The Miscellany News May 13, 2021
miscellanynews.org
Vassar College’s student newspaper of record since 1866 Volume 155 | Issue 11
Mug Night snafu leaves confusion, doubts in wake Confessions page reveals O gossip Annabelle Wang News Editor
n the evening of Saturday, April 24, Vassar’s annual Middle School Mug Night was abruptly shut down by Campus Activities officials due to crowd control issues and violations of COVID-19 guidelines. The events that unfolded at Middle School Mug Night led to the subsequent cancellation of the Misc Music Festival and has left the Vassar student body uncertain about the fate of other major campus-sponsored events. Middle School Mug Night, a concert held on Ballantine Field, rapidly grew overwhelmed as more and more students gathered, making it increasingly difficult for the audience to follow social distancing guidelines. Amidst the confusion, a video of the scene was sent to President Elizabeth Bradley who called Associate Director of Campus Activities Will Rush and other Campus Activities Office representatives to shut down the event, according to VCDJ Co-President Lucy Posner ’21. In a written statement sent to the Miscellany News, Dean Carlos Alamo-Pastrana declared the official reason for the termination
Inside this issue
Olivia Gross
Guest Reporter
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Juliette Pope/The Miscellany News of the event: “We [Vassar administration] always work to be flexible with students when it is appropriate to do so. The challenge with the Middle School Mug night is that the event was overwhelmed with a large number of students within a very small window which limited any flexibility.” According to Posner, the host of the event, Vassar College DJs (VCDJ), received backlash on so-
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Monika Sweeny reports on why Lathrop House had ten fire alarms FEATURES in one week, and how its residents reacted.
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Carly D'Antonio discusses how to tell your parents you HUMOR have been rejected from every summer internship.
music and promoting the show. “We’re not in charge of how the security is going to work, how SARC [Student Activities Resource Center] is going to work the security.” When asked about the College’s official event-planning policy, Alamo-Pastrana wrote, “Crowd control for events is managed collaboratively by Campus Activities, Safety and Security and, at times, See Mug Night on page 4
Dutchess County COVID-19 vaccine rates stagnate Danielle Recco
Nina Ajemian explores Spud Cannon's new single, "You've ARTS got it all (NOT)." Check out her interviews with the student musicians.
cial media from students for the Mug Night incident. Posner defended the organization: “I don’t appreciate the onus being placed entirely on us … Our number one priority is keeping the regulations while also making this semester feel somewhat normal and fun.” She claimed that when it comes to organizing Mug Night, VCDJ is only responsible for setting up their equipment, playing the
ake up babe new Vassar confessions just dropped. On March 21, 2021, dozens of Vassar students’ Instagram stories displayed this message as their owners clamored to read the mountain of new confessions posted to the infamous account. It’s somewhere to reveal all of your secrets. A place for thoughts too personal to even write in your journal at risk of your roommate accidentally catching a glimpse. This is, of course, @vassar.confessions, an Instagram page that displays 1,862 posts containing anonymous confessions from current students, prospective students and random Internet onlookers. With 928 followers and a beaming photo of President Bradley as the profile picture, this page holds immense power over the student body. Some of See Vassar on page 7
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Guest reporter
his past April has seen the fewest recorded number of COVID-19 cases in Dutchess County since last November, with an average of 83.8 cases per day. As of this past week, there were no
COVID-19 related deaths in the county for the first time since last October. Despite 35.7 percent of the county’s residents receiving both doses of the vaccine, hesitancy regarding the coronavirus vaccine remains among some residents in Dutchess County. The
question remains as to how the county will encourage more residents to receive the vaccine and contribute to herd immunity in the United States, which will be reached when 70-85 percent of the nation’s population is immune from the virus. According to Rep-
resentative Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), New York as a whole “has seen an 18 percent drop in administered doses over the past couple of weeks, going from 1.2 million vaccine doses administered last week to 1.5 million the previous week.”
Vassar Track confronts accusations of abuse [TW: This article discusses sexual assault and abuse on campus.] This is a collaborative piece written by various members of Vassar’s Track & Field team and approved by all members. All accounts of abuse are written by the survivors (names are pseudonyms) themselves. n Friday, April 9, our momentum started to build. Grace courageously shared her story with the men’s team captain, explaining how she had quit the team due to a betrayal of trust by our coach and a desire to separate herself from her assaulter. Her assaulter was still on the team, surrounded by friends unknowing of the abuse. The captain knew of two other survivors, one of which was Delaney. Both had the same abuser. With Grace’s permission, he reached out to his fellow captains to initiate a conversation about what kind of culture our team enables, specifically as a men’s team. His top priority was the safety of his teammates, especially the women’s team, and for the team to stop supporting someone with a serial pattern of
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sexual misconduct. Team leadership asked to meet with the coaching staff concerning these serious allegations. Soon afterward, on April 16, a conversation uncovered a fourth survivor who wasn’t on the team. We transitioned from just wanting a conversation with the coaches, to identifying a clear and present danger on the team that needed to be removed. Over the course of that day, the number of survivors we knew of rose to six. It seemed that every couple of hours the team was finding out about another victim. We have been careful to keep their identities and situations confidential, discussing specifics only in cases where the survivors are willing to share parts of their stories. Fearing for our teammates’ safety, and with the survivors’ permission, those of us who knew of the situation began to speak with those who didn’t, generating support for the survivors and solidarity towards removing the abuser from our team environment. We began calling the rest of the team the night be-
fore our mock meet, which was scheduled for April 17. We continued making phone calls the morning of, to make sure that the team was aware of the situation. We could no longer live with ourselves and compete next to a serial abuser with a history of sexual misconduct. When team leadership arrived at the meet, we met with the coaches and said in no uncertain terms that the team refused to compete with this person. This decision was made with the entire team, many of whom had proactively boycotted the meet. We argued that this individual created a toxic social environment on the team and needed to be removed. To our immense relief, we were successful. The abuser was removed from the team, and we collectively decided to cancel the meet in order to process and support each other. On Saturday night, though many felt unsettled by the day's events, we knew a step had been taken to address wrongs that had been ignored for far too long. But if the story had ended there,
we wouldn’t be writing this article. On Sunday, April 18, while we were resting, Vassar’s administration did its best to undo our progress. Administrators, interested in covering their asses far more than doing the right thing, gave Coach A an ultimatum—reinstate the abuser or lose your job. Team leadership had been intent on chewing out administration anyways for letting the situation get to this point, but we began scrambling, doing hours of legal research and trying to justify the removal of this obvious cancer. We memorized Title IX codes, read academic papers on the subject and scrutinized the Vassar College guidelines provided on the school’s website. We tried our hardest to keep what small victories we’d achieved in the hope of convincing administration to stand for something other than protecting abusive athletes. On Monday, April 19, we saw what little gains we had made taken from us. In a meeting with Director of Athletics and Physical Education Michelle Walsh, DiSee Track on page 14