The Miscellany News Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com
March 24, 2011
Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY
Volume CXLIV | Issue 17
VSA CONSIDERS RESTRUCTURE Revisions introduced at meeting
VSA, peers share many concerns
Caitlin Clevenger
Angela Aiuto
he Vassar Student Association (VSA) Council will very likely vote on major changes to its constitution and bylaws this Sunday, March 27. If passed, the changes will alter the Council’s structure and representative configuration next year. Under the current constitution, every class president and house president sits on VSA Council along with an Executive Board, which includes the VSA president and five vice presidents. The proposed constitution will create a Council in which the Executive Board remains, but the rest of the body’s composition will change, including more representatives from classes and fewer from houses sitting directly on the Council and working, rather, from a new Residence Council. The VSA’s Operations and Student Life Committees have written the amended constitution and bylaws this semester, and hope to pass See REVISIONS on page 4
ccording to Vassar Student Association (VSA) Vice President for Academics Laura Riker ’11, a main purpose of the recently introduced revisions to the VSA constitution is “to work on inclusion,” speaking to a perennial problem for not only the VSA Council, but also student government in general: engaging students. Similar to the VSA in recent years, student governments at peer institutions have struggled to close the divide between elected representatives and their constituents by increasing transparency and access, as well as energizing apathetic students. While the revisions to the VSA constitution address the issue of access by increasing the representation of each student, there are no specific provisions addressing the problem of student apathy, which is manifested not only in VSA Council meetings poorly attended by the See PEERS on page 7
Senior Editor
News Editor
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Corey Cohn
Sports Editor
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Courtesy of Sports Information
Vassar’s women’s basketball team faced off against and eventually lost to Kean University in the program’s first-ever trip to the NCAA Division III Championships.
Inside this issue
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FEATURES
Ford Project aspires to Queer Studies majoy
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OPINIONS
Correspondent Chip Reid ’77 to speak at Commencement Molly Turpin
Editor in Chief
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he College has announced that CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Chip Reid ’77 will address the Class of 2011 at Vassar’s 147th Commencement. According to Assistant to the President John Feroe, Reid is “excited and honored to have been asked.”
Feroe continued that the choice of Reid as commencement speaker is notable not only because he is a Vassar alumus—“I’m particularly pleased we will have one of Vassar’s own as the speaker at the sesquicentennial address”— but he will be the first Vassar alumnus ever to give a commencement address. Class of 2011 President Moe
Byrne agrees that Reid’s speech will appropriately mark this significant moment for both the Class of 2011 and the College. “This choice is a great way to highlight Vassar’s history and journey towards the dynamic co-educational institution we know and love today,” she wrote in an emailed statement. See REID on page 4
Hill hosts first “Vassar Today” panels Aashim Usgaonkar & Caitlin Clevenger
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News Editors
resident of the College Catharine Bond Hill hosted the first two of a series of panel discussions, the first titled “Vassar Today” on the state of the College, this week. Hill, along with Director of Financial Aid Michael Fraher and Assistant Professors of English Eve Dunbar and Kiese Laymon, hosted the inaugural panel devoted to financial aid and access, on Monday, March 21. Fraher began the discussion by reporting, “Between the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2009, there has been a 13 percent increase in socioeconomic diversity due to overtures in the Office of Admissions and broadcasting of [Vassar’s] need-blind policy.” He even cited instances in which the school has gone over-budget in assisting students and their families, citing this as evidence for the fact that Vassar is “an institution totally committed to educational access.” Dunbar was next to speak, and explained that she is “very connected to issues of financial aid” on campus for two reasons. Firstly, Dunbar related her own
The Miscellany editorializes on VSA revisions
Olivia Hunter/The Miscellany News
n the program’s first-ever trip to the NCAA Division III Championships, after capturing the program’s first Liberty League title, the Vassar women’s basketball team fell to No. 7 nationally ranked Kean University, 80-49. But the opening round loss, which knocked them out of the tournament, does nothing to detract from the Brewers’ remarkable season,
which saw them capitalize on their gritty determination, inner cohesion and group strength. The team as a whole endured a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions heading into the 8 p.m. tip-off on Friday, March 4. Captain Carolyn Crampton ’11 wrote in an emailed statement that she “was just so ecstatic for the experience, but at the same time it was almost surreal.” See BASKETBALL on page 18
Courtesy of CBS News
Basketball achieves first conference title
CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Chip Reid ’77, pictured above, will address the Class of 2011 at Vassar’s 147th Commencement on Sunday, May 22. He is the first Vassar alumnus to ever give a commencement address.
The first in a series of “Vassar Today” panels was held in the Students’ Building last Monday, March 21, on the subject of financial aid and access. experience as an undergraduate facing financial concerns about getting through her years at college. Secondly, Dunbar co-chairs the Committee on Inclusion and Excellence, a joint governance committee “that has been historically committed to questions of access around campus and in particular around the issue of needblind admissions.” Speaking of the benefits that ac-
14 ARTS
crue to Vassar as a result of this commitment to financial aid, Laymon commented that when he “first started at Vassar, [he] realized that financial aid not only benefits students but also the institution.” Laymon can “see a marked difference in the quality of students after we went need-blind. There is just an improved pool of students” that the school admits, he said. See PANELS on page 3
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