The Miscellany News
Since 1866 | miscellanynews.org
Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY
Volume CL | Issue 7
October 26, 2017
VC swim starts out strong
Why artists do the play
Kelly Pushie
Matt Stein
Guest Reporter
Arts Editor
T
A Courtesy of Ed Pittman
he Vassar men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams took on Brandeis University in the season opener this past weekend in Kresge pool. The women took home a solid 196.5-110.5 win, while the men fell in a well in a 175-106 loss. On the women’s side, upperclass swimmers performed well for the Brewers, but it was the first-years who stepped up to help secure the win. The Brewers started off the meet strong with a win in the 200yard medley relay, where first-year students Rhea Randhawa, Ellie Kennedy-Wood and Brynn Lautenbacher swam with junior Hayley Schultz and posted a time of 1:52.57 to secure a first-place finish. In that same event, sophomore Sarah Boese, first-year Shannon Schrope, and juniors Kael Ragnini and Meg Harrington finished in third with a time of 1:59.89. The women continued to pull in first-place finishes. First-year Angharad Healey swam a 11:09.38 in the 1000-yard freestyle. Ragnini finished first in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 2:04.69. Tabbed Liberty League Rookie of the Week for her performances this past weekend, See SWIM on page 18
Last week, Vassar screened the documentary “I’m Not a Racist...Am I?,” which follows several high school students from different backgrounds as they learn about race. The screenings were required for all first-year students.
VC screens documentary on race Sasha Gopalakrishnan Assistant Arts Editor
V
assar is no utopia. Many students feel that the idea that this space is a liberal haven, free of social prejudice simply due to the progressive values seemingly imbibed by our student population, is an easy screen to hide behind. A common sentiment on campus is that Vassar is just as susceptible to prejudice as any other campus in the United States, and the Vassar bubble is not going to protect us from that. In recognition and response to the
fact that racial bias does indeed exist here, the Offices of Campus Life and Diversity and Residential Life and the Engaged Pluralism Initiative—along with the Drama and Film Departments—came together to host screenings of a documentary titled “I’m Not a Racist...Am I?” for first-year students, in a significant move by the administration. Attendance at the screenings was required of all first-year students, and each screening was followed by small group discussions facilitated by faculty and administrators in order to give
students the opportunity to voice their reactions to the film, discuss how they perceive issues of racism and think about the role it plays in their own lives. A feature documentary that specifically aims to deconstruct race in the United States, “I’m Not a Racist...Am I?” highlighted how the next generation is going to confront racism. It depicts 12 teenagers from New York City who come together to discuss race, racism and privilege in a series of workshops See FILM on page 3
Be safe on Halloween at Vassar party scene CARES
Courtesy of Twitter
Since its inception in 2016, “Skam” has shattered records throughout Scandinavia, and has even acquired cult followings across the world.
Norway leads TV with popular show ‘Skam’ Patrick Tanella Arts Editor
L
Inside this issue
8
Halloween at long last! Visit VC legends of FEATURES the past
13 HUMOR
[Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence.]
W
ith the semester well underway, it seems as if the whole campus is excited for one of Vassar’s most anticipated weekends: Halloween! Throughout campus there are many events going on that cater to a variety of preferences. Whether you choose to go out and party or stay in and watch a movie, there will certainly be something to do. CARES wanted to take this opportunity to inform the campus about ways that an individual can take action to prevent sexual violence in our community. Unfortunately, even though Halloweekend is a time of relaxation and celebration, it also presents the opportunity for individuals to perpetrate sexual violence. Through understanding situations that can lead to interpersonal violation, individuals can keep themselves and others safe. The Halloween Party this year will be held in Noyes Circle, in an outdoor setting. The administration hopes that this will increase accountability and make it more difficult for violation to happen than in a dark, cramped space such as the Villard
JYAer evades censors to recount Russian adventures
Room. While this is a commendable action, there is still a need for prevention and intervention on an individual level. By prevention, we mean: Be respectful of others’ personal space. Provided there is enough room, don’t dance too close to another person without their consent, and if you want to dance with them, just ask! Remember to always ask for consent before touching someone, even if it’s just giving them a hug or a pat on the back. Also remember that revealing or tight-fitting costumes are NOT an invitation to touch. Individuals can dress however they please regardless of gender identity or body type and deserve respect towards their bodies. Hooking up happens often during Halloweekend. Remember that the definition of consent is a voluntary, knowing “yes” that does not come about through intimidation. The lack of a “no” in itself does not qualify as consent. Intoxication from substances such as alcohol or other drugs impairs judgment so that the intoxicated individual may be unable to give consent to a sexual act. If you find yourself in a situation where you or your partner are inSee CARES on page 6
20 SPORTS
Courtesy of Rachel Wallace
ast year, I wrote about the impact “Skam,” a Norwegian television show created for teens, had on my life and how it changed how I viewed the world. Shortly afterwards, the fourth season of the series was announced, and with this came a notice from the show’s producer that this would be its last. I was immediately hit with a wave of devastation. While I had only been aware of the show since December of last year and the announcement of the fourth season was in April, I felt as though the show had been with me for much longer. It was nothing like I had ever watched before, with its unique usage of media and realistic portrayal
of the characters, who each come with a different burden they carry throughout the show’s run. Clips are posted in real time to NRK’s website, which is the channel that the show is featured on, and then compiled into a 30-minute episode airing on Fridays. So, if the season lead has a breakdown after a party at 3 a.m. on a Saturday, then viewers get to see the clip at that time. It creates a special relationship between subject and viewer, one that has never been explored on this media platform. I was first drawn to the show after seeing images of Isak, the protagonist of Season Three, on Twitter and reading tweets of people freaking out about how amazing this weird Norwegian See SKAM on page 15
Guest Columnist
rt, in its essence, is a collaborative process. Even if one person produces the art, there’s still a shared experience created between the artist and the spectator. In theatre, this is no different. The audience doesn’t just see actors on stage. They also get to witness the efforts made by the director over a month of rehearsals, the set a designer spent hours of their time constructing, the words of a playwright that developed after many drafts from a single idea and the hard work of a stage manager who made sure nothing fell apart. In The Miscellany News’ Sports section, there is a weekly column called “Why We Play.” Here in Arts, we decided to reach out to several Vassar students involved in various production roles in student theatre to understand why they do the play. Leora Randall-Tavori ’18, president of Merely Players and Unbound, will be directing Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice” through Unbound. She originally developed a love for theater in general from her grandmother, seeing shows every year for her birthday or watching VHS recordings of 1950s musicals and old ballets in her grandmother’s living room. As a playwright, however, Randall-Tavori developed a linguistic fascination from her father: “I’ve always loved words. I’ve been calling myself a ‘word nerd’ since I could read. I grew up listening to my dad tell me stories, and loving how the way that he used language felt like magic. It sounds corny, but it’s true.” While she only began writing within the last two years, Randall-Tavori has produced a significant amount of work. In addition to helping establish Unbound’s staged reading program, Randall-Tavori has been involved with initiating the TA Reading Series, where once every several weeks there is a See PLAY on page 14
Nicholas Franzen ’20 first became interested in acting from his storytelling father and appearing in a fifth-grade production of “Peter Pan” as the father and Captain Hook.
Vassar’s SAAC strives to bridge student/ athlete divide
The Miscellany News
Page 2
October 26, 2017
Editor-in-Chief
Charlotte Varcoe-Wolfson
Senior Editor Noah Purdy
Contributing Editors Sarah Dolan Eilís Donohue Rhys Johnson Anika Lanser
Courtesy of Yina Wang
“The Danube River splits the bustling city of Budapest into two respective parts: Buda and Pest. This view above greets me every night as I make the trek back home to my own flat. What’s not to love?” Yina Wang ’19 asks herself. Not everything has been easy to love, but she’s determined to make a home for herself in Budapest. To read more about Yina’s exciting JYA experience and other student’s travels, visit farandaway.miscellanynews.org!
The Miscellany News 26
October
Thursday
Take Back the Night Rally
4:30 p.m. | College Center Circle | Women’s Center
Philosphers Holiday
5:00 p.m. | RH 200 | Philosophy Dept.
“Free CeCe” Film Screening 5:30 p.m. | RH 300 | Women’s Studies Program
6:00 p.m. | SC 212 | English Dept.
Sean Hemmerle: Photography Lecture and Book Signing 6:00 p.m. | NE 206 | PHOCUS
27
October
28
Friday
October
American Red Cross Blood Drive
10:00 a.m. | Villard Room | Health Service
Faculty Recital: Danielle Farina, viola, and Thomas Sauer, piano
Saturday
Cross Country (M/W) vs. Liberty League Championships
October
Sunday
Paper Critique
9:00 p.m. | Rose Parlor | The Miscellany News
8:00 a.m. | The Farm | Athletics
Walking Tours of Vassar College Campus 10:00 a.m. | Main Circle | Communications
8:00 p.m. | Skinner Recital Hall | Music Dept.
Halloween Festival
Melancholy Play: A Chamber Musical 8:00 p.m. | Black Box Theater | Drama Dept.
11:00 a.m. | Outdoor Space Joss Beach | Dean of Studies
Volleyball (W) vs. Tri-Match 11:00 a.m. | KH Gym | Athletics
No Offense Presents: Eeeek!
Etsy Artists Holiday Shopping
9:00 p.m. | SC 212 | No Offense
11:00 a.m. | The Juliet | College Store
CJC Sushi Social
6:00 p.m. | RH 104 | Chabad Jewish Community
5K Fun Run
An Evening with Oliver Platt
12:00 p.m. | Residential Quad | Health Education
“SKIN” Panel Discussion
Field Hockey (W) vs. SUNY New Paltz
6:00 p.m. | VCDF 109 | Film Dept. 7:00 p.m. | AULA | Dean of the Faculty
Celebrate the spooky festivities of Halloween this weekend with your friends on Saturday at 11 a.m.
Assistant News Clark Xu Assistant Features Laila Volpe Assistant Arts Sasha Gopalakrishnan Assistant Online Kayla Holliday Jackson Ingram Abby Lass Assistant Copy Claire Baker Assistant Social Media Hannah Nice Web Master & Technical Advisor George Witteman Reporters Talya Phelps Dylan Smith Columnists Izzy Braham Jimmy Christon Jesser Horowitz Steven Park Sylvan Perlmutter Andrew Solender Blair Webber Design Maya Sterling Copy Isabel Bielat Natalie Bober James Bonanno Gabriela Calderon Teddy Chmyz Jillian Frechette Abigail Knuckles Jessica Moss Anna Wiley Andrea Yang
1:00 p.m. | Weinberg Field | Athletics
ASA Workshop
CORRECTION POLICY The Miscellany News will only accept corrections for any misquotes, misrepresentations or factual errors for an article within the semester it is printed.
Soccer (M) vs. Ithaca College
7:00 p.m. | NE 105 | Asian Students’ Alliance
2:00 p.m. | Gordon Competition Field | Athletics
Courtesy of Flickr
Enjoy some delicious sushi and discussions provided by Chabad Jewish Community this Thursday!
“Remembering the Great War: Songs, Poetry, and Images of WWI.”
Courtesy of Karl Rabe
Melancholy Play: A Chamber Musical 8:00 p.m. | Black Box Theater | Drama Dept.
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Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures
Wai Chee Dimock: Lecture
Weekender_
News Laurel Hennen Vigil Humor and Satire Leah Cates Yesenia Garcia Arts Matt Stein Patrick Tanella Sports Mack Liederman Robert Pinataro Design Yoav Yaron Copy Tanya Kotru Gode Sumiko Neary
8:00 p.m. | Skinner Recital Hall | Music Dept.
Melancholy Play: A Chamber Musical 8:00 p.m. | Black Box Theater | Drama Dept.
Work out and show what it takes to run 5000 meters this Saturday at 12 p.m. on the Residential Quad!
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
CORRECTION In last week’s article “Vassar women’s rugby performs well at West Point,” we mislabeled Amanda Saich as Jennie To in the photo caption. The Miscellany News is not responsible for the views presented within its Opinions pages. The weekly staff editorial is the only article which reflects the opinion of the Editorial Board.
October 26, 2017
NEWS
Page 3
VC first-years contemplate ‘I’m Not a Racist...Am I?’ FILM continued from page 1
students from various class years, many of whom the professors had identified as being involved in social justice work on campus. Pittman further elaborated, “The 20 to 30 students who attended the pilot screening last November gave us feedback on the value and relevance of the film, and, having once been firstyears themselves, they suggested that it would be a good thing to show the incoming class.” Pittman further commented that the focus on first-years was intended: “The conversations turn out to be very different with new students as opposed to with students who have been here for a while, and we wanted to give first-years that space to talk alongside other new students like themselves.” He explained that they had made attendance of a screening of the film required for all first-years because, while no real consequences would have occurred if they chose not to attend, it was important for them to have conversations about broader issues like race, bias and oppression that impact their daily lives. “I’m Not a Racist...Am I?” ultimately aims to educate the participating high school students in the documentary about what structural racism actually is, and how it functions in the United States to benefit white people, as explained in the documentary. It makes the distinctions that individual meanness or bigotry that people of color could exhibit towards white people is very different from racism, which fundamentally, due to its systemic nature, can only be exercised by those who are white because that is the group that benefits from white privilege, at the expense of people of color. The film aimed to demonstrate to the students featured, as well to audiences, that white people will always ascend due to institutions being in their favor, while people of color are held back, being on the opposite side of white privilege. First-year Sefa February voiced her thoughts on the film: “I think it’s a good starting point, and they needed to start somewhere, but there’s a lot more to delve into. For example, the film didn’t really talk about how you have to not only
acknowledge your privilege, but acknowledge that you have it because someone else doesn’t; because it was taken from their share. And that acknowledgement should eventually turn into action. It’s not enough to just talk about it but not do anything about it. So this conversation should by no means be over.” It’s an interesting experience for the firstyears to be educated about an issue by watching other young people become educated about it. Watching the film’s high school students engage in conversations where they begin to actually understand the problem—and have to confront their own racial biases and ignorance in the process—was a mechanism by which dialogue was fostered among first-year audiences during the facilitated discussions after the screening. Director of the ALANA Center Wendy Maragh Taylor, who acted as a facilitator for these talks, explained, “The film is relevant no matter how you look at it, but particularly, it’s important to note that if we indeed want an inclusive campus, then we must have honest conversations about all of our differences and the intersections of those, and this specific film helps us get started on at least one of those conversations, one related to race.” Pittman also explained that the facilitated discussions of about 10 students per groups which followed the screening were extremely intentional: “We wanted the students to have a smaller, more intimate setting to share what they’re thinking comfortably. We also didn’t want to the film to impress a uniform idea upon them but rather give them the space to share their interpretations based on their own experiences, and talk it out amongst each other.” Mask elaborated on the discussion function of the film as well: “This film is actually not even available to be bought independently online because it is designed to be facilitated. It requires healthy dialogue later to deconstruct it, otherwise the purpose is lost.” After the screening, students were asked to shout out one word that captured how they felt,
Courtesy of Ed Pittman
and in conversations with friends and family members. The group of teenagers come from different racial backgrounds and ethnicities, which brings in various perspectives on race. As its website indicates, “‘I’m Not Racist...Am I?’ was co-produced by The Calhoun School and Point Made Films ... a larger initiative designed to transform a silenced conversation and fundamentally alter the dialogue surrounding white privilege and structural and systemic racism for K–12th grade students, their parents and teachers” (I’m Not a Racist...Am I?, “Filmmakers”). This film was brought to Vassar as a collaborative effort between several departments and administrative offices, particularly through the efforts of Associate Professor and Chair of Drama Shona Tucker, Associate Film Professor Mia Mask and Associate Dean for Campus Life and Diversity Edward Pittman. The process started with Tucker, who first saw the documentary at her son’s junior high school. She explained, “It was imperative after I saw the snippets at PDS [Poughkeepsie Day School] with my 11-year-old that I bring the film to Vassar if I could. We all need tools to talk about race. It isn’t an easy topic for folks to embrace. We need a way to open up but not be left raw.” From there on, Tucker began conversations with Mask about how it could fit in at Vassar. Mask commented on how their work began two years ago: “We started to look into this documentary in response to a time when Vassar’s campus had become a hotbed of social unrest. We saw the film as a great teaching tool, and while we recognize it isn’t perfect, we thought this cultural programming could possibly help our community heal, igniting healthier conversations which acknowledges that there is indeed a problem.” Tucker and Mask, along with administrators, were involved in a great deal of research and planning regarding these screenings. They organized pilot screenings for senior administrators, followed by another screening for faculty and
First-years attended one of the three required screenings of the film “I’m Not a Racist...Am I?” and one student said, “Underrepresented.” Several students shared this sentiment regarding a lack of representation for non-Black people of color because, although there were high schoolers featured from various racial backgrounds, the debate seemed to center around racism towards Black people. In an email to the administration, some of these students shared their concerns, stating, “There are 216 non-Black POCs in the [first-year] class, and they deserve as much representation.” Mask acknowledged that their criticisms were absolutely valid, and explained, “The Vassar community is very intelligent and sophisticated so I hope they know that this film was not trying to be a catch-all or solution to racism. It’s only meant to be a potential beginning—a start to talking about structural racism in an open way, and we recognize that it only scratches the surface. We definitely want to take this constructive criticism into account so that we can build on these conversations in the future.”
Community gathers to discuss conservation research Clark Xu
Assistant News Editor
O
Courtesy of Clark Xu
n Wednesday, Oct. 18, conservationists from Vassar College and the surrounding area gathered at the Barn on the Environmental Cooperative to share ideas about scientific research, social action and pedagogy for building a habitable future. Speakers affiliated with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Environmental Monitoring and Management Alliance (EMMA), City of Poughkeepsie Natural Resources Inventory (NRI), the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, the Student Conservation Association, Vassar Greens and the Fossil Fuels Divestment Campaign delivered presentations throughout the day. Event organizers Adele Birkenes ’20 and Addison Tate ’17 opened the symposium with a few remarks about the wide range of interests and concerns captured under the heading of conservation. Birkenes referred to a passage from “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold that describes Leopold’s sense of devastation when he successfully culled a mother wolf and six pups by firing his rifle from the top of a ridge into the river valley. Leopold climbed down to the scene of devastation in time to see what he described as the green fire die from the mother wolf’s eyes. Birkenes added, “Conservation must be rooted in a connection to the land that engages the heart as well as the mind. Before my ‘green fires’ of last year, I felt afraid to acknowledge beauty and spirituality in nature because I thought it made me a less credible scientist. Now, I realize that my ability to appreciate this beauty is what makes me a more effective conservationist.” With NOAA, Birkenes developed a database on marine mammal migration patterns in the Alaskan, Pacific and Atlantic regions of U.S. waters. The goal of her research is to make GIS data in the Protected Species Information System available to other researchers and the general public in the effort to better understand aquatic ecosystems. Tate, Education and Outreach Post Baccalaureate Fellow at the Environmental Cooperative, has worked extensively on projects to improve the connection that local residents have with the environment. One of his projects is the Vassar Experimental Garden, which seeks to introduce stu-
One of the organizers of Oct. 18’s conservation symposium, Adele Birkenes ’20, delivered a presentation about her NOAA project on the migration patterns of marine mammals. dents to farming practices and explore new ideas for food production. The latest project is an indoor microgreens plot in Josslyn House, which allows food production to continue even in the midst of the Northeast winter. Tate also considered the 2012 Community Food Assessment in his thesis with the Environmental Studies Program and explained, “I looked at food insecurity in Poughkeepsie and also the Hudson Valley as a food provider, a food system. A quarter of the households in Poughkeepsie are food insecure, meaning that they don’t have consistent access to healthy nutritional food. And on the flip side of that, the Hudson Valley is producing a lot of great local food but is lacking distribution infrastructure. So I created a business model out of these two things for a food distribution program that would source from local farms in the area and deliver boxed foods that people could order ahead of time in Poughkeepsie.” Poughkeepsie Farm Project Education Director
Jamie Levato expressed a similar vision for the social impact of conservation efforts. Levato elaborated, “Poughkeepsie Farm Project is primarily a food justice program. We’re talking about justice, equability, at all levels of the food system, starting from seed production and going all the way to on your plate. The way we do most of our work is to grow vegetables in collaboration with Bon Appétit on land we lease from Vassar. Most of the food from these 15 acres goes to our Student Conservation Association shareholders, but 20 percent of what we grow goes to food providers in the area and we actively provide opportunities for local groups to learn how to farm.” Focusing on scientific research, Vassar Ecological Preserve Research Assistant Elise Matera ’19 spoke about data collection projects on deer browse in sapling fence plots, the prevalence of invasive vines and shrubs and the population levels of local pollinators that formed the core of several efforts in the Undergraduate Research Summer In-
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
stitute. Matera said, “Conservation work, a lot of the time, means helping out where you can, and where the work is needed, you try to put some in.” Editor of VC Nature Stephen Kovari ’19 shared his trail-monitoring work, explaining, “We’ve been putting up cameras on the trails to analyze fox populations, their distance to roads and relationship to human population density. The coyotes out here use the trails; the bobcats cross the trails.” EMMA Coordinator Jamie Deppen presented possible ways for students to get involved with conservation efforts and said, “We’re developing an ecological monitoring network that’s meant to help organizations manage their land and natural resources and share information with researchers, to help accelerate conservation efforts that are going on in the Hudson Valley.” She added that they currently have projects on deer exposures and weather and will examine phenology in the spring. Associate Professor of Biology Lynn Christenson reflected, “I grew up surrounded by nature — forests, plains, lakes and rivers. All of these places were filled with organisms, and I wanted to know who they were and what they were called ... Our natural environment gives us a sense of calm in an increasingly hectic and fast-paced world. So saving spaces where many species can live is important ... The best communicators can walk away from a controversial conversation enriched, informed and compassionate about the topic. That is really true for conservation; we need many ways of achieving good conservation strategies with participation from all members of society.” Tate concluded, “I see the conservation community as akin to an ecological community that consists of many parts each occupying a niche. From our niches, we may not be aware of the entire community, so events like this illuminate the different parts, what is missing and where we may find opportunities to work together. Furthermore, the conservation community exists as one of many communities within our broader human ecosystems of social justice, natural history and spirituality. In order to face the tricky task of focusing on our own work while maintaining a broad scope, we can start by recognizing that all work lies along an intersection of many issues and that we must nourish that interconnectedness.”
NEWS
Page 4
News Briefs
Students get to know Healing to Action
Trump won’t confirm Iran nuclear deal
—Marusa Rus, Guest Reporter
Reporter
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n Friday, Oct. 20, Healing to Action (H2A) had its first all-campus meeting of the year. H2A is a young org at Vassar, whose goal, according to founding members and group leaders, is to raise awareness of social and political issues while also working to fight against the general apathetic attitude that many Vassar students seem to have. “We’re living in times that are especially divisive, and especially disillusioned,” said H2A co-founder Maimuna Touray ’20. “We’re walking around like zombies. H2A is about having time to pause and feel.” Touray said their personal involvement in H2A beckons back to the very beginning of their first year at Vassar. “My desire to create a space like H2A comes from having unprocessed trauma and not having an outlet for it. It comes from realizing that my silence is inherently violent toward myself.” Friday night’s H2A meeting lasted for about an hour and a half and was split up into three major parts. A majority of Friday’s meeting was dedicated to illustrating what H2A does. Since H2A has only become a full org this year, many students on campus don’t know much about it. Friday’s meeting was guided by two H2A members who volunteered to lead the meeting and facilitate discussion. At the beginning of the meeting, they walked attendees through H2A’s goals and philosophy. They focused on explaining the purpose of H2A, the general meeting structure and the constitution of H2A, including the responsibilities of the org’s executive offices. H2A ultimately strives to offer a space for conversation. Meetings are designed to be open forums for healing conversation and positive action. The leaders of H2A, known as liaisons within their framework, hope that attendees define their space and conversation, bringing to meetings whatever worries or thoughts have
Roun l a c i lit
been affecting them. The remaining two parts of the meeting focused on healing and action, respectively. The healing aspect of each meeting is designed to allow for constructive and cathartic discussion. Attendees are encouraged to bring up anything and everything that is on their mind. The liaisons hope that this will lead attendees to identify their own emotional needs and work to heal through active speaking and listening within the group. In H2A’s view, after healing comes the transition to action. The liaisons hope that this transition happens organically during each meeting, that through asking “What do we need?” attendees will naturally seek out ways to meet those needs. H2A also stresses the necessity of planning; to transition from healing to action, attendees are encouraged to explore concrete organizational steps. The H2A liaisons hope that, for future meetings, passionate and focused students will group up around particular issues and work outside of general meetings to plan and execute change in their given area. Future meetings will serve as opportunities for such students to connect and update other H2A members on the progress of their action. Fostering such planning, according to Gabe Duska ’20, is one of the major difficulties in organizing H2A. “It’s tricky to balance having a conversation, and having that conversation transition into action,” Duska said. While leaders want attendees to define and control the space, they also would like to prompt more concrete steps in realizing change. Duska expressed some disappointment in the outcome of Friday’s meeting. While they felt that H2A was successful in reaching out to new people, particularly first-years, Duska hoped for greater attendance. They also would have liked to see more concrete planning and action. “While the conversation is moving in that di-
rection, there’s a lot more to go before seeing change on campus,” Duska said. Duska first found out about H2A over the summer. “I wanted to join because of the lack of the type of community that H2A can build,” Duska said. “I didn’t even realize I was missing that outlet.” Duska reflected, however, that H2A can’t enact change alone. They observed that a lot of change-oriented conversations are already happening within individual orgs and house teams. “We’re focused on making sure that individuals are engaged in the conversation. H2A has a key role to play in bringing together the leaders of orgs and house teams.” Duska emphasized the importance of facilitating connection between individuals dedicated to change, explaining that H2A allows leaders across campus to keep each other updated on important projects and issues. “This isn’t a conversation we can have alone,” Duska said. Jesse Horowitz ’19, who attended an H2A meeting for the first time on Friday, is thankful that H2A has created a space for healing and action on campus [Full Disclosure: Horowitz is an Opinions columnist for The Miscellany News]. “I think a lot of people are used to seeing really good conversations happen, and then having nothing come of it,” Horowitz reflected. “I see a campus that wants to do positive things and help people and do great work, and I’m looking forward to seeing what H2A can do.” Since Friday, some H2A members and attendees have already begun to enact change on campus. One of the major topics of Friday’s meeting was the recent VSA Senate forum with President Bradley regarding Vassar’s financial status. “There weren’t enough seats to hold all the people that attended that meeting,” Duska said. Duska attributes at least some of this turnout to the effectiveness of H2A. “It’s an indication that people on this campus care,” they reflected. Horowitz echoed Duska’s sentiments, saying, “I’m looking forward to working with H2A to help make Vassar the best campus it can be.”
New York Times, “Senate Approves Budget Plan That Smooths Path Toward Tax Cut,” 10.19.2017).
cellence Awards. Business of the Year went to Beacon’s More Good syrup company, and Nonprofit of the Year went to the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory and Hudson River Housing (Poughkeepsie Journal, “Business Excellence Awards recognize Dutchess businesses, nonprofits,” 10.19.2017).
In our backyard... Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, who has been rumored to be considering a gubernatorial run, took his first step toward challenging New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2018 by registering with the state Board of Elections. Molinaro was elected mayor of Tivoli at age 17, making him America’s youngest mayor. Since then, he has served as county legislator, state assemblyman and county executive. In a September speech to the Town of Republican Club in Allegany County, Molinaro confirmed, “Yes, I’m thinking of running for governor of the state of New York. Yes, I’m here to see how people respond to that concept” (Hudson Valley Post, “Molinaro takes major step toward governor run,” 10.2017). On Oct. 16, the City of Poughkeepsie adopted a new debt management policy to address its negative fund balance. The plan was funded by a 2016 grant from Dutchess County and developed by Poughkeepsie’s Finance Department in concert with Capital Markets Advisors, LLC, and finance consultants. Outgoing Commissioner of Finance Marc Nelson explained, “This policy outlines our plan to curtail borrowing, seek refunding opportunities in favorable markets, and improve the City’s bond rating” (The Buzz: City of Poughkeepsie eNewsletter, 10.20.2017). Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolison announced on Oct. 17 that his 2018 preliminary budget stays under the New York State tax cap and drew attention to some of the features of the plan, saying, “With this, my second budget, we will turn our full attention towards the many quality-of-life issues in our community, from blight and basic cleanliness, to youth services and public safety.” The budget endows a new program of local grants for youth activities, allows for a new weekend shift at the Department of Public Works, adds a second sanitation inspector and brings back the city planner position, which was scrapped in 2012. Rolison also emphasized the importance of public safety and committed to retaining firefighters whose funding through a SAFER grant will soon expire (The Buzz: City of Poughkeepsie eNewsletter, 10.20.17). On Oct. 19, area businesses and nonprofits were honored at the Think Dutchess Business Ex-
p du
n Friday, Oct. 13, President Trump announced his decision to disavow the Iran nuclear agreement. For the time being, the agreement remains in place, but it is now up to Congress to decide in the next 60 days whether to again impose sanctions that have been abolished after the nuclear agreement, not to do anything or to start drafting a new law with regard to Iran. The nuclear deal has been approved with the congressional law that requires the president to report every 90 days on Iran’s compliance with the agreement. In his address, President Trump pointed out that the United States can withdraw from the agreement anytime it wants. He also expressed his willingness to negotiate with Congress and U.S. allies to strengthen Iran’s commitment to compliance with the agreement. In case the negotiations fail to reach a solution, the United States will unilaterally withdraw from the agreement, Trump said. Trump did not call for the sanctions against Iran but for sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which he has defined as a terrorist organization. He called on U.S. allies to join him in imposing sanctions due to Iran’s missile program, support for terrorism and in general activities that are destabilizing the region. For the time being, President Trump will wait to see what will be drawn up for him by Congress, where his party is preparing a change of the law under which the president must approve the agreement. The president of the Senate Committee on International Relations, Bob Croker, and his Republican counterpart, Tom Cotton, have prepared a proposal that sanctions should be automatically introduced if intelligence finds that Iran has only one year left to obtain nuclear weapons (CNN Politics, “Lawmakers ready Iran nuclear legislation,” 10.13.2017). Iranian President Hassan Rouhani responded to Trump’s speech, saying that it was full of unsubstantiated allegations and insults and promised to straighten the state security forces in lights of new sanctions. He denied Trump’s threat about the destruction of the agreement, pointing out that the U.S. president does not realize that this is a bilateral agreement, which Trump alone cannot overturn (Reuters, “Trump strikes blow at Iran nuclear deal in major U.S. policy shift,” 10.13.2017). In response to Trump’s decision, European Union (EU) High Representative Frederica Mogherini said that the Iran nuclear deal is an international agreement that cannot be undone by a single state. Moreover, she commented that an international community like the EU cannot afford to break the agreement that operates well and brings results (Reuters, “Iran, EU and Russia defend nuclear deal after Trump threat,” 10.13.2017). After Trump’s speech, leaders of Great Britain, France and Germany reaffirmed their commitment to the nuclear deal (Reuters, “EU Leaders Talk up Iran Nuclear Deal Hoping to Save It From Trump,” 10.19.2017). They also called on Trump to rethink the further measures that could undermine the agreement. In response to the new U.S. strategy towards Iran, Russia has also condemned Trump’s aggressive and threatening rhetoric. It seems that the only leader to publicly take Trump’s side is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who praised what he called President Trump’s courageous decision in refusing to confirm Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal and with countering terrorism in Iran. He also added that this is a great opportunity to rectify this bad agreement (Reuters, “Iran, EU and Russia defend nuclear deal after Trump threat,” 10.13.2017). This decisive shift in strategy toward Iran was also supported by Saudi Arabia, which announced further cooperation in dealing with the dangers of Iranian politics. For many years, the Sunni monarchy in Saudi Arabia condemned Shi’ite Iran for destabilizing the Arab world. Like the majority of other Sunni Arab states, it is against the nuclear deal (Reuters, “Saudi Arabia welcomes new U.S. strategy toward Iran,” 10.13.2017).
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Talya Phelps In this week’s headlines... On Oct. 18, President Trump made a controversial condolence call to the widow of Sergeant La David T. Johnson, who was killed on Oct. 4 in Niger. According to Sergeant Johnson’s mother and Rep. Frederica T. Wilson (D-FL), both of whom listened in on the call, Trump said that Johnson’s husband “knew what he signed up for” and referred to him only as “your guy” (The New York Times, “Trump’s Condolence Call to Soldier’s Widow Ignites an Imbroglio,” 10.18.2017). The next day, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly defended Trump’s words, criticizing Wilson and speaking about the loss of his own son in Afghanistan (The New York Times, “Kelly Delivers Fervent Defense of Trump Call to Soldier’s Widow,” 10.19.2017). Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama separately delivered implicit critiques of President Trump on Oct. 19. Bush spoke in favor of immigration and free trade and condemned nationalism and bigotry, while Obama defended his record on health care and commented on the country’s current social, economic and racial divides (The New York Times, “Without Saying ‘Trump,’ Bush and Obama Deliver Implicit Rebukes,” 10.19.2017). Following his Oct. 17 endorsement of a proposal to restore subsidies to health insurers, drafted by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA), Trump walked back his support with an Oct. 18 tweet stating that he “would never support bailing out” insurance companies (The New York Times, “Trump Pulls Back From Senate Deal to Fund Health Subsidies,” 10.18.2017). On Oct. 19, the Senate passed a budget blueprint that opens the door to rewriting the tax code by protecting against a Democratic filibuster (The
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
Keeping up with 2020 hopefuls... A 2020 poll by the University of New Hampshire showed Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the lead with 31 percent, then former Vice President Joe Biden at 24 percent and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) at 13 percent. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) trailed at six percent, while Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) had just one percent each. Warren wrote to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, economic advisor Gary Cohn and other aides, asking for clarification on Trump’s position on raising the minimum wage (CNN, “#2020Vision: Sanders, Biden up in New Hampshire; Sanders to visit Puerto Rico; Steyer pushes impeachment,” 10.20.2017). Booker sang the praises of Gillibrand in a Vogue feature, saying, “I don’t know if America could hope for a president that cares and loves and works and fights for them more than she would” (CNN, “#2020Vision: Warren’s big fundraising haul; Booker says Gillibrand would be ‘amazing president,’” 10.13.17). During a bipartisan event with Ohio Governor John Kasich, Biden castigated Trump for his self-aggrandizing and constant tweeting, calling him “a president who does not understand governance” (“#2020Vision: Sanders, Biden up in New Hampshire”). On Oct. 18, California State Senate Leader Kevin de León became the first Democrat to formally announce his run against Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) for a U.S. Senate seat. Harris and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, both 2020 prospects, came out in support of Feinstein (“#2020Vision: Warren’s big fundraising haul”). Sanders cancelled his scheduled appearance at the Women’s Convention in Detroit this week after negative reactions to the idea of a man speaking on the first day of an event focused on women. Instead, he planned to visit hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico (“#2020Vision: Sanders, Biden up in New Hampshire”).
October 26, 2017
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Updates from the VSA Committee Updates Committee on Equity and Inclusion: —Dorm beautification project ideas, like the windows in Noyes, were discussed as a way to make the houses feel like communities. —Accessibility concerns for a possible art exhibition were brought up. —An identity orgs dinner to be hosted by VSA was discussed. Financing and logistics have yet to be well defined and tasks will soon be distributed. —Other possible projects that the committee could pursue were also mentioned, including the Workers Appreciation Dinner (organized by MEChA), opening up spaces for various religious events (for example, Diwali), and creating more conversation and celebration for Black History Month. Board of Activities: —A new sound system will be purchased for several college events. They talked to ViCE weekly about which equipment features are needed. The management of the system will require the employment of more than one system manager (as a work-study position) so that the system can remain in optimal condition. —Middle School Mug Night discussion: Current concerns relating to the location and budget for the event were discussed. —Senior Week discussion: The senior class president suggested hosting only one concert in lieu of senior week (but using the same budget). Orgs Committee: —Orgs briefly reviewed the results from the Planning Committee’s orgs survey. The
Committee will likely focus on reaching out to interested orgs based on the needs they mentioned in the survey. —People showed a lot of interest in having the VSA host an event that will help different orgs reach out to other orgs on campus for collaborations on different events. The VSA will likely begin planning for it. Board of Residential Affairs: —The Board discussed collaborating and working on how to make UpC into a programming space—students should be able to reserve UpC for events. —Thanksgiving meals will be offered for those staying on campus over break. —Street Eats, currently in the TAs, may change locations and will work on having an online schedule and menu. —There was a meeting discussing the Committee on College Life, which would be a place to converse about topics to bring forward to the president. They still need to figure out how students will be selected to be on the board. —There was a VSA meeting with the Chair of the Student Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees Carol Ostrow, who expressed interest in direct communication with students, and students in attendance felt that the concerns they presented were heard. Operations and Planning: —Ops is dividing up representatives to be in touch with the different committees, so Ops can have a better idea of the overall running of the VSA. —Ideas are being thrown around for restructuring Senate so that people get more workshop time and there will be more think-
ing and pausing. —VSA representatives have been visiting different houses during study breaks and asking how they feel about the Student Discourse Forum. Responses have been positive. —Next week, Ops will meet with different orgs, targeting identity orgs, to ask how they feel about the Forum. —Org plenary is in the works and will be discussed next week. —Sarah Jane Muder, General VSA Intern President Bradley’s VSA Forum On Sunday, Oct. 22, President Elizabeth Bradley held an open forum hosted by the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Senate. President Bradley presented a PowerPoint slideshow that she had shown to the Board of Trustees and the faculty covering the College’s financial status and options to ameliorate our financial status. She also spoke about potential ways to alter the current residential life system of student leadership. After President Bradley left, the Senate offered time for students to respond to the forum and to express their feelings on this information and these potential changes. Below are some highlights from the Miscellany News’ summary of Bradley’s presentation. To read the full account of the forum, please visit MiscellanyNews.org. On finances: There are two sides to any kind of income statement: the revenues and the expenses. I’ll start with the revenues. There are four big buckets to our revenues.
The first is net student revenue (calculated as gross student revenue, which is the number of students multiplied by the comprehensive per-student fee, minus financial aid). The second is the endowment draw—endowment income used to support the College’s operations. The third is gift revenue, which is funds the College receives that we can spend immediately. The last is other revenue sources, which comes, for example, from the bookstore and other money received. The total revenue for this year is $177.42 million. Our discount rate is financial aid divided by gross student revenue, and our current rate is 40.9 percent. Next are our expenses. The biggest part of our expenses are faculty and non-faculty salaries, wages and benefits. This makes up 64 percent of what we spend money on. The next is discretionary spending, which includes travel, supplies, lectures, etc.—these can change from year to year. Non-discretionary spending includes utilities and debt—these are fixed from year to year. The last category of expenses is capital expense, including facility renewal, technology updates and equipment. On ResLife: The part of residential life I think is really great is when the community takes care of itself. Everybody here is an adult who knows what community can feel like and really work to make our community the most inclusive and life-giving as possible. Every morning I get security reports, and in reading them over I realized that a lot of matters have been escalated up and out to forces outside of the community, when they could in reality be taken care of the community itself. —The Miscellany News
Professors discuss memorials in light of Charlottesville Youngju Chang Guest Reporter
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n Tuesday, Oct. 17, Vassar’s Black Student Union (BSU) and Vassar History Majors Committee hosted the second of the series of “History and Memory after Charlottesville” lectures. They organized a panel discussion titled “Contesting Memory: An International Perspective.” After the racist incident in Charlottesville, VA, in August, BSU and the History Majors Committee decided to organize the serial discussion events in order to share opinions about how the United States and other countries remember histories of wars, conflicts and injustices. The first event of the series was held on Thursday, Sept. 28, when the Head of the West Point history department Colonel Ty Seidule visited the campus and delivered a speech on the Confederacy. As a continuation of the discussion, the second talk, a panel discussion by Vassar faculty about the relationship between commemoration and political power was established. According to Vassar’s Office of Communications’ event listing, “The panelists will help contextualize historical efforts to (re)construct national history and identity in specific international spaces, while also discussing both promises and/or limits of this work, as well as possible ways forward” (Vassar Info, “History and Memory after Charlottesville, ‘Contesting Memory: An International Perspective,’ October 17, 2017,” 10.9.2017). Many students participated in this event in Rocky 300 on Thursday. Emma Wiley ’20 was one of the attendees who looked forward to the discussion. As a history major, Wiley had attended the first event in the series and found that the project was very interesting. Through the panel discussion, she wanted to continue learning more about the topic. Wiley also added that her hometown is Falls Church in northern Virginia, which is close to Charlottesville. She said the series triggered by the Charlottesville incident would give her an insight to understand her local community more deeply. Four Vassar professors participated in the panel discussion: Professor of Political Science
Katherine Hite, Professor of History Ismail Rashid, Assistant Professor of History Wayne Soon and Professor of History Maria Höhn. Each of the speakers talked for 10 to 15 minutes about the various ways of memorializing historical events relating to their respective fields of expertise. Professor Hite was the first speaker. At the start of her speech, she posed the question about how people remember a political violence. She said, “[Memorials are a way of] challenging a silence and opening up important conversations.” Nevertheless, the process of creating memorials, such as deciding narrative, context and design, is deeply influenced by politics, power and interest. Hite explained these points by using Texas, her home state, as an example. She stated that Texas and other southern U.S. states have numerous controversial memorials. For example, proponents of Confederate state monuments argue that they are historical markers honoring heritage, while opponents would disagree by saying the memorials symbolize slavery, racism and a history of brutal territorial expansion. Hite introduced another example: the construction of a monument for Jesse Washington, a Black teenager who was lynched in Waco, TX, in 1961. The proposal of creating the monument was suggested so that people could commemorate the victim and remember the inhumane racism. However, the proposal has not yet been confirmed. Finally, Hite pointed out the fact that there is no major memorial to the Mexican and Mexican-American victims of the Border War during the Mexican Revolution. Hite concluded her portion of the panel by arguing that it is crucial to put more efforts into remembering the history of marginalized groups. Professor Rashid continued the discussion by talking about monuments in South Africa. He opened his talk by introducing the protest “Rhodes Must Fall (#RhodesMustFall).” In March 2015, students of the University of Cape Town protested to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes on the campus. They argued that the statue symbolized colonialism and racism and
so it should be eradicated. Moreover, the protest asked for the decolonization of education across South Africa. The protest soon became extremely powerful and garnered international attention. In April 2015, the statue was removed. Rashid also talked about how the South African government changed the culture of monuments. Previously, there were a lot of monuments in South Africa symbolizing white supremacy and discrimination of marginalized groups. However, recently, in order to counteract this message, the South African government is making an effort to create memorials to the oppressed. Rashid suggested three examples. First, he introduced the Zulu King Monument which memorializes the Bambatha Rebellion in 1906. Next, he highlighted the Voortrekker Monument, the memorial for the Voortrekkers who left the Cape Colony to avoid British colonial rule. Finally, Rashid summarized his speech by introducing Freedom Park, which contains more diverse contexts of the victims during South African Wars, the World Wars and the apartheid era. The third speaker, Professor Soon, discussed the relationship between medicine and the history of wartime China. Soon brought up Norman Bethune, a Canadian physician and renowned Communist who worked in China under the Mao Zedong government. During WWII, there was a global myth that Chinese people had died in hospitals because Chinese nationalists blockaded ways to attain medicines. The myth, however, was revealed to be false by “In the Memory of Norman Bethune,” the book written by Mao Zedong. According to the book, Bethune in fact received medicines from the nationalists, which directly contradicted the misinformation. Soon emphasized that “In the Memory of Norman Bethune” does not say anything about medicine or therapeutic information. Rather, the whole book talks about creating a nationalistic spirit in China. As a result, during the Cultural Revolution, the book became one of the mandatory books that all Chinese people should read. Due to his death by illness, Bethune stayed in China only about a year, but through this policy, his story is still alive in China. Indeed, Soon made his final point that Bethune’s ideologies
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go beyond the Chinese nativism and eventually have formed a modern nationalistic culture of China. The last speaker was Maria Höhn, whose field of study is German history, specifically during and after World War II. She started her discussion with the reactions of West Germany to the Holocaust. Cooperating with United States, West Germany established monuments commemorating victims of the genocide and remembering the brutal actions of the Nazis. For example, the monument that was first constructed was the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. On the other hand, East Germany eradicated most reminders of its inhumane history. Höhn then explained about how to integrate these opposing narratives. She introduced two innovative Holocaust memorials as examples. First, she talked about the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. This grand site is filled with 2,711 rectangular concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern. Their heights and widths are varied and people can walk around them. There are no words or pictures of the Holocaust, which makes this memorial extremely abstract. The purpose of the abstraction is to portray the memorial as a graveyard and to provoke uneasiness, which would help visitors connect themselves emotionally with the tragic history. As Höhn described, “It produces new memories to future generations.” The second monument that Höhn introduced are the stolpersteine (“stumbling stones”). Created in 1993, stolpersteine are cobblestone-size concrete cubes inscribed with the name and life dates of Holocaust victims. These cubes are embedded in the ground where the victims had lived for the last time—such as houses or workplaces—before they were taken to concentration camps. The memorial blocks are placed in many villages and cities throughout Germany. As a result, because of its ubiquity, people can frequently face and remember the history in their ordinary lives. The last lecture of the series will take place on Nov. 9 and will continue and summarize the discussion about history and memory in United States, as well as in other countries.
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October 26, 2017
Advice to have sociable, safe, spooky Halloweekend interpersonal violation during Halloweekend, there are resources available on and off campus. Counselors-on-call and Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) advocates are available for support 24/7. They can be reached by calling the Campus Response Center at (845) 437-7333. SART is a group of faculty, administrators and staff who are trained to provide survivor-centered support and advocacy services to those impacted by sexual and interpersonal violence. Charlotte Strauss Swanson, the Director of Vassar Sexual Assault and Violence Prevention (SAVP) and a victim-survivor advocate, is available to talk to you or anyone affected by interpersonal violation. SAVP and SART advocates are private resources. This means that any disclosures you make to them regarding assaults are not reported to the College unless there are safety concerns and for statistical purposes without sharing identifying information. Formal reports of sexual misconduct can be filed on campus through the Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action/Title IX office. Please keep in mind that professors, administrators, the ALANA Center director, LGBTQ Center director and House Advisors are considered responsible employees, meaning they are required to report any disclosures to the Title IX office. You have the right to respond or not respond to any outreach from the Title IX office following a disclosure. More information about private, confidential and responsible employees is located at: savp.vassar.edu/reporting/reporting-responsibilities.html. More information about all the resources available to you is located at savp.vassar.edu/ resources/. We hope these tips will help you to have a fun and safe Halloweekend! Remember there are resources available to you and that we have a community responsibility to end the culture of sexual violence.
Courtesy of Spencer Davis
CARES continued from page 1 toxicated, perhaps stop for a moment and talk out your options. It is much better to wait until everyone is sober and able to make informed decisions. By intervention we mean: Being an active bystander can be an effective way to prevent interpersonal violation before it happens. For first-years, Halloweekend can be a time to implement some intervention techniques you learned during orientation. We in CARES really like the “4 D’s”: direct approach, distract, delegate and finally delay. The “direct” approach involves confronting individuals directly. For example, if you see someone making another person uncomfortable with gestures, comments or attempted touching, you can approach those involved directly and ask if everything is okay. The potential victim might very well recognize the opportunity to leave the situation and take it. The “distract” approach works well for those who don’t feel comfortable or safe intervening directly. This could involve asking the potential victim to come to the bathroom with you, telling an entertaining story or generally making a ruckus to break up the flow of the dangerous situation. Lastly, the “delegate” approach involves going to someone else, informing them of the situation and recruiting their help to diffuse it. There is strength in numbers! For example, reaching out to a house team member or another student leader for their help in confronting individuals is a useful tactic. Oftentimes, hosts of parties at houses will be receptive to you approaching them and informing them of a potentially dangerous situation. Many times they will be willing to ask perpetrators to leave their home. For anyone hosting parties, consider creating a Facebook event that lays out the ground rules for your party and encouraging guests to men-
CARES stresses that students should take care of themselves and others during Halloweekend. Students should reach out to campus resources if someone needs help or if they do themselves. tion inappropriate behavior to hosts wearing identifying pieces, like wrist bands. This can help make your home a safe space for partygoers. In all cases, your safety is the top priority. If you do not feel safe intervening in a situation, it is okay to ask for help. If you feel your immediate physical safety is in danger, call Vassar Security! With all of the aforementioned tactics, it can also be helpful to follow up with the victim
and/or the perpetrator afterwards. This is the fourth D: “delay.” In order to improve the culture of sexual violence in which we live, we must work even after incidents to educate perpetrators and hold them accountable for their actions, and to support victims/survivors of the violence. A follow-up can be as simple as reaching out to the victim and making sure they are supported and that their needs are being met. If you or someone you know experiences
Cheesy late-night monster resurrected from panini crypt Matt Stein Arts Editor
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Matt Stein/The Miscellany News
“Upon sight, the billowing smoke and pulsations from the bubbling cheese could make an onlooker believe the monster was alive.”
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
“The vast graveyard of cheeses displayed tombstones in various family plots: Pepper Jack, Swiss, Provolone and Cheddar.”
Matt Stein/The Miscellany News
o those also wishing to make the not-so Quesadilla: I do not know that the relation of my disasters will be useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale, one that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking and console you in case of failure. Were we among the tamer scenes of nature I might fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule; but many things will appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions which would provoke the laughter of those unacquainted with the ever-varied powers of nature. The origins of this creation formed one ominously cloudy October night in the haunt known as the Deece as the Chapel bell proclaimed the witching hour. Aghast at the Late Night options of malodorous chicken and potato chips paired with hummus, I wandered over to the Your Kitchen wing to amalgamate several ingredients for a sandwich. However, all that remained were the lifeless plastic sheaths of what once held the great bread names White, Wheat, Rye and Whole Grain. All that remained was their sorry and oft-forgotten cousin, Toufayan Bakeries® Quality Wraps. While I was suspicious at first, the bags promised that they were improved and had no trans fat. I was intrigued by this forewarning but nevertheless progressed on in my quest for nourishment. With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. Despite these flaws to the initial plan, I felt it to be inevitable that I continue my journey. But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil: too much of a love for cheese. The vast graveyard of cheeses displayed tombstones in various family plots: Pepper Jack, Swiss, Provolone and Cheddar. For hope of a delicious synthetic meal, I dug out slices from each cheese pillar onto the makeshift work table of the wrap.
In a fit in which I was overpowered by my unrepressed craving, my eye spotted tomatoes and pickles. Pickles in a quesadilla? Madness. Sheer madness. Logic disappeared in the moment and these strangers made acquaintance with the stockpile of cheeses. The hour grew dim. I could see flashes of lightning in fits and bursts outside the oblong and distorted windows. It was time for my experiment to come to life. I approached the steaming sauna locals called the panini press. Having dressed the savory body for the testing, I laid the wrap down on the ridged surface and the heat spread through every inch of the wretched wrap. As I pressed down the little lever of the panini press, I muttered hysterically to myself: “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” While the heated lightning known as electricity distributed itself within the beast of cheese and grain, I was left only to look on as nature defied its traditional course. The fire was good. Upon sight, the billowing smoke and pulsations from the bubbling cheese could make an onlooker believe the monster was alive. I did it. A modern Prometheus, I had unchained the conservative conventions of a traditional quesadilla, freely roaming uncharted culinary discourse. “Man,” I cried, “How ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!” With the aid of tongs, I transported the daemon, bearing simmering scars induced by the experiment, from the press. My pace quickened, a combination of my astonishment to the results and inability to find a table. Settling in a lurking corner, I indulged in the nourishing pleasure of eating. The consumption was like a Gothic landscape, providing the familiar elements of cheese with elements of the uncanny, a reaction to the quadruplets of pickles and tomato. It was done. I left the remnants of the monster to drift away on the conveyer belt, like a giant spectre floating off on an iceberg. Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. And I changed the quesadilla.
October 26, 2017
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Org of the Week: Club offers fun for all ‘generations’ Gillian Redstone Guest Reporter
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scend the Generations program to the point where students visit the residents on their own or at least stay in touch. Sbano said she has a funny relationship with a resident named Carmen, who tells Sbano not to wear rips in her jeans, among other witty remarks. “[Carmen] yells at whoever is calling the bingo numbers that we aren’t going fast enough, and she is just generally very funny,” she said. “You just can tell that she took absolutely no BS in her life, and it is wonderful.” Velcani described a resident who offered a tour of her room and opened up about intimate details of her life full of interesting anecdotes, including her heartbreaks having John Lennon as a student. Both co-presidents Velcani and Sbano encourage other Vassar students to take part in their organization. The club is very low pressure, and students can attend outings every single week or just every once in a while. Generations leaves from Main Circle at 10:45 a.m. and arrives back at school by 12:15 p.m. “The club is super low commitment, but I’ll have to say, you may not be able to stop coming once you get to form such warm relationships with the lovely Vassar-Warner residents,” said Velcani. Sbano and O’Connell agree that Generations is a very rewarding way for students to spend their Saturday mornings. “I get to hang out with both residents and students whom I otherwise wouldn’t really get the chance to interact with,” Sbano continued. “It’s also a pretty good escape from the everyday Vassar experience, which can be overwhelming.” “On the way out you can see that the students really had a great time. They always say that the people are so nice and that they learned so many things,” added O’Connell. Velcani said that the residents also look forward to the visits from Vassar students. “The Vassar students have definitely become a part
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
he Vassar-Warner Home, a local senior residence, was founded in 1871 and Vassar College was formed in 1861, but the two only recently formed a flourishing connection through the organization Generations. Co-President Frida Velcani ’19 enjoys her time with the organization, describing Generations as a group that does various types of programming to engage with the elderly residents that live in the home. They participate in activities such as cookie decorating, bingo and origami. The main goal of the group is to create bonds between the seniors and the students that benefit both parties. Anyone with any amount of experience can be a part of the organization, but Generations Vice President Leah Cates ’20 chose to join because of her previous work in the elderly community. [Full Disclosure: Leah Cates is Humor & Satire editor for The Miscellany News.] The other co-president, Angela Sbano ’19, raved about the organization and how the low-commitment versatility still allowed her to have new experiences. “I really enjoy working within a community, and Generations was that perfect combination of being off-campus and engaging with people you don’t get to encounter everyday,” Sbano stated via an email interview. According to Activities Supervisor for the Vassar-Warner Home Sandra O’Connell, the residents come from all walks of life and span the ages of late 50s up to the oldest resident, who is 106. She said that with such diversity in the home, the residents have vastly different experiences from each other. Their lives differ even more from those of Vassar students, but that is what the residents love so much about the interactions. “[The seniors] really enjoy when the students talk with them and compare their ex-
periences,” explained O’Connell. “They’ll talk about how school is now and how it was then, how things were different growing up and music and dancing, and food. The students really get a lot out of talking with them, because there’s nothing else like hearing these true experiences.” These conversations are formed through various activities, such as arts and crafts and games like bingo. Generations also will occasionally bring one of Vassar’s a capella groups along to put on a performance in the home, a special treat for the seniors living there. Sbano shared how much she enjoys spending time with the residents, and finding that they can bond over topics like music that can transcend any age difference. She told a story of one visit to the home where the Night Owls, one of Vassar’s a capella groups, tagged along and performed the 1961 hit “Moon River” by Henry Mancini. The performance brought both her and an elderly resident to tears. “This person whom I barely knew and I just shared this moment of being overwhelmed by the emotion of a beautiful song, and it really is symbolic to me of the potential to make true and meaningful connections with people from across widely different life experiences,” she elaborated. “That is what makes [Generations] an incredible experience for me.” O’Connell added to Sbano’s point, describing how a lot of interpersonal conversation is lost among young people due to social media, and stated that connecting with seniors brings back the talking. “Realizing how these people grew up and how their lives have been and how it translates into their own lives...provided a basis for them,” she said. “The residents absolutely love it because they are taking part in teaching as well as being entertained and meeting new people.” The students and Vassar-Warner residents frequently form friendships that go on to tran-
Generations connects the Vassar-Warner Home and Vassar through group activites like Bingo. of their routine,” she said. “They love to share laughs as well as poke fun at our peculiar millennial ways!” Cates agreed that the residents enjoy these special Saturday mornings. “I think the residents enjoy spending time with a generation with which they might not otherwise [interact],” she said. “We also try to bring in fun and unusual activities, [such as] beading, origami and seasonal activities.” Students who would like more information about Generations can email Sbano at nsbano[at]vassar.edu.
Which haunted object on Vassar’s campus are you? Created by Cassidy Nealon and Victorien Jakobsen
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FEATURES
Page 8
October 26, 2017
Vassar legends, ghosts sure to surprise every student Talya Phelps Reporter
[Content warning: This article makes mention of suicide.]
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18. Old river vehicles 20. Blackberry relative “Spooky Scary22. Slang or jargon Skeletons” 23. Break even, in golf by ACROSS Flower garlands 24. 48. Arrival time (abbr.) 1. The radius’ counterpart An image 25. 49. The back bone 5. A gagging noise 50. Escape from 26. 52. Being kept cold (2 words) 10. Slender A relaxation retreat 28. 54. Doesn't 14. Get or acquire Cage bone exist (abbr.) 15. Cast out Cheerful in and poetry happy 31. 55. 'Ever', (abbr.) 16. Sharpen an edge 56. Nitrogenous compound 32. Food stabilizer gum 17. Gargantuan 59. Scrooge-like 33. 61. Walkie-talkies 18. Old river vehicles Glowing gas 36. 63. Compilation volume 20. Blackberry relative Regrets 22. Slang or jargon 64. Iranian money 38. Mobster hats 23. Break even, in golf Against, beside, or toward 42. 65. Mountain cat 24. Arrival time (abbr.) 66. Stage rooms 44. 67. Founder of Pennsylvania 25. The back bone Confuse, befuddle 45. 68. Bacon 26. Being kept cold (2 words) Sulk, or agrease soup 28. Doesn’t exist (abbr.) 48. Flower garlands 31. ‘Ever’, in poetry (abbr.) 49. An image 32. Food stabilizer gum DOWN 50. Escape from 33. Walkie-talkies 1. Sound of disgust 52. 2.AOld-fashioned relaxation 36. Compilation volume opiateretreat 38. Mobster hats 3. Someone from east of Benin 54. Cage bone 42. Mountain cat 4. Begin, refreshed 55. Cheerful and happy 44. Founder of Pennsylvania 5. To factory condition 56. 6.Nitrogenous compound 45. Bacon grease Surplus 59. Scrooge-like 7. A level on a cake Answers to last week’s puzzle Get A Room! 8. Pottery material 61. Glowing gas B A S S D O G M A E M U S 9. Dress border 63. Regrets Y M C A A N I O N P E R U 10. Miniscule town P I A F N I F T Y 64. Iranian money I T E M 11. Submarine sandwich G O T H C H A M P A G N E 65. Against, 12. Chant slowlybeside, or toward O R S O Y E N 13. A builderrooms bird C Y G N U S A F A R F C C 66. Stage A A H E D S P E W H I R E 19. Prepared a turkey 67. Confuse, befuddle W H E R E I T H A P P E N E D 21. Spelling contest E O N S B A I T I R A T E 68. Sulk, or a soup 23. Bouncing stick
Talya Phelps/The Miscellany News, clip art courtesy of Pixabay and Public Domain Pictures
hen I saw that my friends were starting to RSVP for this year’s Halloweekend Facebook event, I felt a rush of homesickness and nostalgia for my favorite holiday. I’m excited to see what shenanigans Halloween in Prague has to offer, but I’ll be missing everyone I love back on campus that night. Here are a few places on campus where you can connect with the legends of Vassar: 1. If you’ve ever visited the Blodgett basement, you’re probably not surprised to hear that Vassar is infested with ghosts. Specifically, spirits roam the third and fifth floors of Main, the fifth floor of Davison, the Alumnae/i House and the Old Observatory. There’s the friendly ghost of Pratt House, who only haunts those not officially affiliated with the College. 2. It would be a stretch to call this story spooky, but legend has it that Beastie Boy Mike D. was expelled from Vassar after six months when he tossed a keg out of a ninth-floor window of Jewett. 3. Rumor has it that when Jane Fonda attended Vassar, she was sent back to her room after showing up to teatime inappropriately dressed. When she returned, she was wearing the obligatory gloves and pearls, but nothing else. Another Spooky Scary Skeletons version of the tale says that she took her revenge a step further by riding a motorcycle through the halls of Main. ACROSS 4. While Edna St. Vincent Millay did pen a poem called “The Suicide,” the story of her attempting1. to The radius' counterpart leap to her death out of her Jewett window only to 5. A gagging noise land in a tree is utterly unsubstantiated. 5. Joss Beach was once home to an armored 10. Slender tank, a gift from the French government for Vas14. Get or acquire sar’s help during World War I. The story goes that students, desperate due to Prohibition and college 15. Cast out parietal laws, would sneak into the tank to smoke 16. Sharpen an edge and drink, which they called “getting tanked” (Vassar Encyclopedia, “Vassar Myths & Legends”). 17. Gargantuan
Ben Costa
35. Second-year (abbr.) 37. Second wife of Henry VIII 39. Calibrate again 40. Medicine for poison 41. Someone superior 43. Comparison adverb 45. Longest bones in the body 46. A wide road 47. Bullseye 49. Buddy 51. Put on clothes 52. Brain container 47. Bullseye 53. Out of fashion 49. Buddy 56. Desert climate 51. Put on clothes 57. Boot up 52. Brain container 58. Brunt of responsibility 53. Out of fashion 56. Desert climate 60. Epoch 57. Boot up 62. Immediately
3. Someone from east of Benin 4. Begin, refreshed 5. To factory condition 6. Surplus 7. A level on a cake 8. Pottery material 9. Dress border 10. Miniscule town 11. Submarine sandwiches 12. Chant slowly 13. A builder bird 19. Prepared a turkey Benjamin Costa Bumpkin 21.33.Spelling contest 34. Spore cells, in fungi 23. Bouncing stick 35. Second-year (abbr.) 27.37.Baby's bed Second wife of Henry VIII 28.39.Freudian Calibrate again desire Medicine poison 29.40.Sort byforsize 41. Someone superior 30. Denials 43. Comparison adverb 33.45.Bumpkin Longest bones in the body 34.46.Spore cells, in fungi A wide road
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OPINIONS
October 26, 2017
Page 9
The Miscellany News Staff Editorial
#MeToo movement must prompt mass action, education [Content warning: This Staff Editorial contains discussion of sexual violence.]
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ver the past week, millions of women across the world have shared stories of sexual assault and harassment on social media after the hashtag #MeToo went viral. This movement began when actress Alyssa Milano posted a tweet calling all victims to speak about their experiences using the phrase “me too” as a response to the widespread allegations of sexual violence made by more than 50 women against film mogul Harvey Weinstein (The Guardian, “Harvey Weinstein: a list of the women who have accused him,” 10.21.2017). Milano explained that responses could help people understand the magnitude of the problem and demonstrate how many women suffer sexual violence without their voices being heard. She said she aimed to take the focus away from the perpetrators and center survivors’ experiences instead (The Washington Post, “Me Too: Alyssa Milano elevates Harvey Weinstein conversation,” 10.18.2017). Just 48 hours after Milano’s tweet, the hashtag had been used almost one million times on Twitter, with people from all walks of life sharing their stories of sexual violence or simply stating “me too” (The Washington Post, “Me Too: Alyssa Milano elevates Harvey Weinstein conversation,” 10.18.2017). The hashtag quickly began trending, with thousands of women sharing harrowing stories of abuse in the few hours after Milano tweeted. The topic was also mentioned in seven million Facebook posts the day after (The New York Times, “#MeToo-Sexual Harassment Stories Sweep Social Media After Weinstein Allegations,” 10.16.2017). Celebrities, too, spoke up about their experiences, with actresses such as Evan Rachel Wood and Reese Witherspoon and countless other public figures tweeting using the hashtag. In addition, many men have spoken out and in support of the campaign online. “Hamilton” actor Javier Muñoz talked about being abused as a queer man, while
Mark Ruffalo spoke up against Weinstein and thanked survivors for their bravery (The Washington Post, “#MeToo: Harvey Weinstein Case Moves Thousands to Tell Their Own Stories of Abuse, Break Silence,” 10.16.2017). Although this might seem like a new phenomenon, the “me too” movement was initially spread by activist Tarana Burke in 2006, who Milano credited in a later tweet. As a survivor of sexual assault herself, Burke created it in an effort to help young women of color who were also survivors (The Washington Post, “The woman behind ‘Me Too’ knew the power of the phrase when she created it — 10 years ago,” 10.19.2017). She was motivated by her experiences in 1996 as program director of Brooklyn-based Girls for Gender Equity, a non-profit organization centered around the empowerment of young women of color. Burke recalled being approached by a young girl who talked to her about being sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. She started the movement to help survivors connect with each other and dispel the shame surrounding their experiences (CNN, “An activist, a little girl and the heartbreaking origin of ‘Me too’,” 10.19.2017). This movement has helped countless survivors tell their stories and connect with each other without fear or shame. Many survivors felt empowered to share the hashtag even if they chose not to describe their personal experiences in depth. The most salient aspect was the sheer volume of posts on social media—millions of women have had some experience that made them say “me too,” which is indicative of the scope of sexual violence. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network’s website (rainn. org), one in every six American women is a victim of sexual assault, and 90 percent of all rape victims are female. These numbers are indeed a cause for concern, and the #MeToo movement has alerted many people to the millions who experience assault or harassment in their lifetime. Though many people appreciate that #Me-
Too has helped open the public’s eyes to the magnitude of this pervasive issue, others have criticized the movement. Milano’s post was geared toward women, and as such, it has been seen as not inclusive to people in the transgender and non-binary communities or to men who have experienced sexual violence. Some posts made an effort to emphasize that anyone can be harassed or assaulted and that they should feel equally empowered to speak out. Others discussed that it is a privilege to speak out without fear of disbelief and that this privilege usually applies to white or cisgender people. Critics have also argued that it is unconscionable to expect survivors of sexual violence to educate the public about the issue, as such a ubiquitous movement in support of survivors distracts from the culpability of perpetrators. Certain posts, for example, denounce demands that people share their experiences, even if they aren’t ready or simply do not want to do so. Additionally, people may assume that those who choose not to share have not experienced harassment or assault. Viewing detailed posts discussing sexual assault can also be overwhelming and triggering to many survivors. Because of the nature of social media, it is difficult to escape the wave of experiences that people have been brave enough to share. We acknowledge and applaud the bravery of those who have chosen to come forward with their experiences and support the call by critics of the movement to preface these posts with a content warning. Reading or sharing posts on social media, while informative, does not always result in direct action. Even though the original purpose of this movement was to spread awareness about sexual harassment and assault, acknowledging the issue is not enough—we must take concrete action to fight against a culture that has largely allowed sexual violence to occur. As widely reported, many men have expressed that the #MeToo posts prompted them
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to reassess their own assumptions and are making promises to appraise how their actions affect women with campaigns such as the #IHave and #HowIWillChange hashtags. These posts feature men admitting that they have been part of the problem and that they can work proactively to help those affected by harassment or assault. Knowing how to react to and help survivors is a complex question, but direct action and education are two ways to enact change. Vassar students should make themselves aware of the available resources for survivors on campus, such as CARES and the Sexual Assault and Violence Prevention (SAVP) Office, which would allow them to better direct people to proper avenues of support. As President Bradley stressed in an email, “Vassar is committed to hearing every voice and empowering people to speak up and report all instances of sexual misconduct and assault,” (Email, “A Message to the Community,” 10.19.2017). We as students should also fight to increase the availability of services for survivors at Vassar. One service that Vassar should consider implementing is Callisto, a sexual assault reporting program specifically for colleges that would make reporting assaults easier and more comfortable for the victims (see The Miscellany News, “Sexual Assault Survivors Must Have Full Admin Support,” 05.03.17). While our society has a long way to go before eradicating the forces that implicitely condone sexual violence, we commend survivors who have come forward and alerted people to the prevalence and gravity of sexual assault and harassment. The #MeToo movement, while not perfect, is finally bringing about the widespread attention in the media and public sphere that this issue demands, meaning that we now have an opportunity to build on this momentum to address it effectively. —The Staff Editorial expresses the opinion of at least 2/3 of The Miscellany News Editorial Board.
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OPINIONS
Page 10
October 26, 2017
Banning hate speech ultimately hurts progressive cause Andrew Solender Columnist
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n politics, always respect the rule of unintended consequences. That is to say, politics is chess, and you must anticipate the consequences of every action, the consequences of those consequences and so on. If you don’t, your actions could very well backfire. In this column, I will discuss the actions of Healing to Action (H2A) and the larger progressive community, and I will explain why I believe their current trajectory may backfire. The two actions I will consider in particular are the intentional or unintentional misrepresentation of facts and support for a ban on hate speech. On Wednesday, the Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union (VCLU) hosted a lecture by a conservative Cornell law professor, William A. Jacobson, entitled “An Examination of Hate Speech And Free Speech on College Campuses.” This was the original title for the event before it was changed to “‘Hate Speech’ is Still Free Speech, Even After Charlottesville,” and then back to the original. This title, and the subject of the event itself, instigated serious concerns within the Vassar community and prompted H2A, a progressive activism group at Vassar, to hold a meeting attended by hundreds of students. The focus of this meeting was to ensure the safety of the student body during the event, and attendees shared their thoughts on how best to do that. They also workshopped ideas about how to effectively boycott or protest the event. I want to make absolutely clear that I in no way condone hate speech on or off campus. My intention in writing this is ultimately to support the progressive causes of racial equality, intersectional feminism and the creation of a more tolerant and peaceful society by presenting what I believe is the best course of action. The first action that I would like to address is the misrepresentation of facts. For this, I would like to clarify the truth of a few claims H2A made about the event for the sake of upholding truth. Firstly, while Professor Jacobson is a conservative and runs a conservative publication called “Legal Insurrection,” it was alleged by some that he is actually a white supremacist. There is no evidence to support this fact, and while some may argue that conservative and white supremacist are one and the same, Jacobson, to my knowledge, has not been
accused by anybody besides H2A of harboring racist or white supremacist opinions. Furthermore, some people alleged that news of the event was shared on white supremacist and neo-Nazi websites and publications. My research found that the news was shared on four sites: Legal Insurrection, VidolAmerica.org, LongRoom. com and VCLU’s own newspaper, Tertium Quids. While some of these sites lean right, none could reasonably be considered white nationalist in the way that the Daily Stormer or the KKK’s website can. The statement that the event has been shared on white nationalist websites is misleading. Lastly, there is no evidence that I could find to support H2A’s claim that members of national hate groups are likely to come to this event as they did in Charlottesville. The president of VCLU told me that they know of “five people” who are attending and who shall remain confidential.. Besides that, there is no evidence of attendees from the outside community, and claims of any are little more than speculation branching off of the earlier claim that news of the event was shared on white nationalist websites. I bring up these points for a simple reason: the pursuit of honesty. I don’t believe H2A was malicious or even intentionally dishonest in these statements. Furthermore, I am just referring to what I heard from H2A leaders at their Monday meeting. It is possible that this information came from the VSA or some other source. I am, admittedly, without knowledge of where this information originated. That said, it is up to each group to screen the facts that they present. Also, it must be noted that the VCLU has acted dishonestly as well. Originally, the VCLU president misrepresented the event on his VSA funding application by attaching a title he did not intend to use. If we wish to have truly equitable and constructive discourse, the first thing we must do is hold ourselves to a high standard of honesty. For both groups, I believe the rule of unintended consequences will ultimately prevail if they continue to misrepresent the truth. It will backfire, likely through the public sentiment. Now I would like to address the topic of the lecture: how to address hate speech in relation to free speech. I think it is a reasonable assumption, drawn from both firsthand testimony from the
H2A meeting as well as a proven correlation between left-wing beliefs and support for a ban on hate speech, that most H2A members and much of the Vassar community would support, or at least consider, a ban. Americans, however, are more split on exactly what to do about this: A YouGov poll shows that “59 percent of Americans say people should be able to express even deeply offensive views, while 40 percent said government should prevent people from engaging in hate speech” (The Atlantic “America’s Many Divides Over Free Speech,” 10.09.2017). Much of that 40 percent consists of Democrats, minorities and young people. However, banning hate speech would not help the left, and it might even hurt us. First, we must consider how anti-hate speech laws would be enforced and how hate speech would be interpreted by the government. There actually are useful case studies for this, since several European countries, including France, the UK and Germany, have laws banning certain forms of hate speech. Unfortunately, hate speech, whether we like it or not, is in the eye of the beholder, and it ultimately falls on the government to enforce how hate speech laws are interpreted. As I stated earlier, it is fair to say that progressives “long for Europe’s hate speech restrictions,” based on the notion “that those laws are used to outlaw and punish expression of the bigoted ideas they most hate: racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny,” (“In Europe, Hate Speech Laws are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints,” The Intercept, 09.29.2017). However, this notion might be somewhat misguided. While hate speech laws have been used effectively to combat racism and anti-Semitism, there have also been many questionable interpretations of them, particularly against left-wing speech. Take France for example: “In 2015,” writes the Intercept, “France’s highest court upheld the criminal conviction of 12 pro-Palestinian activists for...wearing T-shirts that advocated a boycott of Israel.” In the UK, meanwhile, “‘hate speech’ has come to include anyone expressing virulent criticism of UK soldiers fighting in war,” (The Intercept). Now, I would like readers to imagine a country in which, unlike most of these European countries, the political system is completely broken, and a far-
right lunatic with a loose understanding of truth is the chief executive. It’s a stretch, I know. Now imagine what would happen if those aforementioned hate speech laws were in place in this totally hypothetical country. The executive branch, run by a man who often takes the terms of the left—like “fake news” and “racist”—and turns them against the left, and courts filled with justices appointed by that man would be in charge of enforcing those laws. I would go to jail if this were the case. So would many Vassar students. All of this assumes, by the way, a serious alteration or deletion of the First Amendment, which courts have consistently said prevents this sort of legislation. Finally, we must ask ourselves if banning hate speech is truly the solution to the overlying problem of institutional racism. I would argue no. Making hateful speech illegal does not simply stamp out the sentiment that caused it in the first place. A ban on hate speech in France certainly didn’t stop over a third of the country from voting for far-right and islamophobic presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Nor did similar bans prevent the rise and prominence of other far-right parties all across Europe. People will still vote, act and commit violence in the name of racism regardless of the law because they are still, in fact, racist. There are better ways to combat racism. Christian Picciolini, the founder of Life After Hate, a group that tries to integrate KKK members, neo-Nazis and white supremacists back into society argues that these hateful groups are filled with people who feel powerless to control their lives and that punishing their actions is unnecessary when there are other effective ways of changing these people. He uses a method of education and exposure to multiculturalism to reintegrate white supremacists, and it has been proven to work. I would like to close by emphasizing the importance of this issue. As H2A frequently reminds people, racism has always been here, it is ingrained in societies all over the world and it isn’t going away soon. That is why it cannot be fought sloppily. Efforts to combat racism must be deliberate. Progressive groups cannot simply misrepresent the facts, try to physically fight white supremacists or pass dangerous legislation to silence them. If we truly want to combat racism, we must make a choice to be smart about it.
Data accessibility trend overlooks systematic biases Griffin Berlstein Guest Columnist
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ecently there has been a trend to expand and improve open data initiatives for the simple reason that big data problem-solving can help everyone. On paper, that prospect sounds quite nice, and, without a doubt, big data is insanely cool. There are a myriad of interesting trends and helpful conclusions that can be drawn from open datasets. Indeed, much of the work I did over the summer consisted of working with publicly available crime data. However, the actual logistics of open-data initiatives are cumbersome at best and a complete nightmare at worst. Though there is, in this article, little room to properly rant about problems associated with datasets being published in largely useless formats—of which PDFs are among the largest offenders— suffice it to say that the act of acquiring publicly available data can be far more complicated than the phrase “publicly available” may generally lead you to believe. This is certainly a problem, but not the one on which this piece shall focus. Rather, the topic of discussion here is how bias can insidiously creep into our datasets. One of the big draws of big-data approaches to problem-solving is the belief that the conclusions reached are purely mechanical—that is, free of human bias. After all, if the data supports a conclusion, then that conclusion is likely to be correct, regardless of what the human analysts may believe. This is indeed the case sometimes; however, it can just as easily swing the other direction. That is to say, datasets that are contaminated by human bias can be and are constructed, all the while masquerading as if they were not. While that last sentence may evoke images of a shadowy cabal of data-altering super villains, the truth is far more mundane. The problem is the nature of dataset construction and, more specifically, the tracking of metadata as it relates to interoperability. Metadata is information about information,
generally how it was collected; interoperability, on the other hand, is the ease with which multiple datasets can be integrated. Even though it sounds like a horribly unexciting topic of discussion, metadata is absolutely necessary for any complex dataset because various anomalies may be present or absent from the data, depending on the collection techniques used. Some data may only be properly understood with its accompanying contextual metadata, and while interoperability is important—more data being generally a good thing—it is sometimes at odds with good metadata maintenance practices. When two datasets are merged, it may be necessary to drop some information that does not fit into the format of one dataset. Similarly, it may be the case that a dataset lacks information on certain variables that are present in the other data set; in this case, values must be filled in or else be left blank. This ignores the massive hurdles associated with trying to convert data taken in one format to another—truly the stuff of any data scientist’s nightmares. To get an idea of why we need to consider the way data was collected and how it may be used, let us consider a case study. Suppose you are running a company that intends to diversify its workforce and, in order to make sure this process is fair, you decided to create an algorithm to sort through various applications. As a baseline, you train this algorithm using the résumés of the people already hired by the company in hopes that the algorithm can learn the appropriate skills and abilities an applicant will need. In theory, this sounds like a great strategy. An algorithm won’t be prone to human bias or discrimination and should therefore get you a diverse selection of qualified applicants from the pool of applications. Job well done! Go take a well deserved nap. Wait, wait. It’s actually not quite that easy. Why? Because, unless your company already had a diverse group of employees, you may have inadvertently created an algorithm that does not avoid
bias, but instead systematically—and unconsciously—perpetuates it. How could this happen? Suppose the company is predominantly staffed by white males. When the algorithm is trained on the existing corpus of successful and unsuccessful hires, it will notice a pattern that successful hires seem to be largely white and male and so, thusly justified by the data, the algorithm does what it was built to do: It begins to reject applications belonging to women and to members of minority groups. This is far from an unrealistic hypothetical, and in general companies who use hiring algorithms—and most large companies do—need to be particularly cautious with their datasets and parameters, lest they create and bolster algorithmically ordained bias. The issue lies in taking a partial dataset—that is, employees of a given company—and believing it to be representative of a larger population that it may not in actuality capture—the pool of all qualified applicants. In our previous hiring example it is possible to see the problem coming, but it is often more challenging to foresee in practice. Suppose the public transit system hires a group of data analysts to go through ride numbers at certain stops and to determine which subway routes are most successful and which ones should be given greater priority for renovations. The data analysts will return an answer based on the information they have at hand. Now suppose the data were collected by the computers in the electronic turnstile. These systems register a ride when someone pays with their electronic subway card. Can you see any ways in which this might produce biased results? As it happens, this dataset is unlikely to be representative of the entire group of people and furthermore may result in discrimination. This is because, while it seems to be collecting data in a straightforward and robust fashion, it doesn’t include those who may have paid for their ride in cash. When we consider that those who pay in cash may be incapable of reliably being able to pay
with electronic methods, this suddenly becomes a dataset that ignores those who might be in an unstable financial situation. When we further consider that in most American cities, class, income and location can be indicators of race, this error becomes much more problematic. The worst part is, although they are likely to be blamed, the data analysts didn’t actually do anything wrong. They were completely unaware that the dataset wasn’t representative. The lack of robust metadata can lead to these admittedly extreme examples precisely because of the implicit assumption that data are unbiased. Getting unbiased data can be a significant challenge, for at every step of the process, design choices are made that imperceptibly alter the utility of a given dataset. One must decide which questions are being asked, what exactly is being collected, what tools are available for collection, how to deal with missing values, what to do with particularly anomalous results, whether to record any or all of the conditions surrounding the data collection, as well as a myriad of other choices. All of this is to say that there is no such thing as “raw data.” The act of collecting data in the first place involves some design choices that are inevitably going to affect what results the data can show. Many data scientists speak of “cleaning” or “cooking” data, and that is because a majority of their time is spent trying to get data into a usable format before actually doing any analysis. None of this is to say that big data is bad. Big data, and particularly open data, are a powerful set of tools that can reap groundbreaking and transformative rewards. As individuals who may produce and interact with or make decisions based on data, however, we must be aware of how the data were collected and what metadata are available. A healthy skepticism goes a long way, as a conclusion drawn from incomplete data is always an incorrect conclusion, albeit one that may be wrong without anyone’s knowledge.
The Miscellany News is not responsible for the views presented within its Opinions pages. The weekly staff editorial is the only article which reflects the opinion of the Editorial Board.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
October 26, 2017
OPINIONS
Cancer research advancements overstated Steven Park Columnist
I
must admit, it can be exciting to read about the latest developments in cancer research in the news. There is so much happening in the field of oncology that it’s tempting to imagine a future without cancer just around the corner. For instance, scientists at Northwestern University have reported that they have found what they call “an ancient kill switch” in cancer cells (Mic, “Scientists Figured Out How to Make Cancer ‘Commit Suicide’—Here’s How It Works,” 10.23.2017). According to the researchers, they may be able to use this mechanism to force cancer cells to kill themselves in multiple ways simultaneously. Not only that, a revolutionary new form of cancer treatment known as CAR T-cell therapy has swept up the scientific community in an excited fervor. By manipulating the T-cells of the cancer patient’s own immune system with gene therapy and then reinjecting them back into the patient, researchers have successfully destroyed tumors in people who had lost all hope (NIH, “CAR T Cells: Engineering Patients’ Immune Cells to Treat Their Cancers,” 08.31.2017). According to various news reports, this treatment was so promising that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently given it the green light for production and distribution, making it the first use of medicinal gene editing to be available for patients in the United States. “We’re entering a new frontier in medical innovation with the ability to reprogram a patient’s own cells to attack a deadly cancer,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb stated after approving the treatment (CNN, “FDA Announces First US Gene Therapy Approval for Cancer Treatment,” 08.30.2017). As with anything that’s showered with positive attention by the media, however, it’s not as simple as it appears. All the hype surrounding cancer research is actually blinding us to the reality that we are not winning the war against cancer. In fact, despite what headlines may claim, we are nowhere close to actually finding the cure for cancer. While such a claim may sound needlessly pessimistic, it is vital to view the current trajectory of cancer research within the context of its larger history. For one thing, cancer has been around for a very, very long time. This immortal and terrifying disease has been around for all of human history, with fossil evidence and ancient manuscripts dating its pervasiveness as far back as 1600 B.C. (NCBI, “History of Cancer, Ancient and Modern Treatment Methods,” 12.01.2009). Needless to say, countless attempts have been made by renowned scientists and medical experts across human history in a collective effort to understand and combat this disease. In recent memory, the most notable collective endeavor is America’s War on Cancer, which was launched by President Nixon in 1971. From that moment on, the United States has devoted increasingly intensified efforts to find a cure. Over the past 40 years, the U.S. has poured a total of more than $500 billion into winning this war (Big Think, “The Never-Ending War on Cancer,” 06.08.2013). Even now, that war continues to escalate. In 2017, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) received $5.389 billion for the fiscal year, which is $174.6 million more than what the organization received in 2016 (NIH, “NCI Budget and Appropriations,” 05.11.2017). In addition, we have around 260 different nonprofit organizations in the United States that raise money for cancer research and treatment. Together, those nonprofit organizations have budgets that top $2.2 billion (Slate, “Where Do the Millions of Cancer Research Dollars Go Every Year?,” 02.07.2013). This should be good news, though, right? All of that money is going towards a worthy cause, after all. Indeed, that much is undeniable. However, the problem is that all that money is translating to very little substantive progress in terms of developing a permanent solution. So far, we have made great strides in understanding the nature of cancer cells and how they behave in general. Unfortunately, utilizing that knowledge to create a reliable treatment has so far proven to be much more difficult than anyone had realized. Despite receiving billions of dollars in funding and conducting countless expensive and laborious drug trials, scientists have yet to de-
velop anything that can meaningfully increase a patient’s chances of survival, much less actually cure the disease. In fact, a recent study published earlier this year reported that two-thirds of all cancer drugs that were approved in the past two years showed no evidence of extending survival at all (USA Today, “Dozens of New Cancer Drugs Do Little to Improve Survival,” 02.09.2017). When President Nixon announced the War on Cancer, he vowed that cancer would be cured by 1976. Today, cancer remains as deadly as ever. According to the World Health Organization, one in six deaths in the world in 2015 was caused by cancer, resulting in a total of 8.8 million deaths (World Health Organization, “Cancer,” 02.2017). As a result, cancer is still the second leading cause of death globally, just behind heart disease. However, the death toll from heart disease has decreased significantly over the past several decades. In fact, between 1950 and 2005, the death rate of heart disease dropped by 64 percent. In contrast, the death rate for cancer fell by a mere five percent during that same time period (The New York Times, “Advances Elusive in the Drive to Cure Cancer,” 04.23.2009). That’s how little progress we have made, even with billions of dollars in funding supporting decades of scientists’ focused research.
“All the hype surrounding cancer research is actually blinding us to the reality that we are not winning the war against cancer.” Of course, the last thing I want to do is discourage further cancer research. Despite the rather bleak odds, there are still benefits in continuing this line of inquiry and searching for other treatment options. The point I’m trying to articulate is that the news you hear about regarding cancer research tend to be so overly positive that they often fail to accurately depict the reality of the situation. No matter where you look, every new insight is a “major breakthrough,” and every new test product is “a miracle in the making.” By exaggerating successes, the media has effectively deceived the general public into believing that the cure for cancer is just around the corner. Case in point: CAR-T therapy. Remember how I mentioned earlier that this method of cancer treatment showed promising results? When news sources learned that the FDA approved its use in the United States, they became ballistic with excitement. They issued articles about the miracle of CAR-T therapy, with headlines such as “Latest Car-T Therapy for Cancer Signals New Era for Life-Saving Treatments” (Newsweek, 10.20.2017), “New Gene Therapy for Cancer Offers Hope to Those With No Options Left” (NBC, 07.12.2017) and “Cancer’s Newest Miracle Cure” (Time, 10.10.2017). In typical fashion, all these articles feature heartwarming stories of cancer patients miraculously being saved by this revolutionary new treatment that will surely stop cancer in its tracks. What these articles fail to mention is that CAR-T therapy can be incredibly dangerous, because it needs to bring your body to the brink of death in order to save you (STAT, “Experimental Cancer Therapy Holds Great Promise—But at Great Cost,” 08.23.2016). While the genetically engineered T-cells spread and kill the tumor cells, the patient undergoes a series of intense side effects that are so sudden and severe that a team of top specialists must remain on standby to keep the patient alive. And sometimes, not even that is enough. So far, several cancer patients have died from neurotoxicity complications during the clinical trials, and experts still haven’t pinned down the exact cause behind their deaths (LabioTech, “What do the CAR-T Patient Deaths Mean for the Future of the Field?,” 12.14.2016). Because CAR-T therapy is so risky and complex, experts warn that it’ll take years before a treatment like this is safe for patients to use. It is certainly not the miracle cure that the media is making it out to be. It’s not even effective against all cancers;
CAR-T therapy has mainly been used to treat leukemia but struggles against solid tumors like sarcomas and lymphomas (STAT). Does this mean that CAR-T therapy is a lost cause? Absolutely not. Medical experts are justified to claim that this immunotherapy treatment is a legitimate revolutionary breakthrough in a field that has largely stagnated over the past several decades. This is a major accomplishment, and the cancer survival stories prove that fact. But the issue is that for the past 40 years, the media has consistently trumpeted the end of cancer with every trivial development. By bombarding the public with overly exaggerated tales of successes, the media has essentially deluded the country into believing that we are winning the war against cancer and that all cancer patients have a good chance of not only surviving but also returning to their normal lives. But such rose-colored views are far from the truth and have broken families apart. As Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, explained, “We have a lot of patients who spend their families into bankruptcy getting a hyped therapy that [many] know is worthless...[Some choose a medicine that] has a lot of hype around it and unfortunately lose their chance for a cure” (USA Today, “Cancer Treatment Hype Gives False Hope,” 04.27.2017) It’s already heartbreaking for patients and their loved ones to learn that they have cancer. It feels infinitely worse to undergo several “life-saving” treatments performed by doctors at the country’s best hospitals only to learn that none of it actually works. Consider the tragic story of Michael Uvanni and his brother James, a patient with skin cancer. After hearing about all the miracle treatments that were supposedly available and seeing happy commercials of cancer patients hugging their grandchildren, they felt confident that the odds were in James’ favor. That optimism led to crushing disappointment when his health continued to suffer, even after trying immunotherapy and several other experimental treatments. Three years after his diagnosis, James passed away from metastatic melanoma. “I thought they were going to save him...You get your hopes up, and then you are dropped off the edge of a cliff. That’s the worst thing in the world,” confessed Michael Uvanni (USA Today). This sort of duplicitous optimism unfortunately permeates through the entire field of oncology. While newspapers hype research results to attract readers, drug companies make outrageous promises to boost sales and hospitals draw in paying customers by appealing to their hopes and overstating their accomplishments (USA Today). Many scientists have also fallen victim to this mindset, often exaggerating the successes of their own research results to attract investors. Back in 2003, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, the director of the National Cancer Institute, announced the possibility of “eliminating suffering and death due to cancer by 2015” (USA Today). Even President Obama contributed to the illusion when he announced the Cancer Moonshot project in 2016 by saying, “Let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.” Given all these overly positive messages, it’s no wonder that so many cancer patients believe that their lives are guaranteed to be saved, only to feel crushed when they learn the awful truth. Let’s be clear: There is no miracle cure for cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, the percentage of people who are alive five years after being diagnosed with stomach cancer is 29 percent (Business Insider, “These are the 5 Deadliest Cancers,” 01.19.2016). For lung and bronchus cancer patients, the number is 18 percent. For pancreatic cancer patients, it’s seven percent. Patients with metastatic melanoma typically die within a year of diagnosis (USA Today). Despite what you may hear, immunotherapy can cause fatal immune system attacks on the lungs, kidneys and heart. There are no approved immunotherapies for breast cancer, colon cancer or prostate cancer. Not only that, studies have found that immunotherapy only benefits about 10 percent of all cancer patients (USA Today). As grim as all this may be, we must remember that not all hope is lost. That said, the last thing cancer patients need right now is to be blindsided by all the fanfare that seems to accompany every piece of cancer news.
Page 11
Word on the street What is the last lie you told?
“No mom, I’m not worried about my grades” — Colette Cambey ’20
“I raised my hand at least three times in class countering the opinions of people on a book I had not read” — Max White ’21
“I tell many people I haven’t seen their texts but really I just don’t want to respond to them” — Brynna Gleeson ’20
“Yes, that’s enough pasta” — Lauren White ’20
“I’m fine” — Karina Norton ’20
“I told one of my friends that he was my favorite friend, but that was a lie” — Melyssa Cave ’20
Leah Cates, Humor & Satire Yesenia Garcia, Humor & Satire Hannah Benton, Photography
The Miscellany News is not responsible for the views presented within its Opinions pages. The weekly staff editorial is the only article which reflects the opinion of the Editorial Board.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
HUMOR & SATIRE
Page 12
October 26, 2017
Breaking News From the desk of Leah Cates and Yesenia Garcia, Humor & Satire Editors As Halloweekend approaches, Free & For Sale teems with requests for fungus-hued nail polish, bubble wrap From avocados to yappy Student surely, irrefutably dogs: lame internet fads knows about everything Zander Bashaw
World Wide Web Connoisseur
P
erhaps it’s because I have a 15-year-old brother, but something that I have noticed recently is our propensity to tolerate lower and lower quality content on the Internet. It’s like that meme “when you notice yourself enjoying worse and worse content” and there’s some poor child not enjoying a ride down a playground slide. You have to have seen the image, I suppose. I can’t believe I just actually tried to describe a meme. I’m no better than those meme studies majors that keep showing up in those “NowThis” videos. Regardless, I want to reveal some of the most pathogenic trends that I readily participate in. 1. Stories It seems like ancient history when Snapchat first introduced the story, so old in the relative Internet age it seems as though Plato could have added a blurry video of toga-clad men shouting “Chug!” as Socrates takes his hemlock to Athens’s “Our Story.” Actually, I feel like I have seen that on Snapchat before, but not in Athens. Regardless, the trend took off, with Instagram and Facebook being examples of successful implementation and disastrous decision making, respectively. I wouldn’t be surprised if, before long, you can put where you had dinner on your Venmo story or a photo of yourself in the Career Development Office bumming that free pizza on your LinkedIn story. 2. Self-Improvement Apps I must admit that I have fallen victim to a few of these traps. Back in the day, my brother and I got obsessed with a sleep timer app that you put on your bed at night, and it would give you some bullshit data about your sleep quality based purely on how much you moved during the night. The problem is, I’m quite well -known to be a “destructive sleeper.” When I was abroad, I woke up one morning with my top sheet nearly rent in two. Though I blamed that particular instance on lower thread counts in Italian sheets, I wasn’t able to get past my low sleeping scores. My recent foray into apps of this ilk has been downloading “Moment,” an app that, via a process of barely concealed irony, tracks and displays your daily phone usage. Though I have
not changed my behavior at all, I have learned that an app that must always track your location sure ravages your battery. 3. Concept Videos Travelers from around the world can’t get enough of this Avocado Bar! That’s right, everything in this bar in Copenhagen is made out of avocados. You can try a cocktail served with frozen avocado cubes in an avocado shell! Or even play pool with avocado pits! They use a lattice of the nonripe avocado flesh and pits to make up firmer structures, such as the tables and stools, and all but the tablecloths and placemats are made of avocado skin. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of creamy stuff to eat out of the avocado fountain. Tag a friend whom you would love to go with :)!!! 4. Corgis Unpopular opinion, but Corgis and videos about them are frankly carcinogenic. In general, I’m not too taken with small dogs; if you like dogs so much, wouldn’t you just want to have more net dog ? Corgis are closer to being rodents than canines, or, as my friend referred to another small, yappy dog, “pellets.” Small dog disses aside, the stuff about corgi butts and twerking is too much for me to stomach. The people who are about that are definitely furries—not that there’s anything wrong with that, by the way. It’s just that the whole furry fandom doesn’t really match my fursona. 5. Memitators We’ve got memes to the extremes these days. The Internet really has a whole smear of them, from those so utterly offensive that you wish your friends would send them to you rather than tag you in them, to ones that are more normcore than tweeting about seeing the back of Lisa Kudrow’s head in the Deece. Unfortunately, some sources are far less talented than “It is Wednesday my dudes.” For example, memitators that post an image of a gigantic glass of wine that says “When you can only have one drink that night,” or worse, text with no image at all. Still, nothing trumps the GIFs that the CDO sends in terms of try-hard. However, this is the second time in five categories that I’ve brought them up, which could be indicative that their lackluster media has influenced me, or that I’m unemployed and terrified.
Blair Webber Wise Guy
I
n case anyone’s been wondering, I totally know exactly what “decolonize” means and how to use it in a sentence. I know some doubts have been raised on this subject, and I would like to take a moment to step away from my hard-hitting journalistic endeavors to respond to those aspersions. You know what, actually? I don’t have to defend myself. Not to you,reader, and not to my urban studies professor. So, suck it. Q.E.D. End of testimony. Will any of you here today be satisfied with that answer? No. Not one of you. Some of you will say, “How can gourds be decolonized?” and “This isn’t really related to urban studies, do you know what urban studies is?” but I stand by my senior thesis. This is important. This is groundbreaking. This is a perspective that has been squashed for too long by the cyst-sexist, white capitalist patriarchal agenda. Also, I know exactly what the term cyst-sexist means. You don’t need to tell me about cyst-sexism, that’s how aware I am aware of the struggle of those who deal with the sexism against cysts. It’s tearing our society to shreds,so you can quit telling me how I’m just throwing words around and I don’t understand the systems of expression behind them. I think we’re all asking the wrong questions here. Actually, that’s not what I mean, I think all of you are asking the wrong questions here. You are all asking questions like “How does this meet the requirement for graduation?” when what you really need to do is turn the spotlight on yourselves because clearly you are not ready to handle the magnitude of my research. The insights, the groundbreaking-ness of what I’ve written here-it’s all lost on you. This is what is called a “paradigm shift,” and I am shifting your paradigm wide open. All of you are too afraid to admit that you don’t understand what I’m talking about because it is too profound. I am breaking walls down now that you will just start breaking down 10 years from now, Kanye West 2014—and yes, that is how you cite a source, see?! I KNOW HOW TO CITE SOURCES. I worked hard on this paper, and I am not about to spend another year researching and writing about a subject that I
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just don’t care about to satisfy some “department” at some “college” that isn’t ready to examine everything they ever thought was true and change their minds and realize that I am right, that the decolonization of gourds shall undoubtedly prove integral to the development of the socioeconomic urban landscape. Have I reached 10,000 words yet? Almost? Okay, five , four, three, two, one. Great, that’s 10,000. I can stop writing now. Clearly, I have put in a tremendous amount of effort, research and careful academic thinking, shaped and molded by the tremendous work of professors who are nothing at all like Professor Charles of the Urban Studies Department and don’t fail their students right before graduation because they “don’t think the student has a deep understanding of his argument, and that the student is just using the longest, most ostentatious words in an unnecessarily verbose manner to hide the fact that he has no hypotheses based on observations from research and refuses to challenge his own understanding of the world around him.” I absolutely, irrefutably, know all the definitions of the words I use in my thesis, and I use them all correctly, and I am good at semicolons; Professor Charles, and anyone else listening to my appeal. I tolerate no analysis of any unnecessary, yet sufficient, editing or reformations to be compounded upon my magnum Operah. Should a single scratch of red correcting pen endear itself to the latest evisceration of my senior thesis, I will write a strongly worded letter demanding the exorcism of Professor Charles, as well as the cesarean section of any colleagues rallying in his support, especially his intern, Sarah. Did Martin Luther King Jr. let the Catholic Church walk all over him when he impaled his 95 feces to the White Castle door? No. And neither will I. I will crusade, and be found righteous, for in my knowledge there is Truth and there is enlightenment to be shared. So, I think I can definitively say to all those gathered here at my appeal that Professor Charles, and the rest of academia, are the ones who use big words that they don’t understand to sound smart. Not me. I know exactly what “decolonize” means, and I will be collecting my diploma at graduation alongside all of my pears. Thank you.
Davison HousE for auction
Entire dorm goes to highest bidder! MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
HUMOR & SATIRE
October 26, 2017
Page 13
JYAer tries to extinguish capitalist flames with vodka Evelyn Frick
Bolshevik Blogger
D
Courtesy of en.kremlin.ru
ear Comrades, As many of you know, this semester I am studying abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia. (I can only assume I’ve earned a committed readership after my mom shared my Far & Away blog post with her 81 Facebook friends.) You must know, however, that everything written in that blog is propaganda; every word in my posts has been censored and revised by the capitalist pigs of Vassar College. But now, I’ve worked up the courage to break my silence and, through an intricate web of sleeper cells, was able to have a draft of this letter smuggled to the editors of the Humor & Satire section (Comrade Garcia and Comrade Cates), which I’ve written on an old box of Jell-O. All this so I can tell you, my comrades, about what it’s really like to be living in the Union of Soviet...I mean...“Russia.” I came to this country as a foolish American. Throughout my entire schooling, I was taught about the greatness of the United States and the evils of communism. I was conditioned to treat Black Friday like the holiest day of the year and led to believe that a $5 Footlong was a “good deal.” Immediately after stepping off the plane in Leningrad, I didn’t even know how to say “hello” in Russian, but I could sense a change within me. Suddenly, all I wanted to do in the world was live out the theories of Karl Marx and eat cabbage...lots and lots of cabbage. I was soon elated to discover that I would not be spending my time frivolously in The Hermitage, revering Western standards of art and staring mindlessly at collections compiled by the awful tsars. Instead, I was told that the Vassar Semester in St. Petersburg program is really a front for the Vassar Semester on a Collectivist-Farm-Outside-of-Leningrad program. Thus, my time has been spent learning Rus-
Comrade Frick hopes to one day feel her palm wrapped in the firm grasp of Putin’s muscular handshake, just like Lyudmila Alexeyeva, pictured here, did on her 90th birthday. sian history and language, reading essential Russian texts and digging up potatoes to satisfy the agricultural needs of the 14th Five-Year Plan of Russia. In my time here, my knowledge of Russian history and language has expanded greatly. Some of my favorite Russian phrases that I’ve learned are: “I love you” and “Dig faster, Comrade Frick! It’s nearly nightfall, and the bears will eat us if we don’t finish quickly!” More than that, though, I’ve learned a great deal of practical knowledge as well. Since I’ve been here, my bedroom has consisted of sharing a blanket with two other collectivist farm girls, Masha and Olya, in a horse stable. Every morning when I wake up and have my porridge and shot of vodka, all I can think about is how my soft American constitution is hardening. Soon I will look and act like the tough and native Soviet babushka I know I am at heart. This semester in Russia has also taught me
about the many faults of the United States, the first one being that Americans use the national flag willy-nilly. In Russia, I’ve noticed that the Russian flag is used only to denote federal buildings or historical monuments. In this way, its honor and sanctity remain intact. In the U.S., I’ve seen stars and stripes on dog collars, napkins and thongs. I suppose nothing displays the integrity of the American state more than having some red and white stripes wedged in one’s ass. Another defect I’ve discovered in American society is that Americans drink too much water. I realize this may seem trivial, but hear me out. All Russians need to drink to survive is tea, coffee and vodka. I’ve learned that if you’re not getting enough water from these drinks alone, then you’re clearly not trying hard enough. Not only is hydration a capitalist construct, it is also a sign of weakness. In Russia, drinking water is
HOROSCOPES
for babies and cows. Are all Americans babies or cows? Actually...nevermind, I rescind my question. But seriously, why drink water, which tastes like nothing, when one can drink vodka, which tastes like watered down nail polish remover?! That is just to name a few of the many flaws in American society! This doesn’t even begin to cover all the misinformation about the former Soviet Union that has been disseminated by American news outlets. In an attempt to save room and time, I’ll just list a few of the major falsities: Boris and Natasha came to America to train as Olympic ice skaters, not to go after Rocky and Bullwinkle. Lenin was not bald, he actually had a beautiful head of hair. Joseph Stalin did not cause a huge famine in Ukraine, that stuff happened all the time in Russia. Socialism is cool. Mikhail Gorbachev is literally the devil. Americans think Russians never smile. This is not true; Russians smile on occasion. The USSR did not “fall,” everyone just decided to take a little break from communism. And so on. I shudder to think of how I will have to leave this glorious bastion of democracy in a few months. My only hope is that one day before I leave I will be able to meet Comrade Putin and shake his strong, manly hand, and the manly hand of the horse he is shirtlessly riding. Although the more I think about it, I could probably try to start the World Revolution in America when I return to Vassar in the spring. Maybe I could convince Ferry House to elect me as their autocratic ruler and together we could reinvent ourselves as a commune? And from there, we could spread our Marxist ideology onto the rest of New York, and then the rest of the country! I think I could probably make it happen, to be honest. Vassar kids would eat that shit up. Yours, Comrade Frick
Theresa Law and Natasha Sanchez amateur astrologists
ARIES
March 21 | April 19
TAURUS
April 20 | May 20
GEMINI
May 21 | June 20
CANCER
June 21 | July 22
LEO
July 23 | August 22
VIRGO
August 23 | September 22
Your animal is the ram, and you should really embrace that this Halloween. If you need inspiration, check out pictures and videos from the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival. There were adult humans dressed up as and acting like sheep, even to the point of eating leaves little kids fed them. Match that level of dedication in your costume.
LIBRA
A solipsist is someone who thinks that the only thing that is certain in this world is her own mind, and therefore everything else in the world has been created by her mind. Solipsists are fun because if they really, truly believe that, no one can convince them otherwise. Your stubborn Taurus nature lends itself perfectly to being a solipsist for Halloween.
SCORPIO
Show off your vast cultural knowledge, and reference an almost forgotten viral video. Perhaps those kidney-thieving unicorns, Crazy Frog or the Bump It commercial. But whatever you do, do not dress as the infamous “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” video because Josh Schwartz thought of it first.
SAGITTARIUS
You love being comfy and cozy more than any other sign, so wear a costume in which you can embrace that. Wearing PJs is a classic, but instead go as someone who is stuck in a sleeping bag. Yes, you will have to hop around all night, but any place you go could be a place for a nap.
September 23 | October 22
October 23 | November 21
November 22 | December 21
CAPRICORN
December 22 | January 19
Your natural charm and leadership skills lend you naturally to a costume of someone in power. Perhaps that someone should be the president of Vassar College. But to keep it fun and ironic, go for a past president like Cappy, or maybe even Henry Noble MacCracken. Teach your peers some Vassar history.
AQUARIUS
Honor a famous, non-culturally appropriating family like the Beckhams or the Burtka-Harrises. If you do a good enough job, they might honor you with a Twitter shout-out, or offer to adopt you into their family. If you’re really feeling confident in your costume-making abilities, shoot for the stars and go as the British royal family.
PISCES
January 20 | February 18
February 19 | March 20
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
Libras are natural trend-setters. Salute a fashion icon like Anna Wintour, Jackie O, Twiggy or Bob Ross. More important than the clothes, though, is the attitude. Style is internal. If you are really ~feeling~ being Anna Wintour, the clothes won’t matter. But if you’re being Bob Ross, carrying around a canvas and easel is a must. You’re going to want to dress as a classic monster like a vampire, mummy or witch. People lately seem to forget about the classics, but leave it to a Scorpio to make these costumes fun and hip again. Classic monsters really allow you to embrace the monster everyone else thinks you are. So we’ve wanted to do this for years, but no one will get behind it: blades of grass. Get all of your friends, acquaintances and enemies to dress in all green and be individual Blades. Of. Grass. Run in the night together, sway in the wind. Bonus points if you get one person to be the lawn mower.
Be a group of stony-faced, unusually mature children from an indie movie. Props may include a pickaxe, empty jug of water and a wooden log. It is very important that as your character you act far more mature than your age, while keeping the youthful wonder of a child. Wander through a forest to complete the look. Be anything from a Wes Anderson movie. Then talk about Wes Anderson’s cinematic style for the whole night. This can be an individual endeavour (Steve Zissou or Zero the Lobby Boy), a couples’ costume (Suzy and Sam) or a group effort (the khaki scouts, the fantastic foxes or the birds from “Moonrise Kingdom”). Or, go as Wes Anderson. Go for something very abstract like ~water~ or ~night~. Basically those costumes that will have people asking you what you are all night because you’re only wearing solid colored clothing. Your creativity means you know exactly how to turn abstraction into reality, and you know no one will come dressed as the same thing as you.
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October 26, 2017
Play critiques Theatre artists express passion for craft melancholy’s idealization PLAY continued from page 1
Sasha Gopalakrishnan Assistant Arts Editor
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Courtesy of Leora Randall-Tavori
Leora Randall-Tavori ’18 had her play “Proboscis” performed at a staged reading through Unbound’s new plays program, Process, last spring. This semester, she is directing Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice.”
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
ow do we conceptualize melancholy? Is there beauty in sadness? Are we attracted, in some twisted way, to the idea of sorrow? “Melancholy Play,” a senior project in drama for director in addition to Whitney Brady ’18, Daisy Walker ’18 and director John Michael Rezes ’18, explores this complexity of human emotion and contradictory framing of sadness. Scheduled to be performed from Oct. 26 to 28 at 8 p.m. in the Powerhouse Theater, this chamber musical is an adaptation of Sarah Ruhl’s original play, reworked into a musical by composer Todd Almond. This dramatic comedy revolves around a protagonist named Tilly, whose melancholic demeanor is so exquisite it causes every stranger she meets to fall in love with her. Soon, the relationships in Tilly’s life begin to lift her spirits. However, her happiness is not nearly as appealing as her sadness, and so, in an interesting turn of events, all her lovers fall out of love with her, resenting her for losing the one quality that made her so attractive in the first place. Rezes explained the ironic premise of this experimental musical: “It’s a commentary on feminine sadness and the fetishization of sadness. But more than anything, it’s a very emotionally evocative piece, and the emotion sits in people’s heads, not quite noticeable, until they really start to feel for the characters.” Further emphasizing the empathetic response that the show hopes to garner from the audience, Rezes continued, “While all the supporting characters objectify Tilly, you will see them all as individual people who are just trying to navigate this world of magic realism, and hopefully you will come to appreciate them as people as well, in all their complexity.” As an audience member, it may feel uncomfortable or odd to empathize with the characters who have it in them to objectify and romanticize someone for their melancholy. However, the show aims to remove audiences from the cerebral default of what they think they would do in the same situation and rather places them into that emotional gray area where they ask themselves about how love functions, and about their own emotional reactions to people, as they watch this comedic and high-energy farce unfold. Cast member Samantha Hodes ’20, who plays a psychiatrist from an unspecified European country, elaborated on this effect: “As Tilly starts to become happy, the characters begin to feel annoyed by her and her new joyful state. And as this plays out, the audience members put themselves into the shoes of the characters who fall out of love with her, starting to feel annoyed with her as well. And so it puts them into an odd self-reflective place where they start to think about why they think this way, and why people in general think this way, when it comes to love.” Rezes explained that as a director, they wanted to stay as faithful to the original text as possible. In fact, Rezes even spoke to Ruhl directly and received her blessing. “It was a really nice experience as a senior who is doing their thesis to speak to the playwright of the play they’re directing, and have her approve of it,” they mentioned. As a chamber musical, almost the whole show is under-scored. Rezes expanded on how the entire cast has invested a lot of time and energy in ensuring that the melodic aspect of the play comes alive, regardless of whether or not they are from musical backgrounds. As Hodes expounded, “Since the music was actually added later, a lot of its focus is on the gravity of the lyrics, and bringing Sarah Ruhl’s words to life. So we feel that we have duty to really convey the interaction between music and meaning in the play.” Rezes also illuminated what they ultimately hope to impress upon the audience: “It’s a play about how it’s okay to experience a range of emotions; that emotions come and go and it’s okay feel them in their temporality. We want to convey that complexity of human relationships.” The psychological insights of this play, presented in a whimsical, absurd manner, have been widely acclaimed, thus making it a thought-provoking piece for Vassar students to explore for their senior thesis project.
reading of someone’s work in progress, and the 24-Hour Play Festival to create a focus on new work in student theatre. Randall-Tavori discovered her passion for playwriting through a drama class: “I didn’t realize I could combine theater and writing, or that I even wanted to, until I took a playwriting class a little over a year ago, the spring semester of my sophomore year. I don’t know what I expected going into it, but I emerged that semester a different person, with a passion I didn’t think I had.” “During that course,” she continued, “I had to write a 10-page play a week, and read a published play a week, and I was in heaven. I realized, after much thought, that it was because I was at the intersection of the two things, and the two people, who I loved most.” Another member of the Executive Board of Unbound, Henery Wyand ’20, has a very broad theatrical experience. He has assumed the roles of actor, costumer, director, choreographer, sound designer, lighting designer and stage manager. He is also props manager of Unbound. This semester, he will be directing Future Waitstaff of America’s production of “Spring Awakening.” With an illustrious variety of roles, Wyand’s overriding passion is directing, which he first considered after seeing a bad production: “I really became interested in directing when I saw a horrendous high school production of ‘Pippin.’ I was completely horrified by the activities on that stage. I thought of every way each staging choice could be made better. At the same time I was also costuming a production of ‘Pippin,’ and I talked to my high school theatre director and discussed the possibility of me staging a scene in our production of ‘Pippin.’ The next year I had the opportunity to assistant direct the spring musical.” The chief influences Wyand cited as a director are notable Broadway directors Kenny Leon, George C. Wolfe, Rebecca Taichman and Michael Arden. Wyand’s motivation for directing “Spring Awakening” this semester aligns with his general aspiration of increasing representation for people of color on stage: “I’ve never seen someone like me represented on a stage before. A major goal of mine is to represent the underrepresented minorities on stage. Theatre at Vassar is very much white focused, especially in terms of the participants. I want to create a space in which people of color are comfortable with being unforgivably themselves. I chose to direct ‘Spring Awakening’ because this is a story anyone can relate to. This musical helped me through many struggles throughout high school and holds a special place in my heart.” Next, Nicholas Franzen ’20 has acted in multiple student theatre productions, including playing Mephistopheles in Merely Players’ production of Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus” last spring. This semester, he will be acting in The Philaletheis Society’s production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Fuddy Meers” and the Drama Department’s production of Beth Henley’s “Crimes of the Heart.” While his first role was in a fifth-grade production of “Peter Pan,” Franzen’s love for acting stems from his family of raconteurs. When asked who inspires his love for theatre and storytelling, Franzen responded, “I would say my dad. While he’s not an actor, he’s a lawyer so he has to speak for a living. And he’s a fantastic storyteller. Maybe my family in general. My uncle and my father are great storytellers and great entertainers.” One of Franzen’s favorite parts of student theatre is getting to collaborate with different people. He still holds dear his first production last fall, in Merely Players’ “Antony and Cleopatra,” and the connections he was able to make in preparing that show. For Franzen, though, acting isn’t just about the connection of a cast, but also the connection made in exploring the compassion and humanity of another person: “I like the ability to empathize with a character and not just understand their troubles, but also really experience them. And I think that actually helps with outside the theatre because then you can hear what someone is saying or hear how someone is acting and try and connect to them as closely as possible. Of course, you don’t try to be them but you can still try and use some of those skills outside as well.” Designers are often the most overlooked, overworked and underappreciated members of the theatre community. And yet the show couldn’t go on without them.
Beyond the actors on the stage, there are directors guiding rehearsals, designers creating the worlds, playwrights writing the words and stage managers keeping everything together. Lindsay Matheos ’19 is one of the most involved and productive stage managers at Vassar. She has served as stage manager and in other design roles in both student theatre and Drama Department shows and currently serves as the education director of the Vassar Student Theater Tech Conglomerate. Despite her extensive résumé in production roles, Matheos began taking on a design role after an opportune suggestion from her middle school teacher: “I always did the mandatory musicals that we would do in elementary school, which I always had a great time with. Then, when I went to middle school, I auditioned for a musical and I didn’t get a very good part, which discouraged me from auditioning the next year, even though I like theatre. The director approached me and said, ‘Hey, do you want to be an ASM [Assistant Stage Manager] on the middle school musical?’ I didn’t know what that meant, but I was like, ‘Yeah! I want to be involved and I don’t want to have auditions. This sounds great!’ And then I just really enjoyed stage management and continued to do run crew and stage management throughout high school.” Besides her work in the theatre community at Vassar, Matheos served as props intern and run crew at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival this summer. She has also traveled to New York City on many occasions to meet with professional stage managers. It’s in the collaborative nature of theatre that Matheos continues to be a stage manager. “I guess the reason I like stage management is getting to know what’s happening with every aspect of the production and seeing the collaborative process and how you bring a show from before rehearsals through the closing of the show and how everyone’s input and ideas get intermixed into all of that,” she expressed. “I like the collaborative nature and being involved with that. I like interacting with people and making sure everyone has a good time and is being heard.” Pedro Augusto Lima ’21 may be a first-year, but he’s already a set designer for Philaletheis’ “Fud-
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
dy Meers” production and has been working with the Drama Department’s technical director Paul O’Connor. Before arriving to Vassar, he had already explored set design in his high school and local community theatre. When Lima first approached being a set designer, he was able to rely on the experience he gained shadowing his father: “I was immediately drawn to scenery because of my background in construction, having worked in it with my father for years prior to doing drama. The only distinction between simply doing theatre carpentry and design, however, happened when I was given the task to create the torture chair for Gomez’s Grotto in ‘Addams Family.’ The feeling of having a concept brought to life and then used in a production was almost euphoric, and that immediately drew me into design.” Because of the opportunities and encouragements his high school gave, Lima was able to explore scenic design even further: “In my high school, theatre was huge, and so the process to get in involved interviews and auditions, but it was well worth the effort. I soon was given the opportunity to start designing and planning small parts of the show, like a torture [sequence] in ‘Addams Family’ or a taxi for my school’s annual freshman theatre performance. From then on, I began honing my craft of design by working with both of the directors at my school in order to design larger scale shows. After one semester, I was introduced to many of the community theatres in the area and soon created a name for myself in theatre both inside and outside my school.” With these theatremakers’ numerous inspirations come aspirations. Some short-term goals are playing a new kind of role or simply getting through their current productions. And then there are long-term goals, like working on Broadway or owning a theatre company with a mission of accessibility. And because of the community and collaboration essential to theatre, others will be there to help them on their journeys, every step of the way.
October 26, 2017
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End of ‘Skam’ has the world, and Arts editor, in tears SKAM continued from page 1
stunning, with the city backdrop surrounding the two as they sit on the ledge of a pier, gazing into the distance. Titled “The Best of Islam,” Yousef discusses why he has strayed away from the religion, citing its homophobic ideologies as one of the predominant reasons. Yousef’s former close friend Even, who is Isak’s love interest in Season Three, went into a manic episode after attempting to suppress his sexuality for the sake of his Muslim friends. It was a difficult situation, but Yousef took from it that he didn’t need to follow all of the complexities of religion to be a good person, which I think is a very interesting argument that isn’t often talked about. Yousef is a good influence on Sana, as he helps her see the world as not being designed against her, but rather if she tries to see the good in people, it is full of love and possibility. Sana’s belief is further asserted through the season’s other predominant plot, which features her feeling excluded by her friend group that has been together since the first episodes of Season One. The group, which is all white other than Sana, has oriented itself around the mean girls at the school as they form a bus to celebrate graduation (In Norway, designing and being in a good bus is the most important social project in high school.) Sana becomes the leader of the bus, and a particularly strong scene is set from Sana’s point of view as she looks out at the 25 white faces staring at her after she discusses the plan for the bus. This plot is messy and gets resolved quickly toward the season’s end, having Sana reuniting with her best friends and flipping off the mean girls as they ride off into the “sunset,” or rather ride off in a old van they are using as their bus. I was annoyed by this throughout the season and felt like it took away from so many opportunities to do more educationally, as the show has a massive platform, but instead continued with the mean girls plot that every teenage show has centered on. The show’s final episode completely makes
up for all of the poor plots this season. I found it fascinating how Andem parallels its first episode. Eva, the Season One lead, has learned that she can be independent and also be in a relationship. Noora, the lead of Season Two, has opened up about her insecurities and also worked things out with her boyfriend. Isak has come to terms with her sexuality and is in a loving, caring relationship with Even. Sana has learned to trust others and open up to the people who love her. In its final frame, Jonas, Eva’s boyfriend, reads a speech written for Sana celebrating her and Eid. It parallels the speech he first read in the opening frame of Season One, but with a much happier note. The last lines of the show, “Fear spreads but, luckily, so does love” destroyed me. It was truly a beautiful ending for the best show I
have ever watched. While I am still distraught about the ending of “Skam” months later, Andem gave justice to the show through its fantastic resolution. Simon Fuller, the producer of “American Idol,” is working on an American remake of the show, with Facebook buying the rights to the series just a few days ago. I am beyond reluctant to watch and confident that America will ruin another beautiful thing, but Andem has signed up to oversee production. Not all hope is lost, and I’ll give it a chance. Even if you hate subtitles or are asking yourself why in the world you would watch a show about Norwegian teenagers, I highly urge you to reconsider. “Skam” is the most accurate portrayal of growing up in 2017 out there, and it may even help you make sense of this confusing world.
Courtesy of Twitter
show is. If you want to read a detailed analysis of my love for Isak and the best season of television I have ever had the pleasure of watching, go read my other review! Each season has a different lead, who for roughly 10 episodes deals with what is deemed to be their shame (“Skam” translates to shame). Seasons One and Two focus on the difficulties that accompany being in a relationship at such a confusing time in your life. Season Three centers on coming to terms with your sexuality and understanding how to cope with mental illness. With Season Four, Julie Andem, the show’s wonderful producer, gave a voice to one of the few non-white characters on the show by making Sana the season’s lead. Sana is a beautiful, strong teenage Muslim girl whose season revolves around the discrimination she faces being a religious woman in what she defines as a faithless country. She has been a strong presence throughout the show’s run, giving some of the best speeches and advice to former leads. I was ecstatic to see her finally given the opportunity to tell her own story. Season Four had the potential to be the most important yet, with almost a third of Norway’s population watching the show, along with millions of others throughout the world. It promised to serve as a way to educate people who may not understand Islam and its complexities. With that said, the first half of Season Four was incredibly disappointing. Like the previous seasons, Sana spent most of her time pining over a boy, Yousef, which is something we all find ourselves doing, but I was hopeful that this season would show that you don’t need to be in a relationship to be happy. This filled up about half of the season’s drama, with both Sana and Yousef awkwardly flirting with each other until the second-to-last episode, which gives them a beautiful conclusion. A particularly heartwarming clip from this episode features the two of them on their first date by the riverfront of Oslo. The cinematography is
Pictured above is Sana, the beautiful lead of Season Four of Skam. The show tackles serious issues that teens face in the world today, with this season centering on Islamophobia.
‘Happy Death Day’ transcends norms set by horror genre Eloudia Odamy Guest Columnist
Happy Death Day
Christopher Landon Universal Pictures
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knife-wielding serial killer. It is the “Scream” of our time, which makes the movie so good. It has a refreshing take on teen slasher movies while also paying tribute to those heralded in the horror genre. I went into the movie thinking it would just be a bit annoying and tedious, with an endless cycle of Tree dying and waking up and dying and waking up, but thankfully that was not the case. Every scene pulled you into the world of Tree, leaving you breathless as you watched Tree try to solve her murder. The creepy baby-shaped mask was created by Tony Gardner, the same person who created the Ghostface mask from “Scream,” which adds yet another layer to the parallel. When watching the movie, you feel like you are a detective. I kept saying to myself that she is the killer, or he is the killer, or the dad could be the killer. The film immerses you into Tree’s nightmare. However, I disliked how the movie
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he idea of waking up on your birthday, which is a supposedly joyous occasion, and ending up dying is an absolute nightmare. Now, imagine waking up all over again and having to continually relive this day until you can solve your own murder. This agony is exactly what protagonist Tree Gelbman goes through in the horror film “Happy Death Day.” Produced by Vassar’s very own Jason Blum, it reaches the high bar set by his other works. The movie opens up with Tree on her birthday, waking up in Carter Davis’ dorm room with no recollection of the night before. Hungover and confused, she leaves in a hurry and makes her way to her sorority house. Her roommate, Lori Spengler, gives Tree a cupcake with a single candle and says “happy birthday” to her, but Tree ends up throwing it in the garbage. She also ignores her dad’s phone calls numerous times. Later that night, Tree goes to a party and on her way back, she goes through a tunnel, where she has an encounter with a creepy, hooded figure wearing a mask of the college mascot. The figure kills Tree and she gasps, waking up in Carter Davis’s dorm room. Tree eventually realizes that she is in a time loop and has to figure out who is trying to kill her because no matter what Tree does, the killer always finds her. She avoids the tunnel, but the killer still catches up to her. She decides not to go to the party and stays in her room, armed with a hammer, but the killer, hiding in her bathroom, murders her. “Happy Death Day” has gotten a lot of good reviews due to its superb acting and the merging of genres. Jessica Rothe, who plays Tree, is fantastic in this movie and she really brought the character of Tree to life. Her acting was excellent, and the audience quickly becomes en-
raptured in her terrifying story. Coupled with humorous dialogue and terriying horror sequences, “Happy Death Day” does a good job of merging these different genres. There are comedic scenes that make you want to laugh. Yes, there was romance in the movie, which was a bit uninteresting, but sweet all the same. Carter Davis is Tree’s love interest and helps her come up with a plan to find out who is targeting Tree. She even deliberately decides to die to go back and try to save him after he is killed by the murderer in one of these nightmarish days. “Happy Death Day” succeeds in being more than just a typical horror movie that you only see because Halloween is approaching. Rather, it transcends horror norms and makes something truly special. The plot also separates the film from the often bland, stereotypical lines found in most horror movies. It was described as “Groundhog Day” meets “Scream,” with a time loop and a
“Happy Death Day” is not a typical horror film. It uses comedic humor and interesting conceptions of time to add a new layer to the plot, and has received critical and social success.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
tried making it hard to find out who the killer is, but you might guess it. I had my prediction and it was correct. It was obvious, yet my favorite part was when the director threw a curveball at us to divert our attention. “Happy Death Day” might resemble “Groundhog Day” and be a slasher film, but it is really a unique film. I also did not understand why Tree has entered a time loop. This will definitely be a question that will be on everyone’s minds about the movie. There could have been an explanation instead of the film implementing this element just to add another layer to reduce the monotony present in many slasher movies. Another reason why the movie was not perfect was the explanation given as to why the killer was after Tree in the first place, as it was really unexciting and lackluster. The movie should have had a good, valid reason worth killing for and one that made sense, giving the viewer a fuller understanding. Blum never ceases to disappoint, especially with his other films “Split,” “The Purge” and “Get Out,” which is, in my opinion, the best movie I have seen so far. After the movie was over, everyone clapped, which is always an interesting notion of how people felt about a given film. I left the theater in awe, and was happy because it was worth watching rather than doing something else. Tree goes through a great deal of character development, which I would not really expect in a slasher film, so it was truly surprising for me to actually see it happen, and I was glad it was done in this movie. As annoying, unfriendly and mean as she was , she changed into a loving and caring person. This reveals a new layer of Tree and because of this, audiences would root for Tree to solve her murder. Tree’s character development in the film teaches her a lesson, as reliving her nightmare makes her realize who she is and what she has to do to be a better person. “Happy Death Day” is a must-see movie and the director has hinted at the possibility of a sequel that would thus explain why Tree goes through a time loop. The sequel has a lot to live up to, with this film transcending the norms set in the horror genre.
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October 26, 2017
‘Portlandia’ falls short of earlier quality in newest season Izzy Braham Columnist
Portlandia
Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein and Jonathan Krisel IFC
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ty, making sure to dim the lights and turn on a spotlight. This alerts everyone to their story and includes musical instruments to hype up the experience. Another episode revisited Candace and Toni’s relationship. Toni is now in a serious relationship and Candace is struggling with the ensuing separation anxiety. The skit features Candace being a drama queen and tracking Toni down in all of her couple exploits, trying to best her new partner. Another episode features Carrie trying to find a new friend after “losing” a close friend to a marriage. She then aggressively seeks out new candidates as if she is trying to find someone to fill a job, taking résumés and networking. These storylines, while funny and relatable in concept, weren’t as hilarious in practice. They
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n Sept. 9, Netflix released “Portlandia’s” seventh season. From skits about Carrie dating a hunk to a satirical short about meninism to an episode about Portland succeeding so that it can attract less people and remain weird, this season of “Portlandia” has proven to have its quintessential quirkiness and thematic consistency while maintaining its hilarity. As an obsessive viewer and hardcore fan since the beginning, I can attest that this was one of the worst seasons of this wonderful show—and that is painful to admit. For those of you who have never heard of “Portlandia,” it’s (usually) a very funny sketch comedy show filmed in Portland that mocks hipster lifestyles. Written and performed by comedians Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein (who you may know from “Saturday Night Live” and the band Sleater-Kinney, respectively), the show is composed of random sketches interwoven with an ongoing story in each episode. Additionally, a lot of the same characters are featured from season to season. For instance, one of the recurring skits Portlandia is known for is the “Feminist Bookstore,” in which Fred and Carrie portray the utterly hilarious and self-righteous Candace and Toni. These two older women run the Women and Women First bookstore, take themselves very seriously and are incredibly picky about what their customers say and do. What is endearing about “Portlandia” is that it is random, relatable and also a caricature of itself. Almost all of the skits appeal to this alternative sense of humor, making fun of the ridiculous culture of millennials, DIY bands, vegan food and Portland’s ’90s aesthetic. However, you know
it isn’t mean spirited or targeted because Fred and Carrie are “hipsters” themselves who probably subscribe to these trends. This makes their sense of humor inviting—a lot of young people can relate to the absurdity that comes with contemporary technologies and fads and partake in a lighthearted self-mockery. Season Seven provided ample hipster ridicule. The first episode’s reoccurring skit centers around the concept of dinner party storytelling. Fred and Carrie are a couple who struggle to tell stories that will impress their other couple friends. With a cameo by Claire Danes, this episode features Fred and Carrie going to a storytelling counselor who aggressively coaches them on how to tell a good story. In the end, Fred and Carrie perform their story at a huge dinner par-
With its seventh season drawing to a close, “Portlandia” has maintained its quirky charm and hipster ridicule, though this newest season proves to be the worst so far.
were missing a certain je ne sais quoi—perhaps it had to with the lack of just plain, funny moments. There weren’t many elements of surprise, or witty one-liners. With that said, I do think that in the past the best “Portlandia” sketches were always the singular, short random sketches that had nothing to do with the episode’s theme. I definitely found this to be the case with the recent season as well. One of my favorite skits was in episode six, when Fred pretends to be an avid B-52s fan and unpacks a box of their albums and merchandise as if it is the coolest thing in the world. At the end of the skit, he unveils a little love shack toy house, and the B-52s, shrunk down to a miniature size, emerge from it. Instead of being psyched to see the actual B-52s, Fred cocks his head in confusion and simply asks them if they are bobble heads. I thought his excitement about the B-52s merchandise was just so random and funny. My other favorite skit was in episode seven, when Fred pretended to be a chef of an airport sushi restaurant. After having a terrible airport sushi experience, he sets out to open his own airport sushi restaurant as he makes the joke that there is a huge market for bad food at airports. The whole joke is to make fun of how bad airport food is, making it seem like restaurants actively try to make the food that way. Overall, I love “Portlandia,” but this season wasn’t the show’s best. Watching it through a critical lense, I also realized how the comedy could be thought of as elitist in some ways. A lot of skits may not be as universally funny because they center around specific insights about particular situations that not everyone commonly experiences. For instance, sketches make fun of the pretentiousness of dinner parties or the ridiculousness around a new, snobby diet. While it does have a niche type of humor that could be perceived as problematic, I would still recommend the show to anyone, especially anyone younger than 30 due to its hipster satire. Check out Seasons One and Two, though, if you want the best “Portlandia” experience.
Video game feels larger than life, gives user control Jimmy Christon Columnist
Pyre
Amir Rao Supergiant Games
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he video game “Pyre” comes to us from the studio Supergiant Games, whose last two works, “Transistor” and “Bastion,” have been some of the most aesthetically pleasing games to come out in a while. While I like both of them, I think “Bastion” just doesn’t live up to its older sibling. “Bastion” got a lot of hype for having a narrator in the game who seems to comment on everything you do as a player and had a great world and story behind the game, but the game almost felt lackluster in that once you beat it, you didn’t really feel the impression that it left.
“Transistor” is a different story. “Transistor” is the “Sicario” to Bastion’s “Prisoners” (if you read my review in last week’s issue, then you’re one of the five people out there who get this). “Transistor” gives me hope that these games are more than just the schlock that they are commonly purported to be. This statement isn’t exactly hyperbole either, as a lot of games out there are just plain immature. “Transistor” was everything that “Bastion” was not for me. It left a huge impression, one that only grows the more I replay the game. “Transistor” didn’t pull any strings, as it told a story about a girl and a city in a way that only a game could accomplish. The story and characters reveal themselves based on how you played the game. What made this game even more memorable for me is how colorful it is. “Transistor” is a game where the player experiences the beats of a bluesy city on its downward spiral. This is an experience that could only be accom-
Courtesy of Wikipedia
“Pyre” is the newest video game in a series produced by the studio Supergiant Games, and has become popular because of the tremendous amount of freedom it grants to player.
plished in the medium of a game. Additionally, with Supergiant’s new game, “Pyre,” I feel that Supergiant has even outdone “Transistor” in both providing an experience and in leaving an impression. Simply put, I have never played a game that has pulled off the concept of choosing your own adventure as well as “Pyre” has. Usually these games fall into the trap of not letting the player know that the game—and hence its story—has a definitive ending that is ultimately chosen by someone else: the designer of the game. And what follows is a sense of disappointment as you realize that your story isn’t really yours after all. “Pyre” gracefully avoids this by letting the player know the ways in which this story could end and has the player work towards those ends. What this allows for, and why I’m so impressed by this game, is it gives the player complete control to choose how the narrative develops while still enforcing the idea that something else is defining the narrative for you. This is to say that this game is all about the process and not the outcome. And this process is hugely satisfying. The way the game works is that you, as the so-called “reader,” are the general manager of a team of exiles who have to conduct rituals to return to normal society. These rituals come in the form of three-on-three games of...I guess it’s closest to rugby. It’s very “gamey” and full of spells, banishments, auras and abilities, but it is fun to play and engagingly intense when it needs to be. I particularly like the use of an announcer who commentates the games and the way music swells with the score of the game. I said earlier that you as the player operate as a sort of “general manager” for your team. This is by no means hyperbole. You manage everything about how your band of exiles plays their game. From who is starting to where you are playing, you are the decision-maker for your team. Most importantly, however, you get to literally decide the fate of all of the characters around you, and this facet of “Pyre” is what gives the player such an expansive plethora of choice within the game. These rituals, despite being the “gamey-ist”
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parts of “Pyre,” are not what has kept me so entranced with this game. It’s the ways that this game contextualizes and informs the choices you make outside of these rites. What truly pushes this game above and beyond the status quo is the way in which every single choice you make in this game comes back to inform the narrative this game sets you free within. The narrative of this game isn’t just about exiles attempting to obtain their freedom. Rather, it’s an in-depth experiment as to how you, as a leader, will control a social movement. Every choice you make in this game, from who you choose to play, who you choose to exalt and when you choose to lose your games affects the world around you. I could write much more about how this game beautifully encompasses failure into its narrative, but I only have so many words. I have to be vague because of spoilers, but I will say that one of this game’s biggest themes is that of revolution and change. “Pyre” puts the player in charge of exiles redefining themselves, but they are also trying to redefine society. Supergiant has created a game where the player is in control of so many narratives that the player can’t help but forget just how much stuff informs their decisions—just like in real life. This game is all about the intersection between personal existence and the general function of the world around us. I want to avoid making this game sound super important for our times because this game could have come out 20 years before or after today and it would still feel just as significant. But what I am trying to endorse for this game, and why I’m so dumbfounded as to why there’s so little press about this game, is just how affecting it is. “Pyre” isn’t fun because it’s intelligent or wordy. Rather, it’s fun because it makes these larger-than-life situations feel incredibly personal for the player. It’s a game that puts you at the forefront of a plethora of choices, and asks you to shape yourself from the choices you have to make. It’s fun not because it’s bright, poppy and colorful. It’s enjoyable because you get to see so much of yourself reflected from the choices you make within the game.
ARTS
October 26, 2017
Campus Canvas
A weekly space highlighting the creative pursuits of student-artists
Page 17 submit to misc@vassar.edu
Excuse me, What is the most awkward interaction you have had with a professor?
“On the last day of class I told my professor ‘see you next year;’ They told me their contract had expired” — Kenneth Lee ’18
“I lied to my professor about having done my final and faked that my computer crashed when he asked to see it” — Kevin Arce ’20
“My professor walked into my work after Halloweekend and I threw up after I saw him” — Mojan Farid ’20
“I had a wardrobe malfunction in class and I was only wearing a sports bra underneath” — Lena Stevens ’21
“I zoned out in class and thought my professor could read my mind... I was thinking about how I was attracted to him” — Alexandra Blaine ’20
Sophie Cash ’19 I am a junior Environmental Studies major from just outside of Boston.I’ve been doing art casually for as long as I can remember, but have never really taken classes. I mostly work in watercolor, but I love needle felting (see the fox) and this semester I’m doing an independent study on scientific botanical illustration (see the lantana flower drawing). I also embroider (and would take commissions for something simple!). I’ve been interested in the environment and have taken solace in the natural world for as long as I can remember, so I’m drawn towards depicting botanical subjects in particular.
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“When I went to vote I ran into my professor and they told the workers how to pronounce my last name” — Kate Titowsky ’20
Leah Cates, Humor & Satire Yesenia Garcia, Humor & Satire Hannah Benton, Photography
SPORTS
Page 18
October 26, 2017
Women win big, while men fall short in first swim meet SWIM continued from page 1
Courtesy of Carlisle Stockton
Randhawa secured her first individual victory in the 100-yard backstroke, posting a time of 1:01.37. Boese finished third in that same event, putting up a strong time of 1:07.54 and keeping Vassar in the lead. In the 100 breaststroke, Schultz and Schrope finished in first and second place, respectively, with times of 1:09.34 and 1:11.41. In the 200 butterfly, Lautenbacher secured her first collegiate individual win with a solid time of 2:17.58. In the same race, Kennedy-Wood finished third with a time of 2:27.14. The final race before the intermission was the 50 freestyle, where Harrington placed second with a time of 27:06. The second round of races started out well for the Brewers as Schultz finished first in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 58:06. Harrington swam in the same event, finishing third and putting up a time of 59:22. At this point in the meet, Vassar was up 87-59, which would soon be extended to 99-66 when Randhawa finished first in the 200 backstroke with a time of 2:11.40 while Boese finished third with a time of 2:21.56. Schrope recorded her first collegiate win with a time of 2:34.98 in the 200 breaststroke. The Brewers then finished first and second in the 500 freestyle with Ragnini and Healey finishing within a second of each another. Ragnini came in at 5:29.33, and Healey finished at 5:30.10. VC put up another 1-2 finish in the 100 butterfly, where Lautenbacher put up a time of 1:00.93 for first place, with Kennedy-Wood right coming in second behind her at 1:01.88. The Brewers closed out their meet with strong finishes in the 200 individual medley. Randhawa placed first with a time of 2:16.09; Lautenbacher finished close behind with a time of 2:19.83. Senior Emily McDaniels finished fifth with a time of 2:29.09, helping the Brewers pull ahead to 152.5-88.5, effectively securing the win for VC. In the last swim of the day, Vassar competed in the 400 freestyle relay with Harrington, Schrope, Ragnini and Schultz coming in first, and senior Cali Corbett, sophomore Abby Kirsch, Kennedy-Wood and Healey taking third place. For the women’s diving team, senior Katie Nordstrom, in her first collegiate diving event, finished in second place in the one-meter event with a score of 83.90. The women won the meet with a impressive score of 196.5-110, and it is no wonder they could pull off such a win so early in the season consid-
Senior swimmer Cali Corbett races in a freestyle event last season. Corbett and the women’s swimming and diving team defeated Brandeis last Saturday, 169.5-110.5. ering how hard the team worked in preseason to prepare themselves. Leading up to the meet against Brandeis, Kirsch said, “The team had been preparing by training a lot in the pool to build up endurance while also working on the semantics of a race by doing a lot of start and turn work.” Focusing on the logistics while also building up their stamina in the pool was a huge benefit for the Brewers on Saturday. “The preparation translated into performances during the meet by showing that the team was able to manage doing multiple, exhausting races while also maintaining good technique,” Kirsch noted. The men’s team, while they put up a valiant effort posting six personal bests and winning six events, was unable to defeat Brandeis University in their season opener this past Saturday. The meet started out well for the Brewers, who won the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 1:38.94 thanks to first-year Max White, sophomore Harrison Taylor, sophomore Matthew Imiolek and senior Jonah Strand. Strand would finish in first place in all three of his events, securing wins in the 100 breaststroke with a time of 1:00.34, the 200 breaststroke with a time of 2:13.26 and the 200 individual medley (IM) with a time of 2:02.22. White also had a successful day, picking up
his first collegiate win in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 54.57 and a win in the 100yard butterfly, swimming a 53.36 to secure the first-place finish. Imiolek posted a personal best in the 50 freestyle, beating his previous time to win the event with a time of 22.43. In the 1000 freestyle, sophomore Jordan Kalina took second with a time of 10:40.21 and also took second in the 500 freestyle, putting up a time of 5:11.33. First-year Parker Bartz took a fourth place finish for the Brewers in the 200 freestyle with a time of 2:01.06, which was over 14 seconds better than his seed time. First-year Finn Belanger also beat his seed time in the 200 freestyle, coming in at 2:01.38. First-year Rowan McDowell finished the 100 backstroke in fifth place, clocking in at 1:00.58, and first-year Danny Dunn swam a 1:12.70 in the 100 breaststroke, a personal best for the newcomer. Tyler placed third in the 200 butterfly, coming in at 2:12.19. Tyler also placed second in the 100 freestyle with a time of 52.26. In the same event, Bartz and first-year Davon Dowie both came in under their seed times. McDowell took fourth in the 200 backstroke with a time of 2:13.90 and Imiolek took third in
Women’s Soccer
Men’s Soccer
Vassar College 1, Hobart 2
Vassar College 0, William Smith 4
October 21, 2017
October 21, 2017
Vassar College POS
Player
GK D F D M D M D M F D S S S S S S S
Walsh Alvarez Thayer DeBenedictis Chroscinski Coughlan Cutler Lavelle McFarland Ferry Moss Trasatti Deitch Chernet Saari Herrera-Ross Longo Daley
Totals.......
Goalie Walsh
Minutes 90:00
William Smith
Sh SOG G A 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
6
2
0
0
POS M M D F F M M D D F GK S S S S S S S S S S S
the 200 breaststroke with a time of 2:25.57. Imiolek finished fourth in the 200 IM with a time of 2:11.69. The men’s dive team also secured a secondand third-place finish this past weekend. Senior Connor Martin secured second place in the one-meter diving event with a score of 146.25, while junior Marvin Corleto put up 109.30 to secure third place. White, who was recently named Liberty League Rookie of the Week for his performance against Brandeis, commented on the meet as a whole. “I think our team did really well against Brandeis this weekend considering the disadvantage we had with size especially on the men’s side,” he explained. “I think as a team, we had some really solid relays as well, which is going to only get better as the season progresses.” Looking ahead, the Brewers have a pretty quick turnaround with only a couple days of practice before their next meet. In terms of what the team is going to focus on to prepare, White explained that “everyone in practice is trying to fine tune our races and dives while the meet is still fresh in our minds.” While the outcome of the meet for the men did not turn out as they would have hoped, an abundance of strong races from several swimmers shows that the team has the potential to have an incredibly successful season. Strand, who was named Liberty League swimmer of the week, was impressed with the six personal bests that were posted on Saturday, although he thought the relays could have executed better transitions. “We are still in the first part of the season, and we’re practicing those details more and more,” Strand said. Strand has high hopes for the Brewers this season. “Our goals as a team this season are to beat Bard and Skidmore, have all of our swimmers place in the top 20 in an event at Liberty Leagues and for us to each achieve lifetime bests in our respective races,” he noted. However, all this success won’t be possible without leadership, and because of this, Strand is taking his responsibility as a senior seriously. “As a senior, I feel like it is my job to impart knowledge I’ve gained from my three years of experience on our new teammates and to push my teammates to swim faster in practice so that they can succeed at meets.” The men’s and women’s swim and dive team will take on their first Liberty League opponent on Wednesday, Oct. 25, as they host Bard at 6 p.m. in Kresge Pool.
Player
Vassar College
Sh SOG G A
Barwick Kogelmann Lohr Manning Olick-Sutphen Spiegel Hinrichs Moore Campbell Richard Romines Murray Merlo Adams McQuillen Colpoys Mitiguy Spear Carrau Carpenter Deschino O’ Connor Totals.......
3 1 0 2 0 0 3 2 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 2 0 0 2 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
17
8
4
2
# 00 3 5 7 8 11 12 14 19 21 22 6 9 15 16 18 23
Player
Hobart
Sh SOG G A
Marcelino Gilmore Smith Stansell Olsson Snider Novas Van Brewer Collins Lukasik Mrlik Goldsmith Bow Baliat Karaiskos Heitmann Davis
Totals.......
0 0 0 1 0 1 2 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
9
2
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1
1
# 1 3 4 7 8 9 10 25 26 28 35 2 5 6 11 16 19 23 24
Player
Sh SOG G
Kaminer O’ Connell Escamilla Emmanuel Dosky Acheampong Colmenares Weisbein Schulz Martini Widoycovich Barnes Roberts Cary Diouf Wigglesworth Harper Farman Patrick
Totals.......
GA
Saves
Goalie
Minutes
GA
Saves
Goalie
Minutes
GA
Saves
Goalie
Minutes
4
4
Murray Romines
11:58 78:02
0 0
0 2
Marcelino
90:00
2
2
Kaminer
90:00
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0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
10
4
GA 1
A 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2
1
Saves 1
October 26, 2017
SPORTS
Page 19
Yanks lose, America misses Astros primed to hit their out on epic World Series way to first championship Evan Trausch
Guest Columnist
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aturday, Oct. 21, game seven of the American League Championship Series (ALCS) was held between the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros. Game seven would decide which of the two American League Teams would be moving on to the World Series to play the Los Angeles Dodgers, who secured the NLCS. The Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs in four out of five games, showcasing an offensive storm from the powerful Dodger lineup. Regardless of the outcome of the ALCS rubber match, both the Yankees and the Astros would assuredly display a captivating show of offensive theatrics and world-class pitching. The pitching matchup in game seven of the ALCS was between Yankee Veteran CC Sabathia and Charlie Morton of the Astros. Leading up to this point, Sabathia was 1-0 in post-season play, with his one win against the Astros earlier in the series. Morton had a 0-1 record going into game seven. Morton went on to pitch five shutout innings, allowing only two hits. Sabathia left the game after just three-and-athird innings, giving up one earned run. Evan Gattis, catcher for the Astros, was responsible for the run with a solo home run in the fourth. Tommy Khanle came into replace Sabathia and allowed another run in the fifth inning when Jose Altuve hit a solo home run making the game 2-0. Lance McCullers Jr. replaced Morton, coming in in the sixth and continued the shutout, picking up a save. The Astros’ offense scored two more runs with two RBIs from Bryan McCann. The Houston Astros went on to win the game 4-0 and secured their place in the 2017 World Series. Yankees fans familiar with the players and the personnel changes that happened over the course of the year should be proud of how well the young team has performed this season. The Yankees have even exceeded head coach Joe Girardi’s expectations. The addition of Aaron Judge, a rookie, into a consistent lineup spot has shown huge production. The rookie has hit 56 home runs this season, including in the off-season. Also, the Yankees pick-up of veteran Todd Frazier from the White Sox organization has greatly improved the team. Frazier has proved to be a dangerous hitter, a sound fielder and a leader this off-season. Also, the addition of Aroldis Chapman, the flame-throwing, left-hand-
ed closer, came as a missing piece and greatly improved the Yankees’ staff. Aroldis Chapman was traded from the Chicago Cubs organization. The young players the Yankees have spent time developing, Gregorius, Sanchez, Severino and Judge, have all had stellar seasons and were dangerous in the off-season. If the Yankees can avoid significant injuries in the coming years, they will continue to be in playoff contention for the coming years. Also, Bryce Harper’s contract with the Washington Nationals is ending this year; however, Harper has a one-year option. Harper’s contract will end soon regardless, and the young stud outfielder has already expressed interest in becoming a Yankee. In addition to Yankees fanatics, the loss came as a disappointment to many hoping to see a Dodgers vs. Yankees World Series. The Dodgers of Los Angeles and the Yankees of New York represent the two most densely populated cities across the United States. A Yankees and Dodgers World Series would have attracted the attention of millions, and the interest would have certainly been great for Major League Baseball. Also, the population centers in New York and Los Angeles are especially diverse, and in the odd chance that baseball reaches houses that don’t usually watch baseball, new fanatics would be sure to arise. Regardless, the Astros and Dodgers will showcase the tip of the spear of baseball. Teams by this point in the year are locked into the zone, and the playoffs this year have shown it. The Astros have been building their team up for years now for this moment in time. The Astros have best offensive lineup in team history. Maybe even better than the killer bees, which included the likes of Lance Berkman, Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell. Further contributing to their success, the Astros staff may be the best in its history as well. Dallas Keuchel has been a force this entire season and off-season. The late pickup of Justin Verlander from the Tigers Organization has solidified the starting rotation. Verlander, a former Cy Young and MVP winner, has been light-out ever since Aug. 31, when he was traded to the Astros. His record is 9-0 for the Astros. It’s a great time to give baseball a chance. Despite the fact that the Dodgers vs. Yankees World Series has been ruled out, there is a lot to be excited about. Post-season play has been a pleasure to watch so far, and the Dodgers and Astros are sure to put on a show.
Robert Pinataro Sports Editor
I
n 2014, Sports Illustrated printed an issue featuring Houston Astros outfielder George Springer hitting a home run, with the caption “Your 2017 World Series Champs.” Three years later, the Astros actually do have the chance to make this a reality, if they can find a way to best the extremely talented Los Angeles Dodgers. After a 101-61 regular season, the Astros took down the Boston Red Sox in the American League Division Series. They played a much tougher seven-game series to beat the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. Now they are locked in an intense World Series battle with the Los Angeles Dodgers, just four victories from being crowned champions. At the time that 2014 SI article came out, this prediction was laughable. The Astros had 111 losses in 2012 and 92 in 2013. To the average sports fan, it seemed there was minimal chance for improvement, seeing as the ownership did not have the funds to purchase the contracts of better players. The prediction by Sports Illustrated seemed incredibly bold at the time, but their explanation ended up being accurate. The Astros had an incredible farm system that was just beginning to adapt to the level of play that the Major League’s would necessitate. The three years between that 2014 season and this current season allowed these players to gain MLB experience and begin to reach their primes. Shortstop Carlos Correa and third baseman Alex Bregman have developed into outstanding infielders, and Lance McCullers Jr. has evolved into a strong third starting pitcher. The Astros have also used trades to elevate the program to its current level. Most notable was the acquisition of veteran pitcher Justin Verlander in exchange for a few minor league players in early September. Verlander came into the Astros’ already solid pitching staff and overtook well-established Dallas Keuchel as the ace, adding the depth necessary to compete with top-tier teams in the playoffs. While their pitching is very good, the Astros’ strength lies in their offense. Stellar batters such as Correa, Springer and Jose Altuve have highlighted the best statistical offense in Major League Baseball history. This year, the Astros finished first in runs scored, second in home runs and had a lower strikeout rate than any other team. With stats like these, it is clear that this was an offense that had no trouble putting the bat on the ball while hitting both for power and in clutch situations.
The Dodgers’ path to the World Series has been much less of a “rise from the ashes” story. The team will always have a much higher payroll and has made some great additions throughout the season. The Dodgers pitching prowess will be their advantage over the Astros. They have the best pitcher in baseball, Clayton Kershaw, as their ace, with Yu Darvish, Rich Hill and Alex Cobb rounding out the rotation. Their rotation is deeper than the Astros’, which is where the Dodgers gain their advantage. The Dodgers’ relief pitching is also better than that of the Astros. Led by hard-throwing closer Kenley Jansen (1.32 ERA, 0.75 WHIP during the regular season), this bullpen has the ability to end ball games in the seventh inning. It will be interesting to see how the Astros handle the Dodgers pitching staff, being that they have such a powerhouse offense. One big question for the Dodgers on the offensive side is the return of shortstop Corey Seager. He missed the National League Championship Series due to a back injury. When asked about the topic in a conference call, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “We are certainly optimistic. Corey really doesn’t want to be denied” (SB Nation, “Corey Seager expected to return to Dodgers for World Series”, 10.22.2017). Seager’s dedication to returning in time for the World Series comes as great news, as the Dodgers truly need him. While one player will not likely make or break the series based on skill alone, the leadership and presence that he brings at the shortstop position will certainly be missed if he is not playing. The Dodgers’ offense as a whole is solid, but not nearly as impressive as the Astros’. They ranked 12th in the league in runs scored, with 770 compared to Houston’s 896. There are several talented players in the lineup, such as Cody Bellinger, Yasiel Puig and Justin Turner, but it is difficult to say whether they will be able to rise to the occasion against a tough Houston pitching staff. In order to win, the Dodgers will need to put their best foot forward from a pitching standpoint to keep games low scoring. Then they may be able to push a couple of runs across and win. That being said, Houston’s offense shows tremendous upside. The Dodgers will have a tough time beating them in any kind of high-scoring affair. While it is often said that pitching wins championships, it is hard to say whether the Dodgers’ staff can shut down the best offense in league history. I believe that Houston will bat its way to a World Series championship in six games.
MLS pales in comparison to European premier leagues Jonathan Levi-Minzi Guest Columnist
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hen New York City FC was announced as a Major League Soccer (MLS) club-to-be in 2013, I certainly thought it would be my club. A new, albeit desperately enthusiastic fan receiving a real hometown club (the “New York” Red Bull play in Harrison, New Jersey!) seemed like a godsend. To boot, it soon became clear that the team was also bringing in some huge players, including one of my all-time favorites: Juventus’ deep play-maker star Andrea Pirlo. Perhaps if NYCFC had arrived in the nascence of my soccer fandom, it wouldn’t have gone this way, but I soon discovered that when MLS came on the television, I could barely help but shield my eyes. I loved to watch Lionel Messi’s Barcelona, I loved to watch Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea and I had developed an affinity for my Italian father’s own favorite club, Juventus. Watching an MLS match after a top-tier European one was a bit like returning from a trip to Italy and heading to the neighborhood Olive Garden. In both cases, one “just has it,” so to speak—the technical quality on the ball, the fresh ingredients and centuries-old recipe know-how—and the other does not. Major League Soccer’s lack of quality became embarrassingly apparent this fall when the MLS-player-filled United States Men’s Soccer Team failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. With a few bad bounces and many uninspiring performances, the team fell ignominiously to Trinidad and Tobago, a country with fewer than 1.5 million people. Firsthand observation confirms what the USMNT’s MLS-inspired fail-
ure suggests: American soccer is devoid of the technical quality that makes the beautiful game just that. The problem is that MLS, as the country’s professional soccer league, falls short of the standard of play that a country with a millions-of-kids-strong youth soccer presence should have. How does that problem come to be, though? I believe that the answer lies in the structure of the MLS. Major League Soccer is a single entity. It is not a league of independently owned clubs; instead, all clubs are owned by the league and operated by a shareholder. “In the single-entity business structure,” the league website’s About section reads, “club owners operate a financial stake in the league, not just their individual team” (mlssoccer.com, “About Major League Soccer”). There are some arguments to be heard in favor of this approach to improve American soccer. Stateside leagues have folded before under the weight of their component teams’ overinvestment. Formulating a sort of compendium of investment can make it somewhat more palatable for prospective team operators to throw in their lot. The MLS was also created as part of the American bid for the 1994 World Cup, meaning that it wasn’t necessarily an organic fomentationof investor interest in operating American soccer franchises. The argument would go that the MLS’s single-entity approach was a shrewd way of trying to kick-start popular interest in soccer with the one-two punch of a new, stable professional league and a stateside World Cup. On the other hand, it is hard to escape the
stark reality that this MLS set-up is inherently non-competitive. What incentive do MLS clubs have to increase their quality when their “ownership” is not a distinct entity from that of the rest of the competition? As things stand, MLS intra-competition is more or less “on good faith.” All the teams are insulated from their own failure, to such an extent that the incentive for improvement is irreparably muted. Unsurprisingly, quality of performance has not risen at the rate it might otherwise. Though star European players like Andrea Pirlo have provided American fans with spritzes of worldclass play during the twilights of their careers, the average standard for American players is still very low. This dearth in quality was displayed in full measure last month, when a team featuring Borussia Dortmund wonder-kid Christian Pulisic, but weighed down with six MLS players, failed to qualify the United States for the World Cup finals. It is my opinion that a higher-quality Major League Soccer—and a resultantly higher-quality American national team—would have to at least involve a multiple-ownership structure akin to those in the other major American professional sports leagues. At best, this reformed MLS would also embrace a promotion-relegation format. In pretty much the rest of the world, soccer leagues are part of a pyramid system where the worst teams of the higher league get sent down to the league below, whose best teams in turn get promoted to that aforementioned higher league. The effect is that all teams have to keep pace
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
with the league’s standard of quality, lest they get demoted. This format, coupled with large media rights deals, has made the English Premier League into a financial giant with unparalleled levels of investment in player quality. Granted, the Premier League is the home of international megaliths like Manchester United and Liverpool FC. Even with the adapting of a promotion and relegation system, an MLS club will not be reaching such heights for the foreseeable future. The similarity between the two leagues, however, is nonetheless the financial situation (in the MLS’ case, the potential one). Media rights giant MP & Silva bid $4 billion on the American league’s worldwide media rights this past summer. The MLS predictably rejected the proposal: For one thing, their current deal doesn’t expire for years. But the real sticking point was over the promotion-relegation format condition that the offer was contingent upon (Jeff Carlisle,”MLS rejected $4 billion media rights deal requiring promotion/relegation,” 07.24.2017). This deal was never going to happen, but the scale of MP & Silva’s offer still demonstrates that there is a belief in the possibility of an internationally relevant American soccer league. The MLS needs to recognize and react. It needs to recognize the potential value of this offer. It needs to recognize the absurdity of the United States failing to qualify for a World Cup final. And it needs to react with a transition to multiple ownership structure and to a promotion-relegation format.
SPORTS
Page 20
Why
we
Michael Mullen
Guest Contributor
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other player except me was wearing red. I do not remember much from that tryout, but it resulted in me making the best team for my age. Once again I was not the best, and once more, again, I was far from perfect. I did not quit, although at times I wanted to. I did not start on this team until I was in eighth grade, two years after I had originally joined it. In eighth grade we were fortunate enough to make it to a championship consisting of all the teams in the region. We were matched up against Wilmington, from Delaware. They had incredible players, and I could not have been more nervous. As it progressed, the game was tied with just minutes left. A teammate of mine dodged from X, beat his man and threw the ball to me cutting across the crease. I received the ball, and with the flick of my wrists, I scored the game-winning goal. The game ended 4-3. In that moment, I felt a sense of accomplishment that I had never experienced before. In that instance, I knew that lacrosse was what I wanted to be doing. Three years prior I wanted to quit the sport forever, and if it hadn’t been for my mom, I would have. But now, there was no stopping me. When I entered high school, I was fortunate enough to make varsity as a ninth grader. Like every level prior to this, I did not start. I did not get much playing time, except for in throw-away games. But, even if only known to myself, I knew I could play with this quality of competition. I entered my sophomore year as determined as I had ever been before. Through grit and determination, I concluded the season with 80 goals, which ranked third in the entire state. I received first team all-conference honors. Yet, it still was not good enough; I wanted more. I was happy, but I was not satisfied. It might sound clichéd, but it was a driving force for my betterment in the sport. Going into my junior year, I strived to lead the state in goals. I came back better than I had the year prior, and I knew I could play with just about anyone. I had a stellar year, and my overall skill set had improved greatly, but I still finished third in the state in goals, totaling 86. I had beaten my previous year’s marker, but as had been the case
Michael Mullen, Lacrosse
Courtesy of Carlisle Stockton
y lacrosse career began when I was five years old on the only grass-fielded sports complex in my town. At the time I hardly knew what lacrosse was, and my only desire to play stemmed from the fact that my sister (who is three years older than me) had started playing a few years prior. Luckily for me, my town recreational league was known for lacrosse—home of Salisbury University, 12-time Division III National Champions. Every kid started playing at quite a young age in Salisbury, but not as young as I did. For the first two years of my lacrosse career, I played in the U-9 division, consistently the youngest kid on the team. At first I was nervous and intimidated playing against competition older than I. They weren’t that much older, but at the time, two years seemed like a tremendous age gap. I soon came to realize, though, that I was one of the more skilled players on the field even from an early age. I enjoyed being one of the more competitive people on the field, and it fueled me to continue playing. At the age of 10, I was asked to join a club team, one that played both in the spring and summer. It was my first glimpse at summer lacrosse. I had always been able to dominate competition to this point, but for the first time in my life I realized I was far from the best. In fact, I was unaware of just how ordinary I was. I played with the team for two more years before my family decided to move to Pennsylvania. I do not remember being overly upset about moving; however, I knew one thing: I did not want to play lacrosse anymore. I had become frustrated that I was not one of the best. I wanted to be dominant. After weeks of trying, my mom convinced me to at least continue with lacrosse for a little longer. We had decided that I was going to switch my position from midfield to attack. This transition was my attempt at a clean slate. I was going to give it one last shot. I showed up to my first day of tryouts in my allblue gear. The blue equipment was superstitious: blue socks, blue pinny, blue shorts and a black-andblue helmet. I stuck out like a sore thumb. Every
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October 26, 2017
Sophomore Michael Mullen, a member of the Vassar men’s lacrosse team, is the writer of this week’s “Why we play.” Last season, Mullen started all 16 games for the Brewers and scored 24 goals. with all of my previous accomplishments, it simply wasn’t enough. Every year I came back I was better, and I intended to ensure this was the case once more. In my senior year, I led the state in goals with 104 and was a first team all-league and a first team allstate selection. Surprisingly, though, that was not my most memorable achievement of that year. My team was able to win the district for the first time in the school’s history. Additionally, we were able to qualify to compete in the state playoffs for the first time ever. After seven years of determination and constant toiling, we had finally done what no team before us had. Prior to my senior season, I knew that I wanted to play lacrosse at the collegiate level. I had consistently been in the leaderboards in the state; however, I received very little college interest. No one seemed to want me; I felt as though I had so much to give, yet no one even glanced twice at my play. I received two offers: one from Cabrini Uni-
versity, which has an excellent Division III lacrosse program with mediocre academics, and Vassar College, with a lacrosse program on the rise and prestigious academics. To me, it was very much so a common-sense choice. Vassar College was going to be my home for the next four years. Coach Graham and Coach McCreery gave me an opportunity very few others did, and I was going to make the most of it. I didn’t know what to expect of collegiate lacrosse when I first walked on campus, but it sure lived up to my expectations. There were some moments on the field last year, my first year, that I wouldn’t give up for the world. I love every single guy on the team as though he is my brother, and coming to Vassar is all the more worthwhile because of that bond. I play because I want to prove people wrong. I play because I love the game. I play because I love getting better. I play because of the friendships. Utimately, I play because I want to be the best.
SAAC attempts to ‘bridge the gap’ in VC community Mack Liederman Sports Editor
nce every two weeks, a select group of Vassar student-athletes representing all 27 varsity teams, gather together in Rockefeller Hall. The goal of these meetings is to create a unique forum where team leaders can discuss the most pressing issues facing both the athletic community and Vassar as a whole. Vassar’s Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) is part of a national initiative to help the NCAA gain helpful insight on the student-athlete experience. Each school’s SAAC offers feedback on newly proposed NCAA rules, regulations and policies. The Vassar branch has taken its duties a step further, with a particular focus on charitable outreach and creating a strong connection between student-athletes and the Vassar community. “The most important task of SAAC is to voice the opinions of Vassar student-athletes to the Vassar administration, the student body and the NCAA as a whole,” said junior Bryan Rubin, a SAAC representative for the baseball team. “Another important objective is to bridge the gap between student-athletes and students who don’t play sports. At Vassar, like many elite academic institutions, a portion of the student body may feel alienated from the athletic community. ” Senior women’s basketball player Ariella Rosenthal, this year’s Vassar SAAC vice president, also expressed the desire of student-athletes to create a greater relationship with the general student body. “Moving forward I think something that has been really important for us is trying to break the barrier between student-athletes and students who may not participate in athletics,” Rosenthal said. “It is something that a lot of us are passionate about, and we have been trying to figure out ways to bring these communities together.” Rosenthal is just one of many student-athletes who have taken a leading role in SAAC. Members of this year’s executive board include secretary Sophia Tiajoloff (senior, women’s volleyball), Liberty League representative Annie MacMillan (junior, women’s volleyball), Liberty League representative Madison Carroll (senior, women’s swim and dive), community outreach director Dasha Ivenitsky (senior, women’s tennis), treasurer Dahlia
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SAAC VP Ariella Rosenthal ’18 works with the BrewCrew subcommittee, while president Matt Knigge ’18 leads the student-athlete welfare subcommitte at the SAAC meeting last Sunday. Chroscinski (junior, women’s soccer), treasurer Kristin Caolo (junior, women’s lacrosse) and president Matt Knigge (senior, men’s volleyball). Outside of the Executive Board, all varsity teams are given two team representatives, chosen by either their coaches or teammates. Knigge, as president, represents not only the men’s volleyball team and Vassar, but also the entirety of the Liberty League and the New Jersey Athletic Conference at the national Division III SAAC conference. Altogether, Knigge is responsible for having his finger on the pulse of the experiences of over 10,000 student-athletes in the Liberty League and the NJAC. He is also the national student-athlete representative to the Division III Championships Committee. As part of his duties, Knigge has attended over 10 SAAC meetings in Indianapolis and another 10 or so around the country over the course of two years. At these meetings, Knigge has had the opportunity to hear from the president of the NCAA and engage in roundtable discussions with other student-athletes and high-level NCAA officials. Although Knigge takes immense pride in his role at the national level, his main focus is always working with Vassar student-athletes. “First and foremost, I utilize my position as the Vassar SAAC president to make sure that we are best representing and serving the interests of Vas-
sar’s 550 student-athletes,” Knigge said. “What that gets broken down into is acting as an advocate and face for student-athlete welfare issues, as well as ensuring that our ongoing initiatives are successfully implemented.” Vassar’s SAAC initiatives for this year include their “Think Pink Week” to raise breast cancer awareness, a partnership with the local Special Olympics, and increased BrewCrew events to help raise attendance at varsity athletic contests. Rosenthal and Knigge have also organized subcommittees for BrewCrew, community outreach and student-athlete welfare. “At Vassar, SAAC allows the student-athletes to have a unified voice and carry out a set of initiatives and events that allow us to positively interact with members of the greater Vassar, Poughkeepsie and Hudson Valley community,” said Knigge. As Rosenthal added: “I think we have a lot of amazing people in the athletics community, and being able to have them get involved and on board with things going on in the community and on campus is really important and something we strive to do in SAAC.” Fencing team representative Noey Berger said that he was satisfied with the initiatives taken by Vassar’s SAAC that go beyond the basic NCAA requirements. “Vassar’s SAAC plays an important role in fund-
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raising and charity, improving logistical and practical obstacles that student-athletes face in everyday life and improving the relationship between athletes and non-athletes at Vassar,” Berger said. “I think that the latter goal is particularly important at Vassar, as while many students who come to Vassar may not be interested in sports or attending our games, which is totally fine, there is a stigmatization of certain teams and athletes that should be addressed.” As part of its efforts to connect with the larger student community, SAAC discussed at their most recent meeting the possibility of working more closely with the Vassar Student Association (VSA) and of beginning the process to become a registered org. Other important notes from Sunday’s meeting include a letter drafted by SAAC to food provider Bon Appétit to suggest more food availability at the Deece for student-athletes who get out of practice at “dead times,” such as 8:30 p.m. Knigge also guided all SAAC members through potential new NCAA legislation. Most new proposals, such as moving the first permissible basketball contest up one week and allowing all sports to host alumnae/i games without exceptions, was approved by the Vassar student-athletes unanimously. The most hotly contest proposal of the night was one that would allow athletes with eligibiliy remaining after graduation to participate in Division III athletics thereafter without a special waiver. Some athletes expressed their concern that this rule would bring a disadvantage to schools like Vassar who do not have graduate students. However, the proposal was still passed by a majority of Vassar athletes. With all the new feedback on the NCAA proposals, it is now Knigge’s job to relay the thoughts expressed by his peers to the national NCAA office. When asked whether he thought the NCAA and schools like Vassar have a productive and healthy dialogue, Knigge responded, “Absolutely. I don’t think that it is a perfect relationship, but I am confident that the programs and legislation of the NCAA are made with the well-being of student-athletes at the forefront of the decision making process.”