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CATALYST
COUP PREVIEW CAMPUS GRAFFITI pg.
NOVEMBER 4, 2015 VOLUME XXXIII ISSUE VIII
A student newspaper of New College of Florida
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CEO MENTOR PROGRAM pg.
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SSDP focusing on harm reduction as COUP approaches
BY GIULIA HEYWARD As one of the largest, and arguably most controversial, events this year draws near, a student-run organization has already planned to make the Center of the Universe Party (COUP) as safe as possible for attendees. The Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) was established in 1998 and has since become an internationally recognized organization. A chapter has existed on campus since 2013 and, since then, SSDP has been an accessible resource for education on substance use
and harm reduction. “[SSDP] is a grassroots network of students who are critical about the state of drug policy in this country,” third-year and SSDP Co-President Mariana Bonilla said. “They’re students who want to have honest conversations about drugs and drug policy,” thesis student and SSDP Co-President Jane Hepler said. COUP, formerly known as Palm Court Party (PCP), has been a source of controversy in the past year. Following the overdose deaths of two college students on campus, Graduation PCP
was cancelled. The upcoming Halloween COUP will be the first time the event has been thrown since February, as well as the first COUP for the first-year class – one of the largest classes this school has seen. In preparation for COUP, SSDP has a range of plans to educate and take care of students. “We are gonna have the roaming harm reduction fairies who will be equipped with water and phone numbers of people you can talk to,” Bonilla said. “And mainly just keeping an eye on whether or not people are
(above)The Manual of Psychedelic Support is a text used by SSDP for information on harm reduction and responsible substance use. Photo courtesy of psychsitter.com
safe or are having a good time.” Bonilla, Hepler, and second-year and SSDP Secretary Hannah Procell and second-year transfer and SSDP Chancellor Andrew Lanser, will be wearing fairy wings at COUP. Additionally, SSDP hosted a
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CAA to adopt rolling deadlines for speaker fund applications BY KAYLIE STOKES The Speaker Allocation Fund has always been an underused resource on campus. So far this year, only a mere 5.5 percent of the fund has been distributed. The Council of Academic Affairs (CAA) hopes to raise awareness of the speaker fund as well as make changes to the application process in order to increase its use to better serve the community. The speaker fund was created in 2011 by redistributing money from the Student Allocations Committee (SAC). Its first year in existence the speaker fund was set at $7,500, the following year it was doubled, to $15,000 – the amount it continues to be today. The allocation of this money is the responsibility of the CAA. The CAA is comprised of 14 voting members and led by the Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA) – currently third-year Kira Rib – who votes only in the case of a tie. While the CAA has
WHAT’S INSIDE
$15,000
$11,531.04 $10,608.99
$10,000
$5,000
$5,653.27
$5,183.69
$850 $0.00
* Kaylie Stokes/Catalyst
This chart shows the total allocations from the Speaker Fund per academic year. *$850 has been allocated from the speaker fund as of Nov. 2, 2015.
many duties, including representing the New College Student Alliance (NCSA) to relevant administrators, sending representatives to faculty meetings and selecting a Student Appointed Professor
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each year, it is most widely known as the funding source for students’ academic projects such as tutorials, independent study projects and theses. The funding for student projects
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comes from the Grant Allocation Fund, but the CAA is also in control of the lesser-known Speaker Allocation Fund, meant to be used to bring academicrelated speakers to campus. Although in its previous four years of existence the fund has never been fully used by the end of the year – leaving the remaining money to be transferred into the NCSA reserve the following year – the decline in use has shown to be a dramatic trend over the past two years. Between fall semester of 2011 and spring of 2014 around 73 percent of the money allocated to the speaker fund was applied for and allocated. However, for the 2014-2015 school year only $5,653 was applied for and allocated — leaving nearly two thirds unused by the end of the year. So far this semester only $850 has been distributed from the speaker fund. At the same point in the year in 2013, the majority of the year’s allocations, $11,250, had already
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FOUR WINDS HAUNTED HOUSE
CATALYST
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2015 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst
BRIEFS PAGE 2
briefs by Bianca Benedi
Interfaith Council returns The first New College Interfaith Council meeting in five years was held Nov. 3 with an open invitation. The council has been brought back amidst increasing tension in the student body, primarily in response to discussion about Israel and Palestine. Dean of Students Tracy Murry announced in an email that the purpose of the council will be to create a safe space for students
to discuss how to benefit the school and local Sarasota area. Representatives from clubs and groups on campus that address underrepresented voices and populations will be invited to serve as voting members of the council, although meetings will remain open to the student body. The Interfaith Council meeting
was unofficially disbanded in 2010 when meetings were no longer held. A student-led petition to protest a speaker who worked with the AmericanIsrael Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) circulated in the last month. Last semester, students protested against another AIPAC speaker event on campus.
South Carolina cop fired after violence against student Officer Ben Fields from Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina was fired, a school official announced on Nov. 4, following several viral videos that showed him pulling a female student, still in her desk, onto the floor and then throwing her to the floor again. The incident reached national headlines as people declared the incident a violent
escalation of a high school disciplinary issue. An attorney representing the student alleged that her arm was broken in the incident. Following the announcement of Fields’ removal, more than 100 students at the high school staged a walk-out in protest of his removal and in support of the officer. Many of them claimed that although they did not consider his use
of force justified, they considered his firing unjust. Since the altercation went public, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice have opened up investigations into the case to look into whether federal laws were violated. Information for this article was taken from www.msnbc.com
China begins phasing out one-child policy China’s controversial one-child policy is coming to an end in March of 2016, officials from the top family planning body announced on Oct. 29. The policy was enacted in 1979 to stem the major growth of the population, which had reached 979 million people by the time the one-child policy was put in place. Today, China’s population exceeds 1.3 billion people, but a majority of the
population is elderly or middle aged. The government hopes that the removal of the policy will help economic growth by allowing people to have enough children to replace the retiring working population. The policy has received sharp criticism since its enactment, from suggestions that it contributes to female infanticide and punishments which could range in severity from a fine to
a forced abortion. Some exceptions in the policy have been allowed - parents who have no siblings between them could have more than one child, as well as ethnic minorities and those in rural populations, if their firstborn is a girl. Information for this article taken from www.bbc.com.
Mysterious graffiti appears on campus BY SYDNEY KRULJAC AND GIULIA HEYWARD On Oct. 25, third-year Logan Schulman posted on the Forum about mysterious graffiti that appeared on the overpass. The graffiti, which could be seen heading north on 41, was placed under the New College insignia. The incident was seen as both comedic and concerning for students. “The police opened up a police
report and an investigation but, as far as I know, we haven’t received any information on who might have been responsible,” Dean of Student Affairs Tracy Murry. After administration and Physical Plant were contacted by Co-President Paige Pellaton, the graffiti disappeared two days later. However, shortly following this, there was another instance of vandalism. This time, “Naw College” appeared on the overpass, clearly visible to students walking to the academic side of campus, but not
“This may be my only chance to type ‘antelope news’ into the search bar.” © 2015, the Catalyst. All rights reserved. The Catalyst is available online at www.ncfcatalyst.com, facebook.com/NCFcatalyst, @ncfcatalyst The Catalyst is an academic tutorial sponsored by Professor Maria Vesperi. It is developed in the New College Publications Lab using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign and printed at Sun Coast Press with funds provided by the New College Student Alliance.
visible to any cars driving by. These are two of several instances of vandalism that have occurred in the last semester. Previously, damage was done to the Pei Courts resulting in a $3 fine for each residents. As of right now, “Naw College” still remains.
Sarasota looks into Utah homeless program In 2006, the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) ranked Sarasota the number one meanest city in the United States for the homeless population. According to officials from the NCH, Sarasota’s primary crime was in banning anyone from sleeping in public or private spaces without permission, which leaves most of the homeless population with no legal place to be at night. A 2014 policy of giving the homeless a one-way ticket to their hometown was also harshly criticized for merely relocating the homeless instead of addressing the issues that lead to homelessness. It seems the city has finally caught on: Sarasota officials, along with officials from a number of other Florida cities, have traveled to Utah to look into its nationally successful Housing First program. The program grants housing to homeless citizens without requiring that they pay for services and without demanding that they participate in social programs. Since the start of the program more than a decade ago, Utah’s chronic homeless population has been reduced by 93 percent. Only 15 percent of those who are housed return to the streets. “Don’t take on the issue of solving poverty,” said Lloyd Pendleton, former director of the Utah Homeless Task Force. “You’ve got homeless people, and they need to be housed. Focus on that.” Information for this article was taken from www.heraldtribune.com and www.usatoday.com
(right) This graffiti is visible from the overpass but not from Tamiami Trail.
General Editor Managing Editor Copy Editor Online Editor Layout Editors Staff Writers & Photographers
Kaylie Stokes Pariesa Young Yadira Lopez Caitlyn Ralph Haley Jordan & Audrey Warne Bianca Benedí, Katelyn Grimmett, Giulia Heyward, Sydney Kruljac, Jasmine Respess, Ryan Paice, Dylan Pryor, Angela Duda
Direct submissions, letters, announcements and inquiries to: The Catalyst 5800 Bay Shore Road Sarasota, Florida 34243 ncfcatalyst@gmail.com The Catalyst reserves the right to edit all submissions for grammar, space and style. No anonymous submissions will be accepted. Submissions must be received by 12:00 p.m. Friday for consideration in the next issue.
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ON CAMPUS
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Something wicked this COUP comes BY SYDNEY KRULJAC Excitement is high as students anxiously await the first Center of the Universe Party (COUP) of the school year. With a team of thesis students behind the scenes of “Something Wicked This Way Comes” COUP, students can expect nothing short of fun with new designated party areas and witchy themes. The campus-wide party normally falls on or near Halloween, but the upcoming COUP was pushed back a week to Nov. 7. The change received backlash from some students. Many assumed that the rescheduling came about because of a scheduling conflict with thesis student McCalister Grant’s thesis performance. Grant’s play took place in the Black Box Theater (BBT) from Oct. 29-31, which would have rendered the BBT unusable for the party. According to thesis student and COUP co-sponsor Garret Murto, the scheduling conflict was not the reason behind COUP’s rescheduling. “That was a nice addition to changing the date but that wasn’t the original purpose,” Murto said. “The original purpose was that there was a group who wanted to hold a Samhain service on Halloween night. Housing wasn’t going to allow any events the entire day of COUP. So we changed the date for that, so it didn’t infringe on a religious holiday.” Two of the sponsors, Logan Starnes and Bianca Benedi, have been pushing for the witchy theme since
they first arrived at New College. Until their thesis year, “Something Wicked” was merely an idea that was never able to come to fruition. “The inspiration was definitely Harry Potter,” Murto said. Wickedness will come to life in the designated areas of the party. The BBT will be decorated as Charlotte’s Labyrinth; Palm Court as a tri-wizard tournament maze; the Old Mail Room as a swamp witch theme; the basketball court as the Department of Mysteries. Traditionally, the Nook has been used as a designated party space during COUP. This year, however, the sponsors wanted to try something different and experiment with the basketball court as a party space. “It was really important to some of the sponsors to try to experiment with not having music play as close to the dorms as it usually is because it does go really late into the night,” Murto said. “It’s typically kind of like an unwritten rule that you don’t necessarily noise complaint COUP, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it still annoys a lot of people. So we’re kind of experimenting with different spaces.” The sponsors have been working diligently in budgeting their allotted amount of $2,000 in preparation for the party. “We’re putting roughly $350 toward bands, $500 towards food,” Murto said. “Our original budget we allocated for ourselves was around $1,800, so for the rest of it we only have
Sydney Kruljac/Catalyst
COUP sponsors Logan Starnes and Shelly Lehman work on Harry Potter themed banners in preparation for Saturday’s COUP.
budgeted about $800 or $900 for the crafts and stuff like that, but we have some extra money to work with.” Murto said that the DJ’s and bands would all bring something different to the table, creating an eclectic spread of genres throughout the night. “There are several people who are like ‘yeah it’s going to be like trap,’ and there are several people who will be playing electro-swing. It’s a pretty good variety,” Murto said. “There is one act that is described as erotic entomology.” However, most of the musical variety will be heard in the Old Mailroom when several bands ranging from punk sets, acoustic sets and psychedelic sets take the stage on the night of COUP. “I did get Sonic Graffiti which is more punk,” Murto said. “I got this band out of South Florida called My Sweet Symphony which is a bit harsher of a sound, and I also have a band
that’s called Veiny Hands which is more ethereal, psychedelic kind of feel. And then Bradley Baker as Obvious Objects is going to have a 30-minute set.” For those who are not interested in partaking in the antics of COUP, there will be activities in Hamilton “Ham” Center as well as in the “wall-ternatives” room. could not be approved. The RHDs established a procedure in which the RAs would still have to fill out a program proposal and have each event approved by an RHD before accessing funding from the discretionary. Discussion regarding the new funding process began this past summer when RHD Alex Pearson went to the SAC chair at the time, Alex Galarce, to bring up the idea for a separate RA fund. Galarce, NCSA President Paige Pellaton and RA representative at the time Colt
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Relay for Life fundraising event comes to campus in February BY ANGELA DUDA Occurring in more than 20 countries around the world with more than four million participants, Relay for Life is an organized fundraising walk that honors the victims and celebrates the survivors of cancer. While students at New College have participated in Relay for Life in the past, a relay will occur on campus for the first time on Feb. 27. Coordinators have already started fundraising for the event. The fundraiser has set a goal of $15,000. All money raised will go to the American Cancer Society. The Ringling College of Art & Design and University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee will also be participating in this fundraising event. In the relay, teams camp out beside a track with at least one member of each team walking or running around the track at any given time. Relayers are provided food as well as opportunities for other games and activities during the event, which can last a traditional six hours up to a maximum of 24 hours. The goal is not only to spread awareness and raise money, but to enjoy doing it. Currently, there is an all-out penny war among the three participating
schools as a buildup to the Relay for Life. Three buckets are lined up in the Hamilton “Ham” Center, one for each college. Students, faculty and staff are encouraged to fill up the bucket of whatever school they support with pennies. One penny equals one point. Whichever bucket has the most pennies will be deemed the winner. “You can also reduce the other campuses points by adding higher value change,” Campus Life Coordinator Vanessa Van Dyke, who is coordinating the Relay for Life, explained in an email. “Put a nickel in the Ringling or USF-SM bucket and their score goes down by 5 points. A dime is -10 points, a quarter is -25 points, a dollar is -100 points, and so on...” Van Dyke has plenty of experience with Relays in the past, one of which inspires her current participation. The luminary ceremony, which takes place during every Relay, is a time for people to honor survivors and victims to cancer. Paper bags are placed around the track in remembrance of someone. “My friend came across her bag and started getting emotional. I was able to be there to comfort her and that was really special for me.” Nathan Burrage, assistant to the
photo courtesy of Relay for Life Facebook
Three buckets lined up for penny wars in anticipation for the upcoming Relay for Life.
campus life coordinators, participated in Relay for Life in college. Burrage helped bring the relay to campus. “Relay is an opportunity to marvel at how small one individual really is in the world and to realize how much of a difference that one individual can make,” Burrage said. “It is amazing to me to think that even the smallest donations can help the cause. Relay is always fun, it is a very exciting and humbling experience and has made a real impression on me as an individual.” First-year Erika Thompson, who participated in Relay for Life every year in high school, will be participating for the first time as a New College student.
She hopes to help start a campus tradition. “Relay for Life became really personal for me when one of my good friends last year was diagnosed with cancer,” Thompson said. “He had to drop out of school and missed more than half of our senior year. His treatments were really expensive, but it was because of organizations like the American Cancer Society that he’s now cancer free!” Students interested in joining Relay for Life are encouraged to stop by HCL during office hours (9:00 a.m.5:00 p.m.) and talk to Burrage. “We are really trying to encourage individuals to get involved and are always open for questions,” he said.
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CEO creates one-on-one mentorship program BY JASMINE RESPESS The New College Center for Engagement and Opportunity (CEO) has recently created a one-on-one mentoring program that facilitates interaction between current students and recent alumni. The program is called the NovoNetwork. The goal of the program is to allow alumni to get involved with New College, as well as create more opportunities for current NCF students to get advice from former students when planning for the future. Last year, as part of the performance improvement plan, one of the criteria was to start a mentorship program. The program was launched at the end of fall break this year. Erik Wilkinson, who was hired as the coordinator for programming and career exploration, spearheaded the program. In the first week, nine students requested mentors. Wilkinson reported there were 25 mentors in the system and about 30 other alumni who have submitted applications to the NovoNetwork. The alumni involved in the
program come from all around the country, as well as the world. They all graduated from New College. There are multiple age groups, careers and interests represented. “There is a fair amount [of mentors from different disciplines],” Wilkinson said. “Regardless of a student’s AOC, there should be someone that they are interested in, but more than AOC, it is the careers mentors have.” Wilkinson explained that mentors include lawyers, researchers, professors and business people. “The biggest requirement is that the mentor and the student put in the time and talk regularly,” Wilkinson said. “There is a lot of flexibility in how that can be done.” The minimum is that for one semester, the mentor and mentee meet on a regular basis. If a mentor is not in the Sarasota area, then Skype, phone and email discussions would be expected. “If both parties feel like it is a good relationship they want to continue with, that is awesome,” Wilkinson said. “We can continue moving forward, but
if at the end of the semester they want to say they have gone as far as we can, they can end the formal mentorship.” A student can also request that they be given another mentor, if they so wish. “If you want a mentor and you do not see somebody you can work with, you can request one and the CEO will help you,” Wilkinson said. Mentors can help current students with internships, employment and post-graduation. The program is meant to cater to students’ needs, as well as open the community up to alumni. Wilkinson said that the alumni are very excited to share their knowledge and experience with current New College students. “We have had some first-years request mentors, we have had fourthyears request mentors, it is anybody that feels like they could use a little bit of extra guidance, whether it is picking out an area of concentration or figuring out what to do after graduation,” Wilkinson said. “The purpose of the mentorship is to help students out wherever they are at on their journey.”
Concerns rise over ISPs as January approaches BY RYAN PAICE With less than a month left in the first semester of the school year, students are beginning to prepare for their Independent Study Projects (ISP). Almost 240 students gathered in Sudakoff Center on Oct. 27 for the ISP Workshop, looking for guidance and ideas as to what to do for their first experience with the month-long project. Robert Zamsky, dean of studies, led the workshop and stressed the importance of choosing an ISP of interst to each student. Zamsky’s words were echoed in the advice given by upper-year students about ISP. “If you’re stuck on what project to do, ask upper years, look into the group ISPs, talk to professors, do lots of research, and make sure you do something you actually want to do!” second-year Zoe Ramone said. “I enjoyed my individual ISPs more than my group ISP,” alum James Cloos said. “Work with a professor you like on a project that personally interests you.” With ISP being three and a half weeks of largely independent study – except for students involved in group ISPs – it can be challenging to stay motivated. Without constant guidance and external motivation throughout the month, a personal motivation for the ISP idea is essential to keep on track. The Independent Study Project demands motivated and responsible approaches to working on the project. The ISP is a unique-to-NCF academic requirement, that is meant
to prepare students for their thesis. While not all ISP and thesis experiences are alike, there are students who do not think that the beneficial effects of working on one’s ISPs are entirely translatable to dealing with the thesis. “I can’t speak for all people, but my ISPs didn’t really contribute much to really preparing myself for my thesis,” Cloos added. “I’m not saying ISP doesn’t prepare you, just that they are two entirely different animals. “The scope of the two are just so different […] many professors are also lenient with the time frame people have for ISP; some people are still turning in ISPs in March or April. You don’t really have that kind of leniency with your thesis.” Regardless of the results, the ISP is an academic requirement, and the first big date – Dec. 1, when ISP description forms are due in the Registrar’s Office – is less than a month away. If one would not want to be stuck with working a month on something they do not enjoy or are interested in, they might want to start working on an idea. Allowance for time gives one to revise, and revision – through constructive dialogue with one’s ISP sponsor – is one of the best ways to end up with an interesting project that is well-directed for success. For those students who would like to work in a group work environment, there are several available group ISPs which have a limited amounts of spaces. Ranging from Chess ISP to different archiving projects, there are a vast array of group ISPs available to
join and be a part of. With the increased guidance as a part of being a part of a group with instruction, group ISPs are great opportunities to accomplish the month-long task that can be found – along with their descriptions – on the 2015 ISP Handbook online. “I think group ISP’s are good,” second-year Zach Ary said. “It gives people who really have no idea what they want to do something to do, and it can be a good bonding experience.” The project may be intensive, but the possibilities for ISPs are endless and allows for students to gain experience independently studying what they want to study. One of the school’s main academic goals is to allow students the freedom to academically pursue much of what they would like to, and the ISP is a large part of that. Whereas group ISPs are excellent opportunities to accomplish the project, the personalization of an individually-created ISP idea is a freedom most will explore. Almost any idea is viable, as long as it has a basis in the academic world. “Last year, I collaborated with my friend Allie to make a guidebook to the constellations,” Ramone said. “For each constellation, she wrote about its myth and I drew a picture of it. Then, we each had to write a ten page paper relating to the topic. I did mine about the life cycles of stars.” “Last year I designed an experiment looking at how people
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NEWS PAGE 4
NCSA Updates BY CAITLYN RALPH As October came to a close, the New College Student Alliance (NCSA) announced their monthly updates to the student body. Each member attends weekly Cabinet Meetings on Thursday at 6:00 p.m. in HCL8 and holds weekly office hours in the NCSA Office across from the pool table in Hamilton “Ham” Center. Vice President of Relations and Financial Affairs (VPRFA) and thesis student Dannie Benedi attended many meetings, including with the New College Alumnae/i Association (NCAA) and New College Financial Affairs (NCFA) about alumni participation in events, with Associate Professor of Political Science Keith Fitzgerald about Florida Student Association (FSA) lobbying, the University of South Florida Sarasota Manatee (USF-SM) Student Government Executive Board Meeting to discuss funding for Late Night Library hours; the Counseling and Wellness Center (CWC); the FSA Board of Directors Meeting at Florida Gulf Coast University to discuss Polithon; and the Board of Trustees meeting. Benedi also made a presentation at the NCAA Board Meeting about NCSA updates and attended committees on Alumni Professorship, NCSA scholarships and website redesign. Vice president of green affairs (VPGA), second-year Adilyne McKinlay, attended the Master Plan Open House, worked on the Compost Bike situation with Dawn, and met to discuss a possible Food Pantry on campus. Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA) and thesis student Kira Rib held a Council of Academic Affairs (CAA) meeting to discuss upcoming events, subcommittee leadership and representative updates. Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion (VPDI) and thesis student Raina Senae also held a council meeting, facilitated correspondence with Tracy Murry about the InterFaith Council, presented and got approval at the Towne Meeting about the accessibility representative position, shadowed Safe Space training, and held an Invisible Disabilities event. Student Court Chief Justice and thesis student Blaise DeFranco is working on NCSA space management legislation, decision documents of past cases for more precedence, and sanctions in bylaws. Student Court also presented the draft of the Judicial Appointment Committee legislation at the Towne Meeting. Student Allocations Committee (SAC) Chairperson and secondyear Racha Masara worked with her representatives to allocate $2,000 for Center of the University Party (COUP) and create a Resident Adviser (RA) discretionary of $2,500. The SAC’s goal is to continue updating its bylaws.
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NEWS PAGE 5
Shooting of Corey Jones spurs discussion on police brutality BY AUDREY WARNE Corey Jones, 31, was shot and killed by a plain-clothes police officer in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida while pulled over on the side of Interstate 95 on Sunday, Oct. 18. Jones was returning home to Boynton Beach when his car broke down and he was forced to pull over. After calling a friend who came by to assist but was unable to fix the vehicle, Jones called a towing company and proceeded to wait by the side of the road. It was while he was waiting for his car to be towed, exhausted at 2:30 in the morning after a long evening of playing the drums at a gospel music jam he hosted at a local church, that officer Nouman Raja of the Palm Beach Gardens police force approached Jones under the assumption that the car was abandoned. Raja had been staking out a nearby hotel parking lot, where a slew of car robberies had occurred, when he left his post without the permission of his supervisor. Raja was in jeans and a t-shirt, with no discernable proof of his position as a law enforcement officer, and driving an unmarked white van with heavily tinted windows. Raja did not have a body camera nor was his vehicle equipped with any form of recording device – as is the case with all Palm Beach Gardens law enforcement
photo courtesy of wikipedia
Corey Jones was shot and killed by a plain-clothes Palm Beach Gardens police officer on Sunday, Oct. 18.
vehicles. Raja proceeded to fire half a dozen rounds at Jones, hitting him three times and killing him almost instantly with a bullet to his aorta. Jones’ body was found 80 to 100 feet away from his vehicle, evidence that he attempted to run away from Raja. Jones was in possession of a firearm he had procured just three days prior, as well as a concealed carry permit, but the gun was not near Jones when he was shot and no bullets had been fired from the weapon. Nouman Raja is currently on paid
administrative leave from the Palm Beach Gardens police force and Palm Beach State College, where he taught courses on law enforcement. During Raja’s previous time on the Atlantis police force he was cited multiple times for failing to send in required paperwork and evidence. In one case, Raja was given a “written reprimand” for failing to turn in narcotics he seized from a patient at JFK Medical Center in Atlantis. During his time working at JFK, Raja was involved in 14 “use-offorce” incidents in less than two years – almost all of which involved mentally
ill patients. Jones’ family has hired lawyer Benjamin Crump, a Tallahassee-based lawyer known for his involvement in the cases of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice – all victims of racial profiling. The FBI will be joining the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office in its investigation of Jones’ death per the request of Sherriff Rick Bradshaw. Crump released a statement stating that Raja never showed his badge or proved his identity as a member of law enforcement. Jones’ death is only the most recent in the string of unwarranted killings by police officers, specifically the unwarranted killing of AfricanAmerican men and women. Getting correct figures for the number of African-Americans who have died at the hands of police officers is extremely difficult, if impossible, due to a lack of proper record-keeping and many departments’ attempts at skewing their figures. This pattern has been brought to the public’s attention time and time again, with each incident gaining more traction since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014. The advent of political movements such as Black Lives Matter has been hugely influential in drawing
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Indonesia faces a national crisis from raging wildfires BY KATELYN GRIMMETT Indonesian forest fires, the haze of which has been drifting into Malaysia since September, have released more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire U.S. economy on at least 38 days in the last 2 months. Where many provinces in Indonesia have declared a state of emergency, including Jambi and West, South and Central Kalimantan, others hold their breath in the haze for the president to call a state of National Emergency. As the death count rises and more than 140,000 of Indonesia’s population suffers from respiratory illness, the country turns to the world for aid. Last Monday, the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, cut short a visit with the Obama administration to return to his nation and supervise long-running attempts by service workers and humanitarians to put out the wildfires that rage across the country. The reason for the visit was to discuss climate change, an issue which Indonesia is late to but now keen to focus on. Land use accounts for about one quarter of the world’s total greenhouse gas footprint. According to the World Research Institute, however, it accounts for 61 percent of Indonesia’s total emissions. This is mainly because Indonesia produces half of the world’s palm oil, a common form of vegetable oil used in countless processed products
Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons
Indonesia’s firefighting effort attempts to control the fire in Banjarbaru.
and cosmetics. As of 2014, Indonesia has 8 million hectares reserved for palm oil plantations. “In a forest, most of the carbon is found in parts of the trees and in the soil,” Professor of Biology Brad Oberle said. “Tropical forests store tremendous amounts of carbon but that carbon is dynamic in the sense that there is always carbon coming into forests and there is always carbon leaving. It is exchanged quickly with the atmosphere as trees absorb carbon as they grow and lose carbon as they respire. When a forest
burns, all the carbon stored is released back into the atmosphere. Once in the atmosphere, it traps heat on the planet causing it to get warmer.” The wildfires plaguing Indonesia have been called the worst geographic disaster of the 21st century and a “crime against humanity.” But humanity is only one of the victims here; an unimaginable amount of wildlife is being destroyed in the now more than 4.2 million acres of burning forest. Some of the world’s rarest animals live here: from the endangered orangutan to Sumatran
tigers and elephants to rhinoceros to an incredible variety of birds and insects. They, too, are suffering from the “crime against humanity.” One factor that is helping the wildfires tighten their grip is that much of forests grow on peatland. Peat is a soil-like ground layer which is mostly decomposed matter high in carbon dioxide and methane. The fires in Indonesia have seeped under the slow burning peat and are constantly releasing the pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In early August of this year, Indonesia was absent at an Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (ASEAN) meeting to discuss the haze issue for many Asian countries. With 100,000 fires still burning, Indonesia’s fire season this year has turned into the worst recorded since the last powerful El Niño year. Where strong El Niño years result in high rainfall in North American, it causes droughts across Southeast Asia. These droughts are intense and can deprive an entire forest of its water supply. Drought and wind set up an area highly hazardous for the practice of slash and burn agriculture common with palm oil companies and small-scale farmers in Indonesia. These conditions have been blamed as the fire’s spark. But in reality, much
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1st Annual CWC Pumpkin Patch Party a
a
BY ANGELA DUDA Caramel-covered apples and candy dishes greeted students upon entrance to the first annual Pumpkin Patch Party, an event hosted by the Counseling and Wellness Center (CWC). Students walked down a winding path, passing two tables of children from the campus daycare center – tables covered in animal crackers and juice boxes – and arriving at a box piled high with lopsided, bright-orange pumpkins. Students were also offered a handspun stick of cotton candy and a warm bag of freshly popped popcorn. After carefully selecting the perfect pumpkin, a student could decorate it with various art supplies: sharpies of every color and paints of every shade. While some went for a spooky creation, others opted for goofy eyes, colorful rainbows, unicorns and cheerful grins. “I liked having the opportunity to get a pumpkin this year to carve. It makes Halloween here more fun, since I still get to do what I did back home,” first-year Cassandra Detrio-Darby said.
all photos Kaylie Stokes/Catalyst
(left page clockwise) Students gathered outside the CWC to paint and carve pumpkins. Caramel apples were free for the taking. First-year students decorating their pumpkins. The CWC bought hundreds of small pumpkins for the event. (right page clockwise) CWC staff created their very own pumpkin patch. Staff members made the caramel apples, cotton candy and popcorn. The outdoor space was decorated with haybales, scarecrows, signs and a tractor from Physical Plant.
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Writing the Self seminar meets with author of ‘Darkroom’ Lila Quintero BY KATELYN GRIMMETT The Writing the Self seminar hosted a conversation with the author and the translator of “Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White” on Friday, Oct. 23. Lila Quintero Weaver, the author and illustrator of the graphic novel styled memoir, and the book’s Spanish translator Karina Vazquez were introduced by students in the seminar to speak about the book and its weight as a work of literature with roots in the civil rights movement. Afterwards, as students and guests helped themselves to refreshments, the floor was open for a Q&A session. The memoir begins with Weaver and her family’s immigration to the United States from Argentina when she was five years old. In an interview, she described her and her family’s assimilation into their hometown in Alabama and how the book captures this part of her life. “I speak about our integration into society in the South coming as Latin Americans and the cultural resistance, especially from my parents, as my siblings and I desperately wanted to Americanize or what we felt was becoming Americanized. That’s one
aspect of it,” Weaver said. Another subject of the memoir is how her identity as an immigrant growing up in the South played a role in her interaction with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. “It’s an extreme privilege when you’ve been able to see more of the world and know that more exists than this very small fish bowl,” Weaver said. “I feel that coming as a child who had never seen some of the things that we witnessed in Alabama, I can think about how a fresh pair of eyes can see something that people have grown accustomed to. So, coming as a kid is a way of bringing a form of innocence that is hard for an adult to experience.” Vazquez is a professor of Spanish language and Latin American literature at the University of Alabama. She’s collaborating with Weaver to produce a version of the book in Spanish that is as true to the original as possible. Only text and dialogue is changed in the Spanish version, even images of newspaper clippings and textbooks are kept in English. “I am Argentinian too and there are different parts of the book that I relate to,” Vazquez said. “When I met Lila I told her I would love to use this
book in the classroom but I want all my materials in Spanish so I asked when the Spanish version will be available. She said one day it will come up but I started to use it in English anyway and this summer I worked with the photographic intertextual in narrative. I thought this would be a perfect project.” Weaver’s book covers one historical event in particular about a mob that led to the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson, an African-American man who later died from his wounds. This pivotal event happened just a block away from her house. “The person that shot him was a state trooper and he was exonerated,” she said. “This is the event that led to the march from Selma to Montgomery. Even though I grew up in that town I never knew the connection, it was never taught in school and no one ever pointed it out.” Weaver grew up in the precise region where a lot of events in the Civil Rights Movement took place. “I was in the eighth grade when schools were completely desegregated and that’s when my biggest challenge came along where I took a stand while a lot of my white classmates were maintaining
themselves apart and had very racist attitudes,” she said. “That was a dividing line for me to be able to say that I’m not going to live that way and I’m going to make friends across the racial barrier.” Weaver also explained how she came up with the idea of writing a memoir recording her experiences in the form of a graphic novel. “I was in a program at the University of Alabama and I had to do a project and it was whatever I decided to focus on,” she said. “I first thought about doing something on immigration and I realized there was an encyclopedic scope to that so I started to narrow and narrow the focus down to my family’s experience. Then it occurred to me that I could do an illustrated work.” Weaver’s mother was a talented artist and she passed on her artistic ability to Weaver at a young age. Her father was a teacher at a local school but his other passion was photography. His collection of family photos and videos grew enormous over the years. “I was surrounded by not only photographs but also the process of photo making because it was always present in the house,” Weaver said. “My
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SKT1 wins the League of Legends World Championships 3-1 BY ANGELA DUDA With a nearly undefeated run, SK Telecom T1 (SKT) defeated KOO Tigers (KOO) 3-1, winning the League of Legends World Championships for the second time in three years. SKT1 dominated their fellow South Korean team with three wins out of the best-offive series, with all four games played reaching late game (an average of 38 minutes) and most of them with one team maintaining a consistent gold advantage. Game one: The game began with standard bans: Tahm Kench, Kalista and Mordekaiser for SKT; Renekton, Elise and Gangplank for KOO. Just five minutes in, however, KOO made things interesting by using their two teleports on Smeb (Riven) and Kuro (Lulu) to their advantage, gathering in top lane and earning a first blood against SKT’s Wolf (Shen) with a kill on KOO’s Hojin (Lee Sin). Shortly thereafter, SKT retaliated by moving up to top lane and diving PraY (Jinx) under turret. Though SKT’s Faker (Kassadin) earned the kill, living up to his hype, PraY managed to keep him under turret long enough for both players to kill each other. At the time of the two kills, KOO held a slight gold advantage of about .3k. Nine minutes into the match, an explosive team fight on bot led to SKT
picking up three kills and a 1k gold advantage that continued to grow as the game went on. KOO took the first dragon at 23 minutes but lost the next teamfight. SKT then took a Baron and pushed to KOO’s inhibitor. When the Baron next spawned, SKT forced a teamfight, earned two more kills and took out the enemy Nexus. The match ended 20-5 in SKT’s favor. Game two: All six bans remained the same: SKT banned Tahm Kench and Kalista once more, with an additional ban on Renekton (which KOO banned in the first game); KOO banned Elise and Gangplank again, with an additional ban on Mordekaiser (which SKT banned in the first game). This game, however, began with a much more aggressive SKT. Wolf (Alistar) initiated an early invade into KOO’s jungle, disrupting their clears on blue buff and the wolves. MaRin (Rumble) and Bengi (Jarvin IV) followed up with a dive under turret to kill the fleeing KOO members, which ultimately ended in both of them dying and KOO picking up two additional kills afterwards in bot lane. Bengi and Bang (Tristana) attempted another turret dive against Smeb (Fiora), this time successful. At 16:30, Smeb teleported to bot tower to assist PraY (Kennen) and initiate a teamfight while KOO lacked Alistar’s ultimate. This misplay resulted in a free kill for SKT. Three minutes
later, SKT took the first dragon of the game. While KOO managed to take an outer turret, SKT used the dragon to their advantage, destroying two turrets and taking two kills. KOO chose to engage the Baron 32 minutes into the game, but backed off when MaRin teleported in, then reengaged a team fight in the Baron pit two minutes later. SKT dominated the fight, took the Baron and then another dragon. Though both teams took down the same amount of towers at this point, SKT was clearly ahead in objectives with three dragons and one Baron, as opposed to KOO’s zero dragons or Barons. This advantage won SKT the game. Game three: Five minutes into the match, a team fight that began near the mid lane and led to the dragon pit ended in KOO’s favor, with four kills on Hojin (Lee Sin) and one kill on PraY (Ashe). Like most matches, KOO excelled in the early game. Hojin roamed up to mid lane to gank Faker (Lulu), earning himself a fifth kill. His next gank in mid gave Kuro (Kassadin) his first kill of the game. Though PraY missed his first two Ashe ultimates, his third came out of nowhere and resulted in a successful pick against Wolf (Alistar), giving Kuro his second kill. His next arrow stunned Bengi (Rek’sai) and earned him a kill of his own.
Despite their eight-kill advantage against SKT 17 minutes in, KOO only had a 3.5k gold advantage due to SKT’s waveclear team composition. And unlike previous matches between the two teams, the focus was not on the two top laners; instead, this was a game about Hojin carrying his team to victory while getting his team members fed. Their aggressive strategy paid off in the end, with a gold advantage of 9k and more than twice as many kills. This match destroyed SKT’s undefeated streak. Game four: Neither Tahm Kench nor Elise were banned this match. A surprising ban on Fiora and Rumble led to Smeb playing Lulu and MaRin on Gnar, with a jungle matchup of Tahm Kench for KOO and Elise for SKT. Faker (Ryze) responded to an early gank by Bengi (Elise) by taking him for first blood. SKT continued their early lead by taking an early dragon at 11 minutes and two more kills on Faker and Bengi (Sivir) three minutes later. This objective control and slower start allowed for SKT to deny KOO the early game advantage they achieved in the game prior to this one. SKT managed to take Baron 28 minutes in and four dragons by 30 minutes. Furthermore, their gold advantage of 13k and their denial of free kills for KOO ensured them the victory.
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Architectural Salvage adds character to downtown BY HALEY JORDAN “This is what I love, music, art and junk – and in that order,” said Greg Pemberton, owner of Circus City Architectural Salvage. Circus City sells everything from antique art supplies and records to costumes, metal sculptures and novelty furniture. “I’ve always wanted this building... I had to have it, I used to pray for it, and then when I got it a few years ago I started Circus City,” he said. Pemberton was raised with historic preservation work, opening his first shop in Athens, Georgia in 1991. “I travel all over the country to get stuff and I have the best prices of anybody, because I know the business like the back of my hand. I know how to price, I know what will sell and I know what’s cool. I try to keep up with trends to keep in business but I also like other stuff that’s just cool, oddities and things like that,” he said. Circus City is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is located at 1001 Central Avenue. “We like to keep it fun and I love music,” Pemberton said. He had a stage built to host local bands and charities, always free of charge. “We do free beer every Saturday, it’s like a party in here. We’re not about being greedy, I like helping the community and just being cool, we need more cool people in the world. We have enough of the other kind.”
Circus City Architectural Salvage is located at 1001 Central Avenue.
Haley Jordan/Catalyst
Limited by its own ambition, ‘Steve Jobs’ favors difference over quality SUBMITTED BY DAVID CANFIELD “Steve Jobs” fails to follow through on an implicit bargain. The biopic is constructed with idiosyncratic rigidity, but its unusual three-act structure – which goes from product launch to product launch to product launch, spanning 14 years – eventually turns redundant. The film can’t help but slide into the overstuffed, underwhelming territory that it promises to avoid. Though directed by Oscar-winner Danny Boyle, “Steve Jobs” is pure Aaron Sorkin. In the hands of the “Social Network” scribe, the film’s exterior of thunderous excitement only frames a taut behind-the-scenes narrative. Each of the three acts has Jobs (Michael Fassbender) in a panic, on the verge of unveiling his newest product – first, the Macintosh, then, the educational software NEXT, and finally, the iMac. There are technological issues which force Jobs to bump heads with his engineer, Andy (Michael Stuhlbarg). His former partner Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) smiles dumbfounded in the background, always begging him to “mention the Apple 2 team” (Jobs always refuses). There’s also the matter of his daughter – for whom he initially denies paternity, then grudgingly accepts responsibility for – and of former Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), who wrestles with Jobs over
the future of the company. Finally, Joanna (Kate Winslet), the company’s head of marketing, sticks by Jobs’ side: she’s as close to a friend or confidante as he seems to have. It’s never convincing, how so many elements in Jobs’ life manage to converge in moments of utmost tension and anticipation (even if, cleverly, Sorkin alludes to this contrivance in the script). In the first act, this makes for exhilarating drama. In the second, it’s still engaging, but there’s a creeping curiosity as to how Boyle and Sorkin plan to pull everything together. By the end, the conclusions drawn are too broad, given the film’s narrow scope, and distressingly earnest, given how challenging the film’s depiction of Jobs is in the early going. “Steve Jobs” still aspires to sweeping, emotional biography, which makes for a serious discrepancy between form and intent. There’s a push-and-pull going on that never leaves the negotiation room. Sorkin’s talk opera often runs counter to Boyle’s encompassing vision, a friction that produces mesmerizing cinema early on but turns unfocused by midpoint. The second act concludes on a screaming match between Sculley and Jobs, and Boyle swells the score to convey a heightened importance even though the content of the scene is razorthin. At once, it’s over-directed and
overwritten. Boyle, prone to ambitious but uneven moviemaking, again works well with his actors and constructs intensely suffocating scenes. The first act is a master class in character study, atmospheric tension and performative realism, and Sorkin’s writing rattles brilliantly. But there’s just not much of a movie to back it all up. The sharp dialogue struggles to escape its deliberateness. It feels like an exercise in writing without any discernible purpose or backbone. The same goes for Boyle’s excited direction, in which there’s a hollowness that can’t quite be compensated for. What sticks, more than anything else, are the performances. Jobs’ storyline in this film is a little too tidy, but Fassbender is never less than riveting as the icon. He’s uncompromising and contemplative, and watching him churn through Sorkin’s monologues is a work of art on its own. The “Shame” star is central to every scene, and it’s a tall order that the actor pulls off with careful, measured impact. Winslet, Rogen, Stuhlbarg and Katherine Waterston – as the flaky mother of Jobs’ child – all do very good work in the background, with a scene or two apiece to shine. The supporting players manage to transcend significant flaws in the writing. These characters exist solely in their relation to Jobs, but
the actors dig in to find nuances and leave an impression. Boyle’s production, in-tune with Sorkin’s writing, is theatrical – interior, verbal, a little staged. It takes place behind the scenes of a brewing revolution, and that’s a potentially fascinating conceit to work with. We meet Jobs as unflappable, egomaniacal, occasionally cruel – the picture painted, against the backdrop of innovation, is admirably uncompromising. But Sorkin, eternal optimist he’s long proven to be, isn’t interested in living in that character space. He half-heartedly draws connecting lines between Jobs’ worst traits and his upbringing, favoring an arbitrary redemptive tale over a more complex engagement. For the ending, Boyle immerses his audience in sap, earnestly (and unconvincingly) pulling in each of the film’s threads to surround Jobs’ relationship with his daughter. Such a point of focus might not be untrue to the man’s life. But it does prove one thing. “Steve Jobs’” emotional and thematic arcs end up no less standard – and, perhaps, no less didactic – than those of the biopics that it so intently works to separate from. Weak Sat “Steve Jobs” is playing now at Regal Hollywood 20 and Lakewood Ranch Cinemas.
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SSDP CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Psychedelic Harm Reduction Training on Nov. 1 in the Gender and Diversity Center (GDC). The training featured a video of Linnae Pontae, an alum and founder of the Zendo project, an organization that focuses on education in order to create a safer psychedelic experience. “People who are interested have been assigned a chapter of this ‘Psychedelic Harm Reduction Manual,’ which is about creating a safe space to do psychedelic harm reduction,” Lanser said. “We are also hoping to be certified psychedelic harm reductionists.” The manual’s foreword reads: “Concerts, electronic dance music parties, and festivals offer rich aesthetic and social environments that some attendees choose to explore with psychoactive drugs. Those who take ecstasy, LSD, cannabis, or other recreational drugs at these events are generally hoping to have a fun time with a sense of connection, interest and wonder. But a combination of factors— inexperienced users, novel substances, festival chaos, contaminated or misidentified drugs, et cetera—creates a context where some participants may have psychologically difficult or physically dangerous experiences.” SSDP has also noticed more student interest in the club, particularly among first-years. “I think a lot of the changes on campus, and through administration, have sparked a lot of people to want to come to the meetings,” Lanser said. “We’ve also been talking about school policy, and what’s going on here, and people seem even more interested.” SSDP meets weekly on Tuesdays either in the Nook or by the GDC. Anyone interested in getting involved is welcome to come.
Turbulence between campus and airport BY BIANCA BENEDI The feud between New College students and the Sarasota Airport extends several years and legal cases. Issues ranged from the destruction of a local grove to resentment towards the USF president at the time. In 1987 students brought forth another complaint regarding the airport, this time about the road being built in order to bring traffic towards the airport. A proposal was drafted by some students in order to negotiate the location of the road and to air their complaints that the school’s right to exist was being ignored by construction of the airport. “Our campus and the surrounding cultural area have been largely neglected
in the airport’s planning,” the proposal reads. “As a result, the new loop road and its estimated traffic flow of 13,000 vehicles per day is slated to pass within a ‘stone’s throw’ of the New College/U.S.F. dorms and student center. This would destroy the tranquil oak hammock on the eastern edge of our leased property. The proposed new property would also affect planned recreational facilities immediately adjacent to the threatened grove - facilities which represent over 1.5 million dollars of previously allocated student money.” Attached to the proposal is a design suggestion to relocate the road away from the New College campus. “Our design minimizes, insofar as possible, the loss of parking spaces within the loop road. Mr. Lippert, our
engineer, estimates this loss to be 47 spaces out of the total 1400 in the lot.” The proposal also adds “it is clear even to a layman that the airport will eventually have to build parking garages to provide for expanding demand for spaces.” That need hasn’t been met quite yet. “At the authority meeting on March 23, we were told that it would be impossible to resite the road because of ‘traffic flow’ considerations. Our current plan resolves these difficulties, moving the road without causing safety or traffic flow problems,” the proposal finishes, followed by the suggested change. The changes are quite minor; a side by side comparison shows only a mild difference in one road.
then evaporates in mists. Oberle has done extensive research on the shooting star, a plant that used to cover regions in North America. As the climate warmed over centuries, individual plants began to die until it could only grow in particularly cool patches of land. That is essentially what is happening with trees in many areas: they are under stress in warm and dry conditions and since dead wood burns very quickly, these dying trees contribute to the potentiality of forest fires. While Widodo reacts to the crisis in ways such as restricting any
future development on peatland and terminating the permits for several palm oil companies suspected of contributing to the fires by logging in protected areas, the implications of the fires call for much more severe action. The United States’ import of palm oil products has spiked from 174 metric tons in 2002 to 1,112 metric tons in 2014.
Wildfires CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 of the land in Indonesia has long been depleted by excess logging, monocrop culture and forest burning in preserved areas. The environment is simply not well protected against major palm oil companies and competing independent farmers. “The biggest driver in dehydrating a forest is actually cutting down trees because when you cut trees down it short circuits a forest’s water supply, making droughts when they start much worse,” Oberle said. Most trees make their own rainfall by cycling water through their roots, up their trunks and out onto their leaves where the water
Information for this article was taken from www.motherjones.com, www.news. mongabay.com, www.nationalgeographic. com and abcnews.com.
EVENTS: NOV. 4 - NOV. 11 On Campus
Wednesday, November 4 • 6:00 p.m. This is All Now Concert • 6:00 p.m. COUP Construction @ D305 • 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Yoga @ Fitness Center • 7:00 p.m. Middle East Interest Club @ Old Mail Room Thursday, November 5 • 6:00 p.m. NCSA Cabinet Meeting @ HCL8 • 6:00 p.m. COUP Construction @ D305 • 7:00 p.m. Bartending 101 (RA Event) • 9:00 p.m. Council of Green Affairs Meeting @ HCL7 Friday, November 6 • 12:00 p.m. Feminist Fridays @ ACE Lounge • 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. Yoga @ Fitness
• • • •
Center 4:00 p.m. Data Science Seminar @ Blizyuk 6:00 p.m. COUP Setup 8:00 p.m. Double Feature Picture Show @HCL 7 8:00 p.m. Critics’ Film House
Saturday, November 7 • 5:00 p.m. LARPing Club • 8:00 p.m. Double Feature Picture Show @ HCL 7 • 8:00 p.m. Critics’ Film House Monday. November 9 • 5:00 p.m. Lecture: Charlayne Hunter-Gault • 7:00 p.m. Quiz Bowl Prcatice Tuesday, November 10 • 6:30 p.m. Lecture: An Arc of Instability in U.S. Foreign Policy: Reporting from the West Wing and Abroad
Off Campus
Wednesday, November 4 • 8:00 to 9:30 a.m. Free Yoga @ Siesta Key Beach • 6:00 p.m. Nokomis Beach Drum Circle @ Nokomis Beach on Casey Key • 7:00 p.m. Team Trivia @ Growler’s Pub Thursday, November 5 • 8:00-9:30 a.m. Free Yoga @ Siesta Key Beach • 5:00 p.m. Art After 5 @ Ringling Museum • 8:00 p.m. Ringling Underground @ Ringling Friday, November 6 • 8:00 to 9:30 a.m. Free Yoga @ Siesta Key Beach • 5:00 p.m. Cuban Art from the Collection of Jorge @ Ringling College of Art and Design
Saturday, November 7 • 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Dowtown Farmer’s Market • 8:00-9:30 a.m. Free Yoga @ Siesta Key Beach • 9:45 a.m. Sarasota Medieval Fair @ Sarasota County Fairgrounds • 6:00 p.m. Nokomis Beach Drum Circle @ Nokomis Beach on Casey Key Monday, November 9 • 8:00 to 9:30 a.m. Free Yoga @ Siesta Key Beach • All Day Paul Ruldolph: The Guest Houses @ The Ringling Tuesday, November 10 • Free meal for students @ Coffee Loft • 9:00 p.m. Open Mic @ Growler’s Pub
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been allocated. The first allocation for $700 was made during the September session and went to help pay for the travel costs of Lila Quintero-Weaver. Quintero-Weaver – who wrote a graphic novel about her experience growing up in Alabama after moving there from Argentina – gave a talk in ACE on Oct. 23. On the Nov. 1 allocations session $150 was requested to bring in a performer and community organizer from New York to talk about radical organizing. Both applications received a unanimous vote for full funding. According to Rib, this is not uncommon – because the speaker fund has never been fully used, CAA members often unanimously vote to fully fund applicants. “Because so few people usually apply we want to use what we can and get the money to the students,” Rib said. Ideally, the CAA would like to see the fund used as a resource to the point that members would have to make tough decisions regarding which applications to fund. “It’s such a good resource to students,” Rib said. “You can bring the speakers you want to see here, we have the money for it.” In the past, some students have done just that. While attending New College, alum Taylor Rothenberg (‘10) used the Speaker Allocations Fund to bring slam poets Buddy Wakefield, Anis Mojgani, Andrea Gibson and Lauren Zuniga to perform on campus.
“Reaching out to my speakers was pretty easy, with the exception of Andrea who uses an agent. I was able to negotiate directly with everyone on the price and details of providing transportation and lodging,” Rothenberg said in an email interview. “It can be hard, though, because we’re such a small school with a really strained budget even having a dedicated speaker fund we can’t always afford to pay people their normal rate.” The fees for the performers Rothenberg brought to campus ranged from $1,500 to $3,000. Other notable speakers that have been brought to campus in the past include Sonia Renee, Duane de Four and Megan Andelloux. Even bringing in these speakers, the speaker fund still had unused money at the end of each year. “Sometimes the student body gets ahead of itself, though, and shoots people down for wanting to bring an expensive speaker and then the potential event host doesn’t even pursue funding,” Rothenberg said. “I think that sometimes gets the school into situations like we have now where the fund has hardly been touched.” NCSA co-president, third-year Shelby Statham, plans on applying to bring in speakers for both the InterACT independent study project in January and Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April. “Everyone else needs to use it though,” Statham said, encouraging other students to apply. The CAA is hoping to increase the number of applicants by changing the deadline for the speaker fund onto a
rolling basis. Currently the CAA meets once a month for an allocations session where it reviews applicants, and this would remain the case for students seeking funding for academic projects. However, speaker fund applicants would be able to submit an application at any point during the semester and it would be reviewed at the next CAA meeting – which usually takes place every other week. This new rolling deadline took effect immediately following the Nov. 1 allocations meeting. The application for the speaker fund is similar to the standard CAA application and still requires a faculty sponsor. For a strong application the requester should be able to demonstrate interest. “We want something that people are going to be interested in,” Rib said. “Either widely interested in or deeply interested in.” Students can demonstrate interest by beginning a “gauging interest” thread on the forum and printing it out, or by making a petition for people to sign. “I do really think my biggest advice for students interested in hosting events is to cast a really wide net in terms of funding. I think, especially with more educational speakers, it’s important to remember that each of the academic divisions have event budgets, as do Student Affairs, the Provost’s Office and the President’s Office,” Rothenberg said. “You’re more likely to get money from one group if they know you’re also looking for funding from other sources, especially the CAA.”
percent of Americans incarcerated in state prisons and 77 percent of those incarcerated in federal prisons for drug offenses are of Black or Latino descent – even though white Americans are more likely to use drugs. This disparity between the incarceration of people of color and whites involved in drug violations is perhaps best encapsulated in the disproportionate sentences for individuals charged with powder cocaine possession versus possession of crack cocaine. Though pharmacologically the two substances are practically identical, possession of 28 grams of crack cocaine results in a mandatory minimum of at least five years in prison, even for a first offense, while powder cocaine requires 500 grams or more to warrant the same sentence. Although the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduced the disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine from a 100:1 weight ratio to an 18:1 weight ratio, the discrepancy between the offense and the punishment still promotes the disproportionate sentencing of African-Americans, who are more likely to use crack cocaine, in comparison to whites, who are more likely to use powder cocaine. Images of police outfitted in Kevlar vests, helmets and masks, toting
automatic assault weapons, and riding around in mine-resistant armored vehicles have become the norm in the American media. Police forces are provided with grants and subsidies by the federal government that allow them to outfit their departments with the kinds of military equipment most countries reserve for their armed forces. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recent report on police militarization, “War Comes Home,” found that SWAT teams, which were originally designed to be special responders to emergency situations, are deployed for drug searches more than any other purpose. Sending in a team of heavily armed men-in-black can quickly result in panic and escalated levels of violence that can easily lead to unwarranted death and destruction of property. “There seems to be a mentality in regards to the policing of civilians, specifically people of color, where ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ is acceptable in the name of keeping officers ‘safe’,” Romer said. Information from this article was taken from blacklivesmatter.com, palmbeachpost.com, cnn.com, sentencingproject.org, aclu.org, and drugpolicy.org
Corey Jones
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Dodd had previously discussed the issue and when Galarce addressed the committee about the new funding, the SAC as a whole agreed that more funding was essential. “I’ve been on the SAC for two full years and we always just gave the RAs the funding they needed because we all want good, substance-free events,” Galarce said. “So the way that I envisioned the new system being is that we would bypass the rubber stamp from the SAC and just give the RAs and housing the money specifically for RA events and they would work it out themselves.” The amount that will go into next semester’s discretionary fund will depend on the success of this “trial period” – Mod 2 and the January ISP period. However, the RAs will no longer have to survive on $30 dollars a semester or turn to the SAC every Sunday to fund individual and group events for the campus community.
ISP CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 perceived emotion and identified with emotion in dance,” second-year Eugenia Quintanilla said. “I choreographed pieces that were assigned specific emotion and filmed them in two different performance conditions. Participants had to watch a short video and then answer a questionnaire. The whole project was about studying kinesthetic empathy and learning more about the perception of movement in general.”
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 support from and getting information to the American public. “I think that calling attention to this issue is important. It’s unfortunate because we’re still having to have the conversation as a nation about whether systematic oppression is real,” secondyear Carl Romer said. Experts say police brutality in the United States is directly related to the mass incarceration of Americans, the majority of whom are minority individuals. The U.S. has more people in jail than any other nation in the world, with 2.2 million individuals incarcerated – 60 percent of which are ethnic or racial minorities. There has been a 500 percent increase in the U.S. prison population over the past 30 years. As a result of mandatory minimums and zero-tolerance policies, Americans of minority descent are far more likely to be criminalized for drug violations than white Americans, especially in cases of non-violent drug crimes and first violations. African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population yet they comprise 30 percent of those arrested for drug violations and 40 percent of individuals incarcerated in federal or state prisons for drug violations. In total, approximately 57
Quintero CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8 drawings, some, are what I would call cartoonish photo realism; I take various scenes in which I actually replicate photos that we have from our family collection of photos. Other times I sort of assume the position of a photographer and create faux photographs.” There is a lot of variety in illustration throughout the graphic novel. Weaver often puts together collage-styled pages of various drawings and images to depict what is happening in the book’s timeline. “I love reading memoir, that’s actually my favorite genre because I think it is an opportunity to live inside someone else’s life, to kind of borrow their point of view for a while and to learn about the specificity of their life, to pick up details,” Weaver said. “As someone who aspires also to write fiction, I have a hard time inventing anything as interesting as what I see in actual lives.”
CATALYST
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2015 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst
THE BACK PAGE PAGE 12
Four Winds Haunted House returns with creepy ‘X-Files’ theme BY CAITLYN RALPH As the evening of All Hallows’ Eve approached, Four Winds closed its doors early for a transformation. No longer the student-run cafe campus knew and loved, walls turned black, tables filled with plastic organs, customers and employees covered each other with cornstarch blood. Back after a yearlong absence, the Four Winds Haunted House returned last Friday from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m with an “X-Files” theme and plenty of scares. The transformation began at 5:00 p.m. on Oct. 31. Students who came to help were greeted with cafe food, coffee and sweet treats. Some focused on mixing the perfect shade of fake blood while others hung sheets of torn black plastic trash bags on the walls and from the beams to form division in the space. Within four hours, the back patio area became a “holding” area and the inside became four separate rooms. Guests entered from the patio and were welcomed to tables filled with tubs of blood and organs; made their way through a blacked out room, a room depicting a ritualistic scene directly inspired from an “X-Files” episode, and a room with a cage, frightening messages, and a black light; and exited through the back door near the bathrooms. The creation of this large-scale event began at an interest meeting during midterms week earlier this month. Students surrounded a patio table outside of Four Winds, sharing theme ideas and forming a general plan for the weeks to follow. “We can rely on the scare factor and weirdness,” alum (‘11) and Four Winds manager Olivia Levinson said at the meeting. Thesis student Bradley Baker suggested a sci-fi direction right before thesis student Hedda Cooper narrowed down the idea to “X-Files.” Cooper’s theme entailed going on a journey through a secret holding facility, encountering doctors and creepy medical experiments along the way. “More eerie than gory,” Baker said,
summarizing the goal moving forward. Haunted Houses have traditionally been held on campus around Halloween. Four Winds hosted one four years ago, B Dorm took the baton three years ago, and then the tradition returned to the cafe with a twisted carnival theme two years ago. A second interest meeting was held on Sunday, Oct. 25 where students helped cement the ideas for each room, assigned character roles, and discussed advertisements. In the days leading up to the event, flyers began to scatter around campus, emails were sent to the Students’ List, and Four Winds requested more than $100 in funds from the Student Allocations Committee for everything from face paint to an alien mask to animal organs from a butcher in Bradenton. Four Winds split the open area into separate rooms. Each room possessed a theme, usually brought to the organizers from students who were interested in participating. The goal was to have groups zig zag through the cafe, starting in the patio area and ending through the back door, allowing more visitors to get through the house faster. Excited students began to fill the holding area at 9:00 p.m., while organizers prepared the finishing touches. The turnout was consistently strong the entire night. “Reaction was really good,” Levinson said. “It’s tough to have a haunted house with student actors at a small school -- everyone knows each other. But a lot of people expressed that they were scared. Others found it funny to see their friends dressed up and in character.” An estimated 80 to 100 people attended the haunted house in two short hours. “It was a night of improv and team effort,” second-year and Four Winds employee Briana “Bree” Nieves said.”It couldn’t have been done without Olivia. She’s our strong leader.” “And at the end of the day, fear and laughter are good results for a haunted house,” Levinson continued.
(Clockwise from top right) Advertisements found their way around campus all week, including this colorfully crafted chalkboard sign outside of the cafe on the night of the Haunted House. With funds requested from the Student Allocations Committee (SAC), Four Winds was able to purchase props, such as supplies to make fake blood and plastic organs. Tables with a variety of Halloween-themed props welcomed guests in the first room.