Misc 11.21.19

The Miscellany News

Since 1866 | miscellanynews.org

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

Volume CLII | Issue 11

November 21, 2019

Italian stereotypes critiqued

Haitian art exhibits heart, will

Leila Raines

Vassar Haiti Project

Guest Reporter

Guest Columnists

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ith last week’s release of the live-action “Lady and the Tramp” alongside the launch of Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+, Disney fans can now witness the iconic spaghetti Photos: Grace Rousell; editing: Juliette Pope/The Miscellany News date from the original 1955 movie come to life. But this beloved At a VOICE event, SJP protested the talk of Zionist activist Hen Mazzig, who spoke about his IDF scene, widely considered one of service and family history. This incited discursive responses from the speaker, College and student body. the most romantic moments in Disney cinematic history, is ridden with ethnic stereotyping of Italian-Americans. The chefs who prepare the spaghetti and meatof personal information with the movement is “about the fact that Olivia Diallo Guest Reporter balls for Lady and Tramp are an intent of intimidation. In her offi- my parents are alive.” He continexample of the caricatured Italn the evening of Thursday, cial statement to the Vassar com- ued, “If anyone has a problem with ian immigrants seen in countless Nov. 14, Students for Justice in munity, President Elizabeth Brad- Zionism, they have a problem with movies and TV shows, including Palestine (SJP) protested a lecture ley condemned the actions of the the fact that my parents are alive.”

Approximately 20 attendees the cherished Disney classic.

by Zionist activist Hen Mazzig, a protesters as anti-Semitic.

Assistant Professor of Italian Stud- speaker invited to campus by VasMazzig is a self-professed “Is- gathered inside the auditorium to ies Sole Anatrone delved into these sar Organizing Israel Conversa- raeli Jewish advocate, writer, [and] hear Mazzig’s lecture. The lecture stereotypes and their political and tions Effectively (VOICE). Mazzig speaker” (Twitter, @HenMazzig). was titled “Forgotten Refugees: Insocial history in film on Wednesday, claims that he was silenced by pro- He also describes himself as a Zion- digenous Jews of the Middle East,” Nov. 13 during a lecture to students in testers. SJP students interviewed ist. Zionism, Mazzig says, is about reflecting Mazzig’s own identity the Italian department titled “Italy and after the event claim that the pro- “Jewish emancipation.” During his as a Mizrahi Jewish person of TuIts Migrations: Fresh Off the Boat and test was recorded for the purpose lecture, he asserted that the term is nisian and Iraqi ancestry, as well See LECTURE on page 6 of doxxing, the online publishing not political, and that the Zionist See SJP PROTEST on page 3

SJP protests recent VOICE talk

O

A

fter spending three days in the First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Arlington, Mass. for an art sale hosted by the Vassar Haiti Project (VHP), one of VHP’s Events Directors, Shuri Oshiro ’22, reflected on the current political upheaval in Haiti and holding an art sale at this critical juncture: “[The PetroCaribe protests] happening in Haiti now has a complex genealogy, and sometimes as student volunteers, we struggle to figure out how to represent the situation. But, the way we try to occupy the space in Arlington is critical to initiate conversations and raise awareness about Haiti by centering the voices of Haitians.”

The past few years have indeed been tumultuous for Haiti. Since 2018, more than two billion USD in funds accumulated from an oil deal with Venezuela went missing (TIME, “Why a Venezuelan Oil See HAITI PROJECT on page 8

Lath Luv celebrates house pride Mary Cain exposes Nike’s abusive culture Carissa Clough

and celebrate the titular motto of Lathrop house: Lath Luv. Lathrop’s highly anticipated ith iconic party songs such as “Like a G6,” lively house event was a collaboration blacklights and jubilant Lathrop between Lathrop House Team, residents, 2019’s annual Lath Luv Vassar College Sound System was a memorable night full of (VCSS) and Vice Weekly. Per trahouse pride. Students dressed in dition, Lath Luv was a blacklight pink, Lathrop’s house color, filled party featuring performances the Villard room the evening of from DJ Dirty South Joe and othFriday, Nov. 15 to de-stress from er student DJs. Spirited attendees their mountainous workloads flowed between the dance floor Guest Reporter

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Courtesy of Grace Rousell Guest Columnist Carissa Clough writes, “The phrase ‘Lath Luv’ encapsulates what it feels like to call yourself a Lathropian.”

Inside this issue

5

ARTS

Hoodies, moon boots and utility: the philosophy of the ‘Joss goths’

and photo booth, laughing with friends and making memories.

The night was particularly memorable for Lathrop residents.“[Lath Luv] was a blast mainly due to the fact that I’m from Lathrop myself and I felt proud to have my house represented for all of Vassar,” Tim Nguyen ‘23 enthused.

VCSS’ self-taught DJs’ music selections were impressive and intuitive to the well-loved bops of our generation. Lathrop resident and attendee Celeste Weidemann ‘23 raved about the setlist: “They had great music, from Tyler the Creator to The Chainsmokers.

There was a large variety.”

Lathrop House Team had been working since August to ensure this yearly event would be a success. Lathrop Program Director Chloe Richards ‘22 elaborated on Lathrop’s side of the process: “At times [it could] be stressful, but it’s also nice to know that the responsibility I feel is just because I love Lathrop so much. I really want to see our house community thrive, and with events like Lath Luv, I feel a lot of pride in both our house and in seeing the bigger Vassar community come together.”

11 HUMOR

Does Jimmy Fallon look like a wax figure in real life?

Humor Editor has answers

Doug Cobb

Guest Columnist

[TW: This article discusses disordered eating, self-harm and suicidal ideation.] was the fastest girl in America, until I joined Nike,” reveals Mary Cain, a former high school track superstar, in a disturbing New York Times video op-ed (New York Times, “I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike” 11.07.2019). Cain graduated from Bronxville High School in 2014 with an impressive resume. She holds national high school records in the 800m, 1500m, 3000m and 5000m. She broke the junior world record in the indoor 1000m and won the 3000m world junior championship. She competed at the 2013 IAAF world championships, a professional meet, as a high schooler. Cain was extraordinary.

She decided to go pro at the age of 17 with the Nike Oregon Project (NOP), an elite team boasting some of the best distance runners in the world, created and funded by Nike. The head coach of the project, Alberto Salazar,

“I

was an accomplished marathoner himself, and coached many great athletes during his career, including Olympic medalists Matthew Centrowitz, Galen Rupp and Mo Farah. Joining his team was a no-brainer for the best high school runner in the country. But against everyone’s expectations, Cain did not get faster under Salazar and his team’s oversight. She actually got slower.

After running a 4:04.62 1500m and 1:59.51 800m in high school, her times got worse each season she was with the NOP, regressing considerably to 4:10.84 and 2:08.50, respectively, by 2016, the last year she competed for the NOP. This steep drop seems puzzling, considering she had all the resources of a professional runner and was working with a coach that is considered to be one of the best out there. Then, on November 7th this year, the answers fell into place.

Cain came forward with her story in a NY Times op-ed.

In the piece, she explained that the all-male coaching staff at the project told her “If you want to get See MARY CAIN on page 14

Columnists discuss SJP protest, OPINIONS College’s response

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The Miscellany News

Page 2

November 21, 2019

Editor-in-Chief

I

n collegiate newsrooms around the country, tucked away in corridors of campus buildings, student journalists work tirelessly in time they don’t have. Textbooks lie scattered across tables, editors collaborate on problem sets in between sessions of editing, forgotten homework assignments sit precariously stuffed between style guide pages. In student journalism, “student” is the operative word, and one that is often all-too-quickly forgotten by readership that only reads the final product.

Yet for the student journalists themselves, who do the vital work of reporting and storytelling, “student” and “journalist” creates a clash. Working for a college newspaper— while balancing schoolwork and general well-being—can be a daunting challenge, particularly when learning journalism and producing journalism occurs simultaneously. In theory, collegiate newsrooms are training rooms, where young journalists can simply find the ink under their pens. But in today’s media landscape, the condensing field of news outlets creates news deserts for student journalists to fill with their coverage, making our work more necessary than ever before. On top of that, there’s the omnipresent gaze of social media, under which news coverage can be critiqued in-

stantly by anyone, anywhere. Today, writing and publishing demand more vulnerability from reporters; while most college students commit their follies privately, the work of student journalists can be painfully public.

With this empathy in mind, understanding that mistakes can be made by pre-professional students anywhere, I’ll only now say that The Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper at one of the most prominent journalism schools in the country, mishandled backlash to a recent story. On Nov. 5, The Daily went about their usual work, covering a student protest at an event featuring former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In a letter released five days later, editors apologized for their approach to coverage, adding that they had taken down any reporting that identified the student protestors. The coverage under fire includes photos of protestors confronting police officers, the publication of their names and the reporters’ decision to solicit comments through the student directory email list.

I am not doubting that this coverage was, for the subjects specifically, “retraumatizing and invasive,” as described in The Daily’s letter (The Daily, “Addressing The Daily’s coverage of Sessions protests,” 11.10.2019).

But this lived experience should not determine whether or not reportors have the right to document the unabridged reality of

a notable event. Journalism captures hard moments when hard moments present themselves, in which people confront conflict and events go awry. In these moments, reporting has an even more essential role to play—reporters must make their own decisions, stick to their practices and speak truth to power, without external interference.

This is the only means by which reporting becomes accurate record, especially at colleges and universities, where the newspaper is often the only detailed raconteur of the campus. When the students at Northwestern chose to protest, they chose to put themselves in the public square, to participate in an event designed to garner attention. When one signs up to be a journalist, they take on the responsibility of informing the public about a protest of significant interest. Journalists, on college campuses and beyond, act as the mediator, the storyteller, that pushes progress forward and cements it in print.

To read the rest of Editor-in-Chief Mack Liederman’s thoughts on the Daily Northwestern controversy, scan the code and visit miscellanynews.org.

Editors-in-Chief Jessica Moss Frankie Knuckles Mack Liederman

Senior Editors

Duncan Aronson Lucy Leonard

Contributing Editors Isabel Braham Leah Cates Sasha Gopalakrishnan

News Aena Khan Olivia Watson Opinions Jonas Trostle Arts Abby Tarwater Humor Francisco Andrade Sports Teddy Chmyz Design Lilly Tipton Social Media Natalie Bober Photo Yvette Hu Managing Robert Pinataro Online Mohamad Safadieh Graphics Juliette Pope Video Production Alexis Cerritos Audio Alex Barnard Emerita Laurel Hennen Vigil

Assistant News Tiana Headley Assistant Opinions Abram Gregory Assistant Arts Dean Kopitsky Taylor Stewart Assistant Design Mohtad Allawala Assistant Copy Jacqueline Gill Phoebe Jacoby Caitlin Patterson Reporters Delila Ames Jonah Frere-Holmes Rayan El Amine Columnists Lindsay Craig Rohan Dutta XinRui Ong Copy Staff Jason Han Amanda Herring Tiffany Trumble Crossword Frank

“Probably the biggest culture shock was Greek Life. It dominates the social scene here. I’ve spied on a couple admissions tours and apparently 70% of those eligible to be part of Greek Life are affiliated,” writes Hannah Gaven ’21, who is currently spending her junior year at Dartmouth College with the 3/2 dual degree engineering program. “While most of the other dual degrees (3/2 engineering students) just spend every waking hour in the Engineering building, I wanted to try and be an active student and get the full Dartmouth experience. This meant rushing.”

Correction (Nov. 20, 2019): In a sports article titled “A fancasting of impeachment inquiry with NBA actors,” the whistleblower was referred to as a member of the intelligence “committee.” They are in fact a member of the intelligence community.

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.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

NEWS

Page 3

Conflict flares over protest, speaker as statements surface

Thoughts from the EIC: regarding the Daily Northwestern Mack Liederman

November 21, 2019

SJP PROTEST continued from page 1 as a descendant of refugees. According to Mazzig, the Mizrahim remain underrepresented in the public sphere. In an interview with The Miscellany News after the event, Mazzig said he believes that he might be viewed as “one of the only speakers that can properly represent [the Mizrahi Jewish] community.”

Student protesters began gathering outside of Rockefeller 300 at 5 p.m. SJP representatives, who are quoted anonymously per their request, to avoid potential doxxing, estimated that 25 protesters were present.

Students stood at the auditorium entrance handing out fliers, playing music and holding signs. The protest culminated in a series of chants, including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a phrase considered by some, including Mazzig, to be explicitly anti-Semitic. Other phrases included “From Kashmir to Palestine, occupation is a crime” and “Stop the killing, stop the hate, Israel is an apartheid state.” The Miscellany News’ audio recordings indicate that students chanted for approximately six minutes during the event. When interviewed after the event, Mazzig said, “[The protesters were] trying to silence my talk, trying to silence my community, trying to erase my community.”

President Bradley issued two statements in response to the incident. The first statement was released in the early morning hours (around 1:30 a.m.) after the protest occurred. Bradley described the controversial chant as “[having] been associated by some people with anti-Semitism” (Vassar College Office of the President, “Statement of Vassar College President Elizabeth H. Bradley,” 11.15.2019). In the later statement released on Nov. 18, Bradley more explicitly asserted that the student protesters engaged in acts of anti-Semitism. She stated, “In the days following the incident, I have spent time speaking with and learning from students, faculty, alumnae/i, and experts in the field, and I now believe the use of the chant—in this way, directed at this speaker—crossed the line into anti-Semitism” (Vassar College Office of the President, “Statement on Campus Speaker,” 11.19.2019).

SJP defended their use of the controversial chant in a statement released Thursday, Nov. 15 on their official Facebook page, citing the chant’s origin: conceived by ultra-nationalist Zionists from the 1960s and 70s, the phrase was later subverted by Palestinians as a liberatory chant. The statement continued, “Freedom for Palestine certainly does not translate to the genocide of all Jews. It is a demand for total decolonization, for a recognition of the right of return and for the dismantling of an apartheid regime” (Facebook, “Students for Justice in Palestine at Vassar,” 11.15.2019).

In their official statement, VOICE equated the chant with the sentiment that “Israel has no right to exist,” a sentiment that they claim 84 percent of American Jewish people believe to be anti-Semitic (Facebook, “VOICE - Vassar Organizing Israel Conversations Effectively,” 11.15.2019). The statement also noted that VOICE itself was divided over whether the phrase was anti-Semitic..

SJP protesters expressed concern that they had been filmed at the event. The students claim that as they stood in the hall outside of the venue, a man engaged them in conversation about the event. This man was Ron Katz, president of the Tel Aviv Institute, a group associated with Mazzig dedicated to “monitoring, educating and disrupting anti-Semitic contagion” (Tel Aviv Institute, 2019). One of the students claims that Katz

then motioned to Mazzig, who approached the student protesters and asked why they were not allowing him speak on his experience as, in his words, a queer Jew of color. In a later interview, one student said, “We do not have a problem with [Mazzig’s] identity, it’s with [Mazzig’s] politics.” The student noted that only they and one other student were engaged in conversation, a move they contend was motivated by the fact that they were the only white students protesting in Mazzig’s vicinity. The students said they were alerted by another SJP member that Katz was recording their interaction with Mazzig. They alleged that Katz used a smartphone to record, holding the device low so as to not be perceived. The student described the interaction as “a planned tactic.”

The SJP protesters who alleged that they had been filmed are apprehensive that the images recorded by Katz might be used to doxx them. When approached for comment, VOICE leader Jake Miller said, “We are against that, one hundred percent.” On the interaction between Mazzig and students, Miller said, “We flat out condemn the fact that Hen and his friend went out and spoke to protesters. We told him to stay inside. We were very clear about that.”

Assistant Director of Campus Activities Will Rush and Associate Vice President for Communications Gladwyn Lopez approached Katz after the event because one student told Rush and Lopez that they had been filmed without their consent. Rush and Lopez asked Katz to delete any footage.

In an interview after the event, Katz said, “If Channel 7 or 3 or whatever you have up there in Poughkeepsie came in with a reporter and a camera, would you say that freedom of the press is somehow less important than these protesters saying they don’t want to be filmed?” When told that the event was not public, Katz purported that press should not be denied access to the event. At no point during or after the lecture did Katz identify himself as a member of the press. He continued, “I will say, with great clarity and certainty, no one set any conditions on rules for me as a guest.” Katz said that though Rush and Lopez told him that there were rules prohibiting filming on campus, he had been unable to locate those rules.

President Bradley responded to allegations of filming in her correspondence with The Miscellany News. She stated, “I am outraged by it. This is a complete disrespect of our campus as an educational community.

I am told by the organizers that they were asked by the speaker if the session could be video recorded, and the organizers of the event told them no. I feel that by video recording without permission and then posting to social media, the speaker used our campus and our students for their own political purposes.”

Mazzig also commented on allegations of filming SJP students in a later interview, saying that he was not aware that any recording had taken place. He claimed that the only videos in his possession were those posted to his Twitter account, and that accusations of recording students constituted a defamatory PR campaign. Mazzig recounted that as he was on his way from the restroom to the venue, he observed Ron Katz speaking with two students. Mazzig said that one of the students may have initiated the conversation with him and Katz. He claimed that one of the students told him that they were a queer Jewish person. He elaborated, “I don’t know why [they] described [themselves] as a queer Jewish person but I guess that it was a way to whitewash the anti-Semitism that surrounded the whole protest.”

Mazzig recounted an exchange in which he says that a student accused him of “pinkwashing,” a term used to describe the use of LGBTQ identity or signifiers to divert attention away from injustice. Mazzig alleged that the student ended the conversation because of his identity. He said, “[They] didn’t want to speak to me after [they] found out I’m a queer Jew of color.” On Monday, Nov. 18 Mazzig tweeted, “I went to the toilet and these 2 students stopped me on the way back and said they reject my existence as ‘white Jews’” (Twitter, @[HenMazzig], 11.18.2019).

Both SJP members interviewed said that they revealed their identity to Mazzig as queer Jewish people in order to counter potential assertions that their protest of his lecture was racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic. They noted that the language Mazzig employed to describe his personal identity included terms associated with intersectionality—a term coined by Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. One student who believes that she was recorded by Katz said she felt that Mazzig’s referral to his identity in the context of intersectionality constituted a “weaponization of identity politics… it’s just kind of scary to think that that language can be used against the very people it was created by.”

Mazzig spoke at length about the expropriation of Jewish people by Middle Eastern and North African states, an amount of land that he described as “five-times the size of Israel.” He told several stories of the violent persecution that occurred before and during the Farhud, an ethnic cleansing carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad in 1941, and told the story of his grandmother’s struggle to maintain her Iraqi identity while living as a refugee in Israel.

Mazzig noted that “there is a conversation to be had about refugees that were created in this conflict,” referring to the fact that Palestinian communities faced violence in the creation of the state of Israel. Neither community, said Mazzig, “ever received their justice.” He referenced Palestine several times throughout the talk, mostly when speaking about his experience as an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Mazzig served in the IDF for five years, achieving the rank of officer. He characterized his involvement with the IDF as “humanitarian,” alluding to a hospital constructed with the help of his unit and his role in the diffusion of a bomb with which Palestinian children were playing. He also mentioned his belief in a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

When interviewed after the event, Mazzig indicated that he felt threatened by the protests and that he would not have come to campus if he had known the protest would occur. Mazzig stated that disinviting him to speak through official channels would have been preferable to the demonstration that occurred. VSA President Carlos Espina ’20 stated that SJP students would have been able to contest Mazzig’s invitation to campus at the Nov. 10 VSA meeting, the agenda for which included a discussion of the speaker fund allocation for the lecture. An email notifying student organizations of the agenda had been sent on Nov. 7. SJP members countered that they were not made aware of the event before the Nov. 10 VSA meeting, and as such had insufficient time to appeal the decision to invite Mazzig to campus.

Mazzig also believes that the statement released by VOICE may have been written in an attempt by VOICE members to “align with the administration.” Mazzig said, “I saw the post by VOICE, the Israeli student group, and I think it’s a fear. They’re writing

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

out of fear.” Mazzig went on to mention that he thinks that “Jewish students are afraid …

Vassar is known for its anti-Semitic history.” Although he did not allude to any fear VOICE may have felt when composing their statement, Miller described the actions of protesters as “really intimidating.” He explained, “We did have about as many people as they did outside at the end of the day, but if you’re walking in there alone and about 25 people out there are chanting don’t go in, don’t go in…It’s just very intimidating.”

SJP members also reported feeling fear of repercussions, especially at the prospect of being profiled on websites like Canary Mission. The site documents and publishes identifying information of students and faculty who have been active in pro-Palestine movements such as SJP and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) as well as instances of perceived “hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses” (Canary Mission, 2019). In her response to The Miscellany News’ inquiry as to what she has done to protect students’ rights to intellectual freedom, President Bradley admitted that efforts by Vassar’s administration to remove students’ profiles from Canary Mission have been unsuccessful.

The VSA’s rules of protest conduct state that “[I]t is protesters’ right to protest, and chant/cheer outside of the event building as people walk in, as long as it does not interfere with the speaker’s right to speak during the event … Protesters can make and hold signs, but cannot call out, interrupt or prevent the event from continuing. This includes chanting, cheering, etc.” As of Nov. 21, SJP is being investigated by the VSA. Funding for the organization has been restricted.

At the VSA meeting on Sunday Nov. 17, VSA Chair of Finance Emily Janoski ’20 explained, “If you’re being investigated, it’s best to take a pause on things that are currently happening. We’re not restricting their budget, just special purpose funds.”

In a later interview, SJP members stated to The Miscellany News that they did not feel that the protest silenced Mazzig, as he could be heard over the chanting. The statement released by VOICE also responded to the issue: “In the past, SJP has hosted very controversial speakers, and individual members of VOICE chose to attend those events peacefully, despite disagreements. Additionally, as a dialogue-based group, we would have appreciated input about concerns regarding Hen before the event, and we still welcome dialogue moving forward.”

When approached by The Miscellany News the day after the incident, President Bradley described Vassar as “a community that welcomes speakers, and protests.

Both are critical elements of preserving free speech and the free exchange of ideas.” She also responded to concerns that the College might have a financial incentive in condemning the protest, as comments of Vassar alumnae/i on social media called for the cessation of donations to the College. In that statement to The Miscellany News, Bradley said, “I am focused on promoting open dialogue and exchange of ideas as core values at Vassar. Financial support for our mission will flow from those principles, as they are central to high quality education.” Protesters, she claimed, were made aware of the rules of protest conduct. President Bradley went on to say that protesters had committed to adhering to the rules and that SJP’s disruption constituted a code violation.

President Bradley indicated that the College has initiated an investigation of the incident. Per her Nov. 19 statement, “We have begun our adjudication processes, which by federal law are confidential.”

NEWS

Page 4 .

November 21, 2019

Humans of Poughkeepsie: Darrett Roberts Tiana Headley

Assistant News Editor

Humans of Poughkeepsie is an ongoing project seeking to highlight Poughkeepsie residents and community members.

Below, Darrett Roberts shares his story. Roberts is a member of the End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN), a group of Hudson Valley residents working toward local criminal justice reforms. He is also a member of the Dutchess County Progressive Action Alliance (DCPAA), a grassroots organization dedicated to promoting community activism in Dutchess County. He retired from his job in providing care for the elderly and those with mental disabilities for the Taconic Developmental Services in 2012.

Po

Tiana Headley/ The Miscellany News

up

al Roun c i t d li Sara Lawler

In Our Headlines…

After announcing that the impeachment inquiry will move into a public phase, Republican and Democratic legislators are battling over which witnesses will testify.

These disagreements stem from fundamental differences over what the two parties believe the investigation should focus on. Democrats wish to keep the inquiry focused on the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Republican leaders, in contrast, wish to extend the investigation to former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine under the Obama Administration. The list of potential witnesses released by House Republicans on Nov. 9 includes Hunter Biden, his business partner Devon Archer and the unnamed whistleblower. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) stated that the impeachment inquiry will not be used to investigate the Bidens’ actions, or as a way to retaliate against the whistleblower by bringing them into public light. Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) argued that the whistleblower’s testimony is unnecessary–as the whistleblower reported what they had heard about the call–and witnesses who were in the room for the call will be testifying, providing a direct source of information rather than

I really started my activism when I was working. I had so many different people who were liberal or completely conservative. And like I said about the cliques, sometimes you have to interact with them. They’re your coworkers.

And so I learned which way to go—I’d play in the middle. It was for your best health in a survival sense. I always liked to listen to the other side anyway. In that environment, it was good to listen and observe and see. I happened to learn how to use my instincts about certain people.

And it had its good side and its bad side. The good side was that you made friends and you got to know a new environment and become friends with new people. The bad side was that the work itself was very stressful. You’re like a home health aid. If you’ve ever worked in a hospital setting, it can really get to you, especially if you’re working with [intellectually disabled] people ... You had to do complete care for them.

And you do it year in and year out. You had to detach your emotions because you might like a patient particularly well and then they pass away. And you just have to work through it. You’d have to detach yourself to be able to cope. I’m 62. I worked there for 32 years. That’s almost half my life. It was an experience of a lifetime that you never forget.

Nothing is impossible. When I was very young, in my teens, my body was very thin, I was very shy. I didn’t think I would amount to anything. Now, people are saying I’m a big activist and a leader in the community. You wouldn’t have known me about three years ago. I was different. So, my advice would be don’t short yourself. You can accomplish anything. I’m the proof.

Most of what you’d hear from the patients was taught by them from the people before. So, you might hear some racial slurs, which you’d have to have a thick skin for. But then you realized that it wasn’t them using it, it was taught to them long ago. And when you do activism you also have to have thick skin because things can get to you.

I’m not really a leader. My thing is that I’m a bridge-builder.

I like to connect people and organizations together. When I see other people succeed and I’ve helped them out in a little way, that’s my vision of success. I don’t look out for me, I look out for other people. I want them to succeed, especially if they win an office seat. They then can help other people. All I can do is be one voice, but they have an opportunity to have an impact on other people’s lives.

the indirect information that the whistleblower could provide (The Washington Post “Lawmakers spar over impeachment witnesses as probe enters public phase.”

11.10.2019).

On Nov. 16, Lousianna re-elected Democratic Governor Bel Edwards, the only Democratic governor in the deep South.

Edwards’ re-election came at the expense of President Trump’s pick for the seat, Republican Eddie Rispone. Trump visited Louisiana twice in the last two weeks to campaign for Rispone, a businessman who had never run for office before. In a recent rally for Rispone, Trump warned his audience that a Republican defeat in Louisiana would not reflect well on his presidency.

The defeat is particularly striking after Kentucky’s Republican incumbent governor Matt Bevin lost re-election on Nov. 5, after President Trump spent considerable political capital campaigning for him (The New York Times, “In Louisiana, a Narrow Win for John Bel Edwards and a Hard Loss for Trump” 11.16.2019).

[TW: The following paragraph discusses rape, physical assault, a source’s use of a racial slur and possible false-conviction of a Black man.]

On Nov. 15, The Texas Court of Appeals blocked the execution of Rodney Reed due to the emergence of new evidence. In 1998, Reed was convicted of the rape and strangulation of 19-year-old Stacy Stites.

His conviction was based on the claim that the DNA-matched semen inside Stiles could only have resulted from sexual assault. However, Reed said he was having an affair with Stites, who was engaged at the time of her death. Multiple witnesses have come forward to corroborate his story. Additionally, new evidence has emerged suggesting that Stites’s fiance, Jimmy Fennell, is guilty of the crime. Fennell,

I was working at Taconic Developmental Services. I started in 1980 and retired in 2012. That was hands-on care. I was taking care of the patients there—washing them, feeding them, basically doing what they can’t do. Working with them, you get insight into how their lives were. You also got a feel for how the employees were. In that kind of environment, sometimes you never knew who was your friend and who was your enemy. After a few years, you get a sense of who was gonna be your friend and who was out to get rid of you. There was a clique. And if you’re not in that clique, it can be very lonely and frustrating.

I read a lot of books. I’ve been reading about politics, conservatism, political action, all of that. You can learn so much from people, but you also have to have a little understanding of where they’re thinking. And the best way you can do that is with a book. But when you get down to the nitty-gritty, you still have to learn from people. No book can give you everything.

You need another human mind.

who served time for the sexual assault of a woman in 2007, was furious that his fiance was having an affair with a Black man. An inmate imprisoned with Fennell stated in an affidavit that Fennell once said, “I had to kill my [racial expletive] loving fiance.”

Rodney Reed’s case garnered national attention as his previously set execution date of Nov. 20 neared, leading to an indefinite stay of execution. This indefinite ruling is extremely rare, especially in Texas, the state with the highest number of executions per year. Reed’s case will now be sent back to his district court in Bastrop County, where he will once again try to prove his innocence (The Washington Post, “Rodney Reed case: Texas appeals delays execution of Rodney Reed, whose murder case has drawn widespread attention over new evidence.” 11.15.2019).

Around the World…

On Nov. 17, Hong Kong police clashed with anti-government protesters occupying Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Police used tear gas and water cannons in an attempt to breach the protesters’ barricades. Protesters responded with gasoline bombs and fired on the police with bows and arrows. In the aftermath of the clash, during which protesters set fire to two bridges, schools throughout Hong Kong closed for the duration of Monday.

Throughout the protests, police threatened to use “lethal force” to arrest protesters who refused to surrender. Protests began in Hong Kong in June over an extradition bill that would allow prisoners in Hong Kong to be transported to mainland China for trial. The Extradition Bill was soon scrapped. The protests have now expanded to encompass demands for police accountability and greater democracy, as Hong Kong residents fear the increasing

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

influence of the government of Beijing on the affairs of the semi-autonomous region (The New York Times, “Hong Kong Protests: Activists Clash With Police Near Besieged Campus.” 11.17.2019).

The United States and South Korea have agreed to postpone air drills scheduled for this month, in an attempt to improve relations with North Korea. North Korea advocated for the postponement, stating that it would be a show of good faith and help to move discussions between North Korea and the United States forward.

However, North Korea also threatened “hostile punishment” if the United States moved forward with the drills. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper stated that the postponement was “A good faith effort...to enable peace.” Esper hopes that the move will give diplomats the space needed to negotiate the denuclearization of North Korea, a top priority in U.S. foreign policy (The Washington Post, “U.S. and South Korea postpone military drills in bid to save North Korea dialogue.” 11.17.2019).

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, backed gasoline price increases that have sparked protests throughout the country. In Tehran, protesters clashed with riot police and security forces. One protester died in the southwestern city of Sirjan on Nov. 15. There have been other unconfirmed reports of deaths as the protests center less on gasoline and turn more political. Iran’s intelligence agency released a statement that “appropriate action” was being taken against the leaders of the protests. Additionally, Khamenei condemned the protesters, stating, “Some people are no doubt worried by this decision… but sabotage and arson is done by hooligans and not our people” (Reuters, “Iran’s Khamenei backs fuel price hike, blames ‘sabotage’ for unrest.” 11.17.2019).

November 21, 2019

ARTS

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‘Joss Goths’ contemplate clothes, comfort, Halloweentown Taylor Stewart

Assistant Arts Editor

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esthetic purist, modernist architect and bitter man Adolf Loos hated ostentation. In his lecture-essay “Ornament and Crime,” he wrote, “The urge to ornament one’s face and everything within reach is the start of plastic art. It is the baby talk of painting. All art is erotic.”

He argued that children don’t know any better, but in the modern (Western) adult, the decorative urge is degenerate. Anything that doesn’t contribute to a structure of a thing, the essence of it, is unnecessary and childlike. He also measured the value of a country’s culture “by the extent to which its lavatory walls are smeared” (Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime,” 1908).

Yet roommates Max River ’22 and Jedidiah Christie ’22, christened by many rubbernecking Vassar students as the “Joss Goths,” sporting metal, ink and several black layers, are self-professed utilitarians.

This prompts the question: How do we define useful? Do enjoyment, comfort or happiness constitute utility? Is a tall, clunky pair of boots useful if it makes us happy?

Recounting his “goth” origins, Christie first used “utilitarian” in the traditional sense. “I started wearing more black. It was easier. You don’t really get stains on stuff. No grape slushie stains on a black shirt,” he laughed. “Beyond that, you can wear things multiple days in a row—same hoodie. It’s super utilitarian.”

So in some ways it’s low maintenance to dress goth, but the roommates’ unique aesthetics extend far beyond the label. River described “goth” as “a catchall term and mostly a meme.” At first, they thought the goth designation was somewhat monolithic. They went with it, though, and have fun with it now. It remains more a nickname born of campus speculation rather than something that dictates their dress and

interests, which are ever-changing. River revealed, “Me and Jed like to come up with one- to five-word short phrases that describe our vibe in a nutshell for that period of time.” Like a Mad Lib. At one time last week, he was “redneck militant Freedom Fighter goth.”

Although their aesthetic inspirations change regularly, River and Christie cherish their wardrobes. They talked about their closet with parental affection and the vocabulary of a tailor. Putting on a pair of boots that I can only describe as moon shoes meet “Mad Max,” River explained that he got them from his girlfriend’s mom’s boyfriend, who wore the shoes to Burning Man and abandoned them because he was too frail of spirit, apparently.

Christie is similarly attached to one hoodie he’s had for four years despite the wear: “[W]henever I wear it I’m like, ‘Wow, this makes me look like a freshly raised wraith in the cemetery.’”

The pair doesn’t pay much attention to color, but they did emphasize texture, layering, shape and the way garments hang.

Moreover, under all the layers is the principle of presence. A distinct appearance, fashioned by clothing in this case, contributes to a sense of being in the world.

“Something that subconsciously guides us is having a not necessarily strong, but very defined presence,” River reflected. Christie brought up bulkiness: “I think we’re defined in the way weight and mass are represented. I like the solidity in a lot of things in our uniform, like a nice clunky pair of boots. Along with silhouettes, it adds a nice cartoonish edge to things.”

The students affirmed that “goth” dress is utile in the tactile comfort of a blanket or thick sweater, but they also enjoy the comfort of artistic autonomy. In other words, they get to curate how they look; they present to the world how they feel. “We think

of the way that people dress as being for comfort. Not just our physical comfort, but comfort in feeling a congruency in the way you feel and the way you look to others,” Christie mused. “When wondering how others interpret one’s appearance, they should acknowledge that the comfort it gives them probably supersedes any shock value derived from others.”

“A distinct appearance, fashioned by clothing in this case, contributes to a sense of being in the world. ” While they value a defined presence in the world (they are instantly recognizable and they know this), their appearance is not for the enjoyment of outsiders. Wearing items that bring you joy and comfort, they agreed, is a way to make your life more exciting. It makes any given environment “conducive to you existing comfortably,” as Christie put it. I found this attitude admirable, even righteously selfish: They do not care about outside reaction, however shocking their clothes may be in some contexts. They welcomed me warmly into their space, and there was a harmony between interior and sartorial design such that even I, in blue jeans and a thermal, relaxed. Curious, I asked them if they’re ever uncomfortably aware of a dissonance between their looks and their largely “collegiate” surroundings. They recalled the org fair, where the preppy pair represented Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP). Christie detailed, “We’re standing at this table in the College Center among all these freshmen.” (At this River

burst out laughing.) “We had a sign for SSDP that had a shoddily spray painted, large marijuana leaf that said ‘Free Drugs,’ and we spent the majority of the org fair laughing about the picture we made at this table, standing in front of a cardboard sign that says ‘Free Drugs.’”

They also admitted that, when they went to a “towel-on-the-arm” restaurant in Poughkeepsie for their friend’s birthday, they attracted a lot of attention. “All the boomers looked up at us,” said River, smiling, satisfied. Outsiders, be they Poughkeepsie retirees or Vassar peers, may cast a second glance at the Joss Goths because they are heavily ornamented; whenever he wears his space boots, River said, he feels like he’s shaking the earth. However, in this case, what could be perceived as excess is not excess at all, because even in more private places they are bold and playful.

Although River championed the meaninglessness of his tattoos, I saw how lovingly he looked at the little rat inked on his leg.

Likewise, they pored over the little details of their room (so many plastic Halloween skeletons, a gas mask, an old lamp, a banana resting domestically on a UV light).

As we delved into a conversation about childhood influences like Danny Phantom, Raven from “Teen Titans,” My Chemical Romance and the “Halloweentown” series, I continued to marvel at their wear, their warmth and, as River said, their defined presence. I realized then that I am materialistic. The things you watch, wear and touch bring you joy. I don’t think you should deny yourself the joy of stuff and decoration, which not only serve as beauty and entertainment, but also as a means of forging identity and lasting comfort. As Christie told me, “It’s not always for an outward perspective.” Deco—piercings, clunky boots, little skeletons—is the stuff of the spirit.

Max River ’22 and Jedidiah Christie ’22, roommates and titular “Joss Goths,” showed Assistant Arts Editor Taylor Stewart around a living space as curious as their closet. Alongside friends’ art, their walls displayed playing cards, a plastic arm and Halloween hangings. Photos by Tiffany Trumble/The Miscellany News

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

ARTS

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November 21, 2019

Modern country music sells out genre’s vital roots Dean Kopitsky

Assistant Arts Editor

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ear reader, can I convince you to like country music? Could you just give it a listen? At least not become tense at its mere mention? Hey, could you pick the Misc off the floor please?

It’s fine. I’m pretty sympathetic to your sentiment. I’ll begin with why you probably don’t listen to country. In my own words circa 2015, “Every country song goes, ‘I drove my truck to bury my dog the day I slept with my red-headed sister.’”

My aversion to country was cemented when I moved to Nashville at the end of middle school. In Nashville, nightlife was concentrated to a street called Broadway, a vibrant stretch of establishments advertising themselves as “honky-tonks.” The biggest attraction in town was something called the “Grand Ole Opry,” which I’m pretty sure held Civil War reenactments.

Like acting careers in Los Angeles, getting a recording gig as your side hustle is deeply ingrained in Nashville culture; Odds are that you live somewhere in the vicinity of a recording artist. In my family’s case, we lived near a singer named Rodney Atkins.

We lived in a pretty nice house. Rodney Atkins lived in a very, very nice house.

Once, while in the car with my family, a song came on the radio. It went like this: “If you’re goin’ through hell, keep on going/You might get out before the devil even knows you’re there.” Wow. Prophetic.

My family literally could not stop laughing.

Who wrote that bullshit?

“That was Rodney Atkins with, ‘If You’re Going Through Hell,’” said the disc jockey.

It turns out “If You’re Going Through Hell” was a smash country hit in 2006.

Apparently, enough people liked it to earn Rodney Atkins a very, very nice house. My anti-country convictions intensified.

At the time, I wasn’t necessarily wrong.

Country radio was one awful platitude. In 2015, the genre’s chart-toppers were “Drinking Class,” “Hell of a Night” and “Let Me See Ya Girl,” the latter of which I’m surprised

didn’t win the Pulitzer for the line, “Let me see you do it in the bed of my truck/You sure know how to shake it alright.” Hollering at your pal’s girlfriend is a ghastly mutation of country, but it’s not just silly, lazy songwriting that plagues the genre.

It’s the sound that’s gone awry, too. Modern country bleeds right into the bubblegum pop landscape. There are the hypnotic snaps and claps, a mainstay of most pop songs.

There are big techno beat breakdowns.

There are 808s—a drum machine borrowed from rap. Country dudes will pose in front of a truck with a cowboy hat tilted down, meanwhile every other song on the record will be about clubbing downtown.

Modern country disguises itself as something familiar by slapping “Tennessee backroad” or some shit like that on a pop-synth beat and turning up the twang. Quick pop chart success. It got to the point that last spring Lil Nas X, a rapper, had the most popular country song on the radio.

We’re a long ways away from “three chords and the truth.”

So that’s why you and I didn’t listen to country. But what got me to defend country music? One winter day, my family checked out the Country Music Hall of Fame, recently redesigned to resemble an acoustic guitar.

Parking was tough, as the nearby civic center was hosting the 2015 NRA convention.

The Hall of Fame was running an exhibit on Bob Dylan’s Nashville period. Alongside Johnny Cash, Dylan recorded his last album of the ’60s, titled “Nashville Skyline.” As a 15-year-old future liberal arts student, Dylan was practically the only music I downloaded (illegally). The exhibit had a lot of nice vintage photos of Dylan, but more consequentially, the visit assured me that country was not only some pariah of my middle school experiences.

Dylan came to Nashville because he was a huge fan of Cash. He wasn’t alone. At the time, country boasted the most popular individual acts in music. Johnny Cash was the biggest.

In a bitterly divided era, Cash was an icon

to traditional country fans and the counterculture. In 1970, he was invited to perform at the White House. Richard Nixon requested that he perform an inflammatory diatribe against welfare programs called “Welfare Cadillac.” Instead, Cash performed his poem, “What is Truth,” an attempt to empathize with young people’s distrust of institutions and the government (New York Times, “Nixon Is Criticized For Song Request, ‘Welfare Cadillac,’” 03.2019).

In 1964, Cash recorded “Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian,” a surprising concept album that shed light on Native Americans’ mistreatment throughout American history. It was an antithetical product of a genre that associated itself so closely with cowboy imagery.

Although if you’re a fan of singer-songwriter and folk-rock, you probably already appreciate country.

That’s how canonical the genre’s influences music run.

Modern country, with its deference to modern pop, finds itself in an ironic position. There is no single genre more defined by its obsession with tradition. Yet country has never been able to stick to just one sound.

Ken Burns’ recent documentary on country (if you know me you’ve heard about it already) beautifully depicts the recurrent aversion to and perversion of tradition in country. Fiddle and traditional Scots-Irish folk were first commercialized to working class and rural families as “Hillbilly Music” in the ’20s. Even then, country had a grasp on its audience’s yearning for something

off-puttingly ineffable called “tradition.”

As it took over America, country outgrew its roots. The raucous atmosphere of honkytonk bars necessitated a louder, clearer instrument; thus, the electric guitar became the sound of country’s expansion. Fiddle and banjo music were too down home and quiet. They disappeared from radio play over time.

Then they were back! Out of the glitz and smoothed-out sound of the ’50s and early ’60s came stripped down singer-songwriters. In the ’60s and ’70s pop and folk legends looked up to country songwriters, like Dylan did to Cash. Guy Clark, Emylou Harris, Kris Kristoferson, Bobbie Gentry and especially Townes Van Zandt are names that deserve your undivided ears.

Although if you’re a fan of singer-songwriter and folk rock you probably already appreciate country. That’s how canonical the genre’s influences on music run. Pure Prairie League and the Marshall Tucker Band are pure Americana gold. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band revitalized traditional country and banjo music alongside legends Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff, and Bill Monore. Gram Parsons is probably the godfather of country rock. His bands the Flying Burrito Brothers and country rock icons The Byrds made country music a preeminent facet of counterculture music. These artists and more melted this writer’s “Cold, Cold Heart.”

Hopefully my ramblings haven’t fallen on deaf ears. If I did indeed convince you, but you think it’s just me and you listening to country on campus, think again. “Country music is single-handedly the greatest genre of music due to its ability to always make you happy, even though it’s heartbreaking.

It makes me feel the way nothing else can,” eloquently mused Emily Chong ’21.

One anonymous source admitted, “Country music is great to do drugs to. That’s what my cousin says.”

Tucker Quinlan ’23 put it plainly: “Country is good.”

I think so too.

ARTS

November 21, 2019

Campus Canvas

A weekly space highlighting the creative pursuits of student-artists

Rachel Sipress They/Them Class of 2021 Political Science Major For me, art is about the creative journey, the embodied process, more than the end object.

I have synesthesia and will often start with an abstract intersection of thought and memory on a specific theme.

I then create an intensely curated playlist on that theme and attempt to visually translate it onto the canvas.

Page 7

Excuse me, Which is your favorite bathroom on campus?

“The bathroom down the hall going to financial aid.”

— Roayan Azanza ’20

“LGBTQ center Bathroom, it’s always clean.”

—Thomas Dadoly ’21

“Taylor, if you go under the art library, there is a hidden bathroom and it’s amazing.”

— Henry Gilbert ’20

“Any bathroom that is completely vacant.”

— Danielle Kaminski ’20

Lecture confronts cinematic Italian-American caricatures “Saturday Night Fever.” However, to present a more recent example of the over-the-top Italian character, she began the lecture with a scene from the sitcom “The Mindy Project.” The episode the clip was taken from, titled “Mindy and Nanny,” originally aired in October of 2015.

The video showed an interaction between the title character, Mindy Lahiri, and her motherin-law, Annette Castellano. With her obsession with food, Italian accent and prosciutto hanging from the ceilings, Castellano exemplifies the media’s Italian-American archetype. She represents what Anatrone deemed, “[T]he Italian immigrant who cannot lose her accent or redirect her loyalties away from Italy even a century after emigrating.”

These stereotypes that we see on the screen continue to impact public perception of Italian-Americans. It is so easy to take what we see on TV or in a movie and assume it reflects reality, especially since many of the works featuring these characters are instantly familiar for a broad audience. “By…repeating the association of particular groups with certain behaviors or appearances, film and television helps to condition our expectations of those groups off the screen,” Anatrone commented.

As a student taking Elementary Italian with no previous knowledge of the language, I was interested in seeing how the lecture related to what I was learning in class. Genuine Italian culture, which my class has been exploring,

often conflicts with what we see on the screen.

Because Italy contains such a sheer variety of cultures that differ across regions, the diversity of Italian life doesn’t fit into the narrow food-loving, family-focused stereotype that film and other works of fiction have forged.

When asked about the overall message she hopes students take from her lecture and from her course when it begins in the spring, Anatrone reflected, “[F]ocusing on representations of Italian immigrants allows us to trace the persistence of these cultural stereotypes over

more than a century and consequently take a critical (not necessarily negative), but thoughtful approach to our position as spectators and as global citizens.” Although the representations of Italian characters, especially immigrants, can be inaccurate and restrictive, we can still enjoy these movies; the adorable moment when Lady and Tramp share spaghetti will continue to be one of Disney’s iconic scenes. Yet it is still important to acknowledge the nuanced history behind these exaggerated, limiting depictions of nationalities in film.

“New England bathroom on the first floor.”

— Rosa Olguín ’22

Courtesy of Komers Real via flickr

LECTURE continued from page 1 Onto the Screen.” The evening mainly focused on the relationship between Italian emigration and film. Anatrone’s talk provided a glimpse into a course she will teach next semester with similar themes. The class will look at fiction, letters, poetry and other works that capture these stories of Italian migration, especially into the United States.

Many of the quintessentially Italian-American cinematic pieces that Anatrone presented to the students were instantly recognizable—“The Godfather,” “The Sopranos”—while others, such as “L’emigrante,” were lesser-known. The wide array of media Anatrone discussed points to how pervasive Italian-American stereotyping is throughout our culture. In an email correspondence, she described the significance of these filmic depictions: “One of the most enduring stereotypes of the Italian immigrant…is a caricature of an undereducated, shabbily dressed person with a thick accent and a hyperfocus on food and family. This figure is typically accompanied by some kind of music that evokes folkloric traditions and harkens back to early decades of the last century.” The Italian chefs from “Lady and the Tramp,” with their heavy accents, their focus on food and their singing and dancing, are just one example of cinematic figures that align with this caricature.

Anatrone showed many clips from movies that came out during the 20th century, such as

Francis Ford Coppola’s acclaimed mob drama “The Godfather” is one of many iconic films that enforce hyper-exaggerated stereotypes of Italian-Americans.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

“Third floor north in Strong.”

— Siyi Wang ’22

Francisco Andrade, Humor & Satire Yvette Hu, Photography Scan the code above to submit your artwork.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

FEATURES

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November 21, 2019

End-of-life educators, experts demonstrate death wellness Am Chunnananda Guest Columnist

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tices grew.

Duncan and I continued to listen in awe as Stander told us about the mushroom death suit, an eco-friendly alternative designed to make mushrooms grow from the corpse, Australian fashion designer Pia Interlandi’s “garments from the grave,” which are made from biodegradable fibers and Katrina Spade’s developments in “recomposition,” which converts human remains into soil and serves as a scalable, sustainable alternative to burial. I found myself in an incredibly educational and encouraging space—one that freely offered, as Stander puts it, “cultural openings” to talk about death, facilitating a process that felt normal, natural.

Though these concepts and innovations were new to us, Stander reminded us that many of these “greener” practices are simply a return to how things were prior to the evolution of human practices surrounding death. Embalming, for instance, became widely practiced during the Civil War to allow bodies to be preserved so faraway family members could have a chance to grieve.

Living in a society that lacks “death wellness,” or a mentally and emotionally healthy relationship with death, we may also find ourselves forgetting about the universality that is our mortality, Stander pointed out. She told us about a death conversation event she attended where the facilitator had everyone introduce themselves as a mortal. “Coming and owning being mortal is at a different layer,” Stander said—it is a moment of connection that is just as, if not more, fundamental than our name, gender identity or any other aspect

that we tend to foreground during an introduction.

Stander also talked about the unparalleled relationship that people, especially the younger generation, now have with death because of the global climate crisis. “[We will] understand loss on a scale that’s not in human experience very early on in our lives,” which also perhaps generates compulsion to engage with death, evident in the growth of the death care world, Stander explained. She emphasized the importance of schools teaching students to cope with a rapidly changing world, and of having toolkits to handle realities that affect us environmentally and existentially.

We must be equipped to confront the reality that, as Stander aptly phrased it, “The world is our oyster, but the oyster is very sick.”

Our conversation led to Duncan and I sharing how we have personally interacted with death and how it is practiced within our own cultures. Before we left, Duncan and I took a moment to contribute to the poster board set up in the corner of the room, writing down something we each hoped to do before we die. After taking a concluding glance at the black-clothed booth tables and expressing gratitude to those we had come to know, I found myself departing with peace. I did not expect to cultivate my curiosity, accept an invitation for contemplation and subsequently undergo unfamiliar personal reflection about an aspect of my existence I habitually dismiss, all on a Saturday afternoon. I found myself closer to something that once felt needlessly far away.

Vassar Haiti Project moves from one Arlington to another

Courtesy of Vassar Haiti Project

HAITI PROJECT continued from page 1 Program Is Fueling Massive Street Protests in Haiti,” 06.24.2019). This sparked ongoing protests starting in August 2018, known as the “Kot kòb PetwoCaribe a?

[Where is the PetroCaribe money?]” protests. In 2019, more violence has been directed at demonstrators and the daily lives of Haitians have increasingly been disturbed. Meanwhile, more people across the country have taken to the streets to demand the resignation of current president Jovenel Moïse due to his government’s alleged corruption. Protests further intensified as fuel has become increasingly scarce and its price has skyrocketed to around $16 per gallon, according to one of VHP’s contacts in Haiti. Many of Haiti’s larger cities have had to shut down hospitals and schools. The price inflation of goods from food to medication has also posed major challenges to residents (The Nation, “Haiti Is in the Streets,” 10.24.2019). Despite the unrest, Moïse has neither given in to demands nor presented any viable pathway toward compromise. The situation remains unresolved.

As members of VHP follow the situation through media, we are saddened not only to see the strife present in Haiti, but also the rebuilding of a narrative that frames Haiti as a violent, unstable and “backward” place. Many journalists have shared this narrative, rather than frame Haiti as a place that has survived systematic global violence and has risen up countless times to shape a new future for themselves. It’s equally frustrating to see how the news about Haiti is relegated to the corners of mainstream newspapers across the country. The urgency of these stories is diluted by other pieces of news deemed more

Unable to travel to Haiti amid the protests, the Vassar Haiti Project persevered, instead bringing Haitian wares to the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Arlington, MA. important. In this context, hosting a Haitian art sale becomes even more essential, because it is not only how the Vassar Haiti Project raises funds for our community-led initiatives (including Women’s Cooperative, water purification, reforestation, healthcare access and education initiatives), but also how we promote Haitian culture and reframe narratives about Haiti.

Since 2001, VHP has been committed to the promotion of sustainable, community-led development, and the welfare of artisans and artists in Chermaitre, a rural village in northwest Haiti. Typically, during spring break, a group of 10 students, along with VHP co-founders Lila and Andrew

Meade, travel to Haiti to discuss the successes and challenges that the schools, clinic, women’s co-operative and village as a whole have faced. Conversations allow us to collaboratively plan future projects and ensure that all the work we do stems from what the community envisions for themselves. Additionally, the trip is an opportunity for us to purchase art in preparation for future events.

Unfortunately, last March, because of the ongoing political strife in Haiti, we were unable to have these key conversations on the ground. However, we were able to continue our conversations with our key partners in Haiti, Dr. Gueslin Joas-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

sainville and Père André Wildaine, who confirmed that the situation is challenging—but they still hope that Haiti is on the cusp of a new era.

Instead of going to Haiti, the group traveled to Arlington, MA and met with members of the First Parish Unitarian Universalist, a church to which some members of VHP belong. That was when the first seed was planted for an art sale that would eventually blossom.

Six months after the visit, 26 Vassar students loaded up a U-Haul with Haitian art and traveled from one Arlington to another. From Nov. 1-3, the community center space at First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church was transformed into one with colorful displays of the talents of Haitian artists, as the room was entirely embellished with vibrant paintings and handicrafts.

The Arlington sale proved a huge success, as the liveliness of the artworks and the passion of volunteers and customers allowed artists and viewers alike to celebrate the beauty of the country. Benoit Profélus, a Haitian artist whose work was showcased at the sale, has described his two dreams: to “become a bigger artist” and “go to every country and exhibit.” In the same interview, he described how he uses painting to present how he views Haiti. Using their art as a lens, Benoit and his colleagues’ work shows that despite the turmoil, the Haitian spirit of strength and dignity lives on.

— VHP members Laury Senecal ’23, Bryan Hawkins ’23, Yiqing Fan ’22, Joshua Gbodi ’23, Annika Rowland ’20, Shrui Oshiro ’22, Duc Dang ’23, Reynaldo Valenzuela ’23, Sonia Gollerkeri ’21, Brynna Gleeson ’20 and Eilif Ronning ’20.

FEATURES

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Buying ugly food is sustainability fashion, not activism Lindsay Craig Columnist

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wisted carrots, misshapen strawberries and scarred apples—a sampling of the ugly fruits and veggies most shoppers reject for prettier alternatives. In an increasingly aesthetic-oriented consumer culture with an endless supply of perfect-looking produce, ugly foods are left abandoned in produce sections despite having the same taste and nutritional content as more attractive versions.

Often cited as one of the biggest and most ignored problems of the developed world, food waste should be at the forefront of national conversations given that nearly half of all produce is wasted (The Atlantic, “Why Americans Lead the World in Food Waste,” 07.15.2016). In fact, produce is the most wasted household item in the U.S. despite the tragedy that 37 million Americans are food insecure (Feeding America, “What is Food Insecurity in America?”). To combat this phenomenon, companies such as Misfits Market, Imperfect Foods and Hungry Harvest now sell these oft-wasted fruits and vegetables to customers in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)—style boxes. Today, hoards of enthusiastic consumers purchase boxes of hilariously imperfect produce weekly.

Misfits Markets is the T.J. Maxx of the produce industry. You may have even seen some of their copious ugly produce ads on your Facebook newsfeed or online shopping sites. Their brilliant marketing campaigns draw you in with anthropomorphized vegetables and cute slogans. “A hideous orange makes beautiful juice,” professes an Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables ad. “Always fresh, sometimes normal,” reads Misfits Market’s.

And on the side of an Imperfect Foods box two conjoined carrots hug under the sweet words, “We grew up together.”

While these ads draw attention, these companies’ missions to eliminate food waste and build a better food system for everyone have sparked ethical controversies in food communities nationwide. In fact, the whole Ugly Food movement—a food trend these companies set in motion—has ignited debates surrounding the ethics of commodifying flawed foods. These niche markets might be displacing established local efforts to reduce food waste and distribute uglies to food insecure households. Instead, they cater to health-conscious clientele and ultimately fail to address the larger issue of macro-scale farm overproduction and household waste.

Cleanly packaged collections of ugly foods from far away have even come to Vassar. Sophie Kennen ’20 used to order ugly produce from Misfits Market, but recently stopped.

Ironically, they sent her too much and she couldn’t eat everything Misfits delivered— the items rescued to reduce food waste

ended up in the trash anyway. Additionally, her boxes were not only filled with fruits and veggies, but an excess of packaging and plastic. This strikes me as a clear disconnect between the company’s mission and the consumer’s experience. Despite the variety of ugly produce within Misfits boxes, the company lacks variety in box size. Consequently, food waste persists despite the ingenuity of these faddish markets.

My professors tell me that before the commodification of imperfect produce, ugly foods were simply tucked away in juices and buffet bars—not merely left to rot in the fields or on grocery shelves. Before ugly food became a trendy topic in food-conscious communities, unseemly carrots were shredded, non-triangular strawberries made into jam and bruised apples turned into cider. Beyond grocery stores and restaurants, ugly, leftover foods are also vital resources for charities, food pantries and nonprofits.

Organizations like Feeding America use ugly unsellables to feed food-insecure Americans at no cost. Last year they provided 43,000 pounds of summer squash for people in need after an Amish farm in Pennsylvania harvested squash too ugly to be sold in grocery stores (Feeding America, “Three Stories of Rescued Summer Veggies,” 07.20.2018).

Questions emerge. Are for-profit companies like Misfits Market doing the world any good, or are they distracting from a broken food system? And for our local context: Do Hudson Valley farmers benefit from these services, or do they disrupt local systems already in place? These are some of the questions I grapple with in my senior thesis in Science, Technology & Society (STS).

Organizations such as Cornell Cooperative Extension glean leftover produce from the fields of the Poughkeepsie Farm Project (PFP) to feed food-insecure families in the greater Poughkeepsie area for free (Poughkeepsie Farm Project, “Gleaning to Feed the Hudson Valley,” 10.11.2017). Free uglies have even been featured in local events. Two years ago, a festival called “Feeding the Hudson Valley” used ugly produce to make lunch for the public. The event’s mission was to “create awareness of food waste,” and “local organizations fed hundreds of people with produce that was set to be discarded.” (The Poughkeepsie Journal, “Feeding the Hudson Valley turns ‘ugly produce’ into meals,” 10.7.2017) Organizations and farms including the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, Dutchess Outreach and the Hudson Valley Regional Council pitched in to promote ugly foods and run this community outreach. They served ratatouille made with imperfect tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, peppers, yellow squash and other rescued misfits. Hundreds of people attended the event.

Courtesy of Sumiko Neary

fter exiting our Uber, Duncan Aronson ’21 and I entered the brightly lit, colorfully walled space that is the Boardman Road Branch Library, not knowing quite what to expect. As college students in reasonably good health, “Before I Die…” is a tagline we are fortunate enough to not interpret with immediacy. Yet, we found ourselves accepting the invitation to join the “Conversation for Everyone” that the “Before I Die” Death Fair offered on its digital flyer, and made our way into a room tucked away in the corner of the library.

We were greeted with a warm smile as we entered, despite feeling rather out of place as college-aged students. After shuffling around the entrance of the classroom-sized space with unease and intently studying the schedule handed to us, we realized how little we knew. From “green burial,” to “end-of-life doula,” to “Death Cafe,” the jargon of a world from which we were clearly distant stunned us. However, our experience at this initially odd-seeming, but eventually enriching, event would come to remind us that we are, of course, always close to such a world, and that this closeness need not be bound up by fear.

We first shared a conversation with co-organizer of the fair Anthony Sedgman, who is also an end-of-life doula—a trained non-medical companion who respectfully and compassionately supports individuals navigating the experience of dying.

When detailing the purpose of the event, Sedgman introduced to us the concept of “death phobia,” the culturally driven norm

of resisting death. Death phobia shows itself in things as apparently mundane as our euphemistic word choices—we often say “loss” or “passing,” as opposed to “death” itself.

While the event did not aim to combat death phobia head-on, it did seek to provide a space for individuals to converse with experts about aspects of death—funeral homes, elder law, hospice volunteering, storytelling, to name a few—be it casually or through structured panels and activities. Sedgman hoped that participants would depart with enhanced death literacy, as well as a deeper connection to their aliveness. “Studying death makes life more rich,” Sedgman philosophized. He indicated that the practice also leads to a recognition of the preciousness of each day.

After curing some of our initial curiosities, Sedgman referred us to Dina Stander, an end-of-life navigator, writer and coach.

Stander is one half of Last Dance Shrouds, a business offering simple, organic cotton burial cloths that are sustainable. As Stander discussed considerations of sustainability in death practices, such as the delays in decomposition caused by embalming, or the ideal burial depth (3-4 feet as opposed to 6) and casket material (pine rather than metal) for effective decomposition, the concept of death began to unfold as a series of tangible, real practices with intersections in seemingly disconnected fields: science, environmentalism or emotional interactions. My view of death as an incomprehensible inevitability of life stretched out, instead, into a backdrop out of which constellations of ideas and prac-

November 21, 2019

Vassar Food Community member Tamika Whitenack ’21 poses with a bok choi from her Community Supported Agriculture share, an alternative to Ugly Food movements.

Since the Hudson Valley sits at the forefront of foodie-ness, I assumed farmers would know about the Ugly Food movement.

But after conversations with workers at Adams Fairacre Farms store in Poughkeepsie, small-scale organic farmers and market vendors, this is not what I discovered. One farmer said his farm didn’t produce enough ugly food waste to necessitate selling to alternative markets for redistribution. He left undesirables to animals on the farm. One produce vendor at the Thursday farmers market on Raymond Ave asked for clarification on the topic altogether: “The ugly food…what?”

The movement hasn’t made a mark here yet, and after diving into the efficacy of Hudson Valley food distribution, maybe it shouldn’t.

Maybe the movement would put price tags on what’s given to people in need for free.

Imperfect produce often finds a home in the “seconds” pile at grocery stores, farmers markets and CSAs. Shoppers can expect deep discounts for food in seconds. I discovered the seconds pile this past harvest season through Vassar Food Community’s (VFC) CSA share at the Poughkeepsie Farm Project.

Every Saturday morning, a few VFC members and I would hike over to PFP to collect our CSA share: an exciting amalgamation of kale, watermelon radishes, beets, carrots and sweet potatoes. We have incorporated the produce into our club’s many culinary creations. To supplement larger communal meals, we cheerfully collected free ugly produce from the seconds bin. Free and still good to eat, that bin became a favorite stockpile of blemished but delicious extras.

I started the semester asking, “Why aren’t more farmers in the Hudson Valley taking advantage of this hidden market?” but now my question has shifted: “Why does this movement exist at all and what are the ethics of commodifying such foods when we already

have CSAs?” CSAs are incredible models of local food distribution, and some farms ensure that cost isn’t a barrier to enjoying one. For example, PFP accepts SNAP and food stamps to reduce the rate of a season share. Misfits Market offers no price reduction for food stamp customers (Misfits Market, “Frequently Asked Questions,” 2019). Moreover, when you pick up your share at PFP, you meet farmers from the fields and make friends from the community. I had many delightful encounters with Vassar faculty and staff there—even the professor I work for came to collect her share weekly. I also became intimate with the land itself. Throughout the ten weeks of seasonal share, I watched food farmed in the field become vegetables available for CSA collection hours later. One Friday, some friends volunteered to harvest the potatoes, which we collected on Saturday and roasted on Wednesday: farm-to-fork at its finest.

Yesterday I hesitantly signed up for my first Misfits Market box. This Friday I will be opening the box as an investigator eager to ethically examine its contents. I’ll be following up with a phone call to Misfits Market.

In fact, a short phone conversation might be the closest connection I get to the origins of my food and the people behind the process.

Unlike my experience with the CSA share, I won’t be meeting the farmers or workers.

A brown box will arrive with no connection to the land or labor involved—a box like any other from Amazon. And just like an Amazon prime delivery, I will receive my weird items with no clue where they came from or who harvested each potato or parsnip. I’m sure this box won’t replace the beloved CSA seconds pile or weekly PFP pick-up. After all, ugly produce companies make great headlines and catchy ads, but their deeper consequences are still left to be unpacked.

Intensive dramatizes Sophocles, examines gender in myth Meghan Hayfield Guest Columnist

[CW: This article mentions suicide.] ext semester, junior Abigail Lass will teach “Sophocles’ Women of Trachis,” a Greek and Roman Studies and Drama cross-listed course alongside Professor Emerita of Greek and Roman Studies Rachel Kitzinger. The intensive is set to shake up traditional classroom dynamics—culminating in a recorded outdoor performance to be released with the translation—and peer into modern gender dynamics.

GRST 385 examines a lesser-known Sophocles play, newly translated from Greek by Kitzinger and Professor Emeritus of English Eamon Grennan over the course of six to seven years. Before the play’s events, Herakles

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dies and becomes a god, ransacks a city and kills its inhabitants to woo Iole, whom he captures. The play starts with Herakles spending his final day on Earth swooning over Iole. His wife Deianeira gives Herakles a love potion to win him back, which she learns is actually poison, and then kills herself. In his last moments, Herakles asks his son, Hyllos, to put him out of his misery and marry Iole.

“The play leaves you with Hyllos, the son, and Iole the captive woman, these two younger characters,” Lass explained. “Something Rachel and I are excited about exploring is: Can these two people of the younger generation create a better future? Can they create a more equitable relationship? Can things be better?”

“The play is structured around the contrast

between female and male voice,” Kitzinger expressed over email. “Our translation will, we hope, pose questions about communication between men and women, about how difficult it is to understand each other’s perspectives and the destruction that comes from not being able to do so.”

While the text itself is old, the structures of patriarchy it examines are current. The conversations we have around gender have existed for millennia, and Lass argued that it is important to read these texts in order to create art that can consider structural inequalities.

“The larger trajectory of the myth seems to bend towards the patriarchy but Sophocles in the text does not mention that at all,” Lass stated. “We’re really interested in playing with the ambiguities and not privileging one

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

side over the other and looking at breaking those molds… If you’re going to have conversations about gender dynamics, you need to create a full picture and that includes looking at the history of this medium.”

Unlike standard drama productions, GRST 385 limits rehearsal to 10 hours a week and requires no crew assignments or prerequisites.

The instructors said the intensives empower students to collaboratively determine the course’s direction, a thought echoed by Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Studies Rachel Friedman, who connected Lass and Kitzinger in the first place. They hope these factors encourage students from all majors and backgrounds to audition.

Auditions for GRST 385 will take place the first week of December.

HUMOR & SATIRE

Momus, Goddess of Satire, struggles HOROSCOPES to stay awake whilst granting wisdom

Page 10

November 21, 2019

Francisco Andrade Zodiac Warrior

By Ivanna Guerra (Speaker for the Goddess)

ARIES | March 21 | April 19

I’m going to be blunt Aries. You need to focus. Thanksgiving is in a week, and you have yet to practice for all the political arguments you’re going to have. Do not let your racist Uncle Jimmy win again.

TAURUS | April 20 | May 20 Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

What do you mean you have to?

You’re a horse dentist? Oh. Well I guess just don’t look into any other orifices then.

GEMINI | May 21 | June 20

Give yourself time. A crisis doesn’t get resolved rushing out to fix it. Take a deep breath and maybe a nap. Your room will likely still be on fire when you get up.

LEO | July 23 | August 22 You are not sure how to give good advice. The cliche phrases are great, but saying “blood is thicker than water” to a shark attack victim isn’t advice.

More like a morbid science fact, really.

VIRGO | August 23 | September 22 “Up” is absolutely an amazing movie and you should feel free to take a few lessons from it. Explore the world and live your life freely. Don’t run away to South America and try to kill a chubby boy-scout.

LIBRA | September 23 | October 22 I’m not one to say it but you’re doing great Libra. You’ve been exercising, eating well and it’s been weeks since you ranted about how good “Fleabag” is.

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that boring, maybe you can even make money out of it! But as this as my idea I expect five percent of your earnings.

I hope all of my great suggestions help.

Let me know if any of these work out!

Sincerely, Mom

From the desk of Francisco Andrade, Humor & Satire Editor

Cold weather front coupled with rainstorms and bad sidewalk drainage motivates students to hate this place ‘Cadet Kelly’: the most accurate military representation Madison Caress

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e r p l u a S t t i e v l es i o

efore anyone critiques my review of “Cadet Kelly” and says I can’t make fun of war heroes because I have no military experience, I did get permission from our Humor Editor, Francisco, to write this.

He is a VETERAN! And the only reason he joined the military in the first place is because his “Cadet Kelly” cosplay got out of hand. Since Francisco obviously speaks for all military members, I shall do my best to honor the integrity that this cinematic masterpiece brings to our troops.

For the members of my faithful audience that don’t know what “Cadet Kelly” is about, here is a brief synopsis. Hilary Duff’s character, Kelly, has to go to a military school in upstate New York (ew) because her new stepfather (also ew) is the Commandant of the school. Because she is Hilary Duff, she naturally doesn’t fit in. Hilary values, above all else, individuality. She isn’t about to conform to a standard because she’s now in “military school” and that it’s kinda “the point.” She immediately clashes with Cadet Captain Stone, played by Christy Carlson Romano. Their strife and conflict within the film is unparalleled, and results in a surprising amount of homoerotic energy.

Characters other than Kelly and Captain Stone are mostly unimportant, as the

Francisco Andrade Music Afficianado

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SAGITTARIUS

November 22 | December 21 Gonna go out this week? Good; it’s always wise to stop playing RPGs and go outside. But, stop complaining about bad graphics outside, you just need glasses.

CAPRICORN

December 22 | January 19

AQUARIUS

January 20 | February 18

You are right to gift yourself some Amazon wishlist items. You deserve it. Oh god, you accidentally ordered it without logging out of your mom’s account.

Wait, why did your vibrator say “buy again?”

PISCES | February 19 | March 20 Down to business like always, Pisces.

The only advice I can give you is in the first word of every horoscope.

This one goes out to the library basement toilet, for always taking our shit.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

I think I speak for all of us when I say that Hilary Duff’s Christmas album, “Santa Claus Lane,” will be playing on repeat for the next 37 days. Mariah Carey who?

Cadet Kelly has very realistic military representation for a Disney movie. For instance, if you paint a rainbow on your superior officer’s hair, your stepfather, who also happens to be commandant, will only lightly reprimand you and make you lug around equipment for the group on campus that twirls the gun thingys. Also, the group on campus that does twirl the gun thingys are the coolest and most popular students, which I’m assuming has to be true. It takes a lot of talent to not drop guns that can’t be fired anyway. Maybe I should learn to twirl fake guns, since the popularity I would receive from that would hopefully negate the lack of popularity that comes from writing movie reviews.

As I near the conclusion of this review, I suggest that the film be grouped with other militarily influenced ones. Netflix, for instance, should immediately add it to its “war films” category. Just think of it: “Black Hawk Down,” “Schindler’s List,” “Cadet Kelly.” For all you Hilary Duff lovers out there, this film can be found on the new streaming platform, Disney+, but honestly if you truly love Hilary Duff, you already own it on DVD and VHS. I even (begrudgingly) got the platform,

ast summer, I had an incredible opportunity to visit NBC 30 Rock and do a studio tour with a group of friends. Among those in my group, there was someone who spent most of their life under a boulder and thus had never heard of SNL, 30 Rock or most other shows on television.

As the tour went on, the guide informed us we were directly in front of Jimmy Fallon’s studio, and she then opened the door, peeked inside and whispered very quietly to us, “Jimmy Fallon is actually in there right now doing rehearsal, so we can’t go in.” To which my friend (standing directly in front of the still open door) very loudly responded: “Yo, who the fuck is Jimmy Fallon?”

Well folks, the man apparently can’t keep me down because for some crazy reason I was allowed to go back to the studios and sit in a taping of Jimmy’s (whoever the fuck that is) show. I want to start off by saying that I could take a different approach to this story. I could write about how incredible the opportunity was, and how I met wonderful people and was afforded the opportunity of a lifetime. I could say how Fallon (who dat?) donated a quarter of a million dollars to veterans and changed many lives. Or I could be a total assclown and do my job as Humor Editor by mocking a memory I will forever cherish. I have chosen the latter.

So James (I think that’s his name) starts off his show by having his warm-up comic come out. The comic talks to the audience and gets

them ready for the soon-to-be-unfunny afternoon. This guy was great. I don’t remember his name or any jokes he told, but he was hilarious. That much was clear. The flashing lights above us saying “applause” probably helped a little. Then the Roots came out.

And I. Lost. My. Goddamn. Mind. I have always said I wanted to see them live, and I still want to because when they walked on stage I blacked out. Maybe it was the lights that caused it, maybe it was the multiple orgasms I had, but regardless I don’t remember much.

After I regained consciousness, the Roots were calmly standing with their instruments, so it was easier to manage my desire to scream. That is around the time that Jim-

mytopher (who?) himself stepped onto the stage. The audience all cheered, some cried, a few barked (not just the service dogs, either). First impression: Dude is actually tall.

Why was I under the impression he was, like, 4’8”? He is actually 6 feet tall and that kind of intimidated me a bit. I mean, granted I was watching on the show that’s named after him and listening to him talk, so maybe his height shouldn’t have been the primary intimidation factor.

Jimbo (???) had a great monologue about something. I really like the parts where he talked about things. Okay folks I’m gonna level with y’all, I’m still thinking about the Roots. I mean, Questlove was there. How can

Courtesy of Maissoma via Flickr

Yvette Hu/The Miscellany News

Let yourself enjoy the wonders of life.

Pet that dog you see around campus, smell the pine around Vassar, sneak in and release all the whales from SeaWorld. #blackfish

audience spends most of the movie wondering when those two are gonna bang anyway. I mean, I completely understand. If Christy Carlson Romano was yelling at me, I would also feel some things. However, this movie was released in the dark ages (the early 2000s), and was created by Disney, so both characters end up having a crush on a man named Brad. Here is where I see a couple plot holes. For one, women having crushes on men at all baffles me. Secondly, no one ever actually develops a crush on men named “Brad,” they just suddenly find themselves married to them with three kids and a mortgage they can’t pay because “Brad” is trying to start a career making his own kombucha. These plot holes don’t bother me though, as seeing Christy Carlson Romano in uniform makes me forget about everything else.

On the topic of Kelly, for a Disney movie heroine, she is, frankly, obnoxious. It’s not very often I think, “Oh my god, just fit in already. You’ve proved your point, Kelly!” when watching a Disney movie. Even Lizzie McGuire would be tired of Kelly. If Hilary Duff happens to read this review, I don’t want her to think I am bashing her personally. Wikipedia states that she is an actress, singer-songwriter, designer, author, producer and businesswoman. I would never bash anyone that talented. A real sextuple threat!

so if someone could remind me in six days to cancel my free trial, that would be great.

Finally, I give this film a solid 600 out of 600, representing the number of times I want Christy Carlson Romano in uniform to yell at me.

Christy Carlson Romano, you beautiful land mermaid, you darling earthbound angel, you incredible Kim Possible voicing goddess. Never change, you darling woman.

Jimmy Fallon: the easiest way to watch The Roots live

SCORPIO | October 23 | November 21 Never allow your dreams to stay dreams. You dreamt your room was haunted? Buy a ouija board, ring up demons and call them idiots. Make sweet love to the devil himself. Live your best life.

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Breaking News

Millitary Historian

Momus, the Goddess Satire. She watches gracefully from the heavens, and only descends to our realm when a poor student requires sarcastic remarks and bad advice.

HUMOR & SATIRE

Courtesy of Dustin Senger via Wikimedia Commons

CANCER | June 21 | July 22

Hi Boring Lory, People’s opinions of others tend to be subjective, which makes me wonder if you are exaggerating when you say you’re really boring. For starters, a lot of people thought that “Boyhood” was a really great movie, but my grandfather thought it was the most boring movie ever created. He even fell asleep on our recliner. We didn’t bother to wake him up after the movie ended.

What I am trying to say is that you might not be boring to everyone, but, in case you are indeed finding that people begin to snooze off at the sound of your voice, I suggest you do the following: Begin speaking in a really bad British accent. I know this actual British guy that gets a lot of attention for his accent. It might be that he also has a ginger beard and kinda looks like a tall leprechaun, but maybe you can take a page from his book.

Start by calling everyone “lad” and insert the word “cheerio” every so often.

Another option is to stop speaking al-

together. People will not think you are boring if they cannot even form an opinion about your character. Wear stripes.

Or you can only sing while speaking.

If you just sing everything you can make your life a living musical. I don’t know if you’ve seen the most recent film production of “Les Miserables”, but they sing everything—even when they just need to ask a simple question—and that movie was nominated for an Oscar. I mean, that clearly means that the movie was not boring (for some people). I suggest articulating the end of each sentence with a long, high note!

Another option is to learn how to speak different languages and use them all at the same time. What I mean is, alternate words from disparate languages in one sentence. People might not understand you right away, but they will have to focus on you for a while so they can figure out what you’re saying. I guarantee they won’t be sleeping then!

Maybe you can make a career out of your boringness. People, including people on this campus, suffer from insomnia and need an alternative to melatonin gummies. The time is now to be of assistance: Just start up a conversation with them and help them doze off! If you are

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Gonna keep it real with you, Gemi: The world is out to get you this week.

Well, not the whole world—only the moths. They feel you’ve wronged them. You’re screwed.

D

ear Momus, I just realized that I’m boring.

What do I do?

Sincerely, Boring Lory

November 21, 2019

Questlove, pictured here doing something. It really doesn’t matter what he is doing—you can assume it sounds amazing. When he brushes his hair, it definitely sounds like the Aeolian harp.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

any lover of music be expected to focus? I always wondered why the host, Jimmy Jazz (his legal name, I think), was so gangly and over the top on stage, and why the Roots always seemed so calm. Well, it’s because they command all the energy in the room with their pure talent, and it’s still Jimtopher’s (quien?) show, so they have to tone it down as best they can. Also if you’re reading this and you don’t like the Roots, then I’m not talking to you. Stop reading.

Anyway, I know that Fallonious (I’m running out of these) gets a bit of a bad rep for being boring and laughing during every segment, even when something is not funny (see his 10 minute interview with Bradley Cooper where they had to scratch it because he was laughing too much at a wig to ask any questions), but after seeing him live I understand why he is this way. He is one of us: a huge dork. He is just a massive fanboy and found himself in a position where he gets to interview and fawn over celebrities all day!

Not only that, but he gets to fall on celebrities, wrestle celebrities while wearing an “Alvin and the Chipmunks” onesie, spit on celebrities and even slap celebrities (all real segments on his show. Not a joke). This guy found a way to live all his sexual kinks on TV every night and get PAID FOR IT. I’d be giggly too. This experience has given me a newfound love and sexual tension towards Jimbobert (that’s gotta be it) and I will put him as my second favorite late night host right behind Conan (ordered by height).

P.S. I love you, the Roots. You can slap me on TV anytime.

OPINIONS

Page 12

Quite Frankly Frankie Knuckles

Editor-in-Chief Quality Advice-Giver

Hey Frankie, I’m essentially writing two theses: A 60+ page paper for my major and a book for my Creative Writing Seminar. You probably think that you know where this is going, but the theses aren’t actually the problem. I’m super stoked to be writing both of them—I love this stuff. A lot. And therein lies the issue. I just want to write my theses, so whenever I’m assigned an essay for another class, I become miffed and sullen. I resent the hours that I put into these essays that I would love to be putting into my theses, which are not only more enjoyable to craft, but also more important. How do I transform my disgruntlement into productivity?

With gratitude, Seniowritis Dear Seniowritis,

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Best wishes, Frankie P.S. To tide yourself over, just think of the future, when (hypothetically) you can write whatever you want.

Have questions? Want Frankie’s answers?

Scan the code to submit yours!

Gaps in meal plan coverage cause distress Sophie Schoenbrun Guest Columnist

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s winter break approaches, many students ask themselves: If I stay here over break, will I be able to eat? I shared the same question last spring break, when I discovered that every single dining option on campus required out-of-pocket payment on top of the cost of last year’s meal plan. This puzzled me, because if Vassar was allowing students to stay on campus at no extra cost, why wouldn’t they provide access to meals? For the four days I stayed on campus over break, I ate from the same portion of Baccio’s spaghetti and meatballs along with whatever snacks I had accrued from Express over the course of the year.

I was lucky that I had sufficient Arlington Bucks and a friend not far from campus so I didn’t have to go hungry.

I also stayed on campus over the summer working two jobs. By the time I would come back from my off-campus job at 8 p.m., I was ravenous. But the dining hall had already been closed for half an hour.

I was lucky that I had a roommate who knew my schedule. She would often bring me food from the Deece, whatever she could fit in a Tupperware container. When I finally received my bill for the summer, I was unsettled to find that the meals, half of which I never got to eat, had actually cost me significantly more than housing had.

As this year’s Advocacy Chair of Challah for Hunger—an organization which raises funds to combat food insecurity on college campuses and in our local community—I wanted answers to all of the questions I had accumulated from the spring and summer breaks of 2019. Why were there no meal options for students who needed to stay for spring break? Why did campus shut down randomly in the middle of the semester? What would students do if they didn’t have the resources that I had? To answer these questions and more, as Chair I sent out an anonymous survey to current students and recent alumnae/i inquiring about the sufficiency, affordability and accessibility of meals at Vassar over breaks.

What I found was appalling.

For a college committed to serving low-income students, Vassar’s dining resources fell far short of its ideals. 74 percent of respondents said that the meal selections—which over the summer were part of a required meal plan—were both unaffordable and insufficient in meeting their needs. 58 percent responded that they did not have access to meals on campus for all or part of a break. 43 percent said the dining hours over breaks were incompatible with their work schedules. 42 percent said they had to stay on campus for financial reasons in the first place.

If 43 percent of people cannot use the meal plan that they paid for and 74 percent found the plan a financial burden, there needs to be a monumental change in how the College approaches meals over breaks.

While the statistics were illuminating, the respondents themselves provided even more insight and began to share their stories.

In the “additional comments” section of the survey, some informed me that, during past breaks, they had gone days without eating. Another said that many of their friends were frustrated, not knowing where their next meal was going to come from. Still others had allergies and other dietary needs that weren’t met. Several expressed their concerns about the lack of spaces to cook the extra food they had

to buy over break—the dorm we stayed in over the summer break, Main House, had only one kitchen for 200 people, and many times, we were all trying to cook at once.

According to Senior Director of Dining Maureen King, the break meal plan has been a “slowly evolving process” taking place over a few years. Throughout my meeting with King and a subsequent meeting with both King and Associate Dean of the College for Campus Activities Teresa Quinn, I was surprised by how receptive they were to the data I presented and the solutions I suggested: A meal stipend for winter intersession and an extension of the dining hall hours to accommodate student workers. Then, she told me about a summer program I didn’t even know existed—I could have reserved a boxed meal through the dining website for the days when I came back to campus late. Clearly, that could have been better publicized.

Though boxed meals would have been extremely helpful for students working late, they would in no way have been a complete solution to the other issues the survey presented. There is a gap in communication between the administration and the students that is in extreme need of bridging. Without an adequate connection between the administration and affected students, it is much more likely that students will go hungry.

Because Campus Dining, Campus Activities and the Office of Residential Life all have a say in shaping the intersession meal plans, there is no single point of contact for students when problems arise. In a communication void, food insecurity will take a backseat.

“There is no one person to talk to [about this issue] because it’s a collaborative effort,” Director of Residential Education Michael Drucker told me in an interview.

He went on to tell me about recent efforts to mitigate significant food problems that have come up over breaks, such as administrators having to make free lunches for student workers over winter intersession and having to raise funds from different administrative offices to run a spring break food pantry. Drucker noted that the “practices [regarding the lack of meal access over breaks] reflect a different time in Vassar’s history,” when the vast majority of students would leave for every break and campus would shut down completely.

All of this reminded me of the work of Harvard Professor of Education Anthony

Abraham Jack, whose field of study focuses on student food insecurity over breaks when privileged students can afford to go on vacation. Jack says, “It is one thing to extend coveted invitations to [low-income and first-generation students]. It’s another [for a college] to really prepare for their arrival.” (New York Times, “It’s Hard to Be Hungry on Spring Break,” 03.17.2018). Vassar College has a responsibility to provide for its low-income students, and it cannot move forward with its repairs to the meal plan without significant input from those who will be most affected by the changes.

Without input from these students, it’s impossible for the campus to be adequately prepared to stay open year-round.

Winter break is coming up, and although the meal plan will be updated from last year’s, as indicated by Assistant Director for Residential Education Atiya McGhee, we don’t know yet what it will contain.

However, there will undoubtedly be room for improvement. Going forward, Challah for Hunger welcomes those who wish to share their stories, and will continue to work to establish a stronger connection between students and administrators. We want to make sure that no student will have to worry about where their next meal will come from while on this campus. But for now, there are two fixes the college should enact: First, Vassar must find someone to oversee the implementation of a comprehensive meal plan for breaks. This administrator must be available to students during the break times so that concerns can be addressed immediately.

Second, we must bring this conversation to the forefront of student discourse. An existing VSA committee, the Student Dining Committee, is open to meeting to discuss initiatives that would increase meal access on campus during breaks, as expressed by Chair of Residential Affairs for the VSA Amy Miller. The committee is open, but has been often devoid of non-VSA student input due to a lack of publicity. Challah for Hunger is also planning to host open workshops next semester, during which we will brainstorm creative solutions for the unaffordability and inaccesibility of food on campus during breaks.

It is the responsibility of the college to ensure that every student here can thrive regardless of financial status and to guarantee that students will not have to starve in order to do so.

Courtesy of Collin Knopp-Schwyn via Wikimedia Commons

uite frankly, nobody wants to write midterm essays for classes they don’t care about. Or maybe even for ones they do care a lot about. You’re not alone.

Recall your standard productivity tips here. The main point: Doing things is easier if you get a reward for doing the thing.

If you derive joy from working on your theses, construct your schedule to make thesis time a reward for getting other work done—much in the same way I use watching Netflix later as a motivator to plow through 1300 words of hot garbage.

The other way to combat your resentment is reframing the exercise of writing a short paper. Instead of just filling a prompt and sending it out into the world, think about how what you’re putting in your paper now fits into a grander idea, perhaps one that could make its way into a thesis. If the prompts are totally unrelated to the topic or focus of either thesis, this can be even more fun. The educational exercise of writing a paper is supposed to test your knowledge of what you’ve read and understood from class, but most professors are happy to read pieces that engage with a broader theme or integrate sources that come from outside class. Basically, don’t be afraid to go beyond the concrete bounds of the prompt to make the assignment something you actually care to put on paper. Just make sure your professor is alright with that.

This won’t eliminate the sense that you’re wasting time on work you’d rather not be doing. But that sense is basically all of college and most of life, so I suppose you should get used to it.

November 21, 2019

Vassar has an unlimited meal plan, but it doesn’t always feed students who stay over breaks. Some low-income students must stay on campus because they are unable to travel, and Vassar’s current plan does not do enough to ensure their well-being.

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

November 21, 2019

OPINIONS

Page 13

Let’s talk about Hen Mazzig and his troubling history Rayan El Amine Reporter

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n last Thursday, my past in Lebanon and my present at Vassar converged when Former Israeli Defense Force (IDF) officer and Pro-Israeli activist Hen Mazzig came to campus. His visit was met with head-on resistance from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group who, to their credit, staged a very well-organized protest from the outside of room 300 of Rockefeller Hall demanding that Mazzig and his ideals leave our community alone.

When the situation blew up online, a shitstorm of Vassar alums, regardless of religious affiliation, and other supporters of Mazzig, upset that students could even protest at all, punctuated their anger by pledging on social media that they would no longer donate to the institution that they once called home (Twitter, “#shameonvassar,” 11.18.2019).

Please.

Keep your money, take your privilege, gift-wrap your nonsensical ideal that money could do anything to sway these passionate students and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

Now, let me be clear. My biases—I was born and raised in a Lebanon in constant conflict with Israel—are inherently tied to my roots, but those roots have no attachment to the Vassar chapter of SJP. In fact, I’ve consistently questioned the credibility of a group whose membership is composed of few to no Arabs (to my knowledge).

While their intent may be righteous, they have no way of understanding what the conflict is like. There are no real-world consequences when SJP leaders protest. They can put down their signs and go home, not

implicated by the volume of their voice nor the aggression of their actions. Palestinian children continue to starve (The Guardian, “One million face hunger in Gaza after US cut to Palestine aid,” 05.15.2019).

Here’s the thing, though: SJP’s protests have no consequences for Palestinian children either. Unfortunately, when Vassar Organizing Israel Conversations Effectively (VOICE) brings in a former IDF officer and Zionist, those implications change, and the consequences become real. By giving Hen Mazzig a voice, we—as a campus—provide a platform for Zionism and the advancement of Israel as a state, joining a bloody history of Palestinian opression.

Mazzig, regardless of his incredible coming out story within the IDF, is complicit in the murder of thousands of Palestinian people (Vox, “This chart shows every person killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict since 2000,” 07.14.2014). While it is true that all but a few Israelis will at some point spend some time in the IDF, few have used that time to build their ethos in the way that Mazzig has.

Describing his talk as covering “[H]ow both Palestinian & Israeli life is valuable,” Mazzig seems ignorant to the inequity of these two groups in much the same way the #AllLivesMatter movement induces a racist slumber to the systemic destruction of African Americans (Twitter, @[HenMazzig], 11.14.2019).

When Mazzig speaks, what shadows him is not the typical, Westchester upper-middle class Vassar background, but instead a history rooted in displacement and violence.

It’s the ignorance towards a group clearly marginalized and barely hanging on to life.

When Mazzig is heard, those voices are silenced. When Mazzig speaks, our ears perk

up to his eloquent expression of Israeli life and fall deaf to the sound of gunpowder and metal splattering the floor.

Please don’t forget that this man stood silent among the debris of people’s homes.

VOICE is an integral part of Vassar’s campus, one that represents the Jewish community at Vassar and opens conversations on Palestine and Israel in a way that is both educational and valuable to both groups.

It’s a tamer alternative to the often explosive reactions that exist on both sides of the conversation calling for the destruction of a state and the displacement of millions—a situation the Palestinian community already knows far too well.

Mazzig does not represent this healthy discourse, however. Mazzig propagandizes the thought that life in Israel is the same as survival in Palestine. A regular critic of “terrorist” group Hamas, Mazzig seems keen to turn a blind eye to the displacement, starvation and destruction that so regularly accompanies the occupation of Palestine.

Hamas’ place in Palestine, as both a protector and defender, seems to be so conveniently ignored by Mazzig. So regardless of VOICE’s orientation towards education, it is pivotal to understand that by engaging with Zionism and its perpetrators, we are quite literally not “[A]llowing all voices to be heard,” as President Bradley seems so determined to maintain on our campus (The Miscellany News, “Letter to the Editor: President Bradley’s response to VOICE event and SJP protest,” 11.15.2019).

President Bradley expressed a selfish, right-wing claim toward neutrality in a situation where neutrality is not possible. As human-rights activist Desmond Tutu made

clear, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” (Desmond and Mpho Tutu, “The Book of Forgiving,” 2014).

I will leave this article with one final thought. Mazzig said in his talk that the chant echoing through the building, “[F]rom the river to the sea” is one that calls for the “genocide” of his people and the “[M]urder of [him] and [his] family.”

“From the river to the sea” is not a call for murder. The chant calls for the land that once belonged to the Palestinian people. It’s not a call for “The murder of my family” as Mazzig put it.

Crouched behind the walls of Rocky 300, Mazzig made cowardly claims attaching young, American college students to heinous crimes that he is far too familiar with.

It’s not a demand for genocide in the same way that “We Shall Overcome” did not call for white destruction in the 1960s. When Mazzig relays this thought, he associates those young men and women chanting for the liberation of Palestine with cold-blooded murderers. Recalling the inconsequential nature of these protests and implying that they are indeed inciting murder is not only incredibly dangerous—it’s cowardly.

Ultimately that’s what Mazzig is: a coward. Hidden behind a brick wall of Twitter characters and murderous implications, Mazzig does little to acknowledge his own history with murder and continues to imply equality where equality is not present.

VOICE has the potential to be an essential group in advancing Palestinian freedom while maintaining Jewish life.

That, however, can never happen with clowns like Hen Mazzig at the forefront.

Discourse on Israel/Palestine needed, but SJP doesn’t help Abram Gregory

Assistant Opinions Editor

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lainly put, the Israeli government is abusing the Palestinian people. Although the Global Conflict Tracker refers to the phenomenon as a “conflict,” it is not a conflict. A conflict implies two sides of equally matched combatants. When the U.N. certifies that the Israeli military killed 183 demonstrators and wounded over 6,000 from the safety of their own territory, there is no conflict (Council on Foreign Relations, “Global Conflict Tracker: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” 11.18.2019). This is abuse. I make clear that I understand this so as not to be hastily labeled a Zionist simply because I will decry anti-Semitism and Vassar SJP’s toxic presence on campus in this article.

While Palestinians are busy trying to survive continuous slaughter, starvation and attack from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), students in the United States actively advocate for the oppressed people. However, the Vassar chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has bastardized their alleged goal, and its members take advantage of their privileged position on campus to spread negative energy extraneous to the goal of liberation. That is, rather than engage in dialogue with willing groups such as Vassar Organizing Israel Conversations Effectively (VOICE), SJP expends effort disrupting lectures on ethnic minority groups.

A brief overview: Student group VOICE invited pro-Israel activist Hen Mazzig to campus to give a talk called “The Indigenous Jews of the Middle East: Forgotten Refugees.” Members of SJP protested the event with signs and chants, as I’m sure will be re-

ported on in great detail by the time of this writing’s publication. Masturbatory student activism aside, I raise two issues with SJP’s actions: their choice of event to protest, and the naive statement the org subsequently released. In addition, the flagrant foul—besides the possible anti-Semitism—is the deliberate interruption of an invited speaker.

In a separate, preemptive statement posted on Nov. 14 prior to Mazzig’s talk, Vassar SJP wrote on its Facebook page, “While the stories of Mizrahi Jews and their struggle both outside and within Israel deserve attention, this event will be little more than pro-Israel propaganda.” The automatic assumption that a Jew’s presentation is going to be propaganda—even while forecasted as pertaining to an ethnic group of refugees’ experiences—is anti-Semitic, full stop. Even if the speaker was an officer in the IDF, this still assumes that a Jew will preach an inherent project of protecting Israel, rather than actually delivering upon the announced topic of his presentation. This continues Vassar SJP’s history of spreading an anti-Jewish message masquerading as activism. One needn’t look too far down a Google search to be reminded of the time when Vassar’s own SJP shared a Nazi propaganda poster equating Jews with the Ku Klux Klan and the U.S. military complex (Times of Israel, “Vassar’s SJP sort of apologizes for anti-Israel, Nazi cartoon,” 05.16.2014).

Vassar has a history of, shall we say, overzealous anti-Israel activism. However, SJP’s and President Bradley’s responses signal that the game of cat-and-mouse between anti-Zionists and Zionists on campus is about to adopt some new rules. In a second Face-

book statement released on Nov. 15 following the protesting of Mazzig’s talk, the SJP doubled down on the use of the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” positively associating the phrase with the murderous Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) (The New York Times, “Palestinian Groups Are Found Liable at Manhattan Terror Trial,” 02.23.2015). More importantly, the org’s statement mentioned Hamas—a group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by both the US and EU and is arguably most famous for conducting a suicide-bombing of a Passover Seder—without decrying it and even obliquely acknowledged their shared political sentiment (The Guardian, “EU court upholds Hamas terror listing,” 07.26.2017). To accept a terrorist group as an ideological ally is unacceptable.

Congratulations, SJP—if you’re not Nazi sympathizers, you’re the closest thing.

While SJP has persisted somewhat unscathed through past instances of aggression, last week’s escapades indicate that the jig is up. Namely, it’s no longer on the table for student groups to disrupt invited speakers. Vassar Insider’s Andrew Solender ’20 interviewed an anonymous SJP member who argued that the protestors didn’t disrupt anything at all: “We did ‘disrupt’ by being loud, but we never entered the lecture space…and we didn’t keep anybody from going in and didn’t even have contact with the people who went in” (Vassar Insider, “SJP disruption reignites bitter campus debate over Israel,” 11.18.2019). This logic is reminiscent of one sibling waving their finger an inch from their other sibling, declaring “I’m not touching you!” Just because you

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

were not in the room does not mean you didn’t form a threatening presence to those in that space. You disrupted. Moreover, President Bradley’s Monday statement that “Last week’s event…was unacceptable” reaffirms that your disruptive buffoonery will not be tolerated on campus (Office of the President, “Statement on Campus Speaker,” 11.18.2019).

President Bradley’s response signals that ideological comfort and safety are going to take precedent over hate speech at Vassar.

That is, evidently a public talk on a displaced ethnic minority will not be transgressed, and blatant anti-Semitism is no longer fair game. Conservatives at Vassar can find their fantasies of the Petersonian campus dashed, now that hateful speech is no longer permitted to persevere in the name of “the great academic tradition of seeking the truth” (Vassar Political Review, “It’s time to stop prioritizing comfort when it comes to campus free speech,” 10.09.2019). As pertaining to the ideological conflict between Zionists and anti-Zionists on campus (as well as Jews repeatedly victimized by anti-Semitic aggression), the conflict is about to get more worrisome, though not without administrative intervention.

This development may, in fact, mean that anti-Zionists are forced to do the uncomfortable work of weighing their words and engaging in activism that carries more weight than fifteen-minute hit-and-run protests on invited speakers. It may mean transcending beyond manifesto-esque Facebook posts. SJP, it is time to respectfully take a seat at the table of public discourse on campus. You’ve got no other choice.

SPORTS

Page 14

November 21, 2019

NBA has no alibi when it comes to PED speculation Dean Kopitsky

Assisstant Arts Editor

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who-needs-to-and-doesn’t-need-to dope narrative. When the 2004 Panthers were implicated by a doping scandal, not even the punter was immune. So it goes for cyclists as well. Sure, they’re taking Erythropoietin (EPO), a drug that enhances blood-oxygen regeneration, but they’re also taking anabolic steroids, despite the fact that massive pecs don’t help you hustle up Mount Ventu any more efficiently (Sports On Earth, “Why Wouldn’t NBA Players Use PEDs?,” 02.15.2019).

“I believe PEDs are widespread in the NBA. The question is, what (or who) is compelling players to dope: teammates, franchises or a larger structure of doping culture ingrained in the league?”

Even in distance running, where thinner is fitter is a toxic (and misinformed) refrain, growth hormone is used to aid the recovery process. I believe that despite their arguments otherwise, the NBA culture or the league itself encourages doping. In that case, we have a league-wide integrity issue.

The NBA would face the most embarrassment from a PED scandal fallout. For years, league officials, players and trainers have utterly dismissed the idea, saying that not only is there no doping problem, but the sport doesn’t incentivize players to juice in the first place.

In 2005, Congress was investigating the Barry Bonds scandal and NBA commissioner David Stern said the following, “...basketball emphasizes...quickness, agility and basketball skill … illicit substances that could

assist athletes in strength sports [such as weightlifting and football], power sports [such as baseball] or endurance sports [such as cycling or marathon running] are not likely to be of benefit to NBA players,” (SB Nation).

According to this logic, NBA players can’t be bothered to take endurance or strength enhancers, although I’d argue their sport is the most beautiful marriage of the two. To say nothing of the fact that a professional athlete’s existence is spent on a razor thin margin of error. Each year over 25 percent of players are cycled out. But no one would dare look for the slightest of edges?

The NBA claiming its players have no use for PED’s is as believable as Eric Swalwell claiming he didn’t just fart on live television (New York Post, “Rep. Eric Swalwell appears to fart on live TV”, 11.19.2019) If the NBA is going to insist on its own purity, it had better be prepared for a nasty downfall. Basketball’s popularity has skyrocketed as other sports’ integrity and popularity crater around it. We already saw this year how the NBA handled being the hypocrite when league officials, players and coaches blithely defended Chinese autocrats, feigning ignorance and citing the potential consequences of free speech.

LeBron James has every bit the stature that Armstrong once held and more in the world’s fastest growing sport. Not that such a story already exists, but what if it came to light that LeBron ran a tight PED ring, á la Lance? Could it puncture the NBA like it did MLB and cycling?

During the 2007 playoffs the NBA ran promo videos with the slogan, “Where Amazing Happens” alongside some of the greatest moments in basketball. Amazing?

Sure. Each a miracle in the minds of fans that witnessed them. But not me, I’m staying skeptical because, as Lance would have to say to me, “I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles,” (The Telegraph, “Top 20 sporting moments of the decade,” 12.08.2009).

Things go swimmingly for Vassar’s sports power couple Allesandra Fable, Jackie Molloy Guest Reporters

S

ue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. Danica Patrick and Aaron Rodgers. Zach and Julie Ertz. For many, power couples in sports inherently carry a certain badge of coolness.

Besides their athletic prowess, their unattainable lifestyle oozes swag and induces admiration and envy. At Vassar College, the ultimate “power couple” resides within the lanes of Kresge Pool.

Junior Max White and sophomore Jesse Ecklund each tout memorable Vassar careers. White was Liberty League (LL) Rookie of the Year and is the reigning 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle LL champion. Ecklund had a first-year campaign for the ages, capturing the LL Rookie of the Year, the 500-yard freestyle and 200-yard backstroke LL championships, and being named an All-American in her school-record-breaking 200-yard backstroke. When asked about her individual goals for the current season, Ecklund responded, “My biggest goal this season is I would like to make it back to NCAAs in the [200-yard backstroke]. After that, who knows?” White responded similarly: “My main goal is to try to make NCAAs. I’d like to hold on to the 500 free. I have won it the past two years. I won the 200 free last year.

I’d like to win that again.” Their goals may seem ambitious, but it’s understandable— when one puts their accolades together, their collective dominance in the pool rightfully earns White and Ecklund the title of Vassar’s premier sports power couple.

White and Ecklund definitely have an undeniable chemistry. They frequently answered questions interchangeably, making it comically hard to get an independent answer from either of them, especially when the question involved swimming.

When explaining aspects of swimming

that non-swimmers don’t notice, the couple eagerly and articulately described the differences between fast and slow pools, the effects of depth and discrepancies in air quality. Cutely enough, when describing each other as competitors, their previously eager demeanors faded into bashfulness.

“Max as a swimmer is just incredible …

He consistently puts 100 percent into every race ... He does a really great job of motivating people around him. People catch on to his work ethic if they want to do it as well.

He’s a very positive influence on the entire team in every way,” Ecklund, with a soft admiration, characterized her partner. White gushed, “Jesse has a lot of similar attributes, but in a very different manner. For Jesse, I feel like a lot of the motivation she brings is just kind of the quiet worker. I don’t think she gets enough credit for how hard she works in the pool because she’s up there with a lot of the guys during sets and pushes a lot of the girls.” Each replied to the other with a sweet “thank you.”

Despite their undeniable cuteness as a couple, their fierce competitiveness as individuals certainly does not disappear inside or outside of the pool. “We both push each other, especially when it comes to certain sets,” affirmed Ecklund, while White continued, “Yeah, it’s really good because I’m not a super natural backstroker, or my stroke has never been as good as hers. So whenever we actually do shorter stuff, especially with backstroke, it’s honestly pretty close. Even [with] freestyle, it’s like, how far can I get in front of you ... Even if you’re not exactly the same speed you can still train with different speeds.” Outside the pool, it’s a bit less serious. “I would say we’re pretty competitive with dumb stuff like who can swipe the card in the door first,” joked Ecklund.

As a couple competing in the same sport,

Cain lost her period for three years, and her bones weakened to the point where she broke five of them. Additionally, this abuse had devastating effects on her mental health. She began to self-harm and experience suicidal ideation. When she told Salazar this, he neglected to inform any medical professional or Cain’s family. Equally as concerning, she said other members of the staff saw her self-harming and did not intervene to help. No one reached out, spoke up for her or even asked if she was alright.

All of this highlights a bigger problem in the world of sports: Men still hold too much power in women’s sports. The NOP staff was all male, despite working with many female athletes. Wouldn’t it make sense to have a few of the people coaching women’s sports be, I don’t know, a woman?

As an athlete myself, I think having coaches who bring different perspectives to the table is very valuable. Echo chambers, an all male staff in this case, are breeding grounds for problems. Female athletes frequently work with all male coaching, training and medical staffs—and while not all men act like Alberto Salazar, this does highlight a lack of representation and limits the perspectives athletes have access to.

The most concerning thing about the NOP though, is that they didn’t have a single certified nutritionist or sports psychologist on their team. Instead, the staff con-

sisted of Salazar’s buddies, who bent to his will. This made it so there was never any accountability for Salazar, and athletes like Mary Cain didn’t have access to the opinions and suggestions of certified medical professionals.

Salazar has been banned from the sport for four years and the NOP was subsequently disbanded. But, these were not consequences of Mary Cain’s mistreatment—instead, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) found that Salazar, who has been accused of doping violations for years now, was trafficking testosterone as well as tampering with tests and withholding information. Doping is a huge problem in sports, but its importance pales in comparison to eliminating the abuse that is so common in women’s sports. Her coach and his staff, the very people who were supposed to help her be healthy and successful, instead bullied, degraded and abused her. Salazar should also be punished for his mistreatment of Cain.

Nike will probably try to create a nearly identical program with the same type of coaches sans the doping allegations. This cannot happen. We need to speak out and ensure that the next time a program like this is created, there are more outside doctors and nutritionists involved, and that there are channels by which athletes can safely report and be taken seriously, ultimately removing any person found guilty

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

of abuse. Salazar could not have caused so much damage if he wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of yes men and given unscrutinized control of the athletes. All those working on his staff, as well as Nike itself, were complicit in this abuse.

Nike has since released a statement where they subtly victim-blame Cain, saying, “These are deeply troubling allegations which have not been raised before by Mary or her parents before,” and adding that she tried to rejoin the program earlier this year (The Oregonian, “Amid Cain Allegations, Kara Goucher Slams Nike Investigating Itself” 11.15.2019). Nike has also begun an “investigation” which is being conducted internally. That’s a great idea, have the people who are at fault conduct an investigation about themselves. This investigation reeks of corruption.

Mary Cain is a hero for bravely speaking out about such a painful issue. Now that she has come forward, it is our duty to ensure that we adequately respond. She didn’t come forward because she wanted the spotlight—she came forward hoping that her story would force a legitimate outside investigation into this matter and hold people like Alberto Salazar accountable. We must not forget her words and experiences, and we must pressure both companies like Nike and the sports world as a whole to reform their ways. Mary Cain did her part. Now it is time we do ours.

Junior Max White and sophomore Jesse Ecklund are both decorated swimmers, with several Liberty League titles between them. Together, they form an athletic “power couple.”

Ecklund and White inevitably spend long periods of time together in a competition setting, potentially leading to conflicts. The opportunity to train together in team practices is uncommon for athletes who date, so Ecklund and White made sure to address their status as teammates at the beginning of their relationship. White explained, “I think that is one thing we talked about when we started dating, like how do we do this ... it’s been good that we both have a lot of friends and team[mates] separate from each other, and I think we definitely treat each other like teammates when we’re at [team] stuff ... I think we’ve compartmentalized it well.”

Ecklund confirmed, “Practice is a means [where] we try to just take everything else out of the equation: It’s just swimming at

Squash

that point, which is very helpful.”

Vassar swimming’s next meet is the Ithaca Bomber Invitational, held from Dec. 6-8.

The women’s team is currently on a twomeet winning streak, sitting at a 5-1 record, while the men float at 3-3. Ecklund and White excitedly spoke about the potential for the season, speaking on everything from championship season to enjoying their time as student-athletes. Their humility and charisma separately and together are evident to anyone who spends time with them. As far as their time in the pool is concerned, their commitment to the sport and their team remains the priority.

White summed it up perfectly with a simple statement: “We are just teammates and we happen to be dating.”

Women’s Basketball

Vassar College vs. Colby College November 17, 2019

Vassar College 81, Worcester State 54 November 16, 2019

Sunday was tough for both teams, as they both suffered defeats from Colby College: 3-6 for the women and 0-9 for the men. The women’s team managed their three wins on the bottom of the ladder, as junior Isabel Bronson, senior Samantha Henderson and sophomore Lucie Bisbee took victories at the sixth, seventh and ninth spots respectively. The Brewer men fared worse, as they failed to win a single game across nine match losses. Both teams will look to bounce back as they host Connecticut College and Haverford this Saturday, Nov. 23.

Former pro sounds alarm on running’s instutional flaws MARY CAIN continued from page 1 better, you need to get thinner, and thinner, and thinner.” Not only was she encouraged to lose weight, but “[Salazar] would weigh me in front of my teammates, and publicly shame me when I wasn’t hitting weight,” she said. He would even go as far as instructing her to take certain drugs (some of which are banned in her sport) to catalyze her weight loss. She also described him screaming at her after a race in 2015, saying she “clearly gained five pounds before the race” in front of all the other competitors (a claim backed up on Twitter by many athletes in attendance) (Twitter, @ [jmarpdx], 11.07.2019). This isn’t just tough love or bad coaching—this is fully fledged abuse.

Coaches are integral to success, especially in running, where the relationship is personal and a coach’s input is so directly related to the athlete’s performance. He decided to use this position of power to berate, publicly shame and mentally manipulate her.

Body image issues are frequent among athletes, particularly female athletes, possibly causing major physical and psychological damage. To exploit an anxiety so common in young female athletes is just plain despicable. Cain developed RED-S syndrome, a type of eating disorder which stems from a lack of sufficient nutrition, causing an athletes body to break down.

Page 15

Courtesy of Jesse Ecklund

ance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France wins filled my childhood with patriotism and wonder as the American cycling hero earned my utter fascination.

Some years later I watched the myth burn down. Little by little, former training partners gave interviews, testified and railed against him and his Machiavellian control of his teammates. His doping scheme was a tight, paranoid racket, and it was leaking.

When Lance gave the final admission, when they stripped his Tours, I was a young teenager. My childhood hero admitted to Oprah that he was a traitor. As a sports fan, I had to grow up fast.

No fan wants to believe they’re rooting for a synthetic product. It’s not until they’re watching an evening news supercut of latex gloves, needles and their favorite player looking disjointed with an IV stuck up his arm that the bliss of their fandom is shattered. Before I knew it, Lance was begging Oprah for forgiveness.

Goddamnit. Sorry, I just need a second.

I no longer pay attention to professional cycling, save for a couple stages of the Tour each summer. I and everyone else watching shares the memory of Lance’s cover up.

When I try to suspend my doubt and tune in, the thought still carousels through my mind: “I wonder who’s doped to the gills.”

To transition to the peg of the piece, I believe the NBA may keeping hush a performance-enhancing drug (PED) problem.

In a 2011 ESPN interview, former NBA MVP Derrick Rose (may his ankles rest in peace) rated the doping issue a “seven” out of 10 (SB Nation, “ESPN The Magazine Stands ‘Firmly’ Behind Derrick Rose PEDs Comment,” 05.23.2011).

Then, sounding like a pitiful Trump administration stooge, he reneged, saying, “I do not recall making the statement nor do I recall the question being asked … If that was my response to any question, I clearly mis-

understood what was asked of me” (SB Nation). Sounds like Derrick got a visit from the corporate tooth fairy.

Since Rose’s comments, only seven NBA players have been suspended for failing PED tests.

I believe PEDs are widespread in the NBA. The question is, what (or who) is compelling players to dope: teammates, franchises or a larger structure of doping culture ingrained in the league?

The narrative on Wilson Chandler and Deandre Ayton, two of the most recent suspended players, has been something like this: Chandler, you’re an NBA vet. Don’t you know better than to take a banned substance? Ayton, you were the number one overall pick of the 2018 NBA draft. The league office probably phased out sleeved jerseys because they saw your shoulders in high school. Why would you wrongly use an agent that masks PEDs on urine tests?

Sounds naïve, right? But that’s how the NBA media has covered the three suspensions over banned substances this season.

Players are to blame. Players are the selfish actors taking extracurricular measures to gain an edge. So it’s a few bad apples…yeah right.

Oh NBA, you’re so pure. Your game heralds craft and scheme, favors silky ball handling and pure shooting above brute strength. You’re so far above the PED crises that have incriminated other, lesser sports.

I used to think that, too. After all, Steph Curry, a recent two time MVP, is a shooter, and when he does attack the basket, it’s still a few thousand leagues below the rim.

What utility does synthetically produced testosterone present for him?

Except doping can help you no matter what kind of athlete you are. An excellent piece by Patrick Hruby in the wake of the great Hedo Torkoglu doping scandal of 2013 revealed the misconceptions of doping involving both power and endurance athletes.

He highlights a few inconsistencies in the

SPORTS

November 21, 2019

Vassar took home the first ever Hochberg Family Tip-Off Tournament in confident fashion, as they dispatched their finals opponent Worcester State 81-54. Vassar took an early lead, doubling the Lancers through the first quarter 22-11, and never looked back. The Brewers brought a balanced offense, as no player scored above 14, but five reached double digits, including junior forward Sophie Nick, the tournament’s MVP, who posted 12 points and eight rebounds. The win was a strong start for the Brewers, who earned a bid to the NCAA tournament last year.

Fencing

Cross Country

Matt Lampdell Hudson River Invitational

NCAA Atlantic Regionals

November 17, 2019

November 16, 2019

Both men’s and women’s fencing had a chance to repeat as champions of the Matt Lampell Hudson River Invitational on Sunday at home, but only the men were successful, as they went 7-0 en route to the title. The women started strong, going 4-0 in pool play and dominating their semifinal, but lost a tight championship bout against Drew (whom they defeated 17-10 in pools) 13-14. The men’s team will return to action first, as they compete in the Drew Invitational on Sunday, Nov. 24. The teams then reunite for their next tournament, the Sacred Heart Traditional Multi-Meet, on Dec. 8.

All photos courtesy of Carlisle Stockton

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

While the women’s and men’s teams earned fifteenth and fifth place finishes respectively at the NCAA Atlantic Regionals on Saturday, the big news for Vassar cross country came on Sunday, as the NCAA selected the women’s team for the first at-large bid to the NCAA tournament in program history, held this year in Louisville on Nov. 23. Even before the team overall was selected, sophomore Keara Ginell had earned her way to the tournament with a third-place finish at regionals. Along with Ginell, junior Hannah Martin and men’s runner Reed Dolan took home all-region honors.

Page 16

Why

we

SPORTS

play

November 21, 2019

Henrik Olsson, soccer

I

Courtesy of Henrik Olsson

didn’t even know how to properly kick a ball until I was 10 years old. This was not for lack of trying—my parents encouraged me to play as many sports as possible at school. The only thing going for me in sports was the fact that I was relatively athletic. Never the fastest, strongest, most coordinated or most skilled kid—but enough to play a sport and not make an absolute fool of myself. This year, I spent my final season with the Vassar men’s soccer team as captain. If it wasn’t for this sport, I would not have made the same life-long friendships, and I would not be the person I am today. The story of how I got to this point in life is very different from that of many other student-athletes.

As an international student, I had to constantly move during my childhood. I was born in the Philippines and lived there for four years before moving to Switzerland.

Two years later, we eventually moved to London, where I spent the next seven years of my life. England is the birthplace of soccer.

Everywhere you go, you see people playing soccer in the park, a soccer game on TV or fans wearing their favorite team’s jersey. The more I adapted to life in England, the more soccer became a part of my own life.

I was an introvert as a kid. The thought of meeting new people terrified me. Moving to a new school was hard enough, but adjusting to a different country felt impossible. Let’s just say that I didn’t make a lot of close friends at the beginning. After a year at my first school in England, I moved to a new school. I dreaded the first day of classes. “Nora, Joao, Brian, Diana. How am I supposed to remember ev-

Senior Henrik Olsson leads the Brewers on the counter-attack and as the team’s captain. He credits soccer for providing him a gateway to forging valued friendships in unfamiliar places.

eryone’s names?” I thought. My expectations of enjoying my time there stayed extremely low.

Then we had our first recess. All of the students rushed out of the building in a flurry of excitement and joy as friend groups started to form and each group found a space to play its favorite game. Some were playing tag, some made a court for playing dodgeball and others just chatted on the side. I stood in the middle of the playground feeling overwhelmed not knowing where to go. Then I saw a group from my class playing soccer, so I decided that I would just watch them. Not knowing how to play at all, I was asked by one of my classmates to join in. It seemed

Five Years Ago Today: “Memphish” ACROSS

1. Shaq has one from Barry 4. Pats gently 8. Goal of many an econ major 11. Black, green, and Darjeeling 13. Jacob’s twin 14. ID 15. “La donna è mobile”, for one 16. Blood test before a booster 18. Zealous 19. Osbert, on “Thundercats” 21. Kind of Mommie Faye Dunaway was 23. To and ___ 24. Rio Grande city with lots of morays?

25. Kind of company in the Silicon Valley 29. Like the opening of Debussy’s “La Mer” 30. Type of medic or legal 31. Early, in France 33. Auntie, to Daddy 34. Word with secret or Orange 36. Rival of SFG 38. Hugo genre 42. Mushroom tip 44. Last name of 28-Down 46. Yokel

Answer to last week’s puzzle

simple enough: run around, kick the ball in the opposition’s goal and defend any shots towards my goal. Struggling to even toe poke the ball, I fell in love with soccer the moment I started playing.

Since the first day, I would play every day with my new friends during recess and even joined the club team so I could play after school. Soccer meant not just playing, but being part of a team and making friends.

And that’s how I came out of my shell. I felt connected with my teammates, forming relationships that transcended the field into both the classroom and out-of-school friendships.

Even though I was still shy, my self-esteem and confidence grew. I ended up moving

schools in London one last time, and soccer was again the gateway that helped me make new friends. The hard work we put into every practice and game created a bond nothing else could replicate.

And then I had to start all over again. When I turned 13, I moved to the place I now call home: Japan. Just as I had managed to settle in and find my group of friends, I had to start a new life in a new country with new challenges. It sucked. I felt as though my entire time at the new school would be determined by the first impression I made there. But I remember the first week of soccer tryouts as one of the best experiences during my time there. Every single player, despite the pressure of tryouts, took the time to get to know me and make me feel welcome. I felt like I belonged again—that I wasn’t some new kid joining the team, but a real part of it. Soccer is truly “more than a game”.

I know, this piece sounds like some coming of age story of an adolescent boy rather than a Why We Play article. Acclimating to new environments exposed me to opportunities that I would never have had if I stayed in one place. But soccer ties all my experiences together. The life-long friends I made and the teams I bonded with are things I couldn’t attain from doing anything else. Because of these factors, as I made my college decision, I knew I had to continue playing. I then spent my four years on the Vassar men’s soccer team gaining teamwork and leadership skills, but most importantly I discovered my new best friends. So I know that no matter where I end up in life, I’ll find my place, and my best friends, where I always have—on the field.

The Throwback Crossword

by Collin Knopp−-Schwyn ’16 and York Chen ’16

47. Grace and elegance 49. Impulse 51. City on the Charles River, filled with some smallmouth fish?

53. Shy but flirtatious rock garden fish 54. Genderless, as a noun 55. Damp 57. Greek meat sandwich 58. Mount where Moses received some commandments 60. Term of comparison 63. Land that is not 55-Across 64. Bacterium 65. Teensy bit 66. “___ the season to be jolly” 67. Her mother was Rhea 68. Saunders, in Potok’s “The Chosen”

shoulder 35. Sample 37. Much saved text, until 2007 39. Like three toothpicks laid out end to end 40. Gov’t org. that’s theoretically thinking of the children 41. Eisenhower, colloquially, for some reason 43. Plebs 45. City on the Puget Sound with some colorful pond dwellers?

DOWN

1. Org. that’s thinking of the children 2. ScarJo, objectively 3. Professorial perch 4. Bankrupt Michigan city with some rainbow fish?

5. “Yaah, raiiiight” (2 words) 6. Cricket eater or hitter 7. Elvis shoe material 8. Warning for emptores 9. Like a goody-two-shoes 10. What you do to the kitty? (2 words) 12. Bay Area city specializing in fishy liver oil?

14. City on the Gulf of Mexico with some bigheads?

17. They may be bleached 20. How thou might be?

22. Like 39-Down or 3 in Roman numerals 25. Where they use cucumbers, but not for eating 26. Variations include toilet and laser 27. How you might be?

28. Dictator Pot 32. It may come spookily on the

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

47. Scrolls where 48-Down might be mentioned 48. God who probably dealt with many mummies 50. Barefoot Monkeys might spin them 51. Produced, biblically 52. “I’m a horse and I say no!”

55. Johnny of the Smiths 56. Mjölnir’s wielder 59. Born as, to a French woman 61. Gobbled down 62. Catch, as a villain