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The Miscellany News

BIRT releases bias incident records Bethan Johnson

Contributing Editor

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ccording to the Bias Incident Response Team (BIRT), amidst the tensions regarding racial profiling, sexual violence and gender and sexual discrimination that inspired open forums and protests, last semester a total of ten bias incidents and significantly more micro-aggressions occurred on campus. In a campus-wide email disseminated on Feb. 5, BIRT Coordinator and Associate Dean of

Volume CXLVII | Issue 13

February 12, 2015

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the College for Campus Life and Diversity Dean Pittman the team had determined that four bias incidents occurred between November and the end of the fall semester. While officials state that this figure has not notably increased as compared to previous years and have attempted to recognize the growing impact of micro-aggressions on the student body by including them in the report for the first time, some within student See BIRT on page 4

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

Students leave school for success Erik Halberg

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Reporter

or most college students, trudging through four years of classes to get their degree is their ticket to getting a good job and starting a career. But Casey Hancock ’15 and Shannon Liao ’17 have both found opportunities to jumpstart their careers earlier than most.

Hancock, a computer science major, left Vassar at the beginning of this semester, which would have been the second semester of his senior year, to

go to New York City and work fulltime growing a start-up company named vcemo. which he started with other Vassar students.

Vcemo as a company is devoted to the development of virtual reality streaming as a form of entertainment.

Hancock and his fellow Vassar coworkers have been creating a platform from which users can upload and stream videos that can be viewed on a virtual reality headset—such as the headline-making Oculus Rift—in full 360-degree detail.

Hancock’s decision to take time off from school came after the successful conclusion of a Kickstarter campaign for vcemo, as well as the company receiving its first primary investor.

“I left mostly to get our name out there,” said Hancock. “The decision to go to New York City hinged on that we already have money coming in.”

Right now, Hancock is focusing on hiring developers and building relationships with other tech start-ups in the city.

See CAREERS on page 7

A last shot at love with Cupid’s SWAPR Julia Cunningham

Assistant Features Editor

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courtesy of Cathy Grier

or those singles on Valentine’s Day, there is still hope. The spirit of Valentine’s Day is not limited to loving your friends, family and significant others; loving the environment is equally valid.

In honor of this, next Saturday, Feb. 14, the College Committee on Sustainability is hosting Cupid’s Flea Market in the Villard Room from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.

While the flea market is hosted

on campus, it is by no means limited to student vendors. Local Foods Intern and member of the College Committee on Sustainability, Kayla Abe ’15, wrote in an emailed statement, “Campus orgs, individuals and off-campus thrift stores have signed up to reserve booths at the event, though everyone who attends is welcome to buy, sell, trade or donate!”

Sustainability Intern on the College Committee on Sustainability, Evan Kamber ’15, added in emailed See SWAPR on page 6

Shannon Liao ’17 left Vassar after completing her freshman year in order to take a job at an independent newspaper. She fits into a larger trend of students who leave school before graduating to pursue professional opportunities.

VC screens ‘Dear White People’ Swim team makes a splash at states F Emma Rosenthal Arts Editor

eb. 12 and 13 will mark an exciting time for more than one organization on campus. The VSA, the Office of the President, the Senior Class, the Multiracial/ Biracial Student Alliance (MBSA), the Council of Black Seniors and ViCE Film are coming together to present a two-day screening and discussion of the film “Dear White People.”

Senior Class President Zoe Fullerton ’15 wrote in an emailed

statement about her involvement in the organization of this event: “I saw a trailer for the movie and really wanted to bring it to Vassar. We reached out to a couple of producers and tried, however, it wasn’t until MBSA and ViCE Film got involved and mentioned they were doing the same thing that the plan really came to fruition.”

She continued, “This event represents a collaboration... which is something not commonly seen on Vassar’s campus.”

On the event itself, Fullerton

noted the times and places where the screening and post-film discussions will take place, “There will be two screenings of the movie, one on the 12th of Feb. and one on the 13th...The one on the 13th will be held in the Shiva and lunch will be provided, along with a discussion in the ALANA center.”

As a ViCE Executive Board member, ViCE Film representative and a film major with a Hispanic Studies correlate, Sierra Garcia ’15 was involved with planning the See FILM on page 16

courtesy of The Huffington Post

‘Dear White People’ a satirical film by director Justin Simien focusses on issues of race and representation on college campuses. The screening, hosted by several offices and administrators, is an effort to foster dialogue on race at Vassar.

Inside this issue

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Families share VC memories FEATURES over generations

14 ARTS

Paul Bellino makes Skinner debut in faculty recital

Erik Quinson

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Assistant Editor

he men’s and women’s swim and dive team are headed to the Upper New York State Collegiate Swimming Association Championship, or, simply, states. The Brewers will be competing against their usual Liberty League rivals, with the addition of the eight Empire Schools.

Steven Institute of Technology and Ithaca College are both Empire schools and consistently rank first and second at states. “Vassar tends to be in the middle of the pack but definitely pointed toward the upper end,” said Coach Prater-Lee. The competition works differently from in-season meets. Each race has heats in the morning to qualify the final 24 swimmers. Qualifications are based on time, but the difference is that if a swimmer gets the ninth-best time in the morning, no matter how well they do in the evening, they can only get ninth place.

This is a tactic to discourage a really good swimmer from holding back in the morning to conserve energy so they can then swim even faster in the evening.

The addition of the Empire schools to this competition adds a certain degree of unpredictability in regards to what the Brewers will be facing. “We’re a little more familiar with our LL opponents, and we’re familiar with where we are in relation to them but you throw in anoth-

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er eight schools and it gets a little murky,” said Coach Prater-Lee. It’s only slightly murky, however, because on Monday, a sheet was posted that has every swimmer from each school’s times and events.

This allows for a certain amount of planning and strategizing from the coaches, who can shuffle their swimmers around to hopefully maximize their team’s chance of success. The number of events that swimmers will compete in varies greatly. Some will be swimming in 14, while others will be in three. The former will be those swimming in both individual and relay events.

With such a big event coming up, the team has started “tapering,” which means they’re doing fewer yards and working more on technique in training. “What they’re doing now is building their races, through their skills. Which in some ways means less work because they’re getting more rest, but the level of expectation is higher as far as what they’re able to do,” said Prater-Lee. Senior and captain Charles Herrmann wrote in an emailed statement, “Our last two weeks before states sees us back off on the amount of yardage we do so we can recover, while still having very intense practices. This gets us into amazing shape, so although a lot of us are tired, we are swimming very fast and See SWIMMING on page 19

Student-athletes experience hardship SPORTS of consistent travel

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The Miscellany News

February 12, 2015

Editor-in-Chief Palak Patel

Senior Editor Noble Ingram

Contributing Editors Bethan Johnson Meaghan Hughes Marie Solis

Cassady Bergevin/The Miscellany News

News Opinions Arts Humor & Satire Sports Design Photography Online Social Media Copy

Rhys Johnson Joshua Sherman Emma Rosenthal Chris Gonzalez Zach Rippe Elizabeth Dean Samantha Pianello Gwendolyn Frenzel Maddy Vogel Ashley Pecorelli

Crossword Editors Collin Knopp-Schwyn York Chen Assistant Design Sarah Dolan Assistant Social Media Hannah Nice

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Follow us on Instagram at @themiscnews and submit to our photo blog Exposure at exposure.miscellanynews.org!

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Reporters Amreen Bhasin Julia Cunningham Emily Hoffman Penina Remler Alex Trunnell Columnists Sophia Burns Delaney Fischer Sam Hammer Sarah Sandler Claire Standaert Design Sixing Xu Photography Alec Ferretti Emily Lavieri-Scull Copy Hallie Ayres Claire Baker Antigone Delton Shelia Hu Anika Lanser Cody Duan-Mcglashen Macall McQueen Alessandra Muccio Marya Pasciuto Kelsey Quinn Jessica Roden Emma Roellke Sophia Slater Rebecca Weir Laura Wigginton

The Miscellany News does not expressly endorse any of the opinions of the columnists featured within the pages of the paper, except for the staff editorial.

LETTERS POLICY The Miscellany News is Vassar College’s weekly open forum for discussion of campus, local and national issues, and welcomes letters and opinions submissions from all readers.

Letters to the Editor should not exceed 350 words, and they usually respond to a particular item or debate from the previous week’s issue. Opinions articles are longer pieces, up to 800 words, and take the form of a longer column. No letter or opinions article may be printed anonymously. If you are interested in contributing, e-mail misc@vassar.edu.

February 12, 2015

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All College Day speaker to promote community healing Meaghan Hughes & Noble Ingram Contributing Editor & Senior Editor

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people who you may perceive as being in power and not listening, but how do you stay open to that kind of process?”

Part of the theme of the talk focuses on communities in transition. Change is not a foreign concept to Vassar. Pittman recalled, “Being a student here and having worked here for 25 years I don’t think there has ever been a time when we weren’t in transition.”

Insofar as Gumbs’ studies relate to the event’s overarching themes of care and support, Pittman was optimistic about the lessons members of the Vassar community will be able to draw from the talk. “I think what she is going to draw upon is this healing way that women and other feminist

thinkers have coalesced around: supporting one another. We can draw from that and where we are as a community.”

Tambree explained the vision she had for students’ involvement in the events of All College Day. “I think a successful All College Day would entail campus wide participation,” she wrote. “I would like to see students from varying social and political circles. This would ideally manifest in a diversity of identity in participation.”

She went on to comment, “I’d like to see a willingness to learn, support, and question amongst the students, and I would like for the event to extend to participation from faculty, staff and administration.”

courtesy of Alexis Pauline Gumbs

he speaker for this year’s All College Day celebration will be queer black feminist scholar and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Every year, All College Day features a keynote speaker and a theme that is meant to address issues germane to the campus climate. Working with Vassar administrators, faculty and students, Gumbs crafted a talk that fits into the themes of self-care and healing. Her talk is titled, “Breathing in Chorus; Self Care and Communities in Transformation.” She will open the All College Day festivities on Feb. 16 at 6 p.m. in the Villard Room.

Gumbs’ work focuses on the intersection of race and gender. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Barnard College, Gumbs went on to earn a Ph.D. in English, African and African-American Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. Her poetry has appeared in several publications, including Kweli, Vinyl, Backbone and Everyday Genius.

A press release from the office of the Dean of Campus life and Diversity Ed Pittman described Gumbs’ activist work. “Alexis is the founder of Brilliance Remastered, a service to help visionary underrepresented graduate students stay connected to purpose, passion, and community.

She is co-founder of the Mobile Homecoming Project, a national experiential archive amplifying generations of Black LGBTQ Brilliance.”

Pittman played an integral role in selecting Gumbs and organizing the All College Day proceedings. Pittman expressed a strong interest in fostering healing across campus following last semester’s tumultuous campus climate. “When we started our planning process back in the fall, for All College Day, we had four or five students on the planning committee and we started thinking, ‘So what should our theme be?’ and what kept coming up was, ‘How do we heal as a community? How do we take care of each other?

How do we take care of ourselves?’” he said.

Many students spoke of a feeling of fatigue or disappointment after a semester of high intensity protest and social activism, a concern Pittman shared. Hoping that Gumbs will be able to rejuvenate many community members who feel burned out, he said, “I think a lot of students who had been very active in one way or another, many were pulling back and not wanting to be involved because there was a lot of toxicity and pain and energy spent. I think this theme has already generated a number of good activities.”

Kali Tambree ’17, a student who was on one of the committees that helped to organize the All College Day events, also spoke to this recurring sentiment of fatigue and frustration. “[A] s a group, we began thinking about potential themes for All College Day this year by honestly contemplating the upset that many Vassar students have expressed to both administration and to peers,” she wrote in an emailed statement.

“We wanted to thoughtfully incorporate many sentiments regarding the violent lack of support from the administration in a way that would induce healing and solidarity.”

Tambree emphasized the need for Vassar students to learn self-care in their activist work.

“We also thought of this theme as a means to address a general absence of discussion of the ways in which Vassar students need to practice self care for their own well-beings and mental health as well as for the preservation of a safe and supportive community on campus,” she wrote.

With regard to the lecture, Pittman was hopeful that Gumbs would able to foster frank discussion about the processes of change and transition at Vassar. Sometimes, according to Pittman, compromise and collaboration are necessary. He explained, “She will hopefully talk about what it means to have to reach across to the other side [of the conversation] to build communities even with people who you may disagree with and

Feminist activist-scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs will speak at this year’s All College Day celebrations of how the event’s themes of community care and support can ease the tense campus climate.

Vassar’s donations dip as fundraising campaign ends Emily Hoffman Reporter

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tatistical analysis collected by a New Yorkbased council for institutions of higher education reveals that while other colleges and universities boasted increased donation revenues from the 2013-2014 fiscal year, Vassar College experienced a period of notable decrease.

Despite the public announcement of these findings, financial officers at the College remain relatively unconcerned with the discrepancy in charitable giving and its general impact on the functioning of the institution due to extenuating financial circumstances related to the final year of the sesquicentennial campaign.

On Sunday, Feb. 1, The Poughkeepsie Journal published an article regarding a rise in donations at local mid-Hudson Valley institutions, such as Marist College and the United States Military Academy at West Point. However, the article also discussed a drop in donations to Vassar College and Dutchess Community College (The Poughkeepsie Journal, “Marist sees rise in donations, Vassar, Dutchess down,”

02.01.15). The article noted that donations to Vassar fell from $56.56 million to $41.3 million in the 2013-2014 fiscal year, a 27 percent drop.

Meanwhile, donations to Marist saw a 14.1 percent increase this year and gifts to the West Point Association of Graduates topped $52.62 million, an increase of 37 percent. These statistics came from a survey conducted by the Council for Aid to Education (CAE), which covered 105 universities, colleges and community colleges in New York.

The CAE is an organization committed to helping educational institutions measure and improve learning outcomes for their students.

They maintain the nation’s premier database on fundraising outcomes at higher-education institutions. Through the Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey, CAE provides the only tool for benchmarking fundraising in the nation’s colleges and universities.

The report found that Sarah Lawrence College and Westchester Community College also recorded noteworthy increases in charitable giving, while it decreased for the State Univer-

courtesy of Alumni Association of Vassar College

Unlike some of its peer institutions, Vassar has seen a significant decline in donations this year, though officials claim that the numbers do not pose a cause for concern in the Vassar community.

sity of New York at Purchase and for Rockland Community College. On a national scale, charitable donations to colleges and universities rose last year by an average of 13.7 percent, which was the strongest increase in donations since 2000.

In regards to the increased donations to the Military Academy at West Point, representatives from the institution were quick to note that some of the funding represented single, large-sum donations. Senior Director of Development Engagement for the West Point Association of Graduates Samantha Soper spoke about the increase in donations and attributed them to two estate gifts from donors.

The association is also engaged in a multiyear fundraising campaign, For Us All: The Campaign for West Point, which has helped fund an annual leadership conference in the past and an expansion of the West Point Cemetery and construction of a new lacrosse facility.

While Vassar saw a drop in donations this year, Vice President for Alumnae/i Affairs and Development Catherine Baer explained that it was neither unusual nor particularly concerning due to similarly time-specific financial situation. The 2013 Fiscal Year was the last year of Vassar’s $431 million “Vassar 150: World Changing” campaign, and it was the most successful year in fundraising in the college’s history, securing $56.56 million in gifts and donations.

According to Baer, the gifts that were made a top priority included the endowed scholarship aid, the construction of the integrated science center, the renovation of Swift Hall and the annual fund, among others.

Baer commented, “[C]oming out of a highly-successful, multi-year campaign, organizations always see a drop in giving. That said, the $41.3 million we raised in FY ’14 was the third largest amount given to Vassar in a single year.

The fact that West Point is currently in a multiyear campaign was highlighted by the Poughkeepsie Journal as one of the reasons for their successful year.”

According to Baer, the vast majority of donations come from alumnae/i, but Vassar also receives support from parents and friends of the College, as well as important national foundations. The Office of Alumnae/i Affairs and Development engages with donors throughout

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

their lifelong relationship with Vassar, starting with students through the student gift and continuing all the way through estate gifts in which alumnae/i put Vassar in their wills.

Baer also spoke about a common misconception that people believe the only thing the office does is ask for money. She remarked, “Of course we do that—communications ranging from postcards to phonathon calls to emails go out to Vassar alumnae/i, parents and friends throughout the year asking for contributions to The Vassar Fund, and our gift officers personally visit thousands of potential donors. But asking anyone to contribute to Vassar is only going to be effective if she or he feels a close connection to the College.”

Baer discussed some of the ways that the Office of Alumnae/i Affairs Development engaging with alumnae/i: “It’s equally important that we are communicating effectively what Vassar is doing well, day in, day out, and so we work in coordination with all other parts of the College, especially the Office of Communications, to make sure that our alumnae/i, parents and friends are aware of that.”

She continued, “We also engage with our alumnae/i across the country and around the world through programs, networking activities and the efforts of our numerous club and affiliate volunteers. And we are always looking for new ways to communicate these messages.

Last year, we had our first, and very successful, crowdfunding effort. We will be unveiling a similar effort this month.”

Gifts to the Vassar Fund are an important revenue stream and directly support the operations of the College. According to Vice President for Finance and Administration Robert Walton, “[W]hen there is a drop in gifts that requires that we immediately reduce spending at the College by reducing budgets of various departments by a corresponding amount in the same year that the total amount of gifts drops.

Gifts are a key part of the College’s budget.”

Approximately eight percent of the operating budget is supported by annual contributions including gifts to the Vassar Fund and designated gifts and grants. Thirty-two percent of the budget is supplied by income from the College’s endowment, which is supported over time by gifts.

NEWS

Page 4 Outside the Bubble Republican senator calls to wash away federal handwashing laws

Republican Senator Thom Tillis’ remarks at a recent Q and A session for the Bipartisan Policy Center have been the source of much attention.

When asked about his views concerning government regulation, the senator from North Carolina related a conversation he had with a voter in 2010. “I was having a discussion with someone,” he said. “[W]e were talking about certain regulations where I felt like maybe you should allow businesses to opt out” (Chicago Sun Times, “Thom Tillis doesn’t ‘have any problem’ with optional hand washing for restaurant employees,” 02.03.15).

Tillis was referring to signs mandating that employees wash their hands after using the bathroom, which are required by law. Tillis argued that he considers the signs unnecessary. “Let them decide,” Tillis commented. “[W]e need to reduce the regulatory burden on this country” (BBC News, “US senator questions forcing food workers to wash their hands,” 02.04.15). Tillis favors private, consumer-based solutions to food industry issues over federal mandate.

He later defended his statements in an interview at the Capitol. He maintained, “Sometimes there are regulations that maybe we want to set a direction, but then let those who are regulated decide whether or not it makes sense. They might pay a huge price, but they get to make that decision versus government” (Associated Press, “Give firms more leeway on sanitation,” 02.03.15).

Many in the media consider Tillis’ remarks to be the latest of conservative hostility towards science, notably those related to vaccinations.

As public health issues become increasingly important in the nation, further debates over the role of regulation seem inevitable to many.

– Chris Pompetzki ’18, Guest Reporter

February 12, 2015

New financial services office established Rhys Johnson News Editor

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n Sunday, Feb. 4, students were informed of the recent creation of the Office of Student Financial Services, which will merge the Offices of Financial Aid, Student and Employee Accounts, and Student Employment into one student service.

The announcement was made in the form of an all-campus email written by Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Art Rodriguez and Associate Vice President for Financial Services and Treasurer Steve Dahnert, which was sent out by Dean of Strategic Planning and Academic Resources Marianne Begemann.

The email read, “Through this new venture we strive to provide a seamless service to students to ensure that they are able to successfully complete all stages of applying for and obtaining aid, processing refunds from and/or payments to their student account, and securing employment.”

The new office is in the south wing of the Main Building, the former location of the Financial Aid and Student Employment offices.

Although the first steps towards consolidating the offices came seven years ago, when the Offices of Student Employment and Financial Aid unified, the idea for a coalescence of the existing student finance offices originated over the summer as a response to the upcoming Voluntary Retirement Incentive Offer, which has caused some staff members, including Student and Employee Accounts Office Accounting Assistant Colette Beal, to accept the retirement package and resign.

The three student finance offices, having observed similar decisions made by some of Vassar’s peer institutions, took the opportunity provided by a smaller staff to form one

collective system around the Office of Financial Aid, who did not lose any of its staff. The creation of the new system was, by result, less a product of operational concerns than the timing of the College’s execution of the early retirement incentive program.

Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Art Rodriguez commented, “The merger of financial aid and student employment and student and employee accounts into one office made sense since students and families often find themselves working on financial issues across the two offices.

He continued, “Having the offices work together in a common space should provide efficiencies for students and families as they begin their relationship with Vassar and continue through to graduation.”

The main objective of the creation of the new Student Financial Services Office is to streamline the College’s critically acclaimed student finance programs by consolidating them under the umbrella of one central office. Begemann commented on the plan in an emailed statement, “The financial concerns of students and families related to paying for the Vassar education can be answered by a single team of individuals who understand the full range of needs and questions that students might have.”

She went on to say, “Through this venture we strive to provide seamless service to students to ensure that they are able to successfully complete all stages of applying for and obtaining aid, processing refunds from and/or payments to their student account, and securing employment.”

The College’s announcement came in light of Vassar’s recent ranking by the Princeton Review, a college admissions services and infor-

mation company, as having the best collegiate financial aid program in the United States. The new system was created only last month, however, so the benefits of implementing it remain to be seen.

Director of the Office of Student Financial Services Jessica Bernier remarked, “My immediate hope is that students and families will be patient with us this semester as we continue to cross-train and familiarize ourselves with the functions of each office. And in the future we plan to be the place that students feel comfortable coming to or contacting regarding all of their financial issues.”

Despite the restructuring of the organization and physical location of student financial services on campus, those in charge of the merger are now aiming to reassure students that the changes will serve only to make students’ and students’ families’ ability to navigate the College’s services easier and should not create any new systematic problems.

Begemann remarked, “We know that the process of applying for and receiving aid is an extremely complex and sometimes stressful process. With almost 60% of our students on aid, we have the responsibility to make that process as painless as possible, recognizing that doing so is difficult and that it does not stop when students are admitted.”

She continued, “The Office of Student Financial Services supports students from the time they apply for aid and have questions about funding their education to the time they graduate and pay their final bill, sometimes longer. We are recognized for our commitment to access through our admissions and financial aid policies, but being at the top requires that we have great services while students are on campus too.”

Bias Incident Response Team casts light on process BIRT continued from page 1

activist circles and observers have questioned BIRT’s efficacy on these issues.

Determining whether an incident can be classified specifically as a bias incident is of primary concern to BIRT, a group of administrators and the Vice President for Student Life Hannah Matsunaga ’16 as the student representative.

According to BIRT, “A Bias Incident is characterized as a behavior or act—verbal, written or physical—which is personally directed against or targets an individual or group based on perceived or actual characteristics such as race, color, religious belief, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national or ethnic origin, disability, veteran status or age.”

BIRT also maintains that bias incidents can include graffiti, threatening correspondences via phone or mail, vandalism, destruction of property, all forms of physical violence, and harassment.

Based on these qualifications, within the last semester the College officially recognizes 10 bias incidents. According to the two official BIRT fall semester reports, here listed in roughly chronological order, the bias incidents included: hostile statements about feminism and gender on social media; two instances of theft or burning of several flags, both flags of Latin American nations and of the United States; a sexually explicit drawing made on a residence hall mirror; the removal or vandalizing of posters in both the LGBTQ and Women’s Centers; the distribution of a threepage pamphlet with inappropriate ethnic, racial and political content; the use of the use of a racially offensive term on WVKR; the removal or damage of event posters on the Women’s Center’s bulletin board; the vandalism of a “Black Lives Matter” poster; and a transphobic and sexist posting on a student’s door.

Although past semesters have seen variances in the targets of these bias incidents, this figure is believed to be in line with those of previous semesters. Pittman noted “[Incidents were] connected to a lot of broader campus climate issues... around all that happened in the fall semester, what occurred in Ferguson. I just think we hit a point at which there was a critical mass at one time, but I don’t think it’s more significant than, say, the fall of 2013.” The BIRT Coordinator went on to recount the series of anonymous bias incidents reported around campus that promoted the dismissal of two students in the fall semester of 2013, as well as those relating to race and an-

ti-Semitism from last year’s spring semester.

The number and range of bias incidents in period after mid-November elicited mixed responses from various members of the student body when asked to consider their level of surprise at having four reported incidents.

Matsunaga responded in an emailed statement, “Nothing we received in was surprising to me.” Meanwhile, several student sources responded that they had not expected such findings from this second report, some because they had heard of additional instances that they felt merited consideration as bias incidents yet went unmentioned in the report.

Alejandro McGhee ’16 commented in an emailed statement, “In light of the College’s long and arduous journey to officially acknowledging the occurrence of racial profiling on campus I question the moral compass or GPS that the College uses to decide what constitutes an ‘official’ incident of bias.”

He continued, “Whether or not incidences of bias are being reported officially on a regular basis they are still happening. Often times, the targeted students who [are often] of marginalized backgrounds, are left with a lot of intrusive and doubtful thoughts whether what they bring to BIRT will actually give them the closure they might need.”

Student Leader of Transmission Jay Leichtman ’18, speaking as an individual and not as a representative of the group, also noted that not all students feel aware of bias incidents occurring on campus even with the BIRT summary report.

They said in an emailed statement, “Considering that I haven’t heard about incidents of bias beyond word of mouth, the Administration hasn’t been adequately addressing them. If they intend to address bias and microaggressions, they need to acknowledge them and point them out first.”

The issue of underreporting also marks a critical point when analyzing these reports. According to statements made by BIRT, after the team determines a report to be a bias incident, the Department of Safety and Security conducts an investigation and seeks to uncover those responsible for the incident. The engagement with Safety and Security, particularly in light of recent critiques students have made about the level of discomfort some students feel with Safety and Security, some speculate has led to under-reporting. Sara Cooley ’15 explained, “[T]here are certain people who feel comfortable reporting these

things knowing that Security is going to take them seriously and there are other people who do not feel comfortable with Security and do not have any faith that Security is going to want to help them.”

These reports also highlight an additional struggle the College faces and that may contribute to student reticence to report. Currently, most of the bias incident investigations have not resulted in consequences for students. “Over the last two years, the majority have been anonymous, and that’s what makes them effective from a perpetrator’s standpoint. They hide behind not being seen, and so they write something. Those were always the most challenging ones to have an outcome and I think in the spring when they’re happening and the fall, it was really alarming because when you have something that’s out there and you can’t pinpoint it, there’s a lot of fear, and rightful fear,” Dean Pittman explained. He went on to note that quickly reporting anonymous bias incidents may even increase the chances that the College can uncover the culprit.

Despite criticisms of administrative actions by certain groups and sources that believe that this should be a large issue for the entire student body, students report a variety of levels of comfort or interest discussing issues related to bias incidents. Many students contacted to discuss how BIRT operates and the relationship between bias incidents and campus climate responded that they felt that they could not adequately speak to these experiences of bias. BIRT members recounted little to no criticism from the student body regarding their discontent over BIRT actions, with the exception of Matsunaga who noted that a small number of students wanted bias incidents to be classed as hate crimes. Those invested to some degree in activism around these issues hope to see a shift in the campus’ reaction to these instances.

Andrew Joung ’16 wrote in an emailed statement, “Fundamentally, more than half the school is under threat and one has to be in very narrow social circles to not have friends that are people of color or female or LGBTQ.” Despite all of these concerns, BIRT has, for the first time, included other forms of discrimination. In this latest email, the committee also decided to recognize a shift in reports of bias by reporting specifically on micro-aggressions as well as bias incidents. The February email marks the first time that any such BIRT summary report

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

included explicit mention of micro-aggressions.

According to Dean Pittman, “[B]eginning in the spring semester, a number of the reports that we get are relating to conversations that students have with each other or with faculty, or it may be a discourse or a strongly-worded opinion or an expression that doesn’t cross the line of bias incident but has tended to impact the way students particularly feel about their experience on campus and also impact the campus climate. So, the difference in the definition of a micro-aggression is a more subtle expression that isn’t very clear, but it has an impact.”

Director for the Campus Life LGBTQ Center and Women’s Center Judy Jarvis also noted in an emailed statement, “Many students I work with have experienced micro-aggressions from their peers and sometimes Vassar employees as well.

The details range widely, but the unfortunate pattern is that students with marginalized identities on campus, particularly students of color and trans and genderqueer students, are asked to explain and justify themselves more than their white, cisgender peers.”

The first step BIRT has taken in their process towards recognizing and addressing micro-aggressions’ effects on students has been through acknowledging them in this latest summary report. The team is looking to continue its exploration of addressing micro-aggression through a policy of education, as also stipulated in the BIRT report, through a recently formed special working group. Pittman explained, “We’ve started a working group around micro-aggressions.

We don’t know where that’s going to end, but we want to pay attention to it because we hear a lot about it.”

Meanwhile, student suggestions for reducing these problems vary. Matsunaga suggested that students consider their own treatment of others.

Cooley also stated, “I would really, really love to see a school-wide forum that is as mandatory as orientation is for freshmen, which means not really mandatory but very strongly suggested that everybody go to this forum or workshop or panel or whatever it would be.”

Leichtman described, “There are always going to be at least a few individuals expressing those terrible opinions. That said, mandatory (or at least very well publicized) programs about bias for all students, staff and faculty to attend would be a huge step forward. It would make people have to think about the issues involved.”

February 12, 2015

FEATURES

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Birds of a feather: Students with family legacies at Vassar Marie Solis

Contributing Editor

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courtesy of Rachel Garbade

Pictured above are Bernice Garbade ’79 and her daughter Rachel Garbade ’15 at their fall convocations, 36 years apart. Growing up, Rachel attended Vassar reunions and events with her mother.

courtesy of Rachel Garbade

ld photographs are keepers of nostalgia, memory and, often, mystery. American photographer Diane Arbus once wrote, “A photograph is a secret about a secret; the more it tells you, the less you know.” The summer before her senior year, she came across a photo of her mother on the day of her 1978 Vassar College convocation ceremony. Surely, in that moment there was something unknowable about the photograph.

In the picture, Bernice Garbade ’79 stands among a sea of black caps and gowns, no one paying particular attention to the presence of a camera but her. Is she surrounded by loving friends? Was the photo taken before or after convocation? What experiences culminated in this precise moment? She’s smiling, hands clasped, in front of a brick backdrop that is vaguely but certainly Main Building. Thirty-six years later, Rachel took the same portrait at her own convocation.

The photo struck me when I was scrolling through my Instagram feed. “Just a casual pic of my mom and me at senior convocation in 1978 and 2014,” reads the caption. Rachel’s Instagram account is largely a documentation of campus hideaways, food cooked in her Terrace Apartment kitchen and quintessential photos of the library and orchard. All of these images are intensely familiar to her mother and uncle, who both attended Vassar.

Despite this family legacy, Rachel said she never felt any pressure from her family when applying to colleges. “I remember touring around liberal arts schools junior year and worrying that I didn’t have that one school that I wanted to go to. But, when I stepped foot on Vassar’s campus, everything just clicked in the most perfect way. My mom never pressured me to go but she, of course, loved it when I got accepted,” she said.

Bernice said that alongside overarching feelings of excitement was an immediate sign of relief that her daughter had been accepted—she had put all of her eggs in one basket and applied only to Vassar. “I definitely was hoping Rachel would choose Vassar, largely because I thought she would fit in and enjoy the atmosphere, which is the case. Since she applied Early Decision, my only reaction was relief when she was admitted, as she did not have a second choice school,” wrote Bernice in an emailed statement.

Though Vassar evaluates applications holistically, not giving any significant weight to whether or not a student has a family legacy with the College, Rachel joked that she may have had a small advantage. “I must say I had something of an edge when writing essays during the application process; I could talk about the Lathrop Parlor I sat in at reunions or the fond memories my mom shared with me that I hoped to recreate.”

Rachel has been to every one of her mother’s reunions since she was 18 months old. Amid aging photos of Bernice’s time at Vassar in the ’70s and Rachel’s college life over the last four years are pictures of Rachel as a child eating french fries in the Retreat or posing in the flowers in front of Noyes. Looking through them, it’s difficult to be cynical about how—simply put—cool, it is to see Rachel all over campus at ages six, 11, completely unaware that she, too, would attend Vassar. The College remained a homebase for the Garbade family, and Rachel and her brother always came along for the ride.

“Even before Rachel moved in, I cannot tell you how many times I was on campus for reunions, friends’ reunions, when her brother attended Summer Institute for the Gifted there for three years, Sons and Daughters, etc.,” wrote Bernice.

The Sons and Daughters Program is a twoday event Vassar holds every semester for children of alumnae/i who are high school juniors.

During that time, prospective students meet with admissions officers who share advice on the college application process, current students and sit in on classes. Adam Deixel ’82 said this is one of the main ways his daughters Sophie Deixel ’18 and Isabel Deixel ’14 got to know Vassar. Though Isabel was always deadset on going to the College, Sophie wasn’t so sure at first.

“Our older daughter always felt like she was going to go to Vassar...She had always thought of Vassar as being just what college is. Then

On the left is a photo of Bernice and her two best friends crying in front of Raymond because they thought they would never see each other again. On the right, are the three friends reunited in front of the dorm.

Sophie came along and we brought her to the Sons and Daughters event. She went into the process feeling like she didn’t want to go to Vassar. She just didn’t want to follow family tradition,” explained Adam, whose wife, Jennifer Deixel ’84, and niece also attended Vassar. “She surprised herself, I think, by saying she thought Vassar was the place.”

Sophie agreed, writing, “There was no assumption that I would go or even apply. I had convinced myself that I definitely didn’t like Vassar enough to apply early and that I would do something different from my family, but I eventually realized that Vassar was the place for me. I definitely came to the decision on my own, although my parents were very excited to hear that I chose their alma mater.”

Adam maintained that his daughters’ college experiences are uniquely their own, and though he always feels a sense of belonging when he returns to Vassar, it has been exciting to see his daughters grow into the space on their own terms.

“It’s really fun as a parent to see your kids inhabit and own something that used to be yours and make it their own,” he said. Nonetheless, there is a level of mutual understanding for him and his wife when talking to their children about school.

“The knowledge I have is still limited because what I know is 32 years old, but there certainly is a comfort in having a shared vocabulary and a shared geography. In some ways

it’s trivial and superficial—we know the buildings, the dorms, the academic buildings. But when, for example, Sophie says it’s a long walk from Cushing to the library, we know what she means,” said Adam.

It’s easy to see the advantage of parents grasping the mundane aspects of everyday Vassar life. One could imagine this translating to fewer arguments with parents about the merits of gender neutral housing and the nuances of what you’re learning in your classes on gender, race and sexuality. I thought about all of the difficult conversations I’ve had with my parents at the dinner table. I thought about the time my dad called me downstairs and asked me about not wearing a bra. If they had taken the same classes I have, if they knew what Vassar was like, maybe they could understand a little better, I always thought.

Though this may often hold true for Rachel, there are still generational differences between her and her mother that exist with any parent and child.

“Although some of the buzzwords we take for granted now—like ‘heteronormative’—did not quite exist when my mom went to Vassar in the ’70s, I have found that both of my parents are extremely understanding of Vassar’s ever-changing climate. I often come home for break, chattering on about some new type of privilege I learned about recently and I am met with blank stares. But my parents are always curious, ask questions and are happy to learn

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

new things,” said Rachel.

Sophie expressed having a similar relationship with her parents, adding, “I think Vassar is in many ways a very different place now than it was then, but there are definitely similar aspects as well. [My parents] are always extremely interested in what Vassar is like now and finding out from me the ways in which it has changed and the ways in which it had stayed the same.”

Bernice said one of the most prominent changes has been students’ activism and social consciousness. She wrote, “When I arrived at Vassar, it was just the beginning of people feeling comfortable talking about being gay, there was no talk about being transgender, or queer, or questioning. Everything is much more open and diverse in that regard...Clearly students now are much more engaged in politics and social issues.”

Even so, there is still some overlap in experience. Both Rachel and Bernice are French majors, though Rachel was careful not to make one mistake her mother did. “One greatest regret is that she never took Art 105/106. So, I made sure to do that first thing freshman year, and, evidently, that decision has changed my life forever,” said Rachel, who has a correlate in art history and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Contrast.

Sophie’s parents had similar words of caution for her: “My parents have given me a lot of great guidance for how to navigate Vassar.

They made me swear that I will take Art 105 because they both loved that course, so that will definitely be on my schedule next year,” she wrote.

Still, for Rachel, the most salient advice her mother has given her has been through showing rather than telling. Beyond the time Rachel spent with Bernice on campus for reunions and events, away from Vassar she saw how her mother’s relationships flourished after graduation. Every summer her family would visit Bernice’s college best friend in Cape Cod. “I can remember how happy they were to see each other and how they would immediately commence discussion about crazy memories they had from their college years...but I’d also hear stories they would share about how their other best friend...had given birth years ago and how my mother had rushed to Buffalo, N.Y. to help her out in her first days of mothering,” Rachel recalled.

Along the same lines, Adam said the experiences he might share with his children come in broad strokes. College, he said, has always been about making friends and receiving an exemplary education.

“If you’re lucky and at a place like Vassar, there are commonalities. It’s a place where you’re going to make those best friends you might have for your whole life. It’s a place where you go from being a smart kid with a fairly unformed mind to being someone who’s on their way to adulthood with some pretty well-developed skills in thinking and writing and understanding the world around you. I hope those things never change,” he said.

I told Adam I enjoyed talking to him and hearing about his experiences. But before I could hang up the phone, he stopped me: “Can I ask you a favor?” “Sure,” I replied, unsure of what he would ask. “If I’ve said anything you think Sophie would be embarrassed by, please don’t publish it!”

As a second-semester senior, Rachel is now beginning to look forward to after her time at Vassar. And she knows that moving the tassel from right to left won’t be the end of her journey with the College.

“Vassar isn’t just four years—it is forever.

The friends my mom made there are her friends today, some 35 years later. When I think ahead to the future I can only imagine Sean Chang [’15] being the great gay uncle to my children and visiting Simon Hardt’s [’15] beach house in Florida with my whole family in tow,” she said.

Rachel ended by saying, “Vassar is a crazy yet extremely short-lived adventure. Though never explicitly, my mom made it clear that whoever joined you on that journey would be with you for the rest of your life, arguing about drying racks in your first apartment, next to you at the altar, there by your side as you cuddled your first child, and years after that, still reminiscing about how you could once buy alcohol at the Mug.”

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February 12, 2015

Free & For Sale page admins concerned with sale ethics SWAPR continued from page 1

Rachel Garbade/The Miscellany News

statement, “We are expecting The Bearded Lady thrift store to have a table and as of now around 20 student tables, with organizations represented so far such as Vassar Contrast, Equestrian Club, and [off-campus] students.”

“Transactions are entirely in the vendors’ control, giving those selling goods control over the price and in what form of payment they would like to be paid in,” Kamber wrote.

“I expect there to be bartering allowed among some vendors and others who have stricter prices.” Abe added, “We just wanted to provide a platform for an open-ended exchange of goods to take place. It’s really up to the individuals who come to determine what the event ends up looking like.”

The College Committee on Sustainability, Kamber added, would still love to gain more vendors for the event. In addition to all of the booths, however, there also will be a section for people to drop off their old electronics to be properly recycled. Kamber wrote, “We also plan on having an E-waste collecting station where we will collect batteries, old cell phones and recycle them appropriately.”

This is not the first event the Committee on Sustainability has hosted to raise awareness of the amount of waste around campus. Once a year at the end of Senior Week they hold SWAPR. Kamber wrote, “SWAPR has multiple interpretations, I’ve generally referred to the acronym meaning ‘Stop Waste and Promote Recycling,’ but has been interpreted by others as ‘Students with a Purpose: Recycling.’”

SWAPR is the College Committee on Sustainability’s longest running program, having started in 2002.

Holding the event at the end of the academic year gives students a chance to recycle unwanted household goods, clothing and furniture and reuse any items that catch their eye. Anything leftover is donated to local charities.

The idea for Cupid’s Flea Market started with the idea to hold a second SWAPR during the year after seeing how much they accumulated at the last event. “Drawing inspiration from last year’s Art Market hosted by Davison House, and

The Free Market, on the second floor of Main Building, works to decrease waste by taking used clothing and offering it to others. Similar initiatives will be a part of ‘Cupid’s Flea Market’ this Saturday. the Free and For Sale Facebook page, we wanted to give the opportunities for anyone in the community, specifically students, the opportunity to sell and trade goods and services,” Kamber wrote. “We combined this idea with the donation aspect of SWAPR to come up with Cupid’s Flea Market.”

The date, however, was mostly coincidental.

Abe wrote, “Choosing Valentine’s Day for the event was partly logistical, but it also seemed like an appropriate day for a community-building event, and to show some love for the environment by reducing our consumption, a counter to the highly capitalist nature of the holiday.”

“The primary goal of the Flea Market is to reduce the amount of waste we produce at the end of the year,” Kamber added. “Looking at the piles of stuff left from students after they left was daunting—last May it filled the entire Kenyon Gym. Coming into my Senior year we were thinking of ways to improve SWAPR and talk-

ed about having it multiple times a year.” Due to the significant amount of planning that goes into SWAPR, Cupid’s Flea Market will just be a miniature version.

There are many other options around campus to reuse and recycle unwanted stuff. Free & For Sale is a Facebook group where you can post pictures of unwanted items for a reasonable price. The page was started at least a year ago, but, according to Carly Bloomfeld ’16, no one was in charge of the page or what was supposed to happen on it.

When Bloomfeld, along with Debbie Altman ’16 and Andy Sironko ’16, became the current admins of Free & For Sale’s Facebook page, their hope was to discourage Vassar students from taking advantage of each other. They wanted to see the page used in the same way as Cupid’s Flea Market.

Bloomfeld recently posted, “Free & For Sale is a community tool to exchange, reuse and avoid

wasting a wide variety of items (books, clothes, furniture, food etc.) within our community and to make a moderate amount of cash when needed or to make up some of the original cost of a particular item.”

For most, the appeal of the Vassar-specific Facebook page is that it creates a more trustworthy setting, unlike other online mediums such as the for sale section of Craigslist.

Bloomfeld wrote, “You get the convenience of being in very close proximity to whoever is buying your things, but the price for that is you’re doing it within a very small community, so there’s an expectation that you will be fair and not rip people off.”

It wasn’t until last spring when people were leaving for vacation that students started taking more notice of the page, and posting more frequently. Sironko was the first to notice that the tone of the transactions were not what they should be.

Students were not just looking to find good deals, but some were also hoping to make a profit. “One day Andy [Sironko] Facebook-messaged both [Altman and me] saying it really bothered him how people were using the page because they were overcharging and trying to sell things that clearly have no monetary value,” Bloomfeld wrote.

She added, “None of us have any problem with people charging for items, but we thought people were being jerks and trying to rip off their friends.” She added, Sironko was the original author of the post on the Free & For Sale page, but, since she agreed with what he had to say, she posted it to the page for him.

The purpose of these resources is to foster a different sort of feeling towards excess things.

Recycling does not have to be just for paper, glass and plastics. The College Committee on Sustainability’s main goal with the flea market is to promote campus solidarity through the exchange of recycled goods. Kamber wrote, “We hope that Cupid’s Flea Market provides students an opportunity to buy, sell, trade, donate goods and services and acquire free stuff while at the same time providing a community event that supports reuse and recycling.”

For one student, a hearty curry dish with a side of politics Aja Saalfeld columnist

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courtesy of Branny Boils Over

et’s just get this out of the way–being a mixed race, diasporic Rroma kid is not easy in general, and specifically when it comes to eating and misguided attempts to figure out what the hell it is that Rromani actually eat.

I will be the first to admit that I do not have the strongest grasp on my Romanipen, or whatever that may mean to an ambiguously brown boi living across the ocean from most of the people who look sort of kind of like me.

Lately, I have been on a probably ill-advised quest to figure out some way to feel a bit more Rromani, and since Vassar in all its white glory is hardly the easiest place to do that, I made the decision to keep that shit in the kitchen where only my housemates have to deal with it.

Being a large and almost universally oppressed diaspora, Rromani food, at least in my experience, seems to generally be influenced by a combination of regional culinary standards and widespread poverty.

Ingredients tend to be cheap, and organ meats and game animals tend to be popular, particularly rabbit, while Rromani in France and the United Kingdom view hedgehog as a delicacy.

Snail soup was once popular, but has been displaced by increased access to more assimilatory meat.

Until recently I had never eaten snail, but the thought of eating their cute little faces did make me a bit squeamish, something I resolved to get over during this journey of culinary exploration.

Since I did not want to have to look my rabbit in the face after eating someone like her, and, since hedgehogs are not so easy to come by around here outside of a pet store, I thought it might be just a little bit better to focus on a different mainstay of Rromani cuisine–stews and curries.

Typically, Rromani would cook over open fires and in big pots, so it is unsurprising that soups, stews and curries would be popular among the diaspora.

Foods that simmer for a long time and that have a thick gravy are generally viewed as more Rromani than others.

Now, I generally try to avoid making food that takes a long time to make, simply because I will use that as an excuse not to do my homework, but I decided figuring out my culture via eating and procrastinating was more important than focusing on school work anyway.

And with the disgusting winter weather, there is nothing better than staying inside your warm SoCo and cooking up some hearty food.

I can be a little squeamish about cooking meat, not because I find it disgusting, but because I am always afraid that I will undercook it and die horribly of some food-borne illness, so I generally rely on vegetable or bean-based soups or stews.

Even though I have been focusing on stews, curries and bread lately, last weekend, I thought it would be best to just see what this snail business was all about, and I did end up digging into some escargot while out to dinner.

Isn’t it funny how when the French do it it’s a delicacy, but when the Rromani do it it’s filthy? Europeans sure do cherry pick, but I digress.

Naturally, there exist some small, family-owned Rromani restaurants, which I would love to visit if they were more easily accessible, but for now, it looks like I will be trying to figure this whole Romanipen thing out on my own.

For authentic Rromani cuisine, start by being Rromani. This step cannot be skipped.

Add in some widespread poverty and a history of genocide, and you will be well on your way.

The Ingredients

1 can black beans 1 2 oz container curry paste 1 16 oz container yogurt 2 cups cubed boiled potatoes 1 white savior complex Add cooking oil to large skillet. Heat curry paste until fragrant. Add yogurt, combining thoroughly until bubbling.

Add beans and potatoes, cooking until heated through.

Sprinkle liberally with white savior complex.

Serve with flatbread or rice.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

February 12, 2015

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Podcast pairs senior thesis work with the perfect wine Penina Remler Reporter

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here is no doubt that Vassar students like their opinions to be heard. While some prefer to voice their beliefs through the literary world—writing for a newspaper publication, starting a blog or partaking in an online magazine—others choose to express their ideas visually (photography, art, film and so forth). Vassar students Grant Schaller ’15 and Michael Sandberg ’15 are no different from the rest of students; however, this duo has chosen a unique medium to do so—their very own podcast series.

Schaller and Sandberg’s radio show, “Potpourri,” first debuted to the Vassar community after winter break. The series, which revolves around student life at Vassar, has aired one episode so far, but plans to produce and release original

segments each week.

According to Schaller and Sandberg, “Potpourri” intends to elaborate on Vassar seniors’ thesis projects and studies that have taken place over the past year—accomplishments the pair feel are frequently ignored in everyday dialogue.

Sandberg added that, “We originally thought the podcast was just going to be us talking about obscure things—basically, we thought we were funny and articulate enough to have an interesting conversation about a potpourri of topics.”

He continued, “When we came to our senses, realizing that very few people would sit and listen to that, we then came up with the concept for the show as it is now. But the name ‘Potpourri’ stuck, as we thought it still reflected what we were trying to do.”

As technology advances daily, one can’t help

courtesy of potpourripodcast.com

Sophia Rutkin ‘15 is the first guest on a new student-run podcast called “Potpourri.” The program is meant to highlight the thesis work of many seniors in the context of drinking fine wine.

but wonder where Schaller and Sandberg’s classic concept stemmed from. Schaller explained, “For me, the idea for a podcast started just a few months ago. This was also around the time when ‘Serial’ (a podcast launched by Sarah Koenig, a host from ‘This American Life’) was becoming increasingly popular.”

“I started putting on podcasts all the time,” continued Schaller. “I would walk to class with podcasts, have them on when I was cooking, or during any other time when I was between tasks.” As Schaller particularly looks up to Koenig and Alex Blumberg, former “This American Life” host, as admirable broadcasters and storytellers, he likes to coin them as inspirational figures for his own show.

Schaller elaborated, speaking to the origin of the show, “Michael and I started talking about podcasts occasionally, even though he listened to a completely different set than me. Somewhere along the line we were talking about what a fun job it would be to be a host or even to be involved with a podcast at any level. That led us to our podcast, where we’re part of the whole process.”

The process, however, is much easier said than done—especially when Schaller and Sandberg did not have enough time to apply for funding.

Instead, the two have to pay for equipment, web domain and hosting fees themselves. As a result, Sandberg commented, “The equipment is not as high ­quality as we would like to be, but for our purposes, we actually think it gets the job done.

We also have to pay for the pre­-show dinners and wine we buy to share with the interviewees, which doesn’t sound like much, but it does get pricey, especially since we’re looking to increase the frequency of our episodes to two per week.”

In terms of location, they managed to claim a recording space in Skinner Hall, but at the cost of incorporating occasional instruments in the background of their episodes.

As cited in their series premiere, each episode relies upon a guest with an interesting tale and

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Liao, Hancock press pause on schooling for careers

CAREERS continued from page 1

Though vcemo has received its first round of funding, the developers need to develop and produce the platform for the streaming in the next couple of months to get their next round of funding. Hancock and other vcemo founders have been invited to give a presentation on their company at an invite-only event for similar tech-startups next month.

“Right now, we’re focusing on hiring developers because we want the platform to be absolutely beautiful,” Hancock continued, “Right now, we’re both a content and a software company. We’re committed to making sure everything is top-notch quality.”

Hancock believes that virtual reality is a rapidly evolving field that will quickly reach the mainstream as most people’s consumption of media changes drastically. According to him, Microsoft has been investing heavily in developing their own augmented reality headset, and many other media companies are interested in getting into the technology.

Though the future is full of promise for vcemo, Hancock is unsure whether he will return to Vassar to finish his degree. He is allowed to take two semesters off and still re-enroll, and he plans on doing that.

“It all depends on exactly what happens,” Hancock said. “I’ll make the decision [to return to Vassar or not] when I need to.”

Like Hancock, Liao, an English major at Vassar, also left school early to begin her career in New York City. However, she didn’t leave to work on her own start-up company, but to start work as a journalist working for independent newspaper The Epoch Times.

Despite having a good freshman year at Vassar, Liao had felt financial pressure from attending Vassar, as well as a sense that what she was studying would lead her to a career with which she ultimately wouldn’t be satisfied. So she decided not to return for her sophomore year and to take a position as a reporter at The Epoch Times instead.

“After I interned at a magazine, I realized that going to Vassar was going to lead me into a ca-

reer working for literary magazines,” Liao said.

“And for sophomore year, it just got to the point where I thought I was taking out too much in loans and that it would be tough for me to make it all back in the future with whatever career I ended up with.”

Having interned at The Epoch Times for several years during high school, Liao knew that she would have a position there that she could rely on. Having initially grown interested in reporting the news and its portrayal by the media, Liao quickly found herself finding more to love about the job.

“I gave it a try with a three-month internship initially and my employers thought I could stay on and keep doing it during my junior year of high school but it turned out to be too intense to juggle,” reported Liao. “At any rate, I remembered how gratifying it was to see my name in print, and to just grab the elusive interview after many attempts so I came back the next summer and the next.”

During the fall semester, she was working full-time as a reporter and covering a wide variety of breaking events. Though she’s only working part-time now, Liao has still found herself busy researching events she has personally found very interesting.

“This past year in particular was especially gratifying because I got to speak with cops and protesters about the ongoing Ferguson and Eric Garner protests and really get at the human side of the news,” Liao said. “I also interviewed the Chinatown Partnership’s executive director for over four hours to dredge up memories that other reporters before, including a New York Times reporter, had no idea the man had.”

Despite having recently transferred schools to keep taking classes, Liao doesn’t believe that she’ll be putting down her reporter’s notebook anytime soon.

“I plan to work into the foreseeable future and have no plans to quit,” Liao concluded. “I just transferred to CUNY Hunter after taking a semester off, so I might actually continue to major in English and I’m definitely continuing my job at the same time.”

a bottle of wine to accompany the conversation.

While Schaller and Sandberg expect to host predominantly seniors on the show, Schaller noted, “The guest-choosing process is definitely not an exact science, and it’s something we’re still getting accustomed to. We want to try and represent as many different topics and as unique... projects as we can.”

With a set plan to debut their show at the start of the new year, Sandberg stated, “Both of us had to put substantial time in over break to make sure we knew what we were doing. Wine, of course, was researched primarily last semester.”

With that, the first episode incorporated a 2013 California Cabernet Sovereign and guest Sophia Rutkin, a senior history major. Rutkin, who is in the process of writing a thesis on desegregation within the U.S Marines between 1942 and 1953, spoke about her conducted research and responsibilities as the History Department intern.

“Michael and Grant and I have a great rapport so there was no getting­-to-­know­-each­-other awkwardness. They also asked me for some pre­ reading so that their questions could be well-informed, which made the experience more of a conversation as opposed to just me talking ad nauseum,” said Rutkin.

Since podcast series are not as prevalent across campus, Rutkin admitted, “The only weird part about being a guest was listening to it the next day and hearing my own voice recorded.

I am not used to being recorded so it is always jarring to hear my voice that way.”

As “Potpourri” is just beginning to make a name for itself, Schaller and Sandberg hope that their new series will eventually develop a mass audience across campus.

Schaller concluded, “Our podcast can hopefully serve as a way for some of these theses to reach a greater audience and attract the attention they deserve. There are a lot of great projects that people do outside of school, so we’d like to bring as many of those on the show as we can.”

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FEATURES

Page 8

February 12, 2015

QCVC Mug night met with unexpected student dispute Megan Forster

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Guest Reporter

ug nights usually come and go without consequence. They’re hot, sweaty and loud but still persist as a Vassar weekend staple for many.

Last Friday, Feb. 6, the Queer Coalition of Vassar College (QCVC) hosted “Queer Night at The Mug,” an event meant to be exclusively for LGBTQ students. What was meant to be a place of understanding and comfort for QCVC soon took a sharpely different turn. A post from one of the event’s hosts provoked an immediate backlash.

Rishi Gune ’17 originally approached QCVC about the idea and they embraced it fully. Ellie Vamos ’17, a leader of QCVC said, “A lot of queer parties happen in individual rooms and houses…so we thought a [M]ug night would be accessible to a wider range of people.”

The group was able to set up their event with little to no adminstrative hurdles, giving them hope for their event. “The only problem we had was setting up a date, simply because the mug was so booked up,” said Gune. Said Vamos, “Plenty of other orgs host them.”

Unexpectedly, the biggest problem arose when Vamos wrote on the event’s Facebook wall reminding students to be conscious of the safe space she and QCVC were trying to create.

She wrote, “Just to clarify the purpose of this event: we want to create a queer space for queer people in the Mug. Our aim is to reclaim what is traditionally a straight space that can be uncomfortable and even unsafe for queer people.” She continued, “Please keep this in mind when making decisions about whether or not to attend.”

A number of students commented on the thread, taking issue with the exclusion of straight people. One student wrote, “I don’t joke about exclusion. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. I hope that Queer night is a fun night

at the Mug where queers feel comfortable and can hang out with other queers. But if some straight people show up, I hope they have a good time too.”

Another student commented, “I do not appreciate what you are saying here. All are welcome. How is it a traditionally straight place?

All should be included.”

Over 24 hours, there were almost 100 comments on Vamos’ post.

“For those people who objected, I feel as though they don’t fully understand the ways in which marginalized students go about claiming spaces,” said Gune. Gabe Ramos ’17, another leader of QCVC, said neither he nor the organization anticipated the adverse response when advertising the event. “The controversy honestly came out of nowhere and was quite shocking actually.”

Vamos agreed, adding, “It certainly made the event a lot more stressful.”

For Andrew Murphy ’15, a student not planning on attending, the hostility invigorated him to attend even more.

“Exclusion for the purpose of creating a very rare nighttime fun and safe space for queer students is alright,” he said. Murphy said he recognized that his certainty in his identity, combined with his whiteness and male privilege, were factors that encouraged his attendance and comfortability.

For Vamos, there is no such thing as bad press. “On the upside, we didn’t have to advertise the event nearly as much as we’d expected; the controversy did that for us,” she said.

This seemed to ring true for Murphy, who said he was excited for the event, preparing for the night with friends.

He recalled, “I excitedly threw on a friend’s skirt, some leggings, a crop top, my six-inch platforms, and beat my face a bit…I ran down the spiral staircase with some friends and started dancing.”

Ramos said he could only describe the night by acknowledging its differences from more typical Mug nights. “[I felt] comfort for a variety of things: It wasn’t packed to the brim with people grinding on each other, it wasn’t empty either, it was a happy medium and that allowed the mug to not be so unbearably hot,” Gune and Vamos also expressed feelings of comfort. “I really felt good being in that space, and since I was DJing, I could really feel the crowd,” said Gune.

Vamos reflected, “I usually find the Mug pretty stressful and unpleasant…it’s super intimidating to approach other girls when you have no way of knowing whether they’re straight. At the queer Mug night, I felt more comfortable and more able to just enjoy myself with my friends.”

In terms of safe spaces, there are a small number of queer affinity groups that exist on campus. To combat this, Murphy began to host queer movie nights at his house last semester.

“We thought it would be fun to watch queer movies with a bunch of queers on campus, so we began making a list of all of the queer people we knew at Vassar,” he said.

Murphy and a friend created a list of queer movies and sent out an email invite. They advertised the gathering as an expressly queer space. Additionally, he requested that nonqueer identifying housemates leave, if able, in order to create a comfortable space.

Describing the few movie nights they held, Murphy said, “It was exciting and reassuring to finally be in a space that wasn’t dictated by straightness. Honestly, they were two of the very few times that I felt completely comfortable on this campus last semester.”

Vamos, Ramos and Gune all agree on the importance of creating alternative queer spaces to build community on Vassar’s campus and in the world.

Said Gune, “It is vital to have informal spaces where queer people can turn loose without feeling uncomfortable. In the world, we have plenty of spaces, although many are often meant for gay men…This is obviously a misogyny problem that we in the queer community need to work through.”

The LGBTQ center hosts a few organizations such as Transmissions, QCVC, others and keeps its doors open to students. But, creating more informal spaces is vital, Murphy insisted.

“There are countless straight spaces on this campus—sports teams are the primary ones.

Creating lasting queer spaces in a scene where there are so few is difficult,” he said.

Vamos said she envisions a community that reaches out to a broader range of individuals.

“I also think there’s a lot of work to be done in terms of making queer spaces more intersectional; I know that QCVC and other SPECTRUM orgs are hoping to work more with ALANA Center orgs this semester to help make that happen,” she said.

Gune said that specifying something as a queer-only space means reclaiming a space that is often not welcoming.

Moving forward from this weekend, QCVC plans on hosting more queer Mug nights as well as a talk-back to discuss the backlashes the event and hosts faced. “[We’re also looking to] invite POC trans and queer artists and activists on campus,” said Gune.

Gune and Murphy agree that there needs to be self-education by Vassar students on how to deal with topics of queerness. Additionally, deepening the level of understanding on how to be an ally, and what an ally is, is necessary to move forward together.

Vamos said, “It’s certainly not marginalized people’s job to educate others on the necessity of affinity spaces, but as an activist org QCVC is definitely thinking about doing some kind of outreach on this topic.”

Alums across the pond: postgrads return to JYA haunts Sarah Sandler Guest Reporter

with additional reporting by

Claire Standaert Guest Reporter

N

courtesy of Gio Zaccheo

ot many college students know exactly what they want to do following graduation, but when they do it doesn’t often include living and working in a foreign country. For those students whose wanderlust wasn’t satisfied sufficiently by a junior year abroad, staying in the United States after graduating from Vassar doesn’t sound as appealing as moving to Italy or France. Two Vassar alumni in particular, Gio Zaccheo ’14 and Nate Muscato ’14, opted to move to Le Mans, France and Rho, Italy, respectively.

Even though they don’t track postgrad activity, Susan Stephens from Vassar’s Office of International Programs said, “Seniors often come into our office for advice because they have already established a relationship with us during their study abroad. Working abroad is slightly more complicated since it involves obtaining a visa that permits you to work, which is very different from either traveling as a tourist or study abroad.”

Though it can be tedious, studying abroad can have many benefits for students after they graduate. Stephens said, “The boost in confidence that comes from being self-reliant often leads students to become more willing to take risks in terms of choosing a different path after graduation.”

Muscato said he was up to the challenge. In an emailed statement he wrote, “I was eager to expand my experience of the world outside of the U.S., and pretty sure that a nebulous future ‘career’ could (can) wait. [I was also] anxious to continue developing my Italian language skills.”

So when through Vassar’s Italian department he found the opportunity to work at a liceo, or Italian high school, in Rho, he was eager to do it. Muscato described his position at the liceo, his title being an English “mother-tongue” assistant. He explained, “I conduct English language lessons as well as classes in other subjects, and I’ve found opportunities to tutor students one-on-one outside of school.”

Luckily, Muscato didn’t have to go straight from Poughkeepsie to Rho, not leaving until September, four months after graduation. Even though he had the summer to prepare, he said,

Gio Zaccheo ‘14 made the decision to move to Le Mans, France after graduating. He is part of a larger trend of Vassar grads opting to pursue post-grad opportunities outside of the United States.

“I still wasn’t prepared for the reality of distance, something I’m sure I’d be coping with even if I’d moved to New York with many of my classmates.”

Muscato admitted that living across the ocean with completely new people made being social a little more difficult. “In the Vassar bubble, social interaction doesn’t require much effort or planning—you live with or across the TH circle from your best friends, you see the same people in classes, at rehearsals and campus events—and so living across the Atlantic has been a real change of social pace, and has necessitated adjustments to how I approach my friendships and my time,” Muscato said.

Nonetheless, Muscato said his experience in Italy has been a mixed bag with constant surprises.

He wrote, “Outside work, life has been a strange and not unpleasant mix of solitary afternoons and group outings until five in the morning, a healthy balance of reflection and fun.”

After more than four months living outside of the United States, Muscato said, “Much of me is still gaining my bearings, figuring out what

makes me happy here and how to pursue it, but my experience teaching has been a blast. Italian gregariousness knows no bounds, and the school has welcomed me so warmly, with much sincerity and amusement, that I can’t help enjoying my time with the students.” In reference to the Italian people he has met in Rho, Muscato commented, “I’ve been so shocked and refreshed by the Italian attitude towards age and youth, which insists that one has all the time in the world to enjoy, explore and linger in this ambiguous stage of life.”

As compared to his JYA experience, Muscato has been able to meet more locals during this period of time abroad. He wrote, “Bologna and Milan are almost opposites in terms of both physical environment and local mentality, and here I’m not living/studying/traveling with a secure pack of American liberal arts kids.”

Though they are living in two very different countries, Muscato and Zaccheo have been doing similar work. In Le Mans, France, Zaccheo works as an English teaching assistant at a public high school, Lycée Général Bellevue. Through a sug-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

gestion from his French professor at Vassar, Susan Hiner, Zaccheo said, “I got the job through the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF).”

France and French language and culture are familiar to Zaccheo because he has studied French for many years and first went to France in Fall 2012 to study abroad with the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris (VWPP).

Zaccheo enjoyed his experience but added, “I didn’t travel around France as much as I could have and ended up really regretting that. When I saw an opportunity to go back to France, it appealed to me right away.” Like many other college students, Zaccheo said, “I also wasn’t sure what I wanted to do immediately after graduation, and I wanted to get some experience teaching without committing to a full-time, longer-term position.”

This decision has served Zaccheo well, and he went on to say, “I majored in English with a correlate in French and Francophone studies, so I guess I’m making use of my Vassar education!”

Zaccheo described how there is not one typical experience with the Teaching Assistant Program in France because participants are allowed to choose their city preferences to an extent. Zaccheo ended up in Le Mans, a smaller city about 200 kilometers southwest of Paris. “[It] ended up being a pretty ideal situation,” Zaccheo said.

“My high school is close to the center of town and has a strong language program. I really like working with my students, which is a fun challenge as many of them struggle with learning English,” he continued. Zaccheo lives in a subsidized apartment on the school’s grounds with three peer assistants who are German, Spanish and Chinese. Zaccheo teaches only 12 hours of class per week, making for enough time to balance work and play.

“For me, it’s been the perfect job for right after Vassar as well as a unique opportunity to live and travel in France and around Europe,” he said.

But, Zaccheo’s time abroad is coming to a close.

His program is only a seven-month commitment, so he is currently looking for jobs in the United States so he can return after his contract is up.

Zaccheo concluded, “Though I can’t speak for every assistant on this program, I’d definitely recommend it and other teaching programs to Vassar students who don’t know what to do after graduation.”

February 12, 2015

OPINIONS

Page 9

The Miscellany News Staff Editorial

College should do more for sexual assualt survivors

T

his past week, N.Y. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wrote an article for the Huffington Post addressing sexual assault on college campuses. In her article, Gillibrand condemned colleges and universities across the nation for their failure to deal with sexual assault in a strict, victim-centered way. Gillibrand also revealed that many colleges are under investigation by the federal government for allegedly covering up sexual assault incidents, and some colleges that have opted to shoulder a $35,000 fine rather than report sexual assault statistics for a given year.

Although Vassar is not one of the colleges under investigation, and it does report assault statistics, we at The Miscellany News feel that Vassar still falls short in its treatment of sexual violence on campus.

This failure is reflected in the failures that have persisted in the systems currently in place to help students.

For example, until last year, the College’s Sexual Assault Violence Prevention (SAVP) coordinator was not a full-time position, but only offered the most vital administrative support for assault survivors employment during the academic year.

Reportedly, the SAVP position was so underpaid that it was a factor in the former SAVP coordinator’s decision to be one of the first to take last fall’s early retirement incentive packages.

This left the College without an SAVP coordinator for an entire semester, causing the College to fail the students who needed that support the most. The College then persisted in making no urgent efforts to fill the position throughout last semester.

While it is true that President Hill and

the Administration have made the SAVP coordinator, the ALANA, LGBTQ and Women’s Center directors, and other vital student support personnel full time according to Hill’s “Strengthening Vassar” plan, it has only occurred this academic year in response to outrage from students and alumnae/i alike.

It is deeply disappointing and hurtful to the student body that these essential administrators in student-support positions have historically received so little support from the College Further, we at The Miscellany News believe that Vassar continues to fail to sufficiently educate students of all class years in ways that could effectively prevent sexual violence on campus.

Only first-year students and those in certain leadership positions receive orientation on expectations for behavior on campus. It is also during this time that these students learn how to be active bystanders when it comes to instances of sexual and gender-based violence.

What’s more, standards of behavior and definitions of assault vary among administrative offices: The definition of consent in the Student Handbook and consent according to the SAVP orientation are two different things.

This discrepancy leads students who have been victimized to expect one level of support based on the stricter standard to which students hold each other, only to be re-victimized by the Title IX process at Vassar which holds to a different definition—one that is informed by state and federal laws and is concerned with

the College’s liabilities. These definitions create a dissonance for all students, but actively harm students who are victims of sexual assault.

We at The Miscellany News believe that in light of these national and localized concerns, Vassar must take serious, well thought-out steps to address these issues on campus.

Firstly, the Administration should consider instituting a program that requires students to receive sexual assault prevention and bystander intervention training on a yearly basis, maintaining a requisite level of education throughout all four years at Vassar for students.

As first-year students are bombarded with information during their first weeks at Vassar and are still acclimating to the campus and life as a college student, providing such training during this time might be rendered ineffective.

Dartmouth is among those of Vassar’s peer institutions that have implemented these types of programs, encouraging a constant and consistent education for the campus community focussing specifically on these issues.

However, before seeking to execute these initiatives, we at The Miscellany News suggest that the senior administration, in conjunction with its students and faculty, equip themselves accordingly at actually address the issues at hand.

As mentioned, a prime example of fundamental miscommunications and opacity among students and administration presented itself last semester when students were under the false impression that the

College had altered its official definition of consent. In order to make significant strides toward a safer campus, we must all first be on the same page, from students to faculty and administrators.

When students are taken by surprise by the College’s definition of consent and sexual assault, it creates a relationship founded on distrust.

Last semester’s open forums and protests about racism have proven that the Administration lacks some of the tools and sensitivity to adequately address concerns of these issues.

During a time in which colleges across the country are in the public eye for sexual assault, there is a sense of urgency and confusion about how to make campuses safer for students—ultimately, it has become clear that few know how.

That being said, we at The Miscellany News hesitate to encourage the Administration alone to initiate the change our campus so needs.

Senior administrators should seek the counsel of students and faculty who spend their time thinking, researching and discussing these issues.

At this time, we do not need quick, panicked solutions for the purposes of merely reducing numbers and saving face.

Vassar students deserve thoughtful work in the realm of transformative justice and communal accountability to create meaningful change.

—The Staff Editorial represents the opinions of at least 2/3 of our Editorial Board.

Students deserve more authority in joint committees Joshua Sherman Opinions Editor

W

hat if I told you it’s time for the students of Vassar College to unionize? I don’t necessarily mean unionizing in the traditional labor sense, but I do mean perhaps it’s time we seriously consider a major missing piece in our governmental puzzle. I’ve been thinking about this since last semester, when the VSA hired Butch Oxendine to perform an “external review” of our current student government structure. Some also referred to the external review as an “audit,” but no matter what you call it, Butch’s intentions are to analyze what the VSA is missing to accomplish its task of effectively representing the student body. It won’t be long until we get Butch’s final report, and with it perhaps a slew of suggestions to improve our representation and operation. But one thing I also hope we can consider is whether or not we, in recent years, ever really had some sense of power when negotiating with administrators and faculty.

Unions are designed to represent a specific body, often to utilize the collective bargaining and negotiating power that it has in contrast to the voice and authority of a single employee.

Realistically, we are not employees of Vassar College. By extension of this, it seems a bit strange to use the word union when describing a solution to a student body. But after all, why do many schools call their student government a “student union?” Even if it’s just a mere change from the word “association” to “union,” I think it lends to an important issue that I feel has become apparent in the last few years—no matter the issue, we rarely have an equal space to discuss concerns, grievances and disputes with administrators and faculty. I don’t necessarily know or think there’s a specific way to incorporate this power or address this issue, but I do think it’s time that we, as a student body, think seriously about the status quo of our relationship with administrators.

This also brings about the word “shared governance,” something administrators on this campus have used extensively when describing the relationship between the College and its students. I don’t think this is an untrue word either. It’s commendable that we have student voices in student misconduct panels and in

joint committees that consist of students, faculty and administrators. However, one issue with this ongoing “shared governance” is how often student voices become silenced over the clout of administrators in all sorts of meetings.

I do think administrators try to have the best intentions when working with us. However, there are numerous examples that represent this sort of strange dynamic between the voices of students and administrators in such meetings. I cannot speak for student misconduct panels, but with joint committees I have heard, personally and anecdotally, how difficult it can be for students to make suggestions or offer insight in these meetings if they don’t already align with existing faculty and administrator interests. I speak from my time as a representative of Vassar’s Committee on Admission and Financial Aid (CAFA), which felt less like a space for discourse and more of a place for the Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid to report on our performance and dispel rumors.

Meeting times were picked with minimal consideration to student schedules for committee representatives.

“I do think administrators try to have the best intentions when working with us.”

Since David Borus, the former Dean of Admission & Financial Aid, was retiring, there was also much discussion spent about feedback on the selection committee for the current Dean, Art Rodriguez. However CAFA representatives only had one opportunity to discuss the selection committee and meet the consulting firm hired to research candidates. There was more in-depth student representation, but it came not from CAFA but instead the VSA President, who was Deb Steinberg ’14. My grievance over this process is how the VSA President is identified as this catch-all for the need to have a student voice on committees. I spoke with Steinberg and she had good intentions with her feedback in the selection process, but it seems

concerning to me that the committee elected of five students to be the student voice specifically regarding admissions and financial aid was given minimal exposure to the selection of our new dean.

Anecdotally, I also think back to discussions in the Committee on College Life (CCL), where its members in 2013 expressed concern about how feedback and discussions took place over the coming smoking ban. As I was not a member of this committee, I cannot speak for what specifically went on, but those who look back at previous editions of the Misc and Vassar Chronicle can see reactions to the voting in the CCL over the smoking ban, as well as how the College allocated resources for students and staff to get help quitting. As far as I know, we still remain the only school of our kind, a residential non-religious liberal arts college, which is instituting such a smoking ban.

So what can we do when the very committees designed to communicate student grievances and concerns are also sources of conflict over the legitimacy of student voices? I don’t have a particular answer or agenda I think needs to be conveyed, but these examples serve as ongoing reminders of consistent failures in our ability to negotiate arbitrate and communicate with administrators on a level playing field.

What I will suggest is that we look at this concept of unionization not as a necessity or even a structural goal, but instead as a concept on our minds as restructuring discussions go into high gear. We need to also consider how our diversity affects our ability to negotiate. I know for a fact that the Vassar student body is a great and diverse group, with many identities and backgrounds represented. This is why I think a specific solution may not necessarily work unless it accounts for the need for collective bargaining power, as well as an effective way for these groups of many backgrounds be able to communicate concerns through the VSA, rather than see no other way to address their beliefs. It will be impossible to create a body that can negotiate every issue, but in the status quo, we are constantly forced to be silenced or choose between two equally legitimate issues. Every time we are forced to make such a sacrifice, I wonder: Why are we being forced into such a position? In an ideal sce-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

nario, how would we have the effective ability to address all student grievances in some way where administrators cannot merely ignore or avoid answering the issue unless we are forced to protest?

“We need to also consider how our diversity affects our ability to negotiate.”

This all revolves around the reality that we have little agency when the systems we expect to operate fail to do so. This isn’t about pointing fingers either, as it’s the responsibility of the entire College community to interpret the ideas behind shared governance and what these mean for us as a student body. It is up to the VSA to effectively carry out the best possible structural changes to ensure our committee influence can be effective, or provide a way to dispute when we see failures in structure. It’s up to administrators to demonstrate their best interests and collaborate with us on helping shape the future and what we will call “shared governance.” It seems to me most often that these misalignments occur when long-term goals set by administrators and their committees do not necessarily meet student’s shortterm interests. It’s also notable that administrators rarely need to directly answer calls for accountability by students.

So ought we be the Vassar Students Association, or the Vassar Student Union? That’s up for us as a student body to decide. I doubt anyone is against the idea of more power and authority to the collective student body. However, it’s hard to say now what that authority, power or structure should look like. What we do need, however, is to start talking openly and honestly about this issue in VSA meetings and among the many groups that make up our student body. A failure to do so would mean yet another year of the same issues, no matter what advice we get from Butch.

—Joshua Sherman ’16 is an English major.

OPINIONS

Page 10

February 12, 2015

Defining Middle Eastern identity leaves many questions Ramy Abbady

Guest Columnist

I

have found it very difficult to be a person of Middle Eastern descent in the United States for many reasons. The United States government considers people of North African and Middle Eastern descent to be white. However, in the post-Sept. 11 United States, Middle Eastern peoples have been largely othered

by American society, and do not benefit from what is generally described as white privilege.

I say largely because, like many other groups, there are Middle Eastern people who can pass as white and thus can benefit in some ways from this privilege. However, I, as a clearly non-white Middle Easterner, do not benefit from this privilege.

“The mainstream media also places a heavy focus on conflict in the Middle East.”

The question of whether there is a pan-Middle Eastern identity at all is interesting to consider. Who makes up “the Middle East?” As it is, this term is culturally loaded and is created from a Western perspective of the globe. Depending on who you ask, the Middle East can include the countries in the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Turkey and various other nations in North Africa and West Asia.

The mainstream media also places a heavy focus on conflict in the Middle East, further bringing into question whether there is an overall Middle Eastern identity. Additionally, many different ethnic groups exist within the Middle East. The largest group is Arabs, but Persians, Turks, Armenians and many others live in this region, and the status of some of these groups as Middle Eastern peoples is sometimes

brought into question. Kim Kardashian considers herself Middle Eastern due to her Armenian ancestry, but Armenia is not included in many definitions of the Middle East. That said, it is a West Asian country, and thus is sometimes included. These “sometimes” definitions and categories ultimately make a pan-Middle Eastern identity even harder to create or define (BigThink, “What is pan-Middle Eastern identity,” 2007).

In my own personal experience, I’ve definitely encountered evidence of a Middle Eastern identity in the United States. Growing up, I had a friend who was Turkish and considered herself Middle Eastern, a fact which we bonded over. When I was traveling during this past October Break, the desk clerk of the hostel I was staying in asked me my ethnicity, and revealed that he was Lebanese.

When I went to a local amusement park during high school, one of the ride attendants turned out to be, like myself, an Egyptian American. In discussing my Middle Eastern heritage with my therapist, I learned that she was Iranian, and also felt connected to her Middle Eastern identity. These encounters, while few and far between, suggest to me that there is at least some degree of unity in a Middle Eastern American identity.

The history of the whitewashing of Middle Eastern people in the United States is an interesting one. In the early 20th century, Middle Eastern people were considered Asian, as the majority of these countries are located in West Asia. However, immigrants from these countries went to court and fought to be counted as white, largely in response to anti-Asian immigration legislation of the time. They won this battle, and that set the stage for the modern identification scheme.

For the 2010 census, Arab-American activists started a campaign called “Check it right; you ain’t white!” This campaign targeted Arab and Iranian Americans and called for them to

mark the “some other race” box on the census, and write in Arab, Iranian or Persian. Activists have pushed for the creation of a Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) designation to be an option on the 2020 census. This, in many ways, is a parallel to the ongoing issue of Latino/a identities being included only as an ethnic category on the census, which has resulted in many activists pushing for a united ethnic/ racial background question in future United States census processes (ABC News, “US Mulls Middle East-North Africa Category for 2020 Census,” 01.30.15).

“Many Americans see Middle Eastern people as Muslims, despite the region’s diversity.”

According to the Arab American Institute Foundation, there are somewhere between 3.5 and 4 million Arab Americans in the United States, though the census in 2010 only counted 1.7 million. Using the numbers from the Arab American Institute Foundations, Arabs make up about one percent of the United States population. According to the 2010 census, Native Americans and Alaska Natives made up just under one percent of the population, Asians made up almost five percent of the population and multiracial people made up about three percent of the population. These numbers illustrate the fact that Arabs form a significant minority population in the U.S., and if all Middle Eastern and North African people were counted together as a sole demographic, then this population would appear even larger based on these statistics.

In looking critically at the United States, it

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

is abundantly clear that brown-skinned people from the Middle East do not benefit from white privilege and have been singled out and targeted in many instances. Since Sept. 11, anti-Islamic sentiment has been conflated with anti-Arab and anti-Middle Eastern sentiment, and racial profiling on people who “look” Middle Eastern are singled out in airports and other venues as being potential “terrorists.” While there are many people of Middle Eastern descent who can pass as white, they face all kinds of cultural and social erasure in America as a result of the country’s generalizations about this region of the world.

Though they may benefit from white-passing privilege, they also lose part of their identity. It is important to note, too that Middle Eastern people have been combined with Muslims in the eyes of many Americans. Many Americans see Middle Eastern people as Muslims, despite the region’s diversity. Though there is significant overlap, these identities do not automatically correlate. However, like many other stereotypes, it seems that this one is not going away any time soon.

It is exceedingly important that the United States census adopt a more accurate system of classifying race and ethnicity. The effects of doing so would be profound. When I was applying to college, I did not fill out the questions on race and ethnicity because I felt that checking off the white box would give the impression that I have grown up a certain way or benefitted from white privilege, when I have not. In fact, I have been tormented and bullied and called a “terrorist” in response to my physical appearance and my cultural background. And I know I’m not alone. I’d love to create a space for Vassar students of Middle Eastern descent to come together and discuss these issues. If anyone else out there is interested, I want to hear from you.

—Ramy Abbady ’16 is an education major.

February 12, 2015

OPINIONS

‘Serial’ represents power of public voice Emily Sayer

Guest Columnist

“P

reviously, on ‘Serial’-” Cue the familiar sing-songy backtrack that chimes to listeners nationwide, signaling the next installment of America’s beloved podcast. Host Sarah Koenig, a journalist from NPR’s “This American Life,” entrances us with the cycle of speculation that is the Hae Min Lee murder case of 1999. We tune in and wait for resolution, knowing that this achingly unsatisfying story is a thing of the past, but we hope for developments nonetheless. Is Adnan Syed, the 33-year-old Maryland native, a murderer or the victim of an unfair trial? Is this charming, seemingly even-tempered man innocent? Do we want him to be?

As the podcast comes to a conclusion in its 12th episode, Koenig professes that she is unsure if there’s even a story to be told here; she is looking into a murder that is considered solved, and no new information has come to light to suggest an alternate outcome in court.

Syed asks in the show, “So you don’t really have, if you don’t mind me asking, you don’t really have...no ending?”

This, however, might soon change. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals on Friday scheduled a June 2015 hearing for Syed’s case, and hope for closure in Koenig’s desperately inconclusive ending has been restored to the nation. As the case is reopened, the story will continue­—and with it the entertainment.

In conversations with family and friends regarding “Serial,” the topic of Syed’s innocence is always approached objectively, and to me this seems strange. Listeners are mistaking themselves for jurors, hearing fact after fact and weighing each interview, each phone call or piece of evidence, with the gravity of a judge. Even I am guilty of this. We review all the components of the murder that Koenig draws attention to, taking into account the racial biases, shaky alibis, incriminating phone

records, witness testimonies and so on. The format of the podcast allows us to envelop ourselves in the case, sparking our interest like a binge-worthy TV show while engaging our reasoning like an antiquated game of Sudoku, and this is has deceptively combined “Serial[’s]” entertaining aspects with reality. After all, the show is a spin-off of “This American Life,” a podcast dedicated to sharing interesting, truthful stories. Syed’s story, one that Koenig simply intended to inspect, has morphed from a passive narrative of the past into a revived investigation. This makes me wonder: If it weren’t for the overwhelming power of 21st century fads and the amazing clout of a podcast like “Serial,” would the courts have actually gone back and revisit the case as they’re doing now?

I admit that I am a mild supporter of Adnan’s cause. How can’t I be? As unbiased as Koenig attempts to be, the podcast very transparently sympathizes with Syed’s defense, including testimonials from his Pakistani community members and distraught parents, stories of his relatively upstanding boyhood and interviews with the inmate in which he convincingly plays the part of the regular guy stuck in an unfavorable situation. I can’t listen to each episode and easily deem the man an impulsive killer, nor can I accuse him of sociopathy or any other mental condition that interviewees propose. Like most others, I find that he just seems nice. But aside from these feelings of compassion, I don’t see any holes in the case glaring enough to justify a rallying together of us against the courts and for Syed’s legal cause.

The appeal being heard by the Maryland courts is grounded on the belief that the late Cristina Gutierez, Syed’s original attorney, botched the proceedings and screwed over her client in the process. Gutierez allegedly denied Syed the opportunity to seek a plea deal with the state, and as can be heard on

the podcast, her efforts in the courtroom were disorganized and hardly effective. She also neglected to call alibi witness Asia McClain to testify, a move that would’ve contradicted the story of the prosecution’s star witness, a man named Jay, challenging the validity of Jay’s account of the day of the murder. Yes, Gutierez faltered in her strategy and was clearly not performing well in court, but is this a substantial reason for an appeal? If anything, the true error here lies in the fact that the state failed to piece together a solid case with reliable evidence, testimonies, or even motives. (Syed is painted as the resentful ex-boyfriend, but by all accounts, the teenage break-up between himself and Hae Min Lee was a normal one.)

I think that there is ample reasonable doubt in the case, but if a jury 15 years ago disagreed, how can a new trial be legitimate? Sarah Koenig has not uncovered a bed of new information, nor has she upended the prosecution’s argument. Gutierez’s inadequacy is not a newfound conclusion, but an element of which Syed, his family and his supporters were well aware even at the time of the court proceedings. It’s interesting to see how Koenig incorporates this information when presenting the Syed case.

So, putting our pro-Syed biases aside and considering the lack of facts crucial for re-investigation, we can concede that this turn of events is the dangerous product of the combination of mass media influence with real social occurrences. “Serial” has given Americans the chance to project entertainment onto reality—our skewed opinions and forceful obsession with trending pop-culture have impacted the legal system, and whether an appeal for Adnan Syed is ultimately appropriate or not, I am wary of this show and the tangible power of public opinion.

Columnist

M

ost of us have suffered through it: that dreaded day in fifth or sixth grade when the school nurse or health teacher comes to class to give a room of 25 11-yearolds “the talk.” Sex education is something most American public and private school attendees are forced to put up with at some point in both middle school and high school, but amid talk of rising rates of sexually-transmitted diseases and the fact that kids are becoming sexually active earlier, adversaries of sex education are becoming more and more active in their efforts to curb the extent of sex ed in school.

Some people oppose discussion of contraception, safe sex, abortions and even just detailed anatomic diagrams because they think abstinence is the only option that should be emphasized. Rather than wanting their kids to have an all-inclusive knowledge of sex and its consequences, many conservative parents would rather that no-sex-until-marriage policy be the bottom line of sex education. Part of this demand might be coming from a religious point of view, but as sexually-transmitted disease and HIV issues grow among young people, it is vital that a comprehensive education about sex is provided for the sake of our overall health.

In November 2014, the school board of the Phoenix, Ariz. suburb of Gilbert decided to cut out two pages of a biology textbook that “discuss sexually transmitted diseases and contraception, including mifepristone, a drug that can be used to prevent or halt pregnancy” (The New York Times, “In Arizona, a Textbook Fuels a Broader Dispute Over Sex Education,” 11.27.14).

Some of the parents involved in this case argue that it is against their religious values to use contraception, and therefore, their children should not even be taught about it. With this argument, they are taking a self-centered approach, failing to consider how children not in religious families will be robbed of necessary information about sexual health.

Whether parents choose to recognize it or not, young people today are constantly exposed to sexual images on television, in magazines and on the radio. 66 percent of American high school students have had sex by their senior year. Parents would like to believe that they can prevent their child from having sex, but this is an extremely unrealistic ideal. Many teenagers will have sex earlier than their parents would approve, and they should have a detailed education about the options they have and the precautions they should take. This is not just to ensure education about the risks from sexual intercourse, but also to ensure general well-being.

Sex education standards vary greatly depending on where in the country children are going to school. As of now, 18 states and the District of Columbia require sex education, but 32 states do not require it at all.

Even in the states that do require it, what exact facts and information kids are taught varies significantly from state to state (NBC News, “Carnal knowledge: The sex ed debate,” 2013).

“There is a lot more to sexual health than sex itself.”

Some parents believe that providing kids with extensive sex education will make them want to have sex earlier. But because of the images the media circulates, kids will want to have sex regardless of what they are learning in the classroom. An abstinence-only approach means that kids will be bereft of knowledge needed to maintain their health.

It’s not that the option of abstinence is an untenable approach, but kids need to be provided with other reasonable, healthy options. There is a lot more to sexual health than sex itself.

Word on the street If you could re-do your “Your Space,” what would you do?

“Send a Chipotle burrito.”

—David Garfinkel ’15

“I’d do one.”

— Kira Greenberg ’15

—Emily Sayer ’18 is a student at Vassar College.

Sex ed necessary for youth education Sarah Sandler

Page 11

Sexual health aside, discussing sex fairly openly in a health class means that children will grow up with healthier mindsets about sex in general. Parents who have expressed their discontent with sex education in public school are angered by the fact that textbooks associate sex with pleasure rather than just reproduction. However, including pleasure in the discussion of sex and consent teaches younger people that they should only be having sex if everyone involved is enjoying it. If students are not exposed to the stipulations of sexual consent before they start having sex, it could have significant repercussions for them in the future.

There is also the simple fact that if you withhold a certain kind of information, students will be more curious about it and more likely to search for the information on their own. This course of action could lead them to unreliable websites as opposed to the less biased, factual information they would’ve been receiving from a textbook in school.

Also, some parents argue that they should be the ones to teach their children about sex— not the public schools. While this might give them some peace of mind, it means that they will be promulgating their own opinions and partialities to their children, instead of letting them formulate their own standpoint.

The issue of sex education in public schools is a complicated one because it calls into question religious and moral values.

Despite qualms about children receiving sex education in school, it is essential that kids are well informed about sex. Not only does it set them up for good sexual health and safe sexual practices in the future, but it provides students with the necessary information in order to have a good attitude about sex and how it affects us. Exposure to this information won’t cause young people to have sex earlier or make them more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases. I think it will do just the opposite, making kids much better off.

—Sarah Sandler ’18 is a student at Vassar College.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

“I’d keep it the same.”

— Carolina Alvarez ’18

“I would probably send photos of one of the solar rays I worked on last year.”

— Jackson Miller ’16

“I would send them one of my sassy needlepoints.”

—Kiran Kawolics ’15

“Maybe I didn’t do it.” ­­— Clancy Green ’17

Christopher Gonzalez, Humor and Satire Editor Sam Pianello, Photo Editor

OPINIONS

Page 12

February 12, 2015

Immersing oneself helpful when learning languages Sophia Burns Columnist

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ust a short month ago, I was lounging on a sunny, quiet beach in Boquerón, Puerto Rico, with a carton of coconut water in one hand and Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” in the other. As I finished my last yucca chip, I realized that I had, in just three days, almost stopped taking note of the stark differences from my home environment and begun to make myself comfortable. I stayed with a friend and her mother in a small, historical town where horses are a popular method of transportation and the only nearby American business in sight was a Burger King.

Happy to be in an area where I could absorb a culturally significant place while relaxing, I considered my own educational goals that I may have left on the mainland. As a Latina brought up outside of Latin culture, I wished to improve my language skills and grow closer to that part of me as well as those with whom I share this background. As someone studying the Spanish language, I was determined to make my vacation in Puerto Rico an educational experience that could also end up helping me in the classroom.

To preface, I’d like to note that I had relatively poor language instruction in high school, and that my Spanish course last semester absolutely terrified me when it came to speaking and writing, as I had little experience in either.

Through the encouragement to participate by my professor and her engagement in my writing process, I definitely noticed that my reading, writing and comprehension abilities were improving dramatically.

My course also included a “Conversation Class” component, which I found a bit disappointing. In this section, which I assumed

“County of Kings”

would consist of having conversations with one another, we would instead spend an hour each week going over class material and learning about parts of speech—all things that I had learned in high school by studying and regurgitating conjugation charts, and therefore struggled to utilize in practical situations. While I had grown as a writer, I was lacking as a speaker. Needless to say, I was terrified of spending 10 days with native speakers in an area where falling back on English may not necessarily be an option.

My first anxiety-inducing encounter was at the aforementioned Burger King. Waiting in line, I said my order repeatedly in my head, as if I was about to give an important presentation rather than try to order chicken fingers. I remembered learning how to order food once during junior year in high school. I also remembered that this chapter was followed by one that taught us how to talk about UFOs, extraterrestrials and magic.

This was when I realized that my four years of high school Spanish were not only so slowpaced that I graduated having never written a real essay, but also that much of my time was spent learning useless vocabulary that I may never actually use, foregoing opportunities to learn how to actually communicate with a Spanish-speaking person. I realized that learning how to effectively communicate is going to take a lot longer than I had expected. With my goals readjusted, I tried my best to become a better Spanish-learner than a better Spanish-speaker.

One of the most valuable lessons I took away about language was that listening closely is sometimes more critical to communication than one’s proficiency in speaking. If you are

able to at least pick up the topic of conversation and a few details, then piecing together a concise, coherent response, although maybe not exactly what you would like to say, is simpler, and can keep a conversation going rather than stalling to think of the perfect words. I found that people were sympathetic and would not mind repeating something a bit slower, which quelled most of my fear. The fact that I knew that many of the people where I was staying did not know English put me in “survival mode” when I spoke, adding importance to my ability to succeed at speaking Spanish.

I also learned something essential to everyday communication in a second language: People will be forgiving if you use the imperfect tense instead of the preterite as long as you are conveying what you need to. It is easy to go home at night and brush up on whatever you may have stumbled over earlier in the day, but thinking and acting in the moment with your mistakes is crucial, despite what your self-conscious mind may say.

Also, being corrected in a social situation, while it might seem embarrassing, will help the mistake stick in your memory because it is attached to some event and practical usage. I will never forget how to say “Have a good night!” after I said, “Ten una buen noche” instead of “Tenga una buen noche” because I can remember that specific situation and I use that phrase often. Inhibitions can be the biggest (and only) barrier to working on a language in a non-academic setting—sometimes it’s also comforting to remember that you will probably never see this person again!

Another sneaky way to improve language skills I found was to just ask questions about anything, even if they seem random. I found

by Collin Knopp−-Schwyn and York Chen

COUNTY OF KINGS

35 “There’s ___ ___ in sight!”

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Collin Knopp−Schwyn and York Chen

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­­—­Sophia Burns ’18 is a student at Vassar College.

The Miscellany Crossword

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Chambers)” the pons and medulla 27 Eminem album that succeeded 2004’s 75 How we’ll find aliens, oblongata 17 Encore probably 29 Measure of a country’s economy 9 "Ali ___ 76and Oglesthe 40 Thieves" including foreign income 77 Essence 20 13 Personal journal 32 “Use your indoor voice!”

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myself asking my friend or her mother how to say words we came across in music, TV shows and movies, and was able to more easily work these into my vocabulary than learning more niche words in my class readings and lectures.

Finding someone you feel comfortable with who is either a native speaker or a more advanced student is great way to ask questions freely and clear up confusion without fear of being judged by fellow students or professors about your questions. The main goal here is to be inquisitive and not be afraid to bridge the gaps in your language knowledge. Believe it or not, doing this is perhaps easier in real-world settings than in the classroom.

While the academic environment is crucial in learning any sort of new language, finding creative ways to incorporate learning experiences from other parts of your life can help students learn better while also improve language skills as a whole. Both elements are essential to gaining as much as you can from the language learning process. It is important to step outside of your comfort zones in ways that will help you improve, not scare you from trying again.

In the end, whether it’s watching an English movie with Spanish subtitles (the opening song in “Into the Woods” is a great lesson in the subjunctive!) or asking for the translation of a song chorus, opportunities to learn are everywhere, both at home and abroad. Making your second language a part of your real life can make it seem less like another subject to be learned and instead more like a skill to be constantly improved upon both inside and outside the classroom.

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HUMOR & SATIRE

February 12, 2015

Page 13

Breaking News From the desk of Chris Gonzalez, Humor & Satire Editor Humor editor to attend ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ alone on V-Day, cuddle up with crisp pack of Zebra Cakes #TBT: 5 rejected Mug Night For seniors sharing news of themes Vassar should instate recent employment: DON’T Zander Bashaw Mug Manager

1. Preschool Mug Night

Although college students doused in Crystal Palace vodka are already at the capacity of threeand four-year-olds, other logistical factors kept this idea from graduating to the planning stage.

Mug committee members attacked the lack of party music and need for frequent snacks and bathroom breaks as illogical, but I disagree. A trap remix of “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider,” or a slow grind to “I’m a Little Teapot” would serve as a fascinating bridge between the cultural divide of college and pre-school. Further, the cleansing crying, timeouts for disorderly conduct and mandatory sharing of Lincoln Logs are a great unifying exercise! Plus, there would never be judgement for taking a quick nap on the side of the dance floor, or eating some graham crackers at the Retreat.

2. Live Anaconda Mug Night:

The idea of releasing anacondas into a dark room filled with hopeful students expecting a live performance of the Nicki Minaj hit seems mean. But does it have to be? Though anacondas can grow to be 30 feet long, they do not actually have poisonous fangs and tend to constrict their prey. This means that anacondas really just want to give hugs! Additionally, the Biology Department was in full support, hoping to knock off some reptilian behavior research and rip some cheap vodka in one evening. I know what you are all thinking: Will the snakes be able to handle the 90 degree-100 percent humidity-from-sweat environment? Well, actually, since they are native to the Amazon, our trashy tropical atmosphere in the Mug would be perfect for them.

Also, everyone knows that they would be the best at the worm.

3. Get Mugged Night

Get Mugged Night was not a Mug night that was suggested, but rather a night that came out of nowhere. One “innocent” evening of sloppy dancing turned criminal when various people had their V-cards wrested from their pockets, later finding that hundreds of dollars of Bacio’s and Choco Tacos had been purchased by the intoxicated masterminds. The victims described the thieves as: “Sweaty, not wearing a lot of

clothes, and lacking intelligible facial features.”

Basically, these descriptions matched literally everyone who has ever been in the Mug, and justice was never reached. Sounds like it should never happen again, right? Wrong. I believe if we combined this Mug Night with [In the Pink]’s self defense classes, it would work. It could initiate a drunken form of cops and robbers all across campus. The best part would be the new friends you got to make when you received your V-card back in time for a hungover Deece trip.

4. Mug Night at the Loeb.

Drunk students + art gallery = no fucking way this is ever happening, right? Nobody wants Natty Light spilled on our lovely mummy Merymose’s head, and it would certainly be a disgrace to get EMSed in front of portrait Matthew Vassar’s austere gaze, but does mixing art and alcohol have to be a debacle? After all, the Romans had this kind of party all the time, and there was a period in Chinese art history where drinking wine and then painting was considered insightful. If we turned the music down, kept the lights set above the usual I-can’t-see-if-that-is-a-human-or-an-alien-thing-dancing-in-front-of-me Mug setting, it could be an enlightening night.

The compartmental nature of the Loeb creates numerous microenvironments for a party. Discuss Netherlandish landscapes with your friends in one room, jam with Jesus in another.

5. Ugg Night

Pitched as a comfortable spin off of Middle School Mug Night, Ugg Night was rejected because the smell would be unbearable. Only if the Mug were 40-50 degrees cooler would wearing Uggs be acceptable—the potential for foot fungus spread is so high. Despite the strong negative response to this Mug Night, I really believe it could work if we think outside the Mug. Can a Mug Night happen on the Retreat terrace?

If so, then Uggs are the perfect shoe choice to keep warm on a frigid dance floor. One thing we would have to make sure to avoid is stigmata towards people with “fake Uggs” or “Fuggs.” Vassar needs to remain open-minded to all kinds of fuzz-filled boots, and hosting a “no judgement” Ugg Night would be an excellent way to put our best foot forward in 2015. After all, we all deserve to get a little bit Uggly at the Mug.

Chris Gonzalez

Livin’ on a Prayer

I

was walking through the Retreat, minding my own business, dreaming only of an overpriced Retreatzza with all of the Sriracha and garlic powder this world has to offer—when you blindsided me! “Guess what!” is neither an acceptable greeting, so-called friend, nor does it work as a set-up for whatever news I was supposed to be guessing about­, especially when you didn’t give me a chance to make an educated guess based on the zero fucking clues or context you provided.

I’m a simple dude. Give me a jar of Nutella and a big spoon, or a glass of bourbon on the rocks, and I’ll leave you alone for the rest of your life. (I’ll wait for all my “friends” to now leave boxes of Nutella and bourbon in front of my TA doorstep.) Basically, what I’m getting at is that I don’t bother anybody, and I certainly haven’t done YOU wrong in the past.

In fact, I thought we were pals. Bros. Amigos.

Two grains of sea salt clinging for dear life on the underside of an under-seasoned piece of boiled chicken.

But what you’ve done is low.

Rude.

Disgusting.

Unforgivable.

Not even two seconds had passed and you just couldn’t wait to tell me the news of your recent employment. Like I’m supposed to be happy for you? Me, who has no job or future?

Second semester of senior year is a time in our lives when not only the carpet is yanked out from under our feet, but also the floor boards, the dirt and the center of the Earth, along with any form of gravity to keep us from drifting higher and higher until we plummet into the depths of the sun, where we will burst into flames, engulfed by all the uncertainty and ennui in our lives. But you knew that. Or at least I thought you did. Traitor.

I’ve given up hope that family and other adults with careers will stop asking the age-old question, “What are your plans after graduation?” and “You expect to get a job with that major?” and “Chris, dude, you’re 22, you can’t seriously expect the Tooth Fairy to leave you money under your pillow at this point, but also, you still have all your teeth, oh God, oh

sweet lord, whose teeth are you stealing?”

Can’t I live?

Here’s the thing: In a few months from now, when I’m employed and no longer have to worry about how I’m going to afford my weekly supply of Lunchables, I’ll be happy for you.

And, honestly, that could be as soon as tomorrow or as far off as when I’m dead, but just know: I don’t want to think about it.

And that’s really at the heart of all this, isn’t it? You telling me you have a job with a 401k plan, health insurance, a name tag and a cubicle, remind me that I have about three-and-ahalf months until graduation. And just a vague sense of what I would love to happen. It also reminds me, for some strange reason, that I’ll need to make a stop at the liquor store shortly after our interaction.

None of this is to say you shouldn’t be happy. Of course you should! You got a job! And if we’re close, I’ll want to hear about your success and cheer you on. But being close means I was aware of the job search and we struggled together. Coming at me like a kangaroo bouncy-bouncy-bouncing its way out of Hell gives me the impression that your version of “I woke up like this” is “I woke up employed.” While a job popping out of thin air would be totally awesome and I’m all for it (you hear that, America?), please don’t throw it in my face like a fistful of sand.

Posting your status on Facebook is acceptable, because even if we’re unprepared to read it, we can weep silently to ourselves in the bedroom, at the library, in the Retreat over a Retreatzza or in the middle of class when we should be taking notes and not on Facebook (which, professors, if you’re reading this, you know I’d never do!) I think the Facebook status works great for both of us. You get your news out to the world, and I don’t feel personally attacked when you decide to use your words to cut me deep. If you must tell me, please warn me beforehand.

For serious, I’m only mildly freaking out. It’s not just about fear of the unknown, but fear of an education going to waste, fear of returning home, fear of disappointing everyone and fear of, well, not making money. But that’s OK, I have my own coping mechanisms. I can always depend on Nutella and bourbon.

Misc-Adventurous Maddy’s 9 Tips for Your Bae-less Valentine’s Day

by Maddy Vogel, Dancing on Her Own

I

have never had a Valentine. This is not to say I’ve had an entirely bae-less existence devoid of love and romance, but my great romantic conquests have never coincided with V-Day. As such, I have cultivated an expertise in spending Valentine’s Day alone—happy or not! If you are like me, bae-less and broke, rejoice, for I have the ultimate guide to the worst day of the year.

another single friend. Every year, my friend and I order sushi and eat it on the floor and probably spill soy sauce on our shirts because we’re past judgement. I recommend starting a V-Day tradition that will continue through the ages. Last year, we even hiked through the snowstorm because Sushi Village wouldn’t deliver. That’s dedication. That’s friendship.

And that’s love, dammit.

1. Don’t leave your room. This is a very important tip, and the one you must absolutely not break. If you leave your room, you may be accidentally subjected to love, and no one wants that when they are trying to ignore that love exists for those lucky few. Also, leaving your room is fraught with many other perilous things besides love. Like people in general. Life. Potential happiness. Staying in your room is key.

3. If you don’t have a friend to eat with, order pizza or Chinese. Something super fattening but filling and lovely and warm. Because, let’s be honest, you won’t have someone to share your bed with, so you’re probably a little chilly and you can afford to gain 5 lbs. My V-Day is judgement free.

2. Order in. I recommend doing this with

4. Stock up on chocolate and ice cream, because you’ll be eating a lot of that. I prefer anything not red and not heart-shaped. Classic Ben & Jerry’s always does the trick. How-

ever, make sure you get these necessities before the 14th. See tip #1.

gle up to when you’re not leaving your room and need some kind of warmth.

5. Adopt a cat. Or five. Because cats will tolerate you unconditionally and, truthfully, that’s all we want from a relationship. Also, they’re warm and fuzzy and when there is a high of 17 degrees (source: weather.com) there is nothing wrong with a little more warm and fuzzy.

And if you’re not into cats, A) do you have a soul? and B) get five of whatever animal you prefer: dogs, bunnies, snakes, etc. Just something warm. And if you’re allergic, then get five pairs of socks and roll around in them.

7. On that note, don’t watch a rom-com. It’ll just make you more sad that you are spending the day of love alone and loveless. I recommend something more fun, like “Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier”! Because crying about Bucky Barnes is far more enjoyable than crying about your impending status as a spinster.

6. Don’t go see “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Not even ironically. Or if ironically, sneak in.

Don’t fund it. It’s a glorification of abuse and even the actors have said don’t see it. I’m not sure what else to say about it, but just save your money for more chocolate and sushi.

And that pack of socks you’re going to snug-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

8. Alternatively, get really drunk. Like go in on some tequila shots. Because nothing says “Single on Valentines Day” like an EMS call, and this guarantees you at least one hug.

9. Ultimately, just snuggle up with a best friend or go out and have fun because you’re single and you can mingle and love is overrated. I’ve gone my whole life without it! And look at how stable I am! This could be you.

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February 12, 2015

Brewer House Cup performances engage community Yifan Wang Reporter

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courtesy of The Brewer House Cup

inging, dancing, acrobatics, acting and martial arts are things one would normally anticipate to see at a talent show. But the Brewer House Cup (BHC) (No) Talent Show says there’s more to expect. The (No) Talent Show, a first time event organized by the BHC Committee, will take place in Aula on Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. with performances from both talent and no talent categories.

The Brewer House Cup is the inter-house competition of Vassar College. Started in 2011, the Brewer House Cup is a culmination of competitions that occur between members of the nine houses at Vassar. By participating in these competitions and events, residents gain points for their affiliated houses. At the end of the second semester in May, the Brewer House Cup is awarded to the house with most points. Major competitions and events of the Cup include the Brewer Games, the BHC Scavenger Hunt and Brewer House Cup Trivia Night.

This year, however, the various House Teams on campus have been trying to expand the visibility of the BHC on campus. In order to do so, the BHC Committee was established last semester. Jewett House President Calvin Lamothe ’17, a member on the committee, talked about how the committee came into place.

“Last semester, members of various House Teams joined the BHC Committee, which has been working to brainstorm different events for the Cup, as well as define the BHC’s role on campus a little better, as it tends to fade out of the public eye after major events like the Brewer Games and Serenading,” Lamothe wrote in an emailed statement.

Another member on the committee, former member of Lathrop House Team Margaret Ginoza ’16, suggested that the committee hopes to encourage student involvement and boost spirit in the residential system throughout the year.

“The Brewer House Cup in the past has been run mostly by one of the House Advisors, and

The Brewer House Cup is a series of events centered on first-year students that seeks to foster house pride and friendly competition. This year, the Cup will include an event called the (No) Talent Show. the majority of the events have typically been towards the start of the year/during orientation. The goal of the BHC committee is to get more student involvement and input on Brewer House Cup events in order to develop the program and create more programming, encourage involvement and spirit within the residential system,” wrote Ginoza in an emailed statement.

For this year, the committee decided to hold an event for the first time at Vassar. “The (No) Talent Show is an event that is being put on for the first time this year by the Brewer House Cup… You can either enter in the Talent category, with an act that one might consider a ‘traditional’ Talent Show talent (singing, dancing, stand up comedy, etc.), or in the No Talent category, which can include any strange or uncommon talents that wouldn’t be considered

‘traditional,’ or it can be a traditional talent that you just can’t do well,” Lamothe wrote.

He continued, “Anyone can participate and do whatever they want; the idea is to have fun with it and get as much participation from each of the houses as possible.”

As part of the effort to better establish an agenda for the BHC, the (No) Talent Show, as the committee believes, may help promote friendly competition among houses.

“The (No) Talent show seeks to be a fun way to bring a lot of students together in a very casual environment…Essentially, we are trying to come up with a more concrete plan for the BHC moving forward, so that it can establish more relevance and promote more friendly competition between the houses even after the major events at the beginning of the year are over.”

Ginoza, who was mainly involved in the brainstorming process of the event, says that the event can also provide the campus with an alternative option. “We were looking for a fun event to help kick off the semester and get people involved in the BHC. We also hope that it can provide an alternative option to some of the more typical events on campus, as well as an opportunity for students to show off their talents (or lack thereof).”

Resident of Jewett House Daniel Espino ’18 plans to attend the event as an audience member after hearing about it from his house president. “Calvin [Lamothe], our house president, told me that it’s the first year that they’re doing this and I’m interested in seeing how it goes.

It’ll be great to see the ‘with talent’ performances and get to see the brave ‘no talent’ performances,” Espino said.

He continued, “I hope to see some great performances from talented students while also getting to see and support the students that have a good enough sense of humor to share their lack of talent.”

Miranda Kay ’17 is also intrigued by the concept of a (No) Talent Show. “Well, when I saw it pop up on my newsfeed, I was like, ‘a no talent show? That sounds fun.’ I’ve never really seen a real talent show, and this seems like an interesting first time. I’m really excited to see what Vassar has (and doesn’t have) to offer,” said Kay. Given past experiences, the organizers expect that the event this year will receive positive feedback as well. “We had success with an all-campus Jeopardy event last semester, and hopefully the (No) Talent Show will receive positive feedback as well...We hope to get good attendance from all of the houses both in talent and audience participation!” Lamothe said in an emailed statement.

The organization of this event took place mostly at the end of last semester. On a final note, Lamothe commented, “Now all that we need is enthusiastic participants and audience members.”

All about that bass: Bellino makes Skinner Hall debut Connor McIlwain Guest Reporter

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he music department is known for it’s constant stream of free concerts and recitals throughout the year. Oftentimes, these recitals feature more than just student performers, the faculty get to present themselves as well.

On Feb. 15 at 3 p.m. in Skinner Hall’s Mary Anna Fox Martel Recital Hall, Paul Bellino will play the trombone in his first solo faculty recital at Vassar. Faculty recitals are annual events presented by the Music Department.

Bellino commented on the initial process which brings faculty members to the stage, “The recitals are annual events brought about through a request for recital proposals from the Music Department at Vassar.

A concert committee at Vassar accepts all

proposal and then chooses certain proposals for the following years events. I suspect the committee looks at previous years and try to include all different types of proposals and instrumentation.”

Past faculty and guest recitals have celebrated the talent on campus as well as in the Mid-Hudson Valley, bringing in performers from Bard College and area ensembles. Bellino’s recital falls during Vassar’s packed Modfest festival, which showcases the diverse artistic talents on campus. Bellino notes that “Vassar is definitely one very important focal point for the music community in the Hudson Valley.” The recital and upcoming events promise to connect students, faculty and community members to this rich musical scene.

Although this is Bellino’s first recital, it

courtesy of Vassar College Media Relations

Professor of Music Paul Bellino is gearing up for his first faculty recital at Vassar. Bellino is extremely active in music ensembles in the nearby area, including the Hudson Valley Philharmonic.

is not the first faculty recital that the Music Department has hosted. Adjunct Artist in Music Gail Archer has experienced the process of her own faculty recital, and spoke to her involvement in the event.

She said, “I have given several Vassar faculty recitals in my 8 years on the faculty. The best part for me is sharing the music with my current students who have opportunity to hear me play as an artist. The students see me in a different role, not just as teacher, but as performer.”

Bellino is an Adjunct Artist in Music at Vassar and his talents know no bounds. He teaches and performs the trombone and tuba. Bellino holds a bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music and a master’s degree in orchestral performance from the Manhattan School of Music.

He has also performed around the world with various symphonies including the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Russian National Orchestra and St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra.

Bellino is the recipient of several awards including the John Clark Award for outstanding accomplishment in brass performance.

He will be performing pieces by Galliard, Larsson, Bernstein, and Mahler alongside James Fitzwilliam on the piano. “I try to choose music that is diverse, interesting to play, and enjoyable to listen to,” said Bellino.

He continued, “I have chosen several different styles of music including some trombone quartets with three colleagues from the New York City area.”

He looks for challenging pieces that he enjoys playing but also wants to engage the audience. He said, “I select the music based on own personal assessment of musical value ,my desire to perform certain works and ultimately providing a well rounded and entertaining recital that keeps the audience engaged throughout.”

Bellino was granted much flexibility in selecting music to perform. “In my case,” he

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

said, “they went with what I had proposed and I actually made some small changes since then.”

This artistic freedom is an important part of Bellino’s career. He is heavily involved in musical ensembles outside of Vassar, playing second trombone with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and performing as principal trombone with the Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra of Wisconsin.

He highlights the ability to exercise some control over the content and style of his work. “A lot of what happens in the Hudson Valley is dependent on what local musicians desire to do, i.e. a musician can create their own work, if they so desire, in addition to the set local musical organizations.”

Molly James ’16 has taken lessons with Bellino for two years. “He is an amazing trombone teacher because he has so much experience,” she said.

James had played the tuba for seven years before picking up the trombone upon arrival at Vassar. “It’s been an incredible experience to pick up another brass instrument, especially the trombone because it requires so much coordination.”

Moving the trombone slide, recognizing notes in a new register, and physically vibrating the lips prove to be quite the balancing act. Nevertheless, James continues progressing and is now a member of Vassar’s jazz ensemble.

She credits Bellino with much of her success. “I never would have been able to progress as much as I have without the instruction of Mr. Bellino,” she noted.

Although not a trombone player, Samuel Plotkin ’15 has worked with Bellino on a few occasions and spoke to his talent: “...he’s a great guy and probably the best trombonist I’ll ever get to work with...”

Bellino has performed with various groups on campus but this recital marks his first solo performance. He has performed in front of audiences in Japan, Europe, the Caribbean and South America. His Poughkeepsie debut is not to be missed.

February 12, 2015

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Fundraising concert aims to support Korean refugees Christian Prince and Emma Rosenthal Guest Reporter and Arts Editor

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courtesy of LiNK

iNK is the Vassar chapter of the national organization Liberty in North Korea, which rescues North Korean refugees in China and provides them with resettlement assistance. and other resources LiNK will host its annual concert and fundraiser on Friday, Feb. 13 in the Aula. The concert will feature performances from pianist Eric Yoon ’18, Sieu Nguyen ’17, Mariya Adulkaf ’15, Gileann Tan ’17, co-President Chris Yhun ‘16, Anne Kuo ‘16 and the Soiree club, and additional performances may involve spoken word or a cappella.

Co-president Ellis Kim ’16 stated, “What we do as an org on campus is raising awareness about what is going on in North Korea and then also fundraising.”

She continued, “Throughout the year, we do several events or partake in several events that go on to fundraise and then we send that money to the headquarters of LiNK in California because it takes about $3,000 to help a refugee resettle into South Korea or the U.S. So that’s our goal every year.”

Although Kim is from South Korea, she lacked awareness about LiNK and what they were trying to achieve in North Korea. She recalled, “I had no clue about what was happening in North Korea and I just felt like I should know.”

By joining LiNK, she was able to learn more about the organization and specifically about the situation in North Korea. “It’s not just that people don’t have freedom. There’s still concentration camps...and people being tortured, and they live in such dire conditions,” said Kim. Kim kept returning to LiNK when she realized that there was a way she could help.

Ian Clarke ’17, the newest member, spoke about his reasons for joining LiNK, “I like the organization because they show you exactly

how your fundraising has a direct and tangible impact on the country and its citizens.”

Kevin Lee ’17 has been involved in LiNK during his two years at Vassar and commented on his experience, “There was a point in my freshman year when I decided that this is actually a really important cause and this is so under-discussed in not just Vassar, but the world. If I could just join the fight, join the struggle, I think I could find some worth inside it.”

Kim and Lee had similar reasons for joining LiNK and Kim added, “If more people knew about it, they would want to do something about it.”

Although the upcoming concert is not the organization’s biggest fundraiser, it is still a community-building and awareness-spreading event.

Kim commented on her experience with the concert, “I know [the concert has] been going on since I was a freshman. We have about ten performers, so we have had musicians and singers, comedians, just any sort of performer from campus. And what we do is we make food, and have the performers perform, and then we have time where we show a video about LiNK and what we do and how people can help.”

Lee further noted the performers that will be featured in the concert this Friday. He said, “Last year we did the same thing, a benefit concert...this year we have Vassar Soiree, which is another pre-org and they are creating cultural club for drums; they played for Kaleidescope.”

While LiNK members acknowledge the prolonged gestation of their org, they have ambitious goals for the future. Lee spoke on his hopes for the future of the organization, especially so that LiNK can host more events like this concert. Lee said, “LiNK has always had a low-key presence on campus and we’ve always had a slight membership because we

A cappella, in addition to a number of other performances, will be featured in Liberty in North Korea’s (LiNK) annual concert and fundraiser. The proceeds will go to helping refugees in the region. have been a pre-org for so long.”

He continued, “Our main goal is just... building within the club itself, what we already have. I just want to really build that team aspect.”

Although the goals outlined by Lee are shared by all of the members of the club, Kim also stated more broad and general hopes for the future of LiNK. “I want more people to be aware of what’s going on in North Korea,” she said.

Clarke pointed out that fundraising is more difficult than spreading awareness, and he hopes that LiNK will augment its fundraising efforts in the future. He said, “As it’s grown its number of members, the fundraising has increased and then the more members there

Filmmaking alum brings Vassar studies to spotlight Emma Rosenthal Arts Editor

with additional reporting by

Raphael Mariani Guest Reporter

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or Josh Alexander ’97, filmmaking starts with a philosophical question. As many forgetful seniors do, he never declared his philosophy correlate, but has kept the subject in his work post-graduation.

This past Friday, Feb. 6, the Drama Department hosted a screening of Alexander’s award-winning film, “Pretty Old,” at Vassar.

The film is about four 67- to 84-year-old women who participate in the Ms. Senior Sweetheart Pageant in Massachusetts.

As a drama major while at Vassar, Alexander took advantage of the wide range of subjects and classes that Vassar students get to experience. He said, “I think that’s one of the great things about Vassar is that you’re really able to work across different departments and different subject matters and start to make connections, and I remember when I was even here that I would start to take a philosophy class and be writing a paper for that class, but also be writing a paper about an Ibsen seminar.”

Before deciding to pursue a career in the subject of his major, Alexander considered his other options which he gained from taking classes in different departments at Vassar. “I was a drama major, and then took a lot of philosophy classes...I kind of had a choice, I was actually considering going and getting a grad degree in philosophy at one point but then I thought ‘why not be an actor, there’s a better chance of making a living,’” he said.

Although he ended up choosing a path in the arts, Alexander didn’t abandon his interest in philosophy. He commented, “I do think that philosophy has had an impact on my career as a filmmaker, because any story that I tell in a film, I’m always coming to that narrative with questions that I want to try to ask or understand, and also, especially with documentary film, you’ll have thousands of pages of transcripts,

and you’ll have to read it like text to try to piece together a story.”

Although Senior Lecturer in Drama Katherine Wildberger did not teach Alexander while he was at Vassar, she attended the screening of Alexander’s film this past Friday. “I saw the film and was there for the talk. It was a beautiful film that everyone should see. It deals with age in an insightful manner,” she said.

In his recent film, Alexander conducted interviews with the subjects of the film. He spoke on the process of these interviews, “I think that, with interviews, you always try to prepare questions and get as much preparation as you can when you’re going into an interview, but you really have to be willing to let the interview go where it goes, and that’s the gift of certain directors...people will reveal themselves, and if you come in there with a really clear idea of what you’re trying to get out of someone, then they’ll close up.”

When asked about dealing with the subject of his film and the challenges of ageism, Alexander noted the people he worked with who inspired his work. “I mean, it’s really easy to do like a...parody, or move off into sentimentality or sappiness, etc. or to even make fun of the women, and some people come to the film thinking that that’s what you’re going to do. Lenny, the founder of the pageant, has such deep love for all of these women, and such care and such thoughtfulness in how he treats them, that that was the bar we held ourselves to. As long as we were staying true to his own vision of what the pattern is, then we could do that,” said Alexander.

Professor of Drama Gabrielle Cody is not at all surprised about Alexander’s angle in his documentary. “I would expect from Josh that he would be focusing on really difficult issues that are politically difficult and complex,” said Cody.

“And that’s who Josh is, Josh has always been very interested in contradictions and nuance and he’s an intellectually hugely curious human being and hugely engaged in the world. He’s a citizen of the world.”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

are the more events we can put on.” LiNK’s largest fundraising event is the annual dinner it hosts with the Culinary Institute of America. They also are involved with ASA’s Night Market event which takes place in the College Center every year. However, the concert will not only encourage fundraising, but will as well focus on the community-building focus of the organization.

Kim commented on this aspect of the event, “Because it’s not the biggest fundraising event we have each year, I see it as more of a get-together and awareness event. Because people who are not involved in LiNK– the performers themselves and the audience members who come see them, get to learn more about it through the event.”

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Film event fosters racial dialogue

Poitras’ new film, artistic if excessive Charles Lyons-Burt Columnist

Citizenfour Laura Poitras Praxis Films

FILM continued from page 1

event and the logistics of bringing it to Vassar. She wrote in an emailed statement, “There was a high demand to bring the film to campus and to further explore and discuss many of the major themes presented in the film.”

MBSA member Yasani Spencer ’17 added her input on her involvement in the scheduling and planning for this event. She said, “One is an all-campus screening and another is a affinity space for people of color. After the all-campus screening, there will be a talk-back with a panel...This discussion will be more Q&A based from the audience. There will also be a discussion after the affinity space that will also be an affinity space, where we will discuss the role of Black and brown bodies in activism on liberal campuses.”

Spencer commented on her involvement in bringing this film to campus, specifically in relation to her organization. She wrote in an emailed statement, “The initial idea, for MBSA, was to do something high scale that would bring a lot of people so that more people would know about us on campus. We are a fairly new org and not many people know we exist. We are trying to, through efforts of putting on events and holding important discussions, make our efforts and presence on this campus known.”

Associate Professor of English Kiese Laymon will be involved in a panel discussion after the film on Feb. 12 along with Associate Professor of film Mia Mask and the film’s executive producer, Stephanie Allain-Bray. He wrote, “I’ve seen the film a few times. I initially felt sort of joyful that there was a film chronicling the situations so many of my students find themselves in...I think MBSA really wanted to allow the film to push some already existing conversations and create some new ones.”

Although she has not seen the film yet, Fullerton commented on how she hopes the Vassar community will interact with it, “As the film is a satire looking at the experiences of Black students on a predominantly white campus of higher education, we saw the film as a possible way to discuss the issues of campus climate that Vassar has been experiencing in a setting different from the ones that we saw last semester.”

She continued, “We also hope that the following discussion with Stephanie Allain and the professors will provide a way to contextualize the film within the scope of the many other discussions currently being had at Vassar about campus climate.”

As a Professor, Laymon plans to not only initiate discussions on the issues that this film brings up on the Vassar campus, but also in his classroom. He commented, “I hope everyone is willing and able to speak and listen honestly while engaging with the film...I’m using the film in two of my classes.

Wouldn’t it be something if the film was mandatory watching for faculty and admin, though? That would be crazy crazy.”

Garcia commented on her hopes for the screening of “Dear White People,” saying, “I hope that the film will prompt the community to critically respond to the very real issues surrounding racial identity in our liberal arts community.”

Spencer as well spoke to how she expects to connect to the film and what she wants to get out of the experience, “I plan to view this film critically and with an open mind to dismantle the idea that Black and brown bodies are meant to teach white people their wrongdoings and how to recognize their privilege... It is satirical, but there are underlying issues that happen on this campus everyday and it is kind of a film that shows what some Black and brown bodies find disrespectful or basically, not okay.”

As an event which was generated by every level of the student, faculty and administrative body, it will be sure to raise not only awareness for these important issues affecting Vassar students, but will also incite campus-wide discussions.

Laymon made a final remark on his hope for everyone who attends this event, “I hope people watch the film and maybe understand that all socalled racial micro-aggressions at these schools are buoyed by racial terror. Racial terror, like sexual violence, destroys the insides of people lives...I’m so glad that we have so many absolutely committed students at this place always thinking of how to make all of us better.”

February 12, 2015

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atters of identity and personal narrative are no doubt at the center of Laura Poitras’ documentary “Citizenfour.” The film was conceived at the end of 2012 and completed mid-2014, and follows government contractor Edward Snowden and his “political objectives” in making transparent so-called government secrets as he leaked revealing and costly information about the NSA. Snowden’s work ensured widespread exposure of the Agency’s partnerships with telecoms and phone companies like Verizon, in addition to their self-created programs, through which, we hear, an individual’s entire personhood (U.S. citizen or otherwise, as the program’s reach is insidiously global) can be reconstructed through a combination of “linkages”—locations, purchases, cards, transactions—in a series of instrumented invasions of privacy.

For although Poitras is clearly fascinated by the self-myth-making of Snowden and his provocative, intellectual capabilities, she’s also attracted to him as a hugely cinematic subject and self-conscious character.

The filmmaker, here in her fourth feature had unprecedented access to Snowden as he eagerly leaked government documents and dense explanations of injustices to two journalists from The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, in spring 2013.

Poitras had frequent correspondences with Snowden throughout this time.

The construction of stories and characters is constant in “Citizenfour.” “I woke up this morning and basically started writing stories,” enthuses Greenwald in one moment, defining the film as a meditation on shifts in literary and personal identity and the modes of representations that exist in the modern world through which we

can channel our personal narratives and self-created trajectories.

Perhaps the most common image in “Citizenfour” is plain white text on a black background in paragraph structure suddenly transformed—encrypted into a solid block of nonsensical numbers and symbols in space-less confusion. The writing of our personalities, a cold society’s programmatic conformism; all of the “metadata;” our stories and social movements, our collective human face. Poitras tellingly includes news footage that name-checks espionage novelist John le Carré, and includes shots of a book called “Homeland” by Cory Doctorow and a Play-Station gaming system both on Snowden’s dresser. She is suggesting this is a man who thrives on stories; sound familiar, fellow cinephiles?

To this end, in viewing the film, “Citizenfour” was an unexpectedly vital object of cinema, and its composition is undeniably skillful, despite its questionable tendencies as ideological fodder. Poitras favors long, protracted, straight-on shots that often bask in the imposing structures of large urban masses of metal and steel, the impenetrable surfaces of the modern age. As tied to personal perspective as her film is, the director runs into trouble when she turns up the ominousness a touch too much in moments that detrimentally smell like her inner commentary on how important and devastating is. At times, and particularly in the film’s all-too-forced final moments, you simply feel you’re being spun a bit too much.

“In the film’s all-tooforced final moments, you simply feel you’re being spun a bit too much.”

People who call “Citizenfour” the most “important” film of last year are, at least in part, admitting to being scammed by its

cold but unforgettable artistic intrigue, that which is reminiscent of the work of its executive producer Steven Soderbergh. It’s hard not to be enthralled by the film’s director’s formal prowess and the forcefulness of her execution, but one must also question the veracity of her first-person filmmaking approach and what comes across as a relatively unfettered admiration for the modern global politics groundbreaker standing in the forefront of the doc.

In moments, “Citizenfour,” in the way it inevitably involves the personal lives of its makers and subjects and half-crumbles in on itself as a document of a strongly developed connection between three journalistically-minded advocates for governmental integrity and transparency, reminds of Jafar Panahi and Kambozia Partovi’s magnificent recent docu-fiction entry “Closed Curtain.”

Like “Citizenfour,” “Closed Curtain” played on the real and imaginative narratives of a highly political figure in a confined space (or progression of confined spaces) and watches as the divergence between fiction and actual experience occurs, collides, and eventually engulfs the aesthetics and thematic content of the films. The only difference is that “Citizenfour[’s]” collision of these worlds isn’t as powerful because it doesn’t mingle well with Poitras’ tone of almost aggressive self-righteousness.

“Citizenfour” admittedly furrows the brow in its unquestioning, bull-headed conviction of its filmic momentum, not stopping adequately to assess the situations and decisions presented with a necessary measuredness. But the movie nonetheless registers as an accomplished piece of polemic advocacy as well as a veritable piece of artfully made filmmaking in its own right.

Furthermore, Poitras’ film is fascinating for the way its aesthetic reflects its topical concerns of surveillance and citizens’ endangered private identities, often playing eerily like otherworldly security camera footage of our culture’s deepest fears and paranoias. “Citizenfour” is certainly more artful than one would expect, but it’s also undeniably resonant.

‘Eye Candy’ investigates teen mystery Saachi Jain

Guest Columnist

Eye Candy Christian Taylor Blumhouse Productions

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hen I first heard about MTV’s new thriller “Eye Candy,” written by Christian Taylor and based off of the novel

by R.L. Stine, I wasn’t too inclined to watch it given its premise and network. However, when I saw that Victoria Justice played the main character, I decided to give it a chance, since the last time I had seen the young actress on my screen was as Lola Martinez on “Zoey 101,” and I was curious to see how she would take on more adult roles. After watching it, I’m glad I gave the show a shot, though it still has a long way to go in certain aspects.

“Eye Candy” centers on Lindy Sampson, a genius hacker, whose sister, Sarah, was kidnapped soon after the death of their mother.

The show starts off with a flashback of the two sisters, during the day Sarah was kidnapped three years ago. Lindy picks Sarah up from hanging out with her boyfriend, and though the sisters had a somewhat strained relationship, Lindy tries to look out for Sarah as best she can. As they stop at a gas station and Sarah gets out of the car, a van pulls up behind her and someone grabs her, with Lindy stuck in her car and unable to do anything.

Three years later, Lindy is using her hacking skills to help other people whose loved ones have gone missing. She uses the resources available to her through her mundane job to do this, but she can get in major trouble for it as she is on parole and was arrested for her hacking in the past. Sophia, Lindy’s

best friend, convinces her to get back in the dating game after the end of her messy relationship with Ben—her parole officer who got Lindy arrested—and she joins Flirtual, a Tinder-like dating app, under the name “Eye Candy.” However, Lindy soon discovers that someone is using Flirtual to stalk and kill other girls, and may be stalking her as well.

The separate mysteries of the show are set up well the abduction of Lindy’s sister, the missing cases and later murder of multiple women. It is heavily implied that the same person is behind all three of these mysteries, or at least that they are all closely linked somehow. At first glance, “Eye Candy” has a very similar vibe to the ABC Family show “Pretty Little Liars,” and I was worried the show would follow in the latter’s footsteps and make similar mistakes, with dragging out the murder mystery for too long and going back and forth between too many suspects.

The pacing so far is decent, and hopefully the show will continue on that path.

“The pacing so far is decent, and hopefully the show will continue on that path.”

For the most part, the characters and relationship dynamics are mediocre thus far. Justice does a great job as Lindy, who is incredibly smart and competent as well as stubborn and reckless. Her roommate and best friend, Sophia, is pushy when it comes to Lindy, but only wants what is best for her friend. She’s bubbly and caring, and hopefully will get her own backstory and storylines soon. Connor, Sophia’s best friend, has a slightly antagonis-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

tic relationship with Lindy, but one I suspect will strengthen and grow over the season.

George, who works with Lindy, is sweet and loyal, and helps Lindy when tough situations arise. Tommy, who works with the police and is Ben’s friend, also has a tense relationship with Lindy -they butt heads often, but it’s possible that they will be love interests in the future. Ben’s character wasn’t given much depth and was essentially wasted, However, he turned out to be an important catalyst for Lindy’s character and development. The biggest flaw with the characterizations is that most, if not all, of the characters seem to revolve around Lindy. To add more depth, it is also important for characters to have more backstories and storylines in addition to their interactions with Lindy.

The stalker-serial killer character is written really well. Though we never see his face, the show takes the viewers into his twisted mind, using voiceovers to portray his thoughts as he picks out and preys on his victims. Though his depiction can be campy and melodramatic at times, he is still a compelling and interesting antagonist. The way the various mysteries are intertwined grab the viewer instantly, even if the characterization leave room for improvement.

When it comes to representation, “Eye Candy” is decent enough, and though the cast is largely white, Sophia is Black, and Lindy being half-Puerto Rican is acknowledged on the show. Additionally, Connor is gay.

Overall, “Eye Candy” is certainly intriguing, with a plot that will keep viewers coming back for more, though it can also be too dramatic and milks the creepiness factor in every way it can. The characters and relationship dynamics can use some work, but they all have a lot of potential. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but the audience most likely won’t be able to stop watching.

ARTS

February 12, 2015

Page 17

Panda Bear’s synth style impresses some Jack Conway

Guest Columnist

Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper Panda Bear Domino Recording Company

T

here are two kinds of music: The kind I show my parents and the kind I usually don’t. I don’t usually show them lo-fi stuff.

They think low quality recording equals low quality musicians, low quality morals, low quality hygiene, etc. They also don’t really like abrasive rap music. Too many expletives and nothing they can relate to, they say. Then there’s stuff like Panda Bear—bleep-y, bloop-y and experimental.

Over break, I bought “Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper” from my local Best Buy. (Favorite record store didn’t have it, but Best Buy did. Weird.) I then proceeded to play this album in the car on repeat because my radio is broken. At one point, my dad and I needed groceries so we drove over to the store together.

“I then proceeded to play this album in the car on repeat...”

Engine starts, Panda Bear begins. For the first minute eyes are focused on the road.

No comments on the mixture of howling dogs and grumbling synths as of yet. Because, I remember, life has bigger concerns than music—Will we find parking? Will Chobani be on sale?

Then it came. My dad squinted at the CD player, his lips forming a small O. “What is this?” he asked. I told him it was a guy named Panda Bear. This did nothing for Panda’s credibility. Neither would telling

Campus Canvas

my dad that he is a part of Animal Collective. He turned down the volume. “Can we listen to something else?”

Panda Bear, of course, is not his real name. Like with Animal Collective’s Avey Tare or Geologist, it is only a moniker. His real name is Noah Lennox. In general, what differentiates Lennox’s work as Panda Bear from Animal Collective is a certain unity in sound. While with Animal Collective it can be difficult to discern which of its four members are singing, Panda Bear features Lennox as the sole vocalist amidst a landscape of other sounds.. Likewise, as Animal Collective’s songwriting is the product of four unique minds, Panda Bear albums can seem remarkably consistent in comparison.

On “Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper,” this consistency allows the album to be a cohesive meditation on life, death and, in particular, the moment right in between.

As Lennox said in a mini-documentary on the album’s creation, “It’s about a part of you dying and a part of you being born at the same time.”

Nowhere is this motif more apparent than on “Tropic of Cancer,” a crooning ballad sung to Lennox’s father who died of brain cancer in 2002. The song opens with trumpets playing “Taps,” the melody commonly played at military funerals. From there, field recordings of wind and ocean waves meet a lilting harp loop that sustains for the entirety of the track. This contrast between funeral horns and literal breezes places the song in a liminal space between heavy and light, the earthly and the heavenly. And is there a more heavenly, angelic instrument than the harp?

Over this harp arpeggiation, Lennox sings, over and over, “And you can’t get back, you won’t come back.” Speaking to the fact that his father is no longer here, Lennox sings surprisingly with a tone of acceptance. Perhaps, yes, there has been death but now Lennox, 13 years later, is able to move past it. With the lines, “Got

to like it all, got to like what kills,” Lennox understands, too, that death and its causes are natural, an inevitable part of life.

On tracks like “Boys Latin” and “Selfish Gene,” Lennox moves away from the crooning back to his regular vocal style which is akin to Brian Wilson singing to you from space. It’s this voice on top of a myriad of oddball synth lines that I consider to be Panda Bear’s signature sound. With “Selfish Gene” in particular, there is nothing but vocals and synth. In addition, the synth part doesn’t really change, leaving the vocals to carry out the song’s few melodic shifts.

Excuse me, If you could recast “50 Shades,” who would you cast?

“My dad squinted at the CD player...‘Can we turn on something else?’”

For some, this might seem plain redundant. Maybe it’s the patience (or lack thereof ) of today’s listeners to blame, but I do feel that a few of these tracks are excessive in length. “Come To Your Senses,” the album’s halfway marker, stands out in this unfortunate way, a track over seven minutes with about two minutes worth of ideas.

Still, a few stretched out songs aside, the album—both in thematic approach and sonic variety—is quite refreshing. It sounds insensitive to say the theme of death is cliché, but there is something novel in how Lennox handles it. On “Grim Reaper,” death isn’t viewed as an endpoint, an event that can only be reacted upon by those of us who are still alive. Rather, Lennox views death as an agent of change, a meeting of two worlds.

Now this doesn’t make it any less scary, to leave the only world we know. I get the feeling, though, that Lennox just wants to see what happens next.

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Neither Heaven nor Earth had seen a bloodier battle than that on the morn’ of the Eclipse. Infused with all his restored glory, the fallen angel Gnitemastre had waged a war not unlike the first centuries ago, when he and his Band of Rebels first dared to covet the Power of rhe Sun. This battle was not unlike that one of old, nay, but for the aid of Brazzlekrug, Righteous Paladin of the Sun’s Light, and his patchwork Army of the Undead. The waning rays of the infant sun glistened off the Half-Dragon’s Blood Vengeance Armor as he dangled aloft before the Rebel Angel. Beneath this airborne clash of faiths feathers were scattered to the Heavenly wind by Nightshade, the now-holy Necromancer, and her brave Undead. Dash Dogmonster, meanwhile, unleashed a Doglike flurry of Monstrous Assaults on the rebel forces.

The angel Krhzthanthyn- his flaming sword at his sidefelt the blood of his traitorous brothers and sisters wash over him, dying his wings a deeper red as they Fell.

One stood calm amidst the chaos: the newly deified Nosterafu, gracious Goddess of Meat and Mystery, her freshly-baked wings dripping blood-red hotsauce onto the offending corpses. Not a rebellious soul was spared this morn’ by this new Alliance of Sun and Moon who vowed destruction for all those under Gnitemastre’s command. The battle would rage until every scrap of angel had been swept away in the winds of time and by the sullen broom of poor, dead Frederic. But never, evermore would that broom wipe the memory of this glorious battle from the minds of all who dwell on this fair earth, under the Incandescent Light of our Beloved Sun.

“Me and Glo.” ­­— Josh Schwartz ’18

“Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.”

— Sarah Horowitz ’17

“Joe Biden and Reba McEntire.”

— Ryan Eykholt ’17

“Rose Serafini and Matt Bomer.”

— Ariella Rosenthal ’18

“James Franco and Seth Rogen.”

— Jonah Parker ’18

“Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog.”

— Lily Horner ’18

-Rachael Emanuelle Johnson ‘15

Sam Pianello, Photo Editor Emma Rosenthal, Arts Editor

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

SPORTS

Page 18

February 12, 2015

Paul’s comments signal potential disdain for female refs Rob Carpenter Columnist

L

ast Thursday, the L.A. Clippers lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers 105-94 in Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena. The score might have misleadingky made the game seem closer than it was as the Clippers clawed their way back to an 11 point deficient after falling behind by 23 at half time and 31 at the end of the third quarter. Led by Kevin Love’s 24 points and nine rebounds, LeBron James’ 23 points, the Cavs frustrated the Clippers.

The Clippers’ star point guard Chris Paul only made four shots on his 14 attempts, a poor game for the NBA All Star. But Paul did dominate one stat line, penalties. LA’s point guard vented his frustration by committing a flagrant foul against Cleveland’s center Timofey Mozgov. Later, Paul committed a second penalty in the third quarter when he snapped at referee Lauren Holtkamp after catching an inbound pass. But Chris Paul’s biggest bluster came in a post-game interview were he made comments that harshly criticized the officiating of the game.

ESPN reported Chris Paul calling out firstyear referee Lauren Holtkamp, exclaiming that, “The tech that I get right there was ridiculous.

I don’t care what nobody says, I don’t care what she says; that’s terrible. There’s no way that can be a tech…That’s ridiculous. If that’s the case, this might not be for her.”

Whether or not Paul’s statement was referring to Holtkamp’s gender as the basis of his criticism or just her decision to call a technical foul, his comment did imply that he believed Holtkamp did not have the ability to referee NBA games. Furthermore, regardless of gender, criticizing referees is terrible sportsmanship.

This behavior cost Paul a $25,000 fine from the NBA, the league’s traditional penalty for calling out referees.

Lauren Holtkamp is one of two female referees currently working in the NBA, which em-

ploys nearly 70 referees.

Surprisingly, the NBA sets the bar in this regard and according to Sbnation.com, the NBA is the only major American sports organization, including the MLB, NFL and NHL, to employ female referees. Paul’s comments have directed more attention to this major discrepancy in sports refereeing. This is regardless of whether his comments were intentioned with sexism or just competitiveness.

Holtkamp has broken through into a position dominated by men, and it hasn’t been easy.

Before being promoted to the NBA this year, Holtkamp served as substitute for six games last year on top of her experience refereeing games in the NBA’s D-league for six years. A large amount of experience which reveals that even though this is Holtkamp’s first year refereeing full time in the NBA, she is by no means new to officiating.

“Paul’s comments have directed more attention to this major discrepancy in sports refereeing.”

Holtkamp is not the first referee to call a technical foul on Paul’s team, as the Clippers currently lead the league with 58 technical fouls on the season. A statistic that could explain why the Clippers on a four game losing streak that doesn’t show signs of coming to an end as they take on Texas’ scary lineup of NBA teams in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, all in one week.

As reports surface that the Clippers’ star power forward Blake Griffin is heading into elbow surgery, Chris Paul needs to spend less time yelling at referees and more time trying

to score baskets and win games. Against the Thunder a short while ago, Paul hit a jumper and stared down the Oklahoma City bench to which reigning MVP Kevin Durant replied, “You’re down 20 now, homie.”

Holtkamp has broken many barriers to make it where she is today, and it is unlikely that Chris Paul was the first or will be the last to tell her that her career path is “not for her.” Making this situation even more unfortunate, the NBA should be making every effort to encourage their referee corps to integrate an equal number of men and women, instead of allowing their most prominent players to openly call them out.

In addition to being one of the most talented players at his position, Chris Paul has an enormous amount of influence in the NBA as the president of the NBA Player’s Union. Voted into the position by his peers, Paul represents not only himself, but all of the NBA players when he speaks.

A fact that makes Paul’s recent comment even more unfortunate lies in his prominence and relevance in the modern game. Chris Paul has widely been considered the best pointguard in the league as of late, only recently surpassed in some debates by players like Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook.

The day after the Clipper’s loss to the Cavs, Chris Paul chose to elaborate on his harsh criticism of the nights officiating, repeatedly saying “last night was about a bad call,” meaning that he didn’t intend to criticize Holtkamp based on her gender but instead on her ability as a referee to recognize a violation of the rules.

Yet regardless of what he meant to say, it is difficult not to interpret “this might not be for her” as a suggestion that Holtkamp does not belong in the NBA. Whether he intended it or not, Chris Paul involved himself in an issue that was more than how a play was called; he involved himself in the issue that there are only two full-time female referees in all of Ameri-

ca’s four major sports leagues. The NBA and all other American sports leagues need more female referees like Holtkamp, not less.

Still, the league deserves credit for being the only major professional sports institution in the US for employing female officials. Violet Palmer, the first female referee to break this barrier, proved immensely influential for the future of female referees.

“Paul represents not only himself, but all of the NBA players when he speaks.”

Palmer officiated her first game on opening night in 1997 and has since gone on to officiate many important games, including a game between the Knicks and Nuggets in 2006 that included an intense brawl. Palmer too had received early criticism from former players Charles Barkley and Dennis Scott. Barkley attacked her validity as a female but later apologized. Scott’s criticism revolved around the worry that female referees would receive verbal abuse from players due to their gender.

The NBA’s mission statement communicates that players and teams “will use their unique position to bring attention to important issues on a global scale and work to address them to the best of our ability.” Chris Paul brought much-needed attention to an “important issue,” the issue that in the U.S., women are not nearly as well-represented as men in elite positions in the workforce.

But instead of bringing positive attention to an important issue, we will remember Chris Paul choosing to ignore the magnitude of his words and maintaining that his comments were always about “a bad call,” when they really revealed so much more.

Woods’ recent efforts drive wedge between career, success Claire Standaert Columnist

I

t was extraordinary. It was oh so extraordinary. It was the silence of thousands, the slow roll of a golf ball towards a hole, the anticipation of one man. Then the silent thump of the ball falling into the hole, eruption of noise, the victorious scream and fist-pump of El Tigre. At 21, Tiger Woods was the youngest man and first African American to win the U.S Masters.

More than a decade later, extraordinary was no more and ordinary took its place. Oh so ordinary. Lying, cheating, nightclubs, sex. It emerged that the great Tiger Woods had cheated on his wife repeatedly over the years. And just like that, El Tigre fell and Lion Cheetah emerged in his place.

Now, years after the scandal emerged, Tiger has slowly made a comeback as a golfer and sports figure (although never reaching his past level). At 39, there is still time to recapture former sports glory. But to fulfill his father’s prophecy that “Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity”—well that’s another story.

Back when Tiger was just beginning to be-

“More than a decade later, extraordinary was no more and ordinary took its place.” come famous, Sports Illustrated’s Gary Smith responded to Earl Wood’s prophecy by asking: Really? “Your son will have more impact than Nelson Mandela, more than Ghandi, more than Buddha?” The response was a resounding yes.

“Yes, because he has a larger forum than any of them. Because he’s playing a sport that’s international. Because he’s qualified through his ethnicity to accomplish miracles. He’s the bridge between the East and the West. There is no limit because he has the guidance. I don’t know yet exactly what form this will take. But

he is the Chosen One. He’ll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power” (Sports Illustrated, “The Chosen One,” 1996).

This power emerged as a never-before-seen concoction of skill, charisma, intelligence and race. His father’s prophecy seemed like a stretch, but the variables to affect social and political change were nevertheless present. His mother, Tida, was Thai. His father, Earl, was part African American, Caucasian and Native American. To connect the East and West, however, would require something supernatural.

And that’s where golf came into play.

Tiger was considered somewhat of a prodigy, even making an appearance on Good Morning America at age eight to show off his golfing skills. Then he attended Stanford University, winning many amateur U.S. golf titles. After winning the U.S. Masters in 1997, the world began to take serious notice of him. He became marketable. Companies such as General Motors, Titleist, General Mills, American Express, Accenture and Nike signed endorsement deals with him. Although Tiger claimed, “I have no desire to be the king of endorsement money,” a platform for influence had been established.

Now, all he had to do was stand at the podium and be a man of a few profound words—and keep winning.

Which he did, winning four U.S. P.G.A. titles, three U.S. Open championships, three Masters and many others. He built a family, marrying longtime girlfriend Elin Nordegren and fathering two children. His fame exploded—which he handled very well—his father had trained him from an early age to handle the media with caution. In the article “The Chosen One,” Gary Smith brings to light a conversation between Tiger and his father.

“Father: Where were you born, Tiger?

Son, age three: I was born on December 30, 1975, in Long Beach, California.

Father: No, Tiger, only answer the question you were asked. It’s important to prepare yourself for this. Try again.

Son: I was born in Long Beach California.

Father: Good, Tiger, good” (Sports Illustrated, “The Chosen One,” 1996).

Tiger was ready to do what he had trained his whole life to do: be the voice of change, morality, and racial connectedness. But to accomplish these things, perfection, or rather more realistically, near perfection, was required.

In 2009, a media whirlwind exposed Tiger’s many infidelities over the years, which came as a shock to the world. Just a few years before, he had said, “If you are given a chance to be a role model, I think you should always take it because you can influence a person’s life in a positive light, and that’s what I want to do. That’s what it’s all about.” But unfortunately, he must’ve thought it was possible to separate his personal and public characters. Or maybe he didn’t, but chose to do so anyway and hope for the best.

“Tiger was ready to do what he had trained his whole life to do.”

His platform for positive influence fell apart.

El Tigre became Lion Cheetah. Now the media had something juicy, gossipy, and negative to talk about. His endorsement deals ended, he divorced, was publicly embarrassed, and lost his positive reputation. Following all of this, Tiger took off a couple months from golf, but soon came back.

But he never really came back.

Injuries have followed him and he has recorded some of the worst performances of his career. But he hasn’t quit. He might become a great golfer again and win more Masters and U.S. Opens, but in light of the past, Earl Woods’ proclamation that Tiger is “The Chosen One,” has largely been forgotten.

In 2013, the comeback almost looked as if it had been fulfilled. Almost. That year, Woods posted a five-win campaign, winning player of the year. 2014 began with injuries, yet Tiger’s reputation was back. Fans remained optimistic as they looked forward to his return to the Mas-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

ters. This was not the case. Backed by multiple poor outings, Tiger took a plummet from number one in golf-rankings in mid-May 2014 to the mid-60s by February of this year.

In a Washington Post article, Neil Greenburg attacked nearly every aspect of Woods’ current game, making note of the fact that the percentage of events in which he finished in the top 10 had decreased from 64.8 between 1992-2009 to 32.3 percent since 2010. Apparently his short game needs the least work. Greenburg contends that Tiger’s driving seems to be the crux of his downfall. As Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee stated in an article via internationalbusinesstimes.com, “He’s not struggling. He’s incapable of hitting those shots right now. He’s incapable of doing the most pedestrian requirements at the highest level.”

Can Tiger recover? At 39, he isn’t getting any younger. According to an article by Joe Posnanski via golfchannel.com, players ages 35 and younger have won over three-quarters of all of the majors since 1960. Under 10 percent of these majors were won by players over 40 years old.

Still, Tiger refuses to give up. In an article via sportingnews.com regarding chip and putt advice, he stated, “It’s a process, and Chris [Como] are working our tails off to try to get this. I want to get this. I want to be ready come Augusta and the rest of the majors, but we still got some work to do.” Greenburg closes the article immediately after this quote with the short phrase “A ton of work.” The once “golden-boy” now proves and easy and juicy target.

It seems a shame that Tiger never was able to accomplish what he and his father believed he would. Such extraordinary moments overshadowed by ordinary lapses…

But, Tiger might find some relief in a past comment. “Well, you know, a lot of people look at the negative things, the things that they did wrong and –which I do. But I like to stress on the things I did right, because there are certain things that I like to look at from a positive standpoint that are just positive reinforcement.”

Tiger inspired many, he awed many, he connected many. He proved ethnicity places no bounds on talent or capability. He proved sports have universal effects. He did many things right.

February 12, 2015

SPORTS

Page 19

Don’t hate: Boston sports Individuals battle injury, continue to dominate shine amongst competition Sam Hammer Columnist

I

n case you had not heard, the New England Patriots just won their fourth Super Bowl of the Tom Brady and Bill Belichick era. This is a truly incredible feat and a time for New Englanders such as myself to rejoice at the continued success of our football franchise. It is clear, however, that this joy is not shared by football fans around the country. Being accused of deflating footballs and winning a Super Bowl off of a terrible last-minute play call do little to diminish the negativity surrounding the Patriots.

I have gotten used to the hatred people feel toward the Patriots. Any sports franchise that is able to sustain success over a long period of time will eventually face animosity from teams of less successful organizations. The Patriots are being compared to historically despised franchises like the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Lakers. Tom Brady is considered a “pretty boy” and Bill Belichick is imagined as the devil in a hoodie.

Recently, one of my friends from Chicago remarked that he can’t stand Boston sports fans because their teams “win too much.” At first, I thought he was being hypocritical, considering the championships won by the White Sox and Blackhawks in the last decade. Of course, there is also an element of recency bias at play. If this were 20 years ago, people would be sick of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls winning six NBA championships. But the more I thought about it, it dawned on me that since 2000, Boston sports franchises have had an amazing run of success.

The Boston Red Sox, for decades a joke among MLB fans, were able to end the curse of Babe Ruth in 2004 with a remarkable post-season run that included coming back from a 3-0 deficit against the Yankees in the

American League Championship Series, and eventually led to the franchise’s first World Series win in 86 years. The Red Sox managed to win the World Series again in 2007. People were amazed that the once tortured franchise was able to win two championships in a span of less than five seasons. Things were looking promising in 2011 before losing 18 of their final 24 games in September and failing to make the playoffs. This carried into the 2012 season, as the Red Sox had a record of 69-93 and finished last place in the American League East for the first time in 20 years. Incredibly, the team went from worst to first the next season and won their third World Series since 2004. It was a rousing win for the city of Boston, which had suffered the Boston bombing that spring.

The height of success of Boston sports really came between 2007 and 2012. During these years, the Red Sox won the World Series, the Celtics won the NBA title in 2008 and the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011. The Patriots did not win any titles but made it to the Super Bowl in both 2008 and 2012, where they lost both times to the New York Giants. However, during the 2008 regular season, the Patriots made history by going undefeated. Although the Celtics only won the title in 2008, they were the favorites to win it in 2009 before Kevin Garnett’s injury, and then in 2010 they lost in an extremely close seven-game series to the Lakers. Even though Boston teams did not win championships every year during that span, all of the major franchises had the chance to contend for one.

Since 2000, the four major sports franchises from Boston have won a combined nine championships. Still, Tom Brady is approaching forty, and the Celtics are currently rebuilding, so there is a chance that this may have been the last Boston championship for a while.

DANCE continued from page 1

are just about ready for states.”

Junior Gregory Cristina echoed the feelings of fatigue he’s experiencing as well, adding, “A handful of people on the team (men’s and women’s) are sick or have injuries. But through rest and working with the sports medicine trainers, they are slowly recuperating and able to dive back inro the pool during this crucial time in the season.”

Senior Olivia Harries is one such victim of sickness, battling pneumonia for the last few weeks. Despite her illness, Harries is excited to be going to states and ready to get back in the pool. “I’ve got my head in the right place and I’m ready to see what I can do. We have this saying, ‘last one fast one,’ and I’m not done yet. My focus right now is on getting in shape and having a great mile on Saturday night,” she wrote in an emailed statement.

Harries is mirroring the vigor that the rest of the team has. “The energy on the team is extremely high right now. Our tech-suits came in, we started our taper this past week, the men’s team is doing haircuts today; everybody is excited,” wrote Cristina. And Herrmann expressed the same sentiment; “The energy on the team is building quickly. When we got back on campus for intercession on January 3rd, we ended up swimming every day for the next three weeks, most of those days having either two or three practices…We are at that point where everyone is getting pumped about States and morale is very high.”

Last year, the team broke over half of the standing records, and there is a lot of excitement to have a repeat of that this year. “For me, and as a team, I would like to see us break even more records than last year and continue our team’s progress. Since I was a freshman, this team has improved drastically and has become

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closer than ever. It makes me both excited for my last states and proud to be on such an amazing team,” wrote Captain Herrmann.

While the team is very driven to beat the standing records, Coach Prater-Lee has her eyes set on some smaller, but no less important goals. “Hopefully all of them are going to earn personal bests. The more of those we can capture, the better off the team is and the more momentum we gain.”

Momentum is key at this competition, which will last for four days and require every swimmer to be at their peak at all times. “You go to a meet like this, and the races are made up of heats, so the slower swimmers will be in the first meets. We talk from the get go how the early heats set us up. It’s exciting to see your teammates get up there and go fast,” said Prater-Lee. Every member of the squad contributes to the energy and morale on the day.

Of course, there are some rivalries among the competing teams. Prater-Lee mentioned that she tells her swimmers, “If you see someone with a Skidmore hat, you’d better crush them.”

No pressure there.

The Vassar team competed at the Skidmore Invitational last weekend. The men came first of the four schools present, boxing out the runner-up by more than one hundred points. The women came second, falling only twenty points short of the first spot. A victory like that can only fuel the already hot fire of the men’s team’s attitude, while the women will only want to work harder to take that number one spot.

“Everyone’s put in so much consistent effort over the last months and it’s definitely going to pay off, so as long as we stay focused, VCSD is going to have a stellar showing at States,” Harries wrote. The confidence is there. The work rate is there. The Brewers are going to make a statement at states this year.

SPORTS

Page 20

February 12, 2015

Keep on truckin’: student-athletes adjust to life on the road Zach Rippe

Sports Editor

F

ree time is considered a hot commodity at Vassar College. Between classes, organizations, clubs and a whole host of other extracurriculars, it can be difficult for students to find enough time to complete their work, let alone enjoy some leisure time. Student athletes are quite familiar with this situation.

Apart from attending practice most days of the week, these students are required to attend various games, matches and tournaments.

Many of these events happen to be at different locations, making travel a real and necessary part of the student athlete experience. It should be noted that the length of these trips and days of travel vary drastically between sports. Men’s volleyball, for example, travels almost every weekend from January to the beginning of April. Some sports require a much bigger commitment than others. Still, athletes must learn to adjust to spending a portion of their time at Vassar “on the road.”

Most student athletes travel via bus, yet some may take vans for shorter trips if their players can all fit. Coaches also provide food and snacks for players and often suggest restaurants within the area. While transportation itself may not always be the most pleasant, the buses themselves are quite nice. Junior volleyball player Reno Kriz explained, “The buses are relatively comfortable, so some of the guys bring pillows and just sleep on the way.”

Still, athletes are encouraged to get work done during the many travel hours. Coach Brown believes all coaches encourage their athletes to spend at least some travel time studying and doing work.

Yet work conditions are not always optimal.

Said Kriz, “I sometimes do homework on the bus. It’s basically impossible to write anything on the buses, but I can use my laptop for a lot of things. This year, the buses have had decent WiFi, so I’ve been able to use the Internet to work on things as well.” The ability to work

on the buses also varies between students and circumstances. Junior women’s soccer player Lucy Brainerd explained via an emailed statement that she can never do work on the road as it makes her extremely carsick. “Knowing a road trip is coming up means extra hours in the library to make sure I have everything done ahead of time,” she stated.

But some trips have unexpected consequences. Kriz elaborated on one such experience, “We’ve had to spend a couple nights in hotels on occasion; my freshman year, we spent three days in Buffalo due to snow.” Still, this is not necessarily the worst thing in the world. “The hotels are usually pretty comfortable. The past two seasons, we’ve usually had 2-3 people to a room,” he divulged.

Life on the road does extend beyond textbooks and laptops, however. Senior field hockey player Hilary McDonnell explained her typical schedule for a weekend road trip, one that extends beyond a single game: “We normally leave early Friday mornings, get some breakfast from the food that our coach buys for us and then we get on the road. We drive anywhere from two to seven hours. On longer trips, we normally stop somewhere briefly to eat and then arrive at the hotel the night before our two games. Or shorter trips, we’ll get to the game before we go to the hotel.”

Long weekend trips only perpetuate the idea that time management is an extremely vital part of the student-athlete experience at Vassar. As cross country coach James McCowan elaborated, “Academics are the big priority here, and being a great student athlete requires skillful time management, focus and prioritizing. The team experience—training, practicing, competing and the social times around practice—becomes a huge part of a student athlete’s social life, and that takes priority for the dedicated student athlete over the Mug nights and nights at the THs.” The athletes recognize this as well. Kriz, with the responsibility of five classes in his past two semesters, stated, “I’ve

learned to make my down time count, whether it’s on the road or back at Vassar. I occasionally feel overwhelmed, mostly during the midterms week before spring break.” Luckily, his season ends in mid-April, allowing him to focus the remainder of his time on classes and finals.

Still, this time-management can prove beneficial as well. As Brainerd explained, “Procrastination just isn’t an option. I think there are certain times in the semester where everyone on campus feels overwhelmed, but having time management skills from being a student athlete actually mutes that feeling.” Coach McCowan added to this point, “If you take a three hour lunch and hang out on Facebook for hours, or plan to go partying all night every weekend, well, it’s going to be hard to be at practice two hours a day and be successful in the classroom.

If you recognize that those two hours are spoken for and look at that time as a physical, social and mental refresher, then it shapes the day and provides structure. You wake up, get your work done, go to class, get meals, get work done, go enjoy being at practice, eat, get work done, get in bed early and recognize that everything is a choice. You have a lot of time in your day at Vassar. If you choose to use it wisely, you can get a lot done. Most of the students on my team find that when they are in season they have a better structured and balanced day then when out of season.”

But what happens when students have to miss class? Most student-athletes have had to skip the occasional class, but are all quite adamant about their professors’ understanding and helpfulness. Senior baseball player Jason Garfinkel noted that his team’s grade point average was higher during the season. As Coach Brown explained, “In my 20 years here at Vassar the conflicts can be counted on the fingers of one hand and professors have been accommodating and supportive.” Coaches understand this potential for conflict, yet push for academics to remain a student’s main priority. “For regularly-scheduled meets, we always

let students know of the departure times and potential conflicts at the start of the semester and encourage them to ask their faculty if/ how they can manage these potential conflicts in advance so there are no surprises,” explains Coach McCowan.

Despite the time conflicts, less-than-optimal working conditions and possible notion that they may be “missing something” on campus, travel proves quite beneficial to a student-athlete’s Vassar experience. Coach Brown adds that time on these buses is also spent getting to know one another, debating various topics and ideas that help foster team camaraderie and spirit. McDonnell too spoke of various traditions her team holds and the bonding that takes place.

Just being able to get off campus and see a different place proves valuable as well. As Kriz elaborated, “Living at Vassar, or really any college, is sort of like living in a bubble. Traveling to other places reminds me that there are many different places out there in the real world. I try to keep that in mind when I’m back at Vassar, so I don’t spend all my time worrying about school.” Brainerd added, “Road trips are definitely nice for us because the Liberty League is comprised of a bunch of Vassar-like schools whose campuses are beautiful in the fall. It’s also comforting to be playing against students at other schools who you know are working hard in the classroom and not just focusing on their sport.”

This balance goes back to Vassar’s roots.

Coach McCowan elaborates, “Matthew Vassar founded the school with an emphasis on whole mind-body learning, and that is what athletics provides: an opportunity to learn the physical demands and tactics of a sport, but much more the opportunity to really study oneself, how you handle success and failure, what the nature of the mind-body experience is, how motivation and goal setting function in a practical physical way, how to train, prepare and heal your body and mind.”

Men’s tennis gets season underway, sees early success Amreen Bhasin Reporter

Men’s Squash

Women’s Squash

The women traveled to Cambridge and competed in the Seven Sisters Tournament at Harvard University’s Murr Center Squash Courts.

The Brewers finished third overall on the day.

The women began the day by facing nationally ranked No. 24 Wellesley. Wellesley defeated the Brewers 9-0. Freshman Hannah Nice, at the No. 1 position, ended her five game winning streak after falling to Wellesley’s Sarah Zhang.

Sophomore Isabelle Bertram, at the No. 2, took her match to 4 before falling. The Brewers then took on nationally ranked No. 26 Mount Holyoke. Vassar fell 8-1 but Nice picked up a five-set win at the No. 1 spot again. Wellesley eventually took the title later in the day as Mount Holyoke came in second. Finally, the No. 33 Brewers took on No. 36 Smith College. The Brewers rebounded from their first two matches and picked up a 6-3 victory over the Pioneers. Nice and Bertram both won their sets and were named to the Seven Sisters All-Tournament Team.

Men’s Fencing

The men’s fencing team competed in the final meet of the Northeast Fencing Conference

courtesy of Vassar College Athletics

After a heartbreaking 5-4 defeat to Bard College last weekend during the Hudson Valley Invitational, the Brewer men rebounded with a decisive 6-3 victory over the Raptors this weekend. Sophomore Vincent Mencotti, playing at the No. 1 spot for the Brewers, upped his current win streak to four matches. The Raptors won the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 positions, but Vassar picked up victories from No. 5-No. 9.

Senior David Garfinkel continued his success after being moved to the No. 5 position. He picked up his third straight victory. Juniors Ben Kurchin and Tim Boycott both picked up wins at the No. 6 and No. 8 position respectively. Senior Noah Kulick won the No. 7 position. Sophomore Sam Hammer went behind early 2-0 but rallied and won the next three games to take the No. 9 position for the Brewers.

Senior men’s volleyball captain Colin White-Dzuro pumps his fist in celebration. The Brewers have gotten off to a strong start with convincing wins over NYU, Elms University, Bard and NJCU. season this Saturday. They defeated the University of New Hampshire 22-5 in the first match of the day. They then defeated Boston University 26-1 and the University of Massachusetts 22-5. The Brewers’ last match of the day was a tough 15-12 loss to Sacred Heart University, one of the top teams in the conference. Sophomore Ry Farley had nine wins to lead the épée squad on the afternoon. Freshmen George Whiteside had eight wins, while fellow freshman Jonathan Alperstein went 7-1.

Freshman Daniel Swerzenski was 4-0 in épée. In foil, senior Captain Tre Artis had eight wins. He defeated NCAA qualifier Andrew Holmes for the second time this season. Artis’ win over Holmes ended his perfect league record. Freshman Tom Racek picked up seven wins in foil as well. The sabre team was 29-7 on the day. Freshman Eli Polston is just one behind Alperstein in the team lead for victories after going 8-2 in sabre. Junior Zachary Wilson went 8-1 and sophomore Campbell Woods was 5-1.

Freshman Eric Lee went 4-0.

Women’s Basketball

The Brewer women started off their weekend with an overtime loss to Clarkson University 78-67. Freshman Ariella Rosenthal had a strong game scoring 23 points and tying her career high of nine rebounds. Junior Caitlin Drakeley had 20 points. Freshman Kim Romanoff came off the bench for 8 points and went 4-7 from the floor. Junior Rose Serafini had 13 rebounds, six points and two blocked shots. The Brewers made all 11 free throws on the night. The women then were knocked off by St. Lawrence 62-50. Rosenthal broke her career-best record with 11 rebounds and had a game high 18 points.

Romanoff had 6 points and Serafini had eight points, six rebounds, two blocks and two steals.

Senior Allyson Pemberton had nine points.

With the loss, the Brewers were mathematically eliminated from the Liberty League Tournament this year.

Men’s Volleyball

The men’s volleyball team had a mid-week

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

match against Bard College. The Brewers had a strong outing and defeated the Raptors 3-0.

All 10 players that had at least one attack also had a kill. The Brewers had 10 kills in 20 attacks in the first set and held Bard to just one finish on 21 attempts. Sophomore Christian Lizana hit .357 on the evening and had eight kills and eight digs. Freshman Zechariah Lee had 32 assists and two blocks. Sophomore Nick Zarchen had three assists and two digs. The Brewers then competed in non-conference tri-match with New Jersey City University and Wentworth Institute of Technology.

The Brewers first defeated the Gothic Knights of NJCU 3-1. Freshman Matthew Knigge swung at a .545 percentage against NJCU and had 14 kills on 22 attempts. Junior Reno Kriz had 14 kills on 24 attacks. Lee had 33 assists, four assisted blocks and three aces. Freshman Jorge Rivera had 10 kills and four digs. Sophomore Trey Cimorelli had a season and game-best 15 digs. Senior Colin White-Dzuro had 13 assists and four digs. The Brewers finished with a .312 hitting percentage and 52 total kills. The Brewers then fell to WIT 3-1. Kriz had 15 kills and six digs along with five total blocks. Lizana had 10 kills, 10 digs and five rejections. Rivera had seven kills, two aces, four digs and two assisted blocks. Cimorelli had another match-best 13 digs for Vassar.

Men’s Tennis

The Brewer men’s tennis team opened its spring season with a 5-0 dual match victory against Clark University. The Brewers swept the doubles matches to start and then earned 2 singles victories on the day. Vassar moved to 3-1 on the year in duals while Clark drops to 2-4.

Junior Daniel Cooper and sophomore Alexander Luckmann earned an 8-5 win at the No. 1 doubles spot. Junior Christian Phelps and sophomore Juan Felipe Lsao had an 8-6 victory at the No. 2 doubles spot. Sophomore Nick Litsky and senior William Zhu were down 2-7 in the No. 3 Doubles match but came back for a 9-7 win. Cooper had a victory in the No. 2 singles match and Laso sealed the win in the No. 4 singles matchup and gave VC the shutout.