October 25, 2017

Since 1919

Emory University’s Independent Student Newspaper

The Emory Wheel

Volume 99, Issue 8

Printed Every Wednesday

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

RSGA

HOMECOMING WEEK

Unaided

By RSGA, Debate Proceeds

UNIONIZATION

LGS Students Opt to Form Voluntary Union

By Alex KlugermAn News Editor At least one Rollins Student Government Association (RSGA) member and one Rollins School of Public Health student have called for debates to be held before the upcoming RSGA presidential elections, alleging that the RSGA president is abusing power in deciding to not hold debates for fear of stressing students.

In a span of three days, current RSGA Department of Health Policy and Management Representative Christopher DeVore (18PH) and Sana Charania (13Ox, 16C, 18PH) went from

See ELECtion, Page 5

GabriEllE davis/staff

Rapper Post Malone headlined Friday night’s Homecoming Ball, which included performances of popular singles ‘Rockstar’ and ‘Congratulations.’

said.

Emily Siegel (18C) said that when she arrived at McDonough Field at about 10:20 p.m., she and at least 20 other students were denied entry, with Emory Police Department (EPD) offi-

Laney Graduate School (LGS) students originally seeking to form a graduate student union have withdrawn plans to form a full labor union, now planning to form a “voluntary membership union.”

The Emory Graduate Organizing Committee has stopped petitioning for signatures on authorization cards.

The committee is working with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to develop a strategy

See SPC, Page 4

See voLuntaRy, Page 5

Post Malone Attracts Full Crowd By christinA yAn Contributing Writer

Due to rapper Post Malone’s popularity, some students listened to his Homecoming Ball performance from outside of McDonough Field, which reached maximum capacity.

Friday evening’s Homecoming Ball reached the maximum capacity of 4,500 people, according to Student Programming Council (SPC) President Tamara Ezzat (18B).

“From my experience this has never happened before, and we were delighted that we had high attendance,” Ezzat

CAMPUS LIFE PAVILION

LEGISLATURE

SGA Augments Diwali Funding

By BeliciA rodriguez Contributing Writer

Parth Mody/Photo Editor

Students and alumni gather to celebrate the dedication of the Campus Life Pavilion Friday to honor the 13 black students who integrated Emory in 1962 and 1963.

See PaviLion, Page 3

ROSE LIBRARY

Letters Reveal Young Obama’s Hopes By michelle lou Executive Editor

By richArd chess And michelle lou News Editor and Executive Editor

“Moments trip gently along over here,” a young Barack Obama writes.

Obama, then a college student, writes a letter in the winter of 1983 to his then-girlfriend, Alexandra McNear, detailing his usual routine at Columbia University: running on the indoor track, eating “the best bran muffin in New York City,” studying in the library.

The former president’s letter, alongside eight other letters to McNear acquired by Emory University’s Rose Library, reveals more than his day-today collegiate life.

The missives also disclose the musings of a young man discovering his

potential and passion for enacting change in the world.

“Life longs to be understood, Alex, but it contains mechanisms, sometimes sharp and cruel, sometimes a wide wash of mundane, to keep one from getting too close,” Obama writes.

A private individual provided the nine letters, dated between September 1982 and April 1984, to the University, according to Rose Library Director Rosemary Magee.

Over the course of their correspondence, McNear was a student at Occidental College (Calif.), where the pair had met. Obama had attended Occidental from 1979 to 1981 before he transferred to Columbia.

Emory acquired the letters in 2014 from a private individual with whom

Emory mutually agreed to wait until 2017 to announce the acquisition.

Magee declined to provide more information about the acquisition, citing confidentiality.

Neat cursive discussing topics from economic inequality to monogamy adorns the sheets of paper. Among the sentences lie the occasional crossedout word or misspelling.

In the margins of some of the letters, brief annotations, most likely from McNear, according to Magee, answer Obama’s questions and react to his thoughts.

“I care for you as yourself, nothing less, but also nothing more. Does this anger you?” Obama asks on Sept. 1,

NEWS Study ShowS Fox

OP-ED For poLiticaL

A&E poSt MaLoNe

See RoSE, Page 2

NewS ViewerS More LikeLy to chaNge, MiLLeNNiaLS Need to deStroyS hiS hoMecoMiNg Set, Vote repubLicaN ...

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PAGE 9 PAGE 7 LiteraLLy ...

The 51st legislature of the Student Government Association (SGA) convened Monday to approve funding requests for for four student organization-held events totaling $3,376.53.

Indian Cultural Exchange (ICE) President Roshan Modi (19C), Treasurer Rahul Nair (18C) and Diwali Chair Hithardhi Duggireddy (20C) presented Bill 51sl26 to request $3,244 to fund catering and student transportation for ICE’’ Diwali 2017. The requested amount is a 190 percent increase from the $945 ICE received last year from SGA for Diwali.

The bill was amended to allocate $2,744, which is $500 less than what ICE asked for, and passed with 1o votes. College Junior Representative Madelyn Zapata (19C) left early and did not vote.

The ICE representatives said that the organization received $1,000 from the Executive Office of the President, a decrease from the $2,000 ICE received last year from that office.

Campus Life (CL) also contributed $1,000, significantly less than the amount it donated last year.

The Emory Alumni Association had not responded to ICE’s request for $500 as of Monday night.

The BBA office, which provided $750 last year, provided ICE $500 this year. Those decreases in contributions put ICE $4,200 short in funds needed for the annual event.

“When we do our contracts,

EMORY LIFE

Meet

those things take a lot of time for it to be signed by Emory and for it to be approved and signed by the vendors,” Modi said to the legislature.

“We weren’t really able to foresee [the projections] when we were planning our budget.”

Although there is a $1,500 decrease in the overall cost of the event, the loss of some funding caused ICE to request more funding from SGA, Modi added.

During the debate of the bill, Vice President of Finance Javi Reyes (18B) said SGA could fully fund the event with $3,244, pointing out that since SGA is now an undergraduate-wide organization, that it no longer has to factor in potentially funding events for graduate students.

“Most of the things that we end up seeing that come through here are relatively small scale, and this is just one of the very few that happen to be on the upper limit of things that we would fund,” Reyes said. “I do think that we have room within the contingency to fund this event.”

Singh, Executive Vice President Natasha Armstrong (18B) and Emory SAPA President Katherine Gabay (18C) submitted Bill 50sl24, which allocates $350 to fund Take Back the Night custom buttons, candles and event posters.

SAPA Treasurer Leah Shine (18C) explained the event raises awareness about sexual assault and provides a platform for survivors to share their stories.

See Sga, Page 3

SPORTS SwiMMiNg aNd

the aLuMS behiNd eMory diViNg gLide to Victory at aNtheM ...

Back Page PAGE 13 hoMe ...

2 Wednesday, October 25, 2017

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The Emory Wheel

Rose Library Acquires President’s Letters From Private Individual Continued from Page 1 1983. “No” is jotted down in the left margin.

A political science student, Obama at times became frustrated “studying men and their frequently dingy institutions.”

He instead found refuge in a physics course, calling it a “creative escape.” “[He] sees that physics has implications for international relations and nuclear policy,” Associate Professor of Political Science Andra Gillespie said.

“It’s probably not surprising that he ended up with a physicist as his secretary of energy.”

Gillespie, who is working on a book about the former president, said the letters provide insight into Obama’s values and how he grappled with ideas that later shaped his politics.

In the letters, “[Obama’s] thoughts about feminism and socialism emerge … and you can see his racial identity kind of forming, especially when he talks about his work experience,” Gillespie said. “You can see someone who’s really striving to be egalitarian.

He’s intellectually egalitarian, but he also was trying to figure out, ‘OK, what does that look like in practice?’”

Obama, a self-proclaimed feminist and advocate of women’s rights, writes to McNear that she doesn’t have to conform to people’s expectations of her, Gillespie added.

The former president sent McNear a copy of a review of “Becoming a Heroine,” a book that discusses the portrayal of women in novels. Now the father of two daughters, Obama established the White House Council on Women and Girls and signed the

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act during his presidency.

In the letters, the beginning of Obama’s formation of his racial identity emerges. The young Obama describes the growth he experienced during a weeklong job supervising people moving files of the Manhattan fire department to a new building.

“I felt a greater affinity to the blacks and Latinos there (who predictably comprised about three-fourths of the work force there) than I had felt in a long time, and it strengthened me in some important way,” Obama writes on Nov. 15, 1983.

Fresh out of college at the time, he was strapped for cash because community organization salaries were too low, he explained.

“One week I can’t pay postage to mail a resume and writing sample, the next I have to bounce a check to rent a typewriter,” he writes.

Throughout the letters, Obama exhibits a high level of intellectual curiosity, Gillespie said. He references T.S. Eliot and quotes William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Tower.”

“You can read these letters and tell this guy is brilliant,” Gillespie said.

Gillespie said Magee had reached out to inform her about the letters’ presence at Emory a few weeks ago.

When Gillespie read the pieces, she said she realized she could use some of the material in her book.

“I’m finishing the book by talking about what President Obama’s legacy looks like given the fact that he’s proceeded by Donald Trump,” Gillespie said. “Given some of the public writing that President Trump has done as

Parth Mody/Photo Editor

Former u.S. President Barack obama sent letters to his first serious girlfriend, alexandra Mcnear, between September 1982 and april 1984. well, there’s a nice comparison about what their views on education are based on … how Obama is describing [his academics] and based on how President Trump described his approach to school in ‘The Art of the Deal.’”

Facsimiles of the letters will be on display at the Rose Library during the Fall 2017 semester and possibly beyond, Magee said. The letters are also available for viewing by appointment at the Rose Library.

A special viewing of facsimiles was held Oct. 20 from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Woodruff Commons of the Rose Library. “[The writings] are the question-

ings and inner dialogue of a young man trying to find a place in the world,” Magee said. “That’s also true of our own students.”

Obama, in the winter of 1983, shared with McNear the concerns he felt about how he, as a young man about to graduate, should begin to shape the rest of his life.

The young student observes the people around him, the ones searching for direction and security, and those being molded to fit society’s expectation.

“But our lives are fluid, not static, and I can see and taste the possibility of switching gates, channeling the energy toward something of vitality

and dignity,” he writes. “But people are busy keeping mouths fed and surroundings intact.”

The man who would become the 44th president of the United States continues, “It is left to the obsessed ones like us to make the alternatives more tangible, the contour’s of life’s possibilities more defined, so that resistance and destruction rise in the form of creation.”

Madison Bober, Valerie Sandoval, Christina Yan, Alisha Compton and Richard Chess contributed reporting.

— Contact Michelle Lou at michelle.ann.lou@emory.edu

Crime Report Compiled by Monica Lefton On Oct. 17 at 11:19 a.m., Emory Police Department (EPD) responded to a call regarding a bike theft at Casa Emory, the Spanish and Portuguese house, located at 756 Peavine Creek Road. Officers spoke with an Emory student who reported her bike missing from a rack in front of the house.

She believes thats that the theft happened between Oct. 13 at 6 p.m. and Oct. 17 at 9:45 a.m. The bike, all black with no gears, is a rental from the Bike Emory program, which has a replacement fee of $500. The student filed a follow-up report on Oct. 19 at 4:35 p.m. and said that she found the bike parked outside the Robert W. Woodruff Library. She admitted she had forgotten she parked the bike there.

On Oct. 21 at 2:01 p.m., EPD responded to a call regarding disorderly conduct at the corner of Clifton Road and Gatewood Road. Officers spoke with an Emory student who reported standing at the corner as a man on a bike passed by and directed derogatory comments to her.

She reportedly saw him approaching and moved out of his way, but as he passed he reportedly called her a “stupid f**king c**t” and a “f**king b***h.” He continued down Clifton Road toward the Emory University Hospital (EUH). She described the male as Mediterranean, 40 to 50 years old and wearing a dark-colored turban and ragged clothing. Officers arrived on the scene but could not locate the subject. The case has been assigned to an investigator.

On Oct. 21 at 6:30 p.m., EPD responded to a call regarding a reported suicide attempt. An anonymous female caller had said she received a

Wednesday, October 25, 2017 3

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The Emory Wheel

text message from an Emory student that indicated he wanted to jump off a bridge and kill himself. An officer responded to the dorm room of the student in question, and he reportedly appeared fine.

He denied sending any text messages indicating that he was going to kill himself. The female caller left no identification or contact information with EPD, but the student believed it may have been his former girlfriend who lives in North Carolina and is not an Emory student.

The student reported his ex-girlfriend has been repeatedly contacting him, and he showed the officer his cell phone which indicated he had received 13 missed calls over the last two or three days from her. The case was filed as stalking and unlawful conduct during a 911 call. Campus Life was notified of the incident. The case has been assigned to a detective.

On Oct. 22 at 10:23 p.m., EPD responded to a call regarding marijuana possession at Harris Hall.

Officers spoke with a resident adviser (RA) who reported smelling a strong marijuana odor from a room on the third floor while conducting a floor check. The RA knocked on the door and immediately entered the room when the student opened it. The RA observed three marijuana cigarettes on a computer desk and a student in the middle of the room holding a large alcoholic beverage. The RA confiscated all items and called EPD. When officers arrived on the scene, they went to the room to talk to all four students, but only one remained in the room.

The fourth student denied ownership of the marijuana and alcohol. No citations were issued.

— Contact Monica Lefton at monica.lefton@emory.edu

News Roundup Compiled by valerie Sandoval emory stAlls toddler’s trAnsplAnt A 2-year-old boy born without a kidney was denied an organ transplant after his surgery was cancelled because of his father’s latest arrest, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). Anthony Dickerson, the father, is a match to donate a kidney to his son and had planned to undergo the transplant procedure Oct. 3. Emory University Hospital (EUH) said Sept.

28 that the surgery would have to be pushed back until Dickerson could provide evidence he has complied with the terms of his parole for 3 months, according to the AJC. Jail records show that Dickerson was released on parole Oct. 2, and the child’s surgery has still not been rescheduled. Two online petitions, one started by the child’s mother Carmellia Burgess, to urge EUH to allow the surgery sooner have reached more than 41,000 and 130,000 signatures as of Tuesday night. “Guidelines for organ transplantation are designed to maximize the chance of success for organ recipients and minimize risk for living donors,” Director of Media Relations for Emory Healthcare Janet Christenbury wrote in a statement to the Wheel. “Transplant decisions regarding donors are made based on many medical, social, and psychological factors.” Burgess did not respond to request for comment.

AtlAntA to host mls All-stArs The 2018 Major League Soccer (MLS) All-Star Game will be held at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, MLS Commissioner Don Garber announced Oct. 23. The AllStar Game features a team composed of the top MLS players who compete against an international team, accord-

ing to USA Today. The approximate date and international opponent will be announced at a later time, according to MLS Soccer. Atlanta United FC Manager Gerardo “Tata” Martino will lead the MLS All-Star team. Concerts, community service initiatives, player appearances and a showcase match featuring the best players from around the league are expected to precede the game, according to MLS Soccer. disABility documents rescinded The U.S. Department of Education has rescinded 72 policy documents that outline the rights of students with disabilities for being “outdated, unnecessary or ineffective,” according to an Oct. 2 document from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. The rescinded documents detail students’ rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Rehabilitation Act. Chief Policy and Advocacy Officer for the National Center for Learning Disabilities Lindsay E. Jones argued that the documents are useful in helping schools and parents understand how the law works in different situations, such as how schools can spend federal money set aside for special education. The decision may be a result of the Department of Education’s attempts follow President Donald J. Trump’s executive order signed February “to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens,” according to The Washington Post. liBrAry FlAsher chArged Matthew Northcross, 37, was charged Oct. 18 with two counts of public indecency after he allegedly exposed himself in the Robert W. Woodruff Library. An Emory student reported Norcross’ activities to library

security personnel. A security guard filed a third-party report with Emory Police Department (EPD) Aug. 7 and a judge signed a warrant for his arrest.

Northcross is scheduled for a hearing Feb. 13, 2018. oxFord WithdrAWs pArKing plAns Oxford College ended plans to petition for on-street parking along Asbury Street. The original plan, which would have allowed parking along the rightof-way behind Allen Memorial United Methodist Church, was presented at the Oxford City Council’s Oct. 2 meeting, according to The Covington News.

Oxford College Associate Director of Programs Kendra Mayfield told The Covington News that “the idea of realigning the street created a lot of engineering issues that is just beyond the scope of what we can handle right now.” Councilman David Eady called to revisit the issue of parking for both the church and Oxford College at a later date. sAmmy ViolAtes sociAl Freeze Sigma Alpha Mu (Sammy) held two parties during the “social freeze” period at the beginning of the semester and was placed on social probation pending approval of a risk management plan, according to Campus Life Senior Director of Communications Tomika DePriest. The chapter is no longer on social restriction, according to the Office of Student Conduct.

Chapter President Cooper Linn (18C) did not respond to request for comment. Director of Communications at the fraternity’s headquarters Kelby Dolan did not respond to request for comment by press time.

— Contact Valerie Sandoval at valerie.sandoval@emory.edu

SGA VP of Communications Steps Down Due to Schedule Conflicts Continued from Page 1 According to Speaker of the Legislature and Senior Representative William Palmer (18C), the event hosted around 200 people last year. The bill passed unanimously with 11 votes.

The event will take place Oct. 30 from 7:30 to 9:3o p.m. at the Goizueta Business School Jenkins Courtyard and will include a Take Back the Night march across campus.

SGA Vice President of International Relations Dwight Ma (17Ox, 19C) submitted Bill 50sl23 to fund the Emory

International Leadership Summit.

The bill asks SGA to allocate $224.70 for 30 students to attend the reception.

The summit aims to provide international students who are club leaders a space to collaborate on creating future events that would, “[celebrate] global diversity and [initiate] polycultural exchange,” according to the bill.

The bill passed with eight votes and two abstentions.

Zapata submitted Bill 51sl25, which would allocate $57.83 to fund catering

for the Emory Panhellenic Council’s event to celebrate “100 Women at Emory,” which is part of Women’s Empowerment Week.

The event is scheduled for Oct. 27 in the Joseph W. Jones Room at Woodruff Library from 2 to 4 p.m. The bill passed with eight votes and two abstentions.

Singh asked SGA legislatures for their opinion on whether to choose a new vice president of communications from two people who have already expressed interest to Singh

Campus Life Pavilion Dedicated to Black Students

By AlejAndro perez Contributing Writer The Campus Life Pavilion, located at the former site of the Black Student Alliance (BSA) House, was dedicated Oct. 20 to the 13 black students “who integrated Emory in 1962 and 1963.”

A steel beam on the entrance of the building now features 13 stars, representing each of the students. A plaque below the beam states that the Pavilion honors the students who integrated Emory, the BSA house inhabitants and everyone else who has contributed to Emory’s multicultural community.

The names of the 13 students have not been made public for their protection, University President Claire E. Sterk said in a speech at the dedication event.

Located at 716 Peavine Creek Rd., the Campus Life Pavilion opened September 2016 and provides programming space to Emory students and community members.

The 716 Peavine Creek Rd. site was the BSA house from 1986 to 2011. The

current BSA house located at 22 Eagle Row. About 80 people attended the dedication event, which was part of this year’s Homecoming Week.

At the dedication ceremony, Sterk encouraged alumni to reminisce on their college experiences.

“You probably remember studying, forging special relationships and having debates here, frustrated by the problems of the world,” Sterk said.

“This Pavilion is a new place for dialogue and conversation, and it symbolizes Emory’s willingness to undergo the hard work of integration.”

Sterk also emphasized Emory’s commitment to equality.

“We want to become a pioneer in Atlanta, leading the way in promoting social justice,” Sterk said. “The work to fight for social justice will never be over.”

Senior Vice President and Dean of Campus Life Ajay Nair said it is important to maintain a “polycultural community.”

“At a time when cultural wars are

pushing universities to ignore cultural values of students, I am proud that we are honoring this culture,” Nair said.

Sariyah Benoit (18C), the outreach and external affairs intern for the Emory Black Student Union (EBSU) said that she appreciated the chance to connect with other black Emory community members at the ceremony.

“2017 was the year of black love despite all the conflicts and disagreements,” Benoit said. “A love of blackness allows us to connect and reconnect with each other on a daily basis.”

Caucus of Emory Black Alumni (CEBA) Co-chair Dorothy Bota (11C, 13PH) said that she was delighted to see former students meet in the Pavilion.

“It’s good that this event is being covered because hopefully in 20 years we can have information about this day as an important day in which the Pavilion was inaugurated to commemorate black students,” Bota added.

— Contact Alejandro Perez at alejandro.perez@emory.edu

or to send an application to the all undergraduates.

The former Vice President of Communications Gretel Nabeta (18C) can no longer attend executive or legislative meetings due to her class schedule.

The legislature voted on whether to have an open application for the position or not, which resulted in a tie.

Palmer broke the vote and voted yes to an application process.

Applications for the position close Oct. 28 at noon, according to an Oct.

24 all-undergraduate email from Singh.

The vice president of communications coordinates public relations materials and publicity for SGA, communicates on behalf of the legislature and the executive board, communicates with the graduate vice president for communications and organizes public forums for constitutional amendments.

— Contact Belicia Rodriguez at belicia.rodriguez@emory.edu

The Emory Wheel Volume 99, Number 8 © 2017 The Emory Wheel

Alumni Memorial University Center, Room 401 630 Means Drive, Atlanta, GA, 30322 Business (404) 727-6178 Editor-in-Chief Julia Munslow (404) 727-0279 Founded in 1919, The Emory Wheel is the financially and editorially independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University in Atlanta. The Wheel is a member publication of Media Council, Emory’s organization of student publications. The Wheel reserves the rights to all content as it appears in these pages, and permission to reproduce material must be granted by the editor-in-chief.

The Wheel is printed every Wednesday during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions. A single copy of the Wheel is free of charge. To purchase additional copies, please call (404) 727-6178.

The statements and opinions expressed in the Wheel are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Wheel’s Editorial Board or of Emory University, its faculty, staff or administration.

The Wheel is also available online at www.emorywheel.com.

Corrections

• In last week’s issue, William Palmer was misidentified as the SGA Speaker of the House in “Legislature Pushes Back Vote on Student Concerns Committee Bill.” Palmer is the speaker of the legislature. The headline “Legislature Pushes Back Vote on Student Concerns Committee Bill” is inaccurate. The headline has been changed online to “Legislators Deem Student Concerns Committee Bill Unfit As Is.” • In last week’s issue, the photo of the memorial service for Tom Hilchey (16Ox, 18C) was taken by Urvi Agrawal, not Parth Mody.

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SPC Makes 100 Tickets Available to Grad. Students

FACULTY WORKSHOP

Continued from Page 1

Parth Mody/Photo Editor

Professor of Philosophy george yancy urges white students and faculty to confront their racism in the classroom at a faculty workshop oct. 17.

Combat the Norm of ‘Whiteness,’ Prof. Says

By VAlerie sAndoVAl Contributing Writer “White students at Emory have not engaged critically in the question of whiteness,” Professor of Philosophy George Yancy told about 35 faculty members at his discussion “White Privilege in the Classroom.”

As part of a faculty workshop series about inclusive classrooms sponsored by the Office of Equity and Inclusion, Yancy described how he creates “dangerous spaces”— a play on the term “safe spaces”— in his classes to challenge white students to face critical questions about race, refusing to veer away from discussion surrounding the pain of minorities. Because whiteness is often considered the “norm” in society, many white students have never had to think of themselves as different or problematic, Yancy said.

The philosophy professor also urged white professors to acknowledge and reflect on their inherent racism during his Oct. 17 discussion.

Yancy argued that white people must recognize their privilege and that their experience in the world is fundamentally different from the experience of people of color, with whom they will never truly be able to empathize.

During his speech, he made references to his The New York Times op-ed,

“Dear White America,” in which he calls for white people to understand their racism and what they can do to combat it.

The Times piece brought Yancy backlash in the form of death threats and name calling from both his students and the general public. Yancy affirmed in his talk that his goal is not to make white people feel guilty but rather for them to acknowledge their inherent racism and fight actively against it.

Yancy encouraged professors who don’t teach classes that focus explicitly on identity and race to look at the dynamics in their classrooms and call out implicit instances of white privilege when they see them. He also recommended including works from people of color in class when possible to challenge the typical all-white narrative.

To further illustrate his argument, Yancy compared his idea of being an anti-racist racist to sexism. Although he does not intentionally try to oppress or objectify women, he is a sexist by virtue of being a male, Yancy said.

“My argument is that at the end of the day the best that I can be is an anti-sexist sexist. I fight against sexism everyday of my life, to the best that I can,” Yancy said. “The best that [a white person] can become is an anti-

racist racist.”

Yancy added that he seeks to challenge his students to think about whiteness as “strange” rather than the “norm” and argued that sometimestraumatic discussions regarding racism help break apart the narratives of white superiority. Yancy said that having difficult conversations is necessary and crucial to understanding racism and what it means to be white in America.

Associate Professor Lisa Thompson said she was eager to hear what Yancy had to say after reading his op-ed.

“It was a different from what I expected, and it was kind of mindblowing to think about,” Thompson said.

Assistant Research Professor Irene Yang attended the talk after hearing Yancy speak about “Dear White America” on an NPR interview.

“I thought his speech was very provocative, and I resonate with a lot of the things that he said,” Yang said. “He brought up a lot of challenging topics.”

Professor of Pedagogy Arri Eisen and Professor of Philosophy John Lysaker will host the next discussion in the series, “Religion in the Classroom,” on Nov. 8.

— Contact Valerie Sandoval at valerie.sandoval@emory.edu

cers telling the crowd outside the gates that the concert had reached maximum capacity.

“When I got there, there were police officers yelling at a group of students and pushing barricades in front of them,” Siegel said. “Students were really angry and started chanting ‘Let us in, let us in, let us in’ behind the barricades.”

Siegel said that EPD initially told students to watch the performance from across the street, but eventually let people watch from outside the field behind barricades.

After one student pushed the barricades in an attempt to rush onto the field, police spent the duration of the performance circling around the students in an attempt to ensure that nobody else would try to break in, according to Siegel.

For the first time, graduate students had to pay for tickets to the Homecoming Ball due to the Graduate School Government Association (GSGA)/Student Government Association (SGA) split. A total of 100 tickets were available and sold to graduate students, according to Ezzat.

GSGA subsidized 50 tickets that were sold for $12, and another 50 tickets that were sold for $16.

Post Malone came onstage at about 10:15 p.m. Friday, Oct. 20, forgoing a traditional greeting to say “rest in peace” to the victims of the Las Vegas shooting, rapper Bankroll Fresh, hiphop executive A$AP Yams and singer Tom Petty before opening with “Too Young,” the second single off his debut studio album “Stoney.”

Malone performed various singles from “Stoney,” such as “Go Flex,” “White Iverson,” current Billboard No. 1 single “Rockstar” and closed with 2017 single “Congratulations.”

Following the Saturday, Oct. 21, Homecoming Parade, the Plain White T’s headlined Saturday afternoon’s Homecoming concert. Hundreds of

students, alumni and other guests attended the event. The Hails opened the concert.

The Plain White T’s performed for about one hour, beginning their set with 2015 single “Pause” before performing platinum singles, “1, 2, 3, 4” and closing with “Hey There Delilah” and “Rhythm of Love.”

The Homecoming Concert was more family-friendly, with various fairground rides and refreshments set up. At various points throughout the performance, Plain White T’s lead singer Tom Higgenson waved to children in the audience. In contrast, Post Malone encouraged attendees to enjoy their recreational drugs of choice.

“PCP, weed, crystal meth, cigarettes … you can smoke it,” Post Malone said.

Although the Homecoming Ball and the Homecoming Concert differed in atmosphere, both were relatively well-received by students and other attendees.

Maureen Ascona (18C) said she was satisfied with Post Malone’s performance.

“This is the first concert I’ve gone to as a senior and I was highly pleased,” Ascona said.

Anuja Veeraghanta (20C) and Allie Udoff (20C) also said that they enjoyed Post Malone’s performance.

“We hope that SPC finds more artists like this because this was the best concert we’ve been to at Emory,” Veeraghanta said.

Audience members were similarly satisfied by the Plain White T’s’ performance.

Emory alumna Sonal Mathur (17C) said the Homecoming Concert was a good opportunity to revisit Emory and her younger years.

“It was just a nice throwback to old music I used to listen to before … [and reminds me of] good times,” Mathur said.

— Contact Christina Yan at christina.yan@emory.edu

STUDY

Fox News Makes Viewers More Likely to Vote Republican By juliA logAn Contributing Writer Watching Fox News makes viewers more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidates, a study conducted by an Emory professor found.

Emory Assistant Professor of Political Science Gregory Martin and Stanford Associate Professor of Economics Ali Yurukoglu estimated in their paper titled “Bias in Cable News: Persuasion and Polarization” that the Fox News Channel was responsible for 0.46 percentage points of the Republican vote share in 2000, 3.59 points in 2004 and 6.34 points in 2008.

The paper was published in the September 2017 edition of The American Economic Review.

The researchers calculated that an additional three minutes of Fox News consumption per week over the course of an election season year made a Democrat-identified voter 58 percent more likely to vote for Republican George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election, 27 percent more likely to vote for Bush again in 2004 and 28 percent more likely to vote for Republican John McCain in 2008.

MSNBC, which is regarded as a

more liberal network, had an 8 percent Republican-to-Democrat conversion rate in 2008.

Martin said the reason Fox’s influence on the Republican vote share has increased over time is two-fold: Fox has become increasingly conservative since its founding in 1996, and its audience has grown — ratings have doubled since 2000. Fox was seen by 2.35 million viewers in the first quarter of 2017, compared to 1.64 million for MSNBC and 1.06 million for CNN according to Variety.

Using congressional records, Martin and Yurukoglu identified approximately 1,000 partisan phrases — terms that were almost always used exclusively by either Democrats or Republicans — to quantify how liberal or conservative the networks were over the election season using a mathematical model, according to the paper. For example, the term “death tax” is used almost exclusively by Republicans to describe estate taxes.

Equipped with a library of partisan phrases, the researchers searched for relevant phrases in transcripts of programs from cable news networks. The researchers used transcripts from all cable news programs from 1998 to 2012 from Fox, MSNBC and CNN.

Fox has positioned itself farther to the right than is in its financial interest, Martin said.

“If [Fox] were out to maximize [its] viewership, [the network] would want to adopt more centrist positionings, close to what CNN does in practice,” Martin said. “But we find that Fox is actually much closer to the position that would maximize its electoral influence than it is to the position that

“People select into media that confirms their preexisting beliefs.”

— Gregory Martin, Assistant Professor of Political Science would maximize its viewership.”

In general, Martin said it’s difficult to study the effects of cable news consumption on consumer behavior because the practice is inherently self-selecting.

“People select into media that confirms their preexisting beliefs,” Martin

said. “For example, if you compare the audience of Fox to MSNBC, you’d see that Fox is roughly two-thirds Republican and MSNBC is maybe closer to one-third Republican.”

A large portion of Fox viewers were probably already Republicans before they started watching Fox, Martin added.

To account for that and to isolate the persuasive effect of the network, Martin and Yurukoglu called on research dating as far back as the 1980s that indicates viewers’ tendencies to watch networks with lower channel numbers.

“Initially we started this trying to replicate [a 2007 study] with better data, and then we realized when we got into it that we had this additional variation from the channel position that we could use to do something better,” Martin said.

CBS, NBC and ABC have high ratings and almost always occupy low channel positions. A majority of viewers begin watching programs on low channels, and when their program ends, they “channel surf” upward to higher channels until they find a program they like, Martin explained.

Martin and Yurukoglu compared voting data from geographic locations

where Fox News has a lower channel number to areas where Fox News has a higher channel number.

The researchers determined that in regions where Fox News occupies a channel slot roughly one standard deviation (17 channel positions) lower in channel number than average, people watch Fox an average of 2.5 minutes more. That extra consumption is tied to an increase of 0.3 points in the Republican vote share in presidential elections.

Martin said the magnitude of Fox’s influence is larger than he expected.

He was also struck by the amount of viewers suggestible to change their vote based on news coverage.

“There [is] a significant number of people that tune in close to the election who haven’t really made up their minds or don’t follow politics closely, and those people are more persuadable than I would’ve thought,” Martin said.

Fox News did not respond to request for comment.

Richard reporting.

Chess

contributed

— Contact Julia Logan at julia.logan@emory.edu

NEWS

The Emory Wheel

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

5

Voluntary Election Timeline Changes Postpone RSGA Presidential Debate Group to Collect Dues Continued from Page 1

Continued from Page 1 moving forward and set up the voluntary membership union, which will collect membership dues.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) may overturn a 2016 ruling that considered graduate students at private universities who work as teaching and research assistants employees, according to the Washington Post.

Graduate students would lose the right to unionize if the ruling is overturned.

President Donald J. Trump has appointed two of the five NLRB positions, shifting majority power to Republicans.

The Board has switched positions on the issue in the past, often along party lines.

Under former President Bill Clinton, graduate students had the right to unionize; under former President George W. Bush, graduate students lost the right to unionize; and under former President Barack Obama, the NLRB reversed the ruling once again.

“Rather than pushing forward with an effort that we know isn’t going to lead to us having a union we’re transitioning right now to a structure that would be a voluntary membership,” LGS student Jonathan Basile said. “We would do issuesbased advocacy on campus.”

One of the issues the Emory Graduate Organizing Committee, which was created in 2016, hopes to remedy is that graduate students do not receive their first stipends of the academic year until September.

That makes it difficult for students to pay rent and other fees for the first 1.5 months of the year, according to Basile. “[The voluntary membership union doesn’t] have that legal backing to require the University to negotiate,” Basile said.

Sarah Trebat-Leder, another LGS student leading unionization efforts, agreed that the voluntary group will not have as much leverage in negotiating with the University.

“You’re not representative of all the students because you didn’t win an election, only the students who choose to join you,” Trebat-Leder said.

The dues amount, handling votes and leadership are “still under discussion.”

The group hopes to start collecting dues by Fall 2018, Trebat-Leder said.

The group is modeling itself after Duke University’s voluntary membership union, which is not formally recognized by the NLRB, according to Basile.

LGS students started receiving dental coverage and dependent coverage this academic year as a part of their benefits.

The Emory/Aetna insurance plan, which now includes the dental and dependent coverage benefits, is offered to non-LGS students Emory students for a fee but is provided free of charge to LGS students who receive stipends.

Alex Klugerman reporting.

contributed

— Contact Richard Chess at rchess@emory.edu and Michelle Lou at mlou3@emory.edu

disagreeing with RSGA President Tina Mensa-Kwao (18PH) on a Facebook comment thread over the status of a presidential debate, to announcing their own event, only to be forced to reschedule by one week following an announced change in the RSGA election timeline. While the pair alleges that the change was made in retaliation to their unsanctioned debate, RSGA Vice President Serena Durrani (18PH) said the move happened before RSGA was made aware of the debate in the first place.

DeVore said that there was “no widespread objection” when he suggested hosting a RSGA presidential debate at a Sept. 28 RSGA council meeting.

But in a comment thread on the “Rollins School of Public Health, Class of 2019” Facebook group, Mensa-Kwao responded to a student asking if a debate would be held with “No. Don’t want to put stress on students!”

Mensa-Kwao wrote on Facebook that the issue should be discussed further with the entire RSGA board at its next meeting Oct. 26.

But DeVore and Charania, another student who wanted to have a debate, decided to plan their own privately hosted, RSGA-unsanctioned debate as the next RSGA council meeting would occur during the campaign season, making it too late to put debate plans in motion.

“We decided to host this event on our own without any support or funding because if we were to wait until Thursday [Oct. 26] for the council to have their meeting to discuss whether to have the debate or not, we would be well into the campaigning process,” DeVore said.

DeVore said that he believes that a debate would allow voters to assess the qualities of a leader as well as provide an opportunity for candidates to answer questions regarding their platforms. “[Watching candidates debate] ensures voters ... have an individual who is prepared to represent us to other student organizations and public officials,” DeVore said. “If they can’t speak to us, their peers, how can we trust they are able to represent us to the dean of the school and any other

son who is coordinating elections and external partners?”

DeVore and Charania announced putting out these timelines was aware Oct. 20 via a Facebook event that of at the time until I was provided me they scheduled the debate for Oct. 25. with screenshots,” Durrani said. “That DeVore said that their timeline would was after we already voted to extend give candidates a two-day window the election timeline.”

Durrani said that she reached out to between the debate and the announcement of their candidacy Oct. 23 to DeVore and Charania when she realdecide whether to participate in the ized their debate needed to be postponed so it could take place during the event.

Durrani, who is spearheading the election season.

“I reached out to the organizers and elections process, said that no formal motion was brought forward to RSGA … requested that they postpone their to host or sponsor a debate, nor was a debate to a different day [and] that they consider collaborating so I could request made for funds.

“While a debate was discussed have put them on graphics [relating at a Sept. 28 meeting as part of a to the election] and known to alert broader discussion on how to get them right after the vote to extend the students involved in RSGA elections timeline,” Durrani said. “As a student … nobody from RSGA or outside of at RSPH and a member of RSGA, RSGA brought a proposal to create this they are more than able to and have the knowledge of the process of bring event,” Durrani said.

On Oct. 21, RSGA moved the dead- up possible events and collaborations or funding and adverline for platform subtising requests [to missions, the first step to declaring can- “If they can’t speak to RSGA].”

Charania and didacy, to Oct. 25 at us, their peers, how DeVore have resched5 p.m., the same day can we trust they are uled the debate of the debate. RSGA able to represent us to Oct. 30 at the approved the change to the dean of the Claudia Nance Rollins Oct. 19 to allow more time for students school and any other Building auditorium. to submit their platexternal partners?” The Association of Black Public Health forms and allow for more interest meet— Christopher DeVore Students, Students ings to be held Oct. 23 (18PH) for Social Justice, the Emory University and 24, according to Barkley Forum and Durrani.

Charania said she believes the Rollins Latinx Alianza are sponsoring change is a move to stop the debate the debate, according to the Facebook event page. from happening.

RSGA sent an email to all Rollins “We announced our debate and had everything scheduled, we booked the students the afternoon of Oct. 24 that faculty member who agreed to moder- included the 2019 rules for campaignate and coincidentally right after that, ing and a statement serving to clarify there was a new election schedule that rules surrounding the election process was put up,” Charania said. “I person- and debates.

“RSGA (Executive or Legislative ally do believe that it was in response Board) has not taken a position on to our debate.”

DeVore agreed that the schedule the matter of the debate. No motions change “looks like an attempt to block were made to host or sponsor a us from having this debate in the debate; therefore, RSGA has no formal first place because the president is so plans to host a presidential debate.

RSGA was not asked to sponsor, coagainst it.”

Durrani said she was not made host, or be involved with the ‘RSPH aware of the debate until the day after Presidential Debate,’” the statement the vote to change the election time- reads. “Organizers of the ‘RSPH Presidential Debate’ were advised to line, Oct. 20. “[The debate] was something that communicate with the RSGA Council RSGA as a whole wasn’t aware of, and to discuss an ideal date for a debate to it wasn’t something that I, as the per- avoid scheduling conflicts. The orga-

nizers were also invited to propose co-sponsorship, request funds, or request for RSGA to host a debate during RSGA Legislative meetings.”

The statement also stated that students who participated in an Oct. 25 debate would be in violation of campaigning rules. However, Durrani said that candidates are free to participate in the rescheduled debate Oct. 30.

Charania called on Mensa-Kwao to resign from her position in an Oct. 23 interview with the Wheel.

“It’s one thing for the president to decide that RSGA will not hold a debate this year. It is however unreasonable for her to try to prevent anyone else from engaging in open discourse,” Charania said. “After witnessing this abuse of power, I am calling for Tina to resign as president of RSGA.” Durrani characterized the dispute as a “miscommunication” and expressed regret at having to ask Charania and DeVore to reschedule their event.

“I don’t want to ask people to postpone events when they’ve already invited people, when they already put in the effort to get people to moderate.

They probably reached out to possible candidates,” Durrani said. “It would’ve been a lot easier to know ahead of time so that I could coordinate with them to create this kind of event because RSGA itself has not taken a stance whether it’s for or against a debate.”

DeVore had spearheaded efforts for the first-ever RSGA presidential debate held Oct. 26, 2016, between Mensa-Kwao and Carter McCormick (18PH) in his capacity as the Rollins representative to the Graduate Student Government Association (GSGA).

“I asked [GSGA last year] if we could have a presidential debate and I was given permission to run with it, and everything went well, no questions asked,” DeVore said.

RSGA’s elections are governed by GSGA’s Elections Board, chaired by GSGA Chief of Staff Kyle Davis (18B).

Davis did not respond for comment by press time. Debates are not required by the RSGA Constitution.

Voting opens for Rollins students Oct. 31 and runs through Nov. 3.

Results will be announced Nov. 6.

— Contact Alex Klugerman at aokluge@emory.edu

HEALTH CARE

Emory Health Malpractice Suit Dropped By melAnie dunn Contributing Writer

A medical malpractice suit against Emory University Hospital (EUH) and three Emory doctors has been dismissed after the plaintiff, Lacrystal Lockett, failed to provide any evidence.

Lockett filed a lawsuit June 26, 2017, alleging that doctors left a camera in her torso after a December 2014 kidney and pancreatic transplant operation.

EUH’s attorney, Anna Fretwell, wrote in an Oct. 23 statement to the Wheel that medical cameras are not used in those types of procedures.

“No evidence to substantiate the plaintiff’s claims — medical records, photographs, the alleged camera itself, eyewitness testimony or any other evidence — ever was produced,” Fretwell wrote.

The Emory doctors who performed the operation were Denise Lo, Ronald Parsons and Paul Tso. The defendants, which include the doctors and EUH, filed a motion to dismiss the case July 25, 2017.

Lockett’s attorneys did not respond

Parth Mody/Photo Editor

Lacrystal Lockett filed a lawsuit June 26, 2017, against Emory university Hospital and three Emory doctors for allegedly leaving a camera in her torso after a 2014 operation. to multiple requests for comment.

Lockett said the camera was found in a subsequent visit six months later, and more procedures were required to rectify the mistake in the suit filed nearly three years after the operation.

The lawsuit said that Lockett “suffered undue hardship through additional surgical procedures and has

incurred medical expenses as well as significant pain and suffering, future pain and suffering and lost wages” and asked that a jury determine her compensation, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

— Contact Melanie Dunn at melanie.dunn@emory.edu

W Have a tip for the news team?

Email aokluge@emory.edu.

The Emory Wheel

Editorials

Wednesday, October 25, 2017 | Editorial Page Editor: Madeline Lutwyche (madeline.lutwyche@emory.edu)

A Fresh Face for Admin. Responds Unequally Democrats Editorial

To Hurricanes Harvey, Maria Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Florida on Aug. 24. Three days later, Assistant Vice President for Community Suzanne Onorato sent an email to an all-Emory-students listserv detailing Emory’s counseling services in response to the storm.

However, Hurricane Maria’s Sept. 20 landfall in Puerto Rico did not yield a similar administrative email — only College Council (CC) responded, and not until Oct. 16, 26 days after it made landfall.

The University’s administrative inconsistency in addressing disasters should not be ignored.

Administrators appear to have not followed any protocol for supporting students affected by natural disasters, and apparently did not consider the effects of Hurricane Maria as important as those of Hurricane Harvey.

Hurricane Maria was a large-scale natural disaster that continues to affect the lives of some Emory students, faculty, staff and their families.

Not only do thousands of Puerto Rican residents continue to live without power, but they also must cope with limited access to both potable water and cellular service caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. And other Caribbean islands are still struggling to recover from the storms. But despite the veritable tragedy, students received no universal communication about Hurricane Maria from Emory administrators.

Emory’s inattention to Puerto Rican and Caribbean victims and their families mirrors the national response to Hurricane Maria. During his recent visit to Puerto Rico, President Donald J. Trump called Hurricane Maria not a “real catastrophe like [Hurricane] Katrina.” Contrary to Trump’s statement, Hurricane Maria was and

continues to be a real catastrophe, and many people on our campus are still dealing with its repercussions. The lack of a formal statement from the University administration mimics Trump’s negligent response to the Caribbean’s trials and ignores those impacted. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, President of the Puerto Rican Student Association (PRSA) Josue Rodriguez (20C) expressed disappointment in Emory’s lack of communication to students, many of whom feared for the lives of their families and safety of their homes.

While Campus Life’s Office of Student Success Services and Programs (OSSPS) and the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life (OSRL) extended their donation drive, originally intended for victims of Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, to help Hurricane Maria victims, some student organizations on campus have taken a more proactive approach.

The Catholic Student Union and Puerto Rican Student Association jointly organized a variety of events, including an Oct. 4 vigil, multiple canned food drives and faculty-sponsored shipments of supplies to Puerto Rico.

To resolve inconsistencies in communications, the University should establish a standardized response strategy to natural disasters that directly impact the student body.

Whatever its reasoning, the University administration’s responses to Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria shows an unequal handling of student experiences. A standard communication would not only ensure that responses are consistent, timely and appropriate but would also ensure that, in the wake of disaster, students receive the support they need.

The above editorial represents the majority opinion of the Wheel’s Editorial Board.

The Editorial Board is comprised of Nora Elmubarak, Andrew Kliewer, Jennifer Katz, Madeline Lutwyche, Isabeth Mendoza, Boris Niyonzima, Shreya Pabbaraju, Isaiah Sirois and Mathew Sperling.

The Emory Wheel JuLia MunsLoW editor-in-Chief MicheLLe Lou exeCutive editor hayLey siLverstein Managing editor aLisha coMpton Managing editor Copy Editor Nicole Sadek News Editors Richard Chess Alex Klugerman Editorial Page Editor Madeline Lutwyche Arts & Entertainment Editor Devin Bog Emory Life Editor Niraj Naik

Sports Editor Kevin Kilgour Photo Editor Parth Mody Associate Editors Emily Sullivan Brian Taggett Anwesha Guha Hannah Conway Pranati Kohli

Volume 99 | Number 8 Business and advertising Lindsay WiLson | Business Manager ruth reyes | design Manager Business/Advertising Office Number (404) 727-6178

The Emory Wheel welcomes letters and op-ed submissions from the Emory community. Letters should be limited to 300 words and op-eds should be at least 500. Those selected may be shortened to fit allotted space or edited for grammar, punctuation and libelous content. Submissions reflect the opinions of individual writers and not of the Wheel’s Editorial Board or Emory University. Send emails to julia.munslow@emory.edu or postal mail to The Emory Wheel, Drawer W, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322.

Why Hillary Clinton Should Stop Interfering in Politics ber. Enough of Clinton, they said.

As much as I wish her address were 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., it isn’t. The voters who mattered most in 2016 — rust-belt laborers of Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania — made their voices clear.

And so, as long as Clinton remains at the forefront of the Democrats, she imperils the whole party of losing yet again.

I say none of this to criticize the accomplishments of Clinton.

I am not exercising my speech to malign how she has Hillary Clinton is the best thing acted in her capacity as an inthat could have ever happened to dividual or as a public servant. the Republican Party. No one has But I say it to address an unforbeen more critical of President tunate truth: She is actively damDonald J. Trump over the past aging the prospect of a prosperous year than I, but when I criticize future for the Democratic Party.

Trump, I don’t come off like a sore Clinton recently announced loser who lost the most winnable that she intends to involve herself election since Lyndon B. John- with the midterm elections. But I son versus Barry Goldwater in the think to myself, who will sign up 1964 U.S. presidential election. for this service? Will Sen. Sherrod If anything could turn me Brown (D-Ohio) tour the Buckinto a Republican, it would eye state with Clinton at his hip? be the Democratic Party. Will she and Sen. Tammy Baldwin From the moment Clinton wan- (D-Wis.) hike from Milwaukee dered back out of the woods of to Lake Superior hand in hand? upstate New York in late JanuI’m sure that some of the ary, it became clear that she lacks readers who have made it this the basic skills of introspection far have grown more irate with which all other human be- by my misogyny line by line. ings were endowed at birth.

Frequently, when someone The woman has blamed her makes an argument like mine, a 2016 loss on former FBI Director dissenter argues back that if ClinJames Comey, sexton were a man, ism, Russia, Sen. no one would be Bernie Sanders (Itelling her to keep Vt.), WikiLeaks, quiet after such a As long as Clinton fake news, Facemagnificent loss. remains at the book, news netAfter all, they say, works, campaign no one told Sen. forefront of the financiers, suburJohn McCain (RDemocrats, she ban women, white Ariz.) to quiet down women, boyfriends, during his boisterimperils the whole male bosses, faous post-2008 tenparty of losing yet thers … everything ure in the U.S. Senup to and includate. Nor did anyone again. ing “content farms tell former Secrein Macedonia.” tary of State John “I take responKerry or former Vice sibility,” she said President Al Gore. confidently, “for every decision I But McCain and Kerry were made, but that’s not why I lost.” senators who still had acPerhaps — and I’m just spit- tive hands in policymaking. balling here — Clinton lost beGore, though he promoted cause of her lackluster, negative sharp, often lethal criticisms of forcampaign; perhaps it was her lu- mer President George W. Bush and crative 2013 speeches to Goldman his folly in Iraq, only came out of Sachs executives; perhaps it was the woodwork for brief periods of the well-established fact that every time. He didn’t write a book and word of her speeches was filtered go on a nationwide tour denouncthrough multiple focus groups. ing Bush at every stop along the And perhaps it was not the vir- way. Instead, he made a documenile, brutish boyfriends, bosses tary about a highly specific issue or fathers that cost her the elec- that mattered to him. And when tion; perhaps it was not inverte- was the last time anyone has even brate women who couldn’t think heard the name Mitt Romney? for themselves; perhaps it was Clinton is not a senator; she is not not her two X chromosomes. a governor; she does not hold any ofAnd yet, Clinton is still the face ficial role in the government of any of the Democratic Party. She is still part of this country, large or small. the subject of nightly news. She is As unfortunate as that fact may or still a leader to many Democrats. may not be, it is a fact nonetheless.

I find it an apt time for liberals to The longer Clinton stays in the ask, should we not shed this skin for public eye, the worse Democrats the fresh faces of Sen. Cory Booker will fare with the same moderates (D-N.J.), Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) who were turned off by her inauand Sen. Kamala Harris (D.-Calif.)? thenticity a year ago and the uneduFor those unclear of my posi- cated Republicans who fell into her tion, let me reveal it: Clinton was infamous “basket of deplorables.” eons more qualified than Trump.

Nevertheless, the people made Grant Osborn is a College their voices heard last Novem- junior from Springfield, Ohio.

Grant Osborn

OP-ED

The Emory Wheel

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

7

Positivity Needed in Millennial Politics A. Spencer Osborne

Rose Kuan/Staff

Second Amendment Obsolete Charlotte Selton Our civic education cements that the best of America comes from the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

According to politicians and history teachers alike, those 200-yearold documents created a great and powerful democracy based on majority rule with minority rights.

This is an American myth that belongs alongside Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed. The Constitution is neither an ethical document nor a conduit of fair democracy, yet we turn to it as a moral compass. The modern worship of this document precludes crucial corrections to its shortcomings. Most toxic is originalism, a legal perspective that strives to interpret the Constitution as its authors originally intended. This perspective has seeped into many arguments regarding the right to bear arms from the left and right and continues to poison all attempts to enact gun control. To admit that the right to bear arms is not a fundamental right and has no place in a modern democracy, we must stop debating what the meaning of the Second Amendment was in 1791.

The Second Amendment’s modern consequences are unambiguous, forcing Americans to live like Sisyphus, pushing past each mass shooting only to be felled again. To stop this cycle of bloodshed and save the approximately 12 thousand Americans killed every year by gun homicide, we must alter the Second Amendment and remove guns from our communities.

Three weeks ago, 59 people were slaughtered in Las Vegas. Our country mourned, as we did after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., Sandy Hook, Charleston, S.C., Orlando, Virginia Tech and San Bernardino, Calif. Like every previous mass shooting in the last decade, the horror of the Las Vegas shooting sparked discussions across the country about how it could have been prevented. The usual calls for expanded background checks and better mental health services rang out.

News channels flashed statistics that we have all seen before. We know mass shootings are practically a daily occurrence, according to Gun Violence Archive, and that other developed countries with stricter gun control have much lower rates of gun-related deaths.

Now, three weeks later, politicians, news channels and the public have moved past the hundreds of lives irrevocably altered during one night in Las Vegas. So long as Republicans remain content to trade American lives for enormous, gun-lobby campaign contributions, and so long as the average American manages to

endure the carnage, we can anticipate another mass shooting in the national news within six months. And most gun-related deaths don’t even make national news; on average, approximately 90 Americans die daily from gun use, and guns are the third leading cause of death for American children. Meaningful gun control will not be passed and justice will not be served until Americans of all political leanings realize that the Bill of Rights is not sacred and the Second Amendment is not worth protecting.

Furthermore, gun rights are not and never have been equal rights in this country. Two-thirds of male homicide victims are black. Last year, Philando Castile, a black man, was killed during a routine traffic stop for legally carrying a gun. Cops blame their own fear of guns when explaining why they have killed young, unarmed black men, ignoring those men’s constitutional right to possess one.

To interpret the Constitution ‘originally’ today is not merely idiocy; it endorses the sexism, racism and elitism of the Framers.

Yet neo-Nazis and counter-protesters alike paraded about with semiautomatic weapons in Charlottesville, Va., suppressing some other people’s speech through intimidation.

The Second Amendment is exacerbating oppression rather than advancing freedom and security.

Even some arguments promoting gun control fall back on the narrative that the Second Amendment is fundamentally correct, both when it was drafted and today. Searching for a remedy to our gun violence epidemic within the 200-year-old Constitution is a hopeless pursuit because our problem is rooted in that same text. When people argue that the Framers never intended to allow public access to modern weaponry, since the rifles of the American Revolution took nearly two minutes to load, they accept that all Americans deserve access to deadly weaponry — just not too deadly. Similarly, the argument that gun ownership should be limited to members of “a well-regulated Militia,” as the Second Amendment states, ignores the real problem; militia membership would not prevent rogue shooters. Considering the growing ties between militias and white supremacists, restricting gun

ownership to militia members might be more dangerous than our current situation. During the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., this August, a group of armed civilian militiamen claiming to be peacekeepers patrolled the streets, many of them toting semi-automatic weapons more dangerous than standard police weapons; such militarization can only lead to violence. The more we repeat those originalist arguments, the more we reinforce the right to bear arms as a sacrosanct freedom.

Only three countries in the world include the right to bear arms in their constitutions: the United States, Mexico and Guatemala. Yet, citizens of states with much stricter gun laws, including Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany, are neither repressed nor helpless without personal firearms. Instead, they enjoy much lower homicide rates. The right to bear arms is not a human right simply because it appears alongside human rights included under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights like freedom of speech, religion and assembly within the U.S. Bill of Rights.

James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, failed to understand what basic human rights are; he owned numerous slaves, as did most of the founding fathers. Our constitution not only permitted slavery for almost a century but rewarded it. The Three-Fifths Compromise weighted federal representation in favor of slave-owning states.

The country the founding fathers created denied the majority of Americans the right to vote. The best parts of modern America have been forged since then. The U.S.’s development is a tale of tenacity defeating the failings of our original Constitution. To interpret the Constitution “originally” today is not merely idiocy; it endorses the sexism, racism and elitism of the Framers.

If Americans believe in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the solution is clear: We must get rid of guns being used to intimidate, silence and murder Americans. All but select hunting rifles and shotguns should be banned, in defiance of the Second Amendment, which must be altered. No part of this solution is easy. Constitutional change will not be easily won, and removing the 300 million guns already in America will take time and money, but when the alternative is allowing the continued escalation of gun violence, the choice should be clear. By demanding a constitutional amendment to limit gun ownership, we can usher in a safer, fairer era of American history.

Charlotte Selton is a College sophomore from Sacramento, Calif.

I grew up hearing my father repeat the phrase, “negativity begets negativity.” It’s a sentiment I still strongly believe, and the idea that our attitudes have a way of shaping the world around us is in vogue. From articles touting our ability to “think our way” to professional success to social psychology studies that deal with positive thinking and its effect on decision making, the conviction that our optimism or pessimism has a direct impact on our lives is something that has become increasingly popular. So why does our generation nevertheless insist on propagating an aura of unceasing negativity when it comes to politics?

Positivity — even in the midst of seemingly insurmountable odds against the millennial left and minority Americans — is vital to creating change.

This collective tone is one of “political negativity,” the general feeling that those of us who find ourselves in ideological disagreement with our government, especially our president, are fated for an inevitable future of political disenchantment and social division. Undoubtedly, the United States has taken steps backward as a nation since the 2016 election cycle in regard to political discourse, social unity and legislation. But while I’m a fervent critic of President Donald J. Trump and his policies, I’ve grown exhausted of the seemingly inescapable political negativity exemplified by left-leaning peers, social activists and representatives on both sides of the aisle. Those three types of political actors often use rhetoric that is noticeably cynical and sensationalist in tone in order to inspire outrage and dissent. The popular turn of phrase “not my president” stands out as an example. While vocal anger is often understandable, this rhetoric ultimately perpetuates the notion that the left can only put into words what to vote against and never what to vote for.

My claim of rampant political negativity among our generation is both anecdotal and data-driven. As a student at a relatively liberal university, I’ve seen political negativity illustrated in conversation, in the classroom and through student activism, including students’ unwillingness to engage in civil conversation with speakers such as former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who spoke on campus April 2016. To the dismay of many students who felt he should not be given a platform at Emory, Yiannopoulos delivered his address to a packed student audience in White Hall, while others protested outside, carrying signs that accused Yiannopoulos of disseminating hate speech.

Further, political negativity on social media is pervasive. It’s so evident on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook that it has become the subject of extensive social media sentiment analysis, a practical attempt at quantifying the general temperament surrounding a topic, person, product or event, often for marketing purposes.

Many such analyses show that discourse online concerning American politics has largely become inane, malicious and pessimistic. This remains true throughout cable news as well, where shouting matches doused with ego have become more common than productive dialogue rooted in facts. In a country born out of a desire to listen and legislate via the will of the people, we can’t continue to allow our voices to descend into political negativity that cheapens that will. This must change if we’re to improve the health of our society and democracy as an electorate.

December 2010 marked the begin-

ning of one of the largest revolutionary waves in modern history throughout North Africa and the Middle East.

It’s an example of how young people’s dissatisfaction with their government can positively transform a nation.

The Arab Spring, admittedly, is an extreme example of activism affecting change via widespread political dissent and was largely unsuccessful due to social, cultural and economic realities unique to the region. It is, however, an apt example of how not giving into political negativity can launch a grassroots movement toward political change. Citizens in Arab Spring countries were able to mobilize because they shared a common belief that their dissent could manifest as reform and transform their societies. It was a belief rooted in hope.

After the Spring, Tunisia and Egypt witnessed record voter participation in both presidential and parliamentary elections in 2011 and 2012, as well as substantial social, regime and policy change. If despondency had taken hold of millennials in those countries, then their revolutions may well have never occurred. Effective activism requires activists who can differentiate between the negative state of their current reality and the bright possibilities for the future. Negative rhetoric and overly cynical beliefs are draining to a movement for reform.

Young people are often denigrated for their apparent political apathy.

Low turnout among young voters has been a reality in American elections throughout history, and it was evident yet again in 2016 as a proportion of our population failed to cast votes, especially in key battleground states.

Having the lowest turnout rate of any age group leading up to 2016 (routinely hovering around 20 percent lower than that of the general participation rate), it’s not surprising that even last November (in what may well have been the most polarizing presidential election in U.S. history) only about 50 percent of young voters turned out to the polls (roughly 24 million). But as indicated by the Arab Spring and other youth movements, such as the revolutions of 1989 that resulted in the fall of communism across Central and Eastern Europe, ideological discontent has the power to activate voter participation and make an impact.

Political dissent has the power to inspire change. But how we verbalize and discuss those feelings can define the outcome of our opposition and the degree to which we mobilize as informed citizens. In reference to his grueling fight for racial equality and government reform, Malcolm X said, “stumbling is not falling.” As a nation on the path toward progress, we have stumbled. We face immense challenges: the possibility of healthcare reform that principally harms minorities and the working poor; an assault on free and independent media; ubiquitous, divisive rhetoric from our leaders that leads to social rifts along cultural, racial and economic lines.

But we have yet to fall. It should go without saying that frustration, anger and resentment are necessary and logical responses in these trying times.

Still, the tone of our grievances as young Americans must undergo a transformation. Gloom, hopelessness and dejection have no place in an effective movement for change.

Instead, we ought to voice our dissent through a lens of hope, not simply through one of exasperation. We can do this. We will do this. But if we are to make progress, it will be because we found it within us not to give in and hang our heads. It will be because we found a way to remain positive.

A. Spencer Obsorne is a College junior from Asheville, N.C.

The Emory Wheel

&

The Emory Wheel

Arts Entertainment Wednesday, October 25, 2017 | Arts & Entertainment Editor: Devin Bog (devin.bog@emory.edu)

HOMECOMING REVIEW

SOFT ROCKERS REVIEW

Hey There, Emory, Here’s To You

By Janvi Pamnani Contributing Writer

Grade: B+

Gabrielle Davis/staff

Post Malone dominates the stage during his performance on McDonough Field Oct. 20.

Malone Crushes Concert

By Cindy Zhang Contributing Writer

There were the enthusiasts who waited in line outside McDonough Field starting at 8 p.m. for front row spots where they’d be shoved and squished to their hearts’ desires. There were those who preferred to remain toward the back of the field, bobbing their heads and enjoying the spacious

and makeshift dance floor — and there were some who were perfectly content with watching the concert from the windows in Few and Evans Halls while tucked into their warm beds.

Regardless of your location, the spirit of Emory’s community could be heard from miles away.

Saint Jhn warmed up the crowd for Post Malone’s Homecoming performance Friday night at McDonough Field, setting a laid-back attitude yet

COMEDIAN REVIEW

emitting intense vocals when performing his top hits “Reflex,” “Roses” and “3 Below” in his signature cheetah jacket against a backdrop of hanging bras.

Although concert attendance wasn’t the highest during his performance, he didn’t hold back, nearly falling to his knees with every lyric.

When rapper Austin Richard Post, who goes by stage name Post Malone,

See RAPPeR, Page 11

“Hey There Delilah,” a Britney Spears cover by The Hails and a drone made up the most interesting parts of Saturday afternoon’s concert. The Plain White T’s played on McDonough Field Oct. 21 as part of Homecoming and Family Weekend festivities for students, alumni and their families.

The Hails, an on-the-rise alternative rock band from Gainesville, Fla., opened for the main performance.

They played tracks from their album “Impel,” like “Come Alive,” which has a harrowing melody and rad guitar riffs, and exemplifies lead singer Robbie Kingsley’s raspy and expansive vocals. However, the highlight of The Hails’ setlist was their cover of Britney Spear’s “Toxic.” The band recreated the trademark riff using a crisp electric guitar, and Kingsley impressed with his sultry falsetto. Despite their quality tunes, The Hails seemed aloof during their performance; the musicians were glued to their positions on stage. By the time the band finally started to connect with the audience, the act was over.

After The Hails, Student Programming Council (SPC) announced the Homecoming Court and Parade float winners and then

introduced the Plain White T’s, only one of whom sported a plain white T-shirt, disappointingly. The band opened enthusiastically with “Pause,” an upbeat track with a catchy chorus that Higgenson asked the audience to sing along to. The performance featured overly conspicuous guitar playing from Tim Lopez and aggressive drumming from De’Mar Hamilton, almost as if the instrumentalists were desperately trying to get audience members to engage. Despite the lack of audience participation, the band kept their energy level high for the rest of the concert.

The band’s liveliness continued through “Hate (I Really Don’t Like You),” during which band members channeled all of their rage into the performance. Higgenson’s pre-pubescent, nasal vocal quality was even more apparent through the song’s chorus but blended well with the back-up vocals from the three other guitarists.

The harmonies elevated the tension in the angry song and created an crisp texture to the band’s sound. While some audience members appeared bored as they talked over the music, Higgenson bounced around on stage and asked the audience to scream, “Love, love, love.”

Before introducing lead guitarist Lopez as the singer of the next song,

See DROne, Page 11

INTERVIEW

Mistra Charms Hall, Teller Talk ‘Thank You’ Harland Cinema

By Jesse Weiner Contributing Writer

By Jake PerL Contributing Writer The nearly-defunct microphone crackled to life as Student Programming Council (SPC) Speakers Chair Jarett Rovner (19C) addressed the audience in Harland Cinema during Homecoming Week.

“To all those who accidentally picked up bags of jalapeno popcorn at the reception desk, feel free to pick up a bag of regularly salted if you so choose,” Rovner said.

The incidentally jalapeno-infused snack encapsulated the mood of the small auditorium: less-than-professional. A whiteboard to the right of the stage decreed “Jai Alai” in all caps, with square boxes (probably) depicting strategy for the game. Two audience members vehemently discussed the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movie lineage, muttering “Squeakquel” and “Chipwrecked” to themselves while chuckling. As 7:30 p.m. rolled around, someone whispered, “Wasn’t this supposed to start at 7 [p.m.]?”

This ambience was the precursor to comedian Alingon Mitra’s performance Oct. 18 for Homecoming Week.

Despite the slow opening, Mitra — who has appeared on both “Conan” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” — defied all odds, captivating the room through a fantastic performance. One could be quick to judge Mitra by looks

alone. Though he is 30 years old, his diminutive stature and cherubic face suggested that he could pass for an undergraduate student. As he jogged atop the only slightly elevated stage, the crowd hushed. He began to speak.

Mitra instantly apologized to popcorn eaters everywhere on behalf of the “jalapeno mix-up.” The crowd, and particularly those affected by the incident, let out a laugh. He launched straight into crowd work, calling on audience members by name to build rapport.

At one point, he asked if anyone was born internationally, to which Marc Ayad (20C) answered that he’s Egyptian. “Ah, ‘Marc,’” Mitra replied, “What a classic Egyptian name.”

Mitra gestured to the boy on my left.

“You, what’s your name?” he asked.

“Greg,” the boy responded. Mitra took a second to sip one of his two bottles of water. “Cool,” he said, before moving on to his next target.

As his set continued, the room acquired a different feel. The air, rife with laughter, seemed warmer than before, the lights brighter. As the comedian rattled through his trove of topics — Disney, Cotton Eye Joe and Katy Perry, to name a few — the crowd stood rapt, awaiting his next turn of phrase and clever witticism. He had won us over.

See COMIC, Page 11

War is hell, and sometimes the demons follow you home.

This is the message of Jason Hall’s directorial debut, “Thank You for Your Service.” The film, starring Miles Teller (“Whiplash,” “Divergent”), is based on David Finkel’s novel of the same name, which tells the true story of Army veteran sergeant Adam Schumann, who returns home from Iraq in 2007 only to face another deadly challenge in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Thank You for Your Service” follows the story of three soldiers who return home to the United States from Iraq and their struggles with PTSD. In a roundtable interview with The Emory Wheel and two other college newspapers, Hall said that he hoped to convey the stories of the soldiers who grapple with readjusting to civilian life.

“Of course there are guys who come home and they don’t have [these difficulties], and they step back into their lives and they go get a job at the lumber yard and have three kids and become a football coach and it’s all good,” Hall said.

“But there’s a portion of that population that doesn’t have that experience, and I wanted to tell the story of that portion.”

The Wheel interviewed Hall alongside Teller and Schumann on Oct. 5 to discuss the team’s preparation and planning for the film, the challenges

Courtesy of r elianCe entertainment

Tausolo Aieti (Beulah Kole, Left), Will Waller (Joe Cole, Center) and Adam Schumann (Miles Teller, r ight) share beers, having returned home from their deployment to Iraq. faced by real-life veterans and more.

“Thank You for Your Service” hits theatres Oct. 27.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Maddie Bruning, Technique: How did you reconcile how personal and individual war is while attempting to create a film that helps provide insight for the trauma all veterans go through?

Jason Hall: It’s my belief that if you make something super personal it becomes universal because the more personal it is, the more human it is.

[The film] was about trying to get to

the core of Adam’s experience and trying to tap into who this guy really was.

We’re telling the story of three veterans coming home. I looked at that as almost one person, one soldier, making three different decisions. It’s like the soldier gets off the plane and he comes to a fork in the road. These circumstances present options and the soldier makes this decision and goes that way. These guys kind of separate and make three different decisions that in my mind encapsulate some of the experiences that these guys go through when they come home, the guys who are suffering.

See FACInG, Page 11

10

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

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Rapper Turns ‘Rockstar’ With Nirvana Cover Continued from Page 9 finally took to the stage, he made sure to live up to his “Candy Paint” lyrics: “B***h, I’m young stoney, I do what I want.”

From smashing every prop on stage to pieces to overtly smoking on a tobacco-free campus, Post Malone established his stage dominance and rebellious spirit. He kept the performance unpredictable. He entertained with his latest platinum album, “Stoney,” only to whip out a bedazzled guitar, take a seat against minimal lighting and perform a cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” moments later.

Post Malone’s “I Fall Apart,” an anthem for the broken-hearted, left the crowd heavy and burdened. In contrast,“White Iverson” embraced his here-to-stay-attitude as he outwardly rejected the label of “culture vulture” — Post Malone sees what critics call appropriation as his own homage to the black hip-hop community he’s been accused of neglecting.

The excitement was at an all time high with endless hoots and hollers as the crowd went wild to “White Iverson,” one of Post Malone’s most popular hits, spitting the chorus perfectly.

The screaming and pushing only escalated for “Rockstar,” for which many were secretly hoping 21 Savage, who’s featured on the track, would make a special appearance for a collaboration similar to the Rae Sremmurd surprise at Ty Dolla Sign’s Dooley’s Week performance in the spring.

Despite 21 Savage’s absence,

nobody was disappointed by the show Post Malone put on, placing emphasis on the hearty “grrra-ta-ta-ta” parts this rockstar echoed. Not only was I impressed by the high-profile artist Emory booked (through a nonfraudulent booking organization), but I was also pleasantly surprised at the strength and command of Post Malone’s voice, sounding even better than his recorded album. When closing time came around, Post Malone got personal, telling the audience that nobody thought he would make it this far in his career, but that now all they have to say to him is “Congratulations.” With that, he threw his sweaty towels into the abyss of students and descended the stage for a final run through, greeting clammy hands with his own.

The audience clamored to hear Post Malone’s rambling monologues of inspiration but more importantly, Post Malone’s sound, which incorporates a Southern influence that exists as more than a strong bass and rhythmic freestyling.

For the attraction to Post Malone lies in that he is not a proper hip-hop head. His tendencies toward country/ folk vibes has engaged a larger platform than just R&B and hip-hop junkies. However, his real connection to the audience members rests in his charismatic demeanor, which proves him to be your typical braided-haired Dallas boy named Austin who achieved success against all odds.

— Contact Cindy Zhang at cindy.zhang2@emory.edu

Continued from Page 9 Alison Bolt, The Connector: Miles, what was your biggest challenge in preparing for and filming this movie?

Miles Teller: The occupation, the profession. I feel like, for any other movie I’ve done, there’s a way to get some firsthand experience with that.

Nobody can just tell you about war.

Nobody can tell you about being a staff sergeant in the military.

You can kind of get it, but we were lucky because they ran us through a boot camp with some highly trained professional badasses who didn’t take it easy on us and kind of beat that military training into us. It was weird.

From that point on, we’d be checking our own uniforms and get pissed if we missed something.

We just felt that we had learned some stuff that we were taking a lot of pride in, knowing that we represent guys that paid the ultimate sacrifice to wear that uniform or knew somebody who had. So we were taking it very seriously.

Jesse Weiner, The emory Wheel: Miles, when you were 20, you were nearly killed in a car accident. Do you think that your own near-death experience helped you better understand the experience of these soldiers?

MT: Yeah, I do. I think that’s what these guys are dealing with, trying to reckon with immense trauma, things that no person should ever see or be witness to, and these guys are facing those images every day. I think that’s really what actors are; it’s all point of view.

Continued from Page 9

So I was cast, and another actor would have related to it in a different way. I guess, in a way, I was fortunate that I had some real life stuff [happen to me] that I didn’t have to imagine.

[I’ve] lost some buddies in my life and [saw] one buddy on life support with all this sh*t shoved down his throat and his brother just walking down the hall screaming, “That’s my brother!

That’s my brother!”

So yes, I definitely had some stuff to pull on.

Then other stuff nobody could relate to, unless you’ve been to war. So you kind of fill in the blanks.

“We need to make sure that the conflicts we enter are as honorable as the men we send over.”

— Jason Hall

Technique: In trying to help veterans, is it better to discuss the trauma rather than to avoid it or does bringing up the past rehash all of that pain and suffering?

Adam Schumann: That’s actually both of the answers. Bringing it up does cause pain, but you have to bring it up.

You have to talk about it. You can’t hold that burden forever because it’s just going to stew in you. It’s going to fester, like an abscessed tooth. It’s just going to get worse and worse; it’s going to eat at you. It’s a ton of weight

Parth moDy/Photo eDitor

Tom Higgenson leads the crowd in a rousing chorus during the Plain White T’s’ performance at McDonough Field Oct. 21. bers made the wait through the Plain White T’s cumbersome beginning worth it, and other audience members and I walked away smiling, satisfied with the performance of the modern classic.

The Plain White T’s are a mediocre band that have coasted off the success of one song.

While I wouldn’t pay to see them in concert, their Saturday show provided a suitably wholesome event where students and their families could spend time together. But it’s demanding for any band to release hit after hit, and we should appreciate the Plain White T’s for the one great song they’ve given us.

After all, “Hey There Delilah” still pervades my playlist to this day, and hearing it live was a memorable experience.

— Contact Janvi Pamnani at janvi.pamnani@emory.edu

to carry around, and you have to get it off. [You’ve] got to unload it, and you have to find someone to unload it on that’s willing to bear a little bit of that burden for you.

The Connector: How do you want the audience to feel after watching this movie?

JH: Hopefully, this [film] takes a swing at people and hits them in the mouth. Not for the sake of being exciting or thrilling. This is a real issue.

There are 2.5 million veterans walking around who have come home from these wars.

They’re walking by you on the street, and they’ve had experiences like this, and whether they have any kind of trauma or not, these things still resonate … inside of them. These people are passing you on the street corner.

They’re in your classrooms. They’re on the bus with you. And we have no idea what these people have been through.

They slip back into society. They put on civilian clothes, and these heroes walking among us have been through extraordinary hardships, trials and tribulations. They’ve lost people they love and they’ve sacrificed things we have no idea about.

As a civilian population, we have to know what the cost of war is because we are a country that enters into conflicts. If we’re going to enter into conflicts, number one, we need to know how to bring these guys home better, and number two, these are brave men with honor. We need to make sure that the conflicts we enter are as honorable as the men we send over.

— Contact Jesse Weiner at jesse.weiner@emory.edu

Comic is Master of Crowd Work, Vibes

Continued from Page 9

T’s wouldn’t sing “Hey There Delilah.”

Fortunately, Higgenson and crew returned shortly to ask audience members to sing along to the next song, because Higgenson was “pretty sure everyone knows the words.” At that point, even I abandoned my picnic blanket to approach the stage and indulge in the nostalgia that the epic acoustic guitar and simple lyrics bring.

The air was finally filled with the sound of students, parents and alumni singing along, and Higgenson elicited loud cheers and applause by changing a final “Delilah” to “Emory.”

The Plain White T’s ended their set with “Rhythm of Love.” The song began quietly with mere acoustic guitar, maracas and Lopez’s vocals, but grew in complexity with the addition of drums and bass after the first verse.

The audience swayed back and forth to the song’s wholesome lyrics, and the band ended the concert with a big, showy drum finish. The last two num-

11

Facing Trauma Only Way to Heal, Director Says

Drone Does More For Crowd Than Plain White T’s Higgenson attempted to make small talk with the audience by inquiring about Atlanta’s weather, similar to the last resort of someone on a failing first date. Lopez sang “Heavy Rotation,” a track with bouncy lyrics that his raspier vocals gave a sultry quality. He elicited some ephemeral clapping from audience members, who must have sensed they were nearing the most important part of the concert.

Every so often, Higgenson would share an anecdote or two after the obligatory applause for the previous song. He sarcastically called Emory’s concert series “like Coachella, but in Atlanta,” spoke of the new album the band would begin recording in three days and their hectic flight schedule.

The Plain White T’s even tried a comedy bit by poking fun at The Hails’ band name, promptly after which bass guitarist Mike Retondo suggested they stick to music. During “Should’ve Gone to Bed” people waved excitedly to a drone that approached the stage. Lopez commented, “I love that the drone got the biggest response,” acknowledging the otherwise lackluster audience. Nevertheless, Higgenson graciously thanked the audience for coming out.

Toward the end of the concert, Higgenson randomly shouted “Emory!” several times but rather than receiving cheers from the audience, he found confused audience members, eagerly awaiting the band’s best-known song. The band members disappeared offstage after “Our Time Now,” momentarily sinking the hearts of some who thought the Plain White

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Though the punchlines, material and crowd work were thoroughly enjoyable, some fell flat. For example, his observation that Pluto, Mickey Mouse’s dog, received far harsher treatment in the Disney canon than did Goofy, the anthropomorphic dog, elicited little reaction from the crowd.

It wasn’t a fresh take on the idea; in fact, Bo Burnham shared a similar observation in his popular 2010 special “Words Words Words.”

Rather, Mitra’s affable nature and friendly smile crowned him a fan favorite. Even when he called out audience members for their clothing, habits or appearances, it felt as though he approached it from a place of curiosity rather than malice. This charisma also let him get away with some of his best, if not most, controversial lines. When he asked if the crowd was into Santa, some replied, “Eh. We’re Jewish.” “How much of Emory is Jewish?” he asked. Disengaged, the crowd responded, “A lot.” Taken aback, he paused for a second at our meager response. “You sound like you have a problem with that.” The crowd erupted.

After the show, Mitra proved his assumed friendliness in a short interview during which he seemed more than happy to answer my questions.

Mitra said that he found his start in stand-up comedy seven years ago, performing at scattered open mic nights in his home city of Worcester, Mass.

Only after the interview did I realize he began stand-up comedy after graduating from Harvard University, a detail he had conspicuously failed to mention. He said that as his reviews became more and more positive, he was eventually rewarded with the honor of paying gigs. From there, his career took off.

Mitra’s humility was apparent not only when it came to his own accomplishments but also to his grander line of work as a stand-up comic.

“I don’t know if stand-up is important,” Mitra said. “It’s a good way to discuss ideas and a good way for people to come together. But I wouldn’t say it’s huge.”

I agree. There are definitely bigger, more important things than stand-up.

But what made Mitra’s set so enjoyable wasn’t that it was “just” stand-up.

Rather, it was the implication that there was a tenderness hidden behind it.

Smiling through his delivery, laughing during audience participation and taking his sweet time to enjoy every taste of water, Mitra seemed like a guy you’d want to know on a deeper level.

After shaking my hand and looking me in the eyes, he asked me to friend him on Facebook and reach out if I had any further questions. I thanked him and walked away, sending a friend request as I left. Two hours later, he accepted.

— Contact Jake Perl at jake.matthew.perl@emory.edu

The Emory Wheel

Emory Life

Wednesday, October 25, 2017 | Emory Life Editor: Niraj Naik (niraj.naik@emory.edu)

ADVICE

PROFESSOR SPOTLIGHT

Doolino Knows Best: Stop, Drop, Enroll

Courtesy of JessiCa thompson

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jessica Thompson (Second from r iGht) works with students at an excavation site in Malawi.

Professor Dates Ancient DNA in Malawi

By Varun Gupta Staff Writer Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jessica Thompson, four undergraduate and one graduate student are in the process of cleaning and sorting through thousands of 1-mm to 3-mm pieces of stone and human bones, excavated at Mount Hora, located in the Northern Region of Malawi.

As one of Thompson’s summer research initiatives, she recovered samples from the ground to educate Malawians on Prehistoric Africa. An international team of 44 contributors, including Thompson, reported that they retrieved ancient DNA samples at Mount Hora dating back 8,100 years, according to The New York Times.

Jessica Thompson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Courtesy of JessiCa thompson

Thompson said her ongoing work has yielded new bone fragments that have not been assessed for ancient DNA. The excavation site contains material dating between 9,200 and 9,500 years.

According to lab volunteer and Malawi excavation participant Aditi Majoe (19C), the team resided in tents at the base of a mountain for seven weeks over the summer and unearthed remnants of Malawi civilization from the dirt with a trowel and thick paint brush. Thompson has returned to Malawi every summer since 2009, organizing survey or excavation-based trips.

A paleolithic field archaeologist, Thompson received a Ph.D. in anthropology with a concentration in archaeology from Arizona State University in 2008.

Since then, she has published her Malawi specimen analysis, “Reconstructing Prehistoric African Population Structure” on biomedical journal publisher Cell Press. At Emory, Thompson has taught “Concepts and Methods in Biological Anthropology,” a course that explores the prehistoric evolution of cultures and paleoanthropology. In addition to teaching, she conducts lab research to examine lithic and bone samples.

Students can volunteer in the lab or receive academic credit for lab-based

research projects.

Thompson’s interest in becoming an educator stemmed from her introduction to archaeology. Before she entered her freshman year at the University of New Mexico, Thompson enrolled in an anthropology course at a local university, which attempted to prove the existence of Bigfoot through a scientific framework.

“What kind of got me was that he had all these explanations for things that seemed to come from a totally different explanatory framework than anything I really had ever experienced,” Thompson said.

While the scientific evidence negated any sign of Bigfoot, Thompson said that she was hooked by the thought experiment.

“I thought it was fascinating that we could look around and see people today and see evidence of all the stuff that happened to them or their ancestors before,” Thompson said.

The site of discovery, Mount Hora, is considered a sacred burial ground for pre-Malawians and Malawians today, according to Thompson. Majoe said that the trip served to educate Malawian communities about the region’s past.

“To the locals, [bone samples] really highlights how long that history is and how [Mount Hora] was of importance for people that lived 10,000 years ago,” Majoe said.

“To them, it’s mainly about understanding their ancestors and what people before their ancestors were doing in the same landscape as they are in right now.”

The team printed out pamphlets written in Chichewa, the local Malawian language, and English to give to strangers pass up the site and clear up any misunderstanding between archaeologists and the passersby.

“A lot of people thought we were doing construction work because they would see us going to the mountain everyday with all this digging equipment,” Majoe said. “They were like ‘They are building roads up there’ and we were like ‘No, that’s not what is happening.’”

Malawi does not have a national museum for historians and anthropologists to engage in active research, according to Thompson. Through the only archaeologically-trained initiative in Malawi, Thompson has tried organizing public outreach events such as live demonstrations to make artifacts,

excavation walk-throughs and site tours accessible.These resources were a part of a fully-funded field school for secondary school teachers to receive lessons on archaeology and heritage. “[Training on] how they can themselves be more aware of the stuff that is [lying on the ground] because you find this stuff everywhere,” Thompson said. “A lot of people do not know what it is or [do not] care if they do.”

According to Thompson, Malawi politicians prioritized maintaining a high-rank in society over advancing her educational policy, which thus lost momentum.

Thompson said that her Malawi program hires and trains locals to work at the excavation site and in the lab. Most of the feedback she has received pertains to the working environment. “[They] are often saying it’s not that hierarchical as they are used to and they appreciate that. They feel respected and valued,” Thompson said. “That is probably our biggest contribution — making a big impact on a small number of people.”

“That is probably our biggest contribution — making a big impact on a small number of people.”

— Jessica Thompson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Malawians typically find creative solutions to squeeze out of setbacks, a trait invaluable for field archaeologists, Thompson said.

For instance, when Thompson’s car broke down, strangers were able to disassemble and reassemble it in a matter of minutes.

The research lab in the Anthropology Building can also present unpredictable hurdles when researchers attempt to get up close with the samples.

A platform is too expensive to buy, but a Swiffer box would do the same job of moving samples closer to the camera lens.

“If you’re a fieldwork academic like me, there’s a whole new set of skills you have to … come up [with for] ways to fix [things],” Thompson said.

— Contact Varun Gupta at varun.gupta@emory.edu

Homecoming Week is over, so the cynic within some of us would argue that we should buckle up and prepare for misery. Standing tall and proud, the cynic proclaims that the next few weeks of school are as empty as the PBR cans left in your recycling bin.

There is nothing left to look forward to until Thanksgiving break, so get ready to be swamped with studying and eviscerated by exams.

If you are as wise and as learned as I am, you realize that what this cynic says is untrue. I am often asked how I continue to find meaning in my infinite life and not be crushed by an existential dread. The answer, dear readers, is that I live each day without anxiously waiting to reap the fruits of my actions. My actions are the fruits themselves.

At this point of the semester, it may seem that there is no incentive to work because there isn’t some lavish concert on the horizon to dissipate the stress you’ve accumulated from studying. Dearest readers, if you are truly enjoying yourself, then there is no difference between the time you spend admiring Post Malone singing Nirvana’s “All Apologies” and the time you spend playing Mario Kart with your friends at Clairmont campus.

Every second of your life can be your own Homecoming concert if you don the proper perspective. Live life as if you’re skating around an ice rink — don’t fixate on reaching a particular point but relish the very act of movement.

Dear Doolino, I went to the wrong McDonough on Friday night.

After I ate a brownie given to me by my roommate — who I add for no particular reason likes to listen to The Rolling Stones, wears tie-dye and has reddish eyes — I decided to search for this “McDonough Field” on Google Maps on my phone. (As a transfer student, I still do not have a solid grasp of Emory’s geography.)

One thing led to another and my Uber driver took me to the McDonough Center for Family Dentistry in McDonough, Ga. Since I do not listen to much modern music, I mistakenly assumed that the routine root canal procedure performed by the dentist on the screaming 5-year-old patient was some form of an avant-garde performance by Post Malone. I watched the dentist — who, in hindsight, probably was not Post Malone — do this for many hours before he told me to go home because I made some patients feel uncomfortable.

Is there any way I can make up for the Homecoming experience I lost?

From Kief Richards Dear Kief Richards, What do you mean “lost” Homecoming experience? You now officially have more pre-health experience than the average Emory student. That’s more valuable than any Post Malone concert.

Sincerely, Doolino

Dear Doolino, Can you recommend easy electives for me to take? This whole premed thing is tanking my GPA, so I would appreciate some advice. What about one of those sociology classes on happiness, or whatever it is? I need a class that requires me only to memorize a couple of textbook pages for the midterms.

Easy A Dear Easy A, The average human lifespan is 79 years. Of those 79 years, there are only four years that you can dedicate to studying literally whatever you want.

For heaven’s sake, there’s a Lusophone studies minor in this school and, until a few hours ago, I thought that a Lusophone was some sort of brass instrument. (It isn’t.)

I don’t know why you are pre-med but let me tell you this: Academic freedom dies in medical school. When you go to medical school, you will be forced to take a rigid collection of oddly specific biological sciences classes that you’ll need to understand fully. If you don’t, you will probably kill someone. When you are in medical school, the difficulty spikes to a level that if you don’t truly enjoy what you are studying, then you will do poorly.

Nobody will die if you receive a B in a 100-level philosophy class.

Use these precious undergraduate years to cultivate real interests. Do not let the fear of failing hold you back because, although it is disappointing for your GPA to face a hit, it is far more tragic to never truly understand what you are genuinely passionate about.

Screw the easy and embrace the interesting. Also, please do not sue me if you don’t get into medical school.

Sincerely, Doolino P.S. Hope we are clear on the whole don’t sue me thing. I can’t go back to jail.

For your day-to-day qualms and minor life crises, send anonymous questions to doolino.emory@gmail. com.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017 13

EMORY LIFE

The Emory Wheel FOOD

SWEET TREATS

Duck Donuts a Hole in One By izzy ullmann Contributing Writer

duck donutS Buckhead

Joseph shin/Contributing Writer

Janet’s Kitchen Atlants offers shrimp lumpia (left) and pork ribs adobo, a Filipino dish (middle).

Janet’s Kitchen: Filipino Fare Falls Flat

By JoSeph Shin Contributing Writer Several loosely hung, half-inflated helium balloons greeted me as I stepped toward the well-lit countertop at Janet’s Kitchen Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon. A new addition to North Decatur Road, Janet’s specializes in authentic Filipino food.

Unlike regular sit-down restaurants, I was asked to order at the counter before being seated. Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues” countered the awkwardness of the empty joint with a snazzy atmosphere. The welcoming waitress handed me the menu with a warm smile.

Although Janet’s menu is considerably simple — only filling up two pieces of paper — it is still highly diverse.

Their entrees consist of chicken adobo (a traditional Filipino dish), pork ribs adobo, shrimp lumpia (spring roll) and pork lumpia, all served with a bowl of rice and all either $10 or $11. Sides include collards, mac and cheese, mango salad, black-eyed peas and cinnamon yams for only $3 each. When I visited, the soup of the day was a steal at just $5 and included two options: chicken tinola and pork sinigang.

The beverages at Janet’s were what you would expect at a typical restaurant, but you cannot order a glass of ice water. Instead, you have to purchase refrigerated bottled water for a dollar. After that little annoyance aside, I asked for a pork ribs adobo with rice and mango salad.The waitress showed up with the food only several minutes later. To my surprise and disappointment, the meal presentation was feeble

Janet’S kitchen atlanta north DeCatur Center

at best. All orders came out to-go style, and to eat at the joint you had to ask for styrofoam plates and plastic utensils. However, as I began to unwrap the plastic bag and styrofoam boxes, the pork ribs braised in vinegar, soy sauce, garlic and bay leaves started to give off an irresistible, savory aroma.

I ripped the meat off the bone almost effortlessly. The seasoning melded well with the meat, and I could taste the rich, sweet flavor to the bone. The mango salad complemented my dish surprisingly well, as its sweet and sour seasoning was a refreshing addition to the heavy pork ribs adobo. The meal was not too overbearing. Two entrees might be necessary for those who are especially hungry.

Located conveniently behind the North Decatur Center and a few blocks away from Publix, Janet’s Kitchen Atlanta is a quick Uber or C-Publix shuttle ride away from Emory’s main and Clairmont campuses. According to their menu, Janet’s offers a variety of “soul food with a Filipino twist” from shrimp lumpia with rice to Filipino seasoned chicken tenders and waffles.

Overall, I give Janet’s three out of five stars, as the cooking exceeded my expectations but the food service — uncomplimentary water and meal presentation — was so unlike a traditional dine-in restaurant.

— Contact Joseph Shin at hyunkyu.shin@emory.edu

Students looking for a new DUC in their lives should look no further.

Located in Tuxedo Festival retail center in Buckhead, Ga., Duck Donuts offers a warm taste of homemade donuts with seemingly endless combinations of flavors.

With bright pink cabinets covered in rubber ducks beneath light blue walls, the store creates a kid-friendly aura of joyful donut eating.

When I walked into the mediumsized shop, the enthusiastic employees greeted me instantly to help me start my donut-customization journey.

While its best-selling flavors are maple icing with chopped bacon, s’mores and blueberry pancake, the store also offers a build-your-own option, where you pick your desired donut flavor, coat it with frosting, top it and drizzle it with an additional flavor, like marshmallow. Unlike donuts from chains like Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme, every donut at this family run shop is made fresh to order for customers.

Duck Donuts is a family business that originated in Duck, N.C., where the owner Russ DiGilio and his family noticed on vacation that “there was nowhere to get that sweet staple of happiness — a warm, fresh donut,” according to the shop’s website.

After recipe sessions and months of research and collaboration, the first Duck Donuts opened in Duck in 2006.

Today, Duck Donuts exists in more than 50 locations, which range from Pittsburgh to Kissimmee, Fla. The Atlanta location had its grand opening Oct. 7.

I ordered a sample of a classic donut to figure out what base I wanted, since the employees were more than willing to offer samples.

I tasted the classic donut glazed with sugar and watched employees make my donut before my eyes.

Scooping a spoonful of fresh dough from a bowl, I watched an employee drop the dough into a large metal contraption that fried it to a perfect crisp.

The donut was dusted in sugar on the outside with an outside crust harder than the typical Dunkin Donuts

izzy ullmann/Contributing Writer

Duck Donuts, located in Buckhead, Ga., serves customized donuts made fresh to order. donut.

The inside was similar to cake, a delicious light and airy dough that dissolved on my tongue.

While the flavors of the dough were similar to other donuts, the heat radiating off of the donut and the juxtaposition between the hard shell and soft inside made it special.

Scooping a spoonful of fresh dough from a bowl, I watched an employee drop the dough into a large metal contraption that fried it to a perfect crisp.

After I devoured what was considered the “plain” donut, I came to the conclusion that it was flavorful enough to be satisfactory alone.

I decided to order a customized donut and picked a maple donut as my base.

I was tempted to go down the more adventurous path with a peanut butter or a lemon donut, but I figured simplicity was best.

I picked a chocolate coating, crumbled oreos for the topping and a

marshmallow drizzle.

The shop offers a variety of toppings such as bacon, graham crackers and coconut shavings.

When handed my donut, I was asked if the donut “looked ok” and if I wanted anything changed.

Despite the size of the franchise, the family vibe was clear.

“This is our family serving your family and we want you to come back,” DiGilio said, according to the Duck Donuts website.

The maple flavor gave the donut an extra kick of sweetness.

The chocolate frosting tasted rich, much like a Ghirardelli drizzle.

The marshmallow drizzle did not add much to the overall flavor besides another layer of sugar but made for a great instagram aesthetic.

The oreo crumbs gave the donut a crunch to complement the creamy frosting, and within minutes my donut was gone.

Overall, for a franchise that felt much more hospitable than any other dessert shop I’ve been to, a $1.45 donut was worth it.

The made-to-order aspect truly produces high-quality donuts, and having control over the topping selection allowed me to mix and match flavors that usually would never be paired together.

— Contact Izzy Ullmann at isabella.ullmann@emory.edu

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

The Story Behind the Emory Anthem: Alums Look Back By aditya prakaSh Senior Staff Writer

Before the likes of the “Emory Memes for (not so) Southern Teens (MemEmory)” Facebook group, students had just one source of internet humor: the Emory Anthem.

More than six years ago, Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) brothers Eric Seti (12B), Matthew Schwartz (13C) and Dashon Catlett (13B) produced the viral music video about Emory University, which they said stemmed from their passions for filmmaking and comedy.

The video has amassed 104,805 views as of Tuesday night.

Seti graduated with concentrations in finance and marketing. Having worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in management consulting for four years after graduating, Seti is currently an M.B.A candidate at the Columbia Business School in New York City, intending to return to PwC upon graduation.

Schwartz graduated from the

College with a major in film studies with a concentration in film and media management and is currently a content director for The Shadowboxers, an American pop band signed with Justin Timberlake that also got their start at Emory.

Although Catlett was unavailable for an interview, Seti and Schwartz spoke to the Wheel about the story behind the Emory Anthem.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Eric Seti: When we made the [Emory Anthem] it was just an experiment for ETV [Emory TV]. It was an exercise in creativity ... I don’t know if you remember but [“Saturday Night Live”] was releasing these little fiveminute videos like “I’m On A Boat.”

Those were really catchy and popular on campus so we wanted to apply that format to the Emory community. I knew Matt and Dashon because we were all in ZBT. And I knew they were really talented from a musical standpoint so

they wrote the music and lyrics and we went off from there.

Matthew Schwartz: In terms of who did what, the lyrics and melody were all Dashon.

The instrumental and the beat was me, and the production was a collaboration between Eric and [me].

I was given a camera when I was 8 years old, and I had been making shorts and films and music videos of that nature, handing in videos instead of writing essays throughout middle school and high school.

Everything was leading up for me continuing to have a camera in my hands.

ES: [The video] picked up speed pretty quickly.

The weekend it was dropped there were like 20,000 views within the two-day period in which we put it on YouTube.

MS: My privacy definitely disappeared once the video was released.

Definitely in the Emory community, even a few times in an internship at

MTV, whenever I ran into an Emory alum ... It was interesting, walking through the DUC — as we got older — when we were juniors and seniors, the freshmen that came in, they wanted to take pictures with us.

MS: Everything was hyper relevant to our exact experience at the time at Emory.

I actually failed pre-med which is where the line in the song comes from.

I got weeded out in gen chem, and I haven’t looked back since. And I feel very lucky that I did. Many of those lines are now outdated but kinda served as a time capsule to what Emory was like in 2010.

ES: The thing that kind of makes me laugh at myself. You realize how quickly things change. When you hear references to LearnLinks and BBMs and Zaya’s. You realize how fast the world changes.

MS: There seems to be a common theme with a lot of creative [people] that came out of Emory. They didn’t

get the support or the respect that they deserved from faculty and professors — everything was very educational based, and it seems like they want to encourage you to become a professor and discourage you from becoming a true creative.

MS: Be yourself. Be fearless. Follow your heart. Sometimes you need to weigh emotions and logic. I t’s okay to lean into your dreams even if professors and the environment you’re in push you to stick to the more logical approach.

ES: I certainly wouldn’t trade the types of things that we did at Emory for anything. Even if they don’t have a direct relationship to what I’m doing now, I think it just speaks to the opportunities you have at Emory to do things outside your comfort zone and take advantage of opportunities of things you might not have once school is done.

— Contact Aditya Prakash at aditya.prakash@emory.edu

14

SportS

Wednesday, october 25, 2017

Swoop’S Scoop Sport

Opponent

Time

Volleyball

Washington & Lee

4:30 p.m.

Friday

Volleyball

Randolph-Macon

7 p.m.

Oct. 27

W Soccer

Carnegie Mellon

7:30 p.m.

M Soccer

Carnegie Mellon

5 p.m.

Cross Country

UAA Championships

Volleyball

All Day

Berry

Volleyball

12:30 p.m.

Webster

3 p.m.

Sunday

M Soccer

Case Western reserve

11 a.m.

Oct. 29

W Soccer

Case Western reserve

1:30 p.m.

Saturday Oct. 28

*Home Games in Bold

The Emory Wheel

Vettel Chases Fifth On World Championship Fire

Continued from Back Page

World Championship lead over Vettel by 66 points. But there remains a thin ray of hope shining over the German for a Championship win this year. Vettel, a four-time Formula one (F1) World Champion with red Bull racing, moved to Scuderia Ferrari, the oldest team in F1, on a three-year contract that was extended another three years in August 2017.

Many say that Vettel lost his spark after his move from red Bull racing to Ferrari in 2015, failing to secure first place in season standings since the switch.

With only three races left in the season, it is still unclear whether Vettel will succeed in his pursuit for a fifth World Championship and his first World Championship title with Ferrari.

Vettel will need at least two first-place finishes and one second-place finish.

Even if Vettel were to achieve victories, it is highly unlikely that the four-time champion would be able to win the Championship this year, because it would require Hamilton to not put anymore points between him and the German.

— Contact Parth Mody at parth.mody@emory.edu

Eagles Face Burke, Team Build Soccer Eyes Final UAA Steam in Home Meet NCAA Stretch Tourney Continued from Back Page

Continued from Back Page to focus on finishing.”

In practices, McDowell stressed two strategies for mental toughness. First, she told players to focus on what occurs on Emory’s side of the net. While they can’t control how the opposing team receives or hits a ball, they can focus on every player and every moment of contact on their end. Second, McDowell used the phrase “love the 20s” to put emphasis on finishing the last five points of every game with the best level of play possible. “this coming weekend is really big for us, as these are our last matches before [the University Athletic Association (UAA) Championship],” Carr said. “It’s [also] our senior weekend, so we’re excited to celebrate [senior captain and setter Hannah Billings].”

Carr hopes that with the excitement of senior weekend, a loud crowd and a home court advantage, the team will be able to pick up four more victories before heading to the UAA Championship in November. the Eagles play at home oct. 27 for the Emory Invitational against Washington and Lee University (Va.) at 4:30 p.m. and randolph-Macon College (Va.) at 7 p.m. they will then play Berry College (Ga.) at 12:30 p.m. and Webster University (Mo.) at 3 p.m. oct. 28.

— Contact Allison Gelman at allison.gelman@emory.edu

my money. It was a good, tight race, and I appreciate all the competition I can get.”

Copses considered Saturday’s performance to be a good indicator that the team is on the right path.

“Saturday was definitely our best meet so far, especially in comparison to our performance against Queens, which was a little rough,” Copses said. “overall, this meet was better, and we put in a lot of solid work.” on the women’s side, tearing up the competition, junior Julia Durmer was Emory’s top performer with three individual victories. In addition to Durmer, senior Cindy Cheng collected two individual first place finishes. overall, 11 Eagles secured individual wins. one of Durmer’s victories came in the 1000-yard freestyle. Durmer pieced together a terrific race, touching 12 seconds before the No. 2 finisher at [insert time].

“It was the third week in a row that I swam the 1000 freestyle, and that requires 40 laps,” Durmer said. “the 1000 freestyle is exhausting but in the best way possible since it was a really fun race.”

A transfer from the University of Virginia in Spring 2017, Durmer said that she already feels a strong sense of confidence in her new team. “this semester I really feel like I’m part of something really special,” Durmer said. “people are training really well, the team is really cohesive and

there has been great communication.

So, I feel like we are in a really good place.”

Durmer mentioned that it was exciting to swim at home for the first time this year and to have the support of a home crowd.

“It was [Family] Weekend, and it was really fun having so many people in the stands,” Durmer said.

Emory’s top relay teams also played a major role in Emory’s success Saturday. the 200-yard medley team, which consisted of senior Sia Beasley, juniors Meg taylor and Ashley Daniels and sophomore Maria Kyle, touched the wall with a time of 1:49.50. taylor, juniors Hannah Baratz and Fiona Muir and freshman Bethany Seagraves led the way in the 200-yard freestyle relay, posting a time of 1:38.72.

In regard to the team’s performance, Howell mentioned that many contributors helped to make Saturday’s meet successful.

“We are a large group, and there are a lot of moving pieces and a lot of people that contribute to what we do,” Howell said. “It is hard for me to think about just a few key people because there were a lot of high points and a lot of things we accomplished.” the Eagles will be back at the WoodpEC for a two-day meet Nov. 3 and Nov. 4 when they compete against Wingate University (N.C.), Catawba College (N.C.) and Georgia Southern University.

— Contact Stephen Mattes at stephen.mattes@emory.edu

Continued from Back Page from UAA teams,” Ferguson said. “We are always going to fight and battle during those games, and maybe some nonconference games we take it a little bit easier than we should.” the Eagles go into their last three conference games with a solid 11-4 record. they play the Carnegie Mellon tartans at Carnegie Mellon University (pa.) oct. 27. the Eagles and tartans have tied every game they played against each other the past four years, according to Greiner. the teams’ meetings in the past two years have included one red card for each team, Greiner said.

“It is kind of a non-traditional rivalry in recent years,” Greiner said. “they are fighting for their life right now, kind of like we are for an NCAA bid. It’s easy to say it’s a crucial game [because] every game is at this point, [but] it is going to be a very important game for us moving forward in terms of UAA standings.” the Eagles currently rest in a fourway tie atop the UAA standings with a conference 3-1 record. A first-place UAA finish would earn the Eagles an automatic bid to the NCAA championship. otherwise, the team must put its faith in the selection committee and hope to earn an at-large bid into the tournament.

— Contact Anwesha Guha at anwesha.guha@emory.edu

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Head Coach Resigns, Citing Health Issues

By Alec WoodArd Contributing Writer

Emory women’s basketball Head Coach Christy thomaskutty has resigned, she announced oct. 5. thomaskutty led the Eagles to a 187-166 overall record during her 14-year tenure.

She posted record seasons for wins in 2012-2013, consecutive wins in 2013-2014 (14 in a row) and Emory’s highest-ever Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) ranking at No. 7 for the 2013-14 season. thomaskutty resigned as a result of health issues, according to an oct.

5 Emory Athletics press release. She told Emory Athletics that she is “fine and doing well,” but that health issues “have left [her] without the energy needed to coach these young women at the level which they deserve.”

Assistant Coach Misha Jackson (13C) replaced thomaskutty as interim head coach for the 2017-2018 season.

Jackson played for the Eagles from 2011-2013 and was promoted from volunteer assistant to full-time assistant coach for the 2013-2014 season.

“I can’t think of a more deserving person than [Jackson] to take over the coaching duties and to represent Emory University,” thomaskutty said.

Jackson, an Atlanta native, was selected for the first WBCA “thirty Under 30” list of upcoming women’s basketball coaches in 2016.

Nevertheless, replacing thomaskutty is no small task. Jackson said it was a “surprise” and that she is “sad to see her go.” thomaskutty was a “huge part of the program,” according to Jackson.

“At first it was a little nerve-wracking, but I was lucky to learn under Coach thomaskutty,” Jackson said of her new position.

Junior center Ashley oldshue, who started all 25 games last season, said that thomaskutty’s departure was “shocking because [she knew] how

dedicated [thomaskutty] was to the program.” oldshue believes the coaching change is a good one, citing her close relationship with Jackson, who was previously her position coach.

Jackson faces a season without any senior players, but oldshue said, “I feel really good; it’s weird not to have seniors, but the sophomores are stepping up.”

Emory women’s basketball begins their season at home against the rhodes College (tenn.) Lynx Nov. 15.

— Contact Alec Woodard at alec.woodard@emory.edu

“Everyone, red state, blue state, supports space exploration.”

— Bill Nye

Last night, the Los Angeles Dodgers took on the Houston Astros for Game one of the 2017 Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series. However, before your on Fire correspondent can give his or her expert prediction, one road block regarding the whole matter remains: Why the hell is this called the “World Series”? there is only one non-American team in the MLB, the toronto Blue Jays, and they have not advanced to the World Series in nearly 25 years.

While the National Football League (NFL) uses an apt adjective to describe their championship — “Super” — the MLB fails to find an adequate description. to be clear, your on Fire correspondent is not suggesting that the league downgrade its championship to the “Continental Series” or some other non-overtly-superior name. rather, why settle for “World Series” when “Universal Series” is still available?

With Venus and Jupiter contributing as much to the DodgersAstros matchup as say, Lithuania or Micronesia, it makes no sense for the MLB not to expand its scope. With both baseball and mass consumption serving as pinnacles of American culture, why not try to tame outer space and claim its namesake for the championship series? there is truly no better time to make this change than right now. Hell, the team representing the American League in this year’s matchup is the Houston Astros. If Neil Armstrong could stick our flag in the moon, there’s no reason we can’t stick our flag into the entire concept of the extraterrestrial for the sheer sake of attaining the most grandiose adjective for our baseball championship.

With the Houston Astros’ core identity intertwined with that of universal domination, they should have no problem defeating a Los Angeles team whose name evokes imagery of obstruction or “dodging.” Baseball experts all agree that team mascots are the single most important determining factor when it comes to championship success. Look at the New York Yankees. obviously a team embodying American greatness would have the most championships; the real mystery is why they don’t win every year. to support this claim, it’s worthwhile to compare stars from both the Astros and the Dodgers. on Houston’s end, they have designated hitter Evan Gattis. If you were to play a game of pictionary and were assigned the word “girth monster,” a picture of Gattis would be an automatic victory. Gattis is the type of dude to get in the shower and then turn on the water — cold.

He’s the type of guy who wouldn’t use oven mitts. He is the epitome of American grit. on the other end, the Dodgers have pitcher rich Hill. this crafty left-hander has the body type of a dad throwing spirals to the neighborhood kids at a barbeque, not loopy curveballs to MLB hitters. to your on Fire correspondent, the prediction for this year’s Series is simple: the team that aims to conquer space with a contemporary paul Bunyan should have no problem routing a team whose eluding identity is paired with a Wrangler-wearin’ man going through a midlife crisis.

Astros over the Dodgers in four games.

The Emory Wheel

Wednesday, october 25, 2017

Everything runs on data, and understanding data is the essential skill for the 21st century.

To thrive in this world, you have to know how to turn data into concrete results that serve a bigger purpose.

Available Majors: • • •

Our innovative majors combine a top tier liberal arts education with a rigorous math, statistics, and programming curriculum to give students a competitive edge.

to learn more, visit 404-727-6830 | iqtm@emory.edu

15

The Emory Wheel

Sports

Wednesday, October 25, 2017 | Sports Editor: Kevin Kilgour (kkilgou@emory.edu)

SWIMMING & DIVING

VOLLEYBALL

With 4 Injured, Team Lineup Tested

By AlliSon GelMAn Senior Staff Writer

Courtesy of A lison MAi

Sophomore swimmer Maria Turcanu competes in the 200-yard butterfly at home against Birmingham-Southern College (Ala.) Oct. 21. Turcanu won the event with a time of 2:12.03.

Eagles Glide, Dive to Victory

By Stephen MAtteS Senior Staff Writer

the Emory men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams trounced Birmingham-Southern College (Ala.) at home Saturday, oct. 21. the men’s team secured a convincing victory, 163-121. Likewise, the women’s team earned a decisive 173-111 result.

Emory’s strong showing Saturday came a week after a loss at the hands of a Division II squad, Queens University of Charlotte (N.C.), 187-75 (men’s) and 169.5-92.5 (women’s).

With Saturday’s meet taking place early in the season, Head Coach Jon Howell said that the team executed at a high level. “the goal for Saturday was to apply a lot of what we had been doing at

practice to a competitive environment,” Howell said. “We wanted to learn from what we did well so we could move forward.” one of the men’s top performers was sophomore diver trevor Burke, who posted the top score in both of his events.

Burke dominated in the three- and one-meter dives, defeating the No. 2 diver by more than 50 points in each event. His two No. 1 finishes contributed 18 points to the men’s total of 163 on the day. the men’s team found success individually and as a part of relay teams. twelve Eagles recorded individual victories, including freshman Sven Mesihovic, who posted a No. 1 time in two events.

Freshman Sage ono, senior Michael

MEN’S SOCCER

Emory Rebounds, Bounces Berry 4-0

By AnWeShA GuhA Associate Editor

Emory men’s soccer turned around last week’s defeats by securing a 4-0 win against the Berry College (Ga.) Vikings oct. 22 at home.

With this being their last non-conference game of the season, the Eagles were in dire need of a win. A bitter 3-1 loss to oglethorpe University (Ga.) oct. 18 was an unwanted setback for the team, potentially tarnishing their season in the eyes of the NCAA selection committee. “they responded really well, they took it seriously, realized this is our last non-conference game,” Interim Head Coach Cory Greiner said. “they came out with a chip on their shoulder and had a bit of a point to prove.”

Junior defender Aidan Datene scored the first goal, netting the ball in the left corner of the goal in the 20th minute, his second goal of the season, thanks to an assist by senior forward Michael Carragher. the Vikings blocked shots from both Datene and Carragher on two other occasions in the first half, keeping the score tight at 1-0 heading into halftime.

Datene now has two goals and two assists for the season, a notable

achievement for a defender.

“We have had a lot of guys step up this year,” senior center midfielder Alex Ferguson said. “[Datene] in particular, coming in big playing on the wing. I’m happy that a lot of people are scoring.” the second half started with the each team’s defense denying their opponent a goal.

It was not until the 68th minutes that senior forward Jason McCartney scored the Eagles’ second goal off a penalty kick because of a Vikings foul.

McCarthy followed it just five minutes later with a third goal assisted by Ferguson and junior defender Evan Floersch.

As a result, McCartney’s goal count has increased to five this season.

Sophomore midfielder Keegan McCombie wrapped up the game with the fourth and final goal with just three minutes remaining. this game ends the two-game losing streak the Eagles suffered last week at the hands of Brandeis University (Ma.) and oglethorpe, which was the Eagles’ third loss against a non-conference opponent this season.

“We know what we are going to get

See SOCCeR, page 14

Grenon, sophomore Andrew Dupont and junior Alex Kohlman sealed a victory in the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 1:35.38.

In the 200-yard freestyle relay, junior Zachary Chen, senior Alexander Hardwick, sophomore Connor McCourt and freshman Connor Duggan swam past the opposition with a time of 1:26.86.

Senior Henry Copses was victorious in the 1000-yard freestyle, beating the No. 2 swimmer by a fraction of a second with a time of 9:48.23.

“From a personal perspective, I was little scared since it was a close race throughout,” Copses said. “I want to give props to the BirminghamSouthern kid who gave me a run for

See BURke, page 14

Despite lineup changes as a result of various injuries, Emory’s volleyball team returned home with two victories oct. 22 with a 21-5 record. the Eagles began Sunday with a swift victory over Hendrix College (Ark.) 3-0 before fighting their way to a 3-2 win over Birmingham-Southern College (Ala.). “this was a different type of week for us because it was so unusual for us to just play on Sunday, but it’s one of those things that’s different but also good,” Head Coach Jenny McDowell said. playing solely at the tail end of the weekend made for a quick turnaround between games but allowed the team more time to make adjustments.

Emory continues to grapple with the loss of numerous key players, including junior middle hitter Sydney Leimbach with an ACL injury that took her out for the rest of the season, freshman middle hitter Maggie rimmel with a leg injury, sophomore right side Katie Kane with a back injury and freshman middle hitter Haley Stevenson with a shoulder injury.

Junior right side and setter Carly Saitman stepped up and maintained a .556 kill percentage in the Hendrix match, and freshman right side Leah Saunders posted 22 total attacks.

McDowell subbed in junior defensive specialist Mila Barzdukas on multiple occasions to make consistent serves for the Eagles.

“Barzdukas is an incredibly hard worker … and was really a difference maker this weekend,” McDowell said. the team struggled with the quick turnaround during the BirminghamSouthern game, McDowell explained.

Emory began this second match neck and neck with Birmingham-Southern, winning the first set 27-25. the two teams went back and forth.

Emory won the first, third and fifth match, and Birmingham-Southern won the second and fourth matches.

During the game, sophomore defensive specialist Elyse thompson made an Emory volleyball record of 38 digs within the 5 sets. this was thompson’s fourth time making more than 30 digs in a game this season. thompson also led a seven-serve streak in the third set, allowing Emory to gain the upper hand.

In the final set, the Eagles, down 12-14, fought against immense pressure and defended against two consecutive match points from Birmingham-Southern. through the combination of blocks from Saitman and Saunders, serves from thompson and kills from sophomore outside hitter Sara Carr, the Eagles won four consecutive points, winning the final match 16-14. the team has been steadily working in practice at improving the mental game, key aspects to Sunday’s wins, according to Carr.

“We ended up staying mentally tough,” Carr said. “our theme has been

See eAGLeS, page 14

FORMULA 1

Courtesy of federAtion internAtionAle de l’AutoMobile

Sebastian Vettel’s team works on his Ferrari during a pit stop at the 2017 U.S Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. The four-time world champion finished No. 2 in the Oct. 22 race.

Hamilton Bests Vettel in GP By pArth Mody photo Editor

the lights went out. Sebastian Vettel accelerated down the hill, overtaking the pole position leader, Lewis Hamilton, for the lead at the U.S. Grand prix in Austin, texas Sunday, oct. 22. Ferrari had a phenomenal evening thanks to Vettel and fellow teammate Kimi raikkonen. But Hamilton emerged victorious, overtaking his German nemesis, Vettel, in the first lap. Hamilton completed the Circuit

of the Americas with a time of 1:33.50, more than 10 seconds faster than No. 2 Vettel. the final standings generated feelings of both joy and despair. Max Verstappen, the youngest driver to ever race in a Grand prix at 17 years old in 2015, started the race in the 16th slot but experienced engine problems in the first lap of the race. A charging drive made up for his slow start, which earned him a spot on the podium just below Vettel at No. 3. But Verstappen procured a 5-second penalty for over-

taking raikkonen outside track limits, dropping the Dutchman to No. 4 in the final standings. that drop secured Ferrari two much-needed podium finishes after their failure to reach the podium at Suzuka, Sepang and Marina Bay. Even with the results of the race, Ferrari is 147 points behind Mercedes, effectively cementing Mercedes as No. 1 and Ferrari as No. 2 for the 2017 Constructors’ World Championship.

Hamilton went on to extend his

See VeTTeL, page 14