November 29, 2018

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Thursday November 29, 2018 vol. CXLII no. 108

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STUDENT LIFE

ON CAMPUS

Coates discusses progress on race relations, Woodrow Wilson’s damaging legacy

By Oliver Effron Contributor

Nicolette D’Angelo ’19 recently received a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue a M.St. in Classics.

Rhodes Scholar D’Angelo ’19 informs modern knowledge, creativity through classics

By Katie Tam Staff Writer

Nicolette D’Angelo ’19 wants to show the relevance of antiquity to the modern world.

D’Angelo, who is from Hewitt, N.J., was recently awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, which provides full financial support for graduate study at the University of Oxford. She plans to pursue a M.St. in Classics.

As a Classics concentrator, translator, and poet, D’Angelo asks questions about the modern world through engagement with classic texts like Homer’s “Odyssey” and Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”

“Classics are a mirror we can hold up to our own society,” D’Angelo said.

Classics is often considered a subject for the “ivory tower,”

D’Angelo explained, referring to the field’s reputation as esoteric, irrelevant, or obscure.

One of the reasons she applied for the scholarship was to expose the continued importance of the classics to everyday life.

“I would be using the Rhodes to ‘fight the world’s fight,’” D’Angelo said, quoting the informal motto of the Rhodes Scholars.

D’Angelo explained that she will have to defend the relevance of classics and to always keep the broader impacts of the field in mind.

In one of her junior papers, D’Angelo worked on a translation of Euripides’ “The Suppliants,” a play about grieving mothers who beg Theseus, an Athenian king, for burial of their children.

She continues to study See D’ANGELO page 4

U . A F FA I R S

EHS associate director arrested for child pornography, placed on administrative leave

By Oliver Effron & Marie-Rose Sheinerman Contributors

Gregory Cantrell, the University’s associate director for workplace safety in the Office of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS), was charged with possession of child pornography, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office announced early in the morning on Wednesday, Nov. 28.

He has been placed on administrative leave, according to University Spokesperson and Director of Media Relations Ben Chang.

The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office arrested him and fourteen others during “Operation Trading Post,” a five-month operation that “caught individuals who shamelessly viewed and shared depraved images of children being sexually abused.”

“We are aware of the charge and are cooperating with authorities,” Chang wrote in an email to The Daily Princetonian. “We have revoked the employee’s access to campus and to the campus network.”

Cantrell could not be reached for comment by the time of publication.

Cantrell has worked for the University for the past 28 years, ac-

In Opinion

cording to his LinkedIn account.

His responsibilities for his most recent position included “management of several Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) required safety programs,” and “providing safety services for [the] campus.”

Prior to this position, which he began in 2013, he served as a University assistant safety engineer from 1990 to 2000, and a University safety engineer from 2000 to 2013.

Cantrell graduated from Thomas Edison State College in 1990 with a degree in applied science and technology. In 2017, he received a master’s degree with honors from the American Public University System in environmental policy and management.

The Office of Environmental Health and Safety deferred comment to the Office of Communications. The Monmouth County Police Department and the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office could not be reached at the time of publication.

Cantrell and the other defendants were released under the conditions that they do not use the internet and have no unsupervised contact with minors.

This is a breaking story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Contributing Columnist Elijiah Benson proposes a solution to relieve student stress on campus, while contributing columnist Jasman Singh, in his inaugural column, argues we should be concerned about new Title IX policies for the sake of students at other colleges.

PAGE 6

“Progress comes if it’s to a critical mass of white peoples’ advantage,” Coates said, referring to how the civil rights movement of the 1960s blossomed, in part, to draw contrast to the oppression of Soviet Union.

“If power cannot find its own interest in something, it generally won’t do it,” Coates said.

Taylor later asked why Coates refrained from discussing Black Lives Matter in his Atlantic features, noting the topic’s popularity among many of the writer’s contemporaries.

“I felt like there were a See COATES page 2

HANNAH HUH :: PRINCETONIAN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a former national correspondent for The Atlantic, award-winning author of “Between the World and Me” and a Black Panther series for Marvel Comics.

STUDENT LIFE

SILMA BERRADA :: PRINCETONIAN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Annabel Barry ‘19 was named a Mitchell Scholar and will study in Ireland for a year.

Barry ’19 is an empathetic friend and talented writer, peers say

By Hannah Baynesan Contibutor

Known for her intellect and caring nature, Annabel Barry ’19 was recently named a George J. Mitchell Scholar, an award only given to 12 scholars nationwide out of 370 applicants. The 12 scholars will spend a year of postgraduate study at institutions of higher education in Ireland.

Barry, an English major who is pursuing certificates in European cultural studies, humanistic studies, and theater, plans to pursue a master’s degree in philosophy and literature at the University College Dublin (UCD) next fall.

In her first year at the University, Barry struggled with the Humanities sequence, an intensive year-long introduction to the Western tradition,

Today on Campus 4:30 p.m.: Join us for a discussion with author Joyce Carol Oates on her career as a writer and tips for graduating seniors. This event is part of the Last Lectures 2019 series.

Lewis Library Bowl Classroom

receiving poor grades on her first three papers. However, one of her graders, French and Italian professor Simone Marchesi, then suggested that she write her next draft without any adjectives or metaphors. “[That experience] was incredibly painful, but [it] taught me so much,” Barry said. “I am forever indebted.”

Marchesi attributed Barry’s See BARRY page 3

WEATHER

COURTESY OF NICOLETTE D’ANGELO

It’s shameful to go to a university that is so enamored with Woodrow Wilson, according to National Book Award-winning writer TaNehisi Coates.

In a discussion with assistant professor of African American Studies KeeangaYamahtta Taylor, Coates — a former national correspondent for The Atlantic and award-winning author of “Between the World and Me” — spoke about Black Lives Matter, his criticisms of President Barack Obama, and the University’s legacy

of racism. He was introduced by Tennille Haynes, the director of the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding.

During the first portion of the conversation, Coates and Taylor discussed the extent to which race relations in the United States have progressed since Reconstruction, especially during the Trump presidency.

While Coates stated that “we obviously couldn’t have had a black president a hundred years ago,” he said he still holds reservations about whether that progress came in good faith.

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Thursday November 29, 2018

Coates: If power cannot find its own interest in something, it won’t do it COATES

Continued from page 1

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number of other AfricanAmerican writers at that point doing a great job,” Coates said. “I was just trying to back off.”

He explained he tends to avoid writing about activism, arguing that “it’s good for [him] to maintain a degree of distance from movements”—even those that promote causes for which he cares deeply, such as reparations.

Later in the conversation, Coates admitted one of his greatest challenges as a writer is his relationship with the Obama presidency.

Though he was critical of some of President Obama’s immigration and race-related policies, he said the very fact that there was a black president led to “real progress” by inspiring many young African Americans.

Coates said that black communities expressed extremely high approval ratings throughout Obama’s presidency, indicating in-

tense support.

“How can I be a writer who pulls from that love and then dismisses it?” he asked.

Indeed, Coates emphasized the symbolic importance of Obama’s presidency and how it expanded the imagination of what is politically possible.

During the question-andanswer period following the conversation, a member of the Princeton Reconstruction Project asked Coates how the University could reconcile its history of racism with its status as a lead-

er in academic thought.

For one, Coates said, the University needs to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from buildings on campus, calling it an “embarrassment.”

“He wasn’t just racist in the same way that most white people were from that era were racist,” he said, citing the former president’s role in segregating the federal government.

“He was even racist for his time. He was even racist for before his time,” Coates said.

Chloe Searchinger ‘22, an audience member, left the event “reminded of how much more complex issues are than how we debate them on a daily basis.”

“I just thought he was such a smart and inspiring and thoughtful speaker,” she added. “And it reminded me how important it is to really understand our history.”

The talk was held in Richardson Auditorium at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 28. It was hosted by the Fields Center and Princeton Public Lectures.

HANNAH HUH :: PRINCETONIAN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Coates and Taylor discussed the extent to which race relations in the United States has progressed since Reconstruction, especially during the Trump presidency.

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Bermann: Barry makes you rethink texts you’ve read a hundred times BARRY

Continued from page 1

.............

desire for success as the root of her strong academic writing. He said that the help he gave was small in comparison to her hard work.

“The gift our best students have … [is] not so much the ability to get things right the first time, but the commitment to use the advice they receive and grow,” Marchesi said.

One of Barry’s most formative experiences was when she was named the Princeton Bread Loaf Fellow at the University of Oxford. At Oxford, she took a class on James Joyce, the author of “Ulysses,” while pursuing independent research.

Her experience reading “Ulysses” under Jeri Johnson, the editor of the novel’s Oxford edition, was the highlight of her summer, Barry recalled. She explained that the book stood out to her more than any other book had.

“I would start thinking about the complexities of “Ulysses” and end up getting these headaches from thinking about the complexities,” said Barry.

Comparative literature professor Sandra Bermann, who taught COM 335: Poetries of Resistance praised Barry’s creativity.

“Barry … makes you rethink texts you’ve read a hundred times before,” she said.

Bermann recalled that Barry’s final paper crossed the literary borders that usually separate memoir, poetry, prayer, and critical reading.

In fact, Barry’s writing aptitude was so impressive that her thesis advisor, English professor Susan Wolfson, referred Barry’s 16-page essay, “‘My brother Tom is much improved’: The suffering body in Keats’ poetry” to an editor of “The Keats-Shelley Review,” who was impressed.

Barry’s essay was accepted for publication soon after she submitted it.

Barry had written the essay in spring 2018 for Wolfson’s seminar, ENG 341: The Later Romantics.

“The essay was such an accomplishment of critical insight

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and writerly craft,” Wolfson said.

Barry’s peers and friends share the same degree of respect that her professors have for her.

Her lifelong friend from home, Julia Durstzman, emphasized that Barry’s commitment to authenticity is seen in each set built in the theater program, essay written, and friendship built.

“She gives a piece of herself to every work she creates,” Durstzman said.

Sylvie Thode ’20 stressed that Barry’s contribution to those around her is even more valuable than her profound literary commitment. Thode explained that, as one of Barry’s friends, she is “so lucky” to have witnessed Barry’s deep care that she devotes to those around her.

“As soon as Annabel starts talking … you can tell she’s brilliant,” noted Jasmine Wang ’18, who was in the same precept as Barry in COM 335. “She is one of the brightest and best people at Princeton and is so empathetic — she does good for this world.”

Barry hopes to do good in both her personal and academic pursuits.

For instance, her theater thesis, a community theater project of “The Odyssey: The Musical,” works with numerous community groups in Mercer County, including the Trenton Circus Squad and Trenton Children’s Chorus. The project leads multiple scenery workshops with Homefront New Jersey, an organization which aims to end homelessness, that connects the University’s community with the broader township.

She intends to continue this project at UCD, noting the college’s commitment to advocacy and activism.

Prior to this scholarship, Barry has received numerous academic awards from the University. For instance, Barry was awarded the Class of 1883 English Prize for Academic Freshmen, the Frances Biddle Sophomore Prize for the best English literature essay of the year, and the George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize, which recognizes one student of the senior class for his or her academic achievement during the junior year.

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D’Angelo: Classics are a mirror we can hold up to our own society D’ANGELO Continued from page 1

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women and antiquity in her thesis, where she focuses on the evolution of the concept of hysteria from Hippocrates to Freud. Hysteria, once considered “a mysterious affliction of women,” inspired beliefs that female bodies were inherently dysfunctional.

In her thesis, D’Angelo disputes the commonly-held notion of hysteria as a diagnosis since the time of Hippocrates.

Concurrently, she argues for the existence of a cultural continuity, since ancient times, of pathologizing natural processes of the female body. Ancient medical writers saw the female body as inherently dangerous, likening the uterus to a “dog with rabies” or a “poisonous spider.”

By considering the ways in which idioms are interpreted, D’Angelo hopes to change people’s ways of thinking about women, their bodies, and their place in society.

D’Angelo’s thesis advisor, Melissa Haynes, said that D’Angelo’s work will help people better understand the differences and connections between ancient texts on women’s health and people’s current attitudes about women’s bodies.

D’Angelo believes that marginalized voices can reveal more about texts that have been interpreted and reinterpreted for centuries. Her work is part of a movement to reimagine the classics in the eyes of women, minorities, and oth-

er groups traditionally left out of the conversation — Emily Wilson’s recent translation of the “Odyssey,” for example, is a notable contribution to the movement.

“I think the classics should be retranslated and reimagined and re-interrogated,” D’Angelo said. “History should be rewritten for every generation.”

D’Angelo herself started as an “outsider” in the field.

She did not take any Latin or Greek classes in high school and began her studies with the Humanities sequence — an intensive year-long introduction to the Western tradition — in her first year at the University. While reading texts for the course, she found the tension in the classics between the relatable and the unexplainable intriguing.

“The synergy between the nearness and the strangeness, existing at the same time, was really exciting,” D’Angelo said.

With the support of her professors, she applied and attended a CUNY Hunter College language intensive the summer after her first year. In the fall of her sophomore year, she travelled to Greece, where she saw the pages of the texts she had read the previous year come alive.

This past summer, D’Angelo travelled to Rome as an intern with the Paideia Institute, a nonprofit that promotes education in Latin and Greek.

The internship was a natural extension of her previous work tutoring underserved elementary students in Latin through Princeton Young Achievers.

Along with other interns, she

developed a Greek version of the Paideia program for middle schoolers to use. The curriculum has since been picked up for use by organizations like the Onassis Foundation.

D’Angelo aims to teach in such a way that encourages her students to bring personal experiences to the classroom and ultimately help her learn as well.

“I don’t think this is the model which most people primarily associate with Latin or Greek instruction today,” said D’Angelo.

According to D’Angelo, traditional ways of teaching — writing down noun and verb forms, or rote memorization — is “not what inspires kids to have a lifelong love of learning.”

For D’Angelo, access to the classics for all ages and levels challenges the traditional notion of classics as a “finishing school” subject, available only to students from more elite backgrounds.

“I like being able to change the narrative of why people want to have classics in their lives,” D’Angelo said.

Aside from her work in the classics, D’Angelo is also pursuing certificates in gender and sexuality studies, humanistic studies, and creative writing.

Her creative writing thesis is a book-length poem that engages both the past and present, blending the classics with colloquial speech.

“The mix is electric,” creative writing professor Susan Wheeler, who serves as D’Angelo’s creative writing thesis advisor,

said.

The piece examines how heroic struggles are often gendered, calling into question whose bodies matter, Wheeler said.

D’Angelo’s interest in blending the classics and poetry continues from work she did the summer after her sophomore year in 2017 with a grant from the Lewis Center for the Arts.

The project was a book of poetry works, a “vocal collage” that compiled interviews she did with patients at treatment centers for eating disorders.

The book raised questions about ideas of hospitality and the body. D’Angelo noticed that patients were in a state of flux, moving from place to place — just like Odysseus and his men moved from place to place in search of food and sustenance.

D’Angelo also saw parallels between the anxiety of a changing body and the transformations depicted in “Metamorphoses.”

“The classics world gives me a rich tapestry of stories and images to combine with [the] rich set of personal experiences around eating and body image [that] I’ve been fortunate enough to hear about,” D’Angelo said.

D’Angelo’s love of literature and the classics extends to her extracurricular involvements: she is a writing center fellow and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Nassau Literary Review.

When she first joined the Literary Review, she was disappointed at the few public events the organization offered.

Wanting greater accessibility, she quickly discovered that it was essential to tune into the

issues that people cared about.

For instance, to discuss concerns about prison reform, she and her fellow editors organized a conversation with A.M. Homes, author and lecturer in creative writing at the University, about incarceration and the arts.

Such conversations, D’Angelo said, encourage literary activism and a human connection.

“I’m a firm believer that creative approaches can help us see new sides of any issue,” D’Angelo said.

Wheeler and Haynes reflected positively upon their experience working with D’Angelo as she graduates and continues her education.

“There is a wonderful urgency to Nicolette’s interest in her own work and the importance she sees for clarifying our ‘inheritances’ from the classical past,” Haynes said.

“She has a really wonderful imagination, as well as an acute feel for language,” Wheeler added.

Wheeler noted that she hopes to be reading D’Angelo 20 years from now.

D’Angelo has now joined a diverse group of Rhodes Scholars: this year, 21 of the 32 are female, and many come from immigrant, first-generation backgrounds.

D’Angelo hopes to continue sharing the relevance of the classics with this diverse cohort.

“Their input, their presence, and their support will transform my scholarship in ways that I can’t anticipate,” D’Angelo said. “And I’m so ex-

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Opinion

Thursday November 29, 2018

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The Stress Council Elijah Benson

Contributing Columnist

A

t this point, I feel as if the University has gone overboard with the amount of stress it puts on students. The question is no longer “Are you stressed?”; the question is now “How stressed are you?”

It is no longer a matter of if you’re stressed, but to what extent you are and what the cause of your stress is. While life isn’t all candy and roses and some form of stress will always be present in our lives, I think we can have some sort of happy medium: appropriate stress, but not to the point of sacrificing mental health.

As the old adage goes, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I don’t know about you, but I’m not insane and I refuse to allow myself, my friends, and my fellow Princetonians continue this toxic and unhealthy behavior that the stress culture on campus has caused.

The University is by no stretch of the imagination

perfect. Yes, the University has engaged in many efforts to promote stress relief and has demonstrated a concern for its students’ mental wellness. There are workshops that focus solely on stress and mental health, and I have seen posters around campus for graduate student mental health week.

However, the amount of attention that combating stress receives from an administrative standpoint can be increased — there is always room for improvement in the way in which stress is handled on campus. I’m calling for something bigger than the efforts the University has put forth so far: a Stress Council. We have the Undergraduate Student Government, whose purpose is to govern students, and the Honor Committee, whose purpose is to academically police students, so why not introduce a Stress Council to provide the University community with various outlets of relaxation and create a less stressful environment on campus?

I’m not saying we should all be relaxed all the time.

We need assignments and deadlines and projects and exams because that is how an institution of higher education works. The University has high expectations of students. Yes, it is great to be part of extracurricular activities to have an outlet outside of school to showcase other talents, but University students need less stress. With the busy schedules we all have, it would be unfair to put the weight of planning out more time to destress on us students, who simply do not have the time to do so.

However, as the University is a place designed for undergraduates to simultaneously thrive and be creative, undergraduates who feel they have the time to plan out events should be at the forefront of destressing the campus.

The administration, while excellent on many fronts, cannot be as in touch with student body needs as students themselves can be. Students know what students want and more importantly, what students need. We need to combine the ideas of the students with the funding and resources of the admin-

vol. cxlii

istration to effectively lessen the stress culture on campus.

The process for starting a Stress Council is simple. Take the USG class council model: this year, the freshman class had more than 20 candidates vying for five spots on the USG class council. We can use this same template for each class to design specific initiatives and events intended to relieve stress on campus.

I hope that by the time I graduate in the spring of 2022, at the very minimum, a greater initiative will have been taken to counteract the stress culture of the University. At the end of the day, even if we never see a Stress Council come to fruition, we should all fight for a less stressed community for the betterment of all. Regardless of what approach is taken going forward, student-run stress programs have to be part of the underlying mindset for future initiatives regarding stress on campus.

Elijah Benson is a first-year from Newark, N.J. He can be reached at ebenson@princeton. edu.

Title IX changes are going to hurt those who need the enforcement the most Jasman Singh

Contributing Columnist

U

nited States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is pushing forward Title IX reform that would strip victims of sexual abuse of some of their current rights. The newly proposed reforms reduce the liability of colleges in reporting sexual abuse on campuses by removing their obligation to act on issues of sexual abuse when they occur off campus.

Does this really apply to the University?

Probably not.

Does it apply to schools without billions of dollars in endowment?

Probably yes.

Many instances of sexual abuse don’t happen on campus.

They happen off campus — at bars, social venues, and clubs.

The eating clubs aren’t technically a part of campus, but the University is required to investigate and report any incidences of sexual abuse that occur there as part of the Obama administration’s Title IX regulations. Under the DeVos regulations, the University would no longer be legally obligated to act on any reports of sexual harassment, as it did in the case of Tiger Inn in 2014. There are few places, if any, where sexual abuse would be more likely to happen than the Street.

Of course, this is the University’s purely legal obligation. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the University will drop existing protections for students now that some Title IX regulations have been rolled back, but that’s also because the University has a reputation to maintain. It wouldn’t look good for U.S. News & World Report’s No. 1 U.S. university to become embroiled in sex scandals because it is now allowed to look the other way for abuse that happens off campus.

We are privileged to attend a university that’s forced to actively make campus life safer and more secure, but not all students are going to have the same privilege. What about those at large state schools where cases of sexual abuse are already prone to slip through the cracks or be underreported? What about those at schools whose endowments are not $25.9 billion? What about those without the same privilege as us? As Princeton students, we don’t typically acknowledge the fact that we are living a totally different college experience than most people do because of the University’s active desire to increase its prestige domestically and internationally.

A change in Title IX will disproportionately affect less wealthy schools which may not have the means or resources to offer the same protections and services to their students that the University will offer even if Title IX’s legal obligations are lessened. These schools are not

encouraging sexual assault, but they simply don’t have the means beyond federal funding to investigate the issue on campus and to take action accordingly. The University, with its $25.9 billion dollar endowment, well-connected alumni, and strongly-opinionated student body, would likely face severe public backlash, as it has in the past, if it rolled back its Title IX protections for students. With a faculty-student sex scandal in 2017 and two others in 2014, the University’s public image has the potential to be tainted more by lax Title IX enforcement, making the relaxation of policy all the more unlikely. So yes, we’re probably safe, but the fate of policy for those outside the Orange Bubble is unknown.

Another significant change in DeVos’s proposed Title IX reform is allowing the alleged abuser to cross-examine the alleged victim. The Department of Education’s proposal is grossly unfair to victims of sexual abuse. Victims would be obligated to not only speak to their abuser, but to be interrogated by them, with the abuser’s intent being to find flaws in the victim’s description of the incident.

Proponents of this policy claim that accuser-accused cross-examinations would help avoid false accusations. Even if this claim was true, cross-examinations would much more severely harm the victims than help protect the accused. Only 2 percent of sexual abuse accusations are proven to be false

accusations. Yet, those in favor of this policy have dramatized the existence of false accusations to the point where policy is protecting the 2 percent falsely accused more than the 98 percent of real victims.

False accusations are wrong and the accused person’s rights have to be protected, but we shouldn’t re-traumatize victims in trial, making them less likely to report an incident in the first place. The proposed changes to Title IX discount the emotional wellbeing of victims of abuse, with direct cross examinations creating unnecessary, unjust distress for victims.

DeVos’s Title IX reform seeks to hinder the progress that today’s #MeToo movement has made in creating transparency and exposing corruption and abuse at the highest levels of our society. With a nationally covered faculty-student sex scandal in 2017, the wound is fresh for Princeton, hopefully making the University more keen on preventing future incidents. However, news headlines may not spur policy action at other schools without the “fortune” of prestige-driven metrics. We may only attend Princeton, but that shouldn’t stop us from caring about the well-being of students elsewhere in the country. After all, we are “in the nation’s service and the service of humanity.”

Jasman Singh is a freshman from Hightstown, New Jersey. He can be reached at jasmans@princeton.edu

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Sports

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } SPORTS COLUMN

Keep paying attention to Kemba Walker

By Matthew Fuller Sports Columnist

A couple weeks ago, on Nov. 11, point guard Kemba Walker of the Charlotte Hornets made headlines around the NBA by scoring 60 points against the Philadelphia 76ers in a threepoint overtime loss. Two days later, he scored 43 points against the Boston Celtics, achieving the rare feat of scoring over 100 points in backto-back games. After these performances, ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith looked into the camera and said emphatically “Kemba Walker has arrived.”

The only problem is, Kemba Walker already had.

Walker reached national fame in his junior year of college, when he led UConn to the 2011 Big East Title with five wins in five days, including an iconic step-back jumper to beat Pittsburgh. He then led the No. 3 Huskies to the NCAA National Championship and won.

Walker was then selected with the ninth pick in the 2011 NBA Draft to the then-Charlotte Bobcats, known as one of the worst-managed franchises ever. Immediately, in the 2011–12 season, which was shortened due to an NBA lockout, the Bobcats suffered the worst record of any NBA team, finishing 7–59 (.106).

The franchise, owned by Michael Jordan in the smallmarket city of Charlotte, has undergone a slow and quiet rebuilding process that included a name change and four head coaches in just seven years.

Charlotte has made the playoffs twice in this time, in 2014 and 2016.

One reason the Hornets have struggled so much is their poor-decision making in awarding contracts. While Walker has been the face of the franchise for a while, the Hornets have guaranteed underperforming players like Nicolas Batum and Cody Zeller contracts over $40 million, while Walker’s contract is only for $12 million.

The Hornets have been able to capitalize on the lax media attention given to Walker for a while, but this summer they will be able to give him a large

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Kemba Walker drive to the rim against Marcin Gortat in a preseason game against the Wizards.

enough contract to help him stay in Charlotte, which he says he intends to do.

Throughout this rebuilding process, Walker has continued the traits that made him so successful in college, using handles that rival Steph Curry or Kyrie Irving, his famous step-back that gives his six-foot frame more than enough separation from taller defenders, and most recently, his shooting. After the threepoint revolution brought to the NBA by Golden State, Hornets coaches decided it was time to develop Walker’s three-point shooting.

A few years ago, to accomplish this, coaches combined his superior ball-handling skills with developing his range to create a deadly pullup motion that gives Walker both separation and accuracy.

Walker started to look like he could be as good as players like Curry and Irving, complete point guards.

However, while Walker’s shooting improved, the coaching did not. Former Hornets coach Steve Clifford was slow to recognizing not only the need for developing a threepoint shooting team, but also one that could defend from beyond the arc as well. Instead, he opted for older players who better fit his old-fashioned system. While giving Dwight Howard one of his most productive seasons in recent memory last season, Clifford’s inability to defend the newlook NBA ultimately cost him the playoffs and his job.

New coach James Borrego, a former assistant with the San Antonio Spurs, was added to the Hornets this offseason to help them develop effective scoring weapons on offense. So far this season, it has worked. The Hornets currently rank fifth in the NBA in offensive efficiency and Walker is now fourth in the NBA in scoring. Though the Hornets

currently stand at 10–10, eight of their ten losses have come within five points.

With Curry injured and Irving’s Celtics currently struggling, the NBA is now poised to give Walker the attention he deserves — and has deserved for a few years now.

In the 2016–17 season, to garner support for All-Star voting, Walker and the Hornets created a series of small internet videos entitled “Kemba Walker: Charlotte Ranger” in which Hornets players acted in Wild West scenarios in order to get the quiet and humble point guard the attention he deserved, but did not receive, from fans and media pundits.

While this gained Walker popularity, he was again quickly forgotten.

Last season, his popularity once again spiked after a 140– 79 Hornets win over the Grizzlies in which Walker scored 46 points and 10 threes, but he was not given any atten-

tion again unless the Cavaliers were considering trading for him, but even they did not see his worth. One group that has noticed Walker over the last couple seasons, however, is the NBA players themselves, who gave him the NBA Sportsmanship Award in back-toback years.

This year, there is a familiar sound coming from sports talk shows and NBA Twitter.

Once again, Walker is being labeled underrated or undervalued. People blame his being “trapped” in a smallmarket team as the reason he does not get attention, but the Bucks, Timberwolves, Pacers, and especially the Thunder have received way more attention than the Hornets. Others will say it is due to the lack of playoff appearances achieved

by Charlotte, but even in the years the Hornets have made the playoffs, very little attention was given to Walker.

The truth is, Walker could easily be as good, if not better, than someone like Irving or Curry. He has just not had the talented team around him, like the Cavaliers, Celtics, or Warriors, to help him space the floor and carry a lighter load, nor has he found himself in the types of petty drama these teams create. Now that fans are suddenly realizing how “underrated” he is, they want to trade him to another team, just as Borrego’s Hornets are finding their identity with younger, hungrier weapons like Malik Monk, Dwayne Bacon, and Miles Bridges.

While closing games hasn’t been the Hornets’ or Walker’s (Walker was blocked on goahead shot attempts in losses to Philadelphia and Atlanta) strength this season, the quickly growing improvement of Walker’s supporting cast should be enough to keep him fresh enough to finish games and carry the Hornets to new heights in the next few years.

This year, as he leads the league in three-point field goals made and stays in the top five for scoring, don’t let your attention stray from Walker again. His legacy is not defined by flashes of brilliance, but rather a quiet and steady ascension to becoming the superstar he already is.

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Senior Devin Cannady recorded back-to-back 21 point nights for the men’s basketball team.

This was the 18th time Cannady had recorded a 20+ point performance.