The Miscellany News April 27, 2017
Since 1866 | miscellanynews.org
Volume CXLIX | Issue 21
Doyle speaks to Title IX policy, response Hanna Stasiuk
[Trigger warning: mention of suicides, sexual violence]
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bout a year ago, Alexia Garcia ’18 stumbled upon the book “Campus Sex/Campus Security” and chose to read it during lapses in her busy schedule. “I really loved it,” she remembered. “I found myself bringing it into all of my classes.” With heightened policing on Vassar’s campus, the recent expansion of who is a mandatory reporter and students’ continued frustration with the Title IX process, Garcia and the Feminist Alliance Cooperative decided to bring the book’s author Jennifer Doyle to campus to speak about safety and sexual violence. On Monday, April 17, Doyle spoke in Rockefeller Hall, surrounded by a group of over 30 eager students and faculty members. Doyle is an English professor at the University of California at Riverside and is also the author of “Hold it Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art” and “Sex Objects: Art and Dialectics of Desire.” Her most recent work, “Campus Sex/Campus Security,” outlines the complexities that underlie sexual violence, how corporate universities manage Title IX in this neoliberal era and the failure of campuses to both build community and challenge inter-
personal violence. “‘Campus Sex/Campus Security’ is a literary experiment,” Doyle explained in her talk. “It’s theoretical in some ways but there are also ways in which it is really not.” Doyle was inspired to write the book by a personal experience. While she was teaching at the University of California at Riverside, a student began to stalk and harass her. As the situation escalated, Doyle became increasingly frustrated with the campus police. “My department and colleagues were really great around it, but the school itself was terrible,” she recalled. “The campus police were really useless, they made everybody, myself and my colleagues, feel...terrified and uneasy.” She explained that the campus police made her feel like she was part of the problem. “I was struck by the hardening between the harmful ways in which the system was behaving around my own case in the name of protecting me: an escalation of my fear and sense of threat, an increase of the securitization of my workplace and the presentation of me as a kind of security problem.” The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) helped Doyle change her perspective on her situation. Their therapeutic, behavior-modification approach treated stalking and See TITLE IX on page 3
Courtesy of Vassar LGBTQ Center
Guest Reporter
The Trans Allyship Workshop was held on April 19 and 20. It aimed to teach Vassar students, staff, faculty and administrators about ways to support the trans and non-binary communities.
Workshop educates about trans allyship Matt Stein
Features Editor
In the age of increasing social media presence, we can often denote activism with ‘slacktivism,’ passively supporting an issue without actually taking efforts to make a change. In general, though, to truly strive for allyship with a marginalized community, it involves staying aware and supporting the community through actions instead of declamatory statements. Besides asking for a difference, ‘allies’ need to make a difference and also not ignore those voices they support.
On Wednesday, April 19, and Thursday, April 20, Spencer Garcia ’18 hosted the Trans Allyship Workshop, which has been held for the last several years. With the guiding maxim of “Move up, move up,” the workshop created an affinity space for participants to learn about their roles and how they can better support the trans community. The workshop’s curriculum began by establishing basic principles about allyship for participants to understand. An example of the principles covered was the need to respect the pronouns See ALLYSHIP on page 8
Baroque-era master Rugby teams prove to honored at long last be Beasts of the East Sasha Gopalakrishnan Reporter
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n a pioneering move, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is currently hosting the first-ever exhibition dedicated to works by the last great painter of the Baroque period, Francesco de Mura. “In the Light of Naples: The Art of Francesco de Mura” was organized by the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College. It is a traveling exhibition, and Vassar’s own Art Center is the only venue in the Northeast where it will be visiting. It will be on view on campus from April
21 through July 2. On Friday, April 21, curator Arthur Blumenthal delivered an opening lecture on the show, taking the audience through the impact and significance of the works on display, his own journey in acquiring them and the ascension and declension of de Mura’s career. “An artist who was highly regarded during his lifetime but quickly forgotten with his death,” according to Director of the Loeb James Mundy, de Mura and his work have been vastly undervalued. There have been neither See FRANCESCO on page 15
Courtesy of the Loeb Art Center
From April 21 through July 2, the Loeb Art Center will host the first full-fledged exhibit dedicated to Italian Baroque master painter Francesco de Mura, organized by the Cornell Fine Arts Museum.
Inside this issue
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NEWS
Biodiversity expert discusses climate change complexities
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FEATURES
Lindsay Wolk
Guest Reporter
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his year, 54 Vassar Rugby players made the four-hour trip to Portsmouth, RI, for the 34th annual Beast of the East Tournament, the largest college rugby event in the country. Over 75 teams and between 1,7000 and 2,000 college rugby players spanning six divisions took to the field this weekend. The Vassar men competed in the men’s Division III competition, originally being placed into a group with Central Connecticut State University and Massachusetts Maritime. Meanwhile, the women’s squad fielded two squads: the A-side team in the Division I bracket and the B-side team in the Division III bracket. The group games took place on Saturday, April 22 and the playoffs were held on Sunday. Heading home with eight wins out of a total of 11 games, Vassar rugby smiled upon the weekend. “This weekend was a very successful one for the team. We competed at a high level with three physically imposing teams showing that we can not only play with structure, but also outmuscle teams bigger than ours. This semester has been about development for our main Fall season, and along with our tour to Barcelona, this weekend was a crucial stepping stone in preparation for next semester,” commented the men’s team junior captain George Sheppard. To kick off the championships, the
Pre-org’s new column warns against complacency in trans allyship
Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY
men took on Central Connecticut State. The Brewers led throughout the entire game off of tries by sophomore Charlie Hooghkirk and first-year Evan Roberts. Sophomore Stephen Kpundeh kicked both conversions in order to put the Brewers up 14-0 before CCSU began their attempted comeback. Ultimately, Vassar was able to hold off an incredibly athletic team, 14-7, in order to win their first game of the tourney. Meanwhile, the women’s B-side team headed into competition. The squad earned two shutout wins against Brandeis University (59-0) and the University of New England (24-0). Against Brandeis, junior Kayla Lightner led the efforts with five tries, followed by two tries each from junior Claire Fondrie-Teitler and senior Lizzie Bennett. First-year Caroline James and sophomore Aja Dunn also each tallied one try apiece while Makena Emery ’19 contributed two conversions. Senior captain Mary Margaret McElduff commented in an email, “I feel incredibly proud of all of the women who competed in Rhode Island this past weekend. The B side played their hearts out and gained some really meaningful experience with 3 important wins and a tough loss in the semifinals on Sunday.” McElduff continued, “They were lucky to have a few upperclassmen with more rugby knowledge to set the See RUGBY on page 18
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‘Medea’ revives tragedy Noah Purdy & Patrick Tanella Arts Editors
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ow all love is turned to hate, and tenderest ties are weak,” laments the Nurse in the opening to Euripides’ tragedy “Medea.” Both ancient theatrical genres, comedy and tragedy, relied heavily on inversion and exaggeration, as ancient playwrights were wont to explore the outer limits of human reactions to extreme circumstances. These depictions required a certain alienation from the familiar as a means to put audiences’ social norms under the microscope. “Medea,” a quintessential Greek tragedy, is no different, as evidenced in the stunning production sponsored by the Greek & Roman Studies (GRST) Department performed this past Friday, April 21, on the Frances Daly Fergusson Quadrangle. The play recounts the mythical story of its titular character, a former princess and sorceress of the kingdom of Colchis who helped her husband Jason—of Argonauts fame—retrieve the Golden Fleece. As the play opens, Medea finds her already-unstable position in her newly adopted Corinth, to which the couple fled, threatened when her husband leaves her for the daughter of the king of their new land. Medea, distraught, brings life to the phrase “desperate times call for desperate measures,” as she takes her revenge by killing Jason’s new wife and her own children. Associate Professor and GRST Chair Rachel Friedman served as the production’s faculty advisor and leader of two independent studies related to the performance. As she explained, “One of the challenges of performing any ancient tragedy is this basic fact, that we are so removed from the circumstances in which they were composed and performed. All tragedies in Athens were originally performed as part of festivals that formed an integral part of the civic and religious life of the Athenian polis.” Euripides’ version of the Medea tale was performed in Athens in 431 BCE during a festival in honor of Dionysus called the “City Dionysia,” right after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War between the Athenians and the Spartans. Friedman continued, “This context, as well as the particular historical moment, inevitably shaped the plays. I think it’s important to keep in mind the original context while also working to create newer versions and to infuse the ancient drama with a contemporary vision. This can be a very delicate balancing act.” The theme of a cheating husband and a betrayed wife seeking revenge is ever-present in many media today, and so “Medea” has lent itself through the years to such contemporary reimaginings. This production, however, showcased Medea’s foreignness as it was See MEDEA on page 15
Track and Field stays on track to field SPORTS competition in Championships