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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF MANHATTAN COLLEGE | SINCE 1924
Volume XCVIX, Issue 1
FREE
NEW YORK, JANUARY 22, 2019
Intersectional Feminism: Focal Point for Women’s Wave 2019 Shannon Gleba & Alexa Schmidt Staff Writer & Features Editor
Welcome Back, Jaspers! Students are welcomed back to campus with a dusting of snow. Spring semester is underway with the first week of classes. BRIAN ASARE / THE QUADRANGLE
Crime Up in Manhattan’s Precinct Joe Liggio
Asst. News Editor
While New York City officials have touted record low crimes within the five boroughs for 2018, the numbers aren’t as cut and dry as they seem. Mayor Bill de Blasio and other high-ranking city officials have taken the past few weeks to laud the fact that end of year New York City Police Department crime stats suggest a safer, improving city. They have drawn special attention to the fact that the total number of murders stayed under 300 for the second year in a row, and that the number of shootings had declined by four percent, from 789 in 2017 to 754 in 2018. “I want to put this in perspective,” said de Blasio in a Jan. 3 press conference. “We had, in 2017, a record-setting year. We had crime down in ways that no one believed possible previously. And in 2018, the NYPD beat the record again.”
While these numbers suggest a positive direction for the city, a deeper look at the recent CompStat statistics, published by the NYPD, reveals that numerous violent crimes have actually increased in some areas of the city, including the Northwest region of the Bronx which Manhattan College calls home. While other boroughs saw a decline in homicides, the Bronx exhibited a noticeable increase, up from 72 in 2017 to 91 in 2018. This included several within the confines of the NYPD’s 50th Precinct, which covers Riverdale, Fieldston, Kingsbridge, Marble Hill and Spuyten Duyvil. The number of homicides in the 50th Precinct more than doubled between 2017 and 2018, from three to seven respectively. Rape rose from eight to 15 in the same period while robbery, felony assault and vehicle theft also saw small increases since 2017. The majority of these incidents have occured to the south of MC’s campus but have occasionally hit close to home. A shooting near the intersec-
IN FEATURES: L.O.V.E. Winter Letter from our Trips Emphasize New Editor-inChief, Megan Dre- Solidarity on p. 7 her on p. 2
IN OP-ED:
tion of West 232nd Street and Broadway last August resulted in a death and a crime scene established further up the road at West 237th Street, near the college’s South Campus. Some at Manhattan were unfamiliar with the crime trends in the nearby neighborhoods. “I didn’t know that seven people were murdered in our precinct last year,” said Caitlin Hartnett, a junior and mechanical engineering major at Manhattan. The 50th Precinct has been under new management as of late November, when Captain Emilio Melendez replaced Deputy Inspector Terence O’Toole as the commanding officer of the group. Melendez had previously served in the U.S. Air Force and as an officer at three other higher-crime precincts in the Bronx. In spite of the stats, some don’t feel that the increases are much to worry over. __________________________ CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
In preparation for the 2019 Women’s March, Manhattan College’s Campus Ministry and Social Action, Multicultural Center, and Lasallian Women and Gender Resource Center (LWGRC) collaborated to host an Intersectional Feminism workshop on Jan. 18. Held in the Social Action suite, Kathleen Von Euw, Jacqueline Martin and students August Kissel ‘20 and Samantha Monfils ‘19 led the workshop. Initially, Von Euw came up with the idea to organize something that would provide more context to the marches. “We all wanted to organize something so we could go to the march together. We didn’t want to just meet somewhere and go, we wanted to incorporate an educational and interactive kind of aspect so that people are going with a good state of mind, and with information so they can make their own kind of choices. So we’re just here to provide resources to have you guys make your own decisions,” Monfils said. The workshop was attended by approximately 20 students who participated in large and small group conversations about the importance of participating in inclusive feminism in light of recent disputes within the women’s movement. This year, disagreements between the organizers of the Women’s March NYC about inclusivity of all races and religions led to an additional march being planned by Women’s March Alliance on the upper west side of Manhattan to bring attention to the exclusivity felt by many women, with fierce opposition to anti-semitism. In addition, a non-march event was held at Grand Central Station by Rise and Resist with support from Women’s March NYC to raise support for disabled women. Associate Professor of phi-
IN A&E:
Tara Ann Connor Talks Love of Music and her Upcoming EP on p. 5
losophy and co-director of the LWGRC Jordan Pascoe, Ph.D, said, “One of the other things I think is sort of fascinating about this is that there is this split and there has clearly been between the organizers of the two marches a lot of distrust and conflict. But, they seem to be doing really well as using it as a teaching moment to think about what the internal struggles are within feminism and within political movements more broadly.” She continued. “We are trying to learn from that and build on that with some of the work we are doing by giving students some spaces to talk about where they feel included and excluded from feminism and what it means to be part of an inclusive feminist project, since obviously inclusivity is a central Lasallian value.” Pascoe noted that the women’s march has drawn in women that may not have normally thought of themselves as feminists, or even as people who march and protest. “The Women’s March in 2017 was the single largest worldwide day of protest in human history and that means a lot of women showed up to it who normally wouldn’t have, and men too. So, we think that the women’s march, despite the disputes this year about inclusivity is one of the ways that we can bring people into this conversation,” Pascoe said. Lasallian values and intersectional feminism go hand-inhand, and both are centered on inclusivity, solidarity and building community.. But Pascoe also points out that the Lasallian values include solidarity with the most vulnerable and most marginalized groups. “An ongoing critical problem for Lasallians is the question of ‘who is most vulnerable and most marginalized, where should we be aligning ourselves?’ I think that is interestingly the dispute at the heart of __________________________ CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
IN SPORTS:
Women’s Rowing Reflects on Their Fall Season on p. 11