The Miscellany News | April 29

The Miscellany News Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com

April 29, 2010

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

Volume CXLIII | Issue 22

Seniors STUDENTS ELECT 25th VSA COUNCIL surpass gift goal 2010 fundraises for financial aid Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

Jillian Scharr News Editor

T

he Senior Class Gift Committee reached its goal of $15,000 last Tuesday, April 20, at 4:03 pm, according to outgoing Vassar Student Association (VSA) Vice President for Operations and Chair of the Senior Class Gift Brian Farkas ’10. As of Tuesday, April 27, the class gift total is $15,885.47, according to its website.

“I think we’ll continue to go beyond that,” speculated 2010 Class President Selina Strasburger ’10.

“I’m really excited and proud—of not just our class, but everyone who gave. The whole school has really rallied behind this gift.”

“I think there was a concern that when we reached the goal people would feel like they didn’t have to give but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case,” said Strasburger.

Benefits from the gift will be immediate, said Farkas; the money will help finance the Class of 2014 and students returning to See CLASS GIFT on page 4

Outgoing VSA Vice President for Operations and Elections Committee co-Chair Brian Farkas ’10 and Outgoing Noyes President and Elections Committee co-Chair Hannah Groch-Begley ’12 announce the winners of the recent VSA elections on April 26. Mathew Leonard ’11 was elected to the position of VSA president for 2010-2011.

Caitlin Clevenger News Editor Aashim Usgaonkar News Editor

A

ll voting completed and all results tabulated, Vassar students packed into the Retreat Monday, April 26, to hear the results of the Spring 2010 elections for the Vassar Student Association (VSA), announced by VSA Vice President for Operations and Elections co-Chair Brian Farkas ’10 and President of Noyes and Elections co-Chair Hannah Groch-Begley ’12.

Mat Leonard ’11 was elected to be the 25th VSA President in a highly contested presidential race of four candidates. Leonard defeated runner-up Stephanie Damon-Moore ’11 by just 25 votes. A record-breaking 1,526 students voted in the presidential election, about 54 percent of Vassar’s student body.

“I am both thrilled and honored to be elected. This election reflects the continued commitment to democracy at this school, and

I would encourage all students, not only those elected, to remain active in their government. It requires the voice of the students to make a successful VSA. This upcoming year, I will be working hard to make sure that the VSA is a tangible presence and powerful advocate for students—something that can only be done with continued input from everyone,” wrote Leonard in an e-mailed statement.

Vassar’s 25th VSA Executive

Board will be comprised by a group of candidates with diverse qualifications. The positions of vice president for student life and vice president for academics will be held by outgoing President of Raymond House Syed Samin Shebab ’11 and outgoing President of Strong House Laura Riker ’11, respectively.

Outgoing Sophomore Class President Tanay Tatum ’12 will be vice president for activi See ELECTION on page 4

Holder advocates service Matthew Brock Senior Editor

“T Image courtesy of Flickr.com

he responsibilities of protecting the progress our country has made, and of overcoming the many challenges still before us, now fall on the shoulders of today’s leaders, teachers and students. They fall on you,” said Attorney General of the

Danielle Nedivi Reporter

C

alifornia has Coachella, Tennessee has Bonnaroo, Chicago has Lollapalooza, England has Glastonbury, Scotland has T in the Park… and now, Poughkeepsie will have ViCEPOKalypse. You read correctly—Vassar will get its very own bona fide music festival on May 4 at the Ballantine Field, organized

by Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE). The event will take place on the last day of

classes.

“It will be the last hurrah before the final stretch,” said ViCE Finance Director Nick Marmet ’10.

Over 10 bands will play from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. on two separate stages. The roster will include diverse musical styles, covering everything from psychedelic rock to traditional Sierra Leonean music. ViCE is hiring local vendors to give out free food, which will include treats such as ice cream and Molé

Inside this issue

5

FEATURES

The right way to get a hot dog from a restaurant

Molé tacos.

“It will make the experience accessible to the entire student body,” wrote ViCE director Peter Denny ’10 of the music festival ambience in an e-mailed statement.

ViCEPOKalypse got its unique name from incoming ViCE Assistant Director Sarah Morrison ’11, whose creative play on words embodies much of what the event is about. The “ViCe” and “POK” embody collabo See ViCE on page 16

14 ARTS

Attorney General deliver his lecture entitled “On Public Service and the Common Good.” He was introduced

by United States District Court Judge Richard Roberts ’74, his long-time friend.

“I wondered what he authorized the Justice Department to say See HOLDER on page 3

“For many of you, public service is not only a top priority but also a central part of your daily lives.”

The Screaming Females, pictured above, will perform at ViCEPOKalypse on May 4 on Ballantine Field.

The event is organized by Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE) and coincides with the last day of classes.

ViCEPOKalypse is upon us

United States Eric Holder as he charged students to devote their lives to public service in his address in the Vassar College Chapel on April 22.

Hundreds of students, faculty members, staff, press and local high school students crowded into the Vassar Chapel to hear the

Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States

CCP proposes new policy on academic forgiveness William Crane Guest Reporter

V

assar’s Committee on Curricular Policies (CCP) passed a proposal recently that will afford students the option to retake a course if they receive a grade of D or D+. It now has to be approved by a majority of the faculty at their

Philaletheis performs the Bard’s “Complette Works”

next meeting in order to be implemented.

The proposal, originally submitted to CCP by Dean of Freshmen Benjamin Lotto, would allow students to “request to repeat a course in which they receive a grade of D+ or D by submitting a petition to the Committee on Leaves and Privileges.”

19 SPORTS

The proposal differs for freshmen, whose requests would “ordinarily…[be] granted automatically,” while “sophomores, juniors and seniors must provide a statement explaining the academic benefits of repeating the course; requests will be evaluated based on those state See CCP on page 4

An American’s guide to the upcoming World Cup matches

The Miscellany News

Page 2

April 29, 2010

Editor in Chief Molly Turpin Senior Editors Angela Aiuto Matthew Brock

Contributing Editor Lila Teeters

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

News Caitlin Clevenger Aashim Usgaonkar Jillian Scharr Features Mitchell Gilburne Kelly Stout Opinions Joshua Rosen Kelly Shortridge Juan Thompson Arts Erik Lorenzsonn Sports Andy Marmer Design Eric Estes Copy Katie Cornish Gretchen Maslin Photography Juliana Halpert Kathleen Mehocic Online Carrie Hojnicki Elizabeth Jordan Managing Eliza Hartley

Photo of the Week: Will English ’12 orders cotton candy during TONCA’s annual I Won’t Grow Up Day, held this past weekend.

Miscellany News Staff Editorial

CCP proposal on academic forgiveness for D grades should be adopted by faculty T

he Committee on Curricular Policy (CCP) recently passed a proposal to the faculty that would allow students to retake a course in which they received a grade of D or D+ (see “CCP proposes new policy on academic forgiveness” on page 1). Members of the faculty will discuss the policy at their next meeting, and if the policy passes on the faculty floor, the proposal will become part of the academic policy of the College. The Editorial Board of The Miscellany News supports this proposal and encourages faculty members to approve it.

The College already has a policy in place that allows students who receive an F in a course to retake it, but a D grade often presents a student with challenges similar to those he or she would face after receiving an F. A grade of a D or D+, like an F, often does not count towards the fulfillment of graduate school requirements. This disparity puts a students who receives a D or D+ in an unusual predicament: They have not technically failed and therefore cannot take the class again, but the students have also not performed well enough for the grade to pass muster for admission to many graduate programs. In some cases, the course may be a prerequisite to move on in a major or may be a very particular requirement for a professional field, such as medicine. Thus a D could throw a student off of his or her preferred track. If a student worries that he or she may receive a D in a class, there is then an incentive for that student to fail the class, since he or she will then be able to retake the course. We feel that this situation is unreasonable; students should not be punished more for receiving a D grade than for receiving an F. This proposal also provides an important benefit for first year and transfer students.

The ease of a student’s transition into col-

lege life depends greatly on his or her high school preparation. This policy recognizes that Vassar students come from a variety of backgrounds, a variety which includes diversity in academic preparation. The proposal alleviates some of the pressure on these students by providing them with the opportunity to retake a class in which they may have struggled. Even if the student’s grades improve dramatically after the first year, the D grade acquired early on represents a hurdle in graduate admissions. We feel that without the policy, a difficult class taken in a student’s freshman year could unreasonably restrict his or her future professional prospects.

While some might worry that students will take advantage of this policy by purposely failing a class in order to be able to retake it, we think that this sort of abuse will rarely occur. Moreover, we believe the benefits of this policy substantially outweigh this potential risk. As the proposal is now written, both the original grade and the grade after retaking a course will appear on a student’s transcript, and students will only be able to retake a class once.

We feel that these stipulations will deter students from misusing the policy. According to Dean of the Faculty Jonathan Chenette, under the current policy approximately only 70 of the 500 students who receive an F grade in a course each year elect to retake it. This figure suggests that a relatively small

percentage of those students who receive D grades will choose to retake the course in which they receive the D. Those students who do decide to retake a course are most likely committed to the field in which the class was offered. We applaud the diligence of the students who decide to retake a class in which they previously struggled and believe that this commitment to academic success should be encouraged.

Currently, none of our peer institutions have a similar policy in place. We do not see this as a deterrent, but rather as a crucial opportunity for Vassar to set an example for the College’s peers. We at the Miscellany believe that our peer institutions should follow suit in creating academic policies that reflect the difficulties of the first-year experience.

Furthermore, we believe that retaking any course takes a considerable amount of dedication that should be applauded by every academic institution.

It is necessary to extend Vassar’s current policy of allowing students to retake the class in which they received an F grade to those who receive a D grade. We applaud CCP for approving the new policy, and we sincerely urge the members of the faculty to do so as well.

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

EDITOR’S NOTE This is the final issue of the 143rd volume of The Miscellany News. Please continue to check miscellanynews.com for news and multimedia updates through the end of the year, and look for the graduation issue in print on May 23.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Assistant Features Matthew Bock Daniel Combs Danielle Gensburg Assistant Opinions Alanna Okun Assistant Arts Thea Ballard Rachael Borné Assistant Online Kara Voght Assistant Copy Katharine Austin Sammy Creath Sarah Marco Crossword Editor Jonathan Garfinkel Reporters Esther Clowney Sydney Hessel David Lopez Christie Musket Danielle Nedivi Connor O’Neill Xiaoyuan Ren Ethan Shanley Columnists Martin Bergman Steve Keller Nate Silver Nik Trkulja Photographers 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

April 29, 2010

VSA issues referendum on correlates Aashim Usgaonkar News Editor

D

Vassar to be unaffected by N.Y. college health care review William Crane Guest Reporter

N

ew York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office recently launched an investigation into health insurance providers for New York college students, but this will most likely not affect Vassar’s student health insurance plan, according to the Director of Health Services Dr. Irena Balawajder.

The attorney general’s office has subpoenaed 10 of the largest student insurers and five insurance brokers. Cuomo also sent a letter to over 300 colleges, professional schools and trade schools cautioning them to “review their sponsored student health insurance plans and alter potential problems that add gratuitous expenses and put students at risk,” according to a press statement on April 8.

The attorney general’s investigation examined the student health insurance plans of 65 different colleges in New York and out-of-state schools attended by New York students. The investigation targeted health insurance plans that, he claimed, “leave students at risk while providing massive profits for insurance companies.”

For instance, according to the April 8 New York Times article on the investigation, the plan for students at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. has a loss ratio of 49 percent, and the plan at the State University of New York Institute of Technology at Utica had a loss ratio of 28.4 percent. A loss ratio is a figure indicating how much a health insurance plan pays out in relation to its overall cost. A low loss ratio indicates that an insurance policy is overcharging. The plan for students of Pace University in New York City also had a low loss ratio, in addition to which their plan did not cover injuries sustained while intoxicated, according to the Times article.

However, Vassar was not one of the colleges whose health plans were examined by the attor-

ney general. Balawajder said, “We have not been contacted by the attorney general,” to re-examine the student health insurance plan. She added that she “did not at all expect” that Vassar’s plan would be affected by the investigation.

Vassar’s student health insurance plan is offered by the Massachusetts-based student health insurance company Gallagher Kostler. It offers a range of coverage including psychiatric care, and is offered to all Vassar students, who—unless they are international students—may opt out if they already have health insurance.

In contrast to the plans targeted by the Attorney General’s Office, Vassar’s health plan has a high loss ratio of around 70 percent, according to Balawajder. She also cited a number of benefits to the Gallager Kostler plan, including co-pays of only $10 for visits to medical specialists and $50 for comprehensive emergency room visits. Furthermore, the plan comes with a large local network for medical referrals, and students are able to use its coverage outside campus and outside the Poughkeepsie area. Students are covered for injuries that take place while intoxicated, as well as for treatment of drug and alcohol addictions.

Unfortunately, the 70 percent loss ratio may still be too low after the recent federal health care legislation, which requires a minimum loss ratio of 85 percent. “It is not yet clear how the national health insurance legislation covers student health insurance plans, including, among other things, the application of the ‘85 percent target loss ratio’ to these plans,” said Vice President for Finance and Administration Elizabeth Eismeier. “We will of course expect service providers like Gallagher Koster and ACE, the underwriter of the policy, to comply with all of the new regulations as the legislation is clarified by rule-making,” she said.

“Gallagher Kostler is catered to students, so it knows what students need,” said Balawajder.

“We’re very happy with the plan,” she added.

News Briefs Raiding Raymond Three non-students were found trespassing on the third floor of Raymond at 9:22 p.m. on April 22. The individuals were identified and given warnings.

—Caitlin Clevenger and Aashim Usgaonkar, News Editors

Midnight madness On April 23 at midnight, security officers responded to a noise complaint in the Terrace Apartments. The officers discovered an unauthorized party in an apartment and shut it down.

—C.C. and A.U.

Lost in translation A banner, its message blurred from the rain, was found hung from the bell tower on the fifth floor of Main Building on April 24. Someone had broken the lock to get into the tower. Security requests individuals with any knowledge of this event to approach the Campus Response Center.­­

—C.C. and A.U.

Gnarly gnoyes On the morning of April 25 security responded to a noise complaint in Noyes House. The students in the room opened the door and officers found ten people and open beer cans.

—C.C. and A.U.

In the party Security broke up a large unauthorized party in a Town House on April 25 at 1:10 a.m.

—C.C. and A.U.

Keyboard caper A student questioned a suspicious-looking individual walking outside a room in Main with a laptop. This individual, a non-Vassar student, left the scene leaving the laptop behind. The Town of Poughkeepsie police have been advised.

—C.C. and A.U.

Attorney General speaks to Vassar’s legacy HOLDER continued from page 1 about him on the Department of Justice website,” Roberts said. “What can I share about what I know about his life’s spicy moments?”

“Wall Street drooled over him, but he turned cash aside to serve the public,” said Roberts. “Even after he went into private life, he heard about a 17-year-old kid in Louisiana who was wrongfully convicted of rape and offered his [legal] services free of charge.”

Holder began his speech by invoking the name of Founder of the College Matthew Vassar. “In creating this place of learning, Matthew Vassar believed that its students would, as he put it, ‘mold the character of [America’s] citizens, determine its institutions and shape its destiny.’ Many other students and professors who’ve worked to improve life on, and far beyond, this campus have proven that he was right,” said Holder. “[On Founder’s Day] you’ll celebrate the extraordinary foresight, generosity and optimism that Matthew Vassar showed in establishing this college.”

“But the truth is that the celebration of your founder’s legacy and vision has already begun…For many of you, public service is not only a top priority, but also a central part of your daily lives. You serve as mentors at nearby high schools, you teach elementary students about the environment at the Vassar Farm, you clean up the Hudson River and, as part of the Green Haven Program, you tutor inmates at the maximum-security prison in Stormville,” he said.

However, Holder told students that, despite these successes, they have to continue to work for the public good even after they graduate. “In whatever profession you decide to pursue, you must always find a way to be a public servant, a servant of the people,” he said.

“Because of what you’ve learned and

experienced on this campus, you are now among the most prepared and best equipped to improve the lives of others.

With your skills and training, you can work to open the doors of our economic and judicial systems, and help to overcome the obstacles of inequity and injustice,” he continued.

Holder reminded students that, despite the progress that the United States has made in achieving justice and equality, it still has a long way to go. “It will take more than the election of the first African American president—and certainly more than the appointment of the first African American attorney general—to fully secure the promise of equality for every American.

The quest for social justice continues, and it is up to all of us to contribute,” said Holder, “Nothing less than our security, our prosperity and the needs of our most vulnerable citizens hang in the balance.”

During the question-and-answer portion, Holder left his scripted speech to answer questions from Vassar students, selected by Roberts. The first issue that he addressed was the legality of the recent health care legislation. “I think that the commerce clause is a firm basis for the defense of the constitutionality of these statues,” he said.

Holder also fielded questions on the recent legislation passed by the state of Arizona, which makes it illegal for immigrants to go outside without identification and authorizes the police to confirm the citizenship of random individuals at their discretion. He expects the legislation will come before a federal court before long.

Holder also expressed his desire to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in the federal court system and his support for vocational training in prison.

Since his visit to Vassar, Holder has been cracking down on health care fraud, especially on pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Molly Turpin/The Miscellany News

uring the Open Discussion at the April 25 Vassar Student Association (VSA) Council, VSA Vice Presidents for Operations and Academics Brian Farkas ’10 and Stephanie Damon-Moore ’11 announced that the VSA would be sending out a referendum to the student body which aims to solicit opinions on a possible change from changing the term “correlate sequence” to a “minor.”

Citing the reasoning that most students at Vassar use the terms interchangeably, the Vice Presidents used the referendum clause introduced into the bylaws of the VSA last year by 2009-10 VSA President Caitlin Ly ’10.

While appreciative of Vassar’s need to be unique, Farkas expressed a need to limit Vassar’s uniqueness in support of changing the name.

“There are some cases where Vassar is unique in a positive way, and other cases where Vassar is unique in a notso-positive way. This falls into the latter category. Our use of the unusual term “correlate sequence” does little more than confuse prospective students and potential employers. Current students do not really see a difference between minors and correlates, and use the terms interchangeably. Although [Damon-Moore] and I understand the argument of some faculty members that correlates and minors are different, we see no reason why Vassar can’t simply define the term ‘minor’ for itself. That way, we can use the more well-known term, while maintaining the same substantive academic program,” wote Farkas in an e-mailed statement.

“In my mind, the value of the referendum is to inform the VSA’s treatment of the minor v. correlate question. Although I personally think that Vassar would be just fine using the term minor and having our own definition for the term ‘minor’ rather than our own term for the set of six courses (‘correlate’), I’m interested in gauging the feelings of the general student body,” wrote Damon-Moore in an e-mailed statement.

Offering the faculty’s perspective, Damon-Moore reports that that the Committee on Curricular Policies feels that “the use of the term ‘correlate’ has substantial pedagogical value,” continuing that if this is true, she wishes that “the student body be let in on it.”

This pedagogical view lies in the fact that certain programs have various areas on which students can center their studies. For example, a “minor” in economics would differ from a “correlate sequence” in economics in that the latter will clarify, to a degree, what the student’s area of study was.

Referring to the ultimate fate of the referendum, Damon-Moore said, “We’re not fooling ourselves that the referendum will result in immediate and decisive change—this is not something students are allowed to control— but I hope that it will either send a message to the faculty that the use of ‘correlate’ ought to be either presented more explicitly or switched to minor, or send a message to the VSA that students appreciate the term and would like to see it stick around.”

“Either way, I’m looking forward to getting direct student input on something; even if it’s something most people consider a minor issue. Pun intended,” concluded Damon-Moore.

The referendum was e-mailed to all Vassar Students by the VSA on April 27 in the form of an online survey due Wednesday, April 28.

Page 3

Attorney General of the United States Eric H. Holder, Jr. speaks in the Vassar College Chapel on Thursday, April 22. He delivered a lecture entitled “On Public Service and the Common Good.”

NEWS

Page 4

April 29, 2010

Endowed fund Leonard wins in close presidential race will begin to operate in fall

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Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

CLASS GIFT continued from page 1 Vassar next year.

On April 29, the senior class is sponsoring a panel discussion about financial aid entitled “Why Do We Need Financial Aid? A Conversation about Education and Access.” This event is not a fundraiser for the gift; instead, its intention is to “raise awareness of the gift from a policy perspective,” said Farkas.

Instead of discussing why financial aid is important at Vassar, the panel will focus on a larger social context, and its effects locally, nationally and internationally. The panel will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Villard Room.

“I don’t think we’ve been talking about that from the point of view of society overall and why is it important to have a broad geographic and socioeconomic group that comes out of Vassar,” said Farkas.

The money from the senior class gift will go into an endowment, which consists of the College’s “collected assets,” explained Farkas: “different alums set up these endowments, all invested in the same pool...but we keep track of the different designations.”

For example, there is a very old endowment that specifically finances gardening upkeep in Main Circle. The senior class gift will become a financial aid endowment that will gain interest with the rest of the College’s assets in the hopes that it will continue to fund financial aid.

Meanwhile, the sophomore class gift is still working towards its ultimate goal—a 24-hour study space. To that end, the class seeks to raise $7,000 with a 70 percent participation rate. If the qualification of 70 percent is met, the Class of 1987 has promised to give an additional $7000.

According to Sophomore Class Gift coChair Philani Mpofu ’12, the gift currently has $4,707.09 with a 43 percent participation rate.

“We’re still going aggressively door-to-door,” said Mpofu, so the sophomore class still faces the challenge of meeting its goals.

ELECTION continued from page 1 ties, while assistant to the outgoing Vice President for Finance and outgoing Josselyn Sophomore Representative Travis Edwards will be vice president for finance. Former Editor-inChief of The Miscellany News Ruby Cramer ’12 was elected vice president for operations.

Shehab, who in the Executive Board debate wished for the VSA to be a “proactive governing body and not a reactive one,” was elected as vice president of student life over Daryl Duran ’12, who came in second in vote counts.

Among other things, Shehab aims to “invest in the idea of shared space and increase community involvement at Vassar.” He also wants to put in place a “Sexual Assault and Violence Charge for the Student Conduct process.”

Cramer, elected vice president for operations, indicates that she intends to “strengthen connections with alumnae/i, incorporate graduates into current campus events and continue to centralize the VSA website.” As former Editor-in-Chief of The Miscellany News, Cramer is the only member of the Executive Board who has never held a officer position on the VSA. Running unopposed, Riker was elected vice president for academics. Riker says in her statement that she wants to “continue the push for a half-credit for labs [and] the creation of an academic safe space on campus where ideas of social consciousness and awareness can be taught, discussed and shared.”

Sophomore representative for Josselyn House Edwards was elected vice president for finance. Edwards aims to “streamline the VCash machine network, establish a transparent and explicit rubric for fund allocation and provide a more inclusionary framework for students who struggle with liquidity issues.”

Tatum, who was elected as vice president for activities, plans to “bring more alums back to campus [and promote] more creative programming on campus” according to her Candidate’s Statement. “I’m really excited

The newly elected Vassar Student Association (VSA) Executive Board convenes for their first meeting in the VSA Conference Room on April 27. The results of the election were announced on April 26. for next year,” said Tatum after the results were announced. Alluding to the fact that it is Vassar’s 150th year anniversary, Tatum expressed enthusiasm for her upcoming duties. “Next year is going to be a big year for programming,” said Tatum.

Before kicking off the reading of election results, outgoing VSA Vice President for Operations and Board of Elections co-Chair Brian Farkas offered advice for candidates, saying, “There will be some losers tonight. I hope that you not become bitter…everyone here has a role in shaping Vassar. We are a school by the people and for the people.”

Referring to many of the positions that were uncontested, elected President of Josselyn House Dan Flynn ‘13 said,“That guy ‘No’ gave me a run for my money.” Indeed, there were a number of positions that went uncontested, including Executive Board positions of vice president for operations and vice president for academics. Voters had the

option of selecting “No”; had the majority of constituents chosen this option, the Appointments Committee would fill the vacant position.

At this point, there are a number of vacant positions that need to be filled, which include House Team position and class representatives to the Judicial Board and Joint Committees. VSA Elections sent out an email to the student body the night of the Results Party with a full list of these open positions, including instructions on how to apply for them. VSA Council will vote on the appointments at their next meeting.

Said outgoing VSA President Caitlin Ly ’10, “I’m a little sad to be going…I’m still in shock.” But Ly was sure she left the VSA in good hands. “I’m sure Mat’s going to do a great job…I’m really excited about next year’s executive board, and I wish them good luck.”

Policy permits retaking courses CCP continued from page 1 ments.” The proposal also states that both the original and repeated grades will appear on transcripts, and students will not be allowed to repeat a class more than once.

The proposal complements an already existing policy allowing students who receive an F in a course to retake it. The proposal complements an already existing policy allowing students who receive an F in a course to retake it. According to Dean of the Faculty Jonathan Chenette, “about 70 out of 500 students” who failed a course from Fall 2000 to Spring 2004 opted to re-take it.

Grades for both the original and repeated version of the course appear on the transcript and are included in the student’s GPA. Lotto said that the proposal was inspired by admissions data on the Class of 2013, which indicated that it “was the most diverse of any Vassar class so far, and diversity includes diversity of preparation.” Some curricular policies may need to be reconsidered to accommodate students with a variety of backgrounds and approaches to their educations.

“Transition to college is tough for all students,” Lotto added. “With students coming with an increasingly wide range of backgrounds, the possibility of that transition including an adverse affect on first- and second-semester grades seems higher to me.”

Lotto said that the proposal was primarily directed at students with a specific academic interest in the classes in which they have received Ds. Within that group, he noted, “a key component for success is to master the introductory material before you move on.” He said that he hoped the proposal would allow students to “receive a D in a course, retake it, and go on to do well in the field, not just to improve a grade.” He added that in this way, “the current policy puts up a barrier to success.”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Chenette concurred. “We want this to be taken advantage of in cases where the student is really committed to go on” in a certain field, Chenette said. The proposal, he added, would help “establish the likelihood that students will succeed as they move on.”

Associate Professor of Chemistry and former member of the Premedical Advising Committee Christopher Smart spoke to the benefits of the CCP’s proposal to students interested in medicine, specifically. “As a pre-med student, if you take a science class and get a D in it, then you have some explaining to do, but it makes a difference if you can show you went back and succeeded,” Smart said. The proposal, he said, would “enable students to take one more step” toward the medical profession. He added that the current policy penalizes D students as opposed to F students. “If you can fail outright and take a class over, why not make the same option available to those who don’t actually fail?” he asked.

Chenette stressed that the current policy allowing students to retake classes in which they receive an F, is applied “all over the curriculum,” in science and math as well as humanities and social science courses. Lotto added that students who take advantage of the current policy “[can] retake classes all over the curriculum, and at all levels­…I see this being applied all over campus.”

The proposal, as the process for making academic policy changes at Vassar dictates, will next be read at two consecutive meetings of the faculty in May. The faculty will then have the option to amend the proposal, and then vote on it at the second meeting. If approved by the faculty, it will become the academic policy of Vassar.

“The question is: How do we enable students to achieve their maximum academic potential,” Lotto said of the proposal.

Chenette added, “We need an environment where people can make mistakes, and correct those mistakes.”

April 29, 2010

FEATURES

Page 5

Student assistants gain experience, help faculty with groundbreaking research Mitchell Gilburne Features Editor

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Daniel Combs

Assistant Features Editor

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Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

hen the pressure is on to find employment in trying economic times, one way for Vassar students to boost their resumes and get a leg-up in the job market is through paid positions as student research assistants. Research assistants occupy an exciting niche of the Vassar community. There is a prevalent misconception that research assistants are little more than photocopiers and fax machines, but a quick scry into their world reveals that they occupy a privileged limbo between teacher and student that allows hands on access to the research and activities that color Vassar’s academic flavor.

Mariclare Dasigenis ’12 is a research assistant in the Art Department. Her work includes the expected duties of finding articles, copying images and making Professor of Art Nicholas Adams’ work run smoothly.

Dasigenis represents the typical Vassar research assistant. When speaking of her position, Dasigenis admits, “I mostly do administrative stuff, but it’s nice because it teaches you to do things independently, improves your researching skills, and you learn to manage your time well because you’re not on a timetable and are responsible for getting your work done.” These are the qualities one would be expected to possess when in pursuit of a paycheck. While there may be few surprises in the position, the opportunity to work closely with a professor and develop a solid base of professional skills has allowed Dasigenis to reach for the art historical heights, or at least the top of Professor of Art Harry Roseman’s hypnotic mural, as she will be transitioning into a more prominent role as a preparator’s assistant at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center in the Fall: “Working as a research assistant has been a good stepping stone, it was a good way to get experience in the Department.”

The student assistant position need not only be administrative in nature: in some departments, the position involves a hands-on approach to research. Psychology Department Student Assistant Nicole Wood ’12, enjoys the usual responsibilities of matching quotes to their authors and compiling a lexicon of relevant scholarship, but the true intrigue of her position lies in her work at the Wimpfheimer Nursery School and Infant Toddler Center. The Wimpfheimer School is a lab school, which means that the tykes are not only under constant supervision for their safety, but also as research subjects with the consent of parents. Unable to pursue her dream double major in psychology and drama, Wood turned to the Office of Student Employment and found an engaging alternative. Wood, a drama major, works under Wimpfheimer Nursery School Director Julie Riess, of whom she recalls, “I worked at the nursery school as a teacher’s assistant last year, and did an independent research project with [Riess]. We worked really well together, so she just hired me. I came into Vassar thinking I’d be a drama-psychology double [major]. So this was a great way for me to do both.” Working at the Wimpfheimer Nursery School utilizes the skills of student assistants as members of their laboratory team, thus allowing Wood to spend time with the children and participate in observational studies. A favorite assignment of hers involved collecting data as part of a close psychological observation of one rambunctious youngster. Wood respected the observational approach to psychological analysis and childhood development. Wood explained that it is important for her to have spent time in the classroom so that the children became comfortable around her. She explained that this bond makes her an effective observer in experimental situations.

Though working in a very different field from Wood, Michael Hofmann ’13 has also gained valuable research experience in

A dog-eat-dog world: Noshi’s vs. Soul Dog

Mariclare Dasigenis ’12, pictured above, is a student research assistant for Professor of Art Nicholas Adams. As a research assistant, Dasigenis carries out a variety of academic duties. the Music Department. His work with Department Chair and Associate Professor of Music Kathryn Libin has sent him into the dusty depths of Skinner Hall of Music and the picturesque music library in a job whose goals are twofold: to decipher the works of a master musician and to enliven the building in which students study his works. It sounds fancy because it is. Hofmann’s primary focus involves transcribing examples of German classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s own handwriting into a computer system to assist Professor Libin with her thesis on his composition style. While transcribed examples of Mozart’s work already exist in the music library, Hofmann explained, “The accepted transcriptions are not always true to exactly what Mozart wrote. Editors usually changed his notation so that it makes more sense or so it looks better.” Hofmann knows his notes and has been trusted to transcribe Mozart’s original works with fidelity that is, as yet, unmatched. In an aside that illustrated his musical fluency, Hofmann explained that Libin is focusing on Mozart’s discerning ear when notating voice leading, a concept primarily reserved for piano that suggests that notes ought to be played as if they were of two voices. To the untrained ear, this means very little, but Hofmann’s work has made this a familiar and exciting concept to him.

Hofmann pursued a position with Professor Libin, his major advisor and harmony professor, on his own initiative. Hofmann recalled, “When I went onto the job registration I knew I wanted a job that involved music, so I went to her, and she said she was looking for a research assistant with the ability to use the transcription program.”

Hofmann’s duties are not limited to transcription. “My newest project,” Hofmann explained, “is to create small exhibits in

Skinner [Hall of Music]. There are empty glass cases in the hallways and stairwells, and I am working on getting some of the [items] in our collection of historic instruments put into those cases. I recently went into the treasure room above the music library, which has a lot of really cool historic instruments and documents. I think that is probably the coolest thing I’ve done so far.

Now I’m working on getting background on the instruments I’ve found so far. It’s like a wild goose chase tracking down the details on these instruments.”

From the secret lives of Vassar’s instruments, to the hidden psyche of a child, and all the way back to assistant staples—so to speak—such as making copies and scanning images, Vassar is rife with opportunity to find that real on-the-job experience to complement classroom work. Dasigenis’ artistic expertise, Wood’s analytic insight and Hofmann’s instrumental contributions to the Music Department foreshadow the expectations of a post-Vassar reality. The academic machine benefits from a cohesive engagement between professors, students and the material. This relationship is bolstered by the work of student assistants whose behind the scenes maneuverings are likely to be the binding agent behind any number of classroom materials.

In fulfilling their duties, student assistants transcend the daily grind and arrive at a position that offers valuable and department-specific learning opportunities. The position of student assistant holds a unique perspective among campus jobs. Although student assistants are included under the umbrella of student employment, the term “employee” is not able to capture the depth of the symbiotic relationship that a student assistant shares with their professor, and the educational worth of the projects they undertake.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

ith the return of baseball season, the great American pastime has again returned to my life. I read about it in the paper, I see it outside my town house, and I hear about games at Fenway Park from my dad and brother. After months of waiting, my favorite American diversion is back, and with it has returned my craving for tube-shaped meats. Is there anything better than sitting in the bleachers, wolfing down a dog slathered in chili, cheese, onions and mustard? I’m inclined to say no. However, there is no stadium in Poughkeepsie, and thus no bleachers from which to watch a Major League game. The only place to get a dog is at a restaurant, which to me kind of defeats the purpose. The aesthetic of the hot dog comes from its industrialization, its grittiness and its street-food quality. You aren’t supposed to order a dog and have to wait for it to be “prepared;” it should just be there, floating in the dirty water or smoking on the grill.

But no matter how much I disagree with the whole concept of the hot dog restaurant, I do have an emotional connection to the two hot dog businesses in Poughkeepsie. Main Street’s Soul Dog near the train station was one of the places at which I continually found culinary solace during my two year tenure as a vegetarian. Noshi’s Coney Island—across from Smokes 4 Less, next to Molé Molé—is a visual and culinary tribute to one of the coolest areas in the world, and I can’t help but fondly recall my childhood trips to Brooklyn. The two businesses offer completely divergent takes on what it means to eat a hot dog, equally appealing but entirely different. But the real question of the day is: Which one is better?

Noshi’s celebrates the idea of a classic dog, with a devotion to recreating vintage, regional cured meats from across the country. They embrace the grit of the American dog, and the wall decor depicting drunk, beached Brooklynites in the ’80s defines their aesthetic. The Detroit, Chicago, Brooklyn, Texas, Tennessee, Ripper and Slaw Dogs are all amazing recreations of classic hot dog varieties that you would find in ballparks coast to coast.

The pork wieners are unpretentious in their taste; they don’t try to be anything other than what you remember from your childhood. Their toppings are equally down-home; yellow mustard, ketchup, onions, some chili, some cheese here and there, and once in a while some bacon or pickles. The Chicago Dog is especially successful at recreating that perfect ballpark taste. With dill pickle spears, some onions, tomato, yellow mustard, relish and celery salt, it’ll be gone before you even realized it was there.

Soul Dog blazes a different trail entirely. From the unlikely source of the hot dog, Soul Dog has forged a gourmet café atmosphere, catering to any dietary requirement: be it vegetarian, vegan or an allergy to gluten. The very idea of a gourmet hot dog seems like an oxymoron, but the folks at Soul Dog know what they’re doing. Innovation is good, without it we wouldn’t have fusion food and none of us would know what bubble tea is. And Soul Dog’s brand of innovation comes through an exploration into the world of toppings. Ever had guacamole on a dog? How about quinoa? Some of my favorites include the veggie dog with soul sauce, guac and sour cream. Try going southern with chipotle cream, chili and poblano peppers.

(A hint: The soul sauce, which is made in house, is absolutely phenomenal. I’ve been trying to get the recipe from them for years to no avail.)

When it comes down to it, these two dog eateries are so different that it’s nigh impossible to qualitatively compare them. Therefore, I had to resort to a graph that lists what I consider important in a hot dog restaurant, to see which place does it better.

Putting things in a list like this makes abundantly clear what each place has to offer. Noshi’s is a testament to classic dogginess. They never try to be anything else. Soul Dog, on the other hand, uses the hot dog as a vehicle to deliver other culinary eccentricities. So, however much I love Soul Dog, however long it was there for me in my vegetarian days, I have to give the medal to Noshi’s Coney Island, for embracing the pure essence of meat in the shape of a tube.

FEATURES

Page 6

April 29, 2010

Saying au revoir with steak frites à la Vassar bourgeoisie Nate Silver Columnist

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Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

Steak Frites »» 5 6-8 oz. sirloin, ribeye or New York strip steaks »» 3 shallots, chopped »» 1 c. beef stock »» 3 T butter »» 2 T Dijon mustard »» Salt and pepper to taste »» 4 large russet potatoes »» Canola oil, for frying For the Steaks: Generously coat each side of the steak with salt and fresh ground pepper.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed sauté pan over medium-high heat.

Sear the steaks for 2 minutes per side, until they are golden brown. Set aside and repeat with the remaining steaks.

Place the seared steaks on a baking sheet and roast in a 400 degree oven for another 4-5 minutes for a medium rare steak. While the steaks are in the oven add the shallots to the hot sauté pan and then pour in the beef stock.

Add the Dijon mustard, stir well to

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combine and let simmer until thickened (4-5 minutes). Spoon some of the sauce over the steaks to serve.

For the Frites: Fill a large, heavy bottomed pot halffull of canola oil and heat to 325 degrees. Wash the potatoes, but leave the skin on. Using a mandolin, Vslicer, or some precise knife work, cut the potatoes into 1/4 inch strips, or however you like to enjoy your frites.

Just know that the thicker they are, the longer they will take to cook. Fry the potatoes for 4 minutes at 325 degrees, remove from the oil and drain on paper towels. Turn up the heat on the burner and heat the oil to 375 degrees.

Cook the frites an additional 2 minutes, until they are golden brown and crispy. This two-step cooking process ensures that the frites will be cooked through inside and crispy outside. Remove from the oil, drain on paper towels and salt generously.

Frisee salad with pears, cherry tomatoes and goat cheese »» »» »» »»

1 bunch frisee or chicory leaves 1 pear 12 cherry tomatoes Crumbled goat cheese

For the dressing: »» 2 T balsamic vinegar »» 2 T olive oil »» Juice from 1 lemon »» 1 t honey »» 1 t Dijon mustard »» Salt and pepper to taste Slice the pear into thin strips. To prevent oxidization (turning brown) place the pear slices in bowl of water with 1 t. lemon juice. For the dressing, combine the vinegar, lemon juice, honey, mustard, salt and pepper. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while whisking.

Place some frisee onto a plate. Top with some halved cherry tomatoes, pear slices and crumbled goat cheese. Spoon some dressing over the top.

Grocery List

Products purchased at:

Bunch frisee or chicory leaves Pear Cherry tomatoes Goat cheese 1 lemon Sirloin, ribeye or N.Y. strip steaks Shallots Beef stock Dijon mustard Russet potatoes Chocolate croissants Eggs Half and half Raisins

765 Dutchess Turnpike Poughkeepsie, NY 12603 (845) 454-4330

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

Kelley Van Dilla/The Miscellany News

ow to end? The question of how to culminate this column had been rolling around my brain for a couple of weeks before the answer hit me. I needed a column of culinary proportions to put each previous issue to shame and make them irrelevant, obsolete, hamster cageliners. I needed a recipe that would make this issue the issue to cut out and keep for years ahead.

How to end? The answer, of course, is dessert.

I began to brainstorm what I wanted to make this week with the notion in mind that no yearlong food series would be complete without a satisfying treat for the sweet tooth in all of us.

Dessert seemed like the right idea, but perhaps anticlimactic when compared with fresh pastas, marinated meats and homemade soups. I needed some sort of entrée to precede the dessert, to really round out the meal, and make this column more special than the others. I have to admit that I’ll sometimes order dessert even when I’m not hungry just so I can extend the meal. Why stop at two courses when I could make three? Working backwards, from dessert to entrée to appetizer, is how I decided to end this year with a budget-busting three course meal. My ideal meal.

I have worked hard this year to publish a wide array of recipes that stem from different culinary traditions and employ a diversity of techniques.

I have tried to incorporate lots of different proteins—chicken, pork, fish, whole grains—and to provide some weeks where the recipes were vegetarian or vegan-izable. Keeping the budgets under $20 proved to be a challenge, but with the exception of the Thanksgiving turkey issue, I succeeded each week. However, this week I have decided to put the budget aside with the disclaimer that this is a meal for a special occasion. It’s a meal for that certain someone: a Mother’s Day dinner, a Bastille Day brunch, what have you. Of course, each of these dishes on its own would likely fall under $20.

Like all good meals, I began with dessert. There are two types of desserts in this world: cooks’ desserts and bakers’ desserts. Bakers’ desserts are things like layer cakes, pies, stacked cookies, truffles and tartlets. Cooks’ desserts are things like crème brulee, mousses, homemade ice creams and puddings. These categories are, of course, oversimplified, but the point is that some desserts require methods of preparation that are closer to cooking savory foods, which are harder to mess up, while others require a sort of precision and certain skills necessary only for baking.

Bread pudding has always been my go-to dessert because it’s simple, delicious, inexpensive, and, if you put it in the oven right when you sit down for your first course, it will be hot and perfectly cooked as soon as it’s time for dessert.

I like to use croissants, brioche or challah in my bread pudding because these breads are fairly sweet already. I’ve been known to, depending on my pantry situation, toss in dried fruit, Nutella, peanut butter and chocolate chips. Bread pudding’s forgiveness when it comes to adaptation is the real reason I love to make it; follow the simple custard recipe, and it doesn’t really matter what else you do.

Once I had settled on the dessert this week, I looked back through the old issues and tried to find any glaring holes in the recipe box and realized I hadn’t really done anything classically French yet.

The croissants in the bread pudding are French. I like steak. How about the French staple steak frites?

Done deal. For someone who prides himself on having a relatively refined pallet, I will admit that there is a soft spot in my heart for meat and potatoes. To me, there is nothing more comforting. Aside from desiring a nice hunk of steak in stomach, I’m excited to share this week’s recipe because everyone should know the secret to perfect homemade French fries (frites, in French, I guess). The trick is to fry them twice: once at a lower heat, to par-cook them, and again at a higher heat to get them golden brown and crispy. I believe I may have said this once, but let me reiterate: Do not be afraid to fry at home. So long as you invest in an oil thermometer and have a large, heavy-bottomed pot that you do not fill more than halfway with oil, it couldn’t be simpler.

As for how I arrived at the salad to start the meal, I suppose you could say I was embarrassed by the relative heaviness of the rest of the meal and wanted something to lighten it up. Celebrations call for salads too.

Before I close, I would just like to extend my warmest thanks to everyone who has read and enjoyed this column. I have had a fantastic year writing it. As always, happy eating.

FEATURES

April 29, 2010

Page 7

Mark Marchant signs his way through Tanzania Kelly Stout

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Features Editor

Image courtesy of Mark Marchant

he fact that Mark Marchant ’11 speaks Tanzanian Sign Language is not the only thing that sets him apart. Although he entered the Class of 2010 as a transfer student during his first year, he will graduate with a major in political science in December of 2010, making him technically a member of the Class of 2011.

For Marchant, who spent his junior year abroad in Kenya and opted to stay on the African continent for the summer and part of fall of his senior year, his education has been a study in “improvisation.”

Marchant, who is in the process of developing a multimedia Montessori curriculum for a school for deaf students in Bukoba, Tanzania, is a busy guy. He arrived at our interview with a ham sandwich to eat between classes, a blinking BlackBerry smartphone, and what he describes as “Masai sex beads” around his left wrist. The sex beads, he explains, were a gift from a “cattle-herding womanizer” friend with whom he spent time while studying abroad in Nairobi as part of the Saint Lawrence University Kenya Semester program.

Marchant spent the fall of 2008—then his junior year—traveling around Kenya with a schedule that was too busy ever to condense into a daily schedule. As part of his program, he spent several months working as an intern at the Institute for Economic Affairs, a public policy think tank based in Nairobi.

While walking with Kenyan coworkers one day, Marchant recalls a young girl who asked him for spare change on the street, a sight that was common. She grabbed his arm in “desperation,” says Marchant, remembering the pervasive urban poverty in Nairobi. With a shudder, Marchant remembers the sensation of her fingernails on his forearm.

“I felt those fingernails in my arm all semester,” says Marchant.

His return to Vassar in January 2009 after studying abroad was “awful. Vassar is a whole different kind of privilege.” Marchant’s

return to Vassar asked him to confront the privileged environment of the College, and his observation that “I think a lot of people go through that” was of little comfort.

In part, this led Marchant back to sub-Saharan Africa in the summer of 2009 where, on a Burnam Fellowship, he worked for a nongovernmental organization called Community Solutions For Africa’s Development (COSAD) as the organization’s enterprise development manager. His work at COSAD alerted Marchant to the potential for development when community members have already built up social networks. “It really helps convince donors to give you money when there’s already a strong social network in place,” says Marchant.

He was initially attracted to COSAD because of its unique development model: Rather than specializing in healthcare or literacy or finance, COSAD is developing a community center in Bukoba, Tanzania that offers a wide range of resources to community members. The community center will offer after-school programs, nursing programs and microfinance groups, among other programs.

But he laughs when asked to describe what exactly the job entailed. He found the holistic nature of his work at COSAD to be a drawback in some ways. “On paper it was very interesting,” says Marchant, “which is what drew me to it, but I didn’t work out exactly what I would be doing until the night I arrived [in Kampala.]” In one night, Marchant and the directors of COSAD mapped a plan for Marchant’s summer, one that was largely up to Marchant to shape.

He reiterates, “It was improvised in a lot of ways.”

But for Marchant, an unexpected encounter with members of Bukoba’s deaf community became the centerpiece of his whirlwind experience in Tanzania. While at Vassar, Marchant took courses in American Sign Language where he learned the basic structure of sign

Mark Marchant ’11 teaches at a primary school in Amboseli, a city in southern Kenya, in October 2008 while studying abroad as part of St. Lawrence University’s Kenya Semester program. Marchant hopes to return to sub-Saharan Africa after graduation. languages, a skill he translated into a Tanzanian setting when he “sort of fell into” Bukoba’s deaf community.

A friend of his who worked at a local cyber café noted Marchant’s interest in American Sign Language and his fluency in Swahili— a language Marchant says has been relatively easy for him to pick up— and suggested that he check out the Tanzania Association for the Deaf, an educational and advocacy organization located in Bukoba.

Marchant was immediately interested, and shortly after his first days working as a volunteer at the Tanzania Association for the Deaf, he attended a three-day conference on resources for the deaf in Bukoba. The conference focused on the necessity of interpreters for deaf professionals and how the needs of deaf learners differ from those of hearing learners. Marchant was surprised to learn how cohesive the deaf community is in Bukoba,

Year of meals gets just dessert: parting is such sweet sorrow Chocolate Croissant Bread Pudding »» »» »» »» »» »»

5 chocolate croissants 3 eggs, plus 5 egg yolks 4 c. half and half 1 t. vanilla 1 c. sugar 1/2 c. raisins (optional)

Kelley Van Dilla/The Miscellany News

In a large bowl combine the eggs, egg yolks, half and half, vanilla and sugar.

Whisk until well combined. Cut the chocolate croissants (preferably stale ones) into 1 inch squares. In five individual ramekins or one large casserole dish, place the croissant squares and raisins. Pour in the custard mixture and fill until 3/4 full. Bake the bread pudding for 60-90 minutes (depending on whether you’ve used individual ramekins or one large dish) in a 350 degree oven. If the top begins to get too brown, cover with aluminum foil. Remove from the oven when the custard sets, though it will still be a bit wiggly.

but was concerned at what he perceived to be a lack of resources for these communities.

Tanzanian Sign Language came to Marchant quickly, and while working in Bukoba he would spend late nights expanding his Tanzanian Sign vocabulary while studying Swahili. When Marchant didn’t know a word he would “fingerspell” it to ask a Tanzanian Sign Language speaker what the actual word was. He learned to conjugate verbs and make sentences flow together, and discovered that the language was “very informal” compared to the Swahili he was studying. Sometimes words themselves were “improvised.”

Although he is not religious, Marchant began attending a church for the deaf in Bukoba and observed that a network existed for the community similar to the networks for community development that were helping him obtain funding for his work at COSAD. He noticed a difference in Bukoba’s “deaf culture” from the one to which he had been exposed in the United States. Because of the stresses of urban poverty, says Marchant, “there is no time [for the deaf] to worry about a hearingdeaf dichotomy in a divisive way.”

He found that his deaf friends were eager to teach Marchant new signs and bring him along to events that happened in Tanzanian Sign, even though he was hearing.

When Marchant returned to his hometown in suburban Florida in the fall of 2009, Marchant was eager to continue practicing Sign Language, and started attending events for hearing learners of American Sign Language at his local mall, and was impressed with the openness of the people he met there. “Any individual that is discriminated against,” says Marchant, “tends to be likely to be compassionate toward others, I’ve noticed.”

While living at home, Marchant visited Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf in Clearwater, Fla. before returning to Vassar in January 2010. The transition from time away from Vassar, his second in a little over a year, happened quickly: “Over a weekend,” says Marchant.

But when he returned in the winter, he couldn’t get a particular

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

story out of his head. While in Bukoba, a teacher at the Mugeza Primary School for the Deaf said to him, “I just wish I could show [my students] what I’m talking about sometimes.”

Marchant speaks quickly, gesticulates broadly, and is clearly razor sharp. He talks excitedly about networking and development and jumps from one topic to another with incredible speed— sometimes in mid-sentence. It was in this spirit that Marchant began considering how the connections he made in Florida and in Tanzania might come together in a single project. Inspired by the Blossom Montessori School’s take on deaf education and the importance of networking, Marchant proposed a project to administrators at the Mugeza Primary School for the Deaf.

In partnership with the Mugeza and Blossom Schools, Marchant is currently in the midst of designing a multimedia curriculum for Mugeza that caters academics to the unique set of needs for deaf students. The two schools are engaged in a partnership that allows the students to communicate over video messages, and Marchant is hoping to work with the schools to help them increase their multimedia partnership after his graduation with the Class of 2011.

Towards the end of our interview, Marchant quickly apologizes for failing to talk about his experiences traveling around Kenya with his fellow study abroad students. “I ate a raw kidney,” he says, and explains the beads around his wrist half-jokingly. “I ate a bush baby too,” he adds with a smile. With a shrug Marchant says, “I sometimes forget how personal this experience [with deaf students] was for me. I don’t know how interesting it is to people who want to hear about my study abroad experience.”

At the end of our interview Marchant checks the time on his smartphone. He has to run, but adds, almost as a bashful aside, that his next step is to pursue a medical degree: “I always ask myself, ‘am I being useful?’ and I always look at the healthcare people and think, ‘they’re the ones getting things done.’” Concludes Marchant, “I don’t like to waste time.”

OPINIONS

Page 8

Dutchess should join Walkway to Rail Trail Ezra Roth

Guest Columnist

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longside the introduction of airplanes, hot air balloons, electricity that transverses nations, and other great connectors of communities, the spanning of the longest bridge in the world suited the turn of the century wonderfully. This bridge over the Hudson was once frequently crossed by trains pulling hundreds of cars of freight. However, once another more convenient bridge opened further down the river and after a fire destroyed a section of the old bridge, the older bridge was abandoned. Over the past 20 years, Fred Schaeffer, a bike enthusiast and attorney, rallied enough support to renovate this historical landmark into the longest pedestrian bridge in the world. This bridge reopened this past fall as Walkway Over the Hudson with Schaeffer as its president.

Over 600,000 people have visited the bridge and all expectations for the bridge have been exceeded.

Reasonable expectations now should be satisfied: Dutchess County ought to connect the Walkway Over the Hudson with the Dutchess Rail Trail (DRT).

By capitalizing on a 1.6–mile stretch of railroad that shoots off from the Walkway to DRT, many more flocks of people will be able to access the bridge. First, the connection will help provide more parking for the Walkway.

Street parking and the small parking lot on the Poughkeepsie side of the bridge cannot hold the thousands of vehicles that the thousands of Walkway visitors bring.

Most of the street parking requires a permit since the Walkway touches ground in a residential area. With an extension of the Walkway to the DRT there will be many more access points at which visitors can park and access the attraction.

Second, connecting the DRT with the Walkway will allow thousands of bikers to flow through to the Walkway. To travel to the Walkway from DRT, bikers have to meander through heavily-trafficked streets with highspeed traffic. The danger of biking on these roads deters what would be a large number of bikers from venturing to the Walkway.

Dutchess County originally focused on connecting the Walkway with DRT, but a minor set-back discouraged the county from pursuing the connection further.

However, the county has treated a bump in the road as a roadblock. Dutchess County can easily overcome obstacles to paving the connection with persevered concentration and effort.

After talks with CSX Transportation Corporation, the company that owns the land on which the connection would be paved, Dutchess County relegated their attention to the connection. CSX listed a sale price for the land much higher than what Dutchess County estimated the land was worth—even though CSX does not use the land, nor will it be able to find a use that outweighs the cost of foregoing selling the land—so Dutchess County refused to make the purchase. Dutchess County needs to continue to negotiate and push the price of the land down, and CSX needs to realize that selling their land at a reasonable rate for a connection between the Walkway and DRT would benefit them and thousands of people.

In response, Dutchess County has been focusing on paving a bike trail from Morgan Lake by Dutchess Community College to Hopewell Junction in rural southeastern Dutchess County. The connection between the Walkway and DRT would feel the footsteps and bike wheels of thousands more people than the path extension past Hopewell Junction. Plus, many fewer people, particularly those coming from the other side of the river, will utilize the far-reaches of the DRT without a connection between the Walkway and DRT. Thus, it seems imprudent to spend money on the rural extension of the DRT rather than on securing a connection between the Walkway and DRT. Dutchess County should follow the example of the Town of Lloyd, a town immediately off of the Walkway on the other side of the Hudson. Lloyd is working to connect the Walkway with their trail system by October 2010. With their combined trail systems, Lloyd and Poughkeepsie will create a bike system that will attract even more tourism that both towns and their counties will certainly economically benefit from to a great extent. As long as Dutchess County continues to pursue the strip of land through talks with CSX and the community (including Vassar) stays active in supporting the connection, the Walkway, as it has always desired, will sooner than later be able to kiss the Dutchess Rail Trail.

-Ezra Roth ’10 is an intern for President of Walkway Over the Hudson Fred Schaeffer.

April 29, 2010

Arthur S. May vital to Arlington education Lisa Radhika Kaul Guest Columnist

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n May 18, voters in the Arlington School District will vote on a school budget that requires a tax levy rise of 8.29 percent. Even if the budget passes, there will be cuts to teaching positions and educational programs. If the budget fails, the District Superintendent has proposed closing Arthur S. May Elementary School on Raymond Avenue in order to balance the budget.

Arthur S. May is the most racially and economically diverse school in the Arlington Central School District, while also being one of the most academically successful schools in the district. In its 85 years it has managed to perfect the art of providing an excellent education to this diverse population—something that many magnet schools strive to do with limited success.

It has achieved this because it has developed a culture that supports and provides for the needs of every child.

Closing Arthur S. May, which was ranked 280th out of 2283 elementary schools in New York in the 2008-2009 3rd-4th grade state test, would be a travesty. Not only would many underprivileged yet successful children be uprooted from an environment in which they are thriving, they would also be flung into more crowded classrooms, where, as the research demonstrates, they will have a lesser chance of academic success.

Arthur S. May’s location makes it accessible to families who do not own cars.

It affords many students the opportunity to walk to school, thereby reducing their carbon-footprint and allowing them access to a healthier lifestyle. Its proximity to Vassar allows its teachers to take walking field-trips, at a time when budget cuts would otherwise make field-trips impossible. It also provides many Vassar students with rich, easily accessible field work opportunities and a chance to gain teaching experience.

Closing Arthur S. May or any other school will adversely and permanently affect the quality of education that is the pride of the Arlington Central School District. The closure of a school will affect an estimated 1,500 elementary students across the district, as students from the closed school are moved into other elementary schools, students from those schools are moved into other schools to make room for them, and so on, in a ripple effect.

I am not opposed to movement or to change, having benefitted from a peripatetic lifestyle myself. However, not all children respond equally comfortably to transition and change, especially in their early years. Children from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds, those with less stable family lives and those with special needs are adversely affected by transition. There is a substantive difference between forced migration and willing

emigration. Refugees bear scars where travelers accumulate experiences.

Schools are not merely buildings. They are organic communities that evolve over time. They cannot be disassembled, shuffled, and “put back together” with the expectation that they will function as hey did before. Many of the schools in the district, like Arthur S. May, have a “magic” or “chemistry” that cannot be reduced to a formula and reproduced at will.

Closing a school will at best provide a one-time relief from ongoing year-overyear tax increases. It will not address or solve the more fundamental issues that beset the Arlington Central School District and that make the rate of growth of the school budget unsustainable; and it will not avert the future crises that this growth rate makes inevitable. We must demand that our elected representatives at the local and state level address these long-term challenges.

Right now, however, our backs are to the wall. The most important thing we can do is to come together as a community to save our schools and programs, by voting to pass the school budget on May 18th. Vote, if you can. Vote yes, if you would.

—Lisa R. Kaul is a parent of a firstgrader at Arthur S. May Elementary School.

Tradition of financial aid established by Founder Matthew Vassar continues today Ruby Cramer and Brian Farkas Guest Columnists

“N

o student of superior promise should be turned away due to lack of means.” These were the words scrawled decisively by Matthew Vassar into his last will and testament before his death in 1868.

With this final declaration, our founder left $50,000 to establish the College’s first endowed scholarship fund to ensure that his then-progressive ideas of equal access and affordability be preserved. Indeed, Vassar’s very founding was based on making an excellent education available to those to whom it was previously denied. Starting in 1861, young women who couldn’t attend Harvard or Yale could receive the world’s best liberal arts education at Vassar. And, from the very beginning, resources were made available to students and families who needed scholarship assistance. Matthew Vassar’s original gift made this possible.

Today, our founder’s dream is being realized; with a need-blind admissions policy in place and nearly 60 percent of students receiving need-based assistance, the College has clearly placed financial aid at the core of its mission.

Just this year—despite nursing considerable losses to its endowment due to the global financial crisis—Vassar plans to increase its aid budget by an outstanding 11.1 percent.

Consciously increasing Vassar’s resources in this area is not only our moral obligation; it is also a strategic decision.

First-generation students, students from urban areas and a new wave of young immigrants constitute the fastest-growing segments of the college-aged population.

Within these large demographic categories are some truly brilliant young thinkers—students with the potential to become the 21st century’s Frank Lloyd Wright, Maya Angelou or Stephen Hawking (all first-generation college students themselves). We want them to know that Vassar is within their reach. We want them here. Period.

In this endeavor, as in any, Vassar

should strive to be the best—the unapologetic, unequivocal, unabashed best. Any student who is smart enough to be admitted to Vassar should be floored by the generosity of our aid package. We should make them offers they can’t refuse.

As current students, we know that a Vassar education means much more than four years of Moodle readings and Mug nights. It means more than access to professors and facilities. It means access to an expectation of achievement—an expectation that you should become more than you were for having been here.

A Vassar education means access to an alumnae/i network 36,000 strong.

36,000 who like you before even having met you. 36,000 people to advise you, to hire you and to nudge you towards personal success, in whatever form that may take. New students are lifted into a community larger than themselves. In a very real way, Vassar changes lives.

Making this vision of access into a reality, however, is no easy feat for any school; if only it were as simple as Matthew Vassar made it sound in his will nearly 150 years ago. Today, although Vassar meets 100 percent of the demonstrated need of students for all four years, and although we admit applicants without regard to their ability to pay, these commitments to aid come with significant costs. This year, Vassar will spend about $44 million on financial aid, and next year, the College is increasing its allocation to an unprecedented $51 million.

Certainly, the College looks to the generosity of its alumnae/i and friends.

Indeed, the contributions of graduates and parents make our educational experience possible.

But that’s not enough. We, too, have the opportunity and obligation to give back to our College. If we truly value financial aid, we need to show it. This is why every student should make a gift to the 2010 Endowed Scholarship Fund—a truly student-driven initiative to support accessibility to Vassar.

It seems odd for a bunch of 18 to 22 yearolds to practice “philanthropy.” That’s a word we associate with distinguished

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

alumnae/i, celebrities or 19th century robber barons. Philanthropy, however, is the surest way to guide the mission of a place like Vassar. We as Brewers—as the guardians of this College. The direction of our philanthropy influences the direction of the institution. Giving shows where our priorities lie. We can practice this time-honored tradition of giving back to further centralize the financial aid policies that have become so central to our identity as a community.

With such an enormous financial aid budget, however, how could a student’s relatively small gift make a difference?

How could $5 or $10 or $20 even make a dent?

Do not underestimate the effect of your support. Your gift will make a difference for two reasons.

First, because we are beginning an endowed fund, your contribution will continue to appreciate indefinitely overtime.

Our collective gift will be invested with Vassar’s broader endowment and will grow in perpetuity. The revenue from the fund will provide increasing support to the overall financial aid budget. Historical data suggests that our endowment grows at a long-term average annual return rate of about nine percent. In a very real way, then, your “small” gift will actually become quite sizeable over time and make a significant impact.

Second, your gift sends a message. It illustrates that you believe in educational access, social mobility and the transformative power of a Vassar education. Your participation in this historic effort sends a powerful message about our values as a community.

Make a difference in the lives of countless future students. Make your gift online at development.vassar.edu/ seniorgift.

—Ruby Cramer ’12 is the incoming VSA Vice President for Operations and was Editor in Chief of the 143rd volume of The Miscellany News. Brian Farkas ’10 is the outgoing VSA Vice President for Operations and was Editor in Chief of the 142nd volume.

April 29, 2010

OPINIONS

Page 9

Keller sticks to oversimplification, undervalues Paul Kelly Shortridge

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Opinions Editor

n last week’s column, “Ron Paul not viable for 2012 election” (04.27.10), columnist Steve Keller contested that as Ron Paul’s “first act as president,” Paul would abolish the federal government. If this sounds extreme, it’s because it is, and is never something Paul has espoused.

Perhaps Keller was confused by Paul’s “Abolish the Fed(eral Reserve)” movement, though a quick glance at Paul’s Wikipedia page most likely would have eased Keller’s misunderstanding.

And perhaps Keller made other factual errors and attempts to throw out terms, such as Austrian economics, he clearly did not understand because it is quite a daunting thought that Paul, who has publicly stated he has no intention of accepting the Republican nomination if offered, and whom is often considered a “libertarian nut-job,” is polling as well as President Obama—a man who would not have refused the nomination for the world, and a man Keller seems to find deliciously “nut-free.”

Now, as a “cold, cold libertarian,” I have a tendency to wax poetic about Ron Paul, though I do disagree with him on quite a few issues; however, I seem to be more realistic than Keller, who seems to think that after Obama turns out to be a neoconservative with liberal economics—apparently just what Keller wants, while many members of Obama’s base might disagree—the Obama machine will once again be able to pull out a victory.

The Ron Paul machine in 2008 was small, decidedly grassroots, and raised $6 million in one day.

For a candidate that was marginalized by his own party, that is nothing to scoff at, and I would dare say rivals the power of Obama himself.

And his power will only increase with the onset of debates. Ron Paul is not a flip-flopper; he knows his facts, he “sticks to his guns,” even when it is unpopular—like calling for investigation into Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae before the financial crisis or being against the Iraq war—and does not balk on his principles. With Obama participating in off-shore drilling, fighting quite the hawkish fight against terrorism and not fulfilling his promises on health care, can we say the same about him? Perhaps the centrists that Keller claimed would flock to Obama’s camp might favor Paul’s “stubborn” ideas of responsibility in all sectors of governance.

Paul is not a typical Republican, the likes of former President George W. Bush; he opposed the Patriot Act, he opposes federal bans on same-sex marriage and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, is for the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes, and wants a more eco-friendly America.

Unlike Keller’s claims, it is in fact big government that protects big corporations from facing their dirty deeds in the sphere of pollution. Paul, quite logically, believes that stronger property rights—which would extend to limiting negative externalities, such as the toxic chemicals Keller referred to, in air that belongs to other citizens— will raise costs of pollution and thereby deter it.

If Keller wants to be further educated on the subject of natural capitalism—a concept even many liberal academics get behind—he may read the eponymous book and website .

So, perhaps Keller is right. Maybe the Tea Partiers will find themselves at odds with Ron Paul’s philosophy if they “find out what he stands for,” since Keller assumes they haven’t looked into it, much like he didn’t. But in the Tea Partiers’ place,

moderates will find a comfortable spot where “liberal” and “conservative” ideas are fused to protect both civil and economic liberties. Obama accepted insane amounts of money in donations from Goldman Sachs, a company that has come to incarnate Wall Street’s excesses. Ron Paul has always called for responsibility, whether among individuals, Wall Street, or the government. This idea is not exactly radical or crazy, like if someone believed that aliens might have put down the pyramids. It is a sentiment that has been echoing on both sides, though they might not agree on the answer.

And thus is the beauty of the fact that Paul, as President, cannot change the whole game, but maybe can influence it in a direction we haven’t seen since President Clinton. He will not abolish everything the government ever did ever in some made-up catastrophe Keller fretted about. Once a little research is done, there are some interesting alternatives to current federal programs.

For example, Paul proposed tax credits to allow parents to choose which schools their children attend, as well as to cover any schoolrelated expenses. Per child, this system would be much cheaper, and if schools were privatized, they would undoubtedly be more efficiently run, as the schools would have to be held responsible for their budget instead of being able to demand seemingly endless sums of money from the federal government. The schools would have to adhere to federal regulations to ensure that students had their rights, but federal schooling as we know it would be abolish­ed—in my opinion, and in Paul’s, for the better. Young students deserve a quality education without the inefficiencies that the current system has, and Paul’s alternative

gives some food for thought that Keller seemed to ignore in favor of proclaiming that the end of education in America comes with Paul’s election.

The fact of the matter is, Paul becoming president would create some minor policy changes, but the country wouldn’t completely change­—except for perhaps being run more efficiently.

As for Paul fostering negative opinions overseas, please see the following blogs: French for Ron Paul, Holland 4 Ron Paul and Venezuela for Ron Paul are the most notable and interesting.

Sure, they are just blogs, but I can guarantee you that former President George W. Bush didn’t have people overseas writing blogs out of love for him.

As I said before, the fact that Paul is not a media darling, does not have the biggest star power and, in general, is considered an “outsider” of sorts yet still has such a national and international following is very telling.

I think Keller will find that if Paul and Obama were to go head to head, it would not be as simple as they made it out to be in their column, as politics aren’t as simple as Keller tends to pretend they are, especially when the opposing candidate hasn’t even been researched carefully. And, in fact, it might be liberals such as Keller, who rage that Paul will “allow the hungry, ill-clothed, sick and poor to die for want of a basic standard of living,” that will find themselves suddenly turning centrists against them, just as Tea Partiers turned centrists away exaggerating the evils of the health care bill with claims of death panels.

We have a long way to go until 2012, but I would caution against underestimating “the Doc” like the Republicans underestimated “Barry.” You don’t want to be wildly teabagged by the victors, do you?

Lack of Vassar Relay support disheartening Eric Holder’s Adam Newman Guest Columnist

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his past Saturday, Vassar College’s second annual Relay for Life raised somewhere around $15,000. And while ProHealth did an excellent job coordinating the second Relay event to have taken place on our campus, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed as I walked my last few laps. Being a two-time brain cancer survivor, the second time being only this past winter, I had expected this year’s Relay for Life, my first, to be a valuable experience. I expected it to be a moment when our campus would finally recognize the fight of millions of people against cancer as well as remember those who have been lost. But that wasn’t what I experienced this past Saturday. Instead, I came to understand just how ignorant and unsympathetic to the reality of cancer the majority of Vassar College is. As I now understand it, cancer just doesn’t happen at Vassar, and if it does, we just ignore it the way virtually everyone ignored the Relay for Life.

The poor attendance of this year’s Relay was disturbing. Though I understand that being in only its second year Vassar’s Relay for Life isn’t yet well known, I can’t accept that as an excuse. Too many people at Vassar have had experiences with the Relay For Life before, as it is the biggest non-profit fundraising event in the world, for that to be the case. And though Together Opposing Neglect and Child Abuse’s (TONCA) “I Won’t Grow Up Day” was sadly scheduled for the same day, which no doubt split the crowds for both events, the Relay was just too poorly attended for such excuses to hold water. Further, the event was not attended by some very important and symbolic people on this campus who could have helped raise its profile and should have been a part of it. For instance, not a single administrator was in attendance. With two of the most important administrators living on campus, it is

expected that these take some part in the Vassar community and especially events as important as this one. In fact, some of the only faculty and staff who did attend, at least to my knowledge, were the head of Health Service, Dr. Irene Balawadjer, a full complement of Research Librarians participating as a team in support of one of their own, and the Davidson House Fellows, Professor of Psychology Randy Cornelius and Kathy Anderson. I would like to take a moment here to thank Cornelius and Anderson in particular, whom I got to know much better over the course of many shared laps, and whose willingness to participate was truly heartening.

But where were all the other faculty who live on campus as House Fellows and are supposed to be a part of our community?

Where were all the other faculty who have themselves had cancer or have family members or spouses with cancer? Where were all the students whose families and friends have been touched by cancer? Am I right to think that cancer just isn’t a reality at Vassar?

The most striking and resounding symbol of this widespread apathy came in the evening when the Luminaria were put out. For those unaware, after sundown at every Relay for Life, bags with candles in them, called Luminaria, are lit and placed around the track to guide Relayers through the dark of the night and to commemorate those who have won, those who are still fighting, and those who have lost their fight with cancer. At virtually any other Relay for Life, every bag would have been dedicated to someone, for which one needs to only make a $10 donation. But on Saturday, only a quarter of the Luminaria had names on them—the rest were blank. Were those blank Luminaria meant to symbolize all those not touched in any way by cancer at Vassar?

I don’t know. I hope they could have

represented that reality, but such a reality is virtually impossible. I do know that when the the Luminaria were extinguished well before the Relay was supposed to end at midnight, and only myself and a group of three friends saw the Relay to its full 12 hour conclusion, walking a track that was no longer there, I couldn’t help but be disheartened even further. It was a sad conclusion but a fitting one, for throughout the day few had walked for more than a minimal amount and it was clear that the message of the day had not been understood by the community of Vassar College.

The Relay for Life is not merely about giving money. It’s about making time in our “busy” lives to celebrate those who have been lucky enough to beat cancer, honor those who are still fighting and remember those who have lost their fight. At larger schools, with greater appreciation and support for the Relay for Life, it is not merely a 12-hour event but a 24–hour one. By having one person from each team walking at all times through those 24 hours, we remember that just as cancer never sleeps, we can never sleep in our fight against it.

But of all the disheartening moments I experienced on Saturday, none were worse than giving the survivor’s speech at the Luminaria ceremony. I was incredibly nervous beforehand to share my story with so many people, but when I finally saw past the spotlights that had blinded me on the stage I realized that there was hardly anybody there. That patch of almost empty grass with a few bodies scattered about was more nerve-racking for me than than the largest sea of people could ever have been. Because I realized as I finished speaking that it didn’t matter what I had said as the Vassar community just doesn’t seem to recognize the frightening and rather mundane reality that is cancer, and at this point I don’t think anything I say will change that.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

visit a missed opportunity Andy Billings

Guest Columnist

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t was a wonderful opportunity to have Eric Holder visit campus last week. However, because of how wonderful and unique the opportunity was, it was made all the more disappointing that his time spent talking to Vassar campus was of such little value. I have many problems with the visit of the Attorney General, and feel this opinion needs to be voiced, as I cannot be alone in holding this sentiment.

First, Holder spent 15 minutes speaking about what amounted to the importance of doing volunteer work and serving the community. That’s great, but I for one when visited by the Attorney General want to hear a speech of some weight. As college students we are spoon-fed the same pro-public service jargon at every speech, rally, discussion, dialogue, or whatever other liberal arts buzz word for “talk” you’d like to use, in which we are involved. I was extremely disappointed to not be able to hear anything about the political situation of our country from Holder.

And that leads me to my second and most important complaint about his visit: the question and answer period. Instead of opening up the floor to questions, of which I assure you I had more than a few, Holder was instead posed questions that were written by students and faculty beforehand. This is of course code for questions that were prescreened, making it difficult for average students to pose questions. Let’s be real here, the Attorney General’s visit was all public relations, both for him and for the College. Vassar gets to say that we were visited by a high ranking government official and Holder gets to say he made an appearance in a liberal arts college setting. Why did questions need to be pre-screened? Were we afraid to subject a democratic elected official to the conservative shark tank that is a group of Vassar kids? The logic here is laughable and a bit frightening.

The shame of it is that even though to an extent See QUESTIONS on page 12

OPINIONS

Page 10

April 29, 2010

Goldman morally, not legally guilty Obama must do more in support of Israel Mazi Kazemi

Guest Columnist

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he question of whether Goldman Sachs is “guilty” is a question that needs a qualifier. Are they guilty in the moral or legal sense? Were they breaking the law or simply being unethical? The Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC) certainly wants to put the proverbial noose over the Vampire Squid’s neck. Vampire Squid is the endearing nickname that has recently been bestowed upon Goldman Sachs by Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi. So are they guilty? This writer says “yay” to unethical, but “nay” to criminal.

These fraud allegations have emerged from a certain financial derivative known as a collateralized debt obligation (CDO). CDOs are derived from fixed-income assets like mortgages. For example, many problematic CDOs were comprised of mortgage backed securities (MBS). A portfolio of these MBSs would be created, and CDOs would be created to track the performance of this portfolio. The logic was that since housing prices were rising, these MBS portfolios would continue to gain value, and hence so would the CDOs. Of course, that did not happen, but that is a different story.

The specific type of CDO in question concerning Goldman is a synthetic CDO. With synthetic CDOs if one person makes money off of it, someone else has to lose. A lot of misinformed individuals have attacked these complex financial instruments and claimed that not even investment bankers can explain what they are.

The analogy of a horse race seems to be the easiest way to describe what happened. When two people bet differently on a horse, one person wins and another loses. Now let us say that

the person betting against the horse, gets to pick which horse is running.

This person is going to pick a “bad” horse. John Paulson was the horsepicker. He was an investor who rose to fame as someone who successfully anticipated the housing bubble collapsing and found a way to make money on it. Paulson was helping to put together these CDOs that Goldman was selling, and he was betting against them. Much like the horsepicker, Paulson was picking “bad” CDOs to benefit himself. Goldman claims that they showed the investors who were buying these CDOs the “horse.” They could check the horse’s teeth, its legs, and anything else they wanted before they placed their “bets.” The only thing they did not know was that Paulson was picking the CDOs, which Goldman claims is irrelevant. Since Goldman’s clients are mostly wealthy, supposedly financially literate institutions, I see nothing wrong with the Squid’s actions—I have no sympathy for those European banks who did not have the wherewithal to properly analyzes the “horses” before placing their “bets.”

The SEC wants to sue Goldman over the fact that they did not release Paulson’s name. The SEC says that all the information should have been made public. As mentioned previously, Goldman says that is irrelevant, since all the necessary information was given to clients. Both sides do have a point, but there is not enough evidence of intent to defraud clients for the Vampire Squid to get slapped with criminal charges.

Approximately 10 percent of Goldman’s operations are investments for clients. Much of the rest of Goldman’s operations involve making money for itself. When the Squid went pub-

lic 11 years ago, its prospectus said, “Our clients’ interests always come first. Our experience shows that if we serve our clients well, our own success will follow. Our assets are our people, capital and reputation. If any of these is ever diminished, the last is the most difficult to restore.” It would be hard to argue that Goldman has proven that it still fully embraces this philosophy. Goldman knowingly offered its clients “toxic assets,” and then bet against those very assets.

Of course, the clients were provided enough information to figure out the quality of these assets. However, that still does not vindicate the Squid from offering its clients a horse it knew was going to lose the race.

I do not think the Squid is criminally responsible for anything. However, as its own prospectus claims, reputation is of the utmost importance.

While Goldman’s clients were losing money, the Squid was reeling some in.

It is not illegal, but it is also not the best way to treat your clients. At this point, the end results of the trial are not as important as what has already occurred. The intangible charges against Goldman are going to sting a lot worse than the real ones. There was a time when investing with Goldman Sachs was always a good idea. For a firm like that, with important institutions relying on that formerly sterling reputation to invest their money, allegations of fraud undermine the entirety of said reputation. There are plenty of competent investment firms who do not necessarily have the same prestige. Suddenly, those less famous firms may be looking a lot nicer to clients. And always remember, never trust a squid at a horse race.

-Mazi Kazemi ’13

Balance Court with non-elite Juan Thompson

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Opinions Editor

he United States Supreme Court recently heard arguments in the case of City of Ontario v. Quon. At issue in the case is whether public employees who receive text messages on their government issued devices can expect their messages to not be viewed by the government. Unfortunately, precedent that it will establish takes a backseat to what the oral arguments told us about the Court itself.

During the oral arguments, the justices asked questions that revealed just how insular the high court is. Chief Justice John Roberts asked what the difference was between a pager and email.

Justice Anthony Kennedy was confused about what happens when one sends a text message while receiving a text message. And Justice Scalia asked if “Quon could print these spicy little conversations and send them to his buddies”?

This line of questioning offers a clear illustration of how detached and aloof our Supreme Court is. It isn’t just that the justices didn’t know certain things that most people know. It’s that most of them come from the same circles and have no real experience outside of its elite confines.

The Chief Justice is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law and served on the D.C. Court of Appeals before being confirmed to the high court. Scalia also went to Harvard Law and served on the Federal Court of Appeals before joining the Supreme Court. In fact, all of the justices, excepting the retiring John Paul Stevens, went to Ivy League law schools. And all of the current justices have served on the Federal Court of Appeals. Former Justice O’Connor served in the Arizona State Senate for a time and Justice Ginsburg worked for the ACLU’s women’s project. Those sorts of backgrounds offer unique perspectives on the society for which the court decides the constitutionality of certain laws.

This past January in the case Citizens United v.

Federal Elections Commission the Court ruled 5-4 that corporations had the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertisments.

This ruling jettisoned decades of precedence and will give corporations an ability to influence our elections. A lot of the justices often socialize with corporate titans and would naturally have an affinity for them. And in 2007 the Court, which only had one female justice at the time, ruled 5-4 in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that a woman had only 180 days to file an equal pay discrimination complaint, even if she became aware of the discrimination after the 180 day cycle. Such rulings show a Supreme Court that has no connection to most of America. They don’t allow cameras inside the Supreme Court chamber and some of the justices refuse to allow the press to cover their rare public appearances. Moreover, the justices serve life terms and aren’t responsible to anyone.

When Barack Obama ran for President, he promised to appoint justices that had real life experiences, people who are capable of empathizing with regular Americans. Sonia Sotomayor fit that bill, for the most part, because of her lower–middle class upbringing in New York City. Even she, however, served on the D.C. Court of Appeals and went to Ivy League schools. The retirement of Justice Stevens presents the President with an opportunity to appoint someone who is truly unique. The President can send a message to thousands of law students that they too can serve on Supreme Court someday by appointing someone who didn’t graduate from an Ivy League institution. Instead, he could appoint a politician like Earl Warren, who helped usher in the most progressive Court in the nation’s history. Unfortunately, the resumes of Obama’s potential appointees don’t match the rhetoric he himself used when he spoke of appointing someone who would protect the ordinary citizen.

In the next couple of years, the Supreme Court is likely to hear important cases. Obama will be doing himself, and the nation, a great service if he lived up to his rhetoric and appointed someone whose experiences and life are unique and who will protect the ordinary citizen.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Josh Rosen

Opinions Editor

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ntil April 26, the 62-year relationship between the United States and Israel appeared to be coming apart at the seams.

These ties ought to be stronger now than ever, but President Barack Obama prompted a diplomatic fracas over whether Israel had the right to build apartment buildings. So great is the opposition that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was moved to remark “We in Congress stand by Israel,” on March 24, contrasting Congress’ position with that of the President.

Obama’s relationship with Israel has been troubled, even according to the leading left-wing–and most anti-settlement Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, which described U.S.-Israel relations as having experienced “high-level tensions... [that are] rumbling on into a second year.” Not until April 26, when Obama, in a private meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, declared that he had an “unshakeable committment to Israel’s security,” did a sense of normalcy return to U.S.-Israeli relations. Yet this affirmation by Obama is insufficient committment to Israel.

The fundamental ties that link Israel to the United States are ones of tradition, history and shared culture. Israel, founded 62 years ago this past week, would never have existed without the express support of then-President Harry S. Truman, and as the years have gone

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by, Israel has stood by the United States—voting with the U.S. more consistently in the United Nations than any other nation, supporting our national security establishment, and 67 percent of Americans have a favorable image of Israel as a result, according to a February 19, 2010 poll conducted by Gallup.

Yet the tangible benefits of the U.S.-Israel relationship pale in comparison to the intangibles. Israel has attracted public comment from figures of all stripes, including Martin Luther King, Jr., who, in a 1968 speech, called Israel “one of the great outposts of democracy in the world,” and termed it “a marvelous example of what can be done, how the desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy.” King’s sentiments are most certainly fundamental to the character of the State of Israel. As many anti-Israel public figures have noted, 1967–the year before King was quoted–was the year in which Israel purportedly occupied Palestinian land, precipitating much of the current problems, evincing the continual relevance of King’s comments.

That tiny nation, which was founded in a liberal Western tradition and built on immigration from across the globe, made something of itself in the best traditions of the democratic states of the world. Israel is committed to liberal values—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the principle of popular sovereignty—and it is in the interest of the United States to support our ideological allies as strongly as possible.

See ISRAEL on page 12

April 29, 2010

OPINIONS

Immigration law flawed in text, not principle A

rizona is an exciting state. John McCain’s transformation from maverick to partisan would have been this month’s greatest transformation, but follow the headlines and you’ll see that Arizona has suddenly become a land of hatred against Hispanics. A new law on the books is getting people up in a frenzy, so much that the media is making it seem as though it’s now a crime to be Hispanic.

Naturally, this is a gross exaggeration. This bill simply requires people—everyone— whom the police suspect may be undocumented to provide some proof of legal residence. Yes, residing in this country illegally is still illegal if you don’t have the proper identification.

But it would indeed be somewhat ignorant to assume this isn’t going to lead to racial profiling. This is the wrong way to go about dealing with this issue. Is the law inherently racist? Certainly not. It’s an expansion of enforcement of immigration laws already on the books. You have to have immigration laws, after all, and that’s why the crowd that gets whooped up and yells “There are no illegal people!” have entirely rejected reality for an ideology based in philosophical principle.

I’ll defend immigration laws thusly: Having a nation means defining what it means to be a citizen of said nation. Almost all nation-states have restrictions as to who can be allowed in. Sure, I’d love to live in a world where everyone is part of the human community. But we can’t. We have to protect American interests first. The government is the coming together of the people. People coming into this country against the will of that government, and assuming a lifestyle equivalent to that of an American citizen, is an affront to my identity as an American citizen.

Now that the public is starting to understand the racist current underlying the Tea Party agenda, it’s easy to see this Arizona law as just another one of many of the racist reactions taken by hard right-wingers. And granted, there are a lot of wackos out there.

The true right-wingers are insane when they propose deporting tens of millions of illegal immigrants, or gunning them down at the border. Yes, we have illegal immigrants, but there are far too many to kick them all out.

And we need many for our economy.

That’s it, really: The problem with illegal immigration isn’t that they’re taking our jobs.

They’re taking jobs picking fruit in the hot sun. It’s notable that no one connects the fact that our orange juice costs $1.50 a bottle with the migrant workers who live under the radar. The belief that they’re not assimilating is also ridiculous. It took the Irish a while to assimilate. It took the Germans a while to do so too. But the children and grandchildren of immigrants—of which I am one—end up becoming just as loyal to this nation as someone whose ancestry can be traced back to the original Boston Tea Party.

The immigrants are here to stay, which will be a problem is if the hostile, bigoted environment towards Hispanic people continues.

This immigration law will probably alienate the Hispanic community. Putting Minutemen on the border will really make us look a little too exclusive. And I don’t want that to be the face of America, because if it is, the children and grandchildren of these illegal immigrants will have no loyalty to this country.

As it stands now, Arizona does have an illegal immigration problem—there are 460,000 undocumented people in the state. And it’s also clear that Arizona’s law could be abused

in many ways. This all means that the law should have been delayed for a little while until they can determine if it can be implemented effectively and fairly.

But first, we need to expand the definition of legal residence. The Democrats ought to fight for guest worker programs so that illegal aliens can come out of the shadows.

What concerns me as an American citizen isn’t the fact that Hispanic growth is larger than Caucasian growth. Whatever. People are people, and I expect to lose none of my rights as an American if I’m in the racial minority.

What concerns me is flagrant disregard for the legal immigration process. I’d have no problem with making it even easier to become an American citizen, or at least to have legal residence—even temporary residence. Yes, this might be amnesty. But it’s better than keeping communities in the shadows. And it puts a burden on our law enforcement to force them to go after the tens of millions of undocumented workers simply because they look Hispanic, rather than going after the threats to the Republic that could cross our porous border.

And it gives illegal immigrants an incentive not to work with law enforcement officials when they investigate true crimes.

We’re supposed to be the beacon of hope for the world’s huddled masses; that means lighting up communities by making citizenship or residence more inclusive. Let’s stop defining people as illegal. Let’s invite them to contribute to this nation because our the immigrant tradition is what makes us great.

Guest Columnist

L

et’s rewind to March 2008 during President Barack Obama’s campaign: “Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.” Fast-forwarding to the present, we hear a different tone: “The most important thing I can do for the African-American community is the same thing I can do for the American community, period, and that is get the economy going again and get people hiring again.”

What has changed Obama’s perspective on race-related issues in America? Is it the interests that he must now balance to preserve his political points? Is it that he has become short-sided in his vision for “change?” As the majority of black people stand by him in the midst of the political tides, we are flooded by the rising tide he speaks so highly of.

According to the Wall Street Journal, during a meeting with leaders of the black community at the White House, National Association of Colored People (NAACP) President Benjamin Jealous, told reporters that Obama argued, “a rising tide lifts all boats” and that “his job is to be president of the whole country.” Wait a minute, Obama, your job is to have a rich understanding of the boats that these rising tides are supposed to be lifting—some boats are not even afloat in the first place!

“A rising tide lifts all boats.” This phrase gained circulation in the early 1960s when John F. Kennedy referred to this home-grown wisdom popular among fishermen in his native Cape Cod. It comes out of the age-old faith that economic growth and rising GDP benefits all citizens.

However, The Wall Street Journal mentioned, “While the national unemployment rate was down a bit to 9.7 percent last month, African-American unemployment was still 16.5 percent.” That resembles Great Depression numbers. When White America suffered unemployment that high, it was considered a

national catastrophe that summoned the unanimous support of officials in government. But that’s not the full story. Let me be fair. There was encouraging news in the housing market.

More than 850,000 homeowners facing foreclosure were able to renegotiate their monthly payments to 30 percent of their income. This is great news, right? But what about those without jobs? Oh that’s right. Those who lost their jobs do not benefit from the Home Affordable Modification Program.

Early in his administration, Obama said that he did not have any special programs for black people, since he expected that the stimulus package would help blacks as much as the rest of the economy, but I do not see the money in the black communities!

African Americans entered the Depression long before the stock market crash in 1929, and they stayed there longer than other Americans.

Black unemployment reached well over 50 percent, more than twice the rate of whites. In southern cities, white workers rallied around such slogans as, “No Jobs for Niggers Until Every White Man Has a Job,” and “Niggers, back to the cotton fields—city jobs are for white folks.” However, despite mass suffering, President Herbert Hoover did little to aid the poor and destitute. Instead, the federal government established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which relieved the credit problems of large banking, insurance and industrial firms.

Although Hoover believed that such policies would create new jobs, stimulate production and increase consumer spending, benefits did not “trickle down” to the rest of the economy and end the Depression. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

It may be a very complicated issue, but I will try to describe it in one equation: long-term unemployment, plus lack of adequate housing, equals a rising tide that does not lift you up, but drowns you. If that is the tide that Obama is trying to promulgate, everyone should get their life jackets.

What would be Matthew Vassar’s drink?

“Three shots of Everclear before the fun run”

Josh Kessler ’13

“Rob Roy”

Avey Venable ’11

“Screwdriver”

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

Obama’s economic policies neglect minorities Occasio Wilson

Page 11

In March, author Tavis Smiley hosted a forum called “The Black Agenda.” In this forum of black intellectuals like Cornell West, a professor of religion and African–American studies at Princeton University, and Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of sociology at Georgetown University, they discussed the most pressing matters that African–Americans face in their communities. Even further, they discussed the things that would need to be done to address these matters. The most important point Smiley made was that “because black people are suffering disproportionately, it requires a disproportionate response.” Walter Heller, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Kennedy, said: “The government must step in to provide the essential stability [of the economy] at high levels of employment and growth that the market mechanism, left alone, cannot deliver.” Where is the intervention on behalf of those worst off? Where is the common sense?

Even within the black community, there are differing opinions about how we should go about advancing the black agenda. Al Sharpton chastised Smiley, calling him a “critic of the president” and creating unnecessary division.

When there are people like Sharpton advocating for unquestioning support of the president in the face of a human rights crisis, we must begin to question our moral strength. Are we united enough to advance the “Black Agenda” as described in “The Covenant With Black America?” I think we need more solidarity amidst our differences to do so.

I’m not a boat expert, but I don’t think I need to be one to be able to see that our boat is messed up! Something has to change if we are to change the disparaging condition of Black America. Maybe instead of a rising tide, we need a rising consciousness to agitate the status quo and to remove our boat’s tethers.

Otherwise, I hope you can swim.

-Ocasio Willson ’13

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Celynne Balatbat ’13

“Jäger bomb”

Jeremy Arthur ’10

“Tom Collins”

Kar Kapoor ’13

“Mojito”

Alex Hughes ’13 —Joshua Rosen Opinions Editor

OPINIONS

Page 12

April 29, 2010

A gay justice would broaden Supreme Court’s perspective Meghan Feldmeier

P

Guest Columnist

resident Barack Obama has a choice to make in the coming weeks about whom to appoint to replace Associate Justice John Paul Stevens in the United States Supreme Court. Perhaps you have heard the muted rumors around potential nominee Solicitor General of the United States Elena Kagan: Her Harvard schoolmates are pulling out the l-word, and the White House’s recess monitors are telling them to stop spreading naughty lies.

First of all, I don’t actually support Kagan; she’s far too conservative to replace Stevens. And though there is some new energy in the Democratic Party because of the health care victory, it’s important that Obama remembers his most dedicated constituency support him as a liberal, progressive leader, not an appeaser of the conservatives with the aim of getting elected again and possibly accomplishing more in his second term. I understand the argument that Obama and his moderate Democrats don’t want a hostile Congress, especially with elections coming up in the fall. But here’s

a solution: Let’s revive the Democratic electorate with a progressive choice to replace Stevens.

Appointing a liberal associate justice who is openly gay or lesbian could be the best political decision. An openly gay man or woman with liberal ideals would bring the government’s support to one of the most important civil rights movements of our time. Appointing a gay man or lesbian to one of the highest offices in the country legitimizes the movement and recognizes its importance. Justice Thurgood Marshall could not represent African Americans, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor could not represent women, but their occupation of the office included one lived minority experience; and it was an acknowledgment of their struggles, resistance and voice. Appointing a gay person to office is a step in the direction to political and social equality because his or her personal experience will be, undeniably, embedded in political ideals. Telling the true stories of being gay in our society may open the eyes of the other justices so that they can interpret the Constitution in a fair and compassionate manner. In The Nation, Linda Hirshman relates

the story of Associate Justice Lewis Powell, “who cast the deciding vote in Bowers v. Hardwick, the case that kept sodomy a crime and which the Court reversed 17 years later in Lawrence v. Texas. Powell later said he regretted his vote in Bowers; he just never knew any gay people, he said in his defense.”

So let’s give them a qualified gay person to know.

I know that some of the backlash to this idea is not just from Focus on the Family or the American Family Association, conservative organizations that demand employment discrimination based on sexuality; some just don’t support choosing a justice based on sexuality at all. I struggle with this as well. However, there is something to be said for the importance of government legitimization of the gay rights movement. Being gay doesn’t make a candidate qualified to serve, but it can be a consideration in a pool of qualified candidates. The political and social climate of this nation is still hostile to homosexuals—this is a step towards changing that.

Then we can stop talking about if we can talk about sexuality; we can just talk about it instead.

Why is the government “defending” Kagan from

being called a lesbian? I have no idea if she is a lesbian or not, but the fact that the blogosphere has stayed tenaciously away from the topic speaks to how dirty we see this issue. I’ve put my stance out there: I want a liberal, openly gay justice. She is neither liberal, nor openly gay—or gay at all, for all we know—so she is not the right choice. But having a gay justice would mean we would have to talk about sexuality, just like we talk about former President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Brad and Angelina, and the multiple sexual scandals going on in Congress at any given time.

The White House is encouraging discrimination by asking CBS to remove their article that rumored her sexuality. Kagan herself can assert her sexuality; the government need not “protect” her from being outed, as there is nothing wrong with being an alleged homosexual. Appointing an out homosexual will combat this untouchability of homosexuality because Obama will be saying to America and to Congress that this person is gay and qualified.

-Meghan Feldmeier ’13

College should welcome questions Obama should go to QUESTIONS continued from page 11 I understand questions are prescreened under the hope of preventing a “don’t taze me bro” incident, that does not change the fact that it is a symptom of something undemocratic in the way we conduct meetings between government officials and the people they serve. Government officials should not be afraid of the people. Vassar is of course not blameless for this particular incident either, as few students were aware that they had the ability to submit questions for consideration. I for one doubt that students truly had the agency to do this, as I am a conscientious political science major and I too had no idea what I would have needed to do to have my questions considered, even though I would have loved to take advantage of the opportunity. So when it was said

that the questions came from a group of faculty and students, how could I help but laugh? Why wasn’t the campus made aware of what would be necessary to submit questions?

The questions that were asked of Holder were on tough issues such as health care, immigration, prison reform and the trial of Khalid Shaikh Muhammad. It did not matter that the topics were difficult, however, because all of the questions could be answered with canned answers we have all heard on the news long ago. But I want to know how the prosecution in the 9/11 trials plan on dealing with the issue of the requirement for a speedy trial; I want to know how the administration plans on dealing with complaints from doctors about being confused by the new health care reform legislation; and I want to know what right 9/11 conspira-

tors have to be tried in an American courtroom. Vassar, it is our duty as some of the most informed citizens in America to be the ones asking these tough questions of the people who run our government. Someone dropped the ball on this one, and I for one am none too pleased. What ever happened to liberal arts activism? To hell with dialogues and conversations! Let’s make some people uncomfortable!

In the end, I have a message for all parties involved. First, Vassar students: Never let the one time you fail to speak your minds be the time when it is most important that you be heard.

Vassar Administration: Do not compromise the integrity of this institution in order to have one more talking point when convincing prospective students to come here. And finally, Eric Holder: Answer the tough questions.

Israel to show support ISRAEL continued from page 10 Additionally, it would be negligent to not recognize how even today, the national security interests of Israel and the U.S. are more aligned than ever. In fact, joint military exercises between the U.S. and Israel are being conducted, and even now, a $250 million deal between the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Department of Defense regarding the purchase of transport aircraft by Israel is in the works. Evidently, diplomatic troubles belie real security ties that will only strengthen, particularly if Iran becomes more intransigent.

Obama’s lack of support for Israel is troubling—it brings into question his commitment to our allies, in par-

ticular—yet this problem could be solved and the relationship improved with great ease. With a visit to Israel that concludes with a speech affirming American support for Israel in the same vein that he committed the United States to work towards a better relationship with the Muslim world in a 2009 speech in Egypt.

Though Obama has made his committment to Israel known in private, it would still be appropriate for Obama to visit Israel and speak to the Israeli people in public. Not only will this grant Obama foreign policy credibility among more conservative crowds, but he will also obtain the cooperation of Israelis so as to advance his agenda for peace in the region.

Crossword by Jonathan Garfinkel ACROSS 1. Morse code “dash” 4. “By car, plane, train, _____” 9. Bit 11. *Wine 14. Bubble 15. *Love and Lust 17. Step after “lather” 18. Baby’s cry 20. Eau 21. “Run ___” (“It’s Tricky” group) 22. Chinese philosopher Lao and others 24. Also-___(insignificant loser)

26. Mother sheep 27. Eyjafjallajokull output 28. Relaxed 30. An original sinner 31. Directional suffix 32. Burning bit 34. Russian mountain range 37. *Light, music, the arts 40. Partner of vigor 43. *King 44. Swiss peak 45. Ugandan rebels (briefly) 47. *Queen 48. Gerund ending

Answers to last week’s puzzle

49. *Wisdom 51. Plow pullers 52. Pretentious, perhaps 54. “The Chronic” genre 56. Regret 57. Comedian Richard _____ 60. What Greece’s bond rating is NOT 63. Date-rape drug, briefly 66. Paths (abbr.)

67. Bridge (Fr.) 68. Gun-toters unite! (abbr.)

69. Certain upper chambers 71. British cash, slangily 73. _____ v. Vitale (Prayer in schools case) 75. Home of the answers to the starred clues (and the name formed by properly arranging the circled letters) 78. Mr. Fudd and others 80. *The sea 81. Common folk 82. “____ a hatter” 83.

HELP!!! (briefly) DOWN 1. *Harvest 2. Number one 3. *Messenger (and

handbags) 4. Partner of “ahh” 5. Vaca. activity, say 6. “For sale _______” (sign) 7. Meat grader 8. Flat 9. (Just a) tiny bit 10. FBChat msgs.

11. Hoover for one 12. Certain beer type, briefly 13. Hearty soup 14. “The ____” (highly addictive RPG) 16. Poet’s before 17. Nutrition facts datum, briefly 19. Enzyme ending 23. Yemeni capital 24. Like some Christians 25. N-S NYC thoroughfare 29. Ctrl+Alt+___ 31. Trains over your head, briefly 33. Parisian “Ms.” 34. Israeli submachine gun 35. Stimpy’s pal 36. Mo. No. 8 38. Metal sheets 39. Chooses 40. Puzzle

41. Rage 42. Blue ___ Group 46. Actor Eckhart 47. Jump 50. “Big Three” inits.

52. Laid out 53. Where one may be stuck 55. *The hunt 58. Troy sch.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

59. Sings in the Alps (or convenience store pastries) 60. Livid 61. *War 62. “Up in the Air” carrier, briefly 63. Leg 64. URL starting string 65. Witch’s whip, say

70. Rick’s love interest 71. Status ___ 72. Annapolis academy org.

74. Fishing implement 76. Lost, briefly 77. Law enforcement agcys.

79. One living next to Vietnam

HUMOR & SATIRE

April 29, 2010

Page 13

OPINIONS

Breaking medical alert!

Alanna Okun

T

Assistant Opinions Editor

here is a peculiar epidemic that grips Vassar on the regular. It usually hits in full force during the end of each semester, but there are many cases reported around midterms as well. Some people suffer from a low-level condition constantly.

The disease in question? Whine flu.

Whine flu* is a powerful yet insidious sickness characterized by Vassar students attempting to one-up each other when talking about their misfortunes.

If you mention to a person with whine flu that you have a paper due on Friday, they will inform you that they have three papers due in an hour, all written in colloquial Swahili, which must be submitted on Harry Potter-style rolls of parchment. You can’t win. And homework complaints aren’t the only symptoms; victims of whine flu will manage to kvetch about their brutal rehearsal schedule, noble-yet-exhausting fundraising efforts to turn Haiti into a selfsustaining resort paradise-cum-roller derby, and menstrual cycle irregularities all before you’ve had time to say hello.

Much like its porcine counterpart, whine flu can be contracted from a variety of sources. Coming into contact with the delightful people who carry it is one way, but so is spending any length of time in the library (especially the art library), taking an intro language course, or realizing you’re out of Retreat points right as you’re fantasizing about a postlecture bacon cheeseburger. Before you know it, you’re sitting down at the AllCampus Dining Center with a group of people and unleashing the floodgates of ennui into their disinterested, unprepared ears. It happens to the best of us.

Except that then, the best of us realize how irritating we’re being and stop babbling about page minimums and annotated bibliographies to our poor friends who just want to eat their Cap’n Crunch in peace. The worst of us never come around.

It’s unclear whether the ultimate goal of whine flu sufferers is to garner sympathy, appear superior to the peons who aren’t as busy as them, or just be raging axe-wounds. I realize that they’re truly busy. Everyone at Vassar is busy; that’s why we go to Vassar. We’re not satisfied unless we’re four different brands of tired. The trouble is the hierarchy of busyness that the whine flu victims try to perpetuate. It’s not productive or a point of bonding; in fact, its only

guaranteed effect is to make them seem like grade-A d-bags. We all feel sorry for you that you’re the only person in New York State capable of building a working model of the Vatican out of Retreat utensils before Monday, but we feel ever more sorry for ourselves that we have to listen to you complain about it.

So brace yourselves, gentle men and women of this highly selective, residential, liberal arts college located in the scenic Hudson Valley. As finals draw rapidly closer, so does the onslaught of bitching and moaning. The only way to combat whine flu is to nip it in the bud; don’t even bat an eye when your housemate or lab partner spends half an hour describing the throbbing carpal tunnel they’ve contracted from spending all night in the Media Cloisters, and they’ll soon learn to put a sock in it. And if they don’t, you can always beat them at their own game. I’ve heard that if you take the 8 a.m. Organic Chemistry class, the rest of the student body is rendered physically unable to complain at you ever again. Just sayin’.

Now I’ve got to go; I have to compose an opera entirely in Farsi rhyming couplets while simultaneously caring for a consumptive family of orphaned baby rabbits. Don’t even mention the words “art,” “history,” or “flashcards” in my presence, because I have to memorize all art ever created anywhere before my final on Tuesday. That’s only after I singlehandedly tear down Lathrop and renovate it using nothing but a knitting needle and the toiletries currently stored in my bathroom cubby**. At least some of us have managed to stay strong and fight the pull of whine flu, because I don’t know where the rest of you weaklings would be without our fortitude. * Whine flu is not to be confused with its much more desirable cousin, wine flu. Dr. Carlo Rossi and Nurse Practitioner Franzia can cure whatever ails you. ** Full disclosure: I have two cubbies thanks to the suspicious and The Shining-esque lack of people living on my hall. I have plans to branch out into a third.

Author’s Note: Mad props to my freshmen-year student fellow group and its affiliates for accurately diagnosing this dread disease. Y’all can thank them with baked goods and awkward Mug hookups. Also, have a lovely summer!

Just in case you missed it...

Kelly Stout

Features Editor

W

e’ve made it to the last Miscellany News issue of the year. It seems like just yesterday that we were collectively succumbing to the Back-rage, also known as the Back(page) lash of 2010, also known as the Great Fear. But since then, we’ve come a long way.

Yesterday’s Convocation confirmed it: the year is basically over. Seniors, in three short weeks the following people will descend upon us and ask what we’re doing next year: Nana and Pa, Auntie Maggs, Mom and Dad, and your annoyingly successful sister who went to Yale and is now like, Sasha and Malia Obama’s nanny/Michelle’s BFF. I wouldn’t be shocked if my bizarrely-successful-in-theirfields dogs showed up for graduation, judging me for my lack of direction.

But first comes Saturday’s Founder’s Day, an opportunity to thank Matty V. for all he did for us 149 years ago, try some psychedelic drugs (because, c’mon man, when else are you gonna have the chance, man?) and take stock of all the wonderful times we’ve had this year.

As a Vassar student who loves to condense complex situations into binaries (JK, LOL) and reads The Week, it’s time for a very specific kind of over-simplifying review.

It’s been a good Year For:

»» Athletes who only want to take 3 credits of actual academic work next semester. If I can get credit for intro modern dance and the tennis players can’t get anything for playing varsity tennis, then I suppose this is a good idea. Still, I’m loath to think dropping and giving anyone twenty is in the same league as a nice, hearty discussion of the simulacrum. »» The orange couch in my TH. We all thought it took a permanent beating after our makeyour-own-smoothies blowout that went awry in March. But hooray! It made it through another year without dry cleaning—or any cleaning for that matter!—and will live to see another TH living room. To the house that gets it at the SWAPR: Avoid the rightmost cushion. Don’t worry about why. »» Feminine products. The Apple iPad’s inadvertently hygiene-based ad campaign may not have increased the number of actual iPads on campus, but we ladies were quick to turn in the Tampax for an alternative model. »» Not being in the job market yet. This one probably goes without saying—not that we’re not all looking forward to using our Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature to make sandwiches at Subway after graduation. »» The tulips in Main Circle. But honestly, it’s always a good year for them. I think we’re all sort of waiting for it to be a bad year for those annoyingly chipper/muy expensivo plants.

Weekly Calendar: 4/29 - 5/5

»» Freshmen boys. Hello, heterosexual males of the class of 2013. Welcome to girls. »» Pig jokes. Swine flu may be totally passé by now (all the cool kids have had it already and are now part of the swine flu avant-garde), but “One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” still slays me. »» The crew team’s Spandex. What with the crew team’s discontinuation this year, the flashy neon shorts saw less action than a first-semester junior living in Strong, but that meant that they wore out way less quickly! »» Mad-libs comebacks. Baby, are you _____, ______, _______, _______?

It’s been a bad Year For:

»» Keeping your job if your salary is paid by Vassar College. Unless you’re a tenured professor of economics or have sacrificed a goat in Cappy’s honor and are affiliated with varsity sports in some capacity, times were tough this year, and next year promises to be no better. Literally the only funny thing about this is the number of “town hall” meetings that these firings spawned, and how little the pastel colors of Dean Roellke’s oxford shirts changed from meeting to meeting. »» Deers. After the Great Cull of 2010, Bambi and his buddies are few and far between.

This has not, however, kept the surviving deers from making passive-aggressive comments on the Miscellany News website about the hegemony of biodiversity and how the plural of “deer” is actually “deers.” »» Your love life. I mean, I don’t know this one for sure. But if you go here, it’s probably true, right? »» The International Phonetic Alphabet. Despite the noble attempts of pronunciation guides worldwide and in the Vassar Earth Science Department, Iceland’s testy Eyjafjallajokull is actually best pronounced by English speakers with a short inhalation, followed by three clicks of the tongue and a burp. »» Lil Wayne. Not only did “Free Weezy: A Mug Night,” elicit a ton of controversy/dumb comments from entitled white boys, it failed to free Weezy. »» ACDC trays. This notable cut saves water in the short run, but the amount of water we’ve all had to drink to make up for our dehydration due to tears shed for missing “tray-fitti” has just about evened it out. »» Solidarity. Not that the chants of “Cappy needs a pay cut” and the subsequent condescension from the administration weren’t fun for everyone involved, but a new year is almost upon us, and it will be exciting to see how the terms of debate shift to deconstruct the power/knowledge relationship running rampant in College structures. Wait, what did I just write?

Ah, yes. Happy Founder’s Day to all.

by Kelly Stout, Features Editor

THURSDAY, 4/29

SATURDAY, 5/1

TUESDAY, 5/4

3 p.m. Tea. The Five Stages of Founder’s Day, by the Back-

All Day. Founder’s Day. If ever there were a day on which it

page (oops! I mean, Humor & Satire!): Bourgie brunch with housemates. Mimosas for everyone! Making plans we’ll totally forget to stick to! Exclamation marks galore! Rose Parlor.

would be beneficial to wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy, this would be it. Ballantine Field.

3 p.m. Tea. Engage in drunken reconciliation with your exboyfriend/sophomore flame. (“Omygod, I so don’t hate you either!”) Spoon on the hill in each other’s arms. Awww(k).

Rose Parlor.

8 p.m. Annual All-Night Reading of “Paradise Lost.” Pre-

All Day. Recovery. I can just tell that your lab report due

game with bitter ale and barleywine and you’ll be ready to par-tay like everyone’s fave poet/polemicist. The Chapel.

Monday is going to be of very high quality. Your dorm room/ Thompson Memorial Library.

10 p.m. The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged!). Is

MONDAY, 5/3

it really the compl….abridged? Rocky 200.

12 p.m. Paleontology Symposium. Finally! I’ve been wait-

FRIDAY, 4/30

ing for this event for roughly 4.6 billion years! Ely Hall/ Aula.

11 a.m. “War, Peace, and the Struggle.” Or, a fairly accurate description of the process of writing your media studies thesis that’s due in an hour. College Center South Atrium.

SUNDAY, 5/2

8 p.m. Vastards Final Concert. It’s my favorite time of year

again: the time when I am forced to make up joke after joke about a slew of a capella events that are actually all the same. Taylor Hall 102.

then get on the rides and dance wildly on the grass. Vom. com. Rose Parlor.

10 p.m. Broadway a cappella Final Concert. VC is aliiiiiive with the sound of myooo-siiiiic! With songs BAM has suuuuuung, since its founding two years agooooo! See what I mean? Taylor Hall 102.

9 p.m. Trivia Night. Question #23: Where did you leave your

WEDNESDAY, 5/5

shoes on Founder’s Day? The Mug.

3 p.m. Tea. Five hour nap on Ballantine field. Wake up alone

3 p.m. Tea. Eat 5+ hot dogs, drink 3 steins of Busch Light,

3 p.m. Tea. Drink enough gin and tonic to allow your bellig-

erent/Foucault-obsessed side to ask everyone around how we “constitute” drunkenness. Alternate this with enjoying the sunshine. Rose Parlor.

5 p.m. ViCEPOKalypse. Or, what would happen if wealthy hipsters took over the world. Ballantine Field.

and without underwear. Rose Parlor.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

ARTS

Page 14

April 29, 2010

Spoken word pervades campus with Sister Spit and others Thea Ballard

Assistant Arts Editor

“I

Courtesy of Flickr.com

was in space, hovering in the void./Some stars were glistening around me./I was in the motherboard of the universe/and could feel all of the signals in my feet and hands—/no thought could exist, just the sensations—” Eric Schuman ’12, head of student spoken word organization Wordsmiths, stands in a darkened Faculty Commons before a small group of students, delivering a poem entitled “My Afterlife” from pages gripped in his hand.

The setting for the event, Mind Your Jargon, is far less formal than what I would consider a traditional poetry reading. Schuman’s reading comes sandwiched between a pair of rather noisy musical performances, each consisting of drums and electric guitar without a set list or a pretense between them. A projector casts images of buildings and other random scenes behind him, and a couple of spotlights illuminate a set of chairs, missing the makeshift stage but casting a pattern of bars across the carpet.

Wordsmiths is one of the more visible spoken word presences on campus. Said Schuman, “Our goal is to spread poetry throughout the campus, and also important is creating spaces of creative expression and places where people feel safe to do so.”

This includes a range of events, many of which have a deliberately inclusive feel.“We hold a lot of open mics,” said Schuman.

“Those are places where people read poetry, where people can sing, play guitar, do whatever they want.”

He described his experience of interacting with other poets through Wordsmiths as one of personal growth. “You see all the material that other people are making, and you’re seeing it grow and you’re seeing them get better, and you want to keep up,” he said.

Schuman, though most actively involved with Wordsmiths, also speaks highly of Write Club, as well as the English Department’s creative writing offerings.

“I’d say there’s more of a poetry community,” he elaborated, “which is why we exist – because we want to bring that aspect [of spoken word]. That’s sort of the service we provide.”

Beyond specific organizations, he has been generally satisfied with the presence of performance venues for spoken word on campus.

“I think that if you look for them, there are [places to perform],” he said. “Specifically, I think that a lot of them are politically done, but I think that’s great.”

A member of Sister Spit, a queer, feminist spoken word poetry group, delivers a piece at a recent performance. Sister Spit will visit the Vassar campus on Friday, April 30 at an event hosted by Wordsmiths.

For those seeking a side of politics with their spoken word, a spoken word and performance-art collective with a feminist agenda called Sister Spit will be making a visit to campus on Friday, April 30 through the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA) the event follows in the tradition of student organizations integrating spoken word into events meant to represent more political stances. For Irene Beauregard ’10, the head of the FMLA, the event has been about a semester and a half in the making. “They’re a queer feminist spoken word performance troupe,” she said, “and they got started by this radical lesbian feminist writer Michelle Tea, who came of age in the rise of the queercore movement in San Francisco in the mission district, and she’s written a lot of personal narratives or memoirs about her time there.”

The group reformed with brand new members in 2009, following a brief hiatus. The new group is varied, with members covering a wide range of mediums of artistic expression. “The first group was basically the same sort of grab bag of feminist filmmakers, spoken word champions, poets, writers, zinesters, people who illustrate books,” said Beauregard. “They’re pretty multi-talented, and so is this group.”

For Beauregard, there is a distinct connection between spoken word and FLMA’s

agenda. “I think spoken word is one of the most dominant forms of gender resistance right now,” she said. “Because our language is so gendered, and because spoken word is such a political method of conveying your thoughts, it’s very controlled and it just has so much potential for breaking down the gender binary and the ways you refer to people and the way you present yourself and the way you address the audience.”

Raymon Azcona ’12 is a spoken word does artist who is independent of Wordsmiths or the FMLA, although he has collaborated with both.Prior to arriving at Vassar, he had already developed an interest in spoken word.

“I worked with a program in New York City, called Urban Word,” he said. “I started writing spoken word poetry my junior year, and I had best friends in other high schools—I guess I was trained by them because I watched them so much. So I’ve been writing spoken word poetry for quite a long time.”

Azcona hoped to continue once arriving at college, but still hasn’t found a space that he feels truly speaks to his practice. “When I came here I thought that I would find that group, or that medium where I could practice spoken word with other people, but I haven’t found it,” he explained.

He has attended Wordsmiths meetings, but “realized that it wasn’t my thing.” He also per-

formed frequently at events during his freshman year, including a Caribbean Student Alliance and Vassar Haiti Project collaboration dinner and FMLA’s Her Story event. For the time being, however, Azcona has decided to stop performing on campus.

“People like [spoken word] as viewers and listeners for the sensations that it evokes,” he elaborated. “It sounds great, and it makes you feel the emotion that the performer is feeling or is wanting you to feel, but I don’t know if people are listening to the messages. I think they’re just listening to people yell and scream and maybe cry.”

The messages Azcona conveys are often not only political, but are based very distinctly on his background. “It’s about socioeconomic issues, it’s about living in an urban area, it’s about the struggle of being in that area and having multiple identities in it,” he explained. “With Urban Word I was always surrounded by people who were writing about the same thing, and when I wrote and we workshopped poetry I guess I found it useful because I could relate to everyone around me, whereas I don’t think I have that here, to be honest.”

Azcona, who wants to be an English teacher and plans on including spoken word in his curriculum, has instead sought out other channels for his work. Performing at Arlington High School, for one, has proven a great experience for him. “Young minds are more receptive, and that’s a great place to perform and that’s a great audience to perform to,” he said. “And because Poughkeepsie is of the same demographic of where I come from, performing for them, I feel like they get more out of it than people could here.”

He recounted a particularly moving moment in his performance from last year: “I performed I guess what you could call my coming out piece that’s very angry, that’s very sad and emotional. It was so touching to look out in the audience and see this little boy crying because I guess he was struggling with the same thing. The kids love it.”

But Azcona capitalizes on the pliability of the medium as compared to other forms of writing, which perhaps explains the different meanings it takes on within the Vassar community and beyond. “I like spoken word as opposed to all other kinds of poetry, and I guess writing, because it’s so formless. Because it’s spoken you don’t have to worry about all the form and all of those poetic terms and meter and line breaks, you don’t have to worry about that. You just have to worry about expressing yourself.”

“CompleteWorks” abridged, but laughs remain uncut Rachel Borne´

Assistant Arts Editor

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is the fact that the group plans to pack all of Shakespeare’s work into just over an hour and a half. When asked how they do it, Glover responded “Sweatily!” Some plays get just a mention, some a few minutes, and “Hamlet” gets the whole second act. The cast’s tribute to the tale of the Prince of Denmark is fast, ridiculous, and even backwards at times. They duel, jump and fall, yell, throw props, put on puppet shows and improv on the fly.

“People coming into the show should be prepared to laugh until they cry and more importantly, be prepared to be a part of the show,” said MacLeod. Obviously, audience participation is a must, and will definitely enhance the experience of “Complete Works (Abridged!).” “We demolish the theatrical fourth wall,” Glover said, adding “the audience is just as much a part of the show as we are.”

Whether you hated “Hamlet,” loved Lucrece, or haven’t even heard of Henry , there’s no doubt that “Complete Works (Abridged!)” is definitely one comedy that will be served as you like it—fresh, creative, and probably a little inappropriate.

Courtesy of Catherine Buxton

oing 37 plays in 97 minutes with three actors—sounds like mission impossible, right? With the help of a little audience participation, a few wigs and a whole lot of laughter, Tyler Glover ’13, Caroline Iosso ’12 and Henry Behel ’10 are ready to accept the challenge. Directed by Catherine Buxton ’12 and Emily MacLeod ’12, the three will cross dress, rap, fight and dance their way through “The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged!).” Head over to Rockefeller 200 Thursday April 29 at 10 p.m. or Friday April 30 at 7 and 10 p.m. to see this over-the-top parody of all that is Shakespeare.

When MacLeod asked herself the puzzling question, “What hasn’t the Vassar community seen yet?” her mind instantly jumped to “The Complete Works.”

“The show was originally written in the early ’90s when [Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield] thought it’d be funny to condense ‘Romeo and Juliet’ into a half hour using two actors and a narrator,” she said.

Over the last 20 years, “Complete Works (Abridged!)” has been devel-

oped, changed and reinvented to accommodate pop culture and to keep every audience laughing. “I saw a video of [another company’s] stage production when I was maybe thirteen. I was obsessed with it and grew to love the show,” said MacLeod.

Because the original script is packed tight with outdated jokes written for a 1990s audience, Vassar’s cast and crew has put their own unique spin on Shakespeare. “The characters are written for really specific people because it was acted by the people who wrote it. We’ve adapted the parts to our own sense of humor so we can be ourselves on stage,” said Henry Behel. “Though we follow the script to some extent, there’s a lot of improv.

It’s very open to our experimentation,” added Iosso.

Iosso may be the only girl in the play, but she’s definitely not the only one playing with femininity. According to actor Glover, “I play all the female roles. I’m constantly running back stage, putting on a skirt, throwing on a wig, grabbing a sword, spinning around in circles, screaming and probably dancing in provocative ways all the while. It’s insanity.”

What’s perhaps even more insane

Tyler Glover ’13, Caroline Iosso ’12 and Henry Behel ’10, pictured above, will perform “The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged!)” on April 29 and April 30. The group has adapted the comedy of the play for the Vassar setting.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

ARTS

April 29, 2010

Page 15

Filmmaker experiments, diminishes plot Connor O’Neill Reporter

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Campus Canvas

Sydney Hessel

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Courtesy of LeightonPierce.com

t’s not hard to find ways to describe the work of experimental filmmaker Leighton Pierce: Ethereal, graceful, impressionistic, hazy and elegant are good places to start. Pierce uses images in his short films that are watery and almost painterly, washing over the viewer and engulfing them in another realm of time and space. The award-winning filmmaker, who has exhibited his work at the Sundance and Rotterdam film festivals, will be screening his fluid films when he comes to campus on Thursday, April 29 to speak about and present his work.

Pierce is coming as a part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Guest Filmmaker series. The series, which has now brought nine filmmakers to Vassar in the last year with a grant from the Academy as well as a donation from the Film Department, works to introduce students to all aspects of production, exposing them to the various facets of the film industry. Leighton Pierce will round out a group of lecturers that has also included writers, directors, actors, cinematographers, sound designers, and production designers.

The addition of experimental filmmaking to the bill is a a welcome and important part of maintaining a diverse curriculum within the Film Department. “Experimental filmmaking is crucial to the development of a film student,” explained Assistant Professor of Film Kathleen Man, who founded and heads the speaker series. “The development of the personal voice can come through in narrative or documentary after working in such a highly emotional and personal mode.”

The films of Leighton Pierce are no ex-

ception to this. Man worked closely with the filmmaker as a graduate student in film at the University of Iowa, where Pierce is a professor.

“His films can bring you to a place of memory and emotion...watching Leighton’s films is like having a moment with myself,” Man said of her mentor.

These experimental films go against the viewer’s expectations of narrative in film.

Based less on “cause and effect” story telling, Pierce’s films open themselves to the audience much like a painting: a continuum of expression, to be taken in as a piece of cohesive artwork. “The more you invite the viewer to a poetic space, the more they can infuse their own emotion,” Man expounded.

The nature of experimental films is one that accentuates this personal experience, in both the viewer and the artist. The past speakers who have shared their work represented one aspect of the narrative or documentary mode of filmmaking, highlighting and exposing a certain dimension of the process. Pierce, however, as with most experimental filmmakers, is responsible for every aspect of the production of the film.

The emphasis placed on the individual makes Pierce the perfect candidate to cap off a year of wonderfully diverse and exciting speakers in the Film Department. He is able to speak to each step of the process while at the same time providing the perspective of an avant-garde artist in a field which the Department is trying more and more to expose their students to.

A good example of the emphasis on the individual is in one of Pierce’s films entitled “Fall,” in which he holds a marble up to the lens of the camera and films various scenes of plein air life. The hand of the filmmaker is visible

Experimental filmmaker Leighton Pierce, pictured above, will visit campus on Thursday, April 29 to lecture on his most recent work. while the marble captures the outside world, relaying it to the camera, accentuating the manifold tasks of a single artist’s hands in producing beautiful and innovative approaches to the medium of film.

Leighton Pierce’s talk will begin at 7 p.m. in the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film.

He will speak about his work, screen several of his short films and hold a question and answer session with the audience.

A bi-weekly space highlighting the creative pursuits of student-artists

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Driftwood Alexandra Wong ’11 You won’t remember this, but one balmy summer afternoon we were writing poems on driftwood. We scanned the beach for the last of summer’s bonfires, bending down to sort through the ashy piles to find charcoal. The beach was long and the sand was dry, and there were seagulls after your lunch. You had made an egg and tuna sandwich on rye because we didn’t have any whole wheat left. The mayonnaise had escaped and your plastic baggy was coated by the time it left your backpack. I got out a plastic knife from my purse and smoothed it in, smoothed it around. After it was cleaned up I handed it to you and you ate it in five massive bites. When you were finished I got out my day planner and noted “Whole Wheat. Lots of it.”

In a few minutes you got tired of trying to compose a poem so I told you to just do a haiku or even one couplet for me. When I looked over you had drawn a seagull, with wings that looked like hands and feet that could have been forks.

I was trying to write a sestina –I wanted it to sound like the rhythm of the waves, but when I asked you what it reminded you of, you said driving a convertible, so I tossed it to the water.

You took off your boating shoes and we used them as weights to keep the linen blanket from flying away. I remember seeing the tongue of the shoe with the little 10.5 M stamped onto the top, and imprinting onto the insides of my eyelids. It’s funny now, thinking back to it.

Your birthday was coming up in September and I remember having a page in the Eaton’s catalogue dog-eared. I had been eyeing a pair of bedroom slippers for you, the waffled cotton kind with the cream stitching and rounded toe.

But this was all around the same time I thought romance meant having matching bathrobes.

Eventually you threw the driftwood to the side and it jammed itself into the sand. Unzipping your satchel you took out some papers and starting flipping through a packet annotated in your customary way –light pencil underlining anything objective, a blue pen circling everything pertaining to the defense’s side and a yellow highlighter over everything the prosecutor claimed. I asked you what it was about and you said,“The usual.

Sarah Lazarus ’13 is a student-photographer.

People complaining.” So I leant back against the log, too, and took out my legal pad, editing a screenplay that was giving me some trouble.

Your highlighter ran out of ink and you said some curse under your breath and sighed. You shut the folder and threw it down, lying down on the blanket so that you were eye level with my calves. You reached over with your ballpoint and touched it to my knee, I held my breath.

You drew a square, one of the sides dipped in a little and the upper left corner didn’t meet, so it looked like a piece of toast. When the little metal ball left my skin, it left ink that bled through the wrinkles on my knee, snaking little blue rivers.

After the water had changed from golden to cobalt, you took your shoes and slipped them on and marched back to the car. Propping up a map of the coast in the dashboard against the window, you fell asleep in the driver’s seat, your straw fedora covering your face. The linen blanket flew wildly around without your boating shoe to anchor it so I folded it up and placed it between my back and a log instead. I recovered your piece of driftwood from its temporary

After Hours joins students and alumnae/i

grave and blew off the sand. The impact of its landing had rubbed off part of the head and a leg, leaving one vapid eye to balance on feathers that looked like hands and a single leg that stood stiff like a fork jabbed into a kitchen table.

After taking a long bath that night the square on my knee had faded. I traced it over again with a pen, it’s makes my face warm to think of this all again. I did that for the entire summer, redrawing that blue square on my knee after each washing so it looked like I was displaying a little piece of toast with each step.

Eventually, you took your boating shoes and straw fedora and packed them up with your legal papers and yellow highlighters and left.

Later, when I found myself tracing a square onto my body, I’d rub it off with spit and a fingertip, until the spot was red and sore.

I bet whoever you’re with now doesn’t remember to buy you whole wheat bread. I hope she throws away any sandwiches that make a mess.

Maybe you drive to the coast only to nap in the front of the car together, you probably don’t even get out. I bet you don’t even make it to the beach.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Reporter

ith the last Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE) After Hours Showcase scheduled for tonight, you may be wondering: what will we do after hours, after After Hours ends? For seniors, there is an even more daunting question: what will seniors do after their hours at Vassar, when they no longer have access to such a unique community of arts programming? The answer is comforting if alumni Lawrence Louis ’06 and Julia Weldon ’05 are any indication. Their respective Vassar experiences influenced successful music careers; the two will perform their music at the showcase, alongside student musicians Taj Ribe ’12 and Celia McKee ’12.

“The event was conceived as a student, alumni, and faculty After Hours showcase and was an attempt to integrate the work that ViCE does into the larger Vassar community, rather than just the students. We wanted to bring these different segments together into one forum that would showcase the singer-songwriter talent that we have in the community,” wrote ViCE president Peter Denny ’10 in an e-mailed statement.

After Hours chair Kyle Moon-Wright ’12 added, “In a greater context, it represents our attempts at a growing unity between musicians on and off campus.”

The show will include a diverse array of performance styles, from the hip hop of D-lock to the more bluesy, folksy rock of Weldon. For student artists, the chance to perform alongside more seasoned Vassar musicians is both exciting and terrifying. “I’m a sophomore and this is actually going to be my first ever After Hours show, so I’m excited about it,” wrote Ribe in an e-mailed statement. “I’ll be playing all acoustic singer/ songwriter type stuff that I wrote myself. I’ve been singing since I was five and playing guitar since I was 16, and I have had no formal training at all, just a lot of passion and motivation. There’s going to be some alumni doing their thing which is both super intimidating and super awesome.”

Super awesome is right: D-Lock and Weldon are both independent and self-produced, and the time they spent at Vassar inspired their current musical passions and aspirations. D-Lock, who recently performed at Vassar for Hip Hop 101’s Throwback Jam, met Andre Dennis ’06 freshman year when the two were randomly selected as roommates; The two now record together as D-Lock n MediK, with D-Lock writing rap lyrics and MediK creating the beats. Their first album, Crill Tone—“crill” a term meaning “crushing of skill”—came out in June 2009, and their second album, Official Language, is scheduled to come out in May. D-Lock has been working on his music career full-time for the past two years since the school where he was teaching in Washington D.C. closed.

“I was going to do a series of albums, but what ended up happening eventually was that I was unemployed, and I was just writing, writing, writing, some lines and some songs, and then I honed it, and called it Official Language. I felt like it told a story,” D-Lock explained in a phone interview.

Weldon is already familiar with After Hours: she was an active member of the ViCE general body the year that the program started. Like DLock, she is also self-taught and has been playing guitar and writing songs since her early teens, a skill that really began to blossom while at Vassar.

“I started writing pretty good songs when I was 20. I still play some of the songs I wrote at Vassar, and people love them,” Weldon said in a phone interview. “It’s so funny to be going back, because I’ve brought back these songs I wrote at Vassar just recently, and one that I’m going to be playing I wrote on the Metro-North [Railroad] in my senior year—it’s called ‘Southbound.’”

This show will be a great capstone to a year of wonderful After Hours showcases, but is also the beginning of a new trend. As Denny explained: “This would be a great tradition to start, to have students join together with alumni, faculty and any other administrators or staff or community members, and be able to share in the experience of music performance at Vassar.” The final ViCE After Hours Showcase will be from 7 to 10 p.m. outside of the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film.

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ViCE brings music festival to Poughkeepsie

April 29, 2010

Josh Sturm strums folk, classical guitar Esther Clowney Reporter

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nless you plan on participating in the Fun Run, Founder’s Day 2010 may well kick off with Joshua Sturm’s ’11 11 a.m. acoustic guitar set on Ballantine Field. “I’m playing first, so I’ll probably be performing for little tykes,” said Sturm. “Luckily, I think they’ll like my set. The music I play now sounds a lot like the music I grew up with: old timey with elements of the Irish ballads my dad used to play at home,” he said.

Sturm’s current repertoire may be reminiscent of his childhood, but his relationship with the guitar has undergone many permutations along the way.

Sturm began playing classical guitar at age nine. His lessons taught him music theory and standard classical songs, but failed to hold his attention through the tumults of adolescence. “As I approached my teen years, I got fed up with how regimented the style was,” said Sturm. He quit playing classical guitar, choosing to use the skills he had acquired as a member of a hardcore metal band called Lucky Pierre.

“I liked that it was completely different from what I’d been playing, and I enjoyed being able to play in a group. Classical guitar, for me, was very solo oriented,” said Sturm. Lucky Pierre played gigs in New York City, commuting from Sturm’s suburban hometown of Orangeburg, NY. Around his junior year, however, he changed directions again. “I really wasn’t into the violence of the metal scene anymore, so I switched back to acoustic,” he said.

It was around this time that Sturm heard the music of Kaki King for the first time. “She was playing rhythms with her right hand, and tapping on the neck of the guitar,” said Sturm. This technique, which Sturm soon adopted, is called “fingerstyle guitar.” The name refers to the way musicians pluck the guitar strings with multiple fingers instead of a single pick. The style emphasizes use of the guitar as a simultaneously melodic and percussive instrument. “The method employed a skill and knowledge of music that was lacking with the metal style,” Sturm said.

Courtesy of Josh Sturm

ViCE continued from page 1 ration between ViCE and the City of Poughkeepsie on the event’s organization, while the “alypse” symbolizes the fun and explosiveness of the occasion.

Indeed, ViCEPOKalypse will be a unique music festival, even though it is small when compared with other festivals like Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza.

“This isn’t an enormous event. It’s more home-grown,” said Marmet.

He also added that the organizers at ViCE want to capture a “European music festival vibe” on par with the storied and oldest stillexisting festival, Reading and Leeds in England. True to traditional music festival form, ViCE will hand out performance schedules and ensure that the music never stops until the evening’s end.

You won’t see any bands on the level of Radiohead or Flaming Lips headlining ViCEPOKalypse, much less Lady Gaga or other radio chart-toppers.

“We’re working on a tight budget so we couldn’t look for marquee names,” explained Marmet. “Instead of getting names students could recognize, we got ones they’ll recognize in two years.”

Considering ViCE’s track record thus far, he is likely to be right. Head of ViCE Music Christine Yu ’10 provided an example in an emailed statement: “Passion Pit opened for Broken Social Scene early last year, and we got a lot of good feedback about them. Now, they’re HUGE.” Other bands that played at Vassar before they skyrocketed have included Dirty Projectors and Vampire Weekend.

The performers slotted to play on May 4 include JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, which Marmet described as a “retro Motown soul act,” and Twin Sister, who play “dream psych pop.” Also confirmed are “spiritual” singersongwriter Larkin Grimm, who has opened for Mountain Goats and indie violinist Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy), as well as Screaming Females and the critically acclaimed band Dom. The last group is currently booked solid into the summer after positive reviews from the indie webzine Pitchfork and will play other college’s concerts, including New York University and Bennington College.

“All of the bands coming are really psyched,” said Marmet.

The festival’s lack of name recognition could discourage attendance, yet ViCE is actively seeking ways to encourage campus-wide interest. “Personally, 99 percent of the music I listen to was probably at one point or another number one on TRL or the Billboard Top 40 chart,” Denny proudly admitted in his statement. “That does not mean I can’t appreciate and enjoy more alternative and experimental music. I love going to ViCE concerts that expose me to new sounds, even if at the end of the day I’m going to go home and listen to Britney.”

To help foster students’ familiarity with the bands, ViCE will post a podcast and daily artist profiles on its website (viceisnice.org) in the days leading up to the event.

Looking back on the year, Denny says he is most proud of the effort ViCE members put into including the community.

“We had success with clothing and food drives, collaborations with other orgs, and the Civic Center show, among other efforts,” the outgoing director wrote. “We set the bar high for the future of ViCE in terms of the range of events that we are capable of and how they can contribute to student life.”

He added: “I’m so excited to see how ViCE will use this momentum and continue to grow and evolve to best meet the students’ entertainment needs.”

Marmet believes that ViCE’s outdoor music festival will be a perfect way to end the school year at Vassar: “It’s a combination of classes being over, great music, free food, amazing company­­—what more can you ask for?”

Josh Sturm ’11 strums his acoustic guitar while performing at a recent concert. Sturm looks forward to performing at 11 a.m. on Founder’s Day, Saturday, May 1, on Ballantine Field.

He started playing solo again. “I’d get out of school at 2 p.m. and go play open mics in the city,” he said. Sturm continued performing once he got to Vassar, playing regularly at venues such as the Cubbyhole Coffeehouse as well as at After Hours shows organized

by Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE).

But to arrive at the kind of music he’ll be playing on Saturday, Sturm’s style had to go through one more dramatic evolution.

“My music was totally instrumental until last year, when I started adding vocals,” Sturm said. His lyrics are allegorical. “I don’t sing about anything in particular. I write the melody and rhythm parts first, and then just kind of talk while I’m playing. If whatever comes out of my mouth fits with something I want to get across, I keep it. Many of my songs follow a character through some weird story.”

“The King’s Daughter,” a fairly typical example of one of Sturm’s songs, is about a seaward journey undertaken by four brothers. One of the brothers has sex with the daughter of a distant king, and the song follows them through their escape from the

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kingdom. “In a way, I think all the characters are different sides of myself,” Sturm said.

“They represent different impulses I have towards people and relationships.”

Though his song lyrics contain mythic subject matter, they aren’t accompanied by obtuse morality. “I find that when I try to be too direct [with my lyrics], it sounds like I’m trying to get my audience to think in a certain way. When you perform, you’re sort of putting yourself on a pedestal, and if you take that as an opportunity to preach, that’s problematic,” said Sturm. “At the same time, I’m definitely trying to communicate something.”

Throughout the school year, Sturm has been working on recording his music with the help of Adjunct Artist in Music Terry Champlin. While it seems highly unlikely that Sturm will ever halt his process of musical development, he seems comfortable in his stylistic niche for the time being. “I started playing at one radical end of the spectrum, moved to the complete opposite end, and then found my place somewhere in between,” said Sturm.

April 29, 2010

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LCD Soundsystem dusts off old tricks, styles This Is Happening LCD Soundsystem [DFA/Virgin]

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or a long time I’ve been wondering what makes James Murphy—the mastermind and one-man-band behind LCD Soundsystem—so consistent. Over almost 10 years and two albums, Murphy has created and solidified his own brand of dance music, taking his influences from all the right bands and releasing the kind of slow building dance tracks that can be maddeningly hard to pull off. The consistency might have something to do with Murphy’s experience; he’s been doing the rock band thing, the DJ thing, and the remix thing since the early nineties. Or it could have something to do with Murphy’s record collection, which apparently holds every good record ever (his words, not mine. See LCD’s 2002 single “Losing My Edge”). Whatever the reason, Murphy just can’t seem to release a bad record, even if he stubbornly sticks to his chosen palate of sounds and his perennial lyrical themes, as he does on the latest LCD Soundsytem album, This Is Happening.

It’s that same palate of sounds—familiar to anyone who has heard LCD’s first two albums—that thankfully reemerges on This Is Happening. Murphy crafts his songs piece by piece, adding layers upon layers until he feels like singing. They usually start slow, with a deep, pulsing synth riff. Then some more synths are eased in, the bass starts to poke its head out with maybe a tingly guitar line, and then the drums come in with a kit-clearing fill that gives way to some of the crispest hihats I’ve ever heard. The last element is Mur-

phy’s voice, a wry half-sung slur that seems to fit his beats so well you’d think its just another sound he created on an old casio.

The strangest thing about all of this is that Murphy has created some of the most interesting and thoughtful music of the past decade, dance music or otherwise, with what essentially is a borrowed bag of tricks. His keyboards reveal a man with a fetish for the ’80s, his song structures lend a whole lot to disco, and his vocal delivery comes from a long line of indie-rock frontmen who make more out of sarcasm then they do out of actually singing. And those drums—those refrigerator fresh hi-hats and those unrelenting four-on-the-floor kick beats—were the staple of early post-punk bands. In spite of these obvious influences, Murphy never ceases to delight his listeners. Maybe he’s just too brilliant a songwriter to misstep, or maybe he made a deal with the devil, but This Is Happening continues the legacy left by 2007’s Sound of Silver and 2005’s self titled record.

In nine songs, most of which are well over six minutes, Murphy has once again proved his mastery of an oft-mishandled form.

Case in point: opener “Dance Yrself Clean.”

The first half of the song quietly adds synth layers until the drums break out with the piercing patter of the snare, as if they were waiting the whole time and just couldn’t take it anymore. From there on out, Murphy keeps the momentum going, swapping various sounds in and out of the mix as his voice-slowly increasing in volume as the song progresses--goes on about his reoccurring themes--friendship, aging, etc. Its a classic LCD song in every sense; a nine minute grower reminiscent of Murphy’s earliest singles.

But This Is Happening isn’t all 10 minute electro jams. As on LCD’s previous records,

This Is Happening has one song under four minutes, specifically made to be a digestible single for the uninitiated. And that song is “Drunk Girls.” the lightest, catchiest piece of pop music he’s made since Sound of Silver’s “North American Scum.” As the title suggests, the song is mostly about drunk girls, but it’s also an opportunity for Murphy to use his keen eye and his sharp wit to poke fun at the party scene he knows all too well. At times Murphy is in it just for the joke, as he is when he sings, “Drunk boys, we walk like pedestrians/ drunk girls wait an hour to pee.”

At other times though, Murphy drops lines of offhanded insight, with couplets such as, “drunk girls know that love is an astronaut/ it comes back but its never the same.” The song itself is a jumpy, jittery homage to The Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat,” with a buoyant and optimistic chorus in which Murphy sings, “Oh! Oh! Oh!/ I believe in waking up together.”

This Is Happening is the record that Murphy needed to release, a surefire reminder that he hasn’t even lost an inkling of his magic touch. It’s a slower record than Sound of Silver, but a more complete set of songs than the self titled album, making it a nice addition to Murphy’s slim discography. There have been rumors that this might be LCD’s final album, and if this record wasn’t as solid as it is, I would welcome that news with an air of approval. But This Is Happening proves that Murphy can do his thing, and do it damn well, for a very long time. And I’m hoping that he does continue, because the world could use some more LCD Soundsystem.

-—Martin Bergman ’12 is a Jewish studies major writing a bi-weekly column on recently released albums.

“How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed,

by Slavenka Drakulic”

Alex Hughes ’13

“Everything But the Coffee, by Bryant Simon”

Celynne Balatbat ’13 “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges, and A Violence Over the Land, by Ned Blackhawk”

Katia Chapman ’12

Idlewild play reconsiders abortion Gabby Gottlieb

“Crazy in America,

by Mary Beth Pfeiffer”

Guest Reporter

L

Kelley Van Dilla/The Miscellany News

ast Thursday I walked into the Shiva Theater expecting to see a two-hour play about abortion. That’s what the “A” in SusanLori Parks’ “Fucking A” stands for, right?

Wrong. “Fucking A,” directed by Ellen Geissal ’11 and Zoë Dostal ’13 and performed by the Idlewild theater ensemble is a sprawling universe in its own category of epic theater.

The story focuses on Hester, played by Katie Sherman ’11, an abortionist trying desperately to reclaim her imprisoned and estranged son. Hester’s world is one most corrupt; she must pay exorbitant amounts of money to see her son for one afternoon, and when she finally goes on a long-awaited picnic with him, she finds an imposter, Jailbait (Julianna Gonzalez ’11), in his place.

Hester’s story is paralleled by that of the Mayor, played with utmost creepiness

by Danielle Morvant ’10. The despot is displeased with his wife, the First Lady (Estefania Fadul ’10), because she has not given him an heir yet. He sends her to the wilderness while he canoodles with his mistress, Canary Mary (Caroline Warren ’11).

Throughout the rest of the play we see that Hester’s son, Monster (Akari Anderson ’12,) has escaped from jail and meets the First Lady in the woods. They have an animalistic and passionate affair, she gets pregnant, and faces a dilemma as to whether to keep the baby and lie to her husband or to visit Hester’s shop. Meanwhile, three sadistic hunters, played by Belén Ferrer ’10, Erin Gallagher ’13, and Gonzalez, track down Monster while discussing the best way to torture him, and the local butcher (Dorothy Thomas ’12) shares tender feelings with Hester.

Sherman’s Hester stood out as one of the strongest characters for me. She portrayed the fierce love a mother feels for her offspring well and remained identifiable even

Charles Fitzgibbon ’10

“Scavenger, by David Morrell, and A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley”

A member of the theater group Idlewild rehearses for an upcoming performance of “Fucking A,” which is directed by Ellen Geissal ’11 and Zoë Dostal ’13 and will show in the Shiva Theater. when the story was not. The surprise of the evening came from Dorothy Thomas ’12, who delivered a five-minute monologue oozing with dry wit and good comedic timing.

The production was set in a bare, stylized world with little room for color or joy. The set was against the entirety of one of the longer walls of the Shiva, playing with the latitude of the space in a fresh way. The colors of the set, props and lights were rooted in brown and yellow tones, evoking earth, blood, and human flesh. Trees were signified using hanging mesh fabric from the ceiling, and the hanging carcasses in the butcher shop were subtly evoked through hanging wire sculptures. Lighting was used to differentiate between the different spaces and transitions went smoothly and felt well rehearsed.

Costumes also stayed in the realm of browns, tans, and beiges, while only Canary Mary, in her tacky yellow dress, and the First Lady, in her seductive red satin, diverged from

the plain tones of the rest of the clothing. In most cases the design choices of the play exhibited a continuity that helped keep the audience engaged and absorbed in Susan-Lori Parks’ world of violence and betrayal.

In the play, abortion does not exist as the controversial issue of women’s agency and control over her body, but rather as a dirty but necessary task required by society. While most of the women are under the grip of a man or an institution, they can come and go freely from Hester’s shop and abortion is accepted as a natural result of copulation at all levels of society. Abortion becomes the women’s only freedom of choice in this patriarchal and repressive society. “Fucking A” was written in the tradition of epic theater and takes inspiration from Brecht’s “Mother Courage.” Idlewild’s execution of this piece was excellent and obviously well thought out, a fact which allowed the epic qualities of the work shine through.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Tori Hester ’12

“The Fellowship of the Ring, by JRR Tolkien”

Jamie Bateau ’12 —Erik Lorenzsonn Arts Editor

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Page 18

April 29, 2010

Should NCAA Recap: A year of firsts in Vassar athletics athletes be paid to play? I Andy Marmer Sports Editor

Andy Sussman Guest Columnist

I

n the 2007-2008 academic year, the University of Texas Longhorns earned over 120 million dollars in revenue from its athletics programs. Mack Brown, the head football coach of the Longhorns, made $5.1 million in the past year. Yet all of the football and basketball players who don a Longhorns jersey during the season do not earn a penny. The NCAA has always stressed the sacredness of amateurism, that student-athletes should not get paid for what they love to do, and that they are being rewarded by the free education they receive (in the case of scholarship athletes). However, the current system that high-level college sports has in place is inherently flawed as the amateur institution it claims to be; instead, it has become a major business in which the athletes are merely a proverbial cog in the machine.

There are several options for an overhaul of the current collegiate system. First, there is the option of college athletes getting paid some percentage of revenue, which the college brings in for that particular sport.

While that would accomplish compensation for major athletes, there are multiple problems with this idea. First of all, every University of Texas football player, for instance, would receive the same amount of money regardless of how valuable he is to the team. Additionally, an athlete getting paid would essentially nullify the education process. In theory, the more an athlete gets paid to participate in collegiate athletics, the more time he or she will spend working at his or her respective sport. This does not sound like an issue until one realizes that this means less time actually being a college student, both academically and socially.

Instead, if the true focus of the NCAA is to provide athletics as a supplemental part of a student’s college experience, then there should be less of a commitment for athletes.

Recently, the University of Michigan football program came under fire because some players revealed that coaches exceeded the limit of mandatory hours of practice a team can enforce. This problem has happened before, and it will continue to occur unless the NCAA truly is serious about prioritizing academics first and foremost. Currently, coaches are allowed to require 20 hours of mandatory practices a week for in-season athletes in Division I sports. This does not include games, “highly recommended” workouts in which coaches sometimes observe to see who participates, and the often nation-wide travel for athletes.

How can a college athlete realistically put his or her full effort into doing well in classes if he or she is essentially working a full-time job out of it? It’s fine if the NCAA does not want to pay athletes, but if they are going to do that, make college life more of a reality for these players. To start, the NCAA should lower the number of mandatory hours student-athletes can practice. Then, athletes can properly study and participate in their classes, and also get a paying job.

Many athletes who are on scholarship have financial issues at home, and it does not help them to take away time from their academic and vocational endeavors.

The NCAA has a series of commercials saying “most athletes will go pro in something other than sports.” If that is really the case, then they should allow these college students to actually have the opportunity to find their futures. One cannot stress the importance of being a student before an athlete if collegiate athletics is looked at solely based on being a business. Instead of treating athletes as pawns for the colleges and universities they attend, the NCAA should focus on providing a landscape in which student-athletes can succeed at whatever they choose to accomplish in college and beyond.

n just three weeks, after sweating through finals, we will be back in our hometowns enjoying summer vacation. With that in mind, let’s take a look back at the year that was in Vassar sports.

In many ways it was a year of firsts for the Brewers. Mike Mattelson ’10 became the first singles tennis player in Vassar history to compete in the National Small College Championships when he conquered all challengers at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Northeast Regional over the first weekend in October, defeating rival Patrick Whitner from New York University in the finals, 3-6, 6-3, 6-1.

Mattelson became one of three Vassar athletes to ever advance to the National Small College Championship. Two years ago, then-freshmen teammates Greg Katz ’11 and Max Willner ’11 competed as doubles partners for a title.

Mattelson’s individual feat was not the only first for the men’s tennis team. On March 3, the program earned its first ever ITA national ranking, ascending to the spot of no. 22 with, at the time, a perfect 5-0 record in the spring season. The squad would eventually rise to 9-0 before dropping its first contest of the year to no. 20 nationally ranked Trinity College. Still, the Brewers eventually rebounded to earn their second ever Liberty League Championship (their first was in 2007), sweeping Hobart College 5-0 and St. Lawrence University 9-0 en route to the title. The men’s tennis team will attempt to capture more accolades as they continue their season later this year.

The men’s tennis team was not alone in its dominance of the Liberty League. The women’s squash team also captured a Liberty League Championship. As did the women’s tennis team this past Sunday, defeating Skidmore College 6-3 in the championship match to win their 8th consecutive Liberty League Championship. Meanwhile, the men’s volleyball team, which competes

in the North East Collegiate Volleyball Association (NECVA) Metro Division, also earned a divisional championship, concluding the season with a perfect 9-0 divisional record.

Another Vassar first was earned by men’s soccer player Brian Bianchetti ’10. Following a campaign which saw the senior tally 11 goals, he was named the Liberty League Player of the Year, as well as chosen for the East Coast Athletic Conference (ECAC) Division III Upstate Men’s Soccer First Team. The senior midfielder helped lead the Brewers to a 9-6-1 overall record, with a 3-3-1 conference mark.

Bianchetti was hardly the only Vassar athlete recognized by the Liberty League. Prior to this season, Vassar had only had one women’s basketball player selected for the All-League First Team. However, this year, guard Brittany Parks ’12 and forward Emily Haeuser ’10 both earned the distinction. The two led the program to a school record-tying five Liberty League wins.

For Haeuser, the League awards were just the tip of the iceberg. The senior forward was also named to the D3hoops.com All-East Region First Team and the ECAC Division III Upstate Second Team.

Continuing the theme of firsts, Johanna Spangler ’12 brought Vassar its first female ECAC Championship in cross country, after finishing in second place last year. Spangler also captured the school’s first Seven Sisters title since 1998, leading the Brewers to their first ever runner-up finish in the meet.

While the women’s cross country team made great strides in the Seven Sisters competition, other programs finally made it over the hump.

The women’s tennis team triumphed over Wellesley College in the finals to capture their first Seven Sisters title since 2005. The two team titles for the squad came in addition to a number of individual championships won by members of the squad. Nicole Pontee ’10 captured the New York State no. 1 singles and no. 1 doubles championship, teaming with Joy Back-

er ’12 for the latter. Meanwhile, Jennifer Ruther ’13 captured the no. 5 singles championship, and Jennifer Beckerman ’12 and Nicole Block ’12 earned the no. 2 doubles title. The women’s tennis team has not yet completed their season as they seek to rack up more honors.

Vassar also had three fencers recognized for their accomplishments. Tavish Pegram ’13 and Nick Johnson ’12 both garnered first team AllNortheast Conference honors. Teammate Andrew Fischl ’11 finished in 16th place in the sabre competition at the NCAA Fencing Championship, his best finish in the three years he’s competed in the event.

Jake Harris ’13 competed in the College Squash Association Individual Championships in men’s squash, while on the women’s side Emilie Kraft ’10 and Kristine Bell ’11 also competed. Kraft was named the Liberty League Player of the Year, and was joined on the All-Conference First Team by Bell, Hope Blinkoff ’10, Caitlin Ly ’10 and Libby Pei ’13. Pei was also named the Conference Rookie of the Year, while Head Coach Jane Parker earned Coach of the Year honors.

The men’s volleyball team was led to their divisional championship by Phil Tully ’10, who earned his third All-American honors, being named to the Second Team this year. Tully, who was also the Metro Division Player of the Year, was joined on the Metro Division First Team by Matt Elgin ’13. John Konow ’13 earned divisional Rookie of the Year honors, while Head Coach Antonia Sweet earned Metro Division Coach of the Year distinctions.

While Vassar has earned numerous distinctions thus far, there are still more to come. Spring athletes continue to compete and will no doubt add to the trophy cases their peers have stocked.

Celynne Balatbat ’13 has already done just that, winning the women’s golf Vassar Invitational and aiding the team in earning the no. 25 national ranking. And with the success that Vassar athletes have had this year, her accomplishment will certainly not stand alone.

Broooers host second Butterbeer Classic Ethan Shanley Reporter

A

player scoops up the ball and starts to sprint towards the goal. Juking past potential assailants and vicious adversaries, the player eyes the target and rears back, ready to score. Suddenly, “WHAM!” a flying blur appears out of nowhere, blindsiding the player, and leveling them to the ground. The player smashes into a soggy puddle of brown mud and wet grass, sliding a few feet until finally collapsing on the ground in a heaping mess of limbs, dirt, and broomsticks. Broomsticks??

That’s right, the scene I’m describing did not take place on Vassar Farm at a Rugby game, it unfolded during a quidditch match on Sunday in Noyes Circle as a part of The Second “Annual” Butterbeer Classic.

A sport that is derived from J.K. Rowling’s famed Harry Potter series, the muggle form of quidditch was invented in 2004 by students at Middlebury College, and has been growing in popularity on college campuses throughout the country. Vassar has developed its own following here, hosting the second iteration of its tournament, the Butterbeer Classic on Sunday.

Though the day was dreary, rain and grime could not deter from the entertainment that ensued, and possibly even contributed to the fun and excitement of the day.

“Overall, the Second ‘Annual’ Butterbeer Classic” was a great success,” says Sophomore Captain, Molly St. Clair. “The tournament was set up as a round robin, with each team playing each other team once. The two teams with the worst records of wins/losses then played for third and fourth, and finally the two teams with the best records battled for first and second.” State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Villanova University joined the Broooers in the tournament on Sunday.

After defeating SUNY Geneseo, who put up a valiant effort for a brand new team, and a veteran UMass Amherst squad, the Broooers faced a tough Villanova team in group play, and then again in the finals. “The cham-

pionship match [against Villanova] was really physical.” Says second year player Aaron Suzuka ‘12. “Both teams really stepped up their aggression to try and shut down break-aways and attacks. We had to stop play twice for injuries. However, at the end of the day, Vassar emerged victorious and undefeated!” Behind Vassar, SUNY Geneseo came in fourth, UMass Amherst finished third, and Villanova was second. While Vassar’s squad, the “Butterbeer Broooers,” enjoyed the sweet taste of victory at the tournament, consensus sentiment was that the day was more about making friends and living childhood dreams of becoming a wizard, rather than who won or lost.

Though J.K. Rowling clearly defines the rules of quidditch in her books, things become kind of complicated for those of us who can’t do magic. Poor muggles who want to engage in the sport have to find ways around their unfortunate shortcomings, thus, the rules to the land-based game are slightly different that the one’s in the wizarding world.

Like in the books, each team has seven players on the field: three chasers, two beaters, a keeper, and a seeker. Chasers move the “quaffle,” which is usually a soccer or volleyball, downfield and attempt to throw it through one of the other team’s three mounted hula hoops, which is defended by a keeper. If the chasers prove successful there team is awarded 10 points. Opposing Chasers are charged with tackling the ball carrier or stripping them in order to obtain possession, while all players must hold onto their broomsticks at all times.

This is where the game gets interesting. “quidditch is, somewhat surprisingly, a rather intense sport. Tackling is a big part of it, as well as balls being thrown at [opponents]. Naturally, there are bound to be some injuries.” Says sophomore Captain Daniel Bossert. Fellow Captain St. Clair elaborates: “At the World Cup [held at Middlebury College] this year, three students [not from Vassar] were taken off the field in ambulances, including one player with a broken collarbone.” Watching the action play out is like watching a combination of handball,

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

dodge ball, basketball, and rugby all meshed into one.

To add another aspect to the game, there are two beaters on each team. These beaters can “bludgers” (kickballs), to pelt the other team.

St. Clair plays beater, and says that it is “a nice way to get out any pent up aggression after a long day of classes. My job is to defend my chasers against the other teams’ beaters or chasers, and to assist the keeper in guarding our hoops by bludging any approaching chasers.” After being hit by a bludger, a player must drop whatever ball they are holding and run back to their own hoop, symbolizing the amount of time it would take to fall of an aerial broom and remount.

While all of this is going on, the seekers have an important mission, to catch the snitch.

“While Rowling’s snitch is a magical, flying, walnut-sized golden ball, a muggle snitch is a cross country runner dressed in a ridiculous amount of golden and yellow clothing with a tennis ball in a sock tucked in the back of his or her shorts.” Says St. Clair. The Snitch is encouraged to taunt, dance and anger the seekers. “It is also good to have some martial arts training, skills in parkour or free running, or maybe some gymnastic skills.” Says Suzuka.

“Snitches are able to do bascially anything to avoid being caught. I saw a snitch flip a seeker with a crazy jiu jitsu move once.” The Snitch can be caught anywhere, however they are encouraged to return to the field every 10 or 15 minutes so that all can witness the highly entertaining spectacle.

People of all athletic and Harry Potter backgrounds are encouraged to play with the team. I am a huge Harry Potter fan, but when I heard that muggles were trying to recreate the game, I was admittedly skeptical. However, after watching the games on Sunday, I was extremely impressed with the amount of strategy and physicality that went into the game.

As St. Clair puts it, “While my inner nerd and my outer athlete brought me to the Butterbeer Broooers, it was the glorious people I met on the team that kept me there.”

April 29, 2010

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The confused American’s guide to the World Cup Kelly Capehart Guest Columnist

P

erplexed by World Cup advertisement banners on Facebook? Bamboozled by your foreign friends’ remarks about Lionel Messi? Befuddled about why ESPN will be screwing around with their usual programming lineup this summer? We at The Miscellany News sports section are here to help.

Here’s a bare-bones, critical informationonly, no-holds-barred primer for the 2010 World Cup. Q: Can you explain, in 150 words or less, how this competition works?

A: In short, 31 teams plus the host nation are divided into eight groups (lettered A through H) for two stages of initial competition: The group stage, in which all four teams play each other once; and then the knockout stage, in which the top two teams (points are assigned for each win, loss or draw) from each group participate. At the knockout stage, the seeded teams basically operate in a familiar NCAA tournamentstyle playoff system, competing in one-off matches until a winner is decided.

Q: Sounds interesting, when is it?

A: The event kicks off on June 11, but the United States doesn’t play its first game until the next day. The Championship match will be exactly one month later on July 11, in Johannesburg.

Q: Really? What happened last time?

A: In 2006, Italy triumphed over France in a tournament hosted by Germany.

Q: This seems like an odd idea in general, how did it start?

A: The first tournament was hosted by Uruguay in 1930, where the host nation emerged victorious. A total of 13 countries participated: seven from South America, four from Europe, and two from North America. Argentina was the runner-up in the debut tournament, while the United States made the semifinals.

Q: So, South Africa. That seems like an interesting choice for host nation.

A: It is, and plenty of folks remain skeptical of whether or not it was a wise call.

The country is not exactly a soccer stronghold, and many doubted whether the infrastructure necessary to host such a massive event—safe roads, modernized stadiums, a ready security system—would be complete in time for competition. Hosting a World Cup isn’t cheap: No one knows for sure what the ultimate bill will be, but most reports are putting expenses in the $3 billion range, although revenue that may be earned is not known at this time. South Africa is also not a nation known for its safety (Newsweek recently reported that 50 people a day are murdered in a country with a population about one-sixth the size of the United States), and ticket sales are reflecting a certain reluctance to put full faith in South Africa.

Q: Really? Ticket sales are down?

A: Way down. While officially 90 percent of the tickets have been sold, a lot of these have been bought up by agencies who are hoping to resell them to fans but have so far been unable to. According to a recent report in The Independent, while American and British fans have purchased about 190,000 tickets, the interest in continental Europe has been dampened, with football-obsessed Germany buying only 32,000 tickets so far.

Only one of the 64 matches has been sold out. The chief of the World Cup Organizing Committee recently said that he is hopeful of seeing 300,000 foreign fans in South Africa, though current sales indicate there may be as few as 200,000 folks flying in.

Q: Who are the teams to beat?

A: Usual suspects Brazil, which has won the World Cup more than any other team and has never failed to appear in a World Cup tournament, is among the most favored. England is also looking good this year, having basically cruised their way to South Africa with nine wins and only one defeat through the qualification stage. If the Spanish team chooses to step up their game, as they did in winning the European Cup in 2008 (they’ve had some shaky moments the last few years, notably in their surprise loss to the United States in the Confederations

Countries with teams competing in the World Cup, highlighted in light gray, will convene in Johannesburg, South Africa on June 11 to begin the monthlong competition. The participating nations will compete in eight groups of four before the top two teams in each group advance to the knockout stage.

Cup in 2009), they also stand a fair chance.

Q: Final verdict: Who’s taking home the championship?

A: While popular opinion places Spain, Brazil and England in the category of Most Likely to Achieve World Cup Glory, Spain looks the best to a lot of knowledgeable parties. With the likes of Fernando Torres, Cesc Fabregas, David Villa, Xavi and Carlos Puyol gracing the lineup, a Spain that comes out firing on all cylinders might truly be an unstoppable force.

Q: Who are some other teams to watch?

A: The Cote d’Ivorie team probably has the best chance of any African team to do well in the competition, and Didier Drogba is always good for some theatrical moments. Argentina has some astounding players, most notably in FIFA World Player of the Year Lionel Messi, though their nutcase (if not legendary nutcase) manager Diego “Hand of God” Maradona could be their undoing (a man who tells journalists at a post-victory press conference that they can “suck it, and keep on sucking it” is probably a man you want to consider keeping on a tight leash). And call me insane, but I feel good about Serbia: They finished first in their qualifying group for the first time ever, emerging ahead of France, and they’ve got Nemanja Vidic and Branislav Ivanovic, who have both been looking tough. If the Serbs triumph, remember that I said this; if they fall apart, pretend this conversation never happened.

Q: So you’ve told me about the teams.

What about the players?

A: I’ve already talked about reigning FIFA

World Player of the Year, Messi, but he’s hardly alone. Portugal’s Christiano Ronaldo won the award in 2008, and finished second last year. Meanwhile Brazil’s Kaká has also gained the attention of the world. Finally, as English fans look for their squad to claim international prominence once more, they will look to countryman Wayne Rooney to possibly lead them to the promised land.

Q: I still don’t get it. What’s the big deal?

A: While most Americans don’t seem to have caught the soccer virus, the rest of the world cares about the World Cup, and deeply. With four years separating each tournament, there is little chance for international redemption for your team between World Cup years. Imagine if March Madness only happened twice a decade. Yeah. It’s like that. And maybe you’ll be interested to hear that the United States has put in a bid for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup; the last time the World Cup was held on American soil, in 1994, record-breaking attendance was reported and has not been exceeded since. So clearly plenty of people in the United States care about soccer—you just don’t know any of them.

Q: Which is the more correct term: “football” or “soccer”?

A: It’s largely a force of habit—if you learned to talk about the game outside of the United States, “football” is infinitely more appropriate. If you’re a red-, whiteand blue-blooded American, it’s really all a matter of how pretentious you’d like to look.

Q: What about the United States?

A: On one hand, the United States enjoys

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

a group with Slovenia (which admittedly defeated Russia in the playoffs but still probably has some growing to do) and Algeria (which I consider to be so worthless that my personal biases won’t even allow me to write about it with any sort of integrity); on the other hand, there is England. Now, it has been done once before: In the 1950 World Cup, the U.S. side defeated England 1-0 in what has since been called the “miracle on grass” during the group stage. However, it is necessary to put an emphasis on the “miracle” part of that description as after that match, the United States failed to qualify for a World Cup for the next 40 years.

Though the squad won’t be announced until May 12, we can expect to see U.S. stars Tim Howard (who has been getting some pretty okay reviews as Everton goalkeeper in England), captain Carlos Bocanegra (currently at Rennes in France) and Landon Donovan (currently at Los Angeles Galaxy), as well as Jozy Altidore (who was the firstever American to score in La Liga while playing in Spain). Charlie Davies (currently at Sochaux in France) is still in recovery from a brutal October car crash, and Oguchi Onyewu (at AC Milan) is also out.

We can be hopeful for an American team advancing past group stage alongside England; beyond that point, the future remains a bit dimmer. Our greatest hope is the wealth of experience some of our boys have gained playing for foreign teams over the past several years; if we can implement what we’ve learned in Europe, we may just stand a fighting chance.

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April 29, 2010

THE YEAR IN SPORTS: A PHOTO RETROSPECTIVE A

season with a 4-2 record, with each of their matches taking place in Poughkeepsie. Among the triumphs was a victory over cross-town rival Marist College.

The baseball team led by Mike Perrone ’13 has four more games left this year at Prentiss Field.

The Brewers will host Hamilton College for a doubleheader on Founder’s Day, and then the Dutchmen of Union College for two more contests the following Saturday. With just two seniors on their roster, the baseball team will look to be better than ever next season.

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

s this year comes to a close, we at The Miscellany News would like to take a look back at some of the images from this year in sports.

Throughout the page, you will find images captured by our photographers at various points in the 2009-2010 academic year portraying Vassar athletes doing what they do best: competing.

Enjoy.

Below, the men’s rugby team competes this spring at the Vassar Farm. The squad won its final four contests of the spring, concluding the spring

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

Brittany Parks ’12 drives for a layup. Parks and teammate Emily Haeuser ’10 were both selected to the first team All-Liberty League for leading the Brewers to their program-high five Liberty League wins. Just above, Phil Tully ’10 jumps for a serve.

Tully led Vassar to its second divisional championship in the past three years and earned his third All-American selection.

Juliana Halpert/The Miscellany News

Juliana Halpert/The Miscellany News

The men’s soccer team finished just one contest out of the playoffs with a 3-3-1 conference record. The group was paced by Brian Bianchetti ’10 who was selected as the Liberty League Player of the Year. Bianchetti scored a team-high 11 goals. The field hockey team was led by Jessica Lance ’11 with four goals, and All-Liberty League honorable mention Catherine Fuller ’10.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE