November 18, 2016 | The Miami Student

ESTABLISHED 1826 — OLDEST COLLEGE NEWSPAPER WEST OF THE ALLEGHENIES

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016

Volume 145 №22

Miami University — Oxford, Ohio

RHA sends wake-up call to ASG

SMIERCIAK PLEADS GUILTY TO ASSAULT

Letter criticizes dinners, gifts

REDUCED CHARGES COULD MEAN 180 DAYS JAIL TIME

FINANCE

CRIME

CÉILÍ DOYLE

JACK EVANS BEN BLANCHARD

$2000 for cabinet

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

One student representative body attempts to hold another accountable

by Céilí Doyle The members of Miami University’s Residence Hall Association assembled around a collection of tables in the cordoned-off section of a packed Pavilion A in Armstrong Student Center for their weekly meeting on Monday, Nov. 14.

This meeting was to be slightly more impactful than previous sessions. Enthusiastic chatter came to an abrupt halt when sophomore Bradley Davis, vice president of RHA, quieted the representatives while passing out a letter he had written to the Associated Student Government.

RHA voted 28-1-0 to send the letter to ASG outlining their concerns regarding ASG’s internal operating budget and how it represents their core values as a student government.

Dozens of students have complained to their RHA representatives throughout the past month about the lack of transparency ASG has demonstrated in how their budget is allocated.

ASG »PAGE 2

THE MIAMI STUDENT

HEARING »PAGE 2

MU department chairs on teaching after Trump POLITICS

MEGAN ZAHNEIS NEWS EDITOR

Many Miami faculty and staff members have struggled to address last week’s presidential election in the classroom, citing shock, fear and uncertainty. In fact, several instructors, mostly graduate students, opted to cancel classes meeting on Wednesday rather than address political stress, finding it difficult to follow university policy that dictates they’re not to discuss their political beliefs in the classroom.

Provost Phyllis Callahan and graduate school dean Jim Oris held a meeting with graduate students Wednes-

Some graduate students cancel class in wake of election day night “regarding the expectation that individuals with teaching assignments follow university policy regarding class absences and cancellations,” Oris wrote in an email to all graduate students.

Oris’ email cited Section 5.9 of the Miami University Policy and Information Manual, which states that any instructor expected to miss a scheduled class should seek permission to do so from their department chair.

Several Miami department chairs, including Wietse de Boer of the history depart-

ment, said they felt canceling classes was an inappropriate response to such an important political event.

“Certainly I don’t think cancelling classes is a good solution for addressing the impact of an event like this.

I don’t think there’s a good academic reason for doing that,” de Boer said.

Sociology department chair Stephen Lippmann echoed de Boer’s sentiment.

“I think the classroom in a liberal arts university is one of the few places anymore, given the state of media and social media and everything

Best-selling memoirist J.D. Vance visits Miami

ASG

LECTURE

JAKE GOLD

DEVON SHUMAN

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

REDHAWK »PAGE 2

TRUMP »PAGE 2

RYAN TERHUNE PHOTO EDITOR

Miami junior Zach Smierciak, a redshirt starting defensive lineman, leaves the Butler County Area I court house Thursday.

Bird bill soars through ASG

Attendance at Miami University football is generally abysmal, and ASG came together with Hueston Woods with the solution— a bird. More specifically, a real, live red-tailed hawk.

Or, colloquially: a redhawk.

At the ASG session on November 11, the student senate voted to approve resolution 021572, “A Resolution in Support of a Live Mascot Partnership Between Hueston Woods State Park and Miami University.”

The legislation—co-authored by Gaby Meissner and Cole Hankins—states that Hueston Woods will bring a red-tailed hawk to select varsity sporting events, including football and hockey games. The park’s naturalist, Shawn Conner, has agreed to tend to the hawk during the

else, where you can have open and hopefully constructive conversations about this,” Lippmann said. “That’s exactly what it’s for.

“I think [the classroom] is one of the few places that we have to really come together and deliberate and have a meaningful conversation about these kinds of public issues, because on TV they devolve so quickly into shouting matches or namecalling, and that’s not going to work for anybody.”

Lippmann and de Boer both integrated the election into class discussions, despite struggling to conceal their own politics.

“Faculty members are citi-

Robert Null sat under the yellow fluorescent lights of the Butler County Area One courtroom with his parents on either side. An endless stream of defendants cycled up to the podium, spoke to the judge and their attorney, and sat back down.

He shifted in his red and grey pullover and then raised a cupped hand to his mouth, swallowing medication.

“This is the most I’ve actually moved in long time,” said Null.

A senior economics major and employee at Brick Street Bar, Null was waiting for Zach Smierciak to take the stand.

Smierciak, a redshirt junior starting defensive lineman on Miami’s football team, was arrested Saturday, Nov. 5 after he stormed out of Brick Street Bar, pushed over a ladder supporting Null and took off running down the block.

Null landed headfirst on the pavement, began seizing with blood running out of his eye and was unresponsive, according to multiple witness statements in the

CULTURE EDITOR

RENEE FARRELL THE MIAMI STUDENT

Bill Nye “the science guy” talked to an overflowing Hall Auditorium Wednesday night about the election, climate change, technological innovation and why science rules.

CULTURE p. 3

EDITORIAL p. 6

OP-ED p. 7

SPORTS p. 8

HUMANS OF OXFORD: MEGAN MOONEY

MAKE MIAMI’S CAMPUS A SANCTUARY

‘HILLBILLY ELEGY,’ A RETREAT INTO THE INDIVIDUAL

FOOTBALL ON VERGE OF HISTORY

She never wanted to be a Disney character, she wanted to create them.

With this election, the Oxford bubble has officially popped.

Vance’s heart is in the right place, but his politics are off the mark.

The ‘Hawks have shots at a bowl and MAC Championship berth.

Since the release of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” on June 28 of this year, Middletown native, J.D. Vance, has often been referred to as the “Trump whisperer.”

His book, which paints a hauntingly honest and personal portrait of the white, working class, has been looked to as an explanation of the widespread appeal of presidential candidate, and now president-elect, Donald Trump.

But, as Vance explained to a crowd of hundreds gathered in Armstrong on Wednesday, that wasn’t his original intention with the book.

Having come from a culture in which upward mobility is close to impossible, Vance takes issue with the data-driven, ideological arguments coming from both political sides when discussing poverty. While the right

often blames the poor for not working hard enough, the left sees a lack of available jobs as the main issue.

Vance considers both narratives incomplete.

“I wanted to answer, or explain, this lack of upward mobility,” he said. “If I put personal faces on these ideas, they might be easier to digest, to understand.”

Dr. Richard Campbell, Chair of the Department of Media, Journalism and Film, said that he received “Hillbilly Elegy” as a gift from his wife and was very impressed with it.

“I thought, ‘here’s a sensible conservative,’” he said.

“And I don’t often use those two words together.”

When he looked in the acknowledgments, he recognized the name of one of his students, Bonnie Rose Meibers. When he had an advising meeting with Meibers the following day, he discovered that she is Vance’s cousin, and he disHILLBILLY »PAGE 2

visit us online miamistudent.net

2 NEWS from red hawk »PAGE 1

events. There will be no extra cost to the university for this service. In exchange, ASG will sponsor fundraising and awareness events for Hueston Woods.

The hawk, named Colonel, has been at the rehabilitation center at Hueston Woods for nine years. The goal of the rehabilitation center is to return injured animals to wild, but that’s not always possible. In those cases, the animal may stay permanently, as is the case with this hawk.

“I understand that some people don’t like seeing animals in cages, but all of our animals are here because they are unable to survive on their own in the wild,” Conner said. “Our goal is to return injured wildlife to the wild. Unfortunately, we are not always able to do that.”

Nested in the bill, the authors mention several notable schools that have used live mascots at sporting events. The U.S. Naval Academy, Temple University, the University of North Carolina and Yale University topped the list, but the full list is much longer.

In response to the prevalence of non-human mascots, PETA has condemned this activity as a foul from hearing »PAGE 1

Oxford Police Department’s incident report. Null was transported to McCullough-Hyde Hospital before being taken to the University of Cincinnati hospital.

He has been homebound and unable to function normally since the incident.

“Not great,” Null said of his current condition. “I haven’t felt great in a long time. My head has been killing me. I can’t do school anymore. I can’t do anything, actually.

I just lay in bed all day.”

When Smierciak did approach the podium yesterday, Nov. 17, he plead guilty to an amended charge of reckless assault, a first degree misdemeanor. This charge carries a maximum sentence of 180 days in prison and a $5,000 fine, according to the Ohio Revised Code.

After the plea was entered, Judge Robert H. Lyons invited Null and two of the responding OPD officers to make a statement to the court.

Null rose and stood to the side of the room along with his parents and the officers. All declined to speak to the court.

Smierciak was initially charged with second degree felonious as-

from asg »PAGE 1

“The inspiration behind this letter was all of the concern from students who were either involved in ASG or knew people in ASG,” Davis said. “It also stemmed from the lack of public understanding of their budget and the personal incentives behind it.

“Our letter was trying to address the idea that we think an organization’s values lie in its budget.”

One line item that struck a chord with many students was the amount of money ASG’s executive cabinet initially set aside for personal perks during the 2016-2017 school year. Within their budget, $980 is built into “Cabinet Gifts” while $1,100 is budgeted for “Cabinet Dinners,” The Miami Student reported in late October.

This particular agenda raised eyebrows throughout campus and was mentioned specifically within RHA’s letter.

The letter highlighted the comparison ASG made between its Cabinet Dinners and pizza parties that other student organizations might hold. They noted that the comparison was out of hand because the dinners were being extended to all 64 members of ASG and broke down to $17 per person — equating to two medium pizzas each.

ASG has responded to the criticism by distributing the money that was originally assigned to Cabinet Gifts and Dinners to donating benches across campus at the request of disabled students.

“The point of the budget was an effort for ASG to be transparent.

This was again, a budget, not a balance sheet,” said senior Amy Berg, secretary for communications for ASG. “What was presented to Sen-

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016 violation of animal rights. Two senators—Max Leveridge and Max Mullett—both raised similar concerns, especially about the stress on a wild animal in a crowded venue.

“Even though this is a great idea in theory, I wonder about all the things that aren’t so great about it,” Mullett said. “The things that could go wrong.”

Conner was certain that Colonel will be unruffled by the crowds.

“Most of my birds, I would not bring to a sporting event like this because they don’t have the temperament to handle it,” Conner said. “She has been to thousands of school programs, community events, state fairs, county fairs and park programs. She does very well in large crowds.”

Despite the arguments against, the majority of ASG flocked to the legislation. The bill passed with only three senators in opposition.

You can expect to see Colonel at the remaining football and hockey games. Conner has one request about Colonel, though: give her some space.

“We can’t pet her because that is very stressful for her,” Conner said, “but people can take pictures with her so long as they don’t get too close.”

sault, a crime that carries a penalty of two to eight years in prison, according to Ohio Revised Code section 2929.14.

Neal Schuett, Smierciak’s attorney, felt the amended charge better fit the incident.

“What he plead to better fits what happened, which was that [Smierciak] didn’t know [Null] was on the ladder, but there is no doubt that physical harm happened, that it was serious, we are not contesting that,” said Schuett. “...Mr. Smierciak feels very bad about what happened. It wasn’t ever intentional and that’s why we went with what we did.”

The sentencing hearing for the new charge is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Jan. 5, allowing time for Judge Lyons to conduct a pre-sentencing investigation.

Null left the courtroom with an even expression on his face and climbed into a sedan with his mother and father.

“I’m not excited about it, that’s for sure. I don’t really have anything else to say,” said Null. “I mean, trust me, I feel really bad for the kid. I just hope he learns some sort of lesson from it all.”

ate months ago was a projection of spending based on what the position had spent as well as per request by each cabinet member. Each cabinet member had the equal opportunity to request funding based on their own goals and initiatives.”

Throughout this past semester ASG and RHA have been collaborating with one another to push the student body’s interests, which was showcased in their combined efforts (via an RHA survey and ASG petition) to give students an al la carte option back in Bell Tower.

“It has always been an effort for ASG and RHA to work together,” Berg said. “We welcome feedback and for students to express their concerns. ASG and RHA have the same goal: to serve the students.

That is a goal we will continue to work towards every day.”

Davis had no ulterior motive to deface or degrade ASG; his driving force in writing this letter was to express his and his constituents’ unease regarding the various line items within ASG’s budget.

“We are coming from a position of guidance and recommendations, it’s not meant to criticize or call them out or anything,” Davis said.

“As another legislative, student organization we wanted to give our input and our thoughts based off of the opinions we were hearing.”

RHA President Zach Roebel believes that the letter will help offer advice and make Miami a more transparent institution.

“In the end we all came to the general consensus that we’re just trying to make the university the best place we possibly can,” Roebel said. “It’s better to work together and help each other out than trying to put another organization down.”

NEWS@MIAMISTUDENT.NET

RYAN TERHUNE PHOTO EDITOR

Bill Nye takes a photo of the packed crowd at Hall Auditorium Wednesday night.Tickets for the lecture were in short supply. from hillbilly »PAGE 1

from trump »PAGE 1

cussed with her the possibility of bringing him to Miami.

On Wednesday, Meibers had the honor of introducing Vance to the crowd.

“He’s always gonna be my dorky cousin,” she said. “But you all know him as a brilliant author and hillbilly scholar.”

In his book, and in his speech on Wednesday, Vance stressed that there is a distinct divide between the poor, who struggle to move up in life, and the educated elite, who often tend to cloister themselves off from the rest of the country.

“Kids who grew up on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks feel like they can’t get ahead,” he said.

Vance believes we need to stop viewing this as a conservative or a liberal issue. While there are certainly some white, working-class citizens who are too cynical to even try to move ahead, there are others who truly try and struggle to find better jobs.

“We have to be better in this country at striking a balance between these two forces,” he said.

A common theme throughout “Hillbilly Elegy” is the significant cultural divide between classes. While Vance’s family was able to find work and improve their lives financially, they were never able to fully feel comfortable in their new environment.

In one instance, his grandparents trashed a pharmacy after the clerk kicked out their son (Vance’s uncle) for playing with an expensive toy.

In his speech, Vance paralleled that moment with a fancy dinner he attended while at Yale Law, trying to impress a potential employer.

Despite being at a prestigious Ivy League school, Vance was still completely unfamiliar with high-class social norms. He had to call his girlfriend to figure out what all the different utensils were for, he spit out the sparkling water because he didn’t realize it would be carbonated and when asked what type of wine he would like, he responded, “I’ll take the white.”

His point with both of these anecdotes is that the cultural divide between classes has become so gaping that even when upward mobility is possible, it rarely makes for a smooth transition.

“Just because you go from poor to middle class doesn’t mean you can just flip a switch,” he said.

When asked about what gave him the resilience to successfully cross that class divide, Vance credited the people who helped to raise him.

“I didn’t pull myself up by my bootstraps,” he said. “A lot of people in my extended family pulled on my bootstraps as well.”

This is a message that resonated with Amy Bartel, an Oxford resident who attended the event with her husband, Lawrence.

“I found that I wondered the same thing about myself,” she said. “I recognized elements of my upbringing in his… It made me want to ponder the sources of resilience in my own life.”

Moving forward, Vance believes that we must do more to begin understanding those on the other side of the “proverbial tracks.” He encourages college graduates to resist the allure of the big cities and consider moving back to their rural or suburban hometowns, and he urges traditional media to stop relying solely on quantitative data to tell stories about the rest of the country.

“In order to understand others,” he said, “you need to go out and talk to people.

zens, right? [They] have freedom of speech just as everybody else,” de Boer said. ”But, at the same time, they also have a responsibility for fostering a certain climate of openness and fairness for the students that they serve and for the university community as a whole.”

Lippmann felt obligated to open a dialogue about the election in his classroom Wednesday.

“It’s not something you can ignore in a sociology class. You can’t ignore it because then you’d just look like — you wouldn’t be doing your job,” Lippmann said.

“So a lot of people were struggling with, ‘How do I address it, but not violate the policy?’ and not violate the spirit of the policy, which, I think, is to make sure everybody feels comfortable in a classroom if they’re in a political minority they still have a right to be comfortable.

“I had a lot of discussions with people about how they were doing it. And nobody had a great answer.”

For political science chair Patrick Haney’s subject matter, avoiding mention of the election was near impossible.

“I think the election’s given just about every [political science] class a current, real-life example of some concept or theory that’s talked about in that class, whether it’s the electoral college or the importance of presidential power or the relevance of congressional power or the future of NATO or the future of our relations with Asia or weapons proliferation,” Haney said.

American Studies chair Kimberly Hamlin said discussing course-relevant current events is a responsibility for instructors.

“We are here to teach students and to have open discussions,” Hamlin said. “Especially [during] election seasons, as state employees, there are limits to how we can discuss politics. We’re not political advocates, but we would be remiss if we were not to discuss the context and framing and history of elections in our classes. I think it’s our job to create an open environment for discussing rather than advocating your personal points of view.”

Hamlin taught an upper-level elective class the morning after the election, and her students expressed a desire to discuss their reactions to the results. What followed, she said, was a productive pedagogical conversation.

“I felt that it was really kind of inspiring and heartening. Students were really thoughtful. They took their new duty as citizens and voters really seriously,” Hamlin said. “I was inspired to see how much people wanted to be informed and how much thought they had put into their electoral choices beforehand and how carefully they were considering their responses and how much they wanted to engage with not just the people in our class but also with other students, their housemates and students around Miami.

“I thought they were really providing a model for citizenship in that we all don’t have to agree but it would be nice if we all could at least establish the parameters for civil discourse of ideas.

And I think that’s really the goal.

So, I was really glad to teach on Wednesday in particular.”

Lippmann teaches a 10 a.m.

Wednesday class, and was struck

by the dynamic in his classroom the day after the election.

“There was just sort of a general sense of bewilderment and people seemed stunned. It was really quiet. I felt the same way. It was, I think for everybody, pretty stunning, pretty draining,” Lippmann said.

It was an atmosphere he wasn’t accustomed to.

“That’s what’s weird about it.

Usually there’s a lot more passion and a lot more sort of willingness to engage and to discuss, and maybe to argue,” Lippmann said.

“On social media, people are still arguing a lot, but in the classroom, it was so much more subdued. I think probably on both sides everybody was just like ‘deer-in-theheadlights.’ The willingness or the eagerness to really sort of jump in and dissect it and say, ‘Oh, people are doing the wrong thing,’ or ‘People did the right thing’ was just not there, at least in my classes.”

Haney suspects that reaction is due to the months-long divisive political campaigning by both parties.

“I think people’s nerves were a little more raw in this campaign than in others,” Haney said. “I’ve been here [at Miami] since the fall of 1992, so I’ve seen a lot of presidential election seasons on campus. And I think the kind of language that was used in this campaign and the way that people talked about each other was a fair amount more coarse than was often the case.”

All four department chairs said they’ve seen classroom discussions about the election to be mostly constructive.

“I heard of one instance where the instructor decided to shut down the discussion because it got very emotional and was not very productive in the end, with some name-calling and things like that,” de Boer said. “But that is really the exception that proves the rule, so to speak. I think, in general, students have been very respectful of the different views that others may have had, however passionately they may have felt about their position.”

Lippmann, of the sociology department, said his job in the classroom is to challenge students.

“Oftentimes these classrooms can turn into echo chambers if they’re really politically homogeneous where people say stuff, and everybody agrees, and no new information can get into it,” Lippmann said. “I find myself occasionally playing a devil’s advocate, saying, ‘If we can strip aside all of the personal insults and sort of comments that most people agree are not appropriate, does this policy have any legitimacy?’”

Hamlin stressed the importance of that dialogue.

“It’s important for us, not just at Miami but as Americans, to have the skills and the ability to talk civilly about issues even when we disagree, and I think that that’s something that we’re not that great at doing right now as a culture,” Hamlin said. “We tend to mostly talk with people that we already know share our views, and I think that that practice promotes extremism. Universities play a role in giving us the tools and the mindset to be able to engage in discussions with people who may have different ideas from us.

“I think that’s a good thing, and I think that’s one of the reasons that we are here.”

SHUMANDB@MIAMIOH.EDU

3 CULTURE

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016

Humans oƒ Oxford Megan Mooney: A Writer’s Life for Me

Symphony to feature American premiere of ‘Chimera’ MUSIC

ALISON PERELMAN

ASSISTANT CULTURE EDITOR

ANGELO GELFUSO THE MIAMI STUDENT

PEOPLE

KELLY BURNS

THE MIAMI STUDENT

Growing up, many girls dream of being a Disney princess.

But Megan Mooney doesn’t want to be a Disney character. She wants to create them.

“The dream is to be a screenwriter for Disney or Pixar,” Megan said.

“That is the dream, if everything would fall into place.”

The junior English major has written tons of short stories. When

she’s bored in class, she’ll often just start writing in her notebooks.

They’re random — she might write a kids’ story or something more along the lines of Young Adult fiction.

Megan has had ideas for fulllength novels, too, but like most college students, she has little free time.

“Novels are hard because you have to keep writing, and I’m not good at that,” she said with a laugh.

It’s not about what form her writing takes. It’s about the stories and

how they will affect the people who experience them.

“I’ve always liked stories growing up,” Megan said. “I think everyone can connect to them in one way or another, and I’d like to do that for kids one day.”

Megan found her connection to stories early in her life. Whenever her life was tough, she would escape into books, television, any story that she could find. It was her coping mechanism.

Her childhood played a large role in her wanting to write for Pixar.

“Pixar is wonderful and makes dreams come true,” she said with a huge smile on her face. “Kids watch them and are like ‘Oh my gosh, it’s great.’”

That happiness and escape from reality, which Megan found in stories, is what she wants to pass on.

Her stories could give people the opportunity to cope with whatever life deals them.

“I want to write something that would give kids, or minorities, or anyone who wants to be anything, hope,” Megan said.

The hallways in the basement of Presser Hall start to buzz with activity — students in conversation, weaving in between the growing crowd and getting instruments out of the lockers.

A few are already inside room seven. The percussion players set up their drums and cymbals. The harpist plucks at the strings, adjusting the knobs for tuning. Others blow notes to tune or play up and down a scale.

In the middle of this slight chaos, Ricardo Palmezano practices a section of his piece, his violin’s slow, melodic tune rising above the random notes.

Palmezano is a graduate student, returning after six years of playing in professional orchestras in Brazil.

“Here we are like a big family, a symphony orchestra where you need to talk with the strings, but you also need to talk with the woodwinds, so the various families that are in the orchestra,” Palmezano said. “And it has been a privilege to be here and play with them.”

The room is almost full now with strings in front, then the woodwinds, then brass and percussion in the back. Sound, but not yet music, is everywhere.

A minute before class is to start, Ricardo Averbach stands on his conductor’s podium, and the room grows silent.

This was the symphony orchestra’s last rehearsal, with only the dress rehearsal left before their concert.

While the symphony orchestra is SYMPHONY »PAGE 5

Stage Left adapts high school satire, ‘Heathers,’ for fall musical THEATRE

MEGAN BOWERS

THE MIAMI STUDENT

Holy shit.

These words are actual lyrics in the song “Fight for Me,” but they also convey the genuine reaction to sophomore Rylan Hixson accidently being punched in the face during a choreographed stage fight.

Expressions of shock and surprise appear on the faces of everyone present as the smack sound echoes throughout the small classroom in the Center for Performing Arts building.

The most appalled look comes from the person on the other end of the punch, sophomore Marco Colant, who immediately begins apologizing profusely.

This incident took place during the first practice runthrough of Stage Left’s fall musical, “Heathers.”

The satire, based off the 1980s movie of the same name, discusses what it’s like to be in high school and attempts to bring every stereotypical clique to life by over-dramatizing them.

“I always describe it as ‘Mean Girls’ with death,” director Brandon Fogel said.

The show tackles several challenging topics including mental illness, gun violence, suicide, homophobia and sexual assault.

Fogel, a junior, talked through each of the issues with the cast at the start of the process to ensure the ideas were still presented with seriousness, despite the comedic nature of the show, and to make sure they were comfortable with everything.

“We didn’t want them to be put off, or uncomfortable, or go back into that dark place through this material,” Fogel said. “We wanted to very much establish if you need a break for a second or if you need to walk away, that’s fine.”

“Heathers” was first performed off-Broadway in 2014 and has been captivating the attention of teenagers in the the-

CONTRIBUTED BY OLIVIA SEMSEL

Junior Jamie Ross performs “Dead Girl Walking (Reprise)” as the lead, Veronica Sawyer, in Stage Left’s fall musical, “Heathers.” atre world ever since, making the massive turnout for auditions unsurprising.

Assistant director Sarah Emery said the last Stage Left show had around 25 people audition for it.

This one had 85.

Callbacks took place after three days of auditions and lasted from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m.

Per Stage Left tradition, the crew called everyone who was cast that night, at 1:30 in the morning.

Because callbacks were long and vocally straining, they were a good chance for each of the directors to get their first chance to shine.

According to Emery, vocal music director Emma Shibley made everyone feel comfortable and safe in the tiring environment.

“Even at callbacks she was so worried about the safety of ev-

erybody’s voices,” said Emery, a junior.

This level of comfort was continuously displayed as Shibley worked with the cast individually outside of rehearsal to ensure they had their part where they wanted it to be.

“That was when I really got into how can your voice highlight what the words are saying and how can your voice make the music make sense,” said Shibley, a music composition major.

Choreographer Emily Kapnick worked with the cast at callbacks and all throughout rehearsals.

She taught them at an incredibly fast pace, but worked to maintain a positive environment.

“I can dance, but I can’t learn it quick,” said Hixson, who plays Ram Sweeney, the stereotypical jock. “She was always willing to work before rehearsals.”

Costumes and props started accumulating at the time of the

first run-through. This included the iconic blazers of the Heathers and two real guns.

“Sarah [Emery] has done so much research to look into all those issues to see what it was like then and how we can portray that in an honest authentic way,” Fogel said.

Two weeks later, they finally were able to move to Wilks Theater for tech week. Set, sound, lights and the instrumental pit had to come together quickly at this point.

Music Director Kevin Kraus already had everyone in the pit together by the end of September. This helped make the transition from singing along to recordings to being accompanied by live instruments smoother.

The last-minute transition onto the stage is one of many differences between Stage Left shows and Theatre Department shows. The student-run perfor-

mances also rehearse less frequently throughout the week and have a different air of community about them.

“We’re not lackadaisical, but we’re not so serious about ourselves,” said junior Jamie Ross, who plays Veronica Sawyer, the female lead. “I think it’s a warmer community, and we all love each other a lot.”

The show is modern and relevant to a wider audience at Miami than many shows that have been done before.

“I find too often at Miami there are just these groups of people excluding others,” Hixson said. “At the end of the day there is always something beautiful in everyone, and you just have to search for that and find it in each other and in yourself.”

Stage Left will be performing “Heathers” at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 17, 18 and 19 in Wilks Theater.

Admission is free.

4 FYI

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016

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rain being too difficult and the land privately owned. I personally don’t have a strong opinion of him reinforcing the high activity areas which is likely what will happen. I am fairly torn on immigration in general. There seems to be a loose correlation with increased immigration and a stronger economy (http://www.bloomberg.com/ news/articles/2016-08-18/u-simmigration-now-means-big-economic-payoff-later); however that may come at the expense of low income workers. Regardless, the rate of immigration has steadied.

Millions are not pouring over the borders, and a large percentage of illegal immigrants simply outstay their visa, which a wall will not prevent. Furthermore, Trump has slowly moderated his stance on immigration of Muslims into America, though I doubt we will see many more refugees.

As for the economy, his projected cabinet has experience in that area.

I do disagree with his tax cuts but the president has limited control

anyway and I am confident that Paul Ryan will not allow the deficit to substantially increase, which Trump is calling for. His trade war would be ludicrous, but again his voting bloc would be the most hurt by the rapidly increasing prices which would hopefully rein in his tariffs.

There are many more potential issues with a Trump presidency that, as a straight white male, I will not be hurt by as much as minorities in America. That being said, the calls to coalesce have never been more hollow or impossible.

At this point, one must try to understand. Growing up in New Jersey, as the son of an immigrant journalist, my perspective is wildly different from the “townies” just outside Miami pledging to “Make America Great Again.” It is this lack of understanding that shocked me so much when Trump won, and kept me tossing in bed in the following hours. Therefore, I, as I hope many of others will do as well, will try to understand and feel compassion for those unlike me.

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considered an organization, it is also a class that meets twice a week. This means limited rehearsal time, especially with students coming from other classes across campus.

And this isn’t the only obstacle.

About 40 percent of the 70 or so members of the orchestra are nonmajors. This means that Averbach must find a balance between students who are involved as a hobby and graduate students on the path to becoming professional musicians.

“So this is, I think to me, is the greatest challenge, to create an environment that is challenging for everybody and still possible,”

5

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016 Averbach said. “Because if it is too easy for the advanced students, they’ll be frustrated. If it is too difficult for the non-majors, they not only will be frustrated; they will quit.”

Unlike their first concert, which focused on traditional pieces like those composed by Beethoven, this concert includes more contemporary orchestral songs.

“What I try to do here with the students, something that is one of my priorities, is for them to get the maximum possible number of experiences,” Averbach said. “And by that I mean, play music from very different eras so that they learn the different styles.”

This concert is more romantic, with music that was made to be

related to a story, such as “Scheherazade,” which is based on “One Thousand and One Nights.”

Another piece being played is “Chimera,” which has never been performed in the U.S. before.

“It’s a really interesting piece,” senior Ashley Overby said. “Sometimes modern music is a little grating on the ears, I have to admit, but it’s actually kind of beautiful.

There are some really beautiful moments, and I think it tells a really great story.”

Even more, the piece’s composer, Anthony DiLorenzo, will be a guest at the concert, along with Samuel Adler — one of the most prominent living composers.

“It’s something very special when you have a famous composer

FROM FOOTBALL »PAGE 8

FROM VOLLEYBALL »PAGE 8

FROM CROSS-COUNTRY »PAGE 8

Last weekend against the University at Buffalo, the trio combined for 120 yards on 18 carries. This translates to a 6.66 yards-per-carry average from the three halfbacks. While it’s clear that Ragland and the running back committee are pulling their weight, the rest of the offense is doing its part as well.

“We’re getting contributions from all over the field,” Martin said.

Miami is on the cusp of postseason play due in large part to its MAC-best defense.

Fifth-year senior J.T Jones is fifth in the conference in sacks with 6.5. De’Andre Montgomery, who leads the MAC in interceptions with four, was the recipient of two awards for his performance against Buffalo. The sophomore defensive back was selected as the Mid-American Conference East Division Player of the Week and College Sports Madness MAC Defensive Player of the Week.

“Bowling Green, he [Montgomery] showed his versatility,” Martin said. “Harassing the quarterback, tackles for loss, blitzing off the edge, and then making interceptions 35 yards downfield.

De’Andre is kind of a good-playwaiting-to-happen.”

Running back James Gilbert has powered Ball State’s offense so far this season. The sophomore has scored 12 touchdowns on the ground, including an 80-yard score, accumulating 1196 yards on 222 carries.

“They have the leading tailback in the [James] Gilbert kid, his backup is a great player. Their offensive line is experienced, big and physical. The [KeVonn] Mabon kid is—has been one of the best receivers in our league for three years,” Martin said.

Senior Sean Wiggins has spearhead BSU head coach Mike Nue’s defensive efforts this season. The linebacker leads the team in tackles with 87, four of which came for a loss, as well as a forced fumble.

Cornerback Marc Walton also figures to play a role, as the sophomore leads his team in interceptions with three.

BSU holds a three-game win streak over the ‘Hawks, while the Red and White lead the all-time series 16-12-1.

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. Tuesday night and ESPN3 will livestream Miami’s regular season do-or-die finale.

helped the comeback, leading the RedHawks to take the lead with eight minutes left.

The two teams battled until the final buzzer, but a jumper and free throw by junior guard Mark Alstork put WSU up by two points and Miami couldn’t recover in the 10 seconds remaining.

“The second half, we come in and gave our best, we did what we were supposed to do and were right back in the game,” Harouna said. “We made a few mistakes, that’s why we lost by two points.”

The RedHawks who significantly contributed to the comeback saw many minutes and plenty of points, all while cutting down on turnovers and improving free throws—something head coach John Cooper stressed after Miami’s first game.

Wright played 36 minutes, tallied 17 points and was 5-for-8 on three point attempts. Mills also had 17 points but played 10 minutes less and was 4-for-6 from the free throw line. Weathers played for 22 minutes and had 14 points while only turning the ball over twice compared to his seven in the first game. McCormick had 12 points in 23 minutes.

Wright State’s Alstork scored 29 points and was 15-for-20 on free throw attempts. Senior forward Steven Davis chipped in 16 total points.

Miami looks to improve its record at home this weekend in the Tarkett Sports Classic. The ‘Hawks play Delaware (2-1) 7 p.m. Friday, Austin Peay (1-1) 3:30 p.m. Saturday and Northern Kentucky (1-1) 2 p.m. Sunday. When the visiting teams are not playing Miami, they will play each other in a neutral site game.

This weekend poses a special challenge for the team—this is the only time it will play in a tournament until potentially the MidAmerican Conference tournament in March.

“I think that’s something that’s important particularly for us, for playing in the MAC, you’ve got to be able to play the game, execute and yet still have some fatigue and somehow come back and do it all over again,” Cooper said. “So, I think this is a good test, it’s a good barometer for our team—our team is young—this will be good for them.”

Last year, Miami went 2-1 in the tournament—winning the first and last game but dropping the second.

“I think we want to just get those three wins,” Harouna said.

Charlotte Prouse from the University of Washington, and Charlotte Taylor from the University of San Francisco in the battle for the individual championship.

The University of Colorado comes in as the top-ranked team in the nation following a dominating victory in last week’s NCAA Division I Mountain Regional.

The Buffaloes had 360 points in this week’s USTFCCCA Women’s Cross Country Rankings, ahead of NC State with 343 points and Providence with 335 points.

Also representing the MidAmerican Conference will be the MAC champions Eastern Michigan Eagles, as they received an at-large bid for their fifth team place finish in the NCAA Division I Great Lakes Regional. This will be their first time competing in the national championships since 1996.

Scavuzzo says she owes her success to her “coaches, teammates, and family, mixed with hard work, dedication and the determination to never give up on what I set my goals on”.

Scavuzzo toes the line at 11 a.m. on Saturday, November 16, in box 25, next to the University of Mississippi and the University of Notre Dame.

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coming and you perform his music,” Averbach said. “Now even more is when you have two composers.”

Palmezano plays the violin solo of “Scheherazade” — a difficult task, especially with the composer present. But he also recognizes the privilege of having the composer there to give insight.

“Chimera” is a concerto with a brass quintet — an unusual composition. The quintet will be played by five members from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, three of whom are also Miami faculty.

Though they are professionals and play all the time, the faculty members are just as excited to perform the concert. Associate professor Jaime Morales-Matos enjoys

FROM HOCKEY »PAGE 8

MU’s losing streak comes on the heels of a five-game unbeaten run. The RedHawks, now 3-6-2 overall and 0-4 in the NCHC, look to shock the nation’s top-ranked team to earn their first conference victory of the season.

“Our confidence is high, and we’re really excited for the opportunity to go in and play the number one team,” Melnick said.

“There’s no better time for us to turn it around than now.”

The puck drops in the two-game series at Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado on Friday at 9:30 p.m. and Saturday at 9 p.m. Both times are in Eastern time and both will be streamed live at NCHC.tv.

getting to play along with the students.

“I love it because you can see the improvement — how they go from the first rehearsal to the concert, how they prepare, how they improve, how they grow — musically and technically,” Morales-Matos said.

The students enjoy it, too. They get the opportunity and experience of playing next to professionals.

“I’m pretty excited about it,” Overby said. “They’re great musicians, and it’s going to be a great opportunity to work with them.”

The symphony orchestra’s concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 21, in Hall Auditorium with Samuel Adler giving a pre-concert talk at 7 p.m.

FROM VOLLEYBALL»PAGE 8

Maeve McDonald has anchored the back row throughout the year, tallying 449 digs for an average of 4.73 per set.

“It’s going to take everything we have,” Below said. “We have to be confident in our abilities and know that we can win this tournament.

Teamwork and trust are going to be key.”

If Miami is able to continue to play the way it has all season long, the squad will walk away as MAC champions, clinching a berth in the NCAA tournament.

MU will play its first match 6 p.m. Saturday at Victor E. Court on the campus of Northern Illinois in DeKalb, Illinois.

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6 OPINION

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016

EDITORIAL@MIAMISTUDENT.NET

Effort to bring about ‘Miami Sanctuary’ needed The following piece, written by the editorial editors, reflects the majority opinion of the editorial board.

M

iami’s hometown of Oxford has seemingly always been named “The OxBox.” Faculty and students alike agree that when coming to Miami, students enter the Oxford bubble, a bubble through which news is filtered and in which change rarely happens. At any rate, many students here like to think of it as a safe place, or at least a place where they can come to share ideas, engage with other students and generally enjoy the sanctity of a place that celebrates or encourages their pursuit of knowledge.

Like we said, that’s for many students. Not all of them.

In today’s edition of the paper, you will see one student’s experience with post-election harassment. There’s no doubt about it — the Oxford bubble has officially popped with this election. And now, with the somewhat-disturbing transition that our White House is enduring, Oxford and Miami University will likely be affected in even bigger ways, especially in the context of students.

One of Trump’s more disturbing and surprising appointees in

There’s no doubt about it — the Oxford bubble has officially popped with this election.

his transition period got his job on Sunday. Steve Bannon is now his chief White House strategist.

If you don’t know Bannon, here’s a summary: he is an altright conservative whose appointment gained the approval of David Duke of the KKK and Rocky Suhayda, the chairman of the American Nazi Party. He is also the executive chairman of Breitbart News, an incendiary publication that touts headlines like: “President Trump is going to hit some very nasty Greenies where it really hurts” and “Arabic translator: Muslim migrants secretly hate Christians, seek to outbreed them.”

And that’s just within the last week.

With a guy who touts that type of language (and, frankly, lies), it’s easy to see why a multitude of Americans feel uneasy in this country, to say the least. Racism was around before the election, but after Trump was officially picked as the nation’s 45th president, cases of overt racism surged.

What was before latent has now surfaced. And after Sunday, the collective level of fear around the country exploded. And it reached Oxford.

In response to the fear and the xenophobia, certain students and faculty at Miami have responded

In ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ a weak retreat into the individual

with efforts to make Miami a safe space for students, and especially those who are immigrants, by virtue of writing a letter with as many signatures as they can accumulate.

The opening lines of their letter, addressed to Provost Phyllis Callahan, Dean of Students Mike Curme and Ron Scott, Associate Vice President of Institutional Diversity, read as follows: “In the wake of the recent presidential election, we - Miami University students, faculty, staff, and alumni, as well as Oxford community members and organizers - call for you to implement a plan to declare our campus a

sanctuary for undocumented and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students, staff, and their family members who face imminent deportation.”

The DACA policy, instituted by President Barack Obama, allows “undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children to come out of the shadows and pay a fee to receive a temporary work authorization and protection from deportation,” according to ABC News. The fear is that Trump will do away with immigrant-friendly policies such as this one, which is why the document insists upon immediate action, “this semester, before the President-elect is sworn into office.”

This move by the Miami community is commendable and shows signs of promise. Given that a third of Miami students voted for Trump, this document becomes all the more important. Many students are part of a vulnerable group right now — some have been harassed already — and the solidarity shown by nearly 300 faculty and staff is reassuring.

Americans need to deal with what the election gave them POLITICS

POLITICS

KYLE HAYDEN COLUMNIST

J.D. Vance, author of national bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy,” visited Miami University yesterday to give a talk about his book.

Vance’s heart is in the right place.

The book resonated with me thoroughly. However, I have some major and fundamental disagreements with its political premises.

Prior to his talk Wednesday, I was invited to a lunch with Vance by the department of media, journalism and film assumedly because I’m from this area — I’m from Sidney, Ohio.

Vance is also from this area and the bulk of the book concerns itself with Middletown, Ohio, where Vance was raised.

Vance’s family, however, is from Jackson, KY. Half of my family is Williamsburg, KY (also Appalachian Kentucky) and shares a remarkably similar history of migration with Vance’s — although my family moved from Appalachia to Over-The-Rhine, Cincinnati after World War II and then to Shelby County, Ohio in the 1960s.

But there exists a deeper position at issue in Vance’s book that I find eerily similar to a series of sociological gaffes I have been exposed to through my usual reading and thinking.

Vance’s book opens with an introduction that enforces a cultural trend I find particularly troubling that needs to be absolutely debated and established as a farce.

From Page 7: “…[T]his book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.”

That word, “culture” rang a bell in my head. In the 1960s, Columbia University anthropologist Oscar Lewis wrote a book titled “La Vida: A Puerto Rican family in the Culture of Poverty.”

In Vance’s book, admittedly not a work of anthropology (“just a memoir,” Vance said), I find starkly reflective of Lewis’ message: that there are certain traits of people in poverty that ensure they remain there. A sentiment resurrected quite plainly in Vance’s book.

Under Vance’s view, objectionable personal behaviors are the cause (not the result) of poverty that helps “encourage social decay.”

Individuals, like the co-worker readers meet in the introduction are stripped of their personhood. The co-worker in question would show

up to work chronically late and take long bathroom breaks. Could this person have had a sick mother at home he was attending to (we know he has a “baby on the way,” Vance writes), making him late? Or did he have Crohn’s disease that sends him to the toilet several times a day, being quite possibly unable to afford the proper medication and experiencing bad affects?

The reader will never know because Vance didn’t bother to ask.

So why choose to include this bit?

The reader is supposed to buy into the demonization of this half-floating stereotype of a patently irresponsible young man trying to survive in Middletown post-financial crisis (around 2010). To me, most of Vance’s cultural posturing in this regard felt like textbook victim blaming.

Lewis’ work also helped create

This orientation plays into the stereotypes and ways in which urban liberals want to see Appalachia and its problems. and enforce the idea of the “welfare queen”, a lazy, loud and entitled “bad mother.” Vance uses this term specifically on page 8.

This orientation plays into the stereotypes and ways in which urban liberals want to see Appalachia and its problems. In that, it does not surprise me that “Hillbilly Elegy” has become a bestseller. It positions easy solutions (“blame yourselves”) to complex problems.

Americans now live in a culture that continually fails to connect private troubles as larger public issues.

In Vance’s pages readers are told not to question elites and banks that caused the housing crisis, or question the economic liberalization brought by international trade policies that are responsible for the emptying out of Midwestern manufacturing cities like Middletown and Sidney. We are told not to question corporate personhood.

Further, don’t question the immiseration caused by a ruthless and cruel market society imposed by elites to which ordinary people (like the ones featured in Vance’s book) have little contact or influence over.

This is a society in which corporations, in order to remain profitable, put people out on the street without a second thought.

Though Americans have voted themselves out of labor protections, they are told not to blame anyone but

themselves for the grinding misery draped over them by the deepening miserly economic circumstances.

We need to realize politicians, mostly beholden to the whims and demands of corporations, wouldn’t be interested in meliorating a crisis created by the economic liberalization polices they have been sliding over the country in the last 40 years.

C. Wright Mills, more than 50 years ago, was writing about the increasing inability of the American public to translate private troubles into larger public issues. Of course we must realize that if we have an unstable, turbulent society and economy, we will have unstable families and unstable lives.

This sort of denial of a larger social reality — the idea that individuals are the only ones to blame for the state of affairs – has produced a society that is “civically illiterate” writes Henry Giroux: “Illiterate in this instance refers to the inability on the part of much of the American public to grasp private troubles and the meaning of the self in relation to larger public problems and social relations.”

It is this collapse into the personal, the disengagement with the larger social and political reality that troubles me. That so many people are evidently (literally) buying into this logic casually is more alarming.

In the end, I was sitting at the lunch table thinking how mad Wendell Berry would be at the hypocrisy displayed by Vance. I was at the table thinking on my dreams of commitment to place eschewed by the Silicon Valley careerists, including Vance.

Everyone wants to talk about community and having a commitment to their home region and rebuilding the community, but I have yet to see many people actually walk the walk, Vance included.

I was thinking of Sidney.

I was thinking of the family I’ve lost to heroin.

While most young college graduates continue to cram into the metropolitan regions on the coasts, I want to remain in my home region.

If we keep emptying out our small towns and small economies with this urban condescension: a fetish-preference for the megalopolis and its luring information jobs and tech careers lauded by authors like Richard Florida in his “Rise of the Creative Class.”

If we continue to ignore the middle of the country and its nuance, we will end up with a country full of places no one cares about and as James Kunstler writes, we may end up with a country not worth defending.

HAYDENKA@MIAMIOH.EDU

ALYSSA MELENDEZ THE MIAMI STUDENT

I typically avoid saying anything controversial about the election in public, but pictures like this one have really upset me. Is this what America has become? When things don’t go your way, you burn the symbol of freedom that our ancestors fought and gave their lives for?

I understand that a lot of people are upset over the results of this election and their feelings are completely justified, but this has just gone too far.

There’s no changing the fact that Trump will be our next president. So instead of reacting in anger, America needs to put on their big boy pants and be a part of the change that their children and grandchildren can be proud of.

Before we talk about how we can put those pants on, let’s figure out why we need them in the first place.

The majority of those protesting Trump are against him out of fear.

People are scared that a man who has dehumanized women and other minorities, a man who can’t seem to control his mouth, will be in such a high position of authority.

They’re scared because they’ve never had a mere citizen become their leader. It’s always been an experienced politician.

They’re scared because Trump has pledged to repeal every executive order Obama has made, including Obamacare.

But I’m here to tell those scared people something. Something that will either bring extreme relief or extreme distress.

Here it is.

You can’t do anything except put the pants on.

I understand that you may be frustrated, that you may want to take a one-way flight to Europe and never look back, but just hear me out.

Putting the pants on means uniting as a nation. It means setting a good example for the younger generations. You may not real-

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

ize it now, but our children will be reading about this presidential election in their history books.

So stop complaining. Stop the protests. Trust that we will make it through this uncertain time.

Now I know this all might not extinguish your anger and fear of Trump being in office, but I’m hoping it does extinguish the light of the torches burning our flag.

There’s a quote written in the style of C.S. Lewis’ book “Screwtape Letters” that I believe is extremely relevant to today.

“My Dear Wormwood, Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics. Arguments, political gossip and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met serves as an excellent distraction from advancing in personal virtue, character and the things the patient can control.

Make sure to keep the patient in a constant state of angst, frustration and general disdain towards the rest of the human race in order to avoid any kind of charity or inner peace from further developing.

Ensure that the patient continues to believe that the problem is “out there” in the “broken system” rather than recognizing there is a problem with himself.

Keep up the good work, Uncle Screwtape.”

Are you the patient? If you are, maybe you should start looking for a cure.

MELENDAK@MIAMIOH.EDU

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EDITORIAL@MIAMISTUDENT.NET

OPINION 7

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016

Muslim student’s harassment reveals election’s impact on campus RACE

TO THE EDITOR: I am a Muslim American woman and I am proud of my heritage. I am also proud to have supported Hillary Clinton in the recent presidential election. Islam is an inherently feminist ideology so naturally I stood by a strong, progressive leader like Secretary Clinton.

Imagine my shock last Tuesday as I watched states slowly get called in favor of a man who is openly racist, sexist and xenophobic. It was more than just

I don’t feel safe on this campus anymore.

shock—I felt terrified. Mr. Trump has repeatedly called for violence and intolerance against Muslims. I mean, it’s 2016. How can this have happened?

Trump’s victory has emboldened bigots to openly practice hatred against women and people of color [POC]. I don’t feel safe on campus anymore.

Saturdays are for the boys: An origin story LIFE

HALEY JENA GUEST COLUMNIST Instagram captions, Facebook comments, the mouths of frat stars and beyond — you’ve probably seen or heard this infamous mantra a couple (hundred) times.

Five words embellishing the battlecry of a college day-drinker: “Saturdays are for the boys.”

The phrase appeared and exploded almost overnight. But where did it come from?

The alleged origin is a Tweet posted by Twitter user @FeitsBarstool, also known as Barstool Sports blogger John Feitelberg.

Feitelberg tweeted on June 10, 2016: “‘FRIDAYS ARE FOR THE MEN, SATURDAYS ARE FOR THE BOYS’ — some old guy just yelled that, it makes no sense, but I love it.” The supposed older man probably had no idea the weight of his declaration at the time.

This summer, the slogan became more and more popular

come each warm and sunny Saturday. Upon moving back to campus in the fall, my Instagram timeline (and I’m guessing yours, too) has drowned in SAFTB captions.

Sophomore Chris Arihilam thinks the expression is all in good fun.

“I’ve never used the phrase before, but I think it links people together. It builds morale within friend dynamics,” Arihilam said.

“Honestly, if you take away the somewhat pretentious aura from the term, then it’s actually a great way to make friends and create connections with others from a social perspective. Or maybe it’s just a really good way for drunk people to make friends.”

But it’s not just your typical college student who’s boasting the motto. In August, New York Giants offensive guard Justin Pugh posted a video on Instagram of a video filled with disorder and craziness, featuring pool sticks snapping in half and a slow-mo shot of

a baseball cracking a TV screen.

Guess what the caption featured? “#SaturdaysAreForTheBoys.”

There’s even an entire account dedicated to the movement, @ saturdaysare4theboys, featuring videos of similar chaos, usually submitted by college-aged men.

The exact meaning of the expression is a tad blurry. Perhaps Saturdays are for the boys (and girls, too!) because we have nothing better to do on a lazy afternoon then drink with friends. Perhaps it suggests a younger age group simply doesn’t like Fridays as much as an older crowd. Or, perhaps it has no meaning at all and exists as popular, crowd-pleasing slang (remember “YOLO”?).

If you ever find yourself wracking your brain for a clever Instagram caption this Saturday, consider using a version of this popular phrase before it becomes — literally — so yesterday.

JENAHM@MIAMIOH.EDU

A.J. NEWBERRY NEWBERAJ@MIAMIOH.EDU

I am emotionally wrecked right now POLITICS

PAOLO FEDERICO-O’MURCHU THE MIAMI STUDENT Every day I pored over FiveThirtyEight, Politico and The New York Times, trying to discern the power of the “shy Trump voter.” But yet again, I underestimated Trump and his supporters. I consider myself a generally logical and moderate thinker and therefore I always understood that Clinton could lose.

There were enough indicators that the incumbent party could lose to the party with the congressional majority. After all, history is not kind to 12 straight years of singleparty rule during times of peace in America. Should McCain, Romney, Kasich or Rubio have won, I would not have felt anything near this trepidation (not even Cruz, though I definitely would’ve been consternated).

Despite the fact that I thought a Republican could win, I have never been able to fathom Donald J.

Trump winning. It’s cognitive dissonance on my part, which I think is shared by many of the liberal elite/ media (for example, Huffington Post had an irrational 99 percent chance of Clinton winning this, having Florida up by 6 points for her).

Trump is an amalgam of everything that I dislike in humanity, let alone presidential candidates. I perceive him to be proudly anti-intellectual with a startling lack of selfperception that any president, let alone an inexperienced one, needs.

But that is not a constructive way of thinking anymore. It was just my justification for voting for Clinton, independent of whatever Comey would potentially come up with.

For instance, a few weeks ago my roommate (a frustratingly very smart Trump supporter), asked me what would have to be in the emails for me not to vote for Clinton. I struggled for an answer, so convinced was I that Trump was worse in every way. In this way, I am just as blindly loyal as anyone else.

There is a two-fold fear and disappointment in my emotional dolor.

The first is the image of our country. I view myself as an equal member of the international community, very much opposed the nationalistic views of Trump. I am ashamed of how other countries now view us. Even Brexit didn’t have the immediate and obvious ignorance of a Trump presidency. While I am not so pretentious as to believe that the rest of the world views the Oval Office as a bastion of pure democracy, I do think that other countries view the American presidency as loosely indicative of the general path of the world. When I travel to Luxembourg next semester, I am squeamish at having to answer questions about a man I abhor (as I did this summer in Ireland, where I assured all of a Clinton presidency).

The above, though, is borderline irrational and not that important.

I suppose I was naive to view the president as someone who was supposedly greater than the common

I wear a hijab. As I was walking to class the other day a man approached me. He was a big guy, for me. I was physically intimidated.

He began berating me about my hijab and saying awful things like “You have to go back” and “Turk roaches are ruining this place.”

I had never been so scared in my life. I walked away from him as fast as I could and as soon as I got back to my apartment later that day, I burst into tears. My wife’s son walked into the room and asked why I was crying. I told him it’s be-

cause America chose bigotry and hatred over love and respect for minorities.

Trump, who is supported by white supremacists like Steven Crowder and Stefan Molyneux, is a menace for all Muslims, women, and POC. I am calling for all vibrant POC to take a stand against hate, and for Miami to take measures to ensure there are safe spaces for POC.

FATHIMA GASSEM

WAS FORREST GUMP RAPED? LIFE

DARCY KEENAN

THE MIAMI STUDENT

As college students, we hear about rape and sexual assault constantly. We all know the definition: any type of sexual penetration by any body parts or foreign objects, without the consent of the victim.

And then we all know what statutory rape is: someone over the age of consent (typically 18) having sex with a minor. Regardless of what they say, a minor cannot give consent.

That being said, is it statutory rape if the victim is physically over the age of consent but not mentally? If the victim has some sort of mental disabilities and their brain has not developed past a certain age, can they give consent?

Forrest Gump had an IQ of 75, which is borderline Intellectual Disability (typically, an IQ of 70 is needed to be diagnosed with this).

However, twice in the movie Jenny had sexual contact with him. The first time, she placed his hand on her breast. He was obviously uncomfortable as soon as she took off her dress and his level of discomfort only grew as she took off her bra and then made him touch her.

Though he didn’t say no, I don’t think that she had his consent. He was uncomfortable, and it is common for victims of assault to be silent, respond sexually and continue a relationship with their attacker.

Much later on in the movie, Jenny comes back again and then has sex with him. As she climbs

denominator of Americans, naiveté likely brought on by my great respect for Obama. The above is what my social media is covered with: poorly spaced soliloquies decrying him as a misogynist, rapist, racist, etc. They attack him as a man and drape policies around this archetype to fit their description of him.

I don’t think that matters much though for America. Once you tear away the curtain and see that the president is just a man, and in this case one who reflects his voting populace like almost none before, the question is whether he can lead or not. I do not equivocate my shame at the infidelities of JFK, FDR and Bill Clinton with how I view their policies. Rather, I judge them as a president based on their legislative performance and hold their marital actions against how I view them as men.

So the puzzle to analyze is: how will a demagogue backed by party majority but not entirely by ideology change America? That is the question that kept me up election night. There is an interesting dynamic with a Congress that does not entirely support their own president. Assuming they work together fairly well, I worry about the fate of three main institutions.

The first and likely most immediate revision to America will be the reversal of Obamacare. I am no Obama apologist and realize that the rising prices may soon become untenable. However, Trump cannot operate in the unequivocal words he campaigned in.

Bill Clinton once said, “You campaign in poetry, and govern in prose.”

Donald Trump campaigned in infomercials, but he must govern in documentaries. Therefore, it is not feasible to un-insure over twenty

into his bed, Forest protests — it’s wrong. However, when she gets on top of him, his protests stop.

Maybe this could be considered consent? He did not say no, he was not as uncomfortable this time.

However, given his mental state, I do not think he was capable of giving consent.

My mother and I guessed that mentally he was no older than eight or nine years old. Nine-yearolds are not capable of giving consent, regardless of what they say.

In Alabama, the age of consent is 16, and there is no way anyone could reasonably argue that Forrest had the mental development of a 16 year old. That being said, is it possible for Forrest to give consent?

I posted a poll on my Twitter and asked. 43 people voted on it, and of those 43, 12 think that Forrest is unable to give consent, 18 think that he is and 13 are unsure (and one of the people who told me they voted yes, he can give consent, thought about it more and then was not so sure). If you are unsure if something is rape, chances are, it is. At the very least you could assume that it was sexual assault.

Obviously, Forrest Gump is not a true story. So in the end, it doesn’t really matter if he was raped or not, but it is still important to think about. It is a good way to discuss the effects of mental development and consent without using a real person as your example.

KEENANDM@MIAMIOH.EDU

million Americans. Rather, amending it to increase choice and competition between state lines would preserve a healthier America and Republican agenda.

I lean farthest left on social issues, and I am concerned about the future of these momentous progressions. Interestingly, I believe Trump is apathetic towards these concerns, as he has never struck me as either religious or intent on the sanctity of marriage. However, his Vice President and the judges he wants to install are. Fortunately however, should the remaining judges remain in good health, it is unlikely the fairly moderate court would reverse its decision. However the other judge’s are aging, and no matter how much Ruth Bader Ginsburg gripes, the Senate’s choice to not consider Judge Garland has paid off.

Foreign policy is at the forefront of the most important issues facing our country. I don’t fear Trump’s ideas of nuclear proliferation; I believe that there are enough institutions in place to stop that. But I am concerned with America backing out of our treaties and how vulnerable that will leave us and allied countries (especially Western European ones under our protection).

On the other hand, I find the likelihood of war pretty similar between the two candidates. My greatest fear is just that I don’t have the impression he has any idea about the world nor a desire to learn. If someone like Duterte were to insult him, I find him too thin skinned maturely ignore it.

On the other hand, I am not as concerned about immigration or the economy, though I doubt he will improve either. The wall as he planned it is impossible, the terELECTION »PAGE 4

8 SPORTS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016

SPORTS@MIAMISTUDENT.NET

Scavuzzo heads to NCAA’s

BASKETBALL FALLS TO WRIGHT STATE

CROSS-COUNTRY

BASKETBALL

PATRICK KECK

EMILY SIMANSKIS

This weekend, junior Maria Scavuzzo will lace up her cross country spikes one more time this season for the 2016 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships in Terre Haute, Indiana.

While leading Miami University’s women’s cross country team to a 12th place finish at the NCAA DI Great Lakes Regionals, Scavuzzo placed 20th individually in the sixkilometer race. Not only did Scavuzzo run a personal best for the distance, her time of 20 minutes and 32 seconds set a new school record.

“She (Scavuzzo) has really put in a lot of miles and good, consistent training,” senior teammate Lauren Hoover said. “She does all the little things and has a lot of confidence in her fitness come race day. She believes that she belongs out there and is really competitive when she races”.

Despite only running with Scavuzzo for one season, freshman Carly Davis also holds her in high regard. “She gives every workout her undivided attention and effort, and gives the same in every race,” Davis said. “She came in with a goal, to go to nationals and she accomplished it!”

Scavuzzo’s time currently ranks as the 168th fastest time in the country and is the fastest time of any Ohio female collegiate runner this season.

This championship race is wide open, as the top two runners in last year’s National Championships will not be racing this year. 2015 individual champion Molly Seidel of Notre Dame graduated and Allie Ostrander of Boise State was redshirted this season due to injury.

The frontrunners of last week’s Great Lakes regional race, Erin Finn of Michigan and Anna Rohrer of Notre Dame, will be joined by the likes of Amy-Eloise Neale and

The Miami University men’s basketball team made a valiant comeback effort in the second half Tuesday night against Wright State University, but ultimately lost 89-87.

The RedHawks erased a 21-point deficit in the second half and even maintained a short twopoint lead with the help of doubledigit point totals from redshirt sophomore guard Jake Wright, freshman guard Michael Weathers and junior forward Rod Mills.

MU falls to an even 1-1 on the season while Wright State earns its second win to improve to 2-0.

“We didn’t come out and do what we do best,” junior guard Abdoulaye Harouna said. “Going into the second half, after we went to the locker room, we realized that we didn’t play the way we play.

That’s why we were down—we didn’t give enough energy.”

The game was close from the start and neither team could sustain more than a five-point lead until half way through the half.

Then, Wright State took the lead and built upon it with consistent baskets and occasional three pointers. Miami would answer with several baskets but couldn’t match WSU’s offense.

The first half ended with WSU leading 53-32 with Miami only capitalizing on 14 of its 31 shots, three of nine three-point attempts and one of three free throws. The Raiders sunk 18 of their 34 tries, nine of 16 three-pointers and eight of 11 free throws.

A very different RedHawk team hit the court at the start of the second half—the Raiders didn’t score for the first seven minutes of play as Mills and Wright made several free throws and baskets to reduce the deficit to single digits.

Weathers and junior guard Zach McCormick also significantly

THE MIAMI STUDENT

CROSS-COUNTRY »PAGE 5

THE MIAMI STUDENT

ANGELO GELFUSO THE MIAMI STUDENT

Redshirt junior wide receiver Jared Murphy crosses the goal line against Central Michigan. Murphy has five touchdowns this season, tied for the most of any Miami receiver, as well as 460 yards on 35 receptions.

MU on verge of bowl and MAC Championship berth, history FOOTBALL

COBURN GILLIES

ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

The Miami University football team (5-6) has a chance to make NCAA history Tuesday night. If MU is victorious against Ball State University (4-6), it will be the first team to win six straight and become bowl eligible after starting the season 0-6.

In the last meeting between these two programs, Ball State beat MU in blowout fashion, 55-14, in Muncie, IN. This time around, the Red and White have the advantage of achieving bowl eligibility in front of their home crowd in what is the program’s biggest home game since 2010, the last time the ‘Hawks went bowling.

Currently, the ‘Hawks sit in second place in the Mid-American Conference East Division with a 5-2 record against conference opponents. The Cardinals occupy the

Volleyball enters MAC Tournament as favorite VOLLEYBALL

KYLE STEINER

THE MIAMI STUDENT

The Miami University volleyball team begins Mid-American Conference tournament play this weekend in DeKalb, Illinois.

Having clinched the program’s first conference regular season title since 1998 last weekend, the RedHawks are confident heading into their most important weekend of the year.

“We have good experience and a lot of calmness about us when we play,” head coach Carolyn Condit said. “We’re just going to do what we always do and know that we can win.”

Since being named conference favorites during the MAC preseason poll, the ‘Hawks have lived up to their billing all season long.

The squad dominated regular season play en route to a 15-1 conference record, setting a new school record by winning 20 matches in a row along the way. A tournament title would be the final piece to a successful season for MU. Miami will play Western Michigan University, Ball State University or Bowling Green State Universi-

ty in the semifinals Saturday night.

Since the team earned a double bye as the number one seed, it will have the advantage of extra rest over its opponent.

However, Miami is aware that the tournament title will not come easy. Archrival Northern Illinois University is the number two seed, and the Huskies eliminated the RedHawks 3-1 in last year’s semifinals. The Huskies have the advantage of playing the tournament on their home floor this season.

However, MU’s hopes remain high, especially since it defeated NIU 3-0 earlier this season.

A total team effort will be necessary for the Red and White to come out on top this weekend. The team has had a balanced attack all season long, as junior outside hitter Olivia Rusek, sophomore right side hitter Stela Kukoc, junior right side hitter Katie Tomasic and senior outside hitter Maris Below all have over 200 kills on the year.

Defensively, the ’Hawks will look towards senior middle hitter Paige Hill to hold down the front row, as the veteran finished the regular season with 92 blocks. Junior libero VOLLEYBALL »PAGE 5

basement of the West Division with a conference mark of 1-5. BSU enters the contest on a three-game losing streak.

On top of bowl eligibility being on the line, the ‘Hawks are playing for something bigger. If Ohio University falls short against Akron Tuesday night and the RedHawks beat Ball State, Miami will be going to Detroit, MI to represent the East Division in the MAC Championship Game.

Head coach Chuck Martin, who has been a part of his fair share of big games throughout his coaching career, is stressing to his team to not let the moment get to them.

“It’ll be interesting to see how our kids handle it,” Martin said. “I’m excited. I’m hopeful they’re going to handle it the right way. But again, it’s unchartered water for this group of kids.”

Along with the pressure of playing in Miami’s biggest game since 2010, the RedHawks also must handle playing against a competi-

tive BSU team.

“They’re one of the more talented teams MAC teams. It’ll be the most gifted team we play,” Martin said.

After starting the campaign 0-6, the RedHawks have won fivestraight games behind the exploits of redshirt sophomore Gus Ragland. In addition to five-straight victories, since taking over as starting quarterback, the Cincinnati product has displayed efficiency throwing 12 touchdowns and zero interceptions.

On the ground, Ragland has also chipped in two touchdowns.

While Ragland is leading the team through the air, and occasionally doing it by himself on the ground, he will not be the only offensive player making an impact Tuesday. Look for the three-headed rushing attack of redshirt sophomore running backs Kenny Young and Alonzo Smith, as well as sophomore tailback Maurice Thomas, to help spread the field.

FOOTBALL »PAGE 5

BASKETBALL »PAGE 5

Hockey travels to No. 1 Denver ICE HOCKEY

BEN BLANCHARD SPORTS EDITOR

This weekend, the Miami University hockey team looks to snap a five-game losing streak on the road at No. 1 Denver. The skid, which began with a 4-1 non-conference defeat to Bowling Green, has continued as the RedHawks were swept

by W. Michigan and the University of Nebraska-Omaha in their first two National Collegiate Hockey Conference series.

Without junior captain Louie Belpedio, who has been sidelined the past two weeks with a lower-body injury, MU has been outscored 2712.

“Louie’s a great player and one of our main leaders, so obviously it has a huge impact,” sophomore defenseman Grant Hutton said. “But that presents other guys the opportunity to step up and fill a role that they might not otherwise get.”

While Miami has struggled to close out and win games of late, senior forward Anthony Louis has continued his offensive success, as the starting winger is tied for fourth in the nation with nine goals this season. The Chicago Blackhawks

ANGELO GELFUSO THE MIAMI STUDENT

Freshman forward Carson Meyer carries the puck against Bowling Green. Meyer, who was out with illness last weekend, has two goals and eight assists this season. prospect has tallied at least one point in eight of his last nine games and leads the ‘Hawks with 15 points (9g, 6a) this season.

Denver (7-2-1 overall, 3-0-1 NCHC) is riding an eight-game win streak, including a 3-2 road NCHC victory over defending NCAA champion and No. 8 North Dakota in its last game.

The top-ranked Pioneers have heavily relied on their defense and goaltending so far this season. UD is third nationally in team defense, al-

lowing only 1.8 goals per game and no more than three goals in any of its first nine games. Junior goaltender Tanner Jaillet’s save percentage of .934 is sixth in the nation.

“They’re a really good defensive team, so we’ve been working on wheeling around the offensive zone, bearing down on our chances and working together to create more runs,” sophomore forward Josh Melnick said.

HOCKEY »PAGE 5

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