The Miscellany News August 26, 2021
miscellanynews.org
Vassar College’s student newspaper of record since 1866 Volume 156 | Issue 1
Welcome, Class of 2025! Student tuition strike dissolves due to organizational challenges Lucy Brewster and Annabelle Wang
V
News Editors
CStrike officially ended its Fall 2021 tuition strike three months after first launching its campaign (The Miscellany News, “Students strike, demand action from administration and Board of Trustees,” 05.20.2021). The strike, which called on students to withhold their Fall 2021 tuition payment, intended to pressure Vassar’s administration to meet various demands including a three-year freeze on tuition and room and board fees, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour for student workers, and a joint administrative, faculty and student Senate. While strike leaders pointed to a lack of student involvement during the summer as the reason for the strike’s cancellation, some members of the coalition and student leaders outside of the strike expressed that the campaign was fundamentally flawed from its inception. On Aug. 2, #VCStrike publicly announced the termination of the strike via their Instagram account @vcstrike. According to their statement, the student activists suffered from organizational difficulties. As #VCStrike organizer Melissa Hoffmann ’21 stated, “Organizing during the summer is a significant challenge.” Within the first couple of weeks of summer break, some #VCStrike members became overwhelmed as they tried to balance organizing the strike with other personal and professional obligations. Former #VCStrike member Joe Mangan ’23 explained that he had initially stepped away from the strike for the summer to tend to a job and
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an internship. He also mentioned that three other members of #VCStrike also did not have the capacity to help organize during the summer due to their jobs. In addition to demanding summer obligations, COVID-19 was also an obstacle to engaging with the student body. Mangan detailed: “We couldn’t go from dorm room to dorm room and talk to people about the strike or hold in-person events to talk to people…there’s just a lot of basic organizing tools off the table as a result of being remote organizers.” Some members voiced that miscommunication and disagreements amongst the organization’s members also played a key role in the strike’s demise. According to Mangan, “The strike, from the beginning, was just riddled with internal problems.” A few organizers felt uncomfortable with #VCStrike’s overall social media presence, specifically the conspiratorial rhetoric against the Vassar administration. For instance, a #VCStrike Instagram post from May claimed that student voices were disregarded by the administration in favor of the dictatorship of capital. After noticing both the internal and organizational struggles, Mangan initiated conversations about ending the strike in July and ultimately completely disassociated himself from the organization. Other student leaders on campus who were not associated with the strike expressed similar concerns regarding #VCStrike’s rhetoric. ALANA Center leaders Oona Maloney ’22 and Elliot Porcher ’22 both met with strike organizers via Zoom on May 20 to address these concerns. Ac-
learn from people who had seen or participated in this kind of work pre-COVID.” Maloney concurred, explaining that while she agreed with the policy goals of the strike in theory, she disagreed with the tactics the VC Coalition used. “They were ambitious, but there was no follow through. It seemed all theory and no practice,” she said. During their meeting with VC Strike Coalition leaders, Maloney and Porcher outlined what they viewed as the central flaws of the campaign. “They were asking far too See Strike on page 3
Sandro Luis Lorenzo/The Miscellany News.
A cappella groups persevere despite restrictions Leila Raines and Nina Ajemian
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cording to Porcher, “We told [the organizers] to be professional [and] relax with the social media infographics. To relax on demonizing every action that administrators would do. We told them to be polite and to be professional, online and in-person.” Maloney and Porcher posed additional concerns about the overall structure and preparation of the strike and its demands. “I wanted the strike to work because it could have,” Porcher explained. “We thought that there could be potential as long as they could refine their technique and
Arts Editors
or a college with under 2,500 students, Vassar has a surprisingly large number of a cappella groups—nine, to be exact. These singing groups are an integral part of Vassar culture; with numerous performances and events every year, a cappella has filled student life with music, harmony and a stronger sense of community. However, when the pandemic hit, the resulting restrictions on campus deeply impacted a cappella
groups and their ability to function. Vassar’s vibrant a cappella scene engages a wide variety of genres, from jazz and pop to Broadway hits and Disney classics. Among the nine groups are the Accidentals (also known as the Axies), AirCappella, Beauty and the Beats, Broadway and More (BAM), Home Brewed, Measure 4 Measure, the Night Owls, the Vassar Devils and the Vastards. Aptly named, AirCappella (@ See a cappella on page 3
Courtesy of Angelique Rodriguez '22
Students reflect on difficulties of COVID-19 Mahlia Neely
Guest Reporter
@MiscellanyNews
@MiscellanyNews
I
t’s been one year. One year of sitting in socially-distanced circles on the Residential Quad. One year of scheduling COVID-19 tests in the Aula every other week. One year of professors awkwardly interrupting me to say, “I’m sorry, can you speak up a bit? I can’t hear you,” while gesturing towards their masked faces. As we count down the days to our second pandemic school year, I can’t help but reflect on the last year, while trying to remain hopeful for what’s to come. After an extended spring break turned into a full-on shutdown,
Vassar finally reopened its gates to the majority of students in Aug. 2020. Move-in dates were set as early as two weeks before the start of classes in order to account for a campus-wide quarantine. Armed with a backpack in one hand and Clorox wipes in the other, I trudged onto campus during the international student arrival window. Although I was nervous about COVID-19 numbers on campus, the first few weeks of the semester went surprisingly well: the sun shone, birds sang and friend groups sat and laughed in Noyes Circle, which, after months of isolation and lockdown, was so
refreshing to see. I was extremely grateful to be on campus, especially when so many of my friends from other U.S. colleges were stuck back in my home country, The Bahamas, “listening” to their lectures on Zoom. But as the temperatures got lower, so did my mood. Opportunities to meet with friends became few and far between, and I found myself spending more and more time alone in my dorm room—and I wasn’t the only one. Adjusting to the diminished social scene on campus wasn’t easy for Acadia Case ’24 either, who was navigating her first semester at Vassar. “It was pretty difficult
to make friends even in in-person classes, which [made] it really hard to feel fulfilled socially,” she wrote via email. “It was really hard to be away from home during those times—sometimes you just need your mom (or in my case, moms!). I was definitely ready to go home by the time November rolled around.” I felt the same way—especially when my friends back home were posting videos of themselves sunbathing on the beach after Zoom class, while I was heaving on a winter coat just to walk to the Deece. After three months of the See Reflecting on page 4