Homecoming Happiness
Survey finds majority of students are voting for Kamala Harris
By Izayah Morgan Editorial Staff
By Sophia Oppedisano Editorial Staff
By Antonio Machado Staff Writer
The Gatepost conducted an unscientific survey of 300 students and found 78.5% who are registered to vote plan to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming presidential election.
According to the survey, 17.1% plan to support former President Donald Trump. The remaining 4.4% plan to vote for Green Party, Libertarian, Socialist, or Independent candidates on
the ballot.
The survey was conducted between Oct. 1 and Oct. 18.
Of the survey respondents, 79% are registered to vote, and 9% planned to register before the registration deadline. Twelve percent are not registered to vote.
Students were also surveyed about where they stood on important political issues (see data on Page 6).
Most respondents are either affiliated with the Democratic Party (49.7%) or are Independent voters (40.7%). Approximately 9.3% percent of students identify as Republicans, and 0.3% are Libertarians.
The major-party candidates for the 2024 election are Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Major polls have indicated Harris and Trump have been tied since Harris received the Democratic nomination in August.
Some respondents said they wish they could vote for a candidate not affiliated with one of the major parties, but are discouraged by the current political environment.
One anonymous survey respondent wrote, “I would love to vote Green, but it’s risky and unrealistic right now.”
Of the survey respondents, 55% identified as white, 19.3% as Latina/o/x or Hispanic, 17.3% as African American, African, or Afro Caribbean, 6% as Asian or Asian American, and 0.3% as Native American or Alaska Native.
Sixty-two percent identified as fe-
The Art Club draws itself together again
By Ryan O’Connell Associate Editor
As the years have passed at Framingham State, a lot of clubs have been created and forgotten. And the nature of a four-year university makes it easy for student organizations to quietly fall apart. Whether it’s because of the original creator graduating, a lack of interest in maintaining a full eBoard, or even an unprepared successor, there are dozens of reasons why a club might disband.
And once it has been disbanded, it’s hard to start back up.
Renewed clubs must navigate the
extra hurdles of hashing out administrative work with the Student Experience office and no reserved financial budget, all the while clawing for the attention of the student body - because without attendees, it is doomed to fizzle out again.
This is to say that maintaining a club is difficult and often thankless work. And restarting a club is even harder.
Paige Rainville did it anyway.
This semester, the Art Club has been revitalized by its three new eBoard members - President Paige Rainville, Vice President Miranda Allicon, and Secretary David Abe - and has had great success at their events this year, with 50 students attending their latest gath-
ering.
Rainville, a studio art major with a concentration in education, attributes the success of the club this year to the work of her and her vice president.
Rainville said the both of them are RAMs Peer Mentors, and get to advertise their events to their classes often.
She added she was also an orientation leader and was able to both advertise the Art Club and field ideas for events to incoming freshmen during the summer.
Rainville said this is her first semester as the president of the Art Club, but started work on the club last spring.
Emma Lyons / THE GATEPOST
Members of the Floorlords Breakdancing Troupe enjoying the Moonlight Breakfast on Oct. 26.
E ditorial Board
Editor-in-Chief
Sophia Harris
Associate Editors
Maddison Behringer
Ryan O’Connell
Copy Editor
Emma Lyons
News Editor
Dylan Pichnarcik
Asst. News Editors
Kaitlin Carman
Adam Harrison
Opinions Editor
Izayah Morgan
Sports Editor
Sophia Oppedisano
Asst. Sports Editors
Riley Crowell
Izabela Gage
Arts & Features Editors
Raena Hunter Doty
Francisco Omar Fernandez Rodriguez
Asst. Arts & Features Editors
Owen Glancy
Bella Omar
Photos & Design Editors
Adrien Gobin
Alexis Schlesinger
Asst. Photos & Design Editor
Meghan Spargo
Illustrations Editor
Ben Hurney
Asst. Illustrations Editors
David Abe
Emily Monaco
Staff Writers
Jesse Burchill
Sarah Daponde
Liv Dunleavy
Bella Grimaldi
Paul Harrington
Christy Howland
Taylor Kimmell
Dan Lima
Antonio Machado
Daniel Meade
Spencer Pearson
Anthony Pintado
Emma Schor
Anthony Sims
Kyra Tolley
Michael Trueswell
Celia Williams
Staff Photographers
Meg Dame
Oné Green
Travis Plummer
Staff Illustrators
Ronnie Chiu-Lin
Charlotte Fabrizi
Marcus Falcão
Advisor
Desmond McCarthy
Asst. Advisor
Elizabeth Banks
100 State Street
McCarthy Center Room 410
Framingham, MA 01701-9101
Phone: (508) 626-4605
Fax: (508) 626-4097
gatepost@framingham.edu
@T heGatepost | FSU gatepost.com
Gatepost Interview Felix Mwangi
Lead AV Technician, Office of Campus Events
By Kaitlin Carman Asst. News Editor
Can you please describe your position?
I’m the Campus Events audio visual lead technician. The lead tech basically just means that I take care of it all. I work under campus events, because my job is basically to take care of all the technology needed for all the events on campus. … Currently, I’m in charge of three student techs.
What got you interested in this field?
I’ve always been a musician since I was a little kid. I’ve played at my dad’s church since I was 12 years old. I played piano. Piano is my main instrument. When I was young, I was getting involved in music and playing with little bands here and there. But then at some point in my teenage years, I started getting an interest in what it is putting music together. I listen to music, and I hear all the different pieces of what’s happening in the music. I just was curious about how whoever did this put it all together, and the levels of all the instruments and the voices. I was listening more intensely - hearing what’s happening in all the music. I’ve always loved different genres of music. Knowing about that career, which is a music producer or recording engineer, is how I started getting an interest in wanting to do that more. I visited my first recording studio, probably when I was, like, 13 or 14. At the time, we didn’t even have computers - there was no recording with computers. They had these big machines in the studio and it just really fascinated me. Also, I was helping - because I always had that real technical mindset - at my church, [where] my dad was a pastor. When they had issues with microphones, I’d step in and figure out what the issue was, and just help out as much as possible.
What is your educational and professional background?
My background is - I am a music producer and sound engineer. I went to Berklee College of Music to study music production and sound engineering, or audio engineering, and that was my major. After graduating, I set up a recording studio in Boston and I did that for a while. But while I was doing that as part of my services, I was also pro-
viding sound for live bands all over New England. … So between my company and working freelance for other companies, I [got] my hands into the whole AV world of setting up projectors, lighting, and all kinds of stuff. During COVID, my business kind of suffered because there weren’t any events out there. During that time, I actually saw a posting from the University looking for an AV tech. So I was like, ‘You know what? I haven’t
done a regular job in a while. Let me just give it a try.’ And I applied, came in for the interview, and that’s how I got the job. I’ve been here for about two-and-ahalf years now.
What are some challenges you face?
So the thing about being an AV tech is, you always have to be alert and aware of everything that’s happening during an event. Like, an event can be very interesting, but you can’t be so swallowed up by what’s happening at the event that you forget that you’re there to do the job. So you always have to keep that in mind. As interesting as what the presenter is doing, if the mic stops working
Police Logs
Monday, Oct. 28 10:18
Medical Emergency, Athletic Center Transported to Hospital
Tuesday, Oct. 29 1:23
Parking Enforcement, Salem End Lot Citation Issued
Wednesday, Oct. 30 3:18
or something, you’re the first person that has to be aware of that. The challenge is just trying to always be aware of all the technical stuff that’s happening at an event, not even just on top of it, but ahead of it - trying to think of what could happen before [it happens].
What hobbies do you enjoy?
My hobby is still kind of related to my career, because I love going to concerts. Some concerts I go to, I go in to do the work, because I’m a sound engineer for that concert. But sometimes, I like to go and just enjoy the show - just kind of see what the bands have to do. I went to a Santana concert just a few months ago, and it was great. It’s a great show because it was Santana and Earth, Wind and Fire - great music. Being a musician. I definitely like a lot of shows that have good musicians. I’ve been to several shows, but Dave Matthews Bandthey’re great. Maybe … it’s because of my age, but I definitely tend to prefer a lot of the older bands that have been around for a long time. I’ve heard some of the new stuff, but I tend to gravitate more toward the old school kind of bands and the sound because more of them [include] live instruments and they don’t use too much programmed … music.
What is your advice to students and those interested in AV?
Take advantage of everything that Framingham State has to offer. I mean, there’s a lot of opportunities for you as a student. There’s a lot of clubs. With me being an AV Tech, I go to a lot of meetings, even with the administration, and everybody - the faculty and staffseems to be doing everything they can to give the students a better experience while they’re here. So I’d say, for the students, try to take advantage of that and just make it the best that it can be while you’re here. And then now for the [student] AV techs, I try my best to teach them as much as I can - what kind of equipment they can use when they’re here or even when they graduate. So, coming through the AV tech position, you get to experience working with different pieces of equipment that eventually can help you in your life after you graduate.
CONNECT WITH KAITLIN CARMAN kcarman@student.framingham.edu
Alarm / Trouble Signal, Corinne Hall Towers No Police Services Necessary
Wednesday, Oct. 30 11:00
Community Outreach, Hemenway Hall Assignment Complete
Courtesy of Felix Mwangi
Survey
Continued from Page 1
male, 31% as male, 6% as non-binary or gender non-conforming, and 1% as transgender.
The Gatepost survey asked students to rate 10 significant issues in the election on a scale of 0-5 in terms of priority and importance, with 0 indicating no knowledge of the subject, 1 indicating low priority, and 5 indicating high priority.
Protecting American Democracy
Of the students surveyed, 55.3% rated the importance of protecting democracy at a 5, 3.3% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 2.7% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was a low priority to them (see graphic F on Page 6).
President Nancy Niemi said while it doesn’t surprise her that students were less focused on the issue of democracy than other topics in The Gatepost’s survey, it still “bothers” her.
“I am saddened that people don’t pay attention to these things the way I wish they would. I think I’d be a little naive not to know that some of those responses wouldn’t show up on our campus sometimes.
“The work of creating a country in which everyone’s participation is not only secure but truly welcome and invited and nurtured continuously depends on all of us,” she said.
Niemi added the current political discourse promotes the opportunity to “vilify people” and creates false narratives to push the agenda of a particular political candidate.
She said this level of discourse “denies that we all have the right to an equal and powerful opportunity” to get work done in this country.
“Political supporters, particularly of parties on the right … say, ‘Oh, well, all this rhetoric. Nobody really means it. It’s just there to get attention.’ … We have the benefit of history,” she said in reference to the autocracy the world saw before and during World War II.
“I want our students to understand the importance of that and [understand] that not participating is not an option,” she said.
Niemi stressed the value of students thinking about and having smart and civil discourse about the election because of the weight words can hold and how they have the power to lead to action.
“[Students] need to believe that they may only be one vote, but that one vote matters. They have to believe that because if you don’t, then somebody else makes that decision for you. … You have to believe it matters - that you matter.
“We are all a part of this discourse. That’s what I want people to understand. Democracy is built that way, [and] it can go if we don’t help figure this out. It’s much more than about just this vote,” she said.
She added, “If one doesn’t have the opportunity outside of a college campus to have these types of conversations, [Framingham State] fosters that. … I’m very glad to see that reflected in so many different ways, and that reinforces the kind of organization that I know we are,” she said.
Niemi said there are multiple initiatives at FSU to encourage students and faculty to vote, including a Get Out the Vote campaign and scheduling meetings where students are encouraged to
discuss the issues that matter to them.
Kim Galvani, Coordinator at the Office of Transportation, said the campus RamTram will be offering rides to faculty, staff, and students to and from the polling station at the Memorial Building in downtown Framingham throughout Election Day.
Niemi stressed that after Election Day, the same kinds of discourse will be encouraged at both scheduled meetings and during class time among students and professors. She said support for students is of the utmost importance after Election Day.
“I plan to be present … checking in with people, talking about it. It’s important to do that work as well as the Get Out the Vote work because it’s hard to know what to do with those emotions,” Niemi said.
She encourages students and faculty to take whatever steps are necessary to go vote on Election Day, including canceling classes or taking a few hours off during the school day to get to the polls.
“There are very few minutes in the day that I don’t think about this particular vote. … I can’t take advantage of my position … in any way that’s partisan. … I’m mindful of my own space, and I’m encouraged and in empathy with everybody else who’s in a position of authority on campus who also has to think about that,” she said.
Lawrence McKenna, chair of the environment, society, and sustainability department, expressed concern that democracy being undervalued as an issue by student respondents in The Gatepost survey is a crucial misstep in student prioritization of the issues they are voting for in the upcoming election.
He was shocked that only 55.5% of the survey respondents placed the protection of American democracy as a highest-priority issue “because unless we have American democracy, all these other things will go away,” he said.
“I guess that people are more worried about climate change than maintaining American democracy is good in some sense, but without democracy, we’re not going to do anything against climate change,” he said.
McKenna noted that students might not understand the full value of democracy and how crucial it is to the upkeep of America as it stands today and emphasized that it is at stake in the upcoming election.
He said, “Having never had it threatened before in a way that is conceivable and actionable to them, perhaps they don’t understand the threat that is being imposed upon them.
“What I’m worried about is that people don’t think that American democracy is more important than anything else because without it, we don’t have an opportunity to vote,” he said.
Meg Nowak, vice president for student affairs and dean of students, noted that American democracy is a complex issue.
She said she felt “privileged” to live in a country where she has the right to vote even if she is “not sure that our current electoral college process is perfect.
“I am appreciative of the people who have fought for the right of women and BIPOC to fully participate in the process and feel we need to continue to fight for all citizens to have an equal voice,” she added.
Joseph Coelho, chair of the political science, law, and global studies department, noted the support students have for Harris in the survey as well as his surprise that students did not rank issues such as climate change, inflation, and providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants higher.
Coelho said the biggest shock to him was that only 55.5% of students rated protecting democracy as a highest priority.
“I find that to be a little bit disconcerting. … The reason I think that’s happening is because we’re so polarized as a nation.”
He said America’s “culture wars” have also been exported to Europe as far-right parties are beginning to gain more traction.
“You’re seeing polarization there, and as a result, our democratic system[s] don’t seem like they’re addressing problems that young people want to see addressed … so you’re starting to see a lot of younger people feel disaffected or feel like democracy is not the answer to their personal problems,” he added.
“You live in a more globalized, interconnected, and competitive world. … Trying to invest a little bit more time in exposing yourself to multiple opinions, perspectives, and information is probably the best thing to make us a much more informed citizenry, which is crucial for a vibrant democracy,” he said.
Kaylie Valente, a senior, said she was speaking with Coelho and “He was saying something that really resonated with me, which was that [the candidates] have turned [the election] into a joke. It used to be pretty civil.”
She noted how the discourse in the debate has veered away from just talking about the issues and has become a platform for the candidates to “...take constant hits [with] barely any policy talk.
“I believe it was George Washington who said something along the lines that political parties were going to destroy our democracy. I believe that’s what’s happening now,” Valente said.
History Professor Joseph Adelman said civic engagement is necessary for students in order to advocate for the changes they want to see.
Paying attention to issues currently being discussed by the public and actively participating as well as voting is crucial, he said.
Adelman noted the historical importance of the upcoming election with the stark difference between the major-party candidates and said it is important for students to remain informed and engaged in the voting process.
“The two major candidates have presented very different visions of how American democracy should work going forward,” he said.
“Democracy, representative government, requires work and active engagement all the time, and there are times when that can feel overwhelming, but that doesn’t make it less important or less true,” he added.
Adelman explained there are issues far too massive for a single person to solve, such as climate change, but that with enough cooperation and collaboration, progress can be made.
He said, “Doing anything is better than doing nothing and working to make change in your community.
“If there’s anything that American
history has shown, it’s that there’s strength in numbers, and don’t assume that somebody else will speak for you. Find a way to get your voice heard.
“We live in a society where there is the possibility for broad participation in public decision-making. The founders, the people who wrote the Constitution, had a very limited idea of who could participate in that, and we have expanded that to include students, people of color, and women. … We’ve improved on their idea, but the premise is participation.
“We’ve seen that in the last 10 years. The kinds of ways in which people talk about racism and sexism in American culture has changed because people, a lot of them students, have been writing on social media and essentially forced a change in the kinds of terminology that we use in the ways we frame the discussion,” Adelman said.
“You can’t give up and walk away. That cedes the field to the other team. I want people to follow the law. I want people to be nonviolent, but your work doesn’t stop on November 5,” he said.
Sophomore Jordan Ortins said, “I am absolutely terrified for our democracy regardless of who wins this election. … I don’t think our democracy will ever be the same as it once was.”
A national protection of access to abortion
Of the students surveyed, 69.8% rated national protection for abortion access at a 5, a high priority, 2% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 2% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was a low priority for them (see graphic A on Page 6).
According to Psychology Professor Anna Flanagan, “It is a particularly salient issue for college-age individuals, especially women. … I think the protection of your own body and reproductive rights is critically important as people are considering their childbearing years and sexual activity.”
Flanagan said this is a polarizing issue and Republicans are attempting to make it less pressing in the minds of voters.
Psychology Professor Jen Lin said, “Not only have [Republicans] restricted this access, but I think we know what’s next: IVF, birth control, and even sexual education in the public school system.
“I’m very concerned about the slope of the question - where is it going to stop?”
Flanagan said Republicans have made the argument that abortion should be a state issue.
“I have a hard time with that perspective. I don’t believe that where you live in this country should determine whether or not you have certain protections,” Flanagan said.
Lin agreed. “It has a ripple effect for women of minority identities, more so than privileged women - exacerbating the lack of equity we already have in this country.”
Flanagan said, “It’s requiring people to transport themselves across state lines.”
It puts an unnecessary burden on underprivileged and marginalized communities as they may not have the same income level or mobility, Flanagan said.
As people leave certain states because of stricter laws, the political
See SURVEY Page 4
Survey
Continued from Page 3
environment of those states becomes more conservative, Flanagan said.
Lin agreed. “Then we get a self-selection bias and even more polarization in this country.”
Senior Faith Gouveia said, “Trump has made it clear that he wants to take the rights of a woman’s body such as abortion. It has the potential to save a person’s life if pregnancy is a risk.
“I feel Kamala is the better candidate as she supports women’s rights and believes everyone should have control over their own body,” Gouveia added.
Sophomore Althea Norcross said, “Abortion is a medical necessity and shouldn’t be a thing that is debated in government.
“What other people do with their bodies is no one’s business but theirs and their doctor’s,” she added.
Junior Rileigh Kelley said, “Taking abortion away from women is a deliberate attempt at stripping them of their autonomy. Girls and women everywhere are in danger without abortion care.”
Junior Erin Gem said, “I’m very grateful to be in a state that isn’t immediately threatening my rights. However, I think people need to understand that there are still laws that will impact everyone. I believe that people should have their right to do whatever they want with their bodies, but there are a lot of people who don’t share that opinion and are against it.”
A Commitment to Racial Justice
Of the students surveyed, 73.7% rated the need for the United States’ to make a commitment to racial justice at a 5, a high priority, 2% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 1.3% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was a low priority to them (see graphic B on Page 6).
Nowak said she understands why a commitment to racial justice is so important to student respondents in The Gatepost’s survey.
“I think this is important right now because of all the issues which have presented themselves over the last 5-10 years to bring light to racial injustice and hate to the forefront of our discussions and personal decision-making,” she said.
“I am proud to be a leader on a campus that publicly states that it is an ‘antiracist’ campus and promotes racial justice. It is part of our core values and our work. We educate through programming and educating on related topics. We encourage discussions in and outside of the classroom and review/update policies from an antiracist lens,” she said.
Jerome Burke, director for the Center of Inclusive Excellence, said the diverse population of Framingham State reflects the population of the city of Framingham. He was not surprised that students at Framingham State are committed to racial justice.
Burke said he was happy to see how many students are considering racial justice in this election.
“When you look at policy reform, people are having the conversation about whether they will have the same number of rights as those in previous generations. ‘Will my ethnicity determine whether or not I can buy a house in a particular community?’” Burke asked.
He also said it is important to remember there was a period of time when Black people could not vote. Now they and other marginalized groups are exercising the right and focusing on issues that directly affect them.
“The Black community knows very well that if they are not very active in elections … candidates will try to do things that limit them more - such as voter suppression,” Burke said.
“Race is showing up in politics, so much so that both the Republican and Democratic candidates are creating policies that affect minority communities,” Burke said.
He said a major issue is going to be how police engage with underprivileged communities. “Are we going to find a way, if someone commits a crime … to get them back on track?
“Also, if we’re going to do that, are we going to move away from over-policing, which has disproportionately affected Black and brown communities, and find more ways to community police?” he asked.
Junior Cristian Acuna, president of the Brother 2 Brother student organization, said, “As a country, we’re kind of just plateauing right now. We’re just used to what’s been going on for the last couple of years, ever since COVID-19 and the whole George Floyd [tragedy].
“Based on what’s going on in the country and the climate of the justice system when it comes to people of color, I just feel like there’s room for growth, and there’s always needed to be growth.”
Acuna added, “This [election] is pretty different, because it’s important to take into consideration the fact that Kamala Harris could be the first woman, not even just a woman of color, to be president. We’re up against a former president as well - everybody has their opinions on that man. There’s a lot of bad that that man has caused in this world.”
Junior Nicholas Carre said, “Racial justice is important to me because … regardless of gender, sexual orientation or race, everyone deserves an equal opportunity.”
Junior Esther Casseus said, “Overall, I see the shift it’s had on people voting. … I feel like it’s the big issue of this election and it’s where you see whose voice is or is not heard. That’s why it’s important we are active and vote on these issues.”
Protecting LGBTQ+ Rights
Of the students surveyed, 64.7% rated the protection of LGBTQ+ rights at a 5, a high priority, 5.7% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 3% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was a low priority to them (see graphic C on Page 6).
Burke said he came to America for many reasons - one of which was his sexual orientation.
“In Jamaica, it’s an absolute no-no, and to see how much LGBTQ+ issues have been politicized [in the United States] is very concerning,” Burke said.
“To me, it was refreshing to see that students were also considering this, and it is driving them to go vote because those rights need to be protected,” he said.
Burke said during the recent history of the United States, there has been so much done for the LGBTQ+ community in terms of providing anti-discrimination and anti-hate laws. However,
these safeguards are currently under siege.
“When you look at some of the books that have been banned and removed from shelves, a lot of those books are dealing with issues in the LGBTQ+ community.
“Because now, the conversations are different, and we need to allow people to understand that some families might be different. Sometimes, it means two dads, two moms, or two non-binary people,” he said.
“These people are a part of our real life, whether family, friends, or neighbors. Yet when it shows up in the classroom, it’s suddenly a problem,” Burke said.
Senior Hex Strange said, “Trump is in favor of referring to LGBTQ+ students by the name and pronouns on their birth certificate unless given written permission by the parents. The policy may isolate LGBTQ+ students, especially those who are not comfortable coming out yet.”
Junior Aili Schiavoni said, “As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I would like to see my peers be in a position where they don’t have to worry about those rights being infringed upon and that they’re able to express themselves to their truest form without fear.”
Freshman Kimberly Dearo said, “LGBTQ+ rights are the most important [to me] because I am a woman married to another woman. It saddens and troubles me to see that my choice bothers people. People are still losing their lives just for being part of this community, and the threat of having our rights revoked or marginalized truly scares me.”
Stricter Gun Control Measures
Of the students surveyed, 59.3% rated the need for stricter gun control measures at a 5, a high priority, 3.3% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 4% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was a low priority to them (see graphic J on Page 6).
Framingham State Deputy Police Chief Martin Laughlin noted the daily inundation of news coverage on active shooters and these reports’ influence on students.
“Back when I was kid, we didn’t have any such thing like that, but I think in regards to the news media and … all the active shooters in mostly schools, I think it does raise their awareness in regards to gun control itself,” he said.
Police Chief Joseph Cecchi said Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey recently passed a gun control bill that aims to crack down on ghost guns, which are homemade firearms, and strengthen violence prevention.
Regarding Healey’s bill, Cecchi and Laughlin said students are fortunate to live in a state with stricter gun laws.
To further educate themselves, Cecchi and Laughlin urge students to take advantage of the active shooter training the department offers and read Healey’s bill and other state and national gun legislation.
In the meantime, they said the department will continue to do the utmost to protect students and faculty. They noted that if students or faculty have concerns about their safety, they can report them to the police department at any time.
“We want to make sure that the campus is safe and that you can get your higher education degree here without
worrying about safety,” Cecchi said.
Senior Adriana Baldelli said despite her plan to vote for Harris, she sees value in protecting the right to bear arms so women have an opportunity to defend themselves as long as they are legally cleared to carry a firearm and have the proper licensure.
“I think that being able to have a right to bear arms and to be able to [defend yourself] is important, especially as a woman,” she said.
Freshman Cat Schiappa said, “When I was in middle school, I experienced a school shooting threat. I don’t want that to happen to anybody else. Nobody in the world deserves to live under that fear. It’s so horrible to see on the news every day that another school shooting has happened, and we need to vote for someone who will take action and make this stop.”
Senior Adrianna Puccio said it is imperative that civilians are banned from buying assault rifles and there is legislation passed for more thorough background checks because “people who aren’t supposed to have guns, fail a background check, or plan to do harm will always find a way to get [guns].”
Providing Student Debt Relief
Of the students surveyed, 55% rated concerns about student debt relief at a 5, a high priority, 2.3% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 3% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was a low priority to them (see graphic D on Page 6).
Benjamin Alberti, professor of anthropology, said students should not have to worry about student debt relief because higher education should be subsidized.
“I come from a context in the U.K. where when I went to university, it was free,” Alberti said.
He said students didn’t have to pay anything. If they could not cover the cost of food, it would be subsidized.
“Even in the situation that my parents were relatively well off, they just had to pay something toward my maintenance, which was maybe $3,000 a year,” Alberti said.
“To me, it demonstrates how normalized debt is here. It has become that if you go to college, you will come out with some debt,” he said.
Alberti said students anticipate going into debt because “that’s just what happens.” If people are offered the option to go to college with no debt, they would approach their educational experience differently.
Junior Nasir Francilon said, “I personally hate student debt and believe in student debt relief. … I believe in education as a human right, so it should be free.”
Senior Jeslie Daveiga said, “Student debt is ridiculous and then having students pay that all back is stupid. We already have to pay so much and making us pay after school is crazy.”
Sophomore Paige Rainville said, “I will be accruing a good amount of debt after being here in school, and I’m sure I’m not alone. I feel that if debt relief becomes an option in our futures, then not only would that provide a great foundation for our life ahead, but also our life when we are raising children of our own.
“I have a friend who is a mom of three, and she’s still paying her college loans,” she added.
See SURVEY Page 5
Survey
Continued from Page 4
Sophomore Alexandria Rose said, “I had to take out loans to be able to attend school this year. Tuition cost is already so expensive before residence fees, and some people don’t come from the best backgrounds. Scholarships don’t cover even a quarter of tuition costs or the amenities and cost of living.
“Not many people are taking the discussion of debt seriously. If you or someone you care about aren’t directly impacted, people don’t care, but it’s a huge problem everywhere,” she added.
Health Care Affordability
Of the students surveyed, 69% rated concern about health care affordability at a 5, a high priority, only 0.7% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 0.7% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was of low priority to them (see graphic G on Page 6).
Ellen Rearick, chair of the nursing department, said rising health care costs significantly impact college students, specifically those who are nearing graduation and entering the job market.
Rising health care costs impact the ability of students to afford essentials such as housing and food, she added.
“Understanding health care affordability is crucial because it directly affects your financial stability and access to necessary medical services. … Being informed about health care policies can help you make better decisions about your health and finances,” she said.
Rearick said students should evaluate the health care policies proposed by both state and national candidates.
According to Rearick, students are responsible for researching candidates’ platforms, comparing their policies, and considering the long-term effects of those policies to effectively educate themselves.
She added students should refer to reliable sources such as Politifact to get non-partisan, fact-checked information about each candidate’s health care policies.
Easing the Rate of Inflation
Of the students surveyed, 57% rated the importance of easing the inflation rate at a 5, a high priority, 2% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 1.3% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was a low priority to them (see graphic H on Page 6).
Robert Totino, vice president of finance, technology, and chief financial officer, said inflation is “not easy to overcome if you’re working one, two, or more part-time jobs and paying for your college education, trying to be affordable paying for things like rent or food.”
Totino noted that wages do not increase at the annual rate of inflation, making comfortable living tough for students.
However, Totino said the inflation rate has decreased in the last few years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of inflation was 8.3% in August 2022 compared to the current rate of inflation, which is currently hovering around 2.4% as of August 2024.
Totino said the lower rate of inflation is “not great, but manageable,” as it will allow employers to provide wage increases that can match the inflation rate.
“You always would like to see an employer provide raises which are higher than the rate of inflation, so that college students … can not only pay for the costs of goods and services that are going up in their world, but they can also put some money away, too,” Totino said.
A student who wished to remain anonymous praised former President Donald Trump for his work on the United States economy when he was in office.
“The economy was a lot better when he was the president. He might have said some stupid stuff because he really doesn’t know how to publicly talk. I don’t really agree with everything he says, but you can’t deny the numbers. Unemployment was at an all-time low. The economy was at an all-time high. People were getting paid more than in the past 20 years,” the student said.
More action on curbing climate change
Of the students surveyed, 61.3% rated taking action to curb climate change at a 5, a high priority, 3% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 2.7% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was a low priority to them (see graphic E on Page 6).
McKenna said, “There is cognitive dissonance that seems to be affecting how we are [talking about] climate change. Cognitive dissonance is how people maintain that climate change is not happening, even though I’m wearing shorts on October 24.
“They know it’s happening, but they can’t believe it. It’s too much of a threat, so you get this cognitive dissonance where you’re holding two different things as true at the same time, even though they’re mutually exclusive,” he added.
McKenna said the idea of combating climate change may feel overwhelming to students but suggested ways in which they can advocate for curbing it.
McKenna said, “The really difficult thing about climate change, and the reason I think that so many people feel that they don’t have agency with climate change, is because it [that] takes collective action.
“That sort of collective action, where you generate, where you nucleate change in others, is what climate change requires, because it requires a political decision, an ethical decision, and that ethical decision has to be magnified by the participation of others. It’s a big thing for an 18-year-old to think, ‘Oh my gosh, how am I going to do this?’ Well, you vote. You write emails. You become educated. You talk to others,” he added.
“The most persuasive thing you can do to convince others about the necessity of acting in terms of reducing the long-term effects of climate change on the planet is to talk to people in your family, in your friend group, who don’t think it’s a problem and share personal information and ideas with them,” he said.
Junior Veronica Nunez said, “I feel as if climate change is apparent. Before, it already would be cold out but it’s like 70 degrees at the end of October. Even in Alaska, there’s greenery growing out there, when Alaska is known to be cold.”
A student who wished to remain anonymous said, “Fracking is one of my biggest concerns at the moment. More third-world countries are being ex-
ploited for their oil. I’m not voting for someone, but rather I’m voting against certain ideals. It is dire that we make a decision that won’t make us move backwards in our climate journey. The clock is ticking down on the amount of time we have to save the planet.”
Providing a path to Citizenship for Undocumented Immigrants
Of the students surveyed, 48.3% rated providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants at a 5, a high priority, 3% indicated they have no knowledge of the subject, and 6.3% rated the issue as 1 - indicating it was a low priority to them (see graphic I on Page 6).
Coelho said the low number may have resulted from negative misinformation put out by the political right.
“I think the Republican Party has been very effective in controlling the narrative about undocumented immigrants - for instance, saying that they’re taking people’s jobs, they’re committing violent crimes, they’re eating people’s pets - none of the data suggests that any of these things are happening, and yet, people are inundated with the negative messaging,” Coelho said.
He said students should read more newspapers and trusted sources to combat this kind of negative messaging rather than getting their news from social media. He also encouraged students to get involved in conversations that expose them to other opinions.
“When you engage in social media, you’re entering a tribe of people who think like you … and you’re not exposed to alternative opinions or perspectives. … That makes it really impossible to have an open, civil discourse,” Coelho added.
Junior Taimoor Khansaid said, “I would like to see more addressed about immigration. I wish it was a more streamlined process. I feel like it’s unfair to the people who have been in this country for a really long time.”
Students participating in The Gatepost survey were given an opportunity to indicate other political issues that are important to them as voters.
Several students noted their deep concern about the Israel-Hamas war.
One anonymous survey respondent wrote, “I would like for the country not to be supporting Israel anymore.”
Another anonymous respondent agreed with this sentiment, writing, “Free Palestine,” and saying the “genocide” in Gaza is a high-priority issue to them.
One anonymous survey respondent wrote that the United States should end its involvement in all current wars and international conflicts.
Other issues on students’ minds include housing, reforming the Supreme Court, the Russia-Ukraine war, the war in Sudan, protecting union rights, the genocide of Muslims in China, and the national drug epidemic.
One anonymous survey respondent wrote, “Let’s worry about housing U.S. citizens, including legal immigrants and homeless veterans. Stop giving money, housing, or any aid to illegal aliens.”
Another anonymous survey respondent wrote, “I’m voting for Kamala despite the Biden administration’s handling of the genocide in Gaza. Unfortunately, we have a two-party system, which makes having third-party political candidates very unlikely, even though third-party candidates
better represent my desires for this country. … It’s so confusing and overwhelming, but I hope one day, we can rid the country of the Electoral College and two-party system and enact rank choice voting like other more democratic nations.”
Freshman Kimberly Dearo said, “I am very concerned because the Republican Party, based on the proposals they’ve presented, does not give any impression of supporting democracy. When you question whether a person should love only a certain gender, that is not democratic. When they threaten to close borders and deport people, that is not democratic. When they want to decide if a woman should carry a pregnancy to term or not, that is not democratic at all.”
Sophomore Cadence Lucia said she hopes “America can have peace again” after this election.
Lucia admitted she is scared. “It’s kind of chaos right now, and I think everyone is stressed out about everything. I just hope that once the person is [elected], that everyone can go back at ease again. … My worst fear is taking two steps backward because I think, especially after COVID, we all need to step forward. … I have never voted before. This is the first election that I’ve ever been a part of,” she said.
Senior Sasha Charmant expressed her faith in the American people to turn the country around.
“I have a lot of faith in our country and the voters. … I think we are smart enough to choose the lesser of two evils. … It matters. We have to make change - please protest, put something on your story, stop hiding because it affects you. It affects everyone,” she said. For many students, this is the first election in which they can vote.
Sophomore Jordan Ortins said, “At least weekly, I sit with myself and wonder how, in my first-ever election, I’m fighting for my rights not to get stripped away. I never thought I would be watching this country move backward.”
Senior Liv Florestal urges students to vote.
“I’m driving an hour and 45 minutes back home to go vote, so y’all better go vote! Get with the program and make a change,” she said.
Student Trustee Jeremy McDonald said The Gatepost’s survey results are a clear indication that there is a broad array of issues that are of high priority to students.
“It’s important for the candidates to appeal to the concerns of all to earn their votes. … Historically, college students have long played a role in advocating for their views. As we all become more politically aware … students across the political spectrum should advocate to their elected representatives for their thoughtful policy preferences.”
CONNECT WITH IZAYAH MORGAN imorgan@student.framingham.edu
CONNECT WITH SOPHIA OPPEDISANO soppedisano@student.framingham.edu
CONNECT WITH ANTONIO MACHADO amachado4@student.framingham.edu
FSU Students were asked to rate issues on a scale 0-5, with 0 indicating no knowledge of the issue, 1 indicating low priority, and 5 indicating high priority. A national protection of access to abortion
Rams come home for Homecoming
By Sophia Harris Editor-in-Chief
By Dylan Pichnarcik News Editor
By Bella Grimaldi Staff Writer
Along State Street, on an unusually warm fall day, the Framingham State community came together to celebrate each other over a cup of hot cocoa.
Alumni returned to their alma mater to share memories with old classmates and roommates and reminisce about their college years.
Students, alumni, and family celebrated Homecoming on Oct. 25 and 26. The events were sponsored by the Center for Student Experience and Career Development, the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, the Dean of Students Office, and the Office of Family Engagement.
Events included the Family Reception, Fire Pit & Hot Chocolate Social, Floorlords BreakDance Crew, Annual Moonlight Breakfast, GenOne Reception, Honors Program Reception, BIPOC Alumni, Student, Faculty & Staff Brunch, Family Network Meeting, classroom experiences, and Fall Fest State Street Block Party.
The festivities officially began with a Homecoming and Family Weekend launch party on the McCarthy patio, hosted by Ram engagement ambassadors, according to Rachel Spezia, assistant dean of students.
She said the highest-attended event advertised for families was the Moonlight Breakfast, which was attended by 350 students and family members.
Michael Newmark, acting general manager of dining services, said his favorite part of Homecoming was the Moonlight Breakfast. He said the team has “so much fun serving our students and families.”
He added he has only heard “positive great feedback for the entire weekend experience - specifically, the food served at the Moonlight Breakfast and the BIPOC brunch.”
Spezia said the attendance was good across all events and there was a mixture of alumni, students, and family, friends, and guests.
An estimated 250 alumni returned for the weekend, according to Eric Gustafson, vice president of Development and Alumni Relations.
He said his office was “beyond thrilled with the turnout - students, families, alumni - it was fantastic!”
Gustafson said alumni attend Homecoming for the purpose of reconnecting with their alma mater.
“For a lot of our alums, the University means a lot to them. It was a very important part of their lives, and not only for their education, but also all the friends that they made here and they still have today.”
He added that alumni attended from every decade dating back to the 1960s.
Gustafson said Framingham State is a major part of their identities and their lives, so an opportunity to reconnect with Framingham State is crucial to them.
Gustafson said he always enjoys seeing Framingham State alums with their children who are current FSU students reconnect with the campus in a
whole new way.
He added he was particularly impressed with the turnout at the FSU football game, which had “some of the biggest crowds” his office has seen.
Mikayla Quinlan, class of ‘18, said she was on SGA with “a bunch of friends.”
Quinlan added, “I met probably my best friends freshman year, living on the 11th floor of Towers.”
She said her favorite part of Homecoming Weekend was reconnecting with fellow alums at the FSU Football game against Mass. Maritime.
Liz Phillips, assistant director of alumni relations, said her favorite part of Homecoming was “seeing everybody here, all these families, students, alumni, faculty, staff - everyone. It’s really exciting to see our community come together and just hang out.
“We’re always trying to build upon Fall Fest each year and make it a little bit bigger, engage more people, and have more events. This year, we had student organizations participate. We had a Hilltop bake sale and a fundraiser from SGA,” she said.
Phillips added the Dance Team took over the pumpkin patch and did pumpkin painting and DIY tattoos.
“That was so exciting to have them participate. We have alumni vendors this year, including Hook and Whiskers, which does crochet animals. … So every year, we’re just trying to build upon it. If people have ideas, we love to hear it, because we want to make this [Fall Fest] for everyone in our community,” she said.
SGA President Evelyn Campbell said she enjoyed Homecoming - especially hosting the SGA table, where she met many alums who were on SGA while they attended FSU. She said while at the table, SGA raised $227 for the Greater Good Charities for hurricane relief.
Brian Leonard, class of ‘18, said, “I was an RA, the class president, I was Sam the Ram and I was the SGA fundraising chair.”
He added, “My favorite memory is meeting all of my friends who I still talk to every day, and also when they unveiled the new Ram statue my junior year.”
Leonard said, “I really liked getting a balloon dinosaur made, and I like that they shut down the street. They didn’t use to do this. So I think this is a lot better. I like all the different stands.”
Jennifer Callaghan, class of ‘05, ‘08, owner of Hook and Whiskers, which sells handmade crocheted animals, was a vendor at Fall Fest. She said she returns to Framingham State each year for Homecoming, but this is the first year she was a vendor.
Callaghan said she is also a teacher in the Franklin Public School district. She said her favorite memory from her time at FSU was meeting her husband, who was also her resident advisor.
While Callaghan was vending, she said, “There’ve been a lot of people coming up and buying stuff. I sold almost three-quarters of what I brought with me.”
Senior Chris Miller, president of the Hilltop Players, said his favorite part of Homecoming was “the food trucksthey’re pretty awesome.”
Miller said he enjoyed “Homecoming was much later this year. Last year, it was the second or third week
of school, so it seemed early, and there wasn’t a lot of time to get settled in.”
During Fall Fest, the Hilltop Players held a bake sale to raise money for their club fund, raising over $100, according to Miller.
Ben Trapanick, executive director of family engagement, said, “It was great just to see so many of the family members that I communicate regularly with. They email me with questions and all kinds of things, so it’s great to put faces to names and see some people who I had already met as well and saw when they moved in their students, and it was nice to see them back, so it’s just great to connect with them.”
Trapanick said his office spent $3,785 on catering for events sponsored by the Office of Family Engagement.
Meg Nowak Borrego, vice president of student affairs and dean of students, said, “I like the addition of the lightness of the [Rubber] Duck Hunt and the family events on State Street. I thought it just added more energy and was inclusive of our alumni and their families.”
She added, “I thought we did a good job this year creating events that both sets of people involved in the weekend can enjoy.”
Student Experience Manager Sabrina Grammatic said 191 people turned out for the hot chocolate bar and close to 80 for the Floorlords Breakdancing troupe.
Grammatic added she noticed that families had a great time at the Floorlords event.
President Nancy Niemi said, “The energy on campus was palpable, and there was a real community. The community was intersectional - we had students, staff, faculty, neighborhood communities, sports teams, and alumni groups. It was just wonderful.”
She said, “I loved the vibe on State Street, all the food trucks and the different places where there’s something for kids and little kids and their families, but there was just something for everybody. It was a beautiful day.”
Niemi said, “I really did like that State Street was so vibrant. I think we are closing off State Street more often than we used to, which is great.”
She added, “I never made it to a food truck because the line was too long. So I’ll have to try that another time.”
Niemi said the highlight of Homecoming Weekend for her was talking to families, athletes, and alums at the sporting events.
She said, “Talking to some of our staff members, our police officers. It was just nice to talk to them in a different forum.
“It wasn’t over a fire. It wasn’t a problem. It was just a nice conversation to have.”
“So I got to know some of them better, which is the point of working together in a community, and so most of the alums who showed up were people that I knew, which is also great to develop a further relationship with them,” Niemi said.
She said Homecoming “gets better every year. This one, I think, is the best so far. And I don’t think that’s a recency bias. I think we’ve come further and further away from COVID, and so people are more comfortable coming back out.”
Niemi said Homecoming is a way to form “a connection across alumni
groups, across families, with current students and with our community.”
Dan Giard, director of Facilities, and Brad Melon, head of grounds, were responsible for the decorations and floral work along State Street.
In addition to the work of Melon, Giard said maintainers made sure the grass was cut and all the sprinklers were shut off across campus.
He added Facilities “always makes sure that for Homecoming, everything is 100%.”
In addition to the Fall Fest activities on State Street, Jorge Riveras, Professor of Business, held a classroom visit experience on the fifth floor of the McCarthy Center.
According to Riveras, the session focused on Entrepreneurship in an Era of International Business.
“It was exciting to present a topic that allowed me to weave together multiple themes - entrepreneurship, international business, and personal experiences - which I believe appealed to both parents and students alike.
“The engagement from participants affirmed that this approach was effective. The families and additional attendees actively participated, asking insightful questions, sharing their perspectives, and engaging in a meaningful two-way conversation. The energy in the room reflected genuine interest, which was incredibly rewarding,” Riveras said.
The session was attended by three families, and four additional guests, according to Riveras.
“Each group came from different backgrounds and brought unique interests to the discussion,” he said.
Freshman Arianna Baia said her favorite part of Homecoming was “when my brothers came up with my parents and we went to the football game.”
Baia said that her family enjoyed other events during Fall Fest, but her father was unable to eat at the food trucks.
“My dad is gluten-free, so he could not eat anything. They had no options.”
Freshman Giancarlo Totino said, “Homecoming was pretty chill. My favorite part was probably showing my parents around the campus.”
Sophomore Natalie Grimaldo said her favorite part of Homecoming was the food trucks during Fall Fest.
Freshman Ty Kelley said his favorite part of Homecoming was the football game, in which he played. Kelley is a wide receiver for the Rams and the grandson of Head Football Coach Thomas Kelley, known across campus as “TK.”
Freshman Sebastian Guillaume also said he enjoyed the football game against Mass. Maritime and the food trucks during the fall fest.
Gina Pacitto, program coordinator at the Center for Student Experience & Career Development was involved in planning and booking vendors for the event, such as the hot chocolate bar, the apple cider bar as well as the Floorlords. She said her office is always looking for ideas and feedback.
CONNECT WITH SOPHIA HARRIS sharris9@student.framingham.edu
CONNECT WITH DYLAN PICHNARCIK dpichnarcik@student.framingham.edu
CONNECT WITH BELLA GRIMALDI igrimaldi@student.framingham.edu
A MOONLIGHT MEAL
Maddison Behringer / THE GATEPOST (Left) Jay Hurtubise putting food out at Moonlight Breakfast on Oct. 25.
Emma Lyons / THE GATEPOST Students at Moonlight Breakfast on Oct. 25.
Emma Lyons / THE GATEPOST (Right) Professor Joe D’Andrea serving food at Moonlight Breakfast on Oct. 25.
Emma Lyons / THE GATEPOST
President Nancy Niemi at Moonlight Breakfast on Oct. 25.
Maddison Behringer / THE GATEPOST
(Left) Kaylee Beck, Kaitlyn Tello, Kaitlin Loughlin, Maddie Bailey, and Emma Bailey at Moonlight Breakfast on Oct. 25.
Spread by Photos & Design Editor Adrien Gobin
THE GATEPOST EDITORIAL
We, The Gatepost, endorse Kamala Harris
On Oct. 25, The Washington Post published the editorial, “On political endorsement.”
The editorial, written by William Lewis, publisher and chief executive officer of The Washington Post, outlined the paper’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 election, a departure from their practice of endorsement in past election years.
While Lewis wrote refusing to endorse a candidate was part of a return to their original practice from the ’60s, customer response to the editorial was extremely negative.
According to National Public Radio, “by midday Monday” over 200,000 people had canceled their subscriptions, about 8% of the publication’s paid customer base, as shared by two sources from The Washington Post.
While it is the journalist’s responsibility to report fairly and unbiasedly, an editorial board, using this information, is free to take a stand. By not choosing a candidate to endorse, The Washington Post disrespected both parties and their readers.
Especially in an election that is not only highly contested, but also about moral standing.
When one of the candidates wants to erode the rights of the free press, has been convicted of 34 felony counts, and has incited violence when an election did not go his way, it is clear this is no longer a campaign about merely voting red or blue.
This is why The Gatepost editorial board decided to take a stand. The editorial board can proudly say we make the choice to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris with confidence she will pave the way to a brighter future.
Following Trump’s Oct. 27 New York rally and the slew of racist “jokes” by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe - which included calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and a remark about him and a Black attendee of the rally “carving watermelons together” at a Halloween party - it is clear the choice in the 2024 election is about more than party affiliation.
The 2020 election raised similar questions, but some felt the choice between Trump and Biden was between the lesser of two evils due to the age of both candidates and Biden’s fairly centrist policies.
Vice President Harris has earned our endorsement through her demonstrated commitment to Gen Z - evident both through her campaign policies and her acknowledgment of social issues affecting young people.
Harris’ experience in a number of roles - including serving as vice president, U.S. senator, and the attorney general of California - has also given us the confidence that she will be well-equipped to govern the country.
As young people, we are worried about the autonomy of our bodies, civil rights for underrepresented groups, including those who are BIPOC and/or identify as LGBTQ+, and the increasing cost of living, particularly rent - to name a few issues.
Harris, fortunately, has taken a stance to protect these liberties and rights and to combat the high cost of living.
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wadewhich was caused by Supreme Court justices appointed during Trump’s 2016 term - Harris has promised to sign a bill restoring reproductive freedom across the country once it has been passed by Congress.
Tim Walz, Harris’ vice presidential pick, also helped Minnesota become the first state to protect women’s autonomy following the over-
turning of Roe v. Wade, further illustrating the commitment the Harris/Walz ticket has to reproductive rights.
Trump’s opinion of LGBTQ+ Americans, and the way they can be expected to be treated under his presidency, can be gleaned from the rampant homophobic and transphobic rhetoric already taking place on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform.
Trump has invited Musk to speak at his rallies a number of times and Musk was also present at the New York rally Oct. 27.
Harris, on the other hand, has already promised to enact additional legal protections for LGBTQ+ individuals.
She has promised to sign The Equality Act into law, which, according to her campaign website, will “enshrine anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Americans in health care, housing, education, and more into law.”
According to the Human Rights Campaign, Trump disapproves of The Equality Act and would not allow it to be codified, despite the act receiving “support from almost every segment of the U.S. population and a majority of Republicans.”
Harris has also promised to make affordable health care a right by “expanding and strengthening the Affordable Care Act and making permanent the Biden-Harris tax credit enhancements,” which are responsible for reducing the cost of health care premiums for many Americans, according to her campaign website.
She also promises to extend the $35 limit on insulin prices and the $2,000 limit on outof-pocket medical spending for senior citizens and vows to extend this $2,000 limit to all Americans.
As vice president, Harris also assisted President Biden in eliminating over $7 billion in medical debt for over 3 million Americans. As president, she plans to work with states to increase the number of people whose medical debt will be forgiven.
Harris has also recognized the roadblock many Americans are facing today in buying a home due to the high cost of housing and other difficulties such as the low number of new houses being built.
According to her campaign website, as president, she will sign legislation to ban “new methods of price fixing by corporate landlords” as well as increase the number of new affordable rental units and homes by 3 million by the end of her first term.
At every talking point, we have seen hateful speech and planning from Donald Trump. We have seen his resistance to equality regarding identity, protection of civil rights, and bodily autonomy.
Any campaign that vows to strip American citizens of their right to govern their own bodies, deny them access to affordable health care, or put them in danger for expressing their sexual orientation is not a moral campaign.
The rhetoric we have seen from Harris, instead, has been in service of a better world that we, as young people, have a vested interest in building.
The Washington Post’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, in refusing to allow the newspaper he owns to endorse her, has made his allegiance clear.
We at The Gatepost desire to do the same.
We are sticking to our roots and our right to editorialize without censorship.
We are endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
Last call to vote NO on Question 5
By Sophia Oppedisano Editoral Staff
I got my first restaurant job when I was 16 years old. I was hired as a host at a local restaurant. At such a young age, everything I knew about working in the food industry came from my parents, who met and fell in love at the TGI Fridays that was recently demolished right down the road on Route 9.
My mother taught me to always say “behind” when moving through the restaurant and to master the specific assertive politeness needed to communicate effectively with customers.
Eventually, I saw myself begin to master the art of learning by doing as I observed my coworkers and found a passion for customer service.
I worked my way up from host to server and from server to bartender.
Then, it was my father who taught me how to pour a measured ounce properly, and to always put a cocktail napkin down on the bar before setting a drink in front of a customer. Working in the food industry has given me the privilege of working for tips, something I feel that I have earned the right to collect after years of honing my skills to become the best service worker I can be.
I was able to begin financially supporting myself and even buy my first car at 19, something I never dreamed of being able to do.
For all my years in food service, I have worked with single mothers, teachers, retirees, and people with low-income jobs. These are people I consider friends and family, and I have witnessed firsthand the financial struggles they deal with.
Tips allow those in the food industry to earn a liveable wage rather than be forced to live paycheck to paycheck on a biweekly schedule.
Question 5 on the 2024 Massachusetts ballot proposes a law that would gradually increase the minimum hourly wage an employer must pay a tipped worker over the course of five years.
Servers in Massachusetts currently earn $6.75 an hour, plus all tips earned during a shift.
This does not mean we only earn $6.75 and suffer a seemingly low hourly wage. Current federal and state laws guarantee that any tipped worker is paid the current minimum wage rate of $15, but businesses can pay us as little as $6.75 an hour, provided tips make up or exceed the difference. More information can be found on the United States Department of Labor website.
This allows most service workers to earn about $20-$40 an hour during the average shift.
Under this proposed law, employers would be permitted to implement a “tip pool” that combines all customer tips and distributes them equally among all workers, including traditionally non-tipped workers such as kitchen staff who already earn an average of $20 an hour, according to Indeed.
The tip pool will be entirely ineffective in restaurants, as many have 10 to 70 workers at a time, reducing any tips received to next to nothing for workers.
Those in favor of voting yes will tell you that this law is proposed for fairness. They will argue that restaurant workers deserve a full minimum wage and tips from this proposed tip pool. They might also tell you that earning a wage that is subsidized by the amount of tips you earn is too unpredictable of a way to earn a living.
But remember, we will still earn at least minimum wage no matter how much we earn in tips.
Servers, bartenders, and other tipped employees firmly believe that this law will drastically change our compensation and the customer’s dining-out experience.
The wage we currently receive is what allows for lower menu prices, the absence of service fees, and small businesses to stay afloat. Voting yes will shutter many restaurants and create chaos for diners and workers alike. The rising costs may push customers to stop tipping altogether, forcing workers to rely on minimum wage alone.
Before you go to the polls this Tuesday, I urge you to educate yourself. Read about all five ballot questions to make an informed decision. All questions are available on the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s website, sec.state.ma.us/.
More information on voting no on Question 5 can be found on massrestaurantsunited.org.
Turn up the lights and close out your tab, it’s last call on this election.
Franz Kafka - a mirror to our modern struggles
By Celia Williams Staff Writer
Franz Kafka once said, “I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party, and I attended with my real face this tremendous world. I have inside of me how to free myself and this world without tearing myself to pieces and rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”
Kafka is one of modern history’s most significant literary figures, recognized for his uniquely dark, disorienting, and surreal writing. This 100-year-old figure has a notable relevance to the contemporary world.
According to the article, “The Absurdity of Existence: Franz Kafka and Albert Camus” by Yale University Press, even though Kafka lived over 100 years ago, his haunting philosophy resonates with the anxieties of the modern world. The common themes he used in his books we all are secretly and often familiar with, and they make significant crossovers.
He was born in Czechoslovakia but hated Prague and did not consider himself Czech, yet at the same time, he refused to move to Berlin, which he was very fond of, the article states. He spoke and wrote in German, yet did not consider himself German as well, and on top of it all, he was Jewish in an antisemitic world, so he felt even more lonely.
There was a constant question of who he was and who he was not, between his nationality, ethnicity, faith, and a person as a whole. External conflicts also significantly affected his philosophy and work.
He was an artist forced to work for insurance companies after getting a doctorate in law. In the late evenings, he wrote stories exposing humanity’s fears and the absurdities of modern life, showing his unique visions.
This can be seen in novels such as “The Metamorphosis.”
“The Metamorphosis” is an absurd story about a man where everything was taken away from him without him being able to do anything about it.
Gregor Samsa, the novel’s protagonist and a character Kafka associates himself with, is one day transformed into a giant and revolting bug. And his family eventually nurses deep hatred toward him, which then results in his ultimate damnation.
es their purpose in this world and eventually faces some consequence without the power to resist it.
Kafka understands how difficult it is to show our own identity to the modern world, especially with nowadays not only personal difficulties but also economic and political ones, the corporate hierarchies, and healthcare policies.
This creates the feeling of always being behind and failing to reach our dreams and whatever we consider the ‘ultimate success.’
Kafka depicted a world where people are trapped by unseen forces and feel trapped with the hardships of navigating between complex systems designed to confuse or control. No wonder people nowadays feel so unbelievably overwhelmed by bureaucracy.
that he asked his friend Max Brod to burn his manuscripts after his death, which we now know Brod did not do. However, at the same time, he longed for connection and for people to understand him through his work.
I believe we have all longed-for intimacy or companionship yet were scared to give it all to prevent a potential agony. The modern world has its own problems in this sense as well. We are now more connected than at any other time in history, yet we are more disconnected from each other than ever.
This makes us feel connected to the whole world yet disconnected from the present one, creating an illusion of connection while making us feel lonelier than ever before.
One of life’s greatest tragedies is not realizing how loved and liked we are. There is a high possibility that someone in your class enjoys your presence and thinks dearly of you randomly throughout the day without you even knowing.
I know I do.
Like Franz Kafka, we all have felt that perhaps someone one day los
Kafka understands this, as well as the fear of judgment and the longing for personal connection. Kafka is a paradox itself, but I cannot blame him since I often resonate with this feeling as well.
He was so afraid of judgment
People will not usually show appreciation or say it out loud, so we cannot possibly know, so I will on this rare occasion. As I walk across the campus, I genuinely hope you are having a splendid day or just appreciate your existence or the outfit you have chosen to wear.
Kafka unfortunately cannot realize these things anymore, but we can still.
Campus Conversations
By Ryan O’Connell, Associate Editor and Michael Trueswell, Staff Writer
“What is an important issue to you as a voter?”
“Women’s rights.”
“Question number five because I have worked in multiple cafes and bakeries that paid me below minimum wage. … So, I think it’s really like a cheat to the law.”
“An important issue for me as a voter would be immigration. [Also] LGBTQ rights … just having decency for people.”
- Joan Kigotho, sophomore
“Making sure that women have rights, obviously.”
- Kaylen Lyons, freshman
“Health care - affordability and the different types of health care everyone gets … like MassHealth.”
“[The stereotype that] if I’m, let’s say Hispanic American or Latin American, I’m not supposed to vote for Donald Trump or I’m supposed to vote for a more Latinx group. I really feel like it depends only on you. It’s your political value, your political opinion.”
- Daniel Goljamali, freshman
Marcus: How to Spot an FSU Student
- Katherine Fristorm, freshman
- Khatrina Leger, freshman
- Isabella Quiles, freshman
The multi-generational legacy of the Kelley Cup
By Sophia Oppedisano Sports Editor
Football is a cornerstone of the college experience. There is no greater tradition than students coming together to show pride in their team. Through every triumph and disappointment, Framingham State is no different.
In the midst of the annual Homecoming Weekend festivities, students, alumni, and their families gathered on a blustery afternoon at Bowditch Field to watch their home team face off against Massachusetts Maritime Academy in the Kelley Cup.
The Kelley Cup is one element of the growing legacy of Framingham’s Director of Athletics Thomas Kelley, affectionately known around campus as ‘TK.’
TK began his time in the athletic department as a student-athlete and graduated with the Class of ’76. He returned to coach and recruit before ultimately becoming head coach of the football team and working his way up to the director of athletics position.
In 2007, when the yearly contest between Framingham State and Mass. Maritime became a showdown between TK and his son, Mike Kelley, the Kelley Cup was born.
The Kelley Cup was officially inaugurated into the Homecoming program in 2009 after the sports information director at Mass. Maritime decided to make it an annual game Framingham hosts.
Mike Kelley has created his own long-lasting legacy on the other side of the field that mirrors his father’s.
He is an alumnus of Mass. Maritime and is now director of athletics, head baseball coach, and assistant football coach for his alma mater.
To top it off, Mike Kelley’s son, Ty Kelley, is now a freshman receiver playing for Framingham State under the guidance of his grandfather, TK.
This game marked three generations of Kelleys on the field.
“[Ty] adds another layer. We were talking because his brother’s a junior in high school, and he’s probably leaning more toward Mass. Maritime, so that’ll be another layer,” TK said.
He said his family always comes to watch the game - everyone from his 86-year-old mother-in-law to the three-year-old kids.
Ty Kelley said, “The legacy means a lot to me and it’s a pretty cool thing to be a part of. Being the third generation in the Kelley Cup was awesome. It was cool having my dad on one side and my grandfather on the other.”
He added that football has always been a part of his family and “having a game named after us is of great meaning to all of us.”
TK said, “It’s become part of the fabric of our family. … When I first started [coaching], I would have never dreamt of coaching against my son, [or] having my grandson play for me. I would have never ever thought of the longevity,
but I just think it’s special. There are not a lot of people who can say what I say. I coached my sons, I coached against them, and now I’m coaching my grandson.”
TK’s office is adorned with memorabilia from his years at Framingham State and photos of his family - a physical time capsule of all he has accomplished.
Sitting behind his desk, he laughed as he recalled his favorite Kelley Cup in 2013.
“There was one in particular that I’ll always remember. Mass. Maritime had one of the top offenses in the country that year, and they were coming in here and they were scoring 60 points a game,” he said.
He said that year, Homecoming Weekend fell during the week of Halloween, and the Boston Red Sox had
prevailed that year,” he said.
Framingham secured the Cup with a final score of 58-12.
“My son didn’t talk to me until after Christmas,” TK said.
Framingham held the cup trophy for 15 consecutive years and lost it for the first time this year since they lost the first Kelley Cup game in 2007.
TK said his players are always excited to win the Cup and losing it this year was tough on the team.
“It was bound to happen, but you’re never ready for it,” he said.
Mass. Maritime won in spectacular fashion this year, beating Framingham 21-6.
Mike Kelley said the win marks his favorite Kelley Cup to date.
“It’s just an incredible feeling - finally getting over the hump. … It’s very sweet,” he added.
just won the World Series.
“We had a lot of distractions. It was the worst week of practice I can remember,” he said.
On the day of the game, one of the buses that was going to shuttle the team to the field failed to show up, making the team late to the game.
The game also happened to be Senior Day for the team, creating another delay.
Because of the hold-up, the officials wanted to start the game with a delayof-game penalty against Framingham.
“You can’t script a worse scenario than what we had. My in-laws are there rooting against me because of [Mike]. At the time, I had my youngest son coaching with me, and it was just one of those crazy, crazy games,” he said.
TK added that even though Mass. Maritime had the number one offense in the country, “We were probably the number three defense in the country.”
He said that despite all the setbacks, the score was 51-12 in favor of Framingham at halftime.
“My mother was fighting with my mother-in-law,” he recalled.
“Our kids rose to the occasion. I thought we were in deep trouble just because of the way we practiced that week and all the distractions, but we
“It’s pretty special to be a coach, to have these players pulling for you and recognizing how important it is for everybody involved, and what a special game it is,” he said.
He said the addition of his son Ty added to the experience of the game.
“It’s definitely mixed emotions, but when my son was growing up, he knew that nothing was going to come easily and that nothing was going to be given to him. [The family] are all competitive people, and we all want to win in the end. So it was a special, special game.
“I really didn’t think about it until the game how really rare this is to have three generations all involved with a game … on different sides. I don’t know if this has ever happened before. That’s how really rare and special it is,” Mike Kelley said.
He added that when his youngest son, Drew, commits to playing football at Mass. Maritime, “We’re going to even this thing out. It’s going to be two and two. That’ll be fun if that does come to fruition.”
He hopes his sons recognize the value of loyalty and giving back to their schools from the examples set by both himself and their grandfather.
“We’re giving back to the schools that gave us everything,” Mike Kelley said.
“My dad has been my coach my whole life even if he wasn’t on my sideline. My goals are to keep growing and increasing my love for the game,” Ty Kelley said.
Despite the memories of Kelley Cups past, TK said, “The favorite Kelley Cup is always the next one.”
Framingham has struggled this year after a long period of success, winning 10 MASCAC Championships in the past 17 years.
“We’re such a young team … but as long as we’re getting better every week - we still have three games to go. The goal is to win next week and put [the Kelley Cup loss] behind us as fast as we can.
“One of the things that I talk to the guys about is failure. Failure is not a bad thing. … It’s what you do with failure. It’s a life lesson. When you go out in the real world, you’re going to face failures - it’s what you do with it,” he said.
TK said his coaching philosophy has never changed. While winning is important, he said the most important thing is “doing it the right way.”
“I always tell [the players] that academics are first and foremost, and you can’t have football without the academic piece, but this is the best part of your life. … The four or five years you’re here, you should be the having the most fun you’ve ever had, and I think they’ll get there,” he said.
“I think the great thing about athletics and the great thing about football is there’s a lot of life lessons involved. It’s hard, especially with football. You play once a week, and you have five days to practice, and I tell the guys, if this were easy, everybody would do it. I hope at the end of their career, they look back, and they take something away from it,” he added.
TK said Homecoming is special because alumni come back and share stories about how the football program changed their lives.
“If I change one student-athlete’s life, then I think I’ve accomplished a whole lot. … The core of what I do is never going to change. It’s been the same since 1978, when I first started coaching.
“We’ve had a lot of success. If you look back at the last 15 years, we’ve been one of the most successful football programs in New England, if not in the East. I’m a pretty simple guy, and the one thing I tell people is to surround yourself with good people, and good things will happen. I think I’ve done that,” he said.
Framingham football is back in action at home against Plymouth State University Nov. 2, one of three games left before they close out their season at home against Worcester State University Nov. 16.
Stats sourced from fsurams.com and MASCAC.com
CONNECT WITH SOPHIA OPPEDISANO soppedisano@student.framingham.edu
Adrien Gobin / THE GATEPOST
Thomas Kelley (left), Ty Kelley (center), Mike Kelley (right) Oct. 26.
Football loses in Homecoming heartbreaker
By Riley Crowell Asst. Sports Editor
By Izabela Gage Asst. Sports Editor
The Framingham State Rams were defeated by the Massachusetts Maritime Academy Buccaneers 21-6 in a MASCAC matchup at Bowditch Field Oct. 26.
With the loss, Framingham’s overall record fell to 2-5 and their conference record fell to 2-4.
Mass. Maritime received the ball to begin the game and wasted no time getting points on the board.
The Buccaneers put together a 73-yard drive, capped off by a 7-yard touchdown rush by quarterback Evan Pierce.
Kicker James Sansone converted the extra point to give Mass. Maritime a 7-0 advantage over the Rams with 9:00 remaining in the first quarter.
The Rams received the ensuing kickoff and began their first offensive drive of the game at their own 31-yard line.
A defensive stand by the Buccaneers led to a 3-and-out for Framingham, forcing them to punt.
Mass. Maritime received the punt at their own 28-yard line and began their second offensive drive of the game with 6:27 to play in the first quarter.
The Buccaneers once again stormed down the field, advancing all the way to the Framingham 23-yard line in just seven plays.
From there, Pierce attempted his first pass of the game and found wide receiver Brennan Keefe in the end zone for a 23-yard completion and touchdown.
Following the touchdown, Sansone booted the ball through the uprights, converting the extra point to give Mass. Maritime a 14-0 lead with 1:28 remaining in the first quarter.
The Buccaneers’ first two drives featured 17 rushing attempts and only one passing attempt, something that was entirely by design.
Mass. Maritime’s offense utilizes a formation known as the triple option, in which the quarterback receives the snap and can decide to either run the ball himself, pitch it to the fullback, or pitch it to the running back.
The triple option, most notably used in college football by Army, Navy, and Air Force, is designed to keep defenses off balance and give the quarterback freedom to keep or get rid of the ball based on what he sees.
Head Coach Thomas Kelley said the Rams have seen this offense before and have been preparing for it. “We’ve been working on the triple option for three weeks. In the first quarter, it was like we had never seen it.
“Westfield ran it the week before … so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have been ready for it. It took us a quarter to figure it out,” he added.
Junior defensive end Kymauny Roland said, “We’ve been watching this for three weeks. We knew what was coming at us.”
The Rams and Buccaneers both punted on their first drives of the second quarter.
Framingham received the Mass. Maritime punt at their own 48-yard line with 12:35 to play in the second quarter.
On this drive, the Rams showed their first signs of life offensively. Graduate student quarterback Luke Thompson completed six passes and Framingham picked up three consecutive first downs.
The Rams worked their way down to the Buccaneers’ 19-yard line, where they would unfortunately falter. A rush for a loss, a false start penalty, and three incomplete passes by Thompson led to a turnover on downs, giving possession back to Mass. Maritime.
A strong defensive stand by Framingham forced a 3-and-out and a punt from the Buccaneers.
The Rams received the punt at their own 35-yard line with 3:33 remaining in the second quarter.
Thompson completed five passes, most notably a 20-yard completion to senior wide receiver EJ Nichols, to lead the Rams to the Mass. Maritime 10yard line.
On third down, Thompson dropped back to pass and threw the ball to sophomore wide receiver Alex Maia in the end zone. The ball was tipped in the air, but was ultimately able to be taken in by Maia for a 9-yard completion and Framingham touchdown.
This touchdown brought the score to 14-6 Mass. Maritime, where it would stand at halftime.
The second half opened with a 49yard kickoff from Mass. Maritime’s Connor Malone, which quickly set Framingham up for their first possession at their own 30-yard line.
Thompson got the Rams moving, completing a pass to Nichols for an 11yard gain to the Framingham 41-yard line.
On the next play, freshman running back Makoto Uchikawa found a gap and gained 5 yards before Mass. Maritime’s Liam Hines forced a fumble. Their defensive back recovered it at the 49-yard line, flipping possession back to the Buccaneers.
The Buccaneers initiated a steady ground attack, weakening the Rams’ defense. The Buccaneers rushed for a few short gains before attempting to open up the field with a pass by Pierce, who connected with Keefe for a significant 19-yard gain to the Framingham 11-yard line.
Despite the hopeful drive, Mass. Maritime could not convert on their red zone opportunity and Framingham gained possession of the ball.
The Rams’ next drive stalled and they were forced to punt - allowing the Buccaneers another chance to break through the Rams’ defense.
Mass. Maritime struggled offensively, with Framingham’s freshman defensive lineman Korrey Barron consistently stopping plays in the backfield.
A 37-yard punt by Mass. Maritime’s Logan Tsika pushed Framingham back to their 13-yard line, but freshman wide receiver Ty Kelley provided a spark with a 22-yard return to the Framingham 35-yard line.
The Rams started their drive with 4:04 left in the third, looking to push down the field, but their offense quickly faltered. On first down at their own 35-yard line, junior quarterback Donovan Cole attempted a pass to sophomore wide receiver Ayden Ramirez, but it fell incomplete.
Facing third-and-10, the pressure
Izabela Gage / THE GATEPOST
Kymauny Roland (front) going for a tackle during the Kelley Cup against Mass. Maritime Oct. 26.
mounted as Mass. Maritime’s defensive back TJ Jones hurried Cole, forcing him to rush his throw.
Out of options, Framingham turned to Uchikawa on fourth down. Uchikawa launched a solid 48-yard punt, pinning Mass. Maritime back at their 17-yard line.
With the drive ending in a 3-andout, the Rams missed a chance to put points on the board and gave possession back to the Buccaneers.
Mass. Maritime’s drive stalled at their own 17-yard line despite a push by the offense. John Carlson attempted to gain yards, but the Rams’ strong defense, led by Roland, held the offensive line off.
Tsika executed a powerful 51-yard punt, placing Framingham at their own 29-yard line with 1:10 remaining.
With possession of the ball, Cole connected with Maia for a 5-yard pass on first down and then found junior running back Camari Glasgow on a 14yard pass to advance to the 48-yard line.
Glasgow added a 4-yard rush to cap the series, positioning the Rams on the edge of the Buccaneers’ territory as they looked to turn their defensive hold into offensive momentum.
The Rams had possession on the Buccaneers’ 48-yard line in the opening of the fourth quarter.
Glasgow faced a setback with a 5-yard loss, and a series of incomplete passes left the Rams unable to gain ground, forcing them to punt from the Mass. Maritime 47-yard line.
On fourth down, Uchikawa punted for a total of 36 yards to Mass. Maritime’s 17-yard line, with Mass. Maritime’s freshman quarterback Owen Lane returning it one yard to the 18yard line.
Despite a strong 22-yard burst by Mass. Maritime’s running back Daniel Molloy, the team fumbled on a later possession, with freshman safety Carl Renaudin recovering the ball for the Rams.
Despite the turnover, Framingham’s offense couldn’t capitalize on it.
Cole had another incomplete pass and was pressured relentlessly by Mass. Maritime’s defense, including a
crucial sack by defensive lineman Ian Gauch.
Cole later connected on a few short passes to Nichols, but another sack by Gauch left the Rams with little momentum for the remainder of the game.
After the Buccaneers gained possession once again, Pierce fumbled - allowing Framingham to regain possession, but the team struggled to convert.
The Buccaneers’ defense continued its dominance, blocking another series of passes and causing the Rams to turn over on downs with 3 minutes left in the game.
Mass. Maritime ran down the clock with short gains. However, the Rams held on defensively and the Buccaneers were unable to extend the drive any further.
Nichols was named Most Valuable Player of the Homecoming game. “It feels good. I hate that it didn’t come with a win, but it’s good for self-esteem.”
Nichols said they’re working on consistency before their last three conference games. “Since we have a young team, it’s hard for us to execute consistently - so consistency and focus is what we’re working on.”
Roland said the team is working on intensity and effort. “We have to score on offense and lock down on defensethat’s the focus this week.”
The Rams host the Plymouth State Panthers for a conference matchup Nov. 2.
Nichols said, “We’re definitely motivated, for sure. We had little momentum. … This was kind of a shocker for me and the guys, but we just have to come back focused next week - start off Monday great and hope for a different outcome.”
Stats sourced from fsurams.com and MASCAC.com
CONNECT WITH RILEY CROWELL rcrowell@student.framingham.edu
CONNECT WITH IZABELA GAGE igage@student.framingham.edu
HOMECOMING SPORTS
Spread by Photos & Design Editor Adrien Gobin
Photos by Photos & Design Editor Adrien Gobin, Asst. Sports Editor Izabela Gage, and Staff Photographers Meg Dame and Oné Green.
Field hockey celebrates senior game with conference victory
By Taylor Kimmell Staff Writer
The Rams drew a large crowd for their conference matchup against the Bridgewater State Bears Oct. 27.
The team held a short ceremony to honor the graduating members. Each woman was presented with flowers from her family as the seniors were recognized for their years of dedication.
The game began with BSU starting on the offensive end, pressuring the Rams side of the field for the first few minutes. Their first shot on net was wide.
Framingham’s sophomore goaltender Kaitlyn Tello blocked one of Bridgewater’s shots on goal, doing as much as possible to prevent the team from scoring.
The Bears netted their first goal at 3:41.
BSU continued to pressure the net, but Tello shut down their attempts, saving two more shots and remaining vigilant during two penalty corners.
The Rams took back possession of the ball, allowing freshman Finley Hogan to take a hard shot on the Bears’ net, missing by mere inches.
Bridgewater stole the ball and attempted to score, but were unable to make it past Tello.
The second quarter began with a corner from FSU. Senior captains Kaylee Beck and Emma Bailey, freshman Mikayla Malmquist, and senior
Emily Riggins all had shots on goal.
The Bears took another shot on net, once again failing to score on Tello before the half ended.
The third quarter began with a wide shot from BSU 2 minutes in.
Possession went back and forth for the remainder of the quarter.
FSU sophomore Natalia Roehr took a shot but was blocked by Bridgewater goalie Brianna Gagnon.
Shortly after, BSU brought back the pressure on offense, determined to get past Tello, but were unsuccessful. She shut down their attempt with an impressive sliding save.
A minute later, the Bears shot again, but a defensive save from sophomore Marina Cadena prevented them from scoring.
Sophomore Maddie Bailey ended the quarter with a shot on net that was saved by Gagnon.
Action ramped up during the final quarter of the game, with a successful shot from Cadena with an assist from senior Julie Hadley on a corner.
Senior Kaitlin Loughlin kept up the momentum with another shot on net.
Bridgewater attempted three shots, all blocked by Tello, before they scored their second goal.
This was not enough to stun the Rams. They took back possession, earning another corner as well as a penalty stroke, during which senior Captain Angelina Serra fired off a hard shot - tying up the game at 56 minutes.
BSU’s attempts to recover their
squandered lead with four shots and four corners were shut down by Framingham’s unyielding defenders and goalie, sending the game into overtime with a score of 2-2.
During overtime, the Bears earned two corners out of the gate, unable to use them to their advantage. The Rams, however, earned a corner of their own, which allowed Beck to score the game-winning goal.
The seniors expressed their gratitude for the experience the team has provided them.
Beck said being a part of this program has allowed the players to become a family. She said, “It’s like every single one of them is my sister.”
Riggins joined the team for just this season, noting that her teammates have been incredibly welcoming to her in her final year of field hockey.
“They love me for who I am,” she said. “That’s just what I was looking for when I was transferring.”
Serra said, “There are so many things to love about this team. … We play for each other.”
Hadley said that she initially joined the team for the culture and support system the players created. “Seeing us improve season by season has been so much fun to be a part of.”
Loughlin said, “No one doubts each other. … We just have a really good bond.”
Emma Bailey said, “We don’t have cliques. … We’re there for each other, which is what makes us special.”
Men’s soccer blanked by Mass. Maritime
By Kyra Tolley Staff Writer
The Rams lost to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy Buccaneers 3-0 in a conference home game Oct. 26. Their overall record dropped to 1-12-2 and their conference record to 1-5.
Mass. Maritime started the first half with control of the play. Passes over the top of the Rams’ defense created repeated scoring opportunities for the Buccaneers.
The 10th minute brought Framingham’s first shot of the game by sophomore Jack Holt. Mass. Maritime’s defense successfully blocked Holt’s shot, but would have to face an onslaught of goal attempts in the following three minutes.
Sophomore Brian Penney provided the Rams with their first shot on goal of the game, but it was saved by goalkeeper Preston Joia.
Five seconds later, freshman Yuji DaSilva attempted a shot that the Buccaneers blocked, which was followed shortly by another attempt from Penney, whose shot was saved by Joia.
The Buccaneers conceded a free kick in the 16th minute that gave the Rams a significant offensive opportunity. Junior Gustav Hemmingsen stepped up to take the shot, but Mass. Maritime blocked the possibility of a goal before it could reach their keeper.
Sixteen seconds after the shot, Framingham attempted a corner kick.
Senior Bryce Borletto-McCray’s forceful header off the end of the pass curled over the top of the crossbar, barely missing the net.
The Buccaneers built forward momentum for the rest of the first half. They attacked the Rams with a slew of corner kicks that resulted in several scoring opportunities, shots that were just wide, and nearly on-target headers.
Mass. Maritime’s offensive charge lasted for 12 unrelenting minutes before their first goal came as a result of a well-placed corner kick in the 43rd minute.
In the remaining 2 minutes of play in the first half, there was a wide shot by Framingham’s Holt and more action for goalkeeper Mikey Walker, who saved a shot on goal from the Buccaneers just before halftime.
Mass. Maritime came out strong to begin the second half. The Buccaneers had four corner kicks and two wide shots before scoring their second goal in the 50th minute.
From then on, momentum favored the Buccaneers. While the Rams created some offensive opportunities, they were stifled by offside rulings three times in the 7 minutes following Mass. Maritime’s second goal.
In the midst of the Buccaneers’ drive on offense, Borletto-McCray set his sights on scoring, but his shot was saved by Joia.
In the 60th minute, Holt saw an opportunity to put a header on net, but Joia got a hand on it and stopped Holt from putting the Rams on the board.
Sixty-seven minutes into the game,
The team recently took home all three of the MASCAC Field Hockey Weekly awards. Serra, Cadena, and Hogan earned the titles of offensive player, defensive player, and rookie of the week, respectively.
FSU won their game against the Worcester State Lancers 3-2 Oct. 30. The Rams host the Westfield State Owls Saturday, Nov. 2 for their final game before playoffs.
Stats sourced from fsurams.com and MASCAC.com
CONNECT WITH TAYLOR KIMMELL tkimmell@student.framingham.edu
Penney took a shot from a difficult angle that hit the crossbar before exiting the field of play.
With 18 minutes left in the game, the Buccaneers crossed the ball in from the right wing. The ball landed in the box and was kicked in for a third Mass. Maritime goal.
Both Framingham and Mass. Maritime had several shots on net for the remainder of the game, but neither team was able to sink a shot.
Head Coach Adam Gabbard said, “It’s difficult, but the positive is that we now see that we can control our attitude. We control our effort. We control our energy.”
Borletto-McCray said, “We had really good chances, but we just couldn’t finish them.”
He said the game was tough, but “these guys will always fight back - we work hard.
“We just have to pick up each other and be better for each other, but at the end of the day, we beat ourselves,” he added.
The Rams lost 1-0 in a non-conference matchup with Springfield College Oct. 29, which brought their overall record to 1-13-2.
Framingham men’s soccer plays their final game of the regular season against Fitchburg State University Nov. 2.
Stats sourced from fsurams.com and MASCAC.com
CONNECT WITH KYRA TOLLEY ktolley@student.framingham.edu
Adrien Gobin / THE GATEPOST The Rams celebrating after a goal against Bridgewater St. Oct. 26.
Meg Dame / THE GATEPOST
Bryce Borletto-McCray (front) and Gustav Hemmingsen (back) during Homecoming game against Mass. Maritime Oct. 26.
Athletics alumni event strengthens old bonds, forges new ones
By Riley Crowell Asst. Sports Editor
Framingham State University football head coach and athletic director Thomas Kelley hosted “Coach Kelley’s Homecoming Meetup” at SKYBOKX 109 Sports Bar & Grill in Natick Oct. 26.
This event was for former Framingham student-athletes only and provided an opportunity for former teammates and coaches to reconnect with each other, along with making connections with other athletic alumni.
The event was advertised for Homecoming Weekend as a way to “reconnect with your fellow Rams and relive the glory days at this after-game celebration exclusively for alumni athletes.”
Inside the event, there was a sectioned-off space with tables for attendees, along with food and drinks set up for people to enjoy.
Former football player Jerry Jeffrey, Class of ’74, said alumni events are a great way to reconnect. “I come to them because I hope to see some of my friends. I found out about this because of my reunion that we just had in May.”
Jeffrey, a former teammate of Kelley, reminisced about the days of him being a football player at FSU and how different things are over 50 years later. He said, “When I started playing football, we were a club team. We played five games. We were undefeated, but we played B-teams.”
Jeffrey also spoke on the current Framingham football team and offered encouragement in the midst of their struggles. “Framingham has been down this year, but they’ll be back because Tom Kelley is a good coach. He’s
a good guy.”
Former football player Jacques Janvier, Class of ’19, said he found out about the event during the homecoming football game and joined some of his former teammates in attending. “I’m always here to support Coach Kelley.”
Janvier emphasized his interest in alumni events and spoke about the cool and unique connections that he makes at them. “Alumni events are pretty important to me. I think my favorite thing is just getting together with past members.
“I just talked to a guy that was way older than me. He told me about growing up in the 1960s and how he didn’t have a TV. They listened to boxing fights on the radio. It’s just kind of funny to bridge that disconnect a little bit,” he said.
While alumni events are wonderful for seeing old friends and making new ones, they can also be incredibly useful for finding new opportunities.
Janvier said that he was speaking to President Nancy Niemi about his work with autistic children when she mentioned that he could potentially find a role doing that at Framingham State while also pursuing another degree. “Without this event, I would have never known that at all. … Having events like this can open doors for everybody that needs a door open.”
Niemi, President of FSU since 2022, highlighted the significance of alumni events for her and those who attend.
She said her favorite part of the events is getting to know the backstories of the attendees. “They have such specific and wonderful memories of what their time at FSU meant to them. It’s wonderful to hear it and remember
that I’m part of a long tradition.”
Kelley said he loves alumni events because he gets the opportunity to see former teammates, coaches, and players of his. “These are my favorite events. There’s a guy over there from 1972 who is a teammate of mine. All of these guys played for me. It’s family. This is why you do this job.
“They’re not only alumni - they’re friends. We’ve done a lot of stuff together and accomplished a lot of good things,” he added.
Kelley and Niemi agreed that it’s still a work in progress to figure out what kind of alumni events people are interested in and how to increase attendance at them.
The tables at the event featured a save-the-date card with dates and descriptions for upcoming Framingham
alumni events in the 2024-25 school year.
The upcoming events include the “Swiacki Children’s Literature Festival” Nov. 7, the “Awesome 80s Reunion!” Dec. 7, and the reunion weekend for the classes of 1975 and 2015 May 17, 2025.
Niemi said, “We’re still working on what people really want to come to and what is meaningful to our alumni, because that changes from decade to decade, but it’s a great way to have them connect with each other.”
Kelley said he hopes more alumni will come out and enjoy events like this in the future.
CONNECT WITH RILEY CROWELL rcrowell@student.framingham.edu
Izabela Gage / THE GATEPOST
Aluma Maggie Guardiani ’77 (center) talking with University President Nancy Niemi (left) and Director of Athletics Thomas Kelley (right) at the SKYBOKX alumni event Oct. 26.
Izabela Gage / THE GATEPOST
Alumnus Jacques Janvier ’19 (right) laughing with Director of Athletics Thomas Kelley (left) at the SKYBOKX alumni event Oct. 26.
ARTS & FEATURES
Center for Digital Humanities hosts Crossroads Virtual Museum Workshop
By Francisco Omar Fernandez Rodriguez Arts & Features Editor
On Oct. 25, the Center for Digital Humanities hosted “The Crossroads Virtual Museum: Exhibition, Research, and Education.”
This workshop is likely the last installment in the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) invited lecture series because the grant concludes in January, according to Bartholomew Brinkman, the director of the Center for Digital Humanities.
When he first thought of the series, he had wanted to have a healthy mix of formal lectures and hands-on workshops, he said. Throughout this semester, this is the first workshop they have hosted.
He introduced Misha Elashvili and Polina Sabinin, professors from Bridgewater State University (BSU).
Elashvili said their aim is to share some of their experiences and research, which is collaborative work between Bridgewater State University and the Republic of Georgia’s Ilia State University (ISU), where he is from.
One of the projects they’re working on is the Crossroads Virtual MuseumBringing Cultural Heritage Protection to Classrooms, funded by the U.S. Embassy of Georgia, he said.
Sabinin likes to include students in the work their researchers and faculty do. “That’s the most authentic way to have you guys experience research, and what it looks like and what it feels like,” she said.
It also “brings a level of authenticity and a level of excitement to all the projects,” she added.
One goal they maintain is keeping a diverse group of participants and partners in their work, including “undergraduate students, but also graduate students and faculty, new faculty, and seasoned faculty,” Sabinin said.
They also have many different disciplines involved in the research, such as archeology, ecology, biology, and more, she added. Elashvili has experience ranging from physics to geology.
Starting from one U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project, their research team has taken on several new projects, she said. Only some of them get funded, but they try to complete the unfunded tasks as well.
She discussed the SIMuR project. “So SIMuR stands for Shiraki International Multi-disciplinary undergraduate Research projects. It’s funded by NSF,” Sabinin said.
Shiraki is a high elevation plateau in the southeastern most corner of Georgia, and is “a site of an ancient civilization… and dramatically changing environmental conditions,” she explained.
They investigate what happened to the civilization, what is happening
to the environment, and any possible connections between the two, she said.
BSU, ISU, and the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) were all involved in this project, as well as researchers from several other countries, she added.
Depending on the year, they would have BSU students travel to Georgia to do field work, Sabinin said. But the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine shut that down.
“So we brought Georgian collaborators, graduate students as well as faculty, to us, into our labs,” she said.
Elashvili said they use virtual reality to create a virtual reconstruction of archeological artifacts and environments.
To create the virtual reconstruction, they take photos of the same object from many different directions, he said.
“And then the rest is done by the special algorithm, which finds the common points between the photos,” he added. The quality is comparable to using laser scanning, except with a much cheaper price.
“But it’s not just the price. You can use this everywhere. … The pros are way larger than the cons,” Elashvili said.
This can be done through drones, which is how they get scans of areas that someone would otherwise need special permission and equipment to access, he said.
An entire village from the Bronze Age was virtually reconstructed. They needed input from the historians and archeologists working on the excavation site of the real village, he added.
The pottery shown in the reconstruction’s kitchens are 3D models of pottery excavated from graves, he said. “Sorry, not from the kitchen. We took it from the graves, but it’s the same stuff, right?” he joked.
Five years ago, using VR headsets
with their applications would require a cable wire connection to the actual workstation, Elashvili said. Now it’s wireless and doesn’t need as many stations, making the technology more affordable and comfortable.
Next, he discussed a virtual reconstruction of a cathedral from the Medieval period. On the walls are small texts and inscriptions, he said.
“Today, people also do the same thing, and that’s not considered to be nice, right? But people were always doing the same thing,” Elashvili said.
The inscriptions sometimes gave insight into the reality of the time period, similar to newspapers, he said. “They’re mentioning some names of people, they’re mentioning some important events of that period.”
Because they use photos to make these VR reconstructions, they frequently need to rely on sunlight, he added. But because the position of the sun changes, different features are visible at different times of the day.
Virtual museums can use this technology to create reconstructions of different historical environments, with animals and even people, he said.
Elashvili said they could include in the museum “the entire cave of the Paleolithic period, and you can even make it habitable - you can put a fire in that cave.”
They’re working on a virtual reality museum in Georgia, which uses holographic projection, he said. Using the projection, they can create a hardto-detect transparent holographic screen, he added.
A member of the audience asked if VR technology could help conservation efforts by creating motivation to conserve the space and encouraging people to visit historical and environmental sites digitally instead of actually going there.
Elashvili said it can by bringing awareness to these situations. “No matter how many videos you will
shoot or how many articles you type in, it’s way more informative when you can experience it using virtual reality,” he said.
VR is also a good research tool for collecting data, he said. “It’s not just documentation and conservation, but it’s a baseline data for research, and that’s what we are doing now,” he added.
After visiting the University of California San Diego, Elashvili saw they have a cyber-archaeology center where “they are doing really fancy stuff,” he said.
When comparing East Coast and West Coast in developing this technology in education, he got the impression “they are a little bit ahead. Not much but a little bit ahead,” he added.
UC San Diego has a spherical room covered in screens in their cyber center, Elashvili said. “Once you put on your stereo glasses, you get absolute sense of this reality. You can’t even call it virtual reality, it’s real,” he added.
Elashvili put on a headset and connected it to the presentation screen, allowing the audience to view the virtual reality he was seeing. Walking in the real world moved the avatar, but simply clicking at a certain spot moved the viewer there instantly. He showed the audience the Bronze Age village and Medieval cathedral reconstructions.
At the end of the discussion, attendees were invited to try on the headsets and walk around some of the virtual reconstructions.
CONNECT WITH FRANCISCO OMAR FERNANDEZ RODRIGUEZ ffernandezrodriguez@ student.framingham.edu
Emma Lyons / THE GATEPOST
(Left) Misha Elashvili and Polina Sabinin giving a presentation at the Center for Digital Humanities Oct. 25.
Art Club
Continued from Page 1
She said last year the Art Club held simple meetings, but did not have strong attendance. The last active Instagram account for the Art Club posted in 2020.
This means while Art Club wasn’t technically inactive, it was unknown to most students due to its low activity.
The first step, Rainville said, was learning how to be on an eBoard.
“There’s a lot of work, there are a lot of forms - especially in a club with so few members in eBoard, everyone has their fair share of work to get through, especially the president and vice president,” she said.
“There’s just a lot to learn, and then on top of that it’s a constant ask,” Rainville added. “You have to constantly be making something to keep [giving] entertainment and attention to those around you.”
Rainville added some of the other roadblocks include the fact that they receive no funding due to their status as a restarting club, and the number of dead FSU Art Club Instagram accounts making it hard to identify upto-date information.
The correct handle, she clarified, is @fsu.artclub.
“I’ve been sending my vice president Miranda to go to those meetings. Thankfully, SGA has everything,” she said.
She said some of the events on the horizon for the Art Club include a Bob Ross paint night, a second collage night, and ornament painting around the holiday season.
Rainville said the goal of the Art Club is to “bring art into our community and bring our community into art.
“[We] work with what we have, who we have, any ideas - any artistic imagination that anyone has is fully accepted,” she added.
Rainville said the size of the eBoard is “small but mighty.”
She added a long term goal of hers for the club is to provide a community “kick-off to spring” art event, which will aim to provide materials and hopefully become an all-day activity that all members of campus can participate in.
Art Club’s events and general board meetings are held at the same times, 6 p.m. on select Thursdays, and all students are welcome to attend regardless of experience or major, Rainville said.
She said Art Club does help sponsor an “artistic creativity event” monthly or bimonthly in cooperation with the Henry Whittemore Library, which allows students, faculty, and staff the space to create.
The event is held in Red Barn Cafe, she added.
Miranda Allicon, the club’s vice president and a sophomore studio art major with a concentration in graphic design, also joined the eBoard at Rainville’s request.
“Paige and I were in a bunch of
classes together last year and we became friends. … And they were telling me about how they were looking for a vice president, and I said I can be available,” she said.
Allicon said she’s been helping with all parts of the club based on Rainville’s request, and has most importantly been working with Student Government Association (SGA) to get event funding.
The Art Club currently doesn’t have any funding, Allicon said, so whenever they want to host an event, they must prepare and present a plan for spending to SGA, who will grant or deny them the money.
Allicon said thankfully the experience with SGA has been great so far, and the Art Club eBoard has a group chat to easily facilitate planning for these requests.
all,” she added.
David Abe, the Art Club secretary and a senior Business & IT major, said he joined the club at the end of the last semester after Rainville asked him to be the secretary.
“I had always wanted to join the Art Club and I was initially hesitant with having so many clubs I’m a part of, but she ended up convincing me,” he said.
Abe said the job of secretary hasn’t been too challenging, thankfully, and that Rainville and Allicon do most of the hard work.
He added he’s there to support Rainville, explaining he helped pick up the pumpkins for the painting event, takes notes on budget decisions she makes, and helps with event promotion.
Abe said the recent Pumpkin Paint-
Rainville said art is what piqued her interest, although not only the art itself but also the psychology and science involved in the creative process and the science behind the materials and how they interact with each other.
She added this interest in all areas of art is why she decided to go into the education field, so she can learn how these concepts behave in a range of young ages.
Rainville said it still wasn’t an easy decision to pursue art in college.
She said she knew she wanted to be a teacher in her junior year of high school after getting hands-on experience teaching welding to freshmen at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School, but couldn’t decide on what subject.
“I thought maybe I wanted to teach
She added the communal Club Room I and Paul T. Murphy Room on the fourth floor of the McCarthy Center sometimes contain the supplies they need, such as markers, pencils, and paper.
“I mean, surprisingly we don’t have scissors, so we just had to request for scissors. Things like that as well,” she said.
She added a goal of hers is to breathe new life into the Art Club. “We don’t want people to think it’s only for art majors either. Just go and have fun. Paige plays music - we just want everyone to have a good time.”
Allicon said she’s always been interested in art, but didn’t know what path to choose until she took a Digital Tools for Art and Design class with Art Professor Jennifer Dowling.
She added the club has been off to a great start, and thinks the eBoard has achieved their goal of reviving the club.
“The three of us, we communicate really well, we do what we can - both Paige and I are art majors so we do have the long classes and trying to find out who can do what at what times is difficult, but our communication is great. We try our best,” she said.
“I think we’re just doing good over-
ing has been his favorite event so far, but that a mixup with Stop & Shop left them with fewer pumpkins than there were attendees.
“There were a limited amount, but people ended up painting and it was a good time,” he added.
Abe said he wanted to be an art major when he first came to FSU.
“My parents didn’t want that for me - they said that I’ll just get stuck doing somebody else’s work, which they were right,” he said.
Abe said he then became a Business & IT major with the end goal of opening his own art business. Becoming the Art Club secretary, he added, was the natural next step to both improve his art and get experience with management.
He added he was not always interested in art, however.
“I was a hater of art before 2020, and then - this sounds really stupid - I found Studio Ghibli,” he said. “It found me right at the right time, and I was like, ‘Woah, art is an expression of self, what?! It’s not all nonsense!’”
Rainville said she’s always been interested in art.
“Everyone has sort of a story how they’re an artistic child and whether or not they kept going - I was one of those few who kept going,” she said.
history or English, but then I really evaluated myself … and I really felt as though art has been one of my persisting interests that has never gone away,” she said.
When Rainville was asked what made her interested in art in the first place, she had a quick answer:
“Construction paper.
“I remember very very vividly when I was much younger, I had this book of construction paper and every time I looked at it, it would just spark inspiration,” she said.
“Wow, that was a memory I did not expect to have,” she added.
Rainville said restarting a club is difficult work, but can be done.
“It takes a lot of pride, a lot of passion, a lot of energy to really jump over those hurdles, talk to who you need to talk to, and make a fool of yourself, really.
“And advertise, advertise, advertise!”
[ Editor’s Note: David Abe is an Assistant Illustrations Editor for The Gatepost. ]
Izabela Gage / THE GATEPOST
(Left) Art Club Secretary David Abe and President Paige Rainville in an eBoard meeting Oct. 31.
FEST FALL
The FSAB held their annual “Fall Fest” in the Church parking lot on Oct. 29. They had a dounut eating contest, mini pumpkin painting, a food truck, corn hole, and a performance by Shelby Roode and FSAB Vice President, Kyle Walker.
Photos and Spread by Associate Editor Maddison Behringer
ARTS & FEATURES
Digital Humanities director leads workshop for AI prompt engineering
By Raena Hunter Doty Arts & Features Editor
Bartholomew Brinkman, director of the Center for Digital Humanities, led a faculty workshop for engineering effective artificial intelligence (AI) prompts Oct. 31.
Prompt engineering refers to crafting effective input text for generative AI software like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.
Brinkman said he wanted to keep the workshop fairly simple because the event was open to people who may have no knowledge of prompt engineering at all.
He added he wanted to establish some basic facts to keep in mind while engineering AI prompts.
First, the quality of output will depend on which specific AI model is in use - different models will bear different answers, he said.
Second, he said, “Prompting is often iterative,” meaning the first output may not be the best - or even good - but using different iterations of a prompt can make the model generate better responses.
Third, “One analogy I heard recently I think is useful for a lot of us to consider is that a prompt is less like an online search query and more like a formal email,” he said. This means prompts benefit from adding context, setting the tone, high specificity, and using thoughtful tone.
Brinkman said general principles
he tries to keep in mind while generating prompts include giving as much detail as possible, including a point of view for the narrator of the text, specifying the format, and breaking a larger project up into multiple different sections for the AI to generate.
He also recommended attendees working with generative AI should analyze his results, though he said that was beyond the scope of the workshop. Analyzing results allows
generic verbs often produce bland content.”
On top of this, writing in a negative tone may cause the AI to generate a response with a similar tone, and negative prompts - which ask the AI not to do something - can confuse the models, he said.
appropriate they are for 8-year-old children. He said once again it generated fairly reasonable results, though the apparent hyperlinks in the graph didn’t actually lead anywhere.
Next he showed a graph he asked it to generate showing a network graph of different Halloween monsters, which again, he said was fairly reasonable, but when he prompted the AI to edit the draft, it didn’t generate a fixed graph immediately.
“One analogy I heard recently I think is useful for a lot of us to consider is that a prompt is less like an online search query and more like a formal email.”
- Bartholomew Brinkman Director of the Center for Digital Humanities
users of AI to find the root of what’s working and what isn’t when engineering prompts.
Brinkman outlined a few “LLM agnostic” principles “that people are starting to gravitate toward.
“You need to write instructions as you would to an especially literal-minded intern on his first day of working,” Brinkman said.
He added using more specialized language can help because “bland or
THURSDAY,NOVEMBER7,2024
Brinkman recommended avoiding using synonyms to describe the same two concepts when writing prompts, as this may create unnecessary extra variables.
He said sometimes including in a prompt a request for the AI model to slow down can yield better results, as can providing - or asking it to generate - an example of the requested outcome beforehand.
Brinkman said there are a few different types of questions.
First, basic prompts, like “What’s the weather today?” He added for basic questions like these, he urges people to consider whether it would be a better question for a search engine, as AI models use much more power than search engines.
Second, complex prompts, like “Write a summary of the latest research on climate change in the form of a news article.”
Third, role-playing prompts, like “Pretend you’re a 19th-century inventor and explain how a steam engine works.”
Fourth, scenario-based prompts, like “If you were an AI assistant in a medical clinic, how would you handle a patient with flu symptoms?”
After this, he ran through several Halloween-themed examples of the prompts he was describing.
In the first, he prompted ChatGPT to generate a one-act play about classic Halloween monsters written in the perspective of a third-grade teacher creating something for students.
He said even though he didn’t refine the prompt at all, the product generated by ChatGPT was fairly appropriate on the first try.
Next, he asked it to write a 2,000word essay about hysteria during the Salem witch trials, citing at least five academic sources. He said the product, again, was fairly good, though admitted he hadn’t fact-checked the paper for hallucinations, which is what happens when an AI model generates content that sounds correct but is not.
Brinkman then showed a graph ChatGPT generated after he prompted it to create a list of 20 Halloween movies and rank them based on how
Brinkman showed a poem generated by ChatGPT after he prompted it to write Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” for the 21st century. Brinkman said the poem never fully resembled Poe’s poem, “and I’m a poem person, so I was really kind of annoyed.”
For his last Halloween-themed prompt, he showed a couple of examples of images for a middle school Halloween bash generated by ChatGPT, which generated content largely in adherence with the parameters set. Of the two examples he made - one with a more refined prompt than the other - he said, “Maybe it’s just preference.”
His last example - “the scariest example of all” - asked, “Based on the most recent polling, who is most likely to win the 2024 presidential election?” The prompt continued with more specific parameters for what should be included in the content of the response.
Brinkman said he phrased the prompt specifically so it didn’t include the names of the candidates to show that, even though AI models are often trained on outdated datasetssuch as ChatGPT, which was trained in March 2023 - there are still ways for AI answers to use current information.
“If you’re doing this through a web interface, it’s going to link out to websites to pull in content to basically rewrite your query - to add context to your query - and then send it to the LLM,” Brinkman said, though he clarified that is oversimplifying the process.
He added this is important for anyone who wants recent information but doesn’t trust an AI model to generate any.
After that, the workshop broke into groups and attendees were able to experiment with newfound prompt generation skills in order to see what they could produce from an AI model. When the workshop rejoined as a large group, the faculty were prompted to discuss and reflect on their experiences with these new skills.
Brinkman said this workshop only covered “the tip of the iceberg.
“These are often still very flawed in a lot of ways. But they’re here to stay, and I do think that having more considered prompting techniques can help us to get some of those better responses - and also to see some of the cracks in the veneer that we could then push on as needed,” he added.
ARTS & FEATURES
‘The Substance’ pumps it up
By Antonio Machado Staff Writer
In a year so incredibly packed with horror films, “The Substance” managed to shine brightly above its peers, even winning Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival before its release on Sept. 20. Directed by Coralie Fargeat, the film tackles body horror in every possible sense of the phrase.
The film follows Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a dimming Hollywood star, after she is fired from her job starring in an aerobic workout daytime TV show in favor of a younger, sexier alternative. Heartbroken, Sparkle comes across a mysterious black market drug unceremoniously named The Substance, said to create “a younger, more beautiful, more perfect” you.
Which, of course, she orders for herself.
The instructions of The Substance are clear - the new version can only be sustained for seven days at a time, after which you must swap back for another seven days without exception, and most importantly, always remember that “the two of you are one.”
After examining herself in the mirror for a brief moment with pure disdain, Elisabeth injects herself with The Substance and soon finds herself on the bathroom floor in an incredibly
gruesome sequence as we see the new her begin to unzip herself out from Elisabeth’s spine.
It’s impossible to look away, yet so indescribably hard to watch - and it only gets worse from here.
What follows is younger, more beautiful, more perfect - Sue (Margaret Qualley). Sue auditions to replace Elisabeth and quickly rises to fame after getting immediately cast in her very own TV show.
Sue exudes everything Elisabeth was told she no longer had, and as the thrill of being a newborn star begins to outshine her life as Elisabeth, she begins to test the limits of The Substance’s rules.
Simply put, “The Substance” is camp. Certain things don’t make sense at all, but they don’t need to. The absurdity of the film is what makes it good horror, at times eliciting laughs from the audience because
the only alternative is succumbing to the nausea.
As the film progresses, the body horror becomes exceedingly difficult to watch, but the hardest scenes to sit through were not the ones plagued by what is easily the best body horror featured in film since the era of David Cronenberg, but rather the ones where Elisabeth’s self-hatred is placed on display.
The scene in which Elisabeth struggles to leave the house while she’s getting ready for a date is easily the scariest moment in the filmbecause it’s a moment so many people have experienced. Moore’s stellar performance is lived-in and filled with unbridled disdain - for both herself and the world.
With some of the best line deliveries in the entire film, Qualley perfectly inhabits the hypersexualized, bright neon’s of Sue. She’s an inhuman representation of beauty and she owns it, so when that is challenged and the bright pink colors of her star are dimmed, Qualley shines in a new way that spells out “Best Supporting Actress.”
Going into the film, my only expectation was nausea-inducing horror, and though I most certainly received that, what truly struck me was how very clearly the film had a voice and how very loudly it spoke.
Although the TV executive, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), is portrayed to be the antagonist of the film, the true antagonist is the collective consciousness of women’s value diminishing as they age and subsequently the insane measures taken to retain desirability.
We empathize with both women in their moments of frustration and self-hatred, yet we are also brought to detest them for their weaknesses.
“The Substance” blends its campy stomach-turning horror sequences that will undoubtedly leave you appalled with poignant feminist commentary incredibly well. The film is furious and has so much to say, so if you have not yet had a chance to hear its message, I urge you to do so, but until then, take care of yourself.
Rating: ADon’t buy popcorn
CONNECT WITH ANTONIO MACHADO amachado4@student.framingham.edu
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ come and me wan’ go home
By Liv Dunleavy Staff Writer
Beetlejuice… Beetlejuice… beeware of the sequel to the classic 1988 ghost story “Beetlejuice.”
It seems like these days every movie is a part two. I’d say in most cases they aren’t needed either. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” was the sequel to a beloved horror comedy that we definitely did not need.
With several plots that run at the same time, the story becomes muddy and confusing, and the storyline honestly just feels like someone telling an anecdote of one really long run-on sentence and switching between plots randomly.
Much of the cast returned, including Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara), and Beetlejuice himself (Michael Keaton).
Also intriguing, though, were the new characters such as Lydia’s daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), a random love interest for Astrid, Jeremy Frazier (Arthur Conti), and one for Beetlejuice, Delores (Monica Bellucci).
That is what drew me in originally. I was nostalgic to “Beetlejuice,” and wondering how the story could have progressed, but also wanting to see the return of original characters such as Bob and the Sandworm.
After watching the trailer I was so excited to watch this film, to relive the fun times I had back when I was
younger. That’s the problem with part two’s - they give us that nostalgic pull that makes us watch even if we know there is no reason for a second film!
The problem really came in when I realized that this story they created didn’t need to exist in the first place. There are some stories that end in such a way where a sequel is not needed.
“Beetlejuice” ended so the watcher would assume that everything was resolved, and there was a well-rounded finale.
So there is no reason the sequel needs a bunch of random side quests for the viewer to decipher. Also, the actors themselves just don’t bring that same vibe that the first film did!
For example, Astrid’s character seems to have a similar energy to Jenna Ortega’s other teenage, goth, mother-hating daughter character, Wednesday Addams. She even has a similar story arc to that show, and just can’t seem to escape the worst love interests.
And it feels like Lydia’s subplot with fiancé Rory (Justin Theroux) was filler for the whole movie. I don’t think it added anything to the story at all, or made an impact that much on any other characters. Rory just seemed annoying and felt like they needed someone to make me angry about.
The only scenes I really enjoyed were Beetlejuice’s, but for a movie titled after him, I fear they missed
the mark on literally any of the true essence of his comedic presence, and focused far too world building of the Deetz family.
The random introduction to Beetlejuice’s ex-lover De lores seemed tacked on and ran domly inserted. Her presence wasn’t neces sary.
And the use of certain fan-service-esque features such as the soundtrack including the famed “Banana Boat (Day-O)” and new scenes with fun musical additions was definitely a point in the positive direction for the film. But I feel like there just wasn’t enough structure or align- ment with the first film for me to consider it as a strong contender for a second part.
There were so many story arcs going on that it felt rushed and thrown together super messily, and at the end it honestly didn’t feel like anything was resolved either - mostly because there was nothing to really resolve.
I couldn’t tell you what the main plot was, but regardless, the entire movie could’ve been an eight-episode Netflix series with how they decided to go about the story arcs. It probably would’ve been a better watch if they could have focused more on each character’s story. The game is in the name, and we are all aware. Although “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” missed the mark this time, we can assume the third time’s a charm. Guess we should all look out for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” in the future.
Rating: C
Less of a dream - really more nightmare material
Ronnie Chiu-Lin / THE GATEPOST
Emily Monaco / THE GATEPOST
‘Transformers One’ - more than meets the eye
By Izayah Morgan Editorial Staff
The “Transformers” universe has been fighting an uphill battle. Director Michael Bay’s “Transformers” movie adaptation set a precedent with how much the “Transformers” IP can generate.
With the most recent “Transformers” movie “Rise of the Beasts” grossing $441.4 million worldwide in 2023, the movie could not be under more pressure. Combine that with what seemed to be a lack of advertisement, the movie seemed to be doomed to fail.
However, as a massive “Transformers” fan, I was pleasantly surprised.
The voice acting was a key highlight for me, Chris Hemsworth as Orion Pax (Optimus Prime), Brian Tryee Henry as D-16 (Megatron), Scarlett Johansson as Elita-1, and the standout performance of Jon Hamm as Sentinel Prime.
The beginning acts as a setup to the planet Cybertron and how it came to be. Primus was the first Transformer and turned him into the world that the Transformers would all home and produce their life source energon.
After Primus transformed, he created the 13 original “Primes,” who were tasked with governing all Cybertronians and protecting them. After years of peace, the Quintessons - another species - attacked. Twelve of the original 13 Primes died in a conflict with them.
The only survivor was Sentinel Prime.
The Quintessons are an ever-looming threat throughout the movie, and with the planet’s en running low, it quite fully speeds up pro sion in the The Matrix of Leader ship is pre sented to the main Prime and used to allow en ergon to flow suc cessfully to the Cyber tron, which was lost in the battle with the Quintessons.
The story fol lows Orion Pax and D-16. It follows the journey of how their brothership fell into a millenia-long war.
signed to the mines to gather the depleting energon.
Orion Pax, D-16, and many more Cybertronians were born without Cogs, which is what makes a Transformer a Transformer. It allows them to change from robot mode to vehicle mode.
Cogless Cybertronians were as-
Orion Pax is a classic rebel character searching for answers on history and where the Matrix of Leadership is. D-16 is the character there to largeOrion from danger, also present the position of Pax, a character who is largely happy with his life and does not mind the role society has put him
The movie tells a fantastic story between the two brothers and how they fall from grace. Pax strives for more than his life as just a miner and becoming the hero Cybertron needs.
His whole journey and crew’s journey (Pax, D-16, Bumblebee, and Elita-1) is to find the matrix and return it to Sentinel prime.
The comedy to me stood out as the movie’s funniest part. The interactions between the main crew creates some ease after a tense moment.
After learning the true history of the world, the crew has different ideas on what to do. This is the main thing that tears Pax and D-16 apart.
Seeing the two sides one can take after learning the “truth” parallels real life in so many ways. Both Pax and D-16 had relatable paths one could take, and make me empathize with the characters more.
Overall, it was an enjoyable ride and made me jump out of my seat laughing.
Rating: A-
A cog doesn’t define you
CONNECT WITH IZAYAH MORGAN imorgan@student.framingham.edu
David Abe / THE GATEPOST
By Owen Glancy Asst. Arts & Features Editor
The 1960s were arguably one of the most exciting decades for world cinema in film history, with auteurs from all over the globe releasing some of their most important works. Hitchcock made “Psycho,” Ozu made “An Autumn Afternoon,” Kubrick made “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Bergman made “Persona,” Fellini made “8 ½,” and Goddard made “Breathless.”
In this seemingly endless sea of excellent cinema, one film stands out both in the minds of film aficionados and in pop culture in general.
“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” is debatably the most popular western in cinematic history, inspiring such a wide variety of films, it would be absurd to try and list them all. From the iconic score, to the excellent performances, to even the subtly brilliant editing, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” is a true masterpiece.
But most people don’t even know where the film is from.
The English dialogue and lead performance by Clint Eastwood incorrectly lead many people into be-
Puzzles
lieving that this film is from the U.S., when in reality, this is an Italian film.
Directed by Sergio Leone, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” perfectly demonstrates both the pros and cons of Italian filmmaking in the ’60s and ’70s, with perhaps the biggest pro being that Italian productions were truly international.
Italian filmmakers made a bold choice when casting their films, in that they decided not to worry about any sort of language barrier amongst the cast and hired whoever they thought would be best. These foreign actors and actresses would speak all of their lines in their native language, and during post-produc tion, they would be dubbed over in English.
came a classic, to the point where it’s by far the most popular film I’ve covered on Owen’s Oldies.
A major factor in the film’s popularity is Eastwood’s performance as Blondie, a nameless cowboy who also acts as the protagonist for the other two films in the “Dollars Trilogy,” of which “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” is the third installment.
This was, and still is, a bold choice as it made many aspects of production difficult. While many members of production did speak English, many did not and on a scale as big as this, communication difficulties could seriously hurt the chances of the film being finished well and on time.
Despite these issues, the film released on time and very quickly be-
Piece de resistance?
He plays this role with the sophistication and class Eastwood is known for, while also defining the “strong and silent type” gunslinger for decades to come.
Eastwood isn’t alone, however, as Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef round out the titular trio with their roles as Tuco and Angel Eyes respectively. Wallach in particular delivers a delightfully devilish performance as Tuco, who trusts no one and betrays everyone. You come to truly despise Tuco, yet you also come to understand him. He is never someone who you will root for, but he isn’t a character you will hate spending nearly three hours with.
The runtime is what surprised me the most upon first viewing, with the film clocking in at a little under three hours long. That is insane for a ’60s western, as this film is almost
letters you should ignore in the starred clues’ answers
43. “Let me get back to you”
44. Chapter in a textbook
45. Spanish for “grandmother”
48. “ at’s gotta be rough”
51. Last word of “America the Beautiful”
52. *Aardvark’s snacks
55. “Wii Sports ___”
57. “And there it is!”
58. “Sevenlayer” food
59. Yawninducing
60. Entertainment achievements: Abbr.
62. *Change for a ten
66. Get some shut-eye
67. Emotion that causes goosebumps
68. Pre x with “hit” or “bit”
69. ompson of “ or: Ragnarok”
70. Prepares, as a kitchen table
71. Provocative DOWN
1. Pranks with rolls, brie y
2. Quaker bit
3. Like this line: /
4. Clothesline alternative
5. Most wan
6. Chain store with “the helpful hardware folks”
7. Common chocolate substitute
8. 10% donation
9. Sound heard a lot on Talk Like a Pirate Day
10. “Have we met?”
11. Garlicky sauces
12. Undamaged
13. rows, as a graduation cap
18. Opposed to
22. Pre x with “economics”
24. Align
25. Actor Tortorella
27. Golf hazard
30. “___ So Unusual” (Cyndi Lauper album)
33. Pushes away
35. Celebratory poem
36.
an hour longer than both of the other entries in the “Dollars Trilogy.” That being said, the film moves at an incredibly brisk pace.
This fast pace would not be possible if the plot was uninteresting, but thankfully the plot is both simple and engaging. Blondie and Tuco come across a dying soldier who tells them of a strongbox containing $200,000 hidden in a graveyard. The problem is Tuco knows the name of the cemetery, while Blondie knows the name of the grave. These two opposites must work together if they want the money, all while Angel Eyes is hot on their heels, also after the money and their lives.
This constant air of tension throughout the film makes every scene intense, even more so as the trio get caught up in the aftermath of the American Civil War. If this tension was not present, many of these scenes would have felt boring or unnecessary, but with the tension, every scene becomes engaging and anxiety-inducing.
“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” is not just a cornerstone of Italian cinema, but also world cinema in general, showcasing some of the industry’s most talented individuals operating at their absolute best. Even if it might seem a little intimidating, give “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” a try. I have a feeling it’ll become a favorite before long!
CONNECT WITH OWEN GLANCY oglancy@student.framingham.edu
38. Lorde’s rst name
39. Secreting body part
40. Like Fermat’s Last eorem, until 1994
41. Level in a loyalty program
42. “Now,” in the ER
45. HS exam scored from 1 to 5 46. Snoopy’s breed
Cancels out
Commands
Long ght
Short ghts
Shopaholic’s indulgence
Goo
Self-care getaway
Gobble up
Food that may be poached
“Come to think of it ...”
Puzzle solutions are now exclusively online.
‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’
Ben Hurney / THE GATEPOST
F-RAM-ILY MEMORies
Emma Lyons / THE GATEPOST
Maddison Behringer / THE GATEPOST
Ryan O’Connell / THE GATEPOST
Meghan Spargo / THE GATEPOST
Ryan O’Connell / THE GATEPOST
Maddison Behringer / THE GATEPOST
Spread by Associate Editor Maddison Behringer and Photos & Design Editor Alexis Schlesinger
Framingham State University’s Homecoming and Family Weekend, Oct. 25 and 26, saw family, alumni, and students celebrate with live music, a block party on State Street, moonlight breakfast, and more. Some photographs included in this spread were taken on black and white film and developed at The Gatepost office.
Meghan Spargo / THE GATEPOST