The Lost Issue

BUZZSAW Lost May 2021

if found, please return to Williams 323

comment It’s late at night. You’re walking back to your apartment when you realize somewhere along the way you’ve taken a wrong turn. Something crunches under your foot. Dead leaves, you think?

You look down. No. A magazine.

With trembling hands, you leaf through this relic of the ancient past. There are reminders of humor and excitement, of injustice and inequality. You wonder how many others have turned these slick pages.

Maybe they had the same thoughts you’re having, that to be alive right now is a little like being lost on a college campus at midnight. Maybe they felt some semblance of peace knowing that somewhere out there in the darkness, there is a chance things can become better, and that in their own little and big ways they can try to make things better themselves. Or maybe they felt frustrated that things were still the same. Maybe they can feel both things at once, and maybe you feel that way too.

Every issue is a record of things that shouldn’t be forgotten. From the strange world of Spring 2021, here are some for you.

Managing Editor News & Views Ministry of Cool Prose & Cons Sawdust Layout Art Cover & Dividers MOC

Back Cover Copyediting Web & Social Advisor Founders

Audra, Kevin, and Mae— Later, Gators.

Audra Joiner Rachael Powles Brennan Carney Guadi Fanelli Greta Unetich Sarah Borsari Quinn Karlok Mae McDermott Rachael Powles Adam Dee Mae McDermott Hannah Epstein Quinn Karlok Kevin Gyasi-Frempah Julia Batista Carlos Figueroa Abby Bertumen Kelly Burdick Bryan Chambala Sam Costello Thom Denick Cole Louison

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.

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News & Views 4 Current events, local news and quasi-educated opinions.

Upfront 17 Selected dis-education of the month.

Ministry of Cool 23 Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Prose & Cons 27 Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

Sawdust 32 Threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

special features Academic Prioritization Program: Remember This Time................pg 7

Buzzbyes.......................................................................................pg 21 3

news&views

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The

Lost Amendment The Long and Winding Road to Equal Rights // by George Christopher, Staff Writer; art by Adam Dee, Art Editor

S

o far, the U.S. Constitution has been amended 27 times.

But there have been several proposals to amend the constitution that have been lost. Whether it’s the “Titles of Nobility Amendment” which would have made it illegal for an American to accept a title of nobility from a foreign power, or the “Balanced Budget Amendment” which would require a balanced budget every year, or the “Federal Marriage Amendment” which would’ve banned gay marriage throughout the U.S. Some of these proposed amendments are bygones of a long ago era, and others are simply abandoned projects from still-existing special interests. However, one amendment which came oh so close to ratification that is still being discussed is the Equal Rights Amendment.

The amendment which was first written in 1923 by women’s rights activists Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman, would enshrine in the U.S. Constitution equality before the law regardless of sex. This amendment would’ve secured all rights women had not been ensured in the 19th Amendment, which only granted women the right to vote.

At first, this amendment seemed to be a no-brainer, even by 1970’s standards. For once, slow-moving federal politicians weren’t the main problem, and it was passed by the U.S. Congress with a 7-year deadline to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. Many state legislatures quickly did so, and it appeared the ERA would coast to ratification. Enter Phyllis Schlafly.

Schlafly fought for what she called the right of women to be “in the home as a wife and mother.” Interestingly enough, as Schlafly was traveling all over the country saying this, she had 6 children at home, but let’s not talk about that. Hypocrisy notwithstanding, Schlafly was ultimately successful, as the ERA failed to be passed by its initial deadline and missed an extension out to 1982. Five states even rescinded their ratification, although it’s unclear if this is even legally possible.

Schlafly did this by preying on fears of expanded abortion rights, women in the draft and gender-neutral bathrooms.

Ironically, Schlafly’s fight didn’t prevent any of these things

from coming to the forefront. We now have gender-neutral bathrooms and women in the military. And while pro-choice advocates could benefit from an Equal Rights Amendment, I personally see no reason why the six conservative justices currently on the Supreme Court would have a hard time skirting around it.

So, is the fight over? Not really. The necessary threefourths of American states have ratified the amendment with Nevada, Illinois and Virginia all doing so in the last couple of years, but, of course, the deadline has long since passed. It is still debated whether or not Congress could simply expand or eliminate the deadline completely. While this would most likely lead to a fight in the courts, which are increasingly conservative thanks to appointments made under President Trump, this fight would easily galvanize liberal support. From a purely political perspective, this fight could instill within the American left a concern for the judiciary that has been lacking for far too long and create a winning issue with the voters. But even from an idealistic perspective, it is still worth doing.

One may think that the ERA, while nice, isn’t truly necessary in modern society. After all, current legal interpretation holds that equality for women can be found in the 14th Amendment, and there are laws and policies from both Congress and the executive branch to secure those rights. But the problem is that these are all subject to revocation. With a 6 to 3 conservative 1majority, the Supreme Court could easily find that the 14th Amendment does not protect women’s rights. Doing so wouldn’t be difficult from a strict originalist interpretation. As the last four years have shown, elections have consequences and a president and/or a congress hostile to the fight for sexual equality is simply too big a risk to take.

As for the concerns of Schlafly and her ideological descendants, to me they are unfounded. Could women be placed in the draft, possibly, but this would only make the draft even more unpopular than it already is, therefore making it even less likely to return. As for Schlafly’s women’s “privileges,” of course, women have the right to not work and

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remain “in the home” (if that’s even an option for a shrinking number of Americans) just as men have the right to make that same decision themselves. We should not forget that just as patriarchy disempowers and infantilizes women, it also places undue burdens and expectations on men to fulfill traditional gender roles. When the entirety of the global population are placed into two strict roles based on the genitals they are born with, inevitably people are placed into unfair and inefficient structures.

Lastly, even if the amendment would have little practical purpose, it would serve as a statement that the United States is capable of righting previous wrongs. That we can achieve a more perfect union. Every American child would be taught of the Equal Rights Amendment, how we secured the rights of

women and it would send a strong message to young people everywhere whether they be little girls or little boys that they needn’t be placed in boxes called gender roles. And lastly, it would show that a fight which began 100 years ago with the first writing of ERA has, after a long arduous road, been achieved. It would say to our posterity that no matter how hopeless a fight may seem, no matter how long it may take, there is no fight too hard or too long for justice.

George Christopher is a second-year journalism major wondering what congress is even up to these days. They can be reached at gchristopher@ ithaca.edu.

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Academic Program Prioritization:

Remember This Time T

his academic year, Ithaca College’s administration instigated the sudden firing of 116 “full-time equivalent” faculty members, sparking outrage and community-wide protests.

Plenty has already been said, and must continue to be said, about the crumbling of this administration’s oft-touted values and character at the first sign of financial loss. There is plenty to be said about the student activism the administration has erased at best and smeared at worst. And there is plenty to be said about the way they seek to normalize their abuse of power through euphemistic language and distraction tactics. But within this discourse, I see a lack of representation of the people most affected—the fired faculty and staff themselves.

These are the people who now must search for new jobs and so are challenged to behave in the face of manipulation and maltreatment. These are the people who, exhausted and emotionally spent, report to work at an institution that has already passed a stubborn value judgment upon them. They balance their obligation to students with the major restructuring of their lives. They are struggling, and we must support them in any way we can.

My hope in organizing this project is to offer support by highlighting some of these crucial voices. I contacted every faculty member who self-reported their firing on the Ithaca College Layoffs document—an unofficial document that acknowledges the lives disrupted by the APP—and invited them to share their thoughts in whatever way felt productive and healthy. For some, this meant having a discussion with me, which I then transcribed with minimal revisions. For others, this meant composing their thoughts on their own. And for others, it meant forwarding survey responses that may or may have been considered by their recipients. I am deeply grateful for the following contributions, provided during a tumultuous and overwhelming semester.

At the same time, I would be remiss to ignore the fact that they do not account for huge numbers of fired community members. While there are a few staff members who self-reported their termination on the layoffs document, no equivalent list exists for the hundreds of staff that admin quietly fired over the summer of 2020. These people continue to go relatively unacknowledged, which points to major inequities at Ithaca College and in academia at large. I regret my own complicity in this erasure and aim to educate myself regarding staff members’ crucial role in our community, as well as increase my awareness and protectiveness of routinely overlooked workers.

I thank not only those faculty members who contributed their time and energy to this issue, but all of our faculty and staff for their service to, and presence in, this community. The administratoin’s value judgment of you does not reflect your service, character, devotion, and importance to the students—past, present, and future—who will lose your guidance, and you are deeply appreciated.

Mae McDermott, Layout Editor

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A Professor’s Feedback: A Reflection and Survey Responses After publishing the Shape of College draft, which laid out the Ithaca College administration’s planned firings and department discontinuances, the administration provided opportunities for faculty to submit feedback. In doing so, the administration invited laid-off faculty to fight for their livelihoods by working within a system that had already dismissed them.

It later became clear that the administration incorporated very few faculty suggestions into the final document.

The following are a letter and anonymous survey responses from a 2004 IC alum and professor of three years, who, at the time of writing, had already been given tentative notice.

Please note that this letter was originally excerpted by @icopenthebooks on Instagram.

Please also note that in the survey responses, the author originally opted to provide their name; here it has been removed for anonymity. Answers were given in response to the blanket question, “Please provide your ideas for program reorganization, consolidation, and discontinuance in the corresponding fields below,” which was followed by three text boxes labeled “REORGANIZATION,” “CONSOLIDATION,” and “DISCONTINUANCE” respectively. Each text box imposed a short word limit, so this faculty member chose to email their responses instead.

The third response was a follow-up to the initial survey in which the administration asked respondents for additional information.

The professor was thanked by the college for their response and told it would be passed along.

Personal Reflection

I

returned to Ithaca because I wanted to be in this town. A town I came to love while I was a student here.

I have always wanted to teach. When I came here and was hired by my old department, I realized I actually have a passion to teach. I realized I might be able to get good at it. I realized I might have something that I could use to help make Ithaca College a better place.

When I realized it, I immediately asked a senior faculty member if he would help mentor me to looking into how to make this a reality. He gently dissuaded me. I still don’t know why.

But I didn’t give up. I enrolled in ECEI, the Early Career Excellence Institute. I found mentorship in Judith Ross-Bernstein and my fellow faculty members there. I found resources that have already made me a better teacher and a better person.

After my first year here, I was dropped from full faculty to part-time (budget reasons I was told, my department said they wanted to keep me). Discouraged, I cried for three days. Then I decided it was worth it to try and continue. I found a second part-time job to make it work.

I kept up my enthusiasm. I kept reading Intercom, doing unpaid student advising work, making connections across departments. Two and a half years in I know students, staff and faculty from all over campus, with a wide variety of skills and interests and stories. They are wonderful, and I’m so grateful to know them.

And yet, with all the enthusiasm I have, there are limits. Since the first All-College meeting I attended, I have gently (and publicly) observed that there don’t seem to be any pathways for visiting scholars, part-time faculty or talented staff to go anywhere. There’s no movement, no upward mobility, no reward for the hard work they put in. Honestly, there’s not even a consistent schedule to get rehired, despite the hard work of the union.

(By the way, do you know how hard it was to sit from October 4th, the day we were told we may get fired, to Mid-January, when our chairs began letting us know the deal was done, and there was nothing they could do about it? Can you imagine the stress of daily wondering if it would be you? Can you imagine the weight?)

No recognition, no chance. The Faculty Excellence award? Not available for part-time contingent faculty. Dana Teaching fellows? Nope. Healthcare? Not available. So many of the opportunities listed in Intercom simply do not apply to all faculty (and less for staff). Only a few people seem to be worth catering to. Only a few faculty seem to be worth anything. More often than not the opportunities say something like, “...open to all tenured and tenure-eligible faculty members as well as long-term non-tenure-eligible faculty members.” So not me. Not many of us.

And I’m heartbroken because... I know the skills I and others have are valuable. That as a first-generation student, an alum

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and someone who deeply cares about student health and identity and accessibility... that I have something important to give.

I know that last semester, I only received positive reviews from my students.

And I know... I know I don’t fit a specific mold. And I know I don’t have a master’s degree, or a PhD... and I came to teaching later than most.

So maybe that’s on me. Maybe that’s my failing.

But where DO we reward that work, besides in acknowledgments? The part-time professors who sponsor student organizations, who actually stand by their diversity statements, their accessibility practices, their care and attention to student mental health... The faculty members who put in the extra effort to make their spaces really open and safe. Where do we reward it? In gift baskets? In Intercom?

Seriously, where is the reward for that work? And if there is no reward, does the College really value it at all?

Does the Budget reflect our stated Values?

And how do we know if we can’t see the Budget? If we’re not truly brought in as equal members of the community? As valuable stakeholders?

And it hurts, just deeply hurts that as the College starts to do better (much-needed anti-racism trainings, land acknowledgments, etc), there are people here now that care, and they have spent years, even decades of their lives giving and giving and giving... and are just going to be dropped? In the middle of a global pandemic?

Because of... the wrong title? The wrong department?

Because of previous mismanagement by former upper administration, so a lower budget?

Because of... because why?

I don’t know why.

I just know that it feels, from here, that I don’t matter. And it hurts.

It hurts.

And I’ll be fine.

And I truly hope the College will be too.

But I’m hurt, and I’m hurting, and I know I’m not the only one. And I think that’s important to say. And important for others to know. And internalize.

And I hope... I hope all of this will be worth it, in the end, and that our students, and our town, and our community will come out stronger.

But right now, I don’t see any proof that it will.

I don’t see it.

APPIC Feedback Please provide your ideas for program reorganization, consolidation, and discontinuance in the corresponding fields below.

REORGANIZATION: I have so many feelings about this survey, but I won’t linger on them as I don’t want to waste your time. I want to be open and forthright and honest and empathetic. I’m an alum of this institution, as is my Husband, as are most of my best friends. I care deeply about the success of this school. I believe that Ithaca College saved my life. As a young high-school graduate I was an A+ student, a prospective First Gen College student, but was also struggling with poverty and depression. Ithaca College gave me a home, a family, a career and a purpose. I believe I owe a lot to not only the institution itself, but the various members that made and make up this institution. I have reread the APP Final report from June. These words stand out to me under the heading, PRINCIPLE: “Preserve IC’s long-term capacity to recruit and retain a quality, diverse faculty. Although some faculty wish to protect their contingent and non-tenure track faculty colleagues, the committee finds that the hierarchical tenure system allows for resiliency in times of economic stress and that it protects the college’s ability to continue to recruit and retain new faculty. Maintaining a certain percentage of assistant professors in relation to the faculty body as a whole may help guide the implementation of this principle. This principle is also connected to the previous one; if workload is excessive or inequitable we will not be able to recruit and retain faculty.”

What falls short in this description for me, is that so many of our quality, diverse faculty members, are in fact contingent! I see that the APP Final Report acknowledges that we may need to maintain a percentage of assistant professors, and I applaud that decision. I’d like to make a suggestion to do more than that. If the concern is that the College wishes to recruit and retain a quality, diverse faculty, why not offer contingent faculty paths to full-time positions? Right now, there seems to be no system in place where you can start out with a few credits, fall in love with the student body and college, and make a permanent commitment to this institution. Imagine how transformative that could be! A way for the administration to reward longer hours, emotional labor and student favor seems like it could only be a win for everyone. I propose the college adds pathways that encourage short-term contingent positions to shift to greater responsibility, greater credit loads and then if possible, full-time positions that include healthcare and benefits. Why do we keep doing national searches and taking gambles on people joining this community from another state, who may not care about the future of this school and leave after a few years? Why not start that recruitment in-house, and reward the love and institutional knowledge we already have? I think there’s ways to do this important budget work as well as create a new, better college that we all want to be part of.

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CONSOLIDATION: My answers here are said with deep love and admiration for everyone reading this, I know there is “no joy” in this process, and I would like to contribute in some small way to the answers that are found to move IC forward. I believe that if we are going to consolidate, it is something that should include the students as well as faculty and staff. I see ways faculty are being engaged in various formats for this, but I see no way for staff or students to weigh in. It seems silly to say “out loud” but as an alum, I think it’s fairly clear that the students have a keen understanding of which faculty and staff are key to their experience here, and which are not. Even if we (importantly!) take into account some of the ideas that students perhaps don’t always see the “full picture” of why a faculty or staff member may be important to their education, they can easily tell you which advisors ignore them and belittle them, vs which professors make more time for them, which ones are key to their retention. Why not engage the students on it? Are we? I’m deeply concerned that in the (quite understandable) rush to balance the budget, that we may in fact be firing or carefully reducing the income for faculty and staff who are hidden keystones in the bridge of student life. I know we need to consolidate, I understand that, but are we taking into account the emotional labor, the student groups who are being mentored without compensation, the “above and beyond” that we talk about when we award the Faculty Excellence Award... which in fact is only available to “Faculty at the Associate Professor rank or above, whether tenured or continuing contract.” If that award, as an example, were open to those “below” that rank, or to staff... would we in fact find a whole hidden set of gems of people who are currently being left behind and possibly let go? I think it’s important to think through, I think it does matter, and I think that it’s worth exploring sooner rather than later. PS: I’ve had conversations with staff before about ways they think we can reorganize electricity and labor in ways that will save the College money, but have been told when they talk to their supervisors about this, they are ignored. Are we tapping those resources for information? I think we should!

DISCONTINUANCE: I would like to reiterate that I think student involvement in any discontinuance is an important part of this step. If we do move to discontinue programs and classes, my hope is that we are removing duplicated classes, and duplicated programs, and not removing niche interests or special topics that may engage students in unique ways. I know when I was a student here, MANY of the classes that really held my attention, and eventually served me professionally, were rarely offered special topics classes run by individual professors who were passionate about a specific topic. I’d hate to see that lost in the rush to balance the books.

I wish I had more specific information to give you, but without access to the data dashboard (I’m not full-time faculty and it’s only available to them), I don’t think I can give any kind of meaningful, detailed suggestions. This saddens me, as I believe that I (along with many of my contingent colleagues) while afraid of being lost in the transition to a smaller College, would be willing to put in the long hours and work of giving honest, thoughtful feedback on this. I gave an exit interview recently to my second job, and while the reason I left that job was because they didn’t value my labor, I still gave detailed ideas on how I thought the company could improve, where the shortfalls were and what I thought good long term planning would look like for them.

Similarly, I think even when faced with fear and apprehension, many of us consider ourselves scholars and contributors to a whole. I, for one, would love an opportunity to support the College and help with these difficult decisions, even not knowing what the future holds for me here. It’s not just about me; it’s about this place, these students, this work. I don’t think I’m the only one, and I’d love for us to find a way to help out in the spirit of collaboration.

Follow-up survey I would love to see a deeper and more frank, open discussion that includes students and affected faculty, that can drill into the concerns that various groups are bringing up. It feels like there is a disconnect between the people “on the ground” and SLT, and I am hopeful that the gap can be bridged, and the rifts that are happening in the ranks can be repaired.

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Rachel Fomalhaut on the APPIC, Labor Relations, and Shared Governance

The following is an interview with Rachel Fomalhaut, a part-time writing, women & gender studies, and ICSM professor of nine years. Rachel was also Faculty Council representative, and a former chair of the Contingent Faculty Union. After years of advocacy for contingent faculty rights, she was recently laid off by the Ithaca College administration due to the APP process.

Here, she reflects on the relationship between Ithaca College and its contingent faculty, the administration’s anti-labor history, the dearth of promised shared governance and what the community can do to help.

Mae McDermott, Buzzsaw Editor: Editor The APPIC layoffs are changing lives on many levels and in ways that are still unfolding. It may seem like an overly simple question, but it’s arguably the most important one: how are you doing?

Rachel Fomalhaut: Fomalhaut I’m not great. I know a lot of people have had a series of bad things going on this last year and I’m one of them: a lot of people I love dying, and my partner lost his job in November, and his was the primary income for the household.

So it’s not just APP stuff that’s depressing me and making life hard right now. I really resonate with and joined the call from the Open the Books people that one of the reasons not to do the APP on such a rushed timeline—and when it doesn’t seem that we have to do it on a rushed timeline—is because a lot of people have had a really shitty year and it’s just humane to hold off.

So I’m having that same effect from APP that a lot of people are having, which is that it’s piling really bad on top of really bad.

I’ve been struggling with my mental health in ways that I haven’t in years. I’m fearful and anxious about the future. I’ve been feeling really stunned that I’m not going to be teaching anymore because I’ve been teaching in higher education for 11 year, 12 years, something like that. So I’m starting to move past stunned to really sad, really mourning the loss of teaching, because I really love a lot of stuff about it, and it’s hard to believe that it won’t be there.

MM I think it does seem like insult to injury. And it’s also strange because [SLT is] announcing new programs [referring MM: to the Physician Assistant Program] too. It’s kind of like [they’re] pretending that nothing happened. I think I read [the PA announcement] and I just didn’t feel anything. I was like, I mean of course… I’m not even surprised by this.

RF A student in one of my classes who’s in [the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance] told me that the Physician RF: Assistant program is one that’s been in the pipelines for four years. But it’s hard to understand: why would you cut things that have already been established and yet continue with plans for something? I think that question of “why” is the thing that for me really adds insult to injury. If I had to be fired and if all my colleagues had to be fired because we had to be—well that’s just another sucky thing.

But that’s the thing that rubs salt in the wound for me, is knowing that it probably wasn’t necessary. If it was, we would never know—there’s no plan that’s been unveiled to the community. Whatever comes next will just be a surprise to everybody, because there’s no semblance of democratic governing at work.

The thing that I’m struggling with right now that I haven’t really for many years is depression; and I think one of the things that really led me there is the fact that it feels clear that this administration does not value their community members. Because if they did, they would seek to work with us on solutions and they would seek to do this last. I’ve been in faculty meetings [for around] nine months with the provost where tenured faculty, who are much more secure than I and make a lot more money, suggested in a big forum of hundreds of faculty [that they] really want[ed] to explore [equitability] measures across the school.

We could CAP everybody’s salary at 150K for a year those of us who are able to could furlough or take unpaid leaves for a year and then our coursework could go to other [at-risk faculty members]. Let’s work together and let’s do this. These were tenured faculty basically saying “I want to volunteer to do this.” And the provost refused to talk about [those ideas]. Just refused out of hand. She didn’t say “Oh I’ll think about that” and then come back later with a blanket no. She refused to even talk about them publicly.

And that, to me, is the thing that I feel depressed about—the way that the administration has behaved over this last year with the APP is so demoralizing and disturbing. Because it’s so irresponsible. I think that any leader who’s in a position of authority in 2021 in Trump America or post-Trump America, whatever you want to call it, needs to do better.

MM It sounds like there is a lack of information for you too, even being on the “inside” more than students are, and also like MM: this disconnect already existed and has just been getting worse.

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RF For sure, the feeling that students have that like they aren’t being consulted, that’s absolutely a feeling that faculty have RF: as well. Because the governance structure for college is supposed to include shared governance. It’s not only a specific set of principles, but it’s also specific protocols laid out by the American Association of University Professors [of which IC has its own chapter]. So whereas there’s no structure set up for administrators to work with students—which I think is a problem—there is one for faculty and [the SLT] has completely dismissed that entire principle of governance.

As for whether this has been a problem before, it certainly was a problem with the Rochon administration [directly preceding Collado’s]. A lot of [faculty who voted no-confidence in Rochon] voted that way both because they saw that there were no efforts to correct the racism on campus or to try to combat it, and also because they were such a top-down leadership structure. It was a really corporate, neoliberal management style. It didn’t abide by shared governance, and it didn’t seem to respect the educational mission of the school.

Anybody who respects the educational mission of the school is going to place faculty-student relationships at the center of their decisions. We haven’t seen an administrator do that since before I was here, and I’ve been here nine years. From my limited perspective as one faculty member, while I’m sure [this administration is] doing some things better than the Rochon administration, I see maybe even an increase in their dismissal of faculty. I understand that they work with some faculty… but it certainly does not seem to be a representative group. It wasn’t an elected group. It seems like there’s like a few faculty on the inside, and I don’t know how they got there, and then everybody else is just shut out.

MM That’s interesting to me because my impression is that layoffs have everything to do with faculty rankings; but students MM: don’t really understand the politics of tenure eligibility and workload. You have insight into that because of your involvement with the Contingent Faculty Union. Could you say some words about the college’s relationship to its contingent faculty?

RF The college has multiple ranks, like most schools do. But IC has one rank that’s unusual for schools, which is the NTEN RF: rank, [some of whom are] also getting fired. Those people don’t have tenure. At IC, it’s been impossible to tell who’s tenured and who’s NTEN just from what you can see, on paper, about them; you’d have to find out their job classification from HR to like learn. Because they really do all the same work at IC as tenured faculty have done, and they rise in the ranks, they chair departments. The only thing that they don’t have is tenure. Up until now, their jobs have been extremely secure. They’ve been considered to be almost as secure as a tenure job. But if there’s like a national study looking at tenured faculty vs. untenured faculty, they might get lumped with contingent faculty.

There’s an overwhelming gender divide and racial divide between tenure track faculty and contingent faculty, a rank that’s been really badly exploited increasingly by all colleges across the country for the last several decades. IC’s no exception to that. I’ve been teaching at IC continuously every semester for nine years, and the courses I teach are part of the core curriculum—there’s clearly a very permanent foreseeable need for my job into the indefinite future. So why does the college employ me on a part-time basis? There’s no reason for that. But they don’t, they don’t hire me that way. By not hiring me that way, they pay me much less per course than my tenure-track colleagues and they don’t pay me benefits. We’re here to be abused and exploited.

What faculty have done across countries is assert our rights in various ways, and one of those ways is unionizing. When we announced our intention to unionize at IC in 2015, President Rochon was hostile. He immediately hired a law firm that was known for union-busting tactics called Bond, Schoeneck & King, and they put together [and distributed] a whole communications package [full of] anti-Union propaganda. It was manipulative, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fact-based. When we were forming our union we had student supporters who put together a petition that several hundred students signed [asking] the President to remain neutral in the union election. And they were escorted away from his office by armed guards. Even the most benign asks have been met with great hostility. So from the very beginning, IC’s administration has been hostile to the union, even before we were a union.

Then, when we saw this administration come in, we basically were met with more of the same, and I would say that this administration has perhaps been even more hostile. They sent a letter of warning of possible termination to one of our [part-time] members last summer for posting a plea for help to the tenured colleagues. We took it to [American Arbitration Association] and the arbitrator sided with us 100%, and they required the College to rescind the [warning] letter [from the professor’s file] because it was really just an attempted intimidation. That kind of stuff boggles me.

We [saw] an increase in hostility even just at routine semesterly labor-management committee meetings. [Before, things communications were] civil, sometimes begrudging but always willing to like, try to work on problems. But I was in a meeting a year and a half ago, right after the hiring of the new college council. There was somebody at the [meeting] who could solve this very simple logistical question that the union had. But the lawyer jumped in and said no, no, wait, wait, wait, we don’t have to do that, we’re not required to do that. So the relationship became even more stilted, and [they became] even more unwilling to try to collaborate on problem-solving with us. It’s frustrating as all hell.

One of the things that I find really hypocritical and that doesn’t sit right with me is the really wide gap that I see between President Collado’s rhetoric and her policies and actions. I was at the first All-College meeting when she spoke to us for the

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first time after she’d been hired. I remember in her speech she described herself as the child of laborers. She told us how one of her parents drove a taxi. [And then she took] such an anti-labor position. I find that really unsettling and it really does not sit with me well.

MM You mentioned that this has been, on top of all the other stuff that’s happening, a huge mental and emotional blow. Even MM: though probably the best support that you would get to have would come from administration, that’s not going to happen. So what can your students and your colleagues do to support you right now?

RF I think the thing that those of us who are being most impacted by the cuts needs right now, and have needed for the RF: last year, is for students and faculty in particular to use the power that they have as students and faculty. There’s a difference between authority and power. The boss has authority, and the workers have power; the weatherman has authority, the hurricane has power. One of the things that despairs me the most of all of this is the model that the Collado administration is setting for students about governance and power; I think it’s really irresponsible.

The fact is that, despite continual administration and Boards of Trustees acting as if education is not the heart of Ithaca College, the heart of Ithaca College is actually students and teachers working together for education. So I think the thing that those people who are being most affected by the APP cuts—and not just the people, but the community—[need] right now is a solidarity and a realization of the power that faculty and students have. The thing that feels the most in common, to me, of all the folks at Ithaca that I’ve been talking to over the last year, is that the great great majority of us feel highly skeptical of this process and the outcome and feel worried about Ithaca College’s future in the face of it. Ithaca College cannot run without faculty and students. That’s a fact. Faculty and students realizing that together in solidarity with one another, and demonstrating that to the administration, would be the most help to people who are the most impacted right now.

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A Letter from Jennifer Herzog E

leven years ago, I was hired to teach acting in the Department of Theatre Arts at Ithaca College. It has been a deeply fulfilling joy and a privilege to be a faculty member at my alma mater all these years. While I’m heartbroken and disappointed (on behalf of myself as well as so many brilliant colleagues who are in the same boat) that our school’s senior leadership & board of directors are not prioritizing seniority, diversity, or our current student body’s needs in their downsizing quest, resulting in the loss of so many deeply passionate educators (including many proud alumni like myself), I am beyond honored to have spent the past decade contributing my energy and whole spirit to the department that made me the actor I am. Easing into this shift has not been easy. I will miss teaching acting at IC more than words can describe. I will miss getting to know a brand new group of students each semester, and introducing them gleefully to the craft that is my beloved birthright, passed down from my parents, both of whom were Broadway actors. I’m saddened that “Ithaca Forever” means that non-theatre majors at IC will have very few, if any, opportunities to take acting electives moving forward. I will miss seeing the joyous faces in the Dillingham hallway of former first-year exploratory students who had found themselves in my intro class, perhaps as a fluke, then ended up falling in love with theatre and starting a career in our department as a result. I will miss hearing “Guess what, Jennifer!? I decided to declare a theatre minor!” I will miss expanding the minds of advanced acting students with complex scripts, exercises, and tools designed to help them crack open their own creative worlds. Outside of the theatre department, I will miss being a student org faculty advisor, which allowed me the privilege of working with some of the most compassionate and wise hearts on campus every year. I will miss the students. All of the students. So damn much. Next up for me is a “self-sabbatical”—a time for professional development, art, breathing, and reflecting with gratitude on everything my incredible students have taught me over these years. Thank you for being you.

Jennifer Herzog, Dept. of Theatre Arts, 11 years; class of 2000, BFA Acting

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A Professor’s Views and

What Comes Next The APPIC resulted in the layoffs of 116 professors, some of whom were just beginning their time at IC. The following is an interview with a recently hired professor whose time at IC, secured through a rigorous and competitive selection process, was cut short by the APPIC and the Senior Leadership Team. Please note that, in order to protect their identity, this professor elected to remain anonymous. The Buzzsaw editorial staff wholeheartedly support this decision and wish for them to find a professional community where they will be respected and valued.

Mae McDermott, Buzzsaw Editor: Editor Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and involvement and time at IC? Anonymous Professor: Professor Despite being here for not very long, I’ve gotten involved in as many committees and initiatives as I had time for—I was really excited to become part of this community, so I jumped right in.

MM The APPIC layoffs are changing lives on many levels and in ways that are still unfolding. It may seem like an overly simple MM: question, but it’s arguably the most important one: how are you doing?

Prof: I’m ok. When I first got the news, I was devastated, and it’s been a long process coming back to where I’m ok.

Prof MM You’re in the unforeseen position of having to teach after having already been given notice. I would imagine this semester MM: has been rife with tension because every day, you’re fulfilling an obligation to an institution that has already made a final value judgment on you, one that has probably majorly affected your life. How has this been for you? How would you characterize your relationship to IC and your relationship with this semester? How are you balancing your obligation to students with your obligation to take care of yourself and your future?

Prof This is an excellent question and one that I’ve been thinking about lately. First, it’s been difficult to gather motivation to go Prof: above and beyond the minimum requirements for my job. I question how much energy I’m willing to give right now, especially when the pandemic has drained so much of it. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not my students’ fault; I continue to show up and teach and guide just as I did last semester. The value judgment, though, is also demoralizing in other ways. I feel as if I was never needed in the first place and was always expendable. My life matters less than the budget.

MM You only started teaching here recently, so I would imagine it’s been very strange to have such an aspirational time—what MM: should have been the beginning of a very long stay—cut short. Can you tell me a little bit about how you’ve been processing the APPIC as an educator looking to find a new home in academia?

Prof I’m stressed. We have lost 650,000 [jobs in higher ed] across the country due to the pandemic. This means that I’m Prof: competing against so many more people than normal in an already competitive job market. I’m also thinking about how demoralized and strained surviving departments are going to be; even if I find a new home in academia, I might be walking into newly formed toxicities that emerge when departments lose funding, lose colleagues and lose morale. Competition, insecurity and low motivation among remaining faculty will affect how much support I will get as a new faculty member in those departments. I am scared I won’t find a job. I’m scared I’ll get a job out of sheer, desperate necessity, only to end up somewhere miserable. I’m scared that the past few months being a new faculty member will have been the highlight of my career, at least for a while.

Honestly, this whole chapter has made me reconsider academia as a career path. While I will grieve my scholarship and the loss of an intellectual community, I will seriously consider moving to industry, and leaving academia entirely. Administrations have shown their cards and their priorities, and I don’t find myself aligning with their values.

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MM: What drew you to IC? What were your first impressions? How do those first impressions compare to your impressions now?

MM Prof This place felt like home within moments during my campus visit. My colleagues have exactly the same values and Prof: disposition as myself—they are creative, passionate, dedicated to social justice and believe in community. The students I met and taught during my teaching demo were bright, engaging and kind. I still feel the same way about my colleagues and students.

I have lost respect and trust in the college as a whole, however. I have already begun ignoring emails from the Senior Leadership Team (SLT). I just don’t care what they have to say. When I do pay attention, I get upset all over again. For example, IC announced that it is building a Physician Assistant program. Why are we building new programs when the rationale behind the cuts was to save money, and entire programs are being cut? The language of the announcement is revealing; they mention how in-demand PA jobs are right now. The goal, then, is to build a prospective donor base. PA’s will earn more than liberal arts graduates, so they have shifted away from a liberal arts focus to direct resources to STEM. In that case, APPIC cuts weren’t really about cuts, but about desired profit.

Even if all of these cuts were necessary, the SLT could have chosen to be honest instead of euphemistic, inclusive of faculty input (and help! We had ideas for fundraising) instead of dispensing with shared governance, and supportive instead of denigrating faculty who raised rightful concerns – I refer here to the letter the SLT published in Inside Higher Ed about just how unfairly they were being treated by faculty who were losing their livelihoods. These decisions might have gone over better if we’d gotten the slightest sense that the SLT was apologetic and empathetic, if they demonstrated integrity, if they had convinced us that they really did everything they could to save as many jobs as possible.

MM Probably, the best support you could get would have come from administration. But what can your students and colleagues MM: do to support you right now?

Prof I think it’s a drain on our energy and morale to expect anything at all from the administration; they are not listening, it’s not Prof: worth your emotional health to keep expecting them to show up for us. Recently, we were told that terminated adjunct faculty, our already vulnerable colleagues, will not even be able to access library resources and other IC resources after their term ends.

The effect on their scholarship (and on their careers, subsequently) will be substantial, as you might imagine. Without open library access, journal articles and books become really expensive. On top of being terminated, it’s salt on the wound.

The best thing the rest of us can do is continue to show up for one another. Checking in and asking how you’re doing, looking for positivity and strength in unexpected places and simply being compassionate are the best things we can do right now. I have allowed all my students as many extensions as they need, and they can make up missed assignments much later than during a normal semester. I have to remind myself that I still have my colleagues, who have shown unimpeachable support. I am lucky to still have a paycheck, a home and my health, which is more than others have right now. Counting our blessings and daily gratitude are the best forms of resilience against the threat of bitterness and cynicism.

MM: Is there anything else you’ve been thinking about lately that you would like to share?

MM Prof If you’re a student, remember this time, and what happened here. The biggest tool that administrations wield is that of Prof: time. They see this as a temporary period, and things will eventually blow over as everyone gets used to the new normal. Be wary of their attempts to use PR to repair their image. Email and Intercom rhetoric is already acting as if nothing has happened.

Be careful of falling for messaging that all of this is somehow being done in your name or for your benefit—remember that they just want your tuition and housing dollars more than they want to support the educational infrastructure that makes you want to come here in the first place. Students want their professors to stay, and that desire is being blatantly ignored. Make them accountable for that not just in the coming days or weeks or months, but in the coming years. Leave behind a record of your feelings here, so incoming students know what they are up against, and how they are perceived by those in power. Don’t forget any of this.

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upfront

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Lost on Purpose Emily Dickinson’s Lost Mail // by Megan Bostaph, Staff Writer; art by Carolyn Langer, Staff Artist

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fact known to fans of Emily Dickinson, some poetry lovers, or those who have read her for an English class is this: Emily Dickinson was a reclusive, private woman who, in the later stages of her life, rarely left the house. The Poetry Foundation’s biography of Dickinson calls this image of her as a recluse or hermit “sensationaliz[ing] a decision that has come to be seen as eminently practical… The visiting alone was so timeconsuming as to be prohibitive in itself. As she turned her attention to writing, she gradually eased out of the countless rounds of social calls.” At the time, it was customary to “call” or drop in on someone and visit them. Instead, Dickinson was a fan of letters; as The Poetry Foundation says, “For Dickinson, letter writing was “visiting” at its best.” Those who knew her and her life best were those who were recipients of those letters. So, how could we learn about her life without them? Before I continue, I want to note that we still have to remember that Dickinson didn’t write these letters for others to read and pore over. She wrote them for her family and friends to share what was happening in her life. This places the readers of these surviving letters in a voyeuristic role as we look into the personal life of a woman who doesn’t know we are watching.

Another fact that poetry lovers or fans of Emily Dickinson would know is that Dickinson asked her sister Lavinia to burn her letters and correspondence when she died. Because of this, The Emily Dickinson Museum estimates that “printed editions of her letters represent only one-tenth of the letters Dickinson actually wrote.”

The museum also notes that, “While others may yet be recovered, many were probably destroyed, according to the custom of the time, upon their recipients’ deaths.” This leaves an incredible amount of her lifetime unaccounted for and is one of the reasons why scholars are constantly searching and analyzing these letters to learn about her life.

The first editors who compiled Dickinson’s letters worked with her friends and family, with one of the first publications of her letters done by Mabel Loomis Todd, achieved with Lavinia’s help. Subsequent volumes were published by her niece in 1924 and 1932. Interestingly enough, many of the editors who worked on these publications were women, and The Emily Dickinson Museum begins to list more male editors once they reach the 1950s. Not having read these collections, I can’t exactly say how they paint her. However, I know that every time I’ve taken a class that includes her poems, the classic introduction is that she was a private person, almost a hermit, and that she always wore a white dress. And that’s it. So somehow, despite all of these compilations of letters and invasion into her personal life, we have yet to move away from seeing her as the myth of Amherst.

In looking over some of the letters that Todd had

transcribed, Dickinson seems like a kind woman, one who corresponded with her recipients about day-today activities, while still maintaining a poetic mastery of her words. Honestly, I think she seemed pretty cool.

But I say this to point out that if the general public can see these letters, why should we still think of her as a mysterious hermit? Even though scholars have been combing through the surviving letters to learn about Dickinson’s life and poems, the general introduction of her that I’ve heard since high school hasn’t changed.

I think that the person Dickinson is in her letters isn’t acknowledged because she would no longer be mysterious. It wasn’t Dickinson who framed herself in this way, but those who crafted and sensationalized the myths that surrounded her. Were she to be framed as an ordinary woman, scholars would lose the myth that they have created.

Another compelling narrative that has been constructed about Dickinson is the conjecture over if she was a lesbian. Though many of the letters that survive are with family members, such as her brother Austin or friends such as Judge Otis Phillips Lord, one correspondence that has fascinated scholars is her letters to the woman who would become her sisterin-law, Susan Gilbert. These letters in particular have inspired Apple TV’s “Dickinson” to heavily lean into the lesbian narrative, and seemingly bring it to the forefront of who they think Dickinson was. This isn’t to say that literary scholars haven’t had similar conjectures, but it seems to me that the question of Dickinson’s sexual orientation has begun to permeate her story, and overshadow her work. Now, I’m not here to decide whether Dickinson was in love with Susan or not. But the speculation about these letters to Susan seems to me the biggest invasion of privacy that society could have engaged in. Obviously, these letters were meant for no one but Susan, and if the readers of Dickinson’s letters weren’t voyeuristic before, crafting narratives about her sexual life is definitely voyeuristic now.

So I ask, would Dickinson have wanted to have her life pored over like this? The answer is most likely no. Judging from her lack of desire to leave her home of Amherst, and her avoidance of visitors, it can be assumed that Dickinson was a private person to those who weren’t her friends and family. Despite letter burning after death being customary for the time, it is still noted that Dickinson had asked her sister Lavinia to make sure it was done. As her letters were her main form of communication with others, it is assumed that Dickinson would want to preserve her privacy. Besides, it’s not like she expected to be published after her death and become one of the most famous poets of her time. And even if she did hope to be published, it could still be that she didn’t want anyone to know about her personal life and history.

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This loss of Emily Dickinson’s letters is a loss of her history.

Though both The Poetry Foundation and The Emily Dickinson Museum have extensive biographies about her, much of their information has been found based on her letters and interpretations of her poems. However, widespread knowledge of her life is limited. The lack of factual personal history has caused people to try over and over again to find out anything they can about her and use it to interpret her poems. This industry of trying to find more about Emily Dickinson nearly overshadows her actual work at times, and is invasive. As a woman who is dead, Dickinson can’t attempt to stop those who are trying to find out about her, and it leads to the question of what authority she has over her life posthumously?

Her request to have her letters burned is really her last act of agency over who knows her history, and as some letters have survived, it causes her to lose this authority. This continuous investigation into Dickinson’s life speaks to society’s need to know everything about every major figure we can. The need to pry into Dickinson’s life seems to have escalated when you factor in the potential lesbian love affair. Dickinson has no control over what we say about her in death, and as her status in the poetry world has elevated, scholars have dug into a part of her life that most likely was not public knowledge. We’ve taken a private part of her identity and turned it into spectacle.

It’s understandable that poetry and literary enthusiasts would want to know her life, but as more and more editions publish her letters, and books that scour and take apart those letters are set on shelves, the continuous ignorance of her wish to Lavinia is emphasized.

In addition, part of this fascination with Dickinson is because she is from a bygone era, where people were not as heavily documented. We want to know about her in death because no one knew about her in life. In today’s world, with the use of the internet and digital media, people can create copies upon copies of any information they need. But with Dickinson, while there may have been drafts of some of her poems or letters, they were on paper, easily burned away to nothing. The fragility of these pieces of her life makes them more enthralling to us because, were they to be gone, they’d be gone forever. But if a celebrity were to die today and wish for all of their documents and records to be burned? Good luck.

To intentionally become lost is to wish for anonymity, privacy and agency over your life and history, and who knows it. In Dickinson’s case, it would have left the focus solely on her poetry. Additionally, because of the burning of her letters, we cannot accurately grasp how she wanted to be portrayed in death. We assume that her asking Lavinia to burn her letters means that she didn’t want her private life to be known, but this can’t be confirmed. Essentially, I want to make the point that as much as the letters have aided scholars in interpreting her poems, Dickinson was a person. She asked for the letters to be burnt, but not all of them were. Then, instead of using them to develop a full understanding of her as a person, they’ve been used to make her a mythical, mysterious hermit-lesbian. We’ve made her into a character. What we should remember about her is her incredible talent of creating wondrous poems that have transcended time.

I’ve said all of this and discussed how we should leave Dickinson alone, but I’ve fallen into the trap too. While writing this piece, I’m adding to this industry of digging and prying into Dickinson’s life without her approval. Is my speculation about the reasons for Dickinson’s desire for anonymity a betrayal of that desire? To answer my own question: yes. In writing this article, I am both using the letters in order to find out about her biography and then condemning the publishing of them. I’ll fully call myself out here and say it’s hypocritical.

With Dickinson as the literary figure that she has become, it’s impossible to call for the burning of her letters as she had wished for because of the guidance they have offered scholars with interpreting her poems. They’ve also inspired television, such as the aforementioned Apple TV’s “Dickinson,” which is another avenue to explore her life and the poems it led to.

Dickinson’s poems have captivated people; why shouldn’t they want to learn more? It’s only natural. But perhaps next time, we can work towards respecting the wishes of the dead (me included).

Megan Bostaph is a junior English major who keeps a framed portrait of Emily Dickinson next to their bed. You can reach them at mbostaph@ithaca.edu.

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Lost but Not Forgotten The Underserved Populations of Missing Persons Cases // by Jasmine Marrow, Contributing Writer

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first became interested in missing persons cases back in 2010, at 10 years old. I always saw the faces of missing persons on the wall in Walmart, and forced myself to remember their names, their faces, to make sure they weren’t forgotten so that even if the world forgot, I never would. These experiences always pushed me to question why there were so many missing, and why so many of them were BIPOC. These missing people are someone’s family, someone’s friends and this fact alone, pushes me to never forget.

In 2019, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) entered 609,275 missing persons records into their missing person’s database. At the end of the year, they reported that, of those previously entered cases, 87,438 remained active, which is still alarmingly high. This drastic difference in numbers was reported to be due to law enforcement locating the person(s), the person(s) returning home or the previously accepted record was found to be invalid.

There are also definite large, underlying issues that impede such missing persons cases from being solved, such as underlying bias that resides within Police forces, institutional racism or a lack of effort from these investigative parties; many police forces, for example, require 24 or 48 hours of not hearing from a person before they investigate, which can put the missing person in more danger. There are also issues, at times, with lack of evidence or information to utilize, and with racial misclassification (for example, a missing person is labeled as white, but when they are actually a person of color.) The likelihood of finding a missing person alive also narrows drastically after the first 72 hours, and makes these cases more unlikely to be solved after that point.

Although most communities are affected disproportionately, one community that is always heavily hit hard by lack of resources and interest by governmental institutions is the Native American (Indigenous) community.

The community is plagued by the lack of governmental resources, high murder rates and high rates of violence.There was also only a recent overturning of a 35 year-old ruling that said Tribal courts couldn’t prosecute non-natives for crimes committed on Native land, but the recent ruling, which reenacted the Violence Against Women Act, only offers a limited jurisdiction over dating and domestic violence cases committed by non-natives on Tribal land. This inherent lack of support from governmental institutions perpetuates the

marginalization of the Native community, especially Native women and girls.

In 2018 alone, two dozen Indigenous women went missing in the rural parts of Montana. One of them was Jermain(e) Austin Charlo (Morigeau), who was the thirteenth woman to go missing in the state since January 2018. She was last seen on June 16, 2018 between midnight and 1 a.m. as she was dropped off on Fifth Street in Missoula, Montana.

At the time of her disappearance, she was 23 years old.

Involved authorities think she may have become victim to human trafficking, which is relatively prevalent in the state.

Additionally, her case is still unsolved but this is not unheard of for Native American/Alaskan Native communities; many women and girls in the community often go missing, and are never located again.

In a 2016 report released by the National Crime Information Center, it was revealed that 5,712 reports of missing American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) women and girls were entered, although only 116 of those cases were entered into the Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database, NamUs. This draws concerns to the lack of effort on government officials to solve cases involving indigenous people. For example in Montana, Native Americans are four times more likely to go missing than White people.

In 2017, Urban Indian Health Institute conducted research in 71 cities across the United States and uncovered 506 unique cases of Missing and Murdered American Indian and Alaska Native women. In this research, it was found that 128 (or 25%) were missing persons cases, 280 (56%) were murder cases, and 98 (19%) were of unknown status.

Additionally, 153 of these cases were found to not be present in law enforcement systems. Lastly, it was also found that 66 out of these 506 (13%) cases were tied to Domestic and Sexual Violence. This evidence makes it obvious that there are prevalent racial issues within institutions that cause, or have caused, officials to not record (or enter) their information, or not try as hard to solve these cases.

What would you do if this was your child, your sister, your family?

Jasmine Morrow is a senior business administration major who just wants everyone to come home safe. You can reach them at jmorrow1@ithaca.edu. To learn more and donate, visit: https://www.csvanw.org/mmiw

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BUZZBYES...

A few parting words from our graduating editors

I feel insanely, absurdly lucky to have come to Buzzsaw. The first week of college, Mateo Flores and I walked tentatively through the doors of Williams 323 and sat next to each other in the third row, whispering as the editors pitched their articles. I was enthralled; I had just started college, and suddenly, here were all these real adults in their fashionable outfits, talking to me about serial killers and celebrity culture and the evils of social media. I remember thinking, man, if I could just do what these guys are doing, I’d have it made.

It’s bittersweet, really. At eighteen, I imagined my last week of Buzzsaw in the Buzzcave with Mateo, maybe even drinking that little splash of Xtreme Rum that’s been there since 2004. Instead, I’m ending my Buzzsaw career in my bedroom, quietly overanalyzing the Google Drive. Still, I really couldn’t have asked for more; I’ve spent the last four years surrounded by intelligent, hardworking, well-spoken people in the form of my fellow Buzzstaff.

I was so excited to join the Buzzstaff. I’d originally just wanted to write music reviews, but Alexis Morillo quickly pulled me towards Upfront, encouraging me to write pieces that were outside of my comfort zone. I was thrilled when she made me an editor—it’s one of my happiest college memories. I couldn’t have done any of this if Alexis hadn’t seen me, the shy first-year that I was, and pulled me into the wonderful world of Buzzsaw.

And, of course, I have to express my gratitude for recent graduate and my former co-editor, Mateo Flores, who joined me at that first meeting. From the beginning, it was always amazing to have someone on the exact same page of the same magazine.

I really don’t know that I would have ever gone alone, and I don’t know that I would have kept going back without Mateo.

It’s hard to say goodbye. I know that I am leaving Buzzsaw in some insanely capable hands— Julia Dath understands what Upfront is about better than I ever could— and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thrilled for the future of Buzzsaw. Since my first year, I’ve watched Buzzsaw go through some radical changes— not all of them easy. Yes, there were fun times, like our twentieth anniversary celebration. But there were also times of confusion and unease, where we were uncertain where, when, how and even if we’d be able to publish a magazine again. And yet, here we are, time and time again, ready to grace the tops of every table in Campus Center. Buzzsaw has always been resilient, and I’m so excited to see what our up-and-coming editors do in the face of all this insanity.

But man, I’d really love to take a nap on that fifty-year-old couch one more time.

Audra Joiner, President and Upfront

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I found Buzzsaw out of my perfectionistic first-year obligation to join every club on campus. From the start, I felt like a child processing the world, captivated by what I had never seen. The pitch doc was full of topics I had never heard of. The casual profanity shocked me. And the editors, clustered at the front of Williams 323, related to one another in overlapping and eager voices. They seemed so comfortable with themselves and with each other, so at peace in their shared noise.

Still out of perfectionism—and in spite of my meager knowledge of InDesign—I volunteered to design the magazines as then-layout editor, Bree, neared graduation. From the inside, Buzzsaw disoriented me even more. The Bogart basement, affectionately known as the Buzzcave, felt delirious and unhinged. Discarded memorabilia, weird posters, old magazines and scrawled jokes that depended on contexts long-forgotten cluttered every corner of the room, a stale-aired final resting place for whatever found its way inside. Editors interacted chaotically; their sentences half-formed as one person intuited another’s tired thoughts. It felt as though at least five conversations took place at once, usually at unwittingly high volumes. No one could really describe to me what was going on. It was Mateo who finally told me that there weren’t really any rules, and I almost passed out on the spot. Buzzsaw seemed loud, brash, impulsive, and unafraid. It seemed like my complete opposite.

When I could no longer cling to Bree for dear life, I struggled to understand this club and this publication, both of which resist order. My job as layout editor was to maintain enough order to manage production and create a magazine, and I instinctively wanted to impose rules in order to make that happen. But over time, by not yielding to me, Buzzsaw taught me to do something I had never done—yield to my surroundings. Find my footing by accepting that my footing was, and always would be, a little unsure.

Contradictory to its outward brashness, Buzzsaw, in my experience, required some zen. Being part of Buzzsaw means feeling safe enough to trust a lack of clarity and an aversion to hierarchy, to trust that every lateral move is a step toward the right issue. Once I stopped resisting Buzzsaw’s inertia, I saw that it is not the vortex of chaos I thought it was. Buzzsaw is a neurotic and complex creature, publicly unapologetic and privately questioning. Every cycle, our writers, artists, and editors ask, “Are we doing this right? Should we do this? Am I doing a terrible job? Fuck it, I am doing the job I can do!

I hope this is enough… Is this enough?” And that questioning is the source, I think, of Buzzsaw’s noise—not chaos, but a collision of productive worry. The vibrant, unwieldy joy of people feeling tired together, talking too loud without realizing it, losing the thread of one conversation inside of another, bonded by their shared uncertainty and dedication to trying anyway. The peace of shared unknowing. Because at its best, Buzzsaw is not only a platform for outspoken voices, but a cohort of people who have been yoked together by that nervous urgency to speak, and who stay together because they help one another speak more clearly.

I have been lucky to find such a cohort. I never thought I would interact with people as warmly and comfortably as those first editors interacted. But Buzzsaw, and the people who make it up, gave me that sense of warmth and comfort.

I still miss Bree, Kimberly and Isabel, with whom I am so lucky to have shared space and conversation. Julia continues to impress me with her stellar work ethic and forthright nature, and I will miss being bound by our shared perfectionism. I will miss sharing wavelengths with Rachael, with whom I could always exchange overwhelmed glances when things got particularly chaotic. I will miss Adam’s veneer of perplexing personal questions, underneath which was a friend who quietly kept me company as I laid out the magazine for hours at a time. Kevin is my kindred spirit in cautious pessimism and analysis, and I will miss his musings. Audra is my companion in anxiety and a true supporter, and perhaps the advantage to graduating so abruptly is that I don’t have to be here without the compassion, humor, and beauty they have infused into my Buzzsaw experience. These people vocally loved, valued and supported me, and they have given me more than I ever imagined I could receive from my odd and truncated time at IC. I am thankful every day for Buzzsaw, which has been one of the most unexpected joys of my tidy life, and one I will dearly miss.

Thank you for letting me make these magazines, even though I’m not qualified (I like to think that they got a little better in quality every time). Keep reading and writing and thinking and creating, and I hope that in Buzzsaw you can find an unexpected home for your spirit and your work.

Mae McDermott, Layout Editor

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23

ministry of cool

RAW

f ro m the

SAW

“OK Orchestra” - AJR by Emily Imanishi, Staff Writer; art by Julia Young, Staff Artist “One day, maybe someday in a world speeding up. It’s getting hard, so very hard to keep up.” Those are some of the lyrics in AJR’s opening overture on their newest album, “OK Orchestra.” And it’s these lyrics which introduce listeners to some of the central themes of the album: growing up and having to become an adult, but longing for childhood.

AJR is a band made up of three brothers: Adam, Jack, and Ryan Met. Even if you don’t recognize the band’s name, you have probably heard one of their songs at some point.

Their 2013 single “I’m Ready” became a radio hit and is most recognizable due to its use of SpongeBob’s iconic phrase “I’m Ready.” This song introduced to the world this band of brothers who aren’t afraid to make music that is different.

The group had two more chart-topping hits, with singles “Weak” and “Sober Up” both becoming huge radio and TikTok hits and truly solidifying AJR as a force to be reckoned with.

Personally, I’ve been following AJR since 2014 and have been lucky enough to have seen them live, both in concert and acoustic, and to have met them twice. AJR has been a band that I’ve been drawn to for so long, as their sound is so uniquely them and their songs address issues and emotions that nearly all of us face.

And “OK Orchestra” only continues this tradition.

Starting off with an overture (an AJR tradition) the album propels listeners into this very real world right from the beginning. “OK Orchestra” (or “OKO” for short) had three singles released prior to the album’s March 26 release; “Bang!,” “Bummerland,” and “My Play.” “Bummerland,” which was released in August 2020, is very much a song of its time. With lines such as “This month I got seven haircuts and now my hair is all gone. It’s sad but I’ve been alone for too long, so I keep getting haircuts” and “Better nix my summer plans,” AJR uses this shared experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to not only create catchy songs, but to make music that resonates with people.This realness

only continues with some of the other songs on “OKO.” The sixth track on the album, “Adventure is Out There,” starts off with the line “I keep losing my socks, where the hell do they go?” which is a laughable, yet very real thing that people deal with. The song goes on to discuss the struggles of wanting to make something of your life, or even just your day, but constantly feeling stuck where you are.

The closing song of the album, “Christmas in June,” is upbeat and happy sounding, but the lyrics tell a different story. The song discusses the difficult balance of pursuing what you love and being able to be with the ones you love.

The song is honest and shows a struggle very real to many people, especially those who must travel for work, such as musicians. Lyrics such as “How lucky I am to have two things I love, makes it that much easier to fuck it up” show the struggle of having two vastly important things in your life, but because of that, worrying immensely about how your choices will affect both things.

Personally, my favorite track off the album is “World’s Smallest Violin.” The song is about comparing yourself to other, more accomplished people you know while dealing with your own struggles. I know I relate to this, especially going into college and seeing all these more accomplished people, you begin to doubt yourself and your abilities. The song addresses the longing to have your worries and struggles validated, even though you know other people have it worse.

The chorus of the song, “The world’s smallest violin really needs an audience,” shows this plea to just have someone listen and be there for you, no matter how big or small the issue or accomplishment is.

Overall, “OK Orchestra” is a very fitting album for many people’s lives right now. It combines challenges and internal thoughts in a very organic and catchy way. If you want to hear how a band features the Blue Man Group on a song, or just need an upbeat album to dance around to, these brother Ukulele DJs known as AJR have got your back.

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“Ginny and Georgia” by Imani Turner Wells, Staff Writer; art by Adam Dee, Art Editor Talk about a show that is filled with lies, drama, high school problems and relationship issues. I’ve dealt with shows that have a lot of drama, but it was nothing compared to Ginny and Georgia.

Ginny and Georgia follows Georgia, the young mom of teenager Ginny and son Austin, as they start a new chapter in their lives by moving from Texas to Wellsburry, Massachusetts.

With the move comes new people, new friends and new secrets. This season explores the adventures of both Ginny and Georgia as Ginny starts school and Georgia searches for a job to provide for her family.

Ginny and Georgia have the typical mother-daughter relationship. There are frequent arguments, moments of embarrassment for the teenage girl and lots and lots of secrets.

Ginny wasn’t always the rebellious teen that she becomes throughout the season. In episode one, we see that she hasn’t done anything that makes her a regular teen. She hasn’t had a boyfriend or a first kiss. She is the most perfect child and student that a parent could ask for. This all changes when she moves to Massachusetts and starts her new high school.

She meets some people that she bonds with and encounters some potential love interests. A messy love triangle forms that makes things complicated as the season moves forward.

Georgia is a single mother raising two children. She might be young to be a mom, but she makes sure that her kids have anything and everything, even when it’s difficult.

Race is a prominent theme that goes on in the season.

This is first introduced when Ginny starts her new school and her AP English teacher believes she can’t handle the workload.

The teacher has it out for from the beginning and it is implied that his motives may be based on race. Ginny tells him off and says that she can do the work, and that her race is not a

factor. The show highlights the struggles of being Black and/ or mixed. It’s an identity crisis of who a person is when they are mixed. White or Black? This is also shown later in episode five when Ginny and her new friends want to match and they decide to wear ponytails. All the girls have long and straight hair, but Ginny wears her hair naturally curly; typically, curly hair is hard to put in a ponytail. The woman that starts doing Ginny’s hair struggles and Ginny’s hair gets ruined. It shows how much Ginny wanted to fit in, but her hair doesn’t let her do it. This portrays how Black women might feel pressure to change what they wear and do to feel welcome or fit in.

Also, the show portrays the most healthy lesbian relationship I have seen in a while. One of Ginny’s friends, Max, gets into a lesbian relationship and she is happy. In TV shows and movies, lesbian relationships are often kept secret, or characters are struggling with their own individual issues on top of those in the relationship. It’s nice to see a change in that and observe a happy and healthy same-sex relationship on screen. The show also does a good job at approaching the subject of self-harm by giving a real, accurate portrayal.

There is a lot to unpack about this season. The first season of Ginny and Georgia consists of ten episodes that are about an hour long. I do not recommend anyone binging this show in one night. This is a good show to stretch over a long weekend or a random week in summer break.

Overall, I think the season and show are good. The plot is very suspenseful and keeps you on the edge of your seat about what’s going to happen next. It was nice to see that even though most relationships come with a lot of baggage, these relationships between characters are so happy and healthy.

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“Lost” - Sound Horizon by Jay Bradley, Contributing Writer; art by Julia Young, Staff Artist Throughout the last few months, something that I’ve had come up time and time again is old memories.

Whether it be of an old friendship that has fallen apart, something that gave you comfort a long time ago or something you wish you could go back and change, things from the past creep back when every day echoes all of the others.

From there, you choose to hold on to that memory of what was lost, or choose to move on and forget. “Lost,” the third album by the Japanese symphonic rock group Sound Horizon, takes this idea and puts it through the lens of music and fantasy.

Each song represents a different memory of someone. A man who chooses to move on from a past love, mourning a lost home, a mother’s denial over the memory of a lost child, a memory leading to self destruction and more, put to situations and songs that echo archetypal stories you might see in fairy tales and fantasy.

The translations, done by a fan going by the name “Defade,” read more like poetry than songs. How the album’s story interconnects between the songs is vague and largely up to the interpretation of the person studying the lyrics, but there is a lot of food for thought in the individual songs on how memories keep on flowing, or are pushed down until they are forced to come up.

The album has many creative and ambitious moments; some work well while others fall short. In rereading the lyrics and listening back, I came to remember both why I’ve loved this band since discovering it years ago, and how creativity can fall short if one hasn’t developed their chops yet.

“Lost” bounces from rock, to jazz, to pop, to piano ballad, mixing in genres and inspirations that would define the sounds mixed into later Sound Horizon work. It also makes creative use of sound effects to heighten scenes in the storytelling.

You also hear the band’s young age in the instrumentation.

The creativity in the music can be heard through the use of a variety of instruments, including some that are midigenerated. This contrasts with the heavily orchestrated music in later albums like “Moira,” or the more famous Linked Horizon works like “Attack on Titan.” But despite the scrappy nature of it, the production on “Lost” sounds polished when solos come out into the forefront. Notable examples of this element are the accordion and mallets in “The Game Within the Cage” and the instrumental-heavy “The Bottom of the Water of Memories” that follows.

“The Lost Poem” is a really interesting experiment— inventing its own language to represent a lost era and a lost country destroyed overnight. However, the second song in the tracklist is less fortunate in its use of language; poorly executed English by singer Jimag is sung over an admittedly fun rock instrumental. Just don’t hope to get much out of “White Illusion” beyond what you hear.

“Lost” was the first album of the group to use a multitude of vocalists, but it would still be years before composer and frontman Revo himself took to the microphone or stage, as he would later be known for. Despite the group being now wellknown in Japan, this album itself has become a lost memory over the years.

Under the Sound Horizon moniker, Revo’s work is now filling concert halls and stadiums, taking on different ideas and concepts with each album of fantasy suites and metaphorheavy stories. But before that, albums like “Lost” were little more than a passion project.

Before reaching international acclaim from the “Attack on Titan” openings and the soundtracks to the games “Bravely Default” and “Bravely Default II,” Revo got his start as an independent composer and music producer, selling his works at fan convention booths and sharing music on his website in the early 2000s.

Despite the albums being numbered, “Lost” and its doujin (independently produced) counterparts in the discography are not currently being officially sold or reproduced, despite being referenced in later works. Over time, those albums, including “Lost,” have become harder and harder to come by.

I could only find one for sale online that I could get in the U.S., and it would cost me over $1,189 just for the CD. Thankfully, the fans have preserved the album, its art book and the other independent works online, and from the English translation, having been put into other languages by a relatively small but dedicated international fanbase. While not perfect, it has grown in appreciation among many of the international fans over the years following callbacks in new works and live performances, in large part due to its stories and themes.

Perhaps over the course of the last few months, Revo too has been looking back at old memories. Recently, a melody from “Lost” made its way into the newest Sound Horizon release, “Wish on an Ema! (Prologue Edition),” to reference what else but exploring memories.

If there was anything that the pandemic’s relative isolation brought, it was the ability to reflect on your past and where you are now, for better or for worse.

Maybe you will remember a weird CD you got at a convention all those years ago. Maybe it turned out to be something special. If not for yourself, then for the others who may have been too late to experience it—much like the lessons you’ve learned from your own memories.

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prose&cons

On This Night

By Greta Unetich, Staff Writer

On some distant horizon, Or the white clouds of my dreams, You passed by me,

Wrapped like stars.

The whole forest was still; the moon closed its eyes.

Am I in your heart like you are in mine?

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Pomegranate For Xing Ke

By Dariene Seifert, Contributer

She didn’t represent the night; she was the night.

Her long black hair cascaded down her shoulders and back and wrapped around her face and arms like a velvet blanket. When her dark locks touched her pale skin, the contrast between them was intense. Her face remained stoic, but her inky, starless eyes said everything. On her face, down her arms, and all over her body were battle scars that were dark blue. When she was alone, she covered the scars that ran across her right eyebrow and cheek with hair. Even though she wore arm and leg braces, she still felt vulnerable. When sitting on her throne, she would look at her lap and see the scars peeking out from underneath her tunic and try desperately to pull down the skirt to cover them.

She hated her hands the most. Wearing any cloth over them got in the way, so no matter what she did, she would have to stare at them. The scars looked like jagged lightning, mocking her. Sometimes if she overworked herself, especially when using her scythe, the scars would break open, and the blue blood would spill out like thick oil. The wounds would heal by themselves, but the pain was always there.

Bathing was always a difficult experience. Instead of relaxing, she would stare at her reflection. She couldn’t help but only see herself as a broken vase that was hastily glued back together and only existed because of pity, not out of love or even necessity. Yet, all that pain, all that misery, would be washed away into the blackness when the world above became a cold shell, and her world below magically breathed life.

Persephone.

The dark wife of spring who would fall into her queen’s arms and make all the emotions trapped behind her deep eyes pour out like sacred waterfalls. When Persephone was home, she was home. She finally felt at home despite living in her kingdom for thousands of years.

Persephone would place flowers that she gathered from her mother’s precious garden in her wife’s hair. She couldn’t help but laugh. Rainbows don’t exist during the nighttime, yet here it was. In bed, she would wrap her arms tight around Persephone, not wanting to let go. Persephone would kiss her scars and whisper: “Hades, my beauty, my love.”

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It Wasn't The Fact That You Changed Your Mind

By Gabrielle Topping, Contributer

“Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

I shower them with kindness and look out for their best interests.

And then when they treat me poorly, what am I supposed to do?

Treat them poorly? I don’t think so. I don’t want to.

Do I cut them out of my life?

I am not a confrontational person.

I let people hurt my feelings.

It is a bunch of little instances that pile up.

It is a bad habit that I want to break.

How do I stand up for myself?

I want to be confident.

I want to be respected.

I want to be included.

I want to be a priority.

I want to be brave.

It wasn't the fact that you changed your mind.

I don't want you here if you don’t want to be.

It is like you swerved off the road last minute.

I will not be dragged through the mud.

Very few people knew what happened.

But you did.

You knew how badly I was hurt before; How fresh the wound is, And you ripped it wide open again.

You swerved off the same road, Bashed in the car doors, And shattered the windows.

Completely disregarding my feelings.

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The Bus Route

By Lorelei Horrell, Contributer

And in the end, I will always hate taking the bus. Some people grow up taking public transportation,

others adjust to it over time, and the rest of us just look like idiots no matter what.

Next to me, Callie grips the canvas bag in her lap. Inside it has apples, lettuce, and Swiss cheese, and

there’s a loaf of bread sticking out the top. We only did some light shopping today, as an excuse to leave the house. “Four more stops,” she tells me.

I think it’s funny when time is told in space-related terms like that. It makes me feel closer to the an-

cients watching the hours go by on their sundials, but also to the younger version of myself, before I knew what hours meant and my dad would tell me, “One more Curious George until you have to get dressed for grandma’s.” It’s comforting how the transfer holds up, because half an hour now feels so much faster than it did then, but it’s still one Curious George.

To Callie, I say, “Last night, I was in the bath for two hours and I didn’t even notice.”

“I noticed,” she laughs. “I was waiting to shower after you.”

“Sorry. Maybe I can cook for both of us tonight to even out our time balance.”

I turn and accidentally catch the eye of a stone owl across from us, clutched in the arms of a woman

with a sleek bun and ballet flats. He’s just a bit larger than a soccer ball, gray and rough, and his head is turned so he can stare me straight in the eye. I look back into his black stones, imagining a spark of life. The woman wraps her arms around his middle protectively.

“Garden center,” she explains, voice clear and irritated.

I feel like she’s challenging me. I turn away, losing the staring contest with the owl. Callie elbows me,

hiding her laughter by looking out the window.

The bus lurches, and the businessman across from us loses his grip on his shiny travel mug. He watches

with wide eyes as it bounces off the stone owl’s head before smacking against the linoleum floor. The lid pops off.

Spilling from the mug, skittering and spinning in all directions are gold-ish white pebbles. The sound is

clattering, like rainfall, and it goes on for longer than you might think. I can only assume he also came from the garden center.

We all become like the owl, who perhaps knew best all along. Staying very still, we look while pre-

tending we aren’t looking. The man stands tall, not reaching for the mug or the pebbles. The seconds stretch themselves out to accommodate.

Callie stares only at her bread. The woman tightens her grip on the owl, obviously seeking

protection from future travel mugs. A teen in beat-up sneakers in the very back seat picks up one of the little rocks. He gently tucks it in the side pocket of a backpack that seems to belong to the smaller boy beside him.

The backpack owner is too invested in his view out the window to notice.

There’s no right way to react, so I try to count the pebbles instead of the seconds. I somehow think that

maybe if I really count them all, I’ll be exactly finished when the bus gets to our stop. The seconds aren’t really here on the bus with us, but the pebbles are - they would know.

“Anyway, you don’t have to cook just because you feel like you owe me,” Callie says, just to say some-

thing. “It’s not worth it to try to even out time.”

The owl looks on, also counting pebbles, and I think it agrees.

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sawdust

Holy Grail Angry Geese // by Peter Tkazcyk, Staff Writer; art by Adam Dee, Art Editor

F

or all of recorded history, the Holy Grail has been the holy grail of ancient, lost relics. Although very little is actually known about the holy goblet, it remains a target of fascination for millions of people all around the world and the subject of millions of dollars worth of expedition fees by various governments and organizations trying to finally track down its long-lost location.

Nobody knows for certain where the Grail is, but of the many possibilities, one has often been overlooked. The Church of Christ the Gosling was a small and deeply, deeply unpopular Christian sect known for syncretizing the story of Jesus assuming his true divinity with the tale of the ugly duckling. According to conventional history, church members all died after they were all forced onto a boat and made to sail into unknown waters, but can we be certain of this? After all, geese are a well-known renewable food source. Could they have made it to America, settled the Ithaca region and buried their greatest treasure, the Grail, within one of its great lakes before dying of malnutrition caused by eating nothing but duck byproducts? It’s impossible to say for sure. All that we can be certain of is that those geese who nest in Ithaca today match many historical descriptions of the Church’s trained attack geese, bred for hostility and absolute malice over the course of many goose generations.

With this in mind, can we be certain then that Ithaca College represents a real financial institution? Or is it nothing more than a front for a shadowy international criminal ring hoping to get their hands on the Grail for their own evil ends?

After all, the Grail has many powers that could be used for evil, probably. How else could you explain the fifteen credits in “Looking Busy” each student is expected to take as part of any major or the three outbuildings that are just propped-up cardboard cutouts which get you tackled by security guards if you get too close to them?

For decade after decade, this shadowy organization must have been stymied in their efforts by the difficulty of training goons to possess the necessary mental fortitude and tensile skin strength to stand against the deep pain represented by an armed and organized goose counter-assault. However, this may have come to an end. It is very possible that this unknown organization has at last captured the Grail, perhaps due to the geese being impeded by their obligation to adhere to pandemic countermeasures which the goons, being evil, did not need to bother with. This can be inferred by the deduction that if any larger organization ever had a hand in Ithaca College, it has clearly now pulled out and left it to rot.

Peter Tkaczyk is a fourth-year writing major who has trained an army of geese to pick up his takeout orders.

You can reach them at ptaczyk@ithaca.edu.

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Unpacking the Source

of Adult Anxiety It’s Just Because Your Parents Let You Watch “The Lovely Bones” When You Were Young //

by Stephanie Tokasz, Staff Writer

L

ast fall, I was at my regular therapy session trying to unpack why walking through a cornfield during my family’s seasonal trip to “Parker’s Pumpkins and More” had been bothering me so much. My therapist thought perhaps it might be because I was bit by a large bug there before and had a slight fear of that. I looked at her as if she was crazy and knew it was much deeper than that— much more traumatic. I told her it reminded me of a scary experience I heard about or saw on television. She mentioned how Children of the Corn or a certain Dateline episode might just be engraved in the back of my mind from when I was a child and my parents didn’t check ‘Kids in Mind’ before taking us to the movies. I shook my head as I was now wrapped in the fetal position on the couch. She checked her watch as if to signal she had no idea what to do, and by this point, I was visibly shaking.

Then, it hit me! I yelled out, “It’s been The Lovely Bones all along!”

Continue at your own risk.

Scene #1 - Mark Whalberg plays Baseball Haunting Meter: 6.5/10 The fact that the most graphic scene of the film is not necessarily the most haunting really says something about the trauma endured by this film. Susie’s dad figuring out that Harvey was indeed his daughter’s murderer is pretty harsh in itself, but then when he tries to get his revenge, he ends up getting almost killed himself while Harvey just watches from the sidelines—in the exact cornfield he murdered Susie. It’s hard to blame the kid for being scared when Susie’s dad accidentally jumps on his girlfriend thinking it was Harvey, but the kid did not have to keep hitting him with the bat. At least this scene taught us just how much damage a bat could do. So no, you should not hit your brother with it when he steals your toy.

Final Verdict: It’s funny how we used to think Chicken Little made cornfields seem scary.

Scene #2 - Goodbye Susie Haunting Meter: 7/10

Can we just take a minute to talk about the ending sequence of the film? Every part just seems to get progressively sadder.

When Susie meets the other girls Harvey murdered, the way that they all seem happy is just heartbreaking. Also, Ray deserves an honorable mention. I swear I have never wanted to see a love story play out more than I wanted to see theirs, so I’m very glad that they at least got to have a last kiss. However, the most disappointing part of this sequence was the fact that the safe Susie’s body was in didn’t open because she deserved that justice. We all know there was some amount of justice served with Harvey, but still not enough. Overall, the ending quote, “I was here for a moment and then I was gone. I wish you all a long and happy life” is just unreal. If you didn’t cry at that quote, you are indeed a stone person. At the age of ten, we’re out here trying to live and get our lives started, and then here we are contemplating death. This sequence was practically sadder than real-life events, even the loss of our treasured goldfish we had at that age.

Final Verdict: The pamphlet on how to deal with grief you received from your church will finally come in handy because, without it, you have no chance of recovering.

Scene #3 - Bunker of Death Haunting Meter: 8.5/10

Of course, this list includes the scene where Susie and Harvey are sitting in the underground bunker. I’m not going to lie, the bunker would’ve made an excellent hangout if Harvey wasn’t a monster and actually built it for the neighborhood kids. Would the kids have walked through a barren cornfield to get to a secluded makeshift clubhouse? Probably not. Anywho, I think the entire scene was turned around the moment Harvey asked Susie, “Do you have a boyfriend?” I think it is safe to assume that

34

any middle-aged man who you don’t know who asks you this exact question is a murderer. There’s just no other explanation for it. But in all seriousness, a situation like this one is what every person fears, and this movie shouldn’t have to teach the lesson of not going into a bunker to young children, but unfortunately, people like Harvey actually think it’s okay to exist.

Final Verdict: There is no way to recover from this scene, but the behind-the-scenes clip from this on YouTube may take the edge off.

Scene #4 - Harvey Bathtime Haunting Meter: 9/10 Susie runs out of the underground bunker and makes it home, so she must be alive, right? Wrong. When Susie enters Harvey’s bathroom, it’s already bad enough that there is legitimately a naked middle-aged man soaking in dirty bathwater. Also, the blood everywhere in the white bathroom doesn’t help, including the knife also soaked with blood. Like, thank you for spelling out exactly what happened. As if things couldn’t get worse, then, this scene soaks up any last hope you had about Susie making it out alive once she screams and her body begins to disappear, which thankfully isn’t too graphic. Either way, the movie probably could’ve gone without the man in the bathtub.

Final Verdict: Whether I’m ten or twenty or any age for that matter, I really don’t want to see a hairy middle-aged man sitting in a dirty bathtub, please and thank you.

Scene #5 - Murder Montage Haunting Meter: 10/10

If George Harvey was a serial killer, it’s pretty obvious that there were other victims that came before and most likely after Susie.

However, the fact that each victim’s story was told in detail was probably a scene that most people could not have bared to see, especially at a young age. The scene begins with Susie walking through Harvey’s darkly-lit house. The slow music and dark lighting suggest suspense, but most probably weren’t expecting that one second she was in the house, and the next second she was looking at a dead woman’s body in a creek. Of course, each story is tragic, but the fact that he murdered a six-year-old girl is beyond messed up. Also, it doesn’t make things any less frightening when Susie is explaining exactly how he was able to murder the girls who are all around the age of ten, just like most people were when we watched the movie. Good move, Mom.

Final Verdict: Let’s just say this scene and the “Thriller” music video both made us sleep on our parent’s floor.

Haunting Meter: 10/10 Ultimate Verdict: We now have an origin story for our anxiety.

As soon as I finished saying all this, my therapist glanced at her watch once again. “Would you look at the time!”

Stephanie Tokasz is a first-year film, photo, and visual arts major who would like to emphasize that their bones are only sub-par.

You can reach them at stokasz@ithaca.edu

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Jack the Ripper Still at Large Famous Victorian Killer Could be Any One of Us // by Peter Tkazcyk, Staff Writer

I

n the year 1888, a terrifying serial killer stalked the streets of the Whitechapel district of London. Through his brutal and perhaps cannibalistic murders, he became a figure of terror anywhere newspapers were circulated. But despite the great fervor that surrounded these crimes, Jack the Ripper was never caught and remains at large to this day.

Theories continue to this day as to the true identity of Jack the Ripper. Accusations have been levied at notable medical professionals, aristocrats who lived near or visited the area, and even members of the British royal family. However, most of these theories contain the flaw that those accused were eventually confirmed to have died, while the body of Jack the Ripper has never been found. Less popular theories include the idea that he may have been someone besides the few hundred individuals of the relevant time period and region of whom we know.

Eighty years after the final murder directly tied to Jack the Ripper, the British government declared the case closed and, in a highly-publicized funeral, buried an empty coffin beneath a headstone simply labeled ‘Jack the Ripper.”

However, the very next day, the unthinkable happened: a murder was performed with a knife by an unknown assailant in London, proving that Jack the Ripper remained at large.

Speculation immediately began once more, with many eyes

turning towards those who had attended the funeral. After all, perhaps he had waited until it had been assumed that his spree had ended forever before he began to kill again.

It’s easy to speculate on the identity of Jack the Ripper, as only a few traits are known about the mysterious murderer. It is known that he is male (probably), English, good with a knife and a serial killer. If you know anyone, including your closest loved ones and family members, who fits at least one of these criteria, locate the constable immediately, as they may be Jack the Ripper. However, make absolutely certain that the officer you report this to has none of these traits, or else they may be Jack the Ripper themselves.

While Jack the Ripper is among the most famous, many great criminals and monsters have escaped justice over the years. Anyone you pass on the street might be Elizabeth Bathory, the noble who butchered her own servants. Any dog or other canine you see, including one who lives in your own home, might be the Beast of Gevaudan, cleverly disguised to hide from the authorities. And if you have any large rocks in your yard, take a moment of your time to check its background to make absolutely certain that it is not the Chicxulub meteor which mercilessly murdered the entirety of the dinosaur population.

Peter Tkaczyk is a fourth-year writing major who definitely does not stalk the streets of London in a bowler hat.

You can reach them at ptaczyk@ithaca.edu.

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Missing Children Return to

Milk Cartons Searches Complicated by Modern Milk Variety // by Ryan Bieber, Contributing Writer; art by Carolyn Langer, Staff Artist

R

emember those days where you would sit down for breakfast with a hearty bowl of cereal and pull out a carton of milk only to be greeted by the smiling face of a missing child who looked about the same age as you? Refreshing, right? Well, now it’s all making a comeback.

As Americans become increasingly nostalgic for the ‘80s, repopularizing vinyl records and binge-watching “Stranger Things,” bringing back missing children on milk cartons seemed like the logical next step. At first, dairy companies were all too eager to hop onto this next cash-grabbing adventure, but now many are realizing that revitalizing the trend isn’t so easy in the modern age.

The principal problem is there are too many types of milk on the market. Nowadays, consumers have so many daily dairy options to choose from that any effort to raise awareness about missing children has become significantly diluted.

Just last week, a young Timothy Anderson went missing in Texas but his disappearance went largely unnoticed after his face was relegated to the back of oat milk cartons.

His mother was in tears when we interviewed her, but mostly because she had just forced herself to drink one of the dozen oat milk cartons she bought to remind her of her son.

“My boy is missing and nobody even knows because who in their right mind would buy oat milk of all things?” she cried.

Similar milk substitutes have proven to be problematic.

One mother named Karen expressed outrage when her missing daughter’s face was put on a carton of almond milk,

even though her daughter had severe peanut allergies.

“Do they think this is a joke?” she exclaimed. “My daughter has probably been brutally kidnapped but now every time I think of her I just imagine her breaking out in hives all over the place.”

A few days later, it was discovered that the daughter had simply run away from home to escape her overbearing mother.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that the upper-class is using their wealth and influence to get their missing children’s faces on the most popular types of milk, namely the 1%. Some people decided to boycott this type of milk in protest leaving supermarkets with gallons of what they called “spoiled” milk.

Dairy companies have also found that people have much shorter attention spans than they did in the ‘80s. Now, no one seems to have the time or care to read about missing children on milk cartons. One company is hoping to change that by writing shorter bio’s about the missing children, which they are calling, “Condensed Milk.”

Another trend that didn’t exist in the ‘80s is cereal milk, which is milk infused with the flavors of your favorite breakfast cereals. Unfortunately, serial killers were quick to pounce on this newfound branding opportunity, pasting magazine letter cutouts on many of the bottles and taunting victim’s families with notes like “I’m in a bad MOOOOOd” and “Milking this for all it’s worth.”

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Critics of the dairy companies’ controversial milk carton revival have called their efforts “rancid” and “udderly awful.”

The only person who seems to be benefiting from this is Caroline B. Cooney, author of the book “Face on the Milk Carton” which some readers might remember from middle school English class. In a recent interview, Cooney said she

was “brimming” with new ideas for a sequel.

In light of all the controversy, it seems like the trend will be relatively short-lived. Supermarkets have already announced that they plan to shelf the idea in the coming weeks, putting it right alongside evaporated milk.

Ryan Bieber is a third-year journalism major who has begun brewing his own milk for promotional reasons.

You can reach them at rbieber@ithaca.edu

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buzzsaw asks why...

I have been running a European bookstore for a month and nobody has asked my hand in marriage yet?

I’m going to be completely honest here, my relocation to Europe was not to “find myself” as I initially claimed on my Instagram.

Rather, it was the result of a Mamma Mia/Notting Hill/Leap Year/Lizzie McGuire Movie-induced breakdown. I threw all of my crochet tops and sundresses into a bag, plopped a sun hat on my head and booked a flight before my running mascara had even dried.

Am I saying it was a bad choice? No. I drink cappuccinos every day and my student loan bills get sent to my parent’s house, so when they call and ask me to pay them I simply reply: “C’est La Vie.” They nod in understanding that I have reached a more peaceful state of living and confirm the second mortgage they are taking out to pay off my debts. Additionally, I enjoy a secret laugh every time I hear someone speak in an accent so my endorphin levels have never been higher.

I opened a bookstore in London, with a little café and crepe paper decorations. It is the antithesis of everything I saw in America: quaint and soft-spoken. I sit behind the counter every day and read endless books, wipe down tables occasionally, and greet my sporadic customers. Is it very profitable? No. But I am content… and should maybe reach out to my parents about that third mortgage.

The real folly of my choice only becomes evident to me when I turn a page in my book and notice my embarrassingly barren ring finger. The movies had led me to believe that there would be European men lined around the corner ready to make snarky comments about my accent and say I’m “smashing.” The only suitor I have encountered was someone who shouted that I was “right fit” from a double-decker bus. I appreciate that he did it in the most European way possible, but this is not the storybook romance I signed up for.

Every day I stroll through the park in my sundress, pausing to look at trees and giving ample time for someone to approach me and teach me about botany. I go to the museums and cry about my loneliness in hopes someone will think I’m reacting to the paintings and console me and my empathetic intelligence. I have even taken to running into people on the sidewalk while holding a US History textbook so our hands can touch when they help me pick it up and they know that I am foreign! Since when did Americans deserve this type of treatment? You would think with that whole revolution thing I would just be a tantalizing reminder of what they almost had!

But c’est la vie, my European adventure has only offered me history and healthcare, not the dark-eyebrowed Italian man that I crossed the pond for. Perhaps in an Our Lips are Sealed/Muriel’s Wedding-induced haze I will try my luck down under.

Your Editor who has bloody lost the plot,

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Sarah Borsari

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