The Equinox 2.16.17

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THE EQUINOX The student voice of Keene State College

Vol. 69, Issue #19 Thursday, February 16, 2017

Fair trade at Keene State

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Tip Whip comes to Keene KATIE JENSEN

equiNox staff

DOROTHY ENGLAND

/ NEWS EDITOR

Executive board members of the KSC Fair Trade Club seniors Nicole Verrilli, Meghan Powell and Morgan McMinn pose for a picture while raising awareness on the fair trade movement. They are working to get Keene State recognized as a fair trade college. The club has collected over 100 signatures and have all the requirements needed. These requirements include such things as informing the public on fair trade items, having an active club on campus and advocating for fair trade items at the college.

Students ask for administrative approval to make KSC recognized as a fair trade institution DOROTHY ENGLAND

News editor It doesn’t matter where you’re from; everyone wants to get paid fairly for their work.

Here at Keene State College, efforts have been and continue to be made on acknowledging this ideology for workers in developing countries. The notion is known as fair trade.

Items made and sold as fair trade are “made with respect to people and [the] planet” according to fairtradeusa.org.

The website continued to say, “Our rigorous social, environmental and economic standards work to promote safe and healthy working conditions, protect the environment, enable transparency and empower communities to build strong, thriving businesses.”

Here at Keene State, students feel propelled to have the

institution recognized as a fair trade college. This wouldn’t really mean too much other than the recognition, but it could encourage people to be more mindful of their purchases and lifestyles.

KSC senior Kayla Winterson started a proposal this semester, followed suit with the Fair Trade Club members before her.

The group has been trying for years to get KSC recognized as a fair trade college. As of now, the current petition has over 100 signatures and the current members of the club said they have been trying to get KSC President Anne Huot to sign the document since October. This would be the final step in getting that recognition. At the time of The Equinox printing, President Huot had yet to sign off on their proposal.

An interview request from The Equinox went out to Huot, but Director of Strategic Communications and Community

SAMANTHA MOORE / ART DIRECTOR

This graphic shows items that can be bought or sold as fair trade. Fair trade works to establish fair payment and working conditions, especially for people in developing countries.

» TIP WHIP, A2

“Fair trade helps empower farmers and workers in third world countries to ensure they earn a living wage [and] work in safe conditions. [It] empowers women, child labor and so much more.

It makes sure in a more global society that third world countries are not being taken advantage of.”

NICOLE VERRILLI KSC SENIOR

Relations Kelly Ricaurte informed The Equinox that President Huot was away.

Winterson said if KSC was to become recognized for its fair trade efforts, this could have a ripple effect on others. “It’s making a public endorsement that...as a college, we have elements that support the fair trade movement and allow fair trade options on campus,” she said.

She continued that this could also attract people to the college. “The recognition of KSC as a fair trade college is making a commitment to conscience consumerism and raising awareness for fair trade,” she said. Winterson said for her, being involved in the Fair Trade Club at KSC gives her a greater sense of the world around her.

“In this community that is educated and eager to be involved, it’s an outlet that allows students to be passionate about a social justice cause,” she said.

Another member of the Fair Trade Club, KSC senior Nicole Verrilli, said she feels like as a group, they do everything they can to raise awareness to other students. “What we really want this semester is to make Keene State College a fair trade college,” she said.

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Associated Collegiate Press

Tip Whip, a student-run driving service, will be offered to Keene State College students within the next few months for almost no cost year-round.

By downloading the Tip Whip app, students will be able to get drivers to pick them up and drop them off at any address, on or off campus. Just be sure to register with your school e-mail and check off that you are enrolled at KSC; employees and customers must be students only. You will also be asked to submit your credit or debit card information as well so you can tip your driver.

The main advantage to using this service is that you don’t need to carry any money on you. Since your card is hooked up to the app, you can tip any amount you want through your phone.

So don’t worry if you didn’t bring your wallet or if you lost it amidst your nightly adventures; just as long as you keep your phone on, you can get a ride.

College kids are up all hours of the night hopping from one party to the next, but New England’s brutal temperatures may prevent people from going out.

Usually, students resort to calling campus safety for a ride, but they are not always available. However, Tip Whip drivers are students that

A4: Fair trade editorial A10: Choosing the right major B1: Acting in Australia B10: Chamique Holdsclaw visits KSC

BRIEF

Position filled for new campus safety director DOROTHY ENGLAND

News editor A candidate has been found to fill in as Keene State College’s campus safety director.

Barbara O’Connor will start working on March 6, according to KSC’s Director of Strategic Communications and Community Relations Kelly Ricaurte. In an e-mail from Ricaurte, she stated, “O’Connor has worked in law enforcement for over 30 years, including 15 years at university campuses. Before retiring in May 2016, O’Connor had served as Chief of Police at the University of Connecticut since 2012. She also served as police chief at UMassAmherst from 2001 to 2009 and the University of Illinois from 2009 to 2012.”

For the time being, Campus Safety Associate Director Stuart Mitchell is standing in for the position until O’Connor’s arrival.

Updates will be given as more information is provided.

Dorothy England can be contacted at dengland@kscequinox.com

» FAIR TRADE, A3

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Contact Us Newsroom: 358-2413 Executive Editor: 358-2414 Advertising/Business: 358-2401 Newsroom: Questions? Contact obelanger@kscequinox.com or cmesser@kscequinox.com

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Thursday, February 16, 2017

Keene welcomes Chipotle restaurant

TIM SMITH / PHOTO EDITOR

Top: KSC senior and Student Body President Laura Graham hands out free t-shirts to the first 100 customers at the grand opening of Chipotle Mexican Grill. The opening was on Saturday, Feb. 11 at 10:45 a.m. The restaurant is located on 333 Winchester St. The restaurant’s normal hours will be 10:45 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.

Below: Students and others wait in line for the grand opening of Chipotle Mexican Grill. Some students got there two hours before the opening at 10:45 a.m. The first 25 customers got free entrees and the first 100 customers got free t-shirts.

To the left: Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Kemal Atkins and Keene Mayor Kendall Lane eat from Chipotle on opening day. Both help cut the ribbon for the grand opening.

TIP WHIP

aid certification and on-road driving tests.

KSC senior Kelsey Jackson is the campus Cont. from A1 CEO of Tip Whip. When asked about their schedule, she assumed they will be open 24/7 you can rely on to be there.

Unlike Uber, you’ll be more familiar with for half the week. “We’ll most likely be available the person driving you. Since staff is limited Wednesdays through Saturdays, when most to students only, they’re more likely to be a people go out, but it depends on how many friend rather than a stranger. According to drivers we get.”

According to Jackson, the idea came to the whosdrivingyou.org, there are numerous incidents that involve Uber drivers harming CEO of Tip Whip Spencer Wood while he was a their passengers and allowing criminals behind student at the University of Maine.

Sick of giving his friends rides at night when the wheel. they were drunk, he thought, ‘Why don’t people However, on Tip Whip’s website, you can have a driving service for this sort of thing?’ see that drivers must undergo a vetting process Since then, he’s made his idea into reality. Tip that includes in-person interviews, vehicle inspections, violence prevention training, first Whip has expanded to multiple universities and

colleges such as UMaine Farmington, Husson University, Beal College, UMaine Orono and Eastern Maine Community College.

Throughout the next month, Jackson can be contacted through her school e-mail, kelsey. jackson@ksc.keene.edu for any students interested in applying to be a Whip driver. If there are not enough drivers, then hours may be restricted.

KSC first year Mary-Kate Cavanaugh spends every weekend going out with friends. “I usually call campus safety if it’s really cold, but I’d definitely use Tip Whip if they were to come to Keene State,” she said.

Her friend and KSC first year Taylor Lindquist also shared her excitement. “Yeah, I always go to the L[iving] L[earning] C[ommons] to see my friends, so it’d be cool if I could get a ride there instead of walking in the cold every night,” she said.

Tip Whip can be used for all transportation needs, which includes getting a ride to Walmart, Target, Monadnock Food Co-op or any of the other surrounding stores in Keene.

For more information, check out Tip Whip’s website at www.tipwhip.com or follow their Twitter and Instagram accounts. Anyone who has questions about applying can contact Kelsey Jackson or Spencer Wood at info@tipwhip.com.

Katie Jensen can be contacted at kjensen@kscequinox.com

How does Tip Whip compare?

1. Similar to Uber, all transactions are cashless.

2. Different from other transportation services, Tip Whip employs only students.

3. Tip Whip drivers must be first aid certified and trained in sexual assault and violence prevention unlike some other competing companies. However, new legislation in New York is in the process of having all licensed taxi and limousine drivers “complete a sexual assault awareness and prevention training program” according to http://legistar. council.nyc.gov/.

4. Tip Whip only serves students.

SAMANTHA MOORE / ART DIRECTOR

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Thursday, February 16, 2017

LLC wins award for architectural design CAMPUS SAFETY

OLIVIA BELANGER

AdministrAtive executive editor

The newest residence hall on campus, the Living and Learning Commons (LLC), has become an architectural achievement not only to the campus community, but also outside of Keene. The N.H. chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANH) recently awarded the LLC with an “Excellence in Architecture Design” honor award.

Designed by international firm Perkins+Will Global, the on-campus building was one of four other buildings to win the professional association’s award this year.

Construction began in May of 2015 and was open for students this fall, including a level of classrooms, as well as a dormitory. The firm was chosen by a committee mixed with students and faculty.

KSC junior and architecture major Erin Conti stated she was approached by her advisor to become involved with the committee during her first year at KSC. “It was really exciting to be a part of the process of choosing which firm would be selected to work on the project,” Conti stated. “I attended meetings throughout my [first year] and I got to give my opinion on all aspects of the building, from the layout down to the colors and materials used for the interior. At the beginning of my sophomore year after construction had begun, I got to go down to Boston and help pick out furniture to be brought to campus and show to other students to make final choices.”

Conti stated that it was an enlightening experience considering she was involved with this at the very start of her degree.

“It really helped me see the whole process all from a client’s perspective,” Conti stated.

“It was really eye-opening, especially being that it was my [first year] and I had just been starting out in architecture. I learned just how much goes into every single detail and how much can change throughout the design process.”

While there were benefits for student architects, there were also other majors that found applicable skills through being on this committee to help towards their varying career goals.

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Week of: Feb. 6 Monday, February 6 2:04 p.m. One Butler Court: Noise Complaint 8:31 p.m. LLC: Safety Equipment - Misuse 10:48 p.m. Holloway Hall: Controlled Drug Act Violation // - Drug Paraphernalia Possession // - Odor of Drugs Tuesday, February 7 JACOB PAQUIN / EQUINOX STAFF

The Living and Learning Commons (LLC) won an award for its architectural design. The dormitory has both first-year rooms and classrooms.

KSC alumna and art major Natasha Young was also amongst the committee, and spent her last two years on campus as a Resident Assistant (RA). Young stated that her time involved with Residential Life allowed her to realize it was something she wanted to turn into a career. “[Associate Dean of Student and Director of Residential Life] Kent Drake-Deese knew I wanted to work in Residence Life professionally and thought this would be a good opportunity to see a different side of things,” Young stated.

While Conti used this experience to focus on the mechanics of the building, Young stated she was most concerned with the livability for students.

“Being a part of this process really helped me see how we consider our residential spaces on campus in terms of inclusion and accessibility. A lot of buildings still have stairs or entrances where someone who has

a physical disability cannot physically access the building or certain areas of the building, so when we were designing the LLC and talking about what kind of amenities would go into it, I definitely became more conscious of how accessible those spaces were,” Young stated.

Along with the accessibility of the LLC, Young stated she fought for gender inclusive bathrooms on each floor.

“One thing myself and a couple other committee members strongly advocated for in the building was having a gender inclusive restroom on each floor,” Young stated. “We also wanted various spaces that allowed for smaller groups in studying or larger community building areas. Since this took place over my second and third years as an RA, I heard a lot of feedback from my students in particular in wanting more study spaces or just spaces that were not behind a closed door.

I think the committee really took that into

consideration with the designs to make a lot more open and welcoming spaces.”

Both Conti and Young stated they feel accomplished from this experience and that hearing about the award was a privilege.

“It was really cool to hear that it [the LLC] won an award and know that I had a part in the design of this res[idence] hall before it even existed,” Conti stated. “I was able to give input on this amazing building that changed our campus and I feel like in a way, I made a mark on this campus. I will always see it and know that I was there and saw it all the way through.”

Resident Director of the LLC Jeffrey Sawyer could not comment before deadline.

Sawyer stated it was because “Media requests need to be approved through the Director of Residential Life before comment.”

Olivia Belanger can be contacted at obelanger@kscequinox.com

Keene State wins anti-drug PSA award KATHERINE GLOSSER

Equinox Staff Keene State College has received an award for an anti-drug public service announcement (PSA) video.

The video “Why Not?” focuses on the reasons why college students choose to not drink and do drugs. Keene State Coordinator of Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention, Treatment and Education Services Michelle Morrow organized and produced the film with only two days left before her deadline.

The film took an hour and a half to make.

Morrow said it was her first film she ever made.

Morrow said her goal for the film was to show a different perspective than a typical social norm campaign.

“Social norm campaigns have been around for a number of years and had some success, but I have always felt like it’s sort of missing the bigger picture,” said Morrow. “Most students are either not drinking or if they do drink, most of the time they’re drinking responsibly. So to me, it really came down to the, ‘Why are people making those decisions? What’s the priority for students?’”

KSC sophomore and substance abuse minor Dante Diffendale said he had a personal connection with the topic. “I’m actually in recovery from different substances, so it’s kind

“I think it is worthy of the award simply because it really shows that we’re trying and that we aren’t just sitting here and not looking into the drug and alcohol problem that people our age have. It shows that we’re actually making a positive difference.”

SARAH MCVEY KSC JUNIOR

of a part of my life,” said Diffendale. Diffendale said that he already knew the people in the film and said they knew a little about his story, which made it easier for him to be a part of it.

“When I did it, my intention wasn’t to win. My intention was just to be part of it, have a good time and really show that there are different reasons why college students don’t drink and don’t party. There was no bigger picture in my mind,” said Diffendale. Diffendale said he didn’t expect the video to win and was surprised when he saw Morrow’s Facebook post announcing it.

Morrow said she was also surprised that the video won. “Honestly, sending it in, I didn’t expect to win the contest. I had no idea what to expect, but that was really really exciting when we found that out,” said Morrow.

KSC junior Sarah McVey, who viewed the film, said that while there might a few things

to add to the video, she felt that it was worthy of the award. “I think it is worthy of the award simply because it really shows that we’re trying and that we aren’t just sitting here and not looking into the drug and alcohol problem that people our age have. It shows that we’re actually making a positive difference,” she said.

Morrow said she is planning on making another “Why Not?” film to expand on her message. She said that there will be a tabling session at the Young Student Center that will give students the opportunity to participate in her next film and share their “why nots.”

The tabling session will be on Feb. 14, 21 and 28 and will run from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on each day.

Katherine Glosser can be contacted at kglosser@kscequinox.com

PHOTO FROM WMUR WEBSITE

This still frame shot shows part of the winning anti-drug public service announcement. The video shows students who don’t drink or do drugs and their reasons why. Tabling sessions on Feb. 14, 21 and 28 will be held from 11:30 a.m to 12:30 p.m. in the Young Student Center and will be open to students explaining why they choose not to drink or do drugs.

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FAIR TRADE Cont. from A1

Verrilli said Keene State already meets the requirements set to be recognized as a fair trade college.

These requirements include but are not limited to having an active club on campus, being involved with other campus outlets such as Lloyd’s and the dining commons, where fair trade items are included and implementing educational resources for the greater community of Keene State.

“We met all the requirements to become a fair trade college...,” Verrilli said. “It’s just a title for Keene State College to have to show support for the fair trade movement.

We wouldn’t have to change anything on campus.”

Verrilli said there’s a much bigger picture at play here too. “Fair trade helps empower farmers and workers in third world countries to ensure they earn a living wage [and] work in safe conditions. [It] empowers women, child labor and so much more. It makes sure in a more global society that third world countries are not being taken advantage of,” she said.

In an e-mail interview with the General Manager of Sodexo and the Zorn Dining Commons, Josef Quirinale stated that KSC sells and provides many fair trade items.

These include Equal Exchange chocolate bars and teas, Maine Root Soda, fruit and Runa beverages and teas. Quirinale also stated that all coffee options at the dining commons are fair trade.

He stated the coffee is “very popular.” He also stated that it’s always different how well the fair trade items do in regards of selling well. “Some do and some do not,” he stated. “In retail, Equal Exchange chocolate sells pretty well. Since the tea is a flavor option, it’s hard to determine if it sells because it is fair trade. The sodas are moderate sellers, but not the most popular.

Our local coffee roaster Prime Roast provides one fair trade blend for us [called] Demon Roast. It is the most popular blend.”

Quirinale stated that Sodexo makes decisions based on the need and demand of the college community, as well as the costs associated with what is provided.

“It is easier to provide fair trade

11:47 a.m. Randall Hall: Destruction Property / Vandalism 11:54 a.m. Bushnell Apartments: Drug Paraphernalia Possession 1:51 p.m. Carle Hall: False Identification - Possession of Wednesday, February 8 12:11 a.m. Holloway Hall: Alcohol - Criminal Violation // Controlled Drug Act Violation // - Drug Paraphernalia Possession // - Odor of Drugs

in retail because we can price it so [the school] does not lose money – our operating budget is derived from student meal plan money and it would not be fiscally responsible to sell an item that would diminish funds meant for daily meals. Sodexo is contracted by KSC to provide the dining service and manage the student’s meal plan [money],” he stated.

He stated that often there can be problems for fair trade items aren’t always sold in retail. “As an example, we tried to provide fair trade bananas as an alternative a few years ago, and size and quality were not consistent or acceptable, availability was spotty [because] a storm prevented shipment and at one point we were not able to get the shipment,” he stated. “In addition, having more fair trade items in a student’s meal plan could incur a price raise.”

“If we were able to get fair trade bananas consistently, their cost is three times that of what we purchase now. Providing all dining commons options to every student at an average meal cost of roughly $5.80 is challenging and the addition of fair trade would mean the meal plan cost would need to increase or [the] variety of offerings would need to be curtailed,” he stated.

Quirinale stated that at times, getting fair trade items can be difficult because the school depends on outside resources. However, he stated they do try to accommodate as best they can. “Our vendors have been very good providers of fair trade products when we have special requests,” he stated. Even with some troubles, Quirinale stated that incorporating fair trade at a college does matter. “Providing fair trade items is important because of the moral and sustainable implications,” he stated.

For more information, see The Equinox editorial on A5.

Dorothy England can be contacted at dengland@kscequinox.com

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OPINIONS

Opinions / A4

Thursday, February 16, 2017

EDITORIAL

KSCEQUINOX.COM

Make KSC a Fair Trade certified school

Keene State College’s Fair Trade Club has started a petition calling upon President Anne E. Huot to recognize and acknowledge KSC as a Fair Trade college. With many sustainable strides taken so far, members of the The Equinox wonder why this simple step has yet to be taken.

Keene State has placed a great emphasis on sustainability with its efforts toward building and incorporating eco-friendly, sustainable structures and practices into place. The college prides itself off of its use of biofuel to heat buildings on campus, the TDS center using solar panels and the new Living and Learning Commons building. The college has the opportunity to embrace and carry out one more environmentally-friendly initiative, but has yet to take action.

KSC started selling Green Mountain Coffee back in 2008, making it the first Fair Trade product to be sold on campus. The Fair Trade Club began on campus back in 2011. Since then, many more members have joined and all sorts of Fair Trade products can be found on campus. To carry out a Fair Trade campaign and have a college/university be officially recognized as a Fair Trade school, there are steps that need to be completed. In short, these steps include building a team, reaching out to campus outlets, sourcing Fair Trade at events and meetings, committing to Fair Trade education and finally passing Fair Trade resolution. The Fair Trade Club here on campus has done all but the last of those steps, and we need Huot’s help in order to move forward in becoming officially recognized as being a Fair Trade certified college.

For years, the Fair Trade Club has worked toward accomplishing this and is quite close to reaching their goal. The core values of Fair Trade campaigns also align with what Keene State is all about, so it’s rather peculiar that President Huot hasn’t jumped at this opportunity.

We at The Equinox would like to see President Huot take action and help our school be officially recognized as a Fair Trade certified college, especially since the school is already following along with what it takes to be one in the first place.

Fair Trade goes much further than just paying farmers and food

production workers a fair wage for the products and services they supply. At the core of Fair Trade’s values are empowerment, integrity, sustainability, innovation, excellence, personal development, community, fairness and impact. All of this is something KSC encourages.

According to fairtradeusa.org, “Through direct, equitable trade, farming and working families are able to eat better, keep their kids in school, improve health and housing, and invest in the future.” Through Fair Trade, local communities are strengthened, organic agriculture is encouraged for the health of the farmers, consumers and planet and those involved are compensated fairly.

In some instances, farmers are neglected and taken advantage of, receiving bare minimums for the products they plant, tend, harvest and supply. Much of our food comes from poverty-stricken parts of the world, so to further take advantage of these workers only perpetuates the impoverished cycle they find themselves living within. This exploitation isn’t a factor when purchasing a Fair Trade certified product. According to theethicalsilkco.com, “When commercial buyers pay fair premiums, these farmers no longer live in extreme poverty.

Instead, they earn sufficiently to provide and protect their families, as well as strengthen their overall communities through finances, adequate nutrition and education.” Fair Trade also stands against child labor, which is crucial, as many children in parts of the world are tending fields for little or no pay. According to theethicalsilkco.com, “Fair Trade requires compliance with domestic and international labor laws, which include the prohibition of child and forced labor, as well as child trafficking.”

Fair Trade seeks for better equity all around, for the one planting the seed, to the one purchasing that produce and all those in-between with a more sustainable and transparent model for international trade.

We at The Equinox admire all that Fair Trade is e-sign off and become officially certified as a Fair Trade college.

SAMANTHA MOORE / ART DIRECTOR

THE EQUINOX

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Thursday, February 16, 2017

STAFF COMMENTARY

Trump and the tech industry

SAMANTHA MOORE / ART DIRECTOR

Tech companies come together to oppose travel ban ELLIOT WELD

Equinox Staff The Trump administration has signed a lot of executive orders in his first few weeks in office. For the most part, these have been for policies that you could see happening from any other Republican president. The one that stands out is the travel ban which prevented anyone to enter the U.S. from seven majority Muslim countries. The President has come under heavy public scrutiny the second the news of the ban came out. Protests erupted across the world, countless public figures denounced the ban; among them were hundreds of tech companies.

Trump loves the idea of his fellow billionaire businessmen holding government positions, such as Rex Tillerson. Trump even made CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk, part of an advisory council. Musk was born in South Africa, but has citizenship in the United States, so it’s no surprise that he is against the ban and will make that clear to Trump. Musk and his friends in Silicon Valley seem to be like-minded in their opposition of the ban. Nearly 100 high-profile tech companies are supporting the court case against it.

It’s no surprise that tech companies are against the Trump administra-

tion. A group of tech leaders in late September began a fundraising effort which made $76,324 for the Clinton campaign, according to the New York Times. The United States leads the world by far in terms of innovation in the tech industry. An article in TechRepublic said that Trump’s proposed plans to dismantle U.S. trade agreements will have a significant impact on the tech industry. All major tech companies employ immigrant workers and sell products outside the U.S.. Trump has expressed desire to start a trade war with China. If this is done, Business Insider points out that such trade wars would likely cause other countries to invest in their own technology sectors to reduce reliance on American products and create competition for Silicon Valley overseas.

Besides Trump potentially threatening the tech industry’s business, Silicon Valley is home to some of the smartest individuals in the entire country, and Trump would be wise to at least hear out any advice they give. But generally, Trump only hears what he wants to hear, and any idea that goes against what he thinks is instantly labeled “fake news.” In July, 145 tech leaders wrote an open letter on Trump’s campaign. “His vision stands against the open exchange of ideas, free movement of people and productive engagement with the outside world that is critical to our economy — and that provide[s] the foundation for innovation and growth,” the

STAFF COMMENTARY

letter said.

Trump recently tweeted, “Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.” Trump has already antagonized the press as much as he can, and now the next group to attack him is the tech innovators of America. My prediction is that the tech leaders will have some success criticizing Trump where the mainstream media can’t, simply because they are business people, and Trump loves business people. The surprising part about that tweet is that the second part of it isn’t completely wrong. A poll by Politico shows that the travel ban has an approval rating of 55 percent, which is higher than Trump’s overall approval rating.

Trump has made a lot of ambitious promises, but the biggest challenge he has is de-polarizing America. It doesn’t help that he’s already alienated more than half the population. One crucial step will be finding someone who can reason with Trump. Hopefully, these tech leaders will be able to find a way to make Trump listen and compromise.

Elliot Weld can be contacted at eweld@kscequinox.com

STAFF COMMENTARY

Rethinking daylight savings USDA retracts animal rights MARC APESOS

reports from website

Equinox Staff Daylight savings time is archaic and has no business being implemented in our society. It is not a natural solution to save energy or conserve resources, in fact it does the opposite.

Every year, we turn our clocks forward in March and backwards in November. By doing this, we change our natural rhythms and sleeping schedules.

Does anybody know why we actually go through this process?

With over 70 countries using daylight savings time, there must be a good reason for us to be spinning our clocks back and forth every year. The answer is that there might have been 75 years ago.

Daylight savings time was introduced by the Germans in WWI to save energy, and the allied powers followed suit. The reasoning behind it was that the more sunlight there is in a day, the less oil would be burned when it gets dark. The idea was introduced again in WWII by Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) for the same reason and still exists to this day.

Daylight savings time as we know it today serves a purpose not of conservation, but of increased consumption.

In 2005, George Bush passed the Energy Policy Act, which changed the dates of the clock resets, effectively giving us eight whole months of daylight savings. The manipulation of time by our government is due to the joint lobbying effort of retailers in Washington to give consumers some extra time to go shopping after work.

The more daylight there is, the more money is being spent.

A study by the U.S. Department of Transportation shows that daylight savings time cuts one percent of electricity usage every year, and what we save in electricity usage is negated by increased use of heat and air conditioning. There was a study done by The National Bureau of Economic Research that shows that in Southern Indiana, energy usage has not changed after daylight savings time was implemented, in fact it has increased energy consumption because of the increase in human activity. The more hours of the day there are, the more we tend to drive and use gasoline, which increases carbon emissions.

In these winter months, it’s not uncommon for 5:00 p.m. to feel like midnight and 7 a.m. to feel like midnight, and that’s partly because our bodies have their

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ALYSSA SALERNO

Equinox Staff

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own biological clocks and by making social changes to time, it confuses our circadian rhythms.

The negative health effects of daylight savings time are considerable too. A swedish study in 2008 showed that within three weeks after turning the clocks back, heart attacks and fatal car crashes saw a 40 percent spike. These incidents occur because of the population losing an hour of sleep.

There is a recurring theme of presidents increasing our daylight savings. FDR, Wilson, Nixon, Johnson and Reagan all made the bi-partisan effort to manipulate our watches. Presidents like Reagan and Johnson introduced moderate time changes, but since then, Washington was looking for ways to increase daylight savings time as much as possible.

The Energy Policy Act was implemented under the guise of increased energy conservation, but it should have been presented with it’s true purpose of keeping consumers going to the mall and buying as much as possible. Time is not something that can be so easily manipulated without repercussion. We should adapt to the cycle of the Earth by accepting the natural changes in sunlight for a healthier, more wholesome lifestyle.

Marc Apesos can be contacted at mapesos@kscequinox.com

Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) removed all reports from its website that contained information about the way places like laboratories and puppy mills treat their animals. It is not okay for the USDA to take these reports off of their site without giving the public a fast and free alternative to access the information. The reports were about facilities that operate under the federal regulations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and the Horse Protection Act (HPA). As far as I can tell, there is no other way for the public to access this information other than by filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act, an act which allows citizens to request government documents that were not otherwise released to the public. These requests could and often do take months or even years to be approved.

Someone needs to be looking out for the rights of animals in these facilities, and these reports allowed for groups to do that. While the USDA did not necessarily have to do anything with the information in the reports, it allowed for other interest groups to hold facilities accountable for poor treatment of their animals. The reports were open to the public and let people know what facilities were testing on animals like dogs, primates and other animals.

These reports allow for groups to reach out to laboratories to tell them that once they are done using an animal for testing, the groups would adopt the animals. Often times, once the facilities have no use for the animals anymore they are euthanized. These reports told people what labs were testing on what kinds of animals and they were able to arrange with the labs for the proper treatment of the animals.

The reports also showed when places like puppy mills were treating their animals inhumanely by keeping dogs in crates that were too small for them to do things like turn around comfortably. Now that the reports are not accessible, people will not know there is a problem at a facility until it’s too late for many animals.

There also seems to be no reason for the sudden disappearance of the reports on the site. A statement put out by the USDA said, “We remain equally

“By taking the reports down, however, the USDA is being anything but transparent.”

-ALYSSA SALERNO EQUINOX STAFF

committed to being transparent and responsive to our stakeholders’ informational needs, and maintaining the privacy rights of individuals with whom we come in contact.” By taking the reports down, however, the USDA is being anything but transparent. The USDA is solely protecting the “privacy rights of individuals with whom [they] come in contact,” which could be dangerous for many animals.

If the USDA were really looking out for all stakeholders, it would omit personal information about people who work in the facilities but still release the reports. It’s wrong to turn a blind eye to these animals.

They need to be looked out for. It is not acceptable to allow animals to be mistreated and to know about it but not tell anyone else.

I don’t see any reason to even take the reports off in the first place. The USDA will still be receiving the reports. Putting the reports up on the site should not be an issue, in fact, it’s basically just scanning a piece of paper into a computer and uploading it to a webpage.

It’s not challenging in any way and any person with a scanner can do it. In fact, you can do it with most smartphones, so it should not be a problem for the USDA to get the reports out to the public.

The USDA did not take the reports off of the site in the interest of all stakeholders. The only reason these reports would not be accessible is for the benefit of people who are abusing the animals. That is wrong.

The only reason these reports are made is if animals are being treated inhumanely. The USDA is sentencing animals to death and allowing them to be tortured by keeping the information in these reports from the public.

Alyssa Salerno can be contacted at asalerno@kscequinox.com

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STUDENT LIFE / A6

Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

BRIEF

Left-wing activist fights for change after the recent election ETHAN CHALMERS

Equinox Staff On Wednesday, Feb. 8 in the Mabel Brown Room of the Young Student Center, Keene State College hosted racial justice visionary Rinku Sen. Rinku Sen is the President and Executive Director of Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation and is the author of the book, “The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization,” which documents the life of Moroccan immigrant Fekkak Mamdouh, who co-founded the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York after the 9/11 attacks.

As the president of Race Forward, Sen said that she oversees the publication of the news site Colorlines and has initiated projects such as “Shattered Families” and “Drop the I-Word,” which positively affect the perception of immigrants in the United States.

Founded in 1981, the mission of Race Forward, according to Sen, is “to build awareness, solutions and leadership for racial justice by generating transformative ideas, information and experiences”.

Dr. Karen Jennings, professor of psychology at Keene State College, introduced Rinku Sen to the audience. In her lecture, “The Big Picture: Structural Racism, Equity, and Intersectionality,” Sen spoke of the importance of establishing a “multiracial pluralistic democracy,” which would allow Americans of all ethnicities equal social and political rights.

She outlined the following three strategies to establish this democ- Rinku Sen speaks to the Keene State community about fighting for social issues. racy: be explicit about racial justice, focus on impact and make equity, not diversity, the objective.

KSC senior Liz Rizzitano said that she enjoyed the lecture. Rizzitano said, “People need to hear conversations pertinent to the current political atmosphere.”

Folake Oyegbola, a graduate student from the School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Institute in Vermont, also attended the event with members of her class. Oyegbola said that it was “very interesting to see whites [at the lecture] as a black female.”

“It’s exciting and inspiring that racism is not just talked about among blacks,” Oyegbola said.

Alex Weiss, also a graduate student from the SIT Graduate Institute in Vermont, said that he has been interested in attending a lecture by Rinku Sen since he has read some of her publications.

Weiss said that the lecture “focused on local issues, while the focus of current federal politics is overwhelming.”

TIM SMITH / PHOTO EDITOR

“I know you can’t force someone to be empathetic, but is there any way you can change their lens to show them they should care?”

-KEIRA VALAITIS KSC JUNIOR

TIM SMITH / PHOTO EDITOR

Students were able to ask questions in an open forum about what Sen discussed.

Eating with the Equinox: Baked sweet potato chips

Interested in writing?

KATE FAULKNER

Equinox Staff Ingredients: 2 sweet potatoes (150 g each) 2 tbsp (30 ml) olive oil 1/4 tsp sea salt (optional) Instructions: Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (121 C) and position oven rack in the center of the oven.

Rinse and dry your sweet potatoes thoroughly and slice them as uniformly thin as possible. If you have a mandolin slicer, use it. Otherwise, use a very sharp knife to get these uniformly thin. Know that chips that are too thick in parts won’t crisp up all the way.

Still delicious, just not “chip” crispiness.

Toss slices in a touch of olive oil to lightly coat, then sprinkle with salt. Lay out in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for about two hours, flipping chips once at the halfway point to ensure even cooking.

I also rotated mine for more even cooking, which is optional but recommended.

Remove them once they’re crisp and golden brown. Some may feel a little tender in the middle, but take them out and let them rest for 10 minutes or so to crisp up before sampling.

Serve immediately.

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Winter time is the perfect season to eat root vegetables.

Sweet potatoes (also known as yams) are a great vegetable that is packed with a ton of nutrients. They are a good source of vitamin A, vitamin C, manganese, copper, pantothenic acid and vitamin B6. Cutting them up into chips is a different way to incorporate them into your diet or they are also delicious baked with a sprinkle of brown sugar for something sweeter. http://minimalistbaker.com/baked-sweet-potato-chips/ EWTE is supported by the Student Nutrition Associations at Keene State club (SNAKS).

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STUDENT LIFE / A7

Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

Learning the Italian way while studying away

ERIN CONTI

Study AwAy I am a junior majoring in architecture and minoring in occupational safety and health applied sciences, and I am spending this semester abroad in Florence, Italy.

I knew I wanted to study away since my first semester at Keene. In the architecture department, we are encouraged by our professors to go abroad. Being exposed to architecture and design from so many different time periods is so important to understand how we got to where we are today. It has been so amazing to walk through the streets in Firenze and see everything I’ve learned about in my classes at Keene State in person. I walk by the Duomo every day on my way to class and it doesn’t feel real.

Coming from an Italian family, there was no question in where I wanted to study, and living in a homestay was one of the best decisions I could have made. I arrived on Jan. 31 and have just finished my first week of classes. I live with a single host mother who is just so kind, as well as four other students. My host mother does not

speak much English, so there have been some challenges in communication (she cannot pronounce my name and calls me Evelyn, which I love), but luckily one of my roommates has been studying here for almost two years and can speak Italian and translates for us when necessary. One of the classes I am taking is Elementary Italian Language, so I am hopeful that I will be able to pick up quickly and communicate easier by myself in the coming weeks.

Last weekend, our host mother introduced us to friends of hers and took us to an art exhibition opening where we were able to meet more local people. We have spent time with them, had meals with them and they are helping us with our Italian as well. I already feel so immersed in the Italian culture through these experiences and I have only been here a little over one week.

If I were not living in a homestay, I would not have these opportunities and I am so excited to continue to learn and experience more in the next few months.

While so much of it has been wonderful and exciting, there have been some challenges as well, the biggest being communication. When I

meet new people and they learn my last name is Conti (a very common Italian name), they expect that I speak the language and sometimes appear frustrated when I tell them I do not. This has been a little discouraging at times, but has also made me more determined to learn to speak in Italian.

So much of this adjustment has been made easier with my homestay. My host mother, my roommate who has lived in Italy before and the local people I have met give us tips and answer any questions we have about living in Florence and traveling Europe. If anyone is interested in studying abroad and is considering a home stay, do it. I was very nervous going into it, not knowing what to expect, but the experience has been nothing but wonderful and even after just a short time here, I would recommend it to anyone.

Ciao Keene State, see you in the fall!

Erin Conti can be contacted at erin.conti@ksc.keene.edu

PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY ERIN CONTI

Erin Conti has enjoyed the site seeing she has been doing along with the architecture that Italy has to offer.

Humans of KSC

Go Away.

Ask me how.

What is an ideal weekend for you?

Study Away in the USA (or Canada) • Same tuition and fees as KSC • 150+ Universities to choose from • Live and Study... on the other side of the continent or nearby • Choose from universities in 48 States, 8 Canadian Provinces • Financial Aid travels with you • STUDY AWAY DEADLINE: - FALL 17: MARCH 1 - SPRING 18: MARCH 1 (early placement)

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Expand your world/Jump start your career Visit us at 67 Winchester Street! (across from the TDS Building) HUMANS OF KSC IS PRESENTED BY JACOB PAQUIN

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STUDENT LIFE / A8

Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

STAFF COMMENTARY

Alternative Break volunteers spend their weekend in Boston JESSICA RICARD

Copy Editor What better way to spend a blizzard-filled weekend than in the heart of Boston? On Friday, Feb. 10, eight Keene State College students, including myself, left Keene to engage in community service opportunities in the big city through the Alternative Break (AB) program.

Our team of eight came from a variety of different grades and majors, and you never would have known that many of us had never met before we embarked on our road trip. Prior to leaving, the team, which consisted of two first-years, three sophomores, two juniors and one senior, was chosen in an application-based process. Amy Richo and I, the team leaders, chose the team based on a series of questions related to community service and social justice.

The eight of us arrived at a hostel in Boston around 7:30 p.m. and were welcomed by people staying there from all over the world. Right when we got there, we attended the Hostel Welcome Party, which consisted of food, drinks and various activities. For most of the night, we created and decorated cards which would be put in children’s backpacks, motivating them to do well in school.

As Saturday approached, we got started on our service activities. We spent most of the morning making dog toys out of old t-shirts, as well as dog treats for those at the Boston Animal Rescue. Later on that day, we were able to bring our donation items to the animal shelter and even bond with some dogs and cats. Although many of us thought about taking them back to Keene with us, we said our goodbyes and hoped our toys and treats made their day even the slightest bit better.

After lunch, we traveled to the Yawkey Family Inn, which is a home for the patients and families of Boston Children’s Hospital. We made Valentine’s Day cards with children over the course of a few hours, but there was one child who touched all of our hearts in a special way. One five-yearold boy was staying at the house all the way from Texas and had the most contagious and upbeat personality. He made a variety of Valentine’s Day cards with us, while also teaching us about all 45 presidents of the United States. Although many of us were embarrassed to admit it, he knew more about the presidents than we did. Despite his medical conditions, he was so positive, happy and most definitely could have talked our ears off for hours.

On Sunday, we traveled to another house affiliated with Boston Children’s Hospital called the Devon Nicole House. This home also houses families and patients at the hospital, but was set up a little differently than the other house we went to the day before. We got there around 8:30 a.m. and spent an hour making eggs, bacon, three types of muffins (chocolate chip, banana nut and blueberry) and fruit salad for the families staying there.

EMMA HAMILTON / STUDENT LIFE EDITOR

Volunteers made homemade dog treats for rescue dogs.

PHOTO BY YAWKEY FAMILY INN STAFF

KSC student volunteers made valentines with patients of Boston Children’s Hospital

Although we didn’t see and interact with as many families at this house, we the future. The families, children and animals we met touched our hearts were told that leaving the breakfast for families to help themselves to later in many different ways, and the bonds we made as a team are like no other. on in the day is more appreciated than we may realize. Additionally, we left I wish the weekend could have been longer so we had even more time to child-friendly and adult coloring pages for all to use as well. build relationships and participate in more service opportunities in and Overall, the trip was a short, but it was an amazing experience. Eight around the Boston area. strangers have now become such good friends, and I think almost all of us Jessica Ricard can be contacted at have AB fever, motivating us to want to participate in even more AB trips in jricard@kscequinox.com

PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY DEVON NICOLE HOUSE STAFF

Students made breakfast for the patients and families of Boston Children’s Hospital.

EMMA HAMILTON / STUDENT LIFE EDITOR

Volunteers made muffins and several other breakfast items.

College students being employed at local grocery stores JOHN PIATELLI

Equinox Staff In order to afford the costs of college, many KSC students work at Keene’s supermarkets during their time in school.

According to Michael Luciano, the Assistant Store Manager of Store 64 in Swanzey, there is a bright future for KSC students at Market Basket.

Since the store opened nearly 6 and a half years ago on May 6, there are anywhere between 20-30 KSC students working at Market Basket throughout the school year.

Looking for work is not always the easiest task in the world. According to Luciano, Market Basket has over 77 stores, giving students the opportunity to have a job during the school year.

Nathan Richards, a senior at KSC majoring in occupational health and safety said great customer service is what separates Market Basket from other stores in the area. “I started working at Market Basket at age 14 and transferred to Swanzey to make money during school in order to help pay for clothes, books, and groceries,” said Richards. When asked how many KSC students Richards has worked with at a time he replied with “around 10 workers and a lot [who shop].”

KSC architecture major Nick Speidel is one student who moved off campus after his first and sophomore year.

Moving off campus not only means new responsibilities but new walking distances. For Speidel, the new distance to the Dining Commons can be a bit much. “The biggest adjustment since moving off campus would have to be not being as close to the Dining Commons and having to go buy groceries, and cook them,” said Speidel. When asked how other grocery stores, Price Chopper and Hannaford’s compare to Market Basket, Speidel acknowledged that he never noticed any KSC students working at either store. Speidel continues to shop at Market Basket for his convenience and an “unreal selection and location.”

With just over 4,000 students attending KSC as of 2015, Market Basket is not the only supermarket benefiting from KSC students.

When asked how KSC students impact Hannaford supermarket in Keene, NH, the Assistant Store Manager Paul Desmaris declined to comment. After being referred to corporate by Desmaris, Price Chopper Front end supervisor, Phill Jordan said Price Chopper benefits from “multiple colleges” and not just KSC in particular. According to Jordan, around 5-10 employees of Price Chopper attend KSC. After speaking with Luciano, one would believe KSC students are a desired worker to have. According to Mr. Luciano, the relationship between KSC and Market Basket is “mutually beneficial, dependable and successful.”

As long as KSC students are going to college in Keene there will be jobs to fill. Market Basket has certainly been doing its job over the past 6 and a half years by giving KSC students a place to work. When asked how Luciano sees the future between Market Basket and KSC he replied with “going well into the future without a doubt.”

John Piatelli can be contacted at jpiatelli@kscequinox.com KSC students are employed by the local grocery stores during their time at college.

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STUDENT LIFE / A9

Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

A transition from remission to college admission DOROTHY ENGLAND

News editor At first glance, it looks like he’s shoved a screw right through his earlobe. But then, he takes it apart, revealing it only looks one way when in reality, it’s much more complex. Dante Rey Diffendale is the same. With black cropped hair, gender neutral clothing and stark blue eyes full of a strength only permissible by great sorrow, Diffendale appears like any other college student just trying to figure out who they are, unsure of some things, confident in others. For Diffendale, he’s confident Keene State College is the place to be and just as that screw has many ridges spiraling one onto another, so has his life.

Here, is his story.

Diffendale was born in 1984, 18 days after the United States and the Vatican united diplomatic relations after 117 years of hiatus. However, for Diffendale, life wasn’t so peaceful. “When I grew up, I was the youngest kid on the block. When I was a kid, others were 16, 17, 18,” he said. “I saw a lot of things.”

Diffendale continued, “My birth mom is an alcoholic.

She’s in recovery now, but wasn’t when I was little, and she drank a lot. My brother’s father (my stepfather)...he beat me, broke my nose. I have a lot of traumatic views from when I was little and trying to deal with that, and also the bullying in school.”

Drugs made these memories distant, almost to the point of being unreal. “I don’t want to blame anything that happened to me, but I think going through that suffering definitely made it easy for me to turn to something that made me forget,” he said.

He was eleven when he first used drugs. “Oh God, it was horrible. Looking back on it, I’m like, ‘What the hell was I thinking?’ I was huffing perfume, airplane glue and purel straight…I poured it into a plastic black bag,” he said.

He was 15 when he realized he was addicted to alcohol. It was a sunny day, beautiful for the beach, so that’s where he and a few others headed when given 12 hours of freedom from the group home they lived at. “ We got to do whatever we wanted, so we walked downtown and one of the residents had their cousin pick us up,” he said. “We went to the ocean...we went to an arcade, we went in the water. [Then] it started to storm, I think. We went inside the cousin’s house and there was a whole bunch of marijuana, so I got stoned. And then there was a whole lot of alcohol and I was like, ‘Oh, that looks good!’”

Diffendale kept drinking and drinking and drinking. “I couldn’t get enough that first night,” he said. The next morning while others moaned of headaches and nausea, Diffendale felt nothing. “I had no hangover, I didn’t feel any different. It was just like any other day waking up,” he said.

KSC senior Allison Sonia comes from a place of knowing the grasp alcohol can take on person. “My mom’s a recovered alcoholic,” she said, “She’s been sober all my life.” Sonia said her mother has always been open about her addiction, giving her insight on people like Diffendale. “I’m aware that [a lifestyle of heavy drinking] does have an impact on others. It’s a personal choice for me [not to drink a lot], but it helps my relationship with Dante,” she said.

Sonia met Diffendale two summers ago at the Links program. “I was a tutor, not his, but when we met, he expressed an interest in psychology, which I was majoring in,” Sonia said. The two connected and thus blossomed a friendship in which both would be a mentor to the other at various times. “I never felt the age difference,” Sonia said, who is 12 years younger than Diffendale. “Especially since we’re both students, there are things to connect on. I forget our age difference even though he’s had this whole life outside of college,” she said. Sonia said the give and take in their relationship is equal. “It’s interesting, because as an upperclassman, I’ve been a mentor to him, but with the life he’s had, he’s more of a mentor to me,” she said. While Sonia is hesitant to share much about her friend’s life, she does admit some of what she’s been privy to as a close friend.

“I know the impact drugs and alcohol has had on his life...I know the lows he was at, struggling with mental issues. But he was able to come back, and he’s good at handling himself,” she said.

For Diffendale it wasn’t until he hit rock bottom that he found a steady surface. After two family deaths due to heroin and a drug overdose almost causing his own death, Diffendale realized the importance of his life.

He was only provided with a secondhand account of his overdose, as the last thing he remembers before waking up in the ICU was smoking a cigarette on his front porch. He was told, “My lips were gray, my skin was gray, I only had very limited breathing. I had peed and pooped myself, because apparently when your body starts to die, all your body organs just kind of let go, because you don’t have that control your body anymore,” he said.

Thirteen days later, he came back, Lazarus from a grave situation. “I don’t remember anything,” he said.

“It was weird, 13 days had passed. I had lost 13 days.

I still don’t have any other memories.” His eyes flitter across the room, a subconscious chill shaking him, reminding him that death had left its signature, but not a date. He looked straight ahead, “I was basically dead.”

Shortly after that, Diffendale decided he had to go to college. He had pondered the idea on prior occasion, but it wasn’t until that moment that he was ready to go.

Diffendale is adamant it is his choice. “I’m not doing it because my parents want me to go to college, I’m not doing it because my family expects me go to college or anything. I’m in college because I want to be able to take my life-lived experience and hopefully if everything goes as I hope it does, I want to be able to help somebody (else) down the road,” he said, “So all the emotional and physical pain that I’ve gone through, maybe I can make it so somebody else doesn’t have to go down that road.”

But there are other roads for Diffendale to travel down and there are other hurdles along the path. Most recently, Diffendale came out as a transgender male. He gave permission to include this, saying he wants to be

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“I don’t want to blame anything that happened to me, but I think going through that suffering definitely made it easy for me to turn to something that made me forget.”

DANTE DIFFENDALE KSC SOPHOMORE

open and honest because now he finally can be.

Born Natassia Lynn Diffendale, he now prefers to be called Dante Rey Diffendale. “The reason I chose Dante is because it means faithful and loyal and I thought, these are definitely two qualities and attributes I have.

And plus, Dante? That’s a pretty killer name,” he said.

Diffendale said he’s felt like a man for a while, nearly three or four years in his words. However, having an adoptive father who is homophobic, makes it hard to open up. Growing up, he’d have to bring home boys to meet the family to cover up the fact that he was at the time, a lesbian. “When I was down in Jersey, I didn’t say anything, just because it would have made family gettogethers strange. My dad probably would have ostracized me and disowned me,” he said.

Diffendale admits that he always felt something was amiss in life, that even when things were going well, there was a darkness lingering in the background. “I’ll tell you, ever since I came out, there’s a sense of peace inside me that’s so unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

It feels really nice to be 100 percent true to who I am, without having to worry about what other people think about who I am,” he said.

That worry waits for him in New Jersey however. “[If] I know I’m going to see my father, I’ll wear girly clothes,” he said. “I do that for protection reasons.” He has two outfits, a black dress for funerals, the other: dress pants and a nice shirt to curve the impression of womanhood. “They’re basically in my closet because this is not a conversation I’m ready to have with my father yet. So it would be easier for me to wear girly clothes around him until I’m comfortable with actually talking with him about it,” he said.

However, Diffendale is steadfast in his identity.

“This is who I am, I’m proud of who I am,” he said. Diffendale said being at KSC has opened doors for him.

“Keene State is such a good campus to come to if you’re in the LGBTQ community, we have so many resources where I felt [that] this was a safe place for me, where I didn’t really have to worry about really being judged.

There’s a community,” he said.

Coordinator of Community Services Jessica Gagne Cloutier said these resources are there for a reason.

“There’s a responsibility that students have to have to remember [these resources] and to seek them out and I think we have a responsibility too, to notice when a student isn’t in a place to seek that out. I think it kind of comes down to us all working collectively to support one another,” she said.

Cloutier said Diffendale is one of those people set on a mission of support. From the start, Cloutier could see that Diffendale’s openness on his life before college and his passion to implement change was something revolutionary for Keene State. She said it was at a 2015 Student Leadership Retreat that the two had talked about a stuTIM SMITH / PHOTO EDITOR dent recovery group. “The idea of having people who have had similar experiences as students (and addicts), After struggling through being addicted to drugs and alcohol, Dante Diffendale has been able to start [these] may be two unique identities that aren’t always new. represented in recovery groups,” she said. Cloutier acknowledged this could really help others, saying that even just talking with Diffendale could provide aid.

“The patience he comes in with is always a welcoming thing, both his patience with himself and to others.

I think it’s really extraordinary,” she said. “I would just say to other students, if they have the opportunity to meet Dante and know Dante, to do it. I think he is a very warm and welcoming individual, a very open-minded individual, someone who has a lot to share and give, and someone who has a lot to learn from other people too.”

Diffendale said he’s willing to learn more about himself, saying therapy has helped him tremendously. “A lot of people don’t want to admit they’re in therapy, but for me, it’s been one of my saving graces. I have the emotional support, I have really good support from friends who tell me all the time, ‘You’re doing great.’” He smiled.

“I truly believe that everything I went through up until now has made me the person that’s sitting here today,” he said. He stressed that in acknowledging that, it’s far from saying everything has been okay.

When asked about fonder memories as a kid, Diffendale laughed before explaining he was a bit of a klutz as a kid. At one point, he broke four toes, but didn’t let it cripple his energy. “All of that summer vacation, I was in a full-blown leg cast, and I’ve got to tell you that I could run on my crutches faster than most people can walk. It was really fun. I made the best of it,” he said. He smirked. “I remember putting my rollerblade on this foot because it was the okay one and crutching down the road on the other one,” he said. “My mother would yell, ‘You’re going to break something else,’ and I’d scream back, ‘Nah, I’ll be fine!’”

Even now, Dante Rey Diffendale has that same energy. The hold of an addiction never fully lets up, but Diffendale is proving that he can still forge forward.

“I’m grateful that I’m alive, first and foremost,” he said.

“But I’m also grateful that I have the opportunity to better my life and have that opportunity to broaden my horizons. It’s just all been so surreal.”

Dorothy England can be contacted at dengland@kscequinox.com

TIM SMITH / PHOTO EDITOR

Dante Diffendale may look like he has screws in his ears but don’t let is earrings fool you.

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STUDENT LIFE

Student Life, A10 Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

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Choosing the right major for you JILL GIAMBRUNO

Equinox Staff When Keene State College senior Robert Peterson first started his college career, he was an engineering major at Clarkson University.

Though Peterson was pulling good grades, the work was hard, time consuming, and he wasn’t enjoying himself.

“I have a knack for technical things. I thought engineering was something I would be really good at,” Peterson said.

Peterson continued, “Clarkson [University] is a tech school. Once I decided that engineering wasn’t for me, I didn’t have much else to choose from.”

After a brief hiatus from college, Peterson enrolled at KSC without declaring a major. During his first semester, academic advising put Peterson in a mandatory writing class, a Spanish class, a genocide class and a programming class.

“I fell in love with programming and ended up declaring a computer science major after my first semester [at KSC],” Peterson said.

Due to a mix-up with his transfer credits and taking a few classes irrelevant to his major, Peterson doesn’t expect to graduate in just four years.

“I’ll probably end up taking an extra fall semester,” Peterson said, “but it’s definitely worth it, knowing that when I’m done, I’ll be able to get a job in a field I love. It took me a few years to figure out. [Switching majors] made me realize that programming is definitely something I want to do. I know I made the right choice.”

Peterson is not the only KSC student who needed time to figure out which major was right for him.

KSC junior Keanna Winter decided on Keene State for its education program and was an early childhood education major from the start.

“I’ve worked with kids a lot through different babysitting jobs and summer camps. I thought it was something I really wanted to do,” Winter said, “but as soon as I took my first class, I realized that I was wrong.”

After the fall semester of her first year, Winter started taking graphic design classes. “[Graphic design] is something I’ve always really enjoyed and loved doing. It’s something I enjoy and there’s so many different things that I can do with this after school that I know I like and I’m good at,” Winter said.

Winter added that although she waited until the beginning of her junior year to declare a graphic design major, she isn’t behind in her studies.

“I’ve taken multiple [graphic design] classes throughout my three years here, so I’m not particularly behind,” said Winter, who expects to graduate in May 2018.

Winter said that her decision was made much easier with the help of KSC faculty members.

“Not having an advisor was difficult in taking the right classes I needed for graphic design. I met with Lynn Richardson in the art department to make sure I got the right classes and [got] signed into some that I needed.

She was extremely helpful,” Winter said.

Like Winter, KSC junior Brittni Zeboski first declared as an education major.

“I loved the classes and did well in them, but I realized it wasn’t for me the first time I sat in on a high school classroom,” Zeboski said.

Unfortunately for Zeboski, however, she realized this during the fall 2016 semester—more than halfway through her planned college career.

Determined not to waste any more time, Zeboski switched majors as soon as possible.

SAMANTHA MOORE / ARTS DIRECTOR

“Of course, my parents weren’t too thrilled when I told them this,” Zeboski said. “I ended up switching to the psychology major. It was always something I thought about it the back of my mind so I just decided to go for it.”

Though she only has three semesters left until her expected graduation date, Zeboski is confident that she will be graduating on time. “[If] I can cram the psychology classes into my last three semesters and take summer classes as well, graduating on time could happen,” Zeboski said. “The KSC faculty has been nothing but understanding and helpful,

and made the transition a smooth one.”

Zeboski sad she understands how stressful it can be to switch majors at any point during a student’s college career, and offered some advice to anyone dealing with similar struggles.

“Although switching your major can be stressful, it’ll be worth it in the long run, because no one wants to be doing a job they hate every single day for the rest of their lives,” Zeboski said.

Jill Giambruno can be contacted at jgiambruno@kscequinox.com

Students don’t always spend the day of love with a significant other ADRIANNA SANCHEZ

Equinox Staff

ANDREA CUZZUPE / EQUINOX STAFF

It’s that time of year again, where you walk into any store and see candy, decorations and many signs promoting “Valentine’s Day” all over the place.

Many can say they hate the holiday, love it or simply don’t care. According to CNN, on average, a person will spend $130 for Valentine’s day.

KSC student Leah Gokey explained that it doesn’t bother her when she walks into a store and sees decorations all over the place.

“It really doesn’t affect me as much, but I can see how people can get bothered by it because all the decorations are just overrated at times,” she said.

Others who aren’t in a relationship said different. Gokey stated she is spending this Valentine’s day with her friends. “I’m going to see Fifty Shades Darker with a bunch of my girlfriends,” she said. Gokey explained how she felt about this holiday. “Modern day Valentine’s Day is taken a little too far now,” she said.

According to ProFlowers, it reported that in the year 2010, 198 billion flowers were produced just for this holiday. There was also a consumer survey done by American Express and it concluded that six million people were expected to be proposed to on Valentine’s Day back in 2013.

KSC student Nicole Wojtowicz explained that this day is just another day for her. “Honestly, Valentine’s day is just another day for me. Even when I was in a relationship, I never cared,” she said.

Couples on Valentine’s Day will get all dolled up and go out to dinner or the movies, but how about the couples who have been dating for a long time? KSC student Alexandra Figueroa, who has been with her boyfriend for almost four years, stated since they’ve been dating for so long, they are both comfortable not celebrating Valentine’s Day the day of.

“We’re going to spend Valentine’s day later and we’re going to combine it with our anniversary. Because we have been dating for so long, we feel comfortable doing something like this,”

“I hate those people who go all out for this day, I feel that you don’t need a day to show off somebody you care for. I just appreciate the simpler things.”

NICOLE WOJTOWICZ KSC STUDENT

she said.

Figueroa explained that she enjoys the little things. “Because we have been together for so long, things are just comfortable and I’m not disappointed in doing the simple things. I think that’s a big thing that happens when you are with someone for so long,” she said.

Wojtowicz stated that when she was in a relationship, she hated going all out for it. “I hate those people who go all out for this day, I feel that you don’t need a day to show off somebody you care for. I just appreciated the simpler things,” she said. Figueroa and her boyfriend have two different views about Valentine’s Day. She explained her boyfriend doesn’t care about this day as much as she does. “This holiday has never been a big thing for him because he thinks it’s just another day to go out on a date, and he thinks society has made it into something it’s not, but for me, I always get excited,” she said.

Valentine’s Day can be just another day for some and can be a day for others to go all out for their significant other.

Adrianna Sanchez can be contacted at asanchez@kscequinox.com

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Thursday, February 16, 2017

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Learning in the land down under

KSC alumna Kenzie Klem studies acting in Sydney, Australia ALEXANDRIA SAURMAN

Arts And EntErtAinmEnt Editor Australia is home to The Great Barrier Reef and the Sydney Opera House, as well as a massive population of kangaroos (according to the Australian Wildlife Society). In addition, the land down under is also currently the home of KSC alumna Kenzie Klem, who studies acting in Sydney, Australia.

From a young age, Harvard, Massachusetts, native Kenzie Klem has always had a niche for acting. “...ever since she was little, she’s been like over the top… dramatic about everything,” said her younger brother CJ Klem, a sophomore and geography major at KSC. Once Kenzie arrived at KSC, she joined Three Ways ‘Til Sunday, KSC’s improv club, and registered for “as many classes as [she] could” in order to “ha[ve] a wide skill set under [her] belt.”

When Kenzie was 19, she decided to audition for a play at The Apron Theatre Company located

in Putney, Vermont. Unexpectedly, she landed a role in “August: Osage County” and was ecstatic. “...I got a call saying I had been cast and I was thrilled. I was the youngest actor in a cast of 13 and the incredible amount of talent I got to surround myself with was unbelievable,” she said.

She found that the summers she participated in The Apron Theatre Company were “eye opening and incredible experiences... These older actors inspired me and taught me more than I could have ever imagined… The director, Hallie Flower, was one of the most incredible people I have ever worked with and she was the one who believed in me when I didn't believe in myself, so I owe her so much for that support.”

During her senior year, Kenzie grew exceptionally close with Kirstin Riegler, an assistant theatre and dance professor.

Riegler first met Kenzie when Kenzie signed up to be a spotlight operator for the musical Little Women in the fall of 2015.

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PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY KENZIE KLEM

KSC alumna Kenzie Klem now studies acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and The Actors Pulse Studio in Sydney, Australia. Klem graduated from KSC in 2016 with a degree in theatre.

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Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

The Thorne hosts 2125 Stanley Street ALEXANDRIA SAURMAN

Arts And EntErtAinmEnt Editor On Friday Feb. 10 and Saturday, Feb. 11, 2125 Stanley Street came to the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, giving two performances that were under an hour each. The dance had originally been planned for three nights, but due to weather conditions, the scheduled Thursday night showcase was cancelled.

As audience members entered the room, they were welcomed by the sight of two dancers, Margaret Sunghe Paek and Dahlia Nayar, moving slowly in the center of stage floor.

Behind the gold, blue-grey and white clothed dancers hung a clothesline strung on two pulleys and supported by two mops. Two white laundry baskets sat near the clothesline, with socks draping off the sides.

As the lights faded, the dancers began the show. Twirling in unison, they made their way behind the white sheet pinned on the clothesline. They removed their dresses and replaced them with button ups, one in white and one in cream.

The dancers continued, removing the hanging sheet and heading towards the laundry baskets. They took each individual sock, laying them around the edges of the stage in a semi-circle shape.

After the stage was set, they grabbed four socks, placed them flat on the ground and then proceeded to pick them up with their toes. This occurred four times.

The evening continued with various dance movements, from Nayar trembling and slowly standing up, eventually putting her palms to the sky, to Paek standing on her head and placing the socks on the clothesline.

While the movements occurred, a third character, Loren Kiyoshi Dempster, adorned in all black, sat in the corner of the room behind a table, which was also adorned in

black. His job was to provide the sound effects, which changed with each piece of movement. The performance started with birds chirping and rain falling, but eventually included the sound of cars passing by, the playing of a cello and the tapping and banging of the wall and floor.

On occasion, Dempster made his way from behind the table and onto the stage floor, but almost always returned. Towards the end, both dancers exited the room, laundry baskets in hand. When Dempster was left alone on the stage floor, he began hitting areas of the room, such as the door frame and the stairwell.

When he, too, left the room, the lights came back on. The trio re-entered the room, and took a bow.

Before the scheduled Q&A, Paek asked the audience members to remove the white card that had been placed in their programs and prepare to write.

Pens were passed around and the audience was given exactly one timed minute to write anything they wanted on the card, which was placed in one of the laundry baskets afterwards.

The Q&A lasted about 30 minutes, and included a gamut of individuals. One of these individuals was the Director of the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, Brian Wallace.

“I both am still trying to digest it [and] also, I’ve been thinking about it...from sort of an administrative point of view, which is complicated but not necessarily interesting having to do with like… the grants and the student workers and gallery logistics... so I’m really interested in kind of thinking it over and getting past comparing what I expected with what I actually saw,” Wallace said, speaking on the performance.

Wallace wasn’t the only one who needed more time to interpret the meaning of the show. Lara Shields, the house manager of the Redfern, was also contemplating it afterwards. “… I think I need to think on it more to kind of figure out how I feel in terms of…there’s dance that’s very obvious what it’s about, then there’s dance like this that’s more abstract and it takes a little more time to kind of integrate that into your own experiences and figure out what you feel about--what it reminded you of,” she said.

During the Q&A, when talking about the inspirat ion f o r

the piece, Nayar said, “We also pulled our memories and virtuosity that we were around growing up. The value placed on the slow and quiet is something that I was around on with part of my family…”

Dempster, who was in charge of the sound, would go around looking for different sounds to collect and play in whatever venue they were performing in.

“I guess it’s trying to make something common into something a little more magical, perhaps,” he said, noting that some of his inspiration came from his home life, such as his dad “…banging around the house…” playing the trombone, as well as his mom playing the piano.

Both Nayar and Paek talked about the impact the show had on other audiences, since they had been performing the piece for about three years. Nayar noted that it “…invoked a lot of memories for [the audience],” while Paek commented that “…It leaves room for your own story hopefully, too.”

Senior art major and Redfern Ambassador Hannah Soucy said, “I think that what [Paek] said about people always wanting to make a story…naturally you want to connect to it in your own personal way to get the full emotion I feel like, and I think that it’s beautiful that we can have a bunch of different people thinking different things…”

The performance will be turned into an exhibit piece, and will be on display from Feb. 14 to March 26 in the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery.

Alexandria Saurman can be contacted at asaurman@kscequinox.com

TIM SMITH / PHOTO EDITOR

Nayar, one of the dancers in 2125 Stanley Street, picks up socks while on her back using her toes.

TIM SMITH / PHOTO EDITOR

Paek, who performed in the dance performance, removes socks from her laundry basket.

AUSTRALIA Cont. from B1

Riegler said, “My first thought after meeting her was utter joy to have her [as] a part of Little Women because tech week for that show was long and stressful at times, and Kenzie always remained positive with a smile on her face. In my classes, my first impression was LEADER. She is such a leader and a positive role model for those around her. Her eagerness to learn was like the water in the room and the rest of my students soaked it up like a sponge.”

The time eventually came for Kenzie to make a decision as to what she wanted to do after her undergraduate studies. She applied to the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), located in Sydney, Australia. According to their Annual Report in 2013, “Entry to NIDA’s higher education

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courses is highly competitive, with around 2,000 applicants from across the country competing for an annual offering of approximately 75 places across undergraduate and graduate disciplines. The student body for these courses totalled 166 in 2013.” “...She didn’t even think she was gonna make it into the program…,” said CJ Klem, noting that it was Riegler and The Apron Theatre Company that pushed her to audition.

But she did. After a “really intimidating” audition, Kenzie received a phone call telling her that she had been accepted.

“I was speechless and also wanted to scream with excitement at the same time. I was so excited to tell all of the people who supported me and pushed me to follow what I love,” Kenzie said.

CJ said that he was “just really, really excited…”

“I always support her. I want her to do whatever makes her happy but...to make

money in that profession is very tough, so for her to make it into that school, I think it’s a huge deal, so I’m super proud of her.”

Riegler noted that “Pure and utter excitement” was going through her mind.

“I knew she would [make it],” she said. “...

She worked so hard to get into the program and to see the confidence that is within her everyday is breathtaking. I feel like a proud mom…”

Kenzie also made it into the The Actors Pulse, “a Meisner acting technique school,” also located in Sydney.

“When I auditioned for The Actors Pulse, it was just myself and the head of the studio, which was a bit less intimidating. It was an interview process, as well as performing a monologue. I couldn't believe that right on the spot after my audition, he invited me to be a part of the full-time program. I was absolutely in shock as well. I had never been in a situation before where I got accepted on

the spot, so I didn't really know how to react, other than being so grateful and trying to contain my excitement. I later went on to find out that only [two] other people were accepted into the full-time program at The Pulse, which made me even more proud.”

Kenzie, who lives with relatives while she studies in Australia, hopes to eventually “...Act for a theater company...more specifically...tour the country with a show.”

“I want to travel and share the joy of theater and story with everyone that I can,” she said.

“When we are all in a theater, it doesn't matter where we are from or who we are; we are all the same in a theater. We want to be entertained, we want to use our imagination, we want to escape from reality and be taken into the world of a play. I think that's the magic of theater.”

Kenzie also commented saying, “If you are determined enough, you can reach any

goal. Acting is the only thing I can picture doing with my life. My love for it is so intense that I know how much work and effort I need to put in, and I'm willing to do that.”

“Acting is the only thing I can picture doing with my life.

My love for it is so intense...”

KENZIE KLEM KSC ALUMNA

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Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

Hoots ‘N Hollers Bras are a girl’s best friend for more reasons than one

DISCLAIMER: THE “HOOTS N’ HOLLERS” SECTION OF THE EQUINOX IS ENTIRELY SATIRICAL AND NOT AT ALL BASED IN FACT. EVERY STORY, PHOTO AND NAME USED HERE IS FICTITIOUS SOLELY FOR THE PURPOSE OF COMEDY AND DOES NOT REPRESENT THE EQUINOX’S OR THE COLLEGE’S BELIEFS AS A WHOLE. DOROTHY ENGLAND

News editor Once a month, catalogs are delivered to homes, promising life will be all the better if you just hand your money over. Really, it’s that easy.

One company in particular knows just how to clasp your attention: Victoria’s Secret. They don’t even hide their jewels. Right there on the cover, flashing you with a smile are nearly naked and perfect bodies, bright colors and designs covering any naughty parts.

“It’s fun to be and have a girl,” they promise.

Well, let me tell you. I’m a girl and having a bra is fun, but hazardous. Here are some self-experienced delights and horrors.

First of all, as a self-endearing klutz, I fall a lot.

Lucky for me, as long as I fall forward, my bra protects the goods and me. With all the extra padding they’ve installed in today’s bras, there’s a lot of bounce. That

bounce propels me upright again and I’m good to go. This same padding allows me to float for hours in water. It’s very comfortable.

Another great benefit of these bosom pockets is that they are just that, pockets! Who need a purse when you can stash it all on your girls? I’ve even managed to store a whole Subway sandwich in there for the movies, and let me tell you, it’s a little squished, but it’s still good.

Best of all, my bra offers not only physical support, but moral support. Some people name their breasts, I name my bras. I’ve got Shirley, Jane, Hope and Maggie.

They’re like the sisters I never had. I hold them dear to my heart indeed.

Of course sometimes they act out and stab me with their wire arms. Or they pinch me on the sides. Or it just feels like I’m suffocating. Jane says this is because I eat too many Chinese dumplings.

The other frustrating thing about bras is that they

ALEXANDRIA SAURMAN / ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

A girl shows her love for her bra, the one piece of clothing that provides her comfort and support.

don’t really work well as anything other than being a bra.

One day, my ears were very cold. I didn’t have a hat on, but I did have a coat and mittens. With my coat covering up the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra, I slipped a cup over each ear, then tied the straps in a bow under my chin. To be honest, it didn’t work very well, my ears got frostbite.

But I did get a lot of looks my way, so obviously I

looked fabulous. All in all, a bra can be very handy at times and dangerous at others. Of course, not as dangerous as socks, but hey that’s another story and I’ve got to get ready to go to sleep. I’ve got my padded bra pillow ready and I’ll leave the breast for you to figure out later. Cheers!

Dorothy England can be contacted at dengland@kscequinox.com

Interested in Writing?

Stops at 7 on campus locations:

Keddy/Campus Safety Library Student Center Winchester Lot Butler Court Art Center Fiske Lot

Off campus stops:

Target Starbucks Dick’s Sporting Goods Market Basket Walmart Olympia Sports and more!

MONDAY - FRIDAY

Campus/Community Shuttle runs 7:30am-7:30pm City Express runs 8:00am-5:00pm

KSC Students & Staff Ride FREE with ID!

(484) 424-4737

All City Express vehicles are ADA accessible and are equipped with easy to use bike racks. For more information or a complete schedule, visit cityexpress.org or call 352-8494. TTY use 711

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUDOKU: USING THE NUMBERS 1-9, FILL IN EACH BLANK BOX SO THAT EACH ROW, COLUMN AND 3X3 BOLDED BOX CONTAINS ONLY ONE NUMBER. EACH NUMBER CAN ONLY APPEAR ONCE IN EACH ROW, COLUMN AND 3X3 BOLDED BOX.

Answer to last week’s puzzle:

SUDOKU COURTESY OF WWW.PUZZLESANDBRAINS.COM

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Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

Last of the Red Hot Lovers hits KSC GRACE KELLY

Equinox Staff “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” produced by the Walnut Theater takes us back to the 1960s in a production that’s full of laughter and hope for love.

On Wednesday, Feb. 8 in Keene State College's main theatre at the Redfern Arts Center, The Walnut Street Theatre brought “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” to the stage.

The play is set in the late 1960s and centers around a man named Barney Cashman, played by Fran Prisco. Barney is a restaurant owner who wears a clean-cut blue suit every day and refuses to wear anything else. He lives a "nice" life with Velma, his wife of 23 years, and his three children.

The play opens in the setting of an older-looking apartment, that later is identified as Barney's mother's apartment.

Barney's mother volunteers two times a week at the hospital in town.

Fran Prisco, the actor who plays Barney, described the play and his co-star.

"It's about a man trying to have an affair with three completely different women.

My dear friend Karen does an excellent job playing all three women. Originally, there's three different actresses that play the parts, but it was our director’s idea to do it with the one woman and I think she does a fantastic job. She plays them so

well, it doesn't make my life very difficult," he stated.

Karen Peakes plays Elaine, Bobbi and Jeanette, who all have different personalities. The audience had a range of ages from college students to elder senior citizens, and by the end, the entire crowd was in fits of laughter.

Professor Jeannie-Marie Brown had her playwriting class attend the production for a better understanding of playwriting. "Attending live performances provides insight into how the structure of a play works, how actors impact the written word of the playwright, the role of the audience and what type of material resonates on a stage," she stated.

She also commented on the character development and said it is "the ability to critically identify if you care about the characters, feel drawn to this particular form or can identify with the playwright on any

level as a writer. I hope students develop strong opinions substantiated with clear arguments to help them on their journey of creative thinking,"she stated.

“We ran Last of the Red Hot Lovers with the Walnut Theatre for four weeks and closed that on Sunday. They set up the set yesterday while we drove up. And then, we (the actors) came to the set today, to put it all together and did the show,” said Prisco.

Prisco also discussed his next travels.

“We are leaving tonight and going up to Maine to perform again there tomorrow night. Then, we’ll be going to Massachusetts after that performance, so we’re just going to drive right into the storm,” Prisco stated.

KSC junior Adam Filkins attended the Wednesday showing. “I did like the play.

The actors both were very good, and the woman was absolutely superb,” Filkins said. “The script, set and actors were all very professional, and the delivery that

the performers had were always spot on.

The crowd loved it too. There were plenty of moments when the whole audience was laughing hysterically, and I think, by far, my favorite moments were when the woman actor was on stage.”

Grace Kelly can be contacted at gkelly@kscequinox.com

TIM SMITH / PHOTO EDITOR

On Wednesday, Feb. 8, The Walnut Street Theatre’s “The Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” a play centered around a husband’s love affair with three different women during the late 1960’s performed at the Redfern.

New edition to triology ‘is rotten to its core’ WRITER: MATT BILODEAU POSITION: EQUINOX STAFF REVIEW: Once you glance over the often ludicrous dialogue, it becomes much easier to unveil “Fifty Shades Darker” for what it really is: a reprehensible romance that construes verbal abuse as a viable relationship practice.

Weary of letting the affluent Christian Grey [Jamie Dornan] back into her life, Anastasia Steele [Dakota Johnson] demands a drastic retooling of their relationship.

Christian agrees to her terms, building the foundation of his reconciliation.

As the sexually-adventurous couple begins to build a sense of trust, they’re confronted by ghosts of Christian’s past, threats that strive to tear them apart by any means necessary.

Well aware that I was to review “Fifty Shades Darker,” I reached out to a good friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) to accompany me to the supposed death knell of erotic cinema. Over the course of two hours, I witnessed laughter, horror, cringing, more cringing and the occasional flow of tears. Bless her heart, she was a real trooper who (surprisingly) found enjoyment within the insanity.

Her presence made all the difference.

• Ludicrous Dialogue Example #1: “I was trying to be romantic and then you had to go and ruin it with your kinky f---ery.” - Anastasia Steele Erotica is meant to entice and arouse, and yet, “Fifty Shades Darker” is the antithesis of sexy. For a series that prides itself on pushing the boundaries of sexual exploration, it finds itself at ease within the familiar. God forbid they show Christian’s grey in the same film that blissfully voyeurs on Dakota’s johnsons.

• Ludicrous Dilaogue Example # 2: “I don’t know whether to wor-

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COURTNEY BETHEL / EQUINOX STAFF

ship you or spank you.”

- Christian Grey The entire objective of watching a romance blossom between two individuals requires one key element: chemistry; put simply, these two don’t have it. Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson reprise their roles as the seductive billionaire playboy and his

subservient pet. The direction gives the assumption that Anastasia is the one who slowly gains control of Christian. Spoiler alert: she’s not.

• Ludicrous Dialogue Example # 3: “I’m too dressed.”

-Anastasia Steele As with most individuals that show startling signs

of an abusive partner, the greatest weapon Christian uses is coercion, contributing a false sense of compliance. Within the opening five minutes, Anastasia forgives his stalker-ish behavior from the previous film, pretending as if none of his actions had ever taken place. After regaining her newfound trust, Christian

delivers the following lines to Anastasia throughout the film (to name a few): • “He wants what’s mine.”

• “Where the f--- have you been?”

• “For once, just do what you’re told!”

Doesn’t he sound like a charming fella? What makes this romance even more troubling is that any time Christian verbally abuses her, he flaunts his, “I was physically abused as a child; that’s why I say mean things to you,” sympathy card. Anastasia then promptly drops any and all concerns she may have had about his questionable behavior. Almost instantly, Christian preys on her forgiveness, using sex as a tactical aversion to shrug off any and all wrongdoings. Sadly, the exploitation of child abuse doesn’t quite stop there.

In my eyes, the biggest crime that “Fifty Shades Darker” commits is it’s rather offensive depiction of the BDSM community. I can’t claim to be some kind of expert on the subject, in fact, I’m far from it, but I can say this: the couples that practice

it are well-rounded individuals who thoroughly strategize their sexual fantasies, paying an enormous amount of respect for their (dominant/submissive) partner. They’re not damaged beings who turn to it as an excuse to hurt others based on past traumatic experiences.

• Ludicrous Dialogue Example # 4: “You taught me how to f***, but she taught me how to love.” - Christian Grey “Fifty Shades Darker” is rotten to its core. Narratively speaking, it doesn’t have a plot. A series of things just happen at pure random with no rhyme or reason; nobody is made accountable for their actions. And you know what the worst part is? Normalized domestic abuse has been distributed in theaters across the globe, packaged as a ‘cultural phenomenon’ that is sure to make plenty at the box office. Yuck.

Matt Bilodeau can be cotacted at mbilodeau@kscquinoxcom

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Dakota Access pipeline still in progress

JAMES MACPHERSON / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Razor wire and concrete barriers protect access to the Dakota Access pipeline drilling site Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017 near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. The developer says construction of the Dakota Access pipeline under a North Dakota reservoir has begun and that the full pipeline should be operational within three months. One of two tribes who say the pipeline threatens their water supply on Thursday filed a legal challenge asking a court to block construction while an earlier lawsuit against the pipeline proceeds.

Judge denies American Indian tribe requests to halt Dakota Access pipeline work SAM HANANEL

AssociAted Press A federal judge on Monday rejected a request by two American Indian tribes for an emergency order halting construction of the remaining section of the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, in Washington, D.C., said that as long as the oil isn’t flowing through the pipeline, there is no immediate harm to the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes, which are suing to stop the project. But he said he’d consider the arguments more thoroughly at another hearing on Feb. 27.

The tribes requested the temporary injunction last week after Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners got federal permission to lay pipe under a Missouri River reservoir in North Dakota. That’s the last big section of the $3.8 billion pipeline that would need to be constructed before it could carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois.

The tribes say the pipeline would endanger their cultural sites and water supply. They added a religious freedom component to their case last week by arguing that clean water is necessary to practice the Sioux religion and that the mere presence of the pipeline renders the water impure.

At the hearing, though, Boasberg said the harm to the tribe apparently would come from the pipeline being turned on and the oil flowing through it, not from the pipeline’s mere presence.

Energy Transfer Partners received final approval from the Army last week to lay pipe under the reservoir and to complete the 1,200-mile pipeline, which would move North Dakota oil to a shipping point in Illinois. Drill-

ing work began immediately under Lake Oahe, which is the water source for both tribes.

The company’s attorneys filed court documents early Monday urging Boasberg to reject the tribes’ request, calling the new religious freedom argument “exceedingly tardy,” ‘’not construction-related” and a “last-minute delay tactic.”

“Dakota Access has the greatest respect for the religious beliefs and traditions of (tribes).

The emergency relief sought here simply is not necessary to protect the exercise of those beliefs or preserve those traditions,” wrote William Scherman, an attorney for the company.

The Corps also filed court documents Monday arguing that a work stoppage isn’t warranted, saying the tribes will have plenty of time to make their case before oil flows through the pipeline.

Work under Lake Oahe had been held up in the courts until President Donald Trump last month instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to advance construction. The Army is involved because its engineering branch manages the river and its system of hydroelectric dams, which is owned by the federal government.

The drilling work is expected to take about two months. The full pipeline system could be operational within three months.

Energy Transfer Partners maintains that the pipeline is safe and disputes that cultural sites have been affected. But an encampment near the construction in southern North Dakota drew thousands of protesters last year in support of the tribes, leading to occasional clashes with law enforcement and nearly 700 arrests. The camp has thinned to fewer than 300 people, but law enforcement officers continue to maintain a presence in the area.

JAMES MACPHERSON / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Military vehicles are staged near the path of the Dakota Access pipeline Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017 near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. The developer says construction of the Dakota Access pipeline under a North Dakota reservoir has begun and that the full pipeline should be operational within three months. One of two tribes who say the pipeline threatens their water supply on Thursday filed a legal challenge asking a court to block construction while an earlier lawsuit against the pipeline proceeds.

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Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

7 Kenyan doctors jailed over strike

AMY TAXIN ALICIA A. CALDWELL

TOM ODULA

AssociAted Press

AssociAted Press

Seven Kenyan doctors who are officials of the medics union were jailed Monday for failing to call off a two-month strike by doctors at public hospitals that has seen several die due to lack of medical care.

Judge Hellen Wasilwa said she could not delay further the contempt of court sentence she had suspended earlier on condition the doctors call off their strike. At least 5,000 doctors are on strike for better pay and to protest the dilapidated state of Kenya’s public health care.

“This court declines to review its order sentencing the applicants to one month jail term ... you can now start serving your sentences, those are the orders of the court,” Wasilwa said.

The Kenyan Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union said it has called off all communications with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government until their officials are released.

“There will be no negotiations as long as the union officials are in jail ... Jailing them is actually stalling the negotiations to end the strike. It is not a solution,” said Thuranira Kaugiria, a top union official.

Kenyan paramilitary police were later deployed to disperse hundreds of doctors holding a peaceful vigil in support of their colleagues that was being covered live on TV. Doctors want the government to implement pay raises agreed upon in 2013. That agreement would raise their salaries by 180 percent. Currently doctors earn an average basic salary of $400 to $850 per month compared to a Kenya legislator who earns nearly $14,000 a month.

The strike has caused a near-total paralysis in the Kenya’s public health sector and many are believed to have died from a lack of emergency services. Early in December, President

Advocacy groups and the White House say that people suspected of living in the United States illegally are being rounded up in large numbers as part of stepped-up enforcement under President Donald Trump. Advocates cited what they call heavyhanded raids in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Texas and North Carolina and elsewhere.

Yet officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency conducting the raids, say the efforts are business as usual — no different than what happened on a regular basis during the Obama years.

So which is it? The truth lies somewhere in between. Here are some of the facts surrounding what’s happening with immigration enforcement: TRUMP VS. OBAMA

BEN CURTIS / ASSOCIATED PRESS

FILE - In this Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016 file photo, Kenyan nurses and other health-workers on strike demonstrate over low pay at Uhuru Park in downtown Nairobi, Kenya. A Kenyan judge Monday, Feb. 13, 2017 has jailed seven officials of the medics union for failing to call off a two-month strike by doctors at public hospitals that has seen at least a dozen die due to lack of medical care.

Kenyatta said at least 20 people had died as a result of the strike.

Kenyatta has twice asked the doctors to return to work, first appealing to their humanity for the suffering masses and then offering a partial increase of the salary hikes agreed upon in 2013.

The doctors’ union rejected both offers and urged the government to pay the full salary increases promised three years ago.

In 2012, Kenya’s doctors went on strike to protest the bad state of public health care. Emergency rooms in some of Kenya’s public hospitals frequently don’t have gloves or medicine, and power outages sometimes force doctors to use their cell phones to provide adequate light for a surgical procedure.

Kenyatta has said his government must cut down on a ballooning wage bill which he says is not sustainable.

Respected anti-corruption crusaders have said the problem is not the wage bill but corruption. Several large-scale corruption scandals exposed recently — including one at the health ministry where government auditors questioned the diversion of $46 million — have brought many Kenyans to question the president’s commitment to ending graft.

Leading economist David Ndii argues that Kenyatta’s regime is the most corrupt of the all of the four presidents Kenya has had. In an opinion piece in Kenya’s largest circulation newspaper, The Nation, in December, Ndii argued the reason the government does not want to increase sala-

ries is because officials want to “create more headroom for looting.”

John Githongo, a former Kenyan government adviser who exposed millions of dollars in government corruption in the previous regime, makes similar allegations.

“This is the most corrupt government we have in history,” said Githongo, charging that the government has the resources to pay doctors, but officials are diverting the funds.

“Here we have entire government projects that are designed from the onset to steal,” Githongo said. “We no longer have corruption in Kenya, we have theft and plunder.”

Kenya has fallen six places to be ranked 145 out of 167 countries in an index by Transparency International for 2016.

Crews rush to repair dam central to Northern California life JONATHAN J. COOPER DON THOMPSON

AssociAted Press Crews working around the clock atop the crippled Oroville Dam have made progress repairing the damaged spillway, reducing the lake level by at least 8 feet overnight at a Northern California reservoir that has been central to the life of the towns around it for a half century.

Workers hoisted giant white bags filled with rocks, and at least two helicopters planned to fly in rocks Tuesday then release them into the eroded area of the spillway. Dump trucks full of boulders also were dumping cargo on the damaged spillway.

Workers are rushing to repair the barrier at the nation’s tallest dam after authorities ordered the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people for everyone living below the lake amid concerns the spillway could fail and send water roaring downstream. Evacuations remain in place.

State Department of Water Resources officials hope to reduce the lake level to 860 feet by Thursday when storms will bring more rain, spokesman Chris Orrock said. The level was 884 feet on Tuesday morning.

The lake that for five decades has brought residents holiday fireworks and salmon festivals now could bring disaster.

“Never in our lives did we think anything like this would have happened,” said Brannan Ramirez, who has lived in Oroville, a town of about 16,000 people, for about five years.

The Gold Rush town in the Sierra Nevada foothills some 70 miles northeast of Sacramento is nestled near the foot of the dam, which was completed in 1968 and at 770 feet is the nation’s tallest. Houses and churches are perched on tree-lined streets near the Feather River. Old, ornate Victorian homes sit alongside smaller bungalows.

“Everybody knows to go there for the Fourth of July,” evacuee Crystal Roberts-Lynch said of the lake. “Then there’s festivals wrapped around the salmon run.” The mother of three, who has lived in Oroville for 10 years, was staying at a Red Cross evacuation center in Chico Local businesses, including one that sells supplies for gold-panning, dominate a downtown area that spans several blocks. A wide range of chain

Are immigration raids result of Trump policy?

stores sit a short distance away along the main highway.

“The lake brings in an enormous part of the economy for the town. It definitely is a people-catcher,” said Brannan Ramirez, who has lived in Oroville for about five years. “We get people from all over the country.”

Cities and towns farther down the Feather River also are in danger.

Yuba City, population 65,000, is the biggest city evacuated. The city has the largest dried-fruit processing plant in the world and one of the largest populations of Sikhs outside of India.

The region is largely rural and its politics dominated by rice growers and other agricultural interests, including orchard operators. The region is dogged by the high unemployment rates endemic to farming communities. There are large pockets of poverty and swaths of sparsely populated forests, popular with anglers, campers and backpackers.

For now, it’s all at the mercy of the reservoir that usually sustains it, and provides water for much of the state.

“If anything, we would have thought that the dam would have been constructed better,” Ramirez said.

Ramirez said it was “extremely frustrating” when he heard reports that emerged Monday of complaints about the potential danger that came from environmentalists and government officials a dozen years ago.

Those warnings described the very scenario that was threatening to unfold, though they were dismissed state and federal regulators who expressed confidence that the dam and its spillways could withstand serious storms.

The acting head of the state’s Department of Water Resources said he was unaware of the 2005 report that recommended reinforcing with concrete an earthen spillway that is now eroding.

“I’m not sure anything went wrong,” Bill Croyle said. “This was a new, never-having-happened-before event.”

Roberts-Lynch didn’t buy the explanations.

“I know that somebody did not pay attention to the warning signs,” she said. “Someone in charge was not paying attention. It was their job to pay attention to what was going on with the dam.”

Over the weekend, the swollen lake spilled down the unpaved, emer-

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BILL HUSA / THE CHICO ENTERPRISE-RECORD VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this Monday Feb. 13, 2017 photo, mist forms as water flows down Oroville Dam’s main spillway near Oroville, Calif. Officials have ordered residents near the Oroville Dam in Northern California to evacuate the area Sunday, Feb. 12, saying a “hazardous situation is developing” after an emergency spillway severely eroded.

gency spillway, which had never been used before, for nearly 40 hours, leaving it badly eroded.

Officials defended the decision to suddenly call for mass evacuations late Sunday afternoon, just a few hours after saying the situation was stable, forcing families to rush to pack up and get out.

“There was a lot of traffic. It was chaos,” said Robert Brabant, an Oroville resident who evacuated with his wife, son, dogs and cats. “It was a lot of accidents. It was like people weren’t paying attention to other people.”

Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday that he sent a letter to the White House requesting direct federal assistance in the emergency, though some federal agencies have been helping already.

Brown has had harsh words for President Donald Trump, and the state has vowed to resist many of his administration’s efforts.

But the governor said at a news

conference that he’s “sure that California and Washington will work in a constructive way. That’s my attitude.

There will be different points of view, but we’re all one America.”

The governor said he doesn’t plan to go to Oroville and distract from efforts, but he tried to reassure evacuees.

“My message is that we’re doing everything we can to get this dam in shape and they can return and they can live safely without fear,” Brown said.

But evacuee Kelly Remocal said she believed the public officials working on the problem are “downplaying everything so people don’t freak out.”

“I honestly don’t think they’re going to be able to do it, fix the problem,” she said. “This requires a little more than a Band-Aid. At this point they have no choice but to give it a Band-Aid fix.”

As a candidate, Donald Trump vowed to take a hard line on immigration. Five days after taking office, he signed a sweeping executive order that made clear that just about any immigrant living in the country illegally could be a priority for deportation, particularly those with outstanding deportation orders. The president’s order also said enforcement priorities would include convicted criminals, immigrants who had been arrested for any criminal offense, those who committed fraud and anyone who may have committed a crime, including immigration violations.

Under President Barack Obama, the government focused on immigrants in the country illegally who posed a threat to national security or public safety and recent border crossers.

But despite the narrower focus, more than 2 million people were deported during Obama’s time in office, including a record of more than 409,000 people in 2012. At one point, his critics dubbed him the “deporter in chief.”

The record was reached with the help of the Secure Communities program that helped the government identify immigrants in the United States illegally who had been arrested. In the latter half of Obama’s tenure the Secure Communities program fell out of favor with the administration and local jurisdictions, and deportations plummeted to lows matching those during former President George W. Bush’s term.

ARE THE LATEST RAIDS A DIRECT RESULT OF TRUMP’S ORDER? Immigration officials said they weren’t. But Trump, during a press conference Monday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, bragged that his administration was following through on his campaign pledge and targeting “the bad ones.”

He said immigration authorities focused on immigrants in the country illegally “with a tremendous track record of abuse and problems and we are getting them out.”

“I said at the beginning we are going to get the bad ones, the really bad ones, we are going to get them out,” Trump said.

David Marin, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s field office director for enforcement and removal operations in greater Los Angeles, said the agency carries out these operations two or three times a year in his region. The California operation was in the planning stages “before the administration came out with their current executive orders,” he said.

But immigrant rights groups say the actions are harsher than in the past.

Advocates began fielding calls Thursday from immigrants and their lawyers reporting raids at homes and businesses in the greater Los Angeles area. In one instance, agents showed up at the home of a 50-year-old house painter named Manuel Mosqueda in the Los Angeles suburbs, looking to arrest an immigrant who wasn’t there. In the process, they spoke with Mosqueda, arrested him and put him on a bus to Mexico — though lawyers were able to halt his deportation and bring him back.

In all, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 680 immigrants. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said everyone arrested posed “a threat to public safety, border security or the integrity of our nation’s immigration system.”

Kelly said about 75 percent of the people arrested were criminals convicted of a variety of crimes, including “homicide, aggravated sexual abuse, sexual assault of a minor, lewd and lascivious acts with a child, indecent liberties with a minor, drug trafficking, battery, assault, DUI and weapons charges.”

ICE had previously called the arrests an “enforcement surge” that was no different than enforcement actions carried out in the past and said a “rash of recent reports about purported ICE checkpoints and random sweeps are false, dangerous and irresponsible.” In a statement, the agency said “officers frequently encounter additional suspects who may be in the United States in violation of the federal immigration laws. Those persons will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and, when appropriate, arrested by ICE.” THE NEW NORMAL? Despite the claims that this is business as usual, an indication of the changed tactics came earlier in the week when Kelly testified before Congress. He told lawmakers that immigration agents expressed frustration at not being fully allowed to enforce immigration laws under the Obama administration. He predicted Trump’s directives would end that frustration.

“I think their morale has suffered because of the job they were hired to do, and then in their sense, they’re ... kind of hobbled or, you know, hands tied behind their back, that kind of thing,” Kelly told the House Homeland Security Committee. “And now, they feel more positive about things. I bet if you watch the morale issue, you’ll ... be surprised going forward.”

Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan, who was previously in charge of the agency’s enforcement and removal operations, earlier this month made a point of noting that his agents would enforce the law.

In at least one case, it seems clear that Trump’s order changed someone’s fate. Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, a mother of two in Phoenix, was arrested nearly a decade ago for using a false ID to get a job as a janitor at an amusement park. She pleaded guilty to a felony charge, but the government during the Obama years declined to deport her despite her being in the country illegally and a judge’s order that she leave. On Wednesday, she showed up at the ICE building in Phoenix for a scheduled check-in with immigration officers and was swiftly deported to Mexico.

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Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

Women’s Basketball

Men’s Basketball Overall

Home

Away

Neutral

16-7

11-1

4-6

1-0

vs. Plymouth State

vs. Western Conn.

Team

Points

Team

Keene State

88

Plymouth State

61

Overall

Home

16-7

6-4

Keene State Western Conn.

80

Team

Home

Away

3-8

0-1

3-7

Keene State Bridgewater

117

Team

Keene State

Keene State

65

Plymouth State

54

Western Conn.

62

0-0

Overall

Home

Away

1-8

0-1

1-7

vs. Brandeis

vs. Brandeis

Points 170

Team

vs. Western Conn.

Points

Women’s Swim & Dive Neutral

@ Bridgewater

2-2

Points 73

Men’s Swim & Dive Overall

Neutral

8-1

vs. Plymouth State

Points 95

Away

Points

Team

Team

Keene State

137

Keene State

Brandeis

141

Brandeis

Neutral

0-0 vs. LEC

Points

Team

Points

195 97

Keene State LEC

557 -

Indoor Track & Field Little East Conference Katelyn Terry

400 Meter Run 58.48

Jared Hannon

Alyssa Lombardi

3000 Meter Run 11:04.58

Matt Dudley

Long Jump 6.67 meters One mile 4:35.37

Upcoming Games Swim & Dive Friday, Feb. 17-20 NIESDA Championship URI

Women’s Basketball Saturday, Feb. 18 @ Rhode Island College 1:00 p.m.

hidden treasure?

Men’s Basketball Saturday, Feb. 18 @ Rhode Island College 3:00 p.m.

Thursday, February 16th in the DC!

4pm to 8pm

You may have more cash than you know.

Your “Plus” Meal Plan provides Meal Plan Dollars each semester. If you had this form of “Lloyd’s Money” in the fall, you received a fresh supply this spring. Spend your Meal Plan Dollars before they expire* in May! Use them for yourself or your guest!

Meal Plan Dollars are accepted in ALL DINING LOCATIONS on campus: Lloyd’s Marketplace Bean & Bagel Food on the Wing Zorn Dining Commons Hoot-n-Scoot NOC Sizzler Check your balances with our Mobile App or online in the Owl Card Portal: get.cbord.com/owlcard/ *Meal Plan Dollars expire when your Meal Plan ends in May. Dining Dollars and Owl Cash do not expire.

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Owls win back-to-back LEC match ups Plymouth State University CAMERON MOZZER

Equinox Staff The Keene State College men’s basketball team hosted Plymouth State University on the night of Feb. 8, which was the alumni night at the Spaulding Gymnasium. Keene was able to shut down Plymouth on Wednesday night and beat them by a score of 88-61.

After the big win by Keene, the Owls progressed to a standing record of 15-7, 8-3 in the Little East Conference (LEC). After the loss for the Panthers, they fell to 10-11, 4-7 in the LEC standings.

Ty Nichols led the Owls with 21 points in 28 minutes, shooting 9-12 from the field. Jeff Lunn had put up 18 points, shooting 5-11 from the field.

Jimmy Layman and Damonte Turner also helped the Owls seal the victory, combining for 23 points.

Jimmy Layman commented on how the Owls were playing after a big performance from the whole team. “We have been practicing really hard and it showed tonight,” Layman said.

On the other side of the court, Ernie Johnson, Jaylen Leroy and Curtis Arsenault all put up 11 points for the Panthers. Plymouth outscored Keene in the beginning of the game, leading the Owls 11-5. The Owls came back with a 12-2 run, which gave them the lead 17-13. The first half was fought by both teams, and the Owls went into the break leading the Panthers 44-36.

Coming into the second half, the Owls came out quickly. Leroy scored the first points of the half, giving them a spark. Matt Ozzella scored the next three baskets for the Owls, giving them a 50-38 lead. Plymouth simply lost it and couldn’t find the bottom of the net. The Panthers went on to shoot just 7-30 for the second half. The Owls

finished off the game with a strong second half performance, outscoring the Panthers 44-25.

Head Coach Ryan Cain talked about the performance after a big Owls victory. “I think [Jack] Preston, [Curtis] Arsenault and [Mike] Osgood are three of the best players in the LEC and we shut them down tonight. I am very pleased with our effort defensively.”

The Owls swept the season series with the Panthers. They improved to a 34-18 overall record all time against the Plymouth State Panthers.

Keene improved to 10-1 at home and they have not lost a game when scoring over 80 points. KSC Head Coach Cain picked up his 35th career win.

The Owls opened up a large lead early on.

They had a 22-5 run in the first half. The Owls were up 28-13. Nichols found Damonte Turner for a three-point shot and Lunn converted a three-point play.

The Owls continued to push over Western, extending their lead 38-14 on a pair of frees by Ozzella. Edwards shot and sank a three just as the buzzer for the half went off. The Owls remained on top 47-21 at the break.

The Colonials began to get back in the game as they managed to sink a three and a 20-foot jumper to get the lead under 20 (65-46). With just 8:39 left, the Colonials cut the lead even Cam Mozzer can be contacted at more with a layup. Western has now made it a cmozzer@kscequinox.com 13-point game.

The Owls kept moving forward, restoring the lead, when Lunn tipped in Jake Collagan’s Western Connecticut State University miss and Nichols ended the game with a threepoint play and a breakaway slam dunk. The SHELBY IAVA Owls beat the Colonials 95-80.

SportS Editor

Senior Jeffrey Lunn scored his career-high of 26 points during the Owls’ game against the Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) Colonials on Feb. 11 at the Spaulding Gymnasium. “We just wanted to move the ball around today. We wanted to get open looks however we could. The career-high is nice, but I just wanted to win the game. We don’t have agendas, we just move the ball around a lot and different people step up,” Lunn said.

Lunn led all of the scorers with 26, while knocking in all 10 of his free throws. Jaquel Edwards added 20, while Matthew Ozzella and Ty Nichols added 13 points each. Ozzella achieved his 11th double-double of the year with 12 boards.

Shelby Iava can be contacted at siava@kscequinox.com

“We don’t have agendas, we just move the ball around a lot and different people step up.”

JEFFREY LUNN SENIOR FORWARD

SHELBY IAVA/ SPORTS EDITOR

Jeffrey Lunn scored his career-high of 26 points in the Saturday, Feb. 11 game against WCSU. The Owls beat the Colonials 95-80.

Women’s basketball team wins fourth and fifth straight games Plymouth State University CAMERON MOZZER

Equinox Staff The Keene State women’s basketball team hosted Plymouth State on Feb. 8 in the Spaulding Gymnasium.

The Keene State Owls improved their record to 15-7, and 8-3 in the Little East Conference (LEC). The Plymouth State Panthers fell to 5-15 and 2-9 in the LEC. Emily McPadden led the Owls, finishing off the night with six points, shooting 6-9 from the field. Senior Stephanie D’Annolfo tallied her fifth double-double of the season, adding in 15 points and 12 rebounds. Junior

guard Lydia Vital added 14 points, while also adding of the third quarter. A layup late in the quarter by Vital three rebounds, two steals and two assists. put the Owls on top 47-41 heading into the fourth quarOn the other side of the court for the Panthers, Kayla ter.

Wyland scored 12 points, while DeAsia Lawrence added Going into the fourth, the Owls dominated. McPad11. Annaliese Schmidt put up a double-double scoring den had a huge fourth quarter, putting up four three10 points and added 14 rebounds. pointers. The Owls went on a 10-0 run, which then gave Both teams had fought hard in the first quarter, but them a double digit lead over the Panthers. McPadden the Owls led 17-15. Rachel Bonnanzio ended the quarter commented on the Owls’ performance Wednesday with a buzzer beater layup to put the Owls on top. night and said, “They definitely worked harder than us The Panthers took their first lead of the game after a in the first half, but I think we were able to outwork three-pointer from Lawrence in the second quarter. The them in the second half.” second quarter was dominated by the Panthers. The After a big performance from the Owls, they finOwls fought back and ended the half on a 8-0 run, only ished the game beating the Panthers 73-54. Coach Keith down by one point at half. The Panthers led 32-21.

Boucher was happy with how they played in the second The Owls took the lead, scoring the first five points half. “The second half, we talked about playing better defense and I think we did. We obviously eliminated some of our mistakes from the first half as well,” he said.

D’Annolfo has scored 10 or more points in 10 straight games for the Owls and was named to the New England Women’s Basketball Association (NEWBA) Honor Roll earlier this week.

SHELBY IAVA/ SPORTS EDITOR

Hien Thach keeps possesion of the ball and brings it to the net in the Saturday, Feb. 11 game against WCSU. The Owls beat the Colonials 65-62.

a game-high of eight rebounds.

Tied at nine, the Colonials gained a four-point lead on the Owls with 3:19 remaining on the clock. The Owls came back with a layup from Petrow and another basket from beyond the arc by Hien Thach. Two free throws for the Colonials and one for Keene State finished the first quarter in a tie at 17.

Both teams shot back and forth in the beginning of the second. The Owls lead 23-21 with 7:14 to go before the half. Keene State went on a 11-0 run with baskets from D’Annolfo, Purcell, McPadden and Thach to lead Keene into the half 34-21.

In the begining of the third, Kenzie Bennet hit a three to keep the Owls in the lead. The Colonials answered back, scoring the next seven points; at this point, the Colonials were only trailing by six. Western with another layup put them in reach of the Owls 42-35,with 5:15 remaining. McPadden sent off eight straight points to give Keene State a 15-point lead.

The Colonials came back in the fourth with strong shooting from the three-point line, which pulled them within eight. Purcell converted a three-point shot to Cameron Mozzer can be contacted at hold the lead at 11. Western Connecticut was able to cmozzer@kscequinox.com pour in 4-for-4 from the three-point line, bringing them within one of the Owls. With just 47 seconds on the clock, Amerson grabbed an offensive rebound to keep Keene State in possession. The Colonials were then able Western Connecticut State University to regain the ball with 11 seconds to go as they charged down the court. Before the final second of the buzzer, Purcell managed to steal the ball. Lydia Vital was able SHELBY IAVA to finish off the game, making two for two of her free SportS Editor throws, ending it 65-62 Keene State.

The Keene State women’s basketball team fought Shelby Iava can be contacted at off Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) Satsiava@kscequinox.com urday, Feb. 11 at the Spaulding Gymnasium. This is the fifth straight win for the Lady Owls. Emily McPadden scored six out of her 10 baskets from beyond the arc and a total of 22 points. Stephanie D’Annolfo added 12 points, four rebounds, three assists as well as three steals. Sandi Purcell also scored double digits, hitting 11 points. Amanda Petrow and Josie Amerson each added

The challenges, changes and triumphs in New England MARY CURTIN

adS dirEctor In recent weeks, teams in New England have seen many triumphs, challenges, changes and even some shocking events. This has led fans to sigh with relief, shake their heads and clap their hands.

New England Patriots The New England Patriots just won their fifth Super Bowl, and quarterback Tom Brady is setting records at almost 40 years old.

Super Bowl LI was the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history and under Head Coach Bill Belichick’s reign and Brady’s leadership, this may not be the last championship before Brady retires.

Coach Brad Stevens.

The Celtics have been finding their stride in the past two years after Stevens was able to get his feet wet in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Prior to coaching in the NBA, Stevens was the head coach of Butler University for four years.

This season, the Celtics are currently 35-19 and first in the Atlantic Division, and have gone .500 in their last four games. Being in playoff contention, his fourth year as an NBA coach is pretty remarkable, and the Celtics have not won the NBA Finals since 2008.

Stevens was named the Eastern Conference All-Star Game head coach for the second best record in the East.

Bruce Cassidy.

Julien joined the Bruins in 2007 and brought home the Stanley Cup to Boston in 2011, the Bruins first championship since 1972.

The cowardly firing of Julien happened the day after the Patriots won the Super Bowl and a press conference was held during the championship parade.

Since Julien’s firing, the Bruins have gone 3-0, which gives hope for the rest of the season, despite the unforeseen and rather abrupt termination.

Boston Red Sox

Some new changes have come for the Red Sox recently, including a new ace and a slimmer more agile Pablo Sandoval; Boston Bruins with Spring Training right around the corner, it will hopefully give some indicaBoston Celtics The Boston Bruins just recently fired tion of how this 2017 squad will be.

Head Coach Claude Julien and appointed Along with these new changes, a chalThe 2016-2017 Boston Celtics are look- Assistant Coach and former Providence lenge for Manager John Farrell has risen ing pretty strong with three-year Head Bruins’ coach as interim coach of Boston as well.

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Farrell has a lot to prove within Spring Training and the upcoming season, after failing to make playoffs and keep his team in contention when they do make it.

The biggest question with Sale would be if he can succeed in his first season with the Red Sox, because it seems that some pitchers tend to have a rough beginning coming off of a strong season with their former teams.

Sale is joining the Red Sox from the Chicago White Sox, but according to the Boston Herald, he recently has said, “It’s the same game no matter what uniform you’re in,” giving some hope for the 2017 season.

Despite all of the challenges and the triumphs, 2016-17 has been an exciting time in New England and the new changes may give way to an exciting year in New England sports.

Interested in writing for The Equinox?

203-695-5359

Mary Curtin can be contacted at mcurtin@kscequinox.com

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Sports / B9

Senior send-off Men’s club ice hockey celebrates their last regular season game with a win CRAE MESSER

Managing executive editor The Keene State College men’s club hockey team took on the University of Vermont (UVM) Catamounts on Saturday, Feb. 11 in what was the Owls’ final home game of the 2016-2017 season. KSC won the senior night tilt by a score of 6-1 thanks to a twogoal game from Andrew Pierce and a solid performance from sophomore goaltender Carlin Testa.

First Period Just over two minutes into the game, UVM scored on their first shot of the game, beating Testa on the power play. That would be the only blemish on the scoresheet for Testa, who made 30 saves in the game.

Andrew Pierce and Matt Girard scored back-to-back goals on a four-minute power play to give the Owls a quick lead, one from which the team would never look back. Several more power play opportunities created an eventful first period, but the score would remain 2-1 entering the first intermission.

Second Period The second period was filled with endto-end action from the start, but the first goal didn’t come until over halfway through, when first-year Chris Bertone put home a rebound to give KSC a two-goal lead. A shot from the right faceoff dot was stopped

by UVM’s goaltender, but the rebound fell right to Bertone’s stick, who made no mistake, making the score 3-1.

Testa’s stellar play continued throughout the duration of the second period, including a glove-save that the Catamounts initially celebrated as a goal before realizing that Testa had snagged the puck out of the air before it entered the net. The Owls entered the second intermission up by a pair of goals.

Third Period Andrew Pierce got his second goal of the game just over five minutes into the third period, when he beat Vermont’s goaltender high and short-side on an odd man rush,

putting the Owls up 4-1. Pierce’s second goal of the game opened the floodgates, as Kyle Carignan soon thereafter put a shot past the glove of Vermont’s goaltender, making it 5-1, KSC. Keene’s fifth goal forced UVM to pull their goalie, replacing him with their backup.

With less than two minutes remaining in the game, defenseman Lucas Poulin let a slapshot go that found it’s way through traffic and into the back of the net, scoring the last goal of the game and securing the win for Keene State.

Crae Messer can be contacted at cmesser@kscequinox.com

Leicester City: Hero to Zero?

LUKE STERGIOU

“I couldn’t think of a better way to go out.”

ANDREW PIERCE KSC SENIOR & ASSISTANT CAPTAIN

CRAE MESSER/ MANAGING EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Kyle Carignan fights to bring the puck down the ice in game on Saturday, Feb. 11 against UVM.

CRAE MESSER/ MANAGING EXECUTIVE EDITOR

The men’s club ice hockey team celebrated their seniors on the night of Feb. 11 against UVM. The Owls soared past UVM with a score of 6-1. Front row, left to right: Jeff Rossman, Andrew Pierce, Ricky Panton, Trevor Theroux, Derek Clark. Back row, left to right: Adin Sobel, Kurt Mitchell, Josh Bell, Cooper Hines, Chris O’Hara. Missing from the photo Matthew Girard (#10)

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SAMANTHA MOORE/ ART DIRECTOR TIM SMITH/ PHOTO EDITOR

Senior PhotograPher

Post-game Reactions Head Coach Bobby Rodrigue said he was certainly happy with the way the team played in the third period, and that they stepped up their effort from the first two periods.

“In the third period, we started moving the puck and I think the results showed on the scoreboard,” Rodrigue said.

Rodrigue also said that the festivities celebrating the seniors before the game may have caused a bit of a distraction, but he praised the play of Testa, as well as Poulin and defenseman Nick DeCristoforo and reiterated that the entire team regained their focus as the game went on.

Senior Captain Kurt Mitchell said before the game, he reminded the team that it was the last game at Keene ICE for the seniors and it was important to get the win.

“Last time, we took these guys [UVM] into overtime and we weren’t too happy with it, so we wanted to come out and make an impact,” Mitchell said.

Both Mitchell and Pierce said how good it felt to win their final game at their home rink.

“I couldn’t think of a better way to go out,” Pierce said.

Mitchell added, “It’s better to go out a winner than a loser.”

Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

Last year, Leicester City Football Club shocked the soccer world by winning the English Premier League in May 2016. They overcame the 5000 to one odds to win the Premier League for the first time in the club’s history.

This underdog story captured the hearts of thousands of fans of not only the premier league, but other leagues around the world as well. But now, halfway through the 2016-2017 Premier League season, last year’s champions are now in a relegation battle.

What happened to the illustrious underdogs and how are they in such a low position in the league table?

Leicester City is currently sitting in 16th place and one point away from the relegation zone.

They’ve only won five games in the Premier League so far, and gained one point from their last 5 games. This is the worst form of any league champion since it’s inception in 1992. There isn’t specific thing that you can pinpoint as the cause of Leicester’s form.

One thing that is agreed on by the majority of the fans of the league is that the English Premier League is one of the most competitive leagues in the world. Every season there are upsets and at any given point any team can look like they can win the league.

Plus, in the past six years, four teams have won the Premier League.

Maintaining the form that a championship team had the season before and winning the league two years in a row is incredibly difficult, especially for a small team like Leicester.

Only Manchester United and Chelsea have accomplished that feat. Once you win the league, other teams will start studying the tactics and game styles that championship teams use.

So by the time the next season comes along, the other teams in the league know how to play against the reigning champions. For example, back in 2011, Borussia Dortmund had won the Bundesliga (Germany’s top flight division) for the first time since 2002. They went on to win back-to-back league titles when they won it in 2012.

Since then, they have struggled to regain the league title, and it goes to show that eventually, teams will start to figure out that certain style of play and learn how to use it against championship teams.

Another blow to the reigning champions was when they sold their star midfielder N’Golo Kanté to Chelsea for £30m in the summer of 2016.

Kanté was an integral part of the Leicester squad last year, dominating the midfield in every game he played. This was a shock to Leicester fans, but delighted Chelsea fans as they picked up a star midfielder.

Since then, Leicester seem weak in the midfield and lacking the domineering presence that Kanté provided.

Meanwhile, Chelsea is flourishing with Kanté in the midfield and are currently in first place in the Premier league this season with 59 points, nine points clear of second place Tottenham. So it seems pretty clear that even though Leicester has brought in French defensive midfielder Nampalys Mendy to replace Kanté, the void left by him is still haunting them. Even as a Chelsea fan, I would hate to see Leicester get relegated. They’re a great club and even more fantastic to watch.

Maybe it’s time for Claudio Ranieri to leave and a new manager to come in or they need to change up their style of play. Either way, I’m hoping that Leicester pulls off an incredible run of form to stay in the Premier League next season.

Luke Stergiou can be contacted at lstergoiu@kscequinox.com

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Check out the scoreboard on B7!

Sports / B10 Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017

SPORTS

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Mind Games “It’s not only people with mental illness, it’s the people that stand up to a challenge that won’t just roll over and die, the people that are like, ‘Hey I’m going to fight to the end.’”

CHAMIQUE HOLDSCLAW FORMER WNBA PLAYER

LUKE STERGIOU/ SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Former WNBA player Chamique Holdsclaw visited Keene State College on Feb. 10 to talk to student athletes and the rest of the community about the importance of mental health.

Chamique Holdsclaw visited Keene State to talk with athletes about the importance of mental health ALEXANDRA ENAYAT

Social Media director More than 25 percent of college students have been diagnosed or treated by a professional for a mental health condition within a year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

Among this statistic is Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) basketball player Chamique Holdsclaw, who visited Keene State College Friday, Feb. 10 to show her documentary, “Mind/Game: The Unique Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw,” and share her story of coping with mental illness.

Chamique Holdsclaw started playing basketball at the age of seven. The shy tomboy, as she described herself, spent the majority of her free time practicing at local parks.

Once she entered high school, New York Times sportswriter William Rhoden explains, she became the talk of the game.

What people didn’t know however, was that Holdsclaw was using basketball as a therapeutic coping mechanism, while managing hard times back at home.

The Queens, New York, native attended the University of Tennessee from 1995-99.

She helped the Lady Vols’ win three consecutive championships. By the time the four-time Kodak All-America left Tennessee, she had scored herself 3,025 points and 1,295 rebounds, the highest in Tennessee’s men’s and women’s history.

In the film, “Mind/Game: The Unique Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw,” former women’s college basketball coach and Head Coach of Holdsclaw at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville Pat Summitt described Holdsclaw as, “the best player in the game.” When it was time to enter the big leagues, Holdsclaw was the Washington Mystics’ first overall pick, and by the end of the season, she won Rookie of the Year in 1999.

Holdsclaw was at the peak of her success when her grandmother suddenly died of a heart attack. Holdsclaw explained in the film that she was hurting, but she masked that pain and put on a front until it was inevitable and she started losing.

Holdsclaw also started losing control of her emotions and began going into a paranoid

state. She decided to go see a therapist who diagnosed her with clinical depression, but initially Holdsclaw didn’t want people to know.

Instead, she sought a new beginning and requested a trade in 2005 from the Washington Mystics and moved to Los Angeles to play for the Sharks until she announced her retirement in 2007. According to Holdsclaw, at first, life was good in Los Angeles and she was happy.

That was until both her father and her step-father became ill, forcing her to return home for a short time. It was during that time that Holdsclaw started having visions.

“If i jumped off a building, would anybody care?” Shortly after, she started self-medicating, which landed her in the hospital and on suicide watch, but she still didn’t want anyone to know. “How did I let it get like this?” Holdsclaw asked herself. “How can you be sad? You have so many blessings.”

Despite this downfall, Holdsclaw returned to L.A. like nothing happened until she realized her life was more important than basketball and left the Sharks to seek professional help. She then started sharing her story with others. She started “talking about what people didn’t want to talk about,” Holdsclaw admitted, which was mental illness. After her short retirement, she went back onto the court until she made her final retirement in 2010.

One night, Holdsclaw admitted that her thoughts got the best of her, she said, and she lashed out on her ex-girlfriend and former WNBA player Jennifer Lacy.

Holdsclaw took a baseball bat to Lacy’s car and shot out the window with the gun she had sitting in her car’s passenger seat.

Lacy was not injured and did not press charges; however, Holdsclaw was indicted and pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and possession of a firearm.

“This person didn’t do anything to me and I have all this anger,” Holdsclaw explained. After the incident, she received a new diagnosis- bipolar disorder.

Holdsclaw now spends her days traveling the country sharing her story. “I never thought I would be doing this… but through my weakness, I found my greatest strength,” Holdsclaw said.

She realized and recognizes the mil-

lions of people going through the same things she goes through having a mental illness. “I struggled when I was this age, and I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through: the suicide attempt, masking it with alcohol and things like that. It’s just really a tough past, so if I could help you and hold your hand and help you get over that little puddle, then allow me to do that,” Holdsclaw said.

Students at Keene State College said they could really connect with Holdsclaw’s message. KSC senior Kelly Chadnick said Holdsclaw’s message was really important and powerful. “I liked how she never gave up no matter what and she kept going,” Chadnick said.

KSC sophomore Riley Bunker also said that she could connect with Holdsclaw as an athlete. She described Holdsclaw as influential to others for having the ability to overcome her illness and be able to openly talk about it.

Chief Officer of Diversity and Multiculturalism Dottie Morris helped orchestrate this event. She said she hopes that with Holdsclaw’s message, students will realize that we all struggle and that there is no shame to that or asking for what you need.

KSC Athletic Director Kristene Kelly said she hopes that Holdsclaw’s message inspires all students, not just athletes, and that if they are having issues, they can talk to someone and seek professional help before the issue escalates.

“It’s really important to make sure, as far as mental health, that we take that seriously and understand that it’s about the total student and student athlete, not just what they do athletically, but their mental, their physical, their emotional and their spiritual, and I am so glad Chamique was able to share her story.”

Kelly continued, “Mental health is a serious issue and one thing that I want them [students] to understand, because there is one in five Americans who suffer from mental illnesses, is that there are resources on campus… we have the counseling center, we have our CARES program, we have coaches, we have all kinds of people that they can find support in, so if they are having issues, I want them to be able to identify those issues and seek the help they need,” Kelly said.

Chamique Holdsclaw is an inspiration and heroic figure to many individuals, but she said her heroes are those who are not afraid to live in their true skin and be honest with who they are.

Brandon Marshall and her longtime friend Ron Artest are a few people she looks up to- people who admit to their struggle with mental illness and who are honest with who they are. “It’s not only people with mental illness, it’s the people that stand up to a challenge that won’t just roll over and die, the people that are like, ‘Hey, I’m going to fight to the end,’” Holdsclaw said.

Seven years out of retirement, Chamique explained the thing she misses most about basketball is the commodity.

“There’s nothing like that environment, the locker room, the traveling, the other members of your team of coming together as one to meet your goals. That’s just like a pure art,” she said. Holdsclaw shared an encouraging message from Pat Summitt that stuck with her throughout her career: “Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.”

Alexandra Enayat can be contacted at aenayat@kscequinox.com

SHELBY IAVA/ SPORTS EDITOR

While visiting Keene State for the weekend, Chamique Holdsclaw attended the women’s basketball game Saturday, Feb. 11, where she was presented with a Keene State sweatshirt. Holdsclaw was also able to talk with senior Mike Miezejeski during the half time report.

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