The Miscellany News
Volume CXLVII | Issue 20
April 23, 2015
Since 1866 | miscellanynews.org
Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY
Language Holocaust survivor speaks for Yom Ha’Shoa exchange O kicks off Meaghan Hughes
Contributing Editor
Julia Cunningham
Assistant Features Editor
“I
courtesy of Ian Snyder
think the uniqueness of the [Student Language Exchange] SLE program is that it’s a low-key and casual environment that is supposed to pique a person’s interest in the language and give them a glimpse into the culture of the place,” Saisha Srivastava ‘18, a SLE fellow who teaches Hindi, wrote in an emailed statement about the newest org at Vassar. SLE is the Student Language Exchange that was started last year at Brown University by a student. SLE strives to teach languages at another level. Rather than simply offering another hour-and-ahalf lecture to students’ schedules, SLE creates a learning experience by adding cultural significance to everything taught. “Students who teach their own languages also bring in the culture they come from,” Elene Metreveli ’17, Vassar SLE’s Campus Coordinator, said. Fellowship Coordinator Molly James ‘17, added, “And also, we’re lucky that we have the self-instructional language program, which has Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Hindi, Portuguese, Yiddish and one other.” Irish and Korean are also included in Vassar SILP. “And those aren’t traditional classroom learning, and that’s the closest thing that we would have to what this program is trying to do.” This semester, Vassar SLE is offering Brazilian Portuguese taught by Kira Dell ’15 and Hindi taught by Srivastava. See SLE on page 7
n Thursday, April 16, Holocaust survivor Jean Malkischer spoke about her own experiences as part of Vassar’s recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Malkischer’s talk was one of several events organized for Yom Ha’Shoa, the Jewish holiday to commemorate those affected by the Holocaust. Born in Austria in 1930, Malkischer and her family attempted to flee when the country was annexed by Germany in 1938, but were turned away at the Swiss border. In 1942 they were sent to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp, before being sent to Auschwitz in Poland. Malkischer reunited with her parents and sister after the war, and in 1951 they emigrated to the United States. Malkischer explained that she was lucky to have survived the Holocaust, and even luckier to have found her family alive as well. “Very few people survived,” she said. “And I don’t know [why] we See MALKISCHER on page 4
Holocaust survivor Jean Malkischer spoke at Vassar’s annual recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day, recounting to community members how her experiences in German concentration camps inspired her to advocate for peace and tolerance.
Internet, a new frontier for research funding Eloy Bleifuss Prados Reporter
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ssistant Professor of Biology David Esteban’s new project is two experiments in one. His scientific goal is to study the role of viruses in the soil, but he is also hoping to accomplish this research with money from a new method of funding heretofore untested in all of Vassar’s history. In order to secure funds for his research, Esteban has looked to crowd-
funding, a strategy that uses an Internet platform to raise large sums of money through small individual donations from hundreds or thousands of users. As of the night of publication, the project has raised $770 on its way to the $4500 goal, with 32 days remaining. If he and his research team don’t make that benchmark, they won’t get any funding. Underlying the turn to crowdfunding is the decline of the traditional
source for scientific research. Faculty research at Vassar often relies on government agencies like the National Institute for Health or the National Science Foundation (NSF). Years of congressional budget cuts, however, have made these grants more and more competitive. According to www. nature.com, federal spending on research and development declined by 16.3 percent from 2010 to 2013 alone. Facing a more difficult grant pro-
cess, Esteban started searching more or less wherever he could find money to support his research. “I had heard about this site called Experiment.com and I thought ‘oh I might as well try that and see if that could supplement or be a bridge between grants,’” he said. Completing a smaller, shorter-term project on virology would put Esteban in a better position—both in See CROWDFUNDING on page 6
Visiting monks assemble mandala Golf welcomes new cast of characters Emma Rosenthal Arts Editor
If you walked through the Villard room this past week, you may have noticed three monks, deep in concentration, methodically working on a complex sand mandala. The deep vibration of their tools resonated throughout the large room, bringing a sense of
peace into the space. This week in the Villard Room, three Tibetan Buddhist monks will be creating a sand mandala, and will hold a dissolution ceremony on Sunday, April 26. For those who haven’t had experience with the origin or meaning of this practice, Associate Professor of Religion Michael Walsh offered a definition of the ancient and
intricate art. He wrote in an emailed statement, “The term ‘mandala’ is a Sanskrit word that means literally ‘circle.’ It’s a concept used in many parts of Asia but is most closely associated with esoteric Buddhism, and in the case of the sand mandala, Tibetan Buddhism. TypicalSee MANDALA on page 16
Emily Lavieri-Scull/The Miscellany News
Dr. Hun Lye, Lama Somar and Khenpo Choepheo are three lamas who are creating a sand mandala in the Villard Room throughout the week. Once they finish the mandala, they will sweep up the sand and pour it into Sunset Lake, as per tradition.
Inside this issue
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Students open up about struggles FEATURES with Metcalf
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Hillary vying for spot on 2015 Main HUMOR House team
Amreen Bhasin
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Reporter
his season has been one of change, growth and overcoming hardship for the Vassar College women’s golf team. The team has had to contend with a coaching change and an almost completely new roster this year. The current team features just two returning members from last year, junior co-captains Angela Mentel and Aimee Dubois. Along with Mentel and Dubois, the team features returning senior Caitlin Bell, who was on JYA last year, two new freshmen and sophomore newcomer Emily Prince. But despite all these changes and difficulties, the team has managed to come out and continues to be competitive against some of the Northeast’s best teams with many Brewers vying for individual titles. This past weekend, the Brewers traveled to Amherst College to compete for the Jack Leaman Invitational. The event was changed from the usual two-day competition to a shortened one-day event. They still managed to come out for a strong showing on Saturday. Vassar
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College was one of 10 teams and despite this being their second tournament of the spring and carrying a relatively inexperienced roster, the women came away with a seventh-place finish with some very strong scores. Bell posted a season best 83, tying for 14th place overall. Dubois was just a stroke behind at 84. Freshman Kristin Diep also posted an 84, lowering her scoring average to 85, second-best on the team. Fellow freshman Annie Hsu scored an 86, tying for 29th place overall. Prince fired an 88, continuing her strong play as of late and Mentel rounded out the Brewers’ scoring with an 89 for 39th place. Mentel was proud of the way her team handled the shortening of the event and enjoyed the challenging course despite not coming away with the score she wanted. “[Our] team goals were to give our best during the one day event, after it got shortened. Our strategy had to shift a little because of the one day event. My individual goal was to enjoy the course and play my best. This [is] my favorite course that we play, and it proved challenging for me this past Saturday, but I hope that I can make the necessary adjustments for Liberty Leagues.” See GOLF on page 19
Pusha-T, SZA, Bend promise diverse musical medley
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April 23, 2015
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Humor a major tenet of Saunders’ writing Natalie Gerich Brabson Arts and Culture Blogger
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similar way as a personal anecdote of a nonfictional child: the specificity and the unconventionality of this child is funny, regardless of its fictionality. In addition, Saunders relies on the humor of words in “I can speak!™” Some of this word humor is sophisticated, and relies on structure. For instance, in the final paragraph, Sminks says, “We at KidLuv really love what kids are.” Besides the obvious falseness of this statement, this phrase stands out due to its rhythm and repetition. (“KidLuv” and “love… kids” work as a sort of palindrome.) Although language rhythm isn’t inherently hilarious, the sentence structure does enhance the sophisticated humor of this story.
To read more about Natalie’s analysis of George Saunders’ works, go to maincircle. miscellanynews.org!
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of humor into this short story. In fact, I would argue that “I can speak!™” relies on combination humor: the style of humor keeps morphing throughout the letter to allow the story to be continually and freshly funny to the reader. Overall, the piece is satirical in that its purpose is to mock an aspect of society—in this case consumerism—and it uses humor as a means to critique. The piece also starts off on a satirical note by quickly establishing the function of the I CAN SPEAK!™ product, which is by nature absurd but does allude to certain products of our modern consumerist society that supposedly make our lives better (I cite Snuggies and egg slicers). Saunders also employs pseudo-anecdotal humor in his references to Sminks’ very specific and strange baby experiences. For example, Sminks mentions that his son “Billy wears his (I CAN SPEAK!™) while sleeping… If we forget to put it back on after a bath, he pitches a fit.” This anecdote is funny to the reader in a
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n honor of George Saunders’ lecture at Vassar this past week (which I found mostly quite funny), I am going to look at how humor works in one of his short works, “I can speak!™” “I can speak!™” is pseudo company-to-consumer letter in which Rick Sminks, product service representative at KidLuv Inc. writes to Mrs. Faniglia to express regret regarding her disappointment in their product. The reader soon finds out that this product is essentially a mini-robot in the form of a mask: the parent slips the I CAN SPEAK!™ over their baby’s head, and the product “recognizes familiar aural patterns” (i.e. processes the conversations of those in the vicinity of the baby) and then responds in a more advanced manner than would typically developmentally correspond to the baby’s age. One example of this in the story: “Say baby sees peach. If you or Mr. Faniglia… were to loudly say something like: ‘What a delicious peach!’ the I CAN SPEAK!™… might respond by saying ‘I LIKE PEACH!’ or… ‘FRUIT, ISN’T THAT ONE OF THE MAJOR FOOD GROUPS?’” One of the older versions of the I CAN SPEAK!™ mask only comes with a pre-set baby face; thus, the parent would have to choose between seeing their baby in its natural form, and being able to interact with a more advanced version of their baby (which the reader is supposed to presume is appealing to some consumers in this fictional world). This aspect of the product, along with the fact that it does not read the baby’s mind, seems to have upset Mrs. Faniglia and caused her to write the complaint that prompted this story-letter. However, we never see the original complaint: “I can speak!™” is entirely the response letter of product service representative Rick Sminks, and just like many real-life product service representatives, he is an unreliable narrator who jumps through various arguments in an attempt to sell his product. As a satirical piece, “I can speak!™” is mostly amusing due to its exaggeration and absurdity, but Saunders weaves in many forms
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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.
April 23, 2015
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Panel offers insight to Latino/a students after graduation Rhys Johnson News Editor
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courtesy of Vassar Admissions
n Sunday, April 19, Poder Latin@ (PL) and the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztlan (M.E.Ch.A), in collaboration with the Latin American & Latino/a Studies Department and the Office of Alumni Affairs and Development, hosted an alumnae/i panel entitled “Paths Beyond Vassar: Latinos/as in Higher Education,” which featured self-identified Latino/a Vassar graduates who have gone on to pursue advanced degrees. According to PL and M.E.Ch.A Organizing Team member and the Latin American & Latino/a Studies academic intern Guillermo Valdez ’15, the event was organized so that members of Vassar’s current Latino/a community could talk with and learn from past Latino/a students. “[PL and M.E.Ch.A] decided to do this to try to create more networks between the Latinos who have left Vassar and the Latinos who are still here, and to hopefully be inspired by them,” he said. The panel featured Alexis Rivera ’07, a Ph.D student in epidemiology and research assistant at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health with a focus in drug abuse and HIV prevention; Joel Arce ’08, who has taught in the Bronx, worked for the Posse Foundation and will soon study social justice and education in a doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Angélica Gutierrez ’13, who, after working briefly as a paralegal for an immigration law firm on removal cases for
undocumented kids in Los Angeles, returned to Vassar as a coordinator of the Transitions program and as a house advisor. Soon, she will study student affairs at the University of Los Angeles. At the heart of the various topics discussed by the panelists was the necessity of self-reliance and self-motivation to postgraduate success. Rivera explained. “If you want a job, you ask, because if they don’t have something or someone you’re the first person they think of when something comes up.” Arce echoed the sentiment, underlining net-working as crucial as students begin to seek out postgraduate employment and educational opportunities. “It wasn’t until after Vassar that I really learned the value of networking,” he remarked. “It’s a matter of ‘I remember you. You did good work and you know good people. Come on aboard.’ You’re here. You have access to institutional power. Use it.” The panelists also sought to reassure current students that the choice to pursue valuable work experiences was well worth the taxing financial burden it poses to many. Victor Monterrosa ’07, an alumnus who was in the audience, remarked, “Right now the entire world is trying to get into ‘A School.’ You need to be competitive, but don’t think that you need to go right into it. I wanted to be a lawyer at 23, but it took six more years than that, but it’s worth it.” To many Latino/a students at Vassar who are confronted with these sorts of decisions, the
On April 19, alumnae/i panelists Alexis Rivera ’07, Joel Arce ’08 and Angelica Gutierrez ’13 related their experiences as Latino/a graduates pursuing higher educational opportunities to current students. event proved meaningful. “We wanted to see faces that we can identify with and, for some of us, [to] look up to,” commented M.E.Ch.A member Sergio Perez ’18, in an emailed statement. “We wanted to show people that there is representation in higher education for minority students, specifically Latinos and Latinas.
PL President Jamily Duarte ’16 expressed her admiration for the panelists, who are examples to many Vassar Latino/a students who have similar educational aspirations. “We need to see ourselves in post-academia,” she said. “We’ve seen the work you guys do, and we all really appreciate it.”
Federal court dismisses claimed VC gender discrimination Bethan Johnson
Contributing Editor
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n March 31, a Manhattan-based federal court judge dismissed a gender discrimination lawsuit filed against Vassar College by an expelled student more than two years ago. The College expelled Xiaolu “Peter” Yu in March 2013 after finding him responsible for the sexual assault of a fellow student in 2012. Yu and his lawyers maintain that his expulsion violates the College’s Title IX policy regarding gender equity. In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams wrote, “[There] may well be a double standard regarding how the school considers the intoxication level of a complainant and a respondent [but] it is not biased in gender” (Huffington Post, “Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against Vassar College Filed By Student Expelled For Sexual Assault,” 04.15.15). According to court filings, the incident occurred in February 2012, after a night of drinking at a bar off-campus and visiting the Mug; prior to the incident, individuals stated that they had seen the two in apparent states of intoxication (Huffington Post). While the reporting student told College administrators that she had limited memories from the night, Yu states that he was unaware that the student was too intoxicated to give consent (Huffington Post). The documents also show that the complainant said she had either expressly refused or failed to give verbal consent to have sex with Yu, and that, while her memories of the incident remain only partially intact, she recalls feeling unable to object to what was transpiring (Washington Post, “Vassar ruling highlights sex-assault reporting questions,” 04.15.15). After exchanging messages in the weeks following about the incident, which included an apology and a promise to defend him against any accusations of sexual impropriety, she filed a report with the College one year later; the student did not file criminal charges against Yu for sexual assault (Washington Post). The student subsequently stated that the communications between the two after the incident were motivated by denial and a desire to prevent the incident from impacting the interactions they had as members of the same sport on campus, occurring despite her discomfort (Huffington Post). Yu’s attorneys argued that the communication between the two students indicates that the incident was consensual and that, while both were intoxicated, the student had assented to Yu’s request for sex (Huffington Post). According to the College’s “Sexual Misconduct and Interpersonal Violence Policy and Definitions,” a state of incapacitation marks a state in which an individual cannot give consent. The policy states, “Incapacitation includes sexu-
al activity with someone who one should know to be—or based on the circumstances should be reasonably have known to be—mentally or physically incapacitated (by alcohol or other drug use, unconsciousness, or blackout).” It continues, “The question of incapacitation is determined on a case-by-case basis that will include an analysis of whether the accused knew, or a sober, reasonable person in the position of the accused should have known, that the complainant was incapacitated.” The document goes on to state that, while the consumption of alcohol alone does not sufficiently prove incapacitation, a person becomes incapacitated and thus cannot give consent when they cannot fully grasp the details of a sexual encounter. According to Title IX Coordinator Julian Williams, “If the accused student says, ‘Well I was drunk too,’ it really doesn’t matter. What we use is the reasonable person standard, and under the reasonable person standard, the reasonable person is always sober.” According to college regulations, when an episode is reported, the College utilizes a special team to investigate the incident so that the information may be used by the panel adjudicating the case. In its decision-making, Vassar’s method for adjudicating sexual assault cases differs significantly from criminal cases. According to an emailed statement by Sexual Assault and Violence Prevention (SAVP) Coordinator Charlotte Strauss Swanson, “In...campus hearings, the standard of proof is the preponderance of the evidence, which essentially means that it is more likely than not that complaint occurred. This is unlike criminal proceedings, which require proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” College regulations also state, “Vassar College believes in a zero tolerance policy for gender-based sexual misconduct.” According to The Washington Post, Yu’s attorneys argued that the panel’s decision was biased due to the fact that it only considered the incapacitation level of the female complainant and not that of Yu. The newspaper also reported that his lawyers stated that by only factoring in her intoxication level and favoring claims made by the complainant, the College’s decision violated its Title IX regulations against gender equity. Judge Abrams rejected the validity of Yu’s claims of gender discrimination, although she questioned another potential imbalance within the College’s policy. The judge noted that Vassar’s sexual assault and reporting policies are written using gender-neutral terms, that the College provides ample education to students that they may report an incident against students of any gender and that alcohol consumption by the accused parties is not considered regardless
of gender, as indicators that the College’s regulations were not biased against male students (Huffington Post). While the decision did note the potential double standard of deeming a reporting student unable to make reasonable decisions while intoxicated not doing the same for an accused student, the judge noted that this had no relation to gender bias (Huffington Post). In the aftermath of the decision, those working on issues related to sexual assault and Title IX at the College have supported the court’s decision. Strauss Swanson agreed with Judge Abrams with regards to unbiased access to collegiate resources. She explained, “In regards to support services, all parties involved in investigations have access to campus resources, including professional counselors, academic deans and health services, to name a few, and in my experience are treated fairly throughout investigations.” Williams explained, “Mr. Yu utilized his legal right to challenge the College’s decision and the College’s policy and I’m very glad that it was upheld…I’m very pleased and was very satisfied with the outcome that it withstood the high degree of legal scrutiny because one of the things we try to situate our policies around is not only just legal compliance—which is extremely important—but also what is just the right thing to do for students?” He continued,“I would disagree with any categorization of Vassar’s policy being somehow stacked against men or stacked against anyone.” While the College maintains that its policies are not biased against men, it does note a difference in sexual assault figures based on gender. Williams explained, “Most of the reporting students are women and most of the responding students, or the accused students, are men. That’s just the facts of how these issues play out...I can understand why sometimes that argument is made, but when you dig deeper, what you’d find on our campus and probably most campuses is an equitable and fair policy that is trying to make a reasoned and very sound decision based on the procedures in place.” Williams also noted his belief that this decision may serve as a positive precedent with regards to sexual assault policies like that used at Vassar. “It’s one of the first lawsuits by a responding student to be resolved in this way and I think it might be a template for additional legal guidance...I think it’s a good step forward, not just for Vassar, but, I think, for all colleges and universities that are trying to do there best to protect students, to have some policies and mechanisms, and fair policies,” he said. This case, as well as its decision, has garnered serious attention both from the College and the mainstream media, becoming one of dozens of
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
collegiate sexual assault adjudications questioned in courts across the country. The Washington Post reports that currently, over 50 cases are pending on the topic of collegiate adjudications of sexual assault nationwide. CEO of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management Brett Sokolow stated, “In a way, I feel bad for the Peter Yus of the world” (Huffington Post). Other media outlets such as The Observer, Safe Services and A Voice for Male Students have questioned Vassar’s adjudication of this case and supported claims of gender bias. When asked about criticisms made in the media regarding the case and the College’s policy, Strauss Swanson noted the degree of inattentiveness to issues of reporting for students. She explained, “In my work with students, I would not say that survivors always feel they are believed. In fact, in many colleges and universities it is too common for survivors to face victim blaming attitudes and retaliation amongst their peers.” On the collegiate level, Williams stated that the media scrutiny helped enrich campus discussions related to the issue of sexual assault and its adjudication. He said, “I don’t think that the lawsuit made us specifically say ‘We have to fix this’ or ‘We have to change this.’ What it did make us look at, as we were looking at already, is how can we do this better? How can we make this process, our policy, stronger, make them more equitable, more fair for students on either side?” The decision also comes after serious criticisms of the College’s treatment of sexual assault survivors and its policies which came to a head last semester. Alterations to the College’s attitudes and policies was one of several issues relating to racial profiling and mental health provisions raised at a rally attended by hundreds of students and College employees on Dec. 5 (The Miscellany News, “Hundreds surround, occupy Main to demand administrative changes,” 12.06.14). During the rally, Sara Cooley ’15 stated, “It’s time that Vassar started giving a shit about survivors on this campus...It’s time Vassar College proves that it cares about survivors not just as statistics, but as actual individuals.” While criticisms of the College’s policies remain, since the rally and the release of the Margolis Healy report for methods of improving campus safety, the College has hired a new SAVP coordinator and states that a new committee called Safety and Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) has been formed to better educate the campus on issues of sexual assault and violence. After Judge Abram’s decision, Yu’s attorneys reported that Yu intends to appeal the decision, arguing that her note of the potential double standard should have translated into a different decision. No date has been set for this appeal.
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April 23, 2015
Malkischer teaches tolerance through stories of trauma MALKISCHER continued from page 1 did. Having found my parents was unusual because very few people were able to.” After working in New York City at Mt. Sinai Hospital, Malkischer’s husband got a job in Poughkeepsie and the couple relocated to Hopewell Junction, where Malkischer still lives. She spoke of her own survival and her life in the United States, how fortunate she feels to have made it to where she is now. “We have had a happy life,” she said. “We never imagined life would be like this after all we’d gone through.” Malkischer credits her sister with giving her the will to survive throughout their experience. “We shared so much,” she said. “Without my sister I don’t know if I would have been alive because that relationship was so important.” For Kira Greenberg ’15, this sisterly bond was especially poignant. “One thing about her story that really stood out to me was her focus on her relationship with her sister and how that essentially saved her life,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “This really resonated with me because of the relationship that I have with my sister and just think it’s incredible that Jean had hope all of those years because of her sister...” President of the Vassar Jewish Union (VJU), Jeremy Brick ’15, described a moment from Malkischer’s talk that stood out to him. “... She was describing the people she met during her experience in the various camps she was sent to,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “Describing them, she assured us that they were all very good, kind people, and the sense of comradery in the various places she spent time in was incredible. The vast majority of the people she met were killed.” The extreme trauma and hardship that Malkischer endured left her with the desire to help others, as Ian Snyder ’17 explained. “She later went to medical school but did not finish – she told me personally after the talk that her experience in the Holocaust was a major catalyst for her desire to attend medical school,”
he wrote in an emailed statement. “She wanted to help people after realizing the value of human life and its transience.” For Jason Goldman ’18, Malkischer’s resilience was particularly striking. “Her unbelievable maturity and resourcefulness at such a young age was truly inspiring, especially when faced with the most destitute and barren livelihood,” he wrote. He went on to say, “Ms. Malkischer was asked by one of the students if she ever went back to Auschwitz, and I was shocked at first when she said that she could never go back. That really helped me understand how incredibly life-altering that experience was for her; that it would simply have been too overwhelming for her to see it again.” In fact, Malkischer explained that even returning to her hometown of Vienna was complicated. “Vienna was never a place that I could call home anymore after what they did to us,” she said. “Vienna is a beautiful city, but it’s not my home. My home is here.” Snyder explained that he was shocked by Malkischer’s account of the brutality she endured. “Ms. Malkischer’s talk was extremely honest and revealing,” he commented. “I was surprised by how detailed her accounts were of her horrific experiences. I’ve heard Holocaust survivors talk before, but few have been willing to disclose the inhumane brutality that they were subjected to in such detail.” Malkischer was appreciative of those who came to hear her speak, and directly addressed the audience to thank them. “I’m so glad you all came here and you’re all interested in the Holocaust because some think that it didn’t exist,” she remarked. “I was there and I told the truth.” Greenberg recounted her own experience with Malkischer, who emphasized the need to tell stories. “I went up to her to talk to her afterwards,” she wrote. “I thanked her for sharing her story, told her that I had been to both of the camps that she had been in (Theresienstadt and Auschwitz) and that I had family who perished in the Holocaust. She took my
hand and told me that I had to continue learning and sharing these stories, and I started to tear up.” In previous years, the VJU has hosted vigils for the event in which students shared their thoughts and written pieces about the Holocaust. This year, the VJU hosted a vigil on April 15 and decided to organize an additional event as well. Goldman explained his own interest in bringing Malkischer to speak. “Jean Malkischer’s talk was definitely a unique change from previous years,” he explained. “When I took my position as Bayit Intern for the VJU, I knew I wanted to do something about Holocaust education, as survivors are a connection that is quickly fading away as they get older and older.” He went on, “Personal stories really help you realize that this event, which can seem abstract because it was so long ago and so many people perished, was real and affected people beyond just the numbers you see and hear about.” Greenberg also spoke to the fear of losing remaining Holocaust survivors and reiterated the important role of storytelling. “The Holocaust is becoming a more and more distant memory as time goes by, and soon we will not have any survivors left,” she wrote. “I think it’s important to hear the stories of survivors while we still can to prevent it from being just another world event in history books.” Snyder echoed, “It is imperative to continue having these talks so that we may not forget and may not repeat. In a few years there will not be any survivors left and it is important to hear their stories before they pass away.” He continued, noting that Malkischer ended her talk with a focus on the future. “Ms. Malkischer emphasized the necessity for tolerance in order to avert these disasters, which are still occurring in parts of the world today…” Malkischer explained her own definition of tolerance and what it meant to her. “Tolerance: that’s the big word I think,” she said. “To be tolerant of people who don’t think like you
mitted to working hard to earn the support of every Iowan.” (CNN, “Clinton outlines rationale for running in Iowa swing,” 04.14.15) She will be meeting voters in small groups throughout the next month, and an official, public-kickoff event will be held in May.
Complications with rebuilding U.S.-Cuban relations have arisen due to recent tensions in Venezuela, Cuba’s closest ally. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused Obama of trying to overthrow his government, and has labeled several US senators and officials terrorists. Maduro’s reaction was reportedly provoked by the American sanctioning of seven Venezuelan officials in March, and a concomitant statement that Venezuela is a threat to U.S. security. Despite tense American-Venezuelan relations, however, many Cuban officials have expressed their desire to promote cooperation with their capitalist neighbors. Although the exact implications of Castro and Obama’s meeting remain to be seen, Castro himself expressed of his country’s relationship with the United States, “[O]ur countries have a long and complicated history, but we are willing to make progress...” (The White House, “Remarks by President Obama and President Raul Castro of Cuba Before Meeting,” 04.11.15)
do or are different than you are—you don’t have to kill them. You have to be tolerant and accept other peoples’ opinion. Tolerance is the thing.” Goldman commented on the place for tolerance in the context of the Holocaust and the need to keep the memory of it from fading. “Holocaust education continues to be important for many reasons,” he wrote. “Principally, genocides happen today that go unnoticed or quickly forgotten about. The Holocaust reminds us that intolerance and violence because of hatred and perceived otherness has no place in our world and must cease to exist.” Brick also remarked at the importance of remembering the Holocaust today and the significance of holding events for Yom Ha’Shoah. “For someone who is Jewish, like myself, I feel that I do not have the luxury to be able to not take this official day of mourning to remember my six million Jewish brothers and sisters, as well as the five million other victims (homosexuals, Romani, and many other groups who did not fit the Nazis definition of human being), who were slaughtered at that time in history. So I do feel that for Jews around the world, there is a specific meaning and reason for why these events must continue to happen.” He continued, “I think that it is easy for people today to forget the past horrors of anti-semitism...how having an identity of ‘Jewish’ has meant being an ‘other’ time and time again with the Holocaust being the most recent large-scale, mass violence example. If we forget it, then I believe that it is bound to happen again, because violence comes in cycles.” Malkischer explained that she cannot help but remember the Holocaust, even if she tries. “This is something that cannot be forgotten,” she said. “You try to live a normal life, try not to think about it but it’s with you all the time…” Yet she also explained the positive outlook she has, and what she chooses to focus on in her remembrance. “I think it made me a strong Jew. It gave me a lot of pride and strength...I’m happy to be a Jew.”
Outside the Bubble Hillary Clinton Announces 2016 Election Bid
On April 12, former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially announced that she will be running for President in 2016, confirming the rumors that date back to her defeat in the 2008 presidential primaries. Shared online 3 million times within the first hour, Clinton’s campaign spot went viral on social media. Support for her candidacy is expected to be overwhelming, largely due to the fact that her election would mark the first election of a female president in United States history, a fact that has gained her the support of many female voters. The announcement was released just before National Equal Pay Day, putting thoughts of wage equality at the front of voters’ minds. President of Bloomberg-affiliated Selzer & Co. J. Ann Selzer affirmed, “Clinton’s strong performance in 2008 seems to have addressed any question of whether a woman could be a capable president” (Bloomberg Politics, “Democrats and Independents Don’t Want a Hillary Coronation,” 04.10.15). Clinton’s platform will be centered around striving for greater economic equality for the average American. On the agenda are issues such as paid sick leave and child care, issues which, according to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, will appeal especially to families. In her announcement video, Clinton asserts, “Everyday Americans need a champion. And I want to be that champion” (The Washington Post, “What Hillary Clinton’s campaign announcement video tells us,” 04.13.15). According to a poll taken in February by CBS News, 81 percent of Democrats confirmed that they would consider voting for Clinton, a percentage far above those of potential opponents for the Democratic nomination such as current Vice President Joe Biden or former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (CBS News, “Poll: Who would Americans consider voting for in 2016,” 03.29.15). April 15 marked the first stop on Clinton’s campaign trail, in Iowa, where some of the race’s first primaries will be held. Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, Matt Paul, remarked, “Hillary’s com-
Obama, Castro Break Historic Silence
President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro broke a decades-old silence between the United States and Cuba at the seventh Summit of the Americas, which took place April 10 and 11 in Panama City. Since the first Summit in 1994, 35 American nations have gathered every three years to discuss a broad range of issues for which they share concern. A White House release on the summit goals stated, “[W]e [must] redouble our commitment to a more prosperous, safe, sustainable, equal, and democratic Western Hemisphere.” Obama took part in discussions with leaders of many South and Central American nations on a wide range of topics, including climate change, education and the regional economy. He participated in the Civil Society Forum as well as a CEO business summit involving officials and business executives from 12 South, Central, and North American nations (The White House, “FACT SHEET: U.S. Participation in the 7th Summit of the Americas,” 04.11.15). At a dinner on April 10, before the official opening of the Summit, Obama met with Castro for the first time, manifesting the United States’ commitment to improving relations with Cuba. Before their meeting, Obama remarked, “We are now in a position to move on a path towards the future, and leave behind some of the circumstances of the past that have made it so difficult, I think, to for our countries to communicate.” (CNN, “Obama, Castro finally meet face-to-face,” 04.11.15) Obama had announced on December 17 that he was hoping to include Cuba in talks about lifting the American embargo. He expects to remove Cuba from the list of nations that support terrorism, but is prepared to withhold it to achieve further negotiation goals.
– Eilís Donague, Guest Reporter Pulitzer-winners leave journalism for PR
On April 20, the winners and finalists for the 2015 Pulitzer Prizes were announced. Among the awarded media publications, poets and fiction writers, winning journalist Rob Kuznia has been making headlines after an article broke out claiming he left journalism because he could not pay his rent (LAObserved, “LA Times, Daily Breeze win Pulitzer Prizes,” 04.20.15). Kuznia shares the Pulitzer for Local Reporting with Rebecca Kimitch and city editor Frank Suraci of The Daily Breeze, based in Torrance, for their investigation into a corrupt, cash-strapped school district. According the to the Pulitzer Prize website, “For a distinguished example of reporting on significant issues of local concern, demonstrating originality and community expertise, using any available journalistic tool, [The Daily Breeze is granted] Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).” Although the award marks a milestone in the
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careers in each of the aforementioned journalists, Kuznia no longer works as a staff writer on the school beat at The Daily Breeze, having left after 4 years of employment, citing financial difficulties. He said, “Journalism was my thing. I always felt lucky that I had found what I wanted to do in my 20s while others were still looking for it…[but journalism] seems to be melting and I felt too financially unstable” (Los Angeles Times, “South Bay papers revels in its first-ever Pulitzer Prize,” 04.20.15). Kuznia now works in the Publicity Department of the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation. According to a press release on the department’s website, as publicist at USC Shoah Foundation, Kuznia is now on the other side of the journalism coin, helping to pitch stories about the Institute to reporters. But working with the USC Shoah Foundation communications staff has taught him a larger lesson about journalism – that every story is really a group effort, not just the work of a lone reporter. Kuznia is not the first person—or Pulitzer Prize winner—to break away from journalism for public relations. Former staff writer on the cops beat of The Post and Courier Natalie Caula Hauff worked as a part of a team on a seven-part series entitled “Till Death Do Us Part.” The series, which captured a statewide epidemic of domestic abuse, won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Before the first installment of the series had been published, Hauff began a new job as a media relations coordinator for Charleston County government (Columbia Journalism Review, “Another 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winner left journalism for PR. Here’s why.,” 04.21.15). While her departure did not stem from financial troubles, Hauff expressed similar views to Kuznia, that publicity is still related to journalism. She said, “What I was doing was really demanding, as far as the time on my family. So I wanted to find that balance between work and family...So I found this new way to serve the public in a different way” (Columbia Journalism Review). – Chris Gonzalez, Humor & Satire Editor
April 23, 2015
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The state of Vassar’s mental health services: an exposé Marie Solis
Contributing Editor
“I
Megan Griffiths/The Miscellany News
lost track of how many classes I’ve missed so long ago,” admitted Lucy*. “Maybe once a week if it’s an extremely good week, two or three a week if it’s an average week, and,” she trailed off, “I’m too embarrassed to continue.” Despite these absences, Lucy ’18 isn’t failing her classes. She explained, “The majority of my professors are surprisingly understanding. But I do get the strange feeling that they’re a lot more willing to help me as a victim of campus sexual assault, rather than a student struggling with mental disabilities. These two identities of mine are absolutely inseparable, but somehow it’s a lot easier to get people to sympathize with one versus the other.” Recently, Vassar and colleges across the country have been grappling with these problems that are becoming increasingly endemic to their campuses. They are, of course, tied: If universities cannot end sexual assault, many students will rely on mental health services to deal with trauma. Vassar, many would say, has fallen short on both counts. In February 2014, the VSA council sent a letter to senior-level administration calling Metcalf to open a post-doctoral fellow position (The Miscellany News.“VSA addresses increased need for counseling services.” 02.05.14). This past December, a group called Vassar Students for Mental Health garnered over 1,000 signatures on their online petition calling for improvements to Metcalf. Again, the VSA penned a letter of endorsement, emphasizing the need for better counseling service staffing. In just one year’s time, crisis calls had seen a 27 percent increase and a 375 percent increase in on-call and weekend contacts (The Miscellany News. “Over 1,000 sign petition to improve mental health services.” 12.03.14). Following this collective outcry, Hill sent out a campus-wide email at the end of the fall 2014 semester, outlining ways the Administration was working toward improving Vassar’s mental health services. “We are establishing a Mental Health and Wellness Support Fund to eliminate financial barriers to accessing those services both on and off campus, including resources to cover transportation and co-pay expenses,” wrote Hill. She continued, promising to fill the open position of assistant director of Counseling Service as soon as possible. “We will also add one more counselor position and make permanent the post-doctoral fellow position in order to expand group counseling opportunities and decrease waiting time for appointments,” she wrote. The College has followed through on these promises: The post-doctoral position is now permanent, Metcalf is approved to hire an additional counselor and, according to Director of Counseling Wendy Freedman, at least 20 students use the Mental Health and Wellness Support Fund. Freedman said Metcalf has the most counselors it has ever had in her 11 years at Vassar. Still, student need has been difficult to keep up with. Every year, Metcalf sees about 21 percent of the student body and will have seen close to half of all students by the time they graduate. Though these numbers have remained consistent, the magnitude of student need has risen, Freedman noted. “What has increased is the severity of the mental health concerns experienced by the students seeking our services and the number of students who are in crisis and need immediate help,” wrote Freedman in an emailed statement. “Additionally, as our campus community becomes more tuned into students’ mental health concerns, requests for consultation with the Counseling Service staff has increased.” This increased awareness is, inarguably, a good thing: Students are feeling comfortable seeking help when they need it. But they aren’t always able to make an appointment at Metcalf right away, often having to wait at least a week to meet with a counselor or receiving a referral to a counselor outside of Vassar after a few appointments. “Overall, I think Metcalf can be helpful if you are lucky enough to find someone right for you. But even if you do find that person, don’t expect a lasting therapist-patient relationship as they are still extremely understaffed, and will most likely refer you to someone else after a few sessions,” said Lucy, who has seen two different Metcalf counselors but now talks to a counselor from her hometown twice a week. “In my experience, Metcalf uses more of a band-aid approach to help their stressed-out students get through school, so
Pictured above are Metcalf’s counselors. According to the Director of Counseling Services Wendy Freedman, Metcalf currently has more counselors than ever before. However, students struggling with mental health conditions still have barriers in place to getting help, be it bureaucratic obstacles or stigmas. find yourself an outside therapist or ask them for referrals if you need help treating or managing more complex conditions,” she advised. An alumna from the Class of 2013 remembered her own struggles with Metcalf as well as the shifting attitudes on campus toward the office and mental illness in general. “My first impression of Metcalf was that’s where you were sent if you were EMSed or busted by security for drug use or underage drinking. Most people I knew who had used Metcalf’s services had been obligated to do so,” she said. “Gradually, I heard of more people voluntarily using Metcalf, but heard complaints about long waiting lists or referrals to off-campus providers for long-term care.” After experiencing a traumatic event the fall of her senior year, she turned to Metcalf for counseling, but she too had to wait a week to schedule an appointment and many more weeks still to meet with Metcalf’s consulting psychiatrist to receive medication. “[My counselor] helped me contact my professors and the Dean of Studies and begin getting myself back on track academically as well as mentally. I wouldn’t have graduated on time without her help,” she wrote. Due to depression, she had a difficult time meeting the demands of her classes, like Lucy. “Two of my professors were willing to accept very, very late work and allow me to complete their courses. One professor in particular was incredibly kind to me, showing far more patience and understanding than I had expected. In general, I found that professors were respectful and accommodating when I asked for an extension,” she added. Cecilia Graña-Rosa ’15 echoed these sentiments, stating that she has by-and-large been fortunate enough to have professors who were understanding of her mental health condition. But such is not always the case. She said, “As someone who’s been clinically depressed and has severe anxiety issues, there are some times when it’s almost impossible to get yourself out of bed and go to class. It could be for a lot of reasons: you didn’t turn in a paper on time and you’re crippled with shame and anxiety about seeing the professor, or you’ve been sleepless because of nighttime panic attacks and end up sleeping throughout the day and miss the class.” She continued, “I’ve had a lot of incredible professors who I’ve talked to about this and they’ve been accommodating, but that’s often the exception to the rule.” Graña-Rosa maintained that the general feelings toward students who miss assignments and classes still seem to be that these students are lazy, disorganized or careless. She said, “This is far from the truth.” Graña-Rosa, Lucy and the ’13 alumna agreed that while Vassar has made an effort to improve mental health services, some of the stigmas and biases surrounding the students who need them still thrive. Lucy said, “It’s as if mental illness alone is never a legitimate reason for compromised academic performance. My friend had a professor who didn’t want to hear her ‘excuse,’ aka mental illness, because it makes the professor feel uncomfortable. I can’t help but think how much easier it would be if her absence was the result of a physical illness instead.” The anonymous alumna recalled, “The dean
of studies [at the time] was extremely dismissive towards me...and accused me of ‘not seeking enough help,’ implying I was exaggerating or lying about my mental health issues. I felt completely invalidated and ended up filing a formal complaint against her with the SAVP Office.” The fact is, Graña-Rosa noted, questions of mental health get tangled up in the red tape of academic bureaucracy. She pointed out that in an email last year concerning “end-of-term reminders” then-Dean of Studies Joanne Long reminded students of the College’s official protocol concerning final assignments. Under a heading entitled “Extensions and Incompletes,” she detailed, “‘Extensions’ and ‘Incompletes’ are meant to compensate students who have lost time through no fault of their own, as for example, through illness. They are not meant to allow extra time to students who have not been working regularly throughout the semester.” Graña-Rosa said oftentimes this last caveat can end up hurting students struggling with a mental, rather than physical, illness. “Because the way in which some conditions manifest themselves, they are easily misperceived as negative qualities in a person...and this definitely informs how fellow students, professors and administrators view those who have said conditions,” she said, “Of course, there is a point where the condition ends and our responsibility begins, and that’s something that we struggle with understanding and self-evaluating every day, but it often seems like we’re alone in this.” This is where Director of the Office of Accessibility and Educational Opportunity (AEO) MaryJo Cavanaugh comes in. She said that this year, 300 students have registered with the Office—“an all-time high” she noted—and at least 20 percent of these students registered on the basis of mental health concerns. “On the surface, many of the accommodations might appear to be better suited for a student with learning, attentional or even chronic medical concerns, but this is only a menu of typically offered accommodations,” said Cavanaugh. However, she stressed, the Office also offers staggered deadlines, reduced course load or advance reading lists or notice of assignments to help make school work more manageable for students with mental health conditions. Cavanaugh added, “When students work with our office, we are better able to advocate for them with the Dean of Studies Office or with a particular professor. As we get to know a student, we can propose different accommodations that are appropriate to their situation.” Lucy said she’s just begun working with the AEO this semester, and, so far, her experience has been a positive one, with the Office offering her assistance after their first appointment. “MaryJo Cavanaugh has a good understanding of the different support students with different abilities need in order to succeed. Instead of judging my occasional inability to keep up with my course load, she understands that it’s disability, not laziness, that’s compromising my performance and tries to accommodate me in the best way she can.” Cavanaugh recognized the ways college can compound existing mental health conditions, stating, “Managing the demands of college life is difficult enough. Now add in vulnerability for anxiety or depression and sleep deprivation and we have a lot of stressed-out students who may
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have difficulty focusing, making decisions or producing work.” This was the case for Lucy, who didn’t realize she suffered from mental illness until she got to Vassar. “...I hit a wall when I got to college. And I think that happens to a lot of people. The wall exposed me to a lot of pain and trauma, some fairly recent, some long-buried and ignored,” she said. “At this point, what I need most is healing—and the stress of college isn’t helping.” Though Metcalf has a counselor available oncall, their staff is unable to be available 24 hours a day. So when struggles with mental health and the stresses of school work come to a head, many students turn to services like CARES, an organization that has trained students on call around the clock. However, recent changes to their protocol, as passed down to them from the College’s higher-ups, has forged a closer relationship between CARES and Vassar’s counseling services. Now, CARES is required to break confidentiality for any of seven reasons, including if a student plans to commit suicide, if they have self-harmed in the last 48 hours or if they haven’t eaten for the past 48 hours. “There has certainly been an adjustment period as we strive to find a balance between implementing these new policies and upholding our commitment to the confidentiality and anonymity of our calls, as well as the safety and comfort of our callers,” wrote CARES in an emailed statement. “During a call, if we believe a caller is about to reveal something that would have us break confidentiality, we usually stop the call and let them know what our protocol is. We also disclose our protocol if someone explicitly asks about confidentiality,” they wrote, emphasizing that though they have to obey certain guidelines, they’re ultimately concerned with putting students first. Nonetheless, they find that some of the new protocol to which they’re beholden puts a strain on their mission as an organization. “We believe that everyone is the expert of their own experience, and so our calls are focused on the caller’s comfort and agency. The protocols that we enacted last year surrounding the situations in which CARES must break confidentiality were enacted to ensure the safety of all students; however they also have the unfortunate effect of removing some control from the hands of a caller who discloses certain information to us,” they continued. “While we are legally obligated to adhere to these policies, we refuse to look at the mental health of students as a liability.” Organizations like CARES, individual students, counselors, faculty and administrators are working to serve students’ increasing and ever-changing needs when it comes to mental health. But students currently facing the everyday struggles of mental health conditions hope change comes sooner rather than later. Concluded Lucy, “The Administration’s efforts to improve mental health services should remain of one of their [top] priorities...It’s so easy to get two days of health advisory at Baldwin for a fever, but it’s nearly impossible to get excused for mental illness. Students should be able to get mental health days from Metcalf, and they should never have to wait three weeks to get access to mental health services on campus.” *Name has been changed for privacy.
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April 23, 2015
A more mainstream Vassar to come? Campus weighs in Claire Standaert
Assistant Features Editor
O
ver the years, change within Vassar—from a more free-spirited institution to a more straitlaced one—walks a fine line between being perception and fact. Last semester during his talk, writer Jeffrey Eugenides described his idea of the model Vassar girl, an icon that has pervaded media representations of the College: “The Vassar girl was always dressed in a black turtleneck and capri pants and smoking cigarettes… Deep, dry, sarcastic, wonderful girls, either wildly sexual or subtly suicidal.” This image of freeness, open-mindedness and rebellion is one that has persisted in the outside world’s imagination. From within the Vassar bubble, however, there are rumblings that such is no longer the case— that Vassar is becoming more mainstream and less weird. Since its founding as an all-women’s college, Vassar women became attached to the image of sexual allure, unconventional beauty and radical feminism—which television and movies often use as punch lines. You see this in “Miss Congeniality,” when Ben Bratt tries to impress Sandra Bullock with his young Vassar-student girlfriend who is writing a paper on law enforcement, who soon asks Sandra for a woman’s perspective for her paper. In an episode of “The Simpsons,” Lisa meets a typical Vassar girl—a woman who lifts up her arms to reveal hairy armpits and exclaims, “Come to Vassar and un-conform with me!” But women aren’t the only punch line; the idea of Vassar is as well. More recently, the movie “Pitch Perfect” used an establishing shot of Vassar to create the scene for the fictitious Barden College. The image portrays a typical college, but inside it is an a cappella group mastering the art of uniqueness and creativity to win singing competitions, not unsimilar to Vassar, of course, with its nine a cappella groups. Nonetheless, Lily Lanier ’15 voiced the concern that perception and reality don’t quite line up: “I chose Vassar because I wanted to be able to go to some elite prestigious college and also find a place that had alternative thinking and was committed to values outside of academia.
I think I was surprised and a little disappointed with some of the disconnect between the reputation, self-perception and promotional identity versus the one that exists here.” Perhaps this disparity is the result of slow, barely-noticeable shifts in students’ motivations for coming to the College. Marc Michael Epstein, who has been teaching in the Religion and Jewish Studies Departments at Vassar for 24 years, lived to see changes in the “hippie” movement since the ’60s. He said, “I think students are as politically aware as they were twenty-four years ago, but I think they are politically aware in different directions. So, for instance, there always was a lot of talk about gender at Vassar, but now the question of the gender binary itself is being interrogated and that’s very exciting. There is a lot more talk about race than there was when I started here. I feel that students do take initiatives when the personal is at stake.” Though these changes can be subtle, a more visible indicator of change at Vassar is style. Epstein said, “It’s kind of interesting how styles come back. I wouldn’t call the neo-hippie stylistic trends fake in any way. They are just as ‘authentic’ as they were in the ’60s where sons and daughters of heirs and heiresses were going around dressed in ripped jeans with flowers in their hair and not showering or shaving. I think the same sort of thing is happening today—we see the desire of the comparatively affluent to associate themselves with the larger mass of humanity on earth whose concerns are calling to them.” Still, some students feel Vassar is leaning away from the “liberal” in liberal arts. But while they may notice shifts on campus in regards to style, academics and activism, it’s hard to pinpoint from where the changes originate. Lanier said, “I think to live up to a lot of its reputation, Vassar would have to make sacrifices it’s not prepared to make in terms of abandoning its bureaucracy and pursuing alternative education and giving students real leeway and agency. It’s also really hard when you are trying to play the elite small college game. So I don’t necessarily fault Vassar. I think it’s not an anomaly in terms of colleges in general.” Epstein said, “The students are consistently
bright, but they tend more now to narrow themselves rather than open themselves up. And I think part of that is fear of the realities of the job market.” This leads to another avenue for getting a firm grip on the idea of change: the Admissions Office. The friendly face of Admissions is always trying to attract applications. Then the question follows: Is administration changing the student body? Director of Admissions Art Rodriguez maintained, “I’m not trying to change the admissions process. What I’m trying to think about as we move ahead is ‘what are challenges that we may deal with in admissions as we think about changing demographics?’ I think that the character of what the student is are things that we will continue to appreciate. It’s just who might make up those individuals who display that character may change.” He continued, “The goal is to make Vassar attractive to a range of students… We are trying to build central pipelines. And years from now, if we are not deeply-rooted in parts of the country where we are told to see population growth in high school graduates, then it might be a disservice to Vassar.” With this idea of looking to the future, the job market in science and technology has sprung up over the years, and students have caught on. Albert Muzquiz ’17, a tour guide at Vassar, noticed, “I think what’s interesting is that there are a lot of things that Vassar is known for, like art and theater and those sorts of things. But a lot of the admitted students we have been seeing recently haven’t been interested in that. I’ve had a number of tours where people don’t even want to go into the theater, which is kind of rare because that’s kind of what our tour is. I think it has a lot to do with our science building. I’ve seen a lot more people who are science-motivated.” What emerges is a catch-22 scenario: To maintain Vassar, the hippie waters must be diluted and other, more conservative students mixed into the general population, much to the fear of some students. However, Rodriguez suggested that one thing will forever remain the same, which is that Vassar is a place to be curious and bold. In an enrolling students questionnaire sent
out by the admissions office, an outsider’s perception of Vassar has changed slightly, perhaps to the extent of being barely noticeable. In 2010, 10 percent said Vassar was career-oriented and four years later, this number bumped up to 14 percent. And like a seesaw, an opposite reaction followed: a decline in the image of Vassar as “relaxed.” It seems that the distinction between perception and fact is so smeared, that to describe Vassar’s change is, in writer Lauren Slater’s words, “shaped, if it could be, like a question mark.” Lanier, a four-year varsity soccer player, connects the dots between soccer and education. She said, “It shouldn’t be so much about playing the school game, but pursuing things outside of attainment… When the team is so focused on performance, it gets in the way of creativity.” In Rebecca Schuman’s ’98 “The Sad Demise of Collegiate Fun,” she lamented the changes she saw since being a student at Vassar. She wrote, “…much of the unstructured free play at college seems to have disappeared in favor of pre-professional anxiety, coupled with the nihilistic, homogeneous partying that exists as its natural counterbalance” (Slate, 04.15.14). Is Vassar becoming this? Perhaps. Cristina Caso ’14 said, “Vassar got a lot less weird throughout my four years there, but even Vassar at its least weird is still pretty weird.” Perhaps not. Epstein said, “I think that it’s endemic, native, to be a citizen at a four-year liberal arts college, to think by the time you are a senior that the whole thing has gone down tubes and that things were so much open and free and generally better during your years than they are now.” The temptation to think Vassar is losing its vibrancy, its open-mindedness, and its liberalism is not ill-interpreted. However, that’s the perspective of a straight line. Rather, imagine a circle, small or big, that is being endlessly retraced and re-interpreted. This is the pattern of survival; Vassar has yet to lose its theme of intellectual curiosity. Lanier said, “At a four-year college, the student body has to perpetually recreate itself. You lose one batch and have to circle around and replace it.”
Vassar virology study hinges on crowdfunding bucks CROWD FUNDING continued from page 1
I thought would be most interesting and that we could explain in a small amount of time.” Maggie Ginoza ’16 is assisting Esteban with the project’s lab work, along with its publicity. She created the video accompanying the project on Experiment.com, and she has also been reaching out to the Vassar Alumni Association and other college-affiliated organizations. A science, technology and society major, Ginoza explained her attraction to the research. “This project was well-suited for my major because I got to learn and do a lot with science about the project itself, but also sort of looking at the broader structures involved in scientific funding and looking at new ways and new methods of funding,” she said. The only time viruses win public attention is when they pose a threat. While outbreaks of Ebola or H1N1 may make front-page news, the countless, totally harmless viruses in the air, water and earth are virtually ignored. Esteban and his team are aiming to fill a gap of knowledge in microbiological sciences by studying the interactions between the viral and bacterial communities. Ginoza explained how they plan on filling up glass cylinders with soil. The airtight cylinders, called Winogradsky Columns, are a visual tool to examine microbiology. Said Ginoza, “You may not be able to see the individual bacteria and viruses but you can see that things are changing and growing over time, and you can see different colors of bacteria growing and dying off.” Ginoza and Esteban will then send the columns for DNA sequencing. More than 90 percent of the project’s $4500 is reserved for this step alone. Identifying the viruses present could lead to insight into the relationship among viruses, bacteria and the environment. The record on crowd-funding projects is mixed and speaks more to the Internet’s caprice. Successful and popular projects posted on Kickstarter include the feature-length “Veronica Mars” movie that obtained over $5 million in funding.
courtesy of David Esteban
terms of experience and data—for proposing a large-scale, long-term project that would require government funds. Before moving forward, he reached out to Vassar’s Grant Office and Gary Hohenberger, Director of Corporate, Foundation and Government Relations. Hohenberger shared that in the past year, the College requested $10.6 million in grants from an array of public and private institutions. Of that sum, $3.5 million was actually awarded. Focusing specifically on the NSF, the College submitted ten grant applications last year, of which so far four have been approved. Hohenberger explained that, in his experience, this success rate of roughly 40 percent is more or less typical for Vassar applicants; a strong performance compared to the 28 percent success rate for all proposals submitted to the NSF. Working alongside faculty members as they prepare their grant proposals, Hohenberger has noticed some changes nonetheless. “I’ve sensed an increase in just general anxiety about the likelihood of the funding, an awareness that the budgets are constrained and it’s more competitive,” he said. It’s partly why Esteban’s idea of using crowd-funding intrigued him. “Once we had some of the basic questions answered everyone supported in principle as an opportunity to complement both extra and intramural funding sources for faculty but also as a new mode for fund raising,” said Hohenberger. It became clear early on that the success of Esteban’s project would hinge on making the science accessible to the average readers. Traditional grants submitted to the NSF are peer reviewed, written for the eyes of a group of specialists. On the other hand, the public proposals on Experiment.com have to be understood by scientist and layperson alike. “Regardless of how an experiment is funded it should be well-designed,” said Esteban. “However, I did choose one, a particular experiment that
Assistant Professor of Biology David Esteban is looking to the crowdfunding site, Experiment.com, to finance his current research on virology with assistant Maggie Ginoza ’16. They hope to raise $4,500. Meanwhile, this past August, a young man’s proposal for $10 to make a potato salad raised more than $55,000. The website Experiment.com, however, appears to have safeguards in place to weed out insincere applicants. Before any proposal is posted on the site, it has to be approved by a panel of scientists. Their model differs from other crowd funding sites in another important way. Backers to a project on Kickstarter or GoFundMe will receive recognition through some type of prize, larger donations being compensated with prizes of higher value. Experiment.com backers, on the other hand, never receive any material compensation—giving is its own reward. As Ginoza said, “The idea is that you are trying
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to promote science and that you are giving back the knowledge to the community and keeping them in the loop and updated with your research.” Hohenberger feels that the popularity of crowdfunding scholarships might be around for awhile. He said, “Experiment.com is fairly new and I would like to see it perpetuated.” He then added, “The mechanics are different, but fundamentally it’s the same. You have an objective, you need money to reach that objective, and you have to justify both your need and what you want to accomplish.” Esteban also reports enthusiasm among his colleagues and said, “I think the department is always excited of seeking research funds however we can get it—traditional or not traditional.”
April 23, 2015
FEATURES
Page 7
Wheels turn for students eager to explore Poughkeepsie Sarah Sandler Reporter
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our guides may brag about how rarely students need to get off campus to go into the city, but keeping within a walking distance radius for four years isn’t everyone’s favorite thing to do, either. Between the overexpensive taxis and the inconsistent shuttles, there aren’t many ways to get away from campus for a few hours that don’t include overstaying your welcome at Gusto or the Crafted Kup. This is where students’ having their own cars becomes an advantage. For seniors especially, having a car makes their time at Vassar easier. Nich Graham ’15 drove his car from Redondo Beach, Calif., so that he wouldn’t need to rely on anyone else for a ride. “Living in the THs is a lot easier because shopping is never a hassle. In addition to shopping, I occasionally use my car to get to rugby practice at the farm if I don’t want to bike,” he said. Marcos Vargas ’15 needed a car even before he lived in the TAs. Vargas had to have his car at Vassar because he did field work at the Department of Health and Vassar Brothers Hospital. Despite his familiarity with living in a small city, Poughkeepsie still made him claustrophobic. “I grew up in Salinas, which is a city very similar to Poughkeepsie, in Central California,” he said. “I felt trapped my first two years at Vassar because I didn’t have the ability to go anywhere, but once I got a car, I realized how beautiful and open this area is.” Vargas went on to say, “It’s very much like home in that as soon as you leave the small cities, you become immersed in nature. A lot
of people talk about being close to the city and how great that is, but I much prefer driving to a mountain and then proceeding to get lost for a couple of hours on a trail.” Graham agreed that missing out on the more rural aspects of the Hudson Valley was a downside of not having transportation to get there. Having a car has allowed Graham to appreciate more of Poughkeepsie than students normally see from Raymond Avenue. He said, “Traveling through the Poughkeepsie area is a lot of fun by car because Poughkeepsie has a lot more to offer than people think. Just driving around you can see some really cool architecture.” For some, just getting off campus once or twice a week can be enough, as Walter Gabriel ‘17 believes. Like Vargas, Gabriel ’17 does fieldwork at Vassar Brothers Hospital. He doesn’t have his car at Vassar because, as he said, “I feel like there are a lot of opportunities here at Vassar which don’t demand that I leave campus often.” Sometimes, he goes along with his friends who do have cars and he added, “When I do leave campus, it’s fun to go out with friends and meet people out on the town. This weekend we went to Marist and had a great time.” Graham and Vargas are no strangers to spending hours just seeing the sights in a car. Before his classes started this year, Graham traveled over 3,000 miles on a road trip journey to Vassar from his home. Instead of taking the quickest journey to school, he took the opportunity to see a lot of the country that many from the East Coast may not even think about. He made the trip in his 1992 Chevy Corvette with his dad. “We made a
grand trip out of it. We took about a week to finish the trip, stopping at Mount Rushmore, and passed through the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota,” he said. He added, “Then we continued the trip up through Canada and eventually down through Vermont to Poughkeepsie.” Vargas had his car delivered to Poughkeepsie by a family friend, but, he said, “I will be driving back at the end of this year and am planning on a cross-country trip.” He won’t be doing so alone, however. “My brother is flying over from Cali and wants to see the South. We’re currently planning on starting our trip by going straight south, checking out Georgia, Mississippi, and possibly driving to New Orleans before heading West.” Having, or having access to, a car, gives one many extra-curricular opportunities that they wouldn’t otherwise receive. Instead of making the long journey like Graham or Vargas from her home in Arkansas, Knabe drives a Vassar fieldwork vehicle. As a previous member of the equestrian team, she would drive 45 minutes to Rhinebeck Equine every Friday morning, which is, as she explained, “A specialty equine, or horse, hospital that has both inpatient and outpatients services as well as surgery.” She went on to say, “It is nice to have a change of scenery. This will be my fourth semester doing fieldwork and I have always driven to my internships. This has really allowed me to see the Hudson Valley area around Vassar.” For his fieldwork at Vassar Brothers, Gabriel said, “I assist the nurses in the Car-
dio-Thoracic step down unit. I usually go once a week for about four hours. It’s a great experience and I’ve learned much more about patient care there than I could possibly learn about in class.” Graham doesn’t have a job or fieldwork that requires him to be off campus, so he uses his car to escape the monotony of the library on weekends. Quite often this winter, he drove his car to go skiing and added, “I spent most Sundays off campus at Ski mountain, which meant driving roughly 90 minutes in the morning and then 90 minutes back while tired from skiing or snowboarding all day.” Besides the convenience of having a car, there are also many costs. As Graham explained, the regular semester parking fee is steep. “And for a while there, the gas prices were so high, I would try to avoid driving the best I could,” He said. “Not to mention the snowy winter where digging out the car is another chore you have to do if you want to go anywhere.” For Knabe, there is an added aspect of danger that comes with having access to the fieldwork cars. Her trips have always gone smoothly, until last week when she was in a head-on collision on her way to fieldwork. She said, “I have to say that it was pretty unfortunate, but at least I have a nice neck brace to wear to class.” Despite not having his own car on campus, Gabriel added, “I do like to get out into the Poughkeepsie area. It is quite beautiful to go to the Walkway Over the Hudson and explore that area. There are a lot of nice restaurants and bars around there.”
Beyond Chicago Hall: SLE offers non-curricular languages DANCE continued from page 1
ested in. Like, why did they want to take this language? Why did they want to learn about this culture?’ And then, address that and make it really specific for the people in their classes.” Srivastava wrote about her Hindi class, “I actually had fourteen people sign up for mine. Others have even more.” Metreveli said she was able to catch up with Dell after her Brazilian Portuguese class. “She had the most signups, 24 signups or something, so most of them showed up,” Metreveli said. The classes are taught in Chicago, so the classroom, Metreveli laughed, was very full. “It went really well. She actually brought Brazilian cake or candy or something like that.” The inclusion of different cultural aspects in these language classes are the main difference between SLE and any classes of SILP that Vassar offers. For Srivastava, coming up with lesson plans is the most exciting part of being a fellow. “So I sent out an email today with some different options because I want to craft the lessons around what people want from them,” She wrote. “I’m pretty sure it’ll involve a lot of swear words. And chai.” This year, Chen taught alongside native Haitian Creole speakers to teach a group of 10 Vassar Haiti Project members before they went to Haiti. “It was also incredibly valuable to have students of Haitian backgrounds be a part of
the learning process to share with us the cultural nuances and specificities that we would simply never come across in a textbook,” She said. The process of bringing SLE to Vassar’s campus took much longer than anyone anticipated. “It was difficult getting funds from Vassar, which is weird,” James mentioned. “We applied to get a pre-org last semester and then they rejected it for a very odd reason, but then we applied to the president’s fund, and we got the grant for Dialogue Across Differences.” Metreveli added, “That’s why we’re starting this late. I actually started to bring SLE in the beginning of last semester, even spring semester, that was when I started contacting Brown. But finances are what kind of pushed us here, but we’re fine.” Metreveli had the idea to bring SLE to Vassar’s campus in the first place. “Tufts started it last semester, and my best friend goes to Tufts, and in one of the Skype calls it just came up,” She explained. “She’s on the board there, so she was just telling me about this program, and was like ‘Wow, this is so cool!’” From there, Metreveli contacted the central SLE office at Brown and brought the program to Vassar. The trouble with financing had to do with the cost of materials, James explained. Most of the funding that Vassar provides goes back to Brown. The fellows at Vassar offer their teach-
Alec Ferretti/The Miscellany News
The program’s basic focus is on underrepresented languages and cultures on college campuses that don’t have access to a formal academic setting. These languages are picked up by native speakers, or at the very least, highly proficient fluent speakers who are also undergrads. The peer-to-peer learning, then, stimulates a more friendly environment, as stated by SLE’s Mission Statement. It also recognizes, Srivastava wrote, that not everyone wants to have to dedicate all of their time and energy into fully learning a language. Rather, she said, “it’s a place people can get the ball rolling, kind of like an exploratory learning community.” Director of Evaluation and Continued Engagement for Vassar SLE, Tamsin Yee Lin Chen ’15, agreed that the SLE program is vital to understanding underrepresented cultures. “Yes, I could more easily find the resources to learn French, the other official language of Haiti...but just 5 to 10 percent of the Haitian population is bilingual in French and Creole, while 90 to 95 percent speak Creole exclusively!” she wrote in an emailed statement. “SLE hits home for me precisely because it recognizes the significance of languages like Haitian Creole.” In their mission statement, SLE Founder Amelia Friedman said, “Nelson Mandela once said, if you speak to a man in your language, it’ll go to his head. If you speak to a man in his own language, it’ll go to his heart.” As the leader of the on-the-ground program management of volunteers from the Vassar community and members of Chermaitre, a rural village in Northwest Haiti, Chen wrote, “I cannot overstate how important I think speaking the local language is in building mutual trust and understanding in development initiatives.” Metreveli explained, “The main point is that we teach languages that are not usually taught in an academic setting.” This means Spanish, German or French are all off-limits to the SLE fellows. James added, “At other universities, they’ve offered Cantonese, and Vietnamese, Malay, things like that.” The fellows have a lot of freedom when it comes to what they want to share with their students. “It’s really dependent on what the fellows want to teach and how they want to structure it,” James said. “They make lesson plans every week on what they want to cover, and when we were having out in-person training with the fellows, they were like ‘oh, we really want to talk to our students and see what they’re inter-
Pictured above, Saisha Srivastava ‘18 is a language fellow for the Student Language Exchange (SLE). Though Hindi is offered at Vassar, she’ll be teaching it to her peers outside of the classroom.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
ing as volunteers. “But we also have some money for ourselves for printing or getting snacks,” Metreveli said. Once they had funding, SLE wasted no time finding language fellows. “There were emails going around for this program for a while during its inception and programming,” Srivastava wrote. “I think one of the language fellows sent it to me because I study Chinese on campus.” After submitting the application, she added, “This was followed by a questionnaire, interviews, training sessions, they really made us jump through the hoops to make sure they thought we could do this.” James and Metreveli agreed that they wanted to make sure their fellows would do justice to the SLE program. “Lioba Ungurianu, she’s the head of the self-instructional language program, and we’ve asked her for help and advice on just choosing fellows when we interviewed some of the students who wanted to teach their language,” James said. Additionally, they used the guidance of Professor of German Jeffrey Schneider to help with training. “We have two types of training to be a fellow: One is online training, which comes from central SLE Brown office, and we have in person training, like coordinators, like co-executive board,” Metreveli said. “It’s a chill process,” she added. After its delayed initiation, Vassar SLE has run into an additional hitch. Next semester will prove to be a rough transition period. “I’m abroad, our communications person is abroad, and two people are graduating,” James explained. “So Elene’s going to be the only one who’s left in the fall.” In addition to James and Metreveli, there is a Program Manager, Communications Coordinator and a Director of Evaluation and Continued Engagement. “So we’re recruiting people for our exec board,” Metreveli said. “There are these four positions open, and we’ve also started recruiting new fellows for next semester.” All things considered, the future is bright for Vassar SLE. “Sometimes you just want to check a language out and get the feel of it without having to commit to a whole class, or take a course, or do drill sessions, you know?” Srivastava wrote. “This is basically exactly that. It’s like the free sample piece of cake in a little cup you get outside the bakery before they lure you inside to buy the cheesecake. And I have a feeling people are going to want to buy the cheesecake.”
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April 23, 2015
No-Vice, Boilerplate organize dialogue about safe spaces Julia Cunningham and Claire Standaert Assistant Features Editors
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courtesy of Alani Cruz via Flickr
he CCMPR was tense. How do you begin a conversation on how to begin a conversation? This Wednesday, a collaboration of between NoViCE and Boilerplate Magazine organized this round table discussion to gauge a general sense of what people feel about and how they would hope to define safer spaces around campus. Members in attendance were not only from No-ViCE and Boilerplate, but ALANA and LGBTQ orgs, and any student who wanted to be a part of the conversation. To clarify, member of No-ViCE and Arts and Culture editor of Boilerplate, Tati Esposito von Mueffling ’17 said, “The term safe spaces doesn’t just apply to a physical location. It’s not specific to venues or music venues. It’s a more recent term, where it’s gained traction.” She added, “Space also refers to identities on gender and sexuality,” A safe space isn’t necessarily safe for everyone, then. Labeling a space as “safer” is a more honest way of describing a space that’s trying to be inclusive towards everyone. “There’s something very special about safe spaces. There’s an assumption as to what a safe space is, the conversation tends to remain static, and people tend to have an idea of what a safe space means to them, so that they [can] then sit with that idea,” Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Boilerplate Lanbo Yang ’15 explained. Adding the “r” to “safe” creates a new meaning. Zack Wilks ’17, who runs No-ViCE, said, “It feels more active. We’ll do our best to make everyone feel as comfortable as possible.” Wilks went on to say, “The idea behind it is that you can’t guarantee a safe space. The idea of this policy is to make places as safe as possible. We’ll do our best, but we’re not just going to say that it’s a safe space because that would be an exaggeration.” The idea for this project stemmed from members of No-ViCE attending a concert at Bard in October. The venue, Wilks explained, had posters for safe spaces all around. As an org that deals primarily with music and artists, having concerts in designated safe spaces is cru-
On Wednesday, April 22, No-ViCE and Boilerplate hosted a discussion about creating safer spaces on Vassar’s campus. The idea for the project stemmed from a concert No-ViCE members attended at Bard. cial. “The kind of behavior that their poster was calling out and that most safe, or safer space, policies are calling out, are, being unaware of the space you’re taking up, getting in someone else’s personal space to the point of making them incredibly uncomfortable, or basically lack of consent in terms of physical contact.” When it comes to being in a music venue, then, the safe space works both ways: getting into other peoples’ space in a sexually inappropriate way, or disrespecting the artist in any way. “And part of the physical aspect of it relates to moshing,” Esposito von Mueffling said. “Moshing is basically slam dancing,” Wilks explained. “It’s more common with punk music, or just anything really loud. It’s a tricky thing. Because some artists don’t like it when their audience does that because they believe, at least more times than not, that the people that are moshing aren’t really taking into consideration the people around them that don’t want to be
moshing,” Wilks said. “It can be borderline violent,” Esposito von Mueffling added. Cases such as this, everyone agreed, are all too similar to the Mug. Following along the lines of what Bard did at their concert, these Vassar students hope to achieve the safe effect. Wilks said, “[Bard’s] Safe Spaces are essentially looking after one another, if someone’s being sketchy, call them out—that sort of thing. And we thought at least that the kind of behavior that their safe spaces poster was condemning or calling out was this sort of thing that a lot of people encounter in the Mug. So we thought that we should probably have some sort of policy here, but probably improve upon it.” They also hope to prevent more than just physical disrespect. Esposito von Mueffling said, “Our policy should talk about not disrespecting people’s identities about sexuality, gender, race or ability.” This extends into the
classroom. Esposito von Mueffling continued, “A safe space in an academic situation could be a professor saying ‘this classroom is a safe space, any opinion of yours, any concern of yours, ask any question no matter how ignorant or offensive you think it might be.’ So the problem with that is the assumption that you might be making it safe for some people, but the questions that you’re asking may be fundamentally offensive to other people in the classroom. And then, a professor might also use it to say ‘this is a space where all identities are fully respected,’ but you can’t guarantee that: to say ‘this is a safe space’ and then barely create some kind of equality on all levels of identity.” To initiate change, it began with simple discussion. Wilks said, “It’s why we didn’t want to go ahead and just make a policy. The talk is open for anyone who wants to come. It’s open to everybody. It’s not just NoViCE and Boilerplate.” The roundtable discussion was also important in starting a conversation without the involvement of Administration. Yang said, “I think it’s really good to have a student-made, student-enforced policy. If we took it to an administrative level, I’m not sure that it would have the exact weight. People worked on this, students worked on this, people who use the Mug worked on this. Now and in the future, when people want to rent out the Mug space, something will be associated with the Mug and other spaces. This will help the orgs who plan things in the Mug picture how this policy aligns or have a little how-to on there when they spread their Facebook page or something.” Co-Editor-in-Chief of Boilerplate Brittani Skyers-White ’16 added, “It’s student-made, so hopefully that means if new concerns come up in the future, it won’t be a fixed policy. It’s open to change, so it’ll adapt to whatever the Mug or whatever takes us off campus become.” Yang summed up the purpose of the roundtable discussion: “I think the goal is to not silence people on campus when they express themselves, but to find a way for that person to express themselves in a way that engages other people, and engages other people respectfully.”
A breakfast favorite there by your side even when bae isn’t Penina Remler columnist
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courtesy of stevewhitaker via flickr
can’t begin to picture a life without bae in it. Although it hurts me to share my bae with anyone other than the salt and pepper, the perfect bacon egg and cheese is a meal that no one should pass up. When done correctly, this breakfast sandwich cures all symptoms ranging from hunger, hangover, bad grades, bad break-ups, boredom and so on. With bae, you really can’t go wrong. I don’t want to come off as an overly obsessed or possessive person, but in truth, bae is always on my mind—from the moment I fall asleep to the second I wake up in the morning, these thoughts linger on my way to the Deece or Retreat (depending on what hour I get myself out of bed). The colors of egg, bacon and cheese swirl in my mind until I begin to taste a little salt and pepper. So many times I find myself distracted in class thinking of bae and have to remember that I cannot let my undeniable love get in the way of my academic studies. This rendition of the classic breakfast phenomenon uses popovers as opposed to the standard bagel sandwich (Warning: this transformation is wildly addicting and once you try one, you may never want to go back to a “breakfast classic”). The following recipe will serve four people comfortably, debatably two really hungry people and considerably one extremely hungover human being. The fresh, homemade popover sandwich will require popover tins (these usually hold six wells in each pan). This portion of the recipe first requires rosemary, thyme and a bay leaf. Together, gather these ingredients onto a piece of cheesecloth and tie the ends of the sheet to form what best resembles a small pouch. Transfer the bag, along with milk, into a sauce pot and let it sit above medium heat. As the milk warms up, organize eggs into a separate stand mixer (with an attached whisk) and add salt as you whisk the eggs. By the time the eggs are well whisked, the milk should be heated up and you can now pre-
pare the popover tins with nonstick spray. Upon doing so, place the tins on baking sheets and put them into the oven to warm up. Once the milk begins to form bubbles around the pot, transfer the pot away from the heat and throw out the small herb infused pouch. Combine one-third of the infused milk into the whisked eggs and add the rest slowly (to make sure that the eggs won’t curdle). Finally, whisk in flour (one cup at a time) and remove the heated tins from the oven so that you can insert the popover batter into each well. Right before placing them into the oven, sprinkle each well with Parmesan cheese and bake for 20 minutes (or until the popovers appear to rise by half of their original size). Lastly, rotate the pan so that the pastries will bake evenly and leave them in for another 20 minutes (or until golden brown). While the popovers cool on a tin rack, it is time to prepare the bacon and eggs. For the bacon, first preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Lay it down on a shallow baking sheet in the middle rack for about 12 minutes, or until the bacon is crispy. Once the bacon is cooked, allow it to sit separately until it is cool. For the eggs, begin by whisking them together in a large bowl along with marinated tomatoes, cheese, salt and pepper. After mixing these components together, heat up a large sautée pan and melt butter over medium heat. Pour in the whisked mixture and lower the heat as you consistently stir your eggs together until they are well scrambled (a wooden spoon is the easiest utensil to do this with). Right before you are ready to turn off the heat, add in chives, parsley and red pepper flakes and mix them into the dish. Lastly, return to your popovers and cut each in half horizontally. The bottom half will soon be accompanied by the scrambled eggs and topped with a slice (or two) of bacon before sealing the sandwich with the top half. Feel free to sprinkle additional cheese or garnishes and the obligatory ketchup or sriracha sauce on the side.
The Ingredients Ingredients Bacon 4 (1/4 inch) thick-cut slices of applewood-smoked bacon Popovers 1 sprig fresh rosemary 1 sprig fresh thyme 1 fresh bay leaf 4 cups whole milk 8 large eggs 2 tablespoons kosher salt Cooking spray 4 cups all-purpose flour 2 1/4 cups grated Parmesan cheese
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
Eggs 12 large eggs 1/2 cup Marinated Tomatoes 1 1/2 cups extra-virgin olive oil/ 1 tsp red pepper flakes/ 2 packed cups sun-dried tomatoes/ 3 fresh basil leaves 1/4 grated Parmesan cheese kosher salt ground pepper 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 tablespoon canola oil 1 tablespoon fresh chives (chopped) 2 tablespoons fresh parsley (chopped) 2 tablespoons red pepper flakes
April 23, 2015
OPINIONS
Page 9
The Miscellany News Staff Editorial
Senior Class Council succeeds in pushing for traditions
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his past weekend saw not just Vassar’s annual 50 Nights celebration, commemorating the final weeks of school for seniors, but also a new raffle policy set by the Office of Residential Life to accommodate underclassmen interested in staying as guests for Senior Week. As the two events deeply involve the senior class, students already expect the Senior Class Council’s involvement in the planning of both. However, this year in particular represents an exceptional effort by the class council for these events to even take place, and furthermore to be executed successfully. Therefore, we at The Miscellany News believe the Class of 2015 Council deserves commendation for their work, both in ensuring a successful 50 Nights celebration, but also for negotiating with the Office of Residential Life an effective policy for signing in underclassmen considering the office originally denied this option for Senior Week events. Earlier in the year, few students expected a 50 Nights celebration to be held at all, let alone at The Chance Theater. Last April, following severe destruction of The Chance including damage to four out of five buses used to transport students to and from campus, it was believed that future 50 Nights events would be canceled due to poor student behavior—much like the cancelation of the Shiva Rave and HomoHop. It wasn’t until the March 2 VSA Council
Meeting that 2015 Class President Zoe Fullerton confirmed that, contrary to popular belief on campus, there would indeed be a 50 Nights event this year, held once again at The Chance Theater in Poughkeepsie, The fact alone that this event was authorized following last year’s complications demonstrates how significant the efforts of the Senior Class Council, ViCE and other campus organizations must have been in order to convince Vassar administrators to permit the event. The reported success of this year’s 50 Nights celebration further demonstrates the Senior Class Council’s ability to also ensure future senior classes can also have the celebration. Another recent success of the senior class came after the Office of Residential Life announced to seniors on April 16 that a raffle system for signing in underclassmen to stay during Senior Week would be put in place. Originally, in an email to the Class of 2015 on April 3, Director of Residential Life Luis Inoa stated no underclassmen could be signed in for Senior Week. This announcement meant that seniors could not request underclassmen to stay during the time between the last day of finals and commencement for campus events. The reasoning for this was due to the significant number of students already staying on campus, and the exceptionally long Senior Week taking place this year. However, Inoa later reevaluated the sit-
uation. In his most recent email, he mentioned the negotiation process that had taken place “After talking things through with your class representatives we have decided to reconsider our initial position,” he wrote. Res Life will now instead have a raffle system, where any seniors interested in signing in guests through Commencement could enter to randomly win a chance to sign one person in for Senior Week. While it’s already part of Vassar culture for the senior class to sign in underclassmen through Commencement, the raffle system is even an improvement to previous systems for authorizing Senior Week signins. Previously the Office of Residential Life would offer sign-ins at a first-come first-served rate through an online form. This meant students not awake or available when the form went online would be unlikely to sign in underclassmen, and that those who even filled out the online form immediately would not necessarily know if they had successfully signed in an underclassmen, as the system depended on each user being able to type quickly and have a strong internet connection. The new system instead offers everyone interested in signing in underclassmen an equal chance to do so. While the random nature of the raffle process will exclude some students from staying, this solution allows for a more fair and equal approach. Some students, through social media and
anonymous online message boards like Yik Yak, have criticized members of the Senior Class Council for a variety of reasons. However, it is unlikely these events would have even taken place, let alone in their current form, without the council’s efforts. It is already a privilege, not a right, to have these campus events and opportunities available to the senior class, and previous senior classes have unfortunately put these privileges in jeopardy. However the tactful actions of Senior Class Council have given students a second chance to prove their ability to act responsibly at student events, as well as to have a more enjoyable Senior Week. Ultimately the success of student events, especially large events such as 50 Nights and Senior Week, depends on not just effective planning from the senior class council, but also collaboration, negotiation and communication with the appropriate administrative offices. While the student body has yet to see events like HomoHop or the Shiva Raid return, it’s fortunate to see how positive an outcome can come from a situation like the wake of 50 Nights. With a different leadership, there’s no guarantee that the Class of 2015 would have had either 50 Nights or an opportunity to sign in students for the seniors’ last days on campus. —The Staff Editorial represents the opinions of at least 2/3 of our Editorial Board.
Critics ignore Amtrak’s value for commuters, travelers Joshua Sherman Opinions Editor
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n America, talking about rail subsidies is a rather polarizing argument. One one hand, you’ll get those who think we ought to have a more European or Japanese model, favoring more extensive subsidies for higher speed rail service between major metropolitan areas. On the other hand, you’ll get staunch critics who favor privatization or even absolute dissolution rather than spend the $1 billion-plus each year in subsidies. Personally, I fall in the latter category, and it isn’t just because I hate driving. Rail subsidies are not as bad some may make it out to be, and could be essential in offering more ecological and efficient ways to travel between cities, improve local and regional rail services, and ultimately get America out of its plane and car-centric lifestyle. These thoughts come to mind on the heels of a recent report by one of Amtrak’s advisory committees, which recommended necessary repairs and capital projects in Amtrak’s busiest region: the Northeast Corridor. Located right here in a route stretching from Boston to Washington D.C., Amtrak’s woes involve not bullet trains, but essential bridges and tunnels. Frankly, Amtrak isn’t sure where the money will come to pay for these improvements, which include 100-year old tunnels beneath New York’s Hudson River and a 100-year old bridge crossing the Connecticut River on the path toward Boston. As you may notice, this infrastructure is old —really old—and was built by long-defunct railroad companies during the golden age of rail travel. But now, no one wants to pick up the tab (CityLab, “8 Critical rail projects that Amtrak cannot afford,” 04.21.15 ). These concerns also come alongside an active, ongoing debate to electrify more Amtrak routes and expand high speed rail services nationwide. Some projects are modest, such as a plan to electrify the Albany-New York route that passes through Poughkeepsie. Other, more ambitious ideas call for the creation of a new, 17,000 mile high speed corridor that connects the entire country by 2030. The U.S. High Speed Rail Association primarily advocates this project, however, online rail fans have also published websites and interesting infographics about the topic. It seems like an almost crazy idea, but at the
very least it wants to put high speed rail in America back on the table. But pie in the sky ideas like a national high speed rail system are even farther away when you realize just how problematic Amtrak funding is in the status quo. The Northeast Corridor is Amtrak’s only profitable route, meaning it requires no annual subsidies to operate. However, no one is stepping up to contribute to the $4 billion budget CityLab notes as necessary to keep the Northeast Corridor in operation. What this often bridges into is a long, still-ongoing debate about subsidizing public transit in the United States. However, Criticizing rail subsidies is a fallacy as great as Romney’s 2012 war on Big Bird. Many point to the $1 billion subsidy rail passengers receive each year, but in reality the cost is less than that of subsidies the federal government spends on roads each year. According to The Economist, the U.S. government subsidies about $0.439 for each mile of track, while spending a slightly higher $0.447 for each mile of road (“Road v. train: Amtrak’s true costs,” 11.07.11).
“Amtrak’s woes involve not bullet trains, but essential bridges and tunnels.” Some may claim that it’s unfair to claim the limited rail routes in operation to the massive system we call the Highway Interstate system. Technically speaking, these critics are not wrong. However, there’s no argument why or why not Amtrak cannot appropriately scale, if given a larger track system, to provide equal or better service for the same subsidy. Just as Amtrak is a loss-leader on long-haul routes between California and Chicago, not all Interstates are worth their existence. Still, when we add up everything. We can’t however pick and choose what’s worth keeping for essential intercity rail services, as that defeats the entire purpose for such a public service. The goal of public transit and a national system of roads and railways is to facilitate the fundamental way we’ve done
business for decades. Such criticisms of Amtrak also fail to incorporate how different tracks are used in comparison to roads. We subsidize Amtrak to keep train ticket prices down, not pad anyone’s pockets over at the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. But roads are meanwhile funded through myriad other expenses beyond direct and indirect subsidies. The Economist’s report does not compare the gas tax or other vehicle taxes to fund state and federal road projects. Other than charging freight operators, passengers will need to use Amtrak or a state commuter rail service to use the rails we subsidize. It’s far different than getting on a Greyhound, in a car, or in a truck. This makes it much easier for critics to target Amtrak as a wasteful line on the U.S. annual budget. Amtrak can only source federal subsidies and ticket revenues, leaving far fewer ways to generate revenue for its operations. This money goes toward the Highway Trust Fund used for primarily new road constructions. Amtrak receives some of this money for its capital projects, but hardly as much as what state and federal highway agencies receive. In any case, the money that Amtrak receives is a fraction that we spend on maintaining the thousands of miles of pavement we maintain for all our cars and trucks. This isn’t even including all the extra money we spend subsidizing air travel in our post Sept. 11 world, either. Perhaps what fuels this hatred of rail is that historically railroad services used to be profitable industries. But this was more than 70 years ago, in a time before planes and roads alike. But what hasn’t changed is the infrastructure we use in rail systems. The vast majority of Amtrak’s system are tracks, bridges and tunnels privately built more than a century ago. It’s a miracle that the tunnels beneath New York City survived not just all these years of service, but also the wake of Hurricane Sandy and other natural disasters. But rather than implement essential, immediate improvements to our rail infrastructure that are long overdue. Amtrak isn’t the only one that suffers from these ignored improvements either. The tunnels beneath New York City, for example, are owned by Amtrak but are shared with both the Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit companies, both state-funded and
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subsidized transit agencies. These commuter rail companies rent usage of these tunnels, but neither state is jumping up to offer any funds to replace these ancient systems, which simultaneously cause much congestion given record ridership in the New York Metropolitan area. Amtrak was given ownership of these tunnels after the collapse of the Penn Central railroad way back in the 1970s. We seem to underestimate how essential this infrastructure has become in the daily lives for millions of commuters in New York and New Jersey. Still, that doesn’t stop politicians from complaining about how and why we continue to subsidize intercity rail, not realizing how much of a connection it has to commuter rail.
“Criticizing rail subsidies is a fallacy as great as Romney’s 2012 war on Big Bird.” With all these things said, I find it deeply concerning how much we ignore our rail infrastructure. This is in a way not even about the economic or ecological benefits of passenger rail. We seem to misunderstand fundamentally that rail is not simply something you can, with the wave of a magic wand, privatize and remove from the federal budget. All in all, we’re dealing with just 1.5 billion out of 3.9 trillion, equating just 0.0004 percent of the federal budget. It wouldn’t make a dent in any part of our many expenses to run the U.S. government. With even my biases aside, millions of people each year depend on some aspect of Amtrak’s services or infrastructure. It would be foolish to ignore Amtrak’s value to major metropolitan regions like New York City, Washington D.C. and Boston is far greater than the mere $1.5 billion the government spends each year. The longer we try to ignore necessary infrastructure improvements, the longer we play a dangerous game of chicken with our cities that we will otherwise lose. —Joshua Sherman ’16 is an English major.
OPINIONS
Page 10
April 23, 2015
Social media 2016 millennial voters may carry election makes users W into products Emily Sayer Columnist
Zach Rippe
Sports Editor
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hen we think about Internet usage and online “exploration,” whether it be in the form of lurking through different forums, writing our own content or creating unique, online art, the notion of freedom comes to mind. Sure we are being monitored by the NSA, but for the most part, we are still the masters of our own Internet experience. On Twitter we can say anything we want (as long as it fits into 140 characters). On Instagram, we can take photos of people, places and events at our own volition. Sites like Reddit allow us to post, view and comment on information, whether it be in the form of a link to another site, or our own, original hypothesis. Sure most websites are businesses, but we are simply consumers who can engage with this content legally (and sometimes illegally) on our own volition. Right? If we take a look beyond the surface functions of these sites and apps themselves, we find that we are not simply users, nor are we customers. No, we are these sites’ products. Take Facebook for example. Every time you search something, like a page, share or click a link, you are telling Facebook and the host of advertisers it sells you to just exactly how to customize your web experience with their wonderful, colorful advertisements. I’m sure many people know this and are just like “whatever,” but it kind of freaks me out. Sure the monetary cost is nothing, but we pay in different ways. If we aren’t surfing “incognito” or using our trusty TOR browsers, we are living in a personalized, ad-filled online experience. If you are at all concerned, or even the least bit curious, I recommend installing an extension for your web browser of choice called “Ghostery.” Ghostery is great in that when you access a web page, it immediately tells you how many advertising companies are tracking your data. If you click on the icon you can then see which specific companies are following you. You can then manually switch off each company, freeing yourself from the seemingly ever present eye of corporate America. The app does warn you that switching off certain things may affect your web experience, but I’m super paranoid and usually do it anyway. This notion of us as the “product” extends far beyond the realm of social media sites. I acknowledge this sense of exploitation of online commercial capital through the form of blogs, social media platforms and fan sites, yet still feel a sense of passivity and ambivalence towards my role in the process. Sure I, just like everyone in my generation, am angered by unpaid internships, the lengthy, yet unavoidable stepping-stone process that leads into a flimsy career trajectory. Yet when it comes to creating content, writing blogs, posting comments on news sites, I passively contribute content that feels necessary, fun, fulfilling and yet completely independent of digital labor. The content we proliferate, the cults we follow and the things we love have all been intrinsically linked to the digital market. When we create fan-videos, fan-art, fan-fiction, they further promote the object or entity we love. We do not think of objects of fandom as commodities, despite the fact that that is exactly what they are. When we produce this content, we destroy our own agency. We are reduced to what seem to be grassroot marketing campaigns for the objects we love. Still, in this sense, my name too becomes a brand. I am both the content producer and the product that they sell. The commodification of the self manifests itself most prominently online. We market ourselves along side of the products we propagate and advertise for the purpose of a further proliferation of these products and an advancement in the professional field. Online, we are trapped in a vicious cycle that reduces our name to a brand in the best case scenario. While we acknowledge the necessity of this, we also downplay the reality that the ever-accelerating circuits of images, impulses and feelings that we are reduced to digitally. No matter our most personal and earnest intentions, we are feeding this mass digital marketplace that exploits our pleasure, creativity and ambition. —Zach Rippe ’16 is a media studies major.
ith the country getting revved up for the 2016 Presidential campaigning season in the coming months, shifting cultural atmospheres are likely to play a game-changing role in the reception of old bipartisan traditions. The millennials are rising as a major voting demographic, and in order to win the group’s favor, candidates need to reassess their platforms and create new political discussions oriented towards topics otherwise shied away from at the national level. This generation represents the most diverse population to vote in an American presidential election to date; given this fact, the GOP, popularly regarded as a party that does not promote minority strength or tolerate change, must successfully project a more favorable image in this race to stay afloat against competitors like Hillary Clinton. Democrats, on the other hand, can rely on their party’s achievements in forging a well-received message of acceptance and diversity. In Clinton’s video announcing her candidacy, most shots were composed entirely of families from all ethnicities and classes. This video alone shows Democratic confidence in that sphere, but in order to defend successfully against Republican criticism, they need to prove that the party can continue to make progress in a third term. In this race, will the pressure to accommodate demographic changes prevail over the current lack of faith in government, procuring a victory for Democrats? Or will recent trends in the voting population, as indicated by the crushing wave of conservatism in the midterm elections, overturn the rise in liberalism amongst millennials, securing the presidency for Republicans? Since the 1980s, the scope of issues that Americans want to see addressed has transformed drastically, and the remnants of Reagan-era voters are struggling to hold their grip over national conversations. In an opinion piece published by CNN, Julian Zelizer states, “This generation has grown up in an era of great ethnic and social diversity…
and one in which older sexual and gender norms have been shattered. 68 percent of them favor same-sex marriage, and 69 percent support legalizing marijuana. Conventional party lines of division over questions such as abortion or immigration don’t resonate with them, and they want to be talking about other questions such as economics and climate change that seem to get short shrift in Washington” (CNN, “Who will grab the millennial vote?” 02.23.15). Younger voters are rallying to call attention to problems such as income inequality, unemployment and the poor job market, affordable or widely accessible healthcare, marriage equality, student debt and poverty. Although the recent midterm elections resulted in domination by the Republican party and victories for those harping on different issues, such as tax breaks for high income households, millennials are expected to make up a sizable percentage of the vote in the presidential election. Because of this, candidates who continue to cater to the predominantly white, elderly, conservative population are guaranteeing a definite hit to their own party’s prosperity. A Harvard poll conducted in 2014 indicates that this generation shows, “a disenchantment with politics in general...Millennials continue to look more liberal than other age groups, but they give low marks to both parties in Congress. They’re also no longer significantly more likely than older generations to approve of president Obama” (Harvard Institute of Politics, “Likely Millennial Voters Up-for-Grabs in Upcoming Midterm Elections,“ 10.29.14). The bipartisan schism that has so fiercely severed voters over the past decades has not necessarily slackened in the 21st century, but it has been redefined on social terms—we now have the ideological concepts of social liberalism vs. social conservatism, and though the exact politics of the younger demographic cannot be pinned down, cultural trends point to social liberalism as a major uniting factor. The GOP’s only hope for the next few months is that the public’s current lack of faith in the government will allow senators Marco Rubio, Ted
Cruz, Rand Paul and possibly Jeb Bush to capture voters’ attention. Paul in particular boasts a strong anti-government message, his official statement announcing his candidacy being, “I am running for president to return our country to the principles of liberty and limited government.” But do voters truly feel that their lives have suffered at the hands of the “socialist” Obama Administration, or a hands-on approach to government? Despite widespread complaints against Obamacare, the act has insured over 20 million individuals, contributing to the largest leap in healthcare coverage in half a century, without causing a hike in costs, as anticipated by skeptics and opponents. While nearly half of Americans express their distaste for a president playing the “caretaker” role, the truth is that this reform is an example of the Democratic party taking action in the White House; denying that the Democratic party has been active during Obama’s terms, Republicans in 2016 will attempt to manipulate sentiments of government distrust to win over the politically “up for grabs” millennial demographic, planting the desire for a strong, decisive leader. But in doing so, the party is actually bolstering support for Clinton, whose professional experience as well as her clearcut aim of prioritizing minorities and the working class, display the combination of leadership aptitude and understanding of social concerns that qualify her as the candidate with “a vision for the future” that the GOP has been promoting. Granted, her newly released video does not delve into all aspects of her platform, but it does leave voters with an obvious impression of the change that she is envisioning for America—and this change, one that could improve standards of equality, is at the forefront of this generation’s concerns. Right now, the new wave of voters needs a president who will inspire hope for social progression, and with the GOP falling far behind in its ability to either promise or execute this, the prospects for Democrats in 2016 are looking good. —Emily Sayer ’18 is a student at Vassar College.
CJC vital to Vassar’s Jewish community Jason Storch
Guest Columnist
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here is something different these past few semesters about Jewish life on campus. More students are engaging in it, and students who were already engaged are becoming even more involved. Friday parties are starting after Shabbat dinner; I even heard someone say they were enjoying their meals more during Passover than the rest of the year! This new phenomenon Vassar College is experiencing is not a force majeure—it is the very well-organized and needed presence of the Chabad Jewish Community (or CJC) at Vassar. When news came of CJC’s arrival just off campus, some people were suspicious—myself included. Students had heard the myths about the “Chabadniks” as they were called, and some of the loudest anti-CJC cries came from none other than Jewish students on campus. I can safely and proudly say that every single one of these myths—from the legendary van used to convert students to the idea that they refuse to let women speak to the rabbi—are ludicrous. My first encounter with CJC came when I went to the joint Vassar Jewish Union (VJU) and CJC Shabbat. Being a member of the VJU board, I went as a token of goodwill. Little did I know I would have a terrific time. The customs of the CJC, a Chasidic organization that follows the Orthodox Jewish Lubavitch faith, were new and thought-provoking for a Long Islander like myself who had spent his entire life in an almost exclusively reform or conservative setting. Of course, and I cannot stress this aspect of CJC strongly enough, the subsequent dinner solidified that I would have to give the CJC a fair chance. Plus the dinners cooked by the CJC are consistently some of the best meals a student can get at Vassar College—and they are entirely free of charge! Over the next few months, I became more and more engaged in the CJC by attending Passover Seders, going to weekly meetings, even joining the student-run executive board. I am pleased to say that CJC—which will become an official organization starting next semester— has not only helped my Jewish experience at
Vassar College, but is also helping the experiences of many other Jewish students. Before I get too ahead of myself, let me give the reader some baseline information about the CJC. The CJC strives to create an open space where everyone can learn about, challenge and celebrate their Jewish identity. The CJC is a student group that has an outlet for every Jewish experience, with social events like ‘make your own sushi social,’ interactive and challenging classes, one-on-one personalized study, warm Shabbat experiences and social justice with “Mitzvah Corps” all in a friendly, accepting environment. The CJC collaborates with Rabbi Daniel and Dalia Sanoff for guidance. The effects are visible: membership in CJC is quite large especially taking into account the fact it is a pre-organization. For example, more than 60 people went to the two Seder dinners during the recent Passover holiday. In addition to this, CJC’s recurring tabling—which frequently features homemade baked goods—has given students the ability to reach out and get information that they are looking for. Students are gravitating to the environment fostered by the CJC. Maya Horowitz ’16 commented, “The CJC gives me room to explore my Judaism without pressure, gain insights and ask questions and eat good food. Rabbi Daniel and Dalia are warm, open, humorous people, and I love being invited to talk with them on any number of Jewish issues. It is often difficult speaking about being Jewish at Vassar and the CJC offers a space for which to explore, express and enact my Judaism and Jewish heritage in both practical and esoteric ways.” CJC board member Emily Bender ’17 noted to me that, “I became involved with CJC because I think they bring a tremendous amount to the Vassar community. Through weekly Shabbat dinners, celebrations for holidays and numerous events throughout the year, they greatly help in bringing the Jewish community together on campus. Through CJC I’ve explored and connected with many new aspects of my Jewish identity.” Rabbi Daniel may be a good resource for students to use, but he is only second best to Dalia!
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She is a living example of a powerful and intelligent, yet caring leader. She teaches numerous female study groups about how Judaism can add to a Vassar student’s life, and is a wellknown fixture of the CJC framework. When asked about the CJC, Dalia remarked, ”Working with the Vassar Community constantly pushes me to deepen and expand my own spirituality and Jewish experience. Our Women’s study group has become my second family and my favorite part of the week,” Rabbi Daniel, when asked about the CJC and how it serves the interests of students, said that, “CJC has been an empowering resource for students looking to engage in dialogue about Judaism’s unique approach to living. As I am regularly challenged with difficult inquires, I can reaffirm the Talmudic saying, ‘From my students I have learned the most!’ Also, I am still looking for someone who can out-ski the Rabbi.” A tremendous part of many students’ CJC experience is coffee with Dalia or Rabbi Daniel. Students are free to have discussions with them about issues of interest to Jewish students like Kabbalistic teachings or anti-Semitism on campus. Students are gravitating to the environment fostered by the CJC’s combined student and religious leadership.. The Chabad Jewish Community is not something to be feared. It is not stealing customers from other religious groups. It is not trying to convert you. What it is trying—and succeeding in doing—is to create an environment where Jewish students can learn, engage and embrace their heritage in a great, growing space where there is love and compassion—not a stigma— over being Jewish. As the acronym suggests, the CJC is truly a Jewish community, and the name could not describe the group better. It is a community of love, appreciation and respect. I advise any students thinking about Jewish life to go to one of the many CJC events or, better yet, email Dalia or the Rabbi for some coffee. —Jason Storch ’17 is a member of the CJC and a chemistry and Russian studies double major.
April 23, 2015
OPINIONS
E-cigarettes fuel youthful tobacco habits Sarah Sandler Columnist
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t has been drilled into my head in health classes ever since elementary school to stay away from cigarettes. From a young age I have believed that cigarettes are essentially a form of suicide because someone who smokes is consciously partaking in something that has such a high mortality rate. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it is difficult for me to understand how someone can regularly smoke cigarettes while being aware of the fact that it kills so many people. Our grandparents may have had the excuse of not understanding cigarettes’ detrimental health effects, but anyone who was born after around 1960 can no longer claim ignorance. It was on Jan. 11, 1964 that then Surgeon General of the United States Luther Terry released the report titled: “Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee of the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service.” This report, once and for all, dispelled ambiguities about the safety of smoking cigarettes and serves as the first federal link between smoking and disease.
“...anyone who was born after around 1960 can no longer claim ignorance...” Cigarettes are the number one cause of preventable death worldwide, which is why I find it so unfathomable that so many people continue smoking. There are other ailments that cause more deaths each year, such as certain cancers and Alzheimer’s disease, but their victims do not actively contribute to these inflictions like smoking does for complications like lung and throat cancer. The Center for Disease Control has stated numerous shocking facts on its “Smoking and Tobacco Use Fast Facts” page, such as, “On average, cigarette smokers die ten years earlier than nonsmokers,” “More than 16 million
Americans are living with a disease caused by smoking” and “Current trends show that tobacco use will cause more than 8 million deaths annually 2030” (Centers for Disease Control, “Surgeon General’s Reports on Smoking and Tobacco Use“). Despite these appalling statistics, about 17.8 percent of American adults smoke cigarettes. Because the dangers of smoking cigarettes are so widely advertised and backed up by concrete evidence, I was genuinely surprised when I began my freshman year at Vassar and saw so many students on campus smoking cigarettes. Cigarette smokers pose a health risk to not just themselves, but the people around them from their secondhand smoke. This smoke increases the risk of cancer, respiratory infection and other ailments. On the whole, however, cigarette use is declining amongst young adults, down from 16 percent of high school students in 2011 to just 9 percent in 2014. Unfortunately, this is paired with the fact that e-cigarette use for middle school and high school students has tripled between 2013 and 2014. Now 13 percent of students use e-cigarettes, a higher rate than those who smoke regular cigarettes. These statistics lead to the belief that teenagers are giving up cigarettes in favor of e-cigarettes (The New York Times, “Use of E-Cigarettes Rises Sharply Among Teenagers, Report Says,” 04.16.15). E-cigarettes are still a fairly new technology, so their effects on one’s health have not been fully unveiled. The apparent advantage of e-cigarettes is that they provide a smoker with the nicotine they are seeking without many of the harmful ingredients that are present in typical cigarettes, such as tar and other chemicals. Regardless, e-cigarette smokers are still coming into contact with the addictive substance nicotine. The health effects of e-cigarettes are still largely unknown, but something else concerns me about how popular they are becoming. With the decline of cigarette use and the rise of e-cigarette use among young adults, it seems as though this shift is due largely in part to smokers’ concerns with their image. In a recent New York Times article, a high school senior named James
said that, “There’s a certain harshness to cigarettes. Girls think they’re gross” (The New York Times, “Use of E-Cigarettes Rises Sharply Among Teenagers, Report Says,” 04.16.15). From this statement, it is apparent that e-cigarettes and their fashionable technology are enticing teens to become tobacco or nicotine users.
“The health effects of e-cigarettes are still largely unknown.” Part of the appeal with e-cigarettes is that they come in numerous flavors and scents. Just last week, I remember a student bursting into the classroom before class began to exclaim to his friends that he had discovered a new flavor, dulce de leche, at the Smokes 4 Less store on the corner of Raymond Ave and Main Street here in Poughkeepsie. Other popular flavors include toffee, vanilla, cherry and pineapple. This array of attractive flavors could possibly mean that e-cigarettes will be more appealing to younger age groups, making it more likely that they will eventually use other tobacco products as well. Another appealing aspect of e-cigarettes is the ease with which teenagers can obtain them. Once an e-cigarette kit is purchased, the cost is often lower than regular cigarettes, which are more highly taxed. Teenagers can even order e-cigarettes online, easily bypassing state laws regulating the age necessary to purchase e-cigarettes (The New York Times, “Use of E-Cigarettes Rises Sharply Among Teenagers, Report Says,” 04.16.15). Even with the decline of regular cigarette use, these alluring factors mean that teenagers are just becoming involved in yet another division of the greater tobacco industry and its motives. —Sarah Sandler ’18 is a student at Vassar College.
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Word on the street Approximately how many naked bodies have you seen on campus? “Zero...no, wait, two.” —Olivia Lerman ’18
“Probably like three. I think that’s a respectable number.” — Max Moran ’16
“I’ve seen 19-and-a-half naked bodies.” — Alex Masters ’16
By The Numbers “Is this outside the bedroom? A number above one.” — Matt Marcelino ’18
“I’m in drawing class...literally like 20.” —Josh Schwartz ’18
“I’d say 50 and up, like 50 plus.” — Will Chaudoin ’17 This graph depicts available admission statistics for the Classes of 2018 and 2019 at Vassar College and several of its peer institutions. This information has been collected from Admission websites for each respective school, as well as data compiled by The Washington Post. These schools have been classified as peer institutions as they are all liberal arts colleges with less than 3,000 students. Some but not all schools listed are considered peer schools based on data from the Office of Institutional Research. Not all of Vassar’s peer institutions currently have Class of 2019 admission statistics available.
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Chris Gonzalez, Humor & Satire Editor Zander Bashaw, Guest Columnist Sam Pianello, Photo Editor
OPINIONS
Page 12
April 23, 2015
Alumnae/i strive to provide opportunities for students Sophia Burns Columnist
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ne of Vassar’s hallmarks is its uniquely involved student community; I remember my admissions interviewer, who had just graduated nine months before, telling me that Vassar was a place that seeks students who would change it, not the other way around. This was something that I have found to be true, and something that I am extremely proud of. While there is no such thing as a perfect community, I believe that Vassar students are constantly striving toward this ideal, which is something that surely cannot be said for every college community. However, that is only half of the story in what makes Vassar so great an experience. In my experience working with alumnae/i and current students, I have discovered a fantastic quality in Vassar graduates. The commitment to action and a strong, uninhibited voice cannot and does not stop when one steps off this campus. While many are excited to leave when graduation is in sight (and rightly so), this does not mean that they abandon the students that will succeed them. Although many retain their issues with the institution, they also have a remarkable ability to remember the students separately from the institution. It appears that, while students here do make great strides, there are also thousands more outside of the immediate community contributing in just as many different ways. It always surprises me that every time I speak with an alum, I find that they are just as impassioned about campus issues as we are, no matter how far removed they are from Vassar. It is not uncommon to meet someone
who has not stepped foot on campus in decades, but is more up-to-date on issues than even some current students. I have found that Vassar alums stay alert to the problems and triumphs here, and many times just want to know how they can get involved in making things better for the students. Whether this happens through fundraising, writing a letter to administration or just offering a few helpful words to a student, many are genuinely concerned with the well-being of the student body. Perhaps this connection to a student body far different from theirs comes from continued relations with their own graduating class; many alumnae/i I know look forward to and make a point to attend reunions, stay in touch with their local Vassar club and even encourage their children to apply. Maintaining that connection with those who truly made their Vassar experience so great—their peers—obviously inspires interactions with current students. In relation to campus issues, many Vassar alums remember such campus events as the occupations of Main in 1969 and 1990 and final exam boycotts, perhaps because they keep their time at Vassar in the back of their minds in one way or another. Therefore, when they hear of something happening on campus, such as the recent race-related incidents, they do not see these as isolated events—rather, they attribute them to deeply ingrained, ongoing issues at Vassar. This sort of attention and concern may be even more valuable than monetary support, as it reminds students that, even in such dark situations, others have fought similar battles at this institution and that those
people are interesting in helping current students fight theirs. However, that is not to say that monetary gifts cannot make an impact on the Vassar community. Cause-oriented grads have a way of making contributions that are not only financially significant, but also significant to the growth and improvement of the Vassar experience for generations to come. Most recently, three Vassar alums from different class years demonstrated this in the creation of The Solomon and Barbara Wank Prize for Excellence in African, Asian, or Latin American History. United in their appreciation for History Professor Maria Höhn, these alums created an award that honors not just someone who influenced them during their time at Vassar, but also honors someone who continues to influence lives at Vassar College to this day. This act struck me as a very Vassar-like thing to do. This prize fills a gap that can discourage History scholars who study the aforementioned regions as there were, until now, only prizes established for those who studied European and American History. Although the prize’s namesake, Professor Solomon Wank, was a European History scholar, he made strides in broadening the scope of history at that time (the late 1960s) to include women. Professor Höhn has, with Wank’s influence and inspiration, made similar strides in to include and emphasize the contributions of African-Americans in the Second World War. Taking all of these influences into account, the creation of this prize will encourage and reward those who study non-Western history in a continuation of previous work to
make history more inclusive and therefore more complete. This example is not isolated, as many Vassar alums have poured time, thoughts and funds into making their alma mater what its students expect it to be. Naturally, this affectionately named “Vassar experience” has evolved with time and continued social awareness, and it will only continue to improve as time goes on. Similarly, Vassar graduates take an interest in current students’ futures by contributing to such resources as the Internship Grant Fund, offering up their time for informational panels and making themselves available for advice and even internship opportunities through services such as AlumniFire and LinkedIn. To me, this signals a strong support system that compels graduates to reach out to those who need guidance to attain their goals. This is also, perhaps, a result of the supportive rather than competitive community that is found here, which requires a certain level of compassion as well as belief in fellow alums who have never met. A sense of reassurance can be gleaned from this; even if one feels alone within these walls and behind these doors, it is possible to find someone within this larger network who is willing to at least sympathize, if not point them in the right direction. As the semester draws near its end and many are dreaming of life outside of Vassar, it is comforting to know that even after influential people leave campus, they are still thinking of ways to better this community. —Sophia Burns ’18 is a student at Vassar College.
The Miscellany Crossword
“Annual Fenstivals”
by Collin Knopp-Schwyn, York Chen and Alycia Beattie
ACROSS
58 Turkish peso
38 Loiter
52 More than sometimes
1 Reusable cup
59 Talk out your mouth
40 Quick to rumble
53 Collin, York and Alycia to each other, for
5 “Git!”
60 Cher’s catchphrase in “Clueless” (2 words)
41 Collin, York and Alycia, for three
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64 Land of first fruit
46 When doubled, 2013 Singaporean Cannes
55 2008 Disney dog movie
13 Flood-watcher
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14 Puritanical Puritan
66 Civic duty
48 D to D
57 What you might do your professors, online
15 “Is that you? It’s been ___!”
67 Put down
49 Can do
61 Sun in El Salvador
17 Like many an aircraft missile
68 Like some Titans
50 Shreds a check
62 It is shorter?
18 Lil bits
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51 “___ to disagree, then.”
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19 Urine product 20 Bayou basketball tournament?
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24 Hall’s better half
2 Charged thing
25 Biotite and muscovite
3 Large cauldron
28 The judge bangs it
4 Jain principle of non-violence
31 “___, you’re in trouble!”
5 Phallic Gothic church part
32 Rating that can be 87, 91 or 93, often
6 Double, or David
35 Quaker breakfast
7 Yankee Babe
39 Witches night in a quagmire?
8 Eve’s partner in 64-Across
42 Sash
9 Spanish butte
43 Nicaragua nap
10 Second highest peak in Hawaii
44 Chai
11 Wetland heron
45 Struggles with sibilants
12 Honkers
47 Amble
16 Guff
49 Be of service to
21 Fabulous fabulist
52 Gas cabal
22 A deer, a female deer
54 Celebratory brewskis in a morass?
25 Peaty plant
Answers to last week’s puzzle
26 Popular first stop for future
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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
April 23, 2015
HUMOR & SATIRE
Page 13
Breaking News From the desk of Chris Gonzalez, Humor & Satire Editor ViCE spring concert ‘marketing’ ploy actually two-month long campaign: Pusha T, SZA elected Co-VSA Presidents Clinton anounces candidacy Game changer! Registrar for Main House President adds new Fall 2015 courses Zander Bashaw
Marist Red Fox News
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illary Clinton has recently announced that she will be running for Main House President for 2015-16. In a six-second post on Vine, Mrs. Clinton proclaimed that she will in fact be looking to lead the house team of Vassar College’s largest dorm. That was all she really had time to say, however, and this left many of her Twitter followers scrambling for answers to a whole host of questions. Some of the most poignant and recurring questions were, “Where is Bill going to live?” “When can we get non-diseased Sabra Hummus back in the retreat?” and “What can we do about the fact that the toilets in Main sit about eight inches off the ground?” Following these clamoring requests and many others, Mrs. Clinton released an official statement within the Vassar College Main House Facebook group. Her statement read as follows: “Fellow residents of Main Haus, it is my pleasure to announce that I shall be running for Main House President next year. I am an individual dedicated to further improving the quality of Main, and I recognize that even though it is my favorite dorm on campus, there is much work to be done. I shall be as dutiful and loyal as a golden retriever to this dorm, with the same color hair to boot ;). I have spoken to Bill and he is thrilled by the prospects of us living in Main for the next year, and even more thrilled to potentially be the first “first man.” Your vote pending, I am so excited to be Vassar’s first female house president in the institution’s history. Living in the Main House, I will look to serve your immediate needs, and even look beyond our campus to D.C. (Dutchess County) as a whole. Vote for Hilldog, dawg!” I was lucky enough to have a chance to speak to Mrs. Clinton about some of the motives behind her campaign and what she wants to do for the community in this coming year. In an intimate setting on the cloudy side at the deece, Mrs. Clinton and I choked down some coffee while Bill played Angry Birds on her Kindle Fire. Mrs. Clinton told me all about her new policy and I found that a recurring word in her
policy descriptions was opacity. “My goal is to continue the lovely tradition set up by Vassar, and all bureaucratic institutions around this country, of opacity,” said Clinton, giving Bill a dirty look as he leaned his chair back on two legs. “Vassar College Administration is all about being opaque to the student body, and I will be the next stepping stone on the path of confusion and misunderstanding.” Clinton further explained that she would complete this work by sending infrequent and vague emails to the House using gilded language to skate around systemic problems. At this point in the interview, Bill spilled his hot chocolate everywhere, and everyone was pretty distracted through the rest of the time, but Mrs. Clinton did manage to leave a very forgettable impression. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has not come without doubters, including those who point out that she is not, in fact, even close to the first female house president. Yik Yak has been ablaze with people criticizing her campaign, and even her lifestyle. One frustrated app user asked, “Since this entire election system is just a popularity contest, how do we know that Hilldog is cool? Who does she smoke with? What intramural sport does she even play?” Another user wondered, “If Hilldog wants a single so bad, why doesn’t she just dump Bill?” Apparently, Mrs. Clinton is very receptive to Yik Yak, since on the morning of April 20 she sent out a simple tweet believed to be a response to the above anonymous snippets. This was the tweet. “@who_let_Hilldawg_out: My marital status or perceived desire for the best room in Main has nothing to do my decision to run. Hope everyone enjoys their 4/20.” Clinton thinking that she is running for first female Main House president in Vassar history is worth much discussion. If you want to contact Main house team, ResLife or the V.S.A. about any questions, comments or responses to these events or this article, I wish you luck in finding out how to do so. Update: Hillary has lost the election, and more importantly, her single. Sources say she is already working on her next campaign slogan, advancing from “Are You Ready For Hillary?” to “This Time, America, I’ll Be Bulletproof.”
Eloy Bleifuss Prados
ry pedagogical dialogues on determining whether or not your horse is a secret Catholic.
Colleen Mallet
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o all Students: The Course Catalog has recently been modified to reflect the late introduction of several new classes being taught in the 2015/2016 Academic Year. While you can already see the up-todate Schedule of Classes on the Ask Banner site, I have asked the staff of the Miscellany News to please include the following additions before the end of Fall 2015 Pre-Registration Phase 1 on Friday, April 24. Feel free to contact our office (registrar@vassar.edu) with any questions, and good luck to you in the upcoming term.
That class you need for your major. 1 unit(s)
If you don’t take this class your life is ruined. No internship or job. This is your only chance! It isn’t offered any other semester. TR 10:30-11:45 That other class you need for your major. 1 unit(s)
O.M.G.! This is what you’ve been interested in for your entire life. Sign up now! TR 10:30-11:45 ENGL 276 1 unit(s) Queering Oscar Wilde
Sincerely, Colleen R. Mallet Registrar and Veteran Adviser/Certifying Official
An examination into the possible queer subtexts concealed in the works of the nineteenth-century Irish writer Oscar Wilde, devoted husband and father of two. Readings include “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a novella about a young man who, at the cost of moral ruin, attains immortal beauty so he can spend more time hanging out with his other straight guy friends and talking about the theater.
URBS 233 1 unit(s) Queering the Poughkeepsie Galleria
Drawing from the scholarship of Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, José Esteban Muñoz and Mabel Comtois-Gergel, we explore the Poughkeepsie Galleria as a space for queer temporality and radical (trans)gression. All students are required to conduct field research at Aéropostale and the Payless ShoeSource.
MEDS 116 1 unit(s) Vampires and Zombies!
Geography 347 1 unit(s) Boise
This class seeks to answer the question: will putting supernatural creatures in the title increase student registration?
It’s the capital of Idaho. One 3-hour period. AFST 254 1 unit(s) The Intractability of Race
MEDS 368 1 unit(s) Motion, Action and Dual Programmable Controls
400 years of oppression and struggle will finally be laid to rest with a story from your white peer about his semester abroad in Prague.
Using a multi-disciplinary lens, we study the cardboard box to a rice cooker I found four years ago in the dumpster behind Taylor. The course will seek to complicate the analysis of “easy” cooking. All students are required to purchase an Aroma 6-Cup (Cooked) Pot Rice Cooker and Food Steamer, Red™. Two 75-minute class periods and one 3-hour film screening per week.
ART 276 Junk 1 unit(s)
Which classical statuary has the best, hottest, weirdest junk? No fig leaf will be left unturned as we scour all of antiquity for the answer.
ENGL 339 1 unit(s) Stable or Papal?
Life Skills 1 unit(s)
An intensive study of mid-seventeenth centu-
(Not offered in 2015/2016 academic year)
Just don’t do it: The Misc’s guide to not working out by Lily Horner, Deece Couch Potato
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hate working out. I understand why people do it, of course. It makes you feel strong, sweaty and smelly, which are all great reasons to do things. And you’re right, I’m not going to be young forever. However, there’s always been something about going to a building that houses machines on which you run nowhere or sit and push some heavy things around with your various appendages that seems like it would make me have an existential crisis constantly. This is not something easily explained to people, though. So instead of going into grotesque detail about the dread that enters me every time I run on a treadmill, I came up with these fun excuses instead! Feel free to use them on your friends and family, but try to stay healthy, blah blah blah PSA about health go eat an apple! My health teacher in 11th grade told me that sweat is actually your blood leaving your body. So apparently the more you
sweat, the closer you are to death. Personally, I want to live forever, and in order to do so I need to sweat and work out less than the normal person, or not at all if I can help it. In order to work out it is a custom that people change into special attire. Now, I’m no Lazy Lois, so I’m not opposed to this concept of “changing.” However, I have noticed that all workout clothes have these offensive and distasteful slogans written on them. “Just do it?” Do what? If you are going to be this demanding of me, T-shirt, then at least specify what you want me to do so I can ignore you harder. “William McKinley High School Cross Country Team?” What am I supposed to do about that? Congratulate the T-shirt? I think it’s being a little braggy if you ask me. “Gym Staff ?” Come on, we all know that no one actually works at gyms. They are
operated by the machinery, who come to life once everyone has left. That machine that helps you pick up heavy things and put them back down? At night, it transforms into a fully fledged Transformer, which sends absurd emails with [In-The-Pink] as the subject. My pediatrician keeps telling me that I need to stop watching daytime talk shows, and those things are ubiquitous in every gym I’ve ever driven by. Even if there are no TVs inside Vassar’s gym, I anticipate getting so anxious that I would start acting “The Wendy Williams Show” out loud while I’m on that machine where you lift weights with your body. Also, Dr. Phil is on at the gym almost every afternoon, which is absurd, because if I wanted to fix my problems, I certainly would not be at the gym. The ability to check my credit score, an activity of vital importance, is severely di-
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
minished while working out. According to my cousin’s ex-statistician, the probability that the Wi-Fi in the gym blocks CreditKarma.com is astronomically high. I don’t know too much about space, but she assures me that this it is indeed rather large. Personally, I need to check my credit score on a bi-hourly basis (to prevent fraud and assess my chances of obtaining a mortgage or a rich husband), and taking three hours out of my day to participate in gym activities would really affect how much I am able to monitor my score. Hopefully these legitimate reasons will help you avoid awkward and unhealthy social interaction and sweating at the gym. Remember, people will only believe you if you believe them yourself, so practice your lines constantly and one day you will be an expert gym-dodger like me. Hit me up and we can go eat some Deece-za and discuss the latest episode of “Wendy Williams.”
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April 23, 2015
Pusha-T, SZA share stage with student musical group Emma Rosenthal Arts Editor
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songs which I had already written and arrange them for a band and have my friends play with me here.” He describes his music as a blend of genres, saying, “I would say it’s electronic pop with some funk influences.” As Eads transitioned from being a solo artist to working with members of the band, he had to adapt his music to work for the group. “We’re just figuring out what sounds good and trying to make the songs which I already recorded sound new and live and fresh. What I’ll do is bring demos in the way I recorded them and then we’ll parse out who’s going to do what part of it. They’re all really really good musicians so it doesn’t ever take very long—they just kind of pick it up right away. Or I’ll send them chord changes and they’ll get it.” Although Bend has performed on campus a few times, they weren’t on Adler’s radar until he stumbled upon their music and reached out to them. Adler said, “Sean Eads was in one of my classes last year and I literally had no idea that he did music stuff. Really it was just a moment when I was in the ViCE office and someone played his music for me and I was like: ‘Shut the fuck up, this
is a student?’ Initially, I was just going to have two student DJs open, and then I was like: ‘Oh, Bend wants to play’ so I got really excited that they’re going to play.” SZA’s performance will be following Bend, and Toler gave a nod to the female singer and the exciting prospects of her growing career, “It’s interesting because people might not know a lot about SZA but I was talking to our agent on the phone and apparently she has a mix-tape coming out very soon. She’s on the up-and-up with her career right now and she’s going to explode, I think, in the next few months.” ViCE is also introducing a new feature of the Spring Concert this weekend, one that they are enthusiastic to announce to students. “We’re doing tickets for the show, but it’s not going to be a ticketed show. The tickets are kind of like a memorabilia item, but each ticket has a number on it and then we’re going to do a raffle, number randomization thing on the day before the show. And we’ll release the 30 numbers that are winning tickets and those 30 people will be selected to meet SZA and Pusha T,” said Adler.
courtesy of SZA
courtesy of Pusha T
he two pixelated figures on a ViCE poster have been stirring wonder and curiosity ever since they appeared on campus. The puzzle is now finally solved, as ViCE revealed a different version of the poster showing who the artists are for this year’s spring concert. SZA and Pusha T, as released recently by ViCE Music, will perform at the 2015 Spring Concert. But before the blurred image of the two performers could become clear for us to see, months of hard work and negotiation led up to that point. Head of ViCE Music, the organization responsible for planning this event, Alex Adler ’16 spoke about the process to bring outside artists to campus. “I have a [general body] of around 25 people and what we do is we work with this middle agent and we talk about what we think the campus might like for the Spring Concert,” he said. Adler continued, “We establish a list of artists that we think would be good and we go to the middle agent and we say ‘these are the artists that we’re interested in’ and she gets back to us with if they’re available, she gives the price. We see if it fits our budget and whether or not the artist would be interesting.” After the members of the group decide on a few names, they open up the decision-making process to the student body to make sure there is a wider interest for the show. Although there have been many ways that ViCE has executed this part of the process, Adler and Director of ViCE Maya Toler ’16 tried a different approach this year. “So what we did was we would have a list of three artists and then we would ask the...GB to go around the retreat or when they’re walking to class or members in their class, mostly people that they didn’t know and just randomly ask them ‘hey, would you be interested in seeing this person, or this person, or this person?’ And then they’d report back to me in our GB meetings. Basically that’s how we arrived at our names this year,” said Adler. As Adler’s predecessor and the former Head of ViCE Music, Toler had a different role this year when planning and preparing for events. She described her new position as such: “I was there to help kind of mold [Alex’s] vision and see what he wanted but also trying to balance that with what I think would work best and trying to get everyone on the same page. I’m here to help him if he needs
help on negotiations or paperwork or anything like that.” With the experience and passion that Toler has for music and ViCE, she was able to give Adler tips about how to choose artists for the Spring Concert, advice that might not be obvious without the background that Toler has acquired. Adler spoke about some insights she shared with him, “One of the pieces of advice that Maya has given me a lot this year is: Don’t think about what the artist says outside of their music. I think a lot about what the artist might say on Twitter, or what they might say in interviews, and I think a lot about offense. But I have to remember that music is separated from that and art is separated from that and when we listen to art, we have to separate it from the person as the person vs. as the artist.” Toler echoed this sentiment and went into more detail on how to find musicians and artists that fit the preferences of the student body, saying, “You can always find something wrong with someone no matter what... One of the biggest things is trying to please everyone. This year we tried a new formula with having one bigger show. In the past, we dealt with catering to different demographics with each show, which worked.” She continued, “This year–everyone really likes a big artist usually and they like when big artists come, so we’re kind of experimenting again with having a bigger artist. So we’ll see how that works out–I think it’s going well.” To satisfy the interests of all, or at least the majority of students, Toler and Adler worked to find a diversity of artists to feature. Adler commented, “Pusha T is rap, and SZA is more of an R&B soul singer and we think that’ll actually be a really nice medley. And then we also have student band, Bend, opening for the whole show.” Bend is a student group started by Sean Eads ’15 which adds yet another genre and style of music to the lineup. Bend, which is comprised of Eads, Matt Mendoza ’15, Ben Parra ’15, Jeremy Katzenstein ’15 and alum Sam Judkis ’14, played their first show together this past December and the members have been working together ever since. Eads spoke about why he started the group and his background in music, “The project itself I formed in 2012, the summer after my freshman year with a friend from home, who at the beginning was just on the production and business side...And then last semester I decided I wanted to take those
Artists Pusha-T and SZA will perform for the College’s Spring Concert on Saturday, April 25. Pusha-T, a rapper, and SZA, a soul and R&B singer, along with student band, Bend, offer a wide array of styles.
DIY zines take the scene in Collaboratory workshops Sieu Nguyen Reporter
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courtesy of SAVP
he mysterious trailer donning the words “Collaboratory” that has been sitting in front of Rocky for several weeks has finally opened its doors and revealed its purpose. The vehicle is the location for a series of workshops and events centered on zines held by the Research Library. The event is taking place all week, from April 21 to April 26. A zine is a DIY publication that consists of texts and images, often in small circulation. Its topic ranges from handmade art, to autobiographical writing, to social theory. Head of Acquisitions and Cataloging Services in the Library and one of the creators of the project, Heidy Berthoud, introduced the medium, “They can be very artistic or narratives—whatever you want to do with them. They are great primary sources, and they can get to quite personal issues.” The workshops, designed to be an informal event, will open for students to drop in during the week. Librarians are going to be in the Collaboratory to instruct and answer questions. Model zines will be provided, giving students various options for inspiration and reference. A photocopier and office supplies such as staplers, scissors, glue sticks and color markers are available for more labor-intensive works. The Research Library also prepared fingerpaint, Hula Hoops and bubbles to inspire more creativity and personal expressions. Carol Lynn Marshall, a Research Library in charge of the project, said, “Zine culture is very playful. That is the whole spirit of the Collaboratory.” The initial purpose of the workshops was for the Research Library to introduce the campus to their new zine collection. Berthoud said, “This great new collection of zines will hopefully be installed in a prominent public area over the summer. The Collaboratory is a
The Collaboratory vehicle now houses the Research Library’s new zine workshops which seek to teach community members about these literary works and to further grow the College’s collection. way to put them out in the middle of campus. People can stop by; they can look at the zines; they can create a zine with us, talk about zines or just hang out.” Regarding the origins of this collection, she added, “Most of the zines are from Feminist ZineFest and specialized comic bookstores and zine distributors.” The new zine collection does not, however, include much representation from Vassar. This is a disconnect that the Library is hoping to change through these workshops. Marshall said, “This is the seed collection to promote our collection of more Vassar ones.” Berthoud added, “We are trying to collect personal zines on things like gender, sexuality, consent—top-
ics that might resonate with students on campus because a lot of the issues touched on in zines are not what you are going to find in your typical scholarly monograph or journal article. We want to have a collection where students could go read about an experience that has happened to someone and realize ‘that happened to me, too’ to find a common voice. It becomes a reflection of this community.” The Research Library has been working on this project for a long time and is actively looking for zines on the Vassar campus. Marshall noted, “We found out that there are so many zines on campus—faculty members who wrote zines during their graduate school years.” Ber-
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
thoud also remarked, “If we could get the faculty’s zines when they were graduate students, that is a whole other window into the event.” The Collaboratory project has received some early support from many different groups on campus. Several organizations have scheduled specific time slots to come in during the Collaboratory week. Some others also donated zines to the collection. Marshall noted, “We have a ‘Breaking the Silence’ zine–both online and print copies. We also were donated one from a group of students who created a zine in response to the Westboro Church. Recently last week, Vassar Sustainability made a beautiful zine on Earth Day to promote sustainability on campus and gave that to us. Our seed collection of Vassar zines is growing. It is important for future Vassar generations to hear stories of the students.” The Research Librarians were very excited about the latest zines from Vassar Sustainability, which has enriched their new collection. Kayla Abe ‘15, a representative from the group, talked about their product, “I work with Vassar Sustainability, part of the College Committee on Sustainability, and we made a zine over the past few weeks. It gives a brief summary of who we are as a committee, highlights sustainability driven organizations and administrative positions on campus, and covers some of the various projects and community events our committee undertakes. We liked the idea of a zine for how accessible of a medium it is, and how creative you can get when you have multiple pages to fill. It’s an inexpensive and fun way to share information that really only requires paper, pens, and access to a photocopy machine—though some zines don’t even need to be copied if they are each customized by hand.” The Collaboratory is open for students until April 26. A new zine collection is coming up in the near future.
April 23, 2015
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Dance troupe shakes off exclusivity, competitive tone Connor McIlwain Reporter
courtesy of Vass Shakers
Five years ago, the Vass Shakers performed just two pieces for their spring show. A relatively new group, the Vass Shakers have seen an immense growth since the early days of small shows on campus. This week, the group will perform eight. The group’s president, Dylan Bolduc ‘15, has witnessed the growth firsthand. She explained, “My freshman year we performed only two pieces in the dance department’s spring showing, I choreographed one of them. We now have our own show each semester where we perform usually 6-10 original pieces.” This Friday and Saturday, they will be performing their annual spring show in the Kenyon’s Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater– both shows are at 7:00 p.m. The spring show is the culmination of several months of hard work for the Vass Shakers. They have been preparing for the show all semester, putting in countless hours of rehearsal to perfect their craft. The show itself will consist of eight choreographed pieces and about 25 dancers in total. Bolduc explained, “Vass Shakers’ Spring Show serves as our big end of the semester performance that we rehearse for all semester. We are doing eight original pieces that range from hip-hop, to jazz, to contemporary [styles].” As for the show’s theme, another dancer in the group, Jackson Ingram ’18 noted, “I feel like this particular set really emphasizes self-confidence, one of the core themes upon which the organization is built.” The Vass Shakers are one of Vassar’s newest dance groups at Vassar. Founded in 2012, they do not hold auditions and try to make themselves as inclusive as possible. This inclusivity has encouraged many to try dance that otherwise would not have and has brought many new perspectives to the group. The show will be very diverse in content, reflecting the group’s unique makeup. One dancer in the group, Sunny Gaughen ’18, explained, “I’m very excited for the show we’re working on. It’s definitely an eclectic mix that really demonstrates each choreographer’s style.
There will be a little something for everyone!” Ingram added, “[This] show is going to be even bigger and crazier than last semester’s. Counting two group numbers featuring the majority of our members, there will be eight pieces total, all student-designed and choreographed.” The group takes the creative direction of its dancers very seriously. Since its first semester on campus, students have choreographed all performances and had ample opportunities for input in the organization as a whole. This is one of the lures of Vass Shakers. As for the show’s theme, Ingram notes, “I feel like this particular set really emphasizes self-confidence, one of the core themes upon which the organization is built.” The Vass Shakers are one of Vassar’s newest dance groups at Vassar. Founded in 2012, they do not hold auditions and try to make themselves as inclusive as possible. This inclusivity has encouraged many to try dance that otherwise would not have and has brought many new perspectives to the group. “Vass Shakers celebrates the love of dance by bringing together lots of different people in a nonjudgmental environment,” said Bolduc who has been a member of the group since its first semester. The group’s dancers credit Bolduc and other senior members with helping to create such an accepting environment. Ingram noted, “Most of us, myself included, haven’t had any formal training, but Dylan and the rest of the board have done a fantastic job making dance accessible and fun for everybody.” Ingram said, “Anyone can dance, regardless of body type, experience level, or area of study.” The cast has a broad range of experience. Bolduc spoke of the group’s diversity, saying, “We have some members who have been dancing their whole lives, and some members who will be dancing on stage for the first time at this show!” Rebecca Starble ’17, a dancer and Executive Board member of the group, reiterated, “some of…[the group is] new to Vass Shakers and others have been dancing with the group for multiple semesters.” The group’s low-key atmosphere not only makes it appealing to beginner dancers, but
The Vass Shakers will be perfoming on the Kenyon Stage Friday and Saturday for their annual spring show. Members of the group are encouraged to step out of their comfort zone and explore their creativity. also fuels creativity. From Icona Pop to Wham!, the group has performed to many different styles of music and dance over the years. This semester’s performance promises to be just as eclectic. “I don’t think you can really assign one specific style or genre to Vass Shakers–there’s a lot of room to creativity and collaboration and the group is always supportive when people want to try something new,” says Gaughen. The dancers in the group are encouraged to choreograph performances and lend their creative expertise. They are heavily involved in determining what goes onstage. Starble elaborates, “I’m choreographing two pieces for this show with Sammy van Leer ’17. One of our dances is a group dance, and the other is a smaller lyrical-style piece.” This collaboration and dancer input creates a sense of camaraderie that can be felt on stage. According to Gaughen, “I got involved with Shakers last fall and it’s been a great org to be in
as a freshman. It’s very low-stress and anyone can get involved, no matter how much (or how little) dance experience you have. We have a lot of fun at rehearsals and that really translates to the final show.” From its inception just three years ago, Vass Shakers has brought diversity and a little humor to the dance scene at Vassar. The group celebrates its dancers and their creativity, which can be seen in their performances. Bolduc has nothing but positive sentiments about her experience with the group, saying, “I have loved being a part of Vass Shakers growth over the past four years!” The other members share similar feelings; there is a lot of excitement within the group to share their craft with the campus and outside community. “There is no better feeling than being on stage performing a piece that you are proud of while having so much fun with your friends,” says Bolduc.
Alum returns with hope for students pursuing art world Yifan Wang Reporter
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eyond Taylor and the Loeb, outside of New Hackensack and Doubleday, where are art students going after Vassar? After spending four years honing their craft and increasing their love for the arts, what options are available to those who choose to pursue the arts after graduation? Next Monday, April 27, a conversation to address these concerns will take place in the Jade Parlor of Main Building. Hosted by David V. Griffin ‘99, Senior Associate at Thomas & Associates, this conversation will focus on ways for entry level and pre-grad candidates to transition into meaningful employment in the arts, including everything from resume and interview tips to a breakdown of how the art world works and what its stipulations are. Griffin holds a BA in Art History and English from Vassar College. During his seven years with Thomas & Associates, Inc., he has worked to provide staffing, collections management and exhibitions services for the firm’s clients, from The New-York Historical Society to the MetLife Collection. During Ms. Thomas’ Interim Directorship at Lyndhurst, he served as Adjunct Special Events Coordinator. His writing on art and architecture has been published in Metropolis, Dwell and the National Trust’s Preservation website, among other titles. He is a member of Independent Curators International and is currently developing the firm’s Fine Arts Subscription, a unique service for New York City-based collectors, which incorporates museum and gallery visits, auction previews, lectures and exclusive tours into a monthly schedule. However, Griffin’s artistic career probably started earlier than college. “My mother is an artist and my siblings and I have docented at museums since we were children; I also owned a gallery for several years and still curate shows. Arts management, recruit-
ment and development are the underpinnings of every cultural experience one has,” he wrote about his reasons for choosing the career path in an email statement. This will not be Griffin’s first visit back at his alma mater to have a conversation with Vassar students. Associate Director for Employer Relations at Vassar’s Career Development Office Susan Smith said that Griffin’s visits started in 2007. “Mr. Griffin hosted a career conversation on campus in April 2007. He returned to campus in spring 2013, and is scheduled to host another conversation on April 27, 2015. In the years between his visits, Mr. Griffin has hired Vassar students for summer internships. One intern was hired full time in 2011,” she said. Griffin wanted to come back to share his professional experiences as a result of his student years studying and working at Vassar. “As an Art History major at Vassar, I’ve always been interested in how students can explore ways to enter the art world as a career. I’d worked with the Career Services department while I was a student and feel it’s only right to contribute to the dialogue as an alum,” he explained. The conversation will include basic job searching skills including resume building, presentation and interviewing. Griffin will also give advice about what to expect from an arts-related career “We’ll be going over the basics—presentation, communication and how to interview—but also talk about expectations. What is it that people want from a career in the arts? How can they make this a realistic goal?” Expectations are especially important for anyone hoping to pursue a career in the arts. This comes not only from the expectations that students may have for future careers but also from what future employers could expect from recent grads. Griffin explained his goal for this visit, “I hope to give students
an idea of what is expected of them as candidates in the arts & culture profession. Often people starting out can be frustrated by how difficult it is to find what they consider a ‘creative’ role.” Professor of Art on the Sarah G. Blanding Chair Susan Kuretsky also spoke about her experiences as an art historian, and gave advice to students hoping to pursue a career in the same field. Once a student at Vassar, Kuretsky’s career in arts started with ART105. “My career in the art world began with taking Art 105 at Vassar, which completely changed my perspective, knowledge and opened my eyes in ways I had never expected or anticipated. It would have enriched any career path I might have taken, but it gave me extremely solid grounding for further study and graduate school in art history.” She continued to give advice to any Vassar students hoping to have an art-related profession, “Do NOT graduate from Vassar without Art 105!” She finally decided to pursue the art history path because she finds working in the discipline rewarding and inspiring. She explained, “Art history, fascinating in itself, also connects with almost every other field of study in both the humanities and the sciences. Its visual and intellectual training constantly opens doors, and more doors throughout your life. Teaching it lets me try to give back what I have been given.” Professor of Art, Molly Nesbit, pointed to the many career-related events hosted by the Art Department as a resource for students. Nesbit said, “Last year, for example, we had two conservators come to speak about their recent work and then form a panel to discuss the field of conservation generally. We regularly organize special internships and fieldwork opportunities for the students in our courses.” She continued, “And late last fall, the FL-
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LAC had a panel of recent graduates come to discuss ‘The Art World’ —they work at art magazines, in development departments at major museums and in curatorial departments in major museums.” As for this time, the Career Development Office (CDO) collaborated with various departments to organize the conversation. “The CDO often collaborates with the Office of Alumnae/i Affairs and Development, student organizations and academic departments to organize alumnae/i career events. In this instance, Mr. Griffin contacted me to arrange a date and time for his visit. I reserved the room and the CDO will promote his visit through our e-newsletter and other channels,” Smith explained. The CDO has also worked to bring to campus career events in a variety of industries in order to help students find a future in a career they will enjoy. Smith said, “The most direct benefit is the opportunity for students to meet alumnae/i who are working in a particular career field and learn about the industry, their path since leaving Vassar, and tips for breaking into that field. Often, students will follow up directly and continue the conversation via phone or in person meeting.” Ultimately, Griffin hopes to provide insight and skills necessary for students to transition from an academic environment to the professional world, while at the same time enjoying his time at Vassar. He pointed out the challenges and central skills necessary for a further pursuit in the arts. “The art world can be an incredibly demanding environment in terms of employer expectations both prior to and after finding a job and I think the more students entering that world know about how to present themselves, establish a career path and communicate their skills, the better.” He concluded, “I’m always delighted to spend an afternoon at my alma mater.”
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April 23, 2015
Lamas create mandala for Embodying Compassion series MANDALA continued from page 1 ly, the mandala is seen as a residential palace for a deity who will usually be placed at the center of the mandala, the most important part.” Walsh continued, “They can be representative of something, the cosmos, for example, but most of the time they are understood to be the actual thing itself. [E.g.] if a mandala is made for a deity, it isn’t just representing or symbolizing that deity, it is in fact the deity itself.” What is the significance of these mandalas coming to Vassar at this specific time? Professor of Art and Curator of the upcoming Loeb exhibit, “Embodying Compassion in Buddhist Art: Image, Pilgrimage, Practice,” Karen Lucic spoke about the connection between these two events. “What the exhibition is about is a Bodhisattva or a special kind of Buddhist figure who is working to help all beings...Not only is he represented in art, but he’s associated with many practices of self-development and self-actualization that actually helps people be kinder and more compassionate,” Lucic said. She continued, “One of the practices that’s associated with compassion is the making of sand mandalas and this is a specifically Tibetan Buddhist practice and it’s a very special form which combines art with spirituality. So I thought that having lamas here who were trained in doing the sand mandala would be the perfect celebration for the opening of this exhibition.” Lucic began spearheading this event a few years ago, starting just with a the idea to study Buddhist art. She explained how the idea began and how she developed it, “I decided I would... do a research project which would culminate in the exhibition and so in doing this, I’ve not only studied the art but the kind of practices that are associated with it. I met the [lamas who are coming] at the Asian Art Museum. They had an exhibition last year of Tibetan art and they invited these same lamas to come and make a mandala. And then that planted a seed of an idea for our own exhibition and so I contacted them and they
were kind enough to say yes.” To realize this idea and expand the reach of the event, Lucic reached out to others in the Vassar community. She commented on this, “Before I even started on this project, I contacted Sam Speers because I thought there was a really important spiritual dimension to this that went beyond art that might bring in many different segments of the community.” Director of Religious and Spiritual Life (RSL) Sam Speers commented on his office’s involvement with this event in an emailed statement, “My colleagues and I in the RSL Office are especially delighted to be able to sponsor this program–as the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life–where the latter term sometimes escapes people’s notice. This is a key event in RSL’s Spirituality Initiative, which we launched this spring with a series of programs on Embodying Compassion, all leading up to this week’s mandala.” Apart from spirituality and the subject of compassion, other aspects of the exhibit links it to the art and practice of sand mandalas. “What connects the sand mandala to our exhibition is that we have a painted mandala in the show. The show is about the Bodhisattva [of] compassion. The mandala that’s in the show represents the palace of that particular Bodhisattva and then I asked the lamas to make a specific kind of mandala that’s devoted to that same figure. So it will be a continuity between that particular object in the show and what’s going to go on in the Villard Room,” said Lucic. Focusing on the creation and the creators of the sand mandalas themselves, Walsh gave more detail on their purpose and production, “The mandala is also understood to be a locus of divine power and as such can bestow blessings on those who view it. For the practitioner, he or she will often visualize the mandala in their own body, or identify himself or herself with the main deity at the center of the mandala. In this case, the mandala acts as a meditational aid.” These aspects of creation were addressed
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by one of the lamas who is visiting to make the sand mandala, Dr. Hun Lye. He accompanies two lamas originally from Tibet, Lama Sonam, who now lives in Boston, and Khenpo Choepheo, who now lives in Pittsburgh. Originally from Malaysia, but currently living in Asheville, N.C., Lye serves as Spiritual Director at Urban Dharma, the Buddhist center he founded in Asheville. Lye spoke about his background in Buddhism and the study of religion, “Up until recently I taught religion at the college level but about three or four years ago, I made a transition so that I’m now full-time at the Buddhist center. So I do come from an academic background in religious studies.” Unlike Sonam and Choepheo, Lye was raised practicing Buddhism in his ethnic Chinese tradition and acquired–rather than grew up learning– Tibetan Buddhism. “In graduate school, I focused on the study of Chinese Buddhism. At some point, I connected with the Tibetan Buddhist tradition during my undergraduate years and then that connection became stronger and stronger. And so, now I’m part of a Tibetan Buddhist [sect] known as Drikung Kagyu,” Lye said. He continued, “The other two lamas are also members of this lineage. They were born into Drikung Kagyu families in Tibet and they became monks [in their] early teens. But because of the political situation in Tibet... they had gone into exile and left Tibet. They have lived in this country for at least 10 years.” To incorporate the many intricacies and processes it takes to create the mandala, the three lamas split up the work based on skill and experience. Lye commented on this distinction, “Of the three of us, Khenpo Choepheo is the main master at work. So the most difficult task is the laying down of the grid for the mandala. That entails drawing basically the whole blueprint; using pencils the whole blueprint is laid out on the surface. And then after that, all the decisions about what designs turn up in which quadrant–the mandala is divided into four quadrants–what colors and all of that, he makes all of those decisions. Lama
Sonam and myself are basically assisting in filling the colors.” Although Lye makes it seem like filling in colors with sand is the easy part, he also highlights the concentration needed for this practice. “If you like very detailed and deliberate work and you’re good at focusing, then it becomes addictive, in a sense. Particularly when the sand goes down.” He continued, saying, “The way of getting the sand to come out of the funnel is you rub the funnel which has ridges to it, and the vibration from the ridges pushes the sand out. So the vibration when you rub against those ridges, it’s a very specific sound that I find soothing and I think other people do too. So it takes focus and attention and if you like that kind of focus and attention, then it’s enjoyable.” Through her studies of Buddhism and sand mandalas, and extensive travels around the world to witness the art, Lucic also noted the captivating nature of this intensely focused work. “These mandalas are very popular among Westerners, even though they might not understand the tradition or what everything represents, there is something about the concentrated focus of the lamas that’s really compelling. I think it’s because we live such a distracted life...and to see these lamas so focused and making such delicate and exquisite works, it creates an atmosphere that’s very calming, very uplifting.” Lye echoed this sentiment, “It has become certainly something that many Americans find to be fascinating. I think...people find a certain resonance with Buddhist ideals or Buddhist principles by simply watching the construction of a mandala. Traditionally it’s post-construction when it’s ready to be used ritually or meditatively that then people gather.” He continued, “Here, the flexibility of tradition–and religious traditions even–is that it’s open to new interpretation and new ways that people connect with it. But I don’t think, in my opinion at least, that it has to be one way or the other, I think it just shows how flexible this tradition is.”
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ARTS
April 23, 2015
Page 17
Disney adaptation delivers visual delight Meaghan Hughes
Contributing Editor
Beauty and the Beast Alan Menken FSG Originals
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daptation is tricky. Whether it’s from book to movie or from biography to musical, turning a well-known story from one form into another can be difficult. But turning an animated movie into a live-action musical production requires extensive creativity. It’s up to the director and producers to decide how to fit the imagination of the artist into the real limits of the human form. “Beauty and the Beast” is one such Disney movie in a series of others that has been turned into a Broadway production. Originally a French fairy tale written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756, the first film version of the story was Jean Cocteau’s 1946 movie. The Disney version we all know and love was released in 1991. Three years later it was adapted into a musical on Broadway, and is currently on tour where it is being performed for smaller venues, such as the Proctor Theater in Schenectady, N.Y.— where I saw it this past weekend.
“These extra songs add greatly to the depth of the characters.” For the most part, the musical follows the movie flawlessly. Any plot changes are minor, and of course the entire score is composed by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, including a few additional songs written by Menken and Tim Rice. These extra songs add greatly to the depth of the characters and give the ensem-
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ble a chance to perform a few well-choreographed dances. Even some of the original songs are extended in the musical version. The overly macho song “Gaston” had several minutes of extra refrains and dancing featuring tin steins in a way that put the song “Cups” from “Pitch Perfect” to shame. The most difficult part of the adaptation from film was of course the castle staff that turned into inanimate objects. While it felt a little odd to watch actors portray a clock or a teapot, the use of costume was phenomenal. There was a lot of detail in the pants, dress, candlestick-hands and other assortment of props and materials used for these cast members, which made for a less-believable but much more entertaining display of people turned objects who still very much looked like people. Set design was another strong point of the show. There were many scene changes throughout the two acts—I don’t think a single set remained the same for much more than 15 minutes. However, the attention to detail here was not sacrificed for the sake of rapidity. The changes themselves were creative, and each scene felt quite complete with the beautiful painted background and very large and ornate moving pieces as the set. Although the movie itself was certainly meant for a younger audience, the musical felt even more so. At times, it veered toward catering to kids to the point of excess with the use of slapstick comedy and over the top physical mannerisms. Even though I personally may not have enjoyed this change, more than half the audience was under the age of ten, so this may have been a successful modification overall. However, in complete opposition to this child-centered shift was the hyper-sexualization present throughout, especially through the French maid-inspired feather duster, Babette. In the film, the character has very few speaking roles, but the musical featured her extensively with the primary focus being
on her relationship to Lumière, the stereotypically-French candlestick. Besides having the skimpiest costume of the entire cast, Babette is constantly seducing Lumière through the use of suggestive body language and exchanges riddled with innuendo.
“However in complete opposition to this child centered shift was the hyper-sexualization.” While I’m certainly not advocating for a Puritanical ban on suggestive content, in this context it seemed both excessive and unnecessary. The plot already features a main female character who gives up her freedom to save her father only to fall in love with her captor. Making yet another female character be in the service of men only takes away any sense of female agency this story has to offer. Overall the musical was engaging and enjoyable to watch, and almost exactly what one would expect from an adaptation of the movie. Like the original, there was a lot of movement throughout the show, and the cast was well-organized in the dances as well as the constant shifting and moving around during the scenes. The cast itself was well chosen, and each member of the cast had perfected their accents and mannerisms. “Beauty and the Beast” as a musical is successful but in a different way than the film. Since of course the two cannot be identical, the live version emphasizes the inherent strengths of a musical, such as creative costuming and energy from the audience. I saw the musical as an extension of the movie. For those who are familiar with the film and the songs, seeing it on stage would be a somewhat different experience, but one that definitely adds to the established favorite.
A weekly space highlighting the creative pursuits of student-artists
Excuse me, Who are you wearing?
“Ethan Cohen.” —Nick Vargish ’16
“OV by Olga.” —Arden Shwayder ’16
“Nicole Miller.” —Ethan Cohen ’16
submit to misc@vassar.edu
“Zara and J. Crew.” —Mollie Barth ’16 and Katie Eliot ’16
“Beyoncé and Jay-Z.” —Michael Iselin ’16
“Muhammad Ali.” —Frank James ’16
This is a photo I took in a cafe in Paris a couple of years ago. The couple was bickering pretty loudly, and a bit comically, so I decided to capture it. Street photography is my favorite; I love spying on people with a telephoto lens and snapping a picture of their lives. Whether it be a nervous young girl about to perform in a parade, an old Greek man dripping mint green gelato on his shirt, or a couple kissing passionately in front of the Trevi Fountain (some of my favorite photos), I want to shoot it all. -C.C. Stallings ’18.
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Emma Rosenthal Arts Editor Sam Pianello, Photo Editor
SPORTS
Page 18
April 23, 2015
Does pay On the court, young faces leave big traces follow profit W in NCAA? Sam Hammer Columnist
Elaina Peterkin Guest Columnist
S
hould studentathletes be paid? It should not be overlooked that many larger college athletic programs are seeing an increase in their yearly revenue. In 2010, some of the top college athletic programs generated a revenue of $1 billion and in 2014, that number rose to $11 billion. About 50 colleges in 2014 reported a revenues exceeding $50 million and five colleges reported revenues exceeding $100 million. Still, the National College Athletics Association (NCAA) maintains rules against the payment of college athletes. Ohio State University, with one of the largest athletic budgets in the nation, spends about $110,000 on each of their 980 athletes—almost triple the cost per each student for undergraduate education. This budget also pays for the men’s basketball coach to travel about 11 hours or $65,000 worth of miles in a private jet plane for scouting and another 15 hours for personal travel. While OSU’s athletic budget grew by 46% from 2000 to 2005, the household income dropped by 9.3%. This just further reinforces college sports as a blossoming industry. The basketball and football teams at OSU, however, are the only sports actually generating a profit. Overall, these two teams are funding the other 34 varsity teams at OSU, that excluding basketball and football generated a revenue of $1.5 million. This may seem like a considerable amount, but just to put this in perspective, the women’s ice hockey team made a profit of about $1,642, but had an operating cost of about $1.2 million. Among other colleges, this is also a common trend, along with perpetual need for new equipment, job positions, etc. Yet, most of the athletic earnings go into the general fund to aid in scholarships, tutors for student athletes and maintenance, operations and security. However, this does not offer any clear vantage point or evidence for paying college athletes. From these excesses, college coaches are reaping the benefits with average salary of $2 million for football and $4 million in basketball. But the coaches are not the only people making money off of the athletes. There are also the advertising hustlers, television suits, arena operators, concession hawkers, athletic gear manufacturers and retailers, university administrators, coaches and sports media noisemakers. All the while many of these athletes come from homes where they were living beneath the poverty line, come to these colleges and earn the school large sums of money without any form of retribution. Most of these athletes, come to college not for the education, but to be scouted for professional teams. This leads to the argument that these athletes are not even being compensated through education as the majority will not and do not care to finish. But, in paying student athletes, more problems would come about. For example, what is the determining factor for being paid? Performance? Participation in a revenue creating team? If basketball and football are the only sports creating a profit, should the participating team members be the only ones paid? In order to pay players on other sports teams funds from revenue sports would have to be used. In not paying all sports equally, the college would risk being in violation of Title IX. Further, some argue that athletes are already being compensated for playing through having their education, housing, food, etc. paid for, estimated at a value between $50,000 and $125,000. In August 2014, however, the case for paying college athletes made huge strides when federal Judge Claudia Wilken of United States District Court in Oakland, Calif. made the decision against the NCAA’s rules against athletes making money from the teams use of their names and images in games and on television. This ruling would take effect in 2016, and would allow the athletes in the top ten football conferences and all Division I men’s basketball players to earn a share of the billions they generate in a trust fund for after graduation. Though this is a somewhat tentative foray into the payment of college athletes, who knows what the future holds?
hile the rookies have been surprisingly disappointing—with several exceptions, including Andrew Wiggins, Nikola Mirotic and Nerlens Noel, among a few others—the race for league MVP this year has been incredibly close and it would be possible to make the case for as many as five or six candidates this year. LeBron James has been the best player, Stephen Curry has been the best player on the league’s best team, James Harden has improved his defense and his offensive capabilities have taken a Rockets team that has been devastated with injuries to a 56-win season and the second seed in the Western Conference playoffs. While these three are the most likely MVP contenders, several others have demonstrated their amazing ability and have been absolutely thrilling to watch. Despite the looming presence of old veteran stars, the NBA is going through a youth movement. Perennial contenders Oklahoma City Thunder failed to make the playoffs in the absence of Kevin Durant. Still, Russell Westbrook went on an unbelievable run, leading the league with eleven triple-doubles. At only 22 years-old, Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans has showcased his immense talent and his potential to be the best player in the world as early as next year. The one good thing about the Thunder not making the playoffs is that their spot was taken by the Pelicans. Although it is unlikely that the Pelicans will advance past the first round, it will be great to see Anthony Davis attempt to single-handedly carry his team in a series against the NBA-leading Golden State Warriors. Another MVP candidate who should not be overlooked is Chris Paul on the Los Angeles Clippers. Paul has bested his career averages in nearly every statistical category while playing in all 82 games this season. There was a stretch of several weeks where Paul was without costar Blake Griffin. During that stretch Paul car-
ried the Clippers to a winning record and now hold the three-seed in the Western Conference. I mentioned earlier that the rookies this year were not terribly impressive, considering that the 2014 draft class was heralded as the best since 2003. There were several rookies who showed some serious promise this season, though, and it will be exciting to follow their development over the next few seasons. Coming into the 2014-2015 regular season, the most hyped rookies were easily Andrew Wiggins of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Jabari Parker of the Milwaukee Bucks. While he only managed to play 25 games due to injury, Jabari Parker’s first season with the Bucks has been promising as he has averaged 5.5 rebounds and 12.3 points per game while shooting 49% from the floor. Wiggins has stood out this year as the favorite to win the Rookie of the Year award, and the Timberwolves front office must be pleased that they were able to acquire him from the Cleveland Cavaliers before the season began in exchange for Kevin Love. Wiggins has been good offensively averaging about seventeen points per game while shooting 43.7% percent. Wiggins has truly shined on the defensive end where he had 4.6 rebounds, one steal and .6 blocks per game while managing to shut down the best scorers on opposing teams. Talented rookies generally stand out on offense and take a few years to develop their defensive proficiency, which is difficult to nail down at the NBA level, yet Wiggins has managed to already do so. If he can get better at shooting from deep, he has the potential to be a real star in the league. Despite repeated injuries to point guard Derrick Rose, the Chicago Bulls have lucked out this season for several reasons. For one, at the age of 34, Pau Gasol has had a resurgence after leaving the Lakers and is averaging career highs in three-point shooting, rebounds, free-throw shooting and blocks. Guard Jimmy Butler has become the leading man for the
Bulls this season and is averaging career bests in every statistical category, and has a serious chance to receive the Most Improved Player Award this year. Finally, Nikola Mirotic has emerged as the biggest challenger against Andrew Wiggins for Rookie of the Year honors. While Mirotic, who is 24, is not a true rookie since he has spent several years playing professionally overseas, he has still been quite impressive, considering he was a late first-round pick in last summer’s draft. Mirotic is a valuable asset in the current NBA landscape that favors big men who are able to play out of their normal position and stretch defenders on the floor. Mirotic can shoot three pointers decently well and has spent some solid minutes playing at small forward for the Bulls. What could have been a disastrous season for the Bulls has actually turned out okay, and there is certainly hope going into next year. Besides Jimmy Butler, the other leading candidates for most improved player had to be Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors and Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks. Green is a defensive wrecking-ball who is able to guard at both the power forward and center positions. He is also talented offensively where he is shooting about 34% from the threepoint range and grabbing 8.2 rebounds per game. Green was a second-round draft and no one ever expected him to become a star NBA player. He is deserving of maximum contract and the Warriors would be smart to give him one, especially since the salary cap is expected to rise dramatically over the next two to three years. Antetokounmpo, otherwise known as “the Greek Freak,” has been thrilling to watch, and his athletic gifts are out of this world. He will become a superstar one day, and rather than read about him, I suggest you look him up on YouTube and observe just how freakishly talented he is. Despite the disappointing rookie class, a set of young stars, role-players and young “freaks” has shaken up the league for good.
Athlete punished for finding food, shelter Rob Carpenter
Guest Columnist
D
uring last fall’s NCAA football season, the crowds at Baylor University’s McLane Stadium were energized by the magnificent play of sophomore running back Silas Nacita. When Nacita was on the field, he was a force to be reckoned with as he scored three touchdowns and ran for 191 yards on only 31 attempts, averaging 6.1 yards a carry. All the while, he played like a human wrecking ball on special teams and collected nine tackles in only five games played. Nacita’s on-field heroics quickly made him famous on Baylor’s campus as he became a football legend and was given the autocorrect-inspired nickname “Salsa Nacho.” Yet the source of Nacita’s popularity not only came from his play on the football field, but also from the long journey that got him to Baylor. He was a walk-on player, meaning that he was not recruited or given an athletic scholarship to play football at Baylor and was accepted to the school based on his grade point average instead of his yards per attempt average. Furthermore, Nacita was one of the 100,000-plus athletes who are college student athletes in the US, as Sports Illustrated reported in October 2014. Nacita slept on his friends’ couches and studied iPhone photos of required readings because he could not afford to purchase textbooks, all the while achieving stellar academics and being named to the Academic All Big-12 team. The future looked incredibly bright for Nacita, a young football star who had travelled from Bakersfield, Calif. to Waco, Texas and had surprised doubters at every turn. That was until late February, when a Baylor NCAA compliance officer found Nacita was benefiting from unsanctioned financial support, mainly in housing from an acquaintance and was removed from the Baylor football team. In a single moment, years of immense effort and progress were dashed from Nacita and the student athlete was back at the bottom, exactly where he started, homeless and now teamless. Nacita’s removal from Baylor’s football team shines a light on a dire problem that the NCAA
needs to address. Student athletes playing lucrative sports such as basketball and football at large athletic universities are not being provided the support they need to excel on the field and in the classroom. Often times, large universities that make millions from their sports program do not even provide their players with the bare minimum such as housing and food. If the NCAA and their partnered universities hope to create a collegiate sports system that allows student athletes to excel in school and competition, the big wigs in Indianapolis need to ensure that all athletes have the necessities. Outside of student athletes like Nacita, who walked on to Division I teams, many athletes at large universities with competitive sports are provided with scholarships that cover the school’s tuition, housing and board. Yet even with the largest scholarships at the most competitive and athlete-friendly institutions, these scholarships have gaping holes where athletes are forced to go without food. This is a major problem considering that if the athlete chooses to fill their scholarship’s shortcomings with outside support, they risk ineligibility and are forced to give up their scholarships. Punishments effectively rid some athletes of their opportunity to attend college as athletic scholarships are the only route to affording higher education. These problems reveal issues in American college athletics and academics and frequently put student athletes in front of obstacles they cannot possibly surpass. This could be seen in the case of Boise State University’s junior nose tackle Antoine Turner who was given a fullride scholarship to Boise but did not have a place to stay or a source of food in-between academic quarters, before his scholarship would kick in. Thanks to a local Boise news station that attracted attention to Turner’s situation, the promising defensive lineman was given a special waiver that allowed Boise State to provide him special interim assistance. But the NCAA only decided to help after the situation had matured and the university requested that no one help the hapless student in fear of committing
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an NCAA violation. The truth of the matter is not all student athletes have their struggles publicized on the news, and the NCAA rarely provides students with special assistance waivers, meaning many student athletes do not receive the help like Turner did and many are forced to go without even when provided with a full scholarship. On the other hand, the NCAA has made progress in providing Division I student athletes food, an area of support that seems basic but was heavily regulated and restricted as recently as last year. The policy rapidly changed when former University of Connecticut point guard Shabazz Napier commented on the status of student athlete compensation when he said, “I feel like a student athlete. Sometimes, there’s hungry nights where I’m not able to eat, but I still gotta play up to my capabilities.” Coming from one of the nations best young basketball talents, the statement grabbed a huge amount of attention and outrage. The public outcry instigated swift institutional change only a few days after Napier’s statement that allowed universities to provide their student athletes with unlimited meals. The change inspired by Napier and his “hungry husky” championship winning squad of 2014, created a positive difference in the way the NCAA provides for their players, but it also revealed how restricted and convoluted NCAA regulations are. College athletics are undeniably a positive force in the lives of hundreds of thousands college students, and athletic scholarships provide incredible opportunities for many athletes that may not have been able to attend college otherwise. But athletic scholarships have many shortcomings that hurt students who are simply striving to learn and excel. These shortcomings hurt college sports and their players and must be addressed by the NCAA. It goes without saying that an individual such as Silas Nacita should not be punished for accepting support that most of us take for granted, and it is shameful that Nacita was punished for honestly following his dreams while trying to survive.
SPORTS
April 23, 2015
Page 19
Prince shines new light on importance of teammates GOLF continued from page 1
with players, coaches and structure of the program this year that we really didn’t have many concrete goals as a team. Obviously we wanted to do as best as we could every week, but we had to take it one week at a time and use past performances as baselines for future competitions. I really didn’t know what to expect from this group, but the strong work ethic of my teammates has pushed us to improve a lot since September…I’m really proud of the team’s play this week and this season [overall]. We’ve worked really hard through our fall season, winter strength and conditioning training and indoor practices, and now in the spring season. It’s paying off.” Another factor Dubois cites is Head Coach Andy Jennings’ and Assistant Coach Anna Ausanio’s commitment to the program and increased rigor of the team’s training schedule. “Our coaches are fantastic.
They’ve really worked at turning the VCWG program around, and it’s headed in a really positive direction. We have more practice times, more strength and conditioning sessions, and more indoor practices than previous years, but when everyone is excited to go and wants to dedicate time and effort to the team, it’s a good situation for everyone.” Harsh weather conditions make it difficult for teams to get enough practice time. When teams begin practices for their season, most outdoor facilities are still covered in snow and ice. The teams must all vie for space and time within the Bays in Walker. This includes both men’s and women’s tennis, golf, and men’s and women’s lacrosse. In addition to that, men’s and women’s fencing are still practicing and competing in Walker, intramurals go on there and some of the fall teams hold open gyms or off-season practices, de-
courtesy of Vassar Athletics
The team will compete next weekend at the Liberty League Championships. For women’s golf, the league features Vassar College, William Smith, Wellesley, Union, NYU, St. Lawrence and Mt. Holyoke. The event will run for two days and is hosted by William Smith College. The event will take place at Clifton Springs Country Club in Clifton Springs, N.Y. Looking ahead, Mentel emphasized how the team’s daily goals and commitment to one another have shown in their results, giving her optimism going into next weekend. “Our team goals for the season were to improve each day. We wanted to give our best to each tournament, and put in a lot of work over the winter in order to perform well over spring break. We had our first tournament over spring break, and were able to come out with a win. We are sure the hard work will pay off in the Liberty Leagues this season.” Dubois was optimistic about Liberty Leagues but looked even further ahead into how this season’s improvement and experience will contribute down the line. “We’re looking forward to Liberty Leagues next weekend, which will be a great experience. We haven’t played the course it’s at, and the competition is pretty strong, but we’re looking to have a strong showing. Even more in the future, we’ll all work this summer on our playing and hit the ground running in September with practices and tournaments, ready to take on the 2015-2016 season. And as long as we continue to work and improve, I think our chances at winning Liberty Leagues and getting to the NCAAs next year are pretty good.” Looking back at all the changes the Brewers have faced this year, it would’ve been easy to call it a rebuilding season and lower expectations accordingly. But the golf team has managed to take everything thrown their way in stride and continue excelling and pushing forward. Just a few weeks ago, Bell walked away with top medalist honors at the Wellesley Spring Break Invitational. The Brewers themselves walked away with a team title with a first place finish. Dubois has been nothing but impressed with her team, especially without a clear set of expectations set up in the start of the year. “We had so many changes
Junior Aimee Dubois hits a masterful stroke at the Jack Leaman Women’s Championship at the Hickory Ridge Golf Club. The women finished in seventh place out of ten teams on Saturday, April 18.
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pending on the time of year. With the long winter this year, the golf team had a difficult time getting outside to play. Prince explained how finally being able to play and practice outside of the Bays has shown in the team’s and her own scores. “Obviously, with the tough winter, the conditions here have been difficult to play and practice on. We had much better conditions in Florida for our spring break trip, so our scores were better but I think we did our best as a team. I personally think I’ve have been striking the ball much better and it has been reflecting in my score.” The winter has been another hardship this season’s team has had to overcome. But in terms of overcoming adversity and hardship, there is no one better on the team to ask than Prince. Prince was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma this season and competing for the Brewers has been a huge part of her recovery. For Prince, golf and the Vassar College team have both been incredibly positive influences in her life and competing this year has been a triumphant experience. “This has been a difficult two years for me medically, but the support that I’ve received from the golf team has made a world of difference in my recovery. Being able to go outside and enjoy the beautiful courses of the Northeast while being able to represent Vassar is a dream come true and I am proud to be a part of VCWG…I spent last year doing chemo and radiation and golf helped me get back on my feet… During the off weeks of treatments, chemo especially, golf was something I really looked forward to being able to play because it meant I could get outside and enjoy the fresh air. That’s what I have come to especially love about golf, is appreciating the surroundings. My team was also extremely supportive and even wore violet ribbons (Hodgkin’s color) on their hats during the Vassar invitational last year. Having been really out of shape from all my dramatic weight loss and gain, being able to walk eight miles and play 36 holes in a weekend while carrying a 20 pound golf bag was definitely challenging, especially during the fall season, but this spring has been great as I’ve started to really get back to normalcy.”
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SPORTS
Page 20
April 23, 2015
Part of his plan: Vann the man rewrites VC record books Ashley Hoyle Reporter
T
courtesy of Vassar Athletics
aylor Vann, a junior from Conventry, Conn., has been rocketing through the regional and national standings for the decathlon event this season. Currently sitting in the top ten for national decathlon times, Vann has seen some success over the past several weeks. He recently won the decathlon competition at the Slifen Track and Field Invitational, posting a score that slated him first in the ECAC and third in the NCAA. Vann went into the meet with a clear vision, “I really was looking to excel in certain things, really tried to go for some big marks. And it ended up being a personal best in overall score. So now I’m in the top 10 in the country, so we’ll see how that holds up.” Looking forward, Vann has a chance to qualify himself for the national tournament by way of placing in the top 20 at the upcoming ECAC Championship. “[I plan] to really try to go for a really big score and hopefully qualify for nationals, which is top 20. So then up to that point, it’s going to be about getting really specific with my events. Like in the one this weekend I’m doing hurdles and javelin, next weekend just finding things to work on and trying to make it all come together in one day - two days,” he explained. The ability to pay such careful, close attention to each of his many responsibilities is what makes Vann such an impressive decathlete. Senior teammate Brian Deer also identified this dedication to individual responsibilities as one of Taylor’s strong suits. “What I admire most about Taylor in terms of athletics is his ability to focus on the task at hand. Since he is a decathlete, he has a lot of different things to worry about on any given day, training for all of those different events, but when I see him practicing his javelin technique, or doing hurdle drills, or doing pole vault work in the pool, I see him totally focused on what he is doing at that moment. Same thing when he is com-
Junior Taylor Vann has already broken a plethora of records during his time at Vassar. Vann’s speciality, the decatholon, has been his main focus this season, with hard he hopes to make it to Nationals peting. Despite all the other events he has to worry about, he devotes 100% of himself to the present moment,” he elaborated. In Vann’s eyes, one of the best things he has to offer VC track is his impressive work ethic: “People really see me working on those events out on the field by myself either before or after practice, and I think it kind of just reinforces what I’m trying to give off to the team. Trying to be motivated, be determined to succeed at all costs, even if it means working by myself, putting in extra hours and stuff like that. It’s about the effort, going above and beyond is another theme that I try to bring to the team.” His senior teammate Eliot Gerson tends to agree. Gerson contended, “he has an incredible work ethic and is fully committed to doing whatever it takes to be successful. He puts in
hours and hours at practice to master both the technical and physical demands of the decathlon, but there’s more to it than that. Our coaches talk about track as a lifestyle. It’s not something you just do for a couple hours a day and then move on from.” Gerson commented further on Vann’s ethic, “Taylor is obviously a talented athlete and he is clearly willing to put in the work necessary to make the most of that talent. He is a great teammate because of his ability to lead by example. He holds himself to a high standard and inspires us to do the same.” But the time he spends working hard out on the field doesn’t feel like work to Taylor. “We have a lot of fun together. Practice is several hours but it doesn’t matter because I’m just around my friends all the time, so that’s
great.” Being part of a team has really diversified Vann’s experience in collegiate athletics, making it an experience about meeting a wide breadth of people. He explained, “It’s great doing a co-ed sport, because you get different types of people - a lot of different personalities, mindsets, experiences, things like that. So the team is really close from bottom to top, all through the classes, different event groups, things like that.” And for Vann, cultivating his own success is just as important as his teammates’ success. “My girlfriend is Heather Ingerham, she was All-American last year for track, so she’s really fast. I love being able to cheer people on, it’s great to be on the track, and you’re really into it and you want somebody to succeed so badly and when they actually do succeed, everything just comes together so well.” This selfless trait in Vann has grown an interest in a more collaborative endeavour, as one of his goals through the end of this season is to compete on relay teams. He anticipates his participation, “I have some opportunities to be on some of those relays in the next few meets. I love being on the relays, it’s great to be with my other teammates in an actual event. So I’d love to be on the 4x4 relay that qualifies for the ECAC meet and just experience a really successful day with my teammates and not just by myself.” His endearing traits and desire to interact with the team have really left an impact on the program. Deer described it, “[Taylor] is definitely one of the leaders of the team, one who everyone looks to, and he really cares about every one of his teammates...Taylor has brought the same thing he has brought every year: a consistent, relentless focus on the things he wants both he himself and the team as a whole to achieve. I think he has stepped up his leadership a bit, being an upperclassmen now and realizing that that comes with some extra responsibility, but it’s in a natural way because he has always been a leader.”
Women’s Lacrosse jukes past Liberty League rivals Bard Erik Quinson Sports Editor
Women’s Track
The women produced a stellar performance on Saturday, April 18, racing at the Liberty League Championships. The day saw yet another fantastic showing from senior Heather Ingraham, who scored 38 of the Brewers’ 76 points and was named Track Performer of the Meet. Ingraham was not the only Brewer to shine, however, as sophomore Jemma Howlett placed third in the 10,000m event. It was a great day for senior Cassidy Carpenter, who ran in two distance races, placing third in the 1500m and second in the 5000m. In the 1500m, Carpenter came away with more than a bronze; she also scored a personal best of 4:49.27. In the 5000m, she was also able to set a personal best of 18:22.22. The Brewers will be back in action in the 4x400m at the Penn Relays on Thursday, April 23, and on Sunday, April 26 at the Yale Invitational. Men’s Track
The men were able to match their female
counterparts on Saturday at the Liberty League Championships with an equally impressive array of achievements. In the 100m sprint, junior Morrie Lam and freshman Joel Johnson picked up first and second place respectively, and earned All-Liberty League honors. Senior Andrew Terenzi was able to earn the 800m laurel for the second time in his career, as well as a personal best in the event. In his debut performance in the 3000m steeplechase, freshman Noah Trueblood earned an impressive second place and broke the 10-minute barrier. In the 400m, junior Dylan Manning broke the 50 second barrier for the first time. The men will hope to retain their momentum as they head into the Penn Relays on Thursday and the Yale Invitational this Sunday.
unanswered goals to break the deadlock and secure a victory of 12-8. Up until the final quarter there was nothing between these teams, as the Hawks went toe-to-toe with every goal the Brewers scored, but as the clock ticked down in the fourth, the floodgates opened and the Hawks couldn’t stem the flow. Looking to carry their momentum forward, the Brewers hosted Bard on Saturday, April 18. It was all Vassar that day. After going up 2-0, Bard was able to get one in, but before the half was over the women had added another five goals to their lead. There was nothing Bard could do, and although they were able to the find the net twice in the second half it wasn’t nearly enough, and the Brewers walked away with a 12-3 victory. The ladies will be back on Friday, April 24, when they will host St. Lawrence University.
Women’s Lacrosse
The women competed in two games last week. On Tuesday, April 14, they travelled across the river to local rivals SUNY New Paltz. Junior Isabelle Moore scored four goals and recorded four assists in a game that saw the Brewers come out of a tough 8-8 tie with four
courtesy of Vassar Athletics
Junior attacker Isabelle Goldstein looks for an assist in the Brewer’s victory over Bard College on Saturday April 18. The Brewers also defeated SUNY New Paltz by a score of 12-8 last Tuesday.
Men’s Lacrosse
It was a tough week for the men as they hosted two matches, against Williams College on Wednesday, April 15 and Union College on Saturday, April 18, losing the first 11-17 and the second 5-12 respectively. Despite their lead against Williams heading into the second half, the Brewers couldn’t keep their heads up and Williams was able to secure 12 goals in the second half, while Vassar could only get five. Union came flying out of the posts on Saturday, scoring an outstanding nine unanswered goals in the first half. Although the Brewers found some life in the second half, managing to score five, it wasn’t enough, and the Brewers go 1-5 in Liberty League play. They will be playing at Clarkson University on Saturday, April 25. Women’s Tennis
The women had two matchups last weekend. On Saturday, April 18 they travelled to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was a tough day for the Brewers, as they were only able to secure one win out of the nine matches. Freshmen Kate Christensen and Morgan Fitzgerald were able to top the Engineers no.3 pair 8-6 in the team’s 1-8 loss. Sunday’s match saw the Brewers intent on making a statement, and they did just that. The team hosted Rochester
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Institute of Technology (RIT) and swept the Tigers away in a 9-0 victory. Seniors Samantha Schapiro and Ava Sadeghi made quick work of the Tigers no.1 doubles, winning the set 8-0. And that set the precedent for the day, with the Brewers collectively only dropping one set. The women will be back in action on Saturday, April 25, when they will host St. Lawrence University. Men’s Tennis
The men also played over the weekend. Hosting Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on Saturday, it was a frustrating day as the Brewers narrowly lost in a 4-5 nail-biter. The Engineers took an early lead in the doubles matches, winning the no.3 and no.2 matches, but the Brewers were able to secure the no.1 match. RPI took the win in the first three singles matches, and although VC was able to take the remaining three, the day went in favor of the visitors. The men hosted RIT on Sunday and matched the women’s sweep with one of their own. The men will be playing again against St. Lawrence University on Saturday, April 25. Men’s Baseball
The Brewers hosted the University of Rochester over the weekend in two double headers. In the first game Vassar couldn’t get on the board, and the Yellowjackets took the win comfortably 6-0. The second game was a different story, with three runs in the second inning, the Yellowjackets were sitting pretty, and the Brewers, despite some nice hitting from junior Nick Johnson and senior Kyle Casey, allowed the Yellowjackets the sweep in the first day. On Sunday, the Brewers took the first game into an eighth inning, unfortunately conceding a run for the loss. In the second game, they instantly got on the board with three runs in the first innings. The Brewers took the next two runs as well, garnering two in the fourth inning. Rochester finally answered back in the fifth with two of their own, but it was too little too late and the Brewers took the final game. The Brewers will host Bard on Saturday, April 25 and then travel there on Sunday, April 26.