Misc 10.31.19

The Miscellany News

Since 1866 | miscellanynews.org

Volume CLII | Issue 8

October 31, 2019

Tiana Headley

S

am was an ungrateful Negro man, according to his owner, Gilbert Livingston. Livingston thought he had hashed out a fair deal with the 19-year-old—Sam agreed to be bought for $225, and two would work out a deal for the young man’s freedom later. “He knew I was principled against slavery,” Livingston wrote in a newspaper notice dated July 9, 1804. In the same ad, Livingston offered a $10 reward for Sam’s capture (New York Heritage Digital Collections, “1804, Run away notice for Sam of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.”).

But Livingston was not any ordinary disgruntled slave owner.

The Livingston family was the land gentry of Dutchess, Columbia and Ulster Counties during the 1700s and early 1800s. Their ancestral line was a force to be reckoned with in New York’s local and state politics.

Today, the Livingstons and other slave-holding families are memorialized in the Poughkeepsie streets that bear their names.

But many of the children who stroll, commuters who drive and businesses which operate on these streets remain unaware of this history.

Sarah Evans ’18, who investigated this history with other Vassar students for a 2017-18 Community Engaged Learning (CEL) project, believes that the erasure of this history is a decision made by those in power in the United States to forget the atrocities of slavery. At one point in New York State, the enslaved accounted for one-fifth to one-third of the population; 60 percent of enslaved persons lived in the Hudson Valley, according to the committee’s project statement.

“What is most certain is that the formation of Poughkeepsie itself was greatly facilitated by enslaved people, that their toil contributed to and constructed the Livingston fortune,” Evans shared in an email.

In her final project reflection, Evans proposed a memorial to the named and unnamed enslaved men, women and children of See MEMORIAL on page 3

Courtesy of House Committee on Education and Labor via Flickr

Project acknowledges local legacy of slavery Assistant News Editor

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

The House Committee on Education and Labor, chaired by Bobby Scott (D-VA), recently unveiled a bill to overhaul student debt.

Congress introduces loan relief Aena Khan

News Editor

O

n Oct. 15, 2019, the House Committee on Education and Labor introduced the College Affordability Act (CAA) to overhaul the current system of increasing financial burden for higher education in the United States. This is the first update to the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 in over a decade. In a statement to the See LOANS on page 4

Google claims quantum supremacy Rohan Dutta Columnist

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evolution is a term that inspires both hope and fear, but for the most part, the world has embraced the information revolution we currently live in. Despite the problems that have arisen from our digital universe, our governments, media and societies have irrevocably intertwined themselves

with information technology. For better or for worse, the next big phase of the information revolution may be about to begin.

A study by Google was recently published in the highly reputed Nature journal, claiming that the search engine juggernaut had achieved quantum supremacy. If their claims prove true, the breakthrough spells the dawn of the next

big leap in human history. But what exactly is quantum supremacy?

In traditional computing, data is encoded in binary (zeros and ones), with each zero or one taking up a certain amount of space.

Quantum computing allows for the space required for one value to hold more than one separate value simultaneously. This means that See COMPUTERS on page 8

Whang sketches elderly New York Displaced youth find place on Vassar campus Taylor Stewart

Assistant Arts Editor

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very Tuesday, Joseph Whang camps out in a study room in the Art Library, the one protruding from the Main Gate, and further enlivens his drawings. His process is unchanging: He transfers a graphite line sketch onto his computer and adds color and dimension. He is as devoted to his subject matter as he is to this se-

quence; he loves drawing elderly people in New York.

Whang and his wife, Adjunct Artist in Music Yenne Lee, commute to Vassar every week. While she teaches classical guitar in Skinner Hall, he hunches over a sketchpad and tablet in the library, where, scrounging for study breaks, I watch him draw sometimes. One day, we struck up a conversation.

The Miscellany News sat down

Courtesy of Joseph Whang

Joseph Whang, who now draws in Vassar’s Art Library, derives inspiration from the elderly. He shared, “When I see old people, I feel the same emotions I felt from old movies or music. I want to feel or experience those eras I haven’t experienced through watching these people.”

Inside this issue

11

Hard nips, limp dicks: Since dorms are always on fire, HUMOR students must brave the cold

with Whang to discuss traditional media, Mr. Rogers and the value of the old.

The Miscellany News: You were born in Seoul and you lived there until 2010, when you started studying at Parsons. Does the landscape of Seoul affect your art or artistic practice? Or does New York dominate your art?

Joe Whang: I would say New York dominates my art in terms of style and subject matter. When I was in Korea, I focused too much on drawing precisely, but I went to Parsons and I saw students who were focusing on expressing their thoughts rather than trying to draw well. So I think that changed my mind. Since then, I try to draw freely and try to make my own style.

M: What inspires you so much about New York in particular?

JW: In terms of subject matter, I draw old people of New York, mostly. When I was in Korea, I just imagined there would be young, trendy people only in New York.

When I see movies or magazines, there was only fancy New York.

I actually came to New York and I noticed there were so many old people who are the opposite of See ELDERLY on page 5

12

Congress has delayed justice to hold onto OPINIONS power. The time is now to resist.

Dean Kopitsky

Assistant Arts Editor

I

n fall of 2015, Professor of German History and American Studies Maria Höhn, like the rest of the world, was struck by the unfolding humanitarian rights disaster in Syria. President Bashar al-Assad was using chemical weapons to crush protests against his regime. Many refugees fleeing Syria found footing in Germany, where Höhn was living that summer.

“Every day there were pictures,” said Höhn. “Another 10,000 arrived in Munich today, another 10,000 the day after.” The refugees badly needed shelter, medication and food. The state government was ill-prepared, so underequipped volunteers stepped in. Höhn recalled, “They phoned pharmacists in the middle of the night, asking for baby powder, diapers.”

On the Miscellany News database, Höhn performed a keyword search of The Miscellany News database for the keyword “refugee.” The professor found articles describing how Vassar students raised money for Greeks displaced

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by bombing from the Turks, and how Vassar students sent aid to their peers organizing aid for refugees of the Spanish Civil War. “We were inspired by thinking about the past,” reflected Höhn.

That fall, at Vassar, the need for action was simple and urgent: “If we were able to do it then, we should be able to do it now … right away we had students jump in and we started organizing,” Höhn said. The first teach-in on the crisis was held Oct. 8, 2015. By fall break, Vassar Refugee Solidarity (VRS) was formed.

Although he wasn’t around for the inception of VRS, Matthew Brill-Carlat ’19 became the student liaison between the organization and Höhn. Four years after the refugee crisis first demanded the action of Vassar students, Brill-Carlat sat with Höhn and I in her Swift Hall office. We discussed the fruits of the consortium so far and the work yet to come.

Höhn and Brill-Carlat agreed that Vassar has an institutional obligation to respond to mass displacement. “I think we have not plumbed the bottom of that yet,” Brill-Carlat See NEW AMERICANS on page 9

As MLB juices their balls, teams SPORTS have to take a hit

The Miscellany News

Page 2

M

ira Michels-Gualtieri ’21 took this photo from the window of a friend’s house in Valparaíso, Chile. The image captures military personnel filling the street below the house. Michels-Gualtieri prefaces a post about her past week in Chile with “My understanding of the situation is limited and also one of a foreigner—as a result, I hope my perspective can complement the news, videos, and articles about Chile, not replace it.”

Continuing, Michels-Gualtieri writes, “This past week in Santiago—the capital city, which is home to nearly a third of the Chilean population—it was announced that the price of the already expensive public transport system was going to increase. This price increase for transportation—an unavoidable expense that can consume upwards of 20 percent of a Chilean’s minimum wage salary—was la quinda de la torta, the last straw for Chileans who already felt that their current government and their billionaire President (Piñera) have failed to address their needs. This led to widespread frustration; Chilean high school students and other social groups took to the streets to protest, evade and hop metro turnstiles, and galvanize their peers to demand affordable fares ... On the surface, the unrest, marches, riots, destruction, and outcry of the Chilean people started over 30 Chilean pesos—about 5 cents in USD. However, as many protesters have said, this is not about 30 pesos, it is about the past 30 years of inequality that was enabled and exacerbated by the implementation of neoliberalism and capitalism during the Pinochet Dictatorship from 1973 to 1990.” On the protest’s impact on areas of Chile beyond Santiago, Michels-Gualtieri explains, “To say the least, the past week has been an interesting one. It has been a week of fear, less for myself and much more for my friends, loved ones, and the well-being of the Chilean people who have less access to resources and safety nets than my American program peers and I. It has been a week of sleepovers—when there is a 6 p.m. curfew and classes are cancelled, sleeping over at two of my friends’ homes was a real treat. It has been a week of connection and conversation, discussions about the current situation and the similarities and differences to the past and also to the United States. It has been a week of staring at screens and trying to stay informed, but also finding myself exhausted from the lack of clear information and also (for my own safety) not being able to attend political events and see the situation with my own eyes.” To read more about Michels-Gualtieri’s experiences abroad and the unrest in Chile, visit farandaway.miscellanynews.org.

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October

Thursday

1

November

Friday

Annual Family Friendly Halloween Party

Africana Studies 50th Anniversary Conference

3:15 p.m | EH Aula | Wimpfheimer Nursery School

3:00 p.m. | CC Villard Room | Africana Studies

Mauro Carbone

Soccer (M) vs. St Lawrence University

5:00 p.m. | CC Ordan Room | Media Studies

O, Hysteria Performance 6:00 p.m. | Vogelstein 110 | Drama Dept.

[Buddhist Sangha] Evening Sit 8:30 p.m. | Library Quiet Room | Religious and Spiritual Life Office

4:00 p.m. | Prentiss Fields | Athletics

Buddhist Sangha 8:00 p.m. | Library Quiet Room | Religious and Spiritual Life Office

Waking the Witch Part 1: Take Back the Night Performance Hour 7:00 p.m. | The Mug | Big Night In

2

November

Saturday

Students of Sobriety Group 9:30 a.m. | RH 211 | AA Poughkeepsie

Africana Studies 50th Anniversary Conference 9:30 a.m. | CC Villard Room | Africana Studies

Free Public Walking Tours of Vassar College

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November

Isabel Braham Leah Cates Sasha Gopalakrishnan

News Aena Khan Olivia Watson Features Duncan Aronson Opinions Jonas Trostle Arts Abby Tarwater Humor Francisco Andrade Sports Teddy Chmyz Design Lilly Tipton Copy Lucy Leonard Social Media Natalie Bober Photo Yvette Hu Managing Robert Pinataro Online Mohamad Safadieh Graphics Juliette Pope Emerita Laurel Hennen Vigil Assistant Arts Dean Kopitsky Taylor Stewart Assistant News Tiana Headley Assistant Opinions Abram Gregory Reporters Delila Ames Jonah Frere-Holmes Columnists Alex Barnard Rohan Dutta Copy Jacqueline Gill Amanda Herring Phoebe Jacoby Caitlin Patterson Tiffany Trumble Crossword Frank

12:00 p.m. | Vassar Farm | Athletics

Rugby (M) vs. Molloy College

3:00 p.m. | SH Martel Hall | Music Dept.

2:00 p.m. | Prentiss Field | Athletic

Ecumenical Christian Worship

Volleyball (W) vs. Lebanon Valley

4:00 p.m. | Chapel Tower | Religious and Spiritual Life Office

7:00 p.m. | KH Gym | Athletic

Contributing Editors

Rugby (W) vs. Conference Semi Finals

Faculty Recital: Now I am yours - A Spanish, Portuguese, and Latino Songbook

Volleyball (M) Alumni Game

Senior Editors

Frankie Knuckles Jessica Moss

9:00 a.m. | KH Squash Courts | Athletics

Volleyball (W) vs. Stevens Tech

4:00 p.m. | KH Gym | Athletic

Mack Liederman

Squash (M/W) vs. NE, Bucknell, Fordham

2:30 p.m. | Vassar Farm | Athletics

Soccer (W) vs. RIT (Senior Day)

Editor-in-Chief

Sunday

10:00 a.m. | Main Circle | Communications

11:00 a.m. | KH Gym | Athletics

October 31, 2019

Catholic Mass 5:00 p.m. | Chapel Tower | Religious and Spiritual Life Office

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

CORRECTION POLICY The Miscellany News will only accept corrections for any misquotes, misrepresentations or factual errors for an article within the semester it is printed.

The Miscellany News is not responsible for the views presented within its Opinions pages. The staff editorial is the only article which reflects the opinion of the Editorial Board.

October 31, 2019

NEWS

Page 3

EMS staff prepares for perennial Halloweekend chaos Olivia Watson News Editor

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acked costume-clad crowds, a colder than anticipated night and excitement clouding the air are all staples of Halloweekend—one of the most anticipated celebrations to take place on Vassar’s campus. Students dress up in their carefully planned outfits and trek to the packed, humid tent for a mega-sized party situated on Noyes Circle.

Given the weekend’s always-expected chaos, Security and medical services on campus prepare for potential medical situations that could arise. They begin on the Thursday before the weekend officially commences (which this year just so happens to fall on the spooky night itself).

The Office of Health Promotion and Education organizes an info session aptly titled “Health-oween,” with the purpose of educating students on responsible drinking and raising awareness about the resources available to them, should they need help.

With all of the heightened expectations and hype surrounding the weekend, students frequently feel pressured to drink past their limits. A Vassar student who was EMSed during a previous Halloweekend was willing to speak under the condition of anonymity, for the sake of keeping unabridged knowledge of the incident within their close circle of friends. They explained that they were EMSed because their friends feared they had drank too much.

“My EMS encounter occurred during my first Halloweekend at Vassar.” they said. “I personally felt pressure to have a ‘wild’ Halloweekend...Being socially anxious, I drank

a little more than I should have and ended up feeling really sick.”

In preparation for potentially dangerous situations like this, EMS and Vassar’s Safety and Security have extra staff and supplies standing by. According to Medical Director for EMS and Physician Assistant at Baldwin Douglas Kugel, Vassar’s EMS partners with Safety and Security, the Arlington Fire Department and Mobile Life EMS to plan effective responses and treatment for students who require medical attention.

“I personally felt pressure to have a ‘wild’ Halloweekend...I drank a little more than I should have and ended up feeling really sick.”

Last year, EMS responded to six incidents of intoxication, five situations where students refused further medical treatment and one in which the student was transferred to a local hospital. These numbers were significantly lower than those from 2016, when there were 12 incidents of intoxication, seven refusals of medical assistance and five transports via ambulance to the hospital.

Captain and Assistant Captain of Vassar EMS Niharika Shukla ’20 and Sarah Garijo-Garde ’20 explained via email correspondence that because of this precedent for

overconsumption, responders must be prepared to handle a variety of medical issues during this weekend, a challenge requiring additional staff and resources. The most common calls during Halloweekend are for intoxication and psychiatric emergencies.

Often calls are a combination of the two, according to Shukla and Garijo-Garde.

However, students feel that EMS is not always as efficient as needed. The anonymous student explained, “I went back to my room with a friend, and we both ended up falling asleep on my bed. My friends were worried about the state of drunkenness that we were in, and called EMS to check on us. I awoke to them standing over me, and [I] was really confused.”

Many students had similar stories, including five others who responded to an open call for comment, but were hesitant to go on record.

The anonymous source that was willing to go on record continued, “I don’t think EMS responded completely efficiently to the problem. They only questioned me, and not my friend laying next to me. I think this is because they could only address the person that they were called for. However, when I tried to wake up my friend to talk to them, he kept sleeping, and they didn’t care.

He was fine in the end, but they disregarded his condition.”

Given the high amount of intoxication-related health concerns, EMS resources are often stretched thin throughout the weekend. Unfortunately, a high quality of treatment can prove extra difficult to attain on Halloweekend, given the many distractions

and poorly lit areas.

“It can be challenging when working in uncontrolled environments which may have loud music and dim lighting.” Kugel noted, “If possible, we try to move patients to welllit and quieter environments in order to obtain a good assessment.” Because of these potentially difficult situations, EMS and Safety and Security assemble the necessary items in advance.

In response to these increasingly tumultuous conditions, Shukla and Garijo explained that extra resources were necessary to prepare for the influx of calls. They place multiple crews on call, and stock equipment in the Aula. Safety and Security also prepares in advance by staffing extra workers on Halloweekend.

The additional shifts necessary to accommodate the chaos of Halloweekend take an emotional and physical toll on Safety and Security and EMS workers alike.

Yet, Shukla, who has worked the past three Halloweekends on EMS, concluded, “Though it can be fast-paced, stressful and tiring, we both have found that it is one of the most rewarding nights to volunteer with VCEMS.” Although rewarding, being on stand by for Halloweekend creates potentially difficult working situations for EMS. While Halloween remains a night of much-anticipated enjoyment, the looming threat of being EMSed sticks in the minds of students who take part in the weekend’s many blurry events.

For students, EMS is a reminder of support systems in place for all, available even at the end of a long, spooky night.

Project memorializes individuals enslaved in Poughkeepsie MEMORIAL continued

from page 1 Poughkeepsie at the Upper Landing Park, located on Poughkeepsie’s Hudson River waterfront. This park, on land once owned by the Livingstons, is where slaves disembarked on their oftentimes fatal, forced passage from their motherland to servitude across the Atlantic.

Evans’ proposal resonated with community members and ultimately became The Black History Project Committee’s Memorial Project, a local initiative started by Poughkeepsie and Dutchess County community members. The Committee believes

that all too frequently, children grow up in Poughkeepsie without learning this local slavery legacy. This is concerning—Black residents comprise 37.6 percent of the City of Poughkeepsie population, according to 2018 U.S. census data (United States Census Bureau, “Quick Facts, Poughkeepsie city, New York”). “We believe that the under-told history of the enslaved of New York must be made more visible and that memorials can serve to recognize, educate and encourage our communities to reckon with how the violent racist past relates to ongoing social and racial inequality in the

Juliette Pope/The Miscellany News

Shown here are proposed memorial sites that would highlight significant locations in Poughkeepsie’s legacy of slavery. One site was proposed by Vassar grad Sarah Evans ’18.

present,” the Committee writes in its project description.

The Committee has since planned additional markers across the Poughkeepsie area, including one in Upper Landing, to recognize the contributions of slaves made at pivotal locations in the area’s slavery legacy. They have not yet approached city, county and possibly federal officials for approval to install the markers, but they hope to do so by next spring, according to Committee chair and former Dutchess Community College Admissions Counselor Carmen McGill. In the meantime, Committee members will continue to work on designs for the memorial.

Potential marker sites include: • Market Street (to be decided).

“Market Street is named Market Street because that’s where the slavery auction block was,” McGill noted.

• United States Postal Office at 55 Mansion Street, which is a replica of the previous Poughkeepsie Court House built by slaves, according to McGill.

• Upper Landing Park at 83 N Water Street, a historic site where slave ships unloaded.

The Poughkeepsie and Dutchess County residents and students who make up the Committee also participate in the education, communication, outreach, site selection and design, as well as in the project narrative subcommittees.

They are tasked with connecting the City of Poughkeepsie School district and community with their research, informing the community of the project through

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

social media and other means, designing the main memorial structure proposed by Evans and writing the narratives on each historic marker.

The Committee has not yet secured funding, but they are in the process of becoming a 501(c)(3) organization, in order to be capable of writing grants and fundraising. The Committee is in its early stages; they had their first meeting in April.

McGill anticipates the completion of the project this to be a three- to four-year endeavor.

Professor of Political Science on the Frederick Ferris Thompson Chair Katherine Hite, who supervised the CEL project and now co-facilitates the Memorial Project, says she has gone from studying and writing about grassroots memorials in her research to being a part of a memorial initiative. It has been a valuable learning experience for her. “In our Memorial group, I experience African-Americans who I feel constantly demonstrate enormous patience in relation to white ignorance and racism, including from those like myself, working on being an anti-racist,” Hite reflected in an email.

Evans, who is excited to learn of progress on the memorial project, sees this as an opportunity to counter the over-memorialization of white elitism.

“It is interesting how the legacy of white elites and white nationalism manifests in New York State,” she posited through email. “I think that there is a large commentary to be made here: Whose stories are we telling through memorialization?

What histories do we represent and reproduce in our public spaces? And more importantly, what stories do we exclude or fail to sufficiently remember?”

NEWS

Page 4

October 31, 2019

House Committee addresses student debt in new bill

l Roun a c i d lit

up

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LOANS continued from page 1 press, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) touched upon the $1.5 trillion in federal student loan debt carried by approximately 44 million Americans (The New York Times, “House Democrats Unveil Plan to Make College More Affordable,” 10.15.2019). Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Congresswoman Jahana Hayes (D-CT) hosted a Press Call on Oct. 28 to speak with collegiate newspapers, including The Miscellany News, to discuss the 1,165-page bill, which is still undergoing revisions by the Committee.

Scott joked, “Now, if you asked most Americans what Congress is doing these days, they would most likely say impeachment,” before going into the key features of the bill. The current cost of college in the United States averages out to $20,770 for public institutions and $46,950 for nonprofit private institutions, figures that steadily increase each year (ValuePenguin, “Average Cost of College in America: 2019 Report,” 2019). Democratic lawmakers intend for the CAA to lower the cost of college and increase the accessibility of higher education for low-income and middle-class families. In addition to provisions that one Committee aide stated would include the largest-ever increase in the value of Pell Grants and the elimination of hidden fees for student borrowers, the bill allocates funds for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and institutions that serve minorities—such as community colleges—and reintroduces accountability of on-campus sexual assault that is currently under attack from the Department of Education.

In the call, Scott toted the bill as the bearer of “comprehensive reform…that we need to make for the future.” Hayes, a freshman member of the 116th Congress and a former

Sara Lawler In Our Headlines...

The U.S. debt increased by $205 billion in the past year. This varies sharply from President Trump’s promise to eliminate the federal deficit within eight years of having taken office. Instead of the promised decrease, the federal deficit has risen by 50 percent during Trump’s time in office. This occurred in a time where the economy has been growing steadily, which typically leads to decreases in the federal deficit.

In 2011, President Obama and House Republicans worked together to create a deficit commission tasked with looking for ways to reduce the federal deficit. Under the Trump administration, many of these budget-saving measures have been abandoned.

Additionally, 2017 tax cuts have stagnated tax revenues despite the growing economy, which is unusual since growing economies usually reduce unemployment costs and increase tax revenues. Additionally, a series of big spending increases have contributed to a ballooning federal deficit. For one, the Trump administration has increased military spending from $550 billion per year to roughly $700 billion in 2019. Under the Obama administration in 2013 the federal debt reached $16.7 trillion.

educator recognized as the National Teacher of the Year in 2016, reflected on the need for change in how families approach affording higher education: “These are things I’ve seen first-hand.” The bill is expected to cost $400 billion over a decade, more than half of which would go to reworking current student loan programs. Response to the bill has been controversial, with Senior Vice President for the American Council on Education Terry W. Hartle describing it as “a combination of good, bad, ugly and God only knows” (New York Times).

The question remains as to how this bill, particularly as it evolves after passing through the Committee and is sent to the Senate for further amendments, will realistically ease the burden of students and increase access to higher education. In an email to The Miscellany News, Director of Student Financial Services Michael Albano at Vassar College stated: “The College Affordability Act (CAA) is currently proposed legislation, so it would be too early for myself or the College to comment on it. We are monitoring the bill and its progress as it applies to the legislative process.”

Vassar, as part of its financial aid, provides students with either federally subsidized or unsubsidized loans. In the words of Scott, a central goal of the bill is to make federal loans “cheaper to take out, simpler to understand and easier to payoff.” Students may choose to reject the loans and increase an already steep price tag of $75,360—including direct and indirect costs for the 2019-20 academic year—or they may accept them and take out additional private loans. The bill offers refinancing options for students who choose private options, but the debt forgiveness for private loans differs from federal ones. Thus, one drawback of the already ambitious CAA

is that it will not be as inclusive of middle-class students at private institutions who may not be eligible for federal aid but cannot afford to pay thousands in tuition.

One student, Hayley Craig ’22, spoke to her experiences about trying to afford Vassar: “Honestly, I feel a lot of guilt because my parents had to take out huge loans to pay for my tuition. After college, I’m going to have to work on paying those loans back, which is pretty fucking stressful to think about. My parents didn’t realize how much of a financial burden it was going to be … they considered pulling me from Vassar for a semester, but fortunately we haven’t had to do that.”

In addition to loans, one section of the CAA is currently dedicated to providing new funding and increased flexibility for work-study positions, which Congresswoman Hayes believes will foster development programs and community service. However, institutions would still be responsible for the distribution of work-study funds and the creation of jobs. Another Vassar student, Alexander Wolstenholme-Britt ’22, spoke about his frustrations with jobs on campus: “If I am on federal work-study as a part of my financial aid, the College is required to provide me with a job. I applied to about 50 jobs … heard back from less than 10 and interviewed for about four ... the difficulty of [the process] was crazy. The college is not making it easy enough for students that need an on-campus job, for their loans or their livelihoods, to get a job in time … The reality is that a lot of the hundreds of jobs that are being posted are not available.”

Further reflecting on his experiences with the high demand and limited availability of jobs, Wolstenholme-Britt revealed how one department “asked Student Employment for 15 paid student positions, only five of which

have actually been filled.” He continued, “So now there are 10 positions that have been pre-allocated that aren’t being filled.”

In the previous academic year, an on-campus controversy regarding the College’s use of work-study funds to pay students below minimum wage is an issue Wolstenholme-Britt hopes has been resolved: “I think it’s great that Vassar raised what they pay students to New York State’s minimum wage, but I don’t understand how they were paying students below minimum wage beforehand … That’s something [the CAA] should address, because students should not be paid less than minimum wage for the state that they live in.”

The future of the CAA is remarkably uncertain. Still, in his opening statements during the Committee’s session to mark up the document on Oct. 29, Scott remarked that the bill is an investment to fulfill the HEA’s promise of making higher education more accessible to all. In the midst of conflict between the executive branch and Congress, it is significant that steps are being taken to alleviate the student debt crisis not only for generations past but for the United States’ posterity. Studies show that individuals with a bachelor’s degree will make roughly a million more dollars than those with only high school diplomas, as per Scott. However, as it moves between parties, the bill must ensure that specific changes are made to protect students in both public and private institutions.

Regarding the current draft, Craig stated, “I hope that the [final draft] will actually make it easier for me to get out of debt.

I don’t really know all the details of it, but student loan debt is a huge issue and I really hope we start to see more bills aimed at tackling it.”

In response, Trump tweeted, “Obama is the most profligate deficit and debt spender in our nation’s history.” Today, the federal government is more than $22 trillion in debt (The Washington Post, “The U.S. Deficit Hit $984 Billion in 2019, Soaring During Trump Era,” 10.25.2019).

As fires continue to blaze across Sonoma County in California, Governor Gavin Newsome officially declared a statewide emergency. Approximately 180,000 people have been advised to flee the area. Some residents had ample time to pack up pets and sentimental items, while an unlucky number were forced to leave important items in their vulnerable homes. Evacuations have gone smoothly, with nearly no road incidents despite packed highways and the thousands of people desperate to get to safety.

The fire has now spread across 30,000 acres, and with winds reaching 93 mph it is expected to continue expanding. At this time the fire is only 10 percent contained.

Fire meteorologist at San Jose State University Craig Clements described the massive wildfire as “Probably one of the biggest weather incidents in California history” (The Washington Post, “California’s governor declares statewide emergency over wildfires as mass evacuation continues,” 10.27.2019).

House Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) passed away on Oct. 17, 2019 at the age of 68 in his home city of Baltimore, Maryland. Cummings had gained significant attention and praise recently for his continuous criticisms of Trump, and a desire to hold the president accountable for his actions. Former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama spoke at the funeral held in Baltimore on

Friday, Oct. 18. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Secretary Hillary Clinton and Senator Elizabeth Warren also spoke at the funeral, praising Cummings’ commitment to bettering the country.

Obama praised Representative Cummings as honorable, stating that he was honorable even before being elected to office.

“There’s a difference if you were honorable and treated others honorably—outside the limelight, on the side of the road, in a quiet moment counseling somebody you work with,” Obama concluded (PoliticusUSA, “Obama Delivers A Rousing Rejection Of Trump During Eulogy For Elijah Cummings,” 10.25.19).

Around the World…

Clashes initiated by Iraqi Security Forces against protesters left 30 dead and over 2,000 wounded on Friday, Oct. 18.

The Iraqi Security’s use of tear gas caused suffocation and stampedes that resulted in death. This incident was a renewal of violence against protesters from earlier this month, when 165 protesters were killed and over 6,000 sustained injuries. Protesters are calling for a complete overhaul of the Iraqi political system. Their focus is on jobs, equality and the end of corruption. Many of these protesters were raised in the wake of the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq and the political instability that resulted.

After the Iraq War began in 2003, the political system that emerged divided power amongst various religious groups, leading to widespread corruption and a focus on familial connections as a way to gain political authority (The Washington Post, “At least 30 reportedly killed as Iraqi security forces clash with protesters in fresh unrest,” 10.25.2019).

Over 1,200 days have passed since Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU) in a shocking referendum. Despite this, the British government, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is deadlocked.

Johnson refuses to negotiate with Parliament unless the Labour Party agrees to a general election.

However, the Labour Party refuses to consider a general election unless the EU decides on the length of the extension to grant Britain to leave the EU. Leaders of the EU will not reach a decision on the length of the extension until London’s deadlock is broken. As British leaders in London navigate this standstill, the conversation drifts further and further from discussions of the actual logistics of Britain leaving the EU: what the best way to leave the EU would be and how much will it cost (The New York Times, “A Brexit Logjam in Three Dimensions,” 10.25.2019).

As a result of an agreement reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia increased its presence in Syria by 300 military police and 20 armored vehicles. The stated purpose of the increase in Russian involvement is to remove all Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia that are currently within 19 miles of the Turkish border.

The increase of Russian presence demonstrates a shift in the power balance in Syria after Trump began to remove U.S. forces from the region on Oct. 9. Turkey’s NATO allies are concerned that Turkey’s interference will destabilize the region and allow for ISIS prisoners of Kurdish YPG forces to be released (Reuters, “More Russian military police arrive Syria under peace deal with Turkey” 10.25.2019).

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

October 31, 2019

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Student band spotlight: pop-rock five-piece Mayla40 Alex Barnard Columnist

W

ide-eyed first years arrive at college with big plans. Some desire to join a sports team. Others aspire to get better grades than they did in high school.

Of course, sometimes these plans fall through, and the dreams of those young and eager college students get swept away amidst a whirlwind of papers, projects and parties. Tieren Costello ’20, however, came to Vassar with one goal: form a band. And he wasn’t going to let anything stop him.

Within the first week of his arrival to campus nearly four years ago, Costello created the indie/garage band Mayla40 as its lead singer and rhythm guitarist, alongside lead guitarist Dylan Lynch ’20. Costello was so desperate to start a band that he was relieved when he met Lynch during first-year orientation. “That felt very, very natural right

away,” Costello remembered. “I was texting my brother, like, ‘This guy is perfect.’” Lynch echoed, “We were both like, ‘We like pop music in a rock format,’ and that was it.”

From there, it took about a full school year before the group could reach full force, with Ben Papsun ’20 and Aaron Rothko ’20 joining in as drums and bass, respectively. Rothko was the last addition, and second bassist overall, to join Mayla40. Costello claimed that Rothko’s late membership was not intentional, given that he originally thought Rothko was in the class year ahead of him. “I thought, ‘Well I want this band all four years, and even though he is an incredible musician, I can’t have him in the band.’ Then, I learned way too late that he was a freshman with us,” Costello shared, chuckling. Although Rothko did not say much during the interview, when talking about his position in the band, he quipped, “Ever since we got this new bassist

Courtesy of Ruth Demree

Mayla40 consists of five members from the Class of 2020: long-time friends Aaron Rothko, Ben Papsun, Tieren Costello, Dylan Lynch and Sam Cibula (not pictured).

Costello described the group’s sound as “The Strokes playing The 1975’s songs.”

[Rothko], the quality of our music has gone down so much.” The room erupted with laughter.

Papsun was unable to join the band for the interview due to a scheduling conflict, which, the band said jokingly, is not an uncommon occurrence. “I asked Ben if he wanted to be in my band and he said yes, even though he doesn’t have time to be in a rock band,” Costello said. Lynch and Costello also fondly recalled their first practice with Papsun. “On the way to the first practice with Ben, we were walking to Skinner and Tieren was like, ‘Oh, well, I have something to tell you: Apparently this guy has only been playing drums for two weeks,’” Lynch laughed. Luckily for them, this was not the case: Papsun has been playing drums for several years, and his background in jazz lends itself to a well-cultivated, in-the-pocket playing style, accentuated with danceable grooves and energetic fills.

The group does, however, have a rather enigmatic fifth member. Filling out the lineup as the band’s “third guitarist” (he’s never actually plugged in) and de facto frontman, Sam Cibula ’20 is the comedian to the rest of the band’s straight man. Cibula’s answers throughout our interview were consistently absurd and hilarious; at one point, he joked that Costello had never played any music in his life before coming to Vassar. Later, he mentioned randomly, “BurgerFi is actually essential to the Mayla40 experience. Without BurgerFi, Mayla40 never would have existed.” His membership shows that while Costello took his dream to create a band seriously, he doesn’t have to take himself or his music too seriously.

The band draws influence from some

of the big names in indie and garage rock.

Costello revealed, “My freshman year, the only thing I wanted to do was sound like The 1975—which we don’t. But, when I came up with the idea for the band in high school, all I wanted to do was sound like the Strokes. So maybe [the band’s sound] lands somewhere in between, like, the Strokes playing The 1975’s songs.”

Mayla40 is remarkably adept at putting on a live show full of insane and hilarious antics, including Costello jumping off of chairs mid-song and counting all the way up to 40 before bursting into the fantastically hooky “Song in G.” But whether they’re telling hilarious jokes or playing incredible shows, there is one aspect of Mayla40 that makes them such a cohesive unit: camaraderie. Offstage, it’s pretty obvious that these guys really are all best friends. Despite poking fun at the other members, Costello remarked, “[I]t’s so cool to hear my songs being played by people who can play them so much better than me.” Friendship is what makes Mayla40 the mind-blowingly tight band that they are.

What will 2020 have in store for Mayla40?

Costello said the band is currently working on a 13-track debut album, titled “Vain,” which will tentatively be released next year and will be produced by members of the Brooklyn-based indie rock group Adler Hall. In the meantime, while nothing is set in stone, the band will most likely play a couple of shows organized by the Student Musician’s Union (StuMu) throughout the year. Even though the future after graduation is uncertain, Mayla40 is optimistic that they will continue their signature high-energy and always-entertaining stage shenanigans outside of Vassar.

Joseph Whang uses color to capture essence of humanity Rogers’ show, I was most interested in what color cardigan he was going to be wearing. The cardigan always changes. I loved watching him change his leather shoes to, I don’t know, sneakers or Keds. That scene just hit my brain.

And Michael Jordan—he’s kind of God for our generation. I loved the fact that I can buy his Jordans and when I played basketball, I felt like I was like Mike.

M: Is there something about old people’s clothing that draws you to them?

JW: Mr. Rogers’ clothing—at that time, he was kind of old—I think that image has led to my interest in old people. At some point I realized someone’s outfit can show their personality or their character. Since then, I started observing people walking on the street, and it was fun because everyone is different and unique. It’s like appreciating artworks in a museum. I regard them as walking artworks on the street. Old people, especially, are unique. They don’t follow trends; sometimes they wear very classic, elegant, formal [clothes]. They don’t care.

Sometimes they don’t even wear shoes when they are on the street. Moreover, old people move slowly so they give me more time to appreciate them.

M: A lot of your works are of people, as well as scenes drawn from life, candids.

Why do you draw candid pictures?

JW: I love old people’s slowness in life.

They are moving, but slowly. Their slow body movements and their facial expressions—slouching, frowns—those stand out more when they are surrounded with younger people. Younger people are fast, handsome, beautiful—but old people don’t hide their emotions, even if they are negative feelings. They are just revealed. On the other hand, younger people tend to hide

their weakness or bad feelings in public so they pretend like they are okay, but who knows if they are angry? I love watching old people just show how they are.

M: Does your interest in vintage clothing and items have any connection to your interest in old people? Do you have an affinity for aged things?

JW: I think there are some similarities between vintage clothing and old people.

Vintage clothing has existed through many years, so there should be some stories in [it]. [Vintage clothes] are part of the person that wore them because they aged together. I sense those spirits when I see vintage clothing. Sometimes when I see old people, I feel the same way because they experienced things I haven’t such as old movies

and music. I love watching old movies like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “The Godfather.” I also love old jazz like Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald. When I see old people, I feel the same emotions I felt from old movies or music. I want to feel or experience those eras I haven’t experienced through watching these people.

Though I am inspired by old culture and vintage clothing, I like depicting them as vigorous and lively using bright and playful colors. Those colors give them a sort of energy or make them more youthful. I also want to emphasize old people’s presence around us using vivid colors. Eventually, we need to pay more attention to old people because we live together, and we should remember we are going to be them someday.

Courtesy of Joseph Whang

ELDERLY continued from page 1 trendy. They seemed like outsiders, like I am, because I had just arrived to New York and I was dominated and overwhelmed— because [it] is a very big city and people are fast and fancy and handsome and beautiful.

So I felt I didn’t belong here. I identified with old people.

Meanwhile, I miss my parents since I live far away from Seoul, Korea—my hometown.

I was thinking about aging. I’m getting older and my parents also get older, so that’s how I got more interested in old people.

M: A Japanese artist once told me that he thought painting and traditional media had a human essence missing in digital painting.

A lot of your paintings are digital—do you prefer digital painting? If so, why?

JW: I have to agree with the Japanese artist. I think traditional paintings have more human essence than digital paintings because they cannot be duplicated. But I also think digital paintings also have some degree of human essence, as long as they are not created by a computer. That’s a human drawing. We just use tablets or computers as a tool, like a pencil or a brush. I’m a millennial who experienced both traditional and digital media, so growing up I learned how to sketch and draw with pencil, brush, watercolors, acrylic, oil—but I also learned how to draw and paint with tablets on the computer. I like the fact that I’m familiar with both traditional and digital ways.

M: You’re interested in costume and you put a lot of work into rendering the clothes of your subjects. When did you become interested in clothing?

JW: Since I was little I have been interested in clothing and sneakers. There were two big influences: Mr. Rogers and Michael Jordan. When I was watching television, Mr.

Joseph Whang, husband of Adjunct Artist in Music Yenne Lee, uses a study room in the Art Library as his workspace. He typically draws portraits of elderly people in New York City.

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October 31, 2019

Lana Del Rey immortalizes the dying American landscape Abby Tarwater Arts Editor

The year is 2011, and then-rising star Lana Del Rey wears nothing but blue jeans as she hugs her tattoo-covered lover in front of a giant red, white and blue flag. It’s the opening shot of the music video for her second-ever single, “Born to Die,” in which Lana laments the loneliness of America’s open roads. Del Rey, with her vintage wardrobe of leather jackets, heart-shaped sunglasses and Chuck Taylors, built her persona around a wistful fascination of 1950s/60s Americana. Her sad girl aesthetic comes from a deep longing for James Dean-esque bad boys; for tortured, cigarette-smoking Beat poets; for summer nights watching fireworks and drinking Coca-Cola. She sings in mourning of an extravagant America that is long gone—one that never really existed in the first place.

Del Rey garnered considerable controversy when she emerged onto the music scene in 2011—people criticized her dubious ragsto-riches story, her notoriously shaky SNL performance, her glamorization of codepen-

dent relationships—but her proudly patriotic aesthetic seemed to be low on the public’s list of qualms about the self-proclaimed “gangster Nancy Sinatra.” But in a 2017 interview with Pitchfork, Del Rey confessed that she no longer feels comfortable using idealized American imagery in the Trump epoch. “I’m not going to have the American flag waving while I sing ‘Born to Die,’” she revealed. “It feels weird to me now—it didn’t feel weird in 2013” (“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A Conversation with Lana Del Rey,” Pitchfork, 07.19.2017).

Yet America’s fiercest millennial advocate did not suddenly abandon all references to old Hollywood, sprawling U.S. interstates and white yachts. On her aptly named sixth album “Norman Fucking Rockwell!,” Del Rey sings of her infatuation with a California that’s burning away, with classic rock stars who tragically died of drug overdoses, with self-loathing poets who are ultimately more pompous than interesting. It’s the same larger-than-life America that Del Rey has written into existence throughout her discography—

Balancing nostalgia with biting criticism of modern America, Lana Del Rey has proven herself to be one of the essential writers of our times on “Norman Fucking Rockwell!”

only this time, this dream world is imbued with a realism and far deeper sadness than ever before. The result is the most beautiful and poignant document of modern American culture to come out of pop music this decade.

The album cover of “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” at first appears to employ classic Del Rey motifs: She stands with her arm wrapped around a wealthy-looking man on a boat, with an American flag and a coastline in the distance. But upon closer look, the beach is on fire, and Del Rey is reaching toward the viewer in desperation. It’s emblematic of the record’s devastating juxtaposition of fantasy and reality, a tension that is also evident in the album’s title; Del Rey refers to classic mid-century Americana painter Norman Rockwell in a manner that is equal parts reverent and laughably flippant. In Del Rey’s words, “It was kind of an exclamation mark: so this is the American dream, right now … This is where we’re at—Norman fucking Rockwell. We’re going to go to Mars, and Trump is president, all right” (“Lana Del Rey on Breaking Up with Big Hair—And Her Slow-Dance Lesson with Jared Leto,” Vanity Fair, 02.15.2019).

Del Rey’s newfound cynicism has infiltrated even her discussions of sex and love. The opening title track begins with the scathing line, “Goddamn, man child/You fucked me so good I almost said, ‘I love you.’” It’s one of the most instantly memorable starts to an album in recent memory, and the first of a series of Fiona Apple-esque insults that continue throughout the song. Del Rey has suddenly matured as a songwriter in the two years since her last record, 2017’s lackluster “Lust For Life”—such acerbic send-offs are a far cry from the old Lana, who was once known for calling her lovers “daddy” and who infamously declared in 2014 that feminism “is just not an interesting concept” (“Lana Del Rey Is Anyone She Wants to Be,” Fadar, 06.04.2014). Del Rey is no longer romanticizing unhealthy relationships, and the sense of newfound self-worth she debuts on “NFR!” radically enhances her talents a lyricist. This novel sophistication, skepticism and self-assuredness is also striking on the equally gorgeous second track, “Mariners Apartment Complex,” in which she confidently croons,

“I’m the board, the lightning, the thunder/ Kind of girl who’s gonna make you wonder/ Who you are and who you’ve been.”

But of course, Lana is still a romantic at heart. On the heartbreaking highlight “California,” Del Rey yearns for the classic love stories of American cinema, ones filled with life, dancing, drinking and adventure. She begs her lover to come back to California, pleading, “I’ll pick up all your Vogues and all of your Rolling Stones/Your favorite liquor off the top shelf/I’ll throw a party all night long.” Del Rey is subtly referencing iconic American singer Joni Mitchell’s 1971 song of the same name, and Lana effectively proves that she is no longer the one-dimensional caritarture and rudimentary musician of her early days—she deserves a legacy as grand as such legends.

Yet the most dazzling moment on the record comes on later cut “the greatest,” which is arguably Del Rey’s best song to date. The track begins with Del Rey’s signature vintage nostalgia (“I miss Long Beach and I miss you, babe” and “I miss the bar where the Beach Boys would go”). But this time, Del Rey reconciles retro references with her most political lyrics yet. The song’s outro is a powerfully candid encapsulation of the dire state of the modern world: “LA is in flames, it’s getting hot/Kanye West is blond and gone/‘Life on Mars’ ain’t just a song/I hope the livestream’s almost on,” she sings in a near whisper, as if she’s frantically narrating all she knows of the world as it ends before her eyes. Her beloved city is in ashes, Kanye proudly dons his MAGA hat, and the metaphor of one of her cherished ’70s rock stars is now a reality.

Does Lana have any rationale left to cling to her prior trademark idealism?

But of course, Lana is an optimist at heart, despite her lugubrious nature. She ends her magnum opus with a song titled “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have — but I have it.” The instrumentation is some of the bleakest in Lana’s discography, but when she whispers the eponymous lyric, you believe her. It’s a glimmering moment of certainty within our increasingly uncertain and desolate world, and Lana Del Rey’s singular ability to find beauty in the crumbling American landscape is what cements her as one of the most essential writers of our times.

‘Presentable Liberty’ derives power from powerlessness Rohan Dutta Columnist

Ostensibly, we play video games because they give us a degree of power and responsibility unattainable in the real world. The stakes of a plot are higher when you’re the one making the choices, rather than simply watching a character act on their own. Increased power in a game tends to make its story that much more impactful. As such, I find it exceedingly ironic that one of the most compelling artistic video games I’ve played gains its power from the lack of control it gives you.

“Presentable Liberty” is a PC game released in 2017 by the late Robert “Wertpol” Brock as part of the “Menagerie” series.

Design-wise, the game is exceedingly simple; using a conventional game engine, it all could be created in the span of a few hours.

Simply put, it’s staggeringly basic—yet that simplicity only serves to bolster the core narrative.

You start in a small room with a bed and a bug on the floor. There’s a large metal door and a window, neither of which you can go through. An analog clock on the wall ticks down the seconds—until, after a few

moments of stillness, a letter slides in from under the door.

The core mechanic of “Presentable Liberty” is its letter-receiving feature, which lets you read messages sent to you by various characters. The first one you receive is tattered and dark, from a friend named Salvadore. He asks how prison life is.

You start to piece together more information about your situation from the letters that follow. You’re in a prison run by a man called Doctor Money—this is your first clue you’re either in a dystopia or the U.S.—and you’re one of the only people safe from an epidemic decimating the population due to your solitary confinement. You’re assigned a “Happy Buddy,” Mr. Smiley, who mails you toys and small (fully functional) video games to keep you from killing yourself and, in turn, humanity’s chances of survival.

Later on, you start receiving even more letters from a nearby baker called Charlotte, who is the only other person in your town still alive. As the game unfolds, Salvadore decides to try to visit you, Mr. Smiley starts being a bit too nice and Charlotte is mailing you just to feel like she’s not alone amongst a city of corpses.

As the days progress and the letters come in, questions start to arise. How do you know Salvadore? How is Doctor Money still alive, despite the virus? Why is Mr. Smiley so intent on keeping you happy? How are all these letters getting to you in the first place?

Then, to your dismay, you begin to receive answers.

Generally, I consider a video game to be art only when it exploits the player’s narrative autonomy to send a message about how the player acts. “Presentable Liberty” is unlike any other game I have ever considered art because the primary source of its artistic credence stems from the fact that you can’t make decisions.

The same messages will be sent to your cell door no matter what, and you have no ability to reply or advise or warn your friends about the potentially grave mistakes they make. You realize the fates of nearly everyone well before they do but have no choice but to watch as they fall into them.

You gradually become supremely frustrated with the fact that you should have power, you should have control, but all you can do is read the letters of people doomed to fates

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

they don’t deserve. That or play Mr. Smiley’s games, and try to ignore the sound of new letters arriving.

“Presentable Liberty” lacks the control that exists in every other game, but that’s the entire point. Your lack of agency means the game could theoretically be a book or film, but nothing emphasizes your character’s lack of control more than its juxtaposition with the traditional PC gaming controls you use to pilot them. The claustrophobia and isolation of your character are only fully felt in a medium where large, traversable maps are expected and you’re supposed to be able to do more with characters than just read their letters. “Presentable Liberty” is beautiful—and in my opinion, unparalleled—in the way it conveys complete powerlessness through a medium built to give the audience power.

I’ll warn you now: “Presentable Liberty” is a mature game that does not have a happy ending. Nonetheless, it ends with a twist that nearly nobody could anticipate, after a beautiful buildup before it. The game is free, meaning that there’s no reason not to play this meditation on solitude, power and why we fight to stay alive.

October 31, 2019

Campus Canvas

ARTS A weekly space highlighting the creative pursuits of student-artists

Page 7 submit to misc@vassar.edu

Excuse me, What are you going to be for Halloween?

“Black Death-era plague doctor .”

— Kevin Li ’23

“Mermaid.”

— Pam Prior ’02

“Sailor.”

— Murphy Prior ’22

“ Mary-Louise Wright from season two of Big Little Lies.”

— Sam Peterson ’20

“Which night?”

— Claire Norden ’20

Clara Pitt Class of 2022 “Photography helps me process my life and the stimuli around me; it is an exercise of reflection and speculation for me as journaling is for some. It is a way to make sense of the unknown while exploring the mystical and the limits of our understanding. I am fascinated by memory and distortions of reality—specifically the crossroads of the two—and I try to explore that in my work. Recently I have mostly been doing street photography, but I enjoy experimental and abstract photography more.

I made this series of work, Secrets of the Sky, over the summer while camping with my father and brother in upstate New York. You can check out more of my work on Instagram @pittpic!”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

“Eleven from Stranger things.”

— Atticus Koizumi ’21

Francisco Andrade, Humor & Satire Yvette Hu, Photography

FEATURES

Page 8 .

October 31, 2019

Humans of Poughkeepsie: Morees Haddad Dean Kopitsky

Assistant Arts Editor

Humans of Poughkeepsie is an ongoing project seeking to highlight Poughkeepsie residents and community members. Each featured member will share a collection of stories—connected or not—that reveal the multifaceted nature of the self.

This week, Morees Haddad shares his story. Mr. Haddad own Haddad’s Middle Eastern Groceries and Restaurant on the corner of Main Street and Raymond Avenue. He and his wife have been in business since 2013.

Dean Kopitsky/The Miscellany News

I think the community in Poughkeepsie, they are well organized. They work together for the best of the community here. Maybe there is some issues that they are working faster in some aspects to improve than others, but in general it’s a beautiful community.

We are happy to be part of this community and to help as much as possible with the community.

I would love to see that they are more understanding of the concept of business in Poughkeepsie. To help small businesses, that they pay attention to their needs. I think this is very important, to work more to improve the city itself, city planning. They have to pay attention to the public transportation more.

Public transportation here is poor. Basically, if you don’t have a car, a lot of people they can’t move, and they walk miles because there is no public transportation. They walk miles just to get to the clothing store, where they work. Some for like 10 miles, some people it takes them two hours to get there.

That’s unfair I think. They can’t afford to buy a car. Even if they can afford to buy a car they don’t have enough money to maintain the car. And with the gas prices, this is one is also a killer. I think the City of Poughkeepsie or the Town of Poughkeepsie, they have to pay attention to the public transportation somehow. When you compare it to any place in Europe, in Europe you don’t need a car to move. There is everything: buses, electric buses everywhere....Basically you don’t need to buy a car…

I like to be part of this improvement. As a small business owner to do my best to contribute to the city. To add something different, to diversity. New York is well known that the diversity is high. That was the main thing why we opened the store, to bring this kind of taste to American homes. I think it’s a beautiful city and we need all to contribute to improve it somehow.

I had a business before. It’s retail, but different. This is a specialty business. I’m focusing on Middle Eastern food. Grocery or food. I used to have a retail store, like a regular grocery store.

I had a 7-Eleven franchise, totally different than what I do now.

We do the best thing for the community.

When we moved to Poughkeepsie we were looking to supply our home with our Middle Eastern product, and unfortunately we couldn’t find any place [in Poughkeepsie], so we had to travel either to Yonkers or to Paterson, NJ, like an hour and a half driving. So we decided to set up our own place. Then this place became available and we decided to go through with it. To serve the community, the Arabic community, the Middle Eastern community, and to bring the taste to our community.

After 9/11 I was the most scared. It almost a year and a half after I came over here. And I felt that this is the most disastrous thing that will ever happen, and I was really pretty scared. Not to myself but in general. You know, I had just moved here. I had a background [of] what America is, how powerful is America.

There is a German saying, “If you see the monster, don’t go to him, don’t go to the monster.” I don’t emphasize that America is a monster, but America is a powerful country. And attacking a powerful country, this is by itself a disaster, and I was scared about all the region and my family, my country, back home. At the same time I felt so horrified by the action itself, when a lot of people lost their lives. That was a huge impact on me. To look at it on the TV how it happened, that made me really scared.

Scared for everybody. I was scared for people who lived in the area, for people that lived in New York especially. I was scared for the aftermath. I was living in Yonkers, 45 minutes from that.

This was for all Americans, overnight it changed. Overnight. Became a different place.

Well, our childhoods are so different. And when I see the children now, they live in America, I just get so happy for them, you know, I wasn’t that privileged to think about...I don’t know. Honestly I don’t know. I would say I would focus more on my education, and I would focus more to listen to my parents. This is something you just realize after you grow up.

I think I tell my kids a story about what’s the difference and how they are lucky to be born and raised in this free country.

And I’m comparing what we had to what they have, and let them compare it to themselves, see the difference.

Quantum computers may redefine encryption, medicine COMPUTERS continued

from page 1 data can be computed in a different, faster way; comparing quantum computing to traditional computing is like comparing a TI-84 Inspire calculator to an abacus. In theory, a quantum computer could outperform a traditional computer by up to several degrees of magnitude. Given the degree to which the world has changed due to the advent of traditional computers, powerful quantum computers would undoubtedly spell the dawn of a new age.

Quantum supremacy is a milestone in which a quantum computer overtakes traditional computing to the extent that it performs a task traditional computers could not do in a reasonable amount of time. As such, reaching quantum supremacy means that the quantum computer in question would outperform every traditional computer in existence, ushering in a world of even faster supercomputers. Quantum computers have existed for decades, but have still not been able to reach quantum supremacy. At least, not until now.

Google’s study claims that their quantum computer, Sycamore, performed a calculation in 200 seconds that would take IBM’s Summit, the world’s largest traditional computer, approximately 10,000 years (The Verge, “Google may have just ushered in an era of ‘quantum supremacy,’” 09.23.2019).

In other words, Google claims to have achieved quantum supremacy, and to have

achieved it by a wide margin. IBM has disputed the study, claiming that Summit is faster and Sycamore is slower than Google claims (IBM Research Blog, “On ‘Quantum Supremacy,’” 10.21.2019). While the veracity of the study has yet to be determined, endorsement from Google and Nature, two highly respected organizations, lends much credibility. However, even if the claim to quantum supremacy is false, the power exhibited by Sycamore demonstrates that quantum computers are at least very close to overtaking traditional computers and achieving supremacy.

When quantum supremacy is reached, a revolution will begin. With an unprecedented amount of computing power, trillions of data points could be analyzed to create algorithms of unique complexity and discover patterns that could revolutionize how we think of the world. Complex issues such as the causes and impacts of climate change would not necessarily be solved, but could very feasibly be understood to a new degree by analyzing the data to a level that was previously infeasible. Another example is drug development. Creating drugs requires the observation of thousands of pairings of molecules, which would become much faster and thus much more viable with supreme quantum machines.

In a world where drug development could advance at a record-breaking speed, medicine would progress to a degree that would

make our current triumphs pale in comparison.

However, power in any form can be used for both good and evil purposes, and so more informatic power could also spell disaster. Anyone’s location, habits, identity and more could theoretically be derived in a very short amount of time given sufficient information. Consequently, countries with high amounts of civilian surveillance would be able to easily crack down on dissidents and thereby maintain their regimes.

Drugs of more sinister capabilities could be formed just as easily as those of medicinal purposes, so engineering the next pandemic would theoretically be significantly easier.

Additionally, the power afforded by quantum supremacy means that data security is fundamentally at risk. Modern encryption works by making “cracking” an entry code a longer process than any one hacker would have time for. However, a computer that is fast enough to circumvent time constraints would invalidate current security measures.

As of now, quantum computers are too slow for this, but Google’s claim that quantum computing speed will increase at a “double exponential” rate (The Verge) makes it very likely that quantum computers with sufficient power could exist in the future.

Even if quantum computing were only used to break modern encryption, it would still render the protections of valuable

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

government, corporate and personal information useless, as well as the protections for every weapons system connected to a computer on the planet. Thus, as long as someone with a supreme quantum computer has access to anything from an email account to a nuclear missile launch system, they could very easily hack the technological defenses and gain total control. Cryptographers are currently hard at work, and hopefully post-quantum cryptography will create solutions to encrypt the most dangerous tools and information in a way that a quantum computer could not crack. However, until post-quantum cryptography has a breakthrough, the world is vulnerable.

It is important to note that all these potential catastrophes are merely possibilities, and the likelihood of such events happening is slim. Under the assumption that quantum supremacy has been achieved, all that can be claimed for certain is that the world is on the cusp of a new technological age. Quantum computers are very unlikely to make it into the hands of the average consumer, at least for many years to come.

However, their usage by research labs and governments will undoubtedly shape our future.

Until the future arrives, the nature of this technological revolution is entirely unpredictable. For now, all that can be done is to wait and see what comes of Google’s breakthrough.

October 31, 2019

FEATURES

Page 9

Student colors in picture of dyslexia, resists social stigma Emma Koolpe

Guest Contributor

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Courtesy of Vanessa via Flickr

hen I was younger I loved to read those “I Spy” books. Each page had a puzzle to solve, requiring a careful eye to uncover different objects scattered in the photos. For me, seeing the picture and breaking it up is easy. I can see the big picture, then break it into smaller pictures so I can comprehend it all. I believe it is very similar to how most people read, especially when they get to a word they don’t know. They see the word, then break it up into smaller pieces, then sound it out. It’s easy for them to visualize with words because they have verbal thoughts. Now imagine trying to break up a word when you don’t have verbal thoughts; when you think in pictures, not letters.

How do you explain to someone who is not dyslexic what dyslexia is like? You have to use words—something a dyslexic already struggles with—to explain how you face difficulties with language. How does someone having an asthma attack explain how it’s hard to breathe?

One of the clinical definitions of dyslexia is “a neurological learning disability” (International Dyslexia Association, “How to Explain Dyslexia to People you Meet,” 2016). Dyslexics process information differently. It takes a little longer to process new information and figure out how to use it. Non-dyslexics have verbal thoughts (thinking in words). When one has dyslexia, they think in pictures. For example, when comprehending a reading, a mental picture comes to mind, resulting in skipped-over words or added words that magically appear. The next word in that sentence might be “puppy,” but a dyslexic could read “dog.” They see a fully grown, small dog

in their minds, meaning “puppy” to them, even though to others it doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing. The process is quick, firing off in the subconscious mind, leaving dyslexics unaware of it happening (DavisDyslexia, “Dyslexia, The Big Picture,” 2001).

I am dyslexic. I am not ashamed of this fact. I am proud to be dyslexic. I don’t see it as a disability. It is who I am. Most of the time people don’t notice that I am dyslexic. Most of the time I don’t feel dyslexic. Being dyslexic is knowing it takes you three hours to read a page and by the time you’re done reading it, you go back to reread it because you didn’t even comprehend it. You know how to deal with this on your own. You just give yourself more time to do the reading. You also know that it makes you a harder worker, and you are proud of this fact.

People make you feel dyslexic and they make you feel like it is a disability. Feeling dyslexic is seeing people look at you like you are dumb, and not understanding that you don’t know how to spell or read the word “information” (yes, I did have to use spell check there) because sounding words out is not something that comes easily to you. You struggle with making the connection between the sound a word makes and the letters associated with it. Yes, letters move around inside words, and yes, your eyes skip lines, but that is not the entire picture. Others don’t understand their simple confused look when you ask “what does ‘vernacular’ mean?” or “how do you spell intelligence?” only makes you feel embarrassed and dumb.

I recently asked my best friend from high school if she was experiencing this same issue of feeling dyslexic at her college. Luckily for both of us, our professors are pretty un-

In “I Spy” books, the big picture can be divided into many smaller images in order to solve the puzzle. Non-dyslexic people can apply this strategy to make sense of unfamiliar strings of letters, but dyslexic people process words in a different way. derstanding about our circumstances when it comes to words. They should be. Teachers are there to help you with something you don’t understand. Yet in our experiences, some did not understand that it is really hard for us to spell correctly or structure a paper linearly. Classmates have judged her, too.

Recently, she asked one of her classmates how to divide a pound in half. The classmate laughed at her and replied, “You don’t know how to split a pound?” She told me that she ignores these comments when they come from kids our age—they just don’t get it.

Learning in a school where so many people express their intelligence through their speech, I am in a constant battle with the large words people say and defining the words in the context of a conversation, then feeling stupid when I make an argument us-

ing smaller words that I’m actually capable of voicing. You’ve probably experienced that feeling of seeing what you want to say in your head, but not having the words to express it.

Now imagine experiencing this every day in almost every conversation you have. Even now as I am writing this article, I can’t fully voice what I am trying to say. I see it in my head, and I feel it in my body, but I don’t have the words to express it.

When my best friend and I communicate, we don’t use descriptions to fully express what we are trying to say. Just saying “that thing” and using a hand motion to show the shape of it is enough for both of us to understand the object we are talking about. Because we both think in pictures, we are able to communicate with fewer words. When we talk, we don’t feel dyslexic, we just are.

Displaced students study, paint in New Americans Program NEW AMERICANS continued from page 1 said emphatically when I ask what that responsibility looks like. “To stay true to the educational mission of the school—prepare students to respond to displacement...to engage with local and global communities, provide the sort of educational opportunities in order to fulfill that mission.”

In 2016, Vassar came together with Bard, Bennington, Sarah Lawrence College and the New School to form the Consortium on Forced Migration Displacement and Education (CFMDE). Höhn was tasked with applying for grant money, and Brill-Carlat again served as the student liaison for VRS. Höhn admits it was an arduous process: “It’s a big undertaking to write a grant application, to get everyone on board, to figure out a budget. We did workshops, six or seven with the Consortium to think about what a curriculum would look like, and how we would we share the resources between our colleges.”

In 2018, the Consortium was awarded a $2.5

million dollar grant from the Mellon Fund, which broadly aims to strengthen the humanities, arts, higher education and cultural heritage, to continue their work.

One investment from the grant will come to fruition soon. The Consortium worked with the Scholar Rescue Fund to bring a microbiologist from Nigeria, whose name Höhn could not disclose due to privacy concerns. Vassar will provide the scientist with resources to conduct her research and teach, but the visiting scholar piece of the Consortium will allow her to travel between the Consortium schools.

Another function of the grant is to address the confluence of displacement and mental health, which Brill-Carlat describes as “an issue that does not scale up.” He emphasizes that the nature of displaced communities changes how therapy is traditionally delivered: “[I]t cannot be a prototypical one patient, one doctor situation.” Rather, psychologists going to work with displaced com-

Courtesy of Qiwen Tan

A cohort of 18 high school students—all former refugees—painted this colorful mural over the summer as the culmination of the New Americans Program. With the aim of acclimating to college life, they also took classes and interacted with student counselors.

munities need to have an anthropological and historical understanding of with whom they are working.

“If you want to go out into the world you have to be culturally sensitive and trained and understand that other cultures function differently…that learning can happen in graduate school…it has to happen earlier,” explained Höhn.

Höhn and Brill-Carlat are currently organizing the Global Displacement and Mental Health Conference, which Vassar will host from Nov. 8 to Nov. 9. “We’re bringing together some of the leading academics in mental health and humanities and social sciences, practitioners, activists and funders,” Brill-Carlat said about the conference’s significance. Some of the most important organizations working with displaced peoples will be there, including the International Rescue Committee and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The latest Vassar program to come out of the Mellon Fund money is the New Americans Program. Just after campus emptied out and the class of 2019 graduated, 18 high school students, all former refugees living in Albany, NY, came to Vassar. The program was headed by Höhn and Brill-Carlat, alongside a team of Vassar faculty and student-counselors. For two weeks in the summer student participants lived, worked, created and studied on campus. They received tutoring and took classes taught by Vassar professors.

Erin Clark ’20 gushed about her experience as a student counselor in the program over email: “I had so many incredible conversations with the students. We talked about hopes and dreams for our futures…we talked about high school … and what we would do to change the world.” The diversity in the

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

program garnered rich experiences for the students and counselors. “[They] talked to us and to each other about language, about what they missed home, friends, fresh fruit, kind neighbors, and how they spent their time,” said Clark.

The capstone of the New Americans Program was to paint a bright new mural on the deep red broadside of the barn at the Vassar Farm and Ecological preserve. Joe Winswell ’20, also a student counselor, reflected on the poignant moment of painting the barn with the students. “It was a lot of work in the hot sun…but we came out with a product that I think everybody kind of felt like they contributed to. They were able to share something about themselves through that. I think it was meaningful to them to be able to express themselves in that way.”

The ultimate goal of the New Americans Program is to prepare displaced students to attend college, maybe one like Vassar, as Höhn wishes. But that it is a lofty goal, not only considering the beyond difficult circumstances of the students, but also of the U.S. government’s position on admitting refugees into the country. In 2016, VRS had worked for months to bring Syrian, Iraqi and Congolese refugees to Poughkeepsie. They raised money, collected furniture and finally got notice that 80 families were coming, and imminently.

Then came Donald Trump’s halt on immigration from Muslim majority countries.

Ultimately, only two of the families made it to Poughkeepsie. As the world chills to the needs of displaced people, it is heartwarming that people like Höhn and Brill-Carlat and the institutions in the Consortium are taking action, one conference, refugee scholar and mural at a time.

HUMOR & SATIRE

Page 10

October 31, 2019

Momus, Goddess of Satire, gives some HOROSCOPES spooky, fun-sized advice for Halloween Madi Donat

By Ivanna Guerra (Speaker for the Goddess)

Not a Vampire

ARIES | March 21 | April 19

You’re chiller than usual right now, which is working for you. Stay calm in a crisis instead of being reckless.

Remember: safety in numbers. If you’re gonna summon anything, do it with a friend.

TAURUS | April 20 | May 20

You’re finally starting to settle into #SpookySzn. It’s time to face your deepest fears, like demonic possession, or never finding someone to share true intimacy with! Hooray!

GEMINI | May 21 | June 20

Mercury is in retrograde, so you may be in a funk. Try to explain exactly what you’re feeling—discomfort, frustration, pain, the fear of existence, sheer terror, nothing at all…

The recent shift into Scorpio season has you feeling introverted. Take a day to unwind in your room. It’s safer there, anyway. The walls do a decent job of blocking out the screams.

LEO | July 23 | August 22 Talk to people about their interests.

Have they watched Fleabag? You have.

Your tastes are superior. You are so cool.

Soon, everyone will be like you. So cool. So unbearably cool.

VIRGO | August 23 | September 22

Try yoga to shed stress. Take deep breaths during the guided meditation.

Your limbs are filled with sand. There’s honey running up your body. And bees too now.

So honey was a bad idea.

LIBRA | September 23 | October 22

You’re doing alright, but your emotions are out of whack. Did you know that there are little goblins in your brain who are eating your serotonin? Not really, but it’s nice to have someone to blame.

ear Mom,

I forgot this week is Halloween and I have no idea what to wear and Vassar students go hard on Halloweekend!

What should I do? I need three different costumes all before this weekend.

Sincerely, Spooky Procrastinator Dear Spooky, I know you are probably guilt-ridden already, but what were you thinking?

One does not simply “dress up” for Halloween at Vassar. Take the many drama majors that rehearse for months to embody their Halloween costumes.

I guess I can help you, but do not expect to win the Big Night In Halloween contest.

For the first costume, I suggest you cut two arm holes in a trash bag, because that is what your costume is when you wait until the last minute for a Halloween costume: trash.

Then I guess you have to go the slutty route for your second costume. Be basic and buy yourself some nice undies and animal ears. Cady from “Mean Girls” best explained it when she said,

“Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.” Whatever your gender, no one will judge you for looking slutty.

Your real concern is about them judging you for going the basic route.

And finally, if you are going for a third costume, I suggest you pick up a black marker and write your last essay in its entirety on one of your perfect white shirts. I can tell from your poor planning that you are not exactly on top of your stuff, so I bet you procrastinated on your last assignment just like you procrastinated on the most important holiday of the year. Your stressed out, work avoidance vibes probably got sublimated into the text of that essay, so I think this costume will scare everyone on campus, even your poor professor who had to read the essay in the first place.

Best of luck. I hope you learned your lesson and start planning your Halloween costumes on the Monday before Halloweekend like the rest of us!

Sincerely, Mom, who is totally not writing this an hour before I have to turn it into the Misc.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

CANCER | June 21 | July 22

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The Goddess Momus, now in full color, is here to brighten up the lives of students.

Vassar Bitch Chronicles Emily Lesorogol ’22

SCORPIO | October 23 | November 21

You can’t just say “I’m realizing things” and then refuse to tell anybody what those things are. Try to open up more. No, wait, not like that.

Let’s get you sewn up.

SAGITTARIUS

November 22 | December 21 Go on a nature walk. Ignore anything that’s out of place. It’s lovely out. It’s better not to explore things you can’t understand. Venture only as far as you are willing, and barely that far.

CAPRICORN

December 22 | January 19 You’re feeling lucky this week. Take a risk: Buy a different cereal brand. Tell your “platonic” business partner that you have “feelings” for them. Get on a government watchlist. Hide the body.

AQUARIUS

January 20 | February 18 Avoid STEM majors this week. They know too much about the universe to be on your side. If you see one, back away slowly; make sure there are witnesses around. If not, who knows what they’ll do.

PISCES | February 19 | March 20 It’s finally Hozier season! What’s sweeter than confessing your love to someone you just met and decomposing in the woods with them? It’s gross, too, but that’s just how love is sometimes.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

October 31, 2019

HUMOR & SATIRE

Page 11

Breaking News

From the desk of Francisco Andrade, Humor & Satire Editor

Already exhausted students desperately try to astral project to a realm where October Break isn’t yet over Misc hierarchy revealed; Humor Editor stoned to death Francisco Andrade

Soon-to-Be Ex-Editor

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ear readers, as October break fades away with the leaves, and as school begins to kick back up, I bring forth great news: I was voted the Humor Editor for the Miscellany! Fuck yes!

I know you’re probably thinking, “Literally no one cares dude, nobody reads this section sober anyway.” And to that I say, “Sorry, I couldn’t hear what you said over the sound of patting myself on the back and chugging a glass of champagne, but I am sure it was all great and thank you for your kind words.” However, I don’t bring you this solid humble brag just to brag humbly, but also I believe this long-overdue promotion suggests a great opportunity to explain to our faithful readers exactly how the Misc actually works.

Let’s take an inner look at how this sausage is made, and how the various positions make this beautiful obsolete format we call “news” function.

The Miscellany is over a century old, and as is the case with any old white institution, it is shrouded in mystery (and usually Rockefeller money. Not this time, I hope?). So as a service to my Vas-

sar community, and in an attempt to drag the newspaper staff whose company I enjoy so much, I will be breaking down many positions that comprise every cog in the paper wheel.

Disclaimer: I won’t be talking about sections, simply positions. Any similarities to any actual people in any positions is purely coincidental. Or maybe it isn’t and I am calling you out. You know who you are. Throw hands. Anywho! Let’s jump right in—in no particular order.

Editors: These people are the workhorses of the Misc. They work night and day to ensure all their information is correct and then properly formatted on their section pages. Granted, the Senior Editors and Copy Staffers handle most of the grammar, then design ensures it is on the page properly and then the Editor-In-Chief looks it over and makes sure it is all up to standard. But the editors do stuff too! We often talk about how much stuff we have to do. Cause it’s a lot. I swear.

Assistant Editors: They are all biding their time for when the editor messes up so they may replace them. They want the glory of that editor tag and the assistant prefacing it simply mocks them with its

presence. Watch out editors—they are coming for us.

Copy Staffers: They are the machines that keep all the grammar and spelling tidy and clean at The Miscellany News.

They must read every story and ensure that it’s legible, leading them to often ask themselves how any of us managed to pass a first-year writing seminar. You may think they get some sick joy out of telling people they are wrong and insisting that writer’s sentences lack punctuation…you’re right.

Photographers: Misc photographers all have Instagram pages that feature pictures of random dogs. It is a truly wholesome community of camera people who capture terrible pictures of you when you least expect it, and just to spite you.

Social Media Editor: Frankly the smartest person walking the campus at any point in time is the Social Media Editor. The brains required to convince an entire organization to let you browse Instagram and Facebook at any given point for “research” and then get a position on that basis? 300 IQ level play.

Senior Editors: Okay technically we have two but I am not so sure. They are only ever seen together and speak sole-

ly in rhyming riddles. One head only tells lies and the other one only speaks the truth. Their existence is so the Editor-in-Chief does not grow too powerful and lay waste to our human domain.

Editor-in-Chief: The head honcho of the paper! They hold all the cards! But not really. They have to show everyone the cards and cannot play said cards without approval of everyone else. They also lack any semblance of a social life.

They slowly have become one with the Misc office at this point. Basically J. Jonah Jameson if, instead of pictures of Spiderman, he demanded three goddamn minutes of free time.

Contributing Editors: Geniuses. The people who looked at how much time commitment being a Senior Editor or Editor-in-Chief were and said “Fuck that, I will take a position that sounds just as good and requires none of the work. K thx bby.”

That’s all for this behind the scenes look at the Misc—as I have apparently been fired? I can’t imagine why. Until next time. Or maybe not. And remember, next time you see a Misc staffer around campus, stay away from them; they are likely grumpy and need a nap.

Miracle on 124 Raymond Ave: Fire alarm actually works Rohan Dutta

SoundCloud Rapper

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Vassar would never let students go through preventable stress.

Fire alarms greatly disrupt the flow of life. They can put people in the cold, and there are enough illnesses circulating as it is. They prompt people to sprint out of their rooms without bothering to bring their valuables or lock their doors, and nobody needs more crime alert emails. Depending on when they occur, fire alarms can wake people up during nights when they need sleep more than anything else.

Worst of all, too many false alarms would inspire students to become disillusioned

with and subsequently ignore what could end up being dire warnings that could save their lives when actual tragedy strikes. As such, it’s essential that fire alarms are only activated when there are actual threats to safety.

Luckily, Vassar College consistently warns of fires only when there are legitimate fire hazards. The everyday heroes of VC never waste the time of its student body with late-hour alarms that they can never actually explain. They’ve ensured this by awarding a $5 Deece gift card to anyone who catches the College in the act.

Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

idnight, Noyes, mid-October. Some students lay in their beds, either asleep or scrolling through memes after promising themselves they’d go to sleep 30 minutes ago. Others are chatting, or desperately working through assignments they forgot were due tomorrow, whilst in a caffeine- and/or adderall-induced frenzy.

All in all, this is a normal Thursday night at Vassar.

Unfortunately for Noyes residents, the comforts of regular routines are short-lived.

Blaring, angry alarms throb through the curving corridors. Flashing white lights illuminate the faces of shocked and sleep-deprived faces. At first, nobody knows what to do. Arising from hazes of sleep, studying, or “studying,” initial guesses for where the sound is coming from range from a couple rooms down to a very loud truck backing up outside. After a few seconds, however, the confusion fades and fear sets in. A sophomore in the bathroom who treated himself to Chipotle curses his luck. Noyes is awake—and it knows it’s “on fire.”

Everyone moves at once. Given the stellar track record Vassar’s fire alarms have for alerting students of actual fires, nobody is tempted to risk it and go back to sleep.

Students pour out of the building into the cold of the night, shivering and panicking.

Most have forgotten to grab their coats or put on proper pants in the hurry, and so they grimace and try to bear the weather.

Most first-years left their Juuls inside. The students aren’t bothered by it, though— they know that the school would never

send them out into the cold like this unless they were in true mortal danger.

As the alarms continue to blare into the void of night, all the Noyesians can do is wait. Every SoundCloud rapper in the bunch makes a bad joke about their mixtape being played. Their combined six followers—all of whom are close friends—make it clear that nobody wants to play their mixtapes.

People attempt to make small talk with old hookups, but quickly give up in favor of trying to capture their home burning down for their Snapchat stories. The building appears completely unscorched, but nobody is annoyed, as they know must have narrowly avoided a fiery death.

After what seems like an eternity, a firefighter emerges from Noyes. He holds the door open, and beckons everyone back in.

As the masses return into the building, the authorities are quick to notify them of the issue. A junior broke their lighter, and so attempted to microwave three kilograms of weed. In a burst of ingenuity, the firemen deployed the coldest item they had— my ex’s heart—and doused the flames. No physical damage was sustained, but the firefighters expressed concern for my love life.

The students thank the authorities for the information, but their thanks are shrugged off with gruff, mumbled statements like “It’s just part of the job.” After all, nobody would ever leave students in the dark and freezing cold at midnight without explaining what had happened. That way, the students don’t need to fear electrical faults or anything else outside of their control, and

The image above is what every student in Noyes saw in their minds as they stood in the frigid outdoors, hoping for their inferno to end. There were no actual flames, but the drama was real.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

OPINIONS

Page 12

Quite Frankly Frankie Knuckles

Senior Editor Quality Advice-Giver

Dear Frankie, How strange is it at this age range (18-22) to date someone six years older than you?

At what age gap does it get ~weird~ ?

Sincerely, Yearning Youth Dear Yearning Youth,

Q

Best Wishes, Frankie P.S. But then again, if you have to ask, it might be weird.

Under this Congress, revolution is needed Abram Gregory

Assistant Opinions Editor

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the unlanded. That is, the way modern U.S. election strategy has developed, low-population swing states such as New Hampshire and low-population density states like Nevada have garnered the attention of presidential candidates. All of this is just the cherry on top of the terrific sundae that the Electoral College enables someone to be elected without being elected by the majority of the country’s population. Moreover, despite popular votes resulting in Democrats regaining control of the House of Representatives, the House has yet to launch an easy impeachment vote, not to mention their choosing to let reckless Republicans off the hook when it comes to repeatedly threatening individual and national safety.

Since lawless conservatives in Congress have escalated the situation, the liberals controlling the House of Representatives must rise to the occasion. On Oct. 23, House Republicans blatantly violated security protocols by improperly barging in on a closeddoor impeachment deposition being held in a chamber reserved for sensitive intelligence operations. Director of the National Security Program at Third Way Mieke Eoyang stressed the gravity of the group infraction first in a Twitter thread, then in a CNN oped. Eoyang makes clear, “The SCIF for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence [the very chamber that select Republican congresspeople illicitly entered] is one of the most sensitive in the nation” (CNN, “For any national security professional, GOP stunt is a serious breach” 10.24.2019).

That’s right, as Vivian Kane of online publication The Mary Sue underscores, “This may sound small, but it’s a HUGE violation, and [Republicans are] just flaunting that violation by actively tweeting it” (The Mary Sue, “House Republicans Are Making Fools of Themselves by Storming a Deposition to Derail Impeachment,” 10.23.2019). I’ll echo the same question Kane asks in a separate article: Why haven’t these congresspeople been arrested? Why are the Democrats in the House dragging their feet impeaching the biggest-ever threat to American sovereignty?

At this point, I am so exasperated by officials repeatedly blatantly breaking rules that I find myself having to ask these questions over and over again.

The answer is the aforementioned weakness brought on by the desire to cling to power, to collect a paycheck and, as establishment liberals, to usher in just enough change so as to appear progressive. These people support a status quo that keeps the same politicians in power while endlessly profiteering. It is this spineless impulse that may very well had led the DNC to betray Bernie Sanders in 2016, and the same impulse

that delayed the opening of the impeachment inquiry for so long. After taking into account the long history of bureaucrats and politicians disregarding the wants and needs of the public that elected them, it becomes more and more clear that any lowercase “r” republican impulse in the U.S. is quickly fading out of fashion. Meanwhile, theocratic oligarchy and kleptocracy find it less and less necessary to veil themselves.

Conservatives and reactionaries often look nostalgically on the good ol’ days of the United States’ Founding Fathers as a means of escapism, carefully disguised as a search for guidance. You know, the good ol’ days when white folk owned and enslaved Black people, when only rich white men could vote and when women were seen and not heard.

Some students would suggest that we need a new Founding Father to right the ship: “Our country’s founding fathers are beacons of leadership in the dark and murky waters of our current politics. The founding of a country with unprecedented ideas of liberty only happened as a result of great men deliberating fundamental values and eternal truths, in an effort to promote the common good” (Vassar Political Review, “America needs a statesman,” 10.22.2019). Not only is the concept of statesmanship inherently patriarchal, but the belief in a colonial Santa Claus is adorable. America does not need to romanticize and remain attached to a problematic past as a means of turning our eyes from the present. Those who obsess over statesmen have been ignoring leaders right in front of them (not to mention stateswomen right in front of them).

As one can see, conservatives pray to altars dedicated to 18th-century plantation owners. On the other side of the aisle, moderate Democrats in government are taking their sweet time enacting change, wary of being too progressive to challenge the establishment providing them with power.

However, we do not need more politicians that can be romanticized by historians and conservatives generations from now, as my conservative counterparts in student media might suggest. Moreover, we cannot afford to delay justice any longer, as the House’s inaction forces us to do. The authorities need to take out the trash and arrest those breaking federal laws by entering SCIFs and bragging about it. We need to impeach the president, and not when it’s just convenient for establishment Democrats attempting to cling to power. We need to abolish the Electoral College and re-enfranchise those whose votes have been rendered meaningless by de-democratizing actions, both legal and illegal.

We need political revolution to replace the lunacy of the Trump administration, and we need this revolution now.

onald Trump is inept, to understate.

But we’ve dealt with Republican idiots in the past, presumably the same Republican idiots that conservatives put in office just so that they could commit war crimes, all in the name of God and country.

No, this is different—Trump is a threat to our national security, as is becoming more apparent as more information comes out.

Disastrous and daunting though this Idiocracy may be, we are not simply threatened by just an openly theocratic Attorney General or a treasonous president.

The problem is not merely that federal law and the Republican Party have become antithetical. The problem is also that the House of Representatives has become toothless and is repeatedly failing to punish lawbreakers and maintain law and order.

First and foremost, Trump should have been removed from office the moment he unsuccessfully tried to fire Robert Mueller, and subsequently ordered his staff to create a false record that such an attempt had not happened. This was confirmed during Mueller’s July testimony following the full release of the Mueller Report, another point at which impeachment proceedings probably should have begun immediately and without scruple. Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waited until September to informally announce such a measure—and it may very well be too late. Not only are we closing in on Trump’s hopeful last year in office, but any formal measures will now have to play second fiddle to winter holidays and a drumline of congressional recesses. Despite the House already having the amount of votes necessary to impeach Trump and pass the process to the Senate, it’s taken the House this long just to vote to make the proceedings official (CNN, “Democrats moving toward next phase of impeachment inquiry with key vote,” 10.28.2019).

The only reason that I even waste ink on the ugly beauty of bureaucracy is because impeachment is by far the best legal approach to attack the president. Outside the lines of a constitutional takedown, POTUS is largely untouchable while in office.

However, Trump et al. have escalated their rhetoric to include suggesting the arrest of certain political opponents, not to mention openly encouraging mass violence and insurrection. This goes on even while the career congresspersons too spineless to achieve political progress bother with the language of votes and investigation. Beyond the gates of government, this rhetoric is best exemplified in the El Paso shooting, the suspect of which authored a manifesto decrying a “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” something which has been described as “[R]hetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from what Trump has said on Twitter and during campaign rallies.” (Vanity Fair, “’The President of the United States Says it’s Okay’: The Rise of the Trump Defense,” 09.08.2019).

In the context of general unease and discontent rising in society, philosopher and social theorist Slavoj Žižek writes, “The key question now is: who will articulate this discontent? Will it be left to nationalist populists to exploit? Therein resides the big task for the Left” (Verso, “Living in the End Times,” 2010).

The answer may be disheartening. Clearly, the voice of the individual voter has declined in its strength with Trump’s leveraging of the Electoral College, despite receiving several million fewer popular votes than his opponent. This effectively underscores that prop- Republican Congressman Alex Mooney (front) and over 30 of his colleagues stormed a erty ownership still gives a select minority Sensitive Compartment Information Facility. By bringing their phones into the SCIF, these a larger voice in democratic processes than Republicans jeopardized national security. Democrats have done nothing in response.

Courtesy of @Nedprice via Twitter

uite frankly, I don’t think there’s, like, a single quantitative answer here. Some people use the following formula: To find out the youngest age it’s okay for your partner to be, take half your age and add seven.

So to get the oldest age for your partner, you’d do the inverse: Subtract seven from your age and double it. For a 22-year-old, the oldest socially acceptable partner would be 30 years old. But I don’t think that’s the whole story.

Let’s interrogate why age gaps make people uncomfortable. It’s less math, more relationship power dynamics.

In any social interaction, particularly an intimate one, everyone involved comes to the interaction with certain experiences and qualities that give them more or less power in the situation. One of these is obviously age. It’s socially “~weird~” to date someone who’s a lot older than you because there’s a perception, if not reality, that your partner could take advantage of the inexperience of your youthful state, or that your partner is in some way immature themselves. This creates an unbalanced power dynamic, and such imbalances can lead relationships toward toxicity.

Here’s where I add that consensual power dynamic play can absolutely be part of a healthy relationship. However, a large age gap can create a power imbalance that traverses all aspects of your relationship, and not just in enjoyable ways. Perhaps even unconsciously, the older partner might start to treat the younger partner as inferior or less intelligent because of their age.

Likewise, the younger partner can start to think that their older partner just can’t understand what it’s like to be a college student.

That brings us to the other reason why age gaps are frowned upon: 18-year-olds just tend to be in different life situations than 26-year-olds. A college campus, with its pressing academic requirements and social peculiarities, is alienated from the typical life trajectory of a 26-year-old person. However, it’s entirely possible that a 26-year-old is in a comparable life situation to you, if they’re still in school or otherwise moving in the same circles as you, which eliminates this additional distance between your experiences. It’s also noteworthy that relationships can thrive between people who are in different positions from each other, and this difference isn’t a death sentence for any relationship.

When it comes to relationships, there really aren’t set rules that do much better than a Magic 8 Ball. Use your discernment and ask people you trust about your particular circumstances.

October 31, 2019

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

October 31, 2019

OPINIONS

Page 13

Drawing and watercolors: not for money, but for me Alice Woo

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Guest Columnist

reply: Produce what? Pages of a sketchbook that I may later look and cringe at? I am proposing something that goes precisely against the utilitarian views of capitalism: Sit with the discomfort of producing absolute garbage for no reason but to dwell in your inability to do a skill! Perhaps you will improve the skill over time—which comes naturally with practice—but if that’s your goal from the start, then you will find it ten times harder to get started. Yes, I believe there will be a reward for your effort.

But that reward does not come with the product, or from monetizing a talent. The reward comes with the process, and the more time you spend just existing in the world without any direct goal, the more time you have to actually enjoy yourself. I know it’s hard to push past the feelings instilled in us by our capitalist overlords, by years of schooling, by our unwillingness to sacrifice our overachieving-Vassar-student identities—but it’s possible, and it’s wonderful.

“My work is loving the world,” writes Vassar alum Mary Oliver in her poem “The Messenger,” “which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished...which is mostly rejoicing...which is gratitude.”

(Mary Oliver, “Thirst: Poems,” 2007). If we cannot completely do away with the con-

cept of work and production, let’s redefine it. The work of attempting things just for kicks is equally important to me as any work for a grade. I will draw poorly, I will dance awkwardly, I will run slowly and I will write honestly in pursuit of nothing other than valuing life, without any pressure to be great.

Courtesy of Alice Woo

mid the stress of impending assignments and the ever-building pressure to apply for jobs, I found some time to do things this October break that I definitely would not put on my résumé: drawing and watercoloring. If you’re reading this, I’m already proud of you for making time to enjoy something that doesn’t matter at all (in my opinion). Please allow me to further encourage you in your pursuit of unimportance.

Capitalism seeps into every aspect of our lives; at times, the need to be productive weighs on me to the point of nausea.

As an anxious person who has often been branded a “control freak,” I constantly feel a tendency to spend each and every moment pursuing perfection. The result?

Burnout, fatigue and depression. This summer, while studying abroad, I had no choice but to find an outlet for my racing mind, as I did not have access to many resources I would normally have at home or at Vassar, such as therapy, friends or family.

My solution was to practice being bad at things. I got a little blank book and a pen, and I started scribbling the ugliest drawings you ever saw. My studios were seats on buses, park benches and small cafes. I

did not draw in pursuit of acquiring a new skill; I did it in order to make myself slow down and focus on things outside of my brain. Eventually, I began using a tiny travel watercolor set, which I found even more difficult to control (especially on the bus), and therefore even more freeing.

It took effort to overcome the hurdle of my own mind and to put brush to page, but the freedom that followed was priceless. Speaking again as a perfectionist and former “gifted child,” it feels so counterintuitive, so against my nature, to continue doing something that I can’t immediately master. This unfortunate nature has driven me to decline invitations, quit sports and music lessons, and limit myself to my myopic comfort zone.

To be completely honest, I’m still not totally comfortable with the mindset of “if you’re not failing, you’re not learning.”

Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I really enjoy being right. I really enjoy getting good grades and excelling and achieving, by conventional standards.

But sometimes the pursuit of all those things (which are, in truth, meaningless) leads me into deep negativity.

But Alice, you say, isn’t it still capitalistic to hone a skill? Aren’t you still giving into your deepest desire to produce? To this I

The above painting was not produced for money or for any material gain.

Instead, this was made solely for the value of doing something for the reward that comes from creation. Despite being wonderful, this painting is not for sale.

Sulli committed suicide, but will K-pop culture change?

Yvette Hu

Photo Editor

I

ders.” Such vocabulary went beyond fan culture to invade my day-to-day life as I saw my peers commenting on each other’s photo posts using these rudimentary metrics.

You could easily find tons of videos online made by girls to document themselves following a certain K-pop idol’s diet strategy.

It took me years—going through disordered eating and studying feminist theory—to discern the toxicity of K-pop body culture on the mental and physical health of everybody involved, artists and fans alike. At first, I found it difficult to admit that something I was passionate about was built on the objectification of women. For a while, I cut myself off from almost all K-pop related content I used to watch or listen to because I couldn’t reconcile my conflicted emotions.

What was I consuming when I watched those music videos? What kind of reality am I bringing myself into?

It is fortunate to see that intensified demands for more regulation of cyberbullying has forced the Korean government to take action against anonymous, hateful comments. Reportedly, the National Assembly claims they will begin debating a bill, already dubbed “Sulli’s law,” later this year (The Guardian, “K-pop under scrutiny over ‘toxic fandom’ after death of Sulli,” 10.18.2019).

Nonetheless, online violence is not the single cause of Sulli’s tragedy. Whether or not the press and government put more focus on punishing internet haters, the potential for the problematic K-showbusiness to remain unregulated is alarming.

It is worth mentioning that SM Entertainment put Sulli under an intense working schedule, even when her depression had become more severe. (Jiemian, “Sulli’s Suicide: Will Her Tragedy Become An Opportunity to Reflect On Cyber-violence and Entertainment Industry?” 10.21.2019) Knowing that Sulli was dealing with depression, SM had her go on “Night of the Hate Comments”, and read out loud the bullying messages publicly, which made her

re-experience all of the negative emotions.

Besides Sulli’s case, extreme diet regimens, grueling training schedules and the minimal privacy afforded to K-pop idols have gone under-discussed for years. In 2016, Oh My Girl’s JinE announced that she would halt all onstage activities after being diagnosed with anorexia (The Korea Herald, “Dangerously skinny K-pop girl groups,” 09.26.2016).

Three years later, the industry still has not imposed regulations to address the severe diet culture within the industry. Losing weight continues to be an unspoken must when female and male idols come back with their new albums, as pressure rises from the companies, the culture and even the artists themselves.

To cultivate a better behaved online public may be relatively easy, but to fuss with the business side—where capital and politics are intertwined—is way more risky. If the industry sticks with what it does right now, and no external force tries to intervene, will tragedies like Sulli’s reoccur? That’s a question, or rather a reality, to think about.

Courtesy of Viki.com

[CW: This article mentions suicide, depression and eating disorders.] heard the news over breakfast with my friends at the Deece.

“Did you hear that Sulli committed suicide?”

For a moment, my mind went blank.

“What the fuck?” were the first and only words that could burst out of my mouth. A mix of shock and anger sped through my veins and turned into a stirring sensation in my chest.

On Oct. 14, 25-year-old South Korean singer and actor Sulli, legal name Choi Jin-ri, was found dead by her manager in her apartment south of Seoul. The police suspect a suicide, but are still investigating. (Metro, “Former f(x) star Sulli’s cause of death confirmed suspected suicide,” 10.14.2019). Within hours of the suicide, Sulli’s manager, an employee of SM Entertainment, allegedly stated to the police that the young singer had suffered from severe depression (The Washington Post, “How a K-pop star’s death reveals the truth about our society,” 10.15.2019).

Sulli was a former member of K-pop girl band f(x). Ever since she withdrew from the band to focus on a career in acting in 2015, she has been the target of online vitriol and gossip. First, she was condemned for selfishly quitting the band to pursue her solo career. Then her romantic relationship with singer Choiza—who’s 14 years her senior—incited wild disapproval among netizens, who flooded her Instagram with hate messages (Channel Korea, “What’s Sulli and Choiza’s Relationship Like Now, After Their Breakup?” 04.27.2019). The commenters were not only uncomfortable with the relatively large age gap, but also angry that Sulli violated an unspoken rule that disallows K-pop idols to openly discuss their love lives.

The fiercest wave of online verbal abuse hit Sulli after she posted a series of photos—

which the commenters called “crazy”— showing her not wearing a bra. Opponents claimed that her photos were overly sexual and called her a “psycho.” The rampant slut-shaming continued even after Sulli explained on the talk show “The Night of Hate Comments” why she chose not to wear underwear. According to her, whether to wear underwear is her freedom, and underwear is not good for her health since the wired bra could cause problems with digestion (JTBC, “The Night of Hate Comments,” 06.21.2019).

Throughout her career, I was not a fan of Sulli and didn’t follow her news actively. Yet, I involuntarily took in tons of news about her, as coverages on her popped out on a frequent basis online—not just in South Korea but also in my home country of China. I came to ignore the constant coverage of Sulli because I never took an interest in pop news. I also chose to ignore it, I must admit, in an attempt to escape the side of me which struggled with a love-hate relationship with K-pop. Sulli’s suicide reopened that valve for me, reminding me anew of the perils of K-pop culture.

K-pop initially seized my attention when I was in middle school. Back then, I was a big fan of Bigbang and 2ne1, both bands under label YG Entertainment. I started listening to music produced by YG artists exclusively. The high-quality song production and charismatic stage manner of the company’s groups stood out to me, when compared to other groups that focused more on the artists’ cute and flawless appearance. I consciously set myself apart from those fans who fetishize their idols’ appearance over everything else.

But the more I was exposed to the whole scope of K-pop culture, the more I came to accept the beauty myth that the industry sold to me: that the only beauty standard for girls is to be skinny, that we should all have impeccable skin. In this world, bluntly put, girls are measured by their appearances: “Good legs,” “ant waist,” “right angle shoul-

Since the 25-year-old K-pop star Sulli took her own life, the culture and business of K-pop has come under much-deserved scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether any governmental action will be taken.

The Miscellany News is not responsible for the views presented within its Opinions pages. The staff editorial is the only article that reflects the opinion of the Editorial Board.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

SPORTS

Page 14

October 31, 2019

Forget your opinion on tanking: In the NFL, it’s just dumb Ted Chmyz

Sports Editor

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y now, you’ve heard of tanking. Simply put, a team intentionally loses in an attempt to land a high draft pick. I don’t care if you live under a rock, ESPN probably bought the moss on your rock and sold ad space on it. Professional pontificator Stephen A. Smith is likely screaming about tanking underneath your rock.

Tanking rose to prominence in the NBA, most notably in the form of the Philadelphia 76ers. Under the guidance of (since-replaced) General Manager Sam Hinkie, the team pulled off a tank job so obvious it was given its own nickname: “The Process.” It worked. Just four years removed from the 2014-15 season in which they finished with a measly 10 wins, the Sixers are 3-0 and considered favorites to make the Eastern Conference Finals. It turns out when you pick in the top three of the NBA draft four years in a row (including two first-overall selections), along with a slew of other first and second rounders acquired by trading aging players and taking on bad contracts, you’re pretty likely to end up with a legit NBA team.

While the Sixers may be the best-known case of a team choosing to tank, they’re certainly not the only ones. For many NBA teams, tanking is just the right decision. In the era of superteams and championship-or-bust mentalities, you’re better off spending a year or two losing and praying to land your own franchise-defining teenager. It beats dwelling in mediocrity year after year, shelling out huge contracts to not-quite-superstars, and falling out of the playoffs in the first two rounds—if you even make it (I’m looking at you, Wizards).

Tanking has even spread to the NFL, where it seems like an even better idea. Unlike the NBA, which has an infamous draft lottery system (in recent years made even more random, likely to discourage tanking),

the NFL’s system is simple: It awards the worst team with the best picks. This is good news for currently tanking teams like the Miami Dolphins, who are 0-7 and in the process of trading everyone resembling an NFL-caliber player in exchange for the entire second round of the 2021 draft. If the Dolphins continue rolling their way to 0-16, they’ll have their pick of what promises to be a strong draft class, including highly touted Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.

Tagovailoa, or any other first pick, may become a generational player, but that would not be enough to instantly transform the Dolphins into a contender—and therein lies the flaw in NFL tanking schemes. Unlike the NBA, which has only five players on the court at a time, one transcendental player among the 53 on an NFL roster cannot take a team to the Super Bowl, let alone the playoffs. Putting LeBron on any NBA team turns them into, at the very least, contenders. Put Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers on these Dolphins and they might win a few games, if they’re lucky.

In the NFL, where one player can play at most half the snaps and even generational talents need help, team system and overall talent matter far more than having one (or a few) elite players. Throwing a rookie quarterback with franchise potential behind a bad offensive line and giving them few weapons and no defense to rely on is just throwing their potential away (and into the arms of your opponent’s d-line). Combine the lackluster talent on the field with the lack of consistency or quality in coaching or scheme that often comes with tanking teams, and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.

The Dolphins might already have a franchise quarterback on their roster in Josh Rosen, just one year removed from being picked top 10 in the draft by the Arizona Cardinals. The once-highly rated prospect has already seen three offensive coordinators, and spent time behind two of the worst offensive lines in the

league. If Rosen does have that star potential, he’s certainly not getting the chance to show it.

Even around the league this season, other quarterbacks are showing that system and surrounding talent matters more than who takes the snaps. Backups Kyle Allen, Teddy Bridgewater and Matt Moore may not comprise a stunning shortlist of All-Pro arms, but they have all looked competent, or even better, filling in for injured starters. No credit away from this group, and I’m not saying all quarterbacks are entirely system players (yes, the Chiefs are better when Patrick Mahomes is healthy), but good coaching and talent in other areas has kept these teams in the W column. And while I’m focusing on quarterbacks, the same goes for all positions; running back Saquon Barkley might already be the NFL’s best player, but his New York Giants certainly aren’t Super Bowl contenders.

But I confess: I am being a little unfair to the Dolphins. They do have more than one pick, including three in next year’s first round, and presumably plan on surrounding their quarterback of the future with other key pieces. But when you look at where those picks came from, you have to question some of the decision-making. In supporting their new quarterback, the Dolphins will likely want a competent o-line (they traded standout left tackle Laremy Tunsil to the Texans in August), a young talented running back (one like Kenyan Drake, just shipped to the Cardinals a few days ago) and some talent at receiver (perhaps a veteran slot-man along the lines of Kenny Stills, gone to the Texans with Tunsil). They’ll also likely look to improve their abysmal defense, perhaps with a young star safety, like 22-year-old Minkah Fitzpatrick, who requested a trade off the sinking ship and is now with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

It’s okay though, they got a first-round pick in return, and that pick could be anything, even a young star safety!

The Dolphins likely didn’t plan on trading Fitzpatrick, but that’s the risk they ran when they committed to winning next season (or the season after that) at the expense of this one. Expecting talented, highly competitive players to buy into being blown out every game is foolish. With nearly all talent, young and old, off their roster, the Dolphins will have to hit on all, or at least most, of their draft picks, and then succeed in developing those players in their dysfunctional system.

And hitting on picks is easier said than done, especially for culturally challenged organizations—another flaw in the tanking strategy.

In the NFL, defined by its parity and unpredictability, being mediocre is better than being awful. All it takes is one good year, one run, and you’re Super Bowl Champions—just ask the Eagles. Even if you’re missing a final piece, likely a star quarterback, it’s much better to establish a system and talent throughout the roster, then plug your young stud in and give them a chance to succeed. Look at the Baltimore Ravens, who after winning the Super Bowl in 2012, hovered around the eight-win mark for a few years, building a solid defense and keeping Head Coach John Harbaugh in place through losing seasons.

This year they are 5-2, atop the AFC North, as second-year quarterback Lamar Jackson (drafted 32nd overall, by the way) is thriving, thanks to the resources around him. Meanwhile, at the other end of the North, the Browns, who were supposed to finally stop tanking and contend this year (they had a single win across the 2016 and 2017 seasons) are floundering—their highly selected quarterback is struggling and their lack of competent, well-established coaching is apparent.

It’s possible I’m wrong, and you’ll look back and laugh at me as Tagovailoa and the rest of the 2020 and 2021 draft classes establish the next Dolphins dynasty. But, just maybe, at least in the NFL, intentionally trying to lose isn’t a great strategy.

Jonah’s way-too-early NBA takes (Caution: contents hot) Jonah Frere-Holmes Reporter

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s of writing, the Atlanta Hawks and Minnesota Timberwolves hold the top spots in their respective conferences. These two teams, who held a combined record of 65-99 in 2018-19, are hot out of the gates with a 5-0 start. This shocking development—and several others from the fledgling 2019-20 NBA season—deserve overreactions that disregard reasonable perspective and throw history to the wind. Here are those swashbuckling overreactions—all four of them. I hypothesize (and hope) that exactly one of these ill-fated takes turns out to be prophecy. If they do, my Venmo is @Jonah-Frere-Holmes.

1. Trae Young is your 2019-20 NBA MVP. The Hawks opened the season with two wins over playoff teams from last season, the Magic and Pistons, taking them down by a combined 20 points. Young is leading the league in points per game at a torrential 38.5. The pint-sized point guard is making nearly six threes per game, and dishing out nine assists nightly to boot. Without any teammate cracking 20 points in either victory, Young’s efforts thus far have been downright heroic.

Against the Magic, he iced the game on an isolation play against Markelle Fultz, which saw Young lose the ball, regain possession, establish an abyss of space with a stepback and bank in a three over Fultz’s six foot six frame. The possession looked hopeless, and suddenly there was hope. That is the story of Trae Young and the Atlanta Hawks, two games into the 2018-19 season. For Prediction

Number One to come true, all Young has to do is continue to amass avalanches of points at his current rate, which hasn’t been done by a guard since, well, ever.

2. The Timberwolves will make the Western Conference Finals. The other overachievers of the 2019-20 campaign thus far have been the boys from Minnesota, who are 3-0 after taking down the Nets, Hornets and Heat. Karl-Anthony Towns is giving Young a run for his money in the Way-Too-Early NBA MVP race, posting simply goofy per-game averages of 32 points, 13.3 rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals. His Player Efficiency Rating (PER) is 40.6. The full-season record for PER is held by Wilt Chamberlain, who posted a figure of 31.82 in 1962-63. In other words, Chamberlain, whose dominance in his NBA landscape landed him a role as Bombaata (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s foe in “Conan the Destroyer”), was only 75 percent as productive as Towns has been this year.

Assisting Towns in his Herculean effort to help the Timberwolves outscore their opponents is Andrew Wiggins. Wiggins, like Fultz, is a much-maligned former No. 1 pick (Wiggins is also on an $147 million contract, which the Wolves extended because uh, you see, Wiggins promised that he would play better), but is sort of not terrible right now.

He is averaging 20.7 points per game, including a barrage of late threes (something he usually never makes) to seal the Heat game.

The Wolves have a young, talented core that is finally turning its latent athleticism into real-life wins in real-life basketball games. If

Towns continues to play as God embodied on this earth and Wiggins plays like he’s worth even half of his meme-worthy contract, the Wolves might just do something. They are also coached by Ryan Saunders, son of the Wolves’ beloved former coach Flip, who died in 2015; this can only be understood as good karma that will serve them well in a tight playoff series.

3. Steph Curry and the Warriors are going to be exposed and miss the playoffs. For anyone who thinks this isn’t a hot take, please bow your head in shame. Over the last halfdecade-plus, Curry has firmly established himself as the greatest shooter to ever play basketball, won three championships with the team that drafted him and ignited an offensive revolution that irreversibly changed the way the game is played. So, no, he couldn’t guard Kyrie Irving in Game 7 of the 2016 Finals, or ever. That doesn’t matter. Curry’s presence on the court is gravitational; his ability to make the ball go in the hoop from very very far away is remarkable enough that other professional teams employ zone defenses, typically seen in low-level high school games, on the biggest stage at the highest level (I see you, Nick Nurse).

Curry will probably break his record for most three-pointers made in a year. He’ll have to. He spent a large chunk of Golden State’s matchup with the NBA title favorite Clippers sharing the court with Jordan Poole, Eric Paschall, Omari Spellman and Jacob Evans, who have as many combined years of NBA experience as Curry has MVPs. Noth-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

ing that happens this season is his fault. So, here is a hot take that, bandwagon haters be damned, is actually hot: The Warriors will miss the playoffs. They’re well on their way, with an 0-2 start.

4. THE DENVER NUGGETS WILL WIN THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP. I’m very excited about this one. So excited, in fact, that I posted this piping hot take on Facebook, normally reserved for the photo albums tagged too liberally by parents and grandparents.

My uncle had to see this. My grandmother’s friends from work had to see it. It is gospel.

This is the youngest, most fun, best, most awesomest team in the NBA. Nikola Jokic, their best player, is enormous, pale and fleshy, a prepubescent giant with eyes in the back of his head and the playmaking savvy of a veteran point guard. Their backcourt is comprised of a 22-year-old whose go-to shot is a one-legged fadeaway and Gary Harris, who came from Michigan State, bringing with him the super-cool Spartan tradition where if one player slaps the ground on defense, everyone else on his team has to do it too. They have approximately 17 wings in their early 20s who can defend, rebound and make threes at a high clip. They have Will Barton, who moves like a gummy worm with a nice beard.

They also have Mason Plumlee, whom I met over the summer and was a really nice guy. He stepped over the turnstile at 110th Street without jumping. He placed one leg over the turnstile and then the other, the way you or I would step over a puddle. That is a metaphor for the Nuggets’ season to come.

October 31, 2019

Why

we

W

Page 15

Sydney Nemphos, Lacrosse and Squash

ing, and I am so thankful for them. They definitely make me think before I act. Whenever I’ve been on the verge of stopping, or think I cannot do something, they have always told me, even if it’s kind of clichéd, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

I first thought about quitting lacrosse in middle school. Lacrosse in elementary school was fun: It was all about running around and getting exercise. But lacrosse became serious in middle school, and to be serious, you had to be on a club team and play tournaments all year round. However, to continue squash at a higher level, you had to do the same thing.

I had a tough decision to make: Did I want to get serious about my lacrosse or squash career? Ultimately, while I decided that I still wanted to play squash, I was going to take the next step in lacrosse instead.

My parents signed me up for club team tryouts for one of the most recognized teams in the state, and I couldn’t wait. But I didn’t make the team. I was in sixth grade and I was convinced my lacrosse career was over. All of my friends were on a club team, and I was the kid who got cut. I told my parents I never wanted to pick up a lacrosse stick again.

What was the point? I clearly wasn’t good enough to make a team, so how was I supposed to keep playing? Instead of buying into my pity party, my parents asked me if that was what I wanted. Did I want to stop play-

Courtesy Sydney Nemphos

Senior Sydney Nemphos plays not one, but two sports at Vassar: squash and lacrosse.

While she is now an accomplished student-athlete, Nemphos faced many setbacks throughout her career, and at different times considered quitting both of her sports.

ing? But that wasn’t what I wanted; I wanted to play lacrosse. Then why stop? If it’s what I loved to do, loved to play, I should continue to play. They helped me reach out to a couple of other club teams, even though tryouts were over, to see if anyone would be willing to give me a chance. Most said no, that their teams were full, but one coach said yes. She gave me a chance and I made the team.

In ninth grade, I thought about quitting squash for the very first time. My high school was a pretty big squash high school. Many girls trained every day and played tournaments every weekend. I didn’t. I played maybe twice a week, three times if I was lucky, and didn’t have a lot of lacrosse. I didn’t see the point in trying out for the school squash team, considering it was not likely that I would even make the JV team. Everyone played more than me, was better than me, had been playing longer than me. Ice hockey, on the other hand, was a sport no one in my school had played before. Tryouts would be an even playing field, so I was certain I would make the team. Again, my parents asked me if that’s what I wanted. I had already committed myself to proving everyone wrong as a lacrosse player, didn’t I want to do the same as a squash player? Even if I didn’t make a team at all, showing up and giving it my all was important. They were right: I hadn’t proven to be a quitter yet, so I couldn’t quit now.

I didn’t get cut in the first round, but I didn’t ultimately make JV. I made varsity. I was the last on the ladder, but I was on the varsity team. I was on the team over girls who, the whole tryout, asked me why I was there, how I could possibly think I was just as good as them, or could make the team over them. But I did, and by my senior year, I was the top player on the ladder.

Although squash couldn’t have been going better for me by my senior year, lacrosse couldn’t have been going worse. While I was recruited to play not just lacrosse, but squash, by senior spring, I had yet to step on the field in my last year of high school lacrosse. I had worked incredibly hard during my four years.

My freshman year, I didn’t make varsity. My sophomore year, I made varsity, but was told I wasn’t the type of player who would ever step on the field. My junior year, I finally be-

Courtesy Sydney Nemphos

hen I was five, my parents signed me up for dance classes. I was terrible.

Not the type of terrible that all five-year-olds are, but actually really, really bad at dance. I was so bad that I was only put into a single number in the dance recital at the end of the year. For reference, every other kid was in at least two dances, if not more. Afterwards, I was inconsolable; I didn’t understand why I couldn’t dance in as many dances as every other kid in the program. My grandfather, in an effort to console me, asked if I wanted to play soccer instead of dancing, as he had found a program for kids my age. I quickly agreed, and have since never looked back.

Ever since that day, sports have been an incredibly important part of my life. So important, I still play two-thirds of the sports I started in elementary school in college. I first picked up a lacrosse stick only months after I started kicking a soccer ball. Squash came a little later, when I was 10 and looking for a sport to fill the gap between the soccer and lacrosse seasons. Only so many kids get the chance to play a sport in college, let alone two, so it’s easy to assume that I was always incredibly driven, passionate, and successful in my sports. However, I’ve come close to quitting several times throughout my career.

My parents have never forced me to do anything I haven’t wanted to do. They’ve been nothing but supportive and encourag-

play

SPORTS

gan to play, to prove my high school coaches wrong, but they left and a new coach began for my senior year. When I went to her office to ask what I could do—what I needed to do—to step on the field, even just for my senior game, she told me there wasn’t anything I could do. She just didn’t like how I played, and I wasn’t her vision of what a lacrosse player looked like. When I asked her to clarify what that meant, she told me I wasn’t the right build or the right size, and that I just didn’t look like, or play like, what she thought a lacrosse player was.

I thought about quitting the team right on the spot. After leaving her office I decided that I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of my resignation. In fact, I was going to show up to practice every day, with a smile on my face, and beat the crap out of anyone on the field who thought they were going to get by me. I’d like to say that after that, I started every minute of every game, but I didn’t. That’s okay, because I kept going anyway.

I play because I didn’t make a club team the first time I tried. I play because those squash players thought I couldn’t. I play because my high school coach said I wouldn’t step on the field because I wasn’t her type of player. Most importantly, I play because I love it. I love my sports, I love my teammates, I love my coaches and I love playing for Vassar and being a Brewer. I play because nothing will ever stop me from doing what I what I’m passionate about. I play for me.

World Series players ask: ‘What’s going on with my balls?’

Daniel Bonfiglio Guest Columnist

B

ack in the distant past that is 2017, I wrote an article for The Miscellany News detailing rumors that Major League Baseball had changed the composition of its baseballs before that year’s World Series. Rumors of alterations to the baseballs had already circulated over the course of the 2017 regular season, as all teams combined hit a whopping 6,105 home runs, surpassing the old record by 412 dingers (USA Today, “Major League Baseball finishes with 6,776 homers, 11% above previous record,” 09.29.2019). However, the controversy really heated up when the Dodgers and Astros faced off for the championship—the two powerhouse lineups slugged 25 homers over their seven-game series, setting multiple World Series long-ball records in the process. Not only did the numbers indicate that something might be different about the balls, but the players thought so too.

Astros pitchers claimed to be able to instantly differentiate between postseason and regular season baseballs while blindfolded, with ace Justin Verlander claiming he completely abandoned throwing his slider—a pitch difficult to grip—due to

the slickness of the baseball (Sports Illustrated, “Historic World Series Home Run Rate may be Result of Slicker Baseballs,” 10.29.2017). Either way, the results were enthralling, with that World Series already known as one of the most exciting of all time—something baseball desperately needed with its waning audience. But the year is now 2019, and once again, talk of altered baseballs has entered into this year’s October Classic. But with a new twist.

2019 has been the year of the home run.

Teams hit a record 6,776 home runs this year, smashing the old 2017 record by 11 percent, and 2018’s total by a ridiculous 21 percent. Six different teams beat the previous single-season team record of 257 held by the 2017 Yankees, with the Twins leading the way at 307. Home run totals have been steadily increasing over the last few years due to the evolution of hitter’s approaches, but 2019 was quite obviously a statistical anomaly, and people were once again quick to point to the baseballs for an explanation. It is no secret that baseball has been struggling to stay popular, and the league is considering a number of rule changes to try and rectify its boring stereotype. Juicing the baseballs—as they might have for the electrifying 2017 World

Series—would logically be something the MLB might consider.

However, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and the league firmly denied knowingly altering the baseballs, although they had no choice but to concede that something was different, and launched an investigation into the baseballs. In the meantime, the major leagues kept launching home runs. That is, until this year’s playoffs.

Unsurprisingly, pundits predicted unprecedented home run totals for the 2019 postseason, a continuation of the year’s trend. But they didn’t come. Teams hit about 1.2 home runs per game through the first 50 games of the postseason, down from 1.39 during the regular season (SBNation, “These 8 MLB postseason outs were home runs in the regular season and it’s weird,” 10.15.2019). The Cardinals’ analytics department decided to do their own research, and concluded that the baseballs traveled on average 4.5 feet less than similarly hit balls from the regular season (ESPN, “St. Louis Cardinals claim baseballs are traveling less in postseason,” 10.12.2019). By that logic, approximately eight balls hit so far this postseason that were recorded outs would have resulted in home runs. So what is the difference? Why is Major League

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Baseball struggling so much to retain the consistency of their ball?

Major League Baseball once again was forced to issue a statement claiming they had absolutely no knowledge of anything different about the baseballs, saying that the balls being used in the postseason were pulled from the same batches used during the normal season, the only difference coming in the form of the postseason stickers on the baseballs.

One would imagine that if the MLB had an influence on which baseballs were used during the postseason, they would decide to stay with the juiced balls for the regular season, promoting explosive action to the biggest audiences. Therefore, I would be inclined to actually believe Rob Manfred and his admission of ignorance from earlier in the year, although I doubt the ball of the 2017 World Series went unplanned.

Either way, an inconsistent baseball means inconsistent games, and in a sport where millions are spent analyzing every little detail for an advantage, teams and fans will likely put pressure on the MLB to sort out the problem of its balls. In the meantime, opposite to that 2017 World Series, this one will play out with only a traditional quantity of home runs.

The Miscellany News

Page 16

October 31, 2019

Field Hockey

Women’s Volleyball

Vassar 5, St. Lawrence 2; Vassar 2, Skidmore 1

Vassar College 3, Union 2 October 25, 2019

October 25 and 27, 2019

Courtesy of Carlisle Stockton

Courtesy of Carlisle Stockton

Vassar got back on track over the second weekend of October Break, defeating St. Lawrence and Skidmore. Against St. Lawrence, Vassar dominated, rolling to a 5-2 victory. While the Brewers only managed one goal in the first half, they turned it on after the break, scoring three times in the third to put the game out of reach. Skidmore put up more of a fight against the No. 14 Brewers, as Vassar scored two early goals then relied on defense to see out a 2-1 victory, giving their Liberty League opponents their first loss of the season.

Women’s Rugby

October Break Doubleheader

Men’s Soccer

Vassar College 1, No. 22 Ithaca 3

October 27, 2019

l. bioexorcist’s name x3 11. head of department, abbr 14. to quarrel or debate 15. a beer available at the bar 16. primate or monkey 17. a discrete unit of living matter 18. between the ovaries, plural 19. not old 20. not yet set or fixed 21. Brave New World drug, plural 22. humor that’s deadpan or emotionless 23. UTC-5 25. center of field of vision in the retina 27. to encourage or support 31. listened to someone’s advice 33. sex noise 34. preposition at the opening of a fairytale 36. to gradually wear down 39. a promise or agreement 40. Italian salami 42. author of Metamorphoses 43. voluntary unconsciousness 45. phone, jail, red and white blood 46. small multicolored pebble candy

Answer to last week’s puzzle

Courtesy of Carlisle Stockton

Tiffany Trumble/The Miscellany News

ACROSS

October 26, 2019

Vassar took home two victories in their return from October Break on Sunday, one in their usual dominant fashion and one in a much closer affair. It was business as usual for the reigning NCAA champion Brewers against SUNY New Paltz in the Tri-State Quarterfinal, as they pounded the Hawks into the muddy turf in a 36-5 rout. Against non-conference foe Princeton, however, the Brewers had a tougher time, giving up five tries in the second half alone after originally taking a 29-7 lead. In the end the Brewers just barely held on to their undefeated record, as the game ran down to a 44-43 finish.

“Infamous Ghosts”

Women’s volleyball triumphed over Union last Friday in an intense backand-forth. Across the first four sets, the teams traded comfortable victories, as first Union, then Vassar, then Union again, then Vassar again took sets by margins of at least six points. However, in the final, winner-take-all frame, things heated up in the Kenyon gym.

Union took Vassar to the edge of defeat, with a 15-14 lead, meaning a mere single point spelled victory for the visitors.

But Vassar rallied back, winning three straight points to finish the match 17-14.

Men’s soccer certainly enjoyed their break, as they pulled off a heroic upset over No. 22 Ithaca. Despite being presumed underdogs against their ranked opponents, Vassar held their own throughout the contest, outshooting the Bombers 11 to 8. While it was a scoreless stalemate throughout much of the day, Vassar’s efforts finally paid off in the closing stages of the game. In the 85th minute, first-year Kyle Lopes scored his second goal of the season, pouncing on a deflection from an Ithaca defender to give the Brewers their third win in a row.

The Miscellany Crossword

by Frank

47. deceitful or crafty 49. if you snorted this candy in middle school you are def dumb 51. Tenth Doctor’s red-headed companion 52. pretense of shyness to gain attention 53. a man who is rough or clumsy and unintelligent 54. chemical that usually has a sweet smell 57. a Jewish teacher 62. messenger for DNA 63. plants release these to reproduce 64. a group of three related things 65. African National Congress, abbr 66. American Eagle’s Victoria’s Secret 67. the rent for a house 68. strong alkaline solution for washing 69. female priests

30. professional unpaid coffee deliverer 31. Kehlani’s fourth most listened to song 32. formally known as alkenol 35. a small, chaste kiss 37. dry mud 38. Ed, Edd, and 41. too 44. pinesap 48. the friendly ghost 50. moaning ghost that crushes on HP

DOWN

1. respectful Indian form of address for an educated man 2. Irish name meaning ‘green water’ 3. sense of self-esteem or self-importance, plural 4. a melody or song 5. 26 in English alphabet 6. knight sport 7. until or to, archaic 8. a romantic object 9. open-topped water vessel in restaurant 10. television installment 11. antonym of footed under 12. French singing phantom’s home 13. wet with dew 24. negatively prideful of oneself 26. where we lay our scene 27. units of current 28. a bb horse 29. opposite of foot to foot

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

51. paranormal, ghost-hunting, kid superhero 52. members of an indigenous people living in central Canada 53. mouth sex 55. nickname for Victoria 56. spooky Great Lake 58. Greek god of war 59. an inclination or prejudice 60. bottom or foundation 61. middle of March