The Miscellany News | Feb 18.

The Miscellany News Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com

February 18, 2010

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

Volume CXLIII | Issue 15

Lab credit likely not possible Hao Fu

A

Guest Reporter

Image courtesy of Rachel Goss

subcommittee of the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Academic Committee recently sent a letter to a group of natural science department chairs discussing

the possibility of granting an extra half credit for natural science courses with a lab requirement. The letter was sent to Environmental Studies Chair and Assistant Professor of Biology Erica Crespi, Chair of Biology and Associate Pro-

fessor of Biology Alexander Marshall Pregnall, Director of the Neuroscience and Behavior Program and Professor of Biology Kathleen Susman, Chair of the Chemistry Department and Associate Professor of Chemistry Eric Eber-

hardt, Chair of Physics and Astronomy and Professor of Astronomy Debra Elmegreen, and Director of Biochemistry and Associate Professor of Biology David Jemiolo. The departments that these chairs See LABS on page 3

Chris Taylor, bass player for the alternative-rock band Grizzly Bear, performs at the ViCE concert in the Vassar Chapel on Oct. 9.

Misconceptions of ViCE

Erik Lorenzsonn

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Arts Editor

ake a look back at the week in arts and entertainment at Vassar: Three Brooklyn DJs blasted dance mixes in Matthew’s Mug on Thursday, the popular independent romantic comedy Away We Go was screened in Blodgett Hall on Friday and Saturday, an eight-piece jazz band called Rubblebucket jammed the night away on Tuesday, and exactly one week ago it was announced that The Flaming Lips are coming to Poughkeepsie. It may come as a surprise that this diverse slew of events is attribut-

able to the work of a single student organization: Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE).

“ViCE does a lot,” said President of ViCE Peter Denny ’10. “In the broadest sense, we are a large part of what defines college culture here.”

The student-run behemoth is a certified Vassar Student Association (VSA) organization with a mission statement to provide entertainment for the student community. Currently, “entertainment” encompasses jazz nights, Mug nights, student singer-songwriter per See VICE on page 16

VSA’s Proposal Endorsed By CCP

Faculty to vote on Athletics proposal Matthew Brock

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News Editor

Inside this issue

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FEATURES

Late book requests are annual financial burden to students

Associate Professor of Biology William Straus instructs a student during a biochemistry lab on Tuesday, Feb. 16, in Olmstead Hall. Earlier this semester, a subcommittee of the VSA Academic Committee drafed a letter proposing that students receive an additional half credit for labs.

English discusses cuts with majors Jillian Scharr

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News Editor

he English Department held a town hallstyle meeting last Thursday evening, Feb. 11, in Sanders Classroom’s Spitzer Auditorium. Advertised as an open discussion for English majors and interested students, the meeting created a space for conversation about the

Department’s recent and upcoming changes.

Approximately 14 students attended the meeting, which was moderated by Chair of the English Department and Associate Professor of English Peter Antelyes.

Although the curriculum for the 2010-2011 school year will actually increase compared to its size this year,

Antelyes said that the number of English classes being offered was “fairly low for us…[at] 109, 110 courses overall.”

Next year, the Department will offer two fewer freshman writing seminars, although Antelyes expressed hope that “other departments can pick [them] up.”

One creative writing class

and two courses in medieval and modern literature were cut as well.

It is expected that further cuts will be made in the next academic year, 2011-12.

Dean of the Faculty Jonathan Chenette commented in an interview this week that the curriculum’s growth from this academic year to the See ENGLISH on page 4

“It was the hope of the Founder that, if the institution should prove a success, o … ther benefactors would arise to carry out the work he began.”

John Howard Raymond, Vassar College President, 1864–1878

Reading Vassar’s will Angela Auito

Opinions Editor

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pon his death in June 1868, Vassar College Founder Matthew Vassar left the College approximately $275,000 to be invested, with the income being devoted to specific purposes: $50,000 for a lecture fund; $50,000 for an auxiliary fund, the purpose of which was to provide merit scholarships; $50,000 for a library, art and cabinet fund, created for the “preservation and enlargement of the

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FEATURES

library, art gallery and cabinets;” and, finally, $125,000 was to be put toward a repair fund, which would be devoted to the maintainence and expansion of the campus.

It is difficult to understand the magnitude of Vassar’s donations in today’s U.S. dollar. This figure can vary depending on the statistical methods used. Using one indicator, Vassar’s legacy would be valued at about $4,296,685.41 in 2008 dollars, but only at $3,887,037.85 See FOUNDER on page 6

Features reporter reviews Five Guys in Poughkeepsie

Molly Turpin/The Miscellany News

he Committee on Curricular Policy (CCP) voted on Feb. 3 to endorse a proposal that would award half an academic credit to students who participate in varsity sports. The proposal began as a resolution introduced by the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Executive Board at the VSA’s first Council Meeting of the year, and has since been endorsed and revised by the Athletics Department. The proposal will not come to fruition, however, until endorsed by a majority of the faculty. “[CCP] voted fairly strongly in favor of the proposal, but with questions,” said VSA Vice President for Academics

Stephanie Damon-Moore ’11, According to Strong House President Laura Riker ’11, who also sits on CCP, “All the students support it, but I think that it’s sort of split. The faculty would like to have more conversations about it.”

“When we voted, not all of the professors [who sit on the committee] were there,” explained Damon-Moore, who added that many of the members who were not present had serious questions about the proposal, leading to a second round of discussions in a Committee meeting during the following week.

One of the major reservations amongst some faculty members was that, if the College was to award credit for See PROPOSAL on page 3

Molly Turpin/The Miscellany News

ViCE responds to student criticisms

Vassar College Founder Matthew Vassar is buried at the heart of the Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery on Route 9.

14 ARTS

Vassar’s NSO to bring tenth annual NonCon to campus

Page 2

The Miscellany News

February 18, 2010

Editor in Chief Ruby Cramer Senior Editor Molly Turpin

Contributing Editors Caitlin Halasz Chloe McConnell Elizabeth Pacheco

Christie Chea/The Miscellany News

News Matthew Brock Jillian Scharr Opinions Angela Aiuto Kelly Shortridge Features Kelly Stout Arts Carrie Hojnicki Erik Lorenzsonn Sports Andy Marmer Design Eric Estes Online Elizabeth Jordan Copy Katie Cornish Lila Teeters Photography Kathleen Mehocic Managing Eliza Hartley

Photos of the Week: The men and women’s swimming and diving team practices on Feb. 15 in Kresge Pool in the Athletics and Fitness Center.

Editorial | The Miscellany commends ViCE for inclusivity L ast Thursday Feb. 11, Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE) announced that their spring concert will feature the rock band The Flaming Lips. Although the concert is two months away, we must acknowledge that ViCE has outdone itself in planning its most ambitious entertainment event to date in the College’s history.

The Miscellany News Editorial Board would like to consider especially the significant link that the concert has made between on-campus and off-campus communities. The April 17 Lips event will not be hosted in a campus venue, but will be located downtown in the Mid-Hudson Civic Center, a non-profit arena that has served the Poughkeepsie area as a concert and specialevent venue for more than 20 years. Free shuttles on the day of the concert will give students easy access to explore the area around the Civic Center, something ViCE President Peter Denny ’10 has called to “a night-time Meet Me in Poughkeepsie.” Moreover, for the first time, the lion’s share of tickets will be offered to the public instead of to just Vassar students, meaning that this concert experience will not be as exclusive as earlier events. Vassar students will nevertheless have priority in the ticket purchasing process.

All things considered, the spring concert serves as an essential opportunity to strengthen the often-adverse relationship between Vassar College and the wider local community. The concert will inspire students to look beyond campus for a night of dining and entertainment, and the collaboration with the Civic Center is a step towards what could become a more involved relationship. It is our hope that ViCE follows through on its decision to involve the community with similar events in the future. This concert has the potential to complement other arts events that have created time-honored links with the community, like Vassar Reperatory Dance Theater’s annual gala at the Bardavon Opera House, and the Vassar studio art majors’ art exhibition at various Poughkeepsie galleries.

We also commend ViCE on their choice of artist, The Flaming Lips. A common criticism of the organization is that their taste in music is elitist, inaccessible and “hipster,” as the organization has regularly brought indie and unconventional acts to campus. While The Flaming Lips are not exactly a household name, the

Grammy-winning band has achieved a level of mainstream international success that surpasses the likes of previous acts such as Clipse, Deerhunter and Grizzly Bear. Considering the financial impossibility of bringing a Billboard chart-topping artist to Vassar, ViCE has made a sound compromise between mainstream and independent music with their decision to bring The Flaming Lips. For skeptics who haven’t heard of them, the band’s polished pop music directly contrasts with the unorthodox ambience of Deerhunter and Clipse’s unconventionally dark hip-hop, and promises to make for a highly accessible show. Even if the music fails to

“The Flaming Lips concert serves as an essential opportunity to strengthen the often-adverse relationship between Vassar and the local community.” please, the band’s notorious onstage antics will surely entertain. ViCE has ultimately done well to heed its critics by bringing an act with relative mainstream recognition and conventional sound, while staying within its budgetary limitations. ViCE weekly open meetings may have contributed to this popular choice, since they encourage all students to share their suggestions for incoming bands.

ViCE’s spring concert is not without flaws— a point that should be duly noted. While many past concerts sponsored by the organization

have been free, Vassar students will have to pay a discounted price of $18 in order to get tickets for The Flaming Lips’ concert. It is understandable that bringing such a band to campus is expensive, and admittedly $18 per ticket is a remarkable deal considering that the band’s other concerts cost well over that amount. It is nevertheless much to ask of students to pay money for concerts in addition to the student activities fee that comprises the Vassar Student Association’ s budget, a large amount of which goes towards ViCE’s funding. It is also unfair that students who cannot afford the expense will not be able to experience ViCE’s most ambitious and promising endeavor to date. Free programming meant that there was equal opportunity to experience the world-class music; it is a shame that it had to be sacrificed in order to make this concert possible. It should also be noted that, despite what many students often misunderstand, the activities fee would not have been able to have been used to prevent layoffs or alleviate budgetary constraints in other areas of the College—the fee comes from a isolated sector of budgeting and would not have been able to have been used for purposes other than student programming. But, perhaps we all, including ViCE, should be sensitive to how a costly concert looks in these difficult times.

Although the expense is extensive, the concert’s community-orientation along with the accessibility and mainstream fame of the artist promises to make this a landmark event in ViCE’s history. We applaud the organization’s ambition, and hope that they will continue moving in the direction they have gone with this exciting concert.

—The Staff Editorial reflects the opinion of at least two-thirds of the 21-member Editorial Board.

CORRECTION The Miscellany News Editorial Board members would like to offer our sincerest apologies this week to Aaron Biberstein ’06. Last semester, an unknown online commenter on miscellanynews.com penned several comments falsely under Mr. Biberstein’s name. Later that month, in two Opinions articles—one on Dec. 3 and the other on Dec. 10—the Miscellany referenced and quoted those comments, assuming they were in fact written by Mr. Biberstein. The editors would like to apologize for misusing online comments as an article source, and especially for citing these particular comments in an article without first checking with Mr. Biberstein.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Assistant News Assistant Opinions Assistant Sports Assistant Online Assistant Copy Assistant Photo Crossword Editor Reporters

Columnists

Photographers

Caitlin Clevenger Joshua Rosen Mitchell Gilburne Kara Voght Katharine Austin Sarah Marco Juliana Halpert Jonathan Garfinkel Thea Ballard Matthew Bock Rachael Borné Esther Clowney Daniel Combs Wally Fisher Rose Hendricks David Lopez Christie Musket Danielle Nedivi Alexandra Sarrigeorgiou Aashim Usgaonkar Martin Bergman Steve Keller Nate Silver Nik Trkulja Patricia Cruz Gabriel Kelly-Ramirez Jared Saunders

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

Letters to the Editor should not exceed 450 words, and they usually respond to a particular item or debate from the previous week’s issue. Opinions articles are longer pieces, up to 800 words, and take the form of a longer column. No letter or opinions article may be printed anonymously. If you are interested in contributing, e-mail misc@vassar.edu.

The Editorial Board holds weekly meetings every Sunday at 9 p.m. in the Rose Parlor. All members of the Vassar community interested in joining the newspaper’s staff or in a critique of the current issue are welcome. The Miscellany News is not responsible for the views presented in the Opinions pages. The weekly staff editorial is the only article which reflects the opinion of the Editorial Board. The Miscellany News is published weekly by the students of Vassar College. The Miscellany News office is located in College Center Room 303, Vassar College.

NEWS

February 18, 2010

Jahanbegloo’s lecture addresses Islam’s potential Caitlin Clevenger

“I

Assistant News Editor

s a Muslim Ghandi Possible?” Iranian author and philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo spoke in Rockefeller Hall on Tuesday to answer that question and address Western stereotypes about Islam.

A native of Tehran, Jahanbegloo has a doctorate in philosophy and has written over a dozen books on conflict and modernization in Muslim culture. In 2006, Jahanbegloo was arrested by the Iranian government, accused of spying and of plotting to overthrow Islamic rule. He was imprisoned for four months, but was ultimately released.

For some, Jahanbegloo’s arrest may seem to be an instance of aggressive Muslim culture, incompatible with a democratic government. Such instances have caused the “image of the fanatic Muslim to become the dominant stereotype” in the West, according to Jahanbegloo. These persistent prejudices have eclipsed Muslim attempts at peacemaking and nonviolence in both historical and contemporary record. This, and a streak of failures to create secular governments in the Middle East, contributes to a popular belief that Islam and religious tolerance are incompatible.

Jahanbegloo took the opposite position in his lecture, saying that Islam is at its roots a peaceful faith. The Quran, the central religious text in Islam, forbids killing and holds life to be a sacred creation of Allah. Westerners often mistake the term “jihad,” as described in the Quran, as a commandment to participate in a holy war, but Jahanbegloo said that it is primarily a duty to “supersede the ego and become truly faithful.” In addition, the Quran contains over 200 admonitions against injustice, from which Jahanbegloo concluded that nonviolent resistance to injustice is compatible with Muslim doctrines. “Islam does not glorify violence,” said Jahanbegloo.

Despite the centuries of conflict in the Middle East, Islam has had successful secular societies.

Jahanbegloo pointed out that the city of Cordoba in Spain, when under Arabic rule, was both one of the most advanced cities in the world and also a place where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together with little conflict. Akbar the Great, the Muslim Emperor of India in the 16th century, ruled an empire with a majority Hindu population with a policy of religious tolerance. It is in India See LECTURE on page 4

ASA to attend conference Xiaoyuan Ren

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Guest Reporter

he Asian Students’ Alliance (ASA) will venture to the University of Pennsylvania to attend a conference held by the East Coast Asian-American Student Union (ECAASU) over the first weekend of spring break, March 4 to 6.

As one of the largest and oldest Asian American collegiate conferences, ECAASU conference, which was formed to address issues of identity and educational rights in 1977, is a weekend-long series of events where over 1,200 students from across the nation, including 24 Vassar students, come together to learn, network and have fun as they learn about and celebrate the heritage and progress of the Asian Pacific American community.

The conference brings together prominent Asian American activists, artists, speakers and performers to hold workshops that inform and educate students from all over the East Coast on issues relevant to Asians and Asian Americans.

The conference’s theme will be “Behind These Eyes: Impression. Introspection. Innovation,” which is designed to encourage a deeper exploration of the origins behind the elements that compose the Asian American identity, both in a collective and an individual setting.

“ECAASU has been an integral part of ASA’s yearly itinerary for quite some time now,” said ASA President Iris Xu ’11, “and ECAASU is great because it gives us a chance to get in touch with the Asian/ Asian American community on a much wider scale.”

“Schools from all over the East Coast will travel to [the University of Pennsylvania] to attend ECAASU conference.

It’s an amazing opportunity to make new friends and contacts. We will also learn more about Asian/Asian American issues,” she continued.

Angela Rhoads ’12 also looks forward to the trip: “I have never been to ECAASU, but last year many of my friends went. They came back with some great stories and experiences. They considered it a very genuine celebration of their various cultures, and I think it would be a great way for me to better understand Chinese culture since I am already studying the language.”

The conference’s workshops will focus on each of the three separate elements of the conference theme: Impression, Intro-

spection and Innovation. There will also be featured speakers at the conference including Representative Mike Honda (D.-CA), author and activist Helen Zia and Associate Vice Provost at the University of Pennsylvania, Ajay Nair.

“There will also be amazing performances at the opening and closing ceremonies.” Xu added, including professional and student group performances which span a bevy of styles—including comedy, dance, rap, rock and spoken word—expressing culture in forms drawn from all different kinds of Asian traditions.

Rhoads is most looking forward to the opportunity to hear and share students’ personal narratives. “My friends came back and tried to retell the stories they heard, but I have a feeling it wasn’t the same as hearing it first-hand,” she said.

Xu showed more interest in the diversity the event offers: “Every year the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve heard from several students that ECAASU really helped them to become aware of the issues that confront Asians/ Asian Americans in this country and made them feel more connected to the community as a whole. Everyone has different things that they are excited about in going to ECAASU this year, which I think is part of the beauty of the conference.”

The conference offers different insights for students with different backgrounds. Rhoads sees this as a pathway into the Asian culture. “I want to enjoy spending time with my friends, and this gives them an opportunity to introduce me to their culture—parts of their lives that I might have never experienced otherwise.”

The 24 students are hoping to gain a variety of knowledge and experience from the conference. “Usually before attending, we try and let students know what to expect and how to best maximize their time there,” said Xu, “and after everyone gets back, we usually have a debriefing in which students get a chance to talk about the things they did and did not like, and what could be done differently next year.

Last year, ASA took back a lot of the eyeopening ideas and strategies presented at ECAASU to be implemented here on campus.” All the attendants will have much to share and express after they experience this conference.

Subcommittee hopes for credit in future LABS continued from page 1 represent all offer lab courses that are three or more hours long.

“We heard some science major students talk about getting more credits for lab class at the beginning of the year,” said South Commons President Nicole Clark ’10, who serves on the Academic Committee.

Josselyn House President and Academic Committee member Elianne Schutze ’12 explained that at the beginning of the semester, the Committee members generated a list of priorities focused on “what we want and what students want…asking for extra credit for lab classes was one of them.”

Schutze, Clark and Jewett House President Daryl Duran ’12, who is also on the Academic Committee, drafted a proposal requesting the extra half credit and sent it to science departments to gauge the departments’ opinions on the matter.

The proposal states that the move toward additional credit has the support of the student body and will be in the best interest of the students; it cites an informal survey of science majors conducted by the Committee and whose results show that a majority of students questioned support additional credit for lab classes. The group also pointed to the fact that many peer institutions, such as Brown University and Wellesley College, reward extra credit for lab classes. At these institutions—where most classes are worth three credits, based on a one credit per hour

system—lab classes are given one additional credit to be worth a total of four credits in order to reflect the extra amount of time spent in the classroom. Other institutions that adhere to the same credit system as Vassar, where one credit is generally given per class, give an additional half credit to students taking a class with a lab component. So, for taking any science class with a lab, students receive a total of one-and-a-half credits.

Within a week of sending the proposal, all departments responded with what—in the words of VSA Vice President for Academics Stephanie Damon-Moore ’11—was “not terribly enthusiastic” feedback.

Damon-Moore explained that the department chairs’ primary concerns centered on whether or not granting the additional half credits would actually be useful to students.

As many of the chairs pointed out, increasing the credit for lab classes would perhaps shut students out of other classes, given that there is a cap of five credits per semester.

In addition, there are other issues that the departments would have to address should this proposal pass. For example, an increase in the credits for lab classes would raise questions of whether the major requirements should be raised. Further, more credits would perhaps actually lead to greater workload in order to justify the added credit, causing a new burden for students and thus going against the original purpose of granting the half credit.

Schutze explained that, ultimately, “it is not feasible for us to move on without the support of science departments.” She continued to say that the Committee has “alternative plans, though. For example, we can modify our proposal to ask for an extra half credit for every two lab classes, according to the professors’ suggestions. We can also make extra credit optional, as with the athletic proposal [that the VSA Council endorsed in September]. In this way, students will not be shut out of other classes.”

Director of Biochemistry and Associate Professor of Biology David Jemiolo expressed support for an additional quarter credit per lab, or offering a half credit for a year’s worth of classes. Some other classes in the curriculum, such as music or language classes, already offer this type of credit, explained Clark.

“If we are to move on, we need to do more research,” added Schutze. “We need to know what professors’ expectations are of the workload their students should have. It is also essential for us to get the rationale behind the fact that the College gives one-and-a-half credits to some classes, such as language courses. The key of our concern is that students should get recognition for their work.”

The Academic Committee, however, is not optimistic about the proposal’s chances of coming to fruition. “It is not likely that we will move on this semester.” said Clark. The Committee still has many other semester goals, such as peer advising.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

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News Briefs Campus advisory released Friday A student walking towards the Terrace Apartments (TAs) noticed four suspicious individuals on the night of Feb. 12. He heard the group begin to walk faster, so he began to run towards the TAs. The group chased him across the bridge and up the stairs leading to the TAs, but the student was able to escape unscathed. Poughkeepsie police later arrested all four individuals for conspiracy to commit a crime, and they are all currently in jail awaiting a trial. ­—Cailtin Clevenger, Assistant News Editor

Computer crimes continue After a visitor’s laptop was stolen from the Thompson Memorial Library two weeks ago, the Library was the site of another laptop theft on Feb. 10. A student’s laptop and charger, both inside of a backpack, were stolen after being left unattended. ­—C.C.

No bull On Feb. 12, The Miscellany News office reported a missing case of Red Bull. Valued at $8, the case was taken from the Editor in Chief’s office sometime between Wednesday night and Friday afternoon. ­—C.C.

Weird science In the first noise complaint in memory to come from an academic building, Security officers responded to loud noises coming from the lounge in Mudd Chemistry Building at 2 a.m. on Feb. 13. ­—C.C.

CCP endorses proposal with reservations PROPOSAL continued from page 1 varsity sports, students participating in other timeintensive extracurricular activities might also want to receive credit. “Some of the faculty aren’t in favor of the proposal because it might open up a whole new avenue for people who are in extracurricular activities to receive credit,” noted Riker.

However, reminded Damon-Moore, “[Varsity sports are] the only thing with full faculty oversight for which students don’t receive credit,” said Damon-Moore, referring to extracurricular activities such as Orchestra and Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre, which do award academic credit. “All other activities don’t have faculty involvement,” she continued.

“In the past, people have suggested that editors on The Miscellany News and VSA members should receive credit,” she said. As DamonMoore explained, however, those activities differ from varsity sports in that there is no faculty oversight, meaning that no one can grade the participating students. In contrast, varsity sports are superintended by coaches who work for the Athletics and Physical Education Department, and who can make sure that their students meet the requirements needed to receive academic credit.

During their faculty meeting in the late evening of Wednesday, Feb. 17, the proposal was discussed by the faculty in attendance. However, given that this Miscellany News article went to press hours before the faculty meeting, it was unclear as to whether the faculty would vote on the proposal, and, if so, the outcome of that vote.

“I really couldn’t tell you which way it’s going to go,” said Riker, given the large split among faculty members.

Unfortunately, “faculty meetings are not student-friendly,” joked Damon-Moore, because students are not allowed to attend the meetings.

Damon-Moore, however, is preparing a statement to be read in favor of the proposal.

For more up-to-the-minute information on the outcome of this Wednesday’s faculty meeting, please check miscellanynews.com for live updates.

NEWS

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All College Day plans for tenth anniversary Aashim Usgaonkar

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Reporter

n Wednesday, Feb. 24, the Campus Life Office and the Campus Life Resource Group (CLRG) will host the 10th annual All College Day, an event that began in 2001 as a response to an incident concerning the use of racially offensive language.

Various events and discussions of the year’s theme, “Bridging the Gaps: Knowing the Past, Living the Present, Shaping the Future,” will take place in the College Center, Villard Room, Faculty Commons and other locations in Main Building. According to the organizers, all members of the Vassar community, including staff and faculty members, students, and administrators are invited to bring their “ideas, thoughts and reflections” to the events.

Associate Dean of the College and member of the CLRG Edward Pittman described the theme, which “came after weeks of discussion by CLRG members,” as “appropriate in light of the challenges Vassar faced this year and will face in coming years.”

“Our goal with this theme is to encourage conversation on many different fronts while moving toward what we all want—a strong and beautiful Vassar,” said Pittman.

To facilitate the discussions of the day, the event has been broken up into three separate gatherings, each offering a different method of approaching the Day’s theme.

The first event is the Mural Project, which will be held at the College Center’s North Atrium from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Blank canvases will be put up in the area, and members of the Vassar community are encouraged to write or draw messages on them throughout the day.

The second event, Soup and Substance, will start at noon and go on until 1:30 p.m. in the Faculty Commons.

Describing the anticipated mood of the event as “relaxed,” the organizers invite the Vassar community to “stay as long as [they] like,” to eat and reflect on the

issues concerning issues connected to the development of campus life.

Lastly, Campus Gathering will be held in the Villard room from 2:30 to 7 p.m. There will be table exhibits from 2:30 to 4:15 p.m., followed by performances and readings until 7 p.m. Food and refreshments will also be served at this event.

“The intent is never to present All College Day as a stand-alone event, but as part of a sustained effort to talk about critical issues—especially those relating to identity and community,” said Pittman. He described the CLRG’s Conversational Meals, events held throughout the year where randomly selected members of the Vassar faculty and staff members, administration, and student body come together to discuss issues and concerns at the College. After serving themselves a “delicious, catered buffet-style dinner,” participants are presented with a question relevant to campus life or other current issues.

Established in the fall of 2000, Conversation Meals have, in the past, covered issues such as shared governance, transparency and accountability, and the use of alcohol and drugs at Vassar, among other issues. They are part of a year-long attempt by the Campus Life office and the CLRG “to cultivate an environment which invites positive dialogue that affirms the importance of creating community.”

“All College Day has become one of many recognized and anticipated traditions at Vassar. Some engage fully in the day, while others may simply enjoy collecting a mug or T-shirt. In essence, the day, when looked at in the context of other College efforts, signals that developing the campus community and establishing caring environments are ideals we should work toward on a daily basis,” said Pittman, confident that this event will be as successful as its predecessors in “acting as a catalyst for bringing key issues to the forefront.”

Lecture examines Islam LECTURE continued from page 3 that Jahanbegloo finds his models for “Muslim Ghandis.”

One such model is Abdul Ghaffar Khan, an Indian Muslim and follower of Mahatma Ghandi. Khan joined Ghandi in passive resistance to British rule in India and was imprisoned multiple times. Khan also opposed the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland, instead advocating Indian unity. For this he was criticized as being anti-Muslim, but Khan asserted that nonviolence, religious tolerance and secularism realized as a respect for all religions was an essential part of his jihad.

Jahanbegloo pointed out that Khan brought a uniquely Muslim aspect to secular nonviolence. While Ghandi drew his inspiration from such texts as the New Testament, Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau, Khan “found secularism in the Quran.” Khan is known is the “Frontier Ghandi.”

Jahanbegloo also recognized Maulana Azad as another standard for Muslim Ghandis. Azad began as an Islamic revivalist uninterested in collaboration proponents of other religions, but after meeting Ghandi, he began promoting Hindu-Muslim unity. He came to believe that all religions were, as Jahanbegloo put it, “different roads converging on one destination,” each expressing a universal truth in different ways. He thus saw no need for conflict between

believers of different religions and saw Hindus and Indian Muslims, in particular, as brothers.

Based on the examples found in India, Jahanbegloo believes that a Muslim Ghandi and a secular democracy are possible in the Middle East, under certain circumstances. Secular movements in Middle Eastern countries have thus far been either only among the intellectual community, or a forced authoritarian policy. Such methods encourage “an inherent power conflict between the modernist elite and the fundamentalist public,” said Jahanbegloo. The institution of secularism in government cannot follow the Western model, either. It must not alienate the spiritual voice from the public sphere, but rather see “democracy as a median point between the religious and the secular.”

He suggests applying the Indian model in the drafting of constitutions and the development of public life—not excluding religious argument from government, but promoting a “moral togetherness” that includes members of all religions.

In answer to his question—“Is a Muslim Ghandi Possible?”—Ramin Jahanbegloo’s answer was a confident yes. He said in conclusion, “It is time to appreciate the real significance of Azad and Khan and the open terrain for other Muslim Ghandis in the near future”.

February 18, 2010

English Dept. discusses cuts ENGLISH continued from page 1 next is “a little bit of a fluke” due to “an unusually small number” of faculty members on leave. However, “I believe we’ve made the major forced adjustments.”

The 2009-2010 curriculum shrank from the previous year, Chenette said, but the curriculum had been steadily expanding for a decade prior to the current economic crisis.

Antelyes began the meeting by describing this process of curricular and faculty cuts from the English Department’s perspective.

“We were given a list of parttime [non-tenure track] faculty members and told those are from whom we could cut,” said Antelyes of the faculty whose contracts are set to expire after this year and were up for renewal. “[Chenette] made it clear to us that if we didn’t make the decision, he would,” Antelyes continued.

However, added Antelyes, Chenette “didn’t want to [make the decision],” as he recognized that English professors have more knowledge of the Department and would make a better choice.

According to Antelyes, to let the Dean make the decision would also set an undesirable precedent from the English Department’s perspective, so, “with a lot of agony,” said Antelyes, the Department made its own cuts.

Without revealing any names due to respect for the requests fo privacy from the professors whose contracts were not renewed, An-

telyes described the various situations of affected faculty members: some were denied English classes, but will still teach in other departments, some have administrative jobs within the English Department and some had their course loads reduced to less than halftime positions.

Teaching five courses a year, Antelyes explained, is a standard full-time appointment that offers a salary of approximately $60,000 a year plus benefits. Teaching three courses per year constitutes a halftime appointment, for which the salary is half that of a full-time position—approximately $30,000— plus benefits. If one teaches fewer than three courses per year, however, faculty are paid approximately $6,000 to $7,000 per course and do not receive benefits.

“A number of people were taken down from three [course sections] to two,” Antelyes said.

Because a preponderance of creative writing courses are taught by non-tenure track faculty, many in the English Department feel particular concern for this area of the curriculum. Antelyes explained that this has traditionally been the way creative writing was structured, as professors of creative writing often prefer parttime contracts that give them time to pursue their own writing.

Chenette agreed that certain areas of the curriculum have a higher concentration of non-tenure track faculty, creative writing being among them.

However, “some non-tenure track [faculty] expect to be here for a short time” and others “think that they will be here for a longer period of time, but we have to make decisions based on the curricular need and who best meets those needs.”

However, Chenette is in consultation with the English Department in order to maintain an appropriate number of creative writing classes, he said.

Antelyes opined that the College’s de-emphasis of adjuncts and increased amount of tenure-track faculty signals a shift towards a style of teaching more reminiscent of a large university, where parttime faculty are usually, he said, graduate students.

This is not the sort of community, however, which has existed at Vassar.

“The balance between the percentage of our curriculum taught by tenure-track and non-tenure track is moving somewhat in the direction of tenure-line faculty,” Chenette confirmed in a later interview. He named budgetary reasons as the primary driving force for this change.

Said Antelyes, “There are some faculty that agree with the cuts… and I don’t want to demonize them…I don’t want to emphasize my opinion.” Reasons for supporting the cuts, Antelyes posited, include a preference for the “university model” of adjunct use, and the opinion that “the process of getting tenure distinguishes [professors] in that [they have] been held and tested.”

This Week in Higher Ed

by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief Virginia Tech newspaper may take legal action against University if funding is cut Last Monday, the Commission on Student Affairs at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University notified the school’s student newspaper, The Collegiate Times (CT), that it had been deemed in violation of the University’s “principles of community” for allowing anonymous online comments on its website. In that same letter, the Commission also outlined a plan to cut University funding to the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech Inc., which financially supports The Collegiate Times, as well as other student media organizations on campus such as the yearbook. The plan would also ban student organizations from using University funds to purchase advertisements in the CT, a policy change that CT members say could send the paper into bankruptcy. The paper has declined to change their online commenting, saying that most collegiate newspapers allow anonymous comments on their websites. According to an interview CT General Manager Kelly Wolff gave to The Roanoke Times last Thursday, the Commission’s request is “completely unconstitutional and a break of contract.” Wolff explained that the Commission plans to meet on Feb. 18, and if the plans to cut funding and on-campus advertising are indeed approved, “then we will take legal action,” she said.

Brown considers reducing “number and mix” of varsity teams On Thursday, Feb. 11, The Brown Daily Herald reported that Brown University officials would begin to “re-evaluate the number and mix of varsity sports programs to save money and improve athletes’ experiences,” as stated in a recommendation made to President Ruth Simmons by an Athletics subcommittee, one of 12 subcommittees charged last spring with finding ways to save the University $14 million dollars. According to a report from the subcommittee’s umbrella group—the Organizational Review Committee—the Athletics subcommittee was the only group to not meet its savings goal. No specific cuts have yet been finalized, explained Brown Vice

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

President for Campus Life and Student Services Margaret Klawunn. “It is not definite that a reduction will be made, although we think it is possible. No teams have been identified and no timeline has been established,” Klawunn wrote in an e-mailed statement to the Herald. “[The Committee] felt that any consideration of a reduction to the varsity program required more time and a process that would include coaches and student athletes.”

Obama to give commencement addresses at U. of Michigan and Hampton University It was announced this week that President of the United States Barack Obama will deliver commencement addresses at University of Michigan and Hampton University, as well as one of the nation’s military academies, per historic tradition. In a statement released earlier this week, Hampton University President William R. Harvey said, “We are honored that President Obama has accepted Hampton’s invitation to speak to our 2010 graduates during our commencement exercises. [Obama’s] commitment to leadership, education and service is parallel to Hampton’s mission from our beginning in 1868.”

GW approves three percent tuition raise The George Washington University (GW) Board of Trustees approved a three percent tuition increase on Friday, Feb. 12; the price-raise, effective for the 2010-2011 academic year, will mark the third consecutive year in which the University has raised its entry fee, according to an article in The GW Hatchet. As the third-most expensive institution in the nation, George Washington University has often been criticized for being significantly more costly than its peers. In a recent open panel, University President Steven Knapp explained that the University cannot match these schools, given that its endowment is relatively small in comparison, he said, pointing to a plan at Stanford University in which tuition is waived for families with low incomes.

“Stanford’s endowment is about 17 times the size of ours,” said Knapp. “We give probably the same amount of financial aid, it’s just that we don’t take it out of our endowment.”

February 18, 2010

FEATURES

Page 5

Late book orders, an annual pain Carrie Hojnicki

T

Arts Editor

Erica Licht

D Gabe Kelly-Ramirez/The Miscellany News

here’s nothing fun about buying textbooks, about placing a $600 dent in your wallet or about standing in line to do so, arms weighted down by the sheer mass of an Introductory Physics textbook.

While some might call this an inevitable part of the semester, Bookstore Manager Cathy Black-Benson and her colleagues are hoping to relieve some financial burden by spreading awareness of an easily ameliorated flaw in the process: professors submitting book requests far past the Bookstore’s deadline.

“The best way to increase the amount of used books [available to students] is getting book orders from faculty as soon as possible,” explained Black-Benson. “Professors need to know how it works.” No Vassar professors were willing to comment for this article.

The bookstore acquires used books in two ways: through on-campus buyback and through used book wholesalers. In both circumstances, plentiful and successful acquisition relies on when the bookstore becomes aware of the books it must order.

“What is so frustrating is when we buy back a book for wholesale price, say $10, and then we ship them to a wholesaler in Missouri,” explained Black-Benson. “Three weeks later a professor comes in and orders that book. We can’t just get it back.”

“We need to know what books are being used on this campus so that we can pay 50 percent to anyone who wants to sell them back to us,” explained Black-Benson on the Bookstore’s buyback process. “We can’t buy them back at 50 percent and keep them in stock if professors haven’t told us what they’re going to use.”

The Vassar College Bookstore, pictured above, requests that professors submit book orders as early as possible to help students save on the high costs of textbooks and course materials.

When ordering from wholesalers, time carries equal significance. In the wholesale market, the Vassar Bookstore faces competition from all of the other institutions seeking to provide used books for its students. If another school places their requests earlier, they will have access to the most books at the cheapest prices.

“The longer we are in this used book wholesale market, the more used books we’re going to get. So again, if the faculty member tells us earlier—and we can be hunting for used books for months—we’re going to have a lot more success in getting them. If

a professor tells us a week before classes what books they need, we’re not going to have any time,” commented Black-Benson.

A late faculty request may mean that a student selling back a textbook reusable at Vassar may only receive 10 percent of its original value when they should receive 50 percent of the original value. This becomes a burden for both the student seller and the future student buyer, who will not have access to this used book. In fact, recent statistics from the Barnes and Noble Collegiate franchises reveal that Vassar submits See TEXTBOOKS on page 6

Five Guys: when you just need meat Daniel Combs

S

Reporter

donnyfisher.com

ometimes you just need a greasy-ass burger. Sometimes, you also need to top that burger with a mountain of crispy fried starchy goodness. Sometimes, you just need to plow into that meal in a nononsense, no-pretense setting. In other words, sometimes you just need to make a trip to Five Guys. I wasn’t sure about making Five Guys this edition of my weekly fieldtrip. It’s a chain restaurant, to begin with, and the food was so good, I wasn’t sure I could review it without sounding like an ad for the restaurant. But as I said, sometimes you just need a burger, and, in honor of President’s Day, I thought I’d satisfying this particular craving at Five Guys.

Five Guys: Burgers & Fries has been something of a nation-sweeping sensation the past decade. The chain, which started in Washington, D.C., quickly gained popularity through their tasty, user-friendly model. Order at a counter à la fast food restaurant. However, customize your burger with up to 16 toppings, all of which are free. Your double-stacked burger (for what you may consider a regular size you need to order a “Little Burger”) is served up in a paper bag within a few minutes.

Munch on some of the free peanuts while you wait for your food and people-watch the clientele that spans every possible social divide. If you ordered some fries (you should), then on top of your wax-paper wrapped burger you’ll find a paper cup loaded with thick cut, fried spuds. They don’t stop there, however. If you watch the guys in their uniforms behind the counter, you’ll see that once fries start going in the bag, they keep going in until they reach the brim, spilling all over the innards of your bag and rubbing their greasy deliciousness on everything they touch. For this reason, most people arrive at their table with a splotchy, wet brown paper bag that may even be dripping from the grease inside.

It’s a beautiful sight.

Fitness leader realizes dreams

Five Guys Famous Burgers & Fries is located on Route 9 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Despite being a chain, the restaurant is known for its laid-back atmosphere as well as its large servings.

Sure the norm may be a push toward this thing people call “healthy eating,” but I think that artery-clogging, oily food tastes phenomenal. It’s far better than the rabbit food people laud as good for you.

The Five Guys burger is like the Big Mac’s better looking brother, the one that isn’t a popularity whore, but still manages to give everyone what they want. For me, this means ordering it all the way, plus jalapeños. This lands you two slippery patties covered in cheese, lathered in a veritable soup of condiments—mayo, ketchup and mustard—and forced unforgivingly between two helpless buns amidst lettuce, onions, pickles, two tomato slices and, in my case, a handful of jalapeños. And if you’re up to the challenge, throw some bacon on there too.

The atmosphere of the place itself is at once in-your-face and tongue-in-cheek.

With bags of potatoes hung on the walls and an attitude that says, “this is what we serve. If you want something else, then this place isn’t for you,” Five Guys represents a very American strain of anti-change.

However liberal I am, when it comes to food, I like the idea of conservative cuisine. In a society that keeps finding itself in a tizzy about some new diet trend, it’s incredibly comforting to find a place that rejects the cult of egg-white omelettes, low-carb meals and fears over which fats might be bad for you. No screwing around allowed here. Sure, the menu has grilled cheese on it, but if you ordered it you may get laughed out of the building.

See BURGER on page 6

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Guest Reporter

riving down Main Street in downtown Poughkeepsie, it is almost impossible not to notice the energy pulsing from M*POWER Center for Cultural Fitness.

There is a distinct rhythm that emanates out of the storefront space of creative and physical expression for everyone in the Poughkeepsie community. Toni Llanos opened the center over three years ago with her husband Joe Llanos in the hopes of bringing to life the dream for their own space to provide these physical arts for the community. Today, M*POWER continues to thrive as an outlet for energy under Toni Llanos’ leadership as co-Owner and Director of Dance and Fitness.

When Llanos started her Afro-Caribbean Fitness Dance class in 1996, she held it in various local gyms and other traveling locations in order to widen her audience and draw attention to the unique experience that she was offering. Years later, while teaching at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, her students turned the tables on a question that she had posed to the class: “What would you do if money wasn’t an object?” She remembers being caught off guard. She responded from the heart, “I want a place where I can offer all kinds of cultural classes—dance, fitness and martial arts—bring in other people to share their art form and expose the community to all different kinds of cultural expressions.” One year later, this dream became a reality.

M*POWER, which stands for Motivate*Pass On Wisdom and Education Responsibly, blends Afro-Caribbean Fitness and Martial Arts, houses a dance team and provides classroom space for other groups pursuing dance, yoga and movement exercises. It is driven by Llanos’ distinct rhythm to build a holistic experience for all who enter. Each class that Llanos teaches opens and ends with a prayer, and those who take her classes benefit from her “use of music and dance as a form of spiritual release that helps them maintain balance.” She maintains, “Our people [in the community] are lacking understanding.

M*POWER provides full balance—in mind, body and spirit.” It is this beautiful combination that continues to impact the lives her class participants and student members of the M*POWER Elite Dance Team.

Llanos strongly believes that God has played a role in making her dreams a reality, and her studio seeks to honor that role: “I have to remember that it couldn’t happen without Him.” The day she discovered the space on Main Street that would later become the home of M*POWER, she told her son Julian that they would know if it was meant to be. As the realtor showed them inside, she knew she had found her professional home in a newly refurbished space in the heart of downtown Poughkeepsie. “I couldn’t believe that it was here, in the middle of all of this,” she remembers. And three years later, Llanos maintains, “As much of a struggle as it is to be here—He [the Lord] wants us to be here.”

M*POWER is more than a space for class offerings; it is a hub of youthful engagement, creativity and physical expression as a means for important social change for the Poughkeepsie community. The youth members of the dance group called the Elite Team rehearse almost every day of the week and perform at a variety of Poughkeepsie and Vassar College events.

All of the youth involved learn to use dance as an outlet and, according to Llanos, as a “place where they can tap into their divine creativity.” Llanos views the Team just as she views the Center, as both “a place for overall empowerment” and “a place for release.”

While M*POWER may have been Llanos’ dream, it extends far beyond her own ambitions. “I didn’t want it to be about [me],” she said, “It’s about what we’re going to do here with children and families…I may be in front of the group leading, but I am still getting some kind of release. I am stable and healthy because of the Afro-Caribbean class.”

Throughout the Afro-Caribbean class, Llanos reminds the participants to “challenge yourself, but only do what you can do. I am here to challenge you, but you know your body. Work at your level.” It is the supportive atmosphere of M*POWER that keeps community members of all levels, ages, races and genders coming back for more personal and physical growth. “Thank yourself,” Llanos says at the end of every class, for “taking the time in the day to work on you, and the body and mind.”

To her students at SUNY New Paltz, she is “Mama;” to the youth on the M*POWER Elite Dance Team, she is “Miss Toni;” and to all who enter M*POWER, she is a nurturer of rhythmic love and a deep faith in the beauty of Poughkeepsie to grow and foster support for its youth.

“The reason we do this,” she says, “is just to plant the seed.

Because it’s possible: If you want it, you can achieve it.”

—Erica Licht ’10 is the Community Action Coordinator and will be writing community profiles this semester.

FEATURES

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February 18, 2010

Student voices come to the table Fin. aid key

to Founder’s dying wishes

Matthew Bock

T

Reporter

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

he written comments on the bulletin boards by the exits of Vassar’s All Campus Dining Center (ACDC) may be an effective means of communicating students’ culinary preferences to Campus Dining, but they’re not the only way. The Vassar Food Committee, a joint group of students and administrators, meets once a month to discuss ways in which dining on campus can be improved. In addition to exploring new gastronomical options, the Committee addresses the popularity, presentation and healthfulness of the dishes offered in the dining halls.

Recently, the Committee has entertained the possibility of bringing a new kind of coffee to campus (members will be tasting varieties in upcoming meetings), decided upon meatfree pasta salad, introduced turkey bacon and requested that the All Campus Dining Center serve more salmon. They have also re-introduced avocado, a very popular item, to the sandwich station on Thursdays.

While student feedback about dining has been a part of the Vassar ethos for a long time, the extent to which this feedback has been effective seems unclear. Ezra Roth ’10, who chairs the Committee in collaboration with Senior Director of Campus Dining Maureen King, reports that sometimes the Committee’s recommendations are implemented almost immediately, while other times it can take much longer—many weeks, a month, sometimes never at all.

Scrutiny is one way that students on the Committee can guarantee that their voices are being heard. “Whether or not our suggestions are being implemented all the time—that’s ultimately up to administrators,” said Roth.

“However, members of the Committee survey the dining halls on shifts—we don’t reveal to [Campus Dining] administrators when we’re coming—to make sure that the many suggestions we’ve given are being taken seriously.”

Committee members may also communicate other observations at meetings. For example, Roth commented, he lets King know if he notices that the fruit does not look fresh on any given day. According to Roth, the Committee serves as an important bridge between students and Campus Dining administrators.

Members are also receptive to hearing from other students. Roth emphasized the

Students browse the food selections at the All Campus Dining Center on the first floor of the Students’ Building. The Food Committee works to incorporate student opinion into campus dining. importance of student opinion in shaping the Committee’s concerns. According to Roth, he is planning on expanding the Committee’s outreach in the future by placing a lockbox for comments specifically aimed at the Food Committee in ACDC and by writing more frequently on Vassar’s health and wellness blog, VCFit (blogs.miscellanynews.com/vcfit/), which he has updated about every other week since the beginning of the year. Sometimes, he explained, it is the communications that come from students outside of the Committee that bring about the most significant changes.

On the topic, King remarked, “I think the Food Committee’s been really instrumental.

They don’t realize how much influence they do have. The first time they ask for something and it happens, I think sometimes they’re surprised.”

She added that ultimately it is up to the Committee’s members to determine how much change can be enacted, that the Committee’s activity has fluctuated from year to year. She also noted that the Committee is not the only vehi-

cle that students can use to express their opinions about campus dining. For example, coffee from a Mexican coffee cooperative called Just Coffee is available at the Retreat as the result of petitioning from a group of students who traveled to the cooperative in spring 2007 as part of an American Culture/Geography study trip to the United States-Mexico border.

Despite Roth’s belief that there is always room for improvement in the Food Committee, Roth attributes the Committee’s accomplishments to an open-minded and receptive administration. Roth remarked, “A common misconception is that it’s very hard to get a hold of the [Campus Dining] administration.

But that’s not true. From my perspective, the administration really responds to student communication.” King echoed this sentiment: “What we do want students to know is that we are responsive and we are flexible, and sometimes it’s not until students actually meet us face-to-face that they realize that we’re people who care a lot.”

Students bear financial brunt of tardy requests

Five Guys’ fries always in abundance, greasy

TEXTBOOKS continued from page 5 book requests later than its peer institutions. For the current semester, the Bookstore asked that requests for spring semester textbooks be submitted by Nov. 12, 2009. As of that date, only 10.9 percent of book orders had been received. The national average for Barnes and Noble’s college stores was 50.8 percent.

While this gap is certainly alarming, Vassar Student Association (VSA) Vice President for Operations Brian Farkas ’10 attributes the gap between orders submitted and the books that will eventually be required for classes in part to Vassar’s unique curricular flexibility.

“50.8 percent, I would say that that number is too high for Vassar.

If you are operating a bookstore at an enormous university, there are many more classes that are going to be offered every single semester, every single year. And for us, that’s not always the case,” explained Farkas. “I feel like our ideal number, if there is such a thing, should probably be lower than the 50.8 percent and certainly higher than the 10.9 percent, because that’s pretty pathetic.”

Farkas and his fellow VSA Council members responded proactively to these statistics earlier this fall with an e-mail to the faculty.

The e-mail outlined the financial ramifications late book requests have on students and encouraged faculty to consider timely book requests as a “fair and relatively painless way of reducing burden on students.”

Both Black-Benson and Farkas noted the e-mail’s success in eliciting faculty responses and hoped that this becomes a positive trend that can continue to benefit students in these difficult financial times. “[The e-mail] was very effective in getting a lot of faculty members to submit their book orders right after they saw that e-mail. I think that in the future something we will have to institutionalize, at least until our culture is more in line with the norm, is to have the VSA send that reminder e-mail regularly,” said Farkas.

With the Fall 2011 April book order deadline just around the corner, we can all hope that Vassar faculty will rise to the occasion and that all of our wallets can be a little fuller at the end of next semester’s textbook purchasing period.

BURGER continued from page 5 Whether you like it or not, a big, juicy hamburger is the representative dish of American cuisine.

You should be able to feel like you’re eating an American meal without building a Thanksgiving feast, and Five Guys gives you that chance. The red and white color scheme that permeates every facet of the interior design almost requires that you salute it, and the soundtrack—American favorites from your parents’ generation—will remind you how cool Woodstock probably was. It’s depressing to hear about McDonalds opening up in France or Spain and people flocking to them en masse to have an El Mac or a Royale with Cheese. To eat fries and a burger out of a Five Guys paper bag is to have your idea of American fast food completely changed, and I think that if you at all enjoy a burger, you need to give it a try.

In terms of what to get when you do make the trek to Route 9, a recommendation from me won’t do it. The beauty of Five Guys is the total customizability of your burger. I can say that spice really makes a burger for me, and I was far from disap-

pointed with the jalapeños. The possibilities are basically endless, and with a little imagination you can build some real behemoths.

The only thing I can definitively say is that you must, must get fries with your burger. The thick spud strips are coated in a combination of salt and sugar that has opium level addiction potential and have a perfect crispy outside to starchy inside ratio. My only complaint is that the only two condiments to dip said fries into are ketchup and vinegar. Both are amazing on fries, but sometimes I just need that mustard/ketchup mix or some barbecue laced with Tabasco. Even without a smorgasbord of dips, it’s impossible to plow through these with any dignity.

This stuff is indulgent in the best possible way, and I fully endorse going all the way with a huge bacon cheeseburger and a pound or so of fries. While your waistline may not forgive you for a while, you might never again feel as satiated—you will be smiling when you walk out the door. Just be prepared to lie down and do nothing but digest for the next few hours.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

FOUNDER continued from page 1 using year-to-year estimates from the Consumer Price Index.

Regardless, one thing is clear: Vassar left a lot of money. And upon the initial investment of this money, the College gained a large return— about seven percent each year, according to John Howard Raymond, Vassar’s second President.

Given the sheer amount of money involved, one has to ask: Were Vassar’s dying wishes granted?

In a word, yes. At the time of Vassar’s bequest, the College pooled funds from Vassar and other donors to create the College endowment, which still funds the College today. However, as with other restricted gifts, the income from Vassar’s funds was and continues to be directed toward those purposes delineated by Vassar in his will.

Renowned writer and activist Angela Davis, for example, delivered 2009’s Matthew Vassar Lecture. And Matthew Vassar’s Auxiliary Fund, the very first scholarship fund, is listed in the 20092010 College Catalogue alongside those started by other members of the College community.

Vassar intended the provisions of his will to reflect his hopes for the College. Indeed, we can see that all of the provisions left in Vassar’s will remain a celebrated part of College life: with a need-blind policy in place and 58 percent of students receiving need-based aid, according to administrators, the College has affirmed its strong commitment to financial aid; accomplished individuals of all stripes are regularly brought to campus to lecture; and there are a variety of academic resources available to students through the library. As to Vassar’s fund for general repairs: The campus has expanded considerably since Vassar’s time, and, despite a few minor complaints, is in good condition.

Of course, seeing Vassar’s hopes for the College carried out requires time and a lot more money than Vassar himself could give. As Dean Emeritus of the College Colton Johnson wrote in an e-mailed statement, “To take just one of the aims of Vassar’s specified gifts, financial aid in the contemporary sense was slow to evolve, even at Vassar.”

Johnson pointed to “A College for Women, in Poughkeepsie, N. Y.,” a booklet written by Raymond, which documents the first seven years of the College’s operation, and which is available on the online Vassar Encyclopedia. In it, Raymond describes the lack of scholarship aid available to Vassar students at the time; he notes that in the College’s first seven years, only one other person besides Vassar himself created an endowed scholarship fund.

This situation improved over time, of course.

Johnson wrote about later efforts to secure scholarship aid for Vassar students, including those of Vassar’s fourth president, James Monroe Taylor, who “frequently appealed to alumnae groups for scholarship money.” He also mentioned the Vassar Aid Society, which was founded by alumnae in the 1890s. By 1916, Vassar President Henry Noble MacCracken was able to brag that “…Vassar College awards more scholarships than any institution of its numbers, so far as I know, nearly $30,000 a year being awarded out of college endowments for the education of over 200 girls.”

Still, Johnson admits—and few would disagree—that “[MacCracken’s] data seemed a bit underwhelming by today’s standards.” Financial aid in the sense that we understand it, in terms of its magnitude and packaging, didn’t really begin until the institution of federal financial assistance programs.

Being now so far removed from the time in which Vassar lived, it is difficult to say whether Matthew Vassar himself would agree that the achievements of subsequent generations have carried out his wishes to a tee. But Raymond, who knew Vassar personally, had the following to say about Vassar’s wish: “It was the hope of the Founder that, if the institution should prove a success, …other benefactors would arise to carry out the work he began by...augmenting the resources of the institution.”

In which case, it seems safe to say that our Founder would be fairly proud of what he—and we—have created.

FEATURES

February 18, 2010

Page 7

Jambalaya leaves time for Mardi Gras festivities Nate Silver

W

Columnist

Kelley Van Dilla/The Miscellany News

Jambalaya

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3 T olive oil 2 onions, diced 2 cloves garlic, diced 1 green bell pepper, diced 1 red bell pepper, diced 4 stalks celery, diced 1/2 t. ground cayenne pepper 1 t. dried basil 1 t. dried oregano Salt, to taste 3/4 lb. chorizo, sliced into 1/4-inch slices 3/4 lb, andouille sausage (or any other smoked sausage), sliced into 1/4-inch slices 1 28-oz. can diced tomatoes 1 t. hot sauce (optional) 2 c. long-grain white rice 3 c. chicken stock 1/2 lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined (see note) 2 T thinly sliced green onions

Follow this recipe in a photoessay on

Exposure blogs.miscellanynews.com/exposure

A note on shrimp:

To prepare:

Before cooking with shrimp, you need to be sure they are cleaned properly. At many grocery stores you can find “Easy-Peel” shrimp, meaning that the fishmongers have already removed the “vein” from the back of the shrimp and the shell can easily be peeled away. If you cannot find or choose not to buy these, you will need to clean them yourself. Holding the shrimp in one hand, identify the vein (the dark, thin strip on the back of the shrimp), which is actually the shrimp’s digestive tract. With a paring knife, make an incision in the back of the shrimp and remove this vein. Peel away the legs and shell from the shrimp. You can leave the tail on if you like (for appearance), but because it is inedible, there’s really no reason.

For this recipe, you can either keep the shrimp whole or cut them into small pieces.

For me, because there weren’t a whole lot of shrimp, I cut them up so that they would be more of a presence in the dish. You’re more than welcome to use more than a half pound of shrimp, but my $20 only goes so far.

Start by heating the olive oil in large pot or dutch oven over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onions and garlic and sauté until translucent, 4-6 minutes. Add the bell peppers and celery and cook 4 minutes more. Add the dried herbs, cayenne, salt and hot sauce. You can add more or less cayenne or hot sauce, depending on your personal preference.

Next, add the sauce to the pan and brown slightly. If you use smoked sausage, it is already cooked, so you do not need to worry about cooking it through. Add the diced tomatoes (with all the liquid) into the pot. Stir to combine.

Add the rice and the stock, turn the heat to low and simmer for about 25 minutes until the rice is tender and most of the stock is absorbed. The tomato liquid and the 3 c. of stock should be enough to cook the rice, but you may need to add a bit more liquid.

10 minutes before the rice is done, add the shrimp to the pan. Spoon some jumbalaya into a bowl and top with some of the sliced green onions.

Kelley Van Dilla/The Miscellany News

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Kelley Van Dilla/The Miscellany News

ith the Saints bringing New Orleans its first Super Bowl title and Mardi Gras starting on Tuesday, there is cause for celebration in the Big Easy. Up here, in snowy Poughkeepsie, we owe ourselves a joyous taste of the spicy South. Jambalaya is a classic Louisiana Creole dish, consisting of meat, vegetables, seafood and rice. Similar to paella, but with more spice and no saffron, jambalaya is a really great crowd-pleaser that is simple to prepare. While there are many theories about its etymology, the theory I’m most taken with is that jambalaya stems from the Provencal word jambalaia, meaning “mash-up.” I really am not an authority on the subject, but to me, it just makes sense.

I should also mention that, though I am not from New Orleans, the city has played a large part in my life. My mother was raised there, and every December from the time I was born until I graduated from high school included a week-long trip to New Orleans to visit my extended family. Indulging in the cuisine of the city—rich Creole and Cajun dishes like gumbo and etouffee, simple lunches of po’boys and red beans and rice—was nothing short of formative for me. I distinctly remember the first time I bit into a fried oyster and burst through the crisp exterior to find the soft, salty, meltin-your-mouth core. Life would never be the same.

But back to this week’s dish. Perhaps the most appealing quality of jambalaya is how easy it is to make. It’s a one-dish meal, meaning that you will only have to wash one pot when it’s all done. For those of us without dishwashers, you cannot underestimate the power of cooking without much cleanup. Chop a few vegetables, slice some sausage, clean some shrimp, toss it all into a pot, and you’ve basically done all you need to do. In comparison to some dishes that have appeared in previous weeks—braised short ribs, risotto, roast chicken, falafel—this jambalaya is fool-proof.

It’s about as difficult as tying your shoes.

Though the budget did not really allow for it this time, jambalaya is great paired with biscuits, corn bread, a crusty baguette or a simple green salad. It is also a great stand-alone dish, as my housemates can attest to. I was joined this week in the kitchen by the illustrious Nicole Wood ’12, who approached me about doing some sous-chefery. The two of us and Kelley Van Dilla ’12, the man responsible for the mouth-watering photography, had a great time making this meal.

As far as shopping this week, I decided to switch it up a bit. My strong allegiance to Adam’s aside, I figured it might be nice to detail an option for students without vehicles.

With that in mind, I took a trip on the campus shuttle to Stop & Shop. Despite the fact that there aren’t as many free samples or grass-fed beef, Stop & Shop did have surprisingly high quality ingredients, and the prices were great as well. The weekend campus shuttle makes hourly stops at the Stop & Shop on Route 9.

You can find the full schedule at neighbors. vassar.edu. Moral of the story: If you don’t have a car, you can still cook this meal (or any meal, for that matter).

If you haven’t cooked any of these recipes, but look longingly at them wishing you possessed the culinary abilities to make them look as good as they do in the photos, this is the week to try it. It’s only 40 minutes, start to finish. One pot. Five servings. Super delicious.

Grocery List Red Pepper Green Pepper Celery Green Onions Onions Chicken Stock Chorizo Andouille Shrimp Rice Diced Tomatoes

$0.75 $1.39 $1.50 $0.69 $0.95 $2.49 $2.50 $2.49 $4.70 $1.34 $1.20

Total

$20.00

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

OPINIONS

Page 8

February 18, 2010

Deer culling an ethical issue Sophomore Class Gift Library’s 24-Hour Study Space

requires responsibility Joseph Schiavo

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Guest Columnist

s the Sophomore Class Gift Committee began the process of selecting a gift early in the fall semester, we wanted to decide on a gift that would be a tangible, useful resource for the Vassar community, while maintaining a posture of fiscal responsibility in our decision. The gift should add value to the College and improve the student experience.

Our attention turned to the outpouring of student objections to the library’s temporary need to move its closing time to midnight—could we take up an initiative to alleviate staffing pressures and extend access to the library?

In consultation with Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs Rachel Kitzinger and Director of the Libraries Sabrina Pape, we discovered an opportunity to shape the Martha Rivers and E. Bronson Ingram Reading Room and the Reserve Room in the Thompson Memorial Library into a 24-hour space. Students expressed deep concerns over the prospect of a less-accessible library, and such a space would perpetuate the availability of this critical academic resource.

Fiscal responsibility and innovation are integral to this gift. In light of the College’s need for thrift in the current financial climate, how could we create a gift that will relieve budgetary pressures while still making a substantial contribution to the College? The space will afford library administration staffing and budgetary flexibility and will ensure that students always have a space to study.

Capital costs are low—apart from a few card readers, security cameras and anti-theft equipment, almost no construction is necessary. What about long-term financing? Our fundraising will finance the inception and

reconfiguration of the space, but year-to-year costs are still a concern; we needed a solution that wouldn’t incur long-run costs.

Of course, this decision to forego funding a staff position places responsibility for the space with the Vassar community. We will have no one to blame but ourselves if the new space deteriorates into a tragedy of the commons—it is important that the users of this space take ownership of this new and valuable resource. If the space is mistreated and vandalized, it will be easy for 24-hour access to be revoked. The College simply does not have the wherewithal to fix our mistakes, thus it will be more critical than ever that we treat this space with consideration and respect.

Our fundraising target is an achievable $7,000. If the Class of 2012 reaches 70 percent participation, the Class of 1987 will make a generous contribution of $7,000. The Class of 2012 may be organizing this gift, but it is by no means exclusive—it will benefit the entire community. The 2012 Class will soon start a fundraising campaign, and we need the support of the community to realize this tremendous opportunity.

The library is the crown jewel of intellectual life at Vassar, and this exciting gift will serve to make it even better. Its troves of academic resources are invaluable, and it provides a wonderful environment for studying, learning and thinking. The addition of a 24-hour study space will affirm the library’s position as the center of life at Vassar and well reflects the academic character and rigor of the Vassar community, without placing unnecessary financial stress on the College.

—Joseph Schiavo ’12 is Treasurer of the Class of 2012 and a member of the Sophomore Class Gift Committee

Marcy Schwartz Guest Columnist

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n one week, beginning Jan. 7, 2010, Vassar College killed 64 of the 100 friendly deer who lived on and around Vassar Farm. The deer were baited with food and shot en masse. Those that escaped were terrorized and left without the small families they need to survive. Not surprisingly, the administration conducted the kill during Winter Break, when students and faculty were away. It was therefore left to local residents, many of whom had come to know the deer literally in our own backyards, to create a grassroots organization called Save Our Deer to try and stop the killing. Our actions, which were covered extensively by local media, can be found on: saveourdeer.webs. com. Despite public opposition, the College states that it will consider more kills in the future.

Ironically, the College decided to decimate our small local deer herd in the name of ecology, at a time when the Farm is being transformed into a “preserve.”

However, deer culling is usually implemented when a deer herd is overpopulated, resulting in starvation or illness, or if a herd has seriously damaged a working farm or timber stand. None of these applies to Vassar Farm. Indeed, the real reason for the kill given in the Vassar Farm Oversight Committee’s June 2009 Deer Management Memorandum is that deer are eating the underbrush on the Farm. Of course, this is normal deer behavior in winter. A Jan. 28, 2010 Miscellany News article (“Deer culling elicits local controversy”) explains further that because deer eat native saplings, there could be a problem when the native trees eventually die out. Since this means that the Farm will show no damage from deer for at least 20 years, one would imagine that a Committee of 27 Vassar College academics could come up with a better idea by then.

Even if there was an immediate problem, the baitand-shoot method of deer control is considered cruel and unethical even by many hunters, who find it unsportsmanlike. Yet Professor of Biology Margaret Ronsheim, who sits on the Committee, states in the Jan. 28, 2010 Miscellany News article that this was “one of the most humane options.” Unfortunately, her unfounded comment exemplifies the lack of objective analysis and fact finding behind the College’s actions.

Read the memorandum on Vassar’s website and it is apparent that shooting deer was a foregone conclusion. There is no serious investigation into alternate non-lethal methods. For example, the Committee purposely cites the prohibitive cost of over $100,000 for fencing the entire 500-acre Farm, when only smaller forested areas would need fencing, at a much lower cost. Similarly, the memorandum dismisses relocating deer, stating that is it “unlikely that any locations would be willing to receive deer.” Yet at least three

Reflecting on Matthew’s Mug

Mug a space of naked honesty Julian Mundy

T

Guest Columnist

o be honest, I’m a little conflicted about writing this article in the first place since Matthew’s Mug is not usually the first place I think of heading when I crave social interaction. But under the auspices of saying what everyone’s thinking, I feel that it’s important to come out and say what the Mug is, in no uncertain terms (not simply an event or special night, but the place itself), if only to set that issue to rest in my own mind. I’m certainly not talking about the place without firsthand knowledge, though. If I was, how could I talk about little details like the wall of heat and moisture in the air that you can feel almost immediately after descending the stairs? If you haven’t caught on to this yet, no, I’m not a great fan of going to the Mug. But I do appreciate what it means to us as Vassar students. I’ll get into that later.

A lot of what going to the Mug entails is what you expect; that is, expectations. Most people expect to have a good time, get loud and stupid, and feel really good about it. Something amazing happens to a person when they get in the middle of the crowd. We tap into the animal side of our brain that we need to satisfy by dancing hard and fast and just listening to our instincts when we get the urge to go grind or dance with someone. There’s nothing wrong with that.

People also expect to waive their right to personal space—it’s a dance club, after all. We expect to be bumped into, grinded on and all the rest of it.

We expect to immediately see somebody that we wouldn’t mind waking up to the next morning, as well as those people that make us feel uncomfort-

able because they just can’t take the hint that they are not wanted. Our expectations surrounding the Mug are of a social—and literal—Petri dish, where the mass of the crowd just grows in proportion to the sweaty condensation on the floor.

Of course, I’m not going to presume that I can actually speak for everyone. Much of what I hear, especially amongst groups of girls, is some variation on, “I just went in there to dance, but this one guy kept accosting me.” I remember being “this one guy” from time to time, and it’s valuable to know that not everyone goes to the Mug for the same, uniform reason. Maybe next time I’ll ask before I start dancing with someone.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I rarely go to the Mug when I’m feeling social, and this is true. I don’t really enjoy being in a hot, sweaty mass of people unless I have some kind of dementia, and even then I might take some convincing. I prefer to keep my partying small and personal, rather than loud, stupid and anonymous. But more than anything, and despite any quibbles and problems I can find with our beloved club, I can appreciate the Mug for its one genuinely redeeming quality: It keeps us honest. We walk in without pretense, expecting to walk away from the whole thing with a cute person in tow, with the assumption that we’ll wake up next to them the next morning. We don’t burden ourselves with trying to dress the Mug up like something it isn’t. It’s a place for us to have fun with little consequence, say what we want, and most of all, it lets us believe that even though we’re at a small college, we can belong to something bigger by getting lost in the crowd. The Mug lets us be honest with each other in moments when we can’t even be honest with ourselves.

people, unsolicited, contacted Save Our Deer, offering relocation to their land.

So why did the Committee fail to extensively research non-lethal methods when it certainly had time to do so, and instead recommend such a violent solution? I was a lawyer to a Fortune 500 company for 20 years, and I understand how large institutions work. It takes just one person who is passionate about an idea, and who is believed by others to be an expert, to put an idea into action. Just like at Vassar, first a committee is formed. Then, a report is prepared which relies heavily on an expert’s knowledge. Finally, the report supports what the expert wants to get done. Usually, the system works. Here, it failed.

When the College realized that its actions were extremely controversial and that bad press would follow this story everywhere, it was time to stop the kill and review the situation. I personally asked President of the College Catharine Bond Hill to stop killing after the first night, with 44 deer dead. I promised that if she agreed, the protests would stop. She refused. Now the Committee is following suit and going to extreme measures to defend a defenseless decision. Deer are being vilified with the odd accusation that they eat baby birds out of their nests. In spite of substantial opposition to the kill, Associate Dean of Faculty Marianne Begemann minimizes the outcry as “countless e-mails from animal rights groups.” The truth is that most of us live nearby, and are outraged at the College’s hubris in single-handedly wiping out our local wildlife. We have had the rare pleasure of observing these beautiful animals up close, and find it disturbing that their very acceptance of humans made the deer easier targets.

It is time that the College face that it made a mistake, and that it will cost more in poor public relations and potential donor backlash, to continue on this ill-set course. More importantly, it is time that the College recognize the harm done to its own primary mission as an educational institution. Several of the 30-plus letters to the editor of The Poughkeepsie Journal on the kill expressed shock that an institution of higher learning would utilize such a violent method of dealing with a perceived ecological issue. Since students learn by example as well as in the classroom, it was up to the administration and faculty to model ethical stewardship of Vassar Farm. Exhibiting trigger-happy behavior toward the native wildlife falls far short of that goal, and sends a message that violence is a viable option in life. Sadly, this time the College’s failure as a role model hurt not only the student body, but also the unsuspecting deer that lived peaceably among us.

—Marcy Schwartz is a local resident of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and is the founder of Save Our Deer. For more information about Save Our Deer, visit saveourdeer.webs.com.

Letter: ‘Truth always the right choice’ Mike Perrone

Guest Columnist

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single night can change everything.

Back in early December, I had four friends as my guests at the College. One of my friends ended up pulling three fire alarms against my word, knowing I would deal with the consequences of his actions.

I was removed from classes back-to-back days, the first day to speak to the director of the Security Department, and the second to speak to the police. My future had been jeopardized by someone else’s actions. I had worked too hard for this ignorant action to change everything in an instant. This happened around finals week, which affected my grades. I felt humiliated and extremely embarrassed when I told my baseball coach and my father what had happened. My dad is a 28year veteran of the New York City Fire Department, a part of his life he takes great pride in. He was extremely upset to hear the news and even more upset at my friend. I was punished at home over a break for something I hadn’t done, and all the while, I was afraid of the College’s decision regarding my punishment.

My relationship with my friend has changed. He is no longer allowed in my house or car. It was difficult for me to tell the truth knowing my friend would get into serious trouble. My friend had placed a burden upon me for some stupid act that is extremely serious.

The Arlington Fire Department had been negatively affected by this matter.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

They shouldn’t be making pointless runs at extremely late hours of the night when something much more serious could be occurring elsewhere, not to mention that people could have gotten hurt rushing out of the dorms. The Fire Department needs to make sure people trust a fire alarm so that nobody sleeps through or ignores it, for if there was actually a fire or other sort of emergency requiring evacuation, people who ignore the alarm can get trapped and die.

I know the truth is always the right choice. I had to go through some difficult decisions in telling the truth, but the fact that I had to be in this situation that I did not create was bad enough, besides my own punishment of probation and no guests for a specified time period. Make sure you know the true character and maturity level of your guests and ensure that they are respectful. I have learned my lesson the hard way, and by sharing this with you, I hope that you will remember my story and heed my words— choose your guests carefully. I would like to sincerely apologize to the residents in both Cushing House and Strong House on behalf of my friend. I hope that anyone who reads this will take the lessons I have learned from this incident and apply it to their own life.

—Mike Perrone ’13 wrote this letter following a disciplinary sanction and submitted it to The Miscellany News completely of his own accord.

OPINIONS

February 18, 2010

Page 9

College correct on stronger illegal downloading penalties Angela Aiuto

Opinions Editor

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any students are undoubtedly upset with the College’s recent decision to intensify the punishment for illegal downloading. Some question whether the severity of the punishment matches the crime. Others feel that illegal downloading isn’t a crime at all.

For example, on the Facebook event page for the Vassar Student Association’s Forum on Illegal Downloading—which was held this past Wednesday, Feb. 17—a former Vassar employee named Derek Balling questioned the illegality of downloading copyrighted material, writing: “...copyright prohibits ‘distribution’ of copyrighted material without permission. The person who performs a simple download is not distributing the material.”

I don’t pretend to be an expert on this subject, but I find such an explanation debatable at best. The U.S. Copyright Office seems to negate what Balling says: “Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights

of reproduction and/or distribution…Since the files distributed over peer-to-peer networks are primarily copyrighted works, there is a risk of liability for downloading material from these networks.”

It is generally understood that the recording industry goes after those who download files as opposed to those who share them—although, in many cases, a student will be guilty of both. But the Copyright Office seems to suggest that, if the recording industry wanted to, it could go after those who simply download, too.

Given this gray area, it would seem that Vassar is looking out for the overall well-being of its students by strengthening the punishment for illegal downloading.

Of course, legalities or illegalities don’t really matter to the average person either way, do they? Given the sheer volume of files being shared out there, it is virtually impossible for authorities to regulate the distribution of this material in any comprehensive, meaningful way.

The actual risk of getting caught for illegally sharing or downloading music is pretty low, and many people wouldn’t mind making that bet.

But what about the moral issue? Downloading a handful of songs off the Internet doesn’t seem like a terrible offense to most people, especially considering that it subtracts only a few dollars from the massive profits raked in daily by fabulously wealthy record companies and artists. But, in principle, downloading a song illegally is the same as any other kind of stealing.

I imagine that most people who engage in illegal file sharing or downloading wouldn’t feel comfortable about walking into Best Buy and swiping a CD, despite the fact that this theft likely wouldn’t impact Best Buy’s profits or overall financial viability in the slightest.

Given that most people hold a moral objection to stealing, it seems odd and disturbing that they would waive this moral objection when it comes to pirated media because they know they won’t get caught. But it’s also important to note that, in general, people who illegally download music don’t realize the true value of their theft, which is often much more than the cost of your average CD. A 2008 study found that the average teenager’s iPod contains more than 800 illegally downloaded songs.

Resolution of the settlement issue requires a compromise Emil Ostrovski

I

Guest Columnist

sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently reiterated the long-held Israeli stance that some Israeli settlements would always remain a part of Israel regardless of negotiations with the Palestinians and the possible formation of a Palestinian state. The aforementioned negotiations have stalled, with the Palestinians demanding a full cessation of settlement construction as a precondition to talks. It is possible that the Palestinians were emboldened to make this demand after President Barack Obama called for a complete halt on settlement construction in May of last year.

Though initially not giddy over the idea, Netanyahu did take a step towards compromise by calling a 10-month halt to new settlement construction. The Palestinians, however, deem this measure insufficient because it does not extend to disputed territories in East Jerusalem and because construction that is already underway is allowed to continue.

The settlements originally came about in the aftermath of the 1967 war. A pre-emptive Israeli air strike into Egypt ignited the war, launched in response to Egypt’s mobilization of its army, the army’s subsequent deployment along the Egyptian-Israeli border, and the forced withdrawal of a UN Emergency force—ordered by former Egyptian President Gamal Nassar—which had been serving as a buffer between the two countries.

The conflict would pit Israel against Egypt, Jordan and Syria over the course of six days. Israel would emerge victorious, and its spoils of war would be the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The Palestinian-held West Bank and Gaza had previously been under the boot of Egyptian and Jordanian occupation and were now occupied by Israel. East Jerusalem was the only territory that was formally annexed, but in spite of that, Israel encouraged its citizens to establish settlements not only in East Jerusalem, but also in the other territories as well.

Though occupation of the Palestinians has ended, many settlements remain in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. About 500,000 Israelis (out of a population of approximately 7.5 million) live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank today. Israel had settlements in Gaza as well, but dismantled them in 2005.

As for Golan Heights, the Israeli position here is what makes the question of the settlements in general so very problematic. Netanyahu and his governing coalition, while not referring to the territory as annexed, have stated that they view retaining hold of it as a strategic necessity. And this is why there will always be some settlements, because the retention of many of them, according to the Israeli military, is a national se-

curity imperative.

It is perhaps worthy of note that the Israeli army’s investigation into whether certain settlement blocs are strategically necessary or not could very well have been biased, and that there has not, as far as I know, been a separate, independent investigation into the matter.

However, we should also keep in mind that Israel is really a tiny country, so it is certainly not out of the question that a small and insignificant-looking piece of land might very well be crucial to its defensive capabilities. Furthermore, it would not be prudent to overlook certain realities: the hostile international climate Israel existed in when it began the process of settlement construction (and, to an extent, still does exist in), Palestinian terrorist attacks into Israel leading up to the outbreak of the 1967 war, and the continued use of terrorism since then by some Palestinians, both in the form of rockets and suicide bombers. Still, this justification worries me, because it is a “the end justifies the means” argument, and, of course, if we’re going to be completely objective here, there’s no reason why Israel’s end should supersede the end of any other country or people.

So is Israel in the right or in the wrong on the question of settlements? Should the complete dismantlement really be off the table? I do believe that the occupation and seizure of bits and pieces of occupied land are wrongs perpetrated against the Palestinians by the Israelis. While violent actions are carried out by extremists on both sides, actions such as occupation and settlement building have impacted and continue to impact the whole of Palestinian society—in a very real way, Israeli actions amounted to punishing the many for the crimes of the few and, if anything, served to further galvanize anti-Israeli sentiment.

That said, it is difficult to say whether another country would have acted differently under the same circumstances. And if the UN force had merely done their job and held their ground in 1967, there might not have ever been settlements in the first place.

But meting out blame for past failures is easy to do.

Finding solutions is infinitely more difficult. In terms of getting the parties talking again? Either drop preconditions or have both sides renounce violence and have Israel bring settlement construction to a complete halt for the duration of the negotiations. In terms of resolving the settlement problem once and for all? For those ruled absolutely necessary, the Israelis could offer to compensate the Palestinians either in the form of land or money. The UN, for their failure in all this, could offer to match Israeli compensation, one to one, along with the promise of increased aid. Perhaps not an ideal solution, but, then again, we don’t live in an ideal world.

Authorized providers like iTunes typically sell songs for $1. Would the average file sharer feel comfortable stealing an $800 pair of designer shoes? How about a 50” Samsung HDTV or, alternatively, a 48” Toshiba?

And still, we’d only be realizing the average level of theft. At least half of all teenagers— and, we can assume, many adults as well—steal more than 800 songs. We can, in turn, go on to imagine even more costly thefts—a MacBook, a piano or maybe a car?

If students are unprepared to realize the true consequences of their piracy—both in terms of the value of what they are stealing and the punishments they may face—then that is their prerogative. But no one should be criticizing the College for trying to prevent illegal and, more importantly, immoral activity.

—Angela Aiuto ’11 is the Opinions Editor. This year, she and Opinions Editor Kelly Shortridge ’12 are maintaing an alternating column called “Point, Counterpoint,” in which they engage one another in conversation. Aiuto is majoring in political science.

Bayh’s retirement means trouble for 2010 midterms David Keith

S

Guest Columnist

enator Evan Bayh of Indiana has retired, and the Democratic Party is one step closer to losing the Senate.

However, there is more to this. We are potentially witnessing a split in the Democratic Party that could be disastrous, causing them to not only take major hits in the 2010 midterms, but in future national elections as well.

It is first necessary to understand who in fact Evan Bayh was to the Democratic Party. More than being moderate, he was a centrist. He was, along with former President of the United States William Clinton, one of the founders of the 1990s “New Democrats” coalition. Evan Bayh represents to the Democrats the leading voice of the “Blue Dog” coalition in the Congress and has been the liaison between the liberal wing and the moderates. With him leaving, the Democratic Party has the potential to divide.

It is not to be assumed that this potential split would take form in a changing party structure, such as that of the Whigs and Federalists, but it may result in a large amount of Democrats either retiring or voting with Republicans on legislation such as health care and the budget.

After looking at Senator Bayh’s polling reports concerning his re-election, it is apparent that he had very little to worry about. His double-digit leads in every poll and heavy-handed fundraising efforts would make him very likely to win re-election. This shows us that this retirement is more than just electoral concerns. This is not Chris Dodd retiring because he could not win again; rather this is a sign of frustration with Obama, Reid and Pelosi, who have decided to lead from the left.

If indeed this is a sign of a major division in the Democratic Party, it is fair to believe that this faction has something big in store for the future.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Many would argue that these retiring congressmen such as Bayh have deemed themselves “out of politics,” but anyone who knows the first rule of politics—especially when it comes to a purely political family such as the Bayhs—knows that no politician can settle for being “out of politics.”

I would assume that the events concerning the senior Senator from Indiana indicate the beginning of an intra-party fight against Obama for the 2012 Democratic nomination.

Pundits have been saying that President Barack Obama is former President of the United States Jimmy Carter II. According to recent polling and favorability ratings, they would be correct in warning the Democratic Party of a potential loss of the presidency. Therefore, Evan Bayh leaving the Senate, while not due to immediate political woes, can be a sign that certain Democrats are gearing up for a much larger political nightmare on the distant horizon: 2012.

It is no surprise that the same week the Democrats’ de facto centrist leader retires­­—after a long line of other centrists retiring—that Hillary Clinton, a moderate, calls Iran a military dictatorship. Likewise, it is no surprise that a liberal retiring senator who did in fact stand no chance at re-election, Chris Dodd, claims that Obama will “win easily in 2012.” These are clear signs that the Democrats have already started the internal battle concerning 2012.

They most likely have said that 2010 will have to be about containment of whatever they can contain in the Congress, while their main concern is the potential for their party to be a laughing stock in two and a half years.

Many will argue it is “way too early” to be thinking of 2012, but that’s not how political parties work. They have tasks, and one of those is winning elections. 2010 already appears to be a lost cause, so why not start thinking how to hold on to the presidency?

OPINIONS

Page 10

February 18, 2010

Palin does Protests of Islamic Revolution inspire hope not speak F for people Mazi Kazemi

Guest Columnist

Jaun Thompson Guest Columnist

T

he late William F. Buckley once said that “liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” This quote has been racking my brain recently with Sarah Palin’s return to the national stage.

Like most liberals, I’ve been preconditioned to question my own criticism of a conservative figure like Sarah Palin. Am I being an elitist by attacking this woman and ridiculing her oversimplified utterances dressed up as substantive policy declarations? Or is it perfectly okay because Mrs. Palin has put herself out there on the national stage, and thus deserves to have her views questioned? On Feb. 6, the National Tea Party Convention was held in Nashville, Tenn. After seeing Palin’s speech, I’ve decided that she is a fair target for critique.

This convention was billed as the first large gathering of this vague so-called movement that formed last year in opposition to Barack Obama’s policies. Movements often start at the grassroots level with participants who are devoted to it, but with the Tea Party Convention, Sarah Palin was reportedly paid $100,000 to address the attendees, who themselves paid $549 a piece in order to attend. This See PALIN continued on page 11

eb. 11 marks a dubious day in Iranian history. 31 years ago on that day what could be called the culminating moment of the Islamic Revolution took place on the streets of Tehran.

Rebel troops overwhelmed the loyal followers of Mohammad Reza Shah, the last king of Iran.

About two months later the Islamic Republic that still exists today was formed. However, new things are afoot in that country. Since June of 2009, during the presidential elections, there have been intermittent bursts of protests and unrest. This past week, the celebration week of the revolution, was a week the government certainly did not want to be humiliated on. Government officials reportedly sent out text messages the night before President Ahmadinejad’s speech warning of death to anyone who tried to protest. There is no controversy here. This is the story of a group of people oppressed by a dictator and a tyrannical religious government.

Yet I believe that that the true conflicts in that country lay not in the bloodshed on the streets, but in deep rooted societal problems.

I am 100 percent Iranian by blood, and I still have family there. Thus, I have visited the country a number of times, most recently at the end of 2007. During earlier visits I was too young to fully appreciate the sorry state of the country. In my last visit however, I remember quite clearly being struck by the physical ruin and shoddiness of Tehran. The ruinous state seems to have ingrained itself into the populace, as there is an air of wounded acceptance about everyone. When I talked to my relatives, I got the same vibe. There are people in Iran with Ph.D.s driving taxis because they cannot find any other job. There is essentially an exodus of young people from that country. It is a continuous downward cycle that is much harder to repair than it may seem. One cannot simply create

new jobs to keep the youth there. Young people are needed to create jobs, yet they will not be there without already existing opportunities.

The Western media has a tendency to portray President Ahmadinejad as the sole perpetrator in this whole affair. Yes, he is the president, and he is, to be frank, completely insane. However, the real power has always lied with the religious powers. The Ayatollah Khamenei pulls the strings, as anyone in that country will tell you.

So, if you think that yelling “Down with the dictator” is the step to political freedom, you are underestimating the roots of the theocracy. Iran is not a secular country in the grips of a theocratic dictatorship. The people of the country are, and have historically been, quite religious. It is no coincidence that the mullahs have all the political clout, and there will always be a large group of people whose faith will keep them loyal to the leaders no matter how tyrannical their rule.

There needs to be a big—dare I say calamitous—event to spark a new revolution. The continuous weight of injustice weighing upon a people’s shoulders does not instigate revolt— it crushes their spirit and leaves them drained.

After the rigged elections, I thought that maybe that was the moment. The fact that people even had the energy and the will to rise up after 30 years of being crushed by tyranny was shocking to me. The government put down the revolts, and yet, they sprung up again and again. I saw something I did not think I would see in that country, perhaps in my lifetime. So, it has been about six months, and the question remains, “Has the moment arrived?” I say, “No.” I do not think this is necessarily a negative comment on the revolts. They are, in fact, a very surprising and uplifting sign. However promising the signs may be, as I just mentioned, this is not the movement that will, or can, overthrow the theocracy. I certainly hope the West realizes this, too. Devoting time, money and soldiers to what

I believe is a losing struggle will not help the Iranians. If anything, it will discourage future attempts at revolution; it will engrain the sense of hopelessness that existed before. This is an internal struggle that needs to draw its inspiration from the Iranian people, but, sadly, I doubt that this is going to end with democracy in Iran.

The country needs more leaders, not to criticize the brave souls who have opposed the regime. However, there needs to come a time when the opposition leaders can stand up and make their cases without fear of being murdered. These sorts of tyrannies inevitably weaken over time, and it will be some more years before Iran gets there. Once the ruling parties have weakened, then the country will be ready for change. Whether a new, violent revolution springs up, or whether the change comes through peaceful political processes, I do not know. I cannot even be certain that Iran will transform into a democracy, but I do think that the current regime is still far too entrenched to be overthrown. The religious powers that be will need to be challenged by secular ones. I do not mean to bash religion, but there cannot be a theocracy in that part of the world that also provides freedom to its people. Evidence has shown this to be true. Whether or not theocracy can exist anywhere in the world is a different question, but in the Middle East countries like Iran and Afghanistan have shown us that religious government can lead to disaster.

Clearly, I do not think that Iran is ready or able for huge change. Yet, at the same time, as an Iranian and an obvious supporter of Iran’s populace, I feel awful believing that these revolutionaries will not overthrow their oppressors.

As aforementioned, I still think, regardless of the outcome, that these revolts are positive events. They are the first signs of hope—of a fighting spirit—for a country that has not envisioned a bright future for three decades.

Piracy forum misguided Erin Clarke

W

Guest Columnist

hen was the last time you pirated music? For many people I know, it’s such a casual habit that they wouldn’t be able to answer that question because they just don’t think about it. Colleges have always been bastions of progress, ever since the first institutes of advanced study were opened in ancient Greece.

Copyright transgressions are a reflection of this. Regardless of the moral, ethical or legal ramifications of the act, it reflects a huge flaw in the trade of intellectual property. It’s simple economics—if getting the file for free costs less in combined legal risk and moral dissatisfaction than buying it costs in sheer money, then an individual will very likely choose to take that risk unless it costs them more than they gain from the file. You wouldn’t buy a song you don’t like, and you probably wouldn’t pirate it either. This argument demonstrates why the recording industry is an example of why the United States is not home to a true capitalist economy. I am a radical feminist, and as part of my more left-

leaning beliefs, I oppose this “capitalist” system that oppresses people of lower social privilege than others. But that doesn’t mean I oppose capitalism, because a true capitalist society would be one where the prices of goods and the payments for services would have no regulation to favor those who already have money, which intellectual property laws are an example of.

These—and many others—are the sociological problems with the Vassar Computer Information Services’s recent “forum” on so-called internet piracy, but there are further problems relating to the structure of this forum. Rather than have somebody who teaches Networks give an explanation of how copyright holders catch pirates, the College has decided to exclude the people who actually understand anonymity and identity on the internet in favor of people who are more familiar with the penalties associated. Is it really wise to omit a neutral perspective from any discussion, let alone one this controversial?

—Erin Clarke ’11 is a computer science major.

Cartoon by Liza Donnelly, Professor of Women’s Studies

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

February 18, 2010

OPINIONS

Revival of Republicans dangerous, foolish I

’ve been to Washington, D.C. on a number of occasions. It’s always been hot—hot beyond belief. Either that, or it’s rained like the Deluge. Either way, the recent snowstorm that brought 18 inches to our nation’s capital took me by surprise. However, unlike many in the media and the public sphere, my reaction was “That’s a lot of snow!,” not “Al Gore is a liar and global warming is clearly not real!”

That’s because one snowstorm doesn’t mean this is the end of global warming. If you haven’t seen Rachel Maddow’s or Jon Stewart’s takedown of the Republican talking point that this one storm negates all scientific proof on global warming, I encourage you to go on YouTube or Hulu and check it out. If you’re not surprised by the idiocy of these Republican climate change deniers, you’ll at least be entertained by the circles Stewart and Maddow run around them.

But I want to point out something that this recent “snowpocalypse” reveals about today’s conservative polity. Let’s remove our focus on the global warming deniers for just one second and turn to the right wing in general.

As Stewart and Maddow pointed out on their shows, it seems as though the Republicans have no ability to remember anything prior to yesterday, including their ousting from power.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the Republican Party is now reborn. They have new leaders—Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck and Michael Steele—but their record still stands.

Republicans claim they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Did they forget they still created the $3 trillion dollar Iraq war, the $600 billion upper-class tax cuts, the $400 billion handout to the drug companies? Did they for-

Lazio not the change New York needs Brian Hamm

I

Guest Columnist

f you’re anything like me, the impending New York gubernatorial race isn’t getting you too excited. On the Democratic side, Governor David A. Paterson’s performance has been between unimpressive and terrible; Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been a competent attorney general, but has a reputation for arrogance and paranoia that might not play well in the Governor’s Mansion; and former Nassau County executive Tom Suozzi ceased to be a viable dark horse option when he suffered an upset defeat in his re-election bid last year.

But, as always seems to be the case these days, no matter how unimpressive the Democratic field might be, the Republican field is even worse. So far there are two announced Republican candidates: Warren Redlich and Enrico “Rick” Lazio ’80. Redlich is likely not a credible candidate, so I won’t spend much time on him, suffice it to say that he twice ran for the U.S. House of Representatives unsuccessfully in my home district—New York’s 21nd district—and did not seem to have much to say other than that the United States spends too much money defending France. (I’m not kidding. That was basically his entire platform.) Lazio is a much more likely candidate. As a Vassar College graduate who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and unsuccessfully ran against Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate in 2000, he has become, with the announcement that Rudy Giuliani will See LAZIO continued on page 12

get that they created the laissez-faire climate that led to the recession which is now just beginning to be solved by government intervention? Did they forget that it was the Clinton administration that had created a yearly budget surplus that was on track to erase our national debt by the present day? Did they forget that it was also the Republican Congresses that lifted the national debt ceiling time and time again?

Republicans claim to be the party of patriotism. Did they forget that during the Bush administration, they claimed the liberal opposition was unpatriotic and in fact helping the terrorists? Do they not know that bringing guns to Presidential rallies, claiming the President is an illegal alien and calling for secession from the Union is unpatriotic? Did they forget that dissent is what makes democracy work, and that opposing views and the right to hold them was one of the ideals that the Iraq War was supposed to be about?

Republicans claim to be the party that celebrates life. Did they forget that 4,500 Americans and nearly a million Iraqis have died as a result of the GOP’s military adventure in Iraq?

Did they forget that it is their obstructionism that sends 18,000 to 45,000 Americans a year to the grave because they have no health insurance? Did they forget it is their moral responsibility to protect the born, not just the unborn?

Republicans claim to be the “godly” party.

Did they forget that it is their industrial, global-warming-denier policies that is putting this Earth—God’s greatest gift to his children—in extreme peril? They allow “sinners” like Rep. Mark Sanford, Sen. John Ensign and Sen. David Vitter to keep their jobs, but did they forget how fervently they fought for former President

of the United States William Clinton’s resignation during the Monica Lewinsky scandal?

Republicans claim to be the party of national security. Did they forget it was their foreign policies of “go-it-alone” and “smokethem-out-of-their-caves” that created the anti-Americanism that allowed terrorism to thrive in the 2000s? Did they forget that it was that the worst terrorist attack in all of history occurred on their watch? Have they forgotten 9/11, as Rudy Giuliani did when he said, “We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama.”

The Obama administration hasn’t been perfect, and the Democratic Congress has found itself unable to get much of its agenda accomplished. I’m dissatisfied with Harry Reid, and I’m dissatisfied with the way the Democrats have handled their majority status. But the fact is, while the country may be in bad shape, let’s remember how it got this way. President Obama had been in charge for little over a year now. The recession is ending, and economists in general agree that it was the stimulus package and the government intervention in the economy that is preventing this from becoming a depression.

But it’s going to take more than a year and $1 trillion to recover from foolhardy Republican policies that took decades and trillions of dollars more to get us here in the first place. Let’s avoid being like the Republicans here and remember how far in the hole we were, and how the climb out is going to be difficult. The worst thing we could do is lose hope and put the people who screwed us over back in charge.

What else should Matthew Vassar have left in his will?

“Tons of money for a chemistry building—one that doesn’t leak”

Tripta Kaur ’10, Jennifer Son ’10

“An on-campus brewery”

Libby Pei ’13

“Stimulus package”

—Steve Keller ’11 is a political science major editorializing on American politics this semester.

Sarah Palin uninformed PALIN continued on page 10 says two things. First, Mrs. Palin is not a true believer in this Tea Party movement, but an opportunist who is using these people to further her political ambitions while at the same lining her pocket. Second, it says that the convention was a farce, attended by conservative elites who could afford to fork over $549 and not by the “real Americans” Mrs. Palin so cynically claims to represent.

In her speech, Mrs. Palin lobbed many verbal darts. She derisively asked the American people, “How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya,” mocking the 69 million Americans who voted for a new path in 2008. She attacked the administration’s decision to use the term “overseas contingency operation” instead of the word war, as if the words used to describe security operations affect America’s actual national security. Mrs. Palin intentions were clear with this attack: She was trying to make the president appear weak, while knowing full well that President Obama has, much to the dismay of many, increased American troop presence in Afghanistan and drastically increased the number of drone attacks on the Afghan-Pakistani border that kill dozens of innocent Pakistanis every month.

Mrs. Palin, who is rumored to not even know why North and South Korea were separate countries, continued with her assault on President Obama’s national security policy: “And to win [the war on terror], we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern!” The president routinely signs the letters sent to the families of soldiers and operatives killed in war, and he recently decided to send 30,000 more troops into the Afghan war zone. I do not think he needs a lecture on being a commander in chief from Mrs. Palin, who thinks that Vladimir Putin “rearing his head” over Alaska illustrates her own national security expertise.

Mrs. Palin’s playbook is an old one. It is the same one used by George Wallace and Spiro Agnew. They attack and attempt to paint their

Page 11

political opponents as aloof, intellectual snobs who do not represent everyday Americans.

But what Mrs. Palin fails to realize is that America has changed considerably since the days of Agnew, Nixon and Wallace—that in the America of 2010 we do not want lame slogans of yesteryear. Instead, we want politicians and leaders who will solve the health care crisis, implement policies that will usher in new decent-paying jobs for the unemployed, while at the same time keeping America safe from whatever threats may arise.

Mrs. Palin, on the other hand, speaks in bland terms. She offers no specific, just bumper sticker attacks. She alleges that the President lacks experience when she quit halfway through her first term as the Governor of Alaska. She divides the American people against each other by claiming that some are “real” Americans, thereby implying that others are not. And she outrageously exploits reasonable concerns about President Obama in order to advance her political career and make money.

After her performance at the Nashville convention, members of the establishment press, like David Broder of The Washington Post, claimed that Mrs. Palin is a force to be reckoned with and that she represents a sizable chunk of the American public. I even heard one cable news commentator state flatly that she better represents the views of the American people than any other public figure. On Feb. 11, however, The Washington Post and ABC News published a poll that found that 37 percent of the public view Mrs. Palin favorably, while 55 percent of the public view her unfavorably. Moreover, an astonishing 70 percent of the public believe that she is unqualified to be president.

In her speech, Mrs. Palin said that the Tea Party movement is “a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.” Well, it also seems that Americans are a lot smarter than an absurd former governor with crib notes on her hands.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Riley Greene ’10

“His residential estate—it would be an important historical landmark”

Siena Chiang ’11

“An elephant.”

Jon Fuller ’11

“A tetherball pole”

Andres Posada ’10 —Kelly Shortridge Opinions Editor

OPINIONS

Page 12

Full-body airport scanning intrusive and unnecessary Nik Trkulja

D

Columnist

on’t you just love flying!? The bubbling frustration, the lack of space and privacy, not to mention the wonderment of passive aggressiveness all around you. Man I love flying! It’s a brilliant experience, and one that the fine people at Heathrow Airport in London have down to a T. As a frequent flier, I, like many out there, seek out Heathrow for the pure adventure of it. I love the fact that it feels like you’re playing Russian roulette with your luggage, wondering if you will ever see it again once it’s checked.

I too enjoy standing in front of the screens at Terminal 5 with the crowds playing gate bingo, waiting until 25 minutes before the flight for the departure gate to finally be listed and then stampeding across the airport to it. And who doesn’t enjoy the lottery that is the takeoff time—will you have a 20-minute or a twohour delay? Who knows? Ha, how exciting.

Now Heathrow, the specialists in comfort and customer service, brings us a brand-new experience: the full-body scanner. Oh, the joy! You see, on Monday, Feb. 1, Heathrow announced that it, as well as Manchester Airport, would make full-body scanners mandatory for all passengers. Yes, that’s right, mandatory for all whether you covet such things as human rights and privacy or not, and whether you are naturally conservative, a five-year-old child or a woman on her period. If you refuse, these people will kindly boot you out, not letting you board the flight you so graciously overpaid for.

The ramifications are sure to be fantastic.

If, like me, you have always wanted that security check experience to last just that little bit longer, don’t fret, for your prayers have been answered. Finally you will see those biblically long queues you have always wished for, and, yes, the comedic gold that will ensue following the scans will just be the cherry on the cake. I will laugh away, for all eight hours that I am sure to spend waiting, at lines like,

“What is that in your pants, sir?” Hah! But even better is the confusion and constant state of panic that we will be subjected to. After all, who doesn’t enjoy more racial profiling, interrogations and angry stares?

Situations where every passenger is now the enemy, treated as a potential suspect instead of a citizen in need of protection. I, too, will react like my fellow quote-giving passengers, “anything for my protection” and “as long as it keeps us safe.” After all, what are trivial things like my rights, morals, preferences and comfort in the face of irrational, inexcusable fear that keeps a multi-billion dollar operation running?

You see, Smiths Protection, which supplies these X-ray machines to Heathrow, was quoted in a Reuters article on Feb. 1 as saying that it expects its $800 million a year business to grow, and why wouldn’t it? It’s not like reason and common sense have stepped in to dull the media’s and pundits’ desires to fill airtime with their best selling product: fear. And it’s also not like the government hasn’t done its bit to increase “security,” such as President Obama’s administration, which has now signed off over $753 million in the new budget for full-body scanners at U.S. airports.

So, while I say that this is a despicable manipulation of grossly over-stated threats to our security that have been turned into millions of dollars at the expense of our rights, dignity and comfort, all people like Smiths and British Airport Authority, which runs Heathrow, will say is, “ka-ching!” But then again, “to-mae-to, to-mah-to,” right?

In the meantime, I’ll crawl back under my rock of indifference and thank everyone at Heathrow, and the like, for being so gracious as to let me pay exorbitant amounts for my ticket, my luggage, my carry-on, my food and not forgetting my drink, before falling on my knees and showing my full appreciation for them actually letting me fly at all! Thank you!

Oh, thank you!

February 18, 2010

Lazio campaign lacks real policy LAZIO continued on page 11 not seek the governorship, the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

Wanting to know more about the would-be GOP nominee for the New York governorship, I took a look at his website. I fully expected not to agree with most of his stated positions—I’m a liberal Democrat, after all, and he’s a Republican. What I didn’t expect was just how vacuous his website would be. He announced his candidacy in September 2009, and yet had very few real policy positions to discuss.

Here’s my favorite example. This is, word for word, his entire section on reforming health care: “Medicare and Medicaid are the nation’s two largest entitlement programs.

They are also facing multi-trillion dollar deficits in coming decades, due to expenditures, which are minimizing tax revenues. New York spends almost twice per capita on Medicaid spending than anywhere else in the country.”

That’s it. That’s all he has to say about reforming health care. Did you see any semblance of a plan there? Neither did I. Overall, his site says he is running on three principles: getting our financial house in order, returning integrity to government and creating jobs. But, unfortunately, many of his ideas as to how to do those things are only marginally more specific than his health care reform plan, and can’t really be argued with because there’s nothing to argue with.

In many cases it seems like he’s painstakingly trying to avoid saying anything meaningful. He says, for instance, that to put our fiscal house in order, “our regions should be able to make more decisions [emphasis mine] about Medicaid spending, workers compensation mandates, and other costly programs.” “More” decisions? This is a thinly veiled way of avoiding saying “tough” decisions, which is likewise a thinly-veiled way of saying “funding cuts.”

He’s reducing himself to using a euphemism for a euphemism.

As for the few semblances of actual ideas he presents, they strike me as profoundly unrealistic. His first idea to reduce New York’s budget deficit is to cap the property tax. Capping the property tax may be a worthwhile en-

deavor on its own, but it’s not going to do anything to fix the budget deficit. If anything, it would probably make the deficit worse, since government relies on taxation for revenue and capping the property tax would likewise cap the revenue the government can collect. So it is very disingenuous to put this proposal in this section. Similarly, his first proposal for creating jobs is to reduce government spending. Again, reducing government spending might be a respectable proposal, but it does not create jobs. On the contrary, government spending often provides critical economic stimulus during hard times, and attempts to roll back government spending during such times can inhibit economic recovery. Former President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt learned this the hard way. His New Deal spending initiatives helped to substantially reduce the impact of the Great Depression; unemployment dropped steadily for the first several years of his presidency. But after a few years he cut back on these initiatives in an attempt to get the budget back under control. Unemployment instantly jumped back up again as a result.

If Rick Lazio wants to make the case that controlling the deficit is more important than unemployment, he should make that case.

Instead he promotes idealized fantasies that present false hopes about what certain proposals would do.

New Yorkers have a lot to be angry about and deserve a frank discussion about how we can fix our state. Other than voting out every single New York State Senator, there are no easy ways to fix any of them. (Seriously, all of you, vote against your State Senator this year.

If Richard Nixon were resurrected and placed in the New York State Senate, he’d be the most honest member there.) But a good start would be not having a governor who thinks we can have our cake and eat it too. We may need change, but Governor Rick Lazio is not the change we need.

—Brian Hamm ’09 was Vice President of the Vassar Democrats during his senior year at Vassar. Hamm is a New York State resident.

Crossword by Jonathan Garfinkel ACROSS 1. Tub 4. Big Poughkeepsie area corp.

7. “Awww gross!”, perhaps 10. Top credit rating 13. All of George Strait’s live in Texas 15. Baby’s sound of contentment 16. Judicial prefix (abbr.)

17. Appendage 18. Learning by repetition 19. Lacking finesse 21. Sprites 22. Weather station

component 24. Pointy-eared one 26. Hand out, as with cards 27. Star Wars fighter 28. Urban crib, say 30. Author Uris 31. “___ Gratia Artis” 33. Certain blue ribbon wearer?

35. Typical 37. ...

40. Twisted messenger, perhaps 41. Self-disciplined 46. Highlander’s negative

Answers to last week’s puzzle

47. Highlander’s boy 48. Brimming 49. T.I.’s hood 50. “From ___ Z” 51. Porridge 52. Flight datum 53. See __-Down 54. iPhone ntwk.

55. Furrier John Jacob _____ 57. Urbanspoon, for one 59. Zone 63. ___ Lingus 64. Equip 66. Flat-bottomed floaters 68. Retirement benefits agcy.

69. “The kinquering congs their titles take”, for example 74. Spray 77. London’s Globe, say 79. Soon-to-be ex-senator Bayh 80. Ice cube too big for a glass 81. “Perfect!”

82. “___ the Walrus” 83. Shakespearean baddie 84. Obtain 85. Tolkien creature 86. Jefferson Davis’ terr.

87. Snooze

DOWN 1. Designer Bradley 2. Neuron part 3. Jean-Paul’s dome 4. 1/3 ofa Caesarean quote 5. Arctic 6. Mark with spots 7. Actress Charlize _________ 8. Methods, briefly 9. Map feature 10. Goal 11. It may be turned up to 11 12. Crunch target 14. Academic unit (abbr.)

17. One in for a while 20. Actor Jared ____ 23. Partner of “ends” 25. Jet maker 28. Girl with a box 29. Lawyer’s org.

32. Cicero or Cato 33. Babble 34. Certain deck 35. Material for some chips 36. Boston-Washington speeder 38. Turkic ethnic group 39. Comic square 42. Spot 43. Dr. Dre’s hood,

briefly 44. Nightmarish street 45. With “off ”, begin 47. What a fugitive is on 52. Nice summer 54. Loan numbers 56. Snail-mail reply container, perhaps (abbr.)

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

58. Ctrl-V 59. Off somewhere 60. ____ Nui (home of Moai) 61. Sexy 62. Open air markets 65. Non-glossy finish 67. “_____ of the State” (Blink 182 album) 70. Seattle-based out-

doors outfitter 71. One was really “terrible” 72. Tale 73. Alphabet quartet 74. Production, briefly 75. Bit of terre ferme in a __-across 76. Drunkard 78. Egg layer

HUMOR & SATIRE

February 18, 2010

Page 13

OPINIONS

Vassar missed connections What not to write on a Kelly Stout

Features Editor

Q

uestion of the week: how was your Valentine’s Day? If you answered, “lonely,” “predictable,” “took place in the library,” or “I ate muffins and listened to Beyonce alone in my room,” don’t despair! There’s probably someone out there who has spotted you from afar and has fallen in love with you—or, at the very least, thinks it would be fun to sleep with you. After all, we go to Vassar, where romance blossoms year round.

Enter MilosList.org. Invented by former College president Milo Jewett, who found it difficult to keep a girlfriend or buy used bikes and ski equipment at reasonable prices, MilosList.org started from humble, but noble beginnings. What remains the most popular part of the website today is “Missed Connections,” a totally not creepy way to tell someone you admire them anonymously.

m4w-100 Nites - you were ham-

mered and grindin’ up on one of those speakers from media resources. Wish you had been grindin’ up on me. m4m-Hawt meetup at Baldwin -

You were pretending to read “The Economist” in the lobby in a cute American Apparel tee and ironically large glasses. I was wearing plaid and flipping through one of those swine flu informational

brochures. As long as you weren’t there for STD testing, let’s get it on. w4w-To the girl who works at the circulation desk - When you took

back my overdue copy of The Selected Political Writings of John Locke, you kept my heart.

meeting on Sunday. You makin’ the Vassar Islamic Society explain their programming goals was makin’ me hot. Grill baby, grill! There’s nothing I love more than an egotistical student government representative. m4w-Beige suit/scarf - I

m4w-brunette hipster in gray lace - Met you by the keg in the

downstairs bathroom at the new THs last weekend. Your total disregard for the personal space of others and lack of self-awareness were enchanting. w4m-Literary buff - You were reading A la Recherche du Temps Perdu on the elliptical a the gym and wearing an old All College Day t-shirt. I’m just wondering why. Why were you reading that?

It doesn’t really make me want to bang you. m4w-the recession never looked so fine - To the disillusioned girl

at the English majors committee meeting on Thursday: you’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. Email me back and I’ll re-illusion you.

see you in your conservative tissue scarves from Anne Taylor (Loft?) like everywhere and everyone seems to know who you are. I really think you could be the one to help me cut course offerings from my major. w4w-Could we be a sustainable couple? - You came to the door of

my TA to try to convince me to use halogen bulbs. Why don’t you come back and use me, baby? w4m-Tasty Tuesdays heartbreaker - I saw you in line for a samosa in

the College Center. You’re one hot, spicy potato—even if your breath smelled like hot, spicy potato. w4m-Up in the club - Saw you at the Mug. I’m like, 70 percent sure you’re male and would probably be willing to hook up with you.

w4m-Thompson Memorial Libez -

The only other person in the 1951 Reading Room on Friday night.

I wish I’d been going home with you, bookish hottie in the oversized wool sweater. You looked like you needed some. m4w-VSA cutie - You were on a power trip at the VSA council

m4w-girl in glasses from polisci - You were so right about the im-

plications of Brown v. Board for the myth of the independent judiciary. Will you tutor me for the LSATs? Wait, what is this message board for?

Happy week after Valentine’s Day to all!

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teaching fellowship app Jeff McCreight

M

Guest Columnist

y greatest goal in teaching is the complete and utter ruination of the academic potential, personal virtues and life goals of each and every student unfortunate enough to enter my classroom.

Uninhibited by moral scruples and bolstered by the time-honored philosophy that no good deed should go unpunished, I have achieved an astounding rate of success in my previous teaching positions and intend to continue my reign of classroom terror whether it be in your miserable scholarship program or elsewhere.

In my time abroad spent in China, I engaged in tutoring and teaching English as a second language, or perhaps I should say English as a defamatory art form. My method was to prepare my unwitting Chinese students with a host of the choicest English expletives and obscenities described to them as translations of cordial greetings, parlor pleasantries and business terminology. I rest assured that the future of their interactions with visiting Anglophones will be reduced to hilarity, derision and warfare.

My pedagogical stratagems are not confined to ESL, however; you will find me quite adept at obscuring and perverting any given subject. In mathematics, I have timed tests with no calculators using the messiest possible fractions and decimals, with final questions involving imaginary numbers. In English, my students’ returned papers resemble bandages used on a hemorrhage, with a maze of crisscrossing red comments in illegible cursive which they later discover to be written in Sanskrit except for the large printed D- on the back. In the hard sciences, I proceed directly to advanced physics, assign quantum mechanics problems for homework and demonstrate the inevitability of our obliteration by the Sun going supernova, assuming we don’t destroy all life with nuclear power, or simply pollute our planet into the equivalent of a greenhouse used as a junk storage

Weekly Calendar: 2/11 - 2/17

shed and a public bathroom filled with carbon monoxide. History and the social sciences happen to be my favorite area in which to quash optimism, progressive values and the desire for further knowledge, simply because postmodernism affords such a brilliant method for reducing all reasonable assertions to relativist drivel. I have not yet taught an art class, but the work of Marcel Duchamp leaves me confident that there is ample opportunity for confounding young talent.

When it comes to classroom discipline, I rule with an iron fist. Although the banning of corporal punishment in recent years is a lamentable step backwards in my opinion, it has opened the doors to a host of psychological approaches borrowed from the offshore containment facilities run by the U.S. military. When these methods do not suffice to keep students from displaying moments of academic perspicuity, I must resort to fine-tuning the latent equalizing pressures of adolescent society. On one occasion, a student offering the correct answer in class was immediately pelted with lunch refuse by his peers, who had become sufficiently inured to my influence that they recognized the need to take him down a notch.

In conclusion, I believe I am the ideal candidate for ensuring chaos and demoralization in America’s classrooms, continuing in the grand tradition of Leave Every Child (with a sore) Behind. I can affirm that I possess the personality traits of the ideal teacher, including belligerence, orneriness, intolerance, cruelty and impatience. My view on education can be summed up by saying, “There is no bright student who can’t be turned around by a motivated teacher, and no bad student who can’t be driven further into the muck by that same individual.” If you have any further questions regarding my qualifications, you can dunk your head in pickle brine because I don’t have time for your nonsense.

—Jeff McCreight ’08

by Kelly Stout

THURSDAY, 2/18

9 p.m. Seven Deadly Sins Party. Freshman year I went as

6 p.m. Lecture: Consumption, Globalization and Environ-

3 p.m. Tea. Who needs the Olympics when the 134th annual

mental Security in the U.S.” I think I’m gonna skip it and

Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is happenin’? Rose Parlor.

lust. This year I’ll be sitting in my TH eating pizza with my housemates. We’ll call ourselves gluttony. Jewett MPR.

8 p.m. Barefoot Monkeys 24 hr. Theater. Any chance this is

SUNDAY, 2/21

a typo on the Vassar Infosite? Please, God, if you’re up there, make this a typo. Susan Stein Shiva Theater.

5 p.m. Catholic Mass. Unless you worship Lady Gaga (and there’s nothin’ wrong with that), it’s time to repent for last night. You know who you are, girl dancing naked on the speaker/rocking the crucifix necklace. Vassar Chapel.

7 p.m. Screening: “Do I Look Fat?” A frank discussion with your mother that will leave you wishing she were more comfortable telling little white lies. Sanders Auditorium.

9 p.m. Miscellany News Paper Critique. Join us and help me

10 a.m. All College Day. Last year’s “Only the Cool Part of the College Day” was deemed “too exclusive” by the school guidance counselor. College Center North Atrium.

FRIDAY, 2/19 Ongoing. FlyPeople 24 hr. Dance-a-thon. 24 hour news me-

dia heartthrob Anderson Cooper:CNN as who?:FlyPeople. I intend to find out. Various locations.

3 p.m. Tea. At first I was rooting for that whippet thing that can run 35 mph. Sort of a so-ugly-it’s-cute vibe. Rose Parlor.

8 p.m. Josselyn House Band Showcase. This is gonna rock if

you’re into hipsters performing coked-out melodies in inappropriately posh, endowed venues. And who doesn’t love that? Josselyn House Parlor.

SATURDAY, 2/20

come up with better tea jokes. Rose Parlor.

just watch WALL-E with the heat off. Taylor Small Lecture Hall.

WEDNESDAY, 2/24

MONDAY, 2/22 3 p.m. Tea. But then I saw pictures of Apollo the Pomerani-

an. Sorry Apolo Ohno, this week another sun god has stolen my heart. Rose Parlor.

3 p.m. Tea. But ultimately I’m happy for Sadie, the Scottish terrier. Well done, Sadie. Your hair looked better than the VC swim team’s, proving that dog shows are indeed, a real sport. Rose Parlor.

9 p.m. Trivia Night. Question #6: What marine mammal got

stuck in a snowplow and pushed all the way to New Jersey this week? Answer: a seal. Google it if you doubt. The Mug.

Ongoing. NSO’s NonCon. Don’t be fooled, I’m going to meet

TUESDAY, 2/23

hottiez. (I’m really into college dudes who don’t bathe regularly, read young adult fantasy fiction, and play World of Warcraft.) College Center MPR.

3 p.m. Tea. It’s hard to watch a sport in which dogs take better care of their hair than I do. Still, I rallied to throw my support behind Bru the French bulldog. Rose Parlor.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

5:30 p.m. GRE Practice Session. Try not to focus on the fact that even if you ace this and get into your dream PhD program in contemporary fiction, colleges are granting fewer adjunct positions than ever before. Good luck! Love, higher education. Ely Hall GIS Lab.

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February 18, 2010

Tenth NonCon takes it to next level Alexandra Sarrigeorgiou Reporter

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Danielle Nedivi

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green-haired video game character, reminiscent of an iconic red-capped Italian plumber, runs toward a pixilated Main Building in the fliers for this year’s No Such Convention, affectionately referred to as NonCon. The years in which most Vassar students were Super Mario Bros. aficionados has long past, but NonCon nevertheless promises to bring video-game enthusiasts, board-game lovers, comic-book fans and everyone in between together for a weekend of gaming- and comics-oriented fun. This year’s convention is bigger than ever, featuring prominent guests such as fantasy author Tamora Pierce and video game developer Ken Levine ’88.

NonCon is an annual event now in its 10th year, and will take place Feb. 19 to 21. The convention is sponsored by No Such Organization (NSO), Vassar’s “all-around sci-fi/ fantasy/comic book/video game/anime/etc. fan’s organization,” as they comprehensively describe themselves on their website. NonCon will take over several parts of Main Building to host an array of panels, talks, tournaments, games, as well as a unique musical performance.

No Such Organization’s interests are without a doubt all-encompassing. With around 60 active members, and attracting many more students to the organization’s events in one way or another, NSO is one of the largest student organizations on campus. NSO’s Convention Chair Suzanne Rozier ’10 said of the group’s interests: “We have members who are interested in things [like] board games, comics, videogames, anime, Magic: The Gathering, tabletop games… we have a pretty broad range of interests that we cover.”

While NSO members put on weekly events, such as a comicbook drawing group and card games of Magic: The Gathering throughout the semester, they also organize one larger event every semester: a production of Rocky Horror Picture Show in the fall,

Students play Junta in the College Center Multi-Purpose Room at last year’s No Such Convention. The event, sponsored by No Such Organization, will be held from Feb. 19 to 21. The Convention is celebrating its 10th anniversary. and NonCon in the spring. While Rocky Horror Picture Show has consistently been a campus favorite, only lately has NonCon been gaining popularity. “[It] originally was one room with people playing board games for 24 hours,” said Rozier. In recent years, NonCon has been attracting guests not only from Vassar, but from the greater community. “We have a lot of people coming from other colleges like Marist, from Poughkeepsie and from surrounding areas,” explained Lauren Scanlan ’10. “Last year we had about 150 people from off-campus,” added Rozier enthusiastically.

It is not by chance that NonCon is growing so rapidly. NSO has significantly increased their advertising efforts, reaching out to comic-book stores and related organizations all over New York. “We

got into contact with similar organizations from other colleges and invited them to come to NonCon,” said Rozier.

NonCon has an impressive list of events planned out this year and an even more impressive guest list. A schedule of activities can be found at the convention’s official website: noncon.vassar.edu. From a calligraphy workshop to gaming competitions (with gamingthemed prizes nonetheless) to an Artist’s Alley to a karaoke night, NonCon has something exciting planned for people of all interests.

As for this year’s guests, NonCon is branching out. “Every year we’ve gotten someone bigger,” exclaimed Rozier. Vassar graduate Ken Levine ’88, co-founder, President and Creative Director of Irrational Games, the company

that released the award winning, best-selling game “BioShock,” will be doing a panel and so will Tamora Pierce, a New York Times bestselling fantasy author for young adults. Guests include many more graphic novel and webcomic authors, as well as NonCon’s first musical performer.

Random a.k.a. Mega Ran, the rapper who put lyrics to the music of the videogame “Mega Man,” will perform in the Villard Room at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 20.

All in all, the ever-expanding NonCon promises to entertain Vassar students and members of the local community, whether they’re long-standing members of some fandom or not. “I would encourage people to come check it out, it’s a very open and fun event,” said Rozier.

Local author to discuss ‘insignificant detail’ Wally Fisher

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Daedalus Quartet flies into Skinner

Reporter

sk a Vassar student what makes a novel great and they will easily give you a list of criteria: a richness of detail, character development, etc. Ask the same kid what makes nonfiction great and the question might not be so quickly answered. With his talk, “Bill Sikes’s Dog: The Value of the Insignificant Detail in the Work of Creative Nonfiction,” author Peter Trachtenberg will posit a solution to this problem while discussing the nuances of nonfiction writing.

Trachtenberg, a Hudson Valley writer/memoirist, will lecture in Sander’s Classroom this Thursday at 5:30 p.m. In addition to his neighborly proximity to campus, Trachtenberg is married to the English Department’s current writer-in-residence, Mary Gaitskill. His works include The Book of Calamities: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning, which is the recipient of the 2009 Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award “for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.”

The person responsible for bringing Trachtenberg to Vassar was Assistant Professor of English Julie Park. “It’s important because it’s a topic that we don’t get to think that much about in such a philosophical and also spiritually resonant way,” said Park on the subject of suffering. “It’s as much of an intellectual narrative as a medium for healing.”

This powerful notion of the worth of writing was not something Trachtenberg always considered. The writer went through a period in his life where, though he could technically write well, he was unsure of his motives. Trachtenberg recalled, “I didn’t know what the purpose was. I just really wanted people to read what I was writing. It wasn’t until I was 40 that I began to write in order to write the best thing that I possibly could, to acquire some kind of mastery and to understand something about the world.”

He cites varied influences such as Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Dickens, Joan Didion and Simone Weil, among others. Like some of these authors, Trachtenberg writes in different genres, fiction and nonfiction. Park characterized Trachtenberg: “He’s wry and compassionate and endlessly curious.”

A way to utilize both fiction and nonfiction well is by intricately detailing events. In the title of his lecture, Trachtenberg references the antagonist from Dickens’s Oliver Twist. The love between the villainous Bill Sikes and his dog gives Sikes depth and pathos. This seemingly extraneous figure, a dog, adds to the realistic quality of the text.

“We’re used to thinking of fiction as seeing these incidental, irrelevant, insignificant details,” Trachtenberg explains. “The details can be a character like Bill Sikes’s dog, a description of something or even an episode. We don’t

know what its function in the larger work is except that it gives the work a depth and life it wouldn’t often have. Some critics cite their presence in fiction or theater, but I also think they’re present in great nonfiction. So, I’m talking about it from a critical perspective, but I’m also talking about it from a practitioner’s perspective. The key about being a fiction writer is that if you’re good enough, you invent stuff.

But if you’re a nonfiction writer, you can’t invent anything, so how do you describe or see those details if they’re there?”

Trachtenberg encourages students to “be conscious and attentive” in order to write compelling works. This is not to say that the talk is only for nonfiction writers or English majors.

Park reasoned, “I think it’s always fascinating to talk to writers because they turn anything into a great story. It should be really cool to come, even if you’re not a practicing writer to see how the very materials of life, everything, can be turned into stories. Nonfiction, stuff that happens in reality, is the material for a narrative.”

To hear an artist talk about his or her work is always a great privilege. Vassar students are spoiled with opportunities to hear talented people explain their crafts. At the very least, Trachtenberg should help students answer a few pesky critical theory questions the next time some literary type accosts them on the way to lunch.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Reporter

n Greek mythology, Daedalus (pronounced ded-a-lus) was a skillful architect who escaped imprisonment by constructing wings of feathers and wax and then flew away. The Daedalus Quartet will bring the same spirit of innovation and creativity when they perform on Tuesday, Feb. 20 at 8 p.m. in the Martel Recital Hall in Skinner Hall.

The diverse group is made up of siblings Min-Young Kim and Kyu-Young Kim on violin, Jessica Thompson on viola and Raman Ramakrishnan on cello. The group founded their quartet 10 years ago, and have since won several awards and served residencies at Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania. This past September, New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn praised the quartet’s “polished and vigorous” musicianship, “imaginative phrasing and dynamics” and “riveting focus.”

On Tuesday night, the four gifted musicians will perform three extensive pieces beginning with Mozart’s “String Quartet, K. 589.” In their past program notes, the Daedalus Quartet has written that the famed composer “makes the phrases sparkle” in this arrangement.

Second will be “Night Fields” by Joan Tower, a Grammy-winning musician and Hudson Valley resident. In a note accompanying the pieces score, Tower describes the imagery the music is meant to conjure: “a cold windy night in a wheat field lit up by a bright full moon where waves of fast-moving colors ripple over the field, occasionally settling on a patch of gold.” The ensemble will finish with Beethoven’s revolutionary “String Quartet, Op. 131,” a challenging, intricate, and relentless opus.

String quartets are among the oldest types of chamber ensembles in classical music. Thompson, who was last to join the Daedalus Quartet, explained that quartets replicate singing.

“I think string instruments are the most similar to the human voice,” she said.

“The string quartet really covers the range of voices from bass to soprano.”

Thompson attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pa. and has played violin since she was six. She admitted, “My best friend was taking lessons, and I wanted to do whatever she did!” She took up the viola a few years later, and eventually she realized she wanted to perform music for the rest of her life. “I think I decided I wanted to try and pursue it as a career when I was in high school after going to some great summer music festivals and getting to really immerse myself in music,” Thompson recalled.

Intense immersion in music is exactly what Thompson got when she joined the Daedalus Quartet. The dedicated ensemble rehearses together “four or five days a week, for four to five hours a day.” Thompson adores all of the songs in the quartet’s repertoire, which encompasses classical as well as modern arrangement, but her favorites are those by Beethoven. She explained, “[They] are some of the most amazing [pieces of] music ever written. It’s such an incredible experience to play them— there’s something so human about them.” Thompson said that during a performance, the Quartet members’ favorite moments involve when they play off each other’s dynamics. She said their most successful concerts are “when we feel like we’re really in the moment and able to be spontaneous and respond to whatever the others are doing.” with successful ensembles such as the Vitamin String Quartet covering See QUARTET continued on page 15

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Page 15

All College Day mural celebrates its tenth year Thea Ballard

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Reporter

Image courtesy of Ed Pittman

icture this: the College Center circa 2003.

A triangular wooden framework sits in the center of the space, right outside the mailboxes, covered in a basic white surface upon which students are both crudely and painstakingly painting statements about whatever comes to mind. “We are the knights of the modern world,” the “we” underlined emphatically, reads one comment. Elsewhere, next to a bright orange image labeled “the ivory tower,” someone has scrawled both “Bush ’04” and “call x3600 for a good time.”

Captured in photographs, this was the All College Day Mural Project in its earliest stages. The Mural Project, in its 10th year, is an open-ended opportunity for students and other assorted passers-by to put pen (or marker or paint) to paper and say what they feel. It provides not only a chance to capture the mood of Vassar, especially as it pertains to the community-building and conversationstarting themes of All College Day, but to reflect on how this mood has evolved over the last ten years.

All College Day, put on by the Campus Life Resource Group (CLRG), was originally organized as a response to an incident involving a racially offensive skit in a Vassar comedy group’s performance. The show “just sparked a lot of community discussions about community, about identity, about respectable language,” said Associate Dean of the College Edward Pittman, who has been heavily involved in All College Day since its inception. “And so students who were most active said, ‘Well, what can we do to have a sustained response, something that happens every year, as well as regular events during the year that focus on bringing different parts of the community together?’”

The mural provides a public forum for All College Day’s dialogue. “The concept for the mural evolved from this notion of a wall mural, and we couldn’t create something permanent on the wall, so we had this movable mural,” Pittman said. “It’s drawing from murals that exist in a lot of communities, which act as a reflection of what people see, what they think, what they feel. I think that’s really positive.”

The comments that have appeared in years past range from Vassar-centric com-

mentary to total non-sequiturs. The result is something of a lesson on the precariousness of free speech. “Only once or twice did we have something that was more provocative than we wanted,” said Pittman. “We are for free speech, but we also believe that free speech can be damaging even when it’s free.

We don’t promote [free speech] as a random thing, because it can be hurtful.”

However, Pittman feels that there is space for more confrontational commentary, so long as it is communicated in an appropriate fashion. “You can be strong and targeted, but have it be respectful,” he said. “We can all sit and listen and talk to each other through that medium.”

Ryan Greenlee ’10, a student intern for the Campus Life Office and member of the CLRG, spoke to the presence of detracting voices and what that meant for the mural overall.

“There may be a few who may not respect the project and write just any old mess,” he wrote in an e-mailed statement. “And that’s cool. For them, it’s all about them. But this is less about the individual and more about what we can see from a mass of individual voices. Like anything, its potential is limited in part by how willing people are to respect it or take it seriously.”

From the perspective of both a student and an administrator, Greenlee and Pittman agree that the mural presents a unique opportunity for members of the Vassar community to make their thoughts public and possibly even effect change in the process. Said Pittman, “I think administrators and faculty and others who make our job of supporting students will find ourselves looking at the mural and really analyzing even the small comments to understand what is being said, and I think that is important.”

Greenlee summed up the mural’s importance as a part of All College Day and Vassar life in general. “The hope, for me, is to see oneself reflected in some way by the words and images placed there by the expressions of others,” he wrote. “If that reflection isn’t there, that’s important too. Just as it’s important to see what is being said, if we can also get to what’s not, or who’s not, being represented, then can we continue the project of making and sustaining the best sense of community we can.”

The All College Day mural typically reflects the mood of the Vassar College community in any given year. In 2007, as pictured above, commenters expressed a concern for student rights, among other issues.

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Faculty perform Baudelaire compilation Quartet will David Lopez Reporter

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oet Charles Baudelaire has long been considered an inspirational muse, and over the decades composers have translated his work into equally inspirational melodies. After years of collecting Baudelaire song settings—technical term for verse translated to music—the Vassar Lecturer in Music Robert Osborne is producing a collaborative music concert performed by members of the Vassar music faculty.

Since 1982, Osborne’s idea of assembling a concert with the help of Richard Howard, an esteemed American expert on Baudelaire, has remained dormant. Now it has flourished into a reality: a faculty recital called “The Songs and Piano Music Inspired by the Poetry of Charles Baudelaire” will be held in the Skinner Hall of Music Recital Hall on Friday, Feb. 19 at 8 p.m.

The concert will include music by the likes of Claude Debussy, Paul Hindemeth and Gabriel Fauré performed by Vassar faculty, as well as readings of the enduring works of Baudelaire. Osborne described the concert experience in an e-mailed statement as a “taste of the decadent, drug-addled, perverse nature of Baudelaire while listening to fruity, over-the-top,

delicious music.”

The three Vassar faculty members playing the pieces include Adjunct Artist in Music Rachel Rosales as soprano, Osborne as bass-baritone and Professor of Music Todd Crow on the piano.

Howard is the guest poet, commentator and translator. Howard teaches in the Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University and is former chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

“Richard will read his awardwinning translations of the poems before they are sung and he will construct a narrative thread, using the letters and writings of Baudelaire as well as anecdotes concerning Baudelaire and his relationship to music,” explained Osborne in an e-mailed statement.

In addition to works by Debussy, Fauré and Hindemith, well-known composers such as Henri Duparc, Alexander Zemlinsky, Ernest Chausson, Emmanuel Chabrier and Louis Vierne will be performed. Not-so-familiar composers including André Caplet, Aleksandr Gretchaninov, Sergei Tanayev, Henri Sauguet, Alphons Diepenbrock and Déodat de Séverac will also be highlighted.

All of these composers either

were directly inspired by Baudelaire, or wrote music that sounds appropriately Baudelaire-ian.

“Todd Crow has also found a recently discovered piano work

by Debussy that quotes a fragment of a Baudelaire poem—a piece that few would have ever heard before,” wrote Osborne.

“I have been collecting song settings since 1982 and have over 250. We weeded through these to select a representative selection of the very best or most provocative.”

The concert is set up in four parts that explore the different works by Baudelaire that have inspired composers, as well as the different styles of composition. The first section revolves around Howard’s translation of Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal,” for which Howard received the American Book Award for his work in 1982. The second is a Baudelaire bestiary, which focuses on the poet’s love for cats, owls and albatrosses, among other creatures. The following section covers what Osborne calls “the second wave,” which includes the most mature settings by late Romantic composers. Finally, there is a collection of settings by German and Russian composers, a testament to the universality of

Baudelaire’s work.

Beyond the intricate and careful organization of music selections, performing these pieces is a difficult task within itself. The music is a challenge and is difficult for the two singers and pianist to perform. “It is music that only seasoned professionals can tackle,” Osborne wrote. Rosales, however, is capable of delivering vocal ranges from Verdi to Handel. Crow is likewise qualified, with his impressive performance repertoire at venues such as the Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Apart from researching, coordinating and organizing this event, Osborne has performed in over 40 roles with various opera, theater and symphony groups.

Osborne has also had several television appearances including spots on the BBC Omnibus Series, Soviet Arts Television and PBS. No matter how long it may take for an idea to materialize, the final product is what it is all about.

“The end result for the listener is…dripping with decadent voyages into Baudelaire’s psyche,” wrote Osborne. “Their influence is still pervasive today. No serious artist, in whatever field, can escape their pull.”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

play old, new QUARTET continued from page 14 everyone from Ke$ha to The Cure, String quartets and classical music have regained pop culture prominence recently. However, bona fide classical music is certainly not the most common genre on modern college students’ iPods. Thompson thinks that this lack of mainstream popularity is a shame. “People hear the term ‘classical music’ and think of some stodgy music written a long time ago that’s not really relevant anymore,” she laments. “In truth, there’s such a huge range of what could broadly be called ‘classical’ music from pieces written hundreds of years ago to pieces written yesterday for all different types and combinations of instruments and voices, in all sorts of styles. There’s so much wonderful music to discover, and it’s possible to come back to the same pieces again and again and always hear something new.”

So, if a modern college student and classical music amateur decide to give the genre a try by attending the Daedalus Quartet’s performance, what should he or she do?

Thompson brushed away the idea of an appropriate way to attend a recital. “There’s no ‘right’ way to listen to a concert. You can listen in order to understand the structure of the music; you can close your eyes and let your imagination go…I often like to watch and listen to the interactions between the players, to try and understand the conversation they’re having through the music.”

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Students question ViCE’s inclusivity The organization has consistently emphasized a focus on the generic diversity of their events. This year’s two main concerts featured hiphop and alternative artists, and the upcoming Flaming Lips show will fall under the category of pop-rock. This musical diversity, says Denny, makes up for the inability to get non-independent artists.

“No matter what, we could never get Beyoncé or Rihanna,” said Denny. “It’s just not within our price range.”

“I know that people are upset that we don’t have Lady Gaga coming,” said Grober.

“That’s just outlandish. I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

Another counter to ViCE’s perceived elitism is that the up-and-coming bands that they bring often end up attaining mainstream recognition. For example, when the electronic band Passion Pit played alongside Broken Social Scene in September 2008, they had only just released their first EP. Less than a year after that, the band began receiving extensive media attention for its debut album Manners and even managed to chart some of their music.

“It’s a good lesson to look back at the music we’ve brought in the past and see how much success they’ve had since,” said Denny. “We have these bands playing a small independent show here before they play in stadiums and arenas.”

As a large organization that receive a significant amount of student activities fee funds through the VSA, budgetary criticism of ViCE has become especially relevant in light of the recently announced spring concert.

Students who were already upset over the disproportionate amount of VSA funding the organization receives annually were further angered by the fact that they would have to pay money to see The Flaming Lips come April 17.

“ViCE has a very sizeable budget,” said Grober. “But it’s not like all of their money goes to their concerts. [The VSA was] working with them to do a show bigger than before, and a bigger name and bigger venue is expensive.”

Both Grober and Denny emphasize that although the concert isn’t free, a large part of the Music Committee’s budget went to subsidizing the ticket prices for Vassar students.

“We tried to be sensitive to people’s needs, so we tried to keep the ticket prices low,” said Denny.

“But the price of entertainment is very expensive.”

Despite the negative perception that plagues the organization, they attempt to overcome misconceptions by welcoming participation with open arms. “Anybody is welcome to join at any time of the year,” said Yu. “Nobody should be afraid of ViCE.”

Studio art major toys with media

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

VICE continued from page 1 formances, comedians, DJs, movie screenings and a variety of musical concerts from hip-hop to alternative.

Every week sees a variety of events planned by the large-scale organization come to pass. Although the group lives up to its mission statement in terms of the quantity of entertainment it provides, it has come under criticism from the student body for the way it goes about providing it. A survey conducted by the VSA earlier this semester indicated that students perceived the organization negatively for a variety of reasons: exclusivity, disregard for student input, elitism and “hipster” tastes in their programming, and an opaque committee system.

“The most frustrating thing for me is that we are considered exclusive,” said Denny in response to the survey’s results. “It’s not true at all.

There’s nothing stopping people from coming to meetings.”

Each of ViCE’s committee meetings meet once a week in ViCE’s office in the College Center. Each of ViCE’s seven committees meet at different times in the evening to plan events and receive input from students.

Every committee is tasked with organizing different aspects of college entertainment: Film League is responsible for the weekly movie screenings in the Blodgett Hall Auditorium, NoViCE focuses on the unconventional arts and music scene, After Hours is devoted to student singer-songwriters, Music plans larger-scale concerts, Jazz represents instrumental music, Special Events covers extraneous entertainment and Publicity markets all of the approved ideas.

“When we are trying to represent the student body, that’s ideally going to involve as many students as possible,” said Denny. “When people say, ‘You don’t bring music I like,’ I say, ‘Go to the meetings!’”

“We definitely work with the committees first; it’s not the executive board making the decisions,” added Music Committee Chair Christine Yu ’10.

Another problem plaguing ViCE is students’ perception of them as a “hipster” organization, since the musical artists they bring to campus are often independent and relatively unknown. The results of the VSA survey indicated that students with different tastes in music felt underrepresented.

VSA Vice President for Activities Aaron Grober ’11 refuted this criticism: “I think that the perception of ViCE is in interesting contrast with those involved in it. What they try to do is answer to a wide palette of musical tastes.”

“I definitely think that calling us ‘hipster’ is a big misconception,” said Yu. “We have all kinds of tastes of music on the committee.”

February 18, 2010

Jensen Smith ’11, second from the left, serves as one of six assistants to Art Department Chair Harry Roseman during the construction process of his latest installation, “Harry Roseman: Hole in the Wall.” Jensen is a studio art major working on a project inspired by Up in the Air. Rachael Borné

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Reporter

tudio art majors might just be the luckiest students at Vassar. Homework assignments include using power tools, making giant molds, experimenting in the workshop, painting and drawing, and pretty much anything else imaginable. Studio art major Jensen Smith ’11 can testify: “I have become incredibly involved in my art classes. I’m not a passive student just sitting, listening and taking notes. I’m actually doing things with my ideas,” she said.

Smith is indeed a very active art student. Even when most of her peers were taking it easy, she was hard at work. Over Winter Break, Smith helped Art Department Chair Harry Roseman with his installation “Hole in the Wall.”

“Jensen was one of six assistants on the project. The process involved understanding the way the paint was to be applied as well as directing lines as they were put onto the wall,” Roseman said.

Before beginning work in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, the group did some test runs at New Hackensack Building over October Break. “We tried out different colors and patterns. There was a whole system for the way the lines could interact with each other and the walls. We helped decide what each line could do,” said Smith.

Although working with Roseman is no doubt an impressive accomplish-

ment, the work that Smith has been creating for her major is just as exciting. This year, she discovered the limitless world of sculpture and instantly fell in love. “I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity with sculpture. You’re not limited to a canvas or paint colors,” she said. “It’s fun to be able to say ‘I can do whatever I want.’”

For one project done outside the classroom, Smith experimented with unconventional media. “I use these small squares of plywood; I put nails around the outside, and then stretched rubber bands across to make a grid.”

The hovering rubber band grid then acts as the perfect net to contain a collage made up of paper and images.

A class project required Smith to learn a new skill, not to mention a hard one. “Our second assignment was to learn a new material. I decided I wanted to learn to weld,” she said. Smith was inspired by the material because, for this particular assignment, the material came before the idea. “I made this giant pair of aviator sunglasses,” she explained. The shades are still a work in progress: Both hinges work, and the glasses themselves are at least three feet wide.

Smith takes an interesting approach to playing off of what she describes as her “baby.” “When I made the lenses, I had to use these huge molds. The molds aren’t actually part of the sunglasses,

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

but they’re really beautiful and heavy. I thought it would be kind of cool to use the byproducts of my work to make a new work,” she said.

Smith is currently working on a project inspired by the Oscar-nominated film Up In the Air. In the movie, George Clooney’s character gives a lecture about the weight of life, asking his audience, “What if you put your entire life in a backpack? How much would that weigh you down?”

For her project, Smith interpreted this question literally: “I decided I was going to figure out how much everything in my life weighed—my house, my car, ‘my bed, my desk, my friends,” she explained. “The idea is that it’s the weight of my life.”

To finish the project, she’ll put a punningly clever twist on death. “I’m going to make a gravestone with my name on it and the weight of my life in pounds.

Then it’ll have some silly quote like ‘Was it worth the weight?’” she said.

Being a studio art major at Vassar has caused Smith’s style to evolve and grow.

“In high school, I would just copy photos in charcoal on a big scale,” she explained. “I got here and we couldn’t use a grid and we couldn’t look at photographs.” What is considered good must be backed up with ideas and originality.

“The art classes I’m taking here have definitely changed my perspective and put me in a new direction,” she said.

February 18, 2010

ARTS

Valentine’s Day is sinfully sweet Valentine’s Day Garry Marshall [Warner Bros]

V

alentine’s Day the holiday was honored on my part mostly with apathy, although there was a high point where someone slid Sweet Tarts underneath my door. But let’s face it, when you take the candy out of the equation, the number of holidays cooler than this one can be expressed exponentially. It was therefore kind of a humdinger when Valentine’s Day the movie was honored on my part with hands clasped over my heart and a big dorky grin on my face for the entirety of its two-hour-plus running time. Said grin was interspersed with guffaws at the innocuous jokes, bouts of applause for every climactic kissing scene and then coughs of embarrassment when I became remotely self-aware. Then back to the dorky grin.

I liked Valentine’s Day, and you can too!

But before you rush off to the mall to have a look-see at this resplendent rom-com, I have to warn you: There are rules to follow if you want to have as much fun as I did. If you cannot follow the rules of the game, please don’t waste your ten dollars on this flick. It’s thanks to people like you that it’s getting universally panned. A 16 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes? How lucky it is that there are people like me to set those pundits straight.

Rule Number One: Expect no surprises.

This is as straightforward a knockoff of Love Actually as you can get. The movie portrays a set of interspersed romantic narratives

in Los Angeles, Calif., played out by a starstudded cast featuring Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts, Patrick Dempsey and many others.

These stories are hackneyed and contrived to a tee. The movie’s 2003 doppelganger, Love Actually, was hardly original by any means, but it made up for it by charming socks off left and right with a refined cast of Brits and some jolly Christmas cheer. Vis-a-vis the likes of Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, George Lopez and Jessica Biel don’t stand a chance, and did I already mention that Feb. 14 kinda blows? Long story short, Valentine’s Day can’t hide its formulaic foils the way Love Actually could, but that’s okay.

As long as you accept that what you see is what you get, with no unexpected plot twists or inversions of clichés to psyche you out, you’ll be fine.

Rule Number Two: Know that Valentine’s Day throws all subtlety out the window, and be okay with that. This movie tries very hard to be cutesie-poo, and is often overbearingly sappy, shallow, sentimental, sugarcoated and just plain silly. There’s a romantic sub-plot about an adorable lovesick little kid that will make you want to vomit. But I appeal to all lovers of panda and laughing baby videos on Youtube: If you can appreciate the shallow cuteness of Valentine’s Day, there’s a chance you’ll actually become emotionally engaged in the narratives. Maybe you’ll empathize with the story of two high schoolers trying to lose their virginity together, or perhaps you’ll feel concern when the foundation of a marriage is shaken by an admission of infidelity.

Rule Number Three: See this movie with other people. This columnist went with six of his closest compadres, and he couldn’t have

imagined it any other way. To have seen it alone would have just made the entire experience sort of depressing. It didn’t hurt that the theater was filled to the brim with ardent theatergoers. When the lights dimmed and the opening credits flashed on the screen, there was audible chatter, snickers, popcorncrunching and soda-slurping. It may sound obnoxious, but it was actually perfect: There was a tacit understanding between all that no one was here to watch art house cinema. We all abided by rules one and two, and enjoyed the hell out of Valentine’s Day. There was even applause at the very end of the movie.

I kid you not.

So heed these rules three and Valentine’s Day will be well worth it. You’ll giggle at Taylor Swift’s subpar ability to play a ditz, ogle at Taylor Lautners crazy-sculpted bod, and then ponder over how cool it is that they’re in a movie together and that it’s a shame they broke up in real life. They were such a cute couple, and wholesome too. You’ll cry when Ashton Kutcher gets stone-cold dumped by Jessica Alba, then alternately get irked when Topher Grace is a stone cold douche to Anne Hathaway, who totally shouldn’t get treated that way because she’s a stone-cold babe (who cares if her nose is a little weird, I’ll take it.) And when all is said and done, maybe you’ll get reflective and wonder if Valentine’s Day the holiday maybe ain’t so bad after all. Some more Sweet Tarts would go a long way to change my mind, hint hint.

Page 17

1

Song: “The Splendour”

Artist: Pantha du Prince

a

2

Song: “Bead”

Artist: Dinowalrus

3

a

Album: %

Song: “Stumbling 22nd St.”

Artist: Moon Duo

a

4

5

Album: Black Noise

Album: Escape

Song: “Blessa”

Artist: Toro Y Moi

a

Album: Causers of This

Song: “Angel Echoes”

Artist: Four Tet

a

Album: There Is Love In You

Listen live at wvkr.org

—Erik Lorenzsonn ’12 is writing a bi-weekly column on movies and their meanings. He is the Arts Editor.

Kunstemporary Records makes noise Esther Clowney

K

Reporter

unst, the German term for art, is the root word of John McCartin’s ’11 embryonic record label, Kunstemporary Records. It seems like a strange title for a label that seeks to undermine the concept of a creative class. “Isn’t it dumb? I came up with it,” said Ben Cole ’11, who played at Kunstemporary’s first band showcase, Can’t-Fest.

Contradictions reigned at 148 College Ave. last Saturday, but we live in a world where going dumb is a compliment and “getting stupid,” an active goal. As the lumpenproletariat lounged in the kitchen pre-show smoking cigarettes, I talked with McCartin and Kunstemporary cofounder Adam Holofcener about their label.

McCartin and Holofcener went to high school together in Baltimore, Md. After being shut out of the Baltimore music scene by bands they had supported and booked shows for, they grew critical of what they termed the “post-industrial entitlement of the creative class.” The duo created their conceptual/digital “record” label during the summer of 2009.

By “record,” I mean to imply that technically the label has yet to release any physical records, although plans have been set in motion to release a 12” vinyl this summer. By “conceptual,” I mean that Kunstemporary is as much about the idea of art as it is about distributing music.

Kunstemporary challenges the existence of delineations between genius and stupid, between artist and layman, and asks if there’s even such a thing as inherent taste or art or good or bad.

“We’re subverting subversion,” said Holofcener. Kunstemporary’s rhetoric is completely contradictory, but it is selfaware in its contradictions. In other words,

the whole thing is an infuriating puzzle.

The concert opened with Cole, Leander Brotz ’11 and Nick Marmet ’10 playing improvised noise music. Brotz sang into an auto-tuner over the song “Fire” by Twista, while Cole played screwed (read: slowed down or, in musical terms, literally “retarded”) versions of “The First Cut is the Deepest” and “Bittersweet Symphony” by The Verve.

“Slowing music down is the new playing music at the normal speed,” said Cole.

The next group, a duo calling themselves The Other Rolling Stones, played conventional instruments instead of knobs and actually followed along with each other on handwritten sheet music. The band featured Holofcener on guitar, and was considerably more listener-friendly than the first act, but by Kunstemporary standards that’s not necessarily a mark of “good” art.

Indeed, much of the show seemed like it was more fun for the performers than for the audience. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, or, at least, it wasn’t until the beer ran out. Nor was it a problem for the musicians. According to Kunstemporary’s treatise, which is posted on their blog, “We do not want you to listen. We believe you should listen; however, we are not affected by your decisions in any way. We have finally surrendered. Do not worry: We will die someday.”

If you make the listener a mere accoutrement, then the audience/artist line cannot exist, and the category of “artist” becomes harder to define. In this way, noise music chips away at the stratified nature of a “creative class,” which is one of Kunstemporary’s stated goals.

Sampling, which lies at the core of much of Kunstemporary’s music, also blurs this line. To explain, McCartin cited “The Work of Art in the Age of Its

Technological Reproducibility,” an essay by sociologist and media theorist Walter Benjamin: “Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its axiomatic character.”

Written in an utterly beguiling style of media studies leetspeak, Kunstemporary’s website conveys the intelligence of its writers without managing to impart many accessible concepts. That is to say, it might be brilliant, but I’m really not sure.

“We are junkies to the thrill of the chase of the unlistenable object,” the treatise continues. Just as complete visual abstraction is viewed as the end-goal of a certain linear path of contemporary art, noise musicians view the abstraction of sound as the ultimate end of a particular line of auditory reasoning/resonance.

The third act was a set by Elodie Blakely ’12, who was playing live for the first time under the name Hiep Hiep Hoera.

With ukulele in hand and the voice of an angel, Blakely fumbled apologetically with her loop peddle, but played a lovely set with eerie underpinnings. Blakely is currently the only girl on the roster, and is viewed as a potential Kunstemporary cash horse once the label begins releasing vinyl. Perhaps it is easier to commodify women.

McCartin, Holofcener and their friend Will Krieger from Wesleyan played last.

The boys, who called themselves Goldman Sachs, thrashed around sampling and looping, alternately shouting incomprehensibly and muttering incomprehensibly. Krieger wore a ring bearing the inscription scheisse, which means shit in German. I thought it was an accurate description of their aesthetic. Honestly, the most succinct review of Can’t-Fest comes from McCartin himself, via Facebook, “goal: get yr friends to listen to you yell about things. strategy: call it a ‘concert.’”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Foreigner Ulster Performing Arts Center Sunday, Feb. 21, 7 p.m. $45 Universally acclaimed as one of the best acts in stadium rock, Foreigner has knocked out countless hits including the catchy melodies of “Juke Box Hero” and “Hot Blooded” and seminal power ballads such as “I Want to Know What Love Is” and “Waiting for a Girl Like You.” In their 34-year history, Foreigner has sold more than 50 million albums, 37.5 million of those in the United States alone. With their most recent album aptly titled “Can’t Slow Down,” these hard rockers are as relevant as ever.

—Carrie Hojnicki Arts Editor

Robert Klein Bananas Comedy Club Saturday, Feb. 27, 7:30 p.m. $25 “I can’t stop my leg.” It was with this famous phrase that comedian, actor, and singer Robert Klein ended his adored HBO comedy specials throughout the network’s early years in the 1970s. From then on, the legendary comedian became a regular guest on the Tonight Show, garnered a Tony Award Nomination, and more recently has held memorable cameo roles in films such as “Reign Over Me” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” The native New Yorker, who has twice hosted Saturday Night Live, is making the trek upstate for an evening of stand-up at Bananas Comedy Club.

—C.H.

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February 18, 2010

Page 19

The Olympics: why we do care Kelly Capehart

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Guest Columnist

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

riday night, I was going to park myself in front of a television and watch the Opening Ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. But, I forgot.

This past weekend, after I talked with my mother about the Georgian luge athlete’s death, I planned to check to see what else was going on up in Canada. But, I forgot that, too.

In short, I’d like to like the Olympics. But I find them, in a word…forgettable.

It seems I’m not the only one. Google “2010 Winter Olympics,” and within three clicks you’re just as likely to come across a blog entry titled “Why we don’t care about the Olympics” as you are a schedule of sporting events.

Everywhere you turn, it’s cynicism about interest in the Games, and, upon first glance, it seems that this cynicism is deserved.

Nielsenwire, a blog carrying news of television’s Nielsen ratings, prominently charts historical ratings for the Olympics, and a quick survey of these data indicates that America’s Olympic viewership has, more or less, been in steady decline since 1980, with the exception of spikes for Games hosted on U.S. soil.

Maybe, we don’t like the Olympics— especially the winter version—because Americans are so often not dominant in the competition. And if watching curling virtually guarantees seeing a non-American win, why would we bother tuning in?

On Feb. 12, the main entry for CNN’s blog Connect the World was entitled “Do you care about the Winter Olympics?” What is this if not indicative of a general and predictable disinterest in the Games?

But then I got to thinking. And it dawned on me that I’m not sure that we don’t care about the Olympics. I have no evidentiary proof of this assertion, of course. But come on, an American skier was in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. We must care at least a little.

I think where the real gap in attention could be is in the media itself—maybe the sports news machine is just doing a mighty fine job of convincing me that I’m not interested in the Olympics. It seems a little analogous to the 1994 World Cup: The only World Cup to be held on American soil, a country that modern media coverage proclaims doesn’t care about soccer at all, also had the highest attendance of any World Cup, ever, anywhere in the world. The American people clearly cared—and probably still do care—about soccer. But you’d hardly know it from American sports news coverage.

If nothing else, the presence of so many articles on why we don’t care about the Olympics makes it pretty clear that we do.

Somebody is reading those stories. There is a demand for features about the Winter Games. It may be non-traditional, or it may be deflected onto articles about hating the Olympics, but the demand exists nonetheless.

Maybe the lack of ratings and the perceived lack of attention paid to the international event is more an indictment against the media than it is against the American sports fan.

Ultimately, what we have to remember is that apathy is not a one-way street. The media tells us what we ought to be interested in, sure, but we as viewers and news consumers can also tell the media what we’re interested in. If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times: The Olympics are the real deal. Coming together on a world stage, putting aside political differences to bond over the ski jump—it’s trite, but it’s also true. The media might be reinforcing the disinterested status-quo with “How much do you not care about the Olympics?” polls, but we’re also playing into that apathetic hand by predictably and mindlessly answering “a lot.”

What we should do, then—and what I’ll be trying to do—is mark our calendars, call our moms to discuss the figure skaters’ outfits and look past the latest Tiger Woods headlines to find the “Winter Olympics 2010” link on our favorite sports news websites. Let’s stand up for ourselves and our international awareness, America. Our bobsled team deserves no less.

The men’s volleyball team plays in the Kenyon Hall volleyball gymnasium. Sports Editor Andy Marmer sat down with men’s volleyball Head Coach Antonia Sweet to talk about the future of her season.

The death of the dunk T

he NBA All-Star Weekend has long been the showcase for the league. This year’s event, which took place this past weekend, was held in Dallas, Texas and was advertised for months in advance, promising to be the greatest athletic show in the world. At the center of all that attention was, as always, All-Star Saturday, when the ever-anticipated Dunk Contest takes place.

But what we witnessed this year could very well have been the contest’s final bow.

The NBA Dunk Contest was one of many things brought over from the old American Basketball Association (ABA) after debuting in 1976. It was reintroduced into the NBA in 1984.

The Dunk Contest became not only a fan favorite, but also a staple of the NBA. It was a showcase for creativity, athleticism and the spectacle that came to define the NBA. Of course, the competition has had its ups and downs, such as its glory days with the Jordan vs. Dominique “‘Nique” Wilkins rivalry in 1987-1988 and Vincanity in 2000.

It has also seen more forgettable days in the early ’90s with Brent Barry and Harold “Baby Jordan” Miner’s triumphs, but it has nonetheless persevered.

A number of rule changes has brought down the number of competitors and dunks in the competition. The introduction of the mandatory use of teammates in assisting on at least one dunk and the allowance of props has allowed the Dunk Contest to stay relevant and somewhat interesting while the rest of the show has fizzled.

The Dunk contest was once famous for leaving onlookers speechless. Let’s remember when Dee Brown put his arm in front of his face in 1991 for the immediately termed “no-look” dunk or when Isiah Rider was the first to put the ball between his legs in 1994, and Charles Barkley proclaimed it the “best dunk [he’d] ever seen.” The competition consistently raised the bar, not only creatively but also of what was seen as possible. Recall when Larry Nance nonchalantly dunked two balls at once in 1984, or when Dr. J took flight from the free-throw line in 1976, promptly leaving everyone else to collect their jaws from the floor.

However, what was once the most eagerly

anticipated event of the NBA calendar has now become nothing more than a staged side attraction, aimed more at making money than at actual competition. The last few years, which witnessed the introductions of “Superman” and “Kryptonate,” six-foot-11inch Dwight Howard and five-foot-seveninch Nate Robinson respectively, have felt more like a cartoon then a competition. The further addition of text voting from fans, which is advertised repeatedly during the event, only sullies the entire feel even more, as we all begin to realize its new commercial emphasis.

Nonetheless, we’ve sat through these last few contests and bore with them simply because of the abilities of the two aforementioned athletes, but this year was just embarrassing. The four competitors, Demar Derozan, Shannon Brown, Gerald Wallace and Robinson, none of whom are even close to famous in the league except maybe for Robinson due to his prior exploits in the competition, put on the least interesting show ever witnessed.

Completing dunks that are seen daily at playgrounds around the country, none of the players showed any passion, pride or desire to be there. It was clear that gone are the days of actual rivalry between superstars, and in their place is now a showcase of mediocre, disinterested players goofing around on national television. Even the ever-excited Charles Barkley quipped that no one should win, to the shock of TNT officials who immediately made the other commentators compensate by overreacting to what can only be described as a pathetic display.

The simple fact is that the competition is dead. When the highlights, which used to stretch on forever showing new incredible dunks, now feature Nate Robinson bringing out the Dallas cheerleaders to just stand there behind him, then you really know that there simply is no more dunk left in the contest.

—Nik Trkulja ’11 is and Economics and Political Science double major. This semester he will be editorializing on social issues surrounding sports outside of the Vassar athletics realm.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

The Miscellany sits down with Antonia Sweet Andy Marmer Sports Editor

T

his weekend, the men’s volleyball team competed in the Nazareth Invitational. In their first match, the squad defeated Eastern Mennonite University 3-0 (30-25, 30-26, 30-26).

Following the victory, the Brewers dropped their next three matches to host Nazareth College 3-1; rival State Univeresity of New York, New Paltz 3-0; and Rivier College 3-1. Prior to the invitational, The Miscellany News sat down for an interview with Head Coach Antonia Sweet.

The Miscellany News: So far, what are your thoughts on the season?

Coach Sweet: I think we’ve done very well. They’re establishing an identity for themselves, learning the system with the five new freshmen and Po, Andres Posada [’10] who has come in after a year off. Just learning a system that works for everybody, and getting in the spirit of it. Just always pushing through adversity. It looks good. It’s starting to come together; the new boys are picking up stuff. The returners are picking up their leadership, which is really important, really good. We’re getting help from all sides, and that’s what you want from a team—to have everybody participating, everybody helping.

MN: You alluded to the transition the five new freshmen have had to make. How would you evaluate what they’ve done so far?

CS: Well, we are starting four freshmen.

They have not played this kind of way before.

It’s not straight ahead. It’s very much angles and coming at things on the run so to speak.

We have people in key positions—all positions are key—but we have boys who are new to it, coming in and working through the transition from the way they used to play to the way we play now. [They are also transitioning to the] way it is to play in college instead of club or in high school [and are] trying to adjust to a new environment for their academics and just for living. We consider this a classroom. The court is a classroom. The team is a group of people learning to do something together, and everybody has different learning styles. And the freshmen are contributing things: Every year we make the team in the image of who we have, and so they’re adding things we haven’t had before. There’s some confidence, some brashness, some boldness that is different than we’ve had before. It adds an interesting twist to it.

MN: How have Evan Fredericksen ’11 and Phil Tully ’10, and really all the upper classmen helped in that transition?

CS: [Fredericksen and Tully] and all of them have played it before to some extent. It’s very similar. We just have little changes here and there, and so they’re role models. Evan is a quiet person, but he’s a very complete player, so they can look to him to see where they should be on defense, or how they should be using their set packages or what they need to be thinking about when they’re blocking. They can look to him for that. Phil has become a much more vocal leader. Because he didn’t need to be more vocal, he was just a leader by example in years past. Now, he’s asking them for more, and they’re getting used to that. They’re getting used to being challenged by their own teammates, which is what we need to do. They need to compete with each other to make each other better, and some of the boys from last year didn’t play very much, and now they’re playing See Sweet continued on page 20

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Page 20

February 18, 2010

Swimming, squash look forward to championships Elizabeth Pacheco

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Contributing Editor

Christie Chea/The Miscellany News

or many of Vassar’s winter sport teams, the regular season is coming to a close, and players are gearing up for their postseason competitions. Last weekend marked the final regular season for the swimming and diving and squash teams, in which the Brewers showed promise to do well in the state and national championships.

The women’s swimming and diving team finished their regular season last weekend at the Skidmore Sprint Invitational on Feb. 6, while the men’s season concluded this past weekend at the Vassar Sprint Invitational on Saturday, Feb. 13. Competing against three other schools, the men’s team found themselves coming out on top of Skidmore College, State University of New York at Maritime and Elms College.

In a meet that allows swimmers to compete in events they might not normally participate in, the Brewers won 12 of their 16 races in an afternoon that proved to be an ideal pre-championship meet.

Three of those wins came from Jack Smart ’12.

To this, freshman Nicholas Veazie ’13 added two wins of his own. Both Smart and Veazie received Liberty League honors for their performances.

Smart was named Swimmer of the Week and Veazie Rookie of the Week, the fourth time the swimmers have each received these honors.

Greg Sullivan ’12 showed another strong performance in the diving competition, splitting wins with Skidmore College’s Liberty League Diver of the Year. Skidmore won the 3-meter, but Sullivan took the 1-meter, breaking his own school record in the process. Sullivan also received Liberty League honors and was named the Diver of the Week, his third such award of the season. In a season that began official meets on Nov. 1 (and practices that started much earlier), staying committed through the postseason may seem difficult. Interim Head Coach Paul Kueterman however, disagrees, stating that “our training and togetherness really helped us to achieve our goals.”

While the men’s teams will take this next weekend off, they will be on the road again on Feb. 25 to 27, traveling to Syracuse for the New York State Championships. Meanwhile, the women’s team will travel to Syracuse for their State Championship this weekend. “There are many strong teams in the postseason competition,” said Kueterman. “We will need to step up together and show everyone that we are just as strong.”

The squash teams were also at home this weekend and gave impressive performances at their Vassar Team Challenge on Saturday, Feb. 13. Unlike a typical tournament, the Team Challenge combines the individual match wins of both the men’s and women’s teams for each school.

In the initial round of play, the women easily took care of their opponent Connecticut College with all players winning their matches 3-0 for a team victory of 9-0. The men struggled a bit more against Connecticut College, losing 9-0, but thanks to no. 2 Arjun Jain ’11 and no. 4 Henk

On Feb. 15, the women’s swimming and diving team practices in Kresge Pool in the Athletics and Fitness Center. The team finished their regular season last weekend, on Feb. 6, at the Skidmore Sprint Invitational. Vassar came in third place with a score of 191, while William Smith College won with a total of 232.5 points.

Isom ’10, they secured enough individual games to advance both teams to the first-place match.

While the men would go on to lose 9-0 to Wesleyan University in the championship, the women had a close battle before being narrowly defeated 5-4 in the match.

Like the men’s swim team, the women’s squash team will have a break this weekend before traveling to Yale University the weekend of Feb. 26 to 28 to compete in the National Championships. This will be followed by the CSA individuals’ competitions at Trinity College on March 5 to 7. Meanwhile, the men’s team will travel to Yale for the National Championships this weekend before competing in the CSA indviduals’ from March 5 to 7.

For the women, who have finished this season with a 7-6 record, Nationals will be an opportunity to possibly reverse last weekend’s result as they will hopefully meet Wesleyan in the Division C finals and take home the division title. Head Coach Jane Parker is confident about these odds citing their second consecutive Liberty League Championship, a second place finish at Seven Sisters and a current national ranking at no. 18 as evidence of their likely success.

Coming into Nationals with a ranking at no.

38 and with three more wins than last year, the men will be competing in Division E at Nationals, an improvement from last season’s Division F. “The men are set to prove their worth at Nationals and have the opportunity to finish in their rightful place this season,” said Parker.

“Obviously we are pulling out all the stops to win the division but if we finish in the top four it will be a huge confidence booster that will inspire a lot of commitment to the off season training program we are setting.”

Sweet anticipates tournament Sweet continued from page 19 more, so they’re getting used to a different role. So, it’s basically everybody learning a different role and sometimes multiple roles.

MN: What upcoming matches are you and is the team most looking forward to?

CS: Every one of them—our tournament, of course, this weekend. Everyone come to see that. Philadelphia Bible [University] has a guy who probably averages 22 kills a match, and we don’t know about Johnson and Wales [University] really, but then Nazareth [College] is back and Elms [College] is depleted this year— they won’t be as good as they were last year probably, but it’s always a good challenge. Then we play Bard [College] and Ramapo [College]; we have a rivalry with Ramapo. It’s at home on Saturday the 27; it’d be terrific to beat them because they’re our [North East Collegiate Volleyball Association] Metro Division rival. We always get up for that. There isn’t one we don’t look forward to. We get to play New York [University] and Springfield [College] again, which is really good, having lost to them already this year.

MN: What was it like beating Stevens Institute of Technology?

CS: That was sweet. It was really nice.

The boys had a goal of avenging losses from last year and playing well at home: “Defending Kenyon” they like to say. They just executed. Everything just kind of worked and

really worked. They stuck to the game plan, and got a lot of contributions from a lot of different places. They did everything right: talk, move, provide information, hit smart and go after it. It was 100 percent team effort. It was wonderful. Then it was tough to play the next day, play [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology], and Endicott [College] because we had expended a bunch of our energy the night before. But we rebounded well enough to avenge another loss. Last year, they got swept by Endicott on senior night; this year, we beat them.

MN: Is there anything else you’d like to say to the students at large?

CS: Come out for a good time! It’s fun to rock the house, to have so many people there; we appreciate the fan support to no end. It’s so helpful. That’s another member of the team, the crowd is. To have them there and be so positive and helpful is just enormous, and it really pumps the boys up. It makes us all feel really terrific. And it’s really good, high-level volleyball. This is a really high level of volleyball, and so you’re seeing student athletes performing terrifically well on the court. And they know them from the classroom and from in the dorms. Just to see another aspect of the student-athlete. It’s the Division III philosophy—let’s be excellent in every aspect—is just epitomized by these boys. They’re something else.

Sports Briefs Men’s volleyball falls in Nazareth Tournament

Image courtesy of Sports Inforamtion

Shane Donahue ’10 won against Manhattanville College on Feb. 13, in the Walker Field House, propelling his team to victory in their first match of the season.

At the two-day Nazareth Invitational, which began on Friday, Feb. 12, the team defeated Eastern Mennonite University 3-0 (30-25, 30-26, 30-26) early in the tournament, but the squad fell to Nazareth 3-1 (23-30, 23-30, 30-25, 20-30). On Saturday, the Brewers lost to both Rivier College 3-1 (26-30, 30-27, 23-30, 28-30) and State University of New York at New Paltz 3-0 (25, 30-28, 2430). Senior Phil Tully was named to the All-Tournament team, racking up 60 kills over the course of the weekend. The men’s volleyball team will next play in the Vassar Invitational tournament at home on Feb. 19 and 20. The tournament will include Johnson & Wales and Philadelphia Biblical Universities and Elms and Nazareth Colleges. Last year, the Brewers defeated the same four squads in winning their home tournament. In last year’s Vassar invitational, Tully earned the MVP award, while Evan Fredericksen ’11 earned a spot on the AllInvitational Team. Following the Vassar Invitational, the Brewers will travel to Bard College for a conference matchup with the Raptors on Wednesday.

—Molly Turpin, Senior Editor

Women’s basketball splits weekend games In their Feb. 12 game against Union College, the Brewers won decisively with a final score of 65-46 behind 24 points and 13 rebounds from Emily Haeuser ’10. On Saturday, Feb. 13 the Brewers fell 58-52 to Skidmore Col-

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

lege. Haeuser was named ECAC Upstate Player of the Week on Feb. 16 for the first time in her Vassar career.

This past Tuesday, Vassar squeaked out a tight win over Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 59-55. Brittany Parks ’12 led all scorers with 21 points, joining freshman Tori Chaltain in playing all 40 minutes. The Brewers will go on to play their final two games of the regular season at home against Hamilton and William Smith Colleges. Because they are currently in fifth place in the Liberty League, the Brewers must win their next two games in order to secure a spot in the League playoffs. Additionally, Vassar needs Hamilton to lose to RPI Saturday afternoon.

—M.T.

Successful start to Brewers’ tennis season In their first matches of the spring season, both the men’s and women’s tennis teams achieved decisive victories against Manhattanville College and Fordham University respectively. The women’s team beat Fordham with an impressive score of 8-1, and the men’s players went undefeated against Manhattanville in a 9-0 match. The women’s team finished the fall season ranked no. 21 nationally in Division III schools and no. 6 in the Northeast. The teams will return to play on Feb. 28 at home in the Walker Field House, and in the meantime the men’s squad will face the United States Coast Guard Academy away on Feb. 20 and Skidmore College at home on Feb. 27.

—M.T.