you ever wondered where beer came from?

Whether you’re the intellectual interested in learning the origins America’s favorite beverage or a college student wondering what to dedicate your Friday night to, you’ll want to take the time to enjoy this historical chronicle of beer.

The then and now of the famous Ithaca is Gorges t-shirt, created in the 1970s to inspire tourists to explore the area’s unique landscape. More recently the logo is customized by locals to express how cold or “gangsta” Ithaca is.

www.buzzsawmag.org/seesaw/

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News & Views

Beer through the Ages

What Did the Midterm Elections Really Mean?

A look at elections at the local, state and national levels Alexa Salvato, Staff Writer

E

lections are baffling, especially to those who are voting for the first time. Perhaps as a response to this confusion, people between the ages of 18 and 29 were only 13 percent of voters in the recent midterm election, according to a Pew Research report. Many college students don’t even know what the midterm elections are, never mind how the results can affect their lives.

So, what was decided the first Tuesday of Nov. 2014? And how will it affect you?

Local

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

Representative Tom Reed (Republican, incumbent) won the election with 56 percent of the votes.

Martha Robertson (Democrat) lost with 37 percent of the votes.

The race between incumbent Tom Reed and newcomer Martha Robertson was highly contested in the 23rd district, an area that includes parts of 11 counties. Tompkins County sits in the eastern part of the district, which extends to the Pennsylvania border in the south and Lake Erie in the West.

Although there was a tremendous amount of pro-Robertson campaigning in the greater Ithaca area, there was less in other parts of the district.

(Reed’s campaign ads criticized Robertson’s “extreme Ithaca agenda,” implying that only Ithacans could identify with her policies.)

Many Ithaca College students were involved by interning with both Reed and Robertson’s campaigns. Marissa Framarini, a senior journalism and politics double major, said she felt strong connection to Robertson’s campaign as she began interning.

However, she explained that one of the hardest things to deal with on the campaign was the “apathy” she encountered.

“The apathy I felt, not only on campus but in the community, in

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terms of voters getting out to the polls is probably the thing that upset me the most about the results,” she said. “We made, and I made, so many phone calls. I knocked on so many doors. But a lot of it people just kind of turned away… I think it’s just kind of upsetting that [it’s just] spending a minute to talk about or get informed about the politics in your area and very few want to do it.”

Framarini noted Reed winning the 23rd district reflects the national trend of Congress “going red,” which means attaining a Republican majority.

State Governor Andrew Cuomo (Democrat, incumbent) won with 54 percent of the vote.

Rob Astorino (Republican) lost with 40.6 percent of the vote.

One place that did not go red, however, was the state of New York.

Freshman Kyle Stewart, who interned with the New York State Assembly, said this might not be an accurate reflection of the desires of most regions of the state.

“In this past election, especially the election for governor, Andrew Cuomo, he’s pretty unpopular upstate,” he said. “When people think of New York, they definitely think of New York City, but there’s so much more, up here.” New York City is far more densely populated than the rest of New York, which accounts for its level of swing in state elections.

Stewart explained, “Across the board statewide it was mostly Cuomo, his Democrats, his colleagues, they all got reelected. Whereas for more local positions, it went mostly Republican. So I found that interesting, the difference there.”

Stewart was able to pinpoint various reasons why Astorino might have failed despite his broad support from the upstate region. A major reason could have been Astorino’s campaign not having enough

national backing.

He also said Governor Chris Christie’s involvement with the Republican Governors Association next door in New Jersey and never coming over to campaign could have contributed to Astorino’s lack of success.

Another reason was Cuomo is, in terms of being a partisan Democrat, actually quite moderate.

“The bigger problem [for Astorino] was that Cuomo is able to play to both sides,” Stewart said. “He has the Democrats and the liberals but at the same times he’s able to get Republicans as well because he’s kind of like a moderate. Actually, he kind of lost his liberal support in the last few years.”

Stewart also had observations about why the voting rate for young people in New York might be so low: Because of how early registration is, especially for absentee voters.

“It can be difficult to register in New York state because you have to register a month before the election, so people aren’t even thinking about the election … I wonder if maybe New York state could push that back, make it closer to the election, or maybe start earlier in the fall.”

National According to The Washington Post, “This will be the most dominant Republican Congress since 1929, with an almost-certain 8 percent majority in the Senate and an 11.7 to 17.7 percent majority in the House.”

Many Democrats were outraged by the new Republican majority, but Mia O’Brien, a senior journalism major, explained she didn’t think it would change much of how the government operates. O’Brien said she considers herself a conservative, but is a registered Independent.

“They’re not going to bring much change at all, aside from making Washington all the more deadlocked,” she said in an email. “Now, with a Republican Congress and

Some snapshots of tweets reacting to the election: contraceptives is ... something on all Americans’, young and old’s, minds,” she said. I highly doubt they will be able to pass anything so monumental as to take away accessibility to such products — we can’t forget that we still have a Democratic president and these politicians still answer to Democrat constituents, too!” she said.

She said, even though few political changes will be made, Republicans can still capitalize on increased prominence by redefining their Republican label.

“What they can do, looking at this glass half-full,” O’Brien said, “is use these next two years to try and prove to the American public that the GOP is ‘legit,’ willing to work with the American people, and has several viable candidates for 2016.”

Conclusion Midterm elections are important.

As Graham and O’Brien both noted, the results of this one may solidify a political gridlock and prevent action. That lack of action can be very important and tangible in itself: Citizens of every affiliation wish for change, and the American government will not be reflecting that.

Framarini summed it up best when asked about her reactions on the result of the changing hands of the House and Senate. “It’s hard for me to even fathom or begin to fathom the direction of the house when so little of the community or nation really put their vote out there,” she said. “So I can’t even get to that question or the answer to that question when I’m still trying to see, you know, is that really the direction we would be going if everybody used their right to vote? I’m not sure.” ___________________________________ Alexa Salvato is a sophomore journalism major who won’t be putting her money on any decisions in congress. You can email her at asalvat1@ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

Democratic President, even less will be accomplished than when the GOP only had the House — purely because politicians love to just disagree with the opposing party.”

She also echoed Stewart’s earlier point: “Moreover, the GOP itself is not united: there’s a big difference between being a ‘Republican’ in New Jersey and a ‘Republican’ in Georgia — and being a ‘Tea Party Republican.’”

Taylor Graham, meanwhile, is a junior emerging media major who is “disheartened by the change” in majority and finds it to be significant.

He agreed with O’Brien that it will just lead to more of a gridlock: “According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, the vast majority of Republican voters want their congressional members to stand up to Obama even if it means getting less done in Washington. This gives me little hope that we’ll see more bipartisan [cooperation] and real idea generation from Republican congressional members, and leads me to believe that the stagnation that’s come to be the norm in Washington will only continue if not solidify.”

Graham is concerned the Republican politicians could affect many issues that affect millennials as well.

“The thing that concerns me about the recent midterm elections is that many Republican candidates elected to office actively oppose key issues like access to abortion, action on climate change, marriage equality and increased minimum wage, which college-age students support overwhelmingly,” he said. “I would hope that a Republican-dominated Senate will not impede the enormous progress we, as nation, have made in these issues which affect millennials on a daily basis and which we are very passionate about.”

On the contrary, O’Brien said that she didn’t specifically expect any changes that would affect our college-aged constituency, especially considering our own underrepresentation in the voting results.

“Certainly, the great debate over

Protesters Against Expansion of Gas Storage Construction hasn’t started, despite federal approval Aidan Quigley, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

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t’s an overcast, cold early November day in Central New York, and a scene of intense hostility is taking place. A large white truck, with “Amrex Chemical Co.” written in black on the door, is stationary in the road.

Four protesters are holding a sign that reads, “We Love Our Lake! No to Gas Storage…” with the rest of the sign obstructed by the truck. One protester, a short, gray-haired woman, is definitely holding up a fist, as the protesters have prevented the truck from entering the gates of the facility.

This is the scene of the “We Are Seneca Lake” protests, which are protesting the Crestwood Midstream’s planned expansion of its methane gas storage in salt caverns near the lake.

Crestwood currently stores 1.45 billion cubic feet of methane and is expanding their storage to 2 billion cubic feet. The methane gas expansion project was approved by the Federal Energy Regulation Committee on Sept.

30, and protesters started protesting on Oct. 24, the day construction was cleared to start.

Charles Geisler, professor in the Department of Developmental Sociology at Cornell University, is one of the protesters who participated.

“I’ve come to feel we need to vote with more than ballots,” he said. “We need to vote with our feet and be present where energy development is problematic, and even now we need to vote with our lives.”

As of Nov. 21, 65 people were arrested protesting at Crestwood’s facility in the Schuyler county town of Reading, New York. Faith Meckley, a protester and Ithaca College student, said We Are Seneca Lake uses the policies of “civil disobedience” and prevents vehicles from entering the facility. Those arrested were charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct and face either a 15-day sentence or a $250 fine.

The group’s protests are mainly based around concerns about the stability of the salt caverns, their proximity to the lake and the possible negative effects on tourism.

In a statement, a Crestwood Mid-

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stream spokesman said, “We are committed to this shovel-ready storage project, just as we are committed to the safety of our employees and contractors and their ability to access the U.S. Salt complex. The protesters know we haven’t started construction on the LPG storage project or the FERC-approved natural gas storage expansion.”

The We Are Seneca Lake group is currently protesting the methane expansion, and also opposes Crestwood Midstream’s plan to store butane and propane, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), in salt caverns. That project is awaiting approval by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

The DEC scheduled an issues conference during February to address the project.

Meckley said both projects come with major risk.

“They are looking to store methane and LPG (propane and butane) in unlined, unstable salt caverns under the western shore of Seneca Lake,” she said, “The potential for explosion and pollution of the lake is huge.”

Natural gas is the primary source of heat in the United States, and although all gas storage is subject to some risk, engineers would have thoroughly examined the caverns, said Terry Engelder, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State.

“The engineers who look at the likelihood of a salt cavern collapse would have proposed a model that it was extraordinarily unlikely that the cavern would collapse,” he said.

Andrew Kozlowski, the acting associate state geologist, approved the project.

“There does not appear to be any geological reason to deny their request to utilize the geologic formations specified for the storage of liquefied petroleum gas… It has been demonstrated that the caverns in this salt formation have a longstanding operational record as a gas storage facility without any geologic evidence of incompatibility for this intended purpose,” he wrote in his approval.

As for the LPG project, Crestwood Midstream said the project will have

many benefits for the region. Crestwood said the project would create 50 construction jobs and 10 permanent jobs for the region, save New Yorkers money in energy costs and add $25 million in tax revenue to the region.

Crestwood claimed last winter’s propane prices were at an all-time high because of the lack of locally-stored propane and the new project would be able to store enough gas to heat 250,000 homes.

“The Northeast LPG market lacks adequate pipeline infrastructure to serve propane consumers during peak winter demand. Our LPG storage project offers a safe, cost-effective market solution to this constraint that’s less environmentally invasive than building new pipeline,” a Crestwood spokesperson said.

Tony Ingraffea, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, said he believed most gas stored in the region would not be used in the region.

“It will go wherever the market takes it,” he said. “If any of it is used in the Finger Lakes area, it will be an extremely small quantity. The Finger Lakes area is rather sparsely populated; it is not a large demand location for natural gas.”

Protesters are also concerned about Crestwood’s plans for the future in the region.

“We have to see the storage as part of a larger energy development system in the Northeast,” Geisler said. “It’s a comprehensive plan that involves extractions, storage, movement and then lots of infrastructure that goes along with these developments. It’s a massive industrialization of rural New York.”

Crestwood Midstream, formerly Inergy Midstream when it acquired U.S. Salt, is the company that had owned the Reading facility, in 2008. In a press release released at that time, Inergy’s CEO John Sherman said the acquisition was part of the corporation’s plans to create a “natural gas storage and transportation hub in the Northeast.”

Meckley said these plans are part of

put the proposal to approve it on the floor and he fast tracked it through the legislature. The opposition to it in Schuyler County is huge, so I don’t think that the official thing in Schuyler County really represents the people.”

Fagan said the claims saying he has a conflict of interest are ridiculous, and he sold his company to his employees during 2012.

“If a conflict of interest means I have too much knowledge about the details of this project and the gas industry, well that’s ridiculous,” he said. “I certainly dont have any conflict of interest. I’ve never worked for Crestwood or any of its subsidiaries, never taken a penny from Crestwood or any of its subsidiaries.”

He also added the recent elections show the support of the project in his county.

“We just had an election and a legislator who was in favor of the project was reelected while he was opposed by two opponents to the project. I think that says something,” he said.

According to public resolutions, three of the four counties which border the lake (Seneca, Ontario and Yates Counties) came out against the project. One of these counties, Yates County, resolved it was concerned about the “uncertain geological stability” of the caverns, the threat of discharge of salt water into the lake, and the threat of LPG seepage into the lake.

Fagan said other counties did not do their homework.

“We studied this very closely,” he said. “We visited similar sites that Crestwood owns and operates. In my particular case, I visited those sites a total of four times. [This project] can be done in a safe manner.”

Seneca County, which includes over 50 percent of the area of the lake, also opposes the LPG storage project.

In the resolution approved by Seneca County, the county expressed concern over “reports of leakage in similar structures that are neither designed nor built specifically for the purpose purposed.”

The Seneca County resolution also brought attention to a particular well Crestwood is planning on using for the LPG project, Well 58. The resolution stated this well “has previously been plugged and abandoned by the prior owner, New York State Electric and Gas Corp. and deemed no lon-

ger appropriate for storage of the type proposed by the current owner.”

In 2001, Larry Sevenker, an engineer familiar with the caverns, said Well 58 was unusable for storage and should be abandoned. In 2003, U.S. Steel plugged the well and abandoned it. However, after Crestwood’s purchase of U.S. Steel, it was reopened and Sevenker recanted his previous assessment and said he made mistakes in his 2001 assessment. However, according to Peter Mantius in The (Corning) Leader, Sevenker still said the layers of rock and salt that make the roof of the caverns do collapse.

In a letter to U.S. Salt to State Sen. Tony Avella, an opponent of the project, U.S. Salt President Mitchell Dascher addressed concerns over the collapse of Cavern 58. Dascher wrote concerns the cavern had collapsed were “false and not supported by data.” U.S. Salt said Sevenker’s analysis that the cave had collapsed was wrong due to the use of “older sonar technology,” and they had gotten approval from the DEC in 2010 to resume mining the cavern.

Meckley said any accident could be cathrostopic for the region, and that the blast radius (3 miles) from the site would affect the town of Watkins Glen.

“If we let this project go forward and we’re not just talking about having an unhealthy environment, we’re talking about people dying as well,” she said. “This is a health and safety issue just as much as it is an environmental issue. And as someone who lives in the region, I see it as my responsibility to do as much as I can to keep that from happening.”

Ingraffea said the core of these protests was stopping New York taking the risks and getting the negative affects of being a storage ground for other states’ gas.

“The heart of the protest is keeping New York state from being a dumping and storage area for other states,” he said. “There is no substantial benefit for Upstate New York having that storage facility here. It would benefit companies operating from other states and people who are selling their gas in other states.” ___________________________________ Aidan Quigley is a freshman journalism major who doesn’t what is going to happen. You can email him at aquigley@ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

the reason the protesters aim to make Crestwood stop the project and leave the region.

“If we can stop them at their root here with this first project they are trying to do, that will be a wrench in their whole grand plan in this region that no one really wants,” she said. “I do believe if they can’t have this expansion and they can’t go forward with it, they would leave because it would not be economically worth it for them.”

In an opinion piece published in the Finger Lakes Times in September, Bill Gautrauex, the president of the Liquids and Crude Business of Crestwood Midstream, wrote natural gas has been stored in Schuyler county and surrounding communities for over 50 years. He also wrote that U.S. Salt has been part of the local community for over a century and is the largest taxpayer in Schuyler County.

The Schuyler County legislature passed a resolution encouraging the state DEC to come out in favor of the project. The resolution stated that caverns on U.S. Salt property have been used for gas storage since 1964 without incident and the legislature believed those opposing the project lobbied the governor and the DEC to “simply not make a decision on the Finger Lakes’ application.”

Dennis Fagan, chair of the Schuyler County legislature, formerly owned Fagan Engineers, an environmental engineering company. Fagan said his connections at the DEC told him the project received a technical signoff but was on the commissioner’s desk awaiting the green light from the governor.

“At that point in time it became apparent to me that this project was not being reviewed based on technical merits but was based on political merits,” he said. “At that point in time we decided to make a stand and tell the governor to support his technical decision makers and pass the project.”

Fagan believed the project will benefit his county.

“I was convinced it could be done in an environmentally safe manner and that we could have both the benefits of the project together with the growth of our tourism industry,” he said.

Critics of the project, including Meckley, said Fagan’s previous connections with the gas industry cause a conflict of interest.

“Dennis Fagan used to own Fagan Engineering, which helps make fracking infrastructure,” Meckley said. “He

Use of Heroin Spiking in Ithaca Local events following national trend Evan Popp, Contributing Writer

“

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

It didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with it. I think it was pretty scary, but I didn’t want to be the person that was a pussy.

And then it became totally normal. So when I was around heroin it was like... nothing else would really do the trick anymore,” John* said.

This is how John, a former heroin user, described his journey into the world of heroin. He said he began using the drug around the age of 15, after using marijuana, acid and meth. He said it was after the war in Vietnam had ended and before Ronald Reagan and the conservative movement of the 1980s.

“Nobody was really concerned about anyone getting high,” he said.

He said he continued using heroin intermittently until 1996, when his wife died from hepatitis transmitted through a contaminated needle.

John’s story is not an uncommon one. The National Institute on Drug Abuse stated in 2011 “4.2 million Americans, aged 12 and over... had used heroin at least once in their lives,” with the problem increasing dramatically in the last decade.

NIDA reported from 2002 to 2012, the number of Americans who reported using heroin in the past year increased from 404,000 to 669,000.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of deaths involving heroin increased from 2,089 in 2002 to 4,397 in 2011.

Heroin in Ithaca In Ithaca, Jamie Williamson, public information officer at the Ithaca Police Department, said heroin use has increased over the past four to six years However, he said the problem has escalated even more over the past month. As of Nov. 12, Williamson said there were 13 reports of overdoses due to heroin in Ithaca during the previous two and a half weeks, with two of them being fatal overdoses. He also said the IPD is inves-

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tigating if heroin played a role in a third death. Williamson noted the 13 overdoses likely do not represent the full number of heroin overdoses in that time period, as many overdoses go unreported to the police.

He said the IPD thought the string of overdoses may have been the result of a heroin supply laced with an unknown substance. However, Williamson emphasized the investigation into the reason for the number of overdoses is ongoing.

“Good police work mandates that we keep all of our options open and that we don’t focus on one specific cause,” he said.

As of Nov. 12, Williamson said the IPD believed the possible supply of tainted heroin in the city had dwindled, because the rate of overdoses had started to plateau.

On Nov. 26, The Ithaca Voice reported five people were arrested in a heroin and crack cocaine bust. The Ithaca Voice reported police seized $695, 108 pre-packaged bags of heroin and 2.4 grams of packaged crack cocaine.

Why heroin is increasing One of the main perpetrators, of what Rick Wallace, a local attorney and Ithaca City Court judge-elect called “the heroin epidemic” is pharmaceutical opiates. Wallace said pharmaceutical opiates have been prescribed to patients as pain medication at an increasing rate over the past ten years.

The use of opiates as pain medication has centered particularly in the U.S. According to a CNN report from Aug. 30, 80 percent of the world’s pain pills are consumed in the United States. The same report cited a spokeswoman from the NIDA who said nearly half of young people who inject heroin said they abused prescription opiates before using heroin, which is also an opiate.

Wallace said the prescription opiates used as painkillers are highly addictive.

“Somebody uses these drugs pre-

scribed by a doctor and they feel this sense of not only relief from pain, but relief from the pressures of life,” Wallace said. “Because it’s an opiate, it has a profound cognitive and physiological effect.”

Patients will often run through their allotted amount of pain medication and crave more, Wallace said.

He said many patients will then turn to the black market to buy the same pain pills they were prescribed by a doctor.

“But in the black market these pills are very expensive,” Wallace said. “And then along comes someone who says ‘try a little of this. It’s just as good, if not better, and it’s a lot cheaper and easier to find.’ And what they bring them is heroin.”

Wallace said he believed this transition from medically prescribed opiates to heroin is one of the main reasons heroin-related addiction is increasing.

Another part of the increase in heroin and drug use in general in Ithaca is the steady decline of the city’s drug treatment court, Wallace said. He said the number of participants in drug court has gone down in the same period that addiction to heroin and other drugs has gone up.

Wallace said when he takes office as City Court Judge, revitalizing drug court will be one of his main priorities.

Addictive nature of the drug Williamson said one of the reasons heroin-related crimes are so difficult to investigate is heroin users’ unwillingness to give up their supplier of the drug, which he said points to one of the underlying problems of heroin.

“I’ve talked to people that I’ve arrested that have said heroin goes from recreational use to addiction to destruction quicker than any drug they’ve ever experienced,” he said.

“As soon as heroin digs its nails into you, you can’t get out from underneath it. It almost becomes like oxygen, you absolutely need it in order

to survive.”

John said he used to go to New York City to get heroin. He said one way he paid for the drugs was by shoplifting from Sears stores between Ithaca and New York City.

He said he would shoplift an item that cost $150 from one store, and then return it to another store in exchange for an item that cost $50.

He said the store would reimburse him for the difference and he would buy heroin, sometimes up to 20 to 30 bags a day.

“And really you just get to the point where you don’t really care about anything else,” he said.

He said there was a window after the first couple times he used heroin where the drugs made him feel good.

“If you do once or twice a week, you can stay in that window for a long time, because it’s not until you start to do it every day that you start to develop a physical, and more than physical, a mental dependence on it,” he said.

Eventually, he said he got to the point where he couldn’t sleep without using heroin. He said this progressed to fears of running out of the drug.

“And that is way more powerful than actually running out,” John said.

Treatment options

Solutions Cangelosi said another aspect of the fight against heroin is Naloxone, also known as Narcan, which is an antidote to heroin overdoses. Williamson said all IPD officers carry Narcan with them and are trained to administer it in the event of a heroin overdose.

Cangelosi also said more education and money for drug use prevention in accordance with a focus on law enforcement all need to

be part of any solution to the heroin problem in Ithaca. However, she said an underlying aspect of the issue is the stigma that surrounds addiction.

She said people need to think of addiction as a lifestyle disease.

“If you are experiencing negative consequences because of diabetes you would have no problem going to a doctor and asking for help,” she said.

“It’s the same thing here [with addiction], it’s just people don’t look at it the same way. They think it’s a choice, that it’s a moral decision and they can just stop whenever they want. And we know that’s not the case.”

Cangelosi said people should look at addiction the same way they would any other medical condition.

Wallace agreed with Cangelosi’s assessment.

“The smartest response to addiction from a criminal justice point of view — including community safety — is to treat it as a public health issue,” he said.

Williamson said he understands the need for treatment regarding drug addiction, but feels the system also needs an aspect of enforcement.

“I think people need to be held accountable for their actions. Simply because somebody is addicted to some sort of crime does not excuse them from being held accountable,” Williamson said, adding that he believes harsher sentences for heroin related crimes would serve as a deterrent.

Wallace said while treatment is his preferred option, because he feels it better addresses the underlying reasons for drug addiction, consequences are also an important part of the drug treatment system.

“Sometimes you can use a carrot, but other times you need a stick,” he said. *Name has been changed to protect anonymity. _____________________________________ Evan Popp is a freshman journalism major who really gets a rush out of writing his articles. You can email him at epopp@ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

The Alcohol and Drug Council of Tompkins County is a treatment facility that can help people addicted to heroin and other drugs. Stacy Cangelosi, education and prevention director at the council, said when someone addicted to heroin or any other drug comes in, a treatment plan is developed which includes individual and group appointments. However, with heroin, because of its painful withdrawal symptoms, Cangelosi said the council is sometimes forced to give patients a drug called suboxone.

“Suboxone is an opiate analog,” Cangelosi said. “The idea is that it will help reduce the severity of withdrawal symptoms. Heroin can have really horrible withdrawal symptoms that makes it hard for somebody to stop using and come find help.

“Suboxone is meant to be part of the process of treating a heroin ad-

dict, not the entire process,” Cangelosi said. She said the Council emphasizes self-help through counseling and group sessions before turning to suboxone, noting that it is possible for patients to get high off it.

However, Wallace said he is not in favor of using suboxone as a way to wean addicts off heroin.

“We tried it with methadone for a long time and there are people who are hooked on methadone for life,” Wallace said. “There became a black market for methadone. Same is happening with suboxone.”

John said he was not given suboxone when getting treatment for heroin addiction. He said in his particular circumstance he felt substituting one drug for another would not have worked.

“There were a lot of people that I knew that had quit doing heroin, who would switch to other drugs,” he said. “They would drink all the time, or they would smoke pot all the time. And for me it was like I sort of saw that I needed to abstain from all drugs in order to stay on one side of the line.”

He said the process of getting clean was difficult because he didn’t have the skills necessary to make a living. He said his particular treatment path led him to rehab multiple times, as well as Narcotics Anonymous. He said he still attends meetings every week to avoid relapsing.

For him, talking and hanging out with people who have had the same sorts of experiences with drugs has been the most effective way of curbing his addiction, he said.

“It’s the only way I’ve seen that’s effective other than moving to the top of a mountain in Nepal, or substituting another drug,” he said.

Universities Benefit from Athletes’ Success Should Division I college athletes be paid or compensated?

Max Denning, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

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n 2013, USA Today reported 13 Division I athletic departments generated more than $100 million in revenue. Nearly 100 schools nationwide generated more than $25 million in revenue. The National Collegiate Athletic Association has TV deals with CBS and ESPN for the men’s basketball and football playoffs that are worth more than a billion dollars annually.

Yet, the NCAA and its member universities have successfully resisted paying their student-athletes, until now.

In August 2014, Judge Claudia Wilken of United States District Court in Oakland, Calif., ruled the NCAA’s rules banning student-athletes from receiving payments were in violation of antitrust laws, according to the official court documents. The ruling opens up the possibility for colleges to pay football players in the NCAA’s top 10 conferences and all Division I men’s basketball players in 2016.

Wilken’s injunction granted the NCAA the right to cap payments to studentathletes at $5,000 annually in the form of deferred compensation.

When colleges and universities have surpluses of millions of dollars, pay coaches million dollar salaries and have boosters who are paying off coaches’ houses (looking at you Alabama Football Boosters), student athletes can at least be given enough money to cover their cost of attendance. Many athletes reach their peak popularity in college and should be allowed to profit off while they still can.

A 2010 study by the Ithaca College Graduate Program in Sport Management and Media and the National College Players Association found the average shortfall between the monetary value of a grant-in-aid scholarship and the actual cost of attending college at 336 NCAA Division I colleges and universities is $2,951 a year.

To pay every single one of the 85 players on a Division I college football team $3,000, it would cost a program $255,000. That is less than a sixth of what USA Today reported was the average Division 1 Football coaches’ salary of 1.64 million.

Until 2016, the NCAA’s rules re-

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garding student-athlete compensation are still in effect and under scrutiny. In an article in Sports Illustrated, Andy Staples pointed out the hypocrisy in the NCAA profiting from how athletes perform on the field.

“The players didn’t turn college football into a multibillion-dollar business,” Staples said in the article. “The conference commissioners and athletic directors did. Now, those administrators must deal with the consequences, and one is people are more willing than ever to pay for the autographs of the players they see on television every Saturday.”

Staples went on to point out what is possibly the NCAA’s biggest issue.

“The schools don’t want a truly open market for players, even if the courts may eventually force one upon them.”

An open market for players would more than likely concentrate talent into a smaller amount of teams, specifically the teams generating the most revenue and with the wealthiest boosters. While this may be somewhat worrisome, there are ways to encourage parody that don’t include completely leaving student athletes out of the financial equation.

During NCAA CEO Mark Emmert’s testimony during the case with Wilken, Emmert stated the tradition of collegiate athletics as a main reason for why students should not receive further compensation.

“Traditions and keeping them are very important to universities,” Emmert said. “These individuals are not professionals. They are representing their universities as part of a university community.”

What Emmert really wants to keep is the tradition of exploiting student athletes and using their skills to make college athletic directors and NCAA executives millions.

Emmert went on to say the college name was the driving force behind the revenue made from college athletics.

“People come to watch ... because it’s college sports, with college athletes,” he said.

I would argue that college athletics are only popular on a national scale because they offer fans a look at the

next wave of professionals.

Furthermore, in the case of star athletes they can bring in millions in revenue for their college programs. In January 2013, Texas A&M released the results of its study which found Heisman winning quarterback Johnny Manziel was worth $37 million.

“Research conducted by Joyce Julius & Associates shows that the redshirt freshman winning the prestigious trophy produced more than 1.8 million media impressions, which translates into $37 million in media exposure for Texas A&M,” Texas A&M’s statement said.

The hypocrisy lies in the fact Manziel was suspended during the 2013 football season for receiving compensation from selling autographs. Manziel should have the right to sell his autographs because his skills and triumphs have brought him his fame; Texas A&M is simply his platform to do so. Manziel was worth $37 million to Texas A&M. The cost of a college education is a fraction of that.

If you create a billion dollar product, you have to pay the people who are putting their bodies out there to do so.

Brian Frederick, a board member of Sports Fans Coalition and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Sports Industry Management Program, said he believes the NCAA and fans of college athletics must adapt to the changing nature of student athletes.

“If we truly enjoy college athletics and want them to continue, we better start calling for changes now,” Frederick said. “If we continue to throw more and more money into this broken system, it won’t be long before the whole thing falls apart and we all lose.”

The NCAA shouldn’t be allow to continue to exploit student athletes and use the integrity of collegiate athletics as their excuse to do so. If you create a billion dollar product, you have to pay the people who are putting their bodies on the line to do so. _____________________________________ Max Denning is a freshman journalism major who knows what it takes to lay it all out on the gridiron. You can email him at mdenning@ithaca.edu.

Upfront

PFRONT. UPFRONT. UPFRON

Selected dis-education of the month. 13

Proper Etiquette Makes a Comeback The modern revival of an Emily Post mentality

Sage Daugherty, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

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hat do you think of when you hear the word “etiquette”? Chances are you think of stuffy, boring, old-fashioned, proper manners and that etiquette doesn’t matter anymore. You’d be wrong.

Etiquette expert Jodi R.R. Smith, president of Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting, said etiquette and etiquette consulting businesses are thriving in the 21st century due to less of a focus on teaching etiquette in schools and the confusion over dealing with technology etiquette.

Smith said she became interested in the fields of etiquette and social skills through her human resources background. Smith founded Mannersmith in 1996 after teaching etiquette training seminars for companies. She said at the time, and even today, people wouldn’t go to an etiquette training seminar, so she would market the seminar and title it, “New Skills for Emerging Leaders,” so employees would be more apt to attend.

Fifty years ago, children and young adults would learn etiquette from their parents, from their peers and from school and religious programs, but a major shift happened during the 1960s. During this time, Smith said there was blowback from the idea of etiquette and manners, and then, during the 1980s, etiquette began to rise as people realized basic tenets of manners — for example, saying “please” and “thank you” — were still needed.

Marianne Cohen, vice president responsible for client relations, marketing and special projects at Mannersmith, worked with and developed a program called Manners for Minors, which targets children of different age ranges to teach social skills and etiquette.

“We cover table manners, hand shakes, looking adults in the eye, telephone manners and thank you

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notes,” Cohen said. “And then we have a program geared toward Girl Scouts, because they can earn a badge for it.”

Etiquette has changed over the years, not just because of technology, but also because of social change, and Cohen said the etiquette has had to evolve to fit the times.

“Women have a much more prominent role in the business world, so the etiquette has to change,” she said. “Is it okay for a man to pull out a chair for a woman at a business meeting? No, because it’s a business meeting, and they are equals.

I think it’s also getting harder to define those guidelines.”

Daniel Post Senning of the Emily Post Institute said the EPI constantly hears from older generations who bemoan their grandchildren’s lack of manners, but he said this situation has always been the case.

“Manners change and evolve over time, and being prepared to move with them is a big part of what we do, but also having a framework for thinking about etiquette more broadly has been really important to us as well,” Senning said. “Every generation witnesses the changes in manners over a lifetime and thinks the state of manners is in decline, [and] it’s not an unusual phenomenon.”

Since there has been a resurgence of etiquette and manners following the turn of the century, society now has a new issue to consider — the rise of social media and other technology.

Oversharing on social media or commenting on everything that people do is one of the major social media blunders, Smith said. In addition to oversharing, she noted there are more subtle social media issues, like the exclusion of someone in a certain friend group, she explained.

“There can be all sorts of hurt feelings that go on,” she said. “And then of course there are the people who have very strong political or religious

opinions who take that to social media. I think we need to be able to share our opinions and educate other people, but in a polite way.”

Senning said he shares Smith’s opinion and cautions people against excessive or inappropriate use of social media.

“People can share information that’s just too personal or too private, or they can share too much,” he said. “In an age where assessing and filtering digital media is a requirement in today’s world, not overburdening someone and giving them a deluge of information that they have to sift through — there’s a certain lack of courtesy.”

Smith said etiquette in 2014 simply means having confidence in yourself and your ability to navigate a social situation.

“If you have confidence in yourself because you’re dressed appropriately for the occasion or because you know how to shake hands with the job interviewer, then you can be comfortable and enjoy the interaction, so people around you are going to be comfortable and enjoy themselves,” she said. “Having good manners is not about always doing something, but it’s about understanding the guidelines that are appropriate for that interaction.”

Studies have shown that the use of curse words has increased over the past few decades, so it could be said that profanities are now more acceptable in everyday language, but that’s not necessarily the case.

A 2013 study by Kristin Jay, a psychologist at Marist College, found that the use of curse words was indeed on the upswing by comparing the data with a similar study done in 1986. The study involved a group of adults who recorded every swear word they heard for a year.

In an interview with Vox, Jay said the findings shouldn’t be taken too seriously because the participants may not have recorded every curse they heard, and because the study

family has been the leading etiquette authority in the nation for almost a century. Spanning five generations, the EPI thinks of etiquette as simply social skills and relationship building tools.

Every year that he’s been involved with the EPI, Senning said there seems to have been a perception that the latest generation is becoming more rude and unmannered than the last, and he said that’s simply not true.

He said etiquette became much harder to sell during the 1960s, a time of great social change.

“The use of ‘Ms.’ instead of ‘Mrs.’ first came into common usage and acceptance by the U.S. government in the early 1970s,” Senning said.

“The whole advent of feminism and the idea that you needed a title for women that wasn’t addressing their marital status in some ways is a bigger fundamental change to social structures and hierarchies that Internet communication is.”

Senning said the future of etiquette and etiquette consulting is to keep up with the changing times and increasingly diverse world and to be aware of diversity. He said the EPI is committed to changing with the times in terms of technology as well.

“Like everyone in the publishing industry, we are curious about and invested in transferring our content from the printed word to the digital word and figuring out ways to move our content to digital, whether that’s podcasts or a website that has a searchable reference,” he said. “I also think it’s important to continue to look at our message and what we’re saying so that the advice that we give is relevant in an increasingly complex world.” ___________________________________ Sage Daugherty is a junior journalism major who minds her P’s and Q’s.

You can contact her at sdaughe1@ ithaca.edu.

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Upfront

was concentrated in New England and Southern California.

Dealing with profanities has been an ongoing issue for centuries, according to Smith, and happens less and less in the workplace as compared to high school or college.

“We generalize competence based on observable behavior, and when you curse in public, it tells people that you’re unable to interact and communicate appropriately when things don’t go your way,” she said.

“You lack the skills to be able to handle that situation, and it’s also instantly telling me that you can’t control your anger.”

Senning, great-great-grandson of etiquette authority Emily Post, said he thinks profanities haven’t become more or less acceptable to 21st century society, but the line between acceptable and unacceptable changes over time.

“The reason we call them cursing and profanities [and] the reason that language has impact and effect is that they aren’t acceptable in public,” he said. “It’s very common for a lot of the younger generation to casually use the word ‘sucks,’ whereas older generations often find that word really offensive, and bringing awareness to the way different generations perceive communications is one of the things we get asked to come address.”

Proper manners and etiquette are still vital, and Smith said even more so during a social situation that involves food.

“It’s impossible to talk with food in your mouth and not gross the other person out,” she said. “The whole idea of sharing a meal and of breaking bread with someone else is not only to nourish your body but also to enjoy that social interaction. We need table manners to enjoy being with other people.”

Since joining the Emily Post Institute, Senning has become more involved in the “family business” and the business of etiquette. The Post

A State of Protest

Exploring changes in a quarter-century of American activism

Charlotte Robertson, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

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he United States is a nation built around protests. From the Revolutionary War to the Civil Rights Movement, U.S. freedom and government policy have been created through mass social movements.

Over the past quarter-century, the introduction of new technologies, social media forums and mass mediums have changed societal perception of what a social movement is and how supporters can participate.

As social and technological trends shift, the conception of what actions qualify as protests and how active members connect and relate begins to change along with new advancements.

Heidi Reynolds-Stenson is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona, advised by sociologist Jennifer Earl. Her area of interest is in how social movement communities and organizations work to sustain participation in the face of repression.

She has instructed a Social Issues in America course at the University of Arizona and has been published in Mobilization, an international, peerreviewed journal that reviews research of social and political movements.

Reynolds-Stenson said she believes one of the most important protests in modern history was the World Trade Organization protest in 1999.

“The WTO protests in Seattle was a watershed moment for both protesters and for government and police force,” Reynolds-Stenson said.

“Before this, there was a sort of truce between protesters and police that had developed coming off of the peak of the protests in the 1960s and 1970s.”

Before the “Battle in Seattle,” as the protest came to be known, protests had gradually become more institutionalized, adhering to the rules and regulations of police forces and government entities, Reynolds-

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Stenson said. Since the mid-1970s, protesting permits had been required. Protesters were starting to work with police to decide when, where and what protest groups were going to do. This is known as the “negotiated manner approach,” coined by two scholars of sociology, John McCarthy and Clark McPhail.

These practices began in major cities, like Washington, D.C., and New York City, later diffusing across the country.

“There was this unofficial treaty that said that protest groups would follow certain ‘rules’ and the police would allow them to protest a little bit more, rather than trying to just outright stop all protests,” ReynoldsStenson said.

This policing strategy was based around the idea that police would tolerate protests, as long as protesting styles remained predictable, contained, and non-disruptive. Reynolds-Stenson said most protesters had begun to realize that abiding by the “negotiated manner approach” wasn’t as effective as unregulated protest.

“Some protesters believe that disruption or unpredictability are sometimes necessary to create change, put pressure on targets and get attention from the media,” said Reynolds-Stenson, “and a lot of research by social movement scholars would suggest they are right.”

Ultimately, Reynolds-Stenson said she thinks the WTO protests were successful. The protesters stopped the WTO from meeting and brought national attention and media coverage to their issue. Since then, the act of protesting has been significantly less institutionalized, though some protest groups still choose to work with police forces, according to Reynold-Stenson.

Rima Wilkes is an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Wilkes writes for Mobilizing Ideas, an online publication hosted by the

Center for the Study of Social Movements at Notre Dame. The publication is devoted to interdisciplinary perspectives on social movements and social change.

“I think right now we are at a point where protesting is important but has lost its novelty. Demonstrations are important, but not for the reasons they once were,” Wilkes said.

“It used to be that a demonstration might lead to change, or at least we tended to imagine that.”

According to Reynolds-Stenson, we live in a “social movement society.” This term was coined by scholars David Meyer and Sidney Tarrow to describe how protest has been integrated into our culture in a way that makes it routine and taken for granted in a way it was not previously. This integration may have been made more prominent through the media’s coverage of big protests and social movements.

This emphasis on the importance of mass media and the coverage of a social movement through the media has contributed to a process of redefining protesting. According to Wilkes, protesting is not only being deinstitutionalized by the police and government but also by mainstream media.

“Mainstream media focuses on the nature of the event itself rather than the actual issue; they are looking for drama and any kind of argument,” Wilkes said. “I think a lot of activists are getting around this by generating their own media. Social media provides new ways for activists to get their message out while previously they would have had to rely solely on what the mainstream media said about them.”

Now, individual protesters and bystanders are able to share information online, allowing different perspectives to be heard. This generates discussions rather than having an issue reduced down to a sound byte, Reynolds-Stenson said.

J. Craig Jenkins is the director of

Mershon Center for International Security Studies, a facility for research on national security in a global context at Ohio State University, as well as a professor of sociology who studies the impact of social movements on policy and social change. Jenkins said social media is important to the activist community because it is significantly controllable from the bottom up.

“That’s one reason why it’s being used a lot by movements as a vehicle for generating conversation, discourse and discussions about the need for certain types of social change, as well as a recognition of certain types of issues and identities that need to be taken into account,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins said conventional media is both a great opportunity and a problem. Although technology and social media have been beneficial to organizers and protests by allowing groups to organize events and by creating space for dialogue, they have also created problems that were nonexistent twenty years ago.

Wilkes said that she thinks social media protests are often reduced to people mic-ing the voices of others rather than forming their own voice.

She said this changes the effect of social media protesting, making it,

Image by Grace Rychwalski

marching and voting matters more,” Jenkins said. “People need to be aware of that trade off.”

Social media and other technology are not only being used by the activist community. Utilization of new technology is also giving an upper hand to police and government forces, according to Reynolds-Stenson.

Reynolds-Stenson is currently working on an ethnographic study for the activist community in Phoenix, Arizona, where local police have recently come under public criticism of monitoring and infiltrating activist groups in the name of “fighting terrorism.”

“Political Facebook groups will sometimes be monitored by police.

The same thing goes for well-known activists Facebook pages and certain protest events,” Reynolds-Stenson said. “This can be used to potentially stop protest gatherings.”

In places like Arizona, ReynoldsStenson said there have also been circumstances where police have used facial recognition technology at protests. This allows law enforcement to match protesters faces with their Facebook pages, giving them a list of many of the protesters who attended and information protesters have shared through Facebook, she said.

As human invention continues to change and expand, it is hard to imagine what the world of protest will look like 25 years from now.

Technology and, specifically, social media have created a new space for activists to engage, communicate and plan with one another, while simultaneously allows law enforcement to improve regulation strategies. As online spaces develop and technology advances, we must ask how the power of protest will be redefined by American society. ___________________________________ Charlotte Robertson is a freshman Integrated Marketing Communications major who puts the active in activism.

Email her at crobertson@ithaca.edu.

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Upfront

ultimately, less powerful. However, Wilkes said that she believes multiple other problems have stemmed from the use of social media.

“Social media allows for more continuous dialogue,” said Wilkes.

“However, the attention span of viewers is so short.”

This short attention span is one of several problems that have come with improved accessibility to technology and social media, according to scholars like Wilkes. These improvements are changing the way social movements develop and the way protesters connect. However, Professor Jenkins said that, despite this increasing digital world, traditional protest tactics and person-toperson interaction are still important, in fact vital, to creating social and political change.

Jenkins said activists and organizers should be using social media to communicate with their base of people that already believe or identify with their cause. However, he said he doesn’t believe social media is a good way to convert people to join a cause and that physical interaction is vital to recruiting people to become active parts of any social movement.

Jenkins also said he believes that social media protest is important but needs to be part of a multi-faceted approach, including online and physical protest, on behalf of social movements.

“There are social media campaigns where ‘nobody shows up.’ There are social media campaigns where a lot of people are involved, but nothing comes from it immediately,” Jenkins said. “Social media alone is not enough. You can’t just do an online petition campaign and expect that alone to matter.”

He said that though social media is important for social movement campaigns in today’s society, it often may not lead to legislative reform and social change without protesters also having a physical presence.

“Social media can sometimes influence politicians, but sometimes

The Culture of Sports Fandom

Examining the history of a legendary NFL team

Maddison Murnane, Staff Writer

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s the intro to “Hells Bells” by AC/DC rings throughout MetLife Stadium, you know it’s game time. If you also know how many New York Giants players are in the hall of fame, who the real LT is or what the heck Rooney Mara has to do with the team, you might have succombed to New York Giants super sports fandom.

The year is 1925 and Tim Mara has just bought the New York Football

age of the New York Giants. Fans can post questions, statistics and stories, as well as respond to other posts. The site also offers statistics, history, and a roster of the team.

Both said the Giants’ best season was in 1986.

“They were the best team in the NFL that season and to see them hoist the Lombardi Trophy was exhilarating and cathartic at the same time,” Fennelly said.

In contrast, many consider the lowest low of the franchise “The Fumble.” On Nov. 19, 1978, the Giants lost a game to their greatest competitor, the Philadelphia Eagles, in the last 31 seconds of the game. The Giants field positioning was thirdand-2 when Herman Edwards of the Eagles recovered the ball for a game-winning 26-yard touchdown.

This event cost the Giants a playoff spot that year, as well as an offensive coordinator.

“That season was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Giants fans,” Fennelly said. “They turned their back on the team, staying away from the game and even burning tickets from outside the stadium.”

Unlike many others, Fennelly never lost hope in his team.

“I will never stop supporting the team,” he said.

The fans’ revolts led to the hiring of General Manager George Young, who would lead the team to three Super Bowl wins.

However the revolt is not the only thing Giants fans have done in order to support their team.

Fennelly flew to Pasadena, California, to watch the Giants play in Super Bowl XXI on Jan. 25, 1987, without any tickets, he said. He was able to get into the game and watch the team win its first ever Super

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

As of Dec. 6, 2014, the Giants are 3-9. Although this season has led to a lot of TV-yelling and vulgarity, fans have kept their devotion to their team.

Giants for a mere $500. Little did he know that this would become a family business. In only its third year of existence, the team went 11-1-1 and ended the season by winning the championship. This transformed the Giants into one of the major football franchises and attracted fans from all over the country.

Exceptional gameplay on the field led to the craze of the team’s fanbase in the stands.

Lead Giants beat writer for SportsNet New York, John Fennelly, has been a fan since the age of 6. After attending his first game at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 8, 1967, he became loyal to the team and has never stopped, he said.

Eric Kennedy, founder and owner of the Big Blue Interactive, said he started passionately following the Giants in September 1984. The Big Blue Interactive is a site that focuses on the latest news and team cover-

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Bowl over the Denver Broncos.

Since then, the Giants have had their share of ups and downs. While the 1990s were full of inconsistent play, they returned to prominence in 2001 when they reached Super Bowl XXXV, but lost to the Baltimore Ravens.

As of Dec. 6, 2014, the Giants are 3-9. Although this season has led to a lot of TV-yelling and vulgarity, fans have kept their devotion to their team.

“They will always be a class operation no matter what the result on the field is,” Fennelly said.

Through posts on The Big Blue Interactive forum, fans frequently share stories that show just how loyal they are.

“At a game about 20 years ago against the Chargers, I chucked a bunch of snowballs on the field. It was awesome!” a fan with the username taggart said.

Another fan, GiantSteps, said he got a tattoo of current New York Giants quarterback, Eli Manning, holding a banana on his chest.

Not only are some Giants fans rowdy, some are also superstitious.

“The craziest thing I used to do is not watch field goals because I didn’t want to jinx the team,” Kennedy said. “Fellow fan site members used to laugh at first about this during get-togethers at sports bars, but they soon encouraged me to keep up with the practice.”

Over the years, true Giants fans have experienced all of the highs and lows of the franchise as though they are an actual part of the team.

They could also tell you the real LT is Lawrence Taylor, a hall of fame inductee and former Giants linebacker, as well as Fennelly’s favorite player, and actress Rooney Mara is the greatgranddaughter of the team’s founder. ___________________________________ Maddison Murnane is a freshman journalism major whose professional attire includes jersey and face paint.

Email her at mmurnane@ithaca.edu.

Travel in the 21st Century

How globalization normalized adventuring beyond the West

Natalie Shanklin, Contributing Writer

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you relied on a handful of popular tour books, a travel agency or a tour guide,” McKenzie said. “All can be helpful but often homogenize a destination. A simple Internet search can give an adventurous tourist a more authentic experience and get them off of the paths well trampled by the hordes.”

On the contrary, studies show that modern-day trips are much shorter than they used to be due to quicker transportation and the fast-paced influence of media like blogs, the Internet and travel channels. Travel agent Tammy Graham of Ithaca Sun Travel, said this brevity has led today’s travelers to immerse themselves less in the cultures they visit.

“Unfortunately, today, because of many influences, people are generally less polite, dress poorly to travel and are much more impatient,” Graham said.

“Today’s technology has helped and hurt us tremendously.”

Gould also said social media has deprived international travelers of total cultural involvement.

“It’s hard for students to separate themselves and immerse in the new culture completely when they are constantly trying to keep in touch with their friends and family from back home,” Gould said. She said the progression of globalization has also expanded student curiosity about other cultures and impacted travel trends.

“Most of us recognize the importance of being a more global citizen, and that Western Europe no longer fulfills this expectation,” Gould said. She also said there are practical reasons that students travel to more locations than before, such as the purpose of professional development as it relates to globalization.

“A lot of countries we consider less traditional are becoming bigger players in the world, especially China. Knowing these countries and their cultures and language is important in terms of career and personal exposure,” Gould said.

McKenzie said wartime has also had an impact on where people travel. For instance, now that countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and Croatia have mostly recovered from their respective wars,

their tourism industries are booming.

“When there has been conflict in a country, it can take decades for the tourism industry there to recover,” McKenzie said. “That’s part of the travesty for Egypt, which once made so much money from its travel industry.”

He also said voluntourism and ecotourism are other factors shaping the travel industry, especially in terms of travel to developing nations. However, McKenzie said these motivations for travel tend to have a more negative effect on the people and environments of those countries Americans are looking to help.

“Some of these efforts provide minimal assistance and can reinforce notions that crowds of mostly-white Americans can parachute in and save the day,” McKenzie said. “The tourists themselves can be patronizing and insensitive even when they think they are helping.”

The media has a considerable impact on travel trends by advertising the ways in which Americans can go abroad, he said. Companies market themselves by offering voluntourism opportunities for clients willing to pay for the trips, but McKenzie said there is rarely transparency about these opportunities.

“Prospective tourists, like those giving to charities, should look into where their money is actually going,” McKenzie said. “The trips can be quite expensive, and the money sometimes goes not to the people or area who need it but to the tourism companies themselves.

Despite the both negative and positive impacts globalization and media have had on travel culture in the last decade, much of traveling has not changed, especially among older generations. Graham said the most popular destinations for her clients are still Western European countries and Caribbean islands.

“My clients love warm places with beaches and palm trees,” Graham said. “They are looking for a vacation from normal life and its stresses.” ___________________________________ Natalie Shanklin is a freshman journalism major who wrote this article during an international layover. Email her at nshanklin@ithaca.edu.

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ver the last century, travelers have loved seeing the historical sights of Europe or relaxing on the beaches of the Caribbean. However, recent trends have shown a spike in travel to less traditional destinations.

A 2013 study conducted by Pearson Education shows a 0.3 percent increase in travel to Asian nations and a 1.9 percent increase in travel to South American countries among American tourists.

Rachel Gould, the director of study abroad at Ithaca College, said she sees these same travel trends in students’ study abroad decisions.

“A lot of students that come to me want to study abroad in places like China, India and South Africa,” Gould said.

“It seems people are less worried about being far away from home and are looking for a unique cultural experience.”

The Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange of 2014 shows that the number of students studying abroad in Asia has increased by more than 20,000 students, and student travel to sub-Saharan Africa has increased by more than 10,000 students since 1998. China has also joined the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and France in the top five study abroad destinations among American students.

Gould said she attributes the popularity growth of these destinations largely to social media.

“Social media has changed people’s experiences for traveling abroad,” Gould said. “It allows them to stay connected to home 24 hours a day when they’re overseas. I remember when I was a student abroad. ...My parents and I would talk for five minutes and send letters, but that was it.”

Additionally, Charles McKenzie, a lecturer who teaches a globalization seminar at Ithaca College, said the advertising aspect of social media can have a positive impact on a traveler’s vacation in another country through Internet searches that broaden the horizons of all a tourist can see and experience abroad.

“It used to be that when you traveled,

Defying Conformity

Generational parallels between beats and millennials

Kate Nalepinski, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

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hile America was recovering from WWII, a few individuals in the 1950s rebelled against the difficult times by creating new music, literature and art, offering a new sense of style and freedom. These rebels were nicknamed “beatniks,” a term derived from “Sputnik,” the Russian satellite. The term was coined by Herb Caen six months after the launch of the satellite. “Beat” was a term formed

by Jack Kerouac, one of the fathers of the beat movement, to reference unusual, yet spiritual folk. However, “beatnik” became a common phrase to describe these individuals, a connotation of being beaten down by society.

The beat movement was born in the mid-1950s, capturing the talent and imagination of creators, such as Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The movement formed a place in society for individuals who chose to not conform to the societal roles of the 1950s. Most beats are described as a group of people who chose to practice an unconventional lifestyle, taking part in activities such as writing poetry, studying Buddhism and using illicit drugs.

In her memoir Minor Characters, author Joyce Johnson describes the stereotypical beatnik as one who, “sold books, sold black turtleneck sweaters and bongos, berets and dark glasses, sold a way of life that seemed like dangerous fun.”

“I would say their rebellion was a reaction against the crushing conformity of post-war America,” Paul Hansom, an assistant professor of English at Ithaca College who specializes in American literature, said. “It seemed mainstream America was interested in work and consumption, in putting on the tie and heading to the office. For the beats, that really signaled death of the self and spirit, and was a profound betrayal of life itself.”

Participants in the beat movement went against the grain of cultural uniformity. They wore atypical outfits and studied topics such as religion, freedom,

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democracy and intuition. The philosophy of these people emphasized the importance of self-worth above materialistic needs. They worked their way into the media by the 1960s.

“By the mid-’60s, the beats went mainstream: They were featured in Life magazine, they were on TV and were neatly rolled into the counter-culture of that period,” Hansom said.

Millennials have received many of the same criticisms, and expressed the same rebellion against conformity, of members of the beat generation that came before.

Jennifer Graham, writer for The Boston Globe, said millennials are victims of their successes. Graham wrote that this generation rarely leaves their house because their needs are often met.

“There are a lot of people who are really angry at them,” Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, psychology professor at Clark University, said in Abby Ellin’s article “The Beat (Up) Generation” on Psychology Today.

The millennials matured with technology, while their parents did not. They have been surrounded by computers, high-speed internet connections, cell phones and digital media. Their childhood development acted upon technology, which dramatically differs from that of our parents.

“What’s ironic is that the millennials’ and the beats’ personalities were both formed in similar patterns,” Tony Trigilio, creative writing professor at Columbia College Chicago and author of Allen Ginsberg’s Buddhist Poetics, said.

“They both were formed culturally, and act unintentionally.”

Trigilio said today’s youth share the rebellious personality of the beats.

Hansom said the beats were people who strayed away from the stereotypical “housewife” or “businessman” roles in society. In that manner, the millennials share similar boundaries with the beats.

Millennials are willing to change for their own better, despite their parents’ specific ideals. In her article, Ellin said the baby boomers often disapprove of their children’s actions, because they differ from their own.

“Younger generations have long befuddled older folks — the beats, the Vietnam-era flower children, ‘the slacker’ generation X-ers,” Ellin said. “Still, millennials inspire their own brand of vitriol and an entire industry is dedicated to helping human resources interpret them.”

Similar to how researchers are interested in millennial personality traits and morals, 1960s society also questioned the beats.

“For the mainstream, they probably remained marginal nutcases, threats to the ‘normal’ way of life,” Hansom said, “and for young people a new voice that reflected their own discontents.”

According to an article posted by David S. Wills on beatdom.com, a literary journal that focuses on the beat generation, current writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers turn to the beats for inspiration. Like the beats, current artists want to escape their comfort zones and avoid conformity to society’s ways.

“Both the beats and the millennials have the opportunity to seek out a lifestyle different from the mainstream,” writer Mark Judge, in a March 2014 piece for Acculturated Magazine, said. “I see a lot of the beats in the millennials.

They can’t really stay at one job very long, because they don’t like being controlled or micromanaged. They love music and are open to strange and experimental artists and sounds. They seek spirituality, but in unconventional ways.”

Hansom said small parts of the beats are still around.

“Bits and pieces of the beats remain, though in different forms,” he said.

“People choose to live outside of norms, develop different communities, celebrate difference in general.”

The role of the beats in the 1950s is unlike any other, but the role of writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers share similar motives to that of the generations who went against conformity. _______________________________________ Kate Nalepinski is a freshman journalism major who just wants to cuddle up with a mason jar and On The Road. Email her at knalepinksi@ithaca.edu.

When War Changed

How technology killed the romance of war

Will Uhl, Staff Writer

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some soldiers put it in their memoirs and other things, ‘I thought this war would be like the paintings of the great cavalry charges that you see’ — they thought it would be a romantic adventure.”

Soldiers expected, at the very least, a sense of personal contribution, if not a chance to earn their honor, Fogarty said.

Instead, they were relegated to disease-ridden ditches in typically European inclement weather, subject to some of the cruellest, most inhumane weapons ever used in war.

“It was a war waged in trenches with barbed wire, machine guns, heavy artillery, poison gas — the whole panoply of that war,” Fogarty said. “That meant that it was not a romantic adventure; that it was, in fact, something to be endured. You did your job and you hoped that you survived.”

The 1925 Geneva Protocol, a ban on biochemical weaponry, was enacted six years after World War I ended, which aimed to prevent future soldiers from suffering from the horrors of mustard gas and similar tools.

“Gas was hard for soldiers to bear — the gas masks were uncomfortable, it was hard to know when to use them and poison gas is scary,” Isabel V. Hull, a professor from Cornell University with a focus on World War I, genocide and related topics, said. “But gas did not bring the strategic advantage that the Germans might have hoped for, and its tactical uses were limited.”

While biochemical weapons were a terror for soldiers, the greatest threat was the endless bombardment from artillery.

The numerous technological advances first applied to warfare in WWI contributed heavily, if not almost entirely, to slowing the grisly battles to a glacial pace.

“Artillery had advanced at such an extent, they could fire shells — gigantic shells with extraordinary ex-

plosive power — over miles,” Fogarty said. “This meant the enemy had a good defense if they were behind defensive walls or in trenches. It was very hard to get them out of there.”

Without fleets of tanks and bombers, attacking was possible “only by firing your own artillery and just blasting away, which caused the ton of misery we associate with the war, and the stalemate and the destruction of landscapes,” he also said.

Technologically, defense had excelled, while offense was still struggling to catch up. Soldiers were reduced to bullets, plinking away at ironclad defenses and hoping to make a dent. Even medical advances that saved countless lives still reinforced the war’s colossal cost.

“The irony is that [modern medicine] saved a lot of people with horrific wounds that would have killed them,” Fogarty said. “You see a lot of people after the war with terrible head wounds, face wounds, and missing limbs who are able to survive because of the medical technology, but they’re a constant reminder of the horror.”

For years after the war, disfigured and disabled veterans would live alongside other civilians. Most had heard of death and pain on the battlefield before, but now the physical cost was much harder to ignore. ___________________________________ Will Uhl is a sophomore journalism major who studies combat theory in his free time. Email him at wuhl1@ ithaca.edu.

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nce looked upon as a field of honor for the valiant, modern society now regards war as the road to hell.

Before World War I, war was quick and decisive — soldiers either came home as heroes, or didn’t come home at all. Nobody was ready for the ramifications of World War I’s massive technological leap.

The grim realities of the Great War startled the world and shaped how humanity views warfare today. Before WWI, the public opinion of war was much less resigned, according to experts on the era.

“A great number of people welcomed the coming of World War I,” Andrew Wiest, a professor from the University of Southern Mississippi who specializes in World War I and Vietnam, said. “They felt it would be quick, felt it would be decisive again, based on the very recent history that [Prussia] had fought three very quick, very decisive wars for the unification of the country.”

He said, “Although these countries are armed to the teeth, if you look at their military planning, they all expect to win the war quickly. That was a really naive view of what World War I was fixing to be.”

The previous 50 years of war had been everything World War I was not, and expectations were drastically skewed because of it.

When WWI finally broke out, soldiers dove in prepared to make heroes of themselves.

“They thought that war still provided opportunities for individual heroism and that individuals could control their fate to a greater degree than turned out to be the case, in a war of artillery and extremely large weapons over long distances,” Richard Fogarty, associate professor from the State University of New York at Albany with a concentration on modern European culture, politics, war and military, said. “As

The Rise of Digital Dating

Examining technology’s role in finding love

Elena Haskins, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

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ating in the 21st century has made a departure from waiting for the doorbell or landline phone to ring. Technology now plays a role in the way many people find relationships and hookups, and has allowed people to start relationships at the touch of a button.

Controversy has risen as to whether the use of technology hinders or improves the evolution of relationships. Apps like Tinder and Grindr often serve as a simplified and convenient way to start a relationship, but at what cost?

On Tinder, the user chooses one to six photos to display and inputs personal information and preferences.

Once users establish their profiles, the app uses GPS technology to locate potential partners within a specific radius. Users are able to slide through photos and choose from two icons: either the heart, for a match, or X, to reject.

Grindr works in a very similar way to Tinder but targets gay men. Users submit their photos, a brief profile text to describe themselves and desired age range. Grindr shares potential matches, then allows users to chat, block or favorite matches.

Users can slide past profiles that do not interest them.

Tinder users are notified when the potential partners they approve like them in return. Part of the reason hookup and dating apps such as Tinder have received such strong criticism is the role of visual judgment.

“Tinder is superficial because it’s a system based on what you think of someone’s outward appearance,” Will Truslow, a freshman at Ithaca College, said.

But Tinder has approximately 50 million users, according to a recent report by the New York Times.

In a recent survey of 100 Ithaca College students, in which 81 per-

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cent of respondents were female freshmen, about 50 percent of the students admitted to have used either Tinder, Facebook, Grindr or an online dating website to find a relationship or hookup.

The Concerns Starting Relationships on the Internet Forty-five percent of the surveyed college students said they prefer the dating traditions before the internet and social media played a big role.

Many respondents agreed that when it comes to finding a relationship, the traditional style of meeting and getting to know someone in person is ideal but technology can be useful.

Those in long distance relationships often rely on technology to maintain contact with their loved ones. Yanina Mazurkevich, a freshman at Ithaca College, met her boyfriend in high school and said she advocates for starting relationships in person, but also said she understands the importance of using technology to help strengthen and maintain them.

“We would have never been together if we met online because right now, we’re in a long distance relationship, and our only friend is the internet,” Mazurkevich said. “We fell in love with each other over our conversations and not over the internet.”

In the same survey, when asked their favorite aspects of traditionally starting a relationship, 98 percent of people

chose “Meeting someone in person” and 90 percent chose “Going on dates to determine compatibility.”

“Developing a connection face-toface is more real than over a chat or website,” Stephanie Aanonsen, a freshman at Ithaca College, said. “I am sure [dating apps] can work for some people, but I feel like a true connection does not work like a buffet table, where you can fill in your location, age, likes and dislikes, and similar people will just pop up.”

Aanonsen said she has seen the dark side of online dating. She recalled the nightmare that her aunt experienced using online-chat rooms to find a relationship.

“She has a mental disorder and a paralyzed tongue, so although she can comprehend, read and write, her verbal communication skills are not strong,” Aanonsen said. “She resorted to online chat rooms and Facebook friends to talk to, so they would not have to decipher what she is saying through speech.”

Her online lover sent sweet messages and convinced her to send money so they could “one day be to-

gether,” in what over 3 years added up to $40,000.

“People over the internet are not always who they say they are, and they do not always have good intentions,” Aanonsen said.

The Appeal of Online Dating Many who use online dating tools say hiding behind a screen can make it easier to say and do things one normally wouldn’t do face-to-face.

Twenty percent of survey respondents at the college said they enjoyed the anonymity of hiding behind a screen aspect of the “new, technological style of relationships and hookups.”

Sixty-one percent said they enjoyed the easiness of leaving or ignoring a person, followed by 52 percent who like the convenience of using technology to find a relationship and 48 percent who like the lack of awkwardness aspect of technology.

In 2014, Pew Research conducted a survey in which they asked approximately 3,000 respondents to compare anonymity of their online

freshman at Ithaca College, met her ex-girlfriend on DeviantART, an online art forum for artists and fans.

They were strangers and spoke on forums, then transitioned to using Skype. From there they maintained an online relationship.

“I think many people view long distance, online relationships as ‘not real.’ It’s probably due to the lack of physical contact. But I can say that I knew more about my ex than my friends knew about their boyfriends or girlfriends,” Kazim said. “To sustain a relationship, we had to talk to each other and learn about each other constantly, because that was how we grew closer. I think that’s the beauty of online relationships.”

Recent findings by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal suggest that online dating may actually slightly increase a couple’s likelihood of staying together long term.

Researchers surveyed more than 19,000 individuals who married between 2005 and 2012.

According to the study, “More than one third of U.S. marriages begin with online dating, and those couples may be slightly happier than couples who meet through other means.” ___________________________________ Elena Haskins is a freshman film, photography and visual art major who consistently validates the internet. Email her at ehaskins@ithaca. edu.

Image by Lizzie Cox

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experiences with their offline experiences. Sixty-three percent of respondents agreed that the online environment allowed them to be more anonymous.

In a study conducted by the Princeton Survey Research Associates International, researchers found that “70 percent of online daters agree that it helps people find a better romantic match because they have access to a wider range of potential partners.”

Many couples use apps and social media to initially meet each other but later develop a physical relationship away from the screen.

For Ithaca College freshmen Goldye Horan and Northeastern University freshman Travis Flynn, technology played a huge role in developing their relationship. It all started on the Ithaca College Accepted students page on Facebook.

Horan had messaged Flynn when she saw that they had something in common based on a post he had written on the community page. From then, until they met in person a few months later, the two used Snapchat, Facebook and texting to maintain communication and grow closer together before starting a relationship.

According to recent data from the Pew Research Center, “66 percent of online daters have gone on a date with someone they met through a dating site or app, and 23 percent of online daters say they have met a spouse or long term relationship through these sites.”

Jackie Kazim, a

Marraige & Millennials Prioritizing independent security over commitment

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

By Michele Hau

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t is not scientifically proven how legally declaring that you’re “with someone� will drastically improve your standard of living, nor is marriage proven to be necessary to live a prosperous and fruitful life. As attitudes about the institution of marriage are changing, the importance of marriage reveals itself as hazy to millennials. To put it simply, marriage is not as much of an immediate focus as it used to be.

Upfront

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BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

As Hazel Cills, staff writer for an online teen publication Rookie put it, “Getting married is completely obsolete from my idea of success ... most of the time when I think of success I think about my relationships, and my writing career.”

While more and more articles, reports and statistics compare millennial women to past generations, the notion that time creates change becomes ever more apparent.

As the youngest generation of adults, millennials, also known as today’s 18 to 33-year-olds, are challenging traditional notions of love and marriage. In 1960, the median age of first-time marriage in the U.S. was 21 for women and 23 for men; now it is 26 for women and 28 for men as of 2011 according to a study done by the Pew Research Center titled “For Millennials, Parenthood Trumps Marriage.”

Pew’s findings reflect a clear shift toward delayed marriage. However, that shift may be linked at least in part to higher education, Constance L. Shehan, professor of sociology at the University of Florida, said.

“Well-educated men and women with careers are much more likely to postpone marriage,” Shehan said.

Shehan’s findings echoed a 2001 U.S. Census Bureau report titled “Fertility of American Women.” According to a subsection of the report titled, “Fertility Indicators for Women 15 to 44 Years Old by Selected Characteristics,” the number of women who engage in marriage decreases based on level of education, as does the number of women who have children.

For 20-something men and women, delayed marriage can be attributed to social and economic trends according to The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia’s “Knot Yet” study. According to the study, the economic costs of family life have increased while average wages have decreased, eroding lower and middle-class communities across the nation.

As more employers require new hires to have degrees, society most likely will not return to the days where jobs straight out of high school pay good pensions and wages and the jobs available to most recent high-school grads remain lowwage with minimal-to-no benefits, according to information presented in the study.

In response, college-educated millennial adults are more inclined to seek financial security and stability before marrying and bearing

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children.

“The costs of living have risen and many young people are finding themselves having to catch up,” Shehan said.

However, establishing a sturdy financial base may not be as easy as it seems, seeing as the cost of higher education has skyrocketed alongside increases in tuition and housing. According to the New America Foundation, outstanding student loan debt in the United States currently amounts to over $1.2 trillion, recently exceeding total credit card debt.

Additionally, “both the amount of money borrowed and the percentage of students borrowing from 2011 to 2012 have marked the highest rates of borrowing and indebtedness to date,” according to the New American Foundation. In spite of these increases, students and their families have taken on debt to make up the difference through private and public loans, with the average college graduate with a bachelor’s degree owing about $30,000 in student loans.

“Instead of marriage being a vehicle into adulthood and stability, young adults now see it as the cherry on top, the thing you do once you’re established and financially secure,” Jennifer Ludden wrote in her article, “For more Millennials, It’s Kids First, Marriage Maybe,” published by NPR. Shehan echoed Ludden’s article’s point, “People with and without college educations are having a harder

time finding jobs, makluctant

ing them more reto marry.”

Ludden emphasized the dramatic cultural shift young people are propagating when she asked a millennial couple, “Isn’t marrying young and poor and then working your way up the time-honored way?”

The couple replied, “That seems terrifying at this point. It’s hard

Image by Lizzie Cox

enough to work up just on your own.”

Ludden’s line of questioning revealed an underlying trend among millennials: the essentialism of self-sufficiency and self-reliance. In order to realize their goals, millennial adults are taking steps to further their education and stabilize their work lives before they settle down.

“Investing in education and employment, most millennials feel that they should be done with schooling and established on some sort of career trajectory before getting married,” Sharon Sassler, professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University, said. “But specifically, most young women nowadays believe that they will have to work and support themselves, and so they are investing in their own human capital skills in their late teens and early to mid-20s.”

With women outpacing men in college enrollment by seven percent in 2012 as reported by Pew in 2013, it is safe to say that women are becoming more educated than in generations past. In fact, over a span of 10 years, the educational attainment of women ages 25 to 64 in the labor force has risen substantially from 25 percent to 38 percent according to a 2014 study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because of changing demographic trends in education, Shehan said young women are eager to establish a financial foundation for themselves through their careers before settling down.

Moreover, as women are enrolling in college at record highs and becoming bettereducated than their mothers and grandmothers, their workplace options are expanding allowing for more opportunities. This is evidenced by social and demographic trends outlined in a 2013 Pew study, in which millennial women were surveyed on their attitudes about gender and work. The results show that millennial women share many of the same values about work as their male counterparts; they want a job that they enjoy and that provides security and opportunities for flexibility, thus placing relatively little importance on pay. Although the study relates the success of young women in recent decades to educational gains, it also highlights the institutional biases women perceive as hindering or hurtful to their

“but also to gain a clear sense of purpose about one’s own life and about the kind of person one wishes to have as a life partner.”

In focusing their energy in academic and personal goals, Gerson maintained young women are keenly aware of the challenges facing today’s relationships, and because of this, they are stopping themselves from getting married “too early,” making sure they are comfortable with themselves first.

The majority of Americans ages 18 to 34 still hope to marry later in life, despite the growing trend of delayed marriage, according to a Gallup poll conducted by Frank Newport and Joy Wilke.

The poll results also reveal that the first and second most frequently mentioned reasons as to why people are still single and unmarried is because “they have not found the right person” and because they are “too young/not ready.” The third most frequently mentioned reason was because of “money/financial reasons.” Though the answers were straightforward, the results reveal that even though finances can play a part in delaying marriage, the importance of personal development in oneself and in one’s spouse is equally, if not more, valuable than financial security.

Even as more young adults defer marriage, young people continue to pursue other milestones associated with longlasting relationships. With more than 4 million couples currently cohabitating, according to the 2013 census, cohabitation before marriage is emerging as a rite of passage for millennial adults. In fact, Pew found in 2011 that young adults are more likely to cohabitate than the previous generation, Generation X. “Cohabitation allows for couples to talk about situations such as the possibility of getting pregnant, how to split household expenses and general expectations about gender roles even before marriage,” Sassler said. Cohabitation is, according to Sassler, an “unconventional trial run” before marriage, allowing millennials to receive many of the emotional and practical benefits of being in a serious relationship, without the rings and labels.

Relationship practices such as cohabitation, “alter how individuals view the institution of marriage, the performance of relationships and commitment in general,” Sassler said.

Nonetheless, as the institution of marriage is changing, it is important to recognize that society is changing in many other aspects as well. It is hard for Sassler to say how much delaying marriage plays

a role in lower marriage rates among millennials. This is considering other possible contributing factors such as, “high levels of union instability and divorce, or a woman’s ability to work and support themselves without marriage.”

It is unclear whether young adults are delaying marriage out of choice or out or necessity; however, both contribute to overall marriage trends. Men and women are delaying marriage in part so that they can invest in their own human capital, through going to school and establishing themselves at a job. Those are choicebased reasons for delay, but Sassler contends that a reason as to why young women may not be getting married is because men are not ready to get married either.

“In fact, despite millennials saying they desire egalitarian relationships, some evidence suggests that on many relationship fronts, from hooking up to asking someone out on a date to proposing marriage, men still retain the asking prerogative,” she said.

The reason for the decline in earlier-life marriage is multifaceted. Both Sassler and Román agree that women need marriage less economically; because of increases in higher education rates, it is easier for women to work and support themselves. On the other hand, men, as Sassler said, “don’t need marriage either to be in sexual relationships, since they can live with a partner or engage in serial sexual relationships.” Changes in economics, gender roles and growing acceptance of different kinds of lifestyles have contributed to the creation of the trend in marital delay among young people.

Amidst changing tides of marriage and society as a whole, the choice to marry is still very popular. With that said, relationships themselves are often indefinable.

“My friends and I all have differing relationships with people. Sometimes it’s just having sex and not dating anyone; sometimes it’s just dating several people at once; sometimes it’s monogamous and long term,” Cills said. “It’s completely different depending on the person. If anything, I think people are more open to fluid relationships that aren’t set in stone.” _______________________________________ Michele Hau is a culture and communications major with a concentration in defying social norms. Email her at mhau@ithaca. edu.

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aspirations of stability and security, such as pay equity and responsibilities of parenthood.

Taking into consideration the institutional biases the 2013 Pew study outlines, such as the gender wage gap, occupational segregation and stereotypes women face in the workplace, “I can understand why some people are holding off on marrying, since establishing a career takes time,” Stephanie Román, research assistant at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said.

The high costs associated with having a child can justify delaying marriage among millennial women. Citing an IWPR publication titled “Campus Child Care Declining Even As Growing Numbers of Parents Attend College,” Román said: “Child care is among one of the largest expenses that new parents face, and much has been written about the lack of financially accessible quality child care. Affordable, reliable child care is crucial in raising a child.”

According to a Nov. 7, 2011, Pew Study titled “The Rising Age Gap in Economic Wellbeing,” Americans under 35 are suffering the biggest wealth gap between younger and older Americans in history, making it very difficult for young people to have the means to afford child care while simultaneously paying off their debt.

Despite wavering attitudes as to whether delaying marriage is a good decision or not, “The Knot Yet” study, as well as other research over the last years, has repeatedly demonstrated that women who postpone marriage and make the decision to do so are less likely to divorce and more likely to attain economic stability. It also showed delaying marriage improves the socioeconomic prospects of educated women and their families, allowing women to seek other opportunities for personal development such as careers and relationships.

Marriage has long been considered a deeply personal decision. Before settling down for good, Kathleen Gerson, professor of sociology at New York University, quoted one of the participants in a CNN article regarding her study titled, “No Need to Marry Young”: “‘You need to find out who you are first’ before you are ready to choose a lifelong partner.” Further, Gerson wrote that amid our post-industrial, hi-tech economy, it takes longer to gain personal insights and occupational skills to make a successful transition to adulthood.

“It takes time not just to develop the practical knowledge needed to negotiate a rapidly changing world,” Gerson wrote,

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Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Child Stars After Stardom

A status update on child stars of the ‘90s

Katie Orr, Contributing Writer

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may come as a surprise that any of the young actors from Full House came out on the other side with anything but money and smiles.

Sweetin, however, did not turn out to be the same dancing, chipper, sometimes even corny girl that her character Stephanie Tanner was.

In fact, her adulthood was quite the opposite. According to “Jodie Sweetin: I Snorted Meth at Olsen Twins Film Premier” in Us Weekly, Sweetin began using ecstasy, cocaine and meth after Full House ended. The article stated that she stopped drinking for good in 2008; however, her love life hasn’t been as clean as she has. According to “Jodie Sweetin Files for Legal Separation from Morty Coyle,” in People, she separated from her third husband in 2013. Since the separation, Sweetin has kept a relatively low profile.

Here’s to hoping her future is more Full House than Breaking Bad. Speaking of Full House, whatever happened to that little Michelle?

Well, one half of her — the Ashley Olsen half — walked off of the Full House set unscathed. Her twin, on the other hand, ended up battling an eating disorder after her many roles in children’s movies. According to Us Weekly article “Stars Who Battled Eating Disorders,” Mary-Kate Olsen checked herself into Cirque Lodge rehabilitation center in 2004 to seek treatment for anorexia. As of now, she is a successful fashion designer and engaged.

While it’s mostly the young, female stars who earn a rep for “going down a bad path” after childhood stardom ends, there are in fact male stars who haven’t had the best of luck since retiring from Hollywood as 13-year-olds. Aaron Carter is a perfect example. Carter began performing at the age of 7, and by 13, he was a pre-teen heart throb, causing swooning throughout the country with songs from his hit album, Aaron’s Party. The pressures of being a teen idol clearly caught up

to Carter as an adult, though. Aaron landed himself in rehab in 2011, and in 2013 he filed for bankruptcy.

According to the National Post, Carter found himself in $3.5 million worth of debt. I guess he spent his profits made from Aaron’s Party a little too quickly. As of now, Carter is on tour where he is, yes, still singing songs from that very album and residing with a relative in Florida.

And now for Amanda Bynes. In the past year, she has been charged with driving under the influence, two hit-and-runs, possession of marijuana and was finally held on involuntary psychiatric hold after starting a small fire in a stranger’s driveway. Her struggle with mental illness has unfortunately been thrown into the public eye with the help of social media. Bynes often takes to the Twitter world to discuss the microchips in her brain, the ugliness of pretty much everybody in the world and most recently, her father’s abusive tendencies.

Perhaps it’s the limelight that makes them crazy or maybe it’s the money. Perhaps they never had a choice, but were forced into stardom by their parents. Either way, these child stars ended up being people that their smiling, joke-cracking, pop-song-singing characters would not have dreamed of becoming… but as Jodie Sweetin says in her memoir unSweetined, “Life is not like a Full House episode.” ___________________________________ Katie Orr is a freshman exploratory major who avoided the limelight long enough to stay out of jail. Email her at korr@ithaca.edu.

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Ministry of Cool

ohan. Bynes. Carter.

Years ago, these names were associated with Disney, Nickelodeon and happiness. Now, the names are synonymous with DUIs and mental institutions.

So where exactly did these celebs go wrong?

Lindsay Lohan — her name can be recognized in every American household at this point. One would pretty much have to be living under a rock to not immediately correlate the name “Lohan” with trouble. Over the last several years, Lohan has found herself caught in a myriad of bad, highly publicized situations.

From DUIs to public breakdowns, Lohan is definitely not the squeaky clean red-head everyone once adored in The Parent Trap. For those who don’t keep up with People magazine, Lohan no longer partakes in Disney movies. Whether the last time you saw her was switching places with her twin sister or swapping bodies with Jamie Lee Curtis, nothing about Lohan is PG-rated anymore. Around 2007, she ditched her red hair along with her innocence. According to The Daily Beast in “Lindsay Lohan’s Rap Sheet: Arrests, Car Wrecks, Mounting Debt and More,” since her days of child stardom, Lohan has been to jail six times, rehab five times and spent 35 days on house arrest. As someone who started her tumultuous career at the young age of 3 (when she began modeling) it is no surprise that exploitation got the best of the beloved redheaded talent.

Though it seems as though Lohan will be in the limelight forever, there are some child stars who found themselves walking equally rocky paths but stopped attracting attention once they hit puberty.

Jodie Sweetin is one of those stars.

Her real name isn’t as recognizable as Lohan’s, but she is the face of Stephanie Tanner, a character everybody knows from Full House.

Being a family-friendly sitcom, it

8-Bit Impressionists

Turning technological limitations into modern art

Will Uhl, Staff Writer

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by definition. Miguel Sternberg, pixel artist and co-designer of They Bleed Pixels, said: “When you’re thinking about a design, you’re thinking about what’s going to work well at that very small scale and have some uniqueness to it. After you get down to a certain size, you get only so many permutations.”

Without using cartoonish proportions, smaller-sized characters are forced to use more overt traits and attributes to leave their mark on the viewer.

“The fact that there are these holes that need to be filled in by the player’s mind is a strength, the same way that sometimes writing about a scene, instead of showing a picture, and allowing the imagination to fill in the details — that can be a strength as well as a weakness,” Sternberg said. Pixel art’s ambiguity is a positive trait if it’s used deliberately.

Ignoring minute details allows for extra attention to other areas. “It’s also fantastic as a tool for improving your art in general,” Roberts said. “Often it’s easy to get hung up on rendering and shading, but since most pixel art barely allows more than a shadow and highlight, it makes you concentrate on better form, pose and composition.”

Games like Cave Story trade graphical fidelity for refined, fluid an-

Image by Adriana Del Grosso

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

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orn out of necessity, pixel art has gradually changed from a technical limitation to a stylistic choice.

Typically, it’s used to evoke nostalgia, but a trend has been slowly emerging over the past decade. Pixel art is finding a home as a sort of modern impressionism: precise enough to convey complicated visuals, but abstract enough to allow the imagination to interpret the details.

John Roberts, an artist behind noir stealth game Gunpoint, said: “My favorite thing [in pixel art] is its built-in abstract, interpretive nature... It can sound like a cop-out, but your audience gets to read between the lines. In Gunpoint, Conway’s face is only a few pixels across, which lets the player add traits they think suitable; he might be white, Asian or Hispanic, he might be scowling against the rain, he might be scared and frantic as he punches a guard forever or he might be revelling in the bloodshed.”

Gunpoint lets the player choose from a variety of options in conversation, ranging from curt sarcasm to glib banter. By forgoing realism and opting for pixel art, the player can project his or her own idea onto the character, instead of trying to reconcile his or her image with the canon.

Like any style or medium, pixel art has its limitations too. “I also find I can’t play with loose lines too much, or leave shapes undefined, or use messy, interesting brushes,” Roberts said. “I’d suggest that illustrative styles — like those of one of my favourite artists, Ian McQue — couldn’t survive the transition to a clear, defined pixel art style.”

Originally born out of the low-resolution output of early computers and consoles, pixel art is tied to a lack of detail

imation to great effect. Vibrant environments and characters are deeply expressive and bouncing with life.

“Most people are working in a size where there’s a huge range of possible things you can represent, even if you can’t show the earrings on a character, or a cool belt buckle,” Steinberg said. “There’s still a lot of unique stuff you can do with the shape of character, costume, etc.”

As pixel art moves beyond its origins in technological limitation, it’s pushing to spread beyond gaming.

“It also depends how you define pixel art,” Roberts said. “I’m going to be an art wank for a second and suggest that pixel art is just constructing large designs from small, regular components. Then I can say that Van Gogh was a pixel artist or Lego builders are pixel artists. Both use shapes to suggest unseen detail in an abstracted piece and allow the viewer to interpret them differently.”

“So, basically, I’m just like Van Gogh.” ___________________________________ Will Uhl is a sophomore journalism major who likens the art of E.T. for Atari 2600 to Starry Night Over the Rhone. Email him at wuhl1@ithaca. edu.

Fashion on Repeat

Clothing trends run vintage and nostalgic

Photo by Claire McClusky

Hristina Tasheva, Staff Writer

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lothing isn’t just for protection or warmth.

Obviously, it serves those functions too, but it is much more: It is a way to show the world style and personality. It’s no wonder that vintage and retro styles are still popular today. What once worked before should work again, right?

Retro style is often mixed with modern pieces to give off a vintage or nostalgic vibe. Looking down the streets in New York City or the catwalks in Paris, there are many pieces from or inspired by the ‘20s all the way to the ‘90s.

Kitty Cassetti, employee at the vintage clothing store Petrune in downtown Ithaca, explained which vintage styles are most popular today: “Generally the rule for vintage fashion is 40 years and 20 years.

Styles from 40 years ago come back as vintage fashion while styles from 20 years ago come back as a kind of nostalgic fashion. TV shows and movies also influence styles people want to wear.”

The ‘90s were 20 years ago(!), meaning that they finally reached the vintage benchmark. It’s hard to believe, but that’s why people are

1970s Hippie not hipster — that’s what the ‘70s are bringing to the table.

Following the 40-year rule, ‘70s styles are coming back. Nixon-era fashion can be seen everywhere at music festivals (peep Vanessa Hudgens, aka style icon for music festivals). Look around and you’ll be lost in a sea of loose skirts, flower crowns, peasant blouses, vests, maxi dresses and floral patterns.

Loose and comfortable was the general go-to rule for hippie fashion.

However, not every style carries through. Even though today bell bottoms aren’t necessarily making a big breakthrough, skinny jeans seem to be losing steam to looser, flared pants. Sweaters and long scarfs were also a big deal in the ‘70s; people would base entire outfits on sweaters. Sweaters never really go out of style up in the cold northern states, but it’s good to know we’re looking fashionable at least.

1960s The return of ‘60s style can be thanked in part to Mad Men. The hit TV show even gained the attention of news outlets like CNN to write about the style portrayed on the show. The ‘60s was the beginning of the youth revolution; for the first time it was teens and young adults that decided what was cool to wear, not designers.

One of the biggest cheerleaders for this youth revolution was designer Mary Quant. By creating the mini-skirt and hot pants, Quant encouraged the youth to treat fashion as a game.

The mid-’60s look was fun and characterized by minimalism: A-line skirts and dresses, color blocking and patterned tights are the essential parts of the mod look.

Even mod makeup is coming back; think Twiggy: long eyelashes and big eyeliner.

1920s The Gatsby era. It’s no wonder that after the simmering, dazzling new filim adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grandiose The Great Gatsby ushered in a craze for ‘20s styles. Cassetti mentioned in particular, today’s brides are keen to this look, wanting modern Gatsbythemed weddings.

It’s hard to blame them. The art deco and extravagant style reminds people of a time when life was progressive and good. Dresses with dropped waistlines and fringe are not just for costume parties, Anne Hathaway twirled around in a fringe dress when hosting the Oscars in 2011.

Wear what you like, leave what you don’t, but fashion is doomed to repeat itself. ___________________________________ Hristina Tasheva is a freshman journalism major who is accepting all hand-me-downs. Email her at htasheva@ithaca.edu.

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Ministry of Cool

1990s

suddenly making a run to put on crushed velvet and wear a Nirvana shirt. There is something comforting and nostalgic about your favorite childhood style coming back into fashion. Overalls aren’t just for farmers or toddlers and flannel is no longer only for lumberjacks; flannel can be spotted thrown over a T-shirt or tied on a waist.

Classic ‘90s brands are making a comeback; The Guardian and Quartz found that brands such as Doc Martens and Converse have had some of their best sales during the 2010s. The grunge look in particular is popular. According to the article “The ‘90s Are Back -- And We Have Your Google Searches to Prove It” on The Huffington Post, searches for grunge clothing increased more than 80 percent between July 2012 and July 2013, and said they were climbing rapidly as of August 2013.

So break out the dark lipstick, letterman jackets, acid wash jeans, and even a bucket hat if you want.

RAW SAW

Whiplash

FROM THE

Film Review Jon Roberts

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

Staff Writer

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Damien Chazelle’s latest film Whiplash crescendos just like every great drum solo should. The film is driven by its heart and true-to-life depiction of world class musicians and their struggle to become the best. Chazelle’s own experiences in musical performance is what fuels the writing and packs a punch inside the film. It combines all of this with some of the best editing and performances this year.

Miles Teller plays Andrew, a young man who enrolls in the best music conservatory in the world and will stop at nothing to become the best drummer. The film is less about classes in the conservatory and more about Andrew trying to become the best musician he can be. As Andrew works his way up through the ranks of the conservatory he also tries to balance a new romantic relationship with Nicole, played

by Melissa Benoist. J.K Simmons plays Fletcher, the renowned music composer for the institution’s best ensemble, which Andrew strives to become a part of. He is the force holding Andrew back, yet pushing him to become a legend.

Most of the film is based around the interplay between these two, and the chemistry between them is undeniable.

Simmons is absolutely ruthless in his performance and Teller plays the tortured musician perfectly. Teller himself played most of the drumming in the film and even taught himself how to play when he was 15. To say Teller was the perfect casting for the film would be an understatement.

Simmons has a dominant presence in the film, and just like his students when he enters the room or enters into frame, the viewer is locked onto his every move.

Throughout the film, Andrew slowly tries not only to be the best drummer in the institution but the best in the world.

Fletcher is the crazy, yet passionate leader who cares just as much as the musician himself.

The film shines in every aspect: the editing, the cinematography and obviously the sound of the film. The editing is incredibly tight and when combined with the music, the film becomes a dance within itself. The viewer hops from shot to shot along with the music and goes along on a ride where the only thing to do is hold on. The cinematography, especially during the drumming sequences, consists of many close ups with an intense depth of field so most of the frame is out of focus. The shots are beautifully composed and each frame feels necessary to the performance and the overall film.

The film’s writing is tight and constantly puts its characters into corners that seem inescapable but somehow they sneak out without it feeling cheap. All of this combines into what feels like a spectacle, going beyond just 24 frames per second and becoming something else entirely.

By the time the credits started to roll it seemed like something was missing still.

The film has a strong social commentary about what it means to be successful in a modern world which is a unique theme in cinemas today. But the end left me wanting something else; after such a thrilling ride I wanted just a little calm after the storm. In a way, maybe the message becomes even stronger because of that fact, and maybe that makes the film even stronger.

Pride Throwback Review: Led Zeppelin

The cinematically and aesthetically beautiful British film, Pride, deals with serious matters in uplifting ways. The film is based on a true story about the British miners’ strike that occurred in 1984. Directed by Matthew Warchus, it centers around the gay community as they try to bring attention to the miners and their own rights as working class citizens. Pride is an enjoyable and entertaining film that reveals the raw emotion experienced during that time.

The complexity within Pride is derived from the multiple issues that are entailed. The film Film Review mainly surrounds the 1984 British miners’ strike, homosexuality and the AIDS crisis that Gabrielle Cosentino took place during this time. It illustrates the Contributing Writer struggle of the crisis through Ben Schnetzer’s character, Mark Ashton. While Ashton is struggling with AIDS, he becomes the catalyst of the LGBT activist group, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. The group raises money for the miners and their families living in Wales. Both the miners and the LGBT group face the common struggle of overcoming hegemony and end up joining to fight for their natural human rights. Ashton’s dedication and determination show how passionate he is about the cause, as well as his refusal to let AIDS stand in his way from achieving his goal.

Schnetzer gave an outstanding performance

Led Zeppelin IV Album Review

Hristina Tasheva Staff Writer

a slow quiet melody in the beginning with acoustic guitar as Plant croons, “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold.” As the song progresses, it changes from an acoustic folksy tune to a hard rock song with a flawless guitar solo by Jimmy Page, until it immaculately flows back into a quiet ending with Page singing softly, “And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”

The only possible weaker songs are “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Four Sticks.” There is nothing wrong with these songs, they just happen to be in such a knockout album that they don’t stand out. Both are solid hard rock songs with carrying beats and stunning instrumentals. As a more abstract song, “Four Sticks” has a unique drum beat that was literally created with four drumsticks.

The album finishes off with a thick and heavy rendition of Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie’s blues song, “When the Levee Breaks.”

The song sounds like it is walking through a tar pit as a slow, strong, iconic drum beat carries the sludgy guitar and harmonica. The hypnotic blues rocks song ends the album quite nicely.

There is a reason that Led Zeppelin IV is the second-best-selling album in the United States. The boys knew what they were doing, and as pioneers of heavy metal and hard rock, Led Zeppelin doesn’t disappoint. Led Zeppelin IV has remained a staple in the music industry and this immortal album doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

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Ministry of Cool

In 1971, English rock band Led Zeppelin released an untitled, fourth studio album commonly referred to as Led Zeppelin IV or The Fourth Album. Unlike its predecessor Led Zeppelin III, which received lukewarm reception, the fourth album was a critical and commercial success and can be called one of the greatest rock albums of all time, certainly the band’s best. The album contains a stunning mix of rock and roll, blues, hard rock and folk. There is not a single weak track on the album; every song complements the other and one never overpowers the rest.

The album contained some of the band’s most popular songs, including “Stairway to Heaven,” however even the lesser-known songs like “The Battle of Evermore” are just as strong.

Immediately starting off the album with a bluesy-rock song that’s “Gonna make you sweat/ Gonna make you groove,” is “Black Dog” followed by “Rock and Roll.”

The first folk song comes in with “Battle of Evermore.” The mandolin and acoustic guitar combo create a spellbinding backdrop for the song as Robert Plant and Sandy Denny narrate the story song with a magical, mystical quality. With lyrics like “The queen of light took her bow/ And then she turned to go,” this amazing track effortlessly transports listeners into a fantasy book.

Easily one of the greatest rock songs ever recorded, “Stairway to Heaven” begins with

through his expressive ambition. His character is persistent and believes the miners deserve the money because they need people to support their cause. When the strike of the miners has emerged, Ashton says, “If anybody knows what this treatment feels like it’s us.” His motivation to do the right thing is what makes his character so inspiring. Schnetzer encompasses the role and contributes to the powerful message Pride conveys of coming together for a larger cause.

Not only was Schnetzer’s performance a significant factor for the film’s critical acclaim, but the cinematography was as well. The cinematography expresses the openness of both communities and how they conjoin to peacefully protest against the injustices held against them.

The wide shots throughout Pride outline the important spatial aspects between the masses of the miners and LGBT communities. The color palette present within the final scene is bright and warm in which the costumes and setting is encompassed of colors of the gay pride flag. .

Pride is an enlightening story of overcoming oppression and rising above life struggles. It enriches the audience’s perspective on the controversial topics that are presented. The film demonstrates to the audience that we, as humans, have a voice and need to use it as a tool to advance toward a more equal worldly society.

Pink Floyd The Endless River

Album Review Matthew Lucas

The Squidder

Contributing Writer

Ben Templesmith BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

Comic Review Kellen Beck

Ministry of Cool Editor

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Pink Floyd forever changed the music industry and redefined what rock music could be. While not everything Pink Floyd made was great, some of its best work is not just some of the greatest rock, but among the greatest music in general.

Following 15 studio albums in almost 30 years, Pink Floyd announced that a new album, The Endless River, was to be released in late 2014 using extra material from their 20-year-old jam sessions, and as a partial tribute to keyboardist Richard Wright. This album is not only a reminder of what Pink Floyd was, but also a fantastic work in its own right.

The album’s title couldn’t be any more accurate, as the primarily instrumental music flows like a river, each song seamlessly blending into the next, one not standing out more than any other. It is divided into four sides, the same way as two vinyl records, and each side, consists of various songs, but the songs in this case are more like movements in a larger orchestration than an individual composition. The music itself is pure atmosphere. The album doesn’t ever rock too hard, preferring to be more peaceful and relaxing in nature and tone, but it is an incredible listen. The level of

musicianship makes it difficult to believe that everything in this release is leftovers.

This album is not just a great piece of art, it is a love letter to old listeners of Pink Floyd.

“Allons-y,” part of the third side, takes clear elements from its more traditional rock roots, using a traditional setup of lead and rhythm guitars, bass and drums, with occasional keyboard thrown in, calling back to albums like The Wall. After, “Autumn ’68,” which features organ and keyboard, takes the song away from rock before picking things back up and reprising “Allons-y.” This back-and forth with different styles, instrumentations and genres makes this album sound more sophisticated than previous releases.

After almost 50 minutes of atmospheric wonder and awe, vocals begin to fade in, with faint tones getting louder and louder, leading into “Louder Than Words,” the final and only vocal track on the entire album. The impact of David Gilmour’s vocals after being silent for so long is simply staggering.

The Endless River not only shows what two musical geniuses can do with decades-old material, but that music is a lot more than catchy guitar riffs and easy-to-remember vocals. Music can paint a picture, it can tell a story and it can flow like an endless river.

The majority of humans were unceremoniously exterminated; almost nobody alive remembers what life was like before the squid came. Nobody knew how they came or why, but the alien force wreaked havoc on the world. With his latest graphic novel The Squidder, Ben Templesmith wrote and painted a horrific masterpiece.

Artwork is the strength of The Squidder, although the writing isn’t weak by any means. The graphic novel is all about struggle. The world, presumably Earth, has been overrun by giant, floating, hyper-violent squid monsters. An army of genetically modified men called squidders are sent out to fight tirelessly against the enemy to no avail. One of these squidders, possibly the last one alive, is the main character of the book. The story takes place decades after most of humanity was killed and stopped trying to fight.

For the most part, all hope is lost.

Some humans started worshipping the unstoppable squid, while most of the others tried to live in the shadows. The squidder resents most of humanity for their petty squabbles, but finds a connection and glimmer of hope when he meets a squid priestess wanted by thugs.

Every page is a struggle, gripping and ominous. A deep black surrounds almost every page and panel, a constant reminder of the unknown. It is a deep abyss and Lovecraftian horror encapsulating every

inch of the story.

The art inside the panels is unique and disturbing, combining Templesmith’s use of simple pen lines and unconventional watercolors to convey a rich array of emotions and feelings that pour out of every page. Red dominates the book as people are torn to pieces and reduced to mush from the sharp limbs and powerful acaid spray of their enemies. Greens and yellows flow together to create the rest of the world. Sparse uses of white and blue create powerful scenes and pages that stand out against the stark plight of the world.

Templesmith’s mastery of light and shadow bring out vividly illuminated scenes, with the bleed of the watercolors providing a natural glow where needed. Every page has pristine shading and depth, every character and piece of scenery popping with detail and life.

The chapters flow together into a cohesive tale of the beaten-down hero risking everything to finally put an end to humanity’s depression. The story borders on cliche at times but it drives forward relentlessly into brutal territories with heartfelt themes of loss, hopelessness and surrender.

The hardcover collection of The Squidder, funded through Kickstarter, was released in the middle of its IDW-published trade paperback run. I backed the book after following Templesmith on Instagram and Twitter for months, admiring his artwork and political views.

There’s a First Time for Everything Anonymous

I

having a hard time getting it in. I tried shifting my body and coming in at different angles. It just wouldn’t go in. Any confidence I had was gone. I immediately lost my erection, which made it even more difficult to guide in. It was like trying to blindly maneuver a strand of spaghetti through the eye of a needle while also holding myself up with one arm.

After rolling over and trying to get me going again, and then failing to get it in a few more times, I finally sort of got my mostly flaccid tip inside and immediately came.

It still stands as one of the worst sexual experiences of my life.

I’m just glad I dated this girl for a while before doing it; I can’t imagine the horrific embarrassment of going through all of that with a stranger.

Luckily she didn’t immediately break up with me, and we were able to try again another day.

Unfortunately, when we went to try again, the past failure had only set me up for more failure. The pressure was too much and there was nothing we could do to keep me hard. We tried a few more times over the next couple weeks and the same thing kept happening. I was

very embarrassed, and she was understandably frustrated. After the fourth time, we decided that we should just not try it and not even think about it for a few weeks until my mind could get far enough away from my inadequacies.

About six weeks after the initial disaster, we agreed to have another go. We were having fun and kissing when I felt that I could do it. I managed to block out all of the things that were weighing me down and got on top. I slowly and carefully found my way inside. It wasn’t the best sex, or even close, but I did it. I think the struggle of getting there made the triumph that much sweeter. I felt very accomplished, and now we could confidently say that we were no longer virgins. I can proudly say that I have never had an issue since.

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Ministry of Cool

don’t believe most people’s “first times” were as magical and wonderful as they always dreamed them to be. At least mine wasn’t. In fact, it was so bad and unsuccessful that I don’t even think I can technically call it my first time.

My then-girlfriend and I had been in a relationship for quite some time, and both of us were virgins. After talking about having sex for a while, the day came when we thought it would be good to try it out and do away with our sexless selves.

We were in her bed and doing all of the usual foreplay things. Thoughts of the coming experience were swimming through my head. I had nerves. Oh boy, did I have nerves.

On top of that, I am very selfconscious and have a shy bladder.

I can only pee at a urinal if there is nobody else in the bathroom. This does not make for the most confident man the moment he is going to have sex for the first time.

When we felt we were ready, we got into the missionary position, and I tried to awkwardly fumble my way into this girl. I wouldn’t call my penis small by any means, and I was

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

ONS. PROSE&CONS. PROS

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19: Arson State

By Olivia Smialek

A deadly fire destroyed a home in Pittston early this morning, leaving six homeless and one dead. Firefighters managed to contain the blaze, but the home is in ruins. Police were unable to determine the cause of the fire but do not suspect foul play...

I muted the old television as the kitchen phone rang. The endless slew of fire and murder could wait a few minutes. Few people called our house phone, deciding to use my husband Rob’s cell or mine. An image of a large, tanned man appeared on the screen as I picked up the receiver. He looked about thirty, likely foreign. Arrested for murder, the headline proclaimed. At least it wasn’t another arson charge. Those seemed endless. I returned my attention to the phone.

“Hello?” I answered. Silence replied on the other end.

“The offices of your local representative would like to remind you to vote ...” a monotone voice droned. I spared the machine a few minutes of its battery life and hung up. Those skeeves didn’t have the nerve or decency to promote themselves, so they made a robot do it. Playing House couldn’t take too much time out of their busy schedules. It didn’t matter which one of those liars I chose in the booth. We’d still be stuck in a rut full of bad roads and robo-calls.

I returned to the couch and unmuted the television. A barrage of advertisements for local and corporate businesses blared from the weak speakers. My hands wrapped around the mug of lukewarm coffee sitting on the end table. It brought back memories of late college nights and hammering out papers until 3 a.m. How many nights had passed since then? Thousands? I wonder what became of those other panicked, oversexed kids. Perhaps they remember the heaters breaking in the dorm or fleeing to the library to escape a night of hypothermia. I bet they’re happier than I am.

Once the news ended, I pushed myself off the couch and walked to the shower. There was no reason or place to look presentable.

Most days, I didn’t bother changing out of my sleep clothes until late in the afternoon. Bills and cooking hardly require business casual.

I checked the heat: 69 degrees. Why did I feel so cold? Rob said I’d get used to Pennsylvania’s long winters after the first one. Fifteen disproved his theory. I hated the endless sheets of black ice covering the roads, the barren, gray skies pressing down on us, and the hard, bitter people telling me to stop complaining. The rest of the world forgot this place the minute the coal ran out. Many of the children abandoned their relics of families to wither away while they found a better life; industry died with the coal. Who could blame them for leaving?

Somehow, this place blinded Rob with its rolling hills and seemingly bountiful opportunities. I remember his young, tanned face glowing with excitement as he told me about the lovely town near his contractor’s headquarters, with its little shops and friendly people. When did we have that conversation? I remember we still lived in New Mexico, near Santa Fe. I’d graduated from my Master’s program, and he’d begun working for a small upstart designer outside the city. We lived on the edge of the city in a small house not much bigger than an apartment. Around us stretched the desert and miles of endless sand and sky. I sat on the porch every morning, writing a few words before work and admiring the sunrise. He’d come behind me and press a cup of coffee between my hands, kissing the back of my neck. I swear, that man knew how to make me blush. What happened to that life? How many winters killed those memories? Does Santa Fe still exist?

I walked to the fridge and scanned the shelves of leftovers: nothing for dinner tonight. Time to go to the store. Hopefully I could beat the lunch rush. I pulled on some clothes and a coat and dragged myself to the ancient Taurus sitting in the driveway. Jamming the key in the ignition, the car coughed to life and pushed a feeble wave of warm air out of the main vents. Please don’t break. Repairs, like every other basic necessity, meant coughing up more money we didn’t have. I resigned myself to sit in the cold and drove out of our development and into the dingy streets, jostled up and down by countless unrepaired potholes.

Arriving at the market, I grabbed a small cart and pushed my way through the all-too familiar white tiled floors. What did I need here? Right, some kind of meat for dinner. I walked back to the meat coolers, crossing my fingers for something on sale. Something jammed into my heel, pushing me forward into the main aisle. An older man in a plaid shirt and suspenders drove his cart around me, glaring at me.

“Quit blocking the way,” he growled in a dense, scratchy voice, muttering something about stupid yuppies under his breath. I began to apologize, then stopped myself and walked toward the meat. I had nothing to say to him. I glanced over the rows of steak and ground beef for something affordable, forcing myself away from the poultry section. I could hear Rob’s voice nagging in my head.

“Chicken again? We always have that. Can’t we have something different?”

If he wanted something different, he could leave this hellhole and cook it himself. Chicken was buy one get one free. He would have to live with it. I chose two packs from the shelf and dropped them in my cart, walking aimlessly down the aisles for a while. Cold air slipped beneath my coat and made my skin crawl. Even in buildings, the cold air manages to suck the life from me. I loaded my items onto the checkout counter, handing my membership card to the cashier. A loud crash sounded from the aisle next to us. The old man grumbled about something.

“Stupid bitch,” he snapped. “Can’t even bag a damned carton of eggs. I bet this was the only job you could get. You should be ashamed.”

The cashier and I exchanged a glance of understanding and exasperation. She asked me if I wanted paper or plastic. Paper would suffice. I had ten cents off of gas. She thanked me, and I responded in turn. The old man stared at me, twisting his old, wrinkled face into a mask of contempt. I ignored him for now and walked to the parking lot.

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Prose & Cons

Hours later, I stood outside of a small house 15 miles from my own. My husband barely heard me leave after he fell asleep on our couch to the sound of failed propaganda and too many opinions. Beneath the streetlights, I could barely see the stars. The wind blew gusts of warm air onto my body, feeding the blaze that engulfed the small ranch house. A small grin came over my face as the sirens wailed three streets down. Walking away from my handiwork, I remembered bonfires in the desert, piping hot coffee and the barbecue chicken I’d eaten earlier that evening. They kindled a small fire in me, enough to comfort me in the frigid Taurus. Even with a broken heater, the car felt like Santa Fe. An early morning fire destroyed the home of an elderly man in Luzerne County. Firefighters say that seventy-five-year old Joseph Kowalchek lost his home around 11 p.m. last night. They were unable to determine a cause, but suspect that the blaze started because of some paper bags left near a gas stove he’d forgotten to turn off. Kowalchek remains in stable condition and did not wish to comment on the fire.

Pashmina bazaar

by Gillian Wenzel

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

The scents Or slightly raked meat Souring in the tarnished air These grime beats These balding men Caring cargo Owed to the city air Chest pieces and muffled languages Ensnarled in the ancient torso Enveloping curls of culture Too rich for my western mind Gourds and wheels Spinning and brimming To this hipster decoupage It asks for my two cents My two senses Craving the obscene And demanding clarity From the tip of my nicotine fingertips Bless me Blessed be The fog horns of delinquency That channel through my universe And into this university chatter It’s universal As grandmothers pass my busy mind And travel onward Bartering for my ripe crys Holding survivordom over the clouds Hovering here This village chaos Holds me now As the calm keeps running Knocking on my door 11:22am 10/18/14 GZRW

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The Last Time He Kisses You

by Rebecca Dutsar

You will know this is the last time by how slowly the train pulled away seconds after his lips drew back from yours and you opened your eyes.

You will want to die and wish to lie back in the coffin, long and narrow, with nothing but the smell of mahogany wood, tease of occasional passing breeze, and the memory of your two lips pulled together and the fireworks that should have gone off.

The last time he kisses you you will wait, eyes round and hopeful, to see those big colored sparks in the sky.

You will hold your breath and swear you saw them go off and swear you heard children laughing across the cool grassy meadow, but it was only a firefly, quick and promising, buzzing away from the graveyard, and you were not looking close enough to reach out and catch it as they lower you down.

Prose & Cons

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The social justice parade is quick to tell protagonists in media are too white and too male.

The handicapped and the gays have yet to be found on the jacket of novels, or the posters in town.

Bundles of blogs have made it their crusade To end behemoth publisher’s patriarchal ways.

To make minorities in comics and video games abound only then, will their struggles resound.

But for all pundits in pursuit for the politically correct and the disgust their articles mean to affect, their ink would be better spent not in spite but penning the tales they want others to write.

DO-IT-YOURSELF CULTURE

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

by Sam Kamenetz

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Poor Thing

by Samantha Brodsky

Daddy says Mommy is dreaming good dreams. She doesn’t sleep at home anymore.

Daddy says it’s better that way. That she’s more comfortable in her bed at the hospital, but I don’t see how she can be comfortable there. The bed rolls around and only has one pillow.

I go visit her every Wednesday and Saturday with Daddy. She never moves. She’s always frowning and sad looking, and her hair doesn’t look like hair anymore. It’s like the spaghetti she used to make for me. But before she puts it in the pot. The kind you can break into pieces and nibble on. Mommy looks like herself but more wrinkly like one of those soggy, gray rats Roscoe brings in from the backyard. But I tell Mommy she’s still pretty. Tell her she’s still my favorite.

Daddy says she can hear me, she’s just too tired to open her eyes.

When Daddy goes outside to talk to the nurses I always whisper to Mommy that Daddy makes me eat food that comes frozen and in a box. Or that Daddy can’t tuck me in right. Or that Daddy likes to yell things, sometimes at me, sometimes at nobody at all. I try holding her hand through all the tubes that look like pipe cleaners sticking and twisting into her skin. I try rubbing her fingers until they’re warm, tell her I’ll bring her soup for when she’s awake again.

And some gloves too. There’s this big screen that looks like a TV next to the rolly bed. It has all these little buttons all over and makes noise like it’s honking or it’s hungry. Sometimes it growls like it’s mad. I once asked a nurse if she could take it away because all the beeping is probably scaring Mommy. I also asked if she could take away all the wires because they make Mommy look like she’s an alien. I don’t like them. Not one bit. There’s even one stuck up her nose that makes her chest puff up and sink down, and it sounds like she’s always trying to blow into a tissue. Like she’s in a huff.

Daddy has this lady over a lot. I call her Red Lips and she calls me “kid.” He tells me to sit at the kitchen table and eat my SpaghettiOs or my Oreos and to be a good angel and to stay there. So I do. Even after I lick the spoon over and over until all the meat sauce is gone, I stay until he comes back downstairs. Red Lips never really looks at me. She tells Daddy I’m too young to be sitting by myself and why can’t I just stay at Granny’s? Daddy always gets serious with her and tells her to shut up. Red Lips comes to the house even after Daddy’s mean to her.

Once Red Lips came with us. To visit Mommy I mean. Her tall, pointy shoes were all clank-clanky and her lips were bright and sort of puckered. I tugged at her coat and asked her if she thought Mommy was going to wake up. She nodded a little. But didn’t say much. She wouldn’t even look at Mommy. Her face was all twisted, and she was holding onto Daddy like she couldn’t stand on her own.

“I’m five today,” I tell her.

“You poor, poor thing,” she says.

Prose & Cons

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DUST. SAWDUST. SAWD BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

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Satire threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

Second Time’s a Charm

Classic Movie Sequels That are Better Than the Originals Rachel Maus, Sawdust Editor

Grease 2 With none of the charm or talent of the original Rydell High gang, we return to the scene with the new Pink Ladies and T-Birds, lead by Michelle “My Only Other Musical Credit will be the remake of Hairspray” Pfieffer and Rex Manning from Empire Records.

It’s just like the original “change for the person you like” moral, but with no memorable songs whatsoever.

Leprechaun 2: Back 2 tha Hood This film soars not only because of the outstanding realism of the Leprechaun’s journey before he goes to space, but for the quality dialogue. “A friend with weed is a friend indeed, but a friend with gold is the best I’m told.” Classic.

Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World Who doesn’t love historical accuracy in a Disney movie?

Pocahontas never really saved John Smith from her father’s tomahawk of doom, but she did travel to England with the dashing John Rolfe to negotiate with the snooty Brits! Like Grease 2, this Disney sequel leaves no singable songs to belt out in the shower, so you won’t bother your roommates anymore!

Spider-Man 3 The gang returns for the final installment of the first Spider-Man trilogy and this time Spidey has three villains to take care of. Topher Grace becomes the least-threatening Venom in the history of the comics, the principal from Easy A is a mutant sandman and Dave Franco’s weird older brother is Green Goblin 2.0. Combine that with emo Peter Parker and you have something that is at least better than The Fantastic Four.

Blues Brothers 2000 What better way to replace a comedy legend like John Belushi with another John – Goodman, that is! The film opens with Ellwood getting released from jail (just like Jake did in the first installment) and he finds out that both his brother and surrogate father, Curtis, are dead. So funny, right?! He and John Goodman reunite the band, once again, to battle the Ruskies.

Blair Witch Project 2: Book of Shadows This one takes everything original and creative about the first film and completely changes everything about it! The POV/ documentary style? Gone! The mystery of what the Blair Witch is? Gone! What remains is a bunch of kids deciding that they will discover what “really happened” in the first film and then freaky shit goes down with no explanation.

S. Darko This one is just as confusing as the original, Donnie Darko, but with less of a point!

Set eight years after Donnie’s death, this film attempts to replicate the same blurring of space and time and parallel universes through the eyes of Samantha, who is actually reprised by the same actress who plays her in the original. ___________________________________ Rachel Maus is a senior cinema and photography major who is looking forward to The Fault in Our Stars II: On a Rollercoaster to Hell. Email her at rmaus1@ithaca.edu.

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Sawdust

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer The first film was a cinematic masterpiece featuring every ’90s heartthrob ever that we never thought we would see again, but fear not! Jennifer Love Hewitt’s boobs are back and bigger than

ever! And if you think this movie will give you any closure for the first one, you’re in luck because it answers no questions but this time sets them on an island with Brandy!

Summer Girls: My First Eargasm

The song that singlehandedly defined a generation Jodi Silberstein, Staff Writer

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999 was a beautiful year for many reasons. Freddy Prince Jr. was doing things, and Britney Spears was still a girl, not yet a woman. And while we were all playing Oregon Trail and hitting each other with slap bracelets, Lyte Funky Ones, better known as LFO, was creating a song so stunning, lyrics so genius, it changed the rap game forever.

Rich Cronin, Devin Lima, and Brad Fischetti stepped out on the scene in 1995. With bandanas, blonde spiked hair, and all-denim everything, these guys embodied all that made up their era. By 1999, LFO had the fine art of rhyming mastered. Their song “Summer Girls” revolutionized what we knew to be music. When everyone thought the internet was going to explode and kill us all, it was “Summer Girls” that pulled us through, “Summer Girls” that gave us the courage we needed to continue on.

The first verse begins: “Hip Hop Marmalade spic and span/ Met you one summer and it all began/ You’re the best girl that I ever did see/ The great Larry Bird Jersey 33.” Yes. These words bring to mind a quote said by that Jamaican guy, Bob Marley: “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” That’s exactly what this song does. It just feels so good, so right.

These true intellects casually refer to William Shakespeare as Billy, because when it comes to poetry, Bill is a peer, if not someone to look down upon.

“Like the color purple, macaroni and cheese, Ruby red slippers and a bunch of trees/ Call you up but what’s the use?/ I like Kevin Bacon, but I hate Footloose...When I met you, I said my name was Rich/ You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch.” These words would make the heart of Buzzsaw Prose & Cons editor Robert S. Hummel skip a beat, and bring tears to his eyes.

LFO had other songs and went on to release another album after this, but who cares? Nothing could ever top this masterpiece. When the band’s front man/songwriter, Rich Conin, sat down and wrote the words, “There was a good man named Paul Revere/ I feel much better baby when you’re near,” did he know the amount of lives he would be saving?

Conin passed away from Leukemia in 2010. My guess is that heaven was missing a genius, and my hope is that Conin is up there right now schooling John Lennon and watching over all the girls who, for reasons way beyond me, are still wearing Abercrombie and Fitch. _______________________________________ Jodi Silberstein is a senior journalism major who knows that she’ll never love anyone the way she loves denim bucket hats. Email her at jsilber1@ithaca.edu.

The Presidency on Which the Sun Never Sets Remembering our nation’s greatest leader

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Will Uhl, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

t was the best of times, it was the actually-better-than-best of times. Children were frollicking through the streets, the evils of socialism were a distant, imperceptible threat and the hills were alive with the sound of Frank Sinatra. Truly, it was the gilded age of America — a high from which this pathetic husk of a country has yet to match. It was the era of Ronald Wilson Reagan.

It might be hard for the pinko youth of today to imagine, but before they were born, America was a bastion of wholesome values. For example: equality! Reagan didn’t discriminate, he started wars against everything! We had a cold war with the commies, a hot war with the Iranians — hell, he even started a war against drugs! And for the saps that think it’s “failed,” when was the last time you saw a drug walk the streets of America? They don’t even have a

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seat at the UN! He fought tooth and nail against the Reds back in the day, and boy was that great. He didn’t deceive us into thinking it was a complicated conflict of ideologies and identities; they hated us for our freedom, and we had a duty to crush the “Evil Empire.” Here’s a lesson for any liberal morons reading this: evil is bad, and America is good.

Reaganomics was a breath of fresh air for America. I’m not really sure what was trickling down from the rich, but whatever it was was slightly rancid, viscous, and the most goddamned American thing I’ve ever felt since a bald eagle shit on my head.

Soviet sympathizers might criticize him for tripling the national debt, but they’re misunderstanding America’s international relations. It’s like the classic, all-American hero Homer Simpson and his commie wuss neighbor, Flanders — we take, and

we “borrow,” and when they think they have a right to what was really ours all along, we laugh all the way home and give more guns to freedom fighters in the Middle East.

When people ask why we love Reagan, it’s tempting to look at superficial details, such as the social and economic impact he had on the country, or on how his foreign policies have shaped the modern world.

Instead, let’s look at what really matters: he looks like a really nice guy.

He was even an actor before he was president! I wonder how those two professions translate? In the end, he totally looked like a really sweet grandfather, and that’s what counts. ___________________________________ Will Uhl is a sophomore journalism major who firmly believes that every president should look at least somewhat like Droopy Dog. E-mail him at wuhl1@ithaca.edu.

#Things90sKidsForget

They actually grew up in the early 2000s Grace Rychwalski, Staff Writer

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Image by Lizzie Cox

mean it didn’t happen when I say it did!”

The outrage has since escalated into demonstrations, as ‘90s kids have taken to the streets to protest what they are certain is true.

Chanting things such as: “1990 to 1999, your memories are just as valid as mine,” the protesters occupied major cities in the United States, including New York City and Los Angeles.

However, the once-peaceful protests have turned violent as things have progressed. The issue of whether the memories are truly coming from the ‘90s has fallen by the wayside as those born in the early 1990s, whose memories truly represent the decade,

have become

more outspoken, saying that those born aft e r 1995 a r e “not r e a l ‘90s kids,” which has sparked serious conflict among the demonstrators.

J a n e t Thomas, born in 1990, said: “The

real issue here is age elitism. We’re all ‘90s kids, no matter the year we were born, but serious upheaval has begun due to the segregation of post-1995 kids from the rest of us.

Although, yes, the memories of those people are most often from the 2000s and not the ‘90s, they shouldn’t be revoked of their title! That is, unless they were born in 1999. It doesn’t even count at that point.”

Although ‘90s kids are learning to cope with their ‘00s identities, the bitter fights between themselves and the “true” ‘90s kids are escalating. If these conflicts are not resolved within the coming months, it may result in what CNN is predicting as “The Second Civil War.” There are rumors that Michael Jordan, beloved star of the 1996 hit Space Jam, will be able to bring these two worlds together once more, as he did with liveaction and cartoon in the ‘90s, using not only his rad basketball skills, but also his nostalgic power over ‘90s kids to create a compromise.

However, this has not been confirmed by any reliable sources.

As we march into this new era of technological uncertainty, it can only be hoped ‘90s kids will find peace by banding together once again over their shared nostalgia for that squiggly pattern (you know the one). ___________________________________ Grace Rychwalski is a sophomore writing major who is saving herself for the Red Power Ranger. Or Michaelangelo. Or Lola Bunny. Email her at grychwa1@ithaca.edu.

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Sawdust

o-called ’90s kids have taken to rioting after discovering that most of their memories are, in fact, from the early 2000s.

Having been born between the years of 1995 and 1999, most of these millennials mistook their early childhood memories of play as being from those years, which they are developmentally incapable of remembering. Shows like the Rugrats, Courage the Cowardly Dog and SpongeBob SquarePants, as well as toys like the Game Boy Advance, Sega Dreamcast and ChatNow walkie-talkie cellphones all have origins on the cusp of the new millennium, whether it be 1999 or 2000.

After these findings were reported to the public and subsequently posted on blogs such as BuzzFeed, FuckYeah1990s and Things90sKidsRemember, bitter outcries came from the public: “What do you mean I’m not a ’90s kid?! That’s when I was born!” Amber Kosh cried, born in 1996. “I remember jelly sandals… Kind of… I mean, I’m pretty sure that there are pictures of me wearing them. Or was that my older sister? Anyway, I knew that they existed! I was there!”

“I can’t even believe these allegations,” Ian Cannon retorted, born in 1998. “I vaguely remember Moon Shoes! I know for sure that the idea of Wonder Balls was first presented to me as a child and not as an adult who has seen them on Tumblr for the past five years!

How dare anyone try to take my childhood from me?

Just because my formative years are blurred from my lack of reliable memories doesn’t

#Instahistory

Traditional class removed in favor of social media Rachel Mucha, Staff Writer

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BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue

Image by Grace Rychwalski

local high school announced last week that, starting this upcoming spring semester, history classes will be completely removed from the curriculum. Instead of attending daily classes where students learn about the making of our country, the civil rights movement, the world

wars and other outdated, irrelevant topics, a weekly course will be offered on Thursdays.

This new class will simply be called #TBT, and during these meetings, students will be encouraged to share old photos and memories of themselves with their classmates.

“It’s about time this happened,” the principal said. “Too much emphasis

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on history is not good for students.

We need to teach them that you can’t change the past, so there’s really no point in learning about all those horrible things.”

Students are quite enthusiastic about this alternative class. “It will be so great to get some opinions on the perfect filter for Instagram,” sophomore Jamie Lee said. “I can never decide between Hudson and Valencia.”

A f t e r the class shares their throwback p i c t u r e s and they collectively vote on filters, captions, and hashtags (#blessed and #live are very popular choices), the students post the pictures to Instagram.

If they are able to complete this a ssi gnm ent, t h e y automatically get an A+.

Extra credit goes to the student who receives the most likes.

The class won’t only focus on Instagram.

Twitter is a n o t h e r popular way to share throwback pictures. “It’s important we teach them about Twitter, too,” teacher Mrs. Smith shared. “This way, they can get some writing practice in, but since they are limited to 140 characters, it won’t exhaust them as much as the traditional history research papers.”

Parents agreed with this as well.

“My son was always so stressed out when he had to write those five-page papers, and I don’t blame him. On the nights before those were due, he wasn’t even able to watch his TV shows or play Call of Duty with his friends. It really wasn’t fair.”

However, this class won’t be all fun and games. Students will have to do a few presentations throughout the year; they must gather their favorite celebrity throwbacks and explain to the class why the pictures they picked are so important and what impact they have had on their lives.

“George Washington has been dead for so long,” Smith said. “Looking at pictures and hearing stories about him doesn’t make sense anymore.

But seeing a throwback of young, overweight Ryan Seacrest or January Jones with her mullet will really help educate the class about the world today.”

This course will also help to save money in the school’s budget.

Textbooks will not be required and students will have to provide their own laptops and iPhones. While this is a great expense to parents on a fixed income, many are glad to shell out the big bucks in order for their children to partake in this necessary class. “I was much angrier last year when I was paying less and my children were learning more,” one father said. “But now my children will get their hashtags and subtweets straight, and what more can a parent ask for?” ___________________________________ Rachel Mucha is a sophomore journalism major who wanted to propose a new major that is all about Twitter, but then found out that Emerging Media was already a thing.

Email her at rmucha1@ithaca.edu.

Obituary for a Fallen Star Lizzy Rosenberg, Staff Writer

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URHAM, NORTH CAROLINA, Nov. 10, 2014 — America has lost beloved 1990s child star Jovian Zoboo Mafu at a young age of 20 in his birthplace of Durham, North Carolina. After a nasty and fatal battle with kidney failure, the treasured actor was known for being tremendously cuddly and teaching children extremely valuable lessons about forest wildlife. As a fruit and nature enthusiast, Zoboo Mafu spent the majority of his time swinging through the trees and foraging through bushes in his free time. He was particularly talented in the art of grooming and frequently practiced on fellow co-stars and family members.

Zoboo Mafu emerged from the womb on May 14th, 1994 in

Durham, North Carolina, to two loving parents, Flavia and Nigel.

Growing up, Jovian Zoboo Mafu was extremely charismatic, and those in his environment frequently encouraged his acting career. Jovan attended Duke University where he learned a variety of life skills and truly “grew into his own fur.” As a true method actor, Zoboo Mafu’s talents were quickly discovered for a career on the small screen.

Though Jovian Zoboo Mafu’s two fellow co-stars and acting agents, Martin and Chris Kratt, were the creators of his PBS program, they say that Jovian truly carried the program to success. After auditioning several groups of young potential icons for the show, the Kratt brothers chose Jovian for his good looks and docile demeanor. The second Jovian entered auditions, the

Kratts knew he was “the one.” In the words of co-star Martin Kratt, “The ‘do spoke for itself.”

Aside from leaving behind two nostalgic co-stars, all of Generation Y, The Duke Lemur Center and a lost syndicated PBS television show, Jovian is survived by seven children and six grandchildren. Jovian Zoboo Mafu, better known as Zoboomafu, was an extremely talented lemur that will forever be frolicking in our hearts and swinging through our primateloving souls. ___________________________________ Lizzy Rosenberg is a junior integrated marketing communications major who hopes to be reunited with her lemur friend in the great Animal Junction in the sky. Email her at erosenb3@ithaca. edu.

Buzzsaw Asks Why...

... people are still pretending there’s a war on Christmas Rachel Maus, Sawdust Editor

‘

Tis the season for decking the halls and caroling of the bells and little drummer boys drumming and lords a leaping and “War on Christmas” hysteria.

I have been hearing non-stop holiday variety on the radio for weeks.

Black Friday now starts on Thursday. We have all but obliterated an entire holiday that is supposed to be about being thankful for what we have just to save a few bucks on flat screen TVs and Beats by Dr. Dre that, let’s be honest, are not gifts you’re giving.

How many holiday albums are released every year? We can always count on Michael Bublé and Josh Groban around this holly jolly time, but with each new season comes more covers of classics by artists new and old. For fuck’s sake, ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas? They find Christmas movies for every damn day of the month.

A Christmas Story is put on 24 hour repeat.

There is an entire Christmas Spectacular in Rockefeller Center that includes lighting a colossal evergreen tree (the tallest one ever was 100 feet, this year it’s 85).

You want to know what the real tragedy is? It’s not that we’re maybe becoming more inclusive of other religious practices, because one step into literally any store will show you exactly how proportionately we care about Hanukkah. Like, wow you gave them a whole shelf! And it’s certainly not that some people prefer to write “X-mas” and “take the ‘Christ’ out of ‘Christmas’” because Jesus was born in mid-June more likely than not. Bishops in 4th century Rome used the December 25th date to correspond with the winter solstice and traditional pagan rituals in order to convert the heathen sun-worshippers to Christianity.

No, the real tragedy is that we’ve become so consumed with greed that we have turned this holiday, regardless of whether you see it

as a celebration of Jesus Christ o r simply a season of giving a n d loving thy neighbor, into a commercialized circus wrought with consumerist greed and insincere holiday tidings.

As I sign off my last BAW as editor of Sawdust, I’ll leave you with the most clichéd of all the holiday Grinch-isms, but it’s one that you assholes seem to have forgotten nonetheless: “Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” Yeah, maybe. And maybe next time you start running your mouth about why we’re no longer forcing little non-Christian boys and girls to chant along to “The FIrst Noel,” I’ll refrain from punching you right in your reindeer games.

Sawdust out for the last time.

Images by Lizzie Cox

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BUZZSAW: The Throwback Issue