Misc4 2 15 by The Miscellany News

The Miscellany News

Volume CXLVII | Issue 17

April 2, 2015

Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com

Cappy’s Kids kicks off first year Al Vocado

Editor-in-Chief

n Nov. 2014, the College reached out to Margolis Healy to investigate ongoing claims of racial profiling, and their published report noted, “It was clear during our visit that there is much confusion about what it means to be an ‘open campus.’” Since then, the College has striven to make Vassar College as open and accessible to all members of both the College and Poughkeepsie community. As a result, the outreach initiative Cappy’s Kids will kick off at the end of April.

Cappy’s Kids is a weekend-long program that invites underprivileged Poughkeepsie youth to stay in the house of President Catharine Bond Hill. A total of 25 youths— ranging in ages from eight to 14— will drink snifters of scotch, create macaroni picture frames with pearls instead of macaroni and play tug-o-war with her scarves. The 25 youths are selected based on an application process, which asks the applicants to answer a series of questions about economics and what diversity means to them. When contacted for an inter-

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

view with The Miscellany News, the Office declined to respond. Allegedly, Hill’s two interns were told to address any Misc reporters in woofs, meows, squawks or with the sound of “chocolate melting in a diamond-encrusted fondue pot.” The Office offered input only in the form of a sticky note tacked up to their door. “We take up so much space in this town, so we, like, kinda get why people are always wandering through. Our presence is, like, totally ubiquitous, so, like we totally get it.” See SHAMELESS on page 378

No laughing matter: VC to go joke-free 2016 Eumer Mie

News Editor

n April 1, the Administration announced its decision to make Vassar joke-free by 2016. “There is incontrovertible evidence that joking is a dangerous addiction and that secondhand jokes affect everyone,” reads jokefree.vassar.edu, a Blogspot site run by the Office of the Dean of the College. “It’s scary to think what this means for the The Misc’s humor section,” former Humor & Satire editor Ash Leschaps ’07 said. “I guess this means The Chronicle is going to get to keep their ‘Last Page.’”

The zero-tolerance policy notes: All joking will be banned in and within 50 feet of buildings; joke detectors will be set up in every dorm room and public space; students’ Facebook statuses and tweets will be scanned for any trace of “LOL,” “LMFAO,” “SCREAMING” or “ha.” Students will receive disciplinary action if caught “cracking up” or “dying” outside, especially during both daylight and night hours. For students who might need to be weaned off joking, the College will offer sessions on quitting joking with Director of Health Education Renee Pabst for 17 dollars a pop. See JOKIE THE BEAR on page 42

Brewers bubbling with pride over DII status Eng LeChanel /The Miscellany News

Pictured above, Professor Catharine Bond Hill poses with a group of diverse Poughkeespie youth. Although Cappy’s Kids is only in its first year and takes place once a year, the program aims to make “outsiders” feel at home on campus.

Hick Hack

Sports Editor

ay goodbye to DIII letdowns and hello to the big leagues: Vassar College is now a DII school. “The sports program here was content with being mediocre in the worst league in the country,” wrote Roman Czula at the very end of the most recent [In-the-Pink] issue, “but I have made it my life mission to move Vassar from DIII to DII.” After years of secretive meetings with the Counsel of Highly Important Players and Stuff (CHIPS), Czula finally fulfilled his wish. Now Vassar will

be playing against more prestigious schools like Northwest Nazarene University, Palm Beach Atlantic University, Post University (formerly Teikyo Post University) and Emporia State University (formerly Kansas State Normal School). The move to DII will require all students to attend at least one game for each sports team, including fencing. Officials will be stationed within the crowd to monitor morale. “Ironic cheering will not be tolerated. DII schools are not ironic,” wrote Czula. See SPUNKY BREWSTERS on page 3.14

Tiny violin Iggy Iggs gon’ make Founder’s Day ‘the realest’ serenades T VSA Council Fey-Ann See Arts Editor

Viola Lynn

Features Editor

Inside this issue

Room draw system to implement FEATURES imaginary numbers

Sailor Venus /The Miscellany News

n the weeks leading up to spring break, the four or five at-large members who spend VSA Council meetings “livetweeting” for a total of three or four Twitter users reported mysterious string music coming from somewhere in the College Center MPR. “It sounded like someone was crouched in a corner somewhere, watching the ‘Titanic’ scene when the ship is sinking and the quartet is just playing,” Bee Ayefelisha ’17 said. “I mean, it was beautiful. Brought tears to my eyes, but then again maybe it’s the onion sandwich I inhale every Sunday night.” At-large members eventually noticed the music crescendoes whenever a VSA Executive Board member gives a bleeding-heart speech. “We noticed it got especially louder whenever an Exec member claimed they ‘did work’ or were ‘an expert in their position’ or ‘received three hundred emails in a two-hour span’ or ‘looked at the consensus agenda’ or ‘showered,’” at-large member Sam Costco ’15 wrote in an emailed statement. At-large members sought opportunity to search the room, flipping over tables, when Council became distracted for over twenty minutes by a typo on the agenda. They located the source of the noise—the world’s smallest violin, tucked away behind the projector. See RIVER OF CRIES on page 777

hroughout the academic year, students and faculty members alike have called out the Administration for its disregard of the racially hostile campus environment at Vassar. In response, the College has made a bold and progressive step in the ongoing campaign to accommodate students of color—it’s ripped open the endowment, converted it to VCash and thrown the funds at Not-NoViCE to invite rapper Iggy Azalea to perform at this year’s Founder’s Day. In a series of tweets on Tuesday, March 31, Not-No-ViCE announced the news. “That’s right, we got Iggy Iggs; students of color are finally getting some love.” Within minutes after the breaking news, students took their excitement to Yik Yak. “Is it kind of racist to assume that all people of color have an innate love of rap music?” one user Yakked. Inexplicably, the response was downvoted at breakneck speeds. Another user rushed to defend the Administration. They wrote, “Was Iggy the best choice considering that she has the talent of a stale powdered donut you get from the gas station? Probably not. But hey, the Administration gets an ‘A’ for effort, which is better than an ‘A’ for apathy or antagonizing victims of assault.” Noting the backlash, the Administration responded in a group-written emailed statement, “We’re head over heels to have someone as diverse as Ms. Azalea perform. First things first, she’s the realest.” Noted rap artist and Australian expat Iggy Azalea will headline a rare Founder’s Day performance. NotSee PROBLEMS? on page 1-800-555-555 No-ViCe, the organization incharge of the plannining, report that Ms. Azalea is working on her “flow game.”

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Staff Editorial: Our major advisor could OPINIONS kick your advisor’s ass

<3 NEWS

The ACDC serves up the last known bison three times a week

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The Miscellany News

l i r p A ! s l o o F

Front page by Chris Gonzalez, Kayla Lightner, Lily Horner, Zander Bashaw, Sam Pianello and Sarah Dolan Coordinated and edited by Chris Gonzalez

Welcome back from Spring Break! Want to get involved with the Misc? Come check out our paper critique on Sundays at 9 p.m. in the Rose Parlor. MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

April 2, 2015

Editor-in-Chief Palak Patel

Senior Editor Noble Ingram

Contributing Editors Bethan Johnson Meaghan Hughes Marie Solis

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

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

Crossword Editors Collin Knopp-Schwyn York Chen Alycia Beattie Assistant Features Julia Cunningham Claire Standaert Assistant Design Sarah Dolan Assistant Social Media Hannah Nice Reporters Amreen Bhasin Eloy Bleifuss Prados Emily Hoffman Ashley Hoyle Charles Lyons-Burt Connor McIllwain Yifan Wang Columnists Sophia Burns Delaney Fischer Sam Hammer Penina Remler Sarah Sandler Emily Sayer Design Sixing Xu Photography Cassady Bergevin Alec Ferretti Emily Lavieri-Scull Copy Hallie Ayres Claire Baker Antigone Delton Christa Guild Shelia Hu Anika Lanser Macall McQueen Alessandra Muccio Marya Pasciuto Kelsey Quinn Jessica Roden Emma Roellke Sophia Slater Rebecca Weir Laura Wigginton LETTERS POLICY The Miscellany News is Vassar Collegeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s weekly open forum for discussion of campus, local and national issues, and welcomes letters and opinions submissions from all readers. Letters to the Editor should not exceed 350 words, and they usually respond to a particular item or debate from the previous weekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s issue. Opinions articles are longer pieces, up to 800 words, and take the form of a longer column. No letter or opinions article may be printed anonymously. If you are interested in contributing, e-mail misc@vassar.edu.

April 2, 2015

NEWS

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Hill defends liberal arts in wake of Sweet Briar closing Emily Hoffman

Vocations All I Ever Wanted

courtesy of the Office of the President

n Thursday, March 19, Vassar College President Catharine Bond Hill appeared on the radio show “The Diane Rehm Show” for a segment entitled “Worries About the Future of Liberal Arts Colleges.” The show discussed the implications of the recent closure of Sweet Briar College, a women’s college in Virginia. Sweet Briar’s $84 million endowment was not enough to keep the college in business with declining enrollment. Other guests on the show included Richard Ekman, President of the Council of Independent Colleges; Victor Ferrall, President emeritus of Beloit College and author of “Liberal Arts at the Brink”; and Jeffery Selingo, contributing editor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, contributor to The Washington Post and author of “College Unbound: the Future of Higher Education and What it Means for Students.” While Sweet Briar College ended up closing down earlier in March due to low enrollment, the guests all agreed that this was a unique case. Sweet Briar’s low enrollment can be attributed to its restricted endowment, rural location and single-sex commitment. Hill noted that Vassar enrollments are as high as ever and that there is still a high demand for liberal arts. However, other guests argued that while top end schools like Vassar can maintain a liberal arts education, lower tier schools facing financial pressures have had to become more career oriented. Hill, along with other guests, agreed that the pressures put on higher education are a result of income inequality in America. Many of the financial stresses put on colleges come from the discounting process in tuition. According to Ekman, discounting tuition first started in the 1970s, when in an effort to attract students from low-income and first generation families, colleges needed to award more financial aid. After the show, Hill elaborated on the role of income inequality in higher education: “Income inequality in the U.S. has been increasing since

the 70s, and inter-generational income mobility has been declining. This is creating a variety of challenges for higher education. Low and middle income families haven’t done very well over the last few decades, and that makes affording access to higher education difficult. And getting a higher education is more important than ever. At the same time, high income families have done very well, and they are willing and able to pay for an expensive education. I’ve done some work that shows that the increased income inequality has pushed up costs, tuition, and financial aid needs. That is challenging for colleges and universities, as well as families.” However, many believe that a liberal arts education is worth fighting for. In an Inside Higher Ed article entitled “Shocking Decision at Sweet Briar,” Hill expressed her disappointment with Sweet Briar’s decision: “The economics are challenging, but I wish they could have figured out a way to make them work. Perhaps this involved too big a change in the way they have done things historically, and they couldn’t see their way forward. But closing works exactly against what we need to be doing in America. I wish they had experimented and innovated to address the challenges, demonstrating to others how to productively make education available at lower cost.” Dean of the College Christopher Roellke also commented, “While I acknowledge the challenges that small liberal arts colleges are facing, I would argue that the kind of education Vassar and many of our strongest peers provide is critically important to preserve and enhance as we prepare the next generation of leaders for an increasingly interdependent and complex world.” Financial challenges also bring up debates about the value of a liberal arts degree in comparison to a vocational degree. Guests on the show were asked which they think an employer would prefer. Ekman asserted, “If you ask CEOs at major companies they will say they want employees with skills that correspond directly to what liberal arts teach. The difficulty however is that the

President Catharine Hill recently discussed the future of liberal arts education on “The Diane Rehm Show,” asserting that although some think otherwise, liberal arts offers benefits other schools do not. hiring doesn’t get done by the CEO, it gets done by people in an HR office who are looking for a correlation between the things a person studied in college and the exact duties of the job of the new employee.” Cappy echoed these statements, emphasizing that vocational degrees may become obsolete in the future, but that certain aspects of a liberal arts education make graduates much more capable in their future endeavors. Vassar Student Association President Carolina Gustafson ’15 weighed in on this topic as well, drawing attention to the stigma against graduates of liberal arts institutions pursuing a “vocational career.” “I do not necessarily believe that Vassar should move to the model of hosting undergraduate programs in more traditionally vocational fields, as I believe that there is a unique role that

liberal arts colleges play in exposing students to a wide variety of subjects,” she commented. “I do believe however that a shift in the semi-elitist mindset on campus that vocational work is beneath those educated at Vassar would be tremendously beneficial for both Vassar students and for the careers traditionally viewed as vocational…” She continued, “Many graduate schools of nursing are increasingly opening programs to specifically enroll students with non-nursing undergraduate degrees, recognizing that creating a workforce with a more diverse set of backgrounds can tremendously benefit the field of nursing as a whole. I think Vassar is increasingly moving towards the trend of acknowledging the benefits of exposing liberal arts students to fields traditionally seen as vocational…”

Republican budget proposal seeks to freeze Pell Grant Rhys Johnson

Not Taken for Granted

his week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) will begin an advertising campaign targeting 15 Republican members of the House of Representatives who have voted for the recent House Republican budget proposal, which would freeze funds to the Pell Grant award for 10 years. The DCCC plans to carry out these attacks by placing advertisements in collegiate newspapers within the districts of the targeted congressmen and congresswomen, attacking them for refusing to show support for Pell Grants. The Pell Grant, named for Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, who spearheaded its creation under the Higher Education Act of 1965, provides undergraduate students with federally sponsored financial aid. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, it is the largest federal grant program available to

undergraduate students, awarding almost 10 million students with debt-free financial aid annually (The Minnesota Office of Higher Education, “Paying for College,” 2014). The recently-proposed House Republican budget resolution for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, entitled “A Balanced Budget for a Stronger America,” in addition to repealing the Affordable Care Act and cutting other social safety net programs, would freeze funding to Pell Grants at their current maximum award amount, $5,775, for the next 10 years. The House’s recent budget report read, “After multiple increases to Pell Grant award levels, the program is now facing a shortfall. In the past, lawmakers have dealt with the problem with short-term funding patches.” It continued, “Our budget rejects these temporary measures and makes the Pell Grant program permanently sustainable so that it is able to serve students today and in the future” (House of Representatives Com-

courtesy of Gage Skidmore

The Republican House budget proposal for the 2016 fiscal year, which would freeze the Pell Grant at its current maximum amount, has stirred outrage among many college students across the country.

mittee on the Budget, “A Balanced Budget for a Stronger America,” 2015). This proposal comes in the wake of last year’s attempt to do similarly. “[Congress is] demanding Washington live within its means,” remarked House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA), the overseer of this year’s plan (The Washington Post, “GOP budget plan has a surprise among list of cuts for federal employees,” 03.29.15). Despite assertions that the plan rightly addresses an imminent funding shortfall in the 2016 fiscal year, the DCCC’s upcoming attacks have garnered strong support from left-leaning student organizations, like the College Democrats of New York (CDNY), who commended the campaign in a recent press release. The DCCC’s advertisements in New York will target Rep. John Katko of the 24th congressional district, where Syracuse University is, and Rep. Lee Zeldin of the 1st congressional district, where the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook is. According to a CDNY press release, although last year SUNY Stony Brook’s in-state tuition cost $4,215 and its out-of-state tuition cost $10,925, which themselves do not include the additional costs of housing, meal plans, academic supplies and other basic living supplies, the school’s average Pell Grant was only about $3,000. CDNY Vice President and senior at SUNY Stony Brook Kevin Gomez commented, “Personally, I wouldn’t be able to afford to attend Stony Brook without the Pell Grant. I have taken out the max amount of loans that the government has allowed and I still have to pay out of pocket on top of that. I work shifts at a restaurant to pay for those costs. This is at a public school where tuition is supposed to be affordable; I can only imagine the cost incurred by students at private universities.” Although the DCCC advertisements in New York will be aimed specifically at Katko and Zeldin, the CDNY has encouraged criticism of any New Yorkers in Congress who have opposed Pell Grants. “Every year, tuition at universities around New York rise,

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

and a Pell Grant freeze would hurt every student,” the CDNY Executive Board remarked. “Other New York Republican representatives Elise Stefanik (R-NY21) and Tom Reed (RNY23) have also voted against Pell Grants, and their districts encompass both private and public universities such as Cornell University, Ithaca College, Elmira College, SUNY Plattsburgh, St. Lawrence University and SUNY Potsdam.” According to a recent study made by The Upshot and published in The New York Times, approximately 25 percent of Vassar students currently qualify for Pell Grants, one of the highest numbers in the country (The New York Times, “Top Colleges That Enroll Rich, Middle Class and Poor,” 09.08.14). Although the DCCC advertisements will not appear in any Vassar publications, many hope that their efforts will still resonate with students on campus, for many of whom Pell Grants are foundational to their ability to pay for their education. Vassar Democrats President Seth Bynum ’15 commented in an emailed statement, “Financial aid is not only a Vassar, but it is an ‘every college’ issue. Millions of students around the country are taking the time and spending the money to better themselves and receive an education. We as young people are taught that education is the silver pill in regards to improving ones financial standing in life as well as improving the world we live in.” Bynum continued, “The current Republican budget disregards this fact to save a few billion dollars over the next 10 years. Republicans pride themselves in being the party that doesn’t give handouts and encourages people to ‘lift themselves up by their bootstraps.’ A student who receives a Pell Grant is not given a free pass afterwards, they still must earn high marks through hard work and determination and graduate from college.” Although the Republican budget plan has passed in the House, the Senate and the Executive branch will soon have the chance to weigh in, after which the future of the Pell Grant may become more clear.

NEWS

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April 2, 2015

Arianna Huffington to speak at 151st Commencement Palak Patel & Noble Ingram Huffington & Post

courtesy of Arianna Huffington

n March 11, the Office of the President announced Arianna Huffington as the speaker for Vassar’s 151st Commencement ceremony. This year’s commencement will take place on Sunday, May 31. Huffington is one of the co-founders and the current Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post, as well as an entrepreneur, politician and writer. Her worldview has been strongly influenced by her background as a Greek immigrant and through her work as both a conservative and liberal political commentator. As a popular online news source, The Huffington Post is often viewed as a main source of information for people around the world. Huffington’s role as a female journalist has inspired her to bring often-silenced voices to the fore. “There are still many institutional and cultural barriers, but there are also internal barriers to women’s careers,” wrote Huffington in an emailed statement. “I call this voice the obnoxious roommate living in our head. It feeds on putting us down and strengthening our insecurities and doubts.” Huffington was born in Athens, Greece and moved to the United States when she was 30, after living in the United Kingdom for 14 years and studying at Cambridge University. Huffington started her career as an author in the 1970s. She wrote a book entitled “The Female Woman,” which critiqued the women’s liberation movement. She was first subject to the public eye as wife of Republican Senatorial candidate Michael Huffington. Following her divorce in 1997, Huffington’s political views took a dramatic turn and the long-time conservative adopted views that leaned much further left. As professor of Political Science Richard Born noted, “I suppose the most interesting thing about Arianna Huffington is her 180-degree shift in the late 1990s from conservative to liberal. I’ve never come across a really convincing explanation for this transformation, even though I suspect that her divorce from former Republican Congressman Michael

Huffington played a role.” Today, Huffington is known primarily for the political commentary website she founded called The Huffington Post. In 2011, AOL purchased the site and named Huffington as the Editor-and-Chief. The Post is primarily a site for political commentary, offering opinion-based pieces about events on Capitol Hill. The site has begun producing news content as well. Some have criticized the website, however, for blending fact and opinion-based work. Born argued, “The main criticism I have of web sites like the Huffington Post is that they contribute to the ‘echo chamber’ phenomenon, i.e., they promote polarization by allowing readers to pick and choose what political information they’re exposed to on the basis of ideological predisposition (the Huffington Post, however, isn’t quite as politically unbalanced as so many others).” Editor-in-Chief of the Vassar Chronicle Zack Struver ’15, however, pushed back on this idea, arguing that to some degree, every news publication features biased commentary. “Commentary-based news publications are essential. Journalists have insisted for too long, often with a wink and a nudge, that they’re ‘objective.’ Objectivity in the media forces journalists to mask their opinions as fact, and I think that’s extremely dangerous,” he wrote in an emailed statement. Huffington maintains, however, that her main concern for research is not on a lack of data but on a lack of reliable voices to present that data. She wrote, “90 percent of the data now available to us has been created in the last two years. But how much of our collective wisdom has been made available in the last two years? What we’re lacking is not data, but wisdom. Which is no surprise; it has never been harder to tap into our inner wisdom, because in order to do so, we have to disconnect from all our omnipresent devices—our gadgets, our screens, our social media— and reconnect with ourselves.” Even with the criticism about The Huffington Post, many are still excited to have Huffington on campus. Vassar does not consistently offer many

Author and political commentator Arianna Huffington will speak at this year’s Commencement on May 31st. She hopes to emphasize the importance of self-care in students’ lives after graduation. courses relating to journalism and some students are excited to hear this voice. As the editor of a journalism-focused publication, Struver still values the importance of the website, and journalism in general, in today’s mainstream media. “Vassar students know a lot about what journalism is and what it means to write and publish,” wrote Struver. “The problem is that we have a culture here of psuedo-engagement with political ideas—attending one rally and then calling oneself an ‘ally’ or ‘activist’—that lets Vassar students absolve themselves of the very real sin of not actively participating in discourse.” While speaking at Vassar, Huffington hopes to encourage students to be more active in their engagement with politics and activism. She wants to help the upcoming grads to understand how to be as successful as possible in their future

endeavors. To her, it is important that students understand that self-care is an important part of success. “For far too long, we have been operating under the collective delusion that burning out is the necessary price for accomplishment and success,” wrote Huffington. “Recent scientific findings make it clear that this couldn’t be less true. Not only is there no trade-off between living a well-rounded life and high performance, performance is actually improved when our lives include time for renewal, wisdom, wonder and giving.” Huffington’s goal is to help graduating seniors redetermine the methods through which to achieve the success they want. She finished, “The time has come to reexamine the assumption that getting by on less sleep and constant multitasking is an express elevator to the top.”

Outside the Bubble European Plane Crash Triggers New Pilot Safety Protocols While information continues to emerge about the physical and mental state of Germanwings Flight 9525 pilot Andreas Lubitz, the man German prosecutors hold responsible for the flight that crashed in the French Alps on March 24 and killed all 150 people aboard the plane, several corporations have already begun changing their safety protocols to require that two individuals remain in the cockpit for the entirety of flights. Although U.S. aviation regulations mandate that two people occupy the cockpit at all times, other national aviation or major corporate safety regulations have not. Now, individual airline carriers based around the world and at least one nation have confirmed plans to enforce a two-person cockpit protocol. The rush to announce such mandates—with more than half a dozen companies confirming such regulations within two days of the crash of Flight 9525— came upon the announcement by French authorities that they believe co-pilot Lubitz was alone in the cockpit at the time of the crash. According to the Washington Post, the French authorities state that the cockpit voice recording collected from the flight captures Lubitz’s breathing within the cockpit as his co-pilot Patrick Sonderheimer banged on the locked door moments before the flight hit the mountainside (“Germanwings crash sparks rush to embrace U.S. 2 pilots in cockpit rule,” 03.26.15). Authorities currently believe that the crash was the result of a suicide attempt by Lubitz and not any form of mechanical failure or unintentional pilot error (Al Jazeera, “Australia unveils cockpit rules after Germanwings crash,” 03.30.15). Carriers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Australia and Canada have confirmed that they will have altered safety protocols, which were similarly permissive of only one person remaining in the cockpit; the current list includes EasyJet, Virgin, Air Berlin, Air Transit, Monarch Airlines, Air Canada, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Thomas Cook and Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings. These companies told the media that the new policy would be effective almost immediately, typically within two days of its official announcement. Currently, the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority is also asking all other carriers to review their cockpit safety protocols (The Guardian,

“Germanwings crash prompts airlines to introduce cockpit ‘rule of two,’” 03.26.15). Some claim that this merely inspired swifter action on the issue, attempting to separate the policy from the events of Flight 9525. According to Norwegian’s flight operations director Thomas Hesthammer, “We have been discussing this for a long time but this development has accelerated things. When one person leaves the cockpit, two people will now have to be there” (The Guardian). In addition to individual airlines announcing such plans, Australia has announced it will immediately require airlines to change security protocols to include a two-person cockpit regulation (Al Jazeera). Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters less than one week after the crash that commercial flights with more than 50 passengers or more than one flight attendant will be subject to the regulation (Al Jazeera). As per the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority regulations, U.S. airlines have required two members of the airline staff to remain in the cockpit throughout the flight for several years. According to the policy, if one or both pilots exit the cockpit during the flight, qualified members of the crew, such as relief pilots serving as part of the crew or flight attendants, are required to enter the flight deck, lock the door and remain there until the pilot returns (The Guardian). Indiana Law Religious Freedom Draws Ire of LGBTQ Activists and Lawmakers On March 26, Indiana governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), an act that has sparked serious criticisms from activists, celebrities and international corporations, into law. While supporters of the legislation argue that this ensures individuals’ First Amendment rights and marks merely the extension of a bipartisan law passed by the federal government in 1993, opponents argue that it will allow for discrimination particularly based on sexual orientation. This law makes Indiana one of 20 states with similar laws related to religious freedoms. According to the law itself, individuals and businesses—both identified as persons—providing a for-profit service are given a legal defense to deny services in instances they feel would unduly burden them on the basis of religious conviction. It reads, “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially bur-

dened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding” (The Washington Post, “Religious liberty or discrimination? Read the text of Indiana’s religious freedom law,” 03.31.15). In passing this law, Indiana joins a group of 19 states that have such regulations and fall into line with a decades-old federal regulation. In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act with bipartisan support. Supporters of the legislation also allege that in 1998, as a state senator in Illinois, President Obama supported a version of this law (The Wall Street Journal, “Ensuring Religious Freedom in Indiana,” 03.31.15). As LGBTQ people are not federally protected from discrimination, opponents of the law believe that this law will allow for discrimination against LGBTQ individuals. They argue that the law will allow individuals to be denied services or rights based upon their sexuality or gender-identity (Huffington Post, “What You Need to Know About Indiana’s RFRA,” 03.30.15). Organizations have also voiced their concerns about the law’s implications, although they plan to continue to maintain ties with the state. NASCAR issued a statement that reads, “NASCAR is disappointed by the recent legislation passed in Indiana. We will not embrace nor participate in exclusion or intolerance” (HotAir, “We are ‘disappointed’ in Indiana for passing RFRA, says…NASCAR,” 03.31.15). The president of the NCAA, which is based in Indianapolis, wrote, “We are especially concerned about how this legislation could affect our student-athletes and employees” (The New York Times, “Indiana Law Denounced as Invitation to Discriminate Against Gays,” 03.27.15). Others felt that the new law stood in such opposition to its business methods and ethics that they would withdraw bases of operation or events from the state. Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy announced on March 30 that he had halted all state-funded travel to Indiana using an executive order, citing the law as the cause of his action. In days prior, San Francisco and Seattle mayors placed a similar ban on travel to Indiana from their cities (GLAAD, “Ashton Kutcher, Miley Cyrus, Ellen DeGeneres and more celebs speak out against Indiana’s anti-LGBT law,” 03.30.15). Celebrities such as Nick Offerman, George Takei and Susan Sarandon have also advocated for a boycott of Indiana, each pledging to refuse to attend events lo-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

cated there as long as the law is in place. Such pledges added to the countless others across the country, such as “#BoycottIndiana” (GLAAD). Amidst criticism, supporters of the law have argued that Indiana’s new law does not promote discrimination, but rather allows for greater freedom. In an opinions piece published in The Wall Street Journal, Pence explained that he would not support discriminatory legislation. He wrote, “I abhor discrimination…As governor of Indiana, if I were presented with a bill that legalized discrimination against any person or group, I would veto it. Indiana’s new law contains no reference to sexual orientation” (The Wall Street Journal). He went on to say, “Some express concern that Indiana’s RFRA law would lead to discrimination, but RFRA only provides a mechanism to address claims, not a license for private parties to deny services”(The Wall Street Journal). Other activist organizations have also supported the law, claiming it stands as a method of protecting religious freedoms. President of Indiana Right to Life Mike Fichter wrote to LifeNews, “Pro-life Hoosiers deserve the same protections against overbearing state and local laws as do their counterparts in the majority of the states. This is why Indiana Right to Life proudly supports RFRA and is thankful for Governor Mike Pence and the Indiana legislature for enacting this new protection of our religious freedom” (LifeNews, “Why Pro-Life People Should Support Indiana’s New Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” 03.30.15). In light of the criticism the law has faced, and despite claims like those made by Smith and Fichter, Hoosier lawmakers have asserted that they intend to clarify their language to prevent the law’s use for discriminatory purposes. Although he believes the confusion started due to the misleading of Americans, Pence admitted that misinformation has necessitated legislative clarification (10 News, “Where are the supporters of RFRA? Silent out of fear of ‘bullying,’ law’s architect says,” 03.30.15). Thus far, Indiana legislators have yet to announce a timeline as to when such clarifications would be made. Those doubting the veracity of claims that this bill will not be used to discriminate have advocated for the inclusion of LGBTQ people within Indiana’s established state-wide non-discrimination regulations (Huffington Post).

—Bethan Johnson, Succinctly Verbose

April 2, 2015

OPINIONS

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The Miscellany News Staff Editorial

Student spaces need to be priority in future Main plans W

hen initial plans to move the Vassar bookstore in 2013 from its location in the basement of Main began to develop, there was interest in collecting student feedback about the use of space at Vassar. At this time Jason Rubin ’13, former VSA President, sent a survey about student spaces to students when the idea of the bookstore relocation was first proposed. The results of this survey, as well as discussion in focus groups, were used to determine what sort of student spaces would be best placed in the former office spaces. The consensus from these surveys was that students wanted spaces to fit their varying needs, such as areas for orgs to meet and for music groups to practice. While things have since continued to shift around campus from year to year, one fact remains the same: There is not enough student space, seen in the lack of group study areas, rehearsal space and café or lounge facilities. Students have continually been promised more space on campus, yet the College continues to change their plans regarding this issue. At the VSA Council meeting on Sunday March 29, Assistant Dean of the College and Director of Campus Activities Terry Quinn came in to discuss upcoming projects in her department. As a member of the College Planning Committee, Quinn informed the council of the upcoming changes in the College Center to be implemented this summer. One main change Quinn discussed was the use of the basement level of Main, which is currently the location of the biology labs, and formerly the

student bookstore. Over the upcoming summer, the basement will be turned into a “student-centered space” for a variety of resources for the students, including the mailroom. Quinn did mention that the plans for the College Center renovation would be published for students to see after they were decided upon, but that doesn’t help the current situation. Rather than receiving students’ input after plans have been drawn up, the time is now for student voices to be heard and taken into consideration, especially considering the upcoming renovations. Last semester, at the VSA council meeting on Sunday Nov. 9, the Council had a forum with Art Lidsky, President of Dober Lidsky Mathey, a firm hired by the College to assist with campus strategic planning and to help create the master plan for the College. In this meeting, Lidsky wanted feedback about what concerns students have about the use of space on campus. Much of the discussion in the forum was concerning the lack of student spaces on campus, especially in Main. When the bookstore was moved to its current location from the basement of Main, students, who had filled out surveys with their opinions on Vassar’s use of space, were told that student space would be a priority in planning for the future of the space. However, a one-stop shop space is not a student space - it is another office space located in the central campus building, in space that could be well utilized to satisfy student needs. Students were told that the bookstore was going to be moved, displacing The Juliet—a popular bil-

liards place in Arlington—under the guise of creating a new student space. Instead, this newly opened space was first converted into the current biology labs below Main and will now be turned into administrative offices. Many student spaces have been displaced throughout Vassar’s recent history. The student’s building, now the location of the ACDC, was originally constructed with funding to specifically make it a student space. However it is now a space that is only open during dining hours. Group study spaces were removed from the library to make space for offices. Offices constructed on the second and third floors of the College Center to be student spaces are inadequate, and many of the meeting spaces are too often booked by faculty and administrators. The plan for this summer, which will turn the basement of Main into a “one-stop-shop” for the Vassar community, will also create areas for administrative offices. We at The Miscellany News believe that by turning another space into offices for the College, the administration is showing a lack of dedication to the creation and preservation of student spaces on campus. Moving numerous offices that are currently located on the first floor of Main, like the mailroom, copy center, and media resources, could potentially create new student spaces to replace the offices in their current location. We at The Miscellany News believe that if the Administration decides to go through with moving offices to the basement, their former spaces should be used to create new student

spaces, that is, spaces for students designed and used by students. Most colleges have dedicated student spaces, meant to be used for group projects or as casual student retreats. While some dorms, like Davison, have dedicated studies on each floor for students to use, many dorms around campus fail to have more than just an MPR and parlor for studying. Vassar has continuously failed to provide this type of space to students. Instead, the College continues to ask for what the students want and then ignore their needs in lieu of making more space for Vassar Administration. We at The Miscellany News agree that the new one-stop shop could be beneficial to remedying the problems of crowding in the College Center, especially on Tuesdays when the lines from the mailroom, Kiosk, and Tasty Tuesday can make entering the College Center difficult. This can make the space very difficult to use and navigate. However, making this space less crowded will require more than moving the mailroom downstairs. The centralizing of offices used by students is meant to make the College work more efficiently, but it’s unclear at this point if this is what students want. Perhaps most students would prefer to be slightly inconvenienced when walking through the College Center and would like to have more dedicated student spaces rather than to have a clearer College Center with nowhere to study. —The Staff Editorial represents the opinions of at least 2/3 of our Editorial Board.

New execution methods fuel contempt for death penalty Delaney Fischer Columnist

Trigger Warning: This article graphically describes several botched executions and execution methods.

ontroversial political topics have been constantly weaving their way in and out of the news. From the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision to legalizing marijuana, there is always a topic at hand that can be debated. Recently in the news, bills relating to the death penalty have been appearing in the headlines, with two major bills now approving firing squads in Utah and nitrogen hypoxia in Oklahoma for capital punishment. Currently, 32 states, including those prosecuted by the U.S. government and military, carry the option of capital punishment (Death Penalty Information Center, 2015). Each state has different rules and policies about the crimes that can carry the death sentence; for example, in Missouri, any sort of first-degree murder is punishable by death, while in Virginia, the death sentence is only permissible in one of 15 different aggravating instances. Thus, the laws about the death penalty are customized to each state’s preference, are very specific and are often debated or changed, with recent changes most interested in ensuring execution methods that are viable while remaining humane. In 2014, four cases of capital punishment were cited to have malfunctions or issues during the procedure. These cases all used the most common method of execution in the U.S.: lethal injection. However, many companies that once supplied the pharmaceuticals required for lethal injection are now changing their mind, choosing to dissociate themselves with the death penalty. This has made the drug cocktail needed for lethal injection harder to obtain, and some states are choosing to experiment with the drugs needed (CSG, “Lethal Injection Drug Shortage,” 03.2015). On March 4, Akorn Pharmaceuticals, a major manufacturer for two of the major drugs used in lethal injection, decided to block all sales to prisons, making access to these drugs as a method of execution even more difficult. This lack of supply has been cited as the cause for many botched executions. Arizona Republic reporter Michael Kiefer was a witness to the execution of Joseph Wood, who was convicted for a double murder in Arizona. The state had implemented a new drug

formula on Wood, and it took 15 doses and two hours for Wood to pass. Kiefer noted Wood’s seizure-like state during the process, citing at least 640 intense convolutions, and recalled thinking that Wood was not actually going to die as he stared at the horrified faces of law enforcement officials in the room (NPR, “Botched Lethal Injection Executions Reignite Death Penalty Debate,” 01.06.15). Now, with the lack of necessary drugs and concern over botched executions, officials in Utah and Oklahoma have turned to other options for capital punishment. Utah has passed a law that allows the use of firing squads if lethal injection drugs are not available at the time of execution, providing the state a fallback method. Officials such as Rep. Paul Ray (R-Utah) have claimed that the firing squad may also be a more humane form of execution because it ensures a more immediate death and therefore less suffering, in contrast to the botched execution Kiefer reported (CBS News, “Utah governor OKs alternate form of capital punishment,” 03.25.15). Utah Governor Gary Herbert has also made a public statement regarding his decision to sign the bill: “We regret anyone ever commits the heinous crime of aggravated murder to merit the death penalty and we prefer to use our primary method of lethal injection when such a sentence is issued. However, when a jury makes the decision and a judge signs a death warrant, enforcing that lawful decision is the obligation of the executive branch.” Utah is now the second state to once again allow death by firing squad, the other being Oklahoma (Mic, “Utah Has Officially Signed into Law the Most Inhumane Capital Punishment Ever,” 03.24.15). Oklahoma has also passed a bill to permit nitrogen hypoxia as a secondary method for capital punishment if there is lack of drugs available for lethal injection. Michael Copeland, who previously served as the Assistant Attorney General of Palau and a criminal justice professor at East Central University, proposed this methodology, claiming it as more humane. To cause hypoxia, or death by lack of oxygen, the offender would breathe pure nitrogen gas (The Atlantic, “Can Executions Be More Humane?,” 03.20.15). Copeland claims that death by nitrogen hypoxia would be painless and has explained the process, stating, “[When] the switch to pure nitrogen occurs, he would simply lose consciousness about fifteen seconds after the

switch was made. Approximately thirty seconds later, he would stop producing brain waves, and the heart would stop beating about two to three minutes after that.” Still, Oklahoma has a reputation for botched executions, including the execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014 and the more recent execution of Charles Frederick Warner, who declared, “my body is on fire” during his execution, although no physical distress was observed (CBS News, “Oklahoma puts 1st inmate to death since botched execution,” 01.25.15). The state’s lethal injection protocol is actually under review by the U.S. Supreme Court, and three scheduled executions in the state have been postponed. This investigation may be the reason that the state is looking into alternatives like firing squads and even the electric chair. These new execution methods have sparked much debate over the death penalty and what is right and wrong about carrying it out. Many argue that no matter what method is used, employing capital punishment is wrong, unjust and immoral. Famed anti-death penalty advocate and nun Helen Prejean has made statements reminding that capital punishment is another term for murder, informing the public, “it is listed as ‘homicide’ on the deceased’s [prisoner’s] death certificate” (The Salt Lake Tribune, “‘Dead Man Walking’ nun: Utah’s firing squad reveals brutality of capital punishment,” 03.24.15). Randy Garner, whose brother was executed by firing squad, has also spoken out against capital punishment: “When you take somebody and you tie them to a chair, put a hood over their head, and you shoot them from 25 feet with four rifles pointed at their heart, that’s pretty barbaric.” But at the same time, many cannot forget that those sentenced to capital punishment are sentenced for a particular reason—they have committed a heinous crime that has most likely caused intense suffering. Joseph Wood received his punishment for killing his ex-girlfriend, Debbie Dietz, as well as her father. Wood was abusive to Dietz in their five-year relationship and had been documented in several domestic violence incidents. After Dietz attempted to get a protection order against Wood, he fatally shot her father to death in front of her before screaming profanities and fatally shooting her too. Dietz’s sister, who attended Wood’s execution, made a statement and claimed that she did not think Wood suffered through his execution.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

She stated, “You don’t know what excruciating is. Excruciating is seeing your dad lying in a pool of blood” (Mirror, “The shocking murders that put botched execution inmate Joseph Wood on death row,” 07.24.14). Clearly, pain and sorrow are still felt by the victims’ family when Wood was finally executed 29 years after the murders. For many victims and family members, capital punishment is a form of closure, and for some, it also yields a sense of justice. Kent Scheidegger, a top lawyer at the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, has spent nearly 30 years dedicating his professional life to defending the death penalty. He identifies himself as a supporter of victims and believes that the death penalty may help deter crime. Scheidegger has served in the Air Force, earning his law degree while on active duty, and claims his support for capital punishment and military service come from the same core beliefs (National Journal, “Mr. Death Penalty,” 09.06.2014). He has stated, “The death penalty serves three functions. First, for some crimes any lesser punishment is inadequate as a matter of basic justice...Second, an executed death sentence absolutely guarantees the killer will never kill again. A life sentence does not. There are many cases of people killed by murderers who were paroled, escaped, killed within prison or who arranged murders from within the prison... Third, I believe that an effective, enforced death penalty deters some murders.” Opponents of capital punishment have attacked Scheidegger for his opinions, particularly his view that the death penalty does not have to be painless has gained much attention. Nonetheless, Scheidegger stands strong with his beliefs and will continue to be an ally for victims. No matter what one’s stance is on the death penalty, it appears the controversy regarding this topic will not dissipate any time soon. In general, our legal system leaves a lot of questions regarding what is right and what is wrong. Is it proper to sentence someone to death? It is acceptable to sentence someone to life in prison? Should laws be so individualized by state? Like many other issues in politics, the answers to these questions most likely stem from personal beliefs and possibly one’s own association with the legal system. It will be interesting to see how these bills play out and affect other states decisions to alter their own laws. —Delaney Fischer ’15 is a neuroscience major.

OPINIONS

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April 2, 2015

Backlash from all sides in Indiana religious freedom law Emily Sayer Columnist

n a country that staunchly upholds the virtue of secularity, it seems paradoxical that government legislation has, in recent years, been increasingly manipulative of religion as a means to perpetuate oppression and discrimination. Ties between conservatism and religious integrity too often bolster a front against social reform and inhibit the spread of tolerance, a truth that is exemplified by the passing of Indiana’s “religious freedom” law. Signed by Governor Mike Pence this past week, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act essentially permits Indiana business owners to deny members of the LGBTQ community services under the pretense of adhering to moral obligations, masking the obvious prejudicial behavior that such a code legitimizes. The written intention of the RFRA is to prevent state and local governments from “substantially burdening a person’s ability to exercise their religion,” but by opening a platform for conflict and bigotry, the act will surely prove to be an instrument of repression rather than an arbiter of liberty among Hoosiers (Human Rights Watch, “Dispatches: Freedom to Discriminate in Indiana?”, 03.30.15). Considering Gov. Pence’s position as a prospective presidential candidate for 2016, public reception of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is a crucial determinant of the success of his impending campaign; with enraged civil rights groups and businesses uniting across the nation in their threats to boycott the state, Pence is now being blindsided by a backlash of commercial, civil, and political dissent more dramatic and widespread than any reaction he previously anticipated. “I support religious liberty, and I support this law,” Pence stated, shocked by the repercussions of the RFRA, “But we are in discussions with legislative leaders this weekend to see if there’s a way to clarify the intent of the law.”

Pence also responded to criticism by maintaining that, “This bill is not about discrimination. And if I thought it was about discrimination I would have vetoed it.” But his language, ringing with political safe words like “clarify” and “intent,” is doing little to sway the law’s opponents—Hillary Clinton, a likely Democratic rival for Pence in the upcoming election, tweeted, “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against ppl bc of who they love #LGBT.” Others, such as Apple CEO Tim Cook and NCAA President Mark Emmert, also condemned the law. Emmert noted that the NCAA is “...especially concerned about how this legislation could affect our student-athletes and employees,” and companies such as Yelp and Salesforce.com are in the process of blocking off any connections to the state as an act of protest over the RFRA being signed into law. Though the bill was Republican-backed, party leaders are approaching the subject warily. Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush backed away initially from addressing their positions on the law directly, allowing correspondents to do so on their behalf; however, on Monday, March 30, Gov. Bush announced, “I think Governor Pence has done the right thing, I think once the facts are established, people aren’t going to see this as discriminatory at all,” and following suit, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas replied that, “Governor Pence is holding the line to protect religious liberty in the Hoosier State, Indiana is giving voice to millions of courageous conservatives across this country who are deeply concerned about the ongoing attacks upon our personal liberties” (Talking Points Memo, “Bush: Pence Did ‘The Right Thing’ On Religious Freedom Law,” 03.31.15). Bush and Cruz are both presidential candidates for 2016, and considering the combative nature that this debate has taken on amongst these rising political contenders, there are vi-

olent implications for the course of the imminent campaign season. The RFRA is geared toward alleviating oppressive government action, its written focus being that state and local authorities cannot “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” by forcing a business to cater to those whose lifestyles conflict with their personal beliefs. A commonly cited example of the new law’s beneficiaries is any firm involved in the wedding industry, e.g. florist shops, bakers, venues, reception halls, entertainment groups and bridal stores, for these business owners, if opposed to gay marriage, are being granted the ability to abstain from supporting the coming social change.

“Though the bill was Republican-backed, party leaders are approaching

the subject warily.” Of course, the ignorance clouding the law is plainly offensive to the millions of Americans refusing to buy into the vague religious discourse of manipulative conservatives. To assume, first of all, that the business sector is a justifiable space for the expression of individual values beyond those of a company’s financial and service-related aims is flawed; using economic influence to promote certain principles in a culture gives businesses permission to threaten civil liberties and reverse essential governmental efforts towards maintaining a free society with the power of their purses and personal beliefs. In the case of the RFRA, aren’t more citizens becoming “substantially burdened” by the restriction placed on their public lives? Isn’t it the law’s first priority to ensure that all people be

FAIRNESS TO ISRAEL A Vassar alumnae/i group dedicated to fair treatment of Israel in the classroom and on campus

For more information, write to: fairtoisrael@gmail.com

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

treated equally within their communities, with fair access to the same resources as their fellow members of society? Discrimination cannot be eradicated, but it can be facilitated—and this law does just that. Furthermore, a phrase like “substantial burden” is problematic in and of itself, as it is laying the foundation for future court disputes over the specifics of the quality of a burden, or what constitutes a burden in respect to the functioning of a business; this is an issue not unlike the ongoing debate over prayer in public schools, but with this subject, proponents are lobbying more vehemently because it is their last desperate hope of lashing against the legislative support for gay marriage that is sweeping the nation. The law is purposefully unclear with its language because the true message of the RFRA, one of biased malintent, is one that cannot be stated bluntly. It is reminiscent of the same hatred and chaos that overtook Americans in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, and although the RFRA is dragging Indiana in that direction, to acknowledge this fact would be detrimental to any Republican’s political career with the 2016 election season around the corner. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act is not unique—the federal government and about 19 other states have laws in place similar to this one—and sadly, a number of its supporters are sure to emerge in the coming 2016 presidential election. With the issue of religious obligation only realistically applying to a single group, the gay community, the law is jeopardizing the lives and wellbeing of real victims. Measures must be taken to recognize the law for its actual intentions and reverse the potential damage that could be done to the RFRA’s targets accordingly. But, in the meantime, we will just have to be content to wait for some clarification from Gov. Pence. —Emily Sayer ’18 is a student at Vassar College.

April 2, 2015

OPINIONS

Yik Yak users responsible for app content Sarah Sandler Columnist

first became aware of the app Yik Yak at the end of my senior year of high school. Within a few days, students from all grades were using it to make mean-spirited comments about teachers, people from neighboring towns or each other. My brother, who at the time was a senior at the University of Richmond, showed me snapshots of his Yik Yak feed at UR. It included some of the same hateful things and was also dotted with harmless funny posts about a student’s daily life. Quickly realizing that the posts around my high school were immature and pointless, I deleted the app from my phone just a few days after downloading it. Though I only became familiar with it again—this time at Vassar—in the last few months, Yik Yak was created in 2013 by two fraternity brothers at Furman University. Unlike other anonymous online forums, such as the website Formspring, which was popular in middle school, the founders of Yik Yak had a novel goal in mind: because the popular Twitter accounts at their university were mostly those of student athletes and other well-liked students, they wanted to even out the playing field. Instead of letting social media be in the hands of few, they wanted every student’s words to get equal attention online (The New York Times, “Who Spewed That Abuse? Anonymous Yik Yak App Isn’t Telling,” 03.08.15). While this is an innocent objective, the app evolved into something the founders did not expect. Once the app spread to colleges and universities across the country, it morphed into what we now know as a forum where students can say whatever they want without fear of penalization. A few days into orientation week at Vassar, I downloaded Yik Yak once again because I heard so many of my fellow students talking about it. Now that I was on a college campus and not at my high school, the anonymous

posts were, for the most part, innocuous and amusing. Frequent topics included Vassar’s womp-womps and whatever the Deece was serving that day. I have not looked at Vassar’s Yik Yak feed in a few months, but during the time that I looked at it often, posts rarely included cruel things about students or faculty. On many other college campuses, though, Yik Yak has become a growing issue among administrators because of the significant cyberbullying it elicits. Given the ability to say whatever they want with a veiled identity, many people use Yik Yak to comment on their peers. This gets especially hurtful when remarks turn to things involving appearance, sexuality and sexual history, race and intelligence. A student at Kenyon College went so far as to propose a rape at the college’s women’s center through the anonymous app (“Who Spewed That Abuse?”).

“On many other college campuses though, Yik Yak has become an issue.” While many posts are malicious yet harmless in theory, some posts, such as the one at Kenyon College, can pose a serious peril. Yik Yak has indirectly facilitated bomb and gun threats, which are very difficult to trace because of the app’s anonymous structures, forcing police to work tirelessly to keep students safe following a post of this nature. Most of the threats are empty, but they still result in a waste of police resources and deny the offender their appropriate punishment by authorities. Middle schools, high schools and universities have attempted to eliminate Yik Yak

from their campuses because of the way their students and faculty were being affected by it. On many campuses, students involve staff and faculty, such as professors or cafeteria workers in the cruelty, sometimes commenting on their appearance or talking about them in a sexual way. If students are connected to a school’s Wi-Fi network, Yik Yak can be blocked by administrators. If this were to happen, though, the students could just access the app using data from their cellular service instead. As much as an administration may implore their students to discontinue their use of Yik Yak, it is up to the students to follow through. This often proves extremely difficult because if a student on a campus where Yik Yak is popular lobbies for the end of its usage, they could provoke a backlash from their peers. The backlash often appears on—what else—Yik Yak itself. Furthermore, banning Yik Yak could then be construed as a violation of one’s right to free speech or a hindrance of discourse on a campus. Yik Yak’s original motive of making social media popularity more accessible to the average college student was a valid one, but it is only really rational at schools where sports are a bigger deal and athletes achieve a level of fame. In reality, social media websites and apps have become so integrated into our society, especially at colleges, that any student can have a presence in just a few clicks if they want to. Therefore, Yik Yak’s purpose has really become about saying nasty things because if someone wanted to publicly say something genuinely funny or meaningful, they could just do so on Twitter or Facebook. Because of the slew of issues that arise in attempting to eliminate Yik Yak, it is ultimately the student’s job to get rid of Yik Yak and end the damage that it entails. —Sarah Sandler ’18 is a student at Vassar College.

Times op-ed misunderstands safe spaces Susie Martinez Guest Columnist

ver spring break, Judith Shulevitz published an op-ed in The New York Times about the rise of and demand for safe spaces on college campuses. In the article, she claims that the demands of students across college campuses are to “self-infantilize” themselves. She goes as far as to write, “Now students’ needs are anticipated by a small army of service professionals—mental health counselors, student-life deans and the like,” and insinuating that this generation of students is not full of “hardier souls” such as during the 1960s and 1970s. Ultimately, her argument is this: Students’ refusal to accommodate anything that brings them “discomfort” impedes on their ability to dialogue critically all throughout college campuses (“In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas,” 03.21.15). When we talk about safe spaces, we usually mean a space for people to express how they feel and who they are without fear. Often, the people in need of those spaces are marginalized groups. Shulevitz’s assumption that “once you designate some spaces as safe, you imply that the rest are unsafe” is, for the most part, correct. Shulevitz’s remark is right because there are spaces that are unsafe for marginalized groups—for people of color, for LGBTQ folk, for rape survivors, etc. Academia may very well be the first place people have heard of “safe spaces.” That was the case for me. Shulevitz’ article leaves me feeling conflicted. On one hand, I do believe that spaces that prioritize the safety of marginalized groups are necessary. On the other hand, her argument that safe spaces and trigger warnings in academia impede critical thinking skills takes us away from the purpose of safe spaces to what they have now become. While it is easy to analyze academic and social spaces as two distinct concepts, for many students that cannot be the case and casts simple labels over more complicated life experiences. In the last few years, safe spaces have flourished at Vassar. The terminology has been found in and out of classroom settings and has

been interwoven in our communal interactions. We don’t start a dialogue, or any conversation for that matter, without setting ground agreements on how the space will or will not be safe. Often, these dialogue spaces bring up topics such as race, gender and sexuality as a form to foster further growth within our Vassar community, with the assumption that not everyone is at the same level of thinking about social consciousness. However, the term “safe space” then becomes co-opted and used instead to accommodate someone’s discomfort and unwillingness to engage. Feeling uncomfortable is not the same as feeling unsafe. Although it is this distinction that Shulevitz tries to highlight in her case against safe spaces, what this does is diminish the student’s traumatic experiences. To take it a step further–although students can carry their trauma into spaces of higher education, does that then mean that students cannot experience trauma within those same spaces?

“Feeling uncomfortable is not the same as feeling unsafe.” Opponents of safe spaces argue that safe spaces and trigger warnings do not exist in “real life.” Shulevitz essentially does the same by commenting that students’ “trauma” is “quasi-medicalized.” What we don’t talk about is how these relatively small spaces replicate the same dynamics of oppression felt outside. Only recently have we begun talking about cases of racism and sexual assault in higher education. The media portrays many of these cases as isolated incidents that have not occurred before. Is it really surprising that students can be traumatized at school? Or that some of our students may not have had a childhood sheltered from different varieties of violence? When someone is triggered, this usually

means that something in their environment is provoking a strong emotional response, such as flashbacks or dissociation. When someone is triggered, they are probably not feeling safe at the moment. Feeling uncomfortable is not the same as feeling unsafe. I do not believe that people who call for safe spaces are trying to disengage with “scary ideas.” It is dangerous for anyone to call for a safe space or to state that they are being triggered when they are merely feeling uncomfortable with an opposing idea. At the same time, do we then continue to police people’s emotions and what their emotional turmoil looks like? Trauma does not look the same for everyone. Likewise, the ways in which people experience triggers differ. What affects one person may not necessarily affect another. However, people’s emotional responses should not be invalidated. Shulevitz quotes Mari J. Matsuda, who writes that because many students “are away from home for the first time and at a vulnerable stage of psychological development,” they would be “left to their own resources in coping with the damage wrought.” But what do we do when there are not enough resources that are accessible for students? For example, one of the reasons Metcalf, Vassar’s counseling center, is frequently utilized is because counseling is offered at no cost and does not include the logistics or insurance issues common with off-campus counseling. This comes as a relief for those who can’t afford or arrange the transportation needed for off-campus counseling. Shulevitz’s article raises many questions about the ways that we currently talk about safe spaces. However, we should consider the following: Safe spaces are student-initiated and in part formed to address the ways in which resources on campus have expended all of their power to support students in various ways. In addition, we need to consider the various ways in which students of various backgrounds experience our college campuses, and that includes talking about identity. —Susie Martinez ’15 is an urban studies major.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Page 7

Word on the street In lieu of black ice alerts, what alert do you wish Thomas Allen would send you every day?

“Meryl Streep sightings.” —Dave Newman ’15

“Specials at the Deece.” — Benjamin Kriegel ’18

“After getting an email every day I would probably stop reading the emails” — Dean BenBenjamin ’16

“Something telling to go to sleep when it’s 3 am.” —Sam Short ’16

“Where the cheapest cigs are in Poughkeepsie.” —Kiran Kawolics ’15

“An alert for good Ben & Jerry flavors in the retreat.” — Emily Goddard ’15

Chris Gonzalez Humor & Satire Editor Sam Pianello, Photo Editor

OPINIONS

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April 2, 2015

Despite FCC ruling, American Internet access inadequate Joshua Sherman Opinions Editor

e all know too well how bad our Internet is on campus. But our slow speeds and high tuition are also a metaphor to the Internet situation all over the United States, plagued with few competitors, high prices and slow speeds compared to other high-GDP nations. This issue continues despite recent efforts by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to promote fair practices among America’s Internet Service Providers. For the last few years, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Verizon and Comcast have been spotted slowing down access to certain websites, such as Netflix, frequented by their customers. It was Netflix’s belief that customers should be able to access whatever Internet content they want, regardless if it were Netflix, Facebook, or any other website. The ISPs disagreed, believing they had a right to create “fast lanes” that they could charge companies like Netflix if a large percentage of Internet users wanted to access Netflix’s servers. This ultimately exploded into social media as Internet users criticized ISPs and their interest to create Internet fast lanes, where their broadband usage would be scrutinized on top of being an already overpriced, underperforming service (CNN, “Why you’ll hate the Internet fast lane,” 04.30.14). Earlier this month, the FCC at last put this ongoing debate over fast lanes to rest, issuing new rules pertaining to how ISPs should treat the service they provide to customers. These new rules, collectively known as Title II, are a major precedent as they restrict an ISP’s ability to scrutinize content, or create Internet fast lanes. All Internet usage would be treated the same under Title II (Digital Trends, “FCC re-

“A Fool’s Tale” Though I am old, sit close to me My memory, it fails I want to tell you of my loves Five short, poetic tales

I once eloped to some far shore With a salad maker Each night he’d garnish me a meal With pepper from his shaker Caesars, ranches, vinaigrettes A thousand islands too Our love was strong but couldn’t last Forever—that I knew He tossed veggies and when he left

Answers to last week’s puzzle

Survival of the Fittest

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T H

“Unbundling would mean more options to choose from for Internet access.” If the FCC tried to introduce unbundling in its Title II policy, it’s like that the policy would have failed, since the FCC vote to approve Title II was a close 3-2 ruling among its voting members. ISPs were already angry enough to put out anti-Title II advertising during the vote over fast lanes. If unbundling had been part of Title II, we would have seen an even more aggressive campaign from ISPs given how much it’d affect their revenue. There are a few exceptions to this highpriced lifestyle in the U.S. Google is renowned for offering low-cost, high speed Internet access in select cities, such as Kansas City, Atlanta and Salt Like City. However, like everyone else, Google Fiber still monitors your Internet access which it may use to improve its service, sell to Big Data clients, or a slew of other things. Since they offer such a low

priced service and already do more business in big data and advertising compared to other ISPs, Google is more likely to sell your data than others in the broadband space. It also doesn’t help that Google is but a small player in a business dominated by companies like Comcast, Verizon and Charter. However, what we have after Title II is more or less the same problems. Companies like Netflix benefit from Title II and may keep their prices down, but overall our Internet prices and service availability will remain the same unless Congress were to try and pressure ISPs to lower prices or increase competition. What makes this even more damning is that ISPs are so profitable they’ve grown into other businesses, such as Comcast’s purchase of NBC, or AT&T and Verizon’s expansion into wireless. These companies continue to profit from the fiber that we, to an extent, helped fund over the last decade. Title II doesn’t go far enough to address our needs, and in the coming years we’ll want not just our music and movies, but all our content—even television—to come over the Internet. This all has to do with more than Title II or unbundling. ISPs are under minimal scrutiny in their practices to provide what is, for most Americans, an essential service. Vassar has realized our need for faster Internet, and with a new grant it’s finally planning to improve Internet speeds for students and faculty over the next few years. We can keep Vassar accountable through the VSA and other structures. Outside, in the real world, we need to keep Congress accountable, otherwise we’re going to continue paying even more for even less. —Joshua Sherman ’16 is an English major.

by Collin Knopp−-Schwyn, York Chen, and Alycia Beattie

I had a thing for car mechanics (So I married one) Soon I found she ground my gears (Missed that in the test run)

It’s only that I can’t recall Which one comes first and last Please order them in this small grid If you’re up to the task

pany called British Telecommunications (BT). ISPs state the price for the Internet access you want, plus customers transparently know the fees that BT charges for access to their network, known as a “line rental fee.” This in turn allows for healthy competition, transparency over the rate BT charges, and overall lower prices for customers. Unbundling would likely do the same in the U.S., as many communities have at most one or two choices for Internet access.

The Miscellany Crossword

—Although he was quite loyal— He took along his vinegar And left me with just ___

Each person who I’ve loved so dear —Each husband, partner, wife— Has left me with a little gift I’ve kept throughout my life

O U

classifies broadband in Title II,” 03.17.15). Title II was a victory for consumers, but what remains in its wake are still many problems with the way ISPs do business. While it is a big deal to keep away Internet fast lanes, what the FCC ended up ruling on in Title II is a mere fraction of what they could have done to improve millions of Americans’ Internet access. For starters, one issue not addressed in Title II is something called unbundling, which is when ISPs are required to allow access to their fiber optic lines to potential competitors. This is a common practice with wireless companies, and explains why we have more than a dozen different wireless companies to choose from, even if only four of them actually own the wireless towers. Unbundling would mean more options to choose from for Internet access, and more competition among those potential choices. It may seem weird to force ISPs to let the competition use its own fiber, but this fiber was not funded exclusively by these companies. Since the 1990s, local, state and federal grants totaling billions of dollars have been awarded to fund fiber lines and give cities access to cheap Internet access. However, in the years since these grants, ISPs have done little to lower prices as Internet speeds increase. In fact, according to the BBC, an Internet user in New York will pay almost twice as much what a Londoner will pay for the same speed Internet access (“Why is broadband more expensive in the US?” 10.28.13). Meanwhile, other countries like the U.K. handle Internet access a bit differently. For those who want broadband, you can buy it from a number of different companies, even though most of the fiber is owned by a com-

She bolted and ripped out my heart Took it like a spark plug With nothing left the only nut She left me was a ___

We had a hoot, stayed out all night Until my mood turned foul He left my nest all empty, save An ornamental ___

Each love of mine has only sought To please me, I now know Yet my parting gift to every one Was sadness, strife, and ___

And here I sit, a withered sort All lonely and alone But don’t get up on my behalf For my grief’s cause is known

If there is but one takeaway It’s that I hope that you’ll Give love as freely as you take Not act like I, the fool

I know that once I was involved With a man who made prostheses You don’t hear that so much, I’m sure They’re not a common species He’d put his arm around my waist And for my hand he’d beg When I said ‘no’, he had to go But left me with a ___ A woman traded stocks and bonds And loved me without pause Each night I’d sleep as she’d recite Fiduciary clause When I defaulted on her love She hedged her bets—left too— Divested and then skipped a note Left just an ___ Of course, there was the zookeeper He was my apogee Made my heart soar, he specialized In ornithology

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

OPINIONS

April 2, 2015

Page 9

Breaking News From the desk of Chris Gonzalez, Humor & Satire Editor SENIOR SCRAMBLE RESULTS ARE IN Absolutely, positively zero people want to bang you Misc-adventurous Maddy livetweets #JobSearch2k15 Maddy Vogel

Buzzfeed Barista

hile half my brain is still living in denial that I am graduating in 60-some days, thanks to my parents’…encouragement (read: nagging) and my overwhelming sense of guilt and fear, I have indeed delved into my job search project. I have a well-organized spreadsheet of the 26-plus jobs I’ve applied for and while it has far less “interview!” checkmarks than I had hoped by this point in the year, it does make me look smart and responsible. I show this to my family members when they ask me about the process and it calms their raging anxiety. The truth, unfortunately, is far less pretty. What follows is a live-tweet of my semester’s journey to adulthood. January 1, 2015 12:33 p.m.: Google search: how to make a resume. 12:47 p.m.: Google search: how to write a cover

letter. 12:58 p.m.: Google search: how to join the circus. February 9, 2015 6:44 p.m.: Is it too late to get a job? Have I missed

the boat? Everyone in the Econ Dept. has a job and I sit here, jobless, alone, and reconsidering every choice I made in life. 6:59 p.m.: Life crisis: over. Job search: beginning (again). February 9-12. 2015

Dear HR Personnel, why do entry-level positions require experience? Aren’t you supposed to give me experience? #conspiracy February 13, 2015 4:23 p.m.: I applied for my first job, time for a

three-hour nap and a quarter-life crisis. 5:34 p.m.: Wakes up from nap in a cold sweat. Vows to never apply to another job again. 5:37 p.m.: Resume reads: “hostess 2 yrs, waitress 1 yr, barista 2 yrs, cashier 1 yr. Buzzfeed plz hire me, I’ll make you coffee.” February 25. 2015 2:00 a.m.: Google search: rooms in Brooklyn. 9:30 a.m.: First job rejection, unbookmarks

apartments in Brooklyn. :’( 9:32 a.m.: Yes, thank you, a job rejection was exactly how I wanted to start my day, thank you,

Caffeinated thoughts from the Krafted Cup: a stream Divya Pathak

random marketing agency in Soho, thank you. February 26, 2015 9:45 a.m.: Am I binge watching “Dance Moms”

and forgetting about my problems? Maybe. But my problems seem so small when Abby Lee is yelling at 12 year olds. 2:03 p.m.: “@abby_lee_miller do you need a social media specialist for the ALDC?” February 29, 2015 3:45 p.m.: Hypothesis: If I buy interview attire I’ll

get an interview. 5:21 p.m.: Hello self-hatred, my old friend… *crying emoji* March 14, 2015 3:20 p.m.: Who needs spring break when there’s

indeed.com? 4:02 p.m.: Google search: are cover letters really supposed to be this boring? 6:34 p.m.: Today, I watched all of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” I did not write a single cover letter. #hashbrownaccomplished March 20, 2015 8:46 p.m.: Eat, sleep, breathe, apply to jobs I

have no hope of getting, cry about lost hopes and dreams. March 24, 2015 11:11 a.m.: Some people spend their break in

Florida or Panama, I spend mine on VCLink #thanksCDO 12:14 p.m.: Wow this job looks great and perfect for me and—*3-5 years experience necessary*— jksies, early April Fools! March 26, 2015 10:30 a.m.: “Why do you want to work for us?”

Because you’re hiring. 10:35 a.m.: “What can you bring to this position?” My sparkling personality and paralyzing self-doubt. 11:00 a.m.: “Thank you for submitting your application. We will get back to you as soon as possible if you are a match.” I won’t hold my breath. At some later, possibly nonexistent date I will get a job but I will not post about it on social media seeking compliments because I’m not a dick.

Java Junky

’m sitting by my lonesome in the Krafted Cup on the last Sunday of spring break of the semester that was supposed to be my last, struggling through Darwinian literary theory (who knew that was even a thing?). I’ve downed a large light roast and the caffeine has kicked in. How do I know? Within 20 minutes, I have 19 tabs open, I have decided to take a stab at humorous writing, and I am unashamedly head-nodding to some really cool vague hipster ambient chillwave. Ya know, Tycho or Bonobo or some shit. It’s times like these that many grand thoughts and questions (19 tabs worth…) are unleashed downward into a spiraling abyss: When will I ever discuss the evolved, adaptive function of literature with an employer? Fucking never, that’s when. Rather, they’ll ask me if I have “social media skills.” I’ll answer with, “I post clips from ‘Spongebob’ in my statuses sometimes.” Well, hey! at least there’s that smart, handsome, non-creepy OkCupid guy that asked me out the other night. We’re “seeing where it goes.” In other words, I have my microwave burritos and “The Lizzie McGuire Movie” ready to go for when he tells me it’s not going to work out. Hey now, this is what dreams are made of. No, stop, I sound pathetic. I’m being too negative. Brighten up. Look to the future. You’re only 22! The world is your oyster! So many places to go and people to meet! *Opens 5 tabs about law school and imagines self as the next Amal Alamuddin Clooney* Oh yeah, I got this. I’m an STS major; I’d be perfect for law school. Conflicting interests and ethical dilemmas everywhere! Paradigm! ...Wait...the LSAT? You need that GPA? Uhh, maybe I should just drop out and be a professional WWOOFer or open a coffee shop. Or, no, better, open a Dreaming Goddess spin-off. Complete with spa services and music lessons (but not the mainstream stuff; come only if you’re interested in the accordion or theremin or sitar or bagpipe). There could also be a lounge that plays Tycho or Bonobo. That place would be hip with the youngins.

I give dropping out another ponder. You’re thinking: blasphemous! I’m thinking back to first semester. I took the semester off and went home. I worked two jobs, volunteered, and generally took a time-out from the academic and extracurricular trenches of Vassar. While I missed the kind of autonomy I had here and especially missed my friends (thanks for all the bell ringing pics, guys), there were times where I could see myself getting used to the intellectual break. As I searched for those jobs, however, I was amazed at how many more doors open once you have that Bachelor’s Degree! What a concept! To a lot of employers, what you majored in matters; but to another lot, it doesn’t. As long as you have that piece of paper, you’re golden. It’s the difference between shelving books for 8 hours a day and being a “program coordinator.” It proves you had the dedication to write analytical papers with fancy words like polemic, or to complete problem sets or lab reports with classmates that made you question your intelligence. That you even sought out your professors in their office hours with your cool, collected exterior when really, you were way intimidated because they went to Harvard and Yale and Princeton and have also probably spoken to God him(her/them/it)self and thus know when you’re going to die. So, it will be with flying colors that I make it through one more STS class, a thesis and who knows, maybe the LSAT. Then, like I said, I’ll be GOLDEN. Job offers will fall at my feet! Law schools will fight over who gets me! The youngins who want to learn the bagpipe at the Awakened Goddess Lounge will beg for my business acumen. I’ll live in a stylish apartment that I can totally afford and host holiday parties for all the lovely humans I met at Vassar. I’ll be so thankful for my college experience. I much prefer this kind of thought-spiral. The upward kind. The overly-caffeinated kind. I hope there’s others of you out there that find yourselves tangentially traveling, wondering about your purpose and why you are where you are. Maybe you’re trying to make the most of your time at Vassar or reexamining your choices and the costs with which they’ve come. Or maybe you’re just ready for that next cup of coffee. I know I am.

9 Hapless Passengers Who Ruin Roadtrips by Zander Bashaw, Dangerous Driver 1. The Overpacker

3. The Snoozer

This person manages the impressive feat of being annoying both before and during the trip. First, they expect help loading their bags (which appear to be enough for a Mount Everest base camp) into the car. Then, their stuff takes up 75 percent of the trunk space. Don’t worry, though, it will be fine once everyone, including the driver, is holding at least one of their bags the duration of your trip!

Initially, it may not seem annoying, but as this person begins drooling over your shoulder and snoring like a congested bull dog, you start to think twice. When they miss the full car performance of Eminem’s “Real Slim Shady,” you start to wonder if you would have rather brought along a three-toed sloth. After all, a sloth would have taken up less space. 4. Nano-bladder

2. “Are we there yet?”

This has become such a cliche of road trips, that “Are we there yet?” people have taken to disguising their dumb questions in other words. Natural selection has driven them to make their territorial call, “About how much longer do we have?” or “What time do you estimate we will be there?” or “Can I take my seatbelt off now?” Respond “yes” to the last one, and then slam on the brakes.

With this person on your trip, you get the added bonus of seeing the inside of every rest stop for miles en-route to your destination. About five gas station stops in you start having darker thoughts, like “Next time let’s not give them any fluids for three days before the trip.” 5. The Battery Destroyer

Some people just have not learned to survive without an outlet, and when their phone,

iPad, Google Glass and Kindle Fire have all bit the dust, their coping device is to whine about their lack of charge. Be careful about lending them your phone to “call home.” Soon they will be streaming the international ultimate Frisbee final, and eating your popcorn to boot. 6. DJ Garbage

From Tove Lo to Meghan Trainor, “All of Me” to “Hey Soul Sister,” DJ Garbage manages to ruin everything about the road trip. To avoid this musical disaster, try to diagnose who can responsibly wield the aux before departure day.

seats, mutter a “Sorry” that they don’t mean and blatantly ignore your dirty looks. 8. Dr. Swerve

Mario and Luigi are glad that their racing game is gaining popularity in the real world, the passengers of the car are not. This person acts like they are in a James Bond car chase scene every time a simple merge needs to be completed. Keep in mind that they can be just as defensive and violent as Mr. Bond if criticized. 9. Stubborn & Lost

7. The Man-spreader

Recently the Metropolitan Transportation Authority started cracking down on man-spreading within the subway, but an opportunistic man-spreader will claim MTA’s authority does not extend to cars. Typically this person will extend their feet into adjacent

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

It is inevitable on any road trip that the traveling party will get lost. A stubborn lost person has a gene that prevents them from ever stopping to ask for help. Your party could be on the moon, and they would claim that they “had seen this road before” or “are very familiar with this crater.”

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TRAVEL

April 2, 2015

Singapore, Singapore S

ingapore is a multicultural metropolis that blends different backgrounds and cultures, all asserting their presence loudly and vibrantly. All of these influence Singapore in every possible way: the food, the land, the homes and much more. There is a Little India and a Chinatown, and, even on the subway, the stops have names that are all in different languages, such as Buena Vista, Queenstown and Yio Chu Kang. The architecture there is part of what’s so striking. The government owns some buildings and homes and requires people who rent them to preserve the old, colonial exteriors. Right alongside some of these very traditional houses, there are sleek, modern houses with distinctive designs. No two houses are alike, and each house seems to pick out elements from different cultures’ architectures, fusing it all together for what is at once a cohesive and individual look. Everything is created with efficiency in mind. For instance, with public transportation, rather than paying one flat rate, you tap in once you enter whatever form of transportation you take, tap out when you leave, and get charged only for the distance you travel. One bus ride literally cost me 12 cents. More to the efficiency point, every single outlet has its individual switch to turn on or off the power, so you don’t waste even a single drop of electricity, unless you forget to turn it off, which I did a couple times (oops). I could go on and list so many small surprising things like this. It’s shocking how Singapore can account for all these minute details, but it just creates a much better flow for daily life. See what I mean about efficiency? This was an incredible trip and I couldn’t ask for anything more. Shoutout to my friend Christina for hosting and taking me and our friends around. If you ever go, my tip is to eat at hocker centers. They’re much cheaper than restaurants, and you will literally be eating a mouthful of Singaporean culture with every bite. I recommend roti prata, fried carrot cake (which is actually radishes) also known as chai tow kway, and definitely Hainanese chicken rice. It will be unlike anything you’ve ever tasted before. —Stephanie Zhu ’16

Rivera Maya, Mexico

or spring break, I was fortunate enough to travel to Rivera Maya, Mexico. I spent seven days in Mexico—six in Playa del Carmen and one visiting Cozumel. While in Playa del Carmen, I spent most of my time at the beach reading magazines and enjoying a few drinks. The Caribbean Sea was beautiful shades of blue with scattered bits of seaweed. When you’re by the sea, everything tastes fresher, and you’d be silly not to capitalize on seafood in particular. Additionally, though, I had the opportunity to try passion fruit and guava, fruits I had never tried before. I also got a taste of local music when I saw an amazing performance from a tenor group: The three brothers’ voices harmonized flawlessly, making for a great show overall. Along with the tenor group, I went to a violin performance by a local artist. Along the way, I socialized with other visitors, meeting people from around the U.S. all the way to Sweden. Playa del Carmen was so relaxing I nearly forgot about the snow I had left behind in Poughkeepsie—the sun was always shining while I was there, and temperatures hovered around 80 degrees every day. While in Cozumel, I was able to go snorkeling, which was an amazing experience. I had never been snorkeling before, and the beautiful schools of fish mesmerized me. After snorkeling, I did some shopping, which was a fun experience because I was able to bargain. Others at the resort I was staying at told me to never pay for the full price of jewelry. So, a piece of jewelry would cost so much on the ticket, and I would try to negotiate for a lower price. The best I did was a $60 bracelet for $25, but I didn’t actually buy anything. Just walking through all of the shops and browsing the beautiful items was an experience in itself. Traveling to and from Cozumel, I took a ferry, pictured here. On the ferry ride, local musicians played traditional songs, and everyone clapped along. Overall, it was one of best trips I have been on and a much-needed break from senior-year stress. —Delaney Fischer ’15

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

April 2, 2015

TRAVEL

Page 11

St. Thomas, Virgin Islands

fter weeks of stressing about impending student loan payments and the lack of employers interested in hiring me, a vacation to someplace far away seemed like a good, albeit impractical, idea. My trip to St. Thomas, the most populous of the U.S. Virgin Islands, was both enjoyable and restorative. I was lucky enough to have amazing weather while I was there, though the average temperature rarely dips below 70 degrees anyway. Waking up to a view of the ocean was the most luxurious thing I had experienced in a while, and being within five minutes of the beach made up for the sunburn. Admittedly, the island is pretty touristy. However, this meant that there was an abundance of activities to choose from on any given day. I got my adrenaline rush from the freestyle jet skiing and got my ecological and historical tour on the night kayak ride. One of the best aspects of my trip was definitely the food and drink. As someone who hails from a landlocked area, the abundance of seafood was a welcome change. It’s safe to say I ate fish for almost the entirety of my five day trip, and, most importantly, I learned that crab, avocado and manchego cheese is the most amazing combination you can put in a salad. An added bonus: Alcohol is super cheap. Not just the rum that’s made on the island and that you can slurp out of a bucket all day and feel like Jack Sparrow while doing so, but imported beer and other liquors are cheaper than milk. I mean this in the literal sense: milk costs about $5 per half gallon. And for all you underclassmen, the drinking age is 18. You’re welcome. For the most part, the resorts are all strategically placed along the outer coast of the island, which serves two functions. Firstly, it guarantees tourists easy access to the beaches, and it probably allows hotels to charge double for water views. Second, it relegates the native Islanders to the inner parts of St. Thomas, which stand in sharp contrast to the shiny hotels. Americans living on the island describe the inland in the same way that some describe certain areas of downtown Poughkeepsie or the Southside of Chicago. If you only stayed at your own resort, it would be easy to forget that you’re enjoying the spoils of American and Dutch colonialism. St. Thomas profits from tourism, and such an economy is not without its social and financial injustices. —Meaghan Hughes ’15

Santa Fe, New Mexico

could regale you with tales about the week I spent at Vassar, chatting with friends, shopping and composing a bibliography for my thesis, but I believe the meager Yaks everyone found on their arrival back do an adequate job detailing an empty campus. Rather, I will discuss my History Department-sponsored trip to research in New Mexico. After spending a night in the Reagan airport, where I befriended an old woman who held my spot next to the outlets when I needed to pee and brush my teeth, I arrived in Albuquerque. My first morning there, I found the University of New Mexico’s campus as diverse and active as their Yik Yak (very). I spent most of my time in their massive humanities library, which also housed an Indigenous Nations Library Program to support Native students. The next day, I traveled on the train to Santa Fe, passing through desert, small towns and the Kewa Pueblo community. There, I walked an hour from my hotel to a museum that now holds exhibits and sells the work of contemporary Native artists, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, cofounded by Hastiin Tłah, a third-gendered weaver and medicine person of the Navajo Nation, in the 1930s. After meeting with the assistant director and investigating that museum, I wandered the other nearby museums that focused on international folk art and contemporary Native art. On Friday, I traveled back to Albuquerque to catch a flight in the morning, reflecting on my experience, which left me slightly culture shocked from the vitality of the assertion of Native presence. No fight against erasure was necessary in these two cities. Unlike the Northeast and my hometown in Virginia, structures existed that acknowledged Native lives and their struggles. And, while I cannot assert their success at addressing injustice, I think the East Coast could learn from these places about better supporting the Native communities and individuals over here. —Nate Wulff ’15

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

FEATURES

Page 12

April 2, 2015

On the road: two students train for 4,066-mile bike trip Marie Solis

Fell Off Bike Twice in Same Day

ith April upon us, students are beginning to lock in their summer plans. Internships, volunteer work, even jobs for some lucky seniors. Not only do Kevin Pham ’18 and Gabrielle Pollack ’17 already know what their vacations will look like, but they’ve already begun preparing for them—or rather, training for them. Starting in June, they will bike from New Haven, Conn. to Half Moon Bay, Calif. And as if biking 4,066 miles in 80 days isn’t physically exhausting enough, along the way they will build homes, give biking workshops and make presentations on affordable housing, all part of the Bike & Build program. “I thought it would be nice for the summer of my freshman year to do something that’s not

related to my career path and will expose me to a new skill,” said Pham, who is an international studies major. He said he was also drawn to Bike & Build because it departs from the typical nineto-five internship behind a desk. Pham isn’t the sort to do anything typical. Before he came to Vassar he took a gap year in Ecuador, an experience he said—admitting this was a cliché—was life-changing. “I started valuing doing activities and programs that I don’t really have any background in. Studying abroad made me more open to the possibilities of studying different fields or different kinds of work,” said Pham. Additionally, he joked, it made everyone’s expectations for him much higher. When he told his friends and family, Pham said they found it largely unsurprising that he chose to spend his summer in an unconventional way. “A lot of my friends

Emily Lavieri-Scull/The Miscellany News

Pham and Pollack will bike from Connecticut to California this summer as part of the Bike & Build program. They’ve begun training for the 80-day journey, during which they’ll also build houses in low-income areas.

were kind of surprised but not surprised. When I took the gap year, it set the standard pretty high for the things I would do in the future. They were like, ‘That’s something Kevin would do, diving into something he knows nothing about,’” he said. This is mostly true—Pham estimated that the longest he has ever biked is five miles. Over spring break, Pham had just purchased a new bike and all of the equipment he will need to go with it, all covered by a scholarship he received from the program. (He also did some independent fundraising: He and his mother raised $800 selling homemade eggrolls door-to-door. He rolled them; she cooked them.) As the weather gets warmer, he said he will switch from running at the gym to hitting the trails around Vassar on his new bike. Pollack has had more experience but said she still has a lot of training ahead of her. “I’ve biked around 50 miles before,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “But that was four years ago.” Bike & Build Director of Operations and Outreach Justin Villere noted that, though Bike & Build, a program with an application process, doesn’t require its candidates to be experienced cyclists, they do take steps to ensure everyone’s safety on the road. “All riders are required to train at least 500 miles on the road before the trip begins. This both helps to prepare them physically as well as [make] them feel comfortable interacting with vehicles on the road,” he said, going on to add that their riders must also pass a safety quiz. But, beyond these logistics, he said Bike & Build looks first and foremost for youthful enthusiasm. “While we certainly welcome experienced cyclists, we are primarily interested in engaging young adults who have a passion for service and adventure,” said Villere. Like Pham, Pollack said she was looking to spend her summer doing something beyond the scope of her major. “I’m a pre-med neuroscience student and have done research and worked with hospital patients for the past couple of summers. I wanted a change as I know [that’s what I’ll be doing] for the rest of my life,” she said. Even so, she said that she sees her experiences with Bike

& Build as being relevant in the future. “I want to be a pediatrician mainly in underprivileged areas, so it definitely relates in some ways,” said Pollack, continuing, “I also want to learn more about affordable housing and see how I can get involved in more ways.” Pham has gotten a jumpstart on this part of the trip. Over break, Pham was in Atlanta, Ga. with Vassar’s Habitat for Humanity. He said he did a little painting and put up some scaffolding. Pham’s stepdad worked part-time helping people fix up their houses, so he would sometimes go to help out. From the D.C. area, Pham wrote in his Bike & Build bio that he hopes the summer program will inspire him to make a difference in his own backyard. “One in five D.C. residents have severe affordability problems and spend 50 percent or more of their income on housing,” he wrote. Villere noted that many of students who participate in the program go on to make change in communities off the beaten Bike & Build path. “About 70 percent [of our alumni] indicate that they are still involved in some form of public service with their career or through longterm volunteerism efforts,” he said. Since he began working with the organization in 2012 they have granted over $1.7 million to affordable housing affiliates across the U.S. and have built hundreds of homes. As for Pollack, she has an idea of what to anticipate from her Bike & Build trip. She wrote, “I want to learn to push myself...both physically and mentally. I also want to learn more about affordable housing and see how I can get involved in more ways [as well as] establish long-lasting friendships and bonds.” Pham said he counts on the experience being an enriching one on all counts, but he’s going to wait to see how it unfolds. “I like to go in with an open mind about what I would gain....I would hope to continue to be involved with affordable housing after my trip and get more involved with Habitat for Humanity at Vassar,” he said. Pham, too, has a simpler wish in mind when considering his cross-country trek: “Hopefully, these skinny little legs don’t fail me!”

Paella recipe brings Spanish staple to this side of Atlantic Penina Remler Panini Press

Penina Remler/The Miscellany News

or the past ten years, my family has been fortunate enough to travel and explore the country of Panama. We’ve made great family friends, visited exquisite destinations, enjoyed beautiful weather and—debatably my favorite aspect of every trip—we have tasted delicious food. With every trip we take, I know I can count on the freshest produce, which likely was picked off of a tree, or seafood caught from the ocean that day. My family and I have witnessed Panama evolve over the past ten years, and, while every vacation consists of trying at least one new restaurant, we remain loyal customers to some of our favorite places, which have been in business even before we started our travels. Only a fifteen minute drive from our beach house is a family-owned Spanish restaurant, Los Camisones. This traditional dining spot is beloved by everyone in the area and is considered an essential stop on the way to the beach. My go-to dish at Los Camisones will always be the paella. Since I was eight years old, I haven’t left Panama without enjoying this freshly made seafood and chorizo accompaniment which is inundated with flavor within a sea of yellow, saffron-infused rice. My family has yet to leave the restaurant without completely devouring this dish, and, although I can’t find another paella that meets its standards, I know it’s waiting for me every time I return to my second home. Over spring break I was lucky enough to bring a few Vassar friends to Panama and made sure that a visit to Los Camisones was penciled into our agenda. As I explained to the waiter that my friends could not go home without trying my favorite paella dish, he suggested something I wish I had thought of a few years back—our very own cooking class. Finally, we’d be able to make “Camisones Paella” and cherish it back in New York. Before he could even finish his sentence, we jumped at the opportunity to learn such a classic entrée, and, while it may take a few attempts to perfect, this recipe is 100 percent worth trying. The perfect paella relies upon short -grain

rice, fine saffron, sweet onions, chorizo, chicken thighs, clams, shrimp, baby octopus and rich olive oil. In terms of cooking your paella, the dish is meant to be cooked above an open fire, which may intimidate new chefs, but is meant as a technique and a learned skill to practice over time. However, for beginners, one can—and should— cook their paella on top of a grill with a paella pan, which can be found at any cooking store. The first step begins with cooking your protein, which includes browning the meat of the chicken and chorizos and warming the liquid stock. Heat your paella pan with olive oil over medium heat and add seasoned chicken thighs (salt and pepper) in the heated oil. Once the skin is golden, remove the chicken from the pan and cook the chorizo in the oil until brown. Once the chorizo is cooked through, remove it from the pan and let it rest. Now it is time to mix in the onion and garlic. While the paella pan is still over medium-high heat, add the onion until it turns translucent, and, later, mix in the garlic. Once the two flavors are well-combined, add in the rice and stir the ingredients together while topping it off with salt and pepper. With the rice already heated within the pan, gather the stock, chicken chorizo and additional protein into the mix. As you stir in (already cooked) shrimp, octopus, chorizo and peas, continuously add stock to avoid drying out the rice. Following this procedure, add the clams (hinge-side up) so that their juices will be able to spill into the rice and add their own flavor, and, finally, mix them back into the pan on top. With all the ingredients settled into the dish, allow the paella pan to cook upon the heated surface for 25 to 30 minutes. After allowing the surplus of flavors to diffuse into one another, add an additional and final cup of stock with salt, pepper and parsley seasoning. During the process of cooking paella, it is crucial to remember that patience is key. Although it is easy to just mix all the ingredients above a heated surface all at once, a perfect paella is formed by mastering the idea of time and knowing when to add each separate component into the fish. Buena suerte!

The Ingredients 1 large pinch of saffron 2 1/4 quarts of low-sodium chicken broth 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil 2 pounds of chicken thighs Salt and freshly-ground pepper 1 pound of chorizo (best sliced into semi-circles) 1 medium onion (finely chopped) 1 tablespoon of garlic (minced) 4 cups of short-grain rice 1 1/2 pounds of jumbo shrimp (peeled and deveined) 1 cup of frozen peas 2 dozen littleneck clams (cleaned) 2 tablespoons of parsley (chopped)

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

April 2, 2015

FEATURES

Page 13

VHP, ProHealth expand knowledge bases at conference Julia Cunningham Cunning Swimmer

courtesy of ProHealth

he Shubert Theater at Yale University was filled with the biggest names in health and innovation last weekend. This year, Yale was the site of the twelfth-annual Global Health and Innovation Conference, the world’s leading and largest global health conference. It is presented annually by Unite For Sight, a nonprofit global health delivery organization. On March 28 and 29, members of the Vassar Haiti Project (VHP) and ProHealth attended the conference to listen to some of the most innovative and insightful thinkers in their fields share the knowledge they have acquired in their research. With 2,200 participants, it would have been easy to sit back and just listen, but VHP made sure to take an active role in the conference. “Vassar Haiti Project applied to present on behalf of our organization at the conference back in the fall,” Mildred Nelson ’16 wrote in an emailed statement. The VHP’s presentation at Yale was to gain feedback for their health initiative in Chermaitre, a small village in Haiti. Director of the VHP’s Health Initiative Manrose Singh ’15 explained that the clinic the organization has established there serves the residents of 30 villages in the mountains surrounding Chermaitre. There, a Haitian doctor and nurse provide daily health care access. Singh wrote, “My presentation was on how the clinic is operating so far, how it engages the community, challenges we face and what we’re looking forward to in the future.” He added, “Presenting at the conference was a real opportunity to engage actual experts in the field of development and public health. It was also a way to hear critiques about our project and consider new ways to improve our partnerships and clinic management,” He wrote in an emailed statement. “We try to continually challenge ourselves to become more socially conscious and cognizant of the ways we can improve and presenting was chance to

Over spring break, ProHealth (some members pictured above) and VHP attended the Global Health and Innovation Conference, learning how to rethink their approaches to health and volunteer work. do so,” he added. The conference featured speakers from all over the world. Samantha Augenbraun ’17, who attended the conference for the first time as a member of ProHealth, wrote in an emailed statement, “I was amazed by how far people had traveled for the conference and it was exciting to be surrounded by people from all corners of the world who share a common interest.” The conference offered a wide variety of opportunity for participants to build on knowledge they’d learned in the classroom or to learn things they may never hear elsewhere. With so many speakers, participants’ schedules were left flexible so they could chose which lectures they went to or which speakers they wanted to hear. Augenbraun wrote that she attended lec-

tures with diverse topics. She spoke of events ranging from Responsible Global Engagement and Education to Health and Development Innovations. “The series of lectures on responsible global engagement were particularly interesting, especially to college students. Having the opportunity to volunteer abroad is such an exciting experience that it is easy to forget the purpose of a visit to another country,” She wrote. “The four speakers stressed the importance of understanding the culture of the country in which you are visiting.” Nelson is one who has had such an experience abroad. Last summer of 2014, she went abroad to Bolivia, where she shadowed doctors at a hospital and worked as a medical scribe. “I will say that having the experience is the ultimate way for one to learn about global health

problems. The distance between yourself and other cultures often prevents you from understanding the problems they face contextually and result in issues when you implement solutions that work someplace but won’t work in a different context,” she said. All of the lectures weren’t just about finding opportunities abroad to make a difference, however. Serena Lee ’18 said her favorite lecture was a workshop called Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). Though it sounds tedious, Lee found this information invaluable. “[It] put everything I previously learned about all the work global health organizations have been doing into practical use.” The talk was on tracking and analyzing data, a step Lee said she didn’t realize was so important. “It has the power of so much improvement for projects in global health. One of the ‘mysteries’ is that there was so much money going into Haiti, but no one really knows what happened with it,” she said. The M&E system, she explained, gives feedback and helps reduce wasteful spending. “I can apply it to any sort of project I decide to do from here on out,” said Lee. For the attendees, it was just as important to know the topics as the speaker. “The reason we try to attend this conference annually is because of the opportunities in networking with public health professionals and organizations as well the chance to learn about the cutting edge research that’s going on in public health,” Singh wrote. “Improving our project and our partnership with Chermaitre...includes learning about what others are doing.” Though it wasn’t VHP’s or ProHealth’s first time attending, for first-timers Nelson and Augenbraun it was an unprecedented experience. Nelson wrote, “If anything, it was astounding to see the collection of students (highschool-pHD), professionals, world leaders (the minister of health of Rwanda) all assembled together to learn from each other and share their experiences. Definitely a unique experience.”

Alum enlists VC women for community development Sarah Sandler & Marie Solis @VassarGirls

any Vassar students aspire to take what they have learned in the classroom and apply it to real life—do some good, make a difference. Oftentimes, this amounts to volunteering or working for a nonprofit. But instead of hoping to be hired at the nonprofit of her choice, Abby Nathanson ’14 decided to found one instead. Women’s Power Space (WPS) is conceived of as an initiative to create an intersectional space for people of Poughkeepsie as well as the U.S. more largely to focus on healing, self-care and community. Though WPS has flourished, Nathanson insists it came about organically. “In a lot of ways, this project just happened, I certainly never said ‘I’m going to start my own non-profit,’ and I certainly don’t see it in any way as ‘my own,’ but it is a project that I’ve poured quite a bit of my energy in to,” she wrote in an emailed statement. Indeed, WPS seems to have taken on momentum particularly among current Vassar students, with 14 women currently interning with the org. “Women’s Power Space allowed me to get involved and learn on the job, whereas working for a more established non-profit might require prior learning experience in fundraising,” said Development Intern Mary Talbot ’16. She added, “It is also a nice complement to my academic major, women’s studies, and allows me to think about my feminism in a different environment.” For many of the interns, working at WPS has contributed to their work in the classroom at Vassar and vice versa. Alessandra Seiter ’16, whose studies focus on structural oppressions and ideologies/institutions of violence, said, “I suppose it’s given me a lens through which to understand what’s happening in Poughkeepsie and why community healing is so important.” As Co-President of the Vassar Animal Rights Coalition, Seiter also brings extracurricular skills to WPS as Development Intern and Vegan Consultant. In fact, she met Na-

thanson while she was living in Ferry. “Abby and I had lived together in Ferry a couple of years ago, so she knew of my background with yoga and my interest in community organizing, and reached out to me to help start the organization.” Yet, she said, she primarily became interested because of her history of healing from trauma through yoga. She explained, “I’ve experienced firsthand how powerful yoga can be for healing, whether in individual or communal capacities (or both!)” Abigail Hiller ’17, a women’s studies correlate, added, “I have certainly been able to draw connections between my work with WPS and my coursework at Vassar. What I love so much about working with WPS is that I get the chance to put the many academic papers I read for class into action.” For many, WPS is a happy medium between staying close to Vassar and getting to know Poughkeepsie. Abigail Hiller ’17 said, “WPS has given me opportunities to get off campus, and get involved.” Nonetheless, Hiller said it’s nice that they all have Vassar in common, and it proves to be a uniting factor. “I would say that the fact that we all have Vassar in common has brought us together as a community, whether because we can laugh about Vassar’s quirks, or commiserate with each other about Vassar’s failings. I feel as if Abby and the WPS interns are more able to imagine where I am coming from than would be a different, non-Vassar, group of people,” she said. Seiter said she admires Nathanson for her dedication to critiquing Vassar as an institution and giving back to both the college and the surrounding community. “Most grads (and current students) just rest complicit in Vassar’s less-than-awesome relations with Poughkeepsie residents for their four years without thinking about the people who live just beyond Vassar’s walls,” she said. Seiter noted, however, that despite Vassar’s inaction in the community, Poughkeepsie people are excited by the prospect of this project. “Folks in the community have been

asking for something like this for a while now, and we’ve found tons of community support in various Poughkeepsie nonprofits, local businesses, etc,” she wrote. Indeed, Nathanson said she has built on the work of other dedicated activists in the Hudson Valley. “This project is in a unique situation. On the one hand, it is a very new initiative that began just months ago when I set up the website and started contacting people. On the other hand, it’s rooted in an existing women’s group organized by Ruth Faircloth called Daughters of Sarah, that has been doing true grassroots women’s organizing in the Hudson Valley for longer than I’ve been alive,” she explained. Nathanson goes on to embody these politics with the inner workings of WPS. While Nathanson is the organization’s founder and technically and legally the director, they are a non-hierarchical nonprofit. “In meetings, we endeavor to interact as equals,” Hiller clarified. Talbot added that this helps create an atmosphere of mutual respect. She added, “Abby understands firsthand the ups and downs of Vassar student life, and respects our time and energy as students.” WPS has gained momentum. Most recently, the org launched the Youth Advisory Council (YAC), a branch of the nonprofit that will include local high school students who will help organize community events and serve as ambassadors for WPS. Meanwhile, Research Intern Laura Webber ’15 has been working to compile a resource base of all of the other areas WPS has a foothold in, including projects, organizations, activists, yoga studios and articles that align with their politics. In her spare time, she is also doing an apprenticeship. She explained, “I am learning how to be a yoga teacher. Through the WPS apprentice program, I am able to learn how to teach community yoga and gain experience doing so.” WPS is dedicated to becoming a homebase for Poughkeepsie residents, hosting events and collaborating with other organizations. Their perennial staple is their yoga and pizza

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

parties they host every Saturday at My Place Pizza on Main Street. Though it seems like an unlikely combination, it melds together a few things WPS deeply values. “It’s a cool place to have classes, but also because it’s political to show that we believe that we can nourish our bodies with yoga and also nourish them with pizza, and both of those are real and valid and awesome,” said Nathanson. This summer, WPS has plans to host classes in parks and work with farmers’ markets and local artists. Nathanson noted that it is a learning process for everyone, as they figure things out and find their footing. “As with anything, this is a work in progress. The trick is to be humble, self-reflective, inquisitive and always very, very honest as we move forward in all kinds of flawed but exciting and important ways,” she said. Nathanson predicts that WPS will take on many different forms in the future and ultimately aims for it to be more inclusive and community-driven. As a white woman from outside of Poughkeepsie, she said, “This initiative is intended to be for and by women of color and for and by people from the City of Poughkeepsie, and neither of those are true of me.” With that in mind, she said she eventually imagines leaving the nonprofit to someone else or to a group. She wrote, “I’m here to lend my time, skills and energy to get this project off the ground, but the long-term leadership of Women’s Power Space will always be women who are more representative of who this project is actually aimed at,” she said, returning to the theme of privilege. She noted that her position as a Vassar graduate who had the financial security to start a nonprofit means she doesn’t necessarily fit the bill. She continued, “I’m intending to continue being the main coordinator for another year or year and a half, and by then we will have grown in many ways, and ideally this will be a position with a stipend or a salary. I’ll always be involved in some way, but I know that the project will outgrow what I can offer to it.”

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April 2, 2015

Vassar Devils sing their way to collective a cappella success Emma Rosenthal Tone Deaf

courtesy of Cathy Zhou

hile many of us might have spent spring break getting excited for “Pitch Perfect 2,” the Vassar Devils were experiencing the real-life excitement of a national a cappella competition. The Vassar group traveled to Boston to compete in the Northeast Semifinals of the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) at the Boston Symphony Hall. Member of the Devils Joshua Bruce ’16 wrote in an emailed statement about the other schools the Vassar singers were up against: “[The competition] included groups from Berklee College of Music, Harvard University, Hofstra University, NYU, Northeastern University, Emerson College, SUNY Potsdam and SUNY Purchase.” Although those schools were the semifinalists, there was a longer process even to get to the competition in Boston. The Music Co-Director of the Devils, Matt Goldstein ’17, described the road to get to where they are now: “There are four rounds in the ICCA. First, groups send in video submissions in October in order to be considered to participate. This year featured the most submissions the ICCA has ever had–over 300 groups! We were then chosen to participate in one of five Quarterfinal rounds in the Northeast.” Goldstein continued, “At the Quarterfinal, 10 groups compete, and at the end the judges fill out a complicated score-card and combine their votes to determine the Champion, Runner-Up and Second Runner-Up of the event. They can also elect to give awards for Best Arrangement, Best Choreography, Best Vocal Percussion and/or Best Soloist.” This selection process proved to be a success for the Devils and Bruce noted the specific results. “Only the first place winner of each semifinal advances to the finals, which will be held at the Beacon Theater on Broadway on April 18th. We won the Northeast Regional Semifinal and our directors, Matt Goldstein and Hannah Tobias, got two special awards for best musical arrangements and best choreography,” he said. The Devils’ winning performance consisted of a wide variety of songs–including an original one–which told a story, strung together with formulated transitions. The other Devils Co-Direc-

The Vassar Devils perform in Boston as part of the ICCA Semifinal competition. The group won first place and now moves on to the Broadway stage for the final competition in mid April. tor, Hannah Tobias ’16, who has been in the group since the beginning of her freshman year, reported on the songs in an emailed statement: “We performed 4 songs: ‘Iscariot’ by Walk the Moon, ‘Time Machine’ by Ingrid Michaelson, ‘Cough Cough’ by Everything Everything, and an original song written by Matt Goldstein and myself, ‘Nothing’; all connected by musical transitions.” Bruce went into more detail about their overarching theme for the performance and how they strung the songs together, “We tried to tell an interwoven story of the stages of addiction (be it to drugs or a person, etc.) starting with the initial hook, realization of the depth of the addiction and its damaging effects, anger at one’s self and the world for falling into addiction and finally acceptance of the whole arc. Everyone in the group and hopefully the audience had their own nuances to this general interpretation.” Although their set was impressive enough for them to reach outstanding achievements, the

Devils expressed surprise at their success, as their goals didn’t necessarily include winning. Devils member Laura Baretto ’17 conveyed their goals, writing in an emailed statement, “We were originally fearful of being in a competitive environment, but ever since we decided to compete, we told each other we were just going to view the entire competition as just a way to share a set that we were proud of.” Goldstein echoed Baretto by expanding on her sentiments, saying, “The craziest thing about this whole experience has been that we didn’t really intend to compete—were just doing it for the experience! ...we made sure to emphasize that we were doing this for ourselves, not for any judges.” Goldstein continued, “We pushed ourselves to make a set of songs that we enjoyed singing... and never really thought about what criteria the judges were looking for. So it’s been insane that we have gotten this far and have gotten such wonderful feedback from the judges and even random

audience members!” As the Devils advance to the next level, there will be not only a heightened sense of competition, but also of prestige; Goldstein noted, “The Champion of each Semifinal is invited to sing at Finals in New York City, so we are now one of the top eight groups that will be performing at Finals! Finals this year are being held at the Beacon Theatre on Broadway–it’s a huge house that seats over 2,900 people, and it’s already sold out! We are so excited to be representing Vassar a cappella at this huge event!” While winning has, of course, been a highlight of the Devils’ experience, members of the group have also expressed excitement about other aspects of their time. Baretto wrote, “My favorite part was rehearsing and performing the set with my best friends. Every person in the group is wonderful, so basically just going through the competition with people I enjoy spending time with just makes the entire experience memorable.” On his favorite moment from the competition, Bruce noted the surprise the Devils met post-performance. “When we first came off the stage at quarterfinals we were all laughing because of how badly we thought it went. But then when we entered the backstage area a big swarm of people from the other groups there came over to say how absolutely amazing our set was and some of them were still crying. It was completely unexpected and completely awesome,” he said. Goldstein wrote on his idea of the unforgettable part of the experience, “While performing at these events has been amazing, my favorite moments have definitely been hanging out with the Devils after each round of the competition. After both rounds of the competition we went back to one of our member’s houses and celebrated; reading audience members’ crazy live-tweets of the performance, laughing about all the mistakes we made, watching movies, playing silly sleepover games, and just enjoying each other’s company.” Finally, Tobias addressed the question on all of our minds: “Our involvement and the competition itself, is about as far from Pitch Perfect as you can get, despite the media’s attempts to say otherwise...The people we met are all wonderful, the experience is relatively stressless...and our choreography doesn’t have a single jazz hand.”

Female-focused exhibition brings art form to forefront Thomas Hill & Emma Rosenthal Art Librarian & Library Cardholder

or the next several weeks, the Art Library is privileged to present to the Vassar community an exhibition of artists’ books, entitled “Misbehaving: Artists’ Books by Women Artists,” on view through April 20. All but one of the works in the exhibit are from the personal collection of librarian and curator Rosemary Furtak, who helped to establish the artists’ book as a significant art form. As a former Walker Art Center librarian, Furtak worked hard to cultivate a wide variety of art for the public. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2012. Among these are works by many artists who have contributed to conversations about the role of women in art and society in recent decades, including Ida Applebroog, Barbara Kruger, Joan Lyons, Laurie Simmons, Jessica Diamond and Kiki Smith. Collectively, these works provide a window into the development of the artists’ books from its early days in the 1960’s and 70’s through to the present. They also illustrate the medium’s gradual incorporation into mainstream museum culture and its literature, thanks in part to the efforts of a small handful of art librarians who followed Furtak’s lead as a collector and early proponent of the genre. The curator of “Misbehaving,” Grace Sparapani ’16, wrote in an emailed statement, “I gained a real interest in the artist’s book as an alternate form and I was really curious about the challenge of displaying a form that really does beg the reader to physically interact with it a lot of the time.” The feminist critic Lucy Lippard defined this art form in “Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook”: “Like performance art, artists’ books are best defined as whatever isn’t anything else.” Librarians and museum curators both found artists’ books strange, and were per-

plexed as to what to do with them. To curators, although many were being produced by artists who worked in traditional genres, such as Ed Ruscha and Sol Lewitt, the works seemed unexhibitable and, produced in editions of many copies as multiples, purposely designed to undermine the cult status of the art object and the economics of the art market in their low-cost and modest formats. To many librarians, these books seemed difficult to use and presenting a challenge in integrating them into conventional collections. Ruscha’s “Twentysix Gasoline Stations,” for instance, was often classified and shelved with books about highway development and trucking. Furtak herself captures something of the crux of the problem in her own definition of an artist’s book: “An artist’s book is a book that refuses to behave like a normal book (as you can hear her say in the brief Youtube video that accompanied the Walker’s 2009 “Text/Messages” exhibition).” Furtak also began adding to the collection. Beginning with a check of $500.00 given to her by Sol Lewitt as a start-up stimulus, Furtak gradually built up one of the most important museum collections of artists’ books in the world. And as Walker curator Siri Engberg describes the buildings importance ., “Though the Walker’s library occupies a quiet corner of the building, she made it a nerve center, often buzzing with curators, researchers and tour guides,” she said. During the same period, the Walker gained a reputation for being one of the most dynamic and influential exhibiting institutions devoted to modern and contemporary art in the United States, and a nursery for innovative, risk-taking curators and directors who would go on to become forces in the art world generally. Some of these wellknown names include Kathy Halbreich from the MoMA, Peter Eely from PS1 and Philippe Vergne from L.A. MOCA, who once stated he

got his best ideas in the Walker library. In recent years, the artists’ books has come to acquire a kind of celebrity status in the museum world, with modern and contemporary museum exhibits regularly including vitrines with examples of the genre, and with so many established artists producing them. Sparapani commented on her experience with this art form, “The books are amazing, and I hadn’t had the chance to really curate anything other than my own senior exhibit in high school, so I loved getting to try something new.” She continued, “I’m a huge frequenter of galleries and museums, so it was awesome to be able to actively influence people’s experiences with the work, rather than just experience something that has been set up for me. It has definitely made me more sensitive to the way that gallery spaces interact with the viewer.” Many, if not most of the works in “Misbehaving” testify to a conscious identification between the early outsider status of the artists’ book and the outsider status of women in the art world, and in the culture in general. Furtak’s own piece, “Assemblage,” which forms the centerpiece of the exhibit, is emblematic of this circumstance. Noting this distinction, Sparapani said, “The Tauba Auerbach in the middle of the display is definitely the most immediately visually striking and will bring viewers in first, but I’m most excited about the Assemblage we have by Rosemary herself, the previous owner of the collection. It’s amazing to be able to see how she interacted herself with the form, as well as how completely the piece really stands its own amongst works by some very well-known artists.” A ready-made composition of found objects, the work consists of an otherwise empty cigar box containing an invitation to an Ellen von Unwerth exhibition depicting

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

two fashionable and bare-shouldered young women. The piece more than holds its own with the other works in the exhibit, and silently speaks volumes about those works, about the place of women in the world in general and the art world in particular, and about Furtak’s own professional practice. Sparapani continued on about her excitement in featuring Furtak in her exhibit, “It was also amazing to be able to do this kind of tribute to Rosemary, who really just sounds like she was the most incredible woman, through a form that she really helped bring to recognition, in an art library–her usual haunt, as well.” Sparapani highlights Furtak’s interest in works by women artists, under-represented and so often, like herself, practiced in hiding their accomplishments in plain sight. Collectively, the works in this exhibit remind us that we can aid and influence others and accomplish much good even in the context of such limitations. And the cultural conversations that determine how we engage the world and one another can be carried forward, even if spoken in low tones and in spaces we occupy only marginally, perhaps toward the eventual unraveling of these constraints. Most of the works on view in this show are destined after its closing to go into the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., an institution devoted to deploying and promoting art by women toward just this outcome. Sparapani closed with a testament to the female-dominated theme of “Misbehaving,”. As she explained, “I’m also excited for viewers to see an all-women exhibition. I think the artist’s book, as a newer form that has so much freedom, does lend itself well to female artists who may feel either overlooked or stifled—or both!—by more traditional and established forms, dominated canonically by male artists.”

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Page 15

Student work covers Palmer walls in annual exhibition Yifan Wang

An Actual Artist

Sam Pianello/The Miscellany News

his week, it’s probably impossible for anyone to walk past the Retreat without noticing the Palmer Gallery now filled by numerous black and white drawings. While these works might not be as fancy and polished as the works one often finds in galleries and exhibitions, they are nonetheless diverse, interesting and energetic. In fact, Vassar’s student artists from various studio art classes created these very works. Hosted by the Studio Art Department, the month-long exhibition features student art works from a number of studio art classes, including Drawing I and II, Painting I and II, Printmaking, Video Art, Photography, Computer Animation and Sculpture. Works from each class will be on display for around a week, starting from April 1 until May. Faculty Coordinator of the exhibition Laura Newman said that such a student exhibition is not only a way for art students to learn from each other’s works, but also provides an opportunity for students to get a sense of what an art class might consist of. “It’s exciting to see the accomplishments and insights of the students, and for them, an exhibition is a learning experience. They see their work in a context and learn from each other. We are fortunate to have a strong drawing program at Vassar and this annual salon style exhibition gives students who might be interested in taking the course an idea of what we do and how terrific the student work often is,” Newman commented. This annual student exhibition of the Studio Art Department can be dated back to more than 20 years ago. Associate Director of the Palmer Gallery Monica Church talked about the long history of this tradition: “I’ve been working here since 20 years ago and they were doing it at that time. I think it’s fair to say it’s a long-standing tradition.” Director of the Palmer Gallery Teresa Quinn

also talked about how she feels about the exhibition: “We look forward to studio art exhibitions each year, to view the work of VC students whose creative talent and innovation never cease to amaze us.” She also pointed out that the rotating schedule is important in that it ensures that every student has a chance to show their work. “The back-to-back schedule is ambitious, yet also very exciting, as each professor has an opportunity to show their class work. It’s also an important experience for the student artists, as this may be their first time exhibiting in a gallery space.” Quinn commented. In terms of work selection, Newman explained that all students make their own choices about which works they hope to share with the rest of the campus. “Generally students chose their work, often in consultation with their professor.” A student from one section of Drawing I this year, Siyue Fan ’18, shared her opinions of the exhibition as a participant in it. “In this exhibit, students can appreciate the works of others and their distinctive styles. It is such a good opportunity to learn from each other and be critical of our own work,” she said in an emailed statement. She also talked about the works she chose to show. “I select[ed] two of my most recent works: the head drawings. Both of them consist of five pieces of similar style. One of them is a very simple ink work, but I think I managed to capture my best friends’ interesting facial characteristics,” Fan wrote. Adjunct Assistant Professor in Art Patrick McElnea taught the class “Video Art” last semester. From May 13 to 26, 12 students from his class will be showing their final video project in the Palmer Gallery as well. “It’s probably going to be a loop of 12 videos on one single monitor or projector. These decisions are usually not made by me, but depend on the technology we have available,” said McElnea. The installation of the exhibition started this

Portraits from the Drawing I class make their debut in the Palmer Gallery of the College Center. These works are part of a larger rotating exhibition that serves to bring student work to the public. Tuesday. Church assisted Newman to put up and arrange the works. “Normally when I’m in the gallery, I’m like ‘I’m in charge.’ But this is a class, so I’m going to be following Laura’s lead. I want to make sure that I’m able to help her put the work up the way that she wants it, that’s best for the students or what’s in her mind,” Church explained. Assistant of the Studio Art Department Rachael Johnson ’15 was also helping out with the installation. She explained how the backstage preparations for an exhibition like this take place: “Everyone had their first and second choice of what’s going to be on. And we know that we’ll be able to get everyone’s first choice on, and we have a second tier of drawings. But this is the one show where we don’t pay as much attention

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

to how things look on the walls, whereas other shows we give certain pieces more space. Our goal for this is to show everyone’s work.” Ultimately, for the art students, the exhibition is not only a chance to show their works, but also a moment for them to look back at themselves. “I think the exhibition is a great idea because it’s a great chance for other Vassar students to see what we’ve been doing, and choosing paintings for the show is a nice way for us to look back and reflect on the art we’ve done so far this year,” said McFadden. Fan concluded, “I think the work can be seen differently by different people. I would love to know how people react to my drawings, but I will also keep my own most intimate feelings with the drawing.”

ARTS

Page 16

April 2, 2015

ASA screens Lamar’s album takes political look at rap Detroit film, Vincent Who? Charles Lyons-Burt Not Van Gogh

To Pimp a Butterfly Kendrick Lamar Dr. Dre

Connor McIlwain Connor Who?

n Wednesday, April 8, in Rocky 200, “Vincent Who?” will be screened. The film starts at 7:00 and its producer, Curtis Chin, will be in attendance. “Vincent Who?” is a 40-minute documentary released in 2008 about the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin (unrelated to the film’s producer). Chin was beaten to death with a baseball by two Detroit autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz. The two men mistakenly believed Chin to be Japanese and blamed him for job loss in the U.S. auto industry. “It’s because of you mother****** that we’re out of work,” they allegedly shouted. The conflict started at The Fancy Pants Club, where Chin, who was supposed to be married in two days, was celebrating his bachelor party. After an altercation that night, Chin was beaten so brutally that he fell into a coma and died four days later. That fateful night in 1982 triggered a wave of activism within the Asian-American community. Then just 1.5% of the population, this minority group had been the subject of both social and legal discrimination for years. The case galvanized support for the community. The documentary features coverage of the case as well as interviews with prominent activists and scholars from the Asian-American community. Journalist Lisa Ling, civil rights attorney Dale Minami and Executive Director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center Steward Kwoh are among those featured in the film. In the piece, they discuss the past, present and future of activism within this community. “Vincent Who?” received The National Association for Multicultural Education’s 2009 Multicultural Media Award. Curtis Chin, the film’s producer who will appear at Vassar, has written for channels including ABC, NBC, Fox and the Disney Channel. He served on Obama’s Asian American Leadership Council and co-founded the Asian American Writers Workshop and Asian Pacific Americas for Progress. He has been featured on several news outlets and received many awards for his work. Vassar’s Asian Students’ Alliance (ASA) is responsible for bringing the film and Chin to campus. Kevin Lee ’17, the group’s media/publicity chair, said, “ASA seeks to bring a diverse set of outside speakers to this campus. We’ve had spoken word artists, comedians, blogging activists, etc., and so we wanted to bring an Asian American perspective from the film industry next.” “Vincent Who?” stuck out to the group not only because of the crime itself but its vast implications. Lee explained, “The film deals with the senseless murder of an individual, and then pans out to how that one act affected Asian-American activism for years to come.” Co-President of ASA Michelle Zhao ’16 notes the importance of communicating the news and current events. “At Vassar, even though it’s such a small school, there’s a lack of knowledge about what’s going on around campus and most people don’t hear about things that they should know about,” she explained. This theme is true of the greater public as well. She elaborated, “News like Vincent Chin’s murder should have been exposed just like any other news out there to let everyone know that things like this are still happening in the 21st century and things like this could still happen on our own campus if we don’t watch out and learn from previous mistakes.” The resonance of this heinous crime still holds more than 30 years since it took place. The film’s themes are relevant to many other minority groups as well. “Vincent Who?” has been screened at over 300 colleges, libraries, companies and events. “The documentary deals with a lot of issues such as racism in the justice system as well stereotype and bias in everyday life. We felt it was important that people see this film, and we decided to bring it to Vassar,” elaborated Lee.

young rapper stirs in his impoverished hometown. People begin to take notice of him at an early age: Despite his humble beginnings and depressed surroundings, he makes his mark at local talent showcases and with amateurish but promising mixtapes, recorded with the help of those who believe in him. That number of supporters grows astronomically in the subsequent fifteen years, and star producers like Dr. Dre and Lil Wayne take the fledgling under their wing, encouraging his ambitions and eventually signing him to a major-label contract. But notoriety can’t squash the performer’s vitality, even as he fulfills a familiar narrative, overcoming the challenges of his youth and struggling with his inner demons. Lamar also tackles the broader issues that seem to dog his reputation: race, class ascension, controversy surrounding religion and politics. No, even when, eight albums in, fatigue and artistic complacency threatens, at the very least there’s still the hyper energy and impossible speed of delivery, the sheer skill, he had from the beginning. This rapper’s name is Marshall Mathers. This rapper’s name is Kendrick Lamar. Obviously, we don’t know what Kendrick’s eighth record will sound like, but it isn’t a stretch to say it would be about as self-reflexive and (perhaps a bit more genuinely) angry as Eminem’s 2013 release “The Marshall Mathers LP 2.” The former’s latest, third album, entitled “To Pimp a Butterfly,” finds him, despite being younger and thus halfway as far

along in his career as current-day Em, situating himself nicely in reference to that rapper’s best era right between 2000’s original “Marshall Mathers” LP and 2002’s excellent “The Eminem Show.” While their personal trajectories have indeed been very similar, Eminem’s influence on “Butterfly” is first and foremost a stylistic and thematic one. Kendrick has stated before that Mathers ranks in his top five favorite rappers, which makes sense as soon as the third song on the album, “King Kunta” kicks into gear. The beats couldn’t be more reminiscent of a Dr. Dre and Eminem cut with the hook’s minor-key guitar inflections and liquefied percussion that slips and slides with Kendrick’s rhymes in a playful but still tight and elastic manner. It’s an homage that nonetheless repurposes a major influence of the album’s author for his own very personal and highly political ends; the track is based on an 18th century slave narrative about Kunta Kinte, a man whose foot was dismembered in response to his attempted escape. Indeed, from the titles of the two interludes alone—which fall at exactly the 1/8 and 1/2 points in the album’s track listing—“For Free?” (“This…dick…ain’t…free,” Lamar intones) and “For Sale?”, it’s clear “To Pimp a Butterfly” is concerned with the cost of living in the modern world and the price global citizens pay, to themselves and one another, in the new millennium. It’s an explicitly racial album, one very much rooted and wrestling with Kendrick’s place in his old community in Compton, Calif., from which departure he’s been much publicized as feeling guilty about leaving, a feeling that manifests in many of his new record’s lyrics. But as much as Kendrick roots “Butterfly”’s racial content in his own personal experiences (which were the subject of the more

clearly narrativized predecessor, 2012’s “good kid, m.A.A.d city”), the new work’s scope is broader, emboldened, like D’Angelo’s similar and superior early-December statement “Black Messiah,” by the dubiously-justified slaughter of black adults that reached a national awareness with the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner last year. These feelings of persecution and senselessness come through in Kendrick’s fury and delivery, as well as directly confronting the poison of violence in the lyrical content of songs like the second single, “The Blacker the Berry,” “Complexion (A Zulu Love),” and the devastating “Alright,” whose chorus is punctuated by an insistent use of the n-word that invests a communal, fierce yet wounded meaning in the word’s usage. The rapper’s verbal abilities remains as honed and impressive as the skill-set of any contemporary, rivaling, yes, Eminem, whose breathless spitting reached an apex of almost self-parody on 2013’s “Rap God.” Admittedly, it would seem strange that the closest likeness drawn to an album this forcibly, powerfully about race and what it means to be black is to the most popular white hiphop artist, and Lamar and Mathers diverge, certainly, in a number of ways. “Butterfly”’s roots in free-form and more abstract genres like jazz bear no proximity to the Detroit-based 8-miler, and Lamar is a far less crass and absurdly, in some ways self-critically jingoistic in his content than Em. But let’s not forget “White America” or “Square Dance,” boldly political songs that grappled with racial and pressingly contemporary issues with a forthrightness badly needed in the Bush era. Ultimately, these are two uncomfortably intimate rappers who, even if it can be embarrassing or when prodigiousness verges on the precocious, amaze in their insight and in the colorful, broken, deeply human displays of their most vulnerable selves.

‘Whiplash’ tells tale of educational woes Sieu Nguyen Groupie

Whiplash Damien Chazelle Blumhouse Productions

espite acknowledging that “Birdman”’s triumph at this year’s Academy Awards was well-deserved, my personal pick was and is still “Whiplash,” directed by Damien Chazelle. Perhaps I adore this film since its producer is Jason Blum, a Vassar alumnus who visited to present this masterpiece at his own alma mater last October. Perhaps my burning passion for music helps me empathize with Andrew Neiman’s struggles and desires. Putting aside all the “perhaps,” describing “Whiplash” as an excellent artwork is far from an overstatement. “Whiplash”’s protagonist is Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), a first-year student at the Shaffer Conservatory who is obsessed with becoming a great artist. Seeing his potential in jazz music, conductor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) invites Andrew to join his studio band as an alternate drummer. Contrary to Andrew’s expectations, Fletcher is extremely abusive to his students, using future success as an excuse for his troubling ethics. Owing to his hard work and a mysterious incident, Andrew is eventually promoted to become the core drummer of the band. Before an important jazz competition, Andrew gets into an accident and enters the stage with bloody hands. He fails to finish the assigned piece, “Caravan,” resulting in his dismissal from the band. Frustrated, Andrew attacks Fletcher in front of the audience. He is later expelled from school, but is able to testify against the abusive conductor, who is eventually fired as well. Nonetheless, Andrew’s passion for music motivates him to join Fletcher’s independent band afterwards, and drama rises again. What makes “Whiplash” appealing at first is its contemporariness, found in the major theme of education. The film depicts a battle between two pedagogical ideologies: Should we be brutal and

push students to the limits, so that they can overcome all obstacles to achieve greatness, or should we be tender in the process, using softness and encouragement to generate motivation? In other words, is it the result—the destination–or the process—the journey–that is privileged; is it Andrew’s desire to make a name for himself, or his physical and psychological endurance that should be prioritized? Although psychologists have concluded that the latter is a more effective educational strategy, it cannot be denied that many of the world’s most renowned talents came from martyrdom. Being insulted and punished can transform itself into immense motivation, helping an individual transgress their own boundaries to become Someone. What is wonderful about “Whiplash” is that the film navigates skillfully along a delicate borderline between the two ideals, but never stumbles. It showcases both sides without giving a definite conclusion. It bends to a particular one at times; it tumbles at times; the tension is seemingly released at times; but a stable state is never achieved. “Whiplash” constructs a fluid spectrum of emotions. On one extreme of the spectrum is Fletcher, who is constantly pushing and chastising, but has a justifiable reason for his act. In the middle of this spectrum is Andrew, who has to make a decision every now and then, struggling to balance between his true self and the image of a perfect other self. The other end of the spectrum transgresses the silver screen, locating itself in each audience’s own educational ideal. That being said, judging Fletcher’s behavior depends wholly on the viewers, based on their own willingness to adopt this teaching style. If you believe that all things in life happen for a reason, you might understand Fletcher’s methodology. In the end of the film, Andrew succeeds in giving an impressive performance of “Caravan,” taking absolute control of the band from the conductor. The audience is speechless, undoubtedly struck. This can be considered Andrew’s first step in becoming a star–an icon of greatness that he has been dreaming of. However, if he had quit Fletcher’s band in the first place, if he had stayed content with a comfortable life, if he had refused to collaborate with Fletcher after the scandal, if he

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

had never practiced “Caravan” for the prior jazz competition, would he be able to nail the piece that day? Everything is built up from the start, as bricks in constructing a house. Fletcher might be a terrible person, a brutal instructor, but there are conspicuous remnants that he left and we can see on present-day Andrew. The same principle can apply to daily life—if you are willing to go through much pain—we might have a chance to earn what you deserve. This rather problematic idea must have disturbed and haunted many people who are working in the educational realm. At the end of the day, applying this tactic or not, is a personal choice. Apart from the content, the aesthetic of “Whiplash” is also very impressive. I would describe its screening not as an ordinary film screening, but a real viewing experience. J.K. Simmons’ acting is incredible. Imagining myself as another member of the band, I feel disturbed and intimidated by his aggression. A large number of close-ups of his face, showing his wrinkles, a signifier for experiences, and the sharpness in his eyes, representing strictness and determination, incite audience connectivity. The editing—my vocabulary at this point becomes powerless—is majestic and spectacular. There is a tight relationship between visual cuts and the music rhythm, which is essential to a musical film. I feel absorbed into Andrews’ drumming, as though there were an imaginary world whose temporal existence lies neatly between his two beats, the well-crafted precision that stems survival. His whole performance then becomes a vulnerable series of labyrinths and escapes–a meta-embodiment of his own difficulties. Slices of life, thin as they are, are cut out skillfully by the hand of the artist. The sound and the editing touch every pulse of my senses. This is not an easy job–not many films can do what Whiplash has mastered–the art of subtlety. Beautiful things can be found anywhere–those are external impacts. Given its contemporary narrative, visceral quality, fantastic editing and sound mixing, “Whiplash,” without doubt, is one of the best films I have seen recently. I’m looking forward to another impressive artwork from Jason Blum, the pride of Vassar, my inspiration.

ARTS

April 2, 2015

Page 17

New horror flick harkens back to classics Reid Antin

Horror Buff

It Follows David Robert Mitchell Animal Kingdom

n the 1970s and 80s, the horror genre was at its peak. The era had everything, from genuinely great classics like “Halloween” and “The Shining” to wonderfully so-badit’s-good schlock like “Sleepaway Camp” and “Cannibal Holocaust.” They were scary, they were sleazy, but above all, they were just stimulating examples of filmmaking. Nowadays, the horror genre is comprised of either heavily watered-down remakes of said films, or soulless, scare-less derivations thereof. That’s why the recent release of “It Follows” is so incredibly refreshing. Unlike most new entries of the genre, it is a genuinely good piece of filmmaking that, while admittedly more generally creepy than bone-chillingly scary (though other cinephiles have said that it is nothing less than such), is compelling from start to finish, and keeps its energy up long after others have run out of steam. The film has been getting stellar reviews, and I believe it is poised to become a wordof-mouth hit. The Weinsteins certainly believe it will be. They originally were going to give the film a token release on a few select screens and then dump it on Video-On-Demand. But in light of the film’s current 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, they canceled the VOD release, and instead expanded it to 1,200 screens. Last weekend’s haul of 4 million (off of a 2 million dollar budget, mind you) might not indicate such a bona fide hit, with some even calling it a flop in comparison to recent Blumhouse horror openings. But I predict that number will continue to grow as the film lingers on for the next few weeks. It was never going to be a number one box office draw, as the film is comprised of completely unknown amateurs, and only has its high-con-

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cept to ride on. But it is precisely the quality this film contains, and the fact that audiences love a great horror film when they see one, that will give “It Follows” a longer shelf-life than most— one that will last years on Netflix. However, only you, the audience, can make that a reality, and by doing so, you will be supporting the important cause that is the need for more original, bold cinema such as this. You should probably go into the film as

“I believe it is poised to become a word-ofmouth hit.” blind to the plot as you can, but the general premise involves a fictional STD which causes one to be followed by something that can only be described as an “It.” It is something that can take the form of anybody at any time. It is something that will stop at nothing to kill you, unless of course you’re able to pass the STD on to the next person (and even then, if It kills the next person, It will come back to try to kill you). Sure, It is slow, and sure, you can stay far enough ahead of It for a while—but eventually, It will catch up with you. Like many of the best horror entries, such as how Romero’s “Dead” films were metaphors for the domestic climate in the Vietnam era, the film works best as an allegory. “It Follows” is a terrific depiction of adolescence, the anxiety of STDs, the fear of losing one’s virginity and, most of all, how scary sex (something we all know and love) can actually be in our casual, Tinder-ized world. As intelligent as that all may sound, I will say that if you don’t like horror films, there’s really not much I can say about “It Follows” that will convince you otherwise to go, as the visual trappings are most definitely rooted in its genre, and proudly so. But just know that, referring to when

Quentin Tarantino likened watching and appreciating B-movies as being able to drink a lot of milk to appreciate the cream, this film is most certainly cream. Most of all—the music. Wow! The Carpenter-esque synth soundtrack is nothing short of genius, and not just because I personally have a huge penchant for the synthesizer. It recalls all the great horror soundtracks of the ‘80s, and grounds the images of suburbia and menace in a familiar sleaziness that coats the screen in a grime and grease that can only be described as magical. It must be heard, both in its filmic context and on its own, to be kvelled over. I knew that this film had won me over when I heard a twinkly synth underlying an Argento-esque image of a girl staring at an ant crawling down her arm. It might seem like an odd, throwaway moment, but one whose beautiful origins lie in the more surrealistic aspects of the genre. Sure, “It Follows” has its problems. The acting and dialogue are, for better or for worse, amateurish, and indeed they work as both a benefit and a detriment to the experience on the whole. The digital cinematography, perhaps just inherently as a medium, is far too clean for this kind of film that has its roots in scratched film prints and muddy, shadowy darks. Also, the film’s habit of mixing old technology so blatantly with new technology for its own sake can grow a bit eye-rollingly distracting when its initial sheen of coolness wears off. But when a film grips its audience from start to finish as it does here—right from the first beautiful, spinning long take, to its deliciously ambiguous ending—all such flaws can easily be forgiven. For it has a spark and a spunk that is the mark of a hungry filmmaker, and I highly look forward to what else director David Robert Mitchell has up his sleeve. The palpable fear involved, and the earnest performances on display, reminded me of Sam Raimi’s original 1983 “The Evil Dead,” also made on a similar micro-budget. And like that film, I have a feeling this will be remembered 30 years from now as an outstanding example of its genre.

A weekly space highlighting the creative pursuits of student-artists

Excuse me, What book did you secretly lie about reading?

“50 Shades of Grey.” — Jonah Parker ’18

“The Bible.” — Sylvia Haigh ’16

“Harry Potter.” — Hallie Ayres ’18

submit to misc@vassar.edu

“Great Expectations.” — Liza Ayres ’18

“Green Eggs and Ham.” — Gabrielle Miranda ’18

This was my first all-digital drawing, which I did sometime last spring (2014). It was one of my first attempts at getting familiar with my drawing tablet, which is probably why I chose such a tense and forward-facing pose. At the time, I wanted to work on filling the whole page with workable color, as opposed to the over-wrought and cautious lines I had been making in previous work. I was also really into royal blue (and probably Lana del Rey). Technically, this drawing is lacking, but I often find myself revisiting it to remember a time when I took a step out of my comfort zone. I think I’ve also grown fond of her unapologetic stare. Digital drawing is frequently criticized for appearing flawless and intentionally obscuring the artist’s struggle, creating an impenetrable distance between the viewer and the artist. But really, digital work is ubiquitous these days and it shares challenges with classical drawing and painting and has its own unique obstacles. -Madison Gilmore ’15

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

“The Torah” —Lily Horner ’18

Sam Pianello, Photo Editor Charles Lyons, Guest Reporter

SPORTS

Page 18

April 2, 2015

Watch out, Roellke: students favorites in annual game Winnie Yeates Soarin’, Flyin’

strategy is to let our youth prevail. We’re stronger and faster than them, so it shouldn’t be too hard. I will say, however, that I played with a few faculty members earlier this week and was surprised by the IQ and fundamentals a few of their players possess. I hope that muscle memory works out for them!” On the “Old School” side of things, six-year veteran and creator of the event, Dean Christopher Roellke will be donning the number 50 jersey in honor of his upcoming 50th birthday. He has two goals for the game: “[That] everyone that plays and comes to the game has fun and that no one gets hurt! Vegas has the students as 18 point favorites this year and we love being the underdogs. Our problem on the Old School team is that the students seem to come back every season at the same age, while many of us transition to the geriatric stage of our lives.”

Sam Pianello/The Miscellany News

here is a unique event—or new-founded Vassar tradition as some might call it— that is fast approaching. On April 1, the annual Student-Faculty basketball game is scheduled to take place at Walker Field House. This will be the game’s sixth year, and while the custom is still relatively new, it has been welcomed by the Vassar community. The event is unlike anything else at Vassar. Students from all disciplines, as well as faculty members that are not just professors, are encouraged to participate. Faculty members from the Sociology Department and Safety and Security are involved, and it is healthy for students to see professors and faculty members outside of their typical roles and vice versa. The students have prevailed in three out of the five games with the faculty members winning in 2010 and 2013. The scores in past games have been close, usually with the victors winning by a handful of points. There are 34 players on the “Old School” (faculty) team, and 25 players on the “New School” (student) team. Coach of the Student team and a first-year participant in the game, Colleen O’Connell ’16 said, “I have never played in the Student-Faculty basketball game, but I’ve attended every one since I’ve been a student at Vassar. I love watching basketball in general, but watching my friends and professors compete in a fun and intense atmosphere is always a great experience. I think it promotes a lot of school spirit and brings the campus together.” O’Connell said of her team, “We have a solid group and I am confident in everyone’s play, even after watching some people just play once. We bring a ton of energy to the floor, which will be awesome to watch. Let’s just say that I have the opposing team pretty well scouted from my pickup experiences and my time as a varsity athlete on the women’s team. I haven’t lost a one-on-one game to Coach Brown (the women’s head coach) yet, and I don’t plan on

losing this game to her either.” Also on the Student team, Osamagbe Ogbeide ’15, a veteran Student-Faculty gamer who has played in the game in all of the four years that he has attended Vassar, is just looking forward to playing some good basketball on a real basketball court. He says, “Ever since I first decided to retire my rowing spandex freshman year, I’ve been a part of both the annual student-faculty game and Vassar’s pick-up basketball culture. Similar to a lot of kids who I play pick up with at Vassar, I never had the chance to play organized team basketball. Pick-up is great, don’t get me wrong, I love the cardio, but they never let us play on the real courts, so I’m honestly just excited to run around like a real basketball player!” Ogbeide is not hesitant to state what he thinks the outcome of this year’s game will be, “The student team is stacked. Our

The Old School jersey has sat menacingly over the Retreat for weeks in the run up to the annual student-faculty basketball game. Both parties are loudly confident, but which side is full of hot air?

On the event as a whole, Roellke said, “this is precisely why the game is planned—to bring a wide range of students, employees and community members together over something flatout fun.” He says further of the game, “There is a little known rule in the original rules that all students must stay 15 feet away from the Dean of the College at all times. Regretfully, this rule has never been followed. I worry about all the players on the student team!” Another faculty member and veteran gamer participating in the game this year is Tyrone Simpson of the English Department. When asked what encourages his consistent participation in the game each year, Simpson said, “an acute and untreatable form of masochism.” He said to beware of his “Old School” team because “Professor Molly McGlennen and Coach Candice have mean jumpshots!” The predicted outcome of the this year’s game certainly seems to be in favor of the students. O’Connell said, “I may be biased here— but I think that the students will definitely win this year’s game. We have a lot of talent on our squad, and everyone brings something different to the table. That being said, I think our advantage lies in utilizing our youthfulness and athleticism. Running the floor and scoring easy transition buckets will be one of our main offensive strategies. Defensively, we are looking to use our athleticism to create steals and turnovers.” Ogbeide said, “I really like this event because it is a time for all of Vassar to come together for a lighthearted rivalry. Yes, it’s our brilliant youth versus their grey hair– but on a deeper level I think, just given how tense our campus climate has been of late, the student faculty game provides Vassar a small window of bliss to bridge our differences in the moment. This is not to say we should use this game as a means to forget our student body’s ongoing push for social change on campus, but we can all appreciate the humor in our teachers wearing headbands, long ‘dad’ socks and basketball sneakers from the 80s.”

From absurd to mundane, rituals help contain nerves Amreen Bhasin

Sticks to the Status Quo

courtesy of Vassar Athletics

or athletes competing at any level of their sport, many different factors contribute to a victory or a loss. There are the countless hours of physical training and hard work. There is perseverance and dedication along with natural talent. But one of the biggest components that many people often ignore is the impact of mindset or the “mental game” on the athlete. An important method for many Vassar College athletes for controlling and boosting their mental game is the development of pre-game habits and rituals. By the time student athletes at Vassar start their freshman year, they’ve generally been involved with their sport for many years. They’ve been on many teams and competed at different levels. Throughout their time with their respective sports, these athletes have come to develop their own habits and rituals before competition to help get them in the right mindset to win. Sophomore swimmer Julia Cunningham (Full disclosure: Julia Cunningham is the Assistant Features Editor for The Miscellany News), who just competed at the NCAA National Championships over spring break, outlined some of her own personal habits during competition. “I tend to get superstitious at meets. I like everything to be the same. I usually eat oatmeal every morning before I race. I try to wear the same clothes throughout the entire meet (even it if its a four day meet.). I don’t shower. If I do well after listening to a specific song on my iPod, I’ll listen to that song again before any race. Before my races, to get out of my head, I [also] like to go around and wish everyone in the lanes next to me good luck. For every meet in general, I like to wear the same goggles the entire meet, and, for multiple day events, I never shower. I’ve been doing that since high school.” Just like Cunningham, many highly successful athletes, even at the pro-level, have come to develop strict pre-game rituals. Wayne Gretzky, a Hall-of-Fame forward who played in the NHL, is one such example. Gretzky, known as “The Great One” for his prolific hockey career, was well known for his own rituals and superstitions. Some were about luck. He refused to ever get his

hair cut while on the road because he lost once after doing so. But many were specific, competition rituals. He would always take his first shot during warm-ups to the extreme right of the goal. In between warm-up and opening face-off, he’d return to his locker room, drink a Diet Coke, a glass of ice water, a Gatorade and another Diet Coke. While many individual athletes do have rituals, for others, pre-game rituals and habits are not a part of their pre-game preparation. Sophomore field hockey player Lauren Shumate explained in an emailed statement as well that she doesn’t necessarily have pre-game habits or rituals. “I [always] just put my hair in a pony tail with a headband [before games]. But many other players like to wear braids. It’s not a conscious decision of mine to wear or do the same things before a game. I just do what I think will best prepare myself for the game and what I will be most comfortable in.” Another way rituals and habits show up here at Vassar College is within teams as a whole before games. While Shumate explained that she didn’t have her own conscious rituals, her team had pregame habits that she was a part of and that they replicated before each game. “A lot of the players like to do their own thing individually, which usually consists of listening to music. After our individual pre-games, we come together in the locker room and play pump up music on the speakers. We like to dance while we get dressed. When we are all ready our coach comes in to give his pump up speech and show us a motivational video. We then come together, bang our sticks on the locker to get riled up and then come together for a cheer. We all walk out in two uniform lines to the field. “ For senior field hockey captain and women’s lacrosse player Enya Cunningham, pre-game rituals can take any form. “A lot of teammates use hair as a ritual, I think. Others have more to do with activities in the training room—heating, getting wrapped/taped—I think these can be as much a ritual as physically beneficial.” Another place habits and rituals come into play during competition is when specific events occur or an athlete needs to perform a specific skill they don’t necessarily perform all the time. Julia Cunningham explained that the women’s

Sophomore Julia Cunningham takes off as teammates watch and prepare for their meets. The swim team, like all sports teams, have their own unique set of pre-game rituals, setting their minds at ease. swim team has a different pre-game ritual in which she participates before relays as opposed to individual races. “To get pumped up for relays, we always huddle behind the blocks and give each other motivational speeches.” For senior Enya Cunningham, the specific skill she brought up was taking a penalty stroke in field hockey, an event that occurs just a few times each season. “Before taking a stroke in field hockey, I always set my body up the same way, step back, reach out to the ball, look at the corner that I’m not shooting and then count two seconds after the referee blows the whistle to take my shot.” Despite the fact that many rituals or habits seem odd or unnecessary before competition, Shumate finds that they have positive applications. “I think pre-game rituals/habits are good to have because repeating a habit over and over again gets you into the mindset every time you complete those habits. Some superstitions about habits allow players to gain more confidence.”

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Enya Cunningham agreed with her teammate and felt that rituals helped her and teammates focus and prepare for games. “I like the repetition because it focuses me. If you [repeat] certain activities for days when you know you need to reach a difference level of focus and energy than for a regular practice day, I think rituals like doing a specific hair-do can really help.” For Julia Cunningham, rituals are about providing a different mindset. “There’s just a general mindset that I try to get into at meets that I don’t really need during practice.” What Julia is talking about is the need for a different sort of mental game in competitions not needed in practice. While practicing and competing do require the same physical skills and components, their mental components are different. Habits and rituals are just some ways successful athletes at Vassar and everywhere have come up with to help warm-up for the necessary mental game needed for competition.

SPORTS

April 2, 2015

Rugby knows no bounds, bridges cultural gaps Alex Voynow

Head is in the Game

he Vassar rugby team has a tradition that since the 90s has instilled campus-wide jealousy and team-wide pride. Rugby is an international game, born in England but popular in South Africa, Fiji, Australia, Barbados and dozens of other geographically-disparate places. This allows us to jettison ourselves over the United States’ border and spend spring break in any number of foreign places, justified through our athletic connection. We flounder and ogle like any other group of American tourists, but we’re also lent a measure of legitimacy, a shared language between a group of us and a group of locals. This spring break, we went to Budapest, Hungary and, yes, it was awesome. The tour was organized under the direction of senior Sophia Rutkin, who had spent her junior fall semester there, forging “deep ties” to the city and its people. Rugby is only fledgling there, generated from the city’s ex-pat community. We played the aptly-named Budapest Exiles, about half of whom were Hungarians and the other half the team’s namesake. In the tour’s main contest, the Vassar women’s team came out victorious. The men’s team experienced a dissimilar fate, losing by 12 points. Victory’s pride and losing’s shame aside, Vassar rugby established another connection abroad, adding to our increasingly comprehensive list: recent years’ tours include Trinidad and Tobago, Spain, Barbados, Ireland and England. This indeed happened, and is indeed a cool and longstanding tradition for a Vassar group, but why does this matter? How are these excursions justified? It begins with the understanding that sports are more than just games. As seen during the World Cup, sports take on intense geopolitical

significance. During the Superbowl, we see football as the true center of American capitalism. Each sport has its own political story, its own cultural significance, and rugby is no exception. It’s a game unlike any other, a unique combination of strategy, violence, specialization and collectivity. It’s remarkable that most people seeing a game for the first time will remark “it’s like there aren’t any rules!” That observation is representative of another uniqueness of the game: It’s a practice of order among perceived chaos. We know what the rules are, but we don’t see the need to fashion a game that appears highly-ordered and aesthetically-pleasing. Why decrease entropy when we don’t need to? To the critics, a resoundingly pertinent and misattributed quote on the game tells you, “The women and men who play on that rugby field are more alive than too many of us will ever be. The foolish emptiness we think we perceive in their existence is only our own.” When an American university rugby team plays a club team in another country, a lot happens. Both sets of players know that what I said in the previous two paragraphs is true; it is the subtext of our interactions, of our contests and our post-game socials. It is in these moments where rugby’s profound meaningfulness transcends difference. So in Budapest, some beautiful things happened. We lived among the tourist world of Budapest’s sights, restaurants, bars and clubs, and we certainly didn’t shy away from that part of the city. But where typical tourism tends to separate, to accentuate difference and create in this case a further gap between America and Central Europe, our tour did something else. We saw, in the words of Vassar rugby senior Sophia Rutkin, how “cultural bridges can be built and strengthened through common interest.”

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Page 19

Salary cap spike to shift balance of power in NBA Sam Hammer Bops to the Top

or those who do not know, most professional sports leagues utilize a salary cap system that restricts the size of each team’s payroll to fall within a certain threshold. Some sports leagues, such as the MLB, have a very soft salary cap system. There is a luxury tax limit which is currently $189 million. This system of a soft salary cap creates a disparity among small market teams and large market teams, such as the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees, respectively. Since 2001, only one MLB team has won the World Series with a payroll under $100 million. This season, the Los Angeles Dodgers have the highest payroll in the MLB at over $273 million, a figure that puts them about $84 million over the luxury tax. Thus, on top of that massive payroll, the Dodgers must also pay this tax. Yet, the penalties in baseball are not severe enough for a rich team like the Dodgers to care about paying so much money in order to compete for World Series titles by attracting the highest paid free agents. By comparison, the Miami Marlin’s payroll is about $61 million. The salary cap in basketball is much stricter, as teams who spend above the limit can face harsh penalties. The Brooklyn Nets paid over $90 million in luxury tax last season due to their high team salary along with the fact that they have spent above the salary cap for multiple years in a row and must face repeater violations. For the current 2014-15 NBA season, the team salary cap $66.3 million. When the new TV deal comes into effect in 2016, the salary cap (which is calculated as a percentage of league revenue) is projected to jump to almost $90 million. The league is concerned with the sudden leap and has proposed policies that would allow the cap increase to be smoothed out over several years. The NBA players union

has rejected this proposal since they know that team owners will receive the increased TV revenue, and the players want to share the increase in wealth. If the cap actually does increase by over $20 million, there will be several important implications for teams and players. Players who are approaching the ends of their contracts will be hesitant to sign long-term deals since they know that if they can just wait until 2016, they can receive much more money. It is likely that star players who deserve max contracts will become free agents this summer will sign one year deals now in order to make millions more in 2016. Max contracts for individual players in the NBA function as a percentage of the team cap, so when the cap increases drastically the maximum salary an individual player can receive increases as well. LeBron James has been one of the first stars to sign a contract in preparation for the cap increase. Last summer, he signed a two-year contract with the Cavaliers. James does not intend to leave in two years, he simply wants to hold off on a long-term maximum contract until 2016. The rising cap also has implications for players who are good, but are not “max guys.” Players such as Brandon Knight or Enes Kanter will likely get overpaid by teams this summer. Although the contracts these players sign will look bad in the present, once the cap goes up their high salaries will have less of an impact on their teams’ salary caps. In the summer of 2016, even the teams who are currently strapped for cash will be able to sign one or more max players. With all of the players who are due to become free agents that summer, it is certainly going to be a crazy period for free agent signing, and could change the power landscape of the league.

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SPORTS

Page 20

April 2, 2015

One team, one goal: Liberty League Championship or bust Ashley Hoyle

Secretly Pops and Locks

courtesy of Vassar Athletics

opes are high for the Vassar Baseball team this 2015 season. Last year the baseball team saw its best winning record, finishing the 2014 season with a 19-14 spread. Coming off their second year of participating in the Liberty League Tournament, pre-season prognostic polls predict the Brewers will find success again this year. The team was picked for the fourth slot in the league, totaling 50 points, only six points behind the projected winners from the University of Rochester. In addition to the impressive point total, the Brewers also had one first-place vote cast in their favor. Union College took the second slot with 55 points, with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute coming in third at 51 points. The preseason poll a year ago had the same result, also putting the Brewers in fourth. The team has a good chance of building on their success, as four All-Liberty League firstteam performers are returning: sophomore pitchers Adam Erkis from Villanova, Pa. and Trent Berg from Milton, Mass., and juniors Nick Johnson from San Francisco, Calif. and Brooks English from Milton, Mass. In 2014, nine players actually were on the All-Liberty team, and players from Vassar were named all-conference Player of the Year and Pitcher of the Year. Both accolades were a first for the Brewers - signifying a lot of success to come. Four seniors were bid goodbye at the close of last season, but some young talent has certainly stepped up to take their pace. Ten starters will return this 2015 season with coach Jon Martin entering his 10th year. So far the Brewers have an overall record of 1-5. Their only games have been at the Russmatt Central Florida Invitational on their Spring break trip down south. The team lost to Hope College 18-4 and Clarkson University four times, 1-5, 2-5, 5-6, and 4-10. The Brewers came out on top against Southern Vermont

College, taking it to 10 innings and pulling out a 13-9 victory. There is diversity in age with Coach Martin’s picks for captains, as seniors Kyle Casey from San Diego, Calif., Dan McCormack from Nashua, N.H. and Jason Garfinkel from Encino, Calif., as well as English, will all serve this season. All four captains were All-Liberty League team members last year and will provide equally important physical performances this year, as well as offering their vocal leadership to help the Brewers in 2015. The team is focused on one goal. Said Coach Jon Martin, “Our main goal during the regular season is pretty much the same every year: Get back to the Liberty League Tournament. Period.” English concurred, saying, “My goal for the season is to make the Liberty League Championship for the third year in a row.” And as the preseason poll has it, the Brewers will likely achieve this end. As far as Martin is concerned, digging and working hard is what will ultimately get VC baseball where it wants to go. “We are working hard everyday to get back there. The team understands that hard work and dedication will pay off in the end. We are mentally tough and welcome a challenge.” “Our strength is our unity as a whole and our diversity as a team. This is a very tight-knit clubhouse and we have a good time playing the game we love. It’s a fun team and at the same time a challenging team to manage, mainly because we have so many guys that can play different positions. Trying to find the right combination involves taking some risks early in the season. We are blessed with a few utility players, so there are several options and all of them are strong ones,” said Martin. Many players are multi-talented and well-versed in different positions, which many have identified as one of the Brewers’ most important strengths with this roster. “Our biggest strength is our offense. We

Sophomore pitcher Robert Winkelmann throws some heat. Winkelmann is part of the Brewers’ thinly manned pitching staff, and will have to work twice as hard in the four game weekends this season. have one of the best lineups in the liberty league and have consistently shown the ability to hit. Our biggest weakness is pitching depth, but we are working hard to develop new arms,” said English. As far as weaknesses for the 2015 squad, Martin said, “Our biggest obstacle up to this point is the weather and getting in a routine. It’s been a tough winter and we need to be outside on a field to get the most out of workouts, especially at this point in the season.” The weather has not been very forgiving for spring sports, and snow has impacted the baseball schedule so far. The Liberty League doubleheader set to be held in Saratoga Springs against Skidmore College and RPI, as well as the season openers against New Paltz and Plymouth State Univer-

sity, were canceled due to snow. English sees a weakness in depth, particularly where pitching is concerned. He said, “Playing four games a weekend, it is tough to have enough arms for the last game.” As their season gets to a slow start, Martin firmly believes that all of their opponents will be formidable. “Any Liberty League opponents are always the toughest. Playing a four-game series is always tough, no matter who you are playing” he said. Added English, “Our toughest matchup will likely be union, Rochester, RPI and Clarkson.” Obstacles aside, there is a lot of excitement buzzing around the Brewer locker room. English is most looking forward to “competing for a league championship.”

Mixed bag for Brewers on tour from California to Budapest Erik Quinlet and Ripster the Hipster

ing to make a statement at Whitman College, and beat them quite handily with a 6-3 score line. Their victory was short lived, however, as they traveled to Amherst College on Friday, March 20. The hosts dispatched the Brewers winning 1-8. Traveling to Chapman University on Saturday, March 21, the women ended their West Coast tour with a convincing 7-2 victory. The team will play on Friday, April 3 at home against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

All in this Together

Men’s Lacrosse

Women’s Lacrosse

The women kicked off their season on Wednesday, March 11 against Fairleigh Dickinson University–Florham Campus, losing to the visitors 6-12. The women traveled to Bradenton, Fla. for the Spring Fling Lacrosse Tournament. They opened the tournament well on Sunday March 15, beating Keene State 16-10. They couldn’t keep the momentum up, unfortunately, and lost the following game to Stevenson University 7-9 on Tuesday, March 17. However, they ended the tournament in the green, posting a convincing victory against Western Connecticut State on Wednesday, March 18, breezing past the competition 20-12. The women returned to Vassar for their first two Liberty League games of the season. The Brewers hosted Union College on Friday, March 27, losing to the visitors in a close game that ended 9-11

Men’s Rugby

courtesy of Vassar Athletics

The Brewers have been busy the past couple of weeks. On Wednesday, March 4, the Brewers hosted Montclair State University in a demanding game that saw them lose focus and fall 123. After the away match against Swarthmore was postponed, the Brewers hosted Western Connecticut State on Thursday, March 12 in an intense game that went down to the final minute. The Brewers took the day with an 8-9 victory. Over spring break, the men traveled to Colorado Springs for a couple of matchups against Colorado College and Adams State University. They lost to Colorado College on Sunday, March 15, 9-15, but came back swinging against Adams, beating the host 17-12. The men returned for their first Liberty League game against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at home on Saturday, March 21. The Brewers lost 8-9. On Wednesday, March 25 the Brewers hosted Mount Saint Mary College, beating them 1712. The Brewers traveled to Skidmore on Saturday, March 27 and lost to the hosts 5-12. The Brewers will be traveling to Bard on Wednesday, April 1 for their third Liberty League game.

The men’s rugby team wins a scrum in their game against the Budapest Exiles on their spring break tour. The men and women’s teams added Hungary to the list of countries the teams have visited. in overtime. The Brewers then hosted William Smith University the very next day, beating them 9-8. The women will play Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute away on Friday, April 3. Men’s Tennis

The men’s team traveled to Cambridge, Mass. on Friday, March 6 to play Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Brewers lost 3-6 to the hosts. The following day Saturday, March 7 the men traveled to Babson College, once again posting a loss of 1-8. Over spring break, the team traveled to California to play some West Coast Division III competitors. Their first matchup was against nationally-ranked Chapman University. The team was left with their heads in their hands after losing 1-8 to the hosts on Monday, March 16. They fared better against California Lutheran University on Tuesday, March 17, losing 3-6. They then traveled to Whittier College on Wednesday, March 18. Ob-

viously tired of losing, the Brewers rallied and won 7-2, breaking a four-game losing streak. After a couple of days of rest, the Brewers then battled out their last tour game against George Fox University on Saturday, March 21, obtaining a 6-3 victory. The men will play New York University away on Saturday, April 11. Women’s Tennis

The women opened up their season against Liberty League competitors Swarthmore College on Saturday, March 7 at Swarthmore. The women lost the matchup 3-6. The women also traveled to California, opening up their tour against University of La Verne on Monday, March 16, beating the hosts in a string-breaking match ending at 5-4. The following day, Tuesday, March 17, the team traveled to Pomona-Pitzer. Pomona made short work of the Brewers, winning 1-8. With a day of rest, the women came out Thursday, March 18, look-

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The Brewers traveled to Budapest, Hungary over spring break to play the Budapest Exiles, a team mostly made up of British, Irish and French ex-pats. The results were slightly mixed. The Brewers took the field late on Thursday, March 19 under floodlights to play the Exiles in sevens. After an exciting fourteen minutes, which saw the Exiles come back from a three tie deficit, the game ended in a tie. On Saturday, March 21, both teams were looking to break the stalemate. It was a highly-contested first half, which saw only one try find its way over the score line for the hosts, but the Brewers lost their control in the second half and the Exiles secured victory 31-19. The Brewers will be back at it on Saturday, April 4 against New Paltz on the Farm. Women’s Rugby

The Brewer women also traveled to Budapest to play the Exiles. They took part in the Sevens games on Thursday, March 19, faring better than the men, winning their game 5-2 against an experienced team of British, Irish and French players. The women played first on Saturday, March 21, taking to the field with a nice mix of experienced and rookie players. While Vassar did concede the first try, they quickly got it back and then some. By the end of the first half the Exiles trailed 36-5, and had seen little of the ball apart from their early try. The second half saw the Exiles rally and they were able to bring their score up to finish the game 20-48. The Vassar women will be back Saturday, April 4 against New Paltz at the Farm.