The Spin Issue

BUZZSAW OCTOBER 2015

Presidential Primary Coverage pg. 6

ROUND AND ROUND

Sexting: Hormones and Cell Phones pg. 26

Deceptive Movie Trailers pg. 31

Buzzsaw presents...

EDITORS’ COMMENT

The Spin Issue

It’s time to get down and throw that ass in a circle.

Life is full of two-timers trying to get one by you. People try to take information and misconstrue the truth for their own personal gain, and that’s a load of bunk.

While the recent SCOTUS decision in favor of gay marriage was a great step forward, constitution rights have a long history of being misconstrued in support of bigotry and hate. (Separating Church and State, p. 18) Host of media critique radio show, CounterSpin discusses the ins and outs of calling out big-business journalism and making a comprehensive radio program. (Keeping the Mainstream in Check, p. 24)

BUZZSAW News & Views Upfront

Katelyn Harrop Michele Hau Ministry of Cool Kellen Beck Prose & Cons Robert S. Hummel Sawdust Tylor Colby Layout Olivia Cross Art Lizzie Cox Website Lexie Farabaugh Christian Cassidy-Amstutz Seesaw Erica Moriarty Social Media Katie Orr Production

Beach House’s latest album Depression Cherry is a darkly, hollowed, romantic return to form. Each song title manifests itself in the qualities within each track. (Beach House review: p. 34) Advisor Founders

Divider and Table of Contents Photography

By Zoe Szmulewicz Zoe Szmulewicz is a freshman film, photography, visual arts major.

Evan Popp

Tyler Obropta Annika Kushner Celisa Calacal Michael Tkaczevski Taylor Barker Sophie Israelsohn Jeff Cohen Abby Bertumen Kelly Burdick Bryan Chambala Sam Costello Thom Denick Cole Louison James Sigman

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

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

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

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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

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

Front cover, back cover and center spread art by Lizzie Cox

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

Table of Contents Seesaw ..........................................................4 Print media is dead, check out multimedia on the web.

News & Views .................................................5 Current events, local news & quasi-educated opinions.

Upfront .......................................................17 Selected dis-education of the month.

Ministry of Cool ........................................30 Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Prose & Cons ............................................38 Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

Satire threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

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BUZZSAW News & Views

Sawdust .......................................................46

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Get Up-State: Graffiti Artists Create in Ithaca Over 50 graffiti artists from around the world came together to paint the warehouse walls in Downtown Ithaca. Buzzsaw stopped by to check out what these fantastic artists created.

Snow Falling Down, Tuition Going Up

The recent rise of tuition at Ithaca College raised Ithaca Celebrates 13th questions of the spaces on campus for both liberty Annual AIDS Ride for Life and learning. A masked artist, known as The Kid,

the availability of these spaces at the college The Ithaca community has participatedquestions in the fundraiser for 13 years. Buzzsaw met through his artwork. with co-founders of the event, Russ Traunstein and Jerry Dietz about the event’s impact on the Southern Tier AIDS Program.

Talib Kweli Performs in Downtown Ithaca Talib Kweli performed for the Ithaca Commons to an audience of over 1000.

Kweli performed and addressed his fans about the Black Lives Matter movement.

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

Subscribe Seeing Sinand Watch at www.vimeo.com/buzzsawmag A collection of photos by Gabrielle Cosentino displaying each of the seven mortal sins outlined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

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Islamophobia in the U.S.

Politicians and media perpetuate offensive beliefs about Muslims

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By Olivia Blees, Contributing Writer

McCain retook the microphone from the woman and replied, “No, ma’am. He’s not [an Arab].” Just seven years later, it appears the voices of Islamophobia have not become quieter, they’ve grown in volume.

Islamophobia is not just a problem in the world of politics, but also in the media. Bill Maher is a well-known atheist, liberal and comedian. Since 2003 he’s had his own show on HBO, Real Time with Bill Maher. It’s no secret that he’s comfortable voicing his own opinion, but his less than liberal view on Islam has gotten him some less than positive attention.

Back in 2014, Maher and actor Ben Affleck engaged in a heated debate about Islam. During his panel segment, Maher stated Islam is “the only religion that acts like the mafia that will kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book.” Affleck immediately challenged Maher on his comments.

“Some of them do bad things and you’re painting the whole religion with that broad brush,” Affleck said.

At the end of the show, Maher’s audience gave him a giant round of applause, overwhelming Affleck’s opposition.

In early 2015, Maher continued his callous views of Islam with an insensitive joke about Muslims. In a web-only segment, Maher brought up the then-recent departure of musician Zain “Zayn” Malik, who is open about his Muslim faith, from the popular British boy band One Direction. After dismissing Malik’s career move, Maher placed a photo of the pop singer alongside an image of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and asked, “Where were you during the Boston marathon?” This joke received harsh criticism on Twitter, but that didn’t cause Maher to rethink his rhetoric.

Recently, the media has focused on the story of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-yearold Muslim boy who made a clock that supposedly looked like a bomb. Ahmed brought in the homemade invention to his Texas high school to show it to his engineering teacher. His English teacher, however, saw the device and confiscated it. Later, Ahmed was called to the prin-

cipal’s office, placed in handcuffs and taken into custody. He was accused of bringing a device to school that looked like a homemade bomb.

In addition to being placed in a juvenile detention center, the teen was suspended from school for three days. Since the ordeal, Ahmed has gained momentous support on social media and even from President Obama. However, Maher had some choice words for Ahmed. Maher was annoyed with Ahmed’s title as a young inventor, arguing the teen did nothing more than remove parts from a digital clock radio and stuff them in a pencil box.

One of the panelists on the show, Ron Reagan, did not believe what Ahmed made looked like a bomb.

“It looked like a clock,” Reagan said.

Maher was quick to contradict Reagan, exclaiming, “It looked exactly like a bomb!” Maher went on to cite recent instances of Islamic violence, but made no mention of, or comparison to, the myriad of Muslims worldwide who don’t engage in violence.

Larger than the actual problem of the apparent acceptance and ubiquity of these biased views of Islam is that there is no examination of why we as a society are so biased. Maher firmly believes that Mohamed’s clocked looked exactly like a bomb. He and his panelists could argue all day about what the invention really looked like. However, to make some real ground, it would be better to examine why anyone would jump to the extreme, irrational, fear-based conclusion that a 14-year-old boy in Texas built a bomb under the guise of a science fair assignment.

The hysteria surrounding Islam can only begin to be quelled when influential people like politicians and media personalities are held accountable for the ignorant comments they make. ______________________________________ Olivia Blees is a junior TelevisionRadio major with a concentration in religious watch-doggery. You can email her at oblees1@ithaca.edu.

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he first result on a Google search of “Islamophobia” is this: “Dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.” However, many politicians and media personalities today would assert that their views of Muslims aren’t prejudice, they’re just fact.

From the GOP campaign trail, to a Texas high school, the U.S. seems to be obsessed with talking about Islam, but at the same time wants nothing to do with it. For example, on Sept. 17 in a town hall meeting in Rochester, New Hampshire, a Donald Trump supporter said, “We have a problem in this country and it’s called Muslims.” He then went on to ask, “When can we get rid of them?” Trump answered with, “We’re going to be looking at that and many other things.”

The U.S. Constitution clearly states there can be no religious test for public office. However, in a Sept. 20 interview on Meet the Press, Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson said Islam is incompatible with the Constitution. Carson also said on Meet the Press, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.” Trump and Carson are virtually tied for the GOP presidential primary nomination, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted Sept. 20-24.

There seem to be low expectations of tolerance when it comes to what is being spewed from the mouths of these people vying to be the next leader of the U.S. and candidates seem to be engaging with those who hold false opinions about Islam. The man who made the comment to Trump in New Hampshire about the problem in the U.S. being Muslims, went on to say, “Our current president is one.”

Sen. John McCain faced a similar situation in 2008 during his run for President when a woman said about then-candidate Barack Obama over a microphone, “...he’s an Arab.” However, unlike Trump, who didn’t bother to correct his supporters’ ignorant comment,

Presidential Primary Coverage Skewed

Media gravitates to the outrageous while ignoring some candidates

By Otto Bonk, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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ver the past few years, the media has transformed presidential elections from a place of political debate to the set of a reality television show. The most recent GOP debate is only the latest example of this phenomena.

The debates, and the characters who were a part of them, seem to have become a moneymaking opportunity for news organizations. In this latest debate, CNN’s website sported a picture of Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina with the caption “Round Two: The Gloves are Off.” The result of major news outlets’ focus on the dramatization of this election has caused candidates to resort to increasingly preposterous means of getting noticed.

This has been much more pronounced in the Republican field, where the number of candidates is much higher, and nowhere is it more pronounced than with Trump.

According to statistics from the Global Database of Events, Language and Tone, which took into account every time a candidate’s name was mentioned on all major news networks from the beginning of the year to the present, Trump has received the most coverage out of all candidates from both parties. The fact is, Trump is doing something right in this regard, but unfortunately it has very little to do with his policies or his political qualifications.

In an article for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi wrote, “This GOP race is not about policy or electability or even raising money. Instead, it’s about Nielsen ratings or trending.”

Richard Bensel, a professor of government at Cornell University, said this kind of coverage is “detrimental to public debate.”

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If this is the case, then Trump really has been doing something right. He is leading in the polls as of the end of September, and according to GDELT’s data, from the moment he announced his candidacy and denounced Mexicans as rapists, he has been getting double the coverage of Hillary Clinton and more than triple the amount of coverage devoted to Jeb Bush, who at one point was Trump’s closest competitor for the nomination.

The inordinate amount of attention on Trump and his inflammatory remarks, combined with the fact that he has stood by these comments, seems to have gotten other candidates thinking. With so many candidates in the running, and with only a certain number allowed to sit at the grownups table in the debates, candidates seem to see any attention as good attention.

The result is candidates like former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee saying that President Barack Obama is “taking the Israelis and basically marching them towards the door of the oven” with the Iran Nuclear Deal, and then stating the Fourteenth Amendment made abortion illegal, resulting in a brief, yet noticeable bump in the polls.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has since dropped out of the race, attempted to jump on the “build a wall” bandwagon, suggesting the possibility of building a wall on the Canadian border. Yet all these attempts were constantly overshadowed by Trump, who according to GDELT, has received 38 percent of the news coverage out of 17 Republican candidates since the announcement of his candidacy.

Jim Naureckas, an editor of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a national media watchdog group, said the GOP race has become centered around Trump.

“There is a sense that if you want the

nomination in the Republican party, that you are going to have to take away some of the Trump vote,” Naureckas said.

While this might make sense, the media’s refusal to let the Trump story die down has resulted in a near chaotic climate in the GOP race. The latest debate on Sept. 16, for example, was a scene of constant jibes and rhetoric for the sake of rhetoric. For the most part, the candidates spoke very little, and not at all seriously, about issues that concern most people in the U.S. The consequence of this strategy used

by Trump and his fellow Republican candidates is that it will come back to bite them following the primary. By allowing the entire party to be pulled further right, candidates are creating the potentially catastrophic problem of losing all of their moderate voter support, Bensel said.

“Trump is a disaster for the Republican party,” he said.

Bensel attributed this “disaster” to the fact that Trump has seized the spotlight and almost single-handedly painted the Republican party as the party of racism, misogynism and the privileged, exactly the image the party is trying to move away from.

The problem of actually getting one’s message across is hardly exclusive to the overcrowded Republican field. The problems faced by Democratic candidates who are not Clinton are equally damning to their ability to accurately convey their positions and policies, but in a different way. For Democratic candidates, the struggle does not seem to be saying the most controversial thing, but rather escaping the massive shadow of the Clinton political machine.

In many ways, doing that is a task more difficult than trying to beat Trump’s

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one of the largest crowds any candidate had drawn up to that point, but many news organizations did not even give it a mention. In fact, most of the coverage of it seemed to focus on his unkempt hair, rather than the policy goals he was outlining.

According to a different article, published Sept. 24 and also by Boehlert, many news networks have been partially ignoring Sanders because they have found the Clinton email scandal more fascinating, devoting half of Clinton’s total air time to the topic.

In contrast, Boehlert stated, Sanders has received as much air time as Mitt Romney received when he announced that he was not going to run for President again. He is also getting overshadowed in terms of coverage by Bush’s campaign, even though Sanders is doing much better in the key states of Iowa and New Hampshire, according to Boehlert.

Part of the problem, Naureckas suggested, is Sanders is not following the “rules” of campaigning. He is a Washington outsider for the most part, and he doesn’t act like most other candidates. For instance, Sanders has not involved himself with major donors and has used grassroots campaign tactics as opposed to the large-scale political machine campaigning used by most of the other candidates. Naureckas suggested that this may be part of the reason Sanders has been largely ignored.

Boehlert also points out the media seem unsure of how exactly to cover Sanders.

He is not acting like the politician that Clinton is, but neither is he subscribing to the radical raving the Republican party is currently engaged in. According to a May 19 article titled “America’s Views Align Surprisingly Well With Those of ‘Socialist’ Bernie Sanders,” published in Mother Jones and written by Josh Harkinson, most of the things Sanders is saying are proposals much of the American people

agree with, but he is portrayed as being on the fringes of the political spectrum, somewhere very far left of center.

The problem Sanders and other Democratic candidates face is not that they are one voice lost among many, as is the problem facing many Republicans, but one voice that no one seems to want to acknowledge.

The real consequences of the disproportionate coverage of the candidates have not yet been felt, but in the coming weeks and months they will become apparent. Real debate will be drowned out by outrageous comments, and a lack of effective and meaningful political debate could result in the most disastrous election in recent history. ________________________________________ Otto Bonk is a sophomore politics and English double major with a minor in telling stupid media people how to do their damn jobs.

You can email him at obonk@ithaca.edu

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level of political incorrectness. As Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination, has found out, it’s not enough to say something that is far outside the standard party line or to self-identify as a democratic socialist. For him, the problem is not that he is one voice among many, as is the issue for many Republican candidates, it’s that no one seems to care about his voice.

The amount of coverage Sanders has received pales in comparison with the amount Clinton has garnered. According to the GDELT’s research, Clinton has received 80 percent of the coverage among Democratic candidates, while Sanders has received a mere 14.5 percent. Sanders and the other Democratic candidates have been consistently overshadowed since 2013, when speculation already began as to whether Clinton would run.

The strange part about this is television networks and newspapers spent months complaining Clinton had no challenger to face. However, now that she has one, no major news organization has given Sanders much attention.

Furthermore, the argument many news sites have given in response to questions regarding why they are not covering Sanders is they thought his numbers were too low to win. However, Bensel said this far from the election, poll numbers really do not have much bearing on what will actually happen. Even Nate Silver, the editor of FiveThirtyEight, who called 49 out of 50 states correctly in the 2008 election, waited until very close to the actual election to make his determinations. And, despite the media’s focus on poll numbers, coverage of Sanders has been slow to catch up to his increasing popularity in the polls.

A May 29 article titled “The Press and Bernie Sanders” written by Eric Boehlert for Media Matters for America, stated Sanders’ campaign announcement drew

Numbers Over Humans

The problem with media’s coverage of the Chinese stock market crash

By Michael Tkaczevski, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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he Chinese stock market crash over the summer was big financial news, but its severe impact on Chinese families was largely overlooked by Western news.

The crash began as an investment bubble. Large numbers of Chinese small business owners put their business onto the stock market, creating a glut of investment options, according to a Reuters article from July 8. When many small businesses didn’t perform well, the value of their stocks decreased, making the market much more volatile, The Guardian reported.

On June 12, the bubble burst.

On the Shanghai Stock Exchange, a third of the value of A-shares was lost, meaning the best shares of China’s most profitable companies lost a significant amount of value. In one day, China lost the equivalent of about $2.7 trillion, or six times Greece’s entire foreign debt, according to a New York Times’ story from July 6.

The impact of the crash reached the United States, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1000 points, which The Guardian reported represented the largest single-day decrease in average stock value in its history.

Luckily for foreign investors, the impacts of the crash did not do a massive amount of damage outside of China, according to The Guardian and Fortune Magazine. China’s overall growth is still 50 percent greater than last year, Fortune Magazine wrote, so there seems to be no permanent damage for foreign investors big and small.

Seems like a straightforward story, right? The Chinese government’s attempt to mitigate the crash were doomed to fail, but luckily foreign businesses should be able to recover from these losses.

But what about the Chinese people? Small retail investors constitute 80 percent of the Chinese stock

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market, according to The Guardian.

Some of these people had put their family’s life savings into the stock market, encouraged by state-sponsored media’s calls for citizens to invest more.

Most international and financial news outlets either gave only passing mention to this statistic or ignored it altogether. Foreign investments make up only 2 percent of the Chinese stock market, a story in the International Business Times from Aug. 25 reported.

Instead, in an article about the crash, The Guardian included a quote from Nick Dixon, an investment director at the asset management company Aegon UK, who said: “If pension savers don’t need to access their fund for many years, they needn’t be alarmed by short term volatility.”

Dixon was referring to foreign investors, but the article does not mention the impact of the crash on Chinese investors, who will be hit harder by the market’s volatility.

Fortune also published an opinion piece by guest commentators Chen Baizhu and Imaad Zuberi in which they argued the stock market crash and reduced annual growth does not represent significant damage to China’s economy. However, the article completely ignores the situations of individual Chinese investors. To Fortune, the crash was “just the beginning of a new chapter of this great story.”

Similarly, NPR framed their coverage of the crash as a story of numbers and lost profits, not lost savings.

Their main source, a Chinese man surnamed Lee, said, “I got in late last year when the market was still good. … What I’ve lost is mostly just profit, not my initial investment.”

The Chinese government also arrested almost 200 people accused of spreading rumors about the crash, Al Jazeera reported on Aug. 31. Bloomberg Business News reported on Aug. 3 the government also froze 38 accounts suspected of short-selling, a technique in which one bets that a

certain stock will fall in value, buys the stock, and then sells it to drop its value, thus profiting off of stock market sabotage.

Many financial news outlets, such as Fortune, would, at best, mention this only as a brief anecdote. If Western media fails to thoroughly cover the arrests of journalists and investors, it sends a message that the arrests are an acceptable part of the Chinese government’s standard economic policy.

Luckily, some coverage of the crash has included interviews with individual Chinese people who were hit hard by the collapse of the market.

The New York Times published an article, “China’s Market Rout is a Double Threat,” in which He Wuhong, a Chinese middle school teacher and mother of a toddler, is given a voice.

“My heart can’t take it,” she said.

“We would probably sell off our holdings as soon as the market rebounds enough to make us even.”

The authors, Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley, explain her family’s financial situation and their lack of flexibility, analysis that is left out in other articles by mainstream media.

Their analysis acknowledged the misfortune of small business owners and individual investors will be long term writing, “The problem for millions of investors is that share prices may not recover for years, if ever, for the more speculative stocks.”

Unfortunately, The New York Times’ one article did not counter the majority of the coverage, which stopped at discussing stock numbers and never went into analyzing the economic fallout of such widespread debt among consumers in the fastest growing economy in the world.

The expected retort would be that not every U.S. newspaper needs to explain the plight of Chinese individuals and families because the

as The New York Times, explored the human cost of the crash, including lost savings and arrests.

The primary narrative produced by Western news, however, preferred to focus on only the cold numbers of whether the West would feel repercussions and once assured American investors would not lose money, skipped over the tremendous losses in personal livelihood of millions of people. __________________________________ Michael Tkaczevski is a senior journalism major who cringes every time Donald Trump says China. You can email him at mtkacze1@ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

focus of their writing is on the U.S. economy and the interests of their audience, who are most likely not Chinese. If the U.S. is not damaged by events in China, no matter how dramatic, there is no reason for Western media to care.

However, this way of thinking prevents readers from thinking about China as anything other than a mysterious country with an enigmatic leadership. Chinese people remain a monolith to us. If the news media only portrays Chinese news in relation to stocks and businesses, the majority of Americans will continue to view the complex society of the People’s Republic of China as nothing more than an occasional headline in the business section.

Moreover, there is indeed a practical reason for caring about the stories of Chinese families. Financial hardship for Chinese people will have noticeable effects on consumption around the world. If Chinese families lost their savings, they may be less willing to purchase expensive goods, which could hinder U.S. exports and Chinese domestic consumption. Severe debt may also dissuade Chinese families from taking out loans in the future, potentially weakening China’s banking system in a long-term scope.

As much as one can express interest in China’s economy and society, if that interest ends with the business talk, one is simply considering China to be market for goods, not a rich society with more than a billion individuals whose lives should matter when we cover and discuss international economics.

If relations between the U.S. and China are to remain at least benign — let alone improve and become more open — we in the U.S. must make an effort to see Chinese people as individuals with whom we can sympathize, even and especially when we are not directly affected. Our understanding of each other’s economy, society and daily lives must evolve from tropes of paper dragons and monolithic systems into a desire to improve each other’s lives through commerce and empathy.

This stock market crash was an ideal time for Western media to express sympathies for Chinese people who lost their savings and were plunged into debt. Some publications, such

A Young Feminist’s Perspective Why we don’t like Hillary

By Anna Lamb, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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pril 2015. What a time to be alive. Finally, a capable, Democratic, FEMALE candidate is running for president.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy, and with that, a symbolic, feminist moment for the books. However, with the recent scandal over the use of her private email account and the political baggage of the Clinton brand, my support for the former secretary of state has waned.

It seems that Clinton represents a more trivial “girl power” approach to winning over her peers. Instead of promising to enact real systematic change that women are eager to see, she is merely a symbolic candidate for feminism. Women don’t just need sheer exposure, we need someone to make the future better. We don’t need a spokesperson for women simply because that individual happens to be one, but rather a candidate that will voice the real concerns and injustices women and girls face in the United States.

Then who? Who is the ideal candidate for a liberal, female millennial? This is where fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders comes in, and has a clear edge over his competition. Sanders may not have the chromosomes to win over the majority of the feminist population, but he is clearly in favor of women’s rights, advocates for economic reform, has clear stances and is not bogged down by corporate support.

While both Sanders and Clinton support reproductive rights and closing a wage gap, Sanders has made clear progress in advancing all women, whereas Clinton has failed to advance LGBT women and women of color.

Sanders condemned the action of many Republicans in Congress attempting to defund Planned Parenthood as an “attack on women’s health.” In 2000, Sanders voted against a ban on partial-birth abortions, and in 2006 he co-sponsored a bill making emergency contraception universally available in hospitals for victims of rape.

He voted yes on an act that would make it illegal for pharmacies to deny birth con-

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trol to patients, and in 2011, Sanders cosponsored a measure with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, to address the country’s rape-kit backlog.

Sanders also voted for the Paycheck Fairness Act, a piece of legislation attempting to combat factors leading to women making 78 cents on the dollar.

In contrast, voters are left wondering what concrete efforts Clinton has made to advance women and break the glass ceiling she loves to refer to.

While it is clear Clinton wants to promote gender equality, as she has made that a central tenet of her presidential campaign, she does not promote equality for all women. Instead, Clinton promotes a heteronormative, white feminist approach. According to an article in Racism Review, during her time as First Lady, Clinton and her husband — then President Bill Clinton — reduced federal assistance to women and children living in poverty.

Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, notes it was Clinton who advocated for Congress to expand the drug war and mass incarceration, which Alexander wrote impacts people of color significantly more than those who are white.

While promoting the advancement of one systematically disadvantaged group –– women –– Clinton has actively forced another further down. It is a clear moral hypocrisy to be a feminist, but only for white women. Clinton has since called for an end to the era of mass incarceration, but she cannot erase the impact of her actions on this issue when she was First Lady.

Sanders has also spoken about race and its connection to the excessive number of people in prison in the U.S. “From Ferguson to Baltimore and across this nation, too many African Americans and other minorities find themselves subjected to a system that treats citizens who have not committed crimes as if they were criminals, and that is unacceptable,” he said.

As for LGBT women, as well as those who identify as LGBT in general, Sanders voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which was a federal law banning gay marriage, and has repeatedly stood

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up for same-sex marriage even when it has been viewed unfavorably.

Sanders also supported the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which prevented employers from discriminating based on gender identity and sexual orientation, when it was passed by the Senate in 2013, and even called on President Barack Obama to support marriage equality in 2011. Additionally, he co-sponsored the federal LGBT-inclusive Student Non-Discrimination Act. In contrast, Hillary Clinton opposed gay marriage until 2013.

Feminism is about equal rights and fair treatment of all. War and military hostility are about the advancement of one side’s agenda. In a world where most feminists are young millennial women, a big defense budget and aggressive military practices are not going to fly.

Those who are skeptical about war, who tend to be millennials who have seen the U.S. at war most of their lives, see Sanders as more of a dove when it comes to conflict, whereas Clinton tends to be more of a hawk. Sanders voted against the Iraq War in 2002, while Clinton voted in favor of it. Clinton is also gung-ho about the U.S. being the leading force in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, while Sanders finds this concept utterly ridiculous.

As for the recent Iranian nuclear deal, both politicians backed it. However, while Sanders is hopeful that it will lead to future advances in diplomacy, Clinton sees the deal somewhat differently.

“This isn’t the start of some larger diplomatic opening,” Clinton said. “And we shouldn’t expect that this deal will lead to a broader change in their [Iran’s] behavior.”

Ladies: putting a man in the White House is not a betrayal to the feminist cause. Don’t let the Super PACs fool you.

Hillary is not all she’s cracked up to be and we can wait for the right woman to come along. It’s time to feel the Bern. ________________________________________ Anna Lamb is a freshman journalism major who believes feminism defies the gender barrier. You can email her at alamb@ithaca.edu

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Workers’ Center Launches Living Wage Campaign Seeking to raise county’s minimum wage to over $14 an hour

By Evan Popp, News and Views Editor

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and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has already proposed raising New York’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, garnering support from the Republican held State Senate will be more of a challenge.

Despite the challenges ahead, Meyers said the campaign to increase minimum wage in the county to $14.34 is starting to gather momentum.

Part of building a local groundswell is getting towns in the county to pass resolutions endorsing the campaign, Meyers said, which the town of Ithaca did in mid August.

The resolution is nonbinding and has no lawful impact, but Meyers said it does indicate support for the campaign.

The TCWC is currently working on getting the city of Ithaca to pass a resolution approving of the plan, Meyers said. He said Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick, a Democrat and a supporter of the campaign, recently helped the TCWC convince the Tompkins County Democratic Committee to endorse the living wage campaign.

In addition, Meyers said the TCWC also plans to begin having supporters of the campaign testify, possibly in November, before the Tompkins County legislature about the experience of surviving on a low wage.

Meyers said he hopes a large number of supporters attend those sessions, including low wage workers involved in the campaign.

Blodgett, who currently makes $11.85 an hour, said if minimum wage were raised to reflect living wage in the county, he and his family would have a much better chance of getting by. Blodgett said he is slowly getting involved with the TCWC attempt to raise the minimum wage.

Meyers said the TCWC is also circulating a petition that people in support of the campaign can sign, which as of Sept. 18 had garnered about a 1,000 signatures in three weeks. He said the goal is to get 10,000 signatures.

Shawn Davis, a senior at Ithaca College involved in the campaign through a onecredit independent study, said the support the movement has received thus far is representative of a greater political movement.

“Now is the critical moment, just with the election happening and just with the disillusionment at establishment politics and business as usual,” Davis said.

Davis said while he thinks the living wage campaign could be stronger in the number of individuals actually involved, the campaign has been successful in reaching people.

The TCWC is trying to get the Tompkins County legislature to approve the minimum wage increase by next spring, which Meyers acknowledged will be a challenge.

Opposition to the campaign has come from a couple of places, Meyers said. He said some nonprofit human service agencies are expressing qualms because they fear they won’t have the money for a wage increase. In addition, Meyers said he expects pushback from small businesses and employers of youth workers, who typically pay minimum wage.

Meyers said for this reason, Cornell and Ithaca College could potentially be two of the biggest opponents of a minimum wage increase because they pay so many student workers at current minimum wage.

Beth Blinn, manager of the Student Employment Office at Ithaca College, said because the college is not a living wage employer, a raise to a living wage would not impact the amount students are paid at the college.

“New York state minimum wage is what we require,” Blinn said. “What you’re referring to from the Workers’ Center is definitely different from New York State minimum wage.”

However, Meyers said since the minimum wage increase the TCWC is proposing would apply to all of Tompkins County, students’ wages would be upped if the campaign were successful.

For Blodgett, making a living wage would represent a definite improvement to his situation. With his current wages, Blodgett said he only has enough money for one meal a day — the meal he takes to work with him.

“I just want to be able to survive and pay the bills and have some money for food,” he said. __________________________________________ Evan Popp is a sophomore journalism major who wishes Ithaca College’s tuition was $14.34 — total. You can email him at epopp@ithaca.edu

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News & Views

ichael Blodgett lives in a trailer in Dryden, a Tompkins County town just over 13 miles from the city of Ithaca.

Blodgett, 58, shares the home with his wife and daughter, his daughter’s fiance and their 6-month-old baby.

Blodgett, a cleaner in the Trumansburg School District, said he and his wife — who works as a dishwasher at Cornell University — made a combined $48,000 last year, which he said was just barely enough to get by.

“We’re always paycheck to paycheck, we don’t have any savings,” Blodgett said.

Blodgett and his wife’s combined income leaves them in a tough position, as he said they make too much money to qualify for food stamps, but are still reliant on a regular paycheck. This becomes a tenuous position when Cornell is out of session, Blodgett said, as his wife loses her regular source of income.

It is this kind of situation that the Tompkins County Workers’ Center is trying to address when it announced the start of a campaign this summer to increase the minimum wage in Tompkins County to $14.34 an hour, the amount Alternatives Federal Credit Union deemed a living wage in the county for 2015. Living wage is defined as the amount of money needed for a person to meet their basic needs.

Pete Meyers, coordinator at the TCWC, said if the campaign is successful, the increase in the county’s minimum wage would be phased in over five years. Currently, the minimum wage in Tompkins County — and the state of New York as a whole — is $8.75 an hour, although it is set to increase to $9 an hour at the end of the year.

Meyers said the TCWC is first looking to get the Tompkins County legislature to support raising the county’s minimum wage. However, he said that isn’t enough to change the county’s wage level. Unlike cities such as Los Angeles and Seattle that have autonomous control over their wage laws, Meyers said Tompkins County must get approval from the state government.

Meyers said while he is sure the State Assembly will be supportive of the campaign,

The Fault in our Agricultural Geography

Water shortages leading to problems for farmers

By Sophie Johnson, Contributing Writer

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BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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he United States’ largest agricultural hubs are located in dry climates and a lack of water is taking a toll on farming.

According to an article by Jay Famiglietti, published in The Los Angeles Times on March 12, California currently only has about one year of water stored, and the state government has put extensive water restrictions on its citizens and the many farms in the state as a result.

In an executive order published by the state of California on April 1, the state announced an urban water reduction of 25 percent through Feb. 28, 2016. The California State Water Board lists cutbacks that forbid activities like using water to wash driveways, using hoses with no shutoff nozzle and watering outside within 48 hours of significant precipitation. Restrictions on businesses forbid restaurants from giving patrons water without their request and mandate that hotels give customers the option to not have their towels laundered every day.

According to an article by Emily Alpert Reyes in The Los Angeles Times published April 5, even with California’s water issues, Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, hesitated to put water restrictions on the agriculture industry of California.

Brown eventually took steps to reduce water usage by agriculture on June 12, forbidding farms from using any surface water. Water cutbacks on agriculture have not been so severe in the state since 1977, and these restrictions are expected to ruin 620,000 acres of farmland, according to an article by Jennifer Medina in The New York Times on June 12.

Some citizens have criticized Brown for hesitating to place restrictions on agriculture since it accounts for about 80 percent of the water consumed by the state, ac-

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cording to Medina’s article. This statistic is disputed by some, including Will Rodger, director of policy communications at the American Farm Bureau Federation — an independent organization that represents farmers in the U.S. Rodger said half of California’s water goes to environmental causes, like preserving species. He said the 80 percent statistic is out of the 50 percent of water that is left for nonenvironmental issues.

According to the article by Reyes, Brown said he waited to put restrictions on farmers because agriculture had already been hit hard by the drought and more restrictions on water would force farmers on the lower end of the economic spectrum into unemployment.

Additionally, data from the Environmental Protection Agency showed

California produces over a third of the vegetables and two-thirds of the nuts and fruits in the country. Given the water restrictions, the state faces questions as to whether it can still provide a huge amount of food for the country.

California is not the only state to have problems with agriculture’s heavy use of water. This is because agriculture centers in the U.S. are largely concentrated in dry climate areas. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, California and Texas make up two of the three top agricultural producing states in the U.S. and according to the Western Regional Climate Center they, are in extremely dry areas with very low rainfall.

As a result, farmers often have to turn to unsustainable farming

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Brown eventually took steps to reduce water usage by agriculture on June 12, forbidding farms from using any surface water. Water cutbacks on agriculture have not been so severe in the state since 1977, and these restrictions are expected to ruin 620,000 acres of farmland, according to an article by Jennifer Medina in The New York Times on June 12. he said.

According to an article by Judy Scott, published in OregonLive on April 26, some crops that use less water are tomatoes, squash and melons. The crop selection solution will require the cooperation of the general public, who may have to deal with eating fewer almonds, as its farming accounts for 10 percent of California’s water use, according to an article by Eric Holthaus, published in 2014 by Slate Magazine.

Setter also proposed the use of genetically modified organisms as a method of saving water. He said scientists can modify and create crops that require less water and are able to survive during droughts. GMOs are a highly debated topic among different groups, however. California farmers can also find hope in the fact that this year is an El Niño year, which will drastically increase rainfall on the West Coast.

Rodger said reducing water usage is good, but that farmers will do what is economically feasible for them.

“Think of the farmer as the man or woman who has economic incentives to do one thing or another,” he said.

If the government offers incentives for farmers to practice more sustainable water use, then they will, Rodger said. In the end, the U.S. government has to make the choice to facilitate sustainable agriculture in order to promise food for future generations.

Agriculture is vital to feeding the

world’s growing population. And given the present water situation, the United States and the agriculture industry must make changes in order to ensure there is sufficient food for the future. _________________________________ Sophie Johnson is a freshman journalism major who is glad she’s not at Cornell majoring in agriculture. You can email her at sjohnson3@ithaca.edu.

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methods like sprinkler irrigation and subsurface irrigation, which both waste huge amounts of water, said Tim Setter, a professor of soil and crop sciences at Cornell University.

This problem is only going to get worse. In a climate change prediction map released by the National Resources Defense Council in 2010, by 2050, three of the top five agricultural states –– California, Texas and Nebraska –– will be in high-risk zones for water sustainability.

Erin Riddle, the vice-chair of the Atlantic Chapter Farm and Food Committee of the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental organization, said to fix the flawed farming system, the U.S. must shift farming to wetter climates. Riddle said one such climate could be New York because it has an abundance of water.

There is already a huge farming industry in New York, but it accounts for less than 1 percent of the state’s water usage, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Bringing large agricultural businesses to areas like New York will provide water security and therefore be a more reliable and sustainable area to grow food, Riddle said.

Since entirely relocating the largest agricultural centers in the country would be an extensive process, there are other changes farmers can make to be more water sustainable.

Setter proposed changing irrigation practices; instead of using sprinkler or subsurface irrigation, farmers can use furrow irrigation, Setter said.

According to the EPA, furrow irrigation is a system used to irrigate plants by digging channels between crops in which water flows. This is much more efficient and wastes less water. Setter said there are other things farmers can do as well to reduce their water usage.

“One thing would be crop selection, there will be some crops that will be more efficient than others,”

Exploring the Conflict in Yemen

Factions and outside groups struggle for control of country

By Hale Douthit, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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emen is currently embroiled in a massive civil war that has proven to be one of the most violent and destructive of the current conflicts in the region. Saudi Arabian led airstrikes pound the country nearly every day, eviscerating factories, homes, businesses and public utilities.

Most of the populace is without food, water and other important services. While the country is being torn apart by outside forces, inside forces fight for control over the few resources and land that has not been blown to pieces by Saudi Arabian forces.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank devoted to international relations, most of the conflict began in the 1990s when North and South Yemen united behind the military dictator of the North, Abdullah Saleh. Before this, North Yemen was a nominal republic backed by Saudi Arabia and the U.S., while the South was a communist state backed by the Soviet Union. Once the U.S.S.R. imploded in 1990, North Yemen and South Yemen united.

However, in 1994, according to the CFR, the South rebelled against Saleh. Their revolution was squelched, and Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a former Southern Yemeni military commander who had been ousted in the mid-1980s by a civil war, was promoted to vice president.

The peace would not last: Enter the Houthis, a Zaydi Shia group based in Northern Yemen. Zaydi Islam is a branch of Shia Islam popular in Northern Yemen.

According to BBC News, Zaydi Shiites make up around a third of the population of Yemen. Originally started as a cultural revival

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group of the ancient Zaydi Islam in the 1980s, they slowly began to adopt more militant methods as Saleh’s oppression became unbearable and he removed their autonomy, enforcing his own Sunni beliefs on the group.

By 2004, BBC News wrote, the Houthis, named after their first military commander, Hussein AlHouthi, rebelled against the central government in an attempt to protect their beliefs and customs and achieve greater autonomy, as well as fight against government oppression. The Houthis would continue to rebel another five times until 2010, when a ceasefire was signed, according to BBC News.

The current conflict began in January 2011. Shortly before, in late 2010, the first of the Arab Spring demonstrations shook the unpruned tree of repressive dictatorships in the Middle East. One by one, old American-backed leaders collapsed. Hosni Mubarak, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Muammar Gaddafi — although definitely not an American ally — all fell to protests and mass uprisings.

Yemen was no different. Opposition parties, along with the Houthis, protested against Saleh’s corrupt dictatorship. According to the CFR, Saleh stepped down during 2011 amid international pressure and assurances against prosecution.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, a collection of the numerous Arab Gulf states, created a timetable for transitionary measures and a National Dialogue Conference to discuss potential democratic changes in the Yemeni constitution.

However, Professor Stacey Philbrick Yadav, a Yemen expert at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, wrote in an email that Hadi, who took over for Saleh, did not handle this transition process well.

“He did a poor job implementing

important aspects of the transitional framework that empowered him, and the number of crises in the country continued to escalate under his tenure,” she wrote.

The unrest against Hadi and the transitionary process reached its pinnacle in 2014 when the government cut fuel subsidies, extremely important in the incredibly poor Yemen, to satisfy International Monetary Fund demands. According to BBC News, due to wide scale price increases, resulting from the cutting of the subsidies, demonstrations erupted in Sana’a, the capitol. The United Nations tried to broker a peace deal between the various factions where a “transitional technocratic government” would take power, according to the CFR.

By January 2015, in response to continued clashes between the different factions of the government and the crises in creating a new constitution, the Houthis overtook the capital, dissolved the parliament and created a new government.

According to BBC News, after resigning in protest, Hadi and his allies fled to Saudi Arabia, which took up his cause and began large scale bombings of Yemen to unseat the Houthis with U.S. intelligence and weapons. Southern Sunni tribesmen have risen up in support of Hadi, according to BBC News while Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been using the vacuum of power to solidify their bases in the south.

Hadi will obviously be unable to return to power in Yemen peacefully. Yadav wrote “While the possibility of a Coalition military victory may exist, the Coalition’s approach to negotiations thus far suggest that it is not terribly interested in the kinds of political compromises

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that would enable President Hadi’s return to power.”

Hadi’s association with the deadly Saudi Arabian bombings have made him extremely unpopular, and will keep him from obtaining large-scale support back home.

This sentiment is shared by Jason Freitag, a professor of Middle Eastern and Indian history at Ithaca College, who said he thinks Hadi will only come back to power with an enormous amount of force behind him.

The Houthis, on the other hand, have found themselves struggling to forge alliances nationally and internationally. The only ally the Houthis truly possess is Iran, and even that alliance is more a partnership of convenience than a true relationship, Freitag said.

This feeling is shared by Saudi documentarian Safa Al-Ahmad, who said in an interview with The Atlantic, “The Houthis are very much a local group that was born

gain control of the country. Saudi Arabia would never allow an Iranian ally to persist so close to its borders and sees the Houthis as terrorists, complicating any real peace talk the groups might have to end the conflict. _______________________________ ___ Hale Douthit is a sophomore Cinema and Photography major who won’t be visiting Yemen anytime soon. You can email him at hdouthit@ithaca.edu.

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from local conflict inside Yemen … Predominantly the Houthis are very much a local group with local grievances.”

Considering Iran’s relative diplomatic isolation, especially in the Middle East, this marriage of convenience becomes even more difficult to utilize.

Their unappealing nature to the international community can be seen in the Houthis’ motto: God is great, Death to America, Death to Israel, God curse the Jews, Victory to Islam.

While this motto emerges more out of the anti-imperialistic nature that the Houthis proclaim as a key part of their theology –– Zaydi Shia Islam –– according to Al-Ahmed, it is still a deal breaker for Western support. The other major complication comes from the group’s coup against Hadi, who was seen as the legitimate leader by the international community.

Additionally, Hadi’s commitment to the American anti-terror program and Saudi Arabia’s strategic interests, similar to his predecessor has increased his usefulness to the coalition forces. Saleh still maintains loyal forces in the country despite his exile and expulsion, and those forces have allied with the Houthis against Hadi out of convenience.

As it remains now, Yemen is stuck between powerful factions that aren’t strong enough to re-

By 2004, BBC News wrote, the Houthis, named after their first military commander, Hussein Al-Houthi, rebelled against the central government in an attempt to protect their beliefs and customs and achieve greater autonomy, as well as fight against government oppression. The Houthis would continue to rebel another five times until 2010, when a ceasefire was signed, according to BBC News.

The Ithaca Housing Crisis

City experiencing dearth of affordable units

By Miranda Materazzo, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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he rent is too damn high!” This is not just the rallying cry of one-time presidential candidate and facial hair aficionado Jimmy McMillan, but a phrase many Ithaca residents find themselves uttering quite often. And rightly so, as a report by The New York Times, published in April 2014, lists Ithaca as one of the most expensive U.S. cities to live in, ranking it eleventh in a list of 20 cities where rents are highest relative to median gross income. This report shows that Ithacans are spending an average of 38.6 percent of their income on rent alone. The city highest on that list, Los Angeles, has residents coughing up 47 percent of their income on rent.

Sperling’s Best Places, a website that aggregates demographic and real estate statistics from government sources, lists the average rent for a one-bedroom home or apartment in Ithaca at $924.

A report released by the city’s Urban Renewal Agency in May found that the average Ithacan would have to work 74 hours per week at minimum wage to afford even a studio apartment. But for those who want to work a reasonable number of hours, the Urban Renewal Agency reports residents would have to make $14.79 per hour to afford a studio apartment in Ithaca.

Lynn Truame, the community development planner of the Ithaca Urban Renewal Agency, said a major contribution to the hostile housing market is good ol’ supply and demand.

“A lot of people want to live here and there are a limited number of housing units,” Truame said in an email interview. “We have an extremely low vacancy rate, less than one percent for rental units. When there’s a lot of competition for any available unit, landlords can charge top dollar and be pretty sure they will find someone who is willing and able to pay it.”

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Compare this to Elmira, another college city about 30 miles south of Ithaca. In terms of size and income, they’re both quite similar. But Elmira’s rental vacancy rate was 4.61 percent in 2013, according to the Department of Numbers — a group that analyzes and contextualizes data.

This factors into how the average rent for a whole unit in Elmira is equal to one person’s share of monthly rental costs in Ithaca and why that threebedroom apartment on Coddington Road may cost each person $675 per month, but its twin in Elmira could cost only $675 in total. While there are other factors that contribute to this price difference, the difference in expense between the two cities is alarming.

Oftentimes, it is students who are willing to pay top dollar for these housing units, as evidenced by the $1,000 studio apartments smattered across Ithaca’s Craigslist page. As a result, many low-income, permanent residents of Ithaca are feeling the pinch. And while the ads for these properties aren’t explicitly studentcentered, their language makes it clear who the target audience is.

Ads for student-centered properties talk about leases that start around the beginning of semesters and have close proximity to campuses. A nonstudent likely won’t be concerned about these things unless they work for one of the schools. Such targeting is all completely legal as well, Truame said.

“The city has an extremely limited role in guiding development,” she said. “We don’t in any way control or even influence who a developer targets as their clientele. As long as a project is permitted under the zoning and building codes, it can be built.”

Determining how much to charge for the rent on these complexes varies from company to company.

Multiple attempts to reach NovarrMackesey, the local property developer giant that recently finished constructing the Collegetown Terrace

complex at the corner of Routes 79 and 366 downtown, proved unsuccessful. A secretary said that though owner John Novarr was “flattered” that his perspective was wanted for this article, he was too busy to answer questions.

During a brief and hurried phone call, Steve Beer, owner of Beer Properties, said while there is no “golden rule” for determining rent prices, they are typically based on location and the previous year’s rent.

These inflated costs of living aren’t unique to all college towns either. Adams State University is a small public school in Colorado serving about 3,700 undergrads. ASU is located in the town of Alamosa, home to 8,800 desert dwellers. Similar to Ithaca, about one-third of Alamosa’s residents live in poverty, according to the 2010 Census.

But what separates these two college towns is how these numbers are dealt with. Mark Pittman, assistant director of housing at ASU, emphasized the importance of providing affordable housing.

“Adams State University has a very affordable family housing option — $515 per month for 2-bedroom with all utilities, trash, basic cable, phone and internet included — that serves low-income families very well while they are pursuing a college degree, hoping to break the cycle of poverty,” Pittman said in an email.

Back in Ithaca, it’s uncertain if there is light at the end of the housing crisis tunnel. Plans for expanding public housing and dispensing loans to low-income families are in the works, according to the Urban Renewal Agency and Neighborhood Housing Services. Or, as Pittman suggested, perhaps the best way to attack the affordable housing crisis is giving people the resources to afford to attend the schools on the hill and rent those new developments. ___________________________________ Miranda Materazzo is a senior journalism major whose life dream is to be a hair aficionado. You can email her mmatera1@ithaca.edu

Upfront

UPFRONT. UPFRONT. UPFRONT

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Separating Church and State

How the U.S. Constitution is being invoked for progress and prejustice

By Matthew Nitzberg, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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he cheers of activists filled the air outside of the U.S. Supreme Courthouse as SCOTUS announced its decision in support of Obergefell v. Hodges. With the backing of the 14th Amendment, every state in the U.S. became formally required to issue and recognize marriages between two people — regardless of their sex.

This decision, which came down on July 26, was a huge step forward for the LGBTQ community, however the road to this decision was anything short of easy— dotted with lawsuits and acts of hate in which individuals sought to oppress and discriminate against minority sexual orientations.

While the national public support for same-sex marriage has reached a “record high” with 60 percent of Americans approving of same-sex marriage according to a May 2015 Gallup poll, a large minority of Americans (37 percent) still believe that same-sex marriage should not be considered legal. Although the survey was administered before the Obergefell ruling, the results shows a clear division between the cultural attitudes revolving around same-sex marriage.

Regardless, the importance of the ruling has found its way into the upcoming election season, as the same Gallup poll reports 1 in 4 Americans considering a candidate’s opinion on gay marriage as the single most important issue.

Since same-sex marriage has now become a constitutional right by way of the Supreme Court, many individuals see gay marriage as an encroachment on their religious freedom, forcing them to support something that they disagree with fundamentally. As a result, individuals in states such as North Carolina, Kentucky and Oregon have attempted to push back against the court’s ruling,

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by evoking their First Amendment right to practice religion freely.

“Much of the opposition to LGBT rights has evolved over time to be couched in religious terms,” said Molly Tack-Hooper, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberty Union of Pennsylvania. “Most of the debate today focuses on whether people who are opposed to equality for LGBT people should be exempt from such laws [that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation], and if so, how broad the religious exemptions should be.”

While the question of broadness may be valid in a philosophical sense, from a legal standpoint, Marc DeGirolami, author of The Tragedy of Religious Freedom and professor of law at St. John’s University, said: “The law fairly frequently permits [individuals], or might even require individuals to be exempted to laws based on a religious conviction.”

A ready example would be religious exemptions to the Universal Military Training and Service Act. The act, “makes it the obligation of male citizens and residents between 18 and 22 to receive basic military training and education as a member of the armed forces.” However, the exemption allows combatant training and service exemption for individuals holding strong religious oppositions to war, where they would otherwise be obligated to serve.

As such exemptions arguably exist within narrow contexts, the most prominent statutory law regarding religious exemptions is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which states “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability,” essentially limiting the ability for the government, or in this case, the court, to enforce laws that burden people’s religious beliefs.

The law goes further, placing more scrutiny on the government; unless the government demonstrates that

the application is in “furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and is “the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest,” an individual’s religious freedom cannot be infringed upon.

The extent to which the Religious Freedom Restoration Act can be used to justify impediments to samesex marriages are currently being played out in the courts, however Tack-Hooper said she believes that religion cannot justify discrimination.

“Courts have repeatedly recognized that other civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, and gender serve a compelling government interest,” she said.“The government’s interest in prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is no less compelling.”

Nevertheless, requests for religious exemptions are being found all across the country. In McDowell County, North Carolina, all four magistrates have stated they will no longer be performing marriages based on a recently passed state senate bill based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which mandates, “Every magistrate has the right to recuse from performing all lawful marriages under this Chapter based upon any sincerely held religious objection.”

While magistrates are legally appointed government employees, the RFRA’s may even apply to democratically elected government employees such as judges and city clerks.

As Eugene Volokh, professor of religious law at UCLA wrote in his blog , The Volokh Conspiracy: “Nothing in [the RFRA] exempts accommodation claims by elected officials.”

This has far-reaching implications, and in Volokh’s perspective, provides a very tangible legal defense for elected officials. However, the qualifications for receiving a religious exemption are anything but clear.

be made when a person’s service involves creatively or artistically celebrating the institution of gay marriage contrary to that individual’s religious beliefs.

DeGirolami brought forth the example of a christian wedding photographer who might have serious problems photographing a samesex marriage, saying: “there might be differences between providing videographic service in the sense that you have to be kind of celebrating the gay marriage in order to provide an adequate service to just serving someone in a restaurant when they come to sit down.”

While these two examples would have the same impact on a gay couple, DeGirolami argues that the court could view them as being categorically different.

In the end, though the court has legalized same-sex marriage, the road to full acknowledgement and equality for same-sex minorities requires cultural attitudes to move beyond their time.

“The same arguments about religious freedoms were made during the civil rights movement,” Tack-Hooper said. “Looking back, arguments that employers should be able to use their religious conscience to decline to hire someone because of their race seem hard to believe.” __________________________________ Matthew Nitzberg is a junior sociology major whose favorite amendment happens to be the third. You can email him at mnitzberg@ithaca.edu

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Upfront

DeGirolami said he believes that the RFRA have been framed in a broad manner such that “Courts have had to engage in a sort (of) balancing act, weighing individual rights against the interest of the state.”

Made infamous by defying a court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the actions of Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis exemplify the fine line between legal use of civil liberties, and unconstitutional discrimination.

Evan Gerstmann, professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University and author of Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution said “RFRA can’t allow anybody to violate the constitution.”

However, Gerstmann reiterated the thinking of Tack-Hooper, but said he thinks religious opt-outs as applied to state workers are ambiguously constitutional.

“If states choose to allow religious opt outs [for gay marriage], that may or may not not violate the constitution,” he said. “It could cause an Establishment Clause problem, preferring religion over non-religion, or it could violate the constitutional rights of same-sex couples if it prevented them from getting married.

But neither of those arguments are slam dunks.”

Religious exemptions are not only being requested by government officials. This past year, Sweets Cakes

By Melissa, a local bakery based in Oregon, was forced to pay $135,000 in damages to a lesbian couple after the cake maker refused to make a cake for the couples’ wedding based on religious beliefs. The cake maker refusing to serve gay patrons brings to mind segregation-era lunch counters refusing to serve African Americans, a parallel that Oregon courts could not ignore. This court ruling can be attributed to an anti-discrimination law in Oregon, which bars businesses from discriminating or refusing service based on sexual preference.

Nevertheless, there may be circumstances that could lead to a religious exemption. DeGirolami explained a case for exemption could

What Goes Around, Comes Around Millenial appropriation of what once was

By Alexis Morillo, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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veryone has memories of how their lives once were: Skinned knees on the playground during recess; family dinners in the evening; weekend movie dates; passing notes in class; or even graduation day. The feeling of nostalgia that comes while remembering these times is considered bittersweet, because they cannot be relived.

Triggered by an array of things: fashion, music, movies and all other aspects of popular culture from a previous era, “Nostalgia makes us a bit more human,” according to University of Southampton psychology professor Constantine Sedikides PhD. in a New York Times article titled “What is Nostalgia Good For” However, sentimental feelings people have towards their memories can be used against them in the market.

Jeff Fromm is the author of Millennial Marketing and the president of FutureCast, a marketing consultancy group that specializes in Millennial trends. In his article, “As Millennials Get Nostalgic, So Do Brands,” Fromm says stores like Urban Outfitters are rebranding pieces that remind consumers of their childhood — essentially exploiting nostalgia for capital gain.

Cue the Lisa Frank sticker packs and muscle tees they are selling, in attempts to pull on the heartstrings and wallets of potential buyers.

Television channels have used this nostalgia-based marketing to appeal to more viewers, most notably with Nickelodeon starting up their “The 90s were all that” promotion, which airs classic ‘90s programs every night from midnight to 2 a.m.

Leah Swartz, content specialist at FutureCast, said nostalgia causes

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Image by Lizzie Cox people to feel an emotional attachment to certain brands, which makes them more loyal customers.

This loyalty can be maintained and manipulated as Millennials become parents.

“This is an opportune time for brands to try and connect with Millennials through their memories and their desire to give their children the same fun childhood experiences they had growing up,” Swartz said.

Although the millennial generation is not unique in its vulnerability to this kind of marketing, it may be the most notable.

By turning consumers into what FutureCast refers to as ‘Prosumers,’ or potential customers involved with the development of a brand, companies can use their understanding of technology and media to interact

and draw their desired audience toward their merchandise. This is done by representing their interests in a way that makes the consumer feel as if they have a direct impact with the company’s manufacturing.

“Companies have created an environment that not only drives the emotional connections to a brand but also brings it into a digital age where Millennial Prosumers have the opportunity to co-create and interact with their memories of favored brands from the past,” Swartz said.

Infatuation with the past leads certain fads to come back into the forefront of mainstream American media, which can be caused by parents’ desire to give their kids similar childhood experiences, Swartz said.

“As many Millennials are in the process of transitioning into parent-

Hudgens, both of whom have come under fire in the past for cultural appropriation, or borrowing elements of a culture other than their own without respecting the culture.

This can often be taken offensively; for example, Kardashian sported a Native American headdress and Hudgens wore bindis a fashion statement when attending the Coachella music festival in the last few years. Cultural appropriation is so prominent at music festivals that England’s Glastonbury festival and Canada’s Osheaga festival banned headdresses after public outcry against such clothing, according to Carly Ledbetter’s article on the Huffington Post titled “Glastonbury Takes Action Against Headdresses”.

Their offensive fashion choices could be blindly backed up by a false nostalgia. But this is just an excuse to back up insensitivity toward other cultures, because as Markman said, nostalgia can only be felt by people involved in a time directly. This is where the yearning for nostalgia in terms of fashion can become questionable, allowing people feel as if they are entitled to wear these cultural symbols when in reality they are appropriating an entire culture.

As nostalgia is being studied more and becoming more understood, it is also beginning to be questioned.

Markman said nostalgia can be restrictive if it causes people to be too comfortable with the state of their lives.

“Feeling good and optimistic can sometimes make people complacent,” Markman said. “We generally act to improve the future when we are dissatisfied. So, a little dissatisfaction can be a good thing.”

This affection for the past can cause society to be preoccupied rather than hopeful, and can hinder progression rather than motivate it. For companies like Nickelodeon, for example, instead of re-running old shows, they should channel the themes that

viewers loved so much and try to create new content that appeals to their current audience, while keeping the authenticity that led to their past success.

On the other hand, New York Times science journalist Robin Henig, said that nostalgia paired with new age thinking can be beneficial for problem solving. “[Nostalgia] could have a positive effect if it informs that drive to move forward, so that people try to keep the best elements of the past,” It is impossible to determine the difference between fondness and reoccupation with the past, but nostalgia in excess amounts could potentially cause the latter. On the other hand, the benefits of nostalgia can help people to be hopeful that the future will live up to their high expectations.

For now, there is no definitive view on whether nostalgia is positive or negative. Until there is a precise answer for this, society can enjoy some harmless, old-timey trends like mom jeans and tie dye, while being aware of how the market them. And outdated beliefs like racism, sexism and cultural appropriation should be put to rest for good. ____________________________________ Alexis Morillo is a freshman journalism major with a future focus. You can contact her at amorillo@ithaca.edu

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hood, this is an opportune time for brands to try and connect with Millennials through their memories and their desire to give their children the same fun childhood experiences they had growing up,” she said.

By connecting new generations to old traditions, consumers are lead to feel nostalgia for things they weren’t necessarily involved in directly— and spend their money on merchandise that may seem new but is actually rebranded. This could be why teenagers are now channeling old fashion trends like high waisted jeans, bell bottoms, halter tops, saddle shoes and anything else that can be considered “retro.”

Headlines like “Return to Retro”, “Retro Beauty: Love it or Leave it?” and “The Dos and Don’ts of Wearing Vintage” have been published on popular fashion media outlets like Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Glamour, respectively. Mimicking historical events such as Woodstock ‘69 at modern music festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo has become the norm.

However, attempting to achieve a “throwback” can cross the line between trendy and offensive.

Nostalgia, in this case, is used to justify ignorance or misunderstanding, since one cannot necessarily feel nostalgia for a time they were not a part of. Dr. Art Markman, Professor of Psychology at The University of Texas, studies cognitive science and said nostalgia must come from past experience.

“It is possible to feel like it would have been interesting to be part of a time period that they did not experience, but that isn’t quite nostalgia,” he said. “A feeling of nostalgia requires having some memories of that past time.”

This nostalgia-masked ignorance has been exemplified by celebrities like Khloe Kardashian and Vanessa

Gentrification or Revitalization

When change leads to the shattering of community

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BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

By Katie Orr, Contributing Writer ensely populated and burgeoning with a marked increase in young college graduates, many urban communities are experiencing shifts away from their traditional roots and into a mecca of trendy stores and high-end grocers designed to support their new-found population.

Gentrification is the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income individuals, thus improving property values, but often displacing low-income families and businesses. Gentrification has both negative and positive aspects, depending on the demographic.

With so many different opinions surrounding the issue, it can be hard to tell whether or not cities are undertaking redevelopment in an effort to improve the lives of residents.

Matthew Galluzzo is the executive director of the Lawrenceville Corporation, as well as a resident of Lawrenceville, a Pittsburgh neighborhood that has rapidly developed in the past few years. The Lawrenceville Corporation is a neighborhood organization centers around efforts to improve the lives of newcomers and long-time residents. Galluzzo, though a developer himself, said people tend to have the wrong intentions when it comes to city redevelopment and gentrification issues such as displacement.

“You see in a lot of gentrifying neighborhoods a desire on the developer’s part to make money for affluent people,” Galluzzo explained.

“Part of the Lawrenceville Corporation’s mission is to improve the lives of its current residents, not potential residents. We do a lot to avoid displacement. Our goal, and what every urban neighborhood’s goal should be, is to put money into housing and job creation programs for the lowincome residents who are in need.”

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Eileen Neely is the director of capital innovation at Living Cities, a national group of 22 foundations and financial institutions with a common interest of improving the lives of low-income people and the cities in which they live. She said developers “go wrong” when they lose sight of who the focus should be — the residents, not the money or new developments, such as grocery stores and expensive housing.

Neely said developers focus on low-income residents in need.

“Sometimes [redevelopment] is done simply because everybody who lives there is poor,” she said. “And when this is the reason, the focus isn’t tightly centered on the lowincome of the area. They are being taken advantage of.”

It is evident that both Galluzzo and Neely agree that city redevelopment should be focused on the families who already live in low-income neighborhoods, instead of focusing solely on perspective middle- or high-class residents.

The Hazelwood Initiative is a Pittsburgh-based, community organization similar to the Lawrenceville Corporation in its efforts to incorporate low-income residents in city redevelopment. The Hazelwood Initiative works to provide a shared, strong voice for Greater Hazelwood by gathering community input.

James W. Richter, former executive director of The Hazelwood Initiative, explained that the negative domino effect of gentrification begins with the developer and ends with low-income residents. If enough people of middle or high socioeconomic status ask for a Target, for an Urban Outfitters, for nice high rises, somebody who has enough money will make it happen, Richter said.

“Prices go up, because the area has become trendy, but normal people can’t afford trendy,” he said.

“Once these new developments are incorporated, the surrounding area becomes unaffordable for its resi-

dents who already live there.”

However, many see gentrification as an opportunity to revitalize and grow economically struggling communities. According to Neely, gentrification doesn’t have to be a scary word.

“The word gentrification in an advocacy world is bad, but the word in and of itself is not bad,” she said.

Her development background aside, Neely warns that cities must be aware of who the central focus of redevelopment is.

“In all redevelopment, it’s essential to know why you’re undertaking the redevelopment,” she said.

In the 2014 article, “Did Gentrification Make My Neighborhood Better?” in Ebony Magazine, a progressive print publication that highlights African American issues, contributor Damon Young discussed the problems that gentrification have caused him personally, as well as the negative effects that rapid redevelopment has had on his community.

According to the article, the resentment that comes with gentrification isn’t necessarily based on the changes that take place, but the way in which they happen. Many times, city redevelopment is done without the participation or opinions of the residents subject to the risks that come with redevelopment, such as displacement.

Galluzzo stressed the importance of resident participation. “What we aim to do at the Lawrenceville Corporation is make sure we are involving Lawrenceville residents in the changes happening.” The Lawrenceville Corporation will, for instance, educate its residents on environment issues when developing the area to make it more green.

Young explained in the Ebony article that he couldn’t quite process how he felt about the changes that took place in his own neighborhood.

While he and many others are grateful that their neighborhoods are safer, they feel that they weren’t a part

the key to avoiding displacement is to implement community-focused programs and amenities that serve lowincome residents before, during and after redevelopment.

“Something that I’ve learned to be most helpful is to help homeowners feel proud of their homes,” Richter said. “We need to work on applying low-cost home repairs to homes, in order to bring them back up to code.

We have done this and it makes people proud of their homes. They feel that they have contributed to the process.”

When asked if she thought that it was possible to Image by Guillaume Gentil implement redevelopment into a neighborhood even implementing programs may while keeping it affordable for lowerstill result in a feeling of alienation income people who were there first, among residents who are watching Eileen Neely answered “Absolutely.” their neighborhoods change. The While Neely said she believes city goal behind Richter’s house repair redevelopment can naturally result project was to make the home’s in a more positive living situation for residents feel more part of their own a neighborhood’s residents, Richter community. Though a good way to and Galluzzo were more skeptical implement positive changes in peoabout the outcomes of rapidly genple’s lives, It is these concerns retrifying a community. garding residents personal relationA genuine effort to implement preship to their community that raises ventative programs into a neighborconcerns about heightened rates of hood must be made in order to avoid gentrification. “It is a double-edged risks of unaffordable living. The fosword,” Richter said. cus cannot simply just be the residents. As Galluzzo explained when ___________________________________ discussing implementing commuKatie Orr is a sophomore community programs, it may, instead, be nication and design major who premore beneficial for the residents to fers authenticity to Whole Foods. be involved in the changes that are Email her at korr@ithaca.edu. happening within a rapidly changing neighborhood.

However, as seen through Young, the writer of “Did Gentrification Make my Neighborhood Better?,”

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of the change. Implementing education, as Galluzzo suggested, could help to make low-income residents more involved in the changes.

In addition to watching the infrastructure of a neighborhood rapidly change, many long-time residents of urban communities, particularly those who struggle financially, may find themselves unable to meet the rising cost of living in their native neighborhood. In extreme cases, this may lead to forced displacement.

According to an article on gentrification in a September issue of the Atlantic’s CityLab, “The Complicated Link Between Gentrification and Displacement,” written by Richard Florida, gentrification negatively impacts people when city redevelopment is happening too rapidly.

Many times, residents’ individual incomes cannot keep up with the rate at which the economy around them increases.

In Neely’s opinion, city redevelopment does not have to be followed by displacement.

“Gentrification doesn’t equal displacement,” Neely said. “When cities lose focus of the central goal… the goal being its residents, that is when we see things like displacement occur.”

Richter said the focus is often not centered around its current residents at all, rather, a new younger generation. While young, affluent people may think that they are moving into a cool, developing area, they may not realize their affluence may be the direct cause of displacement.

Richter said the idealizations of city redevelopment must be altered to shift the priority toward a neighborhood’s low-income residents.

“Developing urban areas are trendy,” he said. “When they are fully developed, young people move to a new developing area.”

Richter warned that this pattern leaves wealthy developers jumping on any gentrifying opportunity they can find.

“If high-income people keep demanding it, somebody will keep providing it,” Richter said. “Many already-gentrified neighborhoods are becoming too crowded, which is resulting in the risk of displacement.”

Richter and Galluzzo agreed that

Keeping the Mainstream in Check

An interview with CounterSpin radio host, Janine Jackson

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By Annika Kushner, Contributing Writer ounterSpin is a weekly radio show through progressive media watchdog, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) hosted

by Janine Jackson. The purpose of the show is to critically examine the presentation of major news stories and bring to light what major news outlets may have missed or misconstrued in their reporting. It is now heard on more than 150 different noncommercial stations throughout the U.S. and Canada. Jackson, who was first introduced to FAIR when interning as a graduate student, answered some questions about CounterSpin and the greatest issues facing accuracy in the media industry today.

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

Annika Kushner: How did you first become part of CounterSpin?

Janine Jackson: Well, I was an intern at FAIR for the media watch crew when I was a graduate student, and then right after I finished school, I came to work for FAIR. And first I was just doing research, but then one of the hosts of CounterSpin left, and so they said, “Why don’t you do it? Why don’t you work on the show?” I didn’t have any experience in radio, but I thought, you know, it was interesting to me. So I became a co-host and a co-producer, and then years after that, my other co-host left and went another direction and left me with just me! And really I was first just working on FAIR, and had no thoughts about working on radio at all. It just sort of fell in my lap.

Kushner: Would you have any idea how CounterSpin got started in the first place?

Jackson: Here in New York, there is the radio station WBAI, which of course is the Pacifica [Radio] network. It’s non-commercial, listenersupported radio. And FAIR had a live

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show that just aired on Fridays, in which people from FAIR would kind of go through the newspaper and give their thoughts on what they saw. And then listeners liked it, so then a few years later it went from being in a live show at one station in New York to being a syndicated radio show. And then we promoted it to various stations, and it got to where it is, which is over 150 stations.

Kushner: Why do you think that people are recognizing media criticism more?

Jackson: Well, that’s a good question. I think that what happened is there are always a few kind of watershed events. The Gulf War was one.

When the country is at war, there are many people who are naturally opposed to violence and killing. And when they turn on their television and see newscasters waving american flags, and I mean that literally in the case of the Gulf War, I think it occurs to most people, if they are even just a little bit open-minded, that, “Wait a minute. How can I possibly be hearing all of the information about this situation if the news that I’m getting is so obviously invested in just saying, ‘U.S.A., U.S.A.!’” So it just takes one big event like that for people to see a disconnect between what they’re getting from the news and the information that they really need.

Kushner: So what do you think are the greatest issues in unfair media coverage in the world today? Obviously political non-neutrality is definitely part of that. Is there anything else?

Jackson: The big thing I would say is corporate ownership. I think that recognizing that the newspapers and the television networks are actually just part of big process-making corporations has a tremendous

influence. It just means that corporations, which are some of the most powerful social actors that we have, have their own interests. You recognize that the news is going to reflect those interests rather than be critical of them. But also the fact that our news is reliant on advertising, I think, is very important. Because it means that even though we like to think of journalists as being freely independent, they are interested in producing content that is going to reach the audience that their advertisers want to reach, and that’s always going to be a factor.

Corporate ownership and sponsorship are very, very important. And then, as we said, the closeness of big media to the government, and their desire to stay on good terms with the government, also has a big effect on how critical and how independent they’re going to be. So I think that closeness to government and corporate ownership and sponsorship are the biggest influences, or pressures, on news media.

Kushner: Are there any news outlets that you feel are exemplary in not giving in to that pressure?

Jackson: First of all, I would say that there are excellent journalists and good journalism from every outlet. There are always exceptions.

And sometimes even a big corporate-owned outlet can present news that’s valuable. I would not want to pick a single outlet and say, “When you read this, you don’t have to be critical because you know they’re independent.” We should be critical of whatever we’re reading. But in general I would say look to publications that are not sponsored by big companies.

I like to read The Nation for example. I like to read The Progressive. I also like to read specialized websites and publications — some that are on economics news, and some that are on environmental news. I find

that when people are focused on one issue, their coverage can be more in-depth and more thoughtful. And my general advice is to read widely.

Read lots of things.

Kushner: Do you feel that there is a big difference between print media and broadcast media in that respect?

hear but they’re too busy doing their work. That is so important, to come and talk about the media angle on the story. So it really is just getting a wide range of guests.

Kushner: Do you have any plans for expanding the show further?

Jackson: For a while, we had been doing a five-minute video. It was just a five-minute YouTube channel.

And we had to stop doing that just beause we lost staff, and we didn’t really have the personpower to do it any more. But I liked doing that very much, and that kind of was similar to CounterSpin, but with some visual elements, and obviously a little shorter. We got a good response to that, and I think it was a way of reaching people who don’t listen to the radio, that don’t even listen to podcasts. But they will watch something on YouTube. So that would be something that I would like to see us do if it’s possible.

“...corporations, which are some of the most powerful social actors that we have, have their own interests.

You recognize that the news is going to reflect those interests rather than be critical of them.”

Jackson: Well, the big difference, I think, is that broadcast media seems to have — it’s not necessary — but they seem to have decided that if stories don’t have visual images to go with them, then they can’t really tell them.

In other words, I think the difference is print media tends to be more in-depth and more thoughtful. But that’s not necessary, that just seems to be the way they see it.

I think it’s possible to do thoughtful broadcast media, it’s just that we don’t usually see it done — certainly not in a half hour news cast where each story only lasts two minutes.

Kushner: What would you say is the biggest difficulty in being the host on CounterSpin?

Kushner: Personally, what is your favorite part about being on the show? What do you enjoy the most?

Jackson: I guess one of the things that I enjoy the most is convincing a person who knows a lot about Mexico, or who knows a lot about education — convincing someone that they are actually a media critic. People like to think, “Well I don’t know anything about media!” And I say, “Yes, you do.” You know how people cover your issue, or miscover your issue, and you know what people are looking for that’s missing from the mainstream. So I love it when someone says, “Wow, I didn’t think that I

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Jackson: I think it’s finding guests who can shed light on stories and who are not too busy to do it. A lot of what we want to do is get voices into the media that we don’t usually hear from. For example, just last week, I wanted to have a teacher from Seattle. Well, the teacher that we had did take the time, but I could tell talking to him that he was exhausted. He had just come off of five days straight, and he was about to go into the classroom and teach. It was very nice of him to spend 10 minutes talking to me, but there are lots of people whose voices I would like to

would have anything worthwhile to add on the way media talks about this, but I do.” So I like waking them up to a new kind of expertise that they didn’t know that they had. ___________________________________ Annika Kushner is a freshman journalism major with a concentration in media skepticism.

Email her at akushner1@ithaca.edu

Sexting: Cell Phones and Hormones Laws harm the very teens they are meant to protect

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

By Gianna Folz, Contributing Writer

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BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

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exting. Lecherous messages, erotic pictures and awkward pixelated genitals are being sent and received by about 40 percent of all teenagers, according to The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Perfectly fine — if you’re over 18 — but the majority of the population that sexts happen to be in their late teens, and for them it is illegal.

Sexting laws were put into place with good intentions. In 2003, The Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today (PROTECT) Act was passed making it a crime to produce, distribute, possess or receive an explicit image of a child under the age of 18 nationwide. These laws were meant to protect teens from child predators and child pornography charges.

There are additional laws which vary from state to state but are linked by the philosophy that anyone, even those who are not yet adults, caught with sexually explicit pictures of minors will be charged.

Throughout the United States, possession of a sexually explicit picture of a minor, distribution of the picture and promoting, coercing or soliciting are all crimes in and of themselves.

In the state of New York specifically, persuading a child to make pornography is a class C felony which is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Possessing child pornography can be punishable by up to four years in prison, while promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child is punishable by up to seven years of imprisonment.

Although these laws may have been put in place with a sound purpose, many teenagers are now being charged with possessing and taking pictures of themselves or significant others. Some teens in a consensual relationship, who are legally allowed to have sex, cannot send pictures of themselves to their partner without risk of being charged.

Cormega Copening, a 17-year-old football player in North Carolina, was found with naked pictures of himself on his phone earlier this year and was charged with two counts of sexual degree exploitation of a mi-

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nor and three counts of third degree sexual exploitation of a minor.

His 16-year-old girlfriend was also charged and accepted a plea deal.

Each count is a felony charge which could land Copening two years in jail for each count.

In the United States, there are varying ages at which children are recognized as adults, can drive or possess different kinds of firearms.

Dr. Elizabeth D’Amico, adjunct professor of social work at The University of Connecticut and a program manager at The Connecticut Department of Children and Families, said that there should be a consistency for when an individual’s minor status expires.

“One of the things in this country that I think is really hard is that we have different ages for things,” D’Amico said. “So we call you an adult for this or that. Like when you are 16, you can drive in most states or you can vote when you are 18 but you can’t drink in most places until you are 21.” She said that if a teenager is able to have consensual sex with someone of the same status as them, then sending pictures to the person consensually should not be illegal.

Connecticut civil, criminal and family law litigator and trial attorney Drzislav Coric agrees that consistency should be enforced. “When laws are made, I don’t think the legislators who make the laws always think them out and understand all of the consequences of them. They try to solve a specific issue, which is usually some issue in the news for some reason, and then they try to resolve that issue and don’t see how it is going to have an impact on other things.”

In the age of cyberbullying, teens have found more ways of humiliating their peers beyond the classic ostracism, alienation and physical harm. The High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey identifies that 14.8 percent of students surveyed nationwide were bullied online. In this increasingly digital world, a type of bullying emerged in which sexual pictures of teenage girls and boys have been sent around in mass texts. These incidents can contrib-

ute to harassment of teens, and in some cases to the point of suicide, such as 13-year-old Hope Witsell, who ended her own life in 2009 after topless pictures of her were circulated throughout school.

These stories have found themselves in the middle of the public’s attention. Because of circumstances such as Witsell’s, teens are facing harsh punishment for sending pictures to just one person, as significant others. In 2014, Trey Sims, a then 17 year old from Virginia was charged with manufacturing and possessing child pornography after exchanging sexually explicit photos with his girlfriend.

In an interview with The Washington Post, his attorney Jessica Foster said, “The goal [of the law] was to protect children from injury. The problem is, here, there is no victim, because it’s very clear from the text messaging that these two had a consensual relationship. It’s not illegal for them to have a sexual relationship. ... This is a law to protect juveniles, not to prosecute them, not to create more harm.” In the end, Sims was given 100 hours of community service and put on probation for a year.

Criminal records can be debilitating for minors because of the permanence of the consequences that may be associated with their charged crime. Minors found guilty of possession of child pornography could end up on the sex offender registries and could spend time if prison.

After serving time or while being on the register, finding a job can be extremely difficult. According to a 2010 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, inquiring if criminal records affected being denied jobs, 74 percent of the members of SHRM who responded reported that even a nonviolent felony conviction would be “very influential” in the employer’s decision not to hire the individual.

Status equals, or two minors in a relationship, are ending up being classified as sex offenders or serve time in prison and when applying for college or a job, there is often no room for an explanation for why they are on there, they generally just check a box. Even if potential

nors a noncriminal offense or a misdemeanor. “The legislation would not hinder legitimate child pornography investigations, but rather establish an important, potentially life-altering distinction between child porn and sexting among teens,” Roy said.

Roy decided to sponsor the Bill after a police officer from Franklin, Massachusetts came to him about concerns regarding the laws were toward children accused with sending and keeping explicit pictures of themselves or their peers. The police officer explained that if the teenagers were convicted, they would have to register as sex offenders. If put into place, Roy said the bill will, “give police and prosecutors additional tools to make the punishment fit the behavior and further the desire to keep students safe and provide a teachable moment.”

There is much discussion over what to do about sexting and many Americans feel that the current system is punishing teenagers for contradictory reasons. “Laws change all the time,” Coric said. From prohibition in the 1920s to the ban on gay marriage the United States has gone through many legislative changes and the laws on sexting could very well be the next to change for the better. ___________________________________ Gianna Folz is a freshman journalism major who has made “Express yoself” her personal motto. You can email her at gfolz@ithaca.edu

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employees were to explain their circumstances, as soon as they start to mention sexting or naked pictures, the chances of being hired may drop substantially.

An attempt by state governments to keep nonviolent criminal offenders out of the traditional criminal justice processes are called pretrial diversion programs. Those who have access to these programs may forgo community service or in some cases or go through sexual education classes to learn about the social dangers and legal consequences of sexting, Coric said.

For example, a 17-year-old student at Oliver Ames High School in North Easton, Massachusetts had received and saved nude pictures of other teenagers on the app Snapchat. He underwent an investigation by the police and The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office and agreed to a pre-trial diversion offer and had to complete 40 hours of community service.

Coric voiced his support for the programs because they keep children out of prisons. “I think that certainly giving people a break when they make a mistake especially if they don’t have a criminal history is a plus on many levels,” Coric said. “There are pretty severe consequences on having a criminal record. It can prevent you from going into some professions or getting a job to support your family.”

This does not apply to child predators. Coric said, “If you are a 30 year old sexting a 13 year old, I wouldn’t want you to have any availability of any Pretrial Diversionary program because you are someone that society should be protected from and somebody that shouldn’t have an easy out.”

Jeffrey Roy, the State Representative for the 10th Norfolk District of Massachusetts sponsored a bill earlier this year that would change the way teens are punished for sexting.

He said that the Bill H. 1567 would, “give police the tools to address adolescent issues and have the ability to correct the behavior through education or some other means of deterrent.” The bill would amend the state’s child pornography laws to make sexting between mi-

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Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

The Deceptive Movie Trailer

When Hollywood pulls the wool over our eyes

Tyler Obropta, Contributing Writer

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romance. Foreign films like Pan’s Labyrinth have trailers that are voiced over in English, never using dialogue from the film and thus never clueing the audience into the fact that the entire movie is actually in Spanish with English subtitles.

Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd curiously did not include much singing in its trailers, despite the fact that the film is a musical.

Bridge to Terabithia leaves out any and all indications that, an hour into it, things get really, really depressing.

The explanation is simple: Studios want as many people as possible to see their films. This desire often comes at the price of creative singularity. Fans of Ocean’s Eleven might be put off by a slow art film, so it’s best to market The American to the crowd that normally eats up Clooney’s movies. Some of Johnny Depp’s fans might be turned off of Sweeney Todd if they saw that Depp spent most of the time singing.

The false marketing is meant to cut out all of the quirks and deliver more of the same stuff that audiences have become familiar with.

Adam Sandler’s Click presented itself as a typical Sandler comedy with crude humor and a lot of slapping David Hasselhoff in the face, underplaying the sadder and more serious elements of its atypically tragic story.

It’s all a matter of putting butts in seats. The Bill Murray film Lost in Translation used a similar strategy. It was marketed as a wacky comedy with Murray acting as a fish out of water in Japan, leaving out the underlying melancholy of the entire story and the elements of sadness, alienation and futility that characterize the film.

Back when M. Night Shyamalan was considered to be “the next Spielberg,” tons of people loved him for his suspense and thriller work in The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs. With his next film The Village, a period romance, advertising instead indicated it to be a suspenseful, horrifying creature film.

Many people were undoubtedly fooled into going to see Drive and The American under the guise that they were seeing a car chase movie or an action-packed, hit-man film. But films like The Village, Sweeney Todd and Lost in Translation only could have benefitted from more honest marketing campaigns. It would have resulted in

less critical backlash against The Village, because audience expectations would have been different.

A more honest marketing campaign is sturdier, because the entire thing isn’t built on a fabrication. Editors don’t have to tiptoe around what the film is really about and audiences don’t have to adjust their expectations as they watch the movie.

Sometimes, these deceptions can’t be helped. Would Lost in Translation have made any money at all if it was marketed as a bittersweet movie about loneliness and melancholia? Would Drive have tripled its budget if it stuck to its arthouse audience?

False advertising can be instrumental to a film’s financial success, but it can also ruin the joy of movies. The studios behind The Village, Drive and especially Fantastic Four look like they don’t trust their product and the product itself loses some of its quality when this reaction is taken into consideration. You can’t help seeing the slower, dramatic scenes in Drive and thinking, “Why wasn’t this in the trailers?” Yet, a world where all films are marketed honestly would be a world in which The American doesn’t triple its budget in box office receipts, one where your average movie-goer will go to no foreignmade movies, and one where absolutely nobody goes to see 20th Century Fox’s most recent Fantastic Four. _____________________________________ Tyler Obropta is a freshman film, photography and visual arts major who thought The Lord of the Rings was a movie about gymnastics. You can email him at cobropta@ithaca.edu

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rive opened at the Cannes Film Festival to a standing ovation and a Best Director Award for Nicolas Winding Refn.

But when it came time to market the 2011 arthouse crime film to American audiences, it was presented as a loud, visceral, action-packed car chase film a la The Fast and the Furious and The Transporter, the very types of films that Drive was attempting to subvert.

One woman, Sarah Deming, saw the film and was so upset by the misleading marketing campaign that she filed a lawsuit, according to The Guardian. And while it’s her fault for not researching the movie she was about to see, she might be onto something.

Drive is in no way the first of its kind. For decades, audiences have been manipulated and deceived through clever marketing into believing the movie they’re about to see is something else entirely. There are tons of people who neglect to read up on the movies and simply go see something for its stars, its genre or its trailers.

Despite the most recent Fantastic Four movie sucking so bad that it is now the worst commercially-received major superhero film of the last ten years, the trailers were actually quite smart. They present a film that had endearing camaraderie between its young, attractive leads, strong themes of family and friendship, impressive Interstellar-esque scientific intrepidity, and an epic showdown between the titular heroes and the villainous Dr. Doom.

So imagine viewers’ surprise when their superhero movie turned out to be a dark film with heavy elements of body-horror in line with David Cronenberg’s The Fly. Imagine their shock when this Dr. Doom became a weird creep who makes people’s heads explode and the Fantastic Four were introduced as a bunch of unlikable jerks in a film that, to quote Jonathan Romney of The Observer, is “beyond depressing.”

But films don’t even have to be bad to get a misleading trailer. Oftentimes an art film like Drive will be marketed for a broader audience with a trailer that sells a false product. The slow, meditative George Clooney drama The American was marketed as an action film with plenty of shootouts and

Meru

Vinyl Revival

The resurgence of vinyl in the 21st century

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

T

he regurgitation of generational cultures has become a staple of our society, this being obviously seen within the revival of vinyl records.

Though vinyl records were once a major source of a musical reproduction method, and a listening tool, this slowly declined in the ‘80s and ‘90s as compact discs and cassettes took over mainstream culture as presumably better media for listening to albums.

CDs and cassette tapes provided a more compact and portable way to listen to music. Now in the 21st century with way more advanced technological developments, access to music is overwhelmingly easy. Over the past couple of years there has been a sort of revival of the old tool of listening to music — a vinyl revival.

Not only is this “bringing back” of old cultural tools important in how we incorporate past generations within our society, but it also allows us to appreciate the past — taking a musical walk down memory lane, and experiencing music the way our parents and past generations did.

In the 21st century this concept is prevalent in media such as music, art, clothing, and in alternative culture. Some decades which encompass present day culture are revivals of ‘70s and more recently ‘90s culture. With this idea it is clear why there has been a revival and newfound appreciation for vinyl records.

Seven Caso from Ithaca’s Angry Mom Records said “records have maintained status throughout the decades.”

Not only has there been a rise in vinyl from places like thrift and record stores, but also at popular stores such as Urban Outfitters where upto-date pop music combined with past music such as Nirvana and the Beatles can be found.

So why go out and buy a record player and vinyl? A reasonable question to ask, as it would be much easier to just open up a MacBook and look up a YouTube video, or play

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Spotify. However, some appreciate this revival, because it potentially resets music to its purest form.

Possibly even a form in which music was intended to be listened to.

Adam Gonsalves, owner and operator of Portland’s Telegraph Mastering, a full service audio mastering studio, was quoted in The Oregonian, “I think this is what people like about it: it pins very closely to the way that human beings hear music organically.”

This can be shown as possibly the most important aspect of vinyl records. With this revival, music can once again become a more physical experience, developing a way of tapping into past cultures integrated into the 21st century.

The physical process of picking out a record, taking it out of its slipcover, placing it onto the player, and putting the needle down. There is no comparison to this physically mesmerizing experience that directly connects listeners to the music when compared to throwing on some headphones and putting on a random Pandora playlist. This is maybe why vinyl revival, and generational revival is so important in our culture, to allow us in such a fast-paced, technologically advanced world, to sit back for a minute and remember what a physical music experience is like.

Not only do records connect our culture with the past, some admit that vinyl records produce better sound quality as opposed to other musical listening tools. Oftentimes sound quality can become diminished by things like file transferring. Caso said that this is one of the many reasons why individuals stay loyal to vinyl. While there can be some downsides to listening to vinyl like problems with high pitched frequencies, or surface noises due to the way the records are manufactured, this adds to the organic sound experience that so many vinyl lovers identify with.

Caso said that in Angry Mom Records, some of the most common, or

Image by Claire MClusky popular records being purchased recently are classic. Among many others, people seem to be buying a lot of Led Zeppelin, Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen. There has been an overall consumer surge in classic rock record sales. The most popular season for record purchasing seems to be in the summer, when students flee back to school looking for a new oldies, classic rock hit to jam out to before classes begin.

While vinyl records seem to be reaching some sort of a cultural peak, Caso said he believes that every so often people tend to look back at past generations, and bring back what was once old into the new generation. Although records are seen as a past standard for a music listening device, it seems that they will live on in our ever-changing, technological world ___________________________________ Shannah Sacco is a junior politics major who is thinking about getting into wax cylinder recordings. You can email her at ssacco1@ithaca.edu

Mistress America

Shannah Sacco, Contributing Writer

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Meru Contributing Writer

Film Review

Joel Kalow Staff Writer

making the beyond dangerous trek and why it is worth the deadly risk. These interviews also reveal the danger and stakes for attempting Meru and the Shark’s Fin. Jon Krakauer, author of the book Into Thin Air said in the film, “This is the test of the master climber,” as it is more difficult than even Mount Everest, which Chin and Anker have climbed at least four times.

The anxious and breathtaking sensation while seeing these men take a climb into what to them is the unknown is thrilling. However, another significant aspect seen throughout Meru is its ability to depict the relationships developed and their importance when taking the risk that is mountain climbing. Chin did an impeccable job of capturing the deep-rooted feelings that he and his co-climbers had toward each other and the mountain. It seemed as though he and his crew filmed absolutely everything in order to make emotion come to life on screen — which he was successful in doing.

The motion picture was thrilling and captivating from start to finish by its cinematography, style and overall message. Meru shows climbing as not a hobby or activity, but a life-changing sport that holds intense consequences and rewards — something that, as Ozturk claims in the film, “...Was worth the risk. It was worth possibly dying for.”

Some movies want to make you run. Others want you to pick up arms, or kiss your neighbor, or make dinner. The constant here is movement. Movies are a reproduction of movement. It’s right there in the name, “moveies,” and it’s not like they call them moving pictures for nothing. With that said, Mistress America makes you want to dance.

The film is the latest effort of director/ writer Noah Baumbach, and the second, after 2011’s Frances Ha, to be co-written by his partner Greta Gerwig, who also stars. Where Frances was loose and episodic in structure, a beautifully rendered coming of age story that referenced everything from Jules et Jim to Mauvais Sang, Mistress America is quicker and leaner. What it lacks in anhedonia it more than makes up for in quick-witted barbs and lines so quotable they’ll make you frantically search for the nearest pen.

Mistress America tells the story of Tracy Fishko’s (Lola Kirke) first semester at an Barnard College. She struggles with first time independence, relationships — both romantic and platonic — and school work. She also befriends her soon to be step-sister Brooke, played by Greta Gerwig. In Frances Ha, Gerwig was often arrogant and delusional, but as a whole she was compassionate, warm and empathetic. Gerwig takes Frances Halladay and turns her up a couple dozen notches for her performance as Brooke, whose manic cando-except-I-never-do attitude provides the film with its greatest source of comedy. The two form an unlikely mentor-mentee relationship, which Tracy uses as fodder for a short story that she submits to a snooty, briefcase-using literary society. The story, entitled “Mistress America,” is narrated throughout the whole film.

The film’s danciness stems from a few

factors. The music, composed by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, recalls the poppy upbeat sounds from a John Hughes’ film, with just the right amount of New Order-esque sound thrown in for good measure. The editing pushes the pace as well, with fast montages punctuating the action every now and then, as if Baumbach had decided to hit fast forward on parts of his own story. By doing this, the film keeps up its breakneck, often screwball pace while still indulging in the small character idiosyncrasies that gives them true personality.

While Mistress America is a breeze at 84 minutes, it does not shy away from the things that are essential to coming of age stories.

Anxiety over joining groups you have only disdain for, depression over being left out, opportunities missed again and again; these things factor into all of the character’s lives.

Misunderstandings haunt them, fueling their delusions, even while they crack wise about themselves. Everyone is stuck between who they want to be, who they used to be and who they really are, and it’s not like these issues are resolved at the end. If anything, the crushing tide of reality is bound to push them even further into themselves.

But Tracy and Brooke’s story isn’t about overcoming obstacles. It’s about understanding them, and that simple act alone proves to be more inspiring than a thousand sports movies.

For all of the youthful energy that pumps Mistress America full of life, the message is a surprisingly simple one: hold true to who you are, admit your mistakes and be there for others.

The film ends with a voiceover of Tracy reading the last few lines of her story: “She was the last cowboy. Being a beacon of hope for lesser people is a hard business.” Being a beacon of hope is hard indeed, but who knew it could look so fun?

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Ministry of Cool

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Madison R. Barlow

Mistress America

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Film Review

Jimmy Chin’s newest film, Meru, is enthralling, heart-wrenching and captivating from beginning to end. Co-directed with his wife, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the feature documentary follows Chin and fellow elite climbers Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk (also a cinematographer for the film) as they attempt to successfully climb what is known as the Shark’s Fin of Mount Meru. The film depicts intimate interviews with the climbers, their families and experts on the sport, as well as thrilling shots of the heartache, difficulties and ultimate realities of climbing.

Chin’s plan to summit Meru initiated in 2008 when he, Anker and Ozturk began to climb the claimed-to-be-impossible Mount Meru. The film shows footage of the failed first attempt due to low food rations, freezing weather and a storm that set them back in their plans for four days. After the brutal defeat, the climbers return home and are convinced that Meru is out of the question even for the most elite climbers. However, when the three of them endured life-changing experiences, the trio made the decision to attempt Meru a second time three years later in 2011.

While the action shots are what gives the film its exciting edge, the up-close interviews create a connection with the climbers as they share their life stories, their reasons for

The Arcs Yours, Dreamily Album Review Hristina Tasheva

Beach House

Staff Writer

Depression Cherry

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

Album Review Sophie Israelsohn Staff Writer

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Part garage-rock, part psychedelic, part R&B and part concept album, Yours, Dreamily by The Arcs is the kind of album that looks like a disaster on paper but works in practice. Yours, Dreamily is exactly what the name suggests.

It sounds like the feeling of flipping through a vintage photo album: nostalgic, romantic, melancholic, soulful and dreamy.

The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach proved that he plays well with others in the debut album of The Arcs, a supergroup made up of Auerbach, Leon Michels, Richard Swift, Homer Steinweiss and Nick Movshon. The band also features guitarist Kenny Vaughan and Mariachi Flor de Toloache, an all female mariachi band from New York.

Even though Auerbach said in a Rolling Stone interview that the band is completely collaborative in nature, most of the songs, especially in the first half of the album, defiantly sound like they could have come off a Black Keys’ record and are more Auerbach-oriented.

However, they are less bluesy than classic Black Keys’ songs and are a bit more psychedelic.

The first half of the album also happens to be the hardest hitting, with driving beats and grungy-bluesy guitar. Songs like “The Arc” are some of the album’s best, which have moments that sound like “Gold on The Ceiling,” “Outta my mind” and “Put a Flower in Your Pocket.”

What makes this album stand out, however, is when it strays from the expected Auerbach-

oriented songs. The use of piano and saxophone mesh surprisingly well with Auerbach’s grimy guitar and whiny falsetto. Songs on the second half of the album begin to wander into the realm of seductive R&B. Songs like “Nature’s Child,” “Come & Go” and “Everything You Do (You Do For You)” sound like they come straight out of a speakeasy/jazz club.

The weakest song on the album may be “Stay in My Corner,” a song that Auerbach has said was inspired by the Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao fight. One of the more romantic and slow songs on the album, “Stay in My Corner,” just kind of drags along. While not an awful song, it does stick out in this album.

The album ends softly and sweetly with the song “Searching the Blue,” a slow ballad with a steady beat and a mellow, tinkly piano. This song sounds like Auerbach is putting listeners to bed after a long day of play. The simple, but catchy melody is tinged with sadness as Auerbach croons, “War is over now/ I feel my mind returning.”

While it would have been nice to see some cohesiveness in the album, it rather shows the breadth of the group. In the future, it would be nice to see other personalities of the group shine a bit more, but overall this album is well worth a listen. It gives Black Keys fans something while also letting Auerbach explore and create great music with other talented musicians in a wellproduced album.

Opening with the familiar sound of synthesized strings and high hat, Beach House reaches the peak of its signature style in its fifth studio album, Depression Cherry. Beach House has made a point of blurring harsh edges, especially this time around, leaving listeners with a somewhat ethereal, watercolor blend both within and between tracks.

The lyrics, however minimal, are conveyed in a soft, calm conversation.

The first track, “Levitation,” takes on the exact quality of the title. There is little change in harmonic progression. Layers are looped and the melody stays in familiar territory, going over the same notes in every verse. This familiar Beach House technique makes the inclusion of new layers that much more noticeable, just enough until it too blends into the texture and establishes a normalcy with the rest.

Some layers are introduced with a certain harsh quality, such as the heavy buzz of electric guitar in the beginning of “Sparks.” Even among such a thickly-layered harmonic texture, there remains an element of bareness.

The layers become less and less distinctive and the rhythmic pulse equally non-jarring.

Fade-outs are a surprising kin to this album. Each song opens so similarly that they all seem to run together as one idea, sometimes literally fading in and out in waves.

Somewhat hidden in the meditative qualities of this album is a dark romance. Toward the middle, “Beyond Love” possesses more obvious melodic material. Still, the lyrics blend

into the watercolor effect in the rest of the texture. However, the melody is never completely alone, there is one part of the instrumentation that shares in the line almost all the time, as with the pulsing, percussive-pitched synthesizer pairing well with “we really wanna know/ we really do breathe.”

“PPP” has a more dance-like feeling at first with its compound meter opening. And like the meter, it also takes on the old romance aesthetic of a speech-sung intro into verses, like something from a female group from the ‘60s. All throughout, the guitar arpeggiates the chordal harmonies. The synthesizer here is very much in the background to the point where one may only notice the drum, guitar and vocal trinity.

Depression Cherry comes to a close with the, at first fully, a cappella “Days of Candy.”

Layers are added in accompaniment with a delicate touch and again unobtrusively. Piano plunks out the chord progression very lightly at the start of the first verse. Practically seamlessly, the guitar and otherwise ever-present synthesizer come back into play as Legrand sings “just like that, it’s gone,” as the a cappella section too is gone.

Depression Cherry is a step in a softer direction by Beach House, although not drastically different from albums past. The harmonic underlay, albeit repetitive, supports the melody in its hum. This album has few easily distinctive parts to the sound and is to be heard as such, simply and practically uninterrupted.

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Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz Album Review Cecilia Morales, Staff Writer

It’s safe to say that Miley Cyrus has come a long way from her Hannah Montana days, transforming from a sugarcoated pop star to a tongue-wagging twerking aficionado. Putting aside the giant inflatable penises and an embarrassing VMA hosting gig, Cyrus does tend to put out some decent tunes from time to time. And this time she managed to surprise, or rather confuse, us all when she dropped a 23-track double LP entitled Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz.

With the help of a somewhat unorthodox group of musical pals, including Mike Will Made-It, Ariel Pink and The Flaming Lips, Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz is more of a stoner side project than an actual album.

From the start, it’s hard to take the whole thing seriously; even the artwork screams pretentious art school project. It’s easy to imagine this group of musicians pairing a bunch of random beats together and thinking, “Hey, this doesn’t sound half bad!”

Just one listen to the single-track “Dooo It!” will spur a giant eye-roll as Cyrus’s auto-tuned vocals scream “Yeah I smoke pot/ yeah I love peace/ but I don’t give a fuck/ I ain’t no hippie.” What more could be expected from a 22-year-old who wears fake weed leaves on her nipples? Yet it’s hard not to bump to the track’s psychedelic synths and hard bass line. There is a hint of ’90s hip-hop that really carries the song along, bringing it together as a kind of “space trap” subgenre. This can be accredited to hip-hop producer Mike Will Made-It, who has been buddy-buddy with Cyrus since the peak of her twerking obsession. His beats are what save this track from becoming a messy pseudo-existential anthem.

Will Made-It’s mentorship is sprinkled throughout the LP, giving songs like “Evil Is but a Shadow” and “Bang Me Box” the type of beat that never leaves your head.

The lyrics in “Bang Me Box” are raunchy enough to make any conservative’s cheeks turn beet red: “I want yours inside of me/ But don’t forget where I like licking baby.”

The song’s beat is infused with classic funk and smooth R&B. The distractingly sexual lyrics add a little charm to the tune: “Teach me a lesson, pretend we never met/ But we can keep just kissing cause you’re getting me so wet,” almost as if Marvin Gaye was in the room.

Much like Will Made-It, Cyrus’s BFF Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips can be heard having his part in songs like “Something About Space Dude” and “The Floyd Song (Sunrise).” The latter, being an ele-

gy for Cyrus’s recently deceased Alaskan Klee Kai, includes a hazy acoustic riff and angelic background vocals that make one feel as if they are frolicking through a field of sunflowers. The former, with its stereotypical hippie title, also induces a type of musical “trip” that’s almost soothing. The random little guitar trills paired with the reverb on Cyrus’s falsetto make for one hell of a ride, which drags onto a lot of other tracks including “Cyrus Skies,” “Karen Don’t Be Sad” and “Pablow The Blowfish” — which just so happens to be another, quite atrociously written, ode to Cyrus’ deceased blowfish.

It’s blatantly obvious that Coyne, Cyrus’s right-hand man, had a lot to do with this album, probably drawing inspiration from his Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots days.

There’s even a two-minute track consisting of just vocals and ringing bells called “Miley Tibetan Bowlzzz,” which could either be described as the kind of track that normally plays during yoga classes for white suburban moms or some wildly culturally appropriative mix of Tibetan monk music.

Cyrus’s other musician buds also contribute to the befuddling mix, including Big Sean’s misplaced rap verse on “Tangerine” and Phantogram’s Sarah Barthel’s seductive synth work on “Slab Of Butter (Scorpion).” Perhaps Cyrus is trying to compete with Taylor Swift in a battle for the highest number of famous friends one can show off in one performance.

Even if John Lennon had crawled out of his coffin and penned the most tear-inducing lyrics for Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, the LP would be nothing more than filler music. While some tracks are great on their own, the entire LP gets old really quickly around halfway through. The overwhelming amount of artist collaborations blur the line between what is Cyrus’s contribution and what is an outside influence, ultimately making the whole thing forgettable. All in all, Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz is not an album to be taken seriously... like, at all.

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Ministry of Cool

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Fake Palms

Fake Palms Album Review Tyler Obropta

Ben Folds

Contributing Writer

So There Album Review

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

Will Uhl Staff Writer

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Fake Palms is the debut album from the Toronto-based psychedelic alternative rock band of the same name.

And alternative is what its rock is, as each song seems to have two different layers to its sound: There’s the exterior layer, the more audible of the two, which has catchy hooks, dreamy vocals and calm guitar work. Then, there’s the more subtle layer that forms the backdrop of its songs with a hard rock drum beat and extensive guitar.

For songs like “Melatonin,” this juxtaposition of sounds works quite well in the music’s favor. Occasionally, like in the great, minute-long instrumental section in the middle of “Melatonin,” the two wavelengths combine and make a uniquely vivid, headbanging rock-andpop sound.

Fake Palm’s songs carry a hypnotic, dreamy and abnormal quality to their sound, like the recording equipment and the band were placed at two different ends of a very long hallway. The vocals do a lot of echoing to the point where they’re unintelligible, but the guitar and drums often just drown them out anyway.

The sound is uniquely Fake Palms, but its experimental vibes call to mind

the modern-day Guster with more punk influence. The first half revels in this odd and haunting style of instrumentation, while the fantastic second half of the album ramps things up with the best song on the album, the energetic and uneven “YTMATLDPH.” It presents actually intelligible lyrics in cooing “Oooo’s” and the repeated question, “Where did my life go?”

The guitar-centric style permeates “Nerves” and blends amazingly with the heaviness of the drumbeats in “Half Light,” after which the droning vocals and powerful guitar build up of “Sun Drips” sends it home.

The band revels in its simple origins.

The first music recorded by Fake Palms was done in a bedroom with low-quality recording equipment and that simplicity followed through. Fake Palms remains a band determined to create complexities from simplistic ways of recording music.

Fake Palms is an album that is loud and whose vocals seem like an afterthought.

But its sound is so unique and its boldness so admirable that, at the end of the album, the lyrics don’t really matter that much and all of the band’s audible power can be found in its energetic instrumentals.

For a man pushing 50, Ben Folds has done a remarkable job of not settling down. In exchange for the head-bobbing, toe-tapping, soul-crushing ennui from his last album Lonely Avenue, Folds has brought in the classical troupe yMusic to aid in his slower, more elegant orchestrations. And though it sounds like a big change of pace, it’s still Folds’ music, for better or worse.

As typical with Folds, when he tries something new, it doesn’t always work.

Ironically, the album’s titular song, “So There,” is one of its weakest: Though the combination of piano, woodwinds and vocal duets are undeniably pretty, the lyrics don’t carry their own weight. For many artists, that wouldn’t be much of an issue, but Folds’ main appeal has consistently been his hard-hitting, thoughtful lyrics. When a song’s message is lost in translation, like with “So There,” it’s disappointing. Not to speak of “F10-D-A,” in which Folds takes a very simple joke and stretches it over two minutes with little justification. The line “F’d in the A with a D” is played alongside the notes F10, A and D, with little to no variation.

But when it works, it’s brilliant.

Whereas many artists perform songs about intense, vague feelings, Folds is a master at pinpointing specific emotional conflicts and plunging into their depths.

“Yes Man” is perhaps the best example of this, delving into the frustrating co-

nundrum of finding yourself lacking and wishing someone told you about it before it came to a head. Because Folds’ songs are often told through characters, it adds a layer of intrigue in trying to understand the character performing. And thanks to their emotive quality, it’s not necessary to personally experience it to understand it.

Though his lyrics are occasionally cryptic, they’re rewarding to understand. His preference to convey complex thoughts through simple words is occasionally jarring, but on the whole, a breath of fresh air.

The concerto closes the album on a high note. Though it’s a far cry from his other works, the orchestral elements in the rest of the album make transitioning into this classical composition relatively easy. And it’s no lightweight, either — Folds has talked about the careful thought that has gone into the concerto before, and it shows. It’s rhythmically varied enough to be worth listening to on a level of surface appreciation, and understanding the composition’s clever touches is just as rewarding as clueing into the lyrical subtleties of his other songs.

So There isn’t an album for everyone, and it’s not even an album for every Ben Folds fan. Though trading poppy rhythms for an orchestra will turn some off, Ben Folds’ So There is just as thoughtful, creative, and intermittently vulgar as ever.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

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There’s something delightfully disturbing about a game that can make someone happy to get something like cancer or a mutant spider or a demonic-looking pentagram. This is an essential part of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, a rogue-like top-down shooter by indie game designer Edmund McMillen, well-known as the designer of the critically acclaimed Super Meat Boy. The aim of the game is simple, maneuver through the various levels, pick up upgrades and items to help you defeat enemies and bosses, and eventually reach the end. But there’s a twist: If you die, you must start all the way at the beginning. You lose all of your progress, items and all. There are no save points like in most games.

This is what defines the rogue-like game genre. What makes this even more interesting are the randomized level layouts and item pools. You never know where the exit is or what items you’ll get, so you must learn to play the game in ways that you haven’t before, according to whatever you find. Rebirth is a remake of the original Binding of Isaac released in 2011, and with more than double the amount of items than in the original (Over 300 items in Rebirth), one must expect the unexpected.

The plot of the game plays much into its aesthetic and choice of imagery. The opening sequence involves Isaac and his mother, who live alone. His mother watches Christian broadcasts, and one day hears a voice from above, telling her to kill Isaac. Isaac escapes through a hidden hatch in his room that leads into the basement, where the game begins. Isaac journeys through the basement and beyond in order to defeat his mom, shooting tears from his eyes as projectiles that dam-

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Game Review Gabriel Sylvester, Contributing Writer

age enemies like flies, spiders, poop monsters, exploding zombies, Satan and other assortments of disturbing creatures. Along the way Isaac finds upgrades and items with references to poop (so much poop), religion, diseases and even items with allusions to internet memes.

As strange as it all may seem, the enemies, bosses, items and areas are all incredibly easy to look at thanks to the artistic sensibilities of McMillen, whose stylings have long been a seemingly perfect balance of gross and adorable. There’s even a boss that’s basically a giant blob with a cleft palate (his name is Monstro and he is surprisingly cute). The art of Rebirth is top-notch and makes looking at poop an okay prospect.

This is a relief, considering the significant amount of poop in the game.

The music in Rebirth is intriguing as well and does help create an atmosphere of intensity and excitement. However, there is not much diversity, and after a while, it starts to become repetitive and dull. The soundtrack is even more lackluster when compared to the music from the original Binding of Isaac game, composed by Danny Baranowsky.

This seems to be one of Rebirth’s only downfalls.

On the other hand, one of the best things about Rebirth is how well-balanced it seems to be. With so many items, there are bound to be some bad ones. Soy Milk is bad because while it greatly increases your rate of fire, it also significantly decreases your damage, rendering you unable to efficiently dispatch enemies. But there are also bound to be some majorly overpowered ones. Brimstone allows you to shoot a giant red laser that multiplies your damage stat, and can pretty much kill most small enemies instantly. There are items that lay all across the spectrum, so generally, it tends to even out. On any given run, you will most likely not be underpowered, and beating the game becomes a matter of skill as opposed to luck. You will have runs that are absolutely terrible, and you will have runs where you become godlike, but that’s the nature of any game with random elements. Since the random elements eventually bal-

ance out, it ultimately is up to one’s skill level to beat the game.

In spite of the random elements of the game, there is still room to choose what type of run you will have. Items are always optional, and if you encounter one that doesn’t fit the playstyle of a particular run, you can skip it (or with certain items, you can “reroll” to try and get something better). Before taking an item, you can ask yourself: What type of run do I want to have? Do I want a fast rate of fire at the potential cost of damage? Or do I want more damage with the possibility of having a slower rate of fire? Many different items can combo with others, creating interesting or powerful synergies, which can affect the choices of items you pick up or leave.

Because of this, and because of an expansive level system that you can unlock through beating the game multiple times, Rebirth can provide hundreds of hours of original content, and even then you may not discover all of the game’s secrets. There are 178 unlockable achievements in all, which apparently amounts to completing the game 110 percent.

On top of that, a massive DLC expansion is planned for October 30, titled The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth, which boasts over 100+ more hours of content, including new items, new levels, a scoreboard for daily runs and a new gameplay mode titled Greed Mode, which involves facing multiple waves of enemies and bosses at a time with no breaks.

The game does have an ending, but there is so much to discover that beating the game does not necessitate revealing all of the game’s secrets. Rebirth is the same in the sense that it is so packed with content that even after countless hours of playing it, you can still return and find something new. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth has a well-balanced game system, wonderful art and an interesting premise, and as such can be considered a classic in indie gaming, if not in gaming in general.

37

Ministry of Cool

unk odd ion, the best and ally the o?” ates the Half and ips”

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

38

ONS. PROSE&CONS. PROSE&CO

Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

Guy

by Ka

I’ll let you in everyone eat crevices in o

If you don’t l let you forge

You’re proba happens to b Where am I

“So, you likin “Am I liking thing?”

“Robbie. Just putting my h

“Well, lemme “Well, when eyes.

“Again, with roll my eyes.

“Please. I get

“Yeah. Uh-hu

“I’m serious!

“Yeah, some

“You mean, ‘T

“Yeah, that o They’re a co wrong, by th confess I don Oh, yeah –– Wrong. The

And yeah, I’m unless I mee

Today, howev the vino in si

But I won’t. W myself into s stupid, I know

“Hey, Guy! G my daydream

“Yeah, I know or any kind o exactly skip o

Guy Bruno

by Kate Schulman

I’ll let you in on a little secret –– the Bruno family does a good funeral. We invite everyone into the home, and everyone cries, and everyone eats –– oh, does everyone eat –– and then everyone goes home, and we’re up to our eyeballs in trays of baked ziti and various press-on nails that have left their owners to find crevices in our home to rest in.

If you don’t laugh at it, you cry. So you can guess which one I’ve opted for. I’m no masochist, unlike my mother, also known as the queen of Staten. She’s not gonna let you forget it.

You’re probably wondering what the scene is, are you not? I’ll tell you –– this is my great uncle Sam’s memorial service luncheon, located at 34 Mariner St. This also happens to be my mother’s house. She enjoys getting people together to eat and cry and all those other schmaltzy things families are supposed to do.

Where am I right now? Talking to my cousin Robert. Where? In the kitchen, my back all leaned up against the blue floral wallpaper.

“So, you liking Oneonta, or what?” I ask, taking a sip of my beer. Robert grinned.

“Am I liking Oneonta? What kind of question is that? I’m lovin’ it. Do you understand how many girls there are? Like, really hot ones who know how to do that thing?”

“Robbie. Just say ‘blowjob.’ I’m not your mother, I’m not gonna kill you for thinking about growing up and getting fellated by a coed with a blond ponytail,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. His whole little body sagged a little in relief.

“Well, lemme tell you –– it’s fuckin’ awesome. I swear to God; I’m never moving back home.” I laugh.

“Well, when you need a place to stay, don’t think about movin’ in with me. I don’t have any more room on the sofa –– that’s where Penny sleeps.” Robbie rolls his eyes.

“Again, with that fucking cat. It’s always about that fucking cat. When are you gonna get some real pussy, huh?” he laughs, punching me in the arm. It’s my turn to roll my eyes.

“Please. I get plenty. I just don’t bring back my winnings like the rest of you.”

“Yeah. Uh-huh. Right.”

“I’m serious! Y’know what? Forget it, I’m not arguing with an 18-year-old. Let’s just join the rest of the party,” I state, putting my hands up.

“Yeah, some party. Does your idea of a party include smoked sausage on a stick and aunt Debbie drunkenly singing that Bette Midler song?”

“You mean, ‘The Wind Beneath My Wings?’”

“Yeah, that one. I’m telling you, you’re gonna wish we stayed in here,” Robbie warns me, as if I needed a warning when dealing with my family. I know my family.

They’re a colorful bunch of people that think Guilani’s still the mayor and that people who work for the internet are, “weird hippie freaks.” They’re not totally wrong, by the way. My friend from AA, Trevor (you can tell we come from different families just by that name), does freelance web design. He’s also a vegan, which I confess I don’t know too much about but seems like an awful way to spend a Saturday.

Oh, yeah –– I’m an alcoholic. Well, a recovering alcoholic.You would’ve thought that a narrator’s just looking in on his crazy family, but he’s totally normal, right?

Wrong. The only thing that keeps me different from the rest of ‘em is my acerbic wit and penchant for using fancy words I don’t know too much about.

And yeah, I’m drinking a beer in a floral kitchen at a memorial service for my great uncle. What’s it to you? I allow myself one drink a week, and it’s usually a beer unless I meet a girl that night, which in that case, a beer turns into a glass of Prosecco, ‘cause that’s what chicks like.

Today, however, I’m tempted to storm into the living room and, using my skills from my eighth grade drama class, swipe everything off the snack table and guzzle all the vino in sight.

But I won’t. Well, I probably won’t. Let’s see how the open casket goes. If great uncle Sam’s wearing that patchy blue velvet suit, there’s a possibility that I’ll drink myself into such a stupor that I’ll end up with my forehead on the buzzer of my ex-girlfriend Hannah’s house. Again. Don’t act like you’ve never done something stupid, I know you have.

“Hey, Guy! Get in here, we’re cutting the cake!” I hear my mother’s raspy voice above the not-so-muffled chatter coming from the living room, shaking me out of my daydream.

39

Prose & Cons

“Yeah, I know! I’m coming!” I shout.You may think it’s weird to have a cake at a memorial service like this is your cousin’s communion party or a birthday party or any kind of party or something. And it is weird, don’t get me wrong or nothing –– but it’s a chocolate cake with those candy flowers on it, so it’s not like I can exactly skip out on that, can I?

Swinger

By Marissa Booker

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

I was a good ole fashioned swinger, named for tossin’ those pretty ladies ‘round the dance floor, toss ‘em I did. their painted faces a blur as they spun ’round a bound, twistin’ years away as they popped out babies and ordered groceries. children stuck close to their breast, breathing them in, shufflin’ to the same old tune, pulses quicken as the youngins shoes scuff up the floor and the ladies grow cold, oh so sensitive to little things like bar breath and others’ juiced-up lipstick left like a limp, a slow advance in the relationship. oh that incline is hard to climb, and I make myself so numb keeping up in these beat up boots. but I keep swinging, I paint my old lady beautiful shades of blue among purple and watch the watercolors fade to papers that make me nothing but the bastard, the barfly, a wick with a quick ignite, the ex, the father that never kissed his kids. I watch, still swinging, as she’s gone and they’re gone and I’m gone, trying to find those early tunes at the bottom of a bottle in a house I never made a home.

40

You wi with a with a who ho the sum ice-col you wa but yo and be He tell as he g in the b as she becaus when t

Again and th and yo and yo but he too ma But you passio so you and yo Even w but yo You ca but wh You wi Shit, I h And no That us But you Seem s And yo

I want to warn my four-year-old self

by Gabriella Jorio

You will fall in love with a boy who is wild and chases the moon in the thug streets of Milan with a group of friends with shaved heads and purses filled with their favorite quick fix who holds a plastic bag of cocaine in front of you and it dances above your nose and the summer as you know it tastes of ice-cold beer and cigarettes on his tongue and you want him to be better but you are also afraid that being better will make him normal and being ordinary will be your biggest fear.

He tells you he loves you, he always will as he gets high with the junkies in La Romana in the back of an abuela’s house as she makes arroz con habichuelas because growing boys have got to eat, even when they are being eaten away.

Again with a green-eyed charmer who tells you you’re special and the words roll off his tongue, so melodic and your insides shiver and you believe that this time it is true I am special but he can only call you his girlfriend when he’s drunk, too many rum and cokes and he’s dreaming.

But you have always thought passion can only be found in unfulfilled love so you will chase the broken ones and you will be happy Even when he tells you that he’s Jewish and you can’t meet his family but you introduce him to your father anyway.

You call him in August because you think about him everyday but when you’re back at school, he doesn’t want to talk to you.

You will think Shit, I have gained such clarity.

And now you are lost in the silence That used to be fiery nights But you accept that even relationships that Seem so good end with time And you just want time.

Prose & Cons

41

Goodbye, C

by Nabila Crane

Your dry, cracked lips never once made me look away.

The veins taking over your face when you spoke, we were enthralled.

In a roomful of people, you were truth and virtue, yet this Glorious imperfection standing tall— Every word that you uttered, every step that you took held this unbearable weight.

You were shut out from this world, a recluse in the trappings of a stagnant society.

Forgive me if I didn’t, lost as I was — my heart sound asleep — Abandoning you to the War of Love — To this day I ask myself who answered your thoughts, Who silenced your stoic suffering?

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

We were rooted in kinship, Almost as if you had known me years before I had known you.

What an old warrior you were, facing your fears each day.

An ascetic, aching you accepted time’s truth: We are its pious prisoners.

Like Krishna, in the battle of Kurukshetra, your dharma was to Love— with Courage you voiced Vedic law. Stop Waging War. And the divine words spoken in the spirit of our Self: “This too shall pass.”

On days that feel deafening and defeating, I remember your words.

On days that feel meaningless and hopeless, I say them to myself.

On days that feel absolutely mind numbing, I write them down.

And when I can’t write...

I close my eyes and imagine you here with me.

But I can’t anymore. Your pain has been mine for too long.

It’s tough to say Goodbye, C. But just know, your light stays with me: “This too shall pass.”

42

Evening Existentialism with Friends

by Haley Goetz

Her apartment was instantly recognizable as being typical of a 20-something-year-old Brooklyn transplant. She resided on the second floor of a worn brownstone across the street from an elementary school. Her tabby cat had some sort of eccentric name. One of her roommates happened to be a puppeteer who possessed the original hand cast from The Dark Crystal. It was all very quasi-artistic.

I was visiting a teacher of mine by the name of Ariana in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The two of us had bonded quite well when I had taken her workshop in non-linear editing at Boston University over the previous summer. We went out and got some doughnuts, then perused around a furniture store in Bushwick. Now I found myself sitting on her couch, enjoying some tea and good company.

Right as the two of us began to converse, into her apartment walked this guy somewhere in his late 20s or early 30s. Elianque was his name, and he was just about the tallest man I had ever seen, accented with an extra few feet or so of dreads. He and Ariana were friends, and I learned that he was a blackbox director of an experimental show up on 42nd Street. It involved some form of tribal rituals, possibly without clothes. I can’t truly remember.

He needed to borrow Ariana’s car so that he could go up to The Bronx and pick up some of his old turntables from his “crazy” and “evil” ex-wife. I guess that was the literal reason as to why he was there in the first place, but we did have a great conversation on the semantics of acting and writing. Soon he altogether abandoned the idea of going out to reclaim his property, and we instead bonded over venting about the malicious tendencies of this ex-wife of his. She had been sending him a slew of passive-aggressive texts and emails about not following through with picking up his stuff over at her place, along with other tidbits of emotional carnage.

I, being but a 17-year-old girl who was still in high school, felt rather proud of myself for being able to give relationship advice to a man twice my age. Soon we moved over to the kitchen table, where we continued to bond over broccoli and gyoza. Elianque took a break between bites to hold up his fork and stare at it with rapt fascination.

“What if this fork was in another reality?” he postulated.

Ariana interjected.

“What, then, even is reality?”

Dusky light was coming through the windows of the apartment. I really had to get going. The three of us walked into the Bed-Stuy evening glow, entering into a bodega before I was on my way back to the cozy environment of Carroll Gardens, the other Brooklyn neighborhood where I was staying.

This was the last time I would see Ariana for quite awhile, but I knew it would not be the “last” last time in the truest sense.

We parted at the gates to the Bedford-Nostrand subway stop. I was feeling more elated than I had in quite some time. There’s just something so wonderful about maintaining a connection to a friend even after a length of time. The world was spinning, the world was frantic, but nothing was as pressing or as rushed as it previously seemed. Those who were riding the G train with me were but a backdrop to this specific moment in time. There’s something truly magical about being involved in life, in experiencing things, that it’s almost too much to fathom.

Prose & Cons

43

Stillness it appears, calm before the eruption.

Puddle filled with water and darkness, trouble lurking in the depths.

T

A wispy droplet beckons, emerging out of the watering hole silently, free at last Tiny, innocent crystal ball clear and sparkling in light first, breaching over the lower lid and lash — it does not contain your full sorrow but a mere bead of truth Down, caressing the cheek, as it gracefully glides across the delicate skin, nothing more.

The piles, the ruins tumbling down like timber.

And the sweet, salty taste once it reaches and eventually surpasses your lip

was grabbin

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the branch h

brought it u

and the sing

Tear

By Elizabeth Mabee

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that still tre

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blood of the

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

Then, as it’s washed away from your reserves by the harsh smear of cotton. Lost forever until the process repeats.

One gone now.

Again another tear, two gone now. They continue to fall

44

in the grassl

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legs. The be

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ment. They backs.

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R

Shetani

by Mac Snead The tree carried him, its branches extending for his fingers to grip. He climbed like a child lifted onto a father’s shoulders. The only effort was grabbing hold. The rest was simply trying to be weightless. The leaves upon the bark whispered past, but the leaves upon his clothing remained silent, obedient to his secrecy. He was not a man, but a wind stirring the trees. He was nothing but nature, apart from the weapon slung over his shoulder and the lead in his pocket. Even the countless knives around his waist were made from the land. He was a god of the jungle. The god of death.

He did not climb to the top but perched in the midriff of the tree. His bare feet grasped the bark underneath him, wrapping his toes around the branch he had chosen. So steady was his roost that he was able to use his hands for other matters. He unslung the weapon from his shoulder and brought it up beneath his chin, gazing through its scope, an eagle’s eye view. All around, night was falling. The daylight was morphing into twilight, and the singers of the dark were beginning their song. The darkness was egging him on.

The pack had taken refuge in the clearing below. The grass was tall but his eagle’s eye could still see them, scanning their movements as they roamed the grounds, preparing for the night. He knew there were more of them that he could not see, but the first fire from his weapon would send them scattering, and one by one he would pick the animals off.

He marked his first kill. A large one that he pegged as the alpha. Aiming the barrel of his weapon between the beast’s shoulder blades, he fired, sending it to the ground, never to move again. The rest of the pack panicked at the first shot, as he had foreseen. They ran for the trees, bumping into each other as they went, each caring only for its own skin and plowing over the others to get to safety.

But none of them did. One by one he brought them down, aiming, firing, and moving on. Here one fell with a shriek, there one tried to break its fall with extended arms, only to be delivered a kill shot to the head. Animals like them had proven themselves difficult to track long ago, but they were always easy game to kill.

After what must have been two or three minutes, there was only one left. It had not tried to run, but remained in the middle of the clearing, frozen with fear and holding its arms up to the sky. He studied it for a moment through his eagle’s eye, considering its fate. Then he lowered his weapon and slung it over his shoulder for the climb down. He jumped most of the way past the branches, still as silent as a breeze.

When he landed softly on the ground, he quickly made his way through the trees around the clearing, coming to a spot behind the creature that still trembled in the tall grass. It had not seen him, but it would before the end.

As he crept out into the clearing the smell of blood greeted his nostrils. It swam in the air, clearing his sinuses and making him wild. The blood of these creatures cleansed him and all the land as it spilled. He never took his eyes off the prey, moving his way toward it as silent as a mouse in the grasslands.

He cocked his weapon as he came up behind the animal, standing close enough to smell the sweat in its crevasses and the urine between its legs. The beast jumped at the sound and spun around, its arms still in the air. Its eyes widened at the sight of him.

Behold, the god of death.

The creature’s mouth opened in a gasp. Please . . . don’t shoot, it said.

He heard the words, and understood them. Then another smell entered his nostrils. One he did not like. His eyes scanned the encampment. They fell onto a kind of rack, on which were hung furry skins of all different sizes. Momma skins, and baby skins . . . and others with silver backs.

He turned back to the monster that stood before him, lowering his weapon to the ground. He would oblige this beast’s request not to shoot.

45

Prose & Cons

Reaching to his belt, he drew one of his knives.

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

SAWDUST. SAWDUST. SAWDU

46

A Hero For Our City?

Superhero lives in secret

By Nicholas Paraggio, Contributing Writer

S

urely, by this point everyone knows about Dr. Destruction, the masked maniac who has been terrorizing our city for the past four months, despite the best efforts of law enforcement. The few bold citizens who dared to oppose him (including our late, beloved city clerk Amir Wellesley) have vanished under suspicious circumstances and resistance has all but vanished.

In fact, the only reason I am daring to write this article is because of a startling beacon of hope for our bruised city: a mysterious new hero, whose superpowers seem like a formidable threat to Dr. Destruction.

But who is our city’s new saviors?

The answer may come from a homeless man named Roger, who claims that the city’s hero is none other than Jimmy, another homeless man who lives near the bowling alley. Our reporters reached out to Jimmy, who, according to senior correspondent Sarah Hassan, “… clearly isn’t our hero. I mean, a homeless superhero? That’s ridiculous. Maybe if he had a real

house, or a job, or anything really.

But a hobo? Definitely not.”

According to Hassan, Jimmy proceeded to fly into the air and melt a hole in the side of an abandoned building with bolts of energy from his eyes (flagrantly violating vandalism laws and frightening several birds,) while declaring that he was, in fact, the city’s new savior.

“I couldn’t believe it!” Hassan said.

“To see a man with such outright disrespect for social order makes me sick. He belongs on the streets.” Hassan then left, stating that Jimmy “probably just wanted spare change,” and that “it’s better to leave these kinds of people alone.”

“I can’t see how anyone would think this man is our hero,” Hassan said.

“He’s probably just on drugs or something. There are drugs that do that, right? I don’t know. I try to distance myself from these people. Does this guy appear to have the same abilities as the superhero? Maybe.

The same general build, facial features and speaking voice? Sure.

But just look at the noble, selfless way that our hero defends the city.

These are clearly the actions of a steadily employed, contributing member of society. Not some bum who lives in an alley.”

So, the hunt continues for our city’s mysterious new savior. More on this story as it unfolds.

UPDATE: Shortly after Hassan’s departure from the scene, numerous eyewitnesses confirm that Dr. Destruction appeared and began to lay waste to much of the block, only to be stopped by Jimmy, who was still hovering in the air following his conversation with Hassan. Jimmy allegedly used beams of energy to stun Dr. Destruction, who fled the scene. Correspondent Hassan has declined to comment on these events. __________________________________ Nicholas Paraggio is a freshman music education major by day, masked vigilante by night. You can email him at nparaggio@ithaca.edu.

Sawdust

Image by Lizzie Cox

Jimmy proceeded to fly into the air and melt a hole in the side of an abandoned building with bolts of energy from his eyes (flagrantly violating vandalism laws and frightening several birds,) while declaring that he was, in fact, the city’s new savior.

47

America’s Next Top President

B

By Cameron Bain, Contributing Writer

By

Candidates compete for office in talent competition

W

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

ith voter turnouts for the last presidential election at a record low, candidates of the 2016 election wanted to spice things up a little. How will a bunch of old people, out of touch with time, entertain the youth of America? A talent show of course!

The candidates all drove to Ohio Stadium. The event, although unprecedented, brought huge crowds of people from across the state. The first two rows were filled with political donors, with the third row occupied by only the Koch Brothers. The rest of the row was occupied by bags of money.

“I thought it was a little strange too…” spoke one of the brothers’ assistants, “…but hey, if you control who the next president of the United States will be, do whatever you wish.”

When everyone had found their seats, Mitt Romney appeared on stage. He was met with a mixed applauses and people asking each other, “Who is he again?”

Mr. Romney then went on to list of the candidates that would be appearing that night. There was an uproar when it was announced that Trump would not be contending.

This prompted Romney to shrug and say, “I just work here.”

Disgruntled, about half of the audience left. When they exited to the parking lot, they were met by Trump, who was standing on top of a helicopter, which was atop a bus.

He declared he would be having his own competition. He had bought the nearby University Hospital, and planned to have his competition in the parking lot. He then returned to his chopper, leading the trail of cars that followed.

Romney, obviously shaken by the events, quickly announced that the Democrats would be going first, before departing to his own chopper.

48

The first person to go was none other than Hillary Clinton, who displayed her ability to recite Machiavelli quotes as the House of Cards theme song played behind her. As her act was drawing to a close, Bill suddenly burst on stage. The crowd rose to their feet in applause. Hillary then grabbed Bill by the ear, bringing him off stage. An assistant told the press that they had a train to catch.

Bernie Sanders was supposed to go next, but like Trump he couldn’t be there. When asked why he couldn’t attend he commented that he was “Too old for this [expletive].”

Although Lincoln Chafee, Martin O’Malley, and Jim Webb still had to perform, the audience didn’t really know who they were. Instead of watching them perform, the remaining audience were watching Donald Trump’s competition live on their phones. The three of them understood, and followed the caravan of cars to Trump’s competition.

The Republicans now had the stage. Marco Rubio started singing the national anthem. He received mixed responses. Lindsey Graham went next, displaying all of the ways he could destroy a cell phone.

“Before the show started, I asked a group of people if I could borrow their cell phones…” Rubio said. “I told them it would help me become president. People will give you anything if they hear you’re running for president.” Bobby Jindal was supposed to go before Graham, but was locked out of his dressing room. When no one looked to help him, he got in a car with Scott Walker and drove to see Trump.

They were stuck in traffic though, when Chris Christie showed his talent for shutting down bridges.

Jeb Bush was surprised when he was told he would be going after Christie.

Image by Courtney Yule “Apparently, all the other contestants went to see Trump” He said.

“However, I was in the middle of shaving and watching Chris Farley highlights on SNL.” In an attempt to stall long enough for his brother to come on stage, George Bush parachuted down into the open stadium. He then started telling jokes, showing of his golfing skills, and yelling random quotes from his presidency. When Jeb saw what was happening on the TV he rushed out to stop him. George was tackled by his brother, but not before yelling “I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully!”

By this point, the rest of the audience had gone to see Trump. Only one person remained in the stadium: President Barack Obama. Fiddling with confetti, he looked up to the sky.

Even from miles away, he could hear the Trump show. Sighing, he broke out into “For the Longest Time” by Billy Joel, snapping his way out of the empty stadium. ___________________________________ Caameron Bain is a freshman journalism major who still thinks Yeezy is overrated. You can email him at ckoenig@ithaca.edu.

Inf

Biggie & Tupac Alive

Infamous rappers running successful antique store

By Christina DiLuzio, Contributing Writer

R

supervise production on the album.

Although Dre was hoping he could be a part of the process, Biggie and Tupac were against the idea. They insisted on being left alone to record their “masterpiece,” as they were calling it publicly, in solitude. After working on their collaboration album for only two months, it was ready.

When the album was released, stores sold out in hours, and iTunes crashed due to too many people trying to buy the album at once. The record broke all former sales records within hours. But nobody knew before buying the album that Biggie and Tupac’s musical interests had changed.

Fans across the nation were shocked to listen to the collaboration, a mixture of old school hip hop and outlaw country.. The hashtag #BiggieAndTupacFailed is still trending on social media. Biggie and Tupac have since been ostracized in the musical community and plan on returning to their small shop in Delaware.

When confronted, Biggie explained, “Running an antique shop can be boring, so me and Pac talked a lot, and we really bonded over our love of country music. Guys like Johnny Cash? Those are the real gangsters.”

When reached for a comment by myself and other news reporters, Dr. Dre was quoted as saying, “I thought something was weird when they requested to have cowboy hats for the cover photo.” ___________________________________ Christina DiLuzio is a Freshman business administration major who is burning all her Biggie and Pac records. You can email her at cdiluzio@ithaca.edu.

“Creep” apparently the best song ever

By Jordan Aaron, Contributing Writer

L

ocal Radiohead fan, Sam Rogers, claims to know everything about music.

His passion for what he calls “quality music” began when he saw Baz Luhrmann’s film Romeo + Juliet, which was poorly received by critics.

Rogers openly established his core beliefs of the band’s quality. “Radiohead is just really good.” When asked why he loves them so much, he told reporters, “Because they are the best band around. Compare them to the Beatles or Led Zeppelin or Michael Jackson or Nirvana, they’re just really good.”

Critics of Rogers’ attempt to understand why he doesn’t like any other bands. “It’s not that Radiohead is good music. Radiohead is music. I think that’s the misconception here.” Showing a picture of his room, draped in Radiohead gear and paraphernalia, he said, “Just think about the song, ”’Creep.’” He claims “Creep” is the greatest song he’s ever heard. When he heard The Hollies’ hit, “The Air That I Breathe,” a song that uses the same chords and exact same drum beat, he said, “You see, that isn’t music. It wasn’t Radiohead. What makes Radiohead great is that they are Radiohead. They are so unique.” At press time, he told Buzzsaw the only song he has ever heard is “Creep” and that he has not had time to get into any other music. ___________________________________ Jordan Aaron is a sophomore cinema photography major with a soft spot for cold, brooding Brit rock. You can email him at jaaron@ithaca.edu.

Sawdust

ecently we all turned on our televisions and heard the news: “Tonight on CBS, we reveal a shocking truth about the music industry! Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur are alive and well. News of the two men still being alive came about when an eastern antique shop, which they won, was visited by fans of the rappers. Now that their secret is out, what will the men do?

Will they continue with their widely successful store or return to the rap game?”

Needless to say, we were all outraged. Whether we loved or hated the men and the music they made, we were repelled by the idea of being lied to for so many years.

So, naturally after the story made national headlines, the infamous rappers were bombarded with frenzied fans, some begging them to create more music, some picking fights with them about faking their deaths, and others just wanting to shop for antiques in peace.

When asked about how they reconciled, Tupac said, “After we found out that each other were still alive, we met up for a cup of tea and hashed things out”. Pac said the stress of running a store overflowing with seas of screaming people became to much for the men, and they were forced to close down the store. Despite trying multiple times to once again escape from the public eye, Biggie and Tupac were followed everywhere they went.

Eventually, the men stopped leaving their house, but when they did so, they received non-stop letters from fans, music producers and other singers both criticizing their past choices and begging them to return to music. After a few months of this, they felt as though their only way to be left alone was to make one final album together. They reached out to an eager old friend, Dr. Dre, who happily accepted the offer to

Radiohead Fan Knows Everything About Music

49

J.K. Rowling Hires Ghostwriter BUZZSAW ASKS WHY… Kanye West secretly pens final three Harry Potter novels

By Casey Koening, Contributing Writer

K

BUZZSAW: Spin Issue

o,

anye West is a man of many talents — way more talent in his baby toe than most of us have in our entire bodies. Lots of people have had children and come up with names for their children, but how many people have you met named “North?” It doesn’t take much effort to come up with names like “Jessica” or “Susan” or “Jonathan”, but “North?” That takes some talent.

Besides coming up with the world’s greatest baby girl name, West has enjoyed a fine, successful career rapping, microphone grabbing, ranting, frowning and preparing for his great presidential run for the 2020 election. West, however, has a deep, dark, secret that only those closest to him know.

Unless you live under a rock, you should know what the Harry Potter series is. If you haven’t read the series or watched any of the movies, you are a loser who doesn’t have anything to live for and should be very ashamed of yourself. The mastermind behind the world-changing series is a lovely blonde British woman named Jo, better known by her pen name, J.K. Rowling.

For those of you cool people who lived through the series, you know the books are rather lengthy. At the conclusion of writing the fourth installment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, poor Rowling developed very bad carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands and had to have surgery. Recovery took some time, and fans were not very patient.

They wanted the fifth installment yesterday. What was Rowling to do?

She contacted the most creative and talented person she knew, Kanye West.

West, of course, said yes. How could he disappoint so many enthusiastic Harry Potter fanatics?

The fifth installment of Harry Potter was an enormous success, to say the least. Rowling was so impressed with West’s work that she got him to write the sixth and seventh installments as well. The fans ate it up.

They loved it! Rowling was a genius!

The three books West wrote were under Ms. Rowling’s name. As far as anyone was concerned, she was the one who had penned them.

As the years went on, West started to get jealous of Rowling’s fame.

Sure, he had plenty of fame himself and was making a huge sum of cash, but he didn’t like the fact that Rowling was receiving credit for his work.

He wanted the world to know that he, Kanye West, was the author of the last three Harry Potter novels.

So what did Yeezy do? He threatened to tell everyone in his most recent Video Music Awards speech.

Rowling was horrified. West had promised that this was their secret.

How could he ever do such a thing?

Both sides of the party were about four five seconds from wildin for a while. It wasn’t until Rowling agreed to let West name her first grandchild that he agreed to keep quiet about it.

If Rowling has a grandkid and it is named Rose Olivia Francine Lucy or some long ridiculous name of the sort, just remember that King Kanye named her. He’d call her ROFL for short, so he can say that she’s “Rowling on the floor laughing.” Laughing at what exactly, who knows? Maybe at the fact that everyone thinks that someone other than the amazing West wrote the last three books of the Harry Potter series. Or maybe he’d name her South West.

Yeezus Christ. _________________________________ Casey Koenig is a freshman journalism major who still thinks Yeezy is overrated. You can email her at ckoenig@ithaca.edu.

We Still Have Gender Binaries in Clothing Stores By now you’re probably aware of the controversy surrounding Target store’s decision to “move away from gender-based signs,” as stated on their website. But even as LGBTQA+ issues receive greater recognition in other facets of our society, and our culture begins to view gender identity as more of a spectrum, our department stores still remain divided into male and female.

The decision was said to have been made to address concerns from customers over unequal quality of selection. So why the controversy?

Maybe I just live in a bubble as a liberal arts student, but I first assumed the general public couldn’t care less whether there is a gendered sign hanging above their clothing selections or not.

Low and behold, however, the first comment I saw on Target’s page came from a Yvette Fisher, who wrote: “Children need to learn what is expected of them according to their gender. How else will they grow up to properly function in a heterogenous society?”

Apparently some of us are still living in the Reagan era. After all, people still have the choice to dress their children as stereotypically masculine or feminine as they would like. The only difference is they have less of a cookie-cutter guide to assist with this.

Whether Target’s decision is to appease these concerns, or a reflection of our increasing gender fluidity, I applaud them for being the first major chain store to do this.

One of the biggest factors in the American civil rights movement was business’ financial loss undertaken by the multitude of sit-ins across the country. All we can do is support the move, in hopes that it will force a delightful domino effect for other companies.

Your Sawdust editor-in-genderfluidity, Tylor Colby

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