Issue 12 of The Miscellany News

The Miscellany News Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com

January 26 , 2012

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

Volume CXLV | Issue 12

Former VC employee sentenced to 12 years Joey Rearick

O Emily Lavieri-Scull /The Miscellany News

Students enjoy the fresh offerings of the All Campus Dining Center (ACDC). ACDC has implemented several changes in its dining services, such as more self-service options, following a comprehensive review by the Campus Dining Review Committee.

n Thursday, Jan. 12, a Duchess County Court sentenced former Vassar construction manager Arthur Fisher to four to 12 years in a state prison for embezzling more than $2 million from the College.

Later that week, Fisher was sentenced to five years in prison by a Westchester County judge for owning illegal weapons that were found at his home in Ossining, N.Y. last April, when he was arrested for the larceny charge. He will serve the two

News Editor

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nyone who has visited the All Campus Dining Center (ACDC) since the beginning of the semester has undoubtedly noticed that it is operating differently from last semester. In fact, the cafeteria now boasts several self-service stations, accu-

rate nutritional information cards and a piece-by-piece servery layout in an effort to improve its food, organization and atmosphere. Many of these changes are due to the ongoing work of the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Campus Dining Review Committee (CDRC), which has, in conjunction with the administration,

collected student input and made recommendations to ARAMARK Food Services with regards to dining at Vassar.

One of the most prominent changes that was implemented during the winter recess is the incorporation of self-service into nearly every station See ACDC on page 4

sentences concurrently. Judge Peter M. Forman, who sentenced Fisher in Dutchess County, also ruled that his wife, Jennifer Fisher, would serve six months in jail followed by five months of probation for helping her husband steal from the school.

As the result of a civil case the College brought against the Fishers at the time of their arrest, the couple will need to repay the sum of the embezzled funds. They will be responsible for returning the money to the College and its insurance carrier, See FISHER on page 4

Over breaks, revenues dip for Arlington restaurants Ruth Bolster

Advised by CDRC, ACDC effects F changes to improve student dining Dave Rosenkranz

News Editor

Features Editor

or the Vassar student looking for a quick bite to eat without going far, there is little not to love about the restaurants in Arlington: They often accept V-Cash, offer relatively inexpensive fares and are conveniently located within walking distance. Yet just as members of the Vassar community depend on restaurants such as Twisted Soul and Bacio’s as a refreshing change from campus dining, their dependence on our business is often overlooked.

A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Ira Lee opened

Twisted Soul in 2007 to showcase and share cuisines inspired by his travels around the world. Originally on Main Street, the restaurant moved to its current location on Raymond Avenue two and a half years ago.

This has made a significant difference in the volume of customers his business receives daily, most of which come specifically from the College.

“On Main Street we would only get 10 people a day, but we got maybe 100 people in the first hour when we first opened over here. Of course it didn’t stay like that, but we could See RESTAURANTS on page 6

Translated poetry challenges meaning Matthew Hauptman Reporter

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Alumna, faculty and dean: Begemann’s many hats Danielle Bukowski Features Editor

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arianne Begemann, herself a Vassar graduate of 1979 and professor of chemistry since 1985, knows the College inside and out.

In 2007 she moved up as associate dean of the Faculty, and starting on

Jan. 1 Begemann accepted a new role as dean of Strategic Planning and Academic Resources. The position was previously held by Rachel Kitzinger and called the dean of Planning and Academic Resources.

Begemann said she was not involved See BEGEMANN on page 7

Inside this issue

5

FEATURES

JYStayers use opportunity to get involved

16 ARTS

Potown Swing charms students, community

Mia Fermindoza/The Miscellany News

Courtesy of Vassar College Media Relations

Former Associate Dean of the Faculty, Professor of Chemistry Marianne Begemann ’85, above, accepted the position of dean of Strategic Planning and Academic Resources.

ranslating poetry is both an art and a debate. Opinions differ on what precisely a word means to begin with, and better yet, what word in the English tongue most effectively approximates the original word’s meaning. As ModFest founder Adene Wilson ’69 explained, “You have to understand the culture of the language you’re working from, so that you understand the subtleties of the moods and sentences.”

Translators must reconcile the vast differences between any two cultures when they go about translating a given text. Poetry especially, with its attention to precison in meaning, sound, and style beyond prosaic communication only further complicates translating. And no matter how incisive a translated text turns out to be, there will always be loose and missing ends.

Even communication itself, not just connotative word choices, differ. As Japanese Language Fellow Yumi Katsuyama noted, “It’s hard for people who aren’t Japanese to understand these Japanese ways of communication. Sometimes, Japanese people can guess each other’s feelings without saying anything. It’s called ‘ishindenshin.’” Ishindenshin refers to non-verbal communication as a Japanese cultural value over explicit verbal communication.

Above, students partcipating in this year’s “Readings: Translation as an Art,” practice their readings. The event, part of ModFest, will take place on Jan. 25 at 5 p.m.

Students delivered their various interpretations of poems in this year’s “Readings: Translation as an Art.” The interdepartmental readings were performed on Wednesday, Jan. 25 at 5 p.m. as part of Vassar’s annual ModFest.

The involved students read aloud Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian and Spanish poems in their original tongue and then reread the poems in English, in translations devised by the foreign language students themselves.

18 SPORTS

The translations and performances were prepared with the help of the language fellows from the participating departments. The event also included a musical performance from the Mahagonny Choral Ensemble, a student-run singing group conducted

by Naomi Dubin ’12, to open the evening of poetry, and even more music sung by the language fellows together to conclude the evening.

Roman Kopit, the language fellow for the Jewish Studies Department, See POETRY on page 16

Volleyball welcomes new coach

The Miscellany News

Page 2

January 26 , 2012

Editor in Chief Aashim Usgaonkar Senior Editors

Katharine Austin Mary Huber Erik Lorenzsonn

Contributing Editors Katie De Heras/The Miscellany News

On Saturday, Jan. 21, the JACK String Quartet held a concert in Skinner Hall in conjunction with Vassar’s annual Modfest. Comprised ofcellist Kevin McFarland (pictured), violist John Pickford Richards and violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, the young quartet played a variety of modernist works by contemporary composers. The concert occurred on the inaugural weekend of ModFest; concerts, art exhibitions and other events will continue into the first week of February. Be sure to visit the Miscellany News’ photojournalism blog, Exposure, at blogs.miscellanynews.com/exposure for upcoming photo essays on other Modfest activities.

Nick’s Picks by Nick Michel

An STS major’s guide to gaming W elcome back, fellow cold people.

Today I’ll be introducing you to a little game with a big fanbase, Bastion.

Bastion is a hack and slash style action-adventure game, kind of like The Legend of Zelda with more frantic swinging and shooting. The story goes as such. You are a white haired fellow, only referred to as the Kid, who wakes up one day to find that his world has been shattered. Literally.

Pieces of it are floating around where they have no business being. Turns out some kind of Calamity happened, and while your city had an emergency shelter, the titular Bastion, almost no one made it there. As the Kid makes his way to the Bastion, pieces of the old world rise up under his feet. Of course, pieces aren’t all that’s left of the old world. The creatures of the world have been driven mad, and the Kid has to fight through them if he wants to make it.

Every event in the game is comment-

ed on by this smooth talkin’ fella. Pick up a new weapon? He’ll talk about who used it, back in the old world. Choose a new persistent buff from the spirits at your local distillery? He’ll comment on the taste. Complete a gameplay challenge rendered in the form of vigils held for those claimed by the Calamity?

He’ll offer up a few words of encouragement, remembrance, or remorse.

Among other things, the booze and vigils are fine example of how seamlessly Bastion integrates its’ story and gameplay. There is no half hearted justification or handwaves here. Every gameplay element has some reason for it. The reverse holds true as well.

As you complete your quest to restore the Bastion, you unlock more of its’ functionality, including the aforementioned distillery and vigil, as well as an upgrade forge, shop, and shrine to the gods, used for invoking additional challenges.

Primary Education

by Ruby Cramer

A podcast series covering the 2012 Election with Vassar’s professors Professor Born, Political Science Does Character Matter?

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t was President Richard Nixon, of all people, who said, “You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else, he has character.

Character,” he said, “is the most important qualification a president can have.” That was in 1964, when he was campaigning for Barry Goldwater.

Fast-forward 10 years and Nixon was offering his resignation following Watergate -- a scandal of dirty tricks, harassment, money laundering and, most of all, bad character.

Last Thursday, one of our current presidential candidates had his own character attacked. Just two days before the South Carolina primary, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was accused by his second ex-wife of asking for an open marriage. And this on top of what we already knew about Gingrich’s past -- two extramarital affairs and a congressional ethics violation.

Professor Richard Born, of the Political Science department, explains how character plays in the Republican primary.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

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News Joey Rearick Dave Rosenkranz Features Danielle Bukowski Ruth Bolster Opinions Hannah Blume Humor & Satire Alanna Okun Arts Adam Buchsbaum Sports Corey Cohn Andy Marmer Photography Juliana Halpert Madeline Zappala Online Nathan Tauger Social Media Matt Ortilé Assistant Features Assistant Arts Assistant Photo Assistant Copy Crossword Editor Columnists

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January 26 , 2012

NEWS

Page 3

Marist, community in mourning after fatal fire Bethan Johnson

Registrar Extends Hours

Reporter

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Courtesy of The Millbrook Times

n the early hours of Saturday morning, three people, including two Marist students, died in a house fire on Poughkeepsie’s Fairview Avenue. This fire marks the first fatal fire in Poughkeepsie in over a year and is the deadliest fire in Dutchess County since 2001.

The Town of Poughkeepsie Police Department disclosed the names of all three victims in an online press release Monday. The victims were identified as 21-year old Kevin Johnson, a student at Dutchess County Community College and former Marist student, and 21-year old Marist seniors Kerry Fitzsimons and Eva Block. The results of the autopsies revealed that all three died of smoke inhalation.

An initial statement released by Marist College remembers Blocko, a fashion design major, as “a dancer who loved fine arts and had a special interest in photography.” Four other people, some of them Marist students, escaped the flaming apartment by jumping out of the building’s other windows and only sustained minor injuries, according to Police Chief Thomas Mauro.

Authorities believe that the fire began at approximately 1:30 a.m. Saturday. Fairview Fire Chief Chris Maeder said in a news conference Saturday that while the fire department arrived within four minutes of the alarm sounding, by the time firefighters reached the apartment it was fully engulfed in flames and was beginning to spread to other apartments. It took roughly 90 minutes to put out the flames, and the survivors were taken to St. Francis Hospital for treatment after giving statements to the police. In a press release, the police department stated it is still trying to locate more witnesses to the fire.

In spite of the three fatalities, Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro praised the efforts of first responders. “The Town of Poughkeepsie Police and all firefighters and our Cause and Origin Team personnel responded flawlessly,” Molinaro said in a press conference.

The police are still investigating the cause of fire. In an official press release authorities state that the current belief is that the fire’s source was located somewhere in the rear of the house, preventing the victims’ escape. De-

On Jan. 21, a fire ravaged an apartment building, pictured above, housing mainly off-campus Marist College students. While several inhabitants were able to escape, three people died of smoke inhalation. spite the fact that the apartment has already been demolished due to the severe damage the fire caused, the necessary evidence was collected to further understand the events of the fire.

It remains to be seen if there were exigent circumstances surrounding the fire, such as violations of building codes, faulty alarm systems or inadequate safety provisions in the building. There are also reports that more than five people occupied the apartment, in violation of Town of Poughkeepsie zoning regulations. However, in a news conference, Maeder stated that the alarms were sounding and appeared fully functioning upon their arrival. The Town of Poughkeepsie Police believes that the fire occurred accidentally.

The Marist College administration has reacted to the tragic fire by canceling a number of basketball games scheduled for this week out of respect for the victims and providing grief counseling for the entire Marist College community. “While our hearts are heavy with grief and sorrow,” Marist President Dennis Murray wrote in an open letter, “the outpouring of love from the Marist family reaffirms

our core values and beliefs during this extremely difficult time. We will need to draw on this collective strength now more than ever.”

Two candlelight vigils were held in the Marist College chapel on Sunday and Marist held a student-led interfaith service honoring the victims this past Wednesday at 11:15 a.m.

Also, the Dutchess County chapter of the Red Cross is collecting clothes and other supplies for the survivors who have lost their possessions in the fire.

As a result of the Marist fire, Vassar may be taking a closer look at its own fire safety policy both on and off campus. The College administration and Head of the Fire Office Robert Hanaburgh have taken fire safety very seriously in recent years, as evidenced by the numerous fire drills and alarms this year, along with the Freshman Fire Preparedness presentation. President of the College Catharine Bond Hill and Dean of the College Chris Roellke are also working in conjunction with Marist administration to provide support in whatever capacity they need at this tragic time.

VSA announces young trustee position Mary Huber Senior Editor

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t the most recent Vassar Student Association (VSA) meeting on Sunday, Jan. 29, VSA President Tanay Tatum ’12 announced that the VSA was preparing to propose that Vassar College’s Board of Trustees include a young trustee position, which would allow recent graduates to have a chance to share their perspective as students with the Board.

“We’re expecting to submit [the proposal] next week or so, and the Board of Trustees meets in February, and we hope they’ll approve of it,” explained VSA Vice President of Finance Jason Rubin ’13 in a separate interview.

The VSA proposal includes two young trustee positions, consisting of four-year terms that would be staggered so that one new trustee is chosen every two years. All candidates would be recent Vassar graduates.

The young trustee would have the same powers and responsibilities as the other trustees on the Board, despite their unique title. Said Rubin, “Of course, we expect that they will lean more toward the student perspective, and be involved in subcommittees like Academics or Student Life where their experience is more relevant. But they’re not limited to those.”

Rubin cited the desire for a greater student perspective on the Board of Trustees as the main reason for the proposed position.

Currently, Henry P. Johnson ’88 is the most recent graduate on the Board, meaning that no one on the Board has been a student at Vassar for almost 25 years. “[The position] makes the Board more accessible to students,” Rubin added, elaborating on the expected benefits of the position.

News Briefs

“The young trustee will be someone students are familiar with, who they’ll be more comfortable addressing their concerns to. It also allows us to educate the student body about what the Board of Trustees does.”

However, the role of students in the Board of Trustees is limited, and that will not change if the Board does accept the VSA’s proposal.

Students will have no role in choosing the young trustees.

“I think that there’s a natural inclination to appoint a student trustee, because that’s how the College is structured,” said Rubin.

“We have joint committees with students and professors and administrators that work together on various issues.”

The Board of Trustees operates very differently from other committees that have a role in directing the College. “The Board of Trustees is not a representative entity; it’s not tasked with the present. The Trustees are responsible for future planning and the well-being of the College,” Rubin explained.

This is part of the reason why the VSA chose not to propose a student trustee position. Rubin cited studies by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges in his explanation.

“Where there is a tradition of including faculty or students as trustees, any move by the Board to break with tradition would likely result in a damaging political battle,” wrote Merill P. Schwartz in Trusteeship magazine, which is published by the Association of Governing Boards. (Trusteeship Magazine, “Board Composition: Student and Faculty Trustees,” July/August 2010) “AGB generally doesn’t support the inclusion of students or faculty as voting Board members because of the inherent conflict of

interest, especially for an employee, in serving on his or her own institution’s board,” Schwartz stated. “The best approach is generally to ensure that all trustees receive a substantive orientation about their responsibilities and uphold the Board’s standards concerning conflicts of interest.”

The VSA hopes a recent graduate on the Board of Trustees will offer the best of both worlds. “A young trustee will have the same perspective, without the conflict of interests,” said Rubin.

Though the VSA has not formally presented the proposal to the Board of Trustees, some VSA members have consulted with the administration to create an agreeable proposal with a greater likelihood of being accepted and fulfilling the needs of the College community. According to Rubin, President of the College Catharine Bond Hill first suggested that a young trustee might be a better option than a student trustee.

Other administrators found out about the proposal more recently. “I heard about the proposal at my weekly meeting with the VSA Executive Board (this occurred on Friday),” wrote Dean of Students Chris Roellke in an emailed statement about his involvement with the proposal. “I know students have long been interested in bolstering student voice with the Board of Trustees.”

Roellke was cautious but even-handed when asked for his opinion on the proposal.

“I have been very impressed with the trustees, their expertise and their accessibility to students and to their ideas,” he stated. “I think having a diversity of perspectives on the Board is always a good thing and if this proposal can advance this ideal then I am in support of it getting full consideration.”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

The Office of the Registrar has decided to implement additional hours to improve availability for the student body. The office is currently open Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with new extended hours on Thursday evenings when it will remain open until 7 p.m.

Registrar Colleen Mallet implemented the new hours after careful investigation and planning that she has conducted since her promotion from associate registrar in August 2011. “Over the years I noticed that a Vassar student’s body clock is very different from the standard office hours.

We have very little student traffic in the morning, with business increasing in the afternoon. Sometimes students call our office and are racing to get here before we close; especially on deadline days such as the last day to add, drop or preregister,” she stated.

Beginning last Thursday, Jan. 19 the Office of the Registrar remained open until 7 p.m. It will operate under the extended hours for the duration of the spring semester, excluding Spring Break, as a trial run. Employees will monitor the traffic, both in person and by phone, to determine if students welcome the later hours and take advantage of them. If successful, the Office of the Registrar will operate under the new hours in future semesters.

On the first night of late hours, 21 students stopped by between 5 and 7 p.m. The registrar thought this was great traffic for the first night. ‘Students were appreciative and enthusiastic with the extended hours,” observed Mallet.

Additionally, Mallet pitched the idea of extend hours to other student service offices to see if they would like to adopt a similar schedule. For the moment, they are taking a wait-and-see approach. However, if the Office of the Registrar receives a good volume of traffic on Thursday evenings this semester, others may join this iniative in the future.

“I hope that students find these later hours helpful. I also encourage faculty to stop by or call with any business we can help them with,” Mallet said. “Everyone at the Registrar’s Office is excited about this change and opportunity to provide additional services to the campus.”

—Bobbie Lucas, Reporter

VSA Begins Saturday Shuttle This semester, the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Weekend Shuttle has changed the VSA Shuttle schedule. Beginning last Saturday, Jan. 21 the shuttle started running exclusively on Saturdays from 3 to 10 p.m.

The shuttle will run each Saturday for seven one-hour loops to its usual weekend stops— starting at Main Building and then the Poughkeepsie Train Station, the Walkway over the Hudson, Stop and Shop Supermarket, and the Poughkeepsie Galleria Mall. The last stop back at Vassar each Saturday will be at 9:55 p.m.

Previously, the shuttle ran on both Saturdays and Sundays and completed four one-hour loops.

VSA Vice President for Operations Jenna Konstantine ’13 said, “Jeff Kosmacher, director of Media Relations and Public Affairs, got me introduced to the system and the idea of eventually transitioning to a Saturday-only run.”

The decision to change the schedule was made based on many semesters of data collected by the transportation provider, Ed Gallagher at Leprechaun Bus Lines, about when and where passengers on the shuttle traveled on the weekend route. “His data showed, overwhelmingly, that people used the shuttle more on Saturdays— to the point where we had to turn some people away—and most people used it to go to the Galleria Mall. We decided to change the system to accommodate the needs of Vassar students,” Konstantine added.

Changing the shuttle schedule provides students with an opportunity to go off campus on Saturday nights, save the money they would spend on taxi fares, and go to the mall or the movies. The budget for the VSA Shuttle for the whole year is only $15,000 and each day of operation costs around $600. “In addition, by consolidating the hours into one day,” Konstantine explained, “the VSA is able to save enough money to extend the shuttle’s Saturdays of operation from 6 to 10, effectively extending the run until the end of April. ” In addition to the VSA Shuttle, students can use the Shopper’s Special and Main Street City of Poughkeepsie bus lines free of charge because the President’s Office will fund student travel throughout the semester.

—B.L.

Page 4

NEWS

January 26 , 2012

Fisher gets Focus group results exact dining change four to 2 years jailtime FISHER continued from page 1 which absorbed the majority of the losses from theft, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported.

The sentencing marks the culmination of a successful cooperative relationship between college administrators and local authorities, namely the Dutchess County District Attorney’s Office and the Town of Poughkeepsie Police. Fisher first aroused suspicion among college officials who were conducting a review of one of his construction projects. When they examined one supposedly finished building product, they noticed serious discrepancies between what the College had paid Fisher to do and what he had actually accomplished. In an interview conducted shortly after the Fishers’ arrest, Jeff Kosmacher, director of Media Relations and Public Affairs, told The Miscellany News, “What had been spent did not jibe with what the College expected to find.” After further investigation into Fisher’s past work on campus, the College contacted police about the possibility of illegal activity.

Kosmacher, whom college administrators authorized to speak to the media about the Fisher case, expressed his appreciation for the subsequent efforts of local law enforcement officials.

“They were very responsive from the moment we brought them initial evidence of the theft,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “Once they concurred that there was a case to pursue, we provided all the documentation from college records they needed as promptly as possible.” Eventually, Fisher and his wife were charged with inventing false construction companies, using his influence as a construction manager to direct Vassar funds to those companies, and then taking the College’s funds for personal use. Fisher’s intimate involvement in Vassar’s construction bidding system allowed him to steal for years without attracting any scrutiny. At the time of the arrests last year, Kosmacher told the Miscellany, “Contractors must be prequalified for work even before projects are put out to bid. Evidence suggests that this project manager found a way to circumvent the pre-qualification process.”

While news of the Fishers’ arrest caused a stir on campus last April, few students have followed the case closely since the end of the last school year. President Catharine Bond Hill issued an email informing the Vassar community of the details of the incident shortly after the culprits were apprehended, but college administrators have not disseminated information regarding the judge’s ultimate decision in the case. Both Fishers admitted guilt to police after being arrested and the following court procedures, including the recent sentencing, have been predictable.

In addition, the missing funds, while clearly substantial, have done little to alter the College’s general financial security because of its relatively large endowment and the aid of its insurance provider. “The cumulative amount of the theft was obviously significant,” wrote Kosmacher, “but the overall financial health of the College wasn’t thrown off.” He also stressed that Fisher had committed several small thefts over a number of years in the College’s employ. “We didn’t lose the funds in one sudden chunk,” he stated.

“And for the same reasons that we didn’t lose financial stability because of the theft, we don’t regain any significant stability as we recoup the funds.”

But the Fishers’ theft has compelled the College to reconsider the way in which it monitors its investments, especially in terms of expensive construction contacts. In the email she sent following the Fishers’ arrest, Hill committed the College to swiftly improve regulatory standards.

“In light of this discovery, the College is evaluating its financial and operating controls, and has already taken steps to enhance their effectiveness,” she wrote last April.

Kosmacher confirmed that the school has continued its attempt to improve oversight since the Fisher incident. “Financial controls were thoroughly reviewed last year and altered fairly quickly to reduce the possibility of future losses,” he wrote in his statement. “It’s also important to know that there are additional reviews and controls placed on all of the College’s purchases, including construction contracts.”

ACDC continued from page 1 at ACDC. VSA Vice President for Student Life Charlie Dobb ’12, who is also the co-chair of the CDRC, hopes that this will free up ACDC employees and, by extension, improve cafeteria cleanliness and overall food quality.

Many of the stations at ACDC have also been dismantled to increase a student’s ability to customize his or her meal and shorten lines. The sandwich station, for example, has been completely broken up. Now, students who just want plain deli meat don’t have to wait in a sandwich preparation line, but can just grab it next to the salad bar. Hot vegetables have also been separated from the main entrée so that students can pick the specific components that they want in their meal. “One of the ideas that came out of the [CDRC research] is thinking about the Deece more explicitly as a food pyramid. So students can easily say that this is where I’ll get my vegetable, and this is where I’ll get my starch and this is where I’ll get a protein, and sort of building a meal in that way,” said Dobb.

Hilary Mauro ’14 was particularly impressed by the ACDC’s new system, explaining, “I’ve heard good things about the pizza and I’ve wanted to try it, but every time I go into the Deece I’m always distracted by the other good options.” And she wasn’t the only one. On the side of each napkin dispenser in the two dining areas, there is a Quick Response Code that will direct students to an online survey through their smartphones. This survey is meant to determine how effective these changes are at improving student satisfaction. Although a similar survey was never administered last semester before the changes were implemented (so a comparison between last semester and this semester is difficult to make) some information can still be gleaned from them.

Out of 82 respondents so far, about 75 percent felt some degree of satisfaction for the ACDC experience on the day they took the survey, with about 27 percent reporting extreme satisfaction and 7.3 percent reporting extreme dissatisfaction.

About 75 percent of respondents also had some degree of satisfaction wtih the food specifically, with 19.5 percent reporting extreme satisfaction and 8.5 percent reporting extreme dissatisfaction. When answering these survey qustions, roughly 67 percent of respondents were rating their dinners.

Not only have the changes to ACDC been well received by the student body, but they

have also come at little cost. Despite the fact that each station is now self-service, no ACDC employees were let go as a result of the change.

According to Senior Director of Campus Dining and ARAMARK representative Maureen King, all former servers have simply been given new duties. King added that student meal plans will not become more expensive as a direct result of the changes because they were all contained within ACDC’s usual budget.

Many of the changes were motivated by the information that the CDRC collected last semester through an extensive outreach program. The committee hosted an informal dinner at ACDC, organized “Food for Thought, Thought for Food” meetings in each dorm, and arranged a town-hall-style meeting in the UpC Café. The latter three events only had a modest turnout, but were used to build a general framework for what would ultimately become one of the committee’s most useful initiatives: the focus groups.

Each focus group comprised about 10 to 15 students. There was one composed of athletes; one composed of students with special dietary interests; one group of students with special economic, social, or environmental interests; one group of faculty; and two randomly selected control groups. “The charge of the students on [the CDRC] is not to represent every student on campus, because they can’t, but to think creatively about how to get every student’s voice that wants to be heard heard,” said Dobb in September, adding that, although it’s impossible to get 2400 students in focus groups, they can certainly produce a helpful approximation.

According to the CDRC document titled “Focus Groups: Executive Summary,” the committee was able to gauge a variety of student opinions about the food, the atmosphere and the accuracy of the nutritional information cards. “It’s more about the nutrition than the amount of food. It’s not empty calories, we need something of substance,” commented one focus group member. “Everything looks tired.

The building looks tired. The food is tired. The staff is tired,” added another.

According to the summary, many students also put a significant emphasis on simplicity. “I think if there were more plain options, I’d feel more satisfied. I know that if they have pasta or rice, it’s with some weird sauce. I know the times when they have plain rice and pasta, it’s

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

amazing. I just love it,” one student said.

Although the changes have addressed several of the issues raised during the focus group research, some problems remain. Congestion, for example, still plagues the dining center between 6 and 7 p.m., although the CDRC has been working on a solution. According to Dobb, the committee is currently considering the possibility of an ice cream bar with limited availability, or V-Cash related benefits for students who come to ACDC during off-peak hours.

Several members of the CDRC and Campus Life Committee also went on a short trip to Mount Holyoke College, Middlebury College and Bryn Mawr College to assess how comparably sized schools manage their dining systems.

Jewett President and CDRC member Clayton Masterman ’13 attended this trip and found it very informative. “We went to go get a sense of what their dining looked like since....their dining ratings were really good compared to ours,” explained Masterman, adding, “A lot of food at those colleges was self-service, and that was a big thing that we took back to the CDRC. We saw that other colleges had more than one dining hall, and options were less numerous but were better prepared. A lot of the same things that Vassar students said that they would want when we conducted the focus groups.”

Despite Vassar’s 23-year-long history with ARAMARK, and an apparently rising ACDC satisfaction rating, members of the CDRC are still cautious about renewing the College’s contract with ARAMARK for several more years. Although the current contract is not set to expire until the end of the 2012-2013 academic year, Dobb and the CDRC have devised a tentative plan. “My personal idea, and I am pretty confident that this will happen, is that there will be a sort of probational renewal of the contract. A shorter term renewal. Maybe a year or two. If they can’t drive up satisfaction, that’ll also give us a few years to look at other providers,” said Dobb.

After several years of a notoriously low opinion of ACDC, it appears as though Vassar has begun taking steps in a positive direction.

The CDRC hopes to send out a campus survey in mid-February to determine exactly how much progress was made, and what issues the group still needs to face. “I’m really happy to see the changes that are happening out there now,” concluded Dobb.

January 26 , 2012

FEATURES

Page 5

Students remain on campus for sports, work CIS services keep VC A connected Lea Brown and Casey Zuckermann Guest Reporters

Jill Scharr

Contributing Editor

A Mia Fermindoza/The Miscellany News

s many students left for Winter Break by plane, train and automobile, waving goodbye to Vassar’s campus, others shuffled their belongings across campus and moved into Noyes House for the interim. Others huddled down in their Town House, Terrace Apartment or SoCo, enveloped in Snuggies and sipping hot chocolate.

84 students stayed in Noyes House this past winter and many others stayed in the Terrace Apartments and Town Houses, with a total of 300 students spending some portion of their break on campus. The majority of those students are athletes and student workers, as well as international students.

This winter 55 students stayed on campus as part of student employment. Administrative Assistant for the Financial Aid Office Linda Ferraro said, “They are employed in the departments that stay open: the Library, post office, Campus Activities, Career and Development [Office], the nursery school [Wimpfheimer], Residential Life.”

However, students do not just stay on campus because they have no other place to go for the holidays.

Said Director of Residential and Assistant Dean of Students Luis Inoa, “They’re staying here because they’re working and they’re staying here because they have athletics.”

Students move into Noyes shortly after the end of the semester, and they use the rooms of Noyes residents who have gone home for break. The College charges a flat fee of $100 to stay on campus, $25 of which is given back to the rooms’ normal residents as a token of appreciation.

Although they were centralized, there was little cohesion among the students who migrated to Noyes.

“It was a lot less of a dorm atmosphere than when everyone is on campus,” said Matthew Elgin ’13, a men’s volleyball player, of his intersession experience. “Our team would get back from practice, and we’d be exhausted ... you watched a little TV, then you went to bed.”

His team, whose pre-season ran from Jan. 8 to 14, was not alone. The women’s volleyball team, the men’s and women’s basketball teams, and the men’s and women’s swimming teams were on campus as well.

These student athletes were all given a $5 food stipend per meal. “I saw them [the other teams] a little bit when I was cooking food, but

President of Noyes House Deb Steinberg ’14, pictured above, relaxes in her dorm room. Students planning on staying on campus for any part of break temporarily move into Noyes rooms for a minimal fee. they’re in the same boat that we were: just exhausted,” said Elgin.

Options are limited for what students can do on campus, asides from practice. Many of the campus buildings are closed, with the exception of the All Campus Dining Center (ACDC), the Retreat, Noyes and Walker Field House.

Campus eating options are also limited, as the Retreat and the ACDC run on limited hours, which is one of the main reasons why Noyes is utilized to house students.

“Noyes has eight kitchenettes, which makes it a little more feasible to be able to not share one kitchen like one of the other houses,” said Inoa. “It’s one of our newer buildings. Its heating structure makes it greener, more environmentally friendly. We take up less energy. It just is not efficient for us, energy-wise, to leave the whole campus open and let students utilize their rooms, so we have to consolidate where students are staying.”

Of his experience Elgin said, “It’s a very different feel because you’re there focusing on just sports.” However, he had no complaints.

“In an ideal world everyone getting to stay in their own room over break would be awesome, but that’s not the most realistic thing you could ask for,” he said.

While there was not much to do on campus

in terms of entertainment, he claimed that it hardly mattered. “We were either eating, sleeping or playing volleyball ... As far as time goes, we had three practices a day, and sometimes we had to lift with that too. We were pretty much going from 8 in the morning to 9 at night, so what I did when I went back to the dorm was cook something quick, watch a little TV and go to bed.”

Because of the lack of activity on campus, many of the students do not stay on campus during the entire break, but rather visit friends and relatives in other places. “Sometimes what students use intersession housing for is a place in between the places that they’re visiting,” Inoa added.

“They might go to visit some friends in the city, come back up here, then go visit some friends down in D.C., then come back up here, depending on what’s available to them,” Inoa said.

Elgin noted that the intersession pre-season practices also serve as a good way for new members to get to know the team better, and to get use to the rigor of college sports.

Overall he thought being on campus over Winter Break was a fun and worthwhile experience. “I enjoyed it ... I think Vassar did a good job.”

JYStay an opportunity to get more involved Jessica Tarantine

F

Assistant Features Editor

rom the canals of Bruges to the cobbled streets of L’viv, every fall and spring semester students choose to venture out of the Vassar campus with its quaint charm to explore the globe. And while often attention is placed on their alluring adventures filled with language mishaps and millennium-old buildings, 55 percent of students spend an opportunity-filled yet comparatively lackluster junior year on campus with almost half of their class—and friends—missing.

Class of 2013 President Vince Marchetta ’13 explained some of the difficulties of remaining on campus. “I think one of the biggest challenges is having such a big chunk of your class and your friends being completely out of reach for such a long time,” he said.

Kelli Heinrich ’13 agreed stating, “Most of my friends went away in the fall, and it took a little while at the beginning of last semester to adjust to them being gone.”

But the effects of having a significant amount of the junior class being gone has more far reaching than merely the absence of friends.

“With such a large portion of the class abroad, the class unity takes a bit of a blow at different points throughout the year. Remaining juniors are scattered all over campus and off-campus, so it can be difficult to find a strong junior presence in the residential houses,” said Marchetta. “People are often left without their close friends, while those abroad don’t always maintain a big connection with the campus.”

To offset the lack of solidarity felt by some juniors who remain on campus both semesters, many took on more active leadership roles in organizations.

“Becoming a part of the VSA [Vassar Student Association] was always in the back of my mind, but I would say that my choice to not go abroad was a driving force for me to run for junior rep last spring. I figured that if I was going to stay on campus, I should make the best of it by trying something new and meeting new people,” explained Cushing House Junior Representative Rhonda Reid ’13.

Other juniors also seemed to take the year on campus to get more involved. Vassar Catholic Community President and Raymond House Junior Representative Tracy Bratt ’13 said of her decision to remain on campus, “I have been able to take on more leadership roles and discover new interests.”

In addition to individual students becoming more active on campus to counteract a somewhat deary year, the Junior Class Council has taken steps to increase the solidarity of the junior class both at home and abroad.

One event held last semester was the JY-Vassar dinner, which offered a chance for juniors on campus to gather, listen to live music and eat some free food.

The JY-Vassar event was held in the College Center MPR on Nov. 10 of last year; Slow Food Vassar supported the event by providing dessert.

“I think if anything, the biggest success of the event was bringing so many juniors together in one place,” said Marchetta. “Some

people at the event remarked how great it was just to see how many juniors were still on campus, to be reminded that our class does have a strong presence on campus and that they were not alone in not being abroad.”

Said Marchetta of the Junior Class Council, “[We] really [try] to emphasize to our class that both abroad and on-campus experiences have value in our discussions, and in the construction of our events. We try as best as we can to include students who are staying on campus even in our abroadrelated events.”

While the Junior Class Council has not done anything specifically aimed at juniors who remain both semesters, Marchetta joked, “You do have to be on campus to come to any of them!”

Juniors on campus for both semesters might see less cohesion in their class, but they are able to experience classic Vassar events like Halloweekend and Founder’s Day that their abroad counterparts must forego for a year.

However, many juniors interested in traveling abroad are limited by scheduling constraints for their majors and interests.

“I decided to stay both semesters because I’m pre-med and I needed to take organic chemistry this year if I hope to go to medical school right after Vassar without taking a year off,” explained Henrich. “I did not decide to be pre-med until half way through my freshman year, so I’ve been trying to catch up.”

In addition to fulfilling pre-med requirements, some majors require more units than See JYSTAY on page 7

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

re you reading this in a printed newspaper? If so, chances are it’s one of the few analogue texts with which you’ll interact today, thanks in part to Vassar’s computing network and the Computing and Information Services (CIS) Department.

Most of these services are so ubiquitous that we only notice them when they aren’t working.

Such was the case last week, when a campuswide AskBanner outage prevented students from accessing their schedules, transcripts and other information. The current generation of Vassar students may have a hard time remembering life without the Internet, but the network we use and abuse at Vassar has been in development for over 50 years.

The College has a long history of computing, thanks largely to Vassar professor Winifred “Tim” Asprey ’38. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Asprey worked to incorporate computing into Vassar’s math curriculum, frequently inviting IBM employees to lecture on campus.

In 1967, Vassar was the second college in the United States to buy an IBM computer.

As the College acquired more hardware, the Old Laundry Building was converted into a computer center, with classes taught on the upper levels and the Academic Computing Center in the basement.

By the early ’80s Vassar students could preregister for courses via computer, but the process was still quite unlike what today’s Vassar students do. Students were assigned computer-generated draw numbers, but they still had to go to Kenyon Gym to pick up punch cards for the classes they wanted, and then bring the cards to the Registrar’s Office to be processed.

In the 1990s, the College began working on digitizing its record databases. “It was the first time we actually tried to put up [database] components that would talk to each other,” said Dean Emeritus of the College Colton Johnson. “That was a difficult process because all the different departments [in the College] had been keeping records in their own particular way.” April 1991 was the first time Vassar students were able to pre-register online for courses, and in September 1992 Vassar announced plans to construct the Computer Center next to the Old Laundry Building.

This was the time, Johnson observed, that the divide between Vassar’s ex-IBM employees and its computer laypeople was shrinking. “People began to talk the same way [about computing] ... it became something that we all shared, and therefore we shared an interest in integrating it with campus,” said Johnson.

But this generation’s comfort and confidence in computers was still a few years off. In December 1999 Vassar was so worried about Y2K bugs that students were not allowed to remain on campus for the Winter Break.

The Documentary Chronicle of Vassar College quotes contemporary CIS director Diane Balestri saying, “The range of possibilities [is from] essentially nothing to catastrophic ... We have to decide if we should have a New Year’s party on campus or close everything down and have a SWAT team investigate.”

Now, the Computer Science Department is still in the Old Laundry Building, and the Computer Center houses Vassar’s servers and acts as the hubcap for fiber-optic cabling as well as the offices of the CIS staff. Over 150 servers run day and night in the Center and in a warehouse behind Buildings and Grounds.

Another one of the CIS Department’s jobs is to defend the College from viruses, hackers and denial of service attacks. Very few of these attacks are malicious or intentional, however. Vice President for CIS Bret Ingerman explained, “A lot of times [the hackers] aren’t aiming for Vassar, they’re just looking and hitting places…[but] our network is as secure as we can make it and blissfully we have very few outages.”

Vassar’s CIS has developed along with the technological advancements and culture shifts brought by computers.

Page 6

FEATURES

January 26 , 2012

Local Occupy group refocuses amid weather, eviction Alyssa Aquino Guest Reporter

O

Courtesy of Occupy Poughkeepsie Courtesy of Occupy Poughkeepsie

Despite the wintry weather and eviction notices by the Town of Poughkeepsie Police, protesters part of the Occupy Poughkeepsie movement, pictured below, hold strong to the tenets of their mission.

ccupy. According to Time magazine, it is the word for the year 2011. It’s fitting, considering the media attention the Occupy Movement garnered when it spread across the country and became a daily fixation for news outlets. But after such a strong beginning, the movement seemed to fizzle out as winter approached. Many occupiers are taking this lull period to regroup and plan for a stronger 2012; Occupy Poughkeepsie is no exception.

Dec. 7, 2011 marked the removal of Occupy Poughkeepsie (OP) protestors from Hulme Park after a police warning issued on Dec. 1.

The occupiers were told by City of Poughkeepsie officials that they could not be in the park between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The curfew in Hulme Park could be petitioned to be repealed, and some protestors mention that the current political make-up of the town council could work in their favor.

However, occupier Katia Chapman ’12 said, “Some council members are in support of OP, some really want us gone.”

This legal channel would be the only one that OP would consider. Another option, a councilapproved temporary stay in the park (which a councilwoman informally offered to OP before their eviction) is completely off the table.

“We’re a revolutionary movement,” Chapman said. “We’re not going to negotiate a date that we’d leave by.”

Of course, Occupiers could ignore the law, but the action would be futile. “If we set up camp now, the city council would absolutely tear it down,” Chapman said. While there are protestors willing to attempt to re-occupy, building up a campsite protected against winter cold would be too costly.

Another Vassar student, Spencer Resnick ’15, said, “I don’t think that the refocus is to occupy, because actually occupying [Hulme Park] isn’t what we think is necessarily the most important thing.”

Arguably, forced mobilization has given OP the opportunity for evolution. Without a physical base, occupiers have taken to canvassing and working with already existing activist groups that already have established organization and resources. “We’re starting to see signs of this cross-pollination, relationships being built and activist coalitions forming around and with Occupy,” Resnick said.

He even sees this forced change as an inevitability. “From the beginning, we knew this just can’t be 15 to 20 people spending the night in

a park that people use ... We asked ourselves, ‘How do we make this a movement instead of an interesting thing to do?’ That was happening before the eviction, so the eviction just pushed us harder.”

Patrick Quinn, one of the original Occupy Poughkeepsie protestors, shared this sentiment, “Physical occupation isn’t necessary.

We’re moving on.”

Despite this, during a General Assembly meeting, the phrase “When we’re back in Hulme Park” is bounced around so frequently that it sounds like a promise.

“Our presence in the park was valuable because at least people knew that something was going on and that people were there,” Alexandra Deane ’15 explained.

Without the park encampment, OP is limited to three General Assembly meetings a week at changing locations. Though OP posts the locations of each meeting on its website and Facebook page, some locations are not as central as Hulme Park. Also, although community members have been generous in lending out spaces for the protestors, some discussions are capped by a closing time.

There are also the unexpected consequences of full-time occupation to consider. In the words of occupier Ryan Simpson, “[The occupation] opens your eyes to a lot of issues that we don’t usually care about.”

That the local movement in Poughkeepsie is the smallest registered Occupy branch bolsters this sentiment. “Occupations in small towns are more realistic,” Michael Prentice-Glasgow ’15 said. “They’re not idealistic like the Wall Streets or Oaklands. They make the struggle real for us, even if they’re just six people in a tent.”

OP goes to painstaking efforts to lead by example, which is exemplified by the fact that anyone who came to the encampment, regardless of his or her involvement, got fed. While food is still given out during this mobile OP, a lot of the food gathered at Hulme Park was given by bystanders who were both impressed and concerned about the daring required to spend a night in a tent.

Re-occupation does not even have to be in Hulme Park. During an open forum, the possibility of occupying the New York State Armory, which is across Hulme Park and currently unused, is discussed.

But will OP re-occupy?

“Almost assuredly,” Chapman said. “We will be back in the park in spring. Full time. Whether or not that’s in accordance with the law.”

Twisted Soul, Bacio’s adapt to absence of students siders his restaurant’s clientele to be mostly Poughkeepsie residents, but he does not underestimate the amount of business he receives from Vassar. The restaurant’s delivery hours are extended until 4 a.m. on the weekends only when school is in session.

Carino has taken steps to advertise in various local publications in order to increase business among his non-Vassar customers. This has allowed Carino’s restaurant to establish a reliable customer base within Poughkeepsie that serves as a buffer when his customers from Vassar disappear during breaks.

“A lot of my delivery guys don’t like to deliver in town when it is late, so when I’m open late we only deliver to the school. We get a lot of business this way,” he said.

Ken Kraft, who opened the Krafted Kup in 2007 with his wife, Janet, echoed Carino’s claim that about 30 percent of his business came from the Vassar community.

“When the school goes on break, business drops by 30 percent. But over the course of time we were able to build up a base of 12-month residents that we were able to survive and stay here.”

Although Lee relies more heavily on business from Vassar than do some of his neighbors, he is nevertheless satisfied with the customer base he cultivated for his restaurant.

“I think being primarily a college restaurant has its cons, but as long as you understand when the school breaks are ... you are okay,” stated Lee. Although Lee is now comfortable market-

Kat Mehocic/The Miscellany News

RESTAURANTS continued from page 1 do 10 people in a half an hour here when we could only get 10 people a day there. So in this case the change in location told me that we are more of a college-orientated restaurant,” said Lee. Lee noted, “The business we get is about 80 percent college students and 20 percent community, easily.”

During Vassar’s winter and summer breaks, Lee closes Twisted Soul for two and a half weeks and uses that time to travel with his family. Although he would initially take a week’s vacation when the restaurant was located on Main Street, he specifically cited the lull in business he experiences during breaks as the reason for extending the length of his vacations.

“It really works around the College and we realize that so we try to work as much as we can when school is in session and when breaks come around we take that as a rest too.”

With only half of all newly opened small businesses surviving the first five years, according to the 2010 Census data, the importance of establishing a reliable customer base is not to be underestimated. Because his business is primarily geared toward college students, Lee tries to keep each of the menu items priced less than $10. Twisted Soul’s participation in Tasty Tuesdays also helps secure the restaurant’s client base while increasing the amount of business it receives on an otherwise slow day.

While Lee’s business is comprised primarily of Vassar students, only 30 percent of Bacio’s business comes directly from the Vassar community. Bacio’s owner Gerardo Carino con-

Twisted Soul, pictured above, is a favorite local restaurant among Vassar students. Since students comprise the majority of the establishment’s patrons, the restaurant closes during college vacations.

ing Twisted Soul mostly to Vassar, he admits that the uncertainty of establishing a reliable customer base around the College was at first somewhat nerve-wracking. “In the beginning when you are not sure of that you get a little nervous. When Twisted Soul first came over to Raymond Avenue people were saying, ‘Don’t

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

think you can survive just from the college kids.’ We heard a lot of negativity, especially since we were the new kids on the block.”

Lee further stated, “But I think the con has actually turned into a positive. It actually forces us to rest, and usually in this industry that is unheard of.”

FEATURES An energizing granola bar without the sugar January 26 , 2012

Roxanne Ringer Guest Columnist

I

Courtesy of flourishingfoodie.com

t’s back to work; time to snap out of that Winter Break mentality and hit the books.

But what if your mind’s still sluggish with holiday cheer and the books decide to hit you back?

You rolled out of bed late, missed breakfast, have back-to-back classes and no time for lunch. How are you going to refuel? Granola bars are a popular way to pack the energy punch you need and are easy tote around in your messenger bag.

But the granola bars from the grocery store are loaded with sugar and carbs. Sugar shouldn’t be the first or second ingredient on the list. And often you’re misled into thinking there’s less than there really is.

A typical packaged granola bar such as Nature’s Valley is promoted as health food but lists sugar nine times under different forms; sugar, fructose, high maltose corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, etc.

If you don’t know this already take special note now: high fructose corn syrup is the unhealthiest of sweeteners and should be avoided with the same ferocity as hydrogenated oils and trans fats. Sugar may give you immediate energy, but be prepared for a crash halfway through your second class.

Special K Chocolatey Crunch bars proudly state they’re only 90 calories and help you to lose weight. But the bars, which only weigh 22 grams, contain eight grams, or nearly two teaspoons, of sugar. Add to that 120 milligrams of sodium and the fact that sugar is listed as the first ingredient.

“They’re not health food,” said Jayne Hurley, senior nutritionist with U.S.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest about granola bars. “They’re basically cookies masquerading as health food.”

One 30-gram serving of All-Bran original cereal bars contains six grams of fat, 130 calories and nearly two teaspoons of sugar. It’s almost the same as eating two Oreo cookies.

The Quaker Oats True Delights Bar has pretty much the same amount of fat and calories as a Snickers bar.

Store bought, over-processed granola usually has very little fiber, a lot of sugar and an assortment of chemicals. Even the admittedly better for you granola found in health food stores are not quite up to par. While the popular Cliff Bars pack a substantial 5 grams of fiber and don’t have high fructose corn syrup, a single bar does contain an alarming 21 grams of sugar and 230 calories; sugar shows up four times in the ingredients. Created for rock climbers and targeted to athletes, Cliff Bars have more calories than you really need for that 9 a.m. class.

By now we’re all familiar with old warnings to “read the ingredients label,” and “don’t eat anything you can’t pronounce.” These are still

Ingredients

3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant) 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 1/4 cup unsalted sunflower seeds 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon Pinch of nutmeg 1/2 cup canola oil 1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar 1/4 cup pure maple syrup 1 large egg 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 1/2 cup dried blueberries Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with heavyduty aluminum foil, making sure there is a 1-inch overhang all around the sides of the pan. These will be used as “handles” to remove the granola bars from the pan once they are baked. Set aside.

good rules to live by. But basically the only granola bar you’re going to be able to trust is the one you make yourself. Because you control the ingredients, your crunchy concoction will have nothing but good-for-you energy and plenty of taste.

Jump back into classes well armed with this blueberry and maple granola bar recipe.

There are some key ingredients that will boost your brain power.

Blueberries contain ferulic acid and caffeic acid, two great anti-oxidants that protect the

2. Spread the oats, walnuts and sunflower seeds on an ungreased baking sheet and bake until they are lightly toasted, stirring every 2 to 3 minutes. This should take about 10 minutes. Remove baking sheet from the oven and allow the mixture to cool completely before proceeding.

3. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt until well combined.

4. In a large mixing bowl combine the canola oil, brown sugar and maple syrup until the mixture is smooth and well blended.

Stir in the egg and vanilla extract. Stir in the flour mixture until it is just incorporated. Stir in the oat mixture until everything is well combined. Stir in the dried blueberries.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan. Bake the granola bars until they are set, about 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

6. Lift the foil “handles” on either side of the pan to remove the slab of granola bars from the pan. Place them on a cutting board.

Cut into desired size and shape bars.

nervous system and your neurons, which helps improve memory. Walnuts have high concentrations of DHA, an Omega-3 fatty acid that boosts cognitive performance. Sunflower seeds are full of magnesium, which will reduce frequency of migraines, lower blood pressure and help produce the neurotransmitter serotonin, which relieves tension and increases relaxation. All good things to have going on for that fun surprise quiz you have in your 9 a.m. class.

Be good to your body, and your brain will be good to you.

Class Council offers JYStay programming JYSTAY continued from page 5 other majors, limiting these students’ opportunities to go abroad. “I’m a [biochemistry] major. Biochem has 18 units, and I didn’t take any of them freshman year, so my schedule has been really tight. I would not have been able to complete the major had I gone abroad,” said Henrich.

Students pursuing a double major may also have a difficult time going abroad if one of their focuses is not on a foreign language. Often, it requires careful planning early on in one’s academic career in order to fit in all of the requirements.

Other scheduling concerns were with majors which lent themselves to on-campus study, such as studio art and music.

“I would have loved to go abroad, but the music major makes it hard,” said music major Hallie Stoller ’14, “There are just so many wonderful opportunities for music on campus, with all the ensembles and great professors, that going abroad just doesn’t make sense.”

While for some majors going abroad was prohibitively difficult, other courses of study not only lent themselves to study abroad but almost demanded it. “In the Rus-

sian Department, going abroad is certainly recommended. For me, going to Russia will not only enable me to study the Russian language—something which is ideal—but also fully engage with the culture that I’m studying,” explained Rachel Thompson ’14, “Had I majored in physics I would have still wanted to go abroad but it would not have been as central to what I was studying.”

Tierney Steelberg ’14, an American expatriate who grew up in France, explained that while going abroad was attractive at first, the fact that she was already studying abroad lessened the appeal. “I suppose I never felt an urgent need to go abroad since it was something I had already experienced having spent most of my life in France and then come back to the United States for college,” said Steelberg.

Other reasons for staying stateside were forming closer relationships with the school as well as forming closer relationships with other students, both juniors and non-juniors alike. “JYStayers get a chance to get to know the freshmen class well and to forge new relationships with them while students abroad often come back not really knowing a full quarter of the school, some-

thing that can make them feel a little more disconnected upon their return home,” said Marchetta.

“I made a lot of new friends that I would not have made had my friends been on campus. Many people were in a similar situation, and I formed a tight group of JYStay people,” said Heinrich.

Other benefits, such as the ability to be closer to family, seem less obvious. Bratt remarked, “I was also fortunate to be present for the birth of my first niece—something that would have been quite difficult to do if I had not been in the States.”

While there are both benefits and challenges of staying at Vassar for junior year, those who do stay seem to relish the additional time at a place well loved. Bratt said, “[Going abroad] is something I am very interested in. [But] I also love Vassar and want to take advantage of the four years I have here.”

Steelberg agreed, stating, “There is so much I can do here and I want to savor all of it, without feeling rushed or pressed for time.”

Whatever a junior’s reason for remaining on campus both semesters, it presents a unique opportunity to engage in Vassar life.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Page 7

Begemann adjusts to new position BEGEMANN continued from page 1 with the name change. “But I heard it had been discussed, as people joked that I would not have to be called ‘the DOPAA,’” Begemann laughed.

Begemann received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984 and then briefly taught at Mills College beforing returning to Vassar in 1985. “I never thought I would come back,” Begemann said. “I didn’t even know I wanted to go in to teaching when I was in graduate school. But the opportunity came up and I realized I had a strong interest in being able to incorporate undergraduate research into a college program.”

She was able to bring this interest to the forefront while working with students on Undergraduate Research Summer Institute projects and as director of the program in the early 1990s. Although Begemann found it difficult to pick a favorite project, one was “a multi-year project in the Shawangunks to better understand the factors that influence aluminum distribution between soils, water and sediments in the Coxing Kill, a small stream that has a natural longitudinal pH gradient,” she wrote in an emailed statement.

Begemann still has strong ties to her department, which is reflected in her enthusiasm for the major science facilities project. Her role in the project will continue to entail big-picture planning, but she will work less directly with faculty and Buildings and Grounds as construction approaches.

On her move from dean of the Faculty to dean of Strategic Planning and Academic Resources, Begemann said, “The two positions don’t overlap but they have common interests. For example, the Library is of significance to faculty but it is also a resource for students and the institution, broadly speaking, with important on-going concerns like collection development, storage questions, academic outreach and budgetary constraints that require strategic planning.” Begemann said that one of the areas she would like to develop in her new role is long-range space planning, which she views as an important component of the job.

As far as projects for this year, Begemann noted that maintaining competitive compensation and need-blind admission have been important considerations recently. “Moving forward, we know that we need to keep our faculty compensation competitive with peer institutions, but this is difficult when the budget is really tight ... When you have serious constraints, how to do all of those things, and do them well, is in general terms what I’m thinking of right now,” Begemann said.

In addition to beginning her own projects, Begemann will take over the projects Kitzinger had been working on. A faculty salary study with the dean of the Faculty and the members of the faculty compensation committee was in the works.

“She was also working with members of the multidisciplinary programs on planning for space for the programs when New England Building is renovated as part of the science project and with students about uses for the Bookstore space when the Bookstore moves to the Juliet location,” Begemann wrote in an emailed statement.

Begemann enjoyed the responsibility that has come with being associate dean of the Faculty and looks forward to her first year as dean of Strategic Planning and Academic Resources. She accepted the associate dean of the Faculty position when Ron Sharp was dean of the Faculty. “[He] asked me to take it on because I thought I would enjoy the opportunity to work closely with the faculty and the administration to further the mission of the institution in ways that I did not as a faculty member,” Begemann wrote. “I imagined I would like the challenge and complexity of working with diverse individuals and limited resources. The challenges presented to the dean of Faculty office because of our relatively ‘organic’ curriculum and autonomous departments and programs was, and is, intriguing and stimulating.”

Begemann has already learned from her new position. “One of the things I didn’t know about the position before the interview process was that I would be working with students. I believe Rachel [Kitzinger] met on a monthly basis with members of the VSA [Vassar Student Association], which is something I really look forward to,” Begemann said.

2012 promises to be another important year for the College, and Begemann is prepared and excited for the challenge of it.

FEATURES

Page 8

January 26 , 2012

VC French Course catalogue offers up new classes Club serves up culture, crêpes T Divya Pathak Reporter

Thomas Lawler Guest Reporter

E

very student in a French class that has dreamed of fresh crêpes while conjugating the futur anterieur: Vassar’s French Club feels your pain. Dedicated to the cultivation of French food, art and cinema, the club is a student-run organization that is open to all, regardless of fluency. Even Francophiles with no language skills are welcome to the events.

Led by co-Presidents Emily Selter ’14 and Brian Evans ’14, the French Club organized a variety of events throughout the first semester, often collaborating with other student organizations and the French Department and French professors. The French Club can often be found in the College Center selling crêpes they make to order, with favorite toppings like Nutella and bananas. During the all-campus party Moulin Rouge, hosted by Main House, the French Club generously provided French pastries and assorted desserts, including their signature crêpes.

For students with a background in French, the club is a helpful resource to practice speaking the language. The club also arranges film screenings and coffee breaks, offering students and members the ability to engage in non-academic conversations in French. Evans wrote in an emailed statement, “I have been a French student for quite some time and I feel that the French Club at Vassar helps integrate a fuller study of French life from movies to food.”

Throughout the school year, the club gathers as a whole to prepare and enjoy traditional French foods and desserts. The co-presidents said in a joint statement, “We are planning on having more crêpe sales, a cheese tasting, a chocolate tasting and a dinner at a local French restaurant.” The French Club also hopes to arrange a dinner in the spring with West Point Military Academy’s French Club, a feast that has been a great tradition between the clubs.

The French Club functions not as a hierarchical organization with far-reaching goals but rather as an intimate meeting of fellow Francophile students.

Though the club has over 50 members, Selter acknowledged, “Students participate based upon the particular activity or event and their personal schedule.” Selter, who does not consider herself fluent in French, said, “What I enjoy about the club is its eased approach—we focus on the culture not on the language.”

In keeping with the relaxed demeanor, the meetings are scheduled infrequently, often only before an event or tasting. The co-presidents have tried to create an environment for lively and passionate discussion about French food and art, not a review of irregular verb conjugations. Selter said, “The French Club is something informal to go [to], it’s a place to speak with others that have a similar interest in French culture, yet it does not have the pressure of a French class.”

In past years, the French Club has traveled to Richmond, Va. for the Virginia Commonwealth University French Film Festival, an annual festival dedicated to promoting and exposing French cinema to Americans. The club has not been able to travel to Virginia in several years, as they have a relatively small budget and rely on crêpe sales for fundraising. “If we were able to get a bigger budget,” said Selter, “we would love to have the capability to plan trips such as the one to the film festival in Virginia.” Last year the club tried to organize a trip to Quebec for an overnight visit, but they could not raise the necessary funds.

This past fall, the French Club collaborated with the Department of French and Francophone Studies, the Drama Department Costume Shop and Contrast magazine to organize a special event: The French Connection: An Evening of Art et Fashion. The fashion show was held in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. Reflecting back on the night, Selter hopes to make this an annual event. “It turned out great and was a terrific showing of French culture and fashion on the campus,” Selter said.

Structured as a non-academic club, avoiding mandatory meetings and deadlines, the French Club, as Evans described it, “helps bring French culture to the student body.” Even though the co-presidents do not define the club as academic, the French Club is successful at using the academic resources at their disposal. Collaborating with teachers in the French Department, scheduling film showings with film professors and drawing forth the collective knowledge and interest of the student body in French culture, the club has found a vibrant niche in Vassar’s campus.

he selection of classes got a facelift for Spring 2012, with four new course offerings that boast titles that would entice even non-majors to their departments. “I thought of the type of course I would want to take if I were a college student,” said Visiting Instructor of Russian Studies Rita Safariants on how she designed her course, Hipsters, Rebels and Rock Stars in Russian Literature, in the Russian Studies department. Other classes include Beyond the Wall: Contemporary German Cinema, The Political Economy of Gender, and Culture, and Language, Style and Meaning: From Ancient Greek to English, each drawing on the research of professors and inter-disciplinary interest.

Taught by Associate Professor of German Studies Silke von der Emde, Beyond the Wall: Contemporary German Cinema, explores the German film industry after the two German states’ reunification in 1990.

Von der Emde said via emailed statement, “The Film Department asked me to offer a course on German cinema and I thought this course would be interesting for people because these newest films are not that often taught in World Cinema classes.”

Von der Emde had taught a similar class before in the German Studies Department.

However, this new class relates more to her personal interests. “[The class] really comes out of my research on contemporary German literature and film and German attempts to deal with the problematic past(s).”

She continued, “Germany after the fall of the wall is fascinating, I believe. At the heart of Europe and the [European Union], and with a fascinating, if problematic past that it now actively has begun to work through, Germany sets the course in many areas of contemporary life. The literature and films that come out of Germany today are amazing.”

Von der Emde said that with brand new films always being released, she would love to teach the class again in the future. She has found teaching in the Film Department enjoyable and a break from routine. “I love the facilities in the Center for Drama and Film, the assistants are all wonderful, and it’s also a lot of fun to get out of Chicago Hall for a bit.”

Another class with crossover appeal is Professor of Economics Shirley JohnsonLans’s new course, The Political Economy of Gender, which is cross-listed with the

Women’s Studies, International Studies and Asian Studies Departments. The class explores the interaction between cultural values and economic concerns and how it affects gender roles. The class also addresses issues such as the difference in wage between genders, what influences the bargaining power within families, and what the special problems that women in the developing world face.

Johnson-Lans wrote in an emailed statement, “The class was one I have wanted to design and teach for some years, but given our large number of majors and correlates and students in the intro classes in economics I have never been able to do this before.

Until quite recently I did teach a course in the economics of gender, which was part of our major but cross-listed. However, it had an economics 100-level (ECON 101) prerequisite and this ruled it out for a number of the WMST majors and other non-economics majors. Therefore, this is an altogether new class and not simply a redoing of ECON 204.”

Johnson-Lans’s personal research also serves as a basis for this class. She wrote, “This is a class in which students will be able to benefit from my research on gender issues in Asia and in South Africa. I have for more than a decade been doing field work in rural India, and have written a number of working papers on the problems of providing health care, education and help with empowering women in rural villages in Western Rajasthan, an area that is among the least progressive areas in India (with respect to the role of women).”

Also in this mix of new classes is Rita Safariants’ Hipsters, Rebels and Rock Stars in Russian Literature and Culture. Safariants described the class as a “Russian culture course filtered through the idea and constant figure of the rebel, dandy or hipster in Russian literature from the 19th century to present day.”

Like Von der Emde and Johnson-Lans, Safariants will be drawing from her own research interests for the course. “My dissertation was about rock and roll culture and other countercultures in Russia,” she said.

“I also looked at the different historical contexts and what influences they had on these groups.” As far as designing the class, Safariants explained, “I thought of the type of course I would want to take if I were a college student,” and went from there.

The class has been a learning experience not only for her students, but for herself as well. “I am interested in how the students

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

contextualize and analyze the relationships between the various works we study,” she said. “The class is already proving to be a dynamic discussion and the students are really engaged. We’ll see what comes out of it and hopefully with revisions and additions, I can continue to offer this class in the future,” she continued.

These new courses will be evolving in their initial weeks, and by the time Spring Break rolls around there will be another new class in the mix: Language, Style and Meaning: From Ancient Greek to English.

The class is team-taught by Associate Professor of Classics Rachel Friedman, Professor of Classics on the Matthew Vassar, Jr. Chair Rachel Kitzinger, and Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Studies John Lott. This course explores the connections between English and ancient classical languages as well as the significance of studying a culture by reading its literature in the original language, rather than in translation.

“Our hope is that in the process of exploring how ancient languages work students become more aware of how they use their own language to communicate meaning and how the study of Greek and Latin can facilitate such a process,” said Friedman.

The team-teaching aspect of this course will present a unique classroom experience. Friedman said, “The idea for the course emerged out of conversation that we were all having in a department meeting, so it seemed natural that the course be a joint effort by all of us. We also view the course as a nice way for students to get to know the various members of our department.”

The class is not directly a part of the research of the professors, Friedman elaborated, “But because all of us are in the business in our research of translating ancient texts into contemporary contexts, the course reflects at a basic level the kind of questions we are involved in all the time with our research: For example, what does this word actually mean in its original context and is there an English equivalent?”

Whether the class provides students with insight on the professors’ interests or exposes them to ideas and concepts being explored for the first time, each of these classes has something to offer. Until the Add/Drop Period ends on Jan. 31, students can look into exploring one of these exciting classes as a fresh start to the new semester.

OPINIONS

January 26 , 2012

Miscellany News Staff Editorial

Amid online protests, students must join in dialogue about the future of SOPA, PIPA O

n Jan. 18 the English Wikipedia, Google, Reddit and several thousand other online sites protested the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), many by blocking their content completely. These two bills, which were suspended in the wake of the protest, were meant to curb online piracy of copyrighted media. The Jan.18 blackout disrupted many of the ways in which we use the Internet for social and academic purposes. For twenty-four hours, our normally untrammeled access to websites like Wikipedia and Reddit was entirely blocked.

Although we are glad that the event raised awareness about the nature of the Internet, we at The Miscellany News are afraid that that level of awareness was only temporary. The dramatic changes that SOPA and PIPA proposed should not be forgotten after a single simple email to a congressional representative. Rather, people should keep themselves informed about extensive potential changes to the Internet and think critically about their relationship to it.

Protests began because the language of the bill was too broad and could have, among other things, forced websites to monitor all user-submitted content, including comments, for copyright infringement.

Most websites could not possibly develop the infrastructure necessary to accomplish this feat, and therefore would have to shut down or face legal battles. The Miscellany News Editorial Board see these bills and the Jan. 18 protest as a call for all Internet users, and college students in particular, to remain cognizant of the fact that the Internet, which has become ubiquitous, is in fact dynamic; individuals should moreover conduct their own research into policies because dramatic changes to the Internet can be good or bad. Though SOPA and PIPA were too blunt and reactionary in their approach, copyright infringement is a problem that re-

quires constructive solutions. The protests highlighted the fact that if the Internet’s users fail to take part in conversations about its future, outlets that we have quickly taken for granted are easily threatened.

It is especially important that college students heed this wake up call, both because of our heavy use of the Internet and because of the integral role it has assumed in our lives. Consider that we belong in one of the top bandwidth consuming demographics in America. According to the Pew Research Center, 95% of 18-29 year olds regularly use the Internet compared to 87% of 30-49 year olds and 74% of 50-64 year olds. According to the same survey, 94% of all college graduates use the Internet regularly, compared to 69% of high school graduates. Not only do we use the Internet heavily, but its uses very often enrich our academic experience. We use the Internet as an important social tool, a means for us to share media and keep in touch with peers and professional contacts.

We also use the Internet as an educational tool, to access knowledge that can keep us informed about the world around us, and to aid us in research and exploration. Many of us also use the Internet as a creative tool: at the Miscellany News, for example, we use our website to publish articles, blog posts and multimedia content. Whether it is for social, educational or creative purposes, our relationship with the Internet is all but inextricable from the way we lead our lives.

The blackout also highlighted the dynamic nature of the Internet. It can and will undergo changes, some more sweeping than others. Instead of taking our relationship with the Internet for granted, we need to take the time to properly evaluate each change. If our right to free speech is jeopardized, or we lose our ability to use the Internet’s valuable educational and networking tools, maybe the change is for the

worse. But if we are forced to use media in a more responsible way, without resorting to piracy, then maybe the change is for the better. Though we know that SOPA and PIPA provided the wrong solutions, the problems they sought to address were very real.

Just as we critique the heavy regulation that the two bills proposed, we must also scrutinize the influence of online hegemons. Websites like Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit each maintain their own private interests. While the crusade they led last Wednesday admirably proved the power of citizens to influence their representatives, it also pointed to the undeniable power of these sites to shape the opinions of their users. We applaud last week’s effort to halt SOPA and PIPA, but wonder if in the future such sites might exert undue influence. For this reason it is of the utmost importance that users stay informed through a variety of sources and reach their own conclusions.

The vote on SOPA and PIPA may be indefinitely postponed, but other possible vehicles of change are still alive. The AntiCounterfeiting Trade Agreement is an international covenant designed to strengthen enforcement against intellectual property right infringements. While it is still being debated by a number of countries, the United States has already signed the document.

The online blackout of Jan. 18 served as a wake-up call; now is the time to be aware of the Internet and how we use it, and to look at vehicles of change such as ACTA with a critical eye. The online protest proved a popular support for online freedoms; it is now time to turn that movement towards finding solutions to the challenges facing the arguably greatest resource of our age.

—The staff editorial represents the opinion of at least two-thirds of the 21-member Miscellany News editorial baord.

Against Equality misreads movement Carson Robinson Guest Columnist

R

ecently on SayAnything you may have seen a video of an interview with a queer liberation activist named Ryan Conrad. Conrad is a co-founder of Against Equality, an organization that opposes the “mainstream” gay rights movement.

Against Equality specifically opposes the reforms in marriage, in the military and in prosecution of hate crimes—reforms that have been central objectives of gay rights activists. Conrad makes many compelling arguments and points out many important ways in which the mainstream gay rights movement is problematic. I agree with just about everything Conrad says, but I strongly disagree with what Conrad assumes, what he insinuates and how he contextualizes the gay rights movement.

Against Equality misreads “equality” as “sameness.” They assume that the issue of marriage equality is about actually getting married, that being able to join the military is about actually joining the military, and that having fair prosecution of hate crimes is about putting people in prison. Wrong. Reforming these policies is about abolishing political mechanisms that serve to punish and suppress homosexual behavior.

Conrad assumes that gay rights activists are responsible for making marriage equality a hot-button issue. Wrong. The reason that marriage so dominates our discussion of gay rights is that this country is swarming with people who deeply hate homosexuals and are clinging on to whatever mechanisms of oppression they can use to hurt and dehumanize us. Far-

right politicians are still able to designate homosexuals as wrong, as bad, as disgusting. One particularly direct way in which far-right politicians have been able to do this—have been able to officially designate homosexuality as sub-human—is to prohibit homosexuals from marrying each other.

In marriage, the state officially recognizes that two people are in a romantic relationship, so withholding this recognition from same-sex coupes is an excellent way for the state to officially dehumanizing homosexuals. Indeed, the denial of marriage rights is an attempt (like conversion therapy) to prevent homosexuality from existing. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) served a similar purpose, as does the unfair legal response to hate crimes.

Conrad discusses the gay rights movement in the context of the queer population, rather than the context of society at large. In the former context, it is possible to identify a “mainstream gay” rights movement; in the latter context, “mainstream gay” is an oxymoron. Conrad says that “gay is a classed identity; it’s classed as white, it’s classed as middle-class.”

Actually, it’s classed as dirty, it’s classed as bestiality, it’s classed as pedophilia. It’s odd that Conrad and his affiliates seem to have forgotten the profound hatred directed toward queer people; I think about it a lot. Indeed, there are people who are currently (or were recently) running for president who embrace these dehumanizing views of homosexuality.

Conrad downplays homophobia’s role (relative to other issues, such as poverty) in a series of suicides among queer adolescents. He says that the inability of these teenagers to marry or join the mili-

tary probably had little to do with these suicides.

This totally misses the point of gay rights activists; the inability to marry is obviously irrelevant to most queer youth (that is, most of them are not thinking about getting married anytime soon); it is the knowledge of this inability that is so toxic. Policies such as marriage discrimination and DADT are messages from society that say, “We hate you.” Suicidal behavior among homosexuals is a response to these messages.

Of course, suicide may also be driven by poverty, abuse, and other factors, but I find it hard to imagine that homophobia might ever be unrelated to a homosexual’s self-destructive behavior. No matter how rich, safe, and privileged they are (and no matter how many drugs they do or how often they cut themselves), homosexuals can never escape the knowledge of homophobia and persecution that pervades this world. The gay rights movement is about alleviating this burden; it’s about normalizing and legitimizing homosexuality.

Against Equality’s stance on the military issue is somewhat understandable for me, given the extreme suffering that the military has inflicted upon innocent people in foreign countries. I have nothing particularly good to say about anyone joining the military.

But I will say that whether or not you are allowed to join the military, whether or not your parents love you, whether or not you are hired for a job—none of these decisions should take sexual orientation into account, and repealing DADT was one important step in making this a universal rule.

See EQUALITY on page 11

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Page 9

GOP runners ‘divide and conquer’ Jon Bix

Guest Columnist

T

hroughout history, those in power have used the “divide and conquer” technique (based on gender, race or ethnicity, religion, etc.) to thwart the unity of ordinary working people, though of course, racism and other forms of discrimination are not simply the creations of the rich and powerful to be tools for economic gain.

However, in the last few weeks the Republican Party has revived the overt “divide and conquer” tactic in increasingly racist ways.

In the post-World War II United States this “divide and conquer” strategy has most prominently taken the form of manufactured antagonism between African-American and white workers, though manufactured antagonism between undocumented immigrants and primarily white Americans has also been a strategy as of late. Employers have historically blamed the economic struggles of one group of workers on another group, obscuring the fact that the economic struggles of all workers are rooted in their exploitation. Similarly, employers in normal working conditions have kept white racial anger high, and wages and benefits low, among their workers by threatening them with replacement by non-white workers. In the end of the 1960s Richard Nixon also adopted this racially divisive technique to divide the working class politically. He used the fictional story of a Chicago woman dubbed the “Welfare queen,” who he said, “has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards ... She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000.” She was understood as being black, and this caricature became the infamously epitomizing example of the power of coded racism. He used this racist demonization of welfare in order to get elected by swinging the South from the Democrat to the Republican stronghold it remains today. The same strategy is used in xenophobic demonizations of undocumented immigrants, implying that they don’t pay taxes, but benefit from public programs paid for through taxes.

It is ignored that they pay such taxes as the payroll and sales tax, and even around six million undocumented immigrants file individual income taxes each year. Furthermore, they pay about $9 billion per year into Social Security, a program which they don’t benefit from, and play an absolutely crucial role in the United States economy.

The bigotry extends towards all Spanish speakers, as exemplified by Newt Gingrich who once said that Spanish was, “the language of living in the ghetto.”

Though the “divide and conquer” technique has been employed countless times since Reagan, in the last few weeks we have seen possibly the most overtly racist rhetoric of this kind since then. Republican presidential candidates have been using it in fighting to attract white working class support for their candidacies and for the slashing of what little social safety net remains. The Republicans have attempted this through racist demonization of African-Americans and social safety net programs such as SNAP (Food Stamps). They have been dog whistling to the white working class and implying that their economic woes are because their white-person tax dollars are being used for entitlements for lazy and poor minorities, the implications being that non-whites are poor through their own faults and whites do not benefit from entitlements.

Newt Gingrich provided the most obvious example of this vile rhetoric with his comment that, “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So, they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.”

Then again, sometimes the racism of the Republican candidates has been put so bluntly it removes even the remotest chance of deniability. When being questioned about his position on entitlements Santorum responded, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” Ron Paul reiterated earlier this January that he was against the Civil Rights Act, because outlawing segregation interferes with Ron Paul’s fetishism of property rights. At best the Republican candidates obscure the fact that social safety net programs such as food stamps are beneficial for the entire working class and ignore inconvenient facts such as whites are the overwhelmingly largest users of food stamps and that systemic black poverty (like all poverty) is due to structural causes. At worst, they endorse a mentality that blatantly considers African-Americans as less than fully human.

—Jon Bix ’14 is a sociology and political science double major.

OPINIONS

Page 10

January 26 , 2012

Media must not protect Newt Gingrich Lane Kisonak

Guest Columnist

N What is “shit Vassar kids say”?

“This reminds me of MY life.”

Tavish Pegram ’13

“I’m an English major, but I’m not an ENGLISH major.”

Brittany Hunt ’12

“That’s the patriarchy.”

ewt Gingrich routinely styles himself as an intellectual and a historian. Even though he has proven himself worthy of neither distinction, the mainstream media has continuously and shamelessly let him get away with it.

At a campaign event last November, testing out a line he’d surely be quick to use in a general campaign against President Barack Obama, Gingrich launched into a discussion of Obama’s days as a community organizer in Chicago in the 1980s, casting Obama as a proponent of “Saul Alinksy radicalism.” This part of Obama’s background has been tossed around by conservatives since the 2008 election as an argument that Obama lacks experience in the private sector and has committed his career to what some conservatives call a destructive politics of class warfare.

Two months later, the electoral landscape of this long, bizarre and increasingly acrimonious campaign has changed drastically. Having placed fourth in both the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary and winning South Carolina, Gingrich remains bereft of the antics of Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, and now faces just two opponents in his competition to secure the non-Mitt Romney position. After a pro-Romney super PAC launched a barrage of anti-Gingrich ads ahead of the Iowa caucus, many media commentators began to wonder if Gingrich was still pursuing the nomination rather than simply gunning for Romney’s destruction in an act of vengeance.

It sure began to seem that a political feud for the ages was brewing.

It is in this context that we saw Gingrich make his most ridiculous rhetorical move yet in response to Mitt Romney, who declared on Jan. 9 to the Chamber of Commerce in Nashua, N.H. that he likes “being able to fire people.” Like many thoughtlessly worded one-

offs, this was quickly taken out of context and used against Romney to paint him as an outof-touch corporate suit who pursued wealth without a hint of the people’s best interests in mind. It was a soundbite that any savvy liberal strategist worth his salt would pounce on.

But Gingrich led the charge instead, branding Romney and his firm, Bain Capital—along with the profession of private equity in general—as “plundering” and “exploitive.”

Newt Gingrich cannot have it both ways and, as an “intellectual,” he should know this (and probably does); a 2008 profile of Obama’s days as a community organizer in the Altgeld Gardens housing project in Chicago in the National Review describes community organization as “the practice of identifying a specific aggrieved population…and agitating them to become so upset about their condition,” so that they take effective political action. Or, as Alinsky called it, “[whipping people] up to a fighting pitch.” Can we look at Gingrich’s polemics on Romney and Bain and not see them as a demonstration of community organization tactics writ large and tied into the grievances of the still young 99 percent movement?

I don’t think so. Talking heads on CNN or Fox may have commented on the novelty of a Republican sounding the clarion of working class plight, but they did nothing to contrast his new position with the stance he had forcefully taken not so long ago (and likely will again).

On Jan. 12, just as the campaign in South Carolina was heating up, the New York Times website published a blog post by Arthur S. Brisbane, titled “Should the Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” As a piece of self reflection by a major publication, the post was refreshing but frustrating. In it, Brisbane noted that an opinions columnist such as Paul Krugman “clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie.” He then asked the question, “Should news reporters do the same?”

The mere fact that this question must be

asked highlights the degree to which mainstream news and print media have thoroughly abdicated their duty to provide the public with accurate information, instead choosing to cultivate simplistic narratives and gloss over inconvenient facts to make their stories digestible. Their resources are needed more acutely than ever, especially when candidates have become willing not only to flipflop on the issues with abandon but also to use words such as “socialism” in ways that rob them of their intrinsic meanings. Instead these vital resources go wasted, such as when in 2010 Gingrich posited Obama as a radical “anti-colonialist” whose views are “outside our comprehension”—a charge which makes sense only in a bizarro parallel universe where we all proudly stayed on as colonies of the United Kingdom. News reporters, more often than not, take these words at face value and present them to their audience as substantial, legitimate arguments.

Of course I am not breaking any new ground when I say that Gingrich is a self-absorbed, hypocritical blowhard. That much has been clear since the 1990s. What has become remarkable, however, is how much the media shelter Gingrich and others like him, whether deliberately because they are lazy, or simply because they are structured to do so.

Take last Thursday night, for example. At the final debate before the South Carolina primary, Gingrich blasted CNN moderator John King for questioning him about a late-breaking revelation from an ABC interview with his previous wife, Marianne Gingrich, that he asked for an open marriage. Seeing a rise in polling numbers thanks to his performance at Monday night’s debate, Gingrich could understandably have reacted to the revelation with humility or dodged the question altogether.

Instead, he went on the attack. “I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much See GINGRICH on page 12

Romney’s detachment unacceptable Angela Rhoads ’12

“I had dinner at my professor’s house. NBD.”

Sam Smith ’14

“Well, from a _______ perspective…”

Emily Bernstein ’13

“I mean, but actually.”

Anais Paccione ’14 —Juliana Halpert, Photography Editor Alanna Okun, Humor & Satire Editor

Juan Thompson Guest Columnist

F

ormer House speaker and current presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will never be on a list of people I admire most.

He is a shameless demagogue and practitioner of the worst that Washington, D.C. has to offer. Yet, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Gingrich has recently launched a sustained attack on Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney and his stewardship of the private equity firm Bain Capital. Gingrich, though I never imagined I would write these words, is absolutely right.

Indeed we should be having this conversation about Mitt Romney and his work at Bain. Following the 2008 financial meltdown the United States had a robust discussion about the behavior of the banks and mortgage houses. And even though most of their activity-the CDO’s, hedging and CDS’s-were legal in our capitalist system, that did not prevent our debating their outsized roles in the debacle. Romney’s situation is not dissimilar.

His business practices were perfectly legal but that should not eliminate any discourse about why he made certain decisions and the effects of those decisions on communities and workers.

Romney and Bain, in 1994, invested $18 million into a company named Steel Dynamics, which is located in DeKalb County, Ind. Romney’s investment made Bain the company’s largest domestic stakeholder, according to the Los Angeles Times. The officials of DeKalb County offered Bain more than $30 million in grants and subsidies to locate the plant in DeKalb.

And in order for our country to pay for this corporate welfare, county officials implemented a new income tax on its residents, which many residents fought, and a “new quarter-percent tax” to finance infrastructure spending, like roads and job training, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Bain did put the company in Indiana and five years later sold its stake and made an $85 million profit that was subsidized by tax dollars.

I have no problem with government investing in business. I do, however, have a problem with outrageously hypocritical and dishonest politicians, like Mitt Romney, who made millions with the aid of government help but who then criticize government assistance for middle class and working class people as European-style social welfare.

Many conservatives, rallying to Romney’s defense, have become pyromaniacs in fields of straw men. They have labeled these attacks on Romney’s record as an attack on capitalism and free enterprise itself. One of Romney’s New Hampshire supporters even claimed that the attacks were anti-American.

This is, of course, ridiculous partisan poppycock, and it is not unexpected coming from a party that continues to drift further into the abyss of stupidity. Moreover, American capitalism is not running for president. Mitt Romney is running for president and he chose to make Bain the central aspect of his candidacy.

Therefore it is an offense to our democracy and an insult to our intelligence to then say we the people have no right to scrutinize and interrogate his record. Romney is the one schlepping around the country selling himself, erroneously, as a job creator. Bain’s number one job was not to make jobs, but to earn high returns on the investments it put into businesses, even if that called for laying off thousands of workers. The former Massachusetts governor should merely say this instead of making himself into something he is not.

This is another problem that will haunt Romney if he wins the Republican nomination because he, in the words of conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg, has an “authentic inauthenticity problem.” He began wearing Gap jeans when he was criticized as being too formal. He awkwardly joked to a group of Floridians last summer that he too was unemployed; and in the run up to the New Hampshire primary he—a Harvard MBA/JD—informed an audience of his own past worrying about pink slips.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Yet occasionally the real Mitt Romney, the aloof elitist snob, rears his head. Last week he remarked, “I like being able to fire people who perform services for me.”

Such a comment is bad no matter how one slices it. No one gets pleasure out of having to fire people in any context, except Mitt Romney it seems. Romney also, when asked if economic injustice should ever be talked about, replied, yes it should, but in “quiet rooms.”

Who will be in these quiet rooms? I assume not the American people, maybe just multi-national corporations, millionaires and their whore puppets in Congress?

What sort of twisted country does this selfish man envision? Judging from his actions and his words I can only assume he foresees an unequal plutocratic society where multimillionaires, like himself, get rich with government aid while attacking the rest of us as begging for handouts and being envious and jealous of him, as he implied last week when he accused President Obama of practicing the politics of envy.

What the elitist Romney, in his stunning detachment, fails to realize is that we do not want his life. I surely do not. He can’t even drink; I would die without my beloved Burgundy wine and whiskey sours. What we do want, however, is fairness. If the government is helping millionaires like Romney, they’d better help young people like me go to college.

If the government is investing in training for Romney’s workers, they should also be training Americans who are out of working and looking for employment. Americans don’t envy or resent the wealthy. All we want are decent jobs and the opportunities to build comfortable lives for ourselves.

We don’t want a hand out; we want a fair shot. This isn’t envy; it’s reaching for that so-called American dream that has become more and more the exclusive domain of the Mitt Romneys of America.

—Juan Thompson ’13 is a political science major.

OPINIONS Crane on GOP: When will we stop laughing?

January 26 , 2012

Bill Crane

Guest Columnist

K

arl Marx famously said that historical events and personalities tend to occur twice: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

After the tragedy of Reagan’s administration and the farce of George W. Bush, and in light of those struggling to claim their legacies in the Republican primaries we might be forgiven for altering his aphorism this way: history will reoccur as farce until finally people aren’t laughing anymore.

A week ago, Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary, dashing Mitt Romney’s hopes of wrapping up an easy victory. I was a bit disappointed by this— God strike me down if I have any love for Romney—but I was hoping the GOP campaigns, which have seemed like some kind of contest to show who can be the most bigoted, reactionary and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans, might come to an early end.

I suppose that we should be grateful that at least Michele Bachmann, about whom the less said the better, and Rick Perry, whose religious fervor is only matched by his enthusiasm for executions, have been knocked out of the race. John Huntsman, who I have previously described as “the boring man’s Mitt Romney,” also had his campaign go the way of a really pathetic dinosaur.

Natural selection does seem to work in the political process, even if it tends to operate much more slowly than we would hope.

And then there were four. In one corner we have Mitt Romney, long the “acceptable” candidate who may be capable of beating Barack Obama, but not much can

be said about otherwise—a bit like John Kerry in 2004. We have Rick Santorum in another, who still hasn’t won a primary yet, and whose outrageous homophobia have made his name equivalent to a mix of fecal matter and anal lube for a generation of Americans.

Somehow Ron Paul is also still in the race, although I doubt even he thinks he can win anymore. Paul is distinguished from the other candidates in that he has the guts to say what all the rest believe —that if you can’t afford health insurance, you should be left in the street to die, and if you suffer from sexual harassment at your job, you should find another job. He also believes in ending the war in Afghanistan; though not to worry, he thinks that those troops should be redeployed to the border with Mexico.

And then we have Gingrich, the upand-comer, a man whose largest accomplishments are having once shut down the federal government 18 years ago, and vigorously prosecuting a standing president for an extramarital liaison at the same time he was cheating on his own wife, a man who is best described in the words of Paul Krugman: “a stupid man’s idea of what a smart man sounds like.”

We might be forgiven for wondering whether Gingrich has the organization or finances to follow up on his recent triumph. He is not even on the ballot in Virginia, having screwed up the signature process.

In a moment that would be hilarious any other time but has become typical for this campaign, his manager promised a massive write-in campaign by his supporters, without realizing that Virginia’s ballot law does not allow write-ins.

Of course, all of these developments must delight Democrats, especially President Obama. I can pretty securely predict that Obama’s campaign will be run with none of the glamor, the promises of change and hope that so energized liberals four years ago.

This time, all he has to do is say, “look how terrible those guys are.” A look at any of the GOP candidates on offer must make Obama look healthy and sane by comparison.

And yet. Those who will hold their noses and vote for the “lesser evil” in 2012 might do well to remember that Obama has carried through none of the major promises he made four years ago.

Corporate healthcare is alive and well, and poised to make more profits than ever before. Deportations of “illegal” immigrants and civil rights violations against terror suspects have reached a height that I doubt George Bush even dreamed of.

Obama accelerated the bailouts of Wall Street, and they are prepared to pay him back by generously donating to his re-election campaign.

Fortunately, we have an alternative to watching this unfolding freak show with rapt attention. While the occupation of Hulme Park was broken up a month ago, Occupy Poughkeepsie is still alive and well with ongoing activities in outreach and against foreclosures in the community. If you want to be involved and actually make a difference (not to mention preserve your own sanity) you would do well to give it a try.

—Bill Crane ’12 is an Asian studies major.

He is also a member of the International Socialist Organization.

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Page 11

Movement fights for humanity EQUALITY continued from page 9 The “mainstream” gay rights movement may have the tendency to inappropriately glorify highly problematic institutions, like marriage or the military, and they do implicitly condone these institutions by seeking the right to participate in them. But these institutions happen to be sites where the state continues to persecute and invalidate homosexuality.

What ties the gay rights movement together is an effort to dismantle a system of oppression. Marriage discrimination, DADT and unfair retribution for hate crimes are components of this system and must be abolished. Fortunately, many of these mechanisms of oppression either have been or are in the process of being reformed.

If Against Equality is worried about the possible unintended consequences of the reforms advocated by gay rights movement activists (e.g., more people joining the military) then they should take these issues head-on instead of criticizing the mainstream gay rights activists, as if the “mainstream” activists are somehow responsible for solving unimaginable problems such as war, poverty and the prison industrial complex. To the extent that Against Equality would have these reforms be stopped, it can be argued that they support the political enforcement of heterosexuality.

—Carson Robinson ’12 is a psychology major.

OPINIONS

Page 12

January 26 , 2012

Keystone veto first step for healthier Earth Gabe Dunsmith Columnist

O

n Jan. 18, President Obama rejected a plan to extend the Keystone XL pipeline, a massive project that would have pumped oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, down to Texas, where the oil would have been refined and exported. It was the right decision for the indigenous Canadians whose lands were being destroyed by tar sands extraction; it was the right decision for millions of Midwesterners whose water supply would have been threatened by the pipeline; and it was the right decision for the planet as a whole. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that the pipeline would cause 1.15 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime, and environmental activist and journalist Bill McKibben reports that if all the oil from the tar sands was burned, it would increase the earth’s temperature by an entire degree.

However, Obama didn’t necessarily make this decision for the right reasons. In a statement after his decision, the president made no mention of the environmental degradation the pipeline would have caused. He claimed that he made the decision for entirely political purposes, saying that Congress did not give the State Department ample time to review the pipeline. (Congressional Republicans had given the president a Feb. 21 deadline to decide on Keystone, hoping to force him into approving the project.) Additionally, the president left a door open for TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone pipeline: Obama voiced general support for TransCanada’s proposed oil pipeline between Cushing, Oklahoma and the Gulf of Mexico.

Make no mistake: Obama was under tremendous political pressure to approve Keystone XL, and his decision represents a great victory for human health and the environment. But for Obama to veto Keystone only to pave the way for future

pipelines is not what 12,000 people were asking for when they protested TransCanada’s pipeline in front of the White House on Nov. 6. I, along with many other Vassar students, was among them.

What were protestors looking for, then, when we traveled to D.C. to protest? We surely weren’t looking for the continuation of the same political game where our leaders only pretended to act in the best interest of the American people. We protested in the hope that humans would not ruin the planet in their insatiable search for oil; we protested in the hope that pristine Canadian forests would not be decimated for the sole intent of mining the resources below the soil; we protested in the hope that a complete veto of the pipeline would pave the way for an energy policy in the United States that would not obliterate the earth for the sake of human consumption. We wanted to embolden Obama. We wanted to tell the president that since we have spent our time fighting for the health of the planet and the safety of its citizens, so should he.

It is high past time for Obama to support the people of the United States over corporate interests. The American people should not have to obey the whims of oil companies that forsake human wellbeing for profit. The president’s rejection of Keystone is a good first step—it was bold of Obama to kill the pipeline when the American Petroleum Institute was threatening “huge political consequences” if the pipeline wasn’t approved—but we still need the president to take initiatives on a federal level to protect the environment and the climate.

Despite the flaws in Obama’s reasoning and his encouragement of a second pipeline, his decision dealt a blow to TransCanada. American citizens stood their ground and showed that tremendous public pressure can encourage the president to do the right thing. In addition to the Nov. 6 rally, 1253 people were arrested in anti-pipeline

demonstrations at the White House over the summer, and tens of thousands of people signed various petitions opposing Keystone, many pledging to stand in front of bulldozers and earth-movers to physically stop the pipeline if it were approved.

This public pressure will not stop until the president recommits himself to the environment. As late as October, energy investors were entirely sure that Obama would approve Keystone XL. If people had not risen up, then TransCanada would be tunneling their pipeline through the heart of the United States at this very moment.

We will keep fighting. We will rise up tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and whenever the sanctity of life and the health of this earth is threatened.

This victory against TransCanada is not the end of the road, but the beginning. If the people of the United States rise up with conviction and say that we do not want a future constrained by dirty energy, then we will get it. Oil companies’ pursuit of profit will never stop, and neither will their onslaught against the environment. This is why the Keystone battle is part of a larger picture: if we can tell one oil company that we will not stand for its abuses, then we can send that same message to all oil companies.

Last week, Obama made the right decision by killing Keystone XL. Now we need him to take the Keystone battle to the next level and seek the best way forward for the American people: invest in clean energy, divest the United States of her dependence on fossil fuels and combat climate change. Initiative from the president will show that he is ready to fight the hard battles for the betterment of the earth, and with Obama as our ally the citizens of all nations can stop environmental degradation, safeguard the health of all people, and show Big Oil that it does not control our future.

—Gabe Dunsmith ’15 is a member of the Vassar Greens.

Gingrich can’t have it both ways GINGRICH continued from page 10 of the news media makes it harder to…attract decent people to run for public office,” Gingrich declared without an ounce of cognitive dissonance.

It is important to note that, according to a variety of sources, officials at ABC were debating until the final day whether they would even air this interview before the primary. Given that the interview was touted from the beginning as a “bombshell” and, possibly, a career-ender for Gingrich, how could ABC possibly justify sitting on it when it could provide crucial bits of information to voters in what could be a game-changing primary?

Somewhat surprisingly, Gingrich’s response to King resonated with the normally conservative, values-focused South Carolinians and led to his victory in South Carolina, bringing about the first ever instance of three different candidates winning the first three Republican contests. This would have been a laughable proposition even a week before the South Carolina vote, when a Reuters/Ipsos poll of the state had Romney a massive 25 points ahead of Gingrich.

The narrative of Mitt Romney as the inevitable Republican nominee is, to put it bluntly, the most boring scenario imaginable, as media outlets realized early on. The feud that erupted between Romney and Gingrich is a vastly more interesting story, one that would make sense for the media to keep alive as long as it can, especially if Gingrich can get lucky enough to establish momentum heading into Florida and continue picking up delegates heading into the thick of primary season. With events seemingly conspiring on Gingrich’s behalf, including the endorsement of Rick Perry (and let’s not forget Chuck Norris), and Romney’s bewildering evasiveness on his tax returns and clumsy handling of the Bain Capital issue, one wonders what sorts of accommodations the media will make next to keep the story going.

—Lane Kisonak ’13 is a political science major.

Crossword by Jonathan Garfinkel, Crossword Editor ACROSS 1. Place to relax 4. Designer Hardy and others 7. Org. for overbearing parents?

10. Vassar, for one (Abbr.)

13. Ingredient in some baby powder 15. Small child 16. Corn location 17. Stein content, perhaps 18. Brazilian dance 19. Ben-___ 20. Each 21. Ruin 22. Mr. T’s crew 23. Actor Bana

25. Botanical in gin or absinthe 27. Zero 28. Be mistaken 30. Cure-alls 33. Group of experts 35. Sloping surface 36. Author Tan 37. Thin biscuit 39. Couch 41. Literary heroine Jane ____ 44. ___ Newton 46. Kabul denizen 51. Film units 53. Wild horses, cats, etc.

56. See 60-across 57. Philadelphia footballers

Answers to last issue’s puzzle

59. Mo. number 10 60. With 56-across, famous last words 61. Type of tide 64. Confidence 67. Grp. including Canada, Mexico,and Brazil 70. Utopias 72. “Tommy Boy” actor David _____ 75. Ship’s lowest decks 77. Feathery neckwear 78. Dr.’s directions 80. Earthy color 81. “Chicago” leading man Richard ____ 83. Icy rain 85. “Norma ___” 86. Dr. Dre output 89. “Mad Man” Draper 90. Venison, steak, and sausage 91. Vase 92. Big event for a corp.

93. Cap 94. Equal 95. Agency issuing SSN’s 96. Summer in Nice 97. Trains overhead 98. Member of a bygone bloc (abbr.)

DOWN 1. Not moving 2. “Baywatch” actress

Anderson 3. “Sin City” actress Jessica ____ 4. Old-school anesthetic 5. Grumpy, humorless 6. Red _____ (Jamaican lager) 7. “Angel dust”, perhaps 8. Foot appendage 9. “Bric-_____” 10. Fan of green eggs and ham 11. Sophisticated, refined 12. Present 14. Photographer’s need 18. ___ Diego 24. Cleveland ballers 26. Teacher’s grp.

29. Official in stripes 31. Prefix with liberal or conservative 32. ____ Romeo 34. Inhabit 35. Cheese type 38. Bad grade 40. Fighter jet sta.

41. “Before”, to Shakespeare 42. Affirmative vote 43. Normal (abbr.)

45. Miracle-___ (food for grasses) 47. Talking head Van Susteren 48. Shelter with a thatched roof, fre-

quently 49. Tel. co.

50. Original in Munich 52. NY’s Schumer or AZ’s McCain 54. Carries out 55. Envelope content, often (abbr.)

58. Oracle 62. Legislation requiring accesability? (abbr.)

63. “Shaun of the Dead”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

actor Simon ____ 65. Troupe for troops 66. Twitches 67. Witty Wilde and others 68. Goddess on the Acropolis 69. “To be” in Barcelona 71. Irritate, perhaps 73. Hopes’ companions 74. NH acad.

76. Spooky

77. Curves 79. Peter, Paul, and John, briefly 80. “It’s them ____” 82. Stir up 84. Poetic fields 87. Appropriate 88. Author of “The Masque of the Red Death”

HUMOR & SATIRE

January 26 , 2012

Page 13

OPINIONS

Mr. Bouchard’s guide to Word to your friends: writing a proper paper title A senior’s Winter Break Jean-Luc Bouchard Guest Columnist

I

f you’re an English literature/ English language double major, American literature/ English composition/ creative writing triple correlate like myself, then you know the importance of a proper paper title. When they’re good, they can make your paper shine like Poseidon’s belt. When they’re bad, they can make your paper shine like Poseidon’s notoriously unshiny vomit. But did you know that a title can serve as more than just an essay toupée?

Follow my guide, and find yourself in a world of possibilities!

Titles can be used to...

Insult enemies: Themes of Nakedness in Milton’s Paradise Lost and my Roommate’s Slutty, Slutty Profile Pictures Make despicable puns: Analysis of Data Pertaining to Liberal Arts Presidents with Marine Biology Degrees: Saltwater Cappy Flatter professors: Computational Errors in the Framework of RateMyProf.com, and Why You Totally Deserve to Get That Little Chili Pepper Sign That Measures the Completely Objective Trait of Beauty

Make your paper sound way more complicated than it actually is: Semiotic Approaches to Binary Opposition, Liminality, Carte Blanche, Acousmetre, Social Constructions, Net Ionic Equations, Logarithms, Poetry and Mathematical Modeling of Biomedical Systems in Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop Exact revenge: Thiolated Alumoxanes as Heavy Metal Filtration Media, and I Put Your Toothbrush in a Dog’s Mouth Discuss your heart-wrenchingly humiliating childhood with the general public: The Crow as a Symbol of When I Ripped my Pants in Middle School in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson Raise questions that have remained dormant in the worst parts of your mind for six years and that you’re afraid to say in case no one else thinks the same way you do: A History of Ragtime and Stride Piano from 1899 to Did Anyone Else Have a Crush on Kim Possible?

Justify skipping class: 2012: Terrible Movie, or the Truest Documentary Ever Sent from the Future Depicting Our Inevitable Deaths?

Make more despicable puns: Suit, Brief, and Court: A Case Study

Alanna Okun

Humor & Satire Editor

W

inter break, as any college senior will tell you, is a crucial turning point in the school year. It’s a time for unbridled productivity, for applying to fellowships and cramming your (fabricated) resumé onto one page and untagging enough Facebook pictures to make it look like you’re a marginally worthwhile contributor to society or at least not a lumpen abuser of substances. If you’re writing a thesis, it’s the perfect time to hole up at your local library, where you can research methods of pudding-making in the Victorian era while ogling high school lacrosse players taking practice SATs. Even underclassmen can find positive ways to use their free month, by applying to summer internships at their dad’s college roommate’s law firm or building huts someplace unpronounceable.

So what did I do with my break? Is that even a question? Words with Friends, fools.

If you don’t have a phone, Facebook account or working set of eyes and ears, you might not have heard of this new phenomenon. It’s an interactive game with rules 100 percent cribbed from Scrabble, and you can play against virtually anyone you want. I’ve opted only to play with my actual real-life friends and people who I at one point or another made out with, but you can also choose to compete against a random opponent. Apparently a now-married couple in Chicago met this way. Kind of puts your latest grinding-to-Avicii-in-the-half-empty-Villard-Room hookup to shame, riiight?

The game has been around for a few years but it didn’t pick up such incredible steam among people I know until the past few months. No matter where you go at Vassar, be it drooling through your intro psych class or standing in line for chili at the Retreat, chances are someone in your line of sight is about to be plowed over by a tour group because they’re too busy getting lost in the narcissus of that seductive blue-and-yellow screen. It’s everywhere. We definitely need a new word to describe the situation that is being at a TA party unable to use the bathroom because some hapless loser is locked inside, sitting on the toilet, iPhone in hand, frantically trying to remember if it’s spelled “vied” or “vyed.”

I, and others like me, have been rationalizing this addiction the way you explain away any other unhealthy obsession: irrational perspective. “I MEAN OKAY FINE, IT’S

KIND OF BAD THAT I STAYED UP UNTIL SEVEN A.M. THE NIGHT BEFORE MY COG SCI EXAM TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO PLAY ‘DAZZLE’ OVER A TRIPLEWORD SCORE, BUT AT LEAST I’M NOT A PREGNANT HEROIN HOOKER.” And there is some truth in this; at least we’re playing a word game, right? It’s not like it’s one of those games where you have to machine-gun your way through a battalion of generically-foreign computer-generated opponents in order to lay claim to your rightful title as the Supreme Skyrim of the Call of the NBA or whatever.

We’re learning! We’re engaging in peaceful, stimulating competition! We’re all going to need prosthetic thumbs by 2014!

Words with Friends, in its way, feels oddly democratizing. You can play people from high school you haven’t spoken to since they tried to copy your ensayo during your AP Spanish exam; you can play people sitting in the same room as you. You can play eternal frenemies and recent exes, or your mom, or your weirdly computer-literate 82-year-old grandmother.

You’ll find yourself wondering about the meaning of the words played: Why did that quiet girl in your history seminar play “orgy” nowhere near a double-letter tile? What exactly does your housemate mean when he plays “dirty,” “slob” and “ewwwwwwww” one turn after the other? We’ve got some powerful new media at our fingertips. And fierce competition can come from unexpected places—certain English majors have been known to get their asses handed to them by certain math and WMST majors. There’s something comforting about the fact that everyone you know, no matter how many law schools they’ve been accepted to or how tiny their nose is, is at any given moment being spectacularly useless.

Who knows—maybe Words with Friends will put a stop to the recession. Maybe we’ll all graduate as endlessly intellectual, employable individuals, every last one of us armed with a full contingent of acceptable two-letter words.

Or maybe there’ll be a Deece riot when some jumped-up freshman plays “qi” for the fourth time like it’s an actual thing. At any rate, it’ll probably burn out just like any other fad. Come Founder’s Day we’ll all be huddled around our phones and laptops, still not speaking to one another and still neglecting our responsibilities, the only difference being the game we’re frittering our lives away for. My money’s on Hanging with Friends.

Weekly Calendar: 01/26-02/01 by Alanna Okun, Humor & Satire Editor Thursday, 1/26

Saturday, 1/28

3 p.m. Tea. “Oh my God, hi! How was your break? You went home to [suburb in Connecticut], right?” Rose Parlor.

11 p.m. Shiva Rave. A brief history of my Shiva Raves.

Freshman year: made out with the guy I would proceed to date for the next two-and-a-half years, left within 10 minutes. Sophomore year: urinary tract infection, left within 10 minutes. Junior year: fire hazard, shut down within 10 minutes. Senior year: better be at least 22 hours long to make up for all that lost time. Shiva.

Friday, 1/27 3 p.m. Tea. “Yeah, it was great! I saw all [single-digit number] friends I still have from high school, and we drank [brand of vodka named after a fake Russian word] and drove my [brand of minivan exclusively in the purview of soccer moms] to [fast-food chain]. Just like old times.” Rose Parlor.

5 p.m. JY Welcome Back. Oh look, it’s your lab partner you once tongue-kissed who you semi-pretended died! And that girl who lived on your hall freshmen year! Yep, she’s definitely wearing your boots she told you got stolen during a fire drill, and she definitely wore them all through Nepal.

Wait this event sucks. Villard Room.

10 p.m. Guilty Pleasures Mug Night. I don’t have any guilty pleasures. Now STFU and let me get back to pumicing my heels and watching the entire first season of Downton Abbey in one sitting. Mug.

Sunday, 1/29

me [weird endocrine disease].” Rose Parlor.

Tuesday, 1/31 3 p.m. Tea. “Aw, that’s too bad. Hope it’s cleared up. What classes are you taking? I’m in Deconstruction of [subject in the humanities] and thinking of declaring an [other subject in the humanities virtually indistinguishable from the first] major. I’m really nervous about my intro [soft science] class but my advisor says I can NRO it.” Rose Parlor.

11 a.m. Hug-a-Senior-Whose-Thesis-Draft-isDue-Tomorrow-Day. The 24-Hour Study Space/the THs/one of those dining rooms in the Deece that they begged an underclassman to swipe them into.

10 p.m. Trivia Night. Question #69: On a scale from one to boner-factory, where, objectively, does Jimmy Wales fall?

Mug.

4 p.m. The Superbowl. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. A field someplace.

3 p.m Tea. “Ooh, good luck with that. I’m taking a light load this semester so I can be in [play that’s definitely been performed here within the past twelve months but it’s okay because this time it’s *experimental*]. After all, I’m just a [freshman/sophomore/junior/college student]—I don’t need to have everything figured out yet!” “Preach.” Rose Parlor.

Monday, 1/30 3 p.m. Tea. “Nice. I visited my [noncommittal euphemism for “boyfriend”] in [foreign country where they mostly speak English]. It was really fun but I think the food gave

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Wednesday, 2/1

ARTS

Page 14

January 26 , 2012

FLLAC plays host to contemporary artist’s modern work Charlacia Dent Reporter

A

Pavel Shchyhelski/The Miscellany News

s Vassar College eagerly anticipates jazz bands, dance perfromances, muscial workshops and other artistic festivities this ModFest season, artist Marco Maggi asks that we take it slow.

In this 10-year anniversary celebration of contemporary arts, Maggi brings us Lentissimo (which, appropriately, means ‘slow’ in Italian). His new exhibition, located in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (FLLAC) until April 1, features 14 new imaginative works made from simple materials—found objects—that can easily be found laying around your house.

Maggi has transformed these common materials, such as reams of aluminum foil or old, discarded pairs of reading glasses, into abstract or even superficially mundane pieces of art. Unconventional in style and presentation, some of his featured artwork defies easy description and categorization in traditional fine art terms like “canvas painting.”

For example, he has one installation that consists of multiple blocks of copy paper stacked on the floor and arranged to span it. Amid his other unordinary work, Maggi carves geoemetric patterns into Plexiglass and mirrors. The scale of his featured artwork ranges from the minute and miniature to a 48-inch mirror. His range of materials and size, and implementation, is quite unique in itself.

It is quickly apparent that Maggi likes to feel his way through his materials, taking his time with their creation. He dissects everything, turns it inside-out, and slowly crafts

Above, visitors tour the galleries of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (FLLAC). The FLLAC is currently hosting an exhibition of works by artist Marco Maggi as part of this year’s ModFest celebrations. his works without concern for speed in its production.

“The quality of his work seems to contradict a lot of notions of art,” said Linda Weintraub, a critic, author and artist acting as the keynote lecturer for the opening reception.

“We like speed, but the proccess of his work is slow,” Weintraub continued. “He is proposing a very different tempo in his work than is known. He is requiring us to change the way we think about art.”

Maggi noted his subversive style is com-

pletely deliberate. “In order to do my work, you have to work slow. It is initimate and has a way of bringing you close,” said Maggi.

“When you see it, you don’t know if you’re looking at a large scale monument or a city, you lose your own perception of scale.” His work often has such an architectural aesthetic, with some pieces appearing like blueprints and schematics, for example.

“I love architecture. Right now I’m doing a series of famous buildings. I think that the middle ground between two and three dimen-

sions is my place to work,” Maggi explained.

“I really like the relationship between drawing and actually making something.”

In her two-part lecture, Weintraub’s goal was to first enumerate five different notions and habits in contemporary art culture to which Maggi presents a subversive alternative, such as Maggi opting to create his work slowly, with a deliberate inattention to speed.

In the second half, Weintraub will display various images that have been compared to Maggi’s artwork.

Weintraub, in fact, once taught Maggi as an art student at State University of New York at New Paltz. Maggi started creating art at a very young age and stopped for nearly 20 years before rediscovering his love for art as an adult. “I was very fond of him then, and saw loads of potential,” Weintraub said. “I am not surprised that his career has taken off so successfully.”

For this exhibit, Maggi teamed up with FLLAC Curator Mary-Kay Lombino to bring his artistic visions to the public. “Marco likes to do some of his own arranging. I made sure that he could come in the beginning to set those works,” Lombino said. “Everything is created for the space, and so we knew which works would be in the gallery.”

Lombino first became fascinated by Maggi’s work in 2001 when she organized a group exhibition that included some of his pieces.

She described his work back then as being very precise, abstract, and sometimes repetitive in his drawing.

“I’ve been following Marco’s work ever since...his work has changed a lot but my interest in him has grown because he has just gotten better,” Lombino said.

Melding design and urban study, Armborst paves the way Adam Buchsbaum Arts Editor

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Carlos Hernandez/The Miscellany News

here was a courtyard last summer in Long Island City. It was open to the air, with a small forest of trees, a long row of mirrors, a rock climbing wall, and chess boards. In October the park was dismantled, and its goods sent to local community members.

The park, entitled Holding Pattern, is the winner of the annual Young Architects Program, a prestigous prize seen as the bellwether for the field of architecture. Assistant Professor of Art and Urban Studies Tobias Armborst, with his firm Interboro Partners, realized this very project. Sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, the goal of the annual award is to conceive of and build a summer-long outdoor recreational space at MoMA PS1’s space in Long Island City.

Entrants deliver detailed portfolios to a panel, and the chosen winner builds the installation, which is free and open to the public all summer. But at the end of each summer, the contents are typically removed and junked.

“The question of a temporary project always will be, with all this building afterwards, do you throw this all out? It’s not very sustainable,” Armborst said. “We thought to design a structure that you can entirely recycle in a really direct way.” In turn, Interboro talked with about a hundred different community organizations throughout Long Island City, asking them what they needed. Interboro fetched or made all these goods and placed them within their park. “[We] basically stored them in the courtyard over the summer.”

The presence of these requested goods spurred residents that typically don’t go to the site to visit, and so encouraged mingling among the community. Over the summer, many community members even put on events in the space. “That’s what exciting to me,” Armborst said. “How you can use architecture to set up these social relationships.”

When the summer ended, and the park was dismantled, all the goods were sent to the community members who originally asked for them. The ballet school for children received its mirrors, the daycare center its rock climbing walls, and the local Teamsters chapter its trees. Even the cab drivers for Checker Management now have a new ping-pong table and chess table. The project went very well, and its team included many current and former Vassar

students.

“Designing and constructing an innovative project like this under a very tight schedule requires a motivated team,” Armborst wrote in an emailed statement. “This collaboration is what I enjoyed most about the project.”

Armborst founded Interboro Partners after graduating from urban design school with three other classmates. “We started out as a group of friends who enjoyed working together and discussing urbanism in grad school, and we wanted to continue that work and that discourse after graduation,” Armborst stated.

“This is how we started, and this is also how we selected projects: Just doing projects—design, writing, etc.—that [were] interesting to us. Our work is broadly about using design to visualize issues and to solve problems.”

The group began to enter competitions, winning many of them and receiving commissions.

It soon evolved into a professional practice, but retained the educative quality. “It’s an unusual practice,” Armborst said. Sometimes, Interboro simply designs and implements plans as its clientele requests, like making a master plan for the city of Newark or studying a garment center’s architecture, but sometimes the firm also conducts research alone, from grant money or for its own interest. “It’s right at the edge of professional architectural work and more academic research,” Armborst explained.

Armborst has long been interested in urban design, and the potentially difficult navigation of urban space. “I was always fascinated by cities because in an architectural object you have a control of the design, the building environments, together with your client,” Armborst said. “But once you look at the city there are some processes and phenomenas going on you don’t have control over—so to design in that environment always takes an engagement.”

The city by its very nature demands concessions and stirs conflict on its architectures.

Space must contend with its neighbors and problems both large and small—from how to protect park-goers from the sun to preventing graffiti on buildings. This complexity, and the subsequent need to adapt, is what fascinates Armborst. “As long as I remember I wanted to be an architect,” Armborst wrote.

Outside of PS1, the firm has recently been investigating the phenomena of naturallyoccurring retirement communities. Armborst

Assistant Professor of Art and Urban Studies Tobias Armborst, pictured above, worked with his firm Interboro Partners to create Holding Pattern, an award-winning park installation for MoMA PS1. explained the phenomena: essentially, senior citizens move into a space and make it a de facto retirement community, by virtue of their presence alone. Given grant funding, Interboro interviewed one such de facto community’s residents and organizers to understand its inception and nature—which, hopefully, will provide insight into future developments of retirement communities.

Armborst currently teaches both urban studies classes—which investigate issues of urban planning, its past and current practice, and other explorations of the city space—and art classes focusing on architectural design. “My goal is to foster a broad approach to design as a generally useful method of thinking about and

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

engaging with the physical environment,” Armborst wrote in an emailed statement. “In the context of a liberal arts education, the goal of an architecture course has to be broader than educating architects.”

Armborst hopes students learn not only to think, communicate, and shape spaces with diagrams and maps, but to truly go beyond design’s potential boundaries.

Armborst elaborated, “I am convinced that architectural design in a liberal arts college— and specifically at Vassar—has the obligation and the opportunity to be more expansive and more interdisciplinary than in a professional or pre-professional architecture program.”

January 26 , 2012

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Graves embraces performance in all forms Jack Owen

Assistant Arts Editor

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Celia Garrity/The Miscellany News

y grandma says I was always singing,” said Jada Graves ’14 with a laugh. “When I was little I joined a choir and praise group at my church, and that’s when I really realized how much I love to sing.” She began acting at a young age too. “I started theater in sixth grade,” she explained. “I was halfway through conditioning for basketball when I decided to audition for ‘Annie,’ and I got cast and never looked back.”

Graves, a mezzo-soprano and Drama major, has continued to explore her passion for performance while at Vassar. She has always been especially drawn to musical theater, because it combines her two loves of singing and acting.

Through Vassar’s student musical theater organization, Future Waitstaff of America (FWA), Graves has further explored both of them them simultaneously. She played a supporting role in FWA’s “The Wild Party” last year, was in the ensemble for FWA’s “Reefer Madness” and just starred last fall semester in Philaletheis’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” She also engages in the technical side of production, working on the lighting crew for the Drama Department.

“I’ve found that no matter my role I always enjoy working in shows,” said Graves. “Being a part of the ensemble can be great because you have to create your own character to be noticed, which can be very challenging,” she continued.

Similarly, Graves enjoys working out of her comfort zone. “‘For Colored Girls’ was a really difficult piece for me because I am used to doing comedy and it was one of the few serious pieces I’ve done,” she said. “Since it dealt with important issues of race and controversy, I found it to be a really fulfilling experience.” “For Colored Girls” is a 1975 experimental play that discusses the struggles and obstacles faced by African-American women throughout their lives, and went on to be nominated for the 1977 Tony Award for Best Play. Graves played the role of one of the female leads.

Graves said that she loves to hop into another character because it ultimately allows her to better understand herself.

Spring is in bloom at Vassar, despite hurricane force winds which struck campus on Tuesday.

Spring is in bloom at Vassar, despite hurricane force winds which struck Despite her love for the theater, Graves most enjoys her experience singing with one of Vassar’s oldest co-ed a capella groups, Matthew’s Minstrels. “I love the Minstrels! It’s the highlight of my week,” she said. “There is just such a sense of family and community, and whenever I’m trying to figure out what to do I always feel like I have this great support system of people to go to.”

Graves performs solos for the Minstrels’ rendition of Whitney Houston’s classic hit, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).” Known for incorporating comedy into their shows, the Minstrels have a fun and zany approach to music that Graves appreciates.

“I love how wacky it is but we still get stuff done,” Graves said. “[The Minstrels] made my freshmen year, and have made my Vassar experience a great one,” she added.

Along with Whitney Houston, Graves looks to other powerhouse performers in pop and musical theater for inspiration. “One artist I really appreciate is Christina Aguilera, and she has a kick ass voice whether you like it or not,” she said with a chuckle. “And of

course Beyoncé is just fierce.” Graves’ favorite Broadway superstars include Bernadette Peters and Idina Menzel, to name only a few.

Graves enjoys a variety of genres though, beyond just pop icons. “I sing anything. I can’t get enough show tunes. I like pop, rap and even country, which is a new development,” Graves said. “I like it all, whether I sound good on it all is a different question,” she said, laughing.

Graves is also working on a certificate of education and would consider working in an arts studio. Still, she is clearly not at all daunted at the future and its prospects.

“There are so many things I could be doing that I’m not too concerned,” Graves said.

When asked what she plans to do postgraduation, Graves shot a playful smile and said, “Well what actor wouldn’t love to act, wouldn’t love to perform?” Graves feeds off the energy of her audience. “Sometimes audiences don’t realize how much impact they have in a show,” she said. “If the audience is enjoying the show, I enjoy it a lot more because I don’t only do it for myself. I like entertaining people.”

Film screening to feature student shorts Emma Daniels Reporter

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Begin your weekend with two classic films by director George Stevens. On Jan 27, his film A Place in the Sun will screen; on Jan 29, his film Shane will screen. A discussion will follow each screening.

Split Infinitive: The work of Joel Carreiro and Brian Wood Hudson Opera House February 12th, 12 p.m. - 5 p.m.

If you’ve had enough Mill Street Loft fare, try the Opera House. Featuring the work of two artists, both works while seemingly different in imagery both explore similar themes— an uneasy tension between figures and the abstract, the real and the imagined. They invite their viewer to further delve in and seek understanding.

Senior Project Exhibition Gallery 45 Mill Street Loft Opening Reception on February 4th, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m.

On display and open from February 4th to March 18th, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Free Instead of seeing Mill Street Loft’s artwork in the Palmer Gallery’s Teen Visions exhibit, why not come to Gallery 45? Located in Poughkeepsie, the light and spacious loft features artwork year-round. Come see what the Loft’s seniors have been up to.

Live Nation presents Brian Regan Ulster Performing Arts Center February 12th 7 p.m. $38.50 Brian Regan, a premiere stand-up comedian, will perform his signature brand of comedy before a live audience. He has been touring non-stop since 2005, having visited 80 cities already.

Courtesy of vimeo.com

he film starts with ominous music, and depicts a bleak but beautiful landscape. The screen shifts and the title “The Thing in the Lake” appears. As the black-and-white short film continues, it artfully details a scientist’s descent into madness.

This is but one film exhibited as part of Modfest, which includes screenings of original student short films for the first time this year.

Inspired by the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, it was made by Vassar students: Harrison Brody, ’12, stars, Eric Schuman ’12 did the cinematography, and Tim O’Connor ’12 wrote, directed, and produced the piece.

The Vassar Filmmakers Club and the Film Majors’ Committee co-hosted and organized the event, slated for Jan. 31 at 8 p.m. in Rockefeller Hall. Vice President of Filmmakers Club Patricia Cruz ’12, co-Presidents Eric Schuman ’12 and O’Connor, and co-Chair of the Film Major’s Committee Cassie Gomes ’12 evaluated submissions to screen for the upcoming event.

While the Film Department does screen junior and senior films at the end of each school year, and the Filmmakers organize a screening at year’s end too, both groups supported the event. “We’re doing the event to further the reception and exposure for student films around campus,” said Schuman.

There are no rules for entry, other than a the film must be five-ten minutes. “We want to make the requirements as limited as possible,” noted Schuman, “so really anyone can participate.”

The event will last about an hour to an our and half, and conclude with a question and answer period by a panel composed of members

Film Series Hyde Park Free Library Janunary 27th, 7:15 p.m.

Free

The Vassar Filmmakers Club and the Film Majors’ Committee will screen short films made by Vassar students on Jan. 31 at 8 p.m., including Mamma’s Gift by Eric Schuman ’12, pictured above. of the Vassar Filmmakers Club and the Film Majors’ Committee, along with the featured filmmakers themselves. “This provides an opportunity for anyone to ask questions about how the filmmakers did what they did,” explained Schuman.

Not all the films set to screen are as spooky as O’Connor’s. Schuman directed, wrote and produced “Mama’s Gift,” a completely silent film that traces the arc of a blind girl who gains sight through surgery—but doesn’t want it. The film adopts an expressionist style where mood and inner emotion warp and affect the reality on-screen.

The event planners hope to bring students

interested in film together with the event.

Though students may form bonds before beginning film production their junior year, few outlets asides from Filmmakers Club provide a chance for kindred spirits to congregate.

Joe Lovizio ’14, a film major, noted, “Because I haven’t started taking production classes yet, I have limited interaction with other filmmakers on campus. This event seems like a pretty cool way to interact with other Vassar film students.”

ModFest founder Adene Wilson ’69 concurred. “Each year we find that Modfest provides a special opportunity for students in each of the disciplines to share their work with one another,” Wilson said.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Reading by Cynthia Link Merrit Bookstore January 28th, 2 p.m.

Free After checking out this independent bookstore, listen to Cynthia Link read from her collection of short stories, “Cracks in the Earth.”

Link helped found the Brewster Round Table for writers. Four of her plays, two being adapted from her very own short stories, were selected to be read by the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Mystery Book Discussion January 30th, 11 a.m. - 12 p.m.

Free The Friends of the Poughkeepsie Public Library District will continue its ongoing mystery book discussions. The books feature amateur detectives sleuthing and gumshoeing in the United States and Britain. This month’s book is “The Windsor Knot” by Sharyn McCrumb, the fifth book in the Elizabeth MacPherson mystery series.

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January 26 , 2012

Modfest Local swing dancing rocks VC Campus event spurs A debate Shruti Manian Reporter

Campus Canvas

Courtesy of Glenn Katzen

POETRY continued from page 1 was particularly excited about the event’s inclusion of Hebrew, a language that had not been featured in previous ModFest readings. He hopes that Hebrew will remain an important part of Vassar’s foreign language curriculum.

“The event is important because it gives stage to the Hebrew language and allows those of us who study Hebrew to have an audience,” Kopit said. Kopit explained that the hardest part of preparing for the event was training his four students to read clearly and articulately, and to pronounce every word correctly.

Kopit enabled his students to formulate their own interpretations of the poems they read, using their very own poetry. However, allowing that much creative control proved a formidable task for his students.

Maintaining a poem’s formal integrity—its sounds, flow, and meaning, for exampe—after any translation is a difficult task, even for the most seasoned of translators. For this reason, German Language Fellow Eva Hansel approached translation as a lively and collaborative enterprise, rather than a solitary exercise.

Hansel argued that spirited debate and discussion among student translators with competing opinions was crucial to the translation process and its ultimate result.

“What makes translation better, more interesting, is when you have more than one opinion,” Hansel said.

At her instruction, Hansel’s students worked together translating each of their poems. With certain works, students decided that the poem’s meter and rhythm were more important to maintain than the rhyme; with other poems, they concluded the exact opposite. But whatever the outcome, each translated poem was a collective effort.

Hansel’s presentation focused on urban life during the Weimar Republic. While students read their poems aloud, scenes from Walter Ruttmann’s 1927 film “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” were projected on the wall behind them. The film coincides, chronologically, with each of the poems that Hansel selected for her students, and also illustrated many of the same facets of urban life discernable inside the very poems: the anonymity, curiosity and excitement of big cities.

According to Hansel, the poems may address similar themes, but many of them are remarkably different from each other in mood and tone and style. Some poems are enthusiastic and expressive, others melancholic and others sarcastic. Retaining these distinctive moods in the translated versions of the poems was as challenging and painstaking a task as it was crucial and rewarding.

Wilson initiated ModFest 10 years ago, in the hopes of instilling a feeling of pride in Vassar’s varied and active arts programs.

After retiring from teaching in 2002, Wilson began taking courses in Vassar’s German Studies Department, where she became acquainted with several students and language fellows in this process. She decided that a collaborative poetry project would prove not only worthwhile, but also immensely helpful for students hoping to achieve fluency in a foreign language.

“This is my gift to Vassar as an alum,” wrote Wilson in an emailed statement. Wilson believed that the poetry readings and translations have been a great success in years past, and expected such a strong event to continue to do well.

“It was such a success that I didn’t want to do it again right away the next year,” Wilson noted. “It was like a movie that was so intense and strong in your mind afterward that you don’t want to watch it again for a while.”

Though, luckily for students, they will surely watch it again in next year’s performance.

t 8 p.m. last Wednesday, I decided to make the trek across campus to the Aula and find out what PoTown Swing—a swing dancing club hosted at the Aula every Wednesday—was all about. PoTown Swing was founded in 2007

by Glenn Katzen, who began swing dancing as a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. “I wanted to try something different, something that was not related to the technical world. Also this was an opportunity to meet new people,” said Katzen.

So when Katzen moved to Pougkeepsie to pursue a job at IBM, he missed swing dancing and decided to start PoTown Swing. “A lot of technical people are inclined to music and I had an attraction to the dance itself, because the atmosphere facilitates and encourages people to meet each other and interact,” he said.

In the summer of 2007, PoTown Swing began at a café called the Muddy Cup on Main Street, Poughkeepsie. People from all over Poughkeepsie or nearby would gather there to unwind after a busy week and try their hand at swing dancing. PoTown Swing came to Vassar in 2009, when the Muddy Cup closed. With the assistance of a Vassar Administration member who frequented PoTown Swing, Katzen began to utilize the Aula on the Vassar campus to host the event.

“The space is unbeatable, there is nothing like it,” said Katzen about the Aula. Besides being spacious, the Aula also opens up PoTown Swing to members of the Vassar community.

“Vassar students don’t leave campus that often, but there are so many talented dancers here.

PoTown Swing gives them the chance to learn and have fun in a unique and truly social environment.”

Much to my surprise, by the time we were done talking, the Aula was packed with people.

It was, after all, the first day of classes and surely everyone was still in break mode. Yet many students were willing to trudge over to the Aula in the middle of this freezing night. Enthusiastic dancers from Poughkeepsie and Vassar were all there and ready to start dancing.

President of Vassar’s Ballroom Dancing Club Mrinmayee Patil ’12, is a weekly fixture at PoTown Swing. “Coming to PoTown Swing is like stress relief to me. It’s fun, almost like playtime for adults. I don’t know why I love it, just that I do. I can’t imagine not coming here once a week,” said Patil.

Above, students and Poughkeepsie residents jump and jive at a PoTown Swing, held.in the Aula every Wednesday beginning at 8 p.m. Founded in 2007 by Glenn Katzen, the event moved to Vassar in 2009.

Patil emphasized how this is the perfect avenue for a beginner. “This is such a supportive group of people. You don’t have to worry about making a fool out of yourself. Also once you master the basic step, it’s hard to go wrong, which is what makes beginners stick with it,” said Patil.

PoTown Swing and Vassar Ballroom Dancing Club collaborate in numerous ways. The Ballroom Club helps Katzen reserve spaces and throw joint events. Katzen offers a connection to the larger community. Last April, PoTown Swing had an ensemble called the Big Blue Band come and play for their dancers. And for a club with a small budget, it is amazing that Vassar Ballroom can have dancers as skilled as Katzen come and teach a few classes. While the class is great for beginners it also has a considerable number of advanced dancers who are happy to share their expertise.

“This is something that is open to dancers of all levels of expertise: all you need to do is come,” said Patil.

Katzen leads the class with a 30 minute beginner lesson. As he teaches everyone the basic steps, he insists that people move around and switch partners so they can meet as many new people as possible.

A weekly space highlighting the creative pursuits of student-artists

W

hile I was walking around my neighborhood I found these old cabinet doors that were left out on the street. I took them home, and drew this on one of them. I’m constantly looking out for objects that inspire me, and I especially love working in mixed media and unconventional materials.

I’m like an alchemist—I’m constantly surprised at what I can create with two foreign elements. In this case, it was the permanency and elasticity of the marker on the treated wood that was especially intriguing.

As for my subject matter, I rely on imagery from my dreams and symbols that are important to me. When I try to depict whatever is in my head, I find I create deeper meaning for my personal mythologies. The act of creation is an exploration, and visa versa.

The bird-woman is in the act of transformation. The shape of the feathers take over her body, because on a technical level that’s what my markers were prone to do on the wood surface. A cabinet door is a door into the subconscious where these images reside.

This is an idea I’m interested in exploring further, although like most of my work, this piece was spontaneous and not pre-meditated.

—Quinn Milton ’14

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

“Don’t say no when someone asks you to dance, be nice,” said Katzen as he began his lesson. For the next half an hour, an even split of Vassar students and Poughkeepsie residents mixed and mingled. “I really wouldn’t have it any other way because this [mixing] helps us keep a lot of the flair we get here,” said Patil.

When I switched partners, I met Josh Gilbert, an IBM employee who is trying his hand at swing dancing for the first time. “My girlfriend does this professionally, and I know next to nothing about it. This seems to be a fun way to learn,” he said, as we tried not to step on each others’ toes and grasp the nuances of the novel dance. Katzen was reassuring. “The best part about swing of course is that once you master the fairly simple basic, there is so much you can do from there,” said Katzen.

The most impressive thing about PoTown Swing is that by 9 p.m., while I scribble in my notebook, almost everyone else continues to dance the night away. Constant laughter and the buzz of conversation intersperses the dancing as Poughkeepsie residents and Vassar students alike converse and get to know each other through their shared joy of dancing.

“You just need to come ready to dance, smile and be fearless,” said Patil.

submit to misc@vassar.edu

January 26, 201

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Tesfaye delivers another solid record Sam Plotkin

Guest Columnist

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hat do you get when you combine soulful R&B vocals and electronic beats with an authentic artistic vision? You might get Michael Jackson, or you might get Abel Tesfaye, better known by the stage name The Weeknd.

The budding Internet superstar had a breakthrough year in 2011. Tesfaye self-released his first album House of Balloons in March. His second, Thursday, dropped in August and he released his latest album, entitled Echoes of Silence, on Dec. 21. All three albums, which form a trilogy, can be downloaded for free from his website.

With three nine-track albums released in less than one year, The Weeknd is easily one of the most prolific young artists on the R&B scene. Recently featured in tracks by hip-hop superstars Drake and Lupe Fiasco, The Weeknd is quickly making a name for himself, and will mostly likely have a new release in 2012.

The Weeknd has a very uniquely modern sound. While the new album Echoes of Silence is similar to his earlier two releases, though perhaps a little darker, The Weeknd’s sound overall has a distinctively contemporary quality in that it uses electronic sounds that initially might seem detached, but actually create a deeply emotional mood.

The album employs very thick, percussive beats juxtaposed with soft, almost ambient background instrumentals to produce a dark but gripping presence. The Weeknd utilizes a vocal style reminiscent of Usher or other Top 40 R&B artists. Combined with such in-

tense beats and instrumentals, however, the music gains a command of mood that few other artists can rival.

The central draw of the music is Tesfaye’s soulful voice. Although auto-tune is used, it is done tastefully and in moderation. In addition to an impressive vocal performance, the beats backing the tracks are usually thick and syncopated, providing additional emotional strength. It is worth noting that there are no real dance-inducing beats here; The Weeknd’s music goes for pure emotion over dance-ability every time, unless you enjoy very slow, intense dancing. Although, it wouldn’t be at all odd if a few dance remixes show up on YouTube of songs like “Initiation” or “Outside.”

In terms of songwriting, the album certainly serves its purpose of delivering some heavily emotional material, but it is lyrically weak at times. The Weeknd uses the words “baby” and “girl” are used to an annoying extent. Getting past the minor clichés though, The Weend succeeds in his attempt to create a series of intense love-themed songs that will entrance anyone who is willing to sit through the 45-minute album (an impressive length for nine tracks).

The best, and most intense song on the album is “Next.” In addition to using actual piano parts instead of the synthesized/ electronic instruments used on most other tracks, it has a harmony in the chorus that utilizes the ever-popular minor fall to induce some powerful emotions, along with a quasinarrative lyrical theme of a girl who doesn’t know what she wants.

Some other notable tracks include “Same

Old Song,” which is a good track despite its almost rock-like bassline (it can be a little bit repetitive) and “XO/The Host,” which is also the name of The Weeknd’s street team, the XO Crew. The latter features a bluesy guitar in the distant background that offers some soul to the instrumentals in addition to that of the vocals. “Initiation,” also a very strong track, is worth noting for its extremely onedge atmosphere and faster tempo. The album opener, “D.D.,” is actually a cover of the Michael Jackson hit “Dirty Diana,” which The Weeknd makes his own by through his use of ambient electronic instrumentals instead of the bombastic ’80s guitar that enveloped the original version. The vocals are actually quite similar to the King of Pop’s version, as Tesfaye’s voice has a similar register.

Overall, Echoes of Silence is a solid release for a 21-year old singer, especially considering it is his third in a single year. It almost seems like he was saving the best for last.

What really sets The Weeknd apart from his genre, aside from a fairly original sound and some French lyrics in “Montreal,” is that this album feels like he wrote it as an album, and not a series of singles to be released individually. That is something that warrants respect for an artist whose genre typically aims for radio play.

Luckily for The Weeknd, it is possible in 2012 to build a massive fan base with a Facebook page and a few free downloads. Did I mention that Echoes of Silence and both of the other full-lengths by The Weeknd are available for free download on his website?

For Echoes of Silence, The Weeknd gets four out of five stars.

“Perry.”

Nicole Bronson ’13

“A podcast ‘Heart and Soul’ by the BBC.”

Alexandra Codina ’12

“‘Throwing Shade,’ with Brian Safi and Erin Gibson.”

Jay Louik ’14

Tintin provides a delightful adventure Erik Lorenzsonn Senior Editor

I

t’s painful to have to criticize a childhood idol, but the awful truth is that Tintin is a total RINO—a reporter in name only. When you look at some journalistic peers like Bill Moyers, Dorothy Parker and Seymour Hersh, they all have a track record of, well, actually reporting. The young journalist for the Belgian newspaper Le XXe Siècle, however, lets all things reportorial fall by the wayside.

Instead, his beat is more geared towards biplane dogfights, scaling the Himalayas in search of the Yeti, searching for buried treasure in the Antilles and busting opium rackets, all with the aide of a tenacious fox terrier and a crusty sea captain. Journalistic?

Hardly.

Totally badass? Absolutely.

And now, after thirty years of simmering on Steven Spielberg’s backburner, the beloved, cowlicked comic strip character created in 1927 by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé has made his American debut on the silver screen in “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.” In his inaugural outing, Tintin finds himself thrust into what for him has become pretty humdrum: biplanes and buried treasure for starters, and then mysterious and shadowy Gothic manors, a pirate’s curse, a trek across the dunes of the Sahara, a motorcycle chase scene across the rooftops of a Moroccan port city, and swashbuckling duels with both swords and industrial-sized cranes.

The plot tying these episodes together deals with a vast conspiracy about an innocuous-seeming model ship purchased by Tintin in the film’s exposition; it turns out the model contains a centuries-old scroll written in enigmatic code, the meaning of which Tintin endeavors to discover.

He consequently trots the globe to snoop for answers, ducking the talons of a sinister

rival and receiving help from a wee white pooch named Snowy. He also finds a comrade in Captain Haddock, an ever-inebriated mariner who is an absolute riot thanks to his superlatively salty antics. In short, adventures abound.

When I first heard about the film in May, I flipped, and made (sadly unfulfilled) plans to camp outside the Poughkeepsie Galleria theater in a blue sweater and khaki trousers like my hero until tickets were made available.

As it turns out, I would have been chillin’ by the Famous Footwear on my lonesome; most Tintinologists (Yup, Tintinology is a thing— Google it) did not share my enthusiasm for the project in the least.

They instead brimmed with skepticism; Spielberg was treading upon sacred ground by transmuting the sacred ligne claire art style of the Tintin comics—which emphasizes two-dimensionality and heavy lines— into the kitschy realm of 3D motion-capture.

Besides, Tintin is perfect in cartoon-form; why muck up the fun with a potential dud of a movie?

My take: I get where you’re coming from, guys, and I feel the passion, but come on— it’s Spielberg. If there’s anyone you can trust with Tintin, this is the dude. Hergé, who became a national hero in Belgium for authoring the Tintin comics, felt the same way about the filmmaker, and made a point to see every movie Spielberg released. He wrote a note regarding Spielberg before his death in 1983: “If anyone can bring Tintin successfully to the screen, it is this young American film director.”

Spielberg got the rights to a movie after Hergé passed, and stuck it in his back pocket until Peter Jackson unveiled the technological potential of action-adventure with Lord of the Rings. And after some budgetary snafus and release date delays, boom: the Tintin movie is here and happenin’.

And as I watched this Saturday-morningserial modeled, my belief that Spielberg would do good by Tintinologists everywhere was confirmed: The Secret of the Unicorn captures the spunky spirit of the comics to a tee. Sure, the movie’s use of motion capture is a far cry from ligne claire. That said, the quintessence of each character is conveyed perfectly by the 3D-generated bodies, which act and look the part.

Tintin is still the straight-shooting, bland and Boy Scout-like protagonist. The Thompsons are still the completely inane bowlerwearing twin detectives without a clue. Haddock is still a grumpy, growling giant with a heart of gold and a nose of epic proportions.

And Snowy is same ol’ comic canine with a penchant for saving the day (unless a mouthwatering bone is distracting him).

The one thing I was nervous for was the experience of viewing the movie in 3D, something I had never done before. Somehow, the idea of having potpourri flying out at you from the screen just screamed “migraine-inducement.” But leave it to Spielberg to turn 3D into a palatable and enjoyment-enhancing experience. The 3D is used with commendable restraint: the most dramatic moment comes when the villain points a cane menacingly at the screen, which is more of a nice touch than a center-stage spectacle.

Other details really pop in 3D, such as when Tintin jumps into a haycart and it seems as if small motes of dust are dispersed into the air of the movie theater itself.

In sum, the 3D and motion-capture technology definitely makes its mark upon the final product, and thankfully it is for the better and not the worse.

But if you’ll excuse me, I actually have a Misc article-assignment to attend to. Now where on earth did I leave those ocean-liner tickets to Aruba and that dratted pith helmet and machete? Hmmmm.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

“Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’”

Anu Sopeyin ’15

“Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald’s music .”

Felix Ackerman ’15

“Nas.”

Ahmed Sanda ’15

—Adam Buchsbaum Arts Editor

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January 26 , 2012

Peyton still Volleyball welcomes new coach, six frosh the better W Manning Jesse Hartman Reporter

Andy Sussman Columnist

ow that the New York Giants are a game away from winning their second Super Bowl in five years, sportswriters such as Bill Simmons and Rick Reilly have brought up the possibility that perhaps Giants quarterback Eli Manning will end up having a better career than his older brother, Peyton. The argument in favor of Eli goes along these lines: The 35year old Peyton Manning, who missed the entire 2011 season due to his third neck surgery in two years, has not ruled out retirement.

Meanwhile, Eli Manning, who just turned 31, is completely healthy, was elected to the Pro Bowl this season and is one victory away from having won more Super Bowls than Peyton.

However, any examination that lasts for more than 15 seconds makes it abundantly clear that while Eli Manning is a very good quarterback, Peyton Manning is one of the greatest of all time.

The idea that Eli could eclipse Peyton represents a classic case of “What have you done for me lately?” Since Peyton did not play all season and his Indianapolis Colts were the worst team in the NFL, it is easy to minimize the 13 seasons before, when he never missed a game and put up positively legendary numbers each season. Since Peyton began his career six years before Eli, it makes more sense to compare their statistics versus their peers rather than merely against one another.

In each of Eli’s first four seasons, he posted a below-average passer rating, yards per attempt and completion percentage. Only in his past four seasons can he be viewed as an above-average starting quarterback. Upon examination of the elder Manning, however, we get a different picture entirely. For 12 consecutive full seasons of work, Peyton amassed an above-average number of adjusted yards per attempt, completion percentage, touchdown percentage and passer rating, while throwing interceptions and getting sacked less than an average quarterback. That is dominance of which we see only among the elite quarterbacks, such as Tom Brady and Joe Montana.

However, the regular season is only part of the comparison, and Eli’s supporters will happily point out Peyton’s perceived struggles in the playoffs in contrast to the two times Eli has willed his inferior team to the Super Bowl thus far in his career. How true are either of these claims, however? In 10 career playoff games, Eli Manning has thrown for 16 touchdowns and eight interceptions with a 59.8 percent completion rating and 222 yards per game. Conversely, in Peyton Manning’s 18 career playoff games, he has thrown for 28 touchdowns and 19 interceptions, completing 62.9 percent of his passes and averaging 287 passing yards per game. Those playoff numbers are comparable.

The idea that Eli Manning should be the only person recognized for taking two perceived underdog teams to the Super Bowl is far overblown. Yes, Eli certainly had a positive impact on the Giants in both postseasons, but he is not the reason that they won. For both of the New York Giants teams that have made the Super Bowl under Eli Manning, they had an elite pass rush on defense that helped them rattle opposing quarterbacks. The idea that, if the Giants defeat the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, Eli Manning will have “won” more Super Bowls than his older brother may technically be true but is also highly misleading.

It takes away from the efforts of the other 52 players on the roster.

Any athlete in a team sport’s success should be viewed from the prism of how much he or she helped the team try to win. Another Super Bowl victory for Eli Manning does not make up for eight seasons of far superior play by his older brother when viewing the two against one another. The idea that we can project greatness from an active player in his peak makes us forget those who have actually achieved that greatness for an extended period of time.

Cassady Bergevin/The Miscellany News

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ith eight players returning, six incoming freshmen and a new head coach, the Vassar men’s volleyball team will combine veterans and newcomers in an attempt to improve on last year’s fourth place United Volleyball Conference (UVC) finish. After being knocked out of the North East Collegiate Volleyball Association (NECVA) tournament in the first round, the Brewers enter 2012 with their confidence unscathed. “If we play together as a team, I am confident we can beat any team,” wrote outside hitter Matt Elgin ’13 in an emailed statement.

The Brewers graduated just one player from last year’s team, Evan Fredericksen ’11 who led the United Volleyball Conference in kills and claimed first team all-UVC honors in the process.

An additional element of intrigue for the upcoming season is the arrival of first-year Head Coach Robert Wolter. Wolter comes to Vassar after three seasons of being an assistant men’s and women’s volleyball coach at Carthage College in Wisconsin. He aided the program to a 23-11 record and a second consecutive third place finish in the Molten Invitational National Championship at the Division III level.

Wolter has considerable talent to help him build on last year’s successes and continue to win in the UVC. With eight letter-winners returning from last year’s team and six starters, the Brewer men will look to improve on last year’s fourth-place finish. 2011 Honorable Mention All-Conference players Christian La Du ’13 and Matthew Elgin ’13 will lead the defense and offense, respectively. Elgin praised La Du’s skills in an emailed statement, writing, “Christian La Du is one of the most talented defensive players I have ever played with, and he will anchor our defense and serve receive.”

The upperclassmen believe the six freshmen will find their place in this tight-knit team. “Having such a small team last year re-

Men’s volleyball player Christian La Du ’13, right, converses with his teammates during practice. With new Head Coach Robert Wolter, the men’s volleyball team hopes to improve on last year’s results. ally strengthened our team bond, because if we wanted to get anything done in practice no one could slack off,” La Du wrote in an emailed statement. “Everyone had to be working hard for us to have a productive practice, and as a result we became a team with a relentless work ethic and very open communication.” Last year’s adversity will only help this year’s squad.

“Bringing back eight returners with that type of relationship has really helped us incorporate such a big freshman class, and we have been able to carry over the lessons we learned last year,” wrote La Du. While La Du will anchor the defense, and Elgin the attack, John Konow ’13 will launch the attacks from the setter position, after finishing last year with an average of 9.67 assists per set.

Wrote Elgin, “Konow is an incredibly athletic setter with great hands. He has been the start-

ing setter for the past two seasons, and knows strategy and offensive systems better than anyone else on the team.” Lucas Rathjens ’12 (190), as well as juniors Charlie Caldwell (159) and Patrick Donohue (151) finished third, fourth and fifth, respectively, on the team in kills last year and will complement Elgin in attack. Caldwell has already done just that, leading the team in kills in each of the first two matches. Caldwell notched 16 kills in a 3-1 loss to Ramapo College and another nine in a 3-0 victory over Philadelphia Biblical University.

After splitting their first two matches, the Brewers hold a 1-1 record, but the team is looking outside of wins and losses to define success.

La Du wrote, “Regardless of our record this year, I’m confident this season will be a success because of the consistent effort and positive attitudes demonstrated so far.

Sports Calendar: 01/26-02/02

by Corey Cohn, Sports Editor Friday, Jan. 27

Saturday, Jan. 28

6 p.m. Women’s Basketball vs. St. Lawrence University

1 p.m. Women’s Swimming and Diving vs.

New York University (Senior Day)

The 9-6 Brewers continue Liberty League play against the first-place Saints, who enter with a 12-4 record. This matchup pits the top two preseason favorites to win the conference; St. Lawrence edged Vassar in a poll conducted by the nine Liberty League head coaches prior to the 2011-2012 tip-off.

These teams last met in last season’s Liberty League semifinals, where the Brewers came out on top 59-47 en route to their first-ever conference championship. Captain Brittany Parks ’12 had a great all-around game with 16 points, seven rebounds, six assists and three steals while Hannah Senftleber ’13 contributed 14 points, seven rebounds and two blocked shots.

At halftime, there will be a special ceremony to honor the distinguished female athletes from the Fall 2011 season.

Vassar will oppose New York University during the final home meet of the season.

The team will also take time to acknowledge its four graduating seniors: Captain Amelia Couture, Captain Felicia Hansell, Christie Musket and Caroline Shannon.

Couture recently set a Vassar record at the Seven Sisters Championships, posting a score of 339.55 in the one-meter diving event. In December, Hansell recorded a lifetime-best mark in the 200-yard breaststroke, timing in at 2:49.00 at the Liberty League Championships.

Musket set a Vassar record with a score of 244.19 with six dives in the three-meter diving event against cross-river rival State University of New York at New Paltz in November. Shannon, named Liberty League Swimmer of the Week for the week of Jan. 23, set a Seven Sisters record in the 200yard IM with a time of 2:14.58.

8 p.m. Men’s Basketball vs. St. Lawrence University

1 p.m. Men’s Swimming and Diving vs. New York University (Senior Day)

Following the women’s game, the Brewers’ and Saints’ male counterparts square off in the Athletics and Fitness Center. Vassar comes in at 6-9 while St. Lawrence boasts an 11-4 record. In their last matchup, on Feb. 4, 2011, the Saints emerged victorious, 77-56, led by a stifling defense that limited the Brewers to a shooting percentage barely above 35.

This season, Johnny Mrlik ’15 is leading the offensive charge, being the only Vassar player averaging double-digit points per game (12.1).

At halftime, there will be a special ceremony to honor the stand-out male athletes from the Fall 2011 season.

The men also have four seniors to honor during the last meet of the year: Max Bernard, Captain Ian Madison, Captain Jack Smart and Captain Greg Sullivan. Bernard set a lifetime-best time in the 100-yard butterfly during the Liberty League Championships, coming in at 59.24. Madison was part of a strong Vassar showing in the 200yard breaststroke during a recent loss to Trinity College, placing fifth with a time of 2:24.73.

Smart and Sullivan helped keep Vassar afloat against Montclair State University last week. Smart won the 200-yard IM (2:05.66) and came in second in the 100-yard freestyle (51.35), while Sullivan

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

smashed the pool record with a score of 476.30 in 11 dives in the one-meter event.

Sunday, Jan. 29 TBA Women’s Squash at Smith College, vs.

William Smith College

The women’s squash team looks to start a new streak as they travel to Northampton, Mass. for a tri-match against host Smith and William Smith Colleges. The Brewers started the season 4-0 but subsequently fell into an 0-5 slump.

These may be opportune opponents for Vassar to face if the team wants to turn things around; the Brewers have already vanquished both the Pioneers and the Herons this year. Vassar opened the 2011-2012 season with a 6-3 victory over Smith. Libby Pei ’13 won her match in five sets playing as the No. 2 seed. One week later, on Nov. 12, Vassar demolished William Smith 9-0.

Pei played as the No. 1 seed this time and won in straight sets.

1 p.m. Men’s Squash vs. Boston College

Vassar opens the Boston Round Robin against Boston College. Like the women’s squad, the men’s team has also struggled of late following a fast start. After beginning the season 4-2, the Brewers have dropped eight straight matches, including seven consecutive 9-0 losses.

2:30 p.m. Men’s Squash at Northeastern University

Vassar completes the Boston Round Robin with a match against host Northeastern University. The Brewers last squared off against the Huskies exactly one year ago at home. Home-court advantage didn’t help, however, as Northeastern prevailed 9-0.

Vassar seeks to avenge that loss and catalyze a season turnaround on the road.

January 26 , 2012

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Shanley balances music and basketball Nathan Tauger Online Editor

E

JANUARY 21 WOMEN’S BASKETBALL VASSAR AT

73 Juliana Halpert/The Miscellany News

than Shanley, ’12, can play. Does this means scoring 18 points in the Vassar men’s basketball teams first win against Union College since 2008-09, or performing on his trumpet for the popular on-campus band Sol? Trick question: the answer is both.

The senior captain scored a team- and then-career-high 18 points in a winning effort against Liberty League rivals Union on Jan. 7, though he reflects that a different element won the game. “It was more about us winning as a team; I was open so I took the shots, but we played really well. It was our first conference win of the year,” he said. The Brewers have since lost two more conference games against Bard College and undefeated Hobart College and won against Rochester Institute of Technology on Jan. 21. Against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute this past Tuesday, Shanley upped his careerhigh with 31 points in a 104-91 loss. After the game, Shanley downplayed his performance.

“It feels fine, but I wish we would have won,” he remarked. “I would have rather not scored any points and won.”

Although Shanley has been lighting up the floor of late, his primary responsibility on the court is not scoring. “This year I’ve been coming off the bench a bit more but playing solid defense, helping out the team,” he said. “My role is mainly leadership; playing defense and getting rebounds.”

Shanley’s new responsibilities derive mostly from the changing dynamic of the team; the Vassar squad he was brought into was much different than the present one.

“This might be the best team we had since my freshman year, when we had four seniors who were really solid and led us to an 11-15 record,” he recalled, marking the contrast with the current youthful team. “We have

two seniors, Nick Justiz ’12 and I, and then the rest are sophomores and freshmen; we have seven freshmen.”

The quality of the team may be similar to Shanley’s freshman year, but his individual ability has changed tremendously. “As a freshman it was a huge change for me going from high school basketball in Maine to college basketball here. Everyone was bigger and more athletic than me and I was used to being the biggest and most athletic guy on the court.” Shanley continued, “I didn’t play too much my freshman year and my sophomore year we had a down year. I got a bit more playing time but we didn’t win too many games.”

During these periods of Vassar basketball tribulations, Shanley was doing more than shooting hoops.

“I’ve played lead trumpet for the jazz band for the past couple years, and I also play in a jazz combo. I played with Sol for a while, and I’m still kind of involved with them.”

Shanley also played with Beirut when they came to Vassar in February 2009.

“My freshman and sophomore year I had a surf band called Sir Saturn and the Neptones. It was really fun,” Shanley warmly reminisced.

The balance of trumpet and basketball in Shanley’s life is separated. “In the locker room it’s a lot of rap and popular stuff [playing],” he explained. But Shanley is not the only musician on the team. “We have one guy who can play piano a little bit; one guys says he plays viola but I’ve never heard him; one of them plays ukulele.”

Shanley began playing basketball at around age six and started trumpet in fourth grade. “My school brought a bunch of instruments and let kids start out playing, and I just stuck with it,” he recalled.

Shanley’s dedication to jazz also permeates his academic life. “When I study I lis-

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JANUARY 21 MEN’S VOLLEYBALL VASSAR AT RAMAPO

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3

Ethan Shanley ’12, captain of the men’s basketball team, scored a career-high of 31 points in a loss against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on Jan. 21.

JANUARY 22 MEN’S FENCING

ten to a lot of jazz, and my [history] thesis is about the Cotton Club, which was a jazz club in Harlem in the 1920s,” he said.

While Shanley will wrap up his basketball career on Feb. 18 with Senior Day against Hobart, his Vassar music career will extend a bit longer; April 13 is the date of his final jazz ensemble concert. ­­—Juliana Halpert ’12 contributed reporting for this article.

VASSAR VS DETROITMERCY

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Tebow-mania derived from larger cultural narratives Sam Scarritt-Selman Columnist

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hether you wanted to or not, on the evening of Jan. 8, 2012, you most likely were forced to confront some form of the phrase “TEBOW!!!!” That’s because Tim Tebow had just improbably led the Denver Broncos to an overtime playoff win over the highly favored Pittsburgh Steelers on a rather amazing 80-yard, game-winning touchdown strike to Demaryius Thomas; and, instinctively, the world responded with a resounding cry of “TEBOW!!!!” In our ever-mediated age of interconnectivity, this incantation was almost impossible to avoid—for whatever perspective it’s worth, on Twitter, some form of “TEBOW!!!!” was broadcasted at a rate of 9420 tweets per second, a record for any sports-related event. The natural response to such an overwhelming wave of public expression, wherein everyone is giving voice to the same one word, over and over again, is to wonder why exactly this was such a huge moment.

The easiest explanation for Tebow’s rise to prominence within our cultural dialogue is that he is an incredibly divisive figure, both as an NFL quarterback and as a public personality, and his surprising run of on-the-field success this season has made him one of the more captivating topics for discussion we have seen in recent years. In Tim Tebow, we have a devout and ardently outspoken evangelical who is both unequivocal and uncompromising about his faith and the political views that emerge from his spiritual convictions. In Tim Tebow, we also have a fundamentally flawed quarterback who, despite such limitations as being unable to consistently throw a football, is able to inexplicably move his team to victory, producing some of the most unconventional performances we have ever seen from a quarterback. In other words, in Tim Tebow, we have a conversation starter.

Over the course of the past couple of months, during which Tebow went from being the backup quarterback on a 1-4 Broncos team to being the franchise cornerstone of a divisional champion, debate over Tebow has shifted improbably.

What started out as simple X’s and O’s questions about whether or not a quarterback with such

an unorthodox skill set can achieve sustained success in the NFL very quickly morphed into questions about the appropriateness of such candid faith in sports, whether or not Tebow’s race (white, by the way) benefits him unfairly in the court of public opinion, or even if we should credit Tebow’s successes to divine intervention.

An added subplot arose when, as Tebow continued to win, people became very meta and started talking about the way people talk about Tebow: critics complained that he was being crowned as great far too prematurely and that he had not yet earned the praise he was receiving, while supporters charged that nothing Tebow does will ever satisfy his detractors.

All of this has, in turn, produced a rather extreme climate for public discourse in which it seems imperative, even urgent, to formulate an opinion on Tebow, as though how you feel about Tebow says something important about who you are and those who fail to take a position will miss out on some tremendous cultural moment.

But the situation is actually far more complicated than that, because, contrary to popular opinion, it is not Tebow that has inspired all these conversations about white privilege and the intersection of faith and society instead of just football. Rather, it’s plainly obvious that our cultural obsession with Tebow is by our own design, that it is us who have mapped such magnitude onto him, imposing upon him the whole notion that he stands for something more meaningful. There is a tendency of ours to twist and revise the storylines we encounter so that they match up with what we want to hear. The truth of the matter is that before he had ever played a snap of professional football, Tebow was already beholden to the character arc we had selected for him. We constructed a shroud of skepticism about whether or not a player like him would fail spectacularly, thereby allowing us to cast him as the ultimate underdog, for whom every game is an uphill battle and a test of his own faith; we trumpeted how the only thing that truly matters in football is winning football games, which reframed every ugly, narrow, low-scoring Bronco victory as a struggle of attrition and a

triumph of indomitable will (one of the unintentional consequences of Tebow’s popularity is that he made low-scoring football games seem riveting). In a sense, we created the mythology of Tim Tebow—he just won football games.

So, where does that leave us on the question of why exactly so many people felt the need to cry out “TEBOW!!!!” after the Broncos beat the Steelers? Tebow is a perfect vehicle for our generation’s brand of ironic detachment. So often, it seems, the literal meaning of what we say is

“The truth of the matter is that before he had ever played a snap of professional football, Tebow was already beholden to the character arc we had selected for him.” out of sync with the actual meaning of what we hope to imply; we encode nearly every statement with some internal reference or subtextual witticism designed to illustrate not only our true sentiment, but also just how laughable it would be if we were being serious about what we say. Moreover, we live in an era where one of the principal pop cultural commodities is the meme, a medium that trades on this irony and the resultant tension that one finds something that is relatively universal and yet also an inside joke. I find it very difficult to not see our widespread fascination with Tebow in a similar light, for when you declaim “TEBOW!!!!” you aren’t really cheering for Tebow in the traditional sense of the word, but rather saying something else entirely.

See, there are two types of people who root for Tebow to succeed. First, there are those that find it uplifting and redemptive that a quarter-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

back can continue to win football games in spite of such obvious, seemingly disqualifying flaws.

Then, there are those who look on those same inadequacies and find it hilarious that the guy still wins. Though both factions present themselves as distinct and in no way related, I’m sure they’d characterize each other as cynical and mindless, respectively, but they share a central premise: Tebow is not a good quarterback, and that’s what makes him so great.

If you are the type that sees something sincerely revelatory about each low-scoring Broncos victory, Tebow is a case study in how the average, everyday man can achieve the extraordinary and transcend his own shortcomings by believing both in himself and in something greater than himself, thereby exacting every last drop out of his stunted potential. Yet the payoff one gets in seeing Tebow succeed under these circumstances is wholly contingent on the weaknesses he has to overcome; there is no moral to the story if Tebow matches up well against the opposition. Conversely, if you are one of those Tebow devotees that chuckles at the implausibility of the success he has had, then your support for Tebow is rooted in the age-old practice of finding it funny to like something precisely because it is bad. It is as though cheering for Tebow is somewhat akin to listening to “Don’t Stop Believin’” or buying a Nicolas Cage movie at Target: you can tell that something is cheesy and seemingly bereft of any self-awareness, yet you get such fulfillment out of noticing all of its failings and imperfections that you end up enjoying it more than the stuff you like sincerely. There’s nothing funny about a phenomenally talented quarterback, regardless of his public persona. What separates Tim Tebow from other famously religious quarterbacks like Kurt Warner, Jim Kelly or Steve Young is that Tim Tebow has a hard time throwing the football. Thus, “TEBOW!!!!” and its various derivations are all ways of celebrating a type of flawed greatness that requires the flaw in order to be great—outstanding mediocrity that is made outstanding because it is mediocre. And this, my friends, is either inspiring or kind of hilarious.

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January 26 , 2012

Graham brings defensive, recruiting skills to men’s lax Jessica Tarantine

Assistant Features Editor

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Jacob Gorski/The Miscellany News

ailing from Trinity College, where he was the Defensive Coordinator for five seasons, and Defiance College, where he was the program’s first-ever head coach, men’s lacrosse Head Coach Marc Graham took the reigns of the team just four weeks ago, becoming the eighth head coach in program history.

Graham entered the lacrosse field relatively late as a high school junior. “I think starting the game so late forced me to learn a lot about the game,” Graham said. “It forced me to understand the game because when you grow up playing the game you take a lot of those things for granted. It forced me to be a tactician.”

Graham explained that improving the size of the roster—from the roughly 20 players it has now to the 35 typical of conference foes—was one of the most important tasks for the coming seasons. “My biggest contribution in the first year or two will be to focus on recruiting efforts. I think that’s where we can have a little bit of a stronger plan and be a little more forward thinking,” Graham explained.

Indeed, Graham boasts a successful record of recruiting players. While at Trinity, he coordinated all recruiting efforts and oversaw a successful team, which ranked as the top scoring defense in the New England Small College Athletic Conference in the 2010 season. Director of Athletics and Physical Education Dr. Sharon R. Beverly explained that recruiting ability was a skill set which made Graham attractive to Vassar.

“One of Graham’s principal responsibilities was recruiting and therefore he played a major role in that success,” wrote Beverly in an emailed statement. “When he arrived at Trinity the program was in a similar state to that of

Men’s lacrosse Head Coach Marc Graham, pictured above, took the reigns of the team just four weeks ago. Improving the size of the team’s roster remains one of his primary goals for this season. ours and in need of numbers, so he has experience in building a program.”

As for the specifics of building a successful program, Graham has a plan well laid out. “The key is getting out on the road,” he explained.

“If you want to get more kids you just can’t sit and hope they show up. If you really want to be competitive you really have to go out and find kids.”

He also stressed that frank communication

is key in the recruiting process and long term success of the team. “You need to be honest about expectations and what you foresee their lacrosse experience being over the next four years,” he said.

This theme of clear communication carries over to Graham’s coaching style as well.

“I make the hierarchy very simple for kids. It’s your family and your faith: the two things you come here with and the two most important

things. Then it’s going to be academics,” he explained. “Lacrosse is third and needs to be an important commitment but its not going to come before the first two.”

The team’s Assistant Head Coach John Nicol saw this as one of Graham’s strengths. “Graham seems to possess solid ‘old school’ morals,” Nicol wrote in an emailed statement.

Graham has been received well by his players. “Graham’s coaching style is unique in that he relates really well to his players, while always remaining calm, collected and punctual,” midfielder Matthew Pearce ’12 wrote in an emailed statement.

But changing coaches mid-year comes with obstacles. “The main challenge of switching to a new head coach is having the entire team move forward together and accepting the drastic change,” wrote Pearce. “It is difficult, especially for the upperclassman, to have to adapt to something new in their final year at Vassar.”

Graham was well aware of the difficulties players would likely face due to the transition.

“Kids are used to doing things a certain [way].

I’m understanding of that...and I’m willing to make some concessions to help ease things,” Graham said.

Even considering the challenges the team will face in the coming season, Beverly was optimistic of the team’s ability to build a strong program.

“I know that this season will be difficult for our men because the number of team members is low, but I want them to know by my actions and words that they have my support and the support of the Vassar family as they work through these challenges,” she wrote. “They deserve to have a good program and we’re all going to support them as they build the program they and Vassar desire.”

Revitalized for spring, Vassar Brewers return to action Andy Marmer Sports Editor

W

Jacob Gorski/The Miscellany News

hile most Vassar students enjoyed nearly a month away from Poughkeepsie to relax and recuperate for the upcoming semester, a prominent minority returned early to practice their sport and represent the College in interscholastic competition.

The women’s basketball team traveled to Daytona Beach, Fla. for the Land of the Magic Tournament at the end of December. On Dec. 28, the Brewers dropped a 73-68 loss to Marywood University, despite 20 points from Captain Cydni Matsuoka ’14. The loss marked the Brewers’ first of the season. The squad next faced Kean University in a rematch of last year’s NCAA Tournament first round contest that Kean won 80-49. This year, behind 18 points and 15 rebounds from Kristyn Tempora ’12, the Brewers kept the game close, trailing by just two with under four minutes remaining.

However, Vassar could not surge for the victory and Kean held on for the 69-64 win.

Following its Florida trip, the team began Liberty League play on Jan. 6 with a trip to Skidmore College. Despite holding a 29-28 halftime lead, the Brewers were outscored by 17 in the second half, for a 67-51 final score. Matsuoka registered 13 points and 11 rebounds in the loss. The next day Vassar rallied for a 61-58 win at Union College to pull to 1-1 in Liberty League play. Matsuoka keyed the victory with 25 points and 12 rebounds, including the final four points.

With Vassar trailing by one, the sophomore guard stole the ball with 55 seconds remaining, and quickly converted a lay-up to put her team up one. After the Brewers’ defense twice held firm, she converted two free throws with one second left to register the final margin.

After a 78-18 thumping of Bard College that saw 12 Brewers find the bottom of the net, and a 67-55 non-conference loss to Hartwick College, Vassar dropped a close 70-68 overtime loss to William Smith College. Matsuoka once again led the way with 16 points and 10 rebounds.

Colleen O’Connell ’15 forced overtime with six seconds remaining when she nailed a short jumper in the paint. In the extra period, Vassar jumped out to an early four-point lead; however, William Smith rallied and went on a 10-0 run and eventually held on for the two-point

victory, evening Vassar’s Liberty League record at 2-2 in the process. The next day, Matsuoka again paced the offense with 18 points as Vassar defeated Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) 73-51.

This past Tuesday the team dropped back to .500 with a 74-59 loss to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Matsuoka led the way with 17 points and nine rebounds, but it was not enough for the Brewers to overcome a 19-3 run they surrendered at the start.

The men’s basketball team returned from break with a 93-70 loss at the hands of Wheaton College on Jan. 3 and a Liberty League-opening 71-50 loss to Skidmore on Jan. 6. However, the Brewers rebounded, pulling back to .500 in conference play with a 72-67 victory over Union. Despite trailing by nine points at the half, and as many as 16 in the second half, Vassar went on an 11-0 run in under four minutes to narrow the margin. After a series of mini-runs evened the game, this week’s Miscellany News Athlete of the Week Captain Ethan Shanley ’12 put the Brewers up for good, sinking a pair of free throws with just over one minute to play.

Shanley led all scorers with 18 points.

Seeking to improve to 2-1 in the Liberty League, Vassar hosted Bard the following Tuesday. Once again, a valiant comeback kept the Brewers in the game; although Vassar trailed by 11 with 7:19 to play, and seven with 3:34 to play, a 7-0 Brewers run—capped by a three-pointer from Jon Herzog ’13 with 25 seconds left—tied the score. Bard answered back with a pair of free throws with just three seconds remaining, cementing their 59-57 victory.

The team then took a game off from Liberty League play, losing 91-83 to St. Joseph’s College, despite 33 points from Johnny Mrlik ’15.

This past weekend, the Brewers traveled to Hobart College where they had no answer for the league leader’s stymieing defense in a 72-40 loss that saw no Vassar player reach doubledigit points. Once again, though, the team was able to rebound with a 73-63 win over RIT to pull to 2-3 in the Liberty League.

A Vassar loss to RPI, 104-91, this past Tuesday dropped the team to 2-4. Shanley once again led the team, recording a career-high 31 points in the loss.

This past weekend, the No. 15 Vassar men’s

Allyson Pemberton ’15, a guard on the women’s basketball team, dribbles the ball away from her opponent.

The women’s basketball team traveled to Florida for the Land of the Magic Tournament in December. volleyball team opened their season. The Brewers traveled to Ramapo College for a tri-match featuring the host and Philadelphia Biblical University. In their first match, Vassar was knocked off by Ramapo, 1-3 (23-25, 25-20, 2522, 25-15). Charlie Caldwell ’13 led the way for Vassar with a career-high 16 kills. In the second match of the day, the Brewers cruised to a decisive sweep of the No. 14 ranked Crimson Eagles, 3-0 (25-15, 25-16, 25-23). In the first set the Brewers hit 50 percent displaying a potent attack, while their defense held Philadelphia Biblical to negative attacking percentages in each of the first two sets.

Both men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams returned to action against Trinity College, where the men were overcome 163-131 while the women were defeated 178-114. The men then took fifth place out of eight teams at the Kumpf Invitational on Jan. 14, before losing narrowly to Montclair State University 118-107.

Meanwhile, the women’s team was practicing for the Seven Sisters Championship

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

this past weekend. Although Vassar put up a strong effort at the meet, they were unable to dethrone Wellesley College who won its 15th straight championship. The Brewers finished second behind the Blues (1,229 points) with 796 points, ahead of third place Mount Holyoke College (637). The star of the meet for Vassar was unquestionably Caroline Shannon ’12. In the 200 IM, Shannon set a new Seven Sisters record (2:14.58) and was named to the All-Seven sisters team for that race as well as the 400 IM. Captain Amelia Couture ’12 likewise had a record setting day, as her 339.55 in the 1-meter diving event set a new school record, breaking the mark previously established by classmate Christie Musket ’12 (327.50).

The men’s and women’s squash teams returned to action this past weekend at the Pioneer Valley Open. The men were swept in two matches by No. 20 Colby College and No. 26 Hobart, while the women lost 8-1 to No. 22 Colby and 9-0 to No. 17 Franklin and Marshall College.