The Miscellany News, Volume CXLVII, Issue 19 (April 10, 2014)

The Miscellany News

Volume CXLVII | Issue 19

April 10, 2014

Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

Historic tree reduced to stump 50 Nights damages incur costs for Class of 2014 Ruth Bolster

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courtesy of The Chance

Emily Lavieri-Scull/The Miscellany News

Last week, one of Vassar’s most iconic trees was cut down due to its steady decay since 2006. The Class of 1939 Sugar Maple once stood on Convocation Hill.

n Saturday, March 28, a photograph of a single tree stump on Convocation Hill circulated on Facebook, inspiring critical and disappointed comments from students.

“This looks like a scene from The Lorax,” wrote Caroline Stanton ’14.

Erin Murray ’15 commented, “Edna St. Vincent Millay took an amazing photo there that I treasure. I can’t believe this piece of history has been taken [from] us, and with no information!”

The iconic Sugar Maple, which was also the Class of 1939 tree, had been scheduled to come down since early March when an outside arborist from the landscape consulting company SaveATree determined that it was in declining health.

In a March 4 letter to Director of Special Projects at Buildings and Grounds Jeff Horst, the arborist described the central trunk as being “badly decayed,” and stated that “active woodpecker activity confirms the presence of decay in the central limbs.”

However, Horst said the College knew that the tree would have to be removed since 2006.

“At that time, it was assessed as a tree that should be removed due to safety considerations, but we had many that were in far worse condition. We are pretty conscious about See TIMBER on page 7

50 Nights is the only all-campus event Vassar offers off campus, and it is held The Chance.

This year, students’ rowdy behavior amounted to property damages and assaults on security.

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n Saturday, April 5, the Class of 2014, in collaboration with Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE), hosted the event “50 Nights at The Chance,” the annual

event meant to commemorate the date that marks 50 nights until Commencement. The event was held at The Chance Theater in Poughkeepsie. Buses shuttled students to and from campus and The See WILD SENIORS on page 4

Talk bridges gap Basement no more for VC band between athletes, peers M Samantha Kohl ARts editoR

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his past weekend, Vassar College’s Campus Life Resource Group sponsored a dialogue entitled “Who Really Plays for Team Vassar?: A Gathering of Athletes, Non Athletes, and those who exist In-Between.” Sophomore Alejandro McGhee and senior women’s rugby player Dallas Robinson spearheaded the formation of the discussion.

Robinson was unable to make it to

the Jade Parlor this Saturday, but McGhee led the discussion along with senior and former men’s tennis player Wilson Platt.

The discussion took place over the course of an hour and a half. The first portion involved a reminder to maintain civil and appropriate discourse. The group then broke into smaller groups of two, and partners introduced themselves to one another. The small groups focused on See DIALOGUE on page 18

ost jam sessions rarely make it out of a basement. But for the members of Vishnu Basement, time spent riffing and jamming amounted to something larger than any of them had anticipated.

Since its inception, the band has accumulated a massive following on campus, has gotten signed to a label, has recently finished recording their EP and are set to go on tour

with SUPERTEEN, another campus band, at the end of May. Musicians Max Goldstein ’15, Sam Fritzschel ’15, Ben Parra ’15 and Sam Judkis ’14, compose Vishnu Basement. They refer to themselves as “the lowest level of Rock at Vassar College,” but that may not be the case. Vishnu Basement achieved a cult following on campus and host shows that are always widely attended.

Members of Vishnu Base-

ment are indispensable to their fans, but the group was not always a foursome. The three met when Fritzschel, guitarist and occasional vocalist for the band, was practicing in Skinner. “I was practicing in Skinner when Sam Judkis, the band’s drummer, came in and said, ‘Hey! I’m going to be playing with this guy,’” said Fritzschel.

“This guy” ended up being Max Goldstein, guitarist and vocalist See VISHNU BASEMENT on page 14

Social media a glimpse into professors’ lives Chris Gonzalez

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efore the creation of sites like Facebook and Twitter, a professor’s life outside of the classroom remained a mystery for students. Interactions between students and faculty were limited to face-to-face conversations, and emails served as one of the few digital bridges extending discussions beyond office hours. Although their existence is nothing new in the year 2014, social media’s rise has removed a wall of privacy by providing a portal into the personal lives of stu-

dents and professors alike, nuancing the way in which they must navigate their online association with students.

Last month, a student reported a Facebook comment made by Associate Professor of English Kiese Laymon to the Dean of Faculty. Laymon—who has over 2,000 Facebook friends and nearly 3,000 Twitter followers—is not friends with this particular student on the social media site.

In an emailed statement, Laymon restated the comment, writing, “Some kid...tried to turn something I wrote— See SOCIAL MEDIA on page 8

Inside this issue

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Students must consider results of OPINIONS 50 Nights behavior

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Vishnu Basement is signed by student-run record label, Sad Cactus Records. Sad Cactus recorded their album and organized the group’s tour. “It’s sumultaneously super legit and super DIY at the same time,” said bassist Ben Parra ‘15.

Lehman Loeb’s cascading fabric swath inspires awe

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Annual student-faculty game SPORTS sees waning turnout

The Miscellany News

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April 10, 2014

Attention Students!

The following Executive Staff positions of The Miscellany News are now open for the Fall 2014 semester. Applications are due April 14 by 5 p.m.

Positions include Editor-in-Chief, Senior Editor and Contributing Editor.

Executive Staff positions are open to students who have served on the Editorial Board of The Miscellany News.

Editor-in-Chief Chris Gonzalez

Senior Editors

Meaghan Hughes Marie Solis

Contributing Editors Ruth Bolster Jessica Tarantine

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

Noble Ingram Eloy Bleifuss Prados Joshua Sherman Samantha Kohl Lily Doyle Christopher Brown Tina Caso Spencer Davis Palak Patel Gwendolyn Frenzel Maddy Vogel Ashley Pecorelli

Crossword Editor Assistant News Assistant Opinions Assistant Photo

Jack Mullan Anna Iovine Natasha Bertrand Jacob Heydorn Gorski Jiajing Sun Assistant Design Elizabeth Dean Assistant Online Victoria Bachurska

Spencer Davis/The Miscellany News

Photo of the Week The Vassar Student Association (VSA) did not force The Miscellany News to suspend publication as stated in last week’s issue of the paper. We’ve been around for 100 years and we’ll probably be around for 100 more.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Reporters Julia Cunningham Emma Daniels Isabella DeLeo Sam Hammer Emily Hoffman Maggie Jeffers Shannon Liao Jonathan Safir Columnists Delaney Fischer Luka Ladan Zach Rippe Max Rook Lily Sloss Photography Eli J. Vargas I Alec Feretti Design Samantha Pianello Bethany Terry Online Rachel Dorn Copy Daniel Foley Sophie Kosmacher Christian Lewis Macall McQueen Marya Pasciuto Camilla Pfeiffer Emma Roellke Rebecca Weir CORRECTION POLICY The Miscellany News will only corrections for any misquotes, resentations or factual errors for ticle within the semester it is

accept misrepan arprinted.

LETTERS POLICY The Miscellany News is Vassar College’s weekly open forum for discussion of campus, local and national issues, and welcomes letters and opinions submissions from all readers.

Letters to the Editor should not exceed 350 words, and they usually respond to a particular item or debate from the previous week’s issue. Opinions articles are longer pieces, up to 800 words, and take the form of a longer column. No letter or opinions article may be printed anonymously. If you are interested in contributing, e-mail misc@vassar.edu.

NEWS

April 10, 2014

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Dutchess County Legislature repeals energy tax for region Shelia Hu

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Spencer Davis/The Miscellany News

n April 7, 2014 the Legislature of Dutchess county voted and successfully repealed a energy tax that was adopted in December of last year and took effect on March 1.

In Dec. 2013, the Dutchess County Legislature adopted the 2014 country budget that included a new home energy tax for residents in the area. The Legislature voted 14-10 and the new tax took effect on March 1, 2014 and was set to expire in February 2017. This tax is meant to cover a $7.8 million budget gap—$6.4 million after the cities, towns, and villages received their share—and that if the tax was not implemented, the money would be cut from non-mandated services in the county like road-plowing and parks.

Assistant Majority Leader Angela Flesland claimed that if the home energy tax was not passed, residents would see a 10 percent increase in property tax bills; the home energy tax served as an option to address the budget gap without financially over-burdening residents of the county (Hudson Valley Reporter, “Dutchess Country Budget, Home Energy Tax Approved,” 12.6.13).

Republicans were responsible for passing the tax after hours of deliberation. Many democrats disagreed with the necessity of it, saying that there are many other options to cover the budget gap that would better serve the communities of Dutchess County. Democrat Joel Tyner explained, “We could use halfway houses instead of putting some people in jail. There could be housing alternatives for incarcerated people who are mentally ill. We would be able to actually return money to the taxpayers.”

The repeal of this tax is good news not only for residents, but Vassar students who choose to live off campus as well. Living off campus is already a cheaper alternative from on-campus

dormitories, and the extra energy taxing could be a financial burden for those who are already struggling to pay for housing.

Nicole Schonitzer ’16, who might decide to live off campus at some time, responded to the repeal of the tax, saying, “It is definitely better that this energy tax has been repealed; it is one less thing to worry about having to pay for regarding housing. One of the perks of living off campus is that you can pay less than for living in the dorms but the energy tax would increase rent prices.”

The 3.75 percent energy tax is hitting the residents, especially with the exceptionally cold winter this year. Gas usage in Central Hudson was up 25 percent in January, which is 7 percent higher than last year’s usage. A senior citizen living in Poughkeepsie, Eric Fuegel, said, “I think it’s not good for us. I get a big bill about $500 to $600 every two months” (Hudson Solar, “Winter, Country tax, new feeds add up to higher electricity bills,” 3.2.14).

Utility bills are split into supply charges and delivery charges. Supply charges refer to the actual amount of electricity used and Central Hudson sells that to consumers without a markup for price. Delivery charges covers the distribution of electricity so that they can maintain the electric grid and the delivery infrastructure. The existence of the task made Dutchess County the “22nd locality in the state to tax coal, fuel oil and wood for heating, and the 40th locality or school district imposing a sales tax on residential gas, propane, electricity or steam” (Poughkeepsie Journal, “Lawmakers vote to repeal county energy sales tax,” 4.8.2014).

This tax has caused many citizens of Dutchess County to worry about their skyrocketing energy bills, but in the beginning of April 2014, they were pleased to find out that they may not have to pay it much longer. In the

An Energy Tax that was passed by the Dutchess County Legislature in Dec. 2013 was recently repealed. It was originally adopted as a way to balance the legislature’s budget but was then deemed “unneccesary.”

2014-15 state budget deal for Dutchess County, there was new funding that may allow the new tax to be repealed. With the $5.25 million state mandate relief that came with the deal, the leaders that approved that tax started to work to repeal it because they had then deemed it unnecessary.

The relief budget is split so that $3.5 million is for county services and $1.4 million is for services at the Dutchess County Jail (Poughkeepsie Journal, “State aid to help repeal unpopular energy tax,” 4.1.14). In addition, the county will receive $350,000 to help with costs that have come into play since the Hudson River Psychiatric Center closed.

On Monday, the Dutchess County Legislature unanimously voted 24-0 to repeal the sales tax, with one Legislator member Gwen Johnson absent. After filing for a waiver from the state Department of Taxation and Finance for the 90-day notice, the tax would be gone by June 1, which is the first sales tax quarter date.

Officials will have to wait to see whether having the sales tax present for three months plus the state aid would add up to the $6.4 million the county expected to raise during this budget year to help balance the county budget as it stands now. County Executive Marcus Molinaro stated that he would not propose this tax next year.

Vassar tuition to increase 3.5 percent next school year Lily Sloss

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assar fees will increase to $61,140 next year, ensuring that the school will remain on lists of the most expensive colleges and universities in the country.

The 3.5 percent increase was announced in a letter sent to students and their families by Vice President for Finance and Administration Robert A. Walton. “The primary issue for the 2014/2015 budget was increased compensation for faculty and staff, and the increased costs for benefits to staff including health care,” Walton said in an emailed statement.

Vassar is consistently ranked as one of the costliest colleges in the nation. In 2013, Vassar was named second most expensive school in the country by U.S. News and World Report.

Only Columbia University’s tuition is higher.

The increase is consistent with other schools and slightly less than the national average, according to College Board, which recorded an average tuition increase of 3.8 percent at private colleges for the 2013-2014 academic year.

Comparatively, this increase is low. “Students at Vassar College [paid] $12,700, or 7.6 [percent] more,” in the fall of 1984 then they had the previous year, reported The New York Times.

The $61,140 is comprised of tuition, room and board, a student activity fee and a health service fee. According to the Admissions’ website, students should expect to pay an additional “$2,250 for books, supplies, and personal expenses, and an allowance for transportation to and from the campus.”

Administrators claim the increase will not affect students who receive financial aid. Vassar meets 100 percent of students’ demonstrated need, so as costs increase, assuming family income remains the same, financial aid packages will increase in tandem. “The increase in tuition does not affect the number of students accepted into Vassar. As part of the yearly Financial Aid budget process, we factor in the increase in the cost of attendance for the three returning classes and we anticipate what the cost of the incoming class will be,” explained Director of Financial Aid Jessica Bernier.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

International students need not worry. While Admissions is need-aware for non-US citizens, Dean of Admissions David Borus wrote in an emailed statement, “Vassar offers funding to a significant number of international applicants each year.”

“I’m on financial aid so I don’t really feel the pain. I’m sure it’s valid though, because Vassar has an amazing faculty, administration and facilities. Students who can afford it and who think it’s worth it can pay more, after all it’s a free market...I do hope Vassar offers financial aid to the best students,” says Manning Wu ’14, an economics major from a northeastern province in China.

Those without financial aid, however, may have cause for concern. Forty percent of students pay the comprehensive fee for Vassar each year, including room, tuition and board.

The $1,660 increase might hurt an income unmitigated by aid. While “average base pay increases for 2014 will remain at 3 percent for the second year in a row in the US,” many families, particularly the self-employed, will not receive an increase (SHRM, “Pay Trends for 2014: Salary Increases Hold Steady,” 10.8.13). Matt Foster ’14 has not received financial aid while attending Vassar. “If I was coming back next year, however, I’d definitely be concerned about the tuition increase. It’s obviously going to affect my family.”

Furthermore, the increase might reduce socioeconomic diversity on campus. Michael Cadenas ’15, an economics major and financial aid recipient, argued, “As tuition keeps increasing, it will discourage people who don’t have the means from applying.” Despite the need-blind financial aid policy, high fees may intimidate students. If less low income students attend Vassar, the students who attend Vassar will be exposed to less and less of a spectrum of economic diversity.

While the fee increase may be relatively low, private college fees are much higher than alternative options like state universities. With this increase in tuition, many community members must now reassess the cost and feasibility of attending this institution.

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April 10, 2014

Over-crowded off-campus event leads to rowdy behavior WILD SENIORS continued from page 1

Chance and Vassar security was enlisted to help with the transportation. The show featured three musical performers: JSTR, Great Dane, and DJ Pacmahn, Kiran Chapman ’15.

Though the event usually results in small damages and problems because of the number of people attending the event, this year’s 50 Nights event ended with multiple complaints of violence directed towards both students and Chance security officers and racked up several large damages to the venue and the buses.

President of the Senior Class Connor Martini ’14 explained some of the problems of the event.

As he remembered, “Many, many things got out of hand. I’ve never seen such out-of-control entitled behavior from Vassar students before. Students were trying to get on stage, which was for event staff only, and in doing so created such a gridlock in the staircase that people were starting to get seriously pushed and shoved by their peers.”

He continued, “By the end of the event, two of the buses were out of service because students had gotten sick on them, and another was put out of service because students broke the bus doors mobbing the bus. A fourth bus was also damaged because students opened the seat coverings and ripped out the stuffing. This was the reason it took so long to get people out of The

Chance.”

Martini went on, describing one of the problems with the number of students who were at The Chance on Saturday. Due to the volume of students waiting for the bus back to campus, they flooded Main Street and blocked traffic. “I was thoroughly embarrassed by our behavior,” wrote Martini in an emailed statement.

Kathryn Marshall ’16 attended the event and echoed some of the concerns brought up by Martini. According to Marshall, transportation was a key failure of the night. “The buses were ridiculous. People were so rowdy that four out of the five buses were decommissioned. That was one of the worst parts of the night,” she said.

Becca Jannou ‘16 had similar things to say, relating to the transportation and busing issues.

“Students were at their worst when trying to board buses and when they were on the buses themselves. I’d guess it’s because no one wanted to wait for another round of buses to arrive, so they all shoved on as quickly and forcefully as possible as soon as transportation arrived.”

She continued, “I had to wait about 45 minutes for a bus, which was not too long but still longer than the half hour I’d been told it would take.

Once the buses got there, the students mobbed them and it was a scary mess to be involved in.”

Many tried to present solutions to the problems presented by the event. One argument

pushed for a senior-only event that would limit the number of students who could attend and address some of the problems that were a result of overcrowding.

Jannou agreed on how little space was afforded to those at the event. “The line to get it was very long so I had my doubts before even seeing the space, and so did others in line with me.

Once I got into The Chance, it was clear there wouldn’t be much breathing space. The upper floor was less congested but to get there one had to fight their way through the mob to the stairs,” she said.

Jannou also agreed with those who pushed for limiting the number of students who could attend the event. As she explained, “I think it would be better as a senior-only event. I like the idea of parties off campus for the whole student body, but 50 Nights seems like it should be something special and celebratory for those the phrase means something for.”

Martini challenged the idea that the problems of the event were indicative of poor planning of the event. As Martini said, “There was not really anything we could have done. People were going to drink and get out of hand no matter what, but I was really hoping Vassar students would keep it together enough to not cause such ridiculous damage. Obviously, I was wrong, and in the future I think the event will be kept to just

seniors. I think that we could have coordinated with Chance security a bit more to keep the entrance line moving swiftly, but I think in the future we’d recommend capping the event at a certain point.”

Marshall also spoke to the performances of the event. She had high hopes for electronic musicians who played at The Chance. “Vice worked really hard to book the talent. Alex Adler and Jason Ballon, who arranged the artists, did an awesome job, and I personally went to the event mainly for the music,” she said.

She went on, “I felt like it was disrespectful for students to treat the buses and the venue like crap, considering it was supposed to be an awesome night of music. JSTR and Great Dane are really respected and well-known electronic musicians and I was disappointed that I didn’t get to enjoy their performance.”

Martini reflected on the night as a whole, saying, “I haven’t heard much from students besides complaints about the bus rotation. I personally would like to complain about the students. Especially those who punched and scratched Chance staff, broke the bus door, and jumped on stage, only to injure themselves and others. I would challenge them to consider how their behavior is reflective of Vassar and their personal ability to conduct themselves appropriately once they leave our bubble.”

Outside the Bubble

Vassar News Briefs

by noble Ingram, news editor Elizabeth Dean, Assistant Design Editor

by Anna iovine, assistant news editor

Equal Pay Day

Actress Alum to present at Commencement

Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Alumnae and Alumni of Vassar College announced on Monday, April 8, that alumna Sakina Jaffrey ’84 will present the senior class banner at Spring Convocation on April 30. Jaffrey stars as Kinda Vasquez, the White House Chief of Staff, in the Netflix series “House of Cards.”

An alumnus or alumna performs the presentation of the class banner at spring convocation to the president of the senior class, and then makes a speech to the audience. Last year, Kenneth Miles ’07 presented the class banner to President of the Class of 2013, Vincent Marchetta ’13.

In his remarks to the graduating class, Miles said, “Use the tools you have acquired here at Vassar and beyond these campus walls and classrooms. Pay it forward for others. In the small towns big cities, and countries you are from, and the small towns, big cities, and countries where you may wind up.”

Jaffrey may reflect on her years at Vassar as well.

During her time at the college, she studied Chinese Language and Literature. While Jaffrey took an introductory theater course and set design course, she never acted during her time as an undergrad.

In 2004, she said she originally planned on becoming a translator: “I really wanted to act, but I didn’t want to admit it, so I studied Chinese and figured I would to work as a translator” (Boca Raton News, “Actress Sakina Jaffrey: Getting Used to the Red Carpet, 7.4.04).

She told the Vassar Office of Communications in Sept. 2013, “I felt like I shouldn’t waste my parents’ money studying to be an actor. But after I left college and considered the careers I could pursue, I realized I couldn’t pretend I wanted to do anything else but act.”

After graduation, Jaffrey began taking acting lessons while working as a waitress to support herself.

She began her acting career in New York City.

On the fact that her major at Vassar does not reflect her current line of work, Jaffrey said, “…Just remember: If you’re in college and don’t know what you want to do with your life, that’s okay. I look back now and I realize a lot of what I learned at Vassar I applied to my career in ways I could never have anticipated.”

Fans of “House of Cards” have shown excitement for Jaffrey’s involvement with this year’s Spring Convocation. “I’m really happy Sakina Jaffrey is an active member of our community,” said Sophomore Class President Max Moran ’16. Moran continued, “I’m really excited an actress from my favorite show will be at Convocation.” Jaffrey’s acting credits also include the 2002 film “The Truth About Charlie,” starring Mark Wahlberg, 2004’s “Raising Helen” along with her son Cassius Wilkinson and daughter Jamila Wilkinson, and “The Ode” in 2008.

April is national Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM). Beginning in 2001, SAAM was started by the Resource Sharing Project and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. At Vassar, the Sexual Assault and Violence Prevention (SAVP) Program and CARES peer listening service coordinate SAAM. In previous years, Vassar had only commemorated a “Sexual Assault Awareness Week (SAAW),” rather than month. The program has expanded this year to include events throughout the month of April as opposed to events limited to just one week. Some events have carried over from SAAW. CARES will hold their second SpeakOut of the semester in the Mug on April 14, where guests could share their experience to a listening audience.

Another event that Vassar participates in annually is the “I Feel Strong” T-shirt campaign, where Vassar students wear teal shirts that say, “I feel strong” to show their support. This year, the project will take place on April 23. CARES is sponsoring several additions to the SAAM program. On April 15, the LGBTQ center will hold an event called, “Surviving Stigma: How to Support Queer Male Survivors of Domestic Violence.” An Art Show and Open Mic will close Vassar’s first ever SAAM on April 30.

Other changes to Vassar’s celebration of SAAM also include the flyer campaign: CARES members posted brightly colored flyers with validating phrases on them. These phrases include, “I hear you”; “I believe you”; and “You have the right to feel this way.” To raise further awareness, CARES and SAVP table throughout the month.

Other events that took place as apart of SAAM include a lecture by Dr. Gail Dines on April 4 entitled “Pornland.” Dines, an acti-pornography activist and author, discussed how masculinity and femininity are shaped by our image-based culture. Furthermore, a screening of “Very Young Girls,” a documentary about the sexual exploitation of girls in New York City, took place on April 8.

This year’s SAAM accompanies releases of survivor stories to the press. One such story is “Dear Harvard: You Win,” an account written in the Harvard Crimson about the aftermath of a sexual assault that occurred on Harvard’s campus. There has also been a movement on Twitter called “#DecolonizeSAAM.” Throughout the month, the hashtag is used to call attention to violence aimed at women of color. Asian-American activist Suey Park tweeted on March 31, “#DecolonizeSAAM is in response to white feminism pushing “solutions” that increase violence against women of color and increase state power. One can keep up with this year’s SAAM by liking the Vassar SAAM: Sexual Assault Awareness Month page on Facebook. CARES at Vassar and Vassar SAVP have Facebook pages as well.

Tuesday, April 8 marked 2014 Equal Pay Day in the United States. The annual day of awareness advocates for the equal pay for women and people of color as for white men. The date symbolizes the time since the beginning of 2013 that an average woman would have to work to earn the same amount of money for the same work that a man did only during that calendar year. According to the census bureau, women on average earn 77 percent of the pay of men, and the figure is even lower for women of color when compared to white men (Al Jazeera America, “On Equal Pay Day, many urge further action,” 4.8.14).

On this day, President Obama signed two executive orders intended to curb pay discrimination among federal contractors. He also called out members of Congress, particularly Republican members, for blocking similar bills during his term in 2010 and 2012 (BBC News, “Obama signs executive orders targeting gender wage gap,” 4.8.14). The orders mandate that contractors for the United States federal government must report salary information by demographic to the Department of Labor and prohibit contractors from retaliating against employees who openly discuss their pay (ABC News, “Obama challenges Republicans to support paycheck fairness bill” 4.8.14). The BBC reports that in his speech Tuesday announcing the orders, Obama said, “Pay secrecy fosters discrimination, and we should not tolerate it, not in federal contracting or anywhere else.”

However, the orders have been met with criticism from both sides of the aisle. On Twitter, online activists and citizens pointed out that the White House staff itself has comparable pay inequity, and that President Obama’s efforts largely gloss over the greater pay disparity and attendant struggles for women of color.

Also, the Republican National Committee expresses concern that the orders infringe on employer’s rights and may in fact negatively impact female workers. They argue that Obama’s orders for open salary information would restrict employers’ willingness to give merit pay to encourage workers, including women. They also contend that pay disparity will not be improved by the measures because women choose lower-paying jobs.

Both sides will be treading carefully as midterm elections approach this year and everyone vies for the female vote. The elections could change which party controls the senate, including during the last two years of Obama’s time in office. Next, Obama will urge Congress to support the Paycheck Fairness Act, a measure which would increase pay transparency across the board. Democrats in Congress will bring the bill to debate in the coming

weeks, while many in the senate doubt that it will pass due to the Republican oppositions to its restrictions and mandates.

More Women Staying at Home More U.S. women are staying at home full time to raise their children, according to a new Pew Research Center report released Tuesday. The number of stay-at-home mothers in the United States has risen since 2000 after decades of decline. The study found that 29 percent of mothers with children younger than 18—about 10.4 million women—stayed at home in 2012, compared with the historic low of 23 percent in 1999 (The New York Times, “Number of Mothers in U.S. Who Stay at Home Rises,” 4.8.2014).

The shift is most noticeable among women who are immigrants and who do not have college educations. Though both American-born and foreign-born mothers exhibited increases, 40 percent of immigrant mothers stay home to raise their children, compared with 26 percent of mothers who were born in the United States (The Washington Post, “More moms stay at home, new research says,” 4.8.2014).

The report points to stagnant incomes as a possible factor for weighing the cost of child care against wages and deciding it makes more economic sense to stay home. While clearly attitudes over the decades toward working mothers have grown warmer, “Most Americans continue to believe that it’s best for children to have a parent at home,” said D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer at Pew who worked on the report (CBS News, “Stay-athome mothers on the rise in U.S.,” 4.8.2014).

“There surely is a slowdown in the meteoric growth of women working outside the home,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University who studies family issues. “From 1948 to 2000, the number of married women working skyrocketed. Now it’s plateaued, and it’s very hard to know exactly what’s causing it.”

One in five children in the United States today lives with a stay-at-home mother married to a working husband. In 1970, 41 percent of children did (The Washington Post, “More moms stay at home, new research says,” 4.8.2014).

Since 2008, about 70 percent said that a working mother is just as capable as an at-home mother of establishing the same “warm and secure” relationship with her children. But 60 percent of Americans in a recent Pew survey said children are better off when a parent stays home to “focus on the family,” compared with 35 percent who said children are “just as well off with working parents” (CBS News, “Stay-at-home mothers on the rise in U.S.,” 4.8.2014).

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

April 10, 2014

FEATURES

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Green Haven reunion honors Mamiya’s accomplishments Eloy Bleifuss Prados FeAtuRes editoR

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courtesy of Vassar College

or 35 years, Vassar students have taken classes taught alongside incarcerated inmates at State of New York correctional facilities.

It was Professor of Religion and Africana Studies Lawrence Mamiya who started the very first of these classes, the Green Haven program, in 1979.

Mamiya is retiring from teaching at Vassar at the end of this year, and on Saturday, April 4 in the Aula, for the annual Green Haven reunion, friends and former students gathered to honor the man who changed so many lives.

Mamiya has been a civil rights advocate for decades. During the 1960s, he worked as a community organizer in East Harlem and registered voters in rural Georgia for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Shortly after he began teaching at Vassar in 1975, he conceived the Green Haven course as a way to show how institutional racism persists in society. Vassar students accompanied him for a field trip to the Green Haven Correctional Facility in the town of Beekman, where they interacted firsthand with incarcerated persons.

“I didn’t have to lecture about it, since students understood from their visit that about 80 [percent] of those incarcerated in prisons were Black or Latino and most of the corrections officers and administrators were white,” he wrote in an emailed statement.

Thanks to the urging of some inmates, Mamiya developed the Community Re-Entry course, which featured weekly visits to Green Haven’s pre-release center and student-driven discussion.

George Prendes was incarcerated at Green Haven the first year Mamiya came. He described how he was quickly impressed by his conscientious spirit and openness.

“He has the capacity to embrace other people and meet them where they are at,” Prendes said. “I think that makes him a unique leader to people in prison who are anesthetized to the concept of feeling oneself in a community and society.”

Mamiya started the Green Haven program in 1979, a class which brought VC students to NYS correctional facilities. On April 4, a reunion was held, honoring the program and Mamiya, who is set to retire this year.

It was important for to him to have all his students, both those from Vassar and those from Green, in one room and communicating. The entire class hinged on what two groups, coming from very different backgrounds and enjoying very different levels of privilege, could teach each other.

The incarcerated students got something out of the interaction as well, according to Prendes.

Meeting once a week to sit down and have a conversation with people living outside helped the incarcerated men prepare for life after prison.

Prendes said, “Men were getting out of prison, but they had no contact with the community, and Larry offered that by bringing the students.

The students got involved with us, started giving people a human feel to what it would be like to return to society.”

When Prendes took part of the Green Haven

program, he was two years into his 15-year sentence. He explained how he was convicted under the New York State Rockefeller Drug Laws, which imposed mandatory minimum sentences on nonviolent narcotic offenses, even if, as in the case of Prendes, they had no prior criminal record.

Last Saturday’s reunion also brought together a network of formerly incarcerated persons whose lives Mamiya had all touched.

Tree Arrington shared how when he began his 10-year prison sentence at the age of 28, he did not have the ability to read or write.

It was through the help of advocates like Mamiya that he was able to earn an education.

“Half of what I know is through the course of Larry Mamiya,” Arrington said. Today, he holds a doctorate in behavioral sciences, in addition to four masters degrees, three Bachelors, two Associates and a host of certifications.

Vassar alumnus Jake Berzoff-Cohen ’11 drove six hours from Baltimore to attend the reunion.

He talked about the influence Mamiya had on his life.

“Dr. Mamiya is an incredible leader, teacher and man. He taught me about myself. He actually inspired me to do what I do,” said Berzoff-Cohen, a community organizer in Baltimore.

A few years ago, Green Haven Correctional Facility barred any Vassar classes from visiting.

The administration claimed the environment was too dangerous. Despite the fact that, as Mamiya pointed out, there had never been an incident in the class’ over thirty-year history.

Today, the Community Reentry class instead makes weekly trips to the Otisville prison. A student in the class, Debbie Altman ‘16 described the respect she has gained for her incarcerated peer students.

She said, “Each week it gets harder to come to terms with how long many of their sentences are.” Altman went on to say, “I wish everyone had the chance to see what we get to each week.”

During the break for lunch, Tyrone Larkin, who was involved with the Green Haven Program’s founding, stepped up to a podium for a speech thanking Mamiya for the legacy he is leaving.

“We claim this to be his last day or the last year that this is going to happen,” began Larkin.

“But you go back to 1979 to 2014 that’s a big bit.

That’s a lot of time. That’s a whole lot of students coming to Green Haven, Otisville, and I don’t know how many other prisons that were educated.”

After Larkin’s praise and a standing ovation, Mamiya stood up to the podium to make some remarks.

“We developed a model while we were working at Green Haven,” he said, “and that model was, ‘Never let them win. Never let them win.’”

Mamiya spoke for only a couple more minutes, before setting down his microphone, slipping out from behind the podium, and quietly returning to his seat amongst his friends and students.”

Uviller speaks candidly about realities of career in writing Julia Cunningham stAFF RepoRteR

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Sophie Hessekiel ‘16, the organizers also wanted to provide an event specifically for aspiring writers or artists.

“I think that there’s not a lot of opportunities to get advice about how to have a creative career,” said Hessekiel. “Like, all the info sessions are about how to be a doctor or finance or media relations, which is all wonderful and super helpful, but it’s nice to have someone say it’s okay to try to be a writer.”

Hannah Harp ’16 is a student fellow in Davison. The talk, Harp shared, broke the glamorous image associated with writers.

“I always thought writing was a little romantic. Sitting around, drinking coffee, being creative, and not caring about the world around you,” said Harp.

However, Uviller took pains to tell students the truth that most writers struggle with paying bills and earning enough cash solely off

their writing.

“Daphne situated her experience in real life and explained that sometimes, you have to write to make money and work on projects for yourself on the side,” said Harp.

She went on to say, “The projects you care the most about might not make money and the projects you hate might pay well and that’s how it has to be for a little while until you can find a groove that works for you.”

Uviller mainly wanted to hear questions from her audience. She answered anything from her trying experience as a writer to her favorite TV shows to offering personal writing advice.

“It is a very long, slow, sometimes exciting, very frustrating process,” she said. “The bottom line is that you have to like being alone in front of a computer and making up stories and putting one word in front of another.”

Sam Pianello/The Miscellany News

y Sunday night at 7 p.m., the Davison MPR was looking extra cozy for CommuniTea. Organizers arranged the sofas and chairs in a circle. Sitting atop a table by the side was a spread of cheese and crackers and a chocolate fondue. All of this was for an invited speaker: the writer Daphne Uviller.

Author of two mystery novels, Uviller moved to the local area from Manhattan five-and-ahalf years ago. She is also a close friend with Davison House Fellow and Assistant Professor of Psychology Allan Clifton and his family.

Davison House Fellow Intern Arden Shwayder ’16 explained that she and the other organizers were keen to invite an artist and have her speak firsthand about her craft.

“We were like, well, we’ve had a lot of creative people in the house,” Shwayder said, “so let’s have an author come in and talk about what it’s like to be an author who actually gets published.”

Uviller has enjoyed writing since she was a girl. “I want to tell you my path,” she began her presentation, “which makes it sound intentional, which, let me tell you, it is not intentional.

You’ll see. You’ll just follow your interest and it takes you places you never imagined. At least in my case.”

Uviller asked how people in the room were at the very least considering going into the arts after college. Of about 15 people in the room, most were already working on writing pieces of their own, whether in the form of sketch comedy or their own screenplays.

Uviller took a winding path to becoming a writer. She began working on screenplays, but also took a turn with working as an editor for Time Out New York magazine, being the super of her apartment building, as well as working for a law-enforcement agency.

Her first book was an anthology of 21 essays called, “Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Growing Up Solo,” which she coedited with Deborah Siegel.

Taking into account her own hectic life, Uviller knew she wanted her next book to be something in which her readers and herself could find solace.

Uviller said, “I want to write something that I want to read while I’m relaxing.”

With the help of her agent, she sold her debut novel, “Super in the City,” to Random House in a two-book deal. Her second novel, “Hotel NoTell,” was released Spring 2011.

Uviller shared how she was recently in Hollywood trying to sell her screenplays while she continues to work on her third novel, which she said is about three weeks away from being ready to send to her publisher.

She explained how what she writes are sometimes based on her own experiences.

“I am not somebody who likes to do research,” she said. “I am too lazy, and too many times when I was trying to write journalism articles—because I did some soft journalism—it was hard for me because I would want to make it more interesting than it actually was, but editors frowned upon that.” Fiction writing offered Uviller the creative latitude not available with journalism.

Despite this early success as a novelist, Uviller was still unable to make a living for herself by writing alone.

“I’m always very honest and I always want to take questions about money because I never want to mislead people,” she said. “It’s almost impossible to make a living writing—in certain capacities. Certainly if you’re going to hole up and write the Great American Novel, you better have a trust fund or something.”

In the end, however, she maintained that it wasn’t the money that kept her invested in writing.

“I love writing so much that it doesn’t matter if it’s some stupid thing or if it makes a lot of money. If you can make it all come out in the wash, it’s a really nice life.” She added, “And then having a spouse who has the health insurance is very useful.”

According to Davison House Fellow Intern

Davison House hosted a CommuniTea last Sunday featuring Daphne Uviller, a local writer and author of two novels. Uviller shared with students the pleasrues and difficulties a writing life affords.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

FEATURES

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April 10, 2014

Off the beaten thesis track, Rowland pens series of poems Shannon Liao stAFF RepoRteR

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Jacob Gorski/The Miscellany News

ne senior has decided to take a pass on the footnotes and selected bibliographies.

Instead of polishing off a research paper, Liz Rowland ’14 is avidly penning the last few poems for her Senior Composition thesis.

Drawing on poetic material she’s gathered for years, as well as more current work, Rowland’s poetry thesis centers around love and relationships and their interplay, often in freeverse with internal rhyming.

“I’m interested in things that are emotional but have something wrong about them, something that’s a little bit dark and twisted,” said Rowland, adding, “which sounds so cliché, like I’m an eighth-grade goth or something.”

She admitted, “I didn’t think I would be able to write a thesis like that.”

Although writing a thesis became optional in the English Department in 2006, Rowland felt that it would be a fitting way to sum up her college days.

“I knew I was signing myself up for a lot of work,” said Rowland, who spends an average of 20 hours a week writing, editing and stressing over the project, “But it felt like something that needed to be done.”

A nontraditional senior project has its perks, according to Rowland.

“It’s really cool that I get to write creatively the whole time because then I don’t have to agonize over quotes and outside sources and it’s a really nice process,” she said, which is not to say creative thesis is free of all challenges.

“I am the only poet in Senior Composition so it’s kind of strange for me to navigate the class. Because we do meet twice a week and discuss each other’s work, that’s really helpful in a certain way,” she said.

To begin writing, it is crucial for Rowland to tidy up her surroundings in order to reach the right state of mind.

“This is going to sound really strange, but I’m into interior design as well, so if my space around me is clean and functional, engaging and I have resources around me to pull from

like, you know, films or music or anything, then that’s really helpful,” Rowland explained, “If my room’s messy, then it drives me insane.”

Rowland describes her writing process as “kind of spontaneous and triggered by having emotional experiences or art or music.”

On good days, ideas occur to Rowland at random moments, and on worse days, she starts writing at her desk, with or without a muse.

“I will sit down and say, look I need to crank out something. It usually starts with a bunch of fragments and then I go through the fragments and edit what I want to keep and what I don’t want to keep. Then those fragments become various poems and it’s like Legos, almost,” she laughed.

To get herself in the creating mood, Rowland, who is often seen on campus dressed in dark clothes and vintage style,, draws upon fashion, music and film, among other things.

“I believe in the sister arts experience, getting inspired by things that have nothing to do with writing at all,” she said.

“I love listening to music...I’m definitely inspired by the harshness that is present in [goth and industrial] and also punk. I really love punk. [Music is] just like another atmospheric quality that can put you in the right mindset.”

Rowland first grew interested in poetry as a child, when her parents made her recite poems at dinner parties. She began writing at eleven.

She can still remember some of the first things she wrote—not all of it her best work, she admitted.

“I wrote a poem about the Civil War and it was like really rhyme-y and awful. But I’ve been doing it ever since. I used to write terrible song lyrics in high school,” she said.

Rowland stuck with it though, and having attentive English professors who encouraged her craft was what pushed her to pursue poetry more seriously.

Rowland started as an anthropology major before switching to English.

It was not until she took a class with Professor of English Michael Joyce that she began to consider poetry as something more than sim-

Liz Rowland ’14 is the sole student in her composition class writing poetry for her senior project. Though evading research and footnotes has its perks, she spends up to 20 hours a week completing the writing process. ply a hobby.

“I didn’t think that I was going to be a serious writer or take that direction with my life until I took a composition course with [Joyce] and he took me seriously. And he put in the time and effort in and really worked with me on the work that I presented him and it was an enormously helpful experience. He’s invaluable,” she said.

Rowland expressed a desire for a more supportive poetry community on campus that would encourage other hesitant poets and give them the opportunities that she has enjoyed.

Vassar has the student-run organizations Helicon and Wordsmiths, but neither have the workshop format Rowland envisions.

“I would like people who write poetry to come together and make some sort of a group and have an external writing workshop that’s student-run,” she said. For Rowland, her in-

class workshops sent her down a creative path that she intends to continue after graduation.

On Friday, April 11, Rowland will be one of six undergrads competing at a poetry contest at Mount Holyoke College.

The opening lines of “Canned,” the poem she will be reading, go “Idler,/beautiful, mild, desirous of leaving./wraps herself around him like she is sea and he is the land.”

Looking forward to the end of the year and graduation, Rowland is excited to continue crafting poetry, and maybe one day even see her own work printed in a collection.

“Honestly, by the end of this process, I’ll be able to rip the cover off my thesis and maybe send it out to publishers,” she said. “And I think you make like, a little bit of money, so [poetry] would be a fun side thing! It’s something that I’ve always done, and I always see myself doing.”

Dining services rolls out new culinary option at Kiosk Bethany Terry and Erik Halberg stAFF desiGneR And Guest RepoRteR

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for what you get.”

The sushi is being supplied by Edo Sushi Express, a company in Oakville, CT that provides food to colleges and has several locations across the tristate area.

States Edo Sushi Express on their website, “All of our sushi chefs are HACCP trained and licensed before they make sushi for us. Our FDA and Silliker-audited commercial kitchen meets FDA standards and beyond.”

In addition to making sure that their product meets quality standards, their website also declares that the company is working to use sustainable sources of seafood.

Following Monterey Bay Aquarium standards for sustainable seafood, the company says that they try to use United States-based fish whenever possible (“Sustainability,” 8.29.10).

Katie de Heras/The Miscellany News

ushi. From homemade to restaurant quality, this Japanese cuisine has become a popular dish around the world. Here in Poughkeepsie, where there are multiple Japanese restaurants minutes from campus, there is no shortage of the cuisine.

With the new addition of sushi trays at the Kiosk, some students no longer need to leave campus to enjoy this delicious dish.

After considering what might be a popular culinary option for students, Campus Dining announced last week that sushi would be begin to be sold Wednesdays at the Kiosk for cash and dining bucks.

While many thought it to be an April Fool’s joke, given the timing of its addition last Wednesday, April 2, the Kiosk drew many new customers.

Olga Voyazides ’16 had seen the signs advertising the sushi that were spread throughout the College Center the day before and wrote it off as an April Fool’s prank.

Voyazides said in an emailed statement, “I did [think it was a prank]. But I went in the morning to get coffee and saw it, so came by after class to get it for lunch.”

According to Ken Oldehoff, Director of Marketing & Sustainability for Campus Dining, this addition was a general consensus among all Campus Dining managers. After selling 147 boxes the first day, he feels that people loved the addition. “It was a big hit. People really seemed to like it.”

He said that he and the other managers had planned to have leftover sushi to sell the next day; however, all but three boxes were gone by 3:30 p.m., when the Kiosk closes.

Said Oldehoff, “We’re planning on offering sushi once a week through classes. It is an expensive item and we were surprised by how enthusiastically it was received.”

The plan is to offer the boxes on Wednesdays during all hours of the Kiosk’s operation for the rest of the academic year.

Although, given that it is heading into the end of the semester, Oldehoff expressed concern that once students run out of Dining Bucks, as so often happens at this time of year, they will be less willing to spend their own money or VCash to buy the sushi.

Nonetheless, Oldehoff hoped that sushi would remain an attractive lunch option.

He went on to say, “We want to offer an alternative to the Retreat because of how crowded it gets.”

The sushi boxes were available in three different kinds: a California roll, shrimp tempura and Buffalo chicken tempura. The cost for the California roll was $6.99, while the other two were $7.99.

For the California roll, this compares to $4.25 at Tokyo Express and $3.95 at Sushi Village.

Voyazides commented, “A little too expensive

Campus Dining announced last week that the Kiosk will begin serving sushi trays every Wednesday. Students can now conveniently enjoy California rolls without journeying off campus.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Leighton Suen ’14 was very enthusiastic about the sushi. He said in an emailed statement, “I had the buffalo chicken kind last Wednesday, and it was amazing! I had never tried that type of sushi before anywhere, so I was really surprised with how delicious it was.”

Conversely, not all reactions were as positive. Others felt the sushi, while satisfactory, was not the best they had ever tried.

Voyazides said, “It was a little too cold and too spicy. The sushi is better at Toyko Express, but I appreciate the effort that the dining services are putting into providing us with more options on campus.”

Regardless of how they feel about the sushi itself, the ease of access to it is something that all students seem to be able to agree on. Suen said, “I realize that the sushi places nearby are only a short walk away, but allowing us to use Dining Bucks at the Kiosk is just more convenient.”

The Kiosk’s central campus location sees its share of student traffic. The College Center is a place many students will find themselves going through on a daily basis due to the mailroom, the Retreat, the College Store or simply on their way to class.

Given the favorable reception of the sushi, Oldehoff says that he and other Campus Dining managers are looking for even more options to bring to campus.

The Kiosk is limited in what it can offer just by how small it is, which makes it hard to find items that are both small enough to store in bulk and that appeal to a large amount of the Vassar community.

Voyazides had a suggestion that could help alleviate this issue. She said, “I’d love to see either Sushi Village or Tokyo Express come in to Tasty Tuesday.”

While any future developments likely depend on the Kiosk sushi’s continued success, Oldehoff had one final word. He said, “Paula and Beth-Ann, the Kiosk workers, are always willing to try anything. We’re always looking for new things to sell here.”

FEATURES

April 10, 2014

Page 7

The spice of life: ginger soothes soul, settles stomach Mary Talbot

Guest Columnist

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courtesy of Simply Recipes

inger is hot! Sorry to state the obvious.

Adding it to any ordinary menu item ensures instant foodie clout and guarantees popularity even if a few extra dollars are added to the price tag. As an undying food enthusiast, don’t disparage ginger just because it is a foodie item, the popular culinary accompaniment. Ginger is worth every last piece of our adoration.

In addition to the delicious, warm spiciness fresh gingerroot or powder can lend to a dish, you’ve probably heard of ginger’s healing properties—who hasn’t had an iced ginger ale for an upset stomach? You may have dismissed these claims as nonsense, jumped on board the ginger train shouting “I BELIEVE!” or landed somewhere in between. I have no charts, graphs or appendices with which to shore up my argument, but you’ll just have to take my word for it: Ginger does seem to work wonders on a downtrodden body (and face it, that means you—four years of being under-slept and over-committed take their toll).

I have made ginger tea in such incredible quantities in my dorm room (whether to soothe a troubled stomach, head or emotional state) that the mere act of pulling a fragrant tea bag out of its golden pouch—I recommend Yogi brand—immediately lifts my spirits. Candied ginger chews brought back from a friend’s vacation provide a much needed pick-me-up on late library nights.

I witnessed ginger’s remedial powers in action a few summers ago when I spent a month working on a farm in Maine with a friend, who got strep throat immediately upon our arrival.

Patti, farmer and cook extraordinaire, whipped up a brew with fresh gingerroot and raw honey, and we both sipped it in front of the woodstove as drizzle fell relentlessly on the fields and grazing sheep outside. One might argue that Kaitlyn’s quick recovery was due to a hefty dose of antibiotics, but I have faith that spice

and warmth and sweetness also did their part.

The experience which fully solidified my conversion from a casual ginger fan to a diehard crusader occurred in San Francisco the summer before my freshman year at Vassar. It was week two of an extended family vacation ‘Out West’ (if you’re from North Carolina like me, you know that this indicates a broad swath of the country).

Back in our little rental apartment after a long day of sightseeing, I reluctantly registered a swollen ache in the back of my throat, accompanied by dogged chills and an exhaustion which left me drooping pathetically over the arm of the couch, pleading for sympathy and Tylenol. I was distraught. “I know I’m getting sick,” I emphatically informed my parents—and I did know. I was 100% positive that I would wake up the next day with a full-blown head cold, or worse.

That night, we went to Chinatown for dinner, a highly-anticipated excursion. I whined softly in the back seat of the rental car, although secretly delighted in spite of myself by the unfamiliar sights, smells and masses of people. Minutes later, we were sitting at a round table on the bottom floor of a big restaurant. I scanned the menu and listlessly ordered ‘Chicken with Ginger,’ downing cup after little white cup of Jasmine tea. After a round of appetizers, of which I only remember fried prawns served in their shells—crunchy and salty and eyeballing us with little black dots on stalks still attached—the main courses arrived.

A steaming platter was set before me, with whole, skin-on chicken thighs swimming in a gorgeous greenish sauce, perfuming the air with lemongrass, garlic and ginger. I ate and ate and ate, and forgot to feel sick, or nervous about college, or anything but warm, satiated and pleasantly sleepy. By the time I left the restaurant, my impending illness had vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and I woke up feeling like I’d never been sick a day in my life.

Ginger Syrup

The Recipe

Adapted slightly from David Lebovitz’s Fresh Ginger Syrup recipe.

I made this syrup a few weeks ago and immediately wanted it in everything—add spoonfuls to lemonade, seltzer, hot tea, chocolate cake batter, etc.. D.L. says the syrup will keep for 2 weeks in the fridge.

8 oz fresh gingerroot, peeled (or not—D.L. says color will be darker but taste is left unchanged if you leave on the peels) & chopped/sliced into smallish pieces 4 cups water 1 cup sugar (this is cut in half from what D.L. suggests, I found it plenty sweet) A pinch of salt Put all ingredients into a pot and bring to boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for about an hour. Strain the syrup through a sieve into a mason jar. You can either discard cooked ginger pieces or save them to snack on/put in cookies. They are spicy but sweet and delicious!

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Students respond to changing campus landscape TIMBER continued from page 1

that, simply because parents frown on their son or daughter being hit by a tree or branches.”

Because the Sugar Maple was a designated Class Tree, Buildings and Grounds was in contact with the Department of Alumnae Affairs, who notified the members of the affected class about the tree’s removal. The Class of 1939 plaque now sits in Horst’s office, where it will remain until it can be installed by a tree near the new science building.

Now that the tree has been removed, the College also plans to change the path that seniors march along during Convocation. Instead of walking in a straight line down the hill, future seniors will march a lower-grade, serpentine path down the hill, ultimately making it safer and more accessible for chair-bound students.

However, student disappointment was not only directed toward the Sugar Maple’s removal. Over the past few years, a number of trees on campus have been removed due to declining health, including the Cucumber Magnolia that once stood outside the College Center Atrium.

The immediate construction on the Academic Quad, as well as the greater Campus Master Plan have also resulted in the removal of trees, most notably those near the President’s house.

The trees that stood where the science building was to be built were also removed, as well as various Norway Maples, an invasive species, that stood along Fonteyn Kill. As a result, a number of students who have grown to love Vassar’s landscape have had to cope with the fact that it is changing.

“I think that it is a strange time to be at Vassar because of the overall Campus Master Planning changes that will be made within the next few years,” wrote Terrace Apartment President Estello Regnant ’14 in an emailed statement.

He added, “As a senior, I know that if I ever come back post graduation, it won’t be the same Vassar that I remember. It’s sad, but I acknowledge that my Vassar is one of change.”

Other students, such as Jeremy Garza ’14, blame the Administration as a whole for failing

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

to prioritize the conservation of the landscape during the construction.

Wrote Garza, “In my opinion, the increase of cut down trees on our campus is just another outcome of a long trend within Cappy’s Presidency where there is no passion to invest and pay attention to the aesthetic details of our campus at large.”

Despite these concerns, Dean of Strategic Planning and Academic Resources and Professor of Chemistry Marianne Begemann ’79 noted that the College made efforts to preserve trees during the construction. Many of the trees on the Academic Quad have been relocated, including the weeping Norway Spruce that stood outside of Mudd Chemistry. The pine tree, which looks like a dejected chemistry student slumping to class, now slumps over the walkway in the Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center’s sculpture garden.

Although the removal of these trees is linked to a conspicuous campus project, Horst noted that the campus’s landscape has never been static.

“Over the course of my career at Vassar, I’ve kept track, and we removed 280 trees…but we planted about 1800 trees. So we certainly have planted far more than we have lost.” Despite this, the unannounced removal or relocation of a favorite tree nevertheless remains a topic of concern for students, faculty and alumnae/i alike.

“I think that the beauty of Vassar’s campus is primarily in the landscape,” said Begemann.

“That is my personal opinion: it is not the buildings themselves, but the landscape that really makes Vassar’s campus what it is. So I understand why people are concerned, because they have a sentimental attachment to a specific tree, because it is a tree that they liked to visit or do something near, or because they enjoy the landscape in general.”

She continued, “You know, it is hard. You do your best to communicate. Even if you send an email to all, because you know it is a special tree or a tree that’s visible, not everybody sees it. It is tough.”

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April 10, 2014

Professors balance professional, personal on Facebook SOCIAL MEDIA continued from page 1

‘Them shits move mountains and burn water.

All praise is due to white tears’—to the Dean of Faculty.” According to Laymon, no actions were taken against him by the College.

While numerous professors use multiple social media platforms, the College does not have a policy that dictates if professors can or cannot friend or follow students. According to Dean of Faculty Jonathan Chenette, professors have to reach a decision on the matter based on individual preferences.

The College will only get involved if there is a potential violation of existing college policies.

Chenette wrote in an emailed statement, “[Professor-student relationships carried out online] can lead to perceptions of favoritism, inappropriate intimacy, harassment, or discrimination that may raise concerns about whether there are violations of College policy... We have processes for investigating and responding to such concerns.”

He continued, noting that parties should be aware of their actions online. “Social media spaces, by blurring boundaries between public and private or professional and personal heighten the challenge of knowing when and how to communicate,” wrote Chenette.

Some professors take caution by not actively

friending students, especially current ones, over Facebook; often, they will only accept friend requests from former students.

Chenette wrote, “My own practice is not to respond to Facebook friend or LinkedIn connection requests from current students. After graduation, I am happy to add LinkedIn connections for former students I know well enough to assist them professionally—the same students who might request letters of recommendation.”

Laymon will accept requests from current students, but he does so hoping they will respect his space as he does theirs. He wrote, “I don’t turn down anyone who friends me because that feels kinda mean. So if students friend me, I accept their friend request with the understanding that they’re friending me...What I say on my page is kinda like what I do in my yard. If they’re not down with something, I say, they are grown-ups.

They can leave the yard.”

When it comes to other sites like Twitter and Instagram, unless your accounts are private, keeping up with everyone who follows you may prove difficult. Indeed, while professors may not know the exact number of students viewing their online activity, they do not feel it necessary to alter their behavior.

Associate Professor of English Hua Hsu commented in an emailed statement, “The faculty

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has had conversations about this stuff in the past. Though I think those conversations sometimes presume that students are way more curious about their professors’ lives than is actually true…I’m not overly conscious of how students perceive me via social media. The only time it’s come up was one time when a student asked me how/why some of the bands and magazines he followed on Twitter follow me.”

For some, one’s online presence is a reflection of a larger picture. Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life Luis Inoa thinks about what he would feel comfortable sharing with his mother, not students, before making any post. He further added that he wishes students would think more about who they are sharing information with online.

“If I don’t want [my mother] to read it I will not post it. I do wish students who have friended me remembered that they are sharing with me as well. I wear multiple hats and when it comes to VC I never take any of them off,” the Instagram and Pinterest user wrote in an emailed statement.

Connections formed via social media can also afford students and professors the opportunity for educational enrichment, according to Chenette.

He said, “Social media create new spaces for

interaction that can be fruitful for learning and mentoring and exchanging ideas but can also be damaging. We’re still learning how to navigate and interact in such spaces.”

Inoa expressed concerns that while social media widen the barriers between students and professors, they also create some tensions that can be restricting.

He said, “I am fascinated by the ways in which Facebook both enhances and limits community.

As it pertains to student/faculty/administrators and Facebook, we just need to remember that following, liking and commenting on a post does not mean that you know, really know someone.

Yes it is revealing but it is never a reflection of a whole person.”

For Laymon, social media might not be beneficial to the student-teacher dynamic. In fact, it requires constant thought.

He said, “I think we should be aware of power and the abuse of rhetorical and discursive power as grown ups. I think the Facebook thing actually probably closes a space between teacher and student, and I’m not so sure that closed space is necessarily healthy... I can’t imagine looking at the way my professors talked to their friends when I was in school. I wonder if it would have made the educational experience more dynamic and robust. I’m not sure.”

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

OPINIONS

April 10, 2014

Page 9

Splitting Structure of 50 Nights needs reconsidering of nations T a commonality THE MISCELLANY NEWS STAFF EDITORIAL

his past Saturday, the Class of 2014 and ViCE Special Events hosted 50 Nights at The Chance, the only off-campus event that is meant for the entire student body.

Intended to celebrate the 50 nights before graduation, the event includes busing students to the concert space and nightclub in the city of Poughkeepsie.

Unfortunately, this year also showed an expressed escalation in the amount of violence, drunkenness and vandalism by Vassar students. We at The Miscellany News believe that the degree of this disrespectful behavior calls into question several aspects of the event.

At 50 Nights last weekend, Vassar students proved that they cannot handle the responsibility of using a community space not affiliated with the College. Along with pushing in line in front of Main Building on Saturday night, a mob formed on Main Street and had to be broken up by the police, security at The Chance was assaulted, various fights broke out and the night ended with four damaged buses. The club was clearly over capacity, and many members of the Vassar community were excessively drunk or otherwise impaired.

As a result of the misbehavior at 50 Nights this year, we at The Miscellany News advocate for a stricter limitation to be set for future 50 Nights. We suggest that the event either be restricted to seniors and the friends they sign in, or that the event organizers institute a ticketing system to help control the flow of students to and from The Chance throughout the night.

It is important for the students of the College to understand that the lack of self-control by members of our community has historically led to the shut-down of all-campus events, notably HomoHop and Shiva Rave. The lack of respect for shared spaces on campus only points to larger issues on campus regarding self-restraint and disorderly conduct when it comes to all-campus events like 50 Nights.

It is also important to note that just be-

cause 50 Nights is located off campus at The Chance does not mean we can continue to disrespect the space and the people who work there.

While we as students have to collectively pay for damages incurred during Villard Room parties, the damages to the buses procured by the College for transportation must be paid for by the senior class, causing an unnecessary rise in cost to their Senior Week events as well.

Additionally, the nature of the event intrinsically promotes a culture of binge-drinking and irresponsible drug use.

Because the event is off campus and does not allow alcohol to enter the building, students may feel the need to drink excessively beforehand whereas with on-campus events, students have the opportunity to return to their houses and rejoin the event. 50 Nights at The Chance also has a reputation for prompting increased drug usage, bringing the safety of the event into question.

We at The Miscellany News question whether an all-campus event at a location outside the College promotes an unsafe environment in terms of substance misuse, and therefore again recognize that the event may need to be restructured in the future.

The event is meant to be an all-campus celebration, with an emphasis being placed on seniors, but with the continued escalation of violence toward property and others, The Miscellany News questions why students need an event to occur off campus, if we deserve one at all.

The amount of work that goes into setting up 50 Nights and the amount of damage incurred by The Chance indicates a type of immaturity not normally associated with Vassar students; the event seems to encourage rowdy behavior that amplifies every year. Yet, unlike Halloweekend, students don’t seem to be concerned with 50 Nights being shut down in the future. Instead, we treat The Chance and its employees with such a level of disrespect that the

best option almost seems to be the removal of the event altogether.

In order to maintain the integrity of the event as a celebration for seniors as well as to control the overcrowding, we suggest a 50 Nights ticketing system. This system would give priority to seniors, guaranteeing that those who want to attend may do so. Students would be able to sign up for particular bus times, which would help make the often overcrowded buses safer and create a more streamlined waiting queue.

Despite this year’s increase in the number of buses for the event, the volume of those waiting for a ride also increased, so many students pushed their way onto the crowded buses and put them over capacity.

However, because certain departure times from Vassar are more popular, there would need to be some leniency with the times for which students sign up. Our hope is that there is a way to make the busing less hectic and more safe for both the students and the drivers.

Ultimately, we at The Miscellany News realize that a ticketing system may not be enough to fix the problems that 50 Nights at The Chance presents each year. In order to better prevent the damage costs, misbehavior and danger created by the event, it may be necessary to completely restructure it, which could mean closing it to seniors and their guests.

Whether minor or major, we feel it is imperative that changes be made to 50 Nights; Vassar has a history of shutting down events that get out of control, and this one may be next. We at The Miscellany News would not be surprised if within the next five years the event no longer exists. In fact, the time span may be even short than that.

Unless we are willing to work to improve 50 Nights as well as our behavior as attendees, next year’s event could be our last.

—The Staff Editorial represents the opinions of at least 2/3 of the Editorial Board.

Opioid overdose drug can be life-saving Delaney Fischer Columnist

O

n Thursday, April 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new medical device called Evzio that prevents opioid overdoes. An opioid is a chemical derived from opium and has been know to produce sedation and pain relief by binding to receptors in the brain, central nervous system and even in the gastrointestinal tract. Some common drugs you may have heard of that contain opioids include codeine, oxycodone, morphine and heroin. These drugs have also been associated with overdoses that can lead to death.

Evzio, the newly approved hand-held auto injector, is predicted to help save thousands of lives by preventing opioid overdoses (CNN, “FDA approves easy-to-use heroin overdoes antidote,” 04.04.2014). Evzio is administered in a single dose in the same manner as an EpiPen: It is injected into a muscle or directly under the skin. The main drug in Evzio, naloxone, is an opioid antagonist. Naloxone rapidly reverses the effects of heroin and other opioids, which can cause you to stop breathing.

However, James Rathmell, the chief of the division of pain medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, still has major concerns. He noted that “there will be a false sense of security. Like, ‘O.K., I’ve got a naloxone pen, we can party all we want, no one is going to die’” (New York Times, “Hand-Held Treatment for Overdoses is Approved,” 04.03.14). But other experts in this field have suggested that complete access to this device by young adults, particularly minors, is unlikely, and hopefully, Rathmell’s concerns will not become a reality.

While family members, caregivers, and any non-medical personnel are allowed to keep this Evzio on hand and inject it, the new medical device does require a prescription. Despite this restriction, there has still been concern about

improper administration of the drug, such as someone who is not actually overdosing from an opioid. Douglas Throckmorton, deputy director for regulatory programs with the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research answered this question by stating, “If someone is given naloxone who is not overdosing from an opioid, the dose available in the Evzio device will not hurt them.”

A Vassar student commented that this new device reminded them of a “Pulp Fiction” scene when one of the characters is saved after accidentally snorting heroin. They noted it’s not quite the same concept, because in the movie they inject adrenaline into the heart, which they don’t think is realistic, but that it’s interesting such a similar concept was presented.

However, it should be noted that Evzio is not a permanent fix to an overdose solution.

Proper medical care should be given as soon as possible. The injection of Evzio only temporarily reverses the overdose effects, and has been seen to bring out opioid withdrawal symptoms including nausea, vomiting, sweating, as well as increased heart rate and blood pressure that may lead to more serious medical issues (Washington Post, “FDA approves device to combat opioid drug overdose,” 4.3.14).

Eric Strain, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Substance Abuse treatment and research, commented on the risks of injecting, stating: “There are risks and benefits to all medications, but in the big scheme of things, this is probably a valuable tool, especially if it’s used and provided in the context of improving access to treatment.”

Soon, every police officer in the state of New York will be trained to properly use the Evzio and be equipped to carry the medical device. During a test of this medical device in 2013, 563 people in Suffolk Country, New York received this injection, saving many from over-

doses. New York will be first state in the nation to fully equip police officers, using $5 million in seized drug money to fund their Community Overdose Prevention (COP) program (CNN, “FDA approves easy-to-use heroin overdoes antidote,” 04.04.2014).

While I am mildly concerned that in 2013, there were so many cases of opioid overdoses in just one county of New York, I personally think that it is great that New York is pushing for all emergency personnel, like police officers, to be trained and equipped with this new device. Evzio may not be perfect, but often it is police officers, not medical professionals who arrive on scenes where medical treatment is needed first, and the police officers are not always properly trained to deal with those situations. Because of the training in Suffolk County, 563 lives were saved.

And while I also believe Rathmell does make a valid point in suggesting that people may have a false sense of security that they won’t ultimately die due to an overdose because this will revive them, I think there are also a lot of people who simply need help with the pressure of trying something once and not being educated on what might happen or even thinking that one drug is something when it’s actually something else. People sometimes make poor choices in all aspects of life at times. No matter what, when someone overdoses and loses their life it is terrible: loved ones, family, friends all become heartbroken.

For now, I am a supporter of the device, hoping that Rathmell is wrong. Maybe the advancement of the device will bring to light more information and education about opioid overdoses and risks to people. I am hoping to see the that reported number of times the device is used will decrease, but only time will tell.

—Delaney Fischer ’15 is a neuroscience major.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Lily Elbaum Columnist

I

don’t remember a time where there were two Germanys. I don’t think anyone currently a student at Vassar does. The reunification of Germany was a memorable event for an older generation. In fact, for our generation, the borders of the world have seemed to be a relatively fixed feature; the constant redrawing of lines on a map only a feature of a past time. And yet, the current number of “countries” often listed as 196 is rather vague and inaccurate. As it turns out, the borders of our world aren’t as set in stone as we were taught in elementary school, which isn’t so surprising. Many borders were arbitrarily drawn after war or colonialism, sometimes without input by the people who were supposed to live in these new countries. Is it time to reconsider the boundaries we thought were permanent?

I remember in elementary school, we had to color in maps of each continent, with each country a different color. It was supposed to teach us geography, but it really taught us more about how to color inside the lines. Those maps seemed like they were the definitive answer to what countries were there for. We were never taught to question the maps that hung on the walls—why they were drawn the way they were and who drew them was a mystery. The abrupt split of Sudan in 2011 into Sudan and South Sudan was the first time I realized that borders really weren’t fixed. In 2008, Kosovo, a region in conflict with Serbia since the 1990s, declared itself an independent republic.

However, unlike South Sudan, not everyone was happy for Kosovo to become an independent nation. Kosovo, like sixteen other states, is disputed as a sovereign state. Some of these disputed states are only recognized by one or two other nations—often fellow disputed states.

Perhaps the most famous example of this is Taiwan, also known as the Republic of China.

Most of the disputed states are small portions of undisputed countries that have declared independence which larger states haven’t recognized.

Some, though, are UN member states; the most controversial likely being Israel and Palestine, the latter of which only a member state.

Soon, there may be other states that will be added to the list. With the recent events in Ukraine, perhaps Crimea and Eastern Ukraine will join this list of disputed states whose membership in the UN is possible, but depends on recognition from larger, more influential nations like the United States. Meanwhile, since Russia is the one taking the initiative to call Crimea a part of Russia, the U.S. is almost forced to take issue with Russia’s actions. Either way, what Ukrainians want for Crimea and Eastern Ukraine will likely never be the main focus as Russia is certainly more dominant in the relationship.

All that, of course, implies that all the referendums, soldier movements and Putin glaring will come to something. They may not, though the possibility of everything going back to the way it was seems highly unlikely at this point, if not downright impossible. Perhaps what’s most disconcerting, at least for Westerners, is that this is the first major border conflict since the reunification of Germany and the end of the Yugoslav Wars. It marks a change in Russia-EU relations that had gone unchallenged since the end of the Cold War. That status quo is changing in a big way, and no one is quite sure how we’ll come out on the other side.

Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Most states that we consider to have always been there are relatively new creations. Take Italy, for example.

Prior to 1861, it wasn’t even a unified state and it didn’t become a republic until 1946. So really, current state conflicts aren’t all that surprising when one considers the longer timeline.

As for Ukraine, it will be interesting to see how it resolves the disparate parts of itself. Will it divide? Will it try to force continued unification?

It’s impossible to tell. Hopefully, though, whatever happens will be the will of the people, and not the result of governments playing god on these people and their regions.

—Lily Elbaum ’16 is an international studies major.

OPINIONS

Page 10

April 10, 2014

Jordan River trip itinerary addresses complexities of region Jill Schneiderman & Rachel Friedman Guest Columnists

O

n March 23, we returned from a two-week study trip to Israel/Palestine called “The Jordan River Watershed.” We feel confident that as a result of traveling to the region and talking with Arab and Jewish Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians, our students can now speak knowledgeably about the complex realities of this conflict-ridden place. Our trip epitomizes the methodology of the field sciences, as well as the “go to the source” approach that has long been a defining feature of a Vassar education.

On our first day, we visited the holy sites of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in Jerusalem.

Next, visits to the Arab village of Battir and a nearly century-old Palestinian hilltop farm, Tent of Nations, as well as the Dheisha refugee camp in Bethlehem, provided bird’s-eye views of resource quality and quantity issues in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank. After our introduction to the complicated mixture of communities in this tiny area, we traveled north towards the Lebanese border to the contested volcanic heights of Israel/Syria and familiarized ourselves with the water sources that feed the Sea of Galilee, the largest freshwater body in the region, and the upper reaches of the Jordan River. While in the Galilee, we also visited Nazareth and the ancient Roman city of Sepphoris, remarkable for the archaeological record it provides of Romans, Jews and Christians coexisting peacefully.

Over the next days, we headed south, traversing the length of the lower Jordan to its terminus in the closed basin of the Dead Sea. Throughout the Jordan valley, we encountered the stark reality of dammed tributaries, water in/sensitive agricultural practices, inadequate sewage treatment facilities, wetland reclamation efforts, land subsidence, mineral extraction industries and, especially notable, unequal access to surface water conduits and groundwater aquifers. At the same time, we were humbled by the awesome spectacle of deep geologic time revealed in the

limestone layers of the canyons that we hiked to an oasis of Ein Gedi and the storied copper-bearing sandstone mountains of Timna. We concluded our trip in the southern Negev, learning about communities trying to live sustainably in the harsh desert terrain by employing solar power, dry composting, permaculture farming and mud-plaster building.

“Throughout the Jordan valley, we encountered the stark reality of dammed tributaries.”

Throughout our trip we met with Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Christians, Muslims and Jews working together towards justice through nonviolent solutions. Most impressive about these individuals, non-governmental organizations (such as Emergency Water Sanitation and Hygiene in the occupied Plaestinian territory) and educational institutions (Arava Institute for Environmental Studies) was their demonstrated ability to inhabit the gray area between radical extremes. Despite the charges leveled against them, brave people on both sides consistently asserted the need to sustain conflicting narratives simultaneously. As Sulaiman Khatib—a representative from the binational NGO Combatants for Peace who served 10 years in Israeli prison for armed resistance—put it, “Every stone has at least two stories.” Khatib’s line became our mantra as we repeatedly strove to occupy the murky but potentially productive middle space between binary extremes.

We have, of course, followed the maelstrom of reactions to the trip. We, as the instructors of the trip, have personally been attacked from both left and right. In one account, we are “white settler colonialists” oppressing the Palestinians;

Letter to the Editor On April 2, The Miscellany News published a letter titled “Campus Discourse Continues to be Strong,”

by Joshua Schreier. Professor Schreier seems entirely disinterested in being a role model for all students, not just for BDS supporters, and denies the hostile atmosphere that now exists at Vassar for pro-Israel students. Scholars do not publish propaganda in the school newspaper. That is an act contrary to the role of a scholar. Professor Schreier may believe that such an environment is conducive to education. No reasonable person could possibly agree with him.

In fact, it is simply not true that Vassar today supports a diversity of viewpoints concerning the Arab Israeli dispute. That is due in considerable part to Vassar’s course about Israel, taught by a Professor Schreier. As a supporter of BDS, he becomes an advocate first, and educator, if at all, a distant second.

His teaching is compromised by BDS and focused on vilifying Israel. A scholar teaching about Israel would bring at least one pro-Israel speaker during this academic year to speak. Has Professor Schreier done so? No. The dearth of pro-Israel speakers is his fault. Perhaps that is because he supports BDS. To supporters of BDS, there are no other viewpoints.

Israel, to such supporters, is evil, not a country to be understood. Therefore, scholarship that dissents from that viewpoint is not merely wrong, it is intolerable. The professors, including Professor Schreier, who signed the “open” letter, conflate their opinion of Israel with scholarship. Pro-Israel students should thus reasonably fear being marked down by these advocates pretending to be scholars. That is human nature. No student concerned about grades would dare express a pro-Israel opinion in such a teacher’s classroom. Professor Schreier denies the reality of what is occurring on Vassar’s campus. Because our FTI group includes parents of current Vassar students, we are acutely aware of the plight of pro-Israel students. Most prefer silence to being ostracized by classmates. In fact, only the bravest pro-Israel students have dared to speak up. Professor Shreier and his co-signers evidently prefer monologue to a scholarly discussion.

—Melissa Green ’78

in the other, we are “self-hating Jews” pursuing an “anti-Israel agenda.” In fact, people who made little, if any effort to examine the details of our course subject and itinerary have reduced us to stereotypical caricatures. If their narrative is that the two of us are bent on destroying Israel, it is because our support for many of the goals of Students for Justice In Palestine (SJP) and the Open Hillel movement seems irreconcilable with our involvement in our Jewish communities and support (albeit critical) of Israel. If their narrative is that we support a white colonialist regime in Israel, then perhaps they refuse to look at the ways in which we are committed to fighting injustice against Palestinians.

Though unsurprised by these reactions, they sadden us, particularly as educators.

One especially vexing aspect of the criticism leveled at us is that it has been racialized. In early February, SJP students picketed our course causing some of our students to express feelings of harassment and intimidation upon entering the space of the classroom. We objected to the picket because of its negative effect on those who already felt beleaguered by ill-informed criticisms across campus for enrolling in the course. Discussing the picket during class, our students asked us to relay to administrators in the Dean of the College office and the International Studies program the request for a facilitated discussion between them and SJP members. Despite our repeated requests for such an intervention, none transpired.

Since then, our objection to the picket has been characterized by some members of the Vassar community as our use of white privilege to target students of color. If we and our students had been consulted before this conclusion was drawn, listeners would have learned that our students—many of whom belong to racial and ethnic minority groups—were as surprised as we were that the group of SJP protesters were characterized as being “of color.” Furthermore, it would have become clear that we supported the right of SJP students to protest in any number of ways, including ongoing tabling in the College

Letter to the Editor

One of the arguments against fossil fuel divestment, largely perpetuated by Vassar’s Administration and trustees, is that divestment will cost the college money that it is using to fund financial aid and need-­blind admission. Although a proper reinvestment strategy will effectively eliminate all concern about hurting the endowment, it is important to address the underlying idea upon which this argument is based. When those opposed to divestment argue that money invested in fossil fuel corporations benefits the endowment, they are essentially saying it doesn’t matter where we get our money from, as long as it is being put to good use. Here is a dividing line we as a student body cannot cross. Last week, BP spilled an estimated 1,228 gallons of oil into Lake Michigan, only four years after its Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is still affecting marine ecosystems and the Gulf economy today. Tar sands operations in Canada frequently—and often illegally—intrude on First Nation’s land.

Every year, fossil fuel corporations spend millions of dollars disseminating counter-­ information that challenges peer-­reviewed research about the potential damages of climate change. Fossil fuel corporations are deeply entrenched in Congress and have the lobbying power to thwart legislation on emissions regulations, extraction rights and energy subsidies. We cannot afford to ignore that the money we obtain from this industry through investments is money made from committing such abuses. Financial aid and most of the College’s other expenditures are theoretically used to help create a diverse environment and improve the quality of education and campus life. But does the source of this funding matter? Of course it does. We simply cannot justify profiting from these injustices, regardless of what we are doing with the money. There is always danger in such instrumental rationalizing and taking an ends­-justify-means approach

in this case not only detracts from the good done with dirty money, but runs counter to ethical conduct. The benefits we enjoy will and must always be haunted by the knowledge of the way a part of those funds were generated. A recent skit staged by VC Divest in the College Center demonstrated the school’s hypocrisy by continuing to invest in fossil fuel corporations and simultaneously claiming goals of sustainability. Staging a wedding between Vassar College and the Fossil Fuel Corporations, the action presented the problem of an institution with a stated commitment to social justice becoming too close with corporations that do not uphold the same values. Multiple objections were raised by several speakers who interrupted the mock wedding ceremony, reiterating the fact that by choosing to continue investing in the fossil fuel industry Vassar is already making a political statement, already issuing tacit approval and support for those corporations’ gross human rights and environmental abuses. The skit ended with this mock wedding interrupted, but as the priest pronounced at the beginning, “We come together not to mark the start of a relationship, but to recognize a bond that already exists.” Such a tainted relationship will continue, so long as Vassar continues to profit from investments in the industry. We urge Vassar to find ethical and environmentally sustainable alternatives for financing the endowment, recognizing that any potential financial security offered by fossil fuel investments violate the school’s commitment to teaching and practicing social justice. The money that we use to benefit our institution must not come at the expense of others. It is time for Vassar to act not out of convenience, but to take full responsibility for its actions.

—Graham Stewart ’16, Dylan Finley ’17 & Martin Man ’16

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Center, but not inside an academic building at our classroom door. If anyone had thought to speak with us before stereotypically labeling us, multiple competing narratives would have emerged. For example, while the two of us have indeed benefited from the privilege of being seen as within the white majority in our society, we are at the same time in sympathy with the concerns of SJP.

“We have, of course, followed the maelstrom of reactions to the trip.”

Many Vassar students and faculty have expressed their concern that over the last several years, a climate of fear has descended on campus. This fear was confirmed for them during the spectacle at the Open Forum that was held on March 3.

In our opinion, the rage unleashed disrespectfully at us at the forum has a gendered as well as a racial dimension. Perhaps one way to begin countering the climate of fear is to work harder campus-wide to engage one another with intellectual openness, listening to the multiple narratives that emanate from the Vassar community.

A jumping-off point for this endeavor might be to engage with any one of the 28 breathtakingly thoughtful students who devoted their spring break to the study trip. Though some might caricature these students as having been greenwashed by the two of us or by our itinerary, such spurious depictions underestimate the intelligence of the diverse group of students whom we have been privileged to teach.

—Jill Schneiderman is a professor of earth science & geography at Vassar. Rachel Friedman is an associate professor of Greek & Roman studies at Vassar and Jewish Studies.

Letter to the Editor I am writing this in response to “Student loan debt remains imminent hurdle for seniors” (The Miscellany News, 04.03.14), as I would like to provide information regarding the student loan debt for Vassar graduates. The article mentioned that the national average student loan debt for those graduating in 2012 was $29,400; however, for the Vassar class of 2012 the average student loan debt was far lower at $17,234. With the average starting salary of our Vassar graduates between $35,000 and $40,000, the monthly payment of $198 will comprise approximately six percent of their monthly salary, which is far below industry standards of 20 percent of one’s gross income being applied towards debt payments.

The article mentioned the program Pave, which offers funding opportunities for recent graduates; however, the repayment rate may be as high as 10% of your current and future earnings, again a much higher rate than the standard repayment option for your student loans.

There has also been an increasing national concern regarding the overall default rate on student loans; however, Vassar’s cohort default rate has been below one percent for the past ten years.

This default rate continues to be one of the lowest in the country, and below that of many of our peer schools.

Though the thought of beginning repayment may seem daunting, there are options available to help you be successful at repaying your loan debt. For example, the Federal Government offers a variety of repayment plans, which range from a standard repayment ($198 per month in our current example) to repayment plans based on a percentage of your income. In addition, there are opportunities to defer payments based on having a low or no-paying job.

In conclusion, please make sure you research all financial options available to you in order to make the best decision for you in regards to both your short term and long term goals.

—Jessica Berner, Director of Financial Aid at Vassar College.

April 10, 2014

OPINIONS

IVP process needs reforms, better training Michaela Regehr Guest Columnist

TRIGGER WARNING: This article discusses instances of sexual assault.

When I say I’m not safe on campus, I’m not trying to put that reality on anyone else. I don’t want to create a sense of fear on this campus, but at the same time, I want my anxious, panicky reality to be known. I’m a victim. Someone cussed me out, made threats and angry comments to the people I was with, as well as random strangers. When I got back to my room, hours after leaving that less than pleasant social interaction behind, I found him waiting there for me. He tried to force his way into my room to “fight” with me and wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t leave when I called security. He only left when he realized there was someone else in the room with me—when he realized I wasn’t alone.

What triggered this reaction? I cock-blocked him. My friend had texted me to come over with an emergency: To get her out of an interaction with a guy. So, I ran over and started hysterically crying about my love life, and we left the party. But this guy could not handle being told no, so he tried to physically and mentally intimidate me. It worked.

That night, I lay awake in my girlfriend’s bed (security advised me to stay out of my own dorm), wondering how he know where I lived. How long was he waiting for me there? Would he go after my friend? Would he come back for me? Was he only unstable when he was drunk? What would have happened if I hadn’t locked my door fast enough?

I ended up taking the case to an Interpersonal Violence Panel (IVP) because he had tried scaring two other women I knew in similar ways and figured Vassar would not tolerate this pattern of intimidating behavior. This person and I appeared before the IVP to figure out if he was responsible for breaking Vassar’s policy on stalking, attempted assault and disruptive conduct. I had four witnesses come forward to contribute to the investigation’s notes, and they clearly supported my claim that this person intended to harm me out of anger.

The panel only found him responsible for disruptive conduct. I was thankful, because it meant sanctions were put in place, notably a severe Do Not Contact order. It required him to move out of my dorm, to remove himself from any public space where he found himself in my presence and to not make eye or verbal contact with me.

This last measure was put in place because I found myself getting panic attacks in his presence.

I was told to report any violations of the Do Not Contact order to security; that way, if I ever chose to follow up on the incidents, I would have documented events to support my case. By finding this

person responsible solely for disruptive conduct and not stalking or attempted assault, Vassar’s statistics at the end of the year do not reflect the issue of gender-based violence on this campus. This verdict was a way of giving me sanctions without the administration needing to address larger issues on campus.

My real problems arose when the Do Not Contact order was broken four times. I was informed that the incidents were going to another IVP, because the school had to follow up on reports of a Do Not Contact order that had been broken so many times. I protested, because I knew if this time a panel found him “not responsible” of these violations, there would be no incentive for him to continue upholding the Do Not Contact order since he would suffer no consequences. I was already dealing with harassment and intimidation not only from him, but also from his sports team.

I was told that I didn’t need to go to the IVP, but that if I didn’t show up to represent myself, he would almost certainly be found “not responsible.”

So, last week, I showed up to the most emotionally invalidating experience of my life. It lasted six hours. I was placed within five feet of individuals from his team—individuals who had intentionally intimidated me—as they testified on his behalf. A different witness then spoke how this person had clearly seen me in a public space and still didn’t leave. This alone should have been enough to find him responsible for failing to comply with the Do Not Contact order. The Title IX investigator, Rich Horowitz, spoke to the IVP at the end of it all, making it clear that after looking at the evidence and Title IX investigation texts, he had found the person responsible for several violations of Vassar policy. Still, the panel found him not responsible.

The IVP did not uphold Title IX standards. The process causes me extreme stress, and invalidates my struggles. If the Do Not Contact Order is broken (which it will be, because this person feels entitled to my space and faces no consequences for intimidating me with his presence), I don’t feel like I can call security because I could be forced through another IVP. The Do Not Contact order is supposed to restore my sense of safety on this campus. Instead, the IVP process has undermined any sense of empowerment or safety I might have gained from my first IVP. You may think this is a huge overreaction on my part. I disagree, on both an individual and institutional level. In both my cases, I had ample evidence and support from reliable witnesses. If I can’t get recognized with plenty of evidence to back me up, how will someone who has experienced more intimate or isolated trauma ever be

able to reclaim Vassar as a safe space? I am invisible and unsupported on this campus. I’m a victim of gender-based violence and harassment, but I’m also a victim of the system. I’m not the only person that feels this way; my experience with the IVP is not the exception. But it doesn’t need to be this way. We as a campus need to offer self-identified victims and survivors more rights. A victim should get to decide if their issue goes before an IVP. A victim should have the right to a qualified panel. A victim should have the right to not be blamed for their situation. We have the right to feeling safe on this campus. I don’t believe these rights are currently a reality on this campus.

The first step in fixing this process is to have more intensive training for those that sit on the panel. Currently, the sole person responsible for the entire IVP process is D.B. Brown, the Dean of Students. In addition to engaging in victim blaming and micro-aggressions with me, D.B. Brown is the only person responsible for the training of the IVP. I propose to have the training of the IVP members be the responsibility of a panel, one that includes the real life realities of stalking, sexual assault and gender-based violence (instead of sticking to the handbook), and thus creating a panel that can actually ensure us a safer space on this campus. As members of this campus, we need to ensure that victims have the right to appear before a highly qualified panel; otherwise, these hearings cause more harm and emotional trauma than necessary, as well as are ineffective at keeping Vassar a safe space. We need to have panels that call sexual assault by its real name, not so-called “disruptive conduct.” We deserve to be on a campus that doesn’t intentionally render victims invisible and voiceless.

I also want to note that if you or a friend are experiencing an issue of sexual assault, harassment, intimidation, stalking or fear on this campus, there are some incredible resources here on campus.

CARES is really helpful. Elizabeth Schrock is a compassionate advocate that knows all sorts of resources. Kelly Grab and Rich Horowitz are really dedicated Title IX investigators. All members of security that I have met have responded with experience and dedication.

This article is my last leg, though. I have used up all of my campus resources. I am turning to the student body to help fix this important issue, so no one else on this campus has to feel this helpless in the future. It is clear where we have to start to fix this issue. We can make this campus better.

Page 11

Word on the street Where did the Kiosk sushi come from?

“The Indian Ocean.” —Ben Chin ’15

“Tokyo Express.”

—Megan Andersen ’14

“The Deece.”

—Sarah Bekele ’14

—The VSA will be hosting a forum on the Interpersonal Violence Panel system on April 17.

Bookstore could be Arlington price equalizer Joshua Sherman opinions editoR

S

everal weeks ago, the VSA held a forum with the VP of Finance Robert “Bob” Walton and Dean of Strategic Planning Marianne Begemann about a number of ongoing construction projects on campus, including the planned renovation of Juliet Theater and the introduction of an off-campus cooperative bookstore. The project is one I look forward to in many respects for its ability to bring lower cost books, new dining options and more product types to campus.

That said, some information Walton shared that evening leads me to express concern over the impact, or lack thereof, the new cooperative bookstore will have to address a growing cost issue for businesses in the Arlington area immediately surrounding Vassar.

First, for background, many do not realize that almost the entire Arlington block of Collegeview Ave. and Raymond Ave. near campus is actually Vassar property. A for-profit subsidiary of Vassar, College Properties LLC, is responsible for the ownership, maintenance and leasing of this property that includes many local restaurants and the Juliet theater property. The Juliet theater space is going to be split into a dining area leased to a company called BurgerFi and a college bookstore that will focus on selling a specific set of products. These products will include textbooks ordered by professors for classes, Vassar memorabilia and other general goods. One thing Walton noted at the VSA meeting was that this co-op bookstore will not be selling products that compete with local Arlington businesses, such as MyMarket or Three Arts bookstore. On one hand, this is good news.

The thought of the bookstore moving off campus next to another trade bookstore and local grocery sounds like a struggle in the making.

However, this action comes at another cost.

While I want local, family-owned businesses as much as the next person, I wonder the last time administrators like Bob Walton set foot in these same businesses and saw their prices.

One notorious product of college campuses is the rapid inflation of prices with businesses in and around the area. It’s almost ironic to see how much we pay for school supplies, food, snacks and other products from the stores in and around Vassar’s campus, when most of us lack even a regular income. With word that the new bookstore will have no competing products, it means prices now lay exclusively in the hands of these local business owners.

Without competing products, the cooperative bookstore will allow these local businesses to continue charging whatever prices they feel comfortable to Vassar students. This might be perfectly fine to you, but in the status quo this denies a significant member of the Vassar community from enjoying the creature comforts these stores can provide. Only a more privileged sect of our community can afford to shop regularly there, and those who cannot afford can either walk a mile north to the supermarket or simply not have these items.

This issue is inherently a double-edged sword. Vassar’s decision is what’s best for keeping these Arlington stores in good fiscal health, while allowing the new bookstore to coexist.

However, these same stores are considered in many ways connected to the Vassar community and atmosphere, and their prices are at times a

hard reality to swallow. It’s not fair that these stores compete with a bookstore that has to only break even, let alone generate a profit. On the other hand, the chief customers of these stores and restaurants remain members of the Vassar community.

I think there is room for compromise, though.

The College ought to find a way to let the local Arlington businesses continue to remain here, but also realize that this new bookstore can be a resource in so many ways both realized and unrealized by the Vassar Administration. There is already a realization of how this space can be an advantage for cheaper, more accessible textbooks, a new venue for performances and practices and a casual congregation space that attracts more students into Arlington. However, they should also realize the advantage of at last having a store in the Vassar community that doesn’t have to worry about making a profit.

The ability for students to get some products without shelling out a premium can also offer a lot of good for Vassar students and be an equalizing force off campus. I cannot say what kind of products and to what extent this could go, but a discussion about it with students on financial aid at Vassar could be great information for the Finance & Administration office.

Vassar pays its students $8 an hour, and this is only a recent pay increase to meet a state minimum wage increase. I think it wouldn’t hurt for our community to talk about a lot of the costs both on campus and around Arlington. I think a great way to facilitate more accessible pricing remains at the heart of our new bookstore.

—Joshua Sherman ’16 is an English major.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

“The ocean.”

—Sam Plotkin ’15

“The Kiosk has sushi?”

—Zoe Cohen ’14

“I don’t wanna know.”

—Clara Howell ’15

Lily Doyle, Humor & Satire Editor Spencer Davis, Photo Editor

OPINIONS

Page 12

April 10, 2014

Vassar community implicated in serial sexual violence Hannah Ryan

Guest Columnist TRIGGER WARNING: the following piece discusses sexual assault and rape on Vassar’s campus.

“Since we all came from a woman. Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman. I wonder why we take from our women. Why we rape our women, do we hate our women. I think it’s time to kill for our women Time to heal our women, be real to our women” —Tupac Shakur Last spring, I found myself wondering what it would look like if, contrary to science, logic and common sense, the sky fell. This quickly turned into one of those hypotheticals you become momentarily and irrationally invested in. The type you go to lengths to relay to a friend who might wish they understood but might not, nodding and forearm-touching instead. That day, the sky was disarmingly blue, a color that under different circumstances might bring to mind Easter Sunday or tropical screensavers. I cursed a god I don’t believe in for bad news on beautiful days and the sky smiled back at me.

First, I imagined the beautiful blue would freeze, perilously fast and sharp. Icicles would fall until all the blue was in and around our bodies. In the place of the optimistic expanse we had once called the sky would be a hole. An inverted, claustrophobic pit with a discernible height, length and width, though there would be no one left to confirm this.

My second theory was that the beautiful blue would congeal into an impenetrable blanket. It would fall to Earth in one smothering sheet, leaving behind the rectangular absence found under a painting that has been hanging on the wall for a very long time. We would squirm beneath its weight, breathing in a chalky, wet blue until we suffocated.

When I grew tired of this exercise, I looked up and the sky smiled back vacantly. In that moment,

I couldn’t recall hating anything more. I resented it for its blissful indifference, but an exhausted part of me envied it for the same. I needed the sky to pick sides, craved the clarity that would come from hating it for being wrong or loving it for being right.

A liberal arts college is a small town. Characters become locally famous, anonymity is all but impossible and lives are unnaturally intertwined.

You’d be forgiven for believing Vassar to be better equipped at policing sexual violence. Last summer, our school expelled a former friend of mine.

His charges, leveled last spring, ranged from harassment to multiple counts of sexual assault and rape. His serial violence disfigured women I love, maybe women you love, too; it’s a small school.

Tall, smart, articulate, charming: the word rapist was also whispered, it still is, but it took our community three years to whisper it with conviction.

As I’ve been repeatedly reminded, “he didn’t get away with it.” This is technically true; after three years, he was expelled, thanks to the work of impossibly strong women. But the violence started his freshman fall and didn’t stop. In three years, he forcibly groped me; he harassed, assaulted and raped my friends. You’ll excuse me for wanting us to do better next time.

His violence was widespread in our small town.

As our Admissions Office is quick to correct, not just any small town: a highly selective, residential coeducational liberal arts college that consistently ranks among the top liberal arts colleges in the country. They might also mention our legacy as a women’s college. Yet, it took us three years to use the vocabulary we’re ostensibly here learning.

The implicating and unavoidable truth is that it took our community longer than it should have.

For three years, we lived with a serial rapist. Maybe we chose not to hear his violence, maybe we didn’t know what to listen for. Regardless, we’re

“...that is the question”

confronted with the same conclusion: enough of us were bad listeners when it mattered most. Until we learn from this, it could happen again, in the exact same way.

I was one of those bad listeners. A friend texted me at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning. That afternoon, we met at a restaurant on Main Street because Vassar is a small town. She had been scared in his room, and I could tell she still was as she searched for words to describe an experience she didn’t fully understand. I listened to her as she equivocated and I told her to stop and I wanted to kill him, but not for assaulting her, because then, neither of us understood that he had. At the time, we didn’t have the vocabulary to understand the encounter in terms like non-consensual, coercive or assault.

Instead, we drafted a text together, framing her fear as a misunderstanding, and stated in no uncertain terms that it would never happen again. It didn’t, but the text didn’t stop him from violating the women who came next. I don’t let myself forget how relieved I was when he texted her back a few minutes later saying all the right things.

The first challenge facing sexual violence prevention isn’t learning how to speak its language, it’s learning how to listen. “Keep Ya Head Up,” Tupac’s iconic tribute to women, dropped on October 28, 1993. He rapped, “I wonder why we take from our women, why we rape our women, do we hate our women?” Within a month, this poet would be charged with sexual assault. Upon learning this, I listened to that song on a demented loop, hellbent on understanding, and when that failed, witnessing how a man so flawed could ask the right questions so convincingly. I wanted the safety back that Tupac’s sexual assault conviction had robbed me of, however inconsequential it may seem, that Tupac cares, if don’t nobody else care.

It took me a long time to learn to listen to Tupac without pushing his history of sexual violence to

the margins of my mind.

He was summarily expelled last summer, after an exhausting, ceremonious limbo. The news of his expulsion was relayed in a perfunctory email from the college, curt to the point of rudeness, to the survivors who brought the case against him.

A bit about these impossibly strong women. Their identities and experiences are no more mine to reveal, than yours to guess at. Please respect yourself and this community by respecting their privacy.

Now he’s gone and nobody talks about him.

When he reappears in old pictures, I’m surprised, as if it’s someone’s work-study job to Photoshop him out. For the most part, he’s explained privately, just as he was handled prior to his expulsion and yet, this happened. Silence can be triggering, too.

Yes, few know and there are survivors to protect, friends and former friends, too, with wounds that need space to heal. But if we’re being honest as a community, I think more than a sliver of our silence is an attempt to distract ourselves from the guilt that we let it happen at all. It happened, and no combination of the hundreds of thousands of words in our language can remedy this messiness.

When I stopped listening to “Keep Ya Head Up” on a loop, I started writing this. We live in a world where Tupac was convicted of sexual assault; a world where an artist inspired generations with his words and failed spectacularly to live up to them; a world where a serial rapist preyed on our community and where the sky won’t conveniently fall—no matter the number of injustices it witnesses. When it’s sunny and 85 degrees, the sky has no choice but to smile on what unfolds below.

We live in this world and need reminding that, unlike the sky, we aren’t imprisoned by neutrality.

—This article is part of a weekly column through CARES for April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

The Miscellany Crossword

by Jack Mullan, Crossword Editor

ACROSS 1 Monday Night Footballairer 5 Informal language 10 “Let ___”; Beatles hit 14 Wise guy 15 Small drum 16 Beer component 17 Continental conference 18 Fill (with) 19 SNL segment 20 *Name for an non-demanding lecture class?

23 Clean air org.

24 Break a commandment 25 Meditative chants 26 It may be found in a 30-down 27 Santa ___, Calif.

28 Superhero garb 31 Crazy one 34 Civilian attire 37 Cube inventor Rubik

38 Strip in the Mideast 39 Conquistador’s loot 40 Supplements, or literally, what’s done to the answers of the starred clues 43 Snap shot 44 Beat badly 45 Subterfuge 46 Half of a Disney duo 48 Monopolist’s portion 49 Religious offshoot 50 Largest U.S. union 51 Teacher’s favorite 52 Cereal grain 53 Directorate General for Translation: Abbr.

56 “Shallow” movie character 58 *Period of great vacuum use?

63 Brazilian berry

Answers to last week’s puzzle

65 Flightless birds 66 Intl. oil cartel 67 “Gotta run!” in some chat rooms 68 Ecological community 69 Memorization routine 70 Those, in Tijuana 71 Capital of Yemen 72 South Dakota, to Pierre

36 *Unsanitary beach in Cancun?

37 No Child Left Behind dept.

41 Dr. of rap 42 Is an accomplice to 47 Sports video game co.

49 Part of E.S.T.:

Abbr.

50 Qualmishness 52 2009 Peace Nobelist 53 Station 54 Actress Gerwig 55 “Be silent,” in scores 56 A strong word 57 Takes steps 59 “Making Cities”

DOWN 1 “Blimey!” (Var.) 2 Japanese cuisine 3 Fuss, in a way 4 Feeling the effects of Novocaine 5 Reputation harmer 6 Disables 7 ’70s Swedish pop group 8 Pronoun with “sommes” 9 Earl ___ tea 10 AOL communications 11 *Venture to wine valley?

12 Radar image 13 Songstress James 21 Ancient Aegean land 22 Mimic 27 ___&T cell retailer 28 Colgate rival 29 Diarist Frank 30 It may contain a 26-across 32 Powerful arms 33 Careful phrasing, perhaps 34 NYC gallery 35 River to the Caspian

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

dept.

60 “Transformers” actor LaBeouf 61 Explosive Indonesian Mount 62 Ripped 64 Alternative pronoun to 8-down

HUMOR & SATIRE

April 10, 2014

Page 13

Breaking News

From the desk of Lily Doyle, Humor & Satire Editor

Connecticut beats Kentucky in NCAA basketball, also in obesity rates and number of WASPs in sailboats

New Goose Inclusion Act: Harry Potter never had addressing foul inequality to deal with this bullshit Jemma Howlett

W

Field Reporter

ith spring finally here, you may have noticed the remarkable increase of Geese on Vassar’s campus. The appearance of this fowl has been met with comments such as, “They should fly south again!” or “Why are they wandering around our campus? They belong in Sunset Lake!” or “Why is there a Goose passed out in my bedroom with a red Solo cup in its beak?” The sudden arrival of the geese is due to the Goose Inclusion Act recently approved by Vassar College President Catherine Hill, who hopes to create a more inclusive community for everyone— including the Geese.

Response to this bold policy move has been varied. Supporters of the act say, “Geese have a right to an education, to enjoy our beautiful campus and to partake in a meal plan, too!

We have long discriminated against these animals just because of their species and the fact that their primary dwelling is stereotypically lakes. It is time for this to stop. Time for a change.”

Vassar has long had a history of being an inclusive and progressive community, accepting to all. Advocates ask, “Why stop at homo sapiens?” The Vassar Animal Rights Coalition is a huge supporter of this act. When asked to comment, they state that “It is an ethical abomination that these birds do not enjoy the same rights as humans do. The fact that the institution took so long to propose this act is an disgrace on par with human trafficking.

Okay, maybe not that bad. It’s hard to create appropriate metaphors when you are worked up over Geese habitation.”

The act simply hopes to throw outside conventions of animals remaining outside, while humans come inside, outside of the door that the Geese will come inside. It’s that easy.

Amenities for the Geese should not be hard to come by. Bathtubs in dorms are rarely used and will make comfortable waterbeds for the birds. When it comes to meal plans, the Geese are excited about the options available both at the stir-fry station and the salad bar. Meatless Mondays are another point of interest for the herbivore animals, as they are advocates for a meat-free—specifically chicken, quail, goose and turkey-free—lifestyle.

The Geese themselves have a lot to say about the matter. Head of NGAS (National

Goose Advancement Society), Mother Goose, comments, “Quack quack quack. QUACK!” Translation: Just because we don’t have opposable thumbs doesn’t mean we don’t deserve an education! The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg adds, “Quack-a-dee quack q**** quack.” Needing no translation.

For a long time, Geese have felt a societal pressure to fly south for the winter and live exclusively in lakes and bodies of water on campus when they are residing in the North.

The Act aims to remedy these problems. Proponents of the act hope to see geese start to make themselves feel at home in places such as Joss Beach, the ACDC, in various TAs and THs, and all dorms and gender (and species) neutral bathrooms.

President Hill states that the long-term goal of the act is to have an equal number of Geese and non-Geese on campus. She also says, “We expect to hire a few Goose professors and fill some administrative positions.” Additionally, the Act hopes to one day encompass the rights of all fowl, including the ducks that currently reside in the stream along the TH path.

In fact, some Geese have started campaigning for the admittance of their feathered relative by creating “the ugly duckling scholarship fund,” so that less-privileged fowl can receive the education and luxuries Geese enjoy. Rumor has it the new science building will double as a “all-fowl” dorm, although some Geese have expressed concern about existing in such close proximity to Bio labs.

Unfortunately, discrimination against Geese is still rampant on Vassar Campus.

Freshman Paarul Sinha says, “The Geese have taken over, they’re pooping everywhere!”

This is just one example of the blatant disregard for the Geese’s feelings and rights. Senior Lisle Schaffer claims, “Geese belong in Canada.”

Schaffer’s claim opens up issues of deportation and effectively compares Geese to Justin Bieber, which is simply not fair to the Geese.

Vassar has long been on the progressive forefront of colleges and institutions in America when it comes to tackling social issues such as this head on. It appears that Geese still have a long road ahead of them, but one day, maybe we will see Vassar College students and all fowl coexisting, holding hands to feather.

Chris Gonzalez

He’s A Fancy Man

I

hate job interviews.

In truth, I haven’t had a real job interview since before my senior year of high school. It was for this six-week art co-op program that focused on providing jobs for teenagers, and I was applying to be the culinary co-op assistant. I was determined to be a chef back in those days, but I also thought I would get a girlfriend my senior year of high school and have a date for senior prom. I often had dreams of cooking a three-course meal for my nonexistent girlfriend and failing every time to deliver anything edible. And then I learned to stop falling asleep to reruns of “Chopped.”

But this isn’t about that.

What really pickles my onion is the quality of clothing one has to wear in order to beg someone for a job.

I’ve lived on the heavier side of life since I was eight years old, when I spent the first of many summers living with my grandparents in Manassas, Virginia (haha, ‘Ass’). They filled their house with bowling ball-sized muffins and enough peanut butter to render a brick house.

When I returned home to the loving, gentle care of my mother at the end of the summer, as jolly as a miniature Santa, my mother looked into my cherubic eyes and said, “You blew up...like a balloon.”

Needless to say, my relationship to food and anyone I shared a bloodline with changed drastically. I could no longer trust either. But perhaps the biggest shift I experienced was in the way clothes fit on my body (or didn’t fit, rather).

I still can’t walk into a JC Penney without the voice of my grandmother ripping through my ears. “Try this on,” she’d gurgle. I can’t count the times we walked into a department store and, within mere seconds, my grandmother had collected at least half of the boys’ section in her frail arms.

“Look at how nice,” she’d say, while throwing me into a dressing room. I tried to point out that the t-shirt she wanted to buy me was a little snug around my tummy, but she’d give me a cold look in her eyes, put a hand on her waist and say in her knowledgeable voice, “This is the style. This is what kids wear.”

I had a beer gut by the age of 11, and since I couldn’t depend on my family or food for friendship, I leaned on my books for compan-

ionship. I was really big into Harry Potter at the time, mostly because he wore glasses and I tried to find role models who were at least chubby or had glasses. And because my headcannon for male protagonists in all novels is usually myself, he had both traits. I also ran around my grandparents’ house pretending the twig I picked up from their yard was a wand, but that’s a story for another day.

For a fat kid like me, books were a gateway to happier times and weightless figures who only lived for about 400 pages (and forever, in my heart). That is, until my father sat me down one day to tell me I should be out running around and exercising instead of reading books like some loser. He added that I should be concerned “girls weren’t checking me out like they should.” Not your best point Dad, given that I was barely 12. If anything, why should they be interested in me when books existed?

Trying to point that out to my father didn’t really go over well. But it did give me something to think about. Mainly, my family was out to get me, but I already knew that. No, I think I learned that I could never truly fit in anywhere.

And I think about it every time I have to buy some new presentable, “nice” clothes that I have to fit into for one day every few months.

Like the time my mother forced me to buy nice clothes to wear under my graduation gown, and on the day of commencement, the button flung off my pants and into the mirror. I think I used two belts to hold up my pants that day.

Or the time (every single time) I button up a dress shirt all the way and my neck feels like a pig in a blanket.

Or like back in high school when I tried to leave my uniform shirt untucked to give myself that slim, sucked-in-stomach look to attract all of my lady friends.

OR what about that time in high school I ran into a teacher and spilled his coffee all over him.

No, that doesn’t relate to the topic at hand, but I sometimes think about it so I can laugh about how I was kind of an asshole in high school. I did not apologize.

But seriously, I thankfully have an interview coming up. I need new clothes. But instead of doting on all the awkwardness and painful memories associated with clothes shopping and my grandmother, I’m just gonna pretend like I can’t fit into anything because my awesomeness cannot be tamed by fabric.

Standardized Rebellion: Inappropriate reactions to the GRE

by Lily Doyle, Humor & Satire Editor 5:30 a.m.: I wake up, look at my clock, and

then smile smugly, because I know that I am going to wake up for the GRE in a totally timely fashion. Clearly adrenaline is helping me out here and I will wake up at 7, have time for a shower and a complete breakfast with things like bran muffins and grapefruit and oranges and other citrus fruits, and then maybe some leftover time in order to memorize math formulas that I haven’t used since I was 16. I go back to bed, feeling assured of my inevitable success.

7:37 a.m.: I wake up 7 minutes before my

housemate and I have to leave. I have time to splash water on my face and pour a bowl of cereal to eat in the car. I refuse to see this as a bad sign.

8:00 a.m.: We arrive at the testing center,

which I figured would be a huge room with

lines of computers and lots of people all concerned about their academic potential.

Instead, it was this tiny little room with a flickering light bulb that was kind of how I had always imagined libraries were in prison.

8:30 a.m.: The test starts. I obviously can’t

write about what happened in the test, otherwise, the GRE people will take away my citizenship or something, but let me just say that I don’t care about tree frogs and I don’t know how to answer questions about them, nor do I ever want to again.

9 a.m.: The test is being a jerk. It gave me an extra, unscored math section. It knows I don’t know math. I think it’s purposefully trying to trip me up. I start answering with “the answer cannot be determined” for every single question because I CAN’T deter-

mine the answer. That’s right, deal with it GRE. Honesty. Best policy. Booyah.

9:30 a.m.: I am pretty sure the woman who monitors this test thinks I am actively attempting to cheat. Pretty sure the person next to me is taking the TOEFEL which tests English-language knowledge, so I don’t really know why she thinks I need their answers, but apparently I look like I am just that stupid. She has come in at least 9 separate times to ask me not to touch the computer screen. I have yet to touch the computer screen.

10:15 a.m.: I defiantly touch my pencil

eraser to the computer screen. Angry-testwoman-who-thinks-I-am-cheating doesn’t notice. I am excessively proud of myself for taking a stand.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

10:16 a.m.: I realize that perhaps now is not

the best time to challenge authority. Save it for that weekly seminar on how to use Excel spreadsheets, amiright?

11:15 a.m.: I finish early. The woman who definitely thinks I am a big old cheater informs me that I can wait downstairs for my friend. Since I believe in anarchy and fighting the man, I wait in the hallway, quietly.

12:15 p.m.: I spend the rest of the day cel-

ebrating by eating copious amounts of bacon and looking at graduate school requirements. I recognize that this might not be everyone’s chosen mode of celebration, but I got a certain thrill from it. Nothing like a good stint on a University’s “Admissions” page to really get the heart rate up. Pro tip: listen to DJ Khaled while perusing their requirements. You are unstoppable.

ARTS

Page 14

April 10, 2014

New normal: ‘Aloha’ creates world where absurd is average Essie Asan

Guest RepoRteR

T

Sam Pianello/The Miscellany News

he Mug is known to be a dark and obscure space for students to procure romantic liaisons under the veil of anonymity. But this weekend, The Mug will be transformed from its usual role as a place to be faceless to the highly intimate performance space of “Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls.” The show’s intimacy is not exclusive to its setting: “Aloha”’s foundations entail absolute connection between those involved.

And like an average Mug Night, “Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls,” is tinged with absurdity. Ryan Eykholt ‘17, said, “I’d say come into the show with an open mind. You’ll see a lot of weird things, and you’ll probably be like ‘WTF’ during a lot of it, but some of those WTF moments are the most informative and powerful.” Eykholt is not just an actor but a member of the team that is putting up “Aloha” together. The surprise factor is certain, as the content of the show is very hard to put into words: “Expect to laugh, and expect to be confused,” said Joe Metcalf ’17, another member of the show’s team.

What is it about the show that makes it so different from any other? Grace Gregory ‘17 said, “[The show] kind of makes no sense but at the same time explores human interaction and life transitions.”

“Aloha” uses absurdity to its advantage and creates an environment in which the absurd becomes the norm. The characters speak about surreal ideas as if they are having a daily conversation.

Eykholt said, “Although we’re all talking about mummies, Komodo dragons,and piñatas, everyone speaks in such natural, organic, direct and conversational way.”

Therefore, the absurdity of the show does not put the audience off. Instead, the audience can relate and look forward to each scene. Eykholt added, “It’s ridiculous, but somehow it’s able to reach people in a really personal way.

I think every audience member will find a moment in the show that really speaks to them.”

“Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls”’s content enables audience members to embrace the show

“Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls” is a collaborative piece that seeks to explore the absurd as well as human relations. “Aloha” will be preformed at The Mug at 8 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. for its inclusiveness instead of being alienated by its absurdity. Furthermore, the show’s strange content functions as a method of connecting its characters to each other. Metcalf said, “It’s about people trying to find their place in the world. It’s about people who are connected in some weird way, and they are trying to find themselves.”

Unlike the characters in “Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls” who are obscurely related, the cast became incredibly tight-knit and dependent upon one another in order to put on the show. “It was a collaborative experience,” said Metcalf, “There’s no director; there are four facilitators, and the actors all make different collaborations.

We made all decisions as one.”

The collaborative experience demands that the group acts as a whole when making each and every decisions about the show. Gregory said, “As a cast, we workshop each scene until

we’ve created something we all feel good about.

Because the show is collaborative and we have no director, every actor is equally as influential in shaping the work, which is really exciting.”

This process has had a role in transforming the over-the-top absurdity of the show into an organic experience that includes every “Aloha” member. Gregory added, “To create a sense of reality we find the human traits in each character to make them relatable to the audience.”

The process of producing “Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls” gave each and every member of the group the satisfaction to have played a large role—beyond that which is enacted onstage— of the show. Since there is no director, actors felt much more powerful throughout the entire process. Eykholt said, “I’ve felt incredibly engaged and challenged creatively in this show.

We have such a talented cast and crew, and when we craft a collective vision, it’s so reward-

ing to see the show come to life, because you know that you had a big part in its creation.”

At the end of their collaborative creative process, the team—in consensus—felt very comfortable with what the show has developed into; “Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls” includes input from each member of the team. Said Metcalf, “It feels more like our show, because we all have our touches.”

The cast and the members of the production team affirmed that they work very well together and do not hesitate to listen to one another.

This makes the rough journey of production a little bit smoother. Said Eykholt, “We all work really hard and communicate well. Our stage manager, Kelly Wilkinson [’15], is amazingly organized and always keeps us on track and on schedule.”

While the team behind “Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls” acts as one, they are made up of a varied group of students. “We have a very diverse group, a wide range of actors: freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors,” said Metcalf.

The members of the team trust that they are all different people, and all have something to learn from each other; everybody’s opinion matters and holds equal value, and the group’s diversity ultimately benefits the production.

The group’s determined mindset compensates for the fact that “Aloha” does not have a very high budget. “I think everyone in the cast and crew has a lot of ambition when it comes to the production, Metcalf continued. “Throughout the whole process, I think we have been very smart about what is realistic and possible with the resources we have and the space we’re using.”

In addition to the group dynamics, the dedication of the cast and production team to their synergistic show is what reassures them that it will all work out in the end.

Gregory affirmed, “Tech week is always stressful, but we know it will all come together on opening night.”

“Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls” will be performed on April 10, 11 and 12 at 8 p.m. in The Mug.

Theater group supports local students’ exploration of hip hop Samantha Kohl ARts editoR

A

t Vassar, the institution’s endowment allows for the arts to thrive on an equal basis with education. But most public schools do not have the privilege to maintain a vivacious art scene, and the arts are usually first to fall victim to budget cuts.

Relationship Empowerment Affirmation Leadership (R.E.A.L.) Hip Hop Theater seeks to create a space for Duchess County youth that bridges the intellectual realm with that of the artistic.

Jackson Kroopf ’10 founded R.E.A.L. Hip Hop Theater with Tree Arrington, the director of R.E.A.L. Skills Network, which provides after-school and summer programming for Poughkeepsie and Duchess County youth.

“As a whole, R.E.A.L. Skills intends to provide programming for the youth of Poughkeepsie that addresses their education needs, through tutoring and scholarships; seeks to provide constructive and creative outlets, through language based programming; and more broadly keep them occupied, which they accomplish in a myriad of ways, one being a lot of field trips,” stated Brandon Kyle Greene ’13, Art Director of R.E.A.L. Skills, in an email.

One of these language-based programs Greene described is Hip Hop Theater, in which Vassar students assist local sixth through twelfth graders in writing, directing, stage-managing and performing works of original theater.

The program maintains an inclusive environment to curb participants’ inhibitions through constant collaboration. “Art can never be incorrect. Art exists in failure and exploration.” Greene stated. “The play exists for a finite space of time, but getting a 14-year-old on stage to rap or generally exist outside their comfort zone helps to re-imagine safe-spaces and deconstruct stigma. No one can be wrong with art, so we all are equal at the theater.”

Hip Hop Theater’s productions adapt traditional works of theater to address contempo-

rary social values. And, staying true to the program’s name, the four pillars of hip hop—rap, disk jockeying, breaking and graffiti—are at each piece’s core.

“The production crew of Hip Hop Theater is tasked with creating an original play, typically based off a major work—such as the current production’s use of ‘Macbeth’,” Greene stated.

“These plays attempt to resituate the goals and life lessons of the normally hyperbolically constructed characters of the original work into a more digestible form of entertainment for the community at large.”

Hip Hop Theater seeks to put on exciting plays that incorporate many elements of the arts, including rap music, dance and the creation of live art.

Greene first became involved with Hip Hop Theater after Kroopf invited him to participate in Hip Hop Theater’s production, “Wizards of PK.” “I came on as the wizard,” he said. “The vibe in the theater was great, it was really open to commentary and input. I have done theater on campus before and appreciated the flexibility of the Hip Hop Theater production,” stated Greene.

Greene’s experience in the “Wizards of PK” galvanized him to deepen his involvement with the organization. He was soon asked to write for Hip Hop Theater, which prompted further involvement.

“I came to my current position as the art-director of Hip Hop Theater after being invited to write. Every production the theater puts on is original, although the basis of the story line usually corresponds to a major theatrical work,” stated Greene.

“Tree, the director of the R.E.A.L. Skills network, enticed me to take on more responsibility and I leaped at the opportunity.”

Those who watch a Hip Hop Theater performance immediately are often inspired to get involved themselves and deepen their appreciation of art. “I had seen a play done by Hip Hop Theater my freshman year and loved

how much creative freedom was a part of Hip Hop Theater—we cast, write, etc. all ourselves.

Since being involved, I’ve gained a newfound appreciation for the arts that I never had,” said Tiarra Dickens ’14, President of Hip Hop 101.

Dickens turned her inspiration into action in the form of Hip Hop 101, the campus organization dedicated to honoring the four pillars of hip hop and hosting many concerts on campus.

Soon afterward, she became involved with Hip Hop Theater.

“I wanted the organization [Hip Hop 101] to be more involved in the community beyond throwing free, open-campus concerts,” said Hip Hop 101’s President Tiarra Dickens ’14. “So I decided to create a position in our org called the Hip Hop Theatre liaison, who would bridge the gap between the two orgs and ensure that funding is given to Hip Hop Theater from Hip Hop 101 yearly.”

Hip Hop Theater’s spring performance is titled “Grindin’: The Come-Up,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” that incorporates themes of social injustice and hip-hop culture.

Hip Hop Theater is committed to the art of performing. Their rendition of “Macbeth” thus includes performances of original raps, poems and dance numbers, in addition to more traditional acting.

“The performance will include independent dance numbers by community hip hop dance groups. The step team from the Poughkeepsie high school will hopefully be performing with us,” said Leland Masek ’14, the organization’s Director of Theater. “There will be performed rap numbers by actors and community artists such as Ayo Driver, and poet Gold. We will have live stage art, including spray-painting set pieces during the show.”

Hip Hop Theater is not only an outlet for Vassar students and Poughkeepsie teens to connect but also a venue to explore and celebrate a variety of art forms—at a space outside of, say, the Shiva.

“Since being involved I’ve gained a newfound appreciation for the arts that I never had.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

I never understood why art wasn’t being funded in many government funded initiatives and I’m sad to know the arts are the first to go when budgetary constraints are put on schools,” Dickens said. “More needs to be done from Vassar students for the Poughkeepsie community to have creative outlets for self-expression.

So much emphasis is put on after school tutoring and College readiness, but the same efforts should be made to have programs that focus on the arts.”

Hip Hop Theater anticipates “Grindin’: The Come-Up” to attract larger crowds due to the transformative nature of performance.

“Performance is a critical aspect of ‘being,’” said Greene. “We all perform in someway or another. Hip Hop Theater provides a space for the youth of Poughkeepsie, artists and Vassar students to create and address an alternative state of being—for however long.”

Furthermore, the collaborative nature of the Hip Hop Theater’s shows beckon excitement for all who are a part of the production as well as those in attendance. “The theater’s productions push all involved to work collectively, much of the production the result of an ongoing conversation. So when the show actually goes up, everyone is excited to be on a stage they are a part of,” Greene said.

R.E.A.L. Hip Hop Theater’s one-time performance of “Grindin’: The Come-Up” will take place Friday, May 2 at 7 p.m. at the Family Partnership Center’s auditorium. The Center accommodates many community-oriented resources, including a medical clinic, domestic violence support services and after-school programming.

Those at Hip Hop Theater anticipate selling out the 700-seat auditorium. “The auditorium is normally packed to the brim with family and acquaintances that come out in support,” Greene said. “Being able to see friends and family members vulnerable on stage excites many a people and even encourages new membership, because the impact of these plays linger in the community.”

April 10, 2014

ARTS

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Cascading Loeb installation no water under the bridge Jake Solomon Guest RepoRteR

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courtesy of Vassar College

26-foot-tall wall of fabric, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art center’s newest installation is not so much a patch worked tapestry as it is a pendent waterfall, rippling with color and texture.

Artist Todd Knopke’s piece, “Deluge,” accomplishes this overwhelming ambience with its massive size and the method in which he created it—a project he embarked on especially for the Loeb. Todd Knopke’s monumental artwork drapes the walls of the museum and transforms the once empty space into something that demands notice.

“Deluge” appears as a waterfall suspended from the sky. The flowy form of the fabric gives the piece a sense of grace and weightlessness.

The bright colors Knopke pieced together, however, give “Deluge” a sense of boldness and power. With its use of royal blues and forest greens, and textures the nature-mimicking textures, the installation brings the outside world inside.

Not only does this piece amaze the viewer as it showcases Knopke’s refined technique of working with fabric, it also inspires awe through its sheer size.

Knopke is very familiar with using fabric as a medium for his art, but making artwork as large as “Deluge” is a fairly new endeavor for him. In an emailed statement, he wrote, “The actual space inspired this work the most scale wise. I have wanted to make very large pieces for a long time. I like the idea of stealing Christo’s piece where he wraps buildings in fabric but having it be a piece/image I make rather than just raw manufactured fabric.”

The creation of “Deluge” proved to be quite laborious because of the constraints that working in an art studio puts on an artist when working in such a massive format.

“I have 9-foot-tall walls in my studio so it was challenging but also exciting to never really get to see the work as it would be when it was hung high,” Knopke said. “I normally cut things up and rearrange often in the creation of a piece and it’s way more difficult with such a large piece to do that so it made me have to stick with my initial intention much more than

I normally do.”

Although it took a lot of hard work, the praise that the artwork has received shows that making it so enormous was ultimately worthwhile.

Mary Kay Lombino, the Emily Hargroves and Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator of the Loeb, commented, “The scale of the work takes it to another level. And with the stairs running along one side of the Atrium, viewers are able to see the work from various angles, various heights and from a range of distances. Small artwork can really only be seen from one distance—which is up close. When artwork is this enormous, one can engage with it on so many different levels—literally and figuratively.”

Another innovative aspect of Knopke’s work is that it allows the viewer to interact with it due to the artist’s use of fabric. Because Knopke knew where he planned to present the piece, he incorporated parts of the lighting and space of the Loeb into his art in a way that gives viewers a unique perspective when viewing it. Knopke explained, “[A] beautiful quality of fabric is the way it can glow when light shines through it creating something like supple stained glass. This was the main reason we pulled the water fall piece off the wall, allowing a space for viewers to step behind and seeing the back.”

Knopke’s attention to the translucent quality of fabric certainly didn’t go unnoticed. “Visitors are encouraged to walk behind one side of the installation and look at it from the inside or what is ostensibly the back-side,” Mary Lombino said, “One can see all the exposed stitching on that side and the remnants of the making of the piece—all the intricate work that went into it.”

Moving from nature and back to the manmade world, the piece alludes to other works of art. “The light from the Atrium pours in right through the fabric and resembles stained glass in a Gothic cathedral,” Lombino said. “It looks completely opaque from the front and then from the back, inside the dark, intimate space of between fabric and wall, it glows with the light of the towering space.”

In order for Knopke to know how light affects the material of his artwork like this, he had to develop an experienced handling of fabric.

Todd Knopke’s newest piece, “Deluge,” hangs in the atrium of the Loeb. “Deluge” mimics a waterfall suspended from the sky. Knopke’s piece is dramatic as it is weightless and intricate as it is effortless.

Since he has been using fabric to make art since he was a graduate student, he has had ample time to truly understand how to work with it as a medium. He said, “Most of my life I have made fairly traditional sculpture, with wood, metal, plaster—basic art materials. I discovered fabric in grad school when I wanted to try and be self-sufficient, it seemed making food [and] clothes were the top two ways to do that.”

This desire to be self-sufficient made Knopke’s artwork take on an extremely individualistic quality; he began using recycled fabric that he gathered to create his art. He wrote, “[There] are few materials I can use that are completely recycled, create little to no waste and use no toxic processes that have such richness. Most of the material I get from friends and family, the clothes they wore a few months ago to clothes they wore as babies/kids, their sheets towels etc.”

Students are flocking to the exhibit while they

still can, and there’s a lot of excitement building around campus for it, especially in the art community. Essie Asan ’17 said, “It’s fantastic that we have this piece by Knopke on display, and the fact that it was designed specifically to be featured in the Loeb makes it even more special.”

It is only once in a while that the Loeb’s Atrium is filled with artwork, and the staff of the Loeb Art Center is unsure when another piece will be displayed in The Atrium. Lombino said, “Over the last 20 years since the building was completed, we’ve been able to use it just 3 times and each time, it’s for a finite period of time. And I’m not sure when we’ll do it again, so everyone should come and see it while it lasts.

Each installation offers a completely new way to see the space.”

If you want to visit this exhibit while you still can, head over to the Loeb Art Center between now and July 20, 2014 to see Knopke’s spectacular artwork in person.

Student band to bring frenzied, prog rock sound on tour VISHNU BASEMENT continued from page 1

along with Fritzschel. “We operated as the three of us [Goldstein, Fritzschel and Judkis] riffing for a while. We were very jam-based and were kind of just hanging out. We didn’t even have a name for the first year and a half when we were playing together,” Goldstein said. “We had some pretty sloppy, odd-time jams.”

Parra, a campus trumpet player who jammed with Goldstein, Fritzschel and Judkis, was recruited to join Vishnu under one pretense: that he learn to play bass. “It’s funny hearing that you can learn bass to join our band, but it happened,” said Goldstein. And Parra did exactly that: “I spent a summer learning bass and then joined the motley crew,” he said.

The four have been playing together ever since, nameless or otherwise. “Sam’s parents had been holding the name Vishnu Basement for a long time and had apparently been suggesting it to him,” said Goldstein. “So when we were trying to get this thing off the ground, Sam told us the name and we were all pretty sold. That was when shit started to get really real.” Vishnu Basement since made a name for themselves by performing in venues accessible to students. The band most prefers playing at Ferry and performed there five times since the end of the 2012-13 academic school year.

Although Ferry is their preferred venue, Vishnu Basement performs in whatever space they can. “I think the first time we were like ‘Wow. We are really good’ or we got really psyched about ability to put on a show was during our show in UpC,” Parra recalled. “It was a post-serenading show through ViCE, and we were really psyched after that. It was the first big show that we had really prepared for. After that, the scope of the operation has really hit us and we have been trying to get even better.”

Vishnu Basement’s success can largely be attributed to their passionate and wide-reach-

ing following. Two key members of Vishnu’s fan base include Niccolo Porcello ’16 and Tim Brown ’16.

“SUPERTEEN and Vishnu Basement are probably two of the bigger bands on campus.

One night I was talking with Tim Brown about how insane it would be if the two bands went on tour together and played shows together.

We just got carried away and thought, ‘why don’t we take them on tour and organize shows for them?’ and got even further carried away,” Porcello said.

That is how Sad Cactus Records came to be.

“About a month later we had a record label, which is totally nuts,” said Porcello. “We are a registered business in New York State, we pay taxes and we even have an office—which is in my house across the street from school.”

The label, which Porcello and Brown launched and run, signed four other artists in addition to Vishnu Basement, including SUPERTEEN, Tundrastomper, Aural Burrows and Geyser. Sad Cactus Records is soon to release Vishnu Basement’s first EP, titled “Strange Machine,” with album art created by Ethan Hofmayer ’15, the band’s art director. In addition to creating the album art for “Strange Machine,” Hofmayer is designing Vishnu Basement merchandise.

Besides providing Vishnu Basement with a performance space—the living room of his dad’s house—Porcello is particularly instrumental in recording the band’s first EP. “In the beginning of this year, we starting wanting to make our first album. We were looking for a space to do the drums and he volunteered the living room of his dad’s house over October Break, which is where we played a show, because it was a big open spot and his dad wasn’t going to be there,” said Goldstein.

The group is currently pressing their first album, titled “Strange Machine,” onto vinyl—a process that is as complicated as it is exciting.

“I was under the impression that we would re-

cord their three song EP over the fall break— well, we just finished it last week, nine-months later,” said Porcello. “We recorded in my house, in Skinner and spent all of spring break in Blodgett. So those are the three spaces that we’ve used—diverse spaces that create really interesting sounds. It’s been a really fun and even amazing process.”

Due to the nature of Vishnu Basement’s sound, recording can be incredibly time-consuming. “It’s not like Vishnu Basement is Jack Johnson, recording with just a drum, a bass and a guitar playing in four/four. Their whole thing is that they play in absurd time signatures, which make it really hard to record it.

If you mess up, you have to re-record,” said Porcello.

“We’ve done probably 5,000 takes for three songs—granted for Vishnu Basement, three songs is 30 minutes. Still, we have just been plugging away, and Max and them have all done really great and have worked so hard.

I don’t even know what I’ve done—I’ve just found them places for them to do their thing.”

The group’s EP will include three original songs, and a preview of one of the songs, titled “Jakeelis,” will be released next week. The song-writing process is an intensely collaborative one for the group.

“Max and Sam [Fritzschel] or Max or Sam will come up with a part and then we will all listen to it and talk about it,” Parra said.

“Changes will be made as necessary, and then Sam [Judkis] and I will come up with parts.

It’s usually the guitar parts that come first, but it’s not a monopoly. It’s just a coincidence that that happens. Basically everyone critiques everyone’s parts until they are the best they can be.”

“Strange Machine” can be categorized under the genre of prog rock, but that does not necessarily reflect the current direction in which the band’s sound is headed.

“The album right now is loud and very ag-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

gressive and a bit raucous. It’s pretty capital R ‘Rock’. And, speaking for myself, I am very much trying to get quiet now,” said Goldstein.

Vishnu Basement’s signature loud and head-banging sound is developing into something less turbulent, but that does not mean Vishnu Basement will sacrifice their signature complexity. “At the beginning, I was very much set in my ways as a loud and frenetic guitar player…I think we are all a lot more interested in exploring things that are more textual and less going crazy,” continued Goldstein.

“We are now just interested in trying to say something valuable. We are about to be on the precipice of doing a lot of looping and a lot of layers. So the record won’t really reflect that much, but it’s still a really good sound and we are about to tour on it. So we are still super stoked.”

Both Vishnu Basement and SUPERTEEN’s repertoires include a variety of sounds and interpretations of their prospective sounds. Parra said, “[SUPERTEEN is] kind of post-punky, but what makes them really cool and close to us, at least spiritually, is that across their album they have a very wide diversity of what post-punk can mean. They have a lot of different sounding stuff on that album.”

Vishnu Basement’s upcoming tour with SUPERTEEN will take place May 21 through June 4, with performances in Portland, ME, Boston, Providence, Poughkeepsie, Baltimore, Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston, Chattanooga and Savannah.

Before Vishnu Basement depart on their tour, however, the group plans to play at Vassar at least a couple more times. “We have two shows coming up. One of them is on April 18.

We are playing in Rocky 300 of all places with SUPERTEEN, with whom we are going on tour. That will be fun because it is a pretty fun place,” Goldstein added. “Niccolo is saying we are going to open the windows so we can be really loud.”

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April 10, 2014

Poetry month Great American novel hits broadway stage events honor Vassar alumna Albert Muzquiz Guest Columnist

Of Mice and Men Anna D. Shapiro Longacre Theatre

Isabella DeLeo Reporter

“A

pril is the cruelest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot in his epic poem “Wasteland.” Even so, for Eliot, this harsh stint might be said to have one redeeming quality: It’s also poetry month. To celebrate this art form, The Academy of American Poets established April as National Poetry Month in 1996. National Poetry Month seeks to make people more receptive to the poetry around them.

Every month, The Academy of American Poets reasserts the value of poetry in popular culture so that people become inspired to celebrate poetry year-round.

“The reason why the Academy of American Poets began National Poetry Month was to raise awareness and appreciation for poetry in America. I think their original goal is an important one because poetry is a wonderful art form that many people perceive as easy to do,” wrote Library Research Intern Molly James in an emailed statement.

To celebrate National Poetry Month, the library research services will host two study break events focusing on poetry in the Corona Room of the library. The first will feature a haiku-writing contest and raffle, while the second will provide students with the opportunity to continue writing haikus for the contest, or they can create their own zines.

In addition, the English department will bring in a Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Natasha Tretheway, to deliver the annual Elizabeth Bishop lecture on April 10. Tretheway is the country’s nineteenth Poet Laureate, and her poetry focuses mainly on her mixedrace heritage and her upbringing in the South. The lecture series itself honors Bishop, a Vassar alumna whose work is housed in Special Collections of the library. Previous poets invited to read their works for the lecture include Robert Pinsky and Seamus Heaney.

The library research services elected to have a haiku-writing contest because it is generally a short writing activity that can be relaxing to do and interesting to read. “Having something which can be done fast as well as help the students relax was the goal,” wrote James. Efficiency is essential because most students come to study breaks for five or ten minutes and then resume studying.

Gretchen Lieb, a research librarian, explained the reasons for choosing to focus on the poetry form.

“One of the practices of haiku is to include an allusion to nature or the seasons, an awareness that is on our collective mind this year due to the long anticipation of spring after our long winter,” wrote Lieb.

According to some, celebrating Poetry Month at a liberal arts college like Vassar is particularly special. “I believe that since Vassar is a liberal arts college, understanding and experiencing poetry is just another facet to the learning environment,” wrote James.

The Library Research Services celebrate Poetry Month in order to spread the joy of writing and reading poetry. “The research staff at the library hope that at some point during the month, students will pick up a book of poems, read some poetry online, write a down a few lines, or come to the study break. The most important take away is to enter May having experienced poetry in April and maybe even continue experiencing poetry,” wrote James.

“Poetry has always been an important part of the curriculum and lives of the Vassar community, and our [library] collection reflects that,” wrote Lieb. For some, the importance of poetry extends beyond the realm of the classroom and is more than a leisurely activity. “People write poetry to survive,” wrote Leonel Torres, co-president of Wordsmiths, a campus group that promotes both written and spoken word poetry through hosting open mics, writer’s workshops, guest speakers and poets.

According to The Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month is meant to both raise awareness of current writers as well as celebrate those from the past. “The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern,” The Academy wrote on their website. “We hope to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated.”

“M

r. Franco will not be taking pictures,” said a stern security guard to the horde of teenage girls that had congregated by the stage door. My sister, who was at the front of the throng, let out a loud groan, which was soon echoed by a chorus of her peers. It made sense that James Franco wouldn’t be interacting with the crowd that night. Only 24 hours earlier, he had been involved in a scandalous Instagram flirtation with a minor.

“What about Chris O’Dowd?” A middle-aged woman shouted. I agreed with her.

He was the star of “Of Mice and Men” that I really wanted to see. Not James Franco, not Leighton Meester, I wanted to see O’Dowd.

Standing outside of the Longacre Theater in the rain in this crowd of seething fans, I felt disoriented. It was hard to step out of Steinbeck’s world and onto the streets of Manhattan, for I had been so taken in by the authentic and heart-wrenching performances of O’Dowd (“The IT Crowd,” “Bridesmaids,” “The Sapphires”) and Franco (“127 Hours,” “Ruining the 2011 Academy Awards,” “Sort of teaching at Calarts”) that I could hardly cope with the dissonance of the bustling city.

Director Anna D. Shapiro (“August: Osage County”) transforms what I remember as a dry and predictable anecdote into a fullfledged tour de force. Her unique perspective brings a wholly new and creative element to the old classic. The book that I vaguely remember as a sad story about rabbits becomes so much more in her talented hands.

The main theme of the play and novel is male companionship or, more specifically, unconventional and unwanted friendship.

And who better to symbolize the awkward

and unwieldy relationship between clever George and cognitively disabled Lennie than Franco and O’Dowd? They are as incongruous a pair as their characters: Franco, the celebrity-scholar-director wunderkind, and O’Dowd, the Irish classically-trained comedian, hail from drastically different backgrounds, yet they make a formidable duo.

The play takes place on a dusty ranch in Salinas, California and is as much about love and hope as the losses thereof. George and Lennie arrive under dubious circumstances and try to keep their heads down in a foreign place. “This is a bad place, George, I don’t like this place,” Lennie notes, but George begs him to hang on a little longer. They need just a little more money and then they can buy their own place...with rabbits, of course.

Thick with foreshadowing, the plot winds its slow, deliberate way towards the ending we know so well. We must watch Candy hear the gunshot that ends his dog’s life, he must hear George recount the story of the fabled house, and we must see Curley’s wife invite Lennie to feel her silken hair.

The ending was inevitable—even those who haven’t read the book could feel what was coming. The air in the theater hung heavy, even in the sparsely situated comic parts.

Some of Lennie’s lines could be deemed as funny, but I was always disturbed when they got a laugh. His brutal, uncut, naïve honesty was a result of the condition that makes him unable to fend for himself, and O’Dowd’s performance was so convincing and genuine that I felt a pang of anger every time a chuckle echoed in the audience.

Every part of O’Dowd’s performance wowed me; not since Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance in Danny Boyle’s production of “Frankenstein” have I seen such nuanced and inspired physicality. Lennie is big and strong, but he is so completely vulnerable that he needs George to take care of him.

Franco is the perfect foil to O’Dowd’s Lennie; smaller in stature than the “big, crazy

bastard,” he is believable as Lennie’s callous overseer and guardian angel. Where Lennie is overstated and larger than life, George is scheming and quiet. Franco’s performance at first seemed hackneyed, just a stereotypical cowboy acting tough, but all that changed when in one particularly moving scene, you see his façade crack, and the real emotions come spilling out.

This subtlety may partially be due to his training in film acting—from my seat in the balcony, I realized he was clenching his jaw and furrowing his brow, actions that read well on camera but not always in a crowded theater. The moment that shocked me the most was the first time he smiled on stage. It was a tragic, forced smile, but it was perhaps the most drastic action he had taken throughout the whole show.

Many of the people sitting around me had obviously come for Franco.

“This is the closest I’ll ever be to James Franco,” a particularly irritating girl giggled.

The celebrity held his own—his slowly waning movie star looks and scraggly beard were a good match for his hard-scrabble character—but O’Dowd, who did not get the red carpet treatment after the show, who didn’t have a posse or a car service waiting for him outside, was the real star.

Lennie, who can’t control his enormous strength, who destroys everything he holds dear, may never get his chance to tend the rabbits, but he leaves an indelible impression on all who witness his tragedy.

With the exception of Leighton Meester (“Gossip Girl”), the entire cast performed marvelously. James Franco drawing in a crowd and rising to the occasion and Chris O’Dowd showcasing his remarkable knack for the tragic.

“Tell how it’s gonna be, George,” Lennie pleads. And so I did.

Go to the Longacre Theater and watch the great American story unfold, not for the ending, but the endlessly ingenious embellishments along the way.

Brother dynamic at heart of music doc Joe Lovizio

Guest Columnist

Mistaken for Strangers Tom Berninger Marshall Curry

I

love music documentaries. I love the behind the scenes look these films offer, from the fly on the wall vérité style of D.A. Pennebaker’s works to the unabashed candidness of Martin Scorsese’s rock docs. These movies complement footage of their privileged view with uncut and uninterrupted live performances of music legends.

Thus, I was expecting this conventional format when I heard about “Mistaken For Strangers,” a new documentary about American indie rock group The National. Yet, I was delighted to discover this movie breaks the mold.

In my list of cinematic experiences, it earned the title of “best music documentary not about music but instead about the younger brother of a rock star” I have ever seen.

The documentary opened the Tribeca Film Festival last year to positive acclaim. The film’s director Tom Berninger, a fledgling filmmaker and younger brother of National frontman Matt, followed the group on its 2010 High Violet tour, who filmed everything he possibly could and couldn’t with a cheap Panasonic camcorder.

The results are a mixture of awkward and hilarious moments of Tom interacting with the band and its crew as a man with a camera but without a place on a tour throughout Europe and the US. Tom is an engaging subject to follow: a Zach Galifianakis on “Between Two Ferns” type, with chubby humility to spare. I questioned whether I was watching “Portlandia” or a music documentary when the camera zoomed in to his spilt cereal and milk on the

bathroom floor of the band’s Anytown, USA hotel room.

And Tom’s questioning of the band’s bandana-clad drummer on what drugs he has done is just one example of how his own juxtaposition with The National is wonderfully absurd.

The National is a band that I have often said is the classiest of them all—I mean, it doesn’t get much classier than songs with lyrics about Tennessee Williams (see “City Middle”) or a guitarist who produces classical music on the side (see “Kronos Quartet”).

The fun is cut short, though. Tom’s antics are deemed distracting and destructive by the crew manager, leading to his removal from the tour. After Tom’s departure, the true nature of the documentary comes out; this isn’t a story about a band—it’s a strong story about two brothers.

The relationship between Tom and Matt is riddled with contrast. Matt is famous, and Tom is not. Matt lives with his wife and daughter in New York, and Tom lives at home with their parents in Ohio.

The documentary paints a sympathetic portrait of the disparity between the brothers through the eyes of Tom and how dealing with a golden child big bro can be tough, especially dealing with one who has made it creatively when Tom had sputtered (see Tom’s gore heavy horror flick attempts) and failed to reach the same heights.

Interviews with the brothers’ parents only intensify the sympathy, as each parent talks about Matt’s triumphs alongside Tom’s shortcomings.

The stage is set for Tom to falter once again and fade into his own personal Midwest metal head obscurity, but I witnessed an underdog emerge. Tom is the underdog who musters all of his focus and energy imaginable to achieve one goal: to finish making the documentary.

This is where things become a little bit meta. I was afraid that the film would fall

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

down the slippery slope of making a documentary about making a documentary, but the latter half of the film never focuses too much on the self-referentiality of it all.

One of the many kickers of this film is that by the end of it, you almost feel robbed.

It sets up the expectation that you were going to see a film about The National, with clips of full live performances and in depth interviews with all the band members. You wanted that, but only because that’s what every predecessor had done in the past.

Instead, “Mistaken For Strangers” demonstrates the versatility of documentary and how the medium can tell stories on any scale, big or small. This story takes one of the grandest scopes possible, an internationally renowned rock group, and uses it as a backdrop to tell an intimate story about a guy trying to make his mark in the creative world.

As a film student who has worked on documentaries before, I can understand the difficulty in hammering down a focal point with which to stick with when making a non-fiction film. This film is an example of how you don’t really know what a documentary is going to be about until you’ve finished making it.

As I watched the film, out of the corner of my eye I could see my friend’s face turn to disappointment. An indie-music buff, she was hoping for a re-embodiment of her beloved “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” a documentary about LCD Soundsystem that features the band’s final performance almost in its entirety.

Part of me—the part who adores The National’s music more than most other bands’— wanted this film to give me the steady dose of live concert footage that my friend and I were expecting.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to find a story with more heart than any other music documentary, telling a story about a regular guy, trying to reach a brief pinnacle of rock star glory—and succeeding, so to speak.

ARTS

April 10, 2014

Page 17

‘Noah’ adds complexity to biblical tale Max Rook Columnist

Noah Darren Aronofsky Regency Enterprises

“N

oah” is a film that never completely commits to any single style or genre.

It alternates between big-budget action movie, intimate psychological character study and family melodrama, seemingly at random. This is by no means a new problem for this particular style of auteur-fronted mainstream film— David O. Russell’s “American Hustle” similarly struggled to balance comedy and drama, and suffered as a result.

In this case, director Darren Aronofsky’s previous film, 2010 ballet thriller “Black Swan,” was such a success, Paramount apparently set him up with complete creative control and a budget several times larger than anything he had previously worked with for “Noah.” As anyone familiar with Aronofsky’s strange and idiosyncratic films can tell you, the fact that he chose to spend this creative capital on an epic retelling of the biblical story of Noah is appropriately weird. What is surprising about “Noah” is that unlike other films which suffer from similar tonal disparities, in which you can easily pick out one or two elements that are consistently more successful than the rest of the film, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what works well here.

“O. Russell’s ‘American Hustle’... struggled to balance comedy and drama.”

At times Noah’s personal struggle with his faith is incredibly compelling, and the film’s action elements are ludicrous, and then just a few scenes later the relative qualities of these elements will have swapped. This is frequently a very frustrating film, but there are enough

Campus Canvas

moments of beauty, both sublime and gruesome, to make it worth experiencing.

The story of Noah—a guy builds a boat, takes some animals and his family with him, experiences 40 days of rain and then repopulates the earth—is one with which most people are likely familiar, and this particular take doesn’t deviate much from that pattern.

The film adds in the Watchers, a group of fallen angels who have been forced into stone golem-like forms, but they’re oddly inconsequential for such a fantastical concept.

More importantly, the film focuses on the conflict between Noah’s family and the other humans on Earth, the sinners who will be wiped away by the flood. In this version of the story, the other humans have created an almost dystopian industrial civilization, depleting the world’s resources, and the film’s second act focuses on the battle between those humans and Noah and the watchers for control of the ark. And it really is a battle, in the modern cinematic sense. For about ten minutes, the movie basically turns into Lord of the Rings and mimics that style pretty well. While some of the film’s early attempts at action are less effective, such as a laughable sequence in which Noah kills a small group of hunters, the large-scale battle ends up being one of the film’s highlights.

That being said, this really isn’t a standard big-budget action film. The general tone and style are much smaller in scale, a deliberate effort to take the gigantic, world-destroying scope of the Noah story and examine it on a personal level. The most obvious manifestation of this choice is the focus on making Noah a complex and human character as played by Russell Crowe. The film is simply titled “Noah,” after all, not “Noah’s Ark,” and Aronofsky seems much more interested in why Noah does what he does than in the mechanics of building the ark and saving humanity. It helps, then, that Crowe gives one of his best performances in years, playing Noah as a taciturn, difficult man with little in the way of natural charisma.

Dramatic interpretations of biblical stories have a habit of turning their protagonists into Jesus-like inspirational leaders, but Aronofsky and Crowe avoid that impulse, which helps to sell Noah’s internal struggles with

his own faith as believable. Unfortunately, the film’s decidedly human focus is less successful for the rest of its cast. Emma Watson acquits herself nicely as Noah’s daughter-in-law Ila, but Noah’s oldest son Shem is basically a non-entity, and Logan Lerman never manages to make middle son Ham seem like anything more than a whiny teenager. This becomes especially problematic in the dull third act, which locks the central characters in the ark and plays out the conflict between Ham and Noah in the most tedious way possible.

Excuse me, Write us a haiku for poetry month.

“The film focuses on the conflict between Noah’s family and the other humans on Earth.”

Perhaps the best way to approach this film’s wild inconsistencies is to look for Aronofsky’s directorial touch, which is less apparent here than it is in his previous work. The places in which Noah feels anonymous, such as the visually staid third act or Ham’s endless complaining, are easily the film’s weakest segments, while the more visually inventive moments, where Aronofsky’s influence is readily apparent, are much more exciting. A pair of montages that come midway through the running time completely break from the established narrative and visual structure of the film, as if to remind viewers that Aronofsky is the same man who made evocative and harrowing films like “The Fountain” and “Requiem for a Dream.”

Ultimately, Noah is one of Aronofsky’s lesser works. It’s a little too muddled, a little too lacking in focus, and its many disparate elements never cohere into a larger whole. In someone else’s hands, this could have been a perfectly generic blockbuster, but Aronofsky imbues the film with enough darkness to prevent it from becoming forgettable.

Noah may not live up to Aronofsky’s standard, but it does stand out in an era when blockbusters are becoming increasingly interchangeable.

A weekly space highlighting the creative pursuits of student-artists

“‘What is the meaning There is not any meaning could you repeat that (I dedicate this to Talia).”

—Ethan Cohen ’16

“Yes I had a dream of a man without the slime.

Tim Brown the time clown.”

—Nick Vargish ’16

“Georgia’s moonlit beach head foggy and limbs tingling now it’s landshark time.”

—Nathan Bazan ’15

submit to misc@vassar.edu

“Made brief eye contact with dear Danny Devito it was a success.”

—Zoe Lemelson, ’17

“I wrote a haiku it was bad. At least it was self-referential.”

—Tim Brown ’16

I took this photo of my bathroom when I left for Vassar last fall. I don’t normally just take pictures of my house but I was moving out for good, so I wanted some visual keepsakes. Anyway, the emphasis of this photo is, well, the window. As pretty and quaint as this window is—with its flowery curtain thing and the sleeping ceramic kitty—keep in mind that it’s above a toilet. I always found that odd. I found it especially odd when using said toilet. The reason I’m not really talking about this photo’s “photographic” qualities is because I can’t. I don’t really know anything about taking photos other than pressing click. For this reason, I don’t usually show people my photography because I imagine I’ll be found out.

A guy or gal will see this photo, and with even just minimal photography know-how, they’ll know I’m a fraud. Well, hey, whatever. I’m still glad the photo exists. It does indeed act as a visual reminder for me, of different times: times when I would pee with a sweet view.

—Jack Conway ’17

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

“Randos on the quad when the sun shines, they emerge do you all go here?”

—Asprey Liu ’17

Spencer Davis, Photo Editor Samantha Kohl, Arts Editor

SPORTS

Page 18

April 3, 2014

Attendance declines at student-faculty basketball game Sam Hammer RepoRteR

L

courtesy of Vassar College Media Relations

ast Sunday, the annual Student-Faculty Basketball Game took place for the fifth year, with the students winning in a close game of 41-39.

The event began, explained Dean of the College Christopher Roellke, as a way to unite campus. “It was during the great recession that a former student (Brian Farkas) and I came up with the Old School vs. Students idea,” he wrote in an emailed statement.

“We needed an event that would bring the community together over something positive. Over the years, we have raised money for financial aid, student internships and scholarships. The tradition continues,” he said.

Tickets for the game were $5 and all of the proceeds this year will help fund the Student Gift. Student Gift Co-chair Michael Renner ‘14 explained that the proceeds from the game can have a substantial impact on the gift.

“The game can have a substantial impact on the gift, given it’s well attended, because all of the proceeds from tickets sales are donated directly to the gift,” he wrote.

He continued, “Because so many tickets are bought at the door, we won’t know until after the game how large that impact will be, however, a substantial number of tickets were sold before hand through tabling in the College Center, or attendees buying directly from Student Gift Committee members or those playing in the game. In the end, the game is an important event which helps to ensure the success of each year’s Student Gift and this year will be a great benefit for the Internship Grant Fund.”

The series has been an exciting one over the last few years, with the students now leading three games to two. The faculty won the original game and last year’s, while the students won rounds two and three as well as this year. The game is usually very well attended, with over eight-hundred spectators in each of the first four years.

This past weekend, Vassar College held the annual student faculty basketball at the Athletic and Fitness Center by the Terrace Apartments. The game featured faculty from all departments of Vassar This year, however, attendance was not as high, especially after the first half when many of the spectators left and did not return after half-time.

Assistant Director of Admission Eli Stein has played in all five rounds of the series as both a student and admissions officer.

He has also spent the last three years as one of the organizers of the event. He attributes the lower attendance this year to the timing of the event saying, “It is tough to get people to attend an indoor event on a nice spring day.”

An anonymous student agreed, mentioning that they found campus’ lack of enthusiasm about the event disappointing. “It looked like there was half the people there this year than last year, and a good portion of people left at halftime. The low attendance may have been due to scheduling—they scheduled the game

this year in the spring, on a Sunday afternoon after 50 nights, during a couple varsity sports events, and on freshmen parent’s weekend.”

In the first four years, the game has been held in February on either a Friday or Saturday. According to Mr. Stein, this year’s game was delayed due to scheduling conflicts.

Nonetheless, students maintained that the spirit of the players themselves remained steadfast.

Sophomore Jose Erazo attended the game for the first time this year and was impressed by the competitive play, saying that, “The students weren’t going easy on the faculty.”

Throughout the game, all of the rebounds were fiercely contested and there was a great deal of physical contact. Players on both sides were knocked to the ground and there was fouling on both sides.

The players on both teams wore jerseys

sporting their nicknames on the back and there was no shortage of friendly banter between the teams. At one point, Dean of the College Christopher Roellke handed a referee some cash, which in turn lead to some questionable calls against the Student team.

Before the game, the Vastards performed an interesting rendition of the National Anthem. At half-time, dance group HYPE showed off their hip-hop dancing skills. Right before the second-half got started, there was a three-point shooting contest between the two teams in which the Faculty won 12-6.

In preparation for the event, the faculty held two formal practices and had several “open gym” practices leading up to the event.

For Math Professor Natalie Frank, the practices paid off and she was able to perform better than she had anticipated.

“My personal performance was better than expected: my goal was to record one non-negative stat other than minutes played, and I got a rebound and credit for a steal.

Never mind my two turnovers. My defense was probably the best part of my game,” she said.

The students arranged practices of their own. These practices were also more informal events due to the busy schedules of those involved. Though the game came out in the students’ favor, sophomore Osamagbe Ogbeide wrote, “I guess I played alright, [but I was] definitely was feeling the effects of going out to 50 Nights the night before.”

Osamagbe was impressed with the shooting skills of the student team during the game, but not so much during the three-point contest writing, “Highlights: The garage of threes my teammates opened the game with, what a great start! Lowlights: That three -point contest...no comment.”

For senior Luna Garzon-Montano, her highlight and lowlight for the game came on the same play.

She said, “High and lowlight were when Winston [Bailey] housed me...you can quote me on that one.”

Dialogue aimed to locate source of student-athlete divide DIALOGUE continued from page 1

tersection. Student-Athletes brought up their frustrations that trying to have fans and even friends attend their games seemed futile. However, non-athlete students and other athletes as well noticed a tendency of student-athletes to isolate themselves at times. One theory for this proposed was based on the physical locations of various events.

Cousineau summarized the main points of the location discussion from the panel held over the weekend in explaining the physical isolation of athletics as opposed to other parts of campus life. “Something of note that I witnessed here is the location of athletics facilities at the extremities of campus, and not being in the ‘public eye’ of Vassar. This establishes athletic teams as members of the periphery in regard to the social world of Vassar. As a result, social relationships, the use (or non-use) of

specific spaces and how we relate within said spaces remain constant; for example, the preponderance of athletes who live in the TH’s for proximity to facilities and as a comfortable space to live/socialize on campus. Also, there tends to a lack of willingness to attend non-athletic events, like plays, comedy shows, etc, though I have seen changes this year.”

Another main point of discussion was weekend culture and how often times non-athletes felt that student-athlete parties were at times uncomfortable spaces for them to be. There was a general consensus between the student-athletes that discomfort had never been their intention and that many of them had never considered an opposing point of view. Again, the location factor seemed to come into play, as the whole group discussed how most students rarely ventured to the furthest parts of campus

Sam Pianello/The Miscellany News

learning about each individual person based upon passions, interests and general life paths.

Each individual then introduced their partner to the group. The group then broke up based on whether or not one identified as an athlete.

Platt led the group of athletes that included two women’s rugby players, two men’s soccer players, two field hockey players and himself. The small groups that were at the panel discussed their experiences at Vassar before reconvening as a whole to discuss each small group session.

Men’s soccer attendee and Cushing Student Fellow sophomore Ben Glasner found the discussion incredibly beneficial in opening up the campus dialogue and his own perspectives. In an emailed statement, he said, “I think it was a very successful discussion in that it allowed for one to happen, which has been a step we haven’t seen happening on campus. Not only that but many very solid points of view were brought up throughout the talk, which allowed for growth in understanding others perspectives, be those Varsity athletes, club athletes, ex-athletes or those who do not participate in the athlete community at all.”

Glasner’s teammate, junior sociology major Andre Cousineau, agreed with the overall success of the dialogue that happened over this past weekend. “I felt that the discussion was a success because people actually attended and made important contributions to the dialogue, whether it be as athletes or non-athletes. I wanted to see a free flowing of opinions, challenging questions and constructive dialogue about our respective relations to other students as athletes and non-athletes. I felt the discussion went very well. We talked about self-presentations, stereotypes, reputations, spatial occupation/awareness of both groups and our respective experiences on campus about said topics.”

One of the topics brought up in the discussion compared Athletics to Drama. A point of discussion revolved around the various locations of the two spheres and their lack of in-

Over the weekend, students created and facilitated a discussion that focused on identifying the gaps between athletes and non-athletes on Vassar’s campus. The discussion was attended by various students.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

except for social gatherings.

Cousineau echoed these remarks. “The few times a majority of non-athletes venture to the west/east part of campus (TH’s/TA’s), it is for the weekend culture, not to witness athletic events. Here, many non-athletes view athletes as one-dimensional party animals, for the social scene acts as the only dimension available as a lens of observation.”

A third important topic raised in the discussion was the fellow group system especially for fall season athletes. Despite a new system in place allowing for all first years to participate in fellow group events, the group decided there still tended to be a divide at times. Being a fall student-athlete as a freshman seemed to be particularly isolating in both directions. More inclusivity and openness both ways seemed to be the best answer anyone had to solving the isolation problem for athletes and non-athletes.

Glasner had hoped to hear some differing views that he did not generally hear around campus.

“I was really just hoping to hear a point of view regarding the topic from someone not directly involved in a sport on campus, it is not often I hear non-athletes even consider it.”

The conversation remained productive with individuals who have had different experiences with athletics expressing their points of view.

All members of the group contributed and helped to further the discussion by sharing their various experiences, whether they were current or former athletes or had no connection to athletics at all.

In the end, Cousineau had this to say about the experience as a whole: “I felt the event was successful. I wish that there were more people, but I’m sure we will have more discussions and more people attending over time. We do have mutual respect for each other, though such feelings do not manifest themselves within the Vassar public often. But whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, we, as a campus, admire each other for all that we bring to the table. We all play for team Vassar.”

April 3, 2014

SPORTS

Athlete calls for preferential housing Luka Ladan Columnist

A

partment draw has now come and gone, with living arrangements scouted and decided upon. As is always the case, those leaving the dorms to try out the Town Houses, Terrace Apartments and the like have been partitioned into different locales spread out across campus—some will be situated right by the soccer fields, others by the Athletics and Fitness Center. Others will reside in the South Commons, slightly removed from the party scene so much a part of this campus.

I, along with some teammates on the men’s varsity basketball team, will be living in TH 156 for what will be two final semesters at Vassar College. It’ll be a blast, and I grow excited just thinking about it—not only living with some of my best friends, but also having an on-campus apartment to call one’s own. We’ll be able to barbecue and toss the football around in some warm weather, in our own space and, finally, as five housemates looking to have some fun. Living together will be a wonderful way to cap off our undergraduate careers, during which we spent months together.

TH 156 will be the place to be—and we’ll take care of it with a sense of pride—but it was by no means our first choice, harking back to the apartment draw process and the stress accompanying it. In fact, we really wanted to live in one of the TAs right by the basketball courts in the AFC. It made the most sense at the time, as basketball players drawn to the gym and in love with the game.

What could be better than living right by our varsity basketball court, by our locker-room and close to a new weight room?

We spend hours and hours in the gym, shooting around and playing pickup games and lifting when there’s not much else going on. It comes with the territory, as competitively driven student-athletes looking to make the most out of collegiate athletics for four years. We live in the AFC, not only

during the season but outside of it as well.

That gym on the hill has become a part of each and every one of us, not only because of team practices and locker-room meetings but also the spring days spent dribbling and shooting and running after class.

My teammates and I, we’re there from autumn to winter to spring. That’s exactly what is required of us, since winning games truly matters to each and every one of us. As a college basketball player, I have to work on my game — in all kinds of ways — to reap the benefits when the spotlight is turned on come early January; that also goes for my teammates who will shoot and shoot to improve and excel. The same logic applies to studying for a test, which we all know too well. With an additional hour spent studying, performance will also improve as a result.

Thus, I shoot a lot of shots to become a better shooter—and, hopefully, perform better in competitive situations. That’s what the gym is for.

That’s also why we really wanted to live in a Terrace Apartment. It makes the most sense, since the varsity basketball court is a home away from home.

Quite frankly, that should mean something during the apartment draw process. A group of five varsity basketball players should be awarded some sort of preferential treatment, when it comes to living right next to AFC— home to the varsity basketball court, but also our team locker-room and all kinds of useful resources. We all spend hours on end there, doing one thing or another for the betterment of the team. So, why can’t the school help out in some tiny way? From a logistical standpoint, it makes the most sense!

Living right beside the AFC would mean more to me than it would to a non-athlete living in the same area, with no sense of dependence on the building right next door.

The same goes for a varsity swimmer or anyone so closely tied to the Athletics and Fitness Center out of sheer necessity. The

apartment draw process should be reformed to accommodate the student-athlete juggling study time spent in the library and practice time spent on the court or in the pool. That’s the most pragmatic solution. Helping one and not the other can be a dangerous proposition, but not in all situations. If “preferential treatment” actually makes a whole lot of sense, why not? If it make the most sense, why not help out?

Imagine spending five hours in the gym on a Monday, three more hours on the next day, and five more on the day after that one.

Imagine spending days and days in the AFC, even during October break and for most of the dreary winter break on campus. Imagine practicing twice a day, followed by a team lift and a meeting to cap it all off. That’s varsity basketball in a nutshell, and it’s really easy to see why the basketball players on this campus become one with the varsity basketball court and the locker-room and the AFC weight room right on the hill.

It’s not a cliché to characterize the Athletics and Fitness Center as my second home.

So, why not provide me—just as committed as myself to improvement via repetition— with the chance to live right by that second home? It would mean so much, having a first home and a second home just a few short steps apart. Our lives would be made so much easier.

It seems like a pretty valid justification for “preferential treatment,” or whatever you want to call it. My housemates and I, we’ll have a lot of fun wherever we are. The THs will still be a pretty cool place to live as college seniors. But, it does not mean that we’re not left longing for something a tiny bit better and a little more practical. Living in a Terrace Apartment would be more practical, without a doubt.

That’s where reform comes into play.

The apartment draw process should involve some level of accommodation for the student-athlete, at least in this case. It’s just common sense.

‘Tanking’ a strategy that lets fans down Zach Rippe Columnist

T

he Philadelphia 76ers are this season’s “tanking” team. Yet, practically every young, bad team has been accused of “tanking” this year (just like every other year).

The verb itself has become an integral part of NBA lingo, more so than any other professional US sport. The notion that a team will give up their entire season and lose on purpose (to some extent) in order to obtain a high draft pick is indeed quite controversial.

Sure, it makes sense, but it deprives fans, players and coaches of their respectability.

The concept of “tanking” has become an explanation and even an excuse of sorts. If a team is bad, they must be “tanking.” If they have low expectations and no big names at the beginning of a season, they will be expected to “tank” that year. This notion of which teams are purposely losing is quite often a fabrication from fans, yet the way it’s covered within the media can be distracting and downright disrespectful to players and coaches.

Naturally, a team’s coach is going to tell the media that his team is always playing hard and fighting for their lives each and every night. Losing on purpose sounds, and is, unprofessional, especially for players and coaches who are collectively earning millions upon millions of dollars each season.

“The concept of ‘tanking’ has become an explanation and even an excuse of sorts.”

Former NBA coach and current analyst Jeff Van Gundy believes “tanking” is very

real, particularly this season. However, he is quick to defend the players themselves. According to CBS Detroit, he stated, “It doesn’t necessarily mean the guys on the floor aren’t trying hard, but it means teams have put some really bad rosters on the floor.”

Here lies the problem in professional basketball. Players and coaches have no control over who is on their roster. Ownership wants to build a winning product because winning teams produce more fans. But, the majority of teams in the NBA cannot afford to sign the big free agent the following year, nor do they want to play the odds as all-star free agents.

They rarely want to sign with a losing team (unless they are in New York or Los Angeles).

Thus, the realistic option is to build through the draft. The Thunder did it. Yet, teams like the Cavs, despite their multiple high draft picks, did not. The draft, too, is a lottery. Teams could have everything work in their favor, land the number one pick and wind up with the next Kwame Brown. So, the word “tanking” gets thrown around a lot more often during years with a talented draft class.

The problem here lies in more in the front office than anywhere else. As Van Gundy articulated a few months ago, “A lot of teams right now are happy with losing and that’s really too bad for the league. That’s too bad for the fans.” While players and coaches bear the brunt of frustration from fans and the media, front office executives are removed to the point that they may feel no remorse for negative results if they lead to positive ones in the future. The league’s playoff structure certainly doesn’t help this problem. With eight teams in each conference making the playoffs, it is fair to say that only four to five total have realistic championship aspirations. This year, the East is particularly pitiful. For example, a sixth seeded team is in perhaps a worse situation than a team who only won 20 games. They are good enough

to achieve a low playoff seed, yet not nearly good enough to win a title. It is extremely difficult for them to improve, as they will not obtain great draft picks and are most probably not good enough to attract a-list free agents. Accordingly, from the perspective of a front office, their best option is to completely blow up their roster, get younger and lose a lot of games with the hope of obtaining a high draft pick. Most often, “tanking” happens before the season even starts.

“The word ‘tanking’ gets thrown around a lot more often during years with a talented draft class.”

Next year’s draft class is supposed to be incredible. Some have called it potentially one of the best ever. If there were ever a time for a team to tank, it would be now. The Sixers are terrible, yet have a glimmer of hope with Michael Carter-Williams. The Lakers, too, have been awful, but their history and large market appeal give them better odds for success in the near future. “Tanking” has become a loaded and overused term, particularly in seasons like this where stars are clustered into an elite set of teams. While many teams are young and particularly unstable, they play hard and simply have no other options. With little hope of obtaining current stars, small market teams and fans throw their dreams of a franchise player into the draft. Sure, it stinks and seems contradictory to the ultimate goal of winning in professional sport, yet the solution to this problem remains a mystery. Perhaps tanking has simply become a part of the game. Whether it’s this year or next, nobody likes to lose.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Page 19

Pacers fall short of expectations Eli J. Vargas I Columnist

F

or the most part, all of the excitement in the NBA this season has been isolated to the Western Conference and to the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat.

The Eastern Conference did not have more than three teams with winning records a good way into the season, while the Western Conference has seven teams that have a winning percentage above .600.

What was projected to be a historically bad season for the Eastern Conference has not turned out to be as bad as previously thought. Still, the only bright spots in the Eastern Conference have been the Indiana Pacers and the Miami Heat. On a weekly basis, the Indiana Pacers have consistently been ranked as the top teams in the NBA this season, and for good reason. The Pacers have one of the best defensive centers in the NBA in Roy Hibbert. The majority of key players on their team have been playing with each other for more than two seasons now, and they happen to be one of the best defensive teams in the NBA this season. Along with a great defense, the Pacers have Paul George, who, earlier this season, was thought to be a contender for the MVP with the likes of Lebron James and Kevin Durant.

As of late, however, the Pacers seem to have experienced a drop off, much like their star player Paul George did. The Pacers have lost seven of their last ten games, and many of those were not to teams that would be considered contenders this season. This last Sunday, the Pacers looked as bad as they ever have in a 107-88 loss to the lowly Atlanta Hawks, who are most definitely not a team that should be blowing out the Pacers like they just did. The Indiana Pacers have begun to freefall, and at the worst time of the season. The NBA playoffs begin before the end of April. In their last game, their star center, Roy Hibbert, was recently benched. These are not good signs for a team with such high expectations of giving the Miami Heat a run for their money (in what seemed like an inevitable clash of the Eastern Conference’s best teams in the conference finals in the playoffs).

They need momentum heading into the playoffs, not disunity, because this is the time where teams have already played more than 70 games together. Teams are supposed to be gelling and finding a rhythm to build some steam heading into the toughest stretch of basketball.

The Pacers are 26th in the league in points-scored, but they are second in points-allowed, which for most of the season has not been a problem. But as of late, the Pacers have seemed listless, and to be one of the better defensive teams in the league, listless won’t suffice. To be successful the way the Pacers play, there needs to be an endless amount of energy and grit, because they just don’t have the type of offensive threats that can completely take over a game, like many elite teams do. The Pacers’ defense wins their games, while their offense keeps them in it. This last loss to the Atlanta Hawks, who are have a losing record and may not make the playoffs, doesn’t lend well to the excitement that was being felt by fans of the game who were itching to see a Heat-Pacers rematch in the Conference Finals, because if the Pacers continue to play the way that they have recently, they will be lucky to make it out of the first round.

Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Hawks should serve as a wake up call to the sputtering Pacers, who have lost four of their last five games; otherwise, their downward trend may well carry into the playoffs, and the playoffs are no place to mend a team’s problems. It only serves as a place to expose them for all of the world to see. At the end of March, the Pacers found themselves ahead of the Heat in the Eastern Conference standings, which would ensure home court advantage and potentially decide the series if the two teams were to meet in the playoffs.

Unfortunately, and understandably, the Pacers now find themselves a game behind the Heat, with only a handful of games left in the season. With a record of 53-25, the Pacers have been successful compared to other NBA teams, but in terms of their goal coming into the season, they are failing. The goal is to win a championship, and having the best record in the Eastern Conference would send a message to the two-time defending champion Heat and ensure home court advantage in the playoffs. With the way that the Pacers have been playing in their last ten games, they need home court now more than ever, especially considering that they are 34-6 at home, but only .500 on the road.

SPORTS

Page 20

April110, 2014

Men’s baseball pulls off crucial victory against Skidmore Jonathan Safir

season with senior day and sent its lone senior, Joe Pyne, off in fashion defeating Brooklyn College 3-0 (25-13, 25-23, 25-14). Later that afternoon, the team fell short to The State University of New Jersey Rutgers University-Newark (27-29, 25-22, 19-25, 22-25). For the day, Pyne had 35 kills, three aces, four blocks, and 14 assists.

For the 2014 season, sophomore Reno Kriz led the team with 424 kills, followed by Pyne with 326. Kriz also had a team high 3.68 kills/set.

RepoRteR

Men’s Baseball

Men’s Lacrosse

On April 2, the men’s lacrosse team defeated crosstown-foe Bard College 15-2. The team was led by four goals from senior Max Herman and three from junior Scott Brekne. Sophomores Colin Cederna and Shane Flattery each chipped in with two assists, as did freshman Liam Moriarty. The two game win streak came to an end on April 5 at St. Lawrence University. The Brewers were defeated 13-8. Junior Sean Brazier led Vassar with two goals and two assists, while Andrew Nicol held strong with 18 saves. On Tuesday, April 8, the Brewers defeated Drew University by a score of 9-8.

Leading the way for the club were Cederna and Brazier with two goals apiece and Nicol with 14 saves in net. For the year, Herman leads the

courtesy of Vassar College Athletics

The Brewers had a 3-2 week, defeating Skidmore at home on April 2 and splitting a 4-game weekend series with Clarkson on April 5 and 6.

Leading the way in the Skidmore victory were senior Brett Zaziski and sophomore Brooks English with two hits apiece. Senior Joe Lovizio earned the win, not allowing a run in his five innings on the bump. Over the weekend, Zaziski reached base eight times. Vassar received strong pitching performances from freshmen Adam Erkis and Trent Berg and sophomore Connor Cucalón. On the season, Zaziski is hitting a team high .500 with three home runs, one triple, eight doubles and 11 runs batted in. Johnson is batting .413 with nine doubles and 12 runs batted in. Sophomore Cory Wuenschell is hitting .414 with two homers, two doubles and 12 runs batted in. On the bump, the Brewers have arguably the best closer the Liberty League has seen in quite some time, in Cucalón, who has still yet to allow a run this season. Looking forward, the Brewers play at Skidmore College on Wednesday, April 9 and host SUNY Cortland for a double-header on Saturday, April 12.

Junior infielder player Kyle Casey catches a ball thrown by a teammate during a warm up before a match. The men’s baseball team went 3-2 for the past week, defeating Skidmore at home on April 2. team with 26 goals. Herman also has the team lead in assists with 16, followed by sophomore Noah Parson with 12. Moriarty has won a team high 57 face-offs, followed by Brekne with 43.

The Brewers play host to #1 nationally ranked Rochester Institute of Technology on Saturday April, 12.

Track and Field

Senior Aubree Piepmeier ran a terrific 5000m at the Sam Howell Invitational at Princeton University on April 4, qualifying her for ECAC Championships. Piepmeier is currently ranked 14th in the 1500m and second in the 5000m nationally. The following day, her teammates competed at the Fifth Annual Ramapo College Roadrunner Invitational. Junior Heather Ingraham ran a 12.71 in the 100m, placing third overall. Junior Ariel Bridges finished

seventh with a time of 12.96. Junior Cassidy Carpenter won her 1500m heat and right behind her was sophomore Ava Farrell. Qualifying for ECAC’s was the 4x100 team consisting of juniors Bridges, Ingraham, Nina Andersen and sophomore Mollie Schear. Sophomore Sarah King qualified for ECAC’s as well, finishing second in the 3k steeplechase. The team next runs April 12 at the April Invite at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Men’s Volleyball

On April 3, the men’s volleyball team hosted New York University and was defeated in straight sets (17-25, 14-25, 17-25). In the match, senior Joe Pyne led the team with eight kills, junior Colin White-Dzuro led the team with 15 assists, and freshman Trey Cimorelli led the team with 10 digs. On April 5, the team finished its

Women’s Lacrosse

On April 5, the women’s lacrosse team improved to 7-2 overall and 2-1 in Liberty League play with a 14-2 thrashing of Bard College.

Junior Sophia Rosetti led the team with four goals, while junior Dara Davis had three and sophomore Kim Mulvehill also had three. Senior Nicole Magney and junior Isabelle Goldstein led the Brewers with two assists apiece.

Junior Hilary McDonnell led the team with five saves. For the season, Davis leads the team with 24 goals, followed by Goldstein with 18. Goldstein leads the team in assists with 12, followed

by Davis with five. The Brewers are away April 11 and 12, at William Smith and Union, respectively.

Women’s Tennis

The women’s tennis team improved to 3-1 in Liberty League play over the weekend with an impressive 9-0 win over the number 16 regionally ranked Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Engineers here at the Josselyn Tennis Courts.

Victorious in singles competition for the Brewers were junior Samantha Schapiro, freshman Emily Hallewell, sophomore Winnie Yeates, senior Lindsay Kantor, sophomore Lauren Stauffer and freshman Shayna Becker. To complete the dominating team performance, the team received doubles victories from Schapiro and Becker, Hallewell and Yeates, and Stauffer and Kantor. The team next competes in the Seven Sisters Championships at Bryn Mawr on April 12.

Men’s tennis team serves Liberty League opponents Tina Caso

spoRts editoR

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courtesy of Vassar College Athletics

n March 29, the men’s tennis team began a streak of Liberty League matches as it moves into the spring season. Thus far, the Brewers have defeated all three of their league opponents including St. Lawrence University, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). During these matches, Vassar managed to sweep St. Lawrence and RIT with scores of 8-1 and 9-0, and defeat regionally ranked RPI 5-4.

“Conference matches are always important and usually tough,” explained newly appointed Head Coach Alex Wong in an emailed statement. “On top of that, [St. Lawrence and RIT] were away matches and it is always tough to play away at another team’s indoor facility. Despite all of that, I thought that the team played well to win both the matches. We shuffled the lineup around a little but those who played stepped up and played well.”

According to Cooper, “On Saturday, we had a very intense match against a feisty St. Lawrence team that had strong doubles. We managed to sweep the doubs, and then went on to win five out of the six singles matches. It was a great team performance all around.”

The team traveled North for its match vs. St. Lawrence. During this match, the No. 2 team of junior Christian Lyon and freshman Nick Litsky and the No. 3 team of sophomores Sha Huang and Christian Phelps went 3-0 in doubles. In No. 2 singles, Litsky went 6-1, 6-0 while No 1. sophomore Daniel Cooper went 6-4, 6-2.

On March 30, the team traveled to Rochester, NY to compete against RIT. In his first No. 1 singles match, Cooper won with a perfect 6-0 and next moved into a second tie-breaking 7-6 win. Freshman Jim Lee also won his singles match while both Litsky and sophomore Evan Udine had shutouts.

The next day, the Liberty League named Cooper as a Performer of the Week for going 4-4 in his singles and doubles spots. More recently, he was named Eastern College Athletic

Conference (ECAC) Upstate Tennis Player of the Week for his play.

Cooper, like the rest of the team, has high expectations for the spring season and has been impressed so far. “I believe we are living up to our expectations from last season,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “We had a phenomenal team last year that set the bar pretty high. We had only returning starters this year in myself and co-captain Christian Phelps, so many people had counted us out. However, we picked up a win against #20 in the nation NC Wesleyan, and we plan on shining during the most important part of the season ahead of us.”

11 out of the 13 players on the men’s tennis team are underclassmen. “Last year, the team had a bunch of experienced seniors who helped the team win the conference. This year, we have a very young team, in fact, almost the entire lineup is of freshmen and sophomores,” wrote Wong. “I am not sure of what the team’s expectations were from last year but I know we want to continue the success of last year.

I believe that with continued hard work and more experience for the players that we will put ourselves in a position to achieve that.”

He continued, “We are a very young team so we have had to start many freshmen and sophomores. Of the freshmen class, we have three players who have been consistent starters in Nick Litsky, Alexander Luckmann and Juan Felipe Laso. They have had to play at different positions and have done a good job at stepping in and contributing right away. Our sophomore class has also stepped up as Daniel Cooper, Christian Phelps, Evan Udine, Sha Huang have all offered great leadership and stability to the lineup.”

In fact, it was underclassmen who helped to upset the regionally ranked RPI. Cooper and Luckmann defeated RPI’s 15th nationally-ranked duo 8-2, and Cooper continued to dominate in singles with a score of 6-4, 6-2. Laso went 6-0, 6-3 in No. 6 singles while Phelps also went 6-0, 6-3 in the No. 3 spot.

Udine clinched the win at the No. 4 spot, going

Men’s tennis has defeated all three Liberty League opponents they have faced early in the spring season. Evan Udine ’16, pictured above, had his first collegiate match clincher in the game against RPI. 7-5, 6-3.

Head Coach Wong has stressed that, despite standout performances, everyone contributes to the team’s overall success. “We have had to ask many players on the team to step up and the players have done that. We have stressed since day one that everybody would be important towards the success of the team and that still remains,” he wrote. “The team is an extremely close team. They work really well with each other and are very supportive of each other. While they are competitive with each other to earn starting spots, they understand the goal of team success and understand that the team is most important.”

The men’s tennis team will next compete on Friday, April 11 at 3:30 p.m. against New York University. The match will take place at home on the Josselyn Tennis Courts.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

As for the rest of the spring season, the Brewers are looking forward and are confident. According to Cooper, “We expect to contend for the Liberty League title and hopefully repeat as champions and get another shot at nationals.” However, this will not be an easy feat. “We have a tough stretch in our schedule upcoming with three nationally ranked opponents,” wrote Wong. “I know that we would like the opportunity to prove ourselves against these opponents and are looking forward to the challenge.”

Junior William Zhu is optimistic. “We obviously have a lot to live up to as defending Liberty League champions, but we aren’t ranked as high this year and many have already written us off,” he explained. “Right now we are underdogs on paper but I think some people are in for a surprise.”