Fall 2019 - Issue 7

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CATALYST OCTOBER 30, 2019 VOLUME XXXIX ISSUE VII

New College of Florida's student-run newspaper

Relevant rights: student protections on campus Photo courtesy of Kathleen Vacca

BY SIERRA LAICO Amidst concerns about the seemingly heightened presence of police on campus and controversies surrounding police encounters, students have expressed confusion regarding what rights they have as residents of this community. With a Palm Court Party (PCP) approaching this Friday, there is a sense of urgency for students to figure out what protections they have under the law. Student groups such as Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) have created conversation among the community to address students’ discomfort and concerns of safety.

“New College is an institution founded on progressive values and non-traditional methods of organizing and navigating community,” Vice President of SSDP and third-year Kendall Southworth said. “This reality is frequently swept under the rug, but it's our foundation and our power. There needs to be open and active discourse about power dynamics, accountability

https://doc-0k-18-docs. googleusercontent.com/ docs/securesc/s7jurnmk912se8sp3mgg3hd8llrh0uos/obdpo7fpcdn719 co01n4qb7t57rv346b/1 506448800000/0533393 9401667025082/025783 83506865688437/0B4ze ECbsUTILVjVXY25YUU 52ZUk?e=download

President Donal O’Shea will be travelling to Gainesville to defend the “New College Tomorrow: Arts and Sciences for Florida’s Future” proposal, which requests an additional $700,000 for the 2020–2021 school year, at the Oct. 30 Florida Board of Governors (FBOG) meeting.

The proposal focuses on three main initiatives—executing the college’s strategic plan to grow enrollment, inflecting student experience toward the world of work and increasing collaborative agreements with regional institutions—and came to fruition as the FBOG adds an additional funding category to its Education and General (E&G) budget request.

New College is part of the State

WHAT’S INSIDE

EVENING WITH CIW pg.

5

pg.

3

PUMPKINS & GHOSTS pg.

9

Demographic statistics for the cohort of 2019

BY ADRIANA GAVILANES

among the 12 institutions that make up the SUS. Performance-based funding: a baseline for all SUS institutions For the 2019–2020 school year, the SUS’s performance-based funding budget totalled $560 million.

This money is distributed between the 12 universities in the system based on how well each performs in regards to 10 key metrics.

The model has four guiding principles: use metrics that align with SUS Strategic Plan goals, reward “excellence” or “improvement,” have a few clear, simple metrics and acknowledge the unique mission of the different institutions.

Each metric is scored on a scale

In the midst of the college’s growth plan, this is the second year that the incoming cohort has claimed the title of smallest class size in recent history.

The cohort of 2019 totalled 173 students, including 26 transfers.

This number marks a 22 percent decrease from the size of the cohort of 2018, which was 222 students. This year's cohort brings the total undergraduate enrollment of the school to 702.

In past years, the incoming cohort demographics report provided a broader range of information than the current year’s report, including average SAT score, average GPA, percent of Florida residents, percent of outof-state students and more. This year, the office of research and administrators only reported the finalized data including statistics about gender, race and ethnicity.

The report states that four students are nonresident aliens, 27 students are Hispanic/Latino, no students are American Indian or Alaska Native, four students are Asian, no students are Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, 97 students are White, six students are two or more races and four students are race and ethnicity unknown.

According to the Director of Institutional Research Hui-Min Wen, the student demographic data stems from the aAdmission application every student fills out. Changes to a student’s affiliated identity can be made by contacting the registrar. Changes commonly happen when students are employed by New College and complete the HR form.

continued on p. 4

continued on p. 11

During consensual encounters, there are no police commands, force, lights or sirens.

and retraumatization, but before that can even happen, students need to feel safe, comfortable and empowered enough to participate in those conversations. We need to reflect on our values and expectations as a community and funnel our energy into renegotiating our roles in conflict management and decision-making.”

When asked about any potential changes or initiatives that have been considered by administration to ease the stress of students and other members of the community, Dean of Out-

reach & Engagement and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer Bill Woodson said he was in conversation with students and other administrators.

“Recognizing that there's been heightened tensions on our campus, I've been in conversation with our student affairs leadership and staff, President O'Shea, Provost Feldman and a number of faculty and students in our community, specifically to discuss what opportunities we might

continued on p. 10

Demystifying the SUS budget: how NCF plans to take advantage of additional funding category

BY JACOB WENTZ

BREXIT & CHILE

University System of Florida (SUS), a system of 12 public universities in Florida. Headquartered in Tallahassee, the SUS is overseen by a chancellor and governed by the FBOG. Every year, the SUS submits an E&G budget request to the Florida Legislature. After the sitting governor submits budget recommendations to the Florida Senate and House of Representatives, the two legislative bodies pass separate budget bills. Differences between the two budgets are negotiated and resolved through a joint public conference. A final budget bill—the General Appropriations Act—is passed by the legislature and sent to the governor, who has line item veto power.

After the governor approves the final bill, the E&G budget is divided

6 Spooky Decor

8 SRQ Eat Local

12 Haitian Art Exhibit

CATALYST

BRIEFS

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PAGE 2

BRIEFS BY SERGIO SALINAS

Jane Bancroft Cook Library and the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens present the Selbyana journal On Tuesday, Oct. 22, the Jane Bancroft Cook library held a reception to honor the collaboration with the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens to present the Selbyana journal, a peer-reviewed research journal for botanists. In the past the Selbyana journal has been published only in printed form. However, with the publication of volume 33 on Mar. 20, 2019 the journal is now exclusively available online. The reception was attended by faculty and members of the Selby Botanical Gardens board.

“Selbyana is a journal thats been published by the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens for about 40 years, that has, up until this point, been pub-

lished in traditional format, in subscription analog journal,” Librarian Cal Murgu said. “We’ve converted it into an open access digital publication that is accessible worldwide without any subscription fees.”

The collaboration with Selby Botanical Gardens is thanks to efforts made by Murgu and Professor of Biology Brad Oberle. Oberle serves as a Research Scholar Associate Editor of the Selbyana journal and together with Murgu, talks with Selby Botanical Gardens went over smoothly.

New College has agreed to continuously support the publication so long as Selby Botanical Gardens decides to continue to work with the school.

“I had been talking to professor the Selbyana journal will allow everyOberle about opportunities to col- one to use the journal for free. laborate with community partners,” Jacob Wentz/Catalyst Murgu said. “He brought everybody together. From there we organically collaborated and decided to help each other out. In terms of resourcing, there's a lot on both sides that are being committed to this project, but it’s also a really fun project to work on.”

Access to research journals and papers can be restricted or limited by publication companies that set up pay-walls to gain profit off the work of researchers. Often, the researchers themselves receive no compensa- For access to the Selbyana journal head to tion. The open access availability of https://journals.flvc.org/selbyana/index

Book Club with a Librarian: conversations with Cal Murgu Often, in a technology-focused society, it can be easy to forget the simplicity of cozying up and reading a good novel. For students looking to engage with their cohorts in literary discussion, Librarian Cal Murgu is leading Book Club with a Librarian, which will have its first meeting on Nov. 6 to discuss the 2019 novel, The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead.

Book Club with a Librarian is now filled to capacity. All nine student spots have been taken and five students on the waitlist. Currently, there are plans to have four meetings, twice per semester, to discuss one book per semester. In the future the next novel will be chosen collectively by the participating students.

Participants can look forward to food and snacks themed around the novels discussed. The group will have its first meeting on Nov. 6, coincidently on Colson Whitehead’s birthday, to discuss his new novel The Nickel Boys.

The Nickel Boys was published on July 16, 2019 and is based on the true horror story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys (AGDS) in Marianna, Florida. The AGDS opened in 1900 and closed in 2011. After failing a state inspection in 2009, then governor of Florida Charlie Crist ordered a full inspection that later led to the school’s closing in June, 2011. An archaeological survey done by the University of South Florida (USF) in

2012 discovered 55 burials and documentation of almost 100 deaths.

Whitehead brings a fictionalized version of the story to bring up the topic of justice in today’s world and whether or not the moral guidelines of the universe favor the just.

Book clubs can be a useful tool for students to engage in discussion with one another and get different perspectives on the same topic, allowing for a broader view that would have otherwise been limited. With Murgu leading the group, students can look forward to extensive cultural discussions revolving around relevant topics of justice and identity in an increasingly hectic world.

Sergio Salinas/Catalyst

Murgu's bitmoji holds a striking resemblence.

Librarian Winn Wasson resigns The Jane Bancroft Library is a valuable tool for all students to use and get ahead in their research and studies. One aspect of the library that can often go overlooked are the librarians, who work diligently to help students by offering expertise and guidance. Librarian Winn Wasson recently resigned from his position and the library is now searching for a new librarian. They may temporarily hire someone to fill the posi-

tion while looking for a permanent replacement to ensure students have the appropriate resources available to them.

“Librarians are available to help students with their research through individual consultations that can be scheduled,” Dean of the Library Brian Doherty said. “They also work with instructional faculty to teach classes in information literacy skills

"First-years are really just paid actors." © 2019 the Catalyst. All rights reserved.

The Catalyst is available online at www.ncfcatalyst.com, facebook.com/NCFcatalyst instagram.com/NCFcatalyst twitter.com/ncfcatalyst The Catalyst is an academic tutorial sponsored by Professor Maria D. 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 Division of Social Sciences.

and the research process. Additionally, librarians can help with digital projects and a variety of other academic endeavors that students embark upon.”

Wasson was a Research, Instruction and Data Services Librarian whose primary duties included providing service and instruction to students while also taking on data management and curation services.

Editor in Chief Copy Editors & Writing Coaches Layout Editors Digital Editor Staff Writers & Photographers

Jacob Wentz Izaya Garrett Miles & Anna Lynn Winfrey Cait Matthews & Sergio Salinas Adriana Gavilanes Chris Marie De Felipe, Vianey Jaramillo, Sierra Laico, Sofia Lombardi, Claire Newberg, Kali-Ray Skinner & Hayley Vanstrum

Like all librarians, Wasson also participated in working on exhibits and events, assisting faculty with research and working on other library initiatives.

With Wasson’s resignation, there is now an empty position that needs to be filled. There will be an active search for a permanent hire with a committee that represents faculty, staff and students.

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.

CATALYST

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2019 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst

NEWS PAGE 3

Unfair fares and economic inequality spur riots in Chile

BY IZAYA GARRET MILES Bedlam and blazes prevail across Chile, one of South America’s most prosperous and stable nations, as the government resorts to a state of emergency in an attempt to grapple with the riots. The unrest was sparked by a four percent increase in metro fares in Santiago, the nation’s capital, amid high income inequality.

Twenty lives have been lost in the chaos as of Oct. 26 and nearly 3,000 have been arrested, as arson proliferates and the government struggles to restore order.

When the fare was raised on Oct. 14, few predicted that it would result in anything more than a small story in the country’s newspapers and grumbling among the citizens.

It was a price hike agreed upon by a technocratic panel of transportation experts, in response to changes in the cost of living and gas prices.

Disgruntled passengers, many of them students, refused to buy tickets, instead bypassing the turnstiles.

Among the protestors, the slogan was “Evade, don’t pay, another form of struggle.” By Oct. 20, the civil disobedience grew destructive, leading to 80 of the city’s 136 metro stations requiring significant repairs. Nine were completely burnt down.

Arson in particular has been a problem during the unrest. The headquarters of Enel Chile, the local power company, were firebombed. Pro-

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Protestors gathered under the statue of General Manuel Baquedano in Santiago, Chile.

testers torched some of the offices of the country’s oldest newspaper, El Mercurio. Metro tunnels, buses and over a dozen supermarkets have also been set on fire. One clothing factory outside of Santiago was set on fire by looters and five people were burned alive in the building.

Police have resorted to blunt force in their attempts to manage the protests. Rubber bullets, water hoses and tear gas have all been used against looters, rioters and protestors. Police have arrested over 3,000 people and have killed at least one.

On Oct. 25, more than one million protestors mustered in Santiago in the largest demonstration in Chile's history.

“It’s impossible,” Alicia Mercado-Harvey, Visiting Professor at New College and graduate with a Mas-

ter’s degree in History from Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, said about the day-to-day lives of Chileans during the protests. “I was watching an interview with the president of the metro when this was starting, saying it was a little thing, just a few students, that it was going nowhere, that it wasn’t going to catch on. He couldn’t have been more wrong.”

The price hike in metro fares is considered by the protestors and their apologists to just be the tipping point. Chile is one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America, and the gap between the country’s upper and lowest classes is one of the highest in the world. The Gini Coefficient of Chile is 46.6, around the middle of Latin America and about five points higher than the United States. The Gini Coefficient is the standard mea-

sure of income inequality: zero is perfect equality and 100 is perfect inequality. The income inequality is the result of economic policies put in place by the University of Chicago-trained economic advisors to the country’s dictator Augusto Pinochet, known as the Chicago Boys. Chile has had the fastest growing economy in Latin America in the three decades since the Chicago Boys’ reforms, but the stark income inequality has remained.

The government’s response shows how severe the situation has become. Chilean President Sebastian Piñera of the center-right National Renewal Party issued a state of emergency on Oct. 18, as well as a 10 p.m. curfew in Santiago. School has been suspended, both for public safety concerns and to alleviate pressure on the damaged metro system.

Additionally, for the first time since the Pinochet regime, the military has been deployed to restore order in the streets.

“The police should have been able to handle the looting,” Mercado-Harvey said. “But instead what they did is send in the military to the streets to a country that has suffered the trauma of having a dictatorship.

The last curfews happened in 1987.”

The United Nations Human Rights Chief and former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet has ancontinued on p. 11

Brexit explained: economics, elections and impediments

BY SOFIA LOMBARDI Outside of the United Kingdom (U.K.), Brexit, a conjunction for the ‘British Exit’ from the European Union (EU), is a situation most people do not care about, or if they do, do not understand. Here’s the thing: the economic ramifications of Brexit will not only impact the U.K., but the entirety of Europe, the United States and the rest of the world. Most recently, the Parliament of the U.K. rejected Boris Johnson’s bid to call a snap general election for a third time, despite the Prime Minister arguing it would help “get Brexit done.” The EU also extended the Brexit deadline until Jan. 31, though extension is flexible, meaning the U.K. can leave earlier if the deal is ratified.

In 2016, a referendum on Brexit was held. Calls for a referendum on the U.K.’s relationship with the EU had circulated for years from Parliament. For example, in 2012, over almost 100 Conservative members of Parliament (MPs) unsuccessfully called for a referendum. One of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s campaign promises was that if he won the 2015 General Election, there would be a

referendum held on Brexit before the end of 2017.

The motivation behind the U.K. leaving the EU is typically either economic or political. Countries that are members of the EU are governed by free movement laws, which guarantees the free movement of all people to travel, live and take jobs in other EU countries. U.K. politicians have used the emotional rhetoric of claiming that British citizens have suffered due to the EU’s free movement laws.

“In recent years, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans have come to Britain to do a job,” British journalist and Brexit proponent Douglas Murray said to Vox, arguing that this has “undercut the native working population.”

Politically, many U.K. politicians support Brexit because they believe that the EU threatens British sovereignty. The EU’s executive branch, the European Commission (EC), cannot be directly accountable to the U.K. government. British leaders have very mild influence on the selection of the EC’s members and their selection only occurs every five years—therefore, the U.K. does not have total sovereignty.

Boris Johnson won the 2015 General Election and as promised, a referendum was held to get citizens’ opinion on whether or not the U.K. should leave the EU in 2016.

51.9 percent of the electorate voted in favor of leaving the EU, appearing to be in line with the typical political rhetoric of the time. However, according to The Washington Post, “At about 1:00 a.m. Eastern time, about eight hours after the polls closed, Google reported that searches for ‘what happens if we leave the EU’ had more than tripled” within Britain, and many people were reported to say that if given another chance, they would vote to stay.

These results led to negative reactions from financial markets worldwide, a stock market plunge and a significant decline in the value of the British pound. Almost immediately after the vote, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he would resign as Prime Minister and as Leader of the Conservative Party within Parliament. While this vote was not legally binding, leaders at the time had promised to implement Brexit if the decision supported leaving the EU, and this impactful eco-

nomic decision could cause shortterm suffering almost everywhere.

After over three years of multiple delays and arguments within Parliament and across the globe, the U.K. is now on its third Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, appointed by Parliament in July 2019.

Johnson has publicly committed to leaving the EU by Oct. 31, a date that has been disputed by the U.K. Parliament, who passed a law to force an extension. The U.K. has recently requested a three month extension for Brexit as Johnson has struggled to get adequate support from fellow lawmakers.

According to The Washington Post, on Friday, Oct. 25, European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva announced that after talks, 27 ambassadors from the EU’s other nations have accepted the idea of an extension and their “work will continue in the coming days.”

While these ambassadors have decided that an extension is necessary, they have not agreed on a timeline for this delay. According to The Washington Post, a diplomat who continued on p. 11

CATALYST SUS budget

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 of one to 10, resulting in a total score out of 100.

New College is currently the lowest-ranking institution in the SUS, with a total performance score of 67. This statistic marks a significant drop from the 2018–2019 school year, when the total performance score was 75. The highestranking institution is the University of Florida (UF), with a total performance score of 95.

For the 2019–2020 school year, New College was allocated $8,337,255 in performance-based funding, the lowest in the state.

“When it comes to performance-based funding, we don’t do as well as we should,” O’Shea said.

“I’ve been afraid that we’re going to get called on the carpet for that because it dropped in the past year. We should be doing better on those metrics, there’s no question.”

Of the 10 metrics, seven apply to all 12 institutions. The eighth metric, which measures graduate degrees awarded in areas of strategic emphasis, applies to all institutions except New College. Instead, New College’s eighth metric is “freshman in the top 10 percent of graduating high school class.” The ninth metric regards the percent of Bachelor’s degrees awarded without excess hours and the tenth metric is chosen by each institution’s Board of Trustees to be applicable to each institution’s specific mission.

The first metric, which deals with the percent of Bachelor’s graduates employed or continuing their education further one year after graduation, is one that New College always struggles on.

New College received a score of one out of 10 for the first metric in 2019. For comparison, the second lowest score in the SUS belongs to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), which scored six out of 10.

“A lot of our students are not so focused on the next 12 months; they’re looking 10 years ahead at what they want to do and try to figure out and put together the various pieces of their lives,” O’Shea said.

“New College just attracts students like that. We look better if we look 10 years out.”

Information for this metric is obtained from a variety of external sources, primarily the Wage Record Interchange system (WRIS2). The SUS advocates that they are able to account for approximately 90 percent of SUS graduates, but data from some states—Alabama, California and New York—are not included in WRIS2. Every year, a handful of New College graduates pursue work in these states and are not accounted for in the data.

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Even with these circumstances taken into consideration, O’Shea recognizes work needs to be done to improve student outcomes. The SUS reports only 53 percent of New College alumni who graduated in 2019 were employed or continuing their education one year after graduation. The second lowest outcome, from FAMU, was over 10 percent higher than New College at 63.9 percent.

“It’s hard when you had around 50 percent of our students not in graduate school and not earning more than $25,000 14 months out,” O’Shea said. “That number is still way higher than it should be, even taking into account the things that make New College students different. The students have pretty good skills, we should be helping them more.”

Because a substantial amount of New College alumni are not accurately represented in the first metric, the FBOG Budget and Finance Committee is proposing a model change at the Oct. 30 meeting.

The proposed issue is that “smaller institutions experience volatility with the data from these external sources. Thus, there can be significant fluctuations year over year.”

The proposed option the committee supports is to “allow institutions with headcount enrollments less than 2,000 students to supplement the WRIS2 data with alumni data for those in non-WRIS2 states.” The supported option mentions the methodology for the supplemental alumni data would need to be approved by Board staff and verified and audited by institutional staff.

“We would love a metric, and we ask for it all the time, for three years out or five years out, and in fact, in this Universities of Distinction title, we’ve proposed one like that as a separate metric,” O’Shea said. “But politicians, they want change immediately, and I get that too. A lot of the Board of Governors are uninterested if someone goes out of state. They’re using state money to stimulate the state economy, and it’s short-sighted, but I get it.”

Preeminent university funding: additional money for the state’s highest-performing institutions “The two basic sources of funding are performance-based funding and another stream for preeminent universities,” O’Shea said.

In addition to receiving performance-based funding, preeminent universities receive money from the SUS’s “preeminence and emerging preeminence” budget.

According to Florida Statute 1001.7065, preeminence is determined by 12 academic and research excellence standards, detailed in the attached table. To reach preeminent status, universities must reach 11 of these 12 benchmarks.

Currently, preeminent universities include the University of Florida (UF), Florida State University (FSU) and, most recently, the University of

NEWS PAGE 4

Performance-based funding metrics

The SUS uses the following metrics to determine how much performance-based funding each institution in the system receives: 1. Percent of Bachelor's Graduates Employed (Earning $25,000+) or Continuing their Education

6. Bachelor's Degrees Awarded in Areas of Strategic Emphasis

2. Median Wages of Bachelor's Graduates Employed Full-Time

7. University Access Rate (Percent of Undergraduates with a Pell-grant)

3. Average Cost to the Student (Net Tuition per 120 Credit Hours)

8a. Graduate Degrees Awarded in Areas of Strategic Emphasis 8b. Freshmen in Top 10% of Graduating High School Class – for NCF only

4. Four Year Graduation Rate (Full-time FTIC)

9. Board of Governors Choice – Percent of Bachelor's Degrees without Excess Hours

5. Academic Progress Rate (Second-Year Retention with GPA Above 2.0)

10. Board of Trustees Choice

New College’s 2019–2020 scores: Metric

Statistic

Improvement (from 2018–2019)

Excellence Score (out of 10)

1

53.0%

-1.2%

1

2

$25,900

-3.0%

4

3

$1,030

-117.0%

10

4

55.7%

2.1%

10

5

75.9%

-2.9%

0

6

48.0%

-3.2%

9

7

33.3%

3.8%

7

8

38.0%

3.0%

6

9

82.9%

0.2%

10

10

100.0%

0.0%

10

Benchmarks to reach preeminent status

To be considered a preeminent university in Florida, institutions must reach 11 of the following 12 benchmarks: 1

Freshman class with a weighted grade point average of 4.0 or higher on a 4.0-scale and an average SAT score of 1,800 or higher on a 2,400-point scale or 1,200 or higher on a 1,600-point scale

2

A top-50 ranking on at least two “well known and highly respected” national public university rankings

3

A freshman retention rate of 90 percent or higher

4

A four-year graduation rate of 60 percent or higher

5

Six or more faculty members who are members of a national academy

6

Total annual research expenditures of $200 million or more as reported annually by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

7

Total annual research expenditures in diversified nonmedical sciences of $150 million or more, based on data reported annually by the NSF.

8

A top-100 national ranking for research expenditures in five or more science, technology, engineering, or mathematics fields

9

One hundred or more total patents awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the most recent three-year period

10

400 or more doctoral degrees awarded annually

11

200 or more postdoctoral appointees annually

12

An endowment of $500 million or more

South Florida (USF). The University of Central Florida (UCF) is considered an “emerging” preeminent university and receives additional funding, but does not yet hold the official preeminent distinction.

For the 2017–2018 school year, the SUS’s “preeminence and emerging preeminence” budget totalled $52 million. This figure has been sharply cut, however, declining to $20 million for the 2018–2019 school year and $0 for the 2019–2020 school year.

These cuts come after clashes between the Republican-controlled state House and Senate in early 2019.

The House proposed $100 million in across-the-board cuts to higher education funding, with an additional $20 million drop in preeminence

funding.

The push by the House to reduce spending was bolstered by questions surrounding spending by preeminent universities, most notably UCF’s misuse of at least $38 million in state funds to build a new classroom/office building. UF also opened an internal investigation into its use of several million dollars in state money to construct a Center of Outdoor and Recreation Education and three Greek housing lots, and USF officials admitted they misused $6.4 million on a building completed in 2010.

According to O’Shea, despite the budget cuts, the SUS plans to request $100 million for the “preeminence and emerging preeminence” budget for the 2020–2021 school year.

CATALYST Universities of Distinction: the emergence of new funding for non-preeminent universities “This is the Legislature, there are a lot of powerful members, and so they were going ‘well what about the other nine universities?’” O’Shea explained, referencing the non-preeminent institutions. “So they concocted this Universities of Distinction label.”

According to the FBOG, Universities of Distinction is “a path towards excellence that will produce high-quality talent to diversify Florida's economy, stimulate innovation and provide a return on investment to the state.”

The key goals of Universities of Distinction are to focus on a core competency unique to the SUS and one that achieves excellence at the national or state level, to meet state workforce needs now and into the future, including needs that may further diversify Florida’s economy and foster an innovation economy that focuses on areas such as health, security and STEM. The Board of Governors held a meeting on Aug. 28 and 29, where O’Shea presented the progress of the college’s strategic growth.

“At that meeting, we were told that [the SUS] was going to ask for $100 million for Universities of Distinction and to put in proposals,” O’Shea said. “This was the new board chair talking, when they say put in a proposal, it’s kind of an order.”

The FBOG set Sept. 16 as the deadline for proposals. O’Shea returned from the meeting with intentions to immediately inform the faculty about the need to submit a proposal. Because of Hurricane Dorian, O’Shea was not able to start the proposal planning process until a week after the meeting.

“It’s hard to believe” O’Shea said, referencing the short timeline.

“It’s a major institutional change but needs to move way faster than normal academic speeds.”

Despite the timeline, O’Shea received a significant amount of feedback from faculty. The deadline was also extended to Sept. 19.

“The faculty came through,” O’Shea said. “About 40 faculty wrote in about substantive things and we had a couple of faculty charrettes, but it was too fast to get students in.

It’s hard without consulting students here, I mean, this is a collaborative place. I always feel like I’m violating process but then have no choice.”

Representatives from New College then presented the proposal to the FBOG on Oct. 3 and received feedback.

“I was on a phone call yesterday and they’ve switched their plan a bit,” O’Shea said. “They’ve lowered the amount of funding for preeminent universities and are now asking $65 million for Universities of Distinction. We had put in a proposal of $1.3 million, so now we’re going to

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cut it to $700,000.”

“New College Tomorrow: Arts and Sciences for Florida’s Future” Following the Universities of Distinction key goals, the proposal, “New College Tomorrow: Arts and Sciences for Florida’s Future,” outlined three main goals: executing the college’s strategic plan to grow enrollment, inflecting student experience toward the world of work and increasing collaborative agreements with regional institutions. The goals also drew upon recommendations O’Shea received from the Arts and Sciences report.

“One is our strategic plan because they had just given us $10 million to do that,” O’Shea said.

In the proposal, this initiative is described as the “first and central strand.” The college plans to continue its attempt to grow to 1,200 students and 120 faculty, with the additional support staff and programs to achieve a four-year graduation rate of 80 percent.

“We’re also going to orient things so that we’re not just oriented towards graduate school—which we’re doing really well on—but we want students to be able to do better in a job market, which is music to [the SUS’s] ears anyway,” O’Shea said. “It’s also true that most of this generation of students remembers their parents struggling with the recession, so jobs matter for a good number of students.”

The second strand thus proposes that the college will systematically integrate opportunities for professional development and practical applications into every student’s experience by deploying three tactics: integrating hands-on learning, having nearly every student pursue more than one target of study—one that relates to academic interests and one that relates to potential career interests—and integrating post-college planning across every student’s college experience from day one.

“With Dwayne Peterson, that’s really going to turn around,” O’Shea said.

The third strand plans to better take advantage of the opportunities the Sarasota-Manatee area offers and to better contribute to the region. The plan states that the college will “dramatically increase articulation and collaborative agreements with other educational institutions in our region and further afield, and aggressively seek out links with research, health, civic institutes and employers in the region.”

“We’re always going to be a really academically-rigorous liberal arts-based place,” O’Shea said. “But I hope we’re also going to be just much more aware of the world, more oriented to the world of work and more connected to the region.”

Information for this article was gathered from flbog.edu, leg.state.fl.us, flsenate.gov, and orlandosentinel.com

NEWS PAGE 5

An evening with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers

BY HAYLEY VANSTRUM On Thursday, Oct. 4, Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) member Nelly Rodriguez and Student/ Farmworker Alliance (SFA) employee and translator Yaissy Solis spent some time after their busy day presenting on campus to sit down for an informative dinner with New College students at An Evening with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. This event, organized by the New College of Florida Student/Farmworker Alliance, allowed students to hear directly from a farmworker about the origins and future goals of the CIW, along with how students can play a major role in creating lasting and systematic change within the agricultural industry.

The CIW, founded in 1993, started as a group of six workers gathered in a church discussing the conditions they were facing, possible solutions and their own value in the system that had been exploiting their labor for decades.

“We realized that as farmworkers we were important, our labor is valuable and is essential to feeding this country and we deserve respect just as any other workers should,” Rodriguez, through translation by Solis, said. “A lot of the time, people think that because you’re working in agriculture that by default you shouldn’t have any rights, so you shouldn’t be respected or you should be seen as less, but that is not the conclusion we came to.”

As the CIW grew in size and impact, group members, which had been previously targeting growers to no success, realized they needed to take a different approach to get the results they desired.

“There was a fast food company that was doing business with one of the farms locally where we were harvesting, and there was an article that

came out that said this company was going to do business with this farm year round paying wholesale prices for their tomatoes, and we made a connection,” Rodriguez said. “It’s these types of agreements between large corporations and farms that have been keeping our wages stagnant for over 30 years and continue to run down the wages and also the conditions that we’re facing.”

CIW members decided that in order to see substantial change, they needed to fully rework the tomato harvesting system that they find abusive. This is where the Fair Food Program (FFP), introduced by the CIW in 2001, came into play. The campaign had three major demands: insisting that corporations pay one extra penny per pound on tomatoes, requiring that farms adopt a code of conduct with zero tolerance policies for sexual harassment and modern day slavery and maintaining that workers would have a say in their own workplace conditions. The first corporation that the CIW targeted, Taco Bell, was a major success for the future of the movement.

“That essentially gave us the key to unlock the power of the market in the industry and we realized that it was these companies that were making the most profit off of our work and they were the ones that were extracting the most benefit,” Rodriguez said.

The CIW finds that while corporations play a major role in the continued exploitation of farmworkers, consumers are also complacent in maintaining the unjust structure of the tomato industry. CIW members, through their protests, workshops and public actions, seek to educate non-farmworkers on the moral cost of their produce and get them involved in fighting back against injuscontinued on p. 11

Hayley Vanstrum/Catalyst

Rodriguez and Solis construct a pyramid representing the tomato supply chain, with farmworkers taking the worst abuses at the base and corporations which demand the most product possible at the cheapest price at the top.

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FEATURES

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Jacob Wentz/Catalyst

Students deck the halls for

SPOOKY SEASON

BY CLAIRE NEWBERG Halloween carries wonderful childhood memories of candy, fun costumes and scary movies, but it can be a bit hard to celebrate away from home. To combat this, some students have found a way to make their dorms and campus spaces feel like home for the fall by adding halloween decorations.

Thesis-student Mershon Moore recalled her childhood experiences with her mother during Halloween.

The two would often bond over decorations and watching Halloween staple movies.

“My mom really goes all out for Halloween so having a smidgen of our Halloween decorations makes it feel homey in the dorm,” Moore said.

“I love the lights that I have hanging because they create a really cool low light when I turn the main dorm lights off. A lot of these decorations come from my mom so it really feels like Halloween at home, on a lesser scale though.”

Moore spoke of Halloween as her favorite holiday, saying that she really enjoyed the collective celebration of wacky things such as Bobby Picket’s “Monster Mash.” “[Halloween is] a really fun mix of spooky scary things and the general fall aesthetic that I love,” Moore said. “I think that atmosphere is in part what distinguishes Halloween from other holidays. I feel like dressing up is also a big part too.”

First-year and Catalyst staff writer Chris Marie De Felipe described her plan for her dorm decorations, saying, “I'm making a SkeleSnoop (Doggy Dogg) in my balcony but it's a work in progress.”

De Felipe also spoke of her love for Halloween, and the feeling of fall around the holiday season, her favorite parts being the more aesthetic aspects of Halloween.

“Halloween is just the best holiday,” De Felipe stated. “In Fall the world is just more bearable. It's chilly, there are good flavored drinks

and depending on where you live the world is kind of dying, so it's still a little dramatic.”

Regarding her ‘Skele-Snoop’ endeavor, De Felipe said, “I like Halloween decor that makes my dorm look stupid and [makes] my friends laugh.”

Second-year Alexandra Conte took on the task of decorating the Writing Resource Center (WRC), and called it her ‘second home.’

“My favorite thing about Halloween is the change in atmosphere everywhere,” Conte shared. “Pumpkin muffins come back into season and TV shows I grew up watching come back on.”

Like Moore’s experience, Conte also celebrated Halloween with her mother as a child, and found it to be a very pleasant bonding experience.

“I usually go a little crazy on Halloween because it reminds me of home,” Conte explained. “My mom's favorite holiday is also Halloween so she decorated the house every year and filled it with pumpkin spice scented products and we would watch Rocky Horror Picture Show together.”

Furthermore, Halloween holds a familial sense for Conte.

“Growing up, Halloween meant family and friends to me,” Conte said. “Being an only child, all my family would come over to help me dress up, and every year we had a Halloween party. We spent time together watching movies and making decor.

Also the movie selection is much better than other holidays.”

When decorating the WRC, Conte tried to keep the theme as neutral as possible so more people would appreciate it.

“I love Halloween and think it can be super fun, but I am aware that some people are really scared of the gory or macabre aspects of spooky season,” Conte stated. “I try to be conscious of that and generally stick with things that I know people will feel comfortable around.”

Photo courtesy of Karianne Kapfur

Third-year Karianne Kapfur has a dabbing pumpkin in her dorm.

Claire Newberg/Catalyst

The Palmer B dorms are currently guarded by the ‘Pumpkin Spectre Boi’ (deemed so by third-year Joey Daniels).

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Jacob Wentz/Catalyst

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Jacob Wentz/Catalyst

Third-year Isabella Smith and her roommates combine cute decor with creepy decor in their suite.

Bats hang from Smith's ceiling.

Claire Newberg/Catalyst

Second-year Alex Conte took on the task of decorating the WRC this year.

Claire Newberg/Catalyst

Second-year Alex Conte and third-year Phoebe Sernaker are both SWAs at the WRC who wish a very happy Halloween to students.

Jacob Wentz/Catalyst

Photo courtesy of Sydney McLain

First-years Sydney McLain and Erin Neihaus decorate their window with some festive stickers.

Claire Newberg/Catalyst

Pumpkins carved by students in the Writing LLC sit atop issues of the Catalyst.

"I don't sit in the suite alone anymore because the skeletons are too scary," Smith said.

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FEATURES

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Eat Local Week: foraging Florida with Green Deane

BY KALI-RAY SKINNER Eat Local Week’s 2019 theme of “Exploring Food Waste” celebrates Manatee and Sarasota County businesses, nonprofits and individuals by dishing out an array of workshops, tours and plant walks from Oct. 17 through Nov. 2.

Beginners and experienced foragers interested in “eating their environment” arrived at the Emerson Point Preserve, a 365 acre preserve west of Palmetto on Wed., Oct. 23 at 5:30 p.m.

Many came equipped with binoculars, notebooks and the kind of hiking pants that zip into shorts. Green Deane of Eat The Weeds led the foraging nature walk. The eccentric and jolly fellow has an online encyclopedia full of knowledge about plants and foraging. Deane is a leading authority on foraging and has over four million views on his YouTube channel, where he breaks it down to simple science.

Deane took the foragers on a walk through the preserve. With quick-fire wit, he grabbed protruding strands of grass or squatted down to the earth to point to specific “weeds,” recounting the history, medicinal properties and folklore stories of the plant.

“These grow very, very fast and they are three weeks early, they’ve been fruiting this week, which gives us a couple of more weeks,” Deane explained, pointing to a honey-colored floret of mushrooms known as Amillaria tabescens growing on the walking path. “They grow exclusively on wood,

so that means there has to be a root or stump here.”

Some New College students and alumni who study plant medicine attended the foraging walk.

“My favorite quote was about the ringless honey mushroom and how you can learn to identify [mushrooms] through the acronym FAD (fixed, attached and descending),” thesis-student Salua Rivera said. “That changed my perspective on foraging for mushrooms and gives me the courage to go out there and learn to find them.”

Rivera’s Area of Concentration (AOC) is in Environmental Studies and she is one of the Composting Teaching Assistants (TA).

“My relationship to foraging is increasing the more in tune I become with my environment by observing and being present,” Rivera said. “I look up and down and sideways whenever I’m outside and I always find something I know and something edible.”

Transition Sarasota, the nonprofit organization that put together Eat Local Week, is a part of a larger Transition Movement that began in Totnes, England in 2005. The worldwide movement advocates for community-based solutions to global problems. Darryl McCullough, Treasurer of Transition Sarasota worked together with Aedan Stockdale, Education Division Manager of Parks and Natural Resources in Manatee County to oversee the foraging event.

“Our mission is to create food and economic security by supporting

Kali-Ray Skinner/Catalyst

Deane suggested boiling the mangrove stalks rather than eating them raw as they taste better that way.

local sustainable sources,” McCullough said. “We have two main events. One is Eat Local Week, which is in its ninth year, and it’s a collection of events that showcase all different aspects of local food in Sarasota and Manatee counties.”

Transition Sarasota is almost entirely volunteer based and have had New College interns in the past.

“We also organize charity harvesting, where there’s unused produce that would otherwise go to waste,” McCullough said. “For many years we worked with Jessica’s Organic Farm. If they had leftover produce in their field that they didn’t need, we would organize volunteers to harvest it and send it to the food bank. Over eight years, we sent about 300,000 pounds of produce to food banks.”

Serendipitously, Stockdale is a part of the New College cohort of 2005. Along with Sara Denison (‘10), Education and Volunteer Specialist, both alumni assisted in the facilitation of the foraging event. After studying Environmental Studies at New College, Denison joined the Peace Corps in Jamaica and afterwards got a job with her fellow alum at Manatee County.

For more information on Eat Local Week or to get involved with Transition Sarasota movement, visit TransitionSRQ.org. The week will end with Mote Aquaculture Research Park Tour and Composting and Community

by Sunshine Community Compost on Oct. 30, a Tour and Volunteer at All Faiths Food Bank on Nov. 1 and the Annual Farm-to-Table Fundraiser for Operation Eco Vets on Nov. 2.

Embracing spooky season with horror films and cost-effective tickets at SRQ theaters

BY VIANEY JARAMILLO As Halloween creeps up, watching a horror film with friends for spine-tingling thrills may be an activity most students desire to partake in.

Sarasota has several movie theaters close to New College, but students on budgets can look forward to purchasing a movie ticket for just $2.50 at Parkway 8 Cinema, a cash-only discount theater that screens second-run movies. While the past few years have brought on a new golden age of horror, many films have been straying away from premiering near Halloween.

Movie theaters' success has been in question due to the emergence of streaming. But it seems as though horror films are what keep movie theaters relevant. Most people are still willing to pay money to watch a film that may give them nightmares. The reason why, for the most part, is the explosion of young talented incoming producers and filmmakers who are passionate about telling horror stories.

Movies such as Get Out and It are films that have certainly inspired more Hollywood studios to invest money into

the development and creation of more horror movies.

Over the course of the 20th century, “dump months” have begun to emerge in the film industry. Although this term is not used by big Hollywood studios, it has been widely embraced by film critics. Dump months are the times of the year when commercial and critical expectations for American filmmakers are low, usually JanuaryFebruary and August-September. This is because the spending before dump months is usually high and other forms of competition, such as sports, negatively affect movie attendance.

Horror films released during dump months are slowly starting to gain popularity. Hit horror films such as Mama (2013) and Cloverfield (2008) were released during dump months.

These commercial successes, along with other ones, are now making them a more prominent addition to dump months. However, other films released during these times can also have lower ratings, cannot be marketed easily, are intended for teenage audiences and films that would have been released at other times of the year if better test

screenings were done. Even though some may want horror films to be released in October, winter’s somber feel may make audiences more acceptable to this new shift.

The local movie theater Parkway 8 Cinema is currently showing Rambo: Last Blood, Lion King, Hustlers, Good Boys and several others. They only accept cash, with the exception of movie tickets which can be purchased by card. The tickets are $2.50 but shift to $3.00 after 6:00 p.m. Their fountain drinks and popcorn are relatively inexpensive: small drink is $4.75, medium is $5.25, large is $5.75, small popcorn is $5.75, medium is $6.25 and large is $6.75. The staff there are friendly and easy to make conversation with, so after a movie or before people could probably ask questions about Sarasota. Students can also see movies at Hollywood 11, AMC Bradenton 20 and Burns Court, which sell tickets from $8-$10.

When asked for the top horror movies to name in a forum post, most people agreed on Midsommar (2019) and Hereditary (2018).

“I love Hereditary and the Baba-

dook and a lot of the others on this list, but Jane Doe unsettles me on a really deep level I can't quite describe,” Alyssa Motilinski (‘13) said.

“I agree with everyone above on Midsommar and Hereditary,” Thesis student Ariel Parets shared.

“Also agreed on Midsommar and Hereditary, just be prepared for some fucked up stuff-- the first ten minutes of Midsommar hit me right in the phobias,” Thesis student Catio Moore said.

Ari Aster wrote and directed Midsommar and Hereditary. He is also a part of the young producers in this time of the golden horror age.

In the forum thread, plenty of other movies were mentioned: Silence of The Lambs, Audition, Rosemary's Baby, Jennifer’s Body, The Ritual and Cabin In The Woods were popular recommendations.Someone even struck the thought of starting a horror club, so students who have horror film addictions or interested in the film industry could consider joining. It could also create a space where students can talk about the movies after relieving some of the jitters before going to bed.

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SUBMISSIONS

PAGE 9

Submission: Creepy chronicles of our college campus SUBMITTED

BY CAROLINE NEWBERG Content warnings: illness, depression, demons, anything of that sort.

This year I was an Orientation Leader. For one of my events, I decided to write a ghost tour combining some of the stories that I had heard from my friends, professors, and alumni. The tour was meant to entertain and to orient the new students with different places on campus. It was pretty informal, so a lot of the claims made here are somewhat dubious, but everyone had fun.

Dort and Gold The Dort and Gold residence halls are some of the newer dorms on campus, having been built in the 1990s.

Still, some students have reported haunted experiences.

A friend of mine lived alone on the bottom floor of Dort. Her cat would react aggressively to seemingly nothing; it would hiss, growl and hide in the darkness. She lived there alone and would hear bumps in the night, lights would turn off and on, and on one occasion, heavy furniture was stacked on top of each other.

Another person heard distant music when they were in Dort 307 B and nowhere else in their dorm. They asked the person below them if they (or anyone else) had been playing music, but no one had. It happened the year before my friend, Phoebe Sernaker, and I lived in that exact room. In that dorm, we personally witnessed heavy doors opening and closing themselves, and heard footsteps above us at night,

even though we were on the highest floor.

Letter Dorms People have reported doors locking on their own and bumps in the night. A friend of mine who lived in the letter dorms received a text from his roommate late at night asking that he stop making so much noise, but he wasn’t home at the time.

Pei Dorms Take a look around at First, Second, and Third Court. These aren’t the oldest residential halls on campus, but they are the most recognizable. More students have lived in Pei than anywhere else. Who knows what kind of energy they’ve left behind?

One of the more notorious spirits of Pei is called Varney. He supposedly haunted Pei 341 in the late 1990s. According to alum James Sheridan, Varney would turn lights on and off, give students chills, or occasionally touch them. The last time the Catalyst interviewed Sheridan about his experiences, the equipment failed and no sound at all was picked up, which is a fairly common occurrence with paranormal investigations. While no reports of Varney have resurfaced recently, it’s curious to think about where he could be today.

Several other Pei residents have had strange experiences. In the 1990s, multiple students living in Pei 202 experienced items moving on their own, such as things flying off shelves or the shower curtain opening and closing on its own. They would the curtain moving when no one was in the bathroom.

Some friends of mine living in Pei 134 reported doors turning on their

own, strange noises from the supposedly empty room next door, and water faucets turning on in the middle of the night.

Another friend, who I think lived in Pei 332, had a number of concerning experiences. He had a Celtic cross hanging on his wall that flew off the wall. One night after taking a shower, he looked in his mirror and there were mysterious handprints in the condensation. He and his roommate compared their handprints to the ones on the mirror and there was no match.

Creepy stuff.

An alum had a strange experience one night in the second court lounge.

As he entered the lounge, he saw a woman in a white shirt and white jeans standing at the sink, who he believed was his friend Michelle. He entered the lounge completely, and started to call her name. But he turned and she was gone. The lounge was empty, and she couldn’t have left. And the sink was wet as if someone had just been there.

One of the more well-known and scary stories about Pei happened to a group of first years living in first court in 2015. One night, they decided to play with a Ouija board. When they asked the board if there was anyone who wanted to communicate, the planchette moved quickly and forcefully to yes. Then they asked the entity its name. It moved to the letter Z, and then to O. If you’ve heard any cautionary tales about Ouija boards, you’ve likely heard of Zozo, who is commonly known as the Ouija board demon. The speaker said goodbye to the entity immediately, and then ex-

plained who Zozo is. The demon Zozo often comes through Ouija boards to mess with inexperienced users, often luring the users in with promises of telling their futures or something else.

While the original speaker refused to touch the Ouija board again after saying a prayer and cleansing the room with sage, their other roommates felt a compulsion to keep playing and keep contacting Zozo. They eventually had a Catholic priest bless the entire First Court.

Caples Caples has a reputation on campus for being one of the more active paranormal sites, perhaps because the old mansion sits in the dark back corner of campus, away from lively residence life or the busy ACE Plaza.

Security guards patrolling Caples at late hours of the night have reported hearing the piano playing when no one was in the building. Professors coming to their offices in the morning reported things moved around and lights on when they had been off the evening before. Students making music late at night get calls with noone on the line.

One student told a story of a time when she and a friend were sitting in the downstairs dining room. She felt her necklace being pulled to the side by an unknown force at the same time that her friend felt her hair being pulled to the side. It was as if there was a physical presence standing in between them. Apparently, they caught it on video.

Continue reading this article at ncfcatalyst.com

Submission: Oh my gourd, a paper on pumpkins SUBMITTED

BY CHARLIE LEAVENGOOD In our global world, it’s easy to forget that certain foods were once tied to specific land and cultures. The pumpkin originated in Central America, notably in modern-day Mexico.

Today, pumpkins are grown on six continents. Pumpkins were believed to have been cultivated in the Americas around the same time as maize, or corn. There were varying accounts of when pumpkin domestication started, but most believe it was around five to seven thousand years ago. The term “pumpkin” is new, and it’s not the name given to this plant by native cultivators. There are many different tribes and nations that have these gourds interwoven into their diet and culture. The land that Bishop’s University was built upon, the school where I am studying abroad, belongs to the Abenaki people. The Abenaki word for pumpkin or squash is wasawa. Pumpkin stems from the Greek “pepon” which means melon, which then went through French, English and became “pumpkin” in the American colonies.

The practice of carving pumpkins at Halloween originates from Irish immigrants in the U.S. The practice of carving Jack-O-Lanterns, traditionally with potatoes and turnips, came from Ireland. However, Irish immigrants found that carving pumpkins was much easier than hearty root vegetables.

Pumpkins are a seasonal fruit— yes, they’re considered a fruit—that only comes into US grocery stores one or two months of the year. However, canned pumpkin stays on supermarket shelves fairly constantly.

In Mexico, the Spanish name for pumpkin is calabaza. The seeds of the pumpkin are called pepitas. In their original uses in Mexico, dating back a few millennia, pumpkins were cut, dried and woven into mats; the use and consumption processes were more expansive and less wasteful.

Today, Mexico is responsible for 347.5 million (27.5 percent) of annual exports of pumpkins. One way to prepare calabaza is crystalized into hyper sweet, waxy confections. This process uses the pulp and the skin, while most US recipes only use the pulp. Another

notable use for calabazas in Mexico is for Día de (los) Muertos (Day of the Dead). One calabaza dish made special for Día de (los) Muertos is Calabaza en Tacha. This dish creates a syrup-y like mixture of pumpkin and sugar that is heated and reduced for hours. Pumpkin oil also has medicinal and nutritional values and is another traditional way to use pumpkins.

The growing season for pumpkins starts in May/June and finishes in October. They usually take between 90 and 120 days to grow. They prefer dry, hot conditions which is why they grow best in the summer. In the US, 85 percent of pumpkin products such as canned pumpkin or pumpkinflavored-whatever come from farms in Illinois. In fact, most pumpkins in the US come from one town in Illinois, Morton, Illinois. Considering how concentrated industrial pumpkin agriculture is, the ability to only harvest pumpkins once a year in October, and the fact that the US produces over 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins each year, it’s easy to see how pumpkins are vulnerable to climate change.

Climate change is coming for the

US pumpkin industry. With trends of excessive rainfall in the midwest during the summer, pumpkin production in Illinois is facing challenges. The extra water that floods pumpkin fields leads to shortages come harvest time because pumpkins do not grow well in wet conditions. This is part of a larger issue in the US surrounding agriculture industry in the midwest. “Adapting to the changing climate is not as simple as finding more hospitable fields for the pumpkins – it could require moving the entire industry” (Madson, 2017). Another way that pumpkins play into climate change is the methane produced by pumpkins that get chucked into landfills after Halloween: more than 1.3 billion pounds of pumpkins are tossed out. Although they are cool to decorate, it’s a lot of organic matter that is not being consumed and ceremoniously tossed out on November 1st. We may see a change in American cultural trends in the coming decades when ornamental food becomes a luxury we can no longer afford.

Information was gathered from a variety of scholarly sources.

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Student rights CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

have to address student questions, re-establish trust and repair damaged relationships,” Woodson said. “With a new Interim Dean of Student Affairs coming on board, I think this moment can be an opportunity to sharpen our focus on actions that we can take to move the campus forward. I know our police department is very concerned about the current climate and is open to ideas about how to improve the department's relationship with our students.”

Regarding the presence of campus police at student events, students have proposed initiatives such as “Wallmonitors” for Walls and PCPs in attempt to take back some of the control they feel has been unbalanced in the power dynamics between police and students.

When asked during an interview to address the tensions felt around campus, Campus Police Department (CPD) Captain Kathleen Vacca urged that the CPD are working to better engage with the community, contrary to the belief that they only appear on campus when someone is in potential trouble.

“The community engagement is not something new, it’s something that we’ve been doing heavily, much more so making it a clear objective in the last year,” Vacca said. “And that means going to a real variety of things, the things that we become aware of, the things that we’re invited to and the things we kind of stumble upon.”

Student rights during encounters While discussing the rights of

students in situations where they are stopped on campus and either randomly questioned or asked for identification, Vacca explained the legal guidelines of the three levels of contact between law enforcement officers and citizens: consensual encounters, reasonable suspicion and probable cause.

“If an officer stops someone and asks for ID or says, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ and you want to keep walking, well that’s within your right to do that unless the officer has a reasonable suspicion,” Vacca said. “Maybe it’s just a ‘Hey, how you doing? Who are you, I’m officer so-and-so’ want to meet. But you’re under no obligation to make the introduction if you don’t want to, you can walk away unless there is reasonable suspicion about a crime and they’re trying to figure that out.”

Obligations change if the officer is attempting to investigate a crime. Students may be required to talk with the officer to avoid charges of obstructing justice. However, the person does have the right to tell the officer that they do not wish to speak with them.

“If the officers say, ‘Hey, I’m trying to determine if I have a crime or if you’re the person that I just got a ‘be on the look-out’ [warning] for, I’m trying to figure out if you’re that person,’ then there’s a law that has to deal with obstruction. In that case, the person should not hinder, impede or obstruct the officer in fulfillment of their obligation to determine whether or not a crime has occurred.”

A consensual encounter does not involve police commands, force, lights or sirens. The officer may ask questions, but the person has the right to refuse to answer. In an encounter defined by reasonable suspicion, an officer must believe that the person has

Two New College pro-vaxxers get vaccinated

BY SIERRA LAICO AND SOFIA LOMBARDI Two pharmacies, both alike in dignity, In sweltering Sarasota, where we suffer for degrees, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil germ makes civil anti-vaxxers unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two competing stores A pair of New College pro-vaxxers get vaccinated; Whole misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their shots bury the flu’s contention The health-conscious passage of their shots-mark’d friendship.

Trump, after Stein's tender buttons SUBMITTED BY CLAIRE QUIN A cheeto, the carpet absorbed in it. The cheeto absorbed in itself. A heel grinding, a self-absorbed cheeto, immersed in the carpet as the carpet is becoming immersed. A sprinkling, a crinkling, an empty bag winking from inside and a silver twinkling. All gone. Deep among the bitten fingernails.

A sinking, a singing, an anthem linking fibrous stems. Red roots. Orange log- thinking or malingering? Unlinking into the water table; white rot.

When the carpet caught the cheeto was the carpet was bound to become.

committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime.

While an encounter resulting from reasonable suspicion can often be abused, allowing for discrimination and other foul play, a police officer ultimately has the right to detain a person for investigation. In this type of encounter a citizen does not have the right to walk away or refuse to identify themselves. However, the citizen does have the right to tell the officer that they do not wish to speak with them.

Lastly, probable cause is the legal standard that a police officer must have in order to make an arrest, conduct a personal or property search or obtain a warrant for arrest. The citizen’s right in this encounter is the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney.

Residential rights The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

However, student housing agreements often work based on a landlordtenant relationship, where landlords have a common law to enter a tenant’s property for various purposes. Because of this relationship between the institution and the students, it is possible that students’ rights to be free from warrantless preliminary searches by university officials or campus police can be limited to best suit the interest of the university and its property. This explains why a college may impose penalties on students who fail to comply with searches.

Numerous court cases have resulted from such miscommunication and have further defined what it really means for students living in residential housing on a college campus.

In the 1968 case Moore v. Student Affairs Committee of Troy State University, two narcotic agents pursued a search due to “reliable information” concerning the possible presence of marijuana on campus. A search of a student’s room was conducted without his permission but in the presence of the Dean of Male Students and two agents of the State of Alabama Health Department. They found marijuana and, following a hearing from the Student Affairs Committee, the student was indefinitely suspended from Troy State University.

The court ruled, “College students who reside in dormitories have a special relationship with the college involved … the student is subject only to reasonable rules and regulations, but his rights must yield to the extent that they would interfere with the institution’s fundamental duty to operate the school as an educational institution. A reasonable right of inspection is necessary to the institution’s performance of that duty even

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though it may infringe on the outer boundaries of the dormitory student’s Fourth Amendment Rights.”

If police ask to search your dorm The current precedent is that a campus housing representative must be present during the search. Under the Fourth Amendment, students have the right to refuse an officer’s entrance in their living space, however if there is reasonable suspicion that something potentially dangerous is going on in the room, the college can grant the police or other college official access to the room key.

Drugs and alcohol Regarding being seen with alcohol and drugs on campus, Vacca explained this may fall under the contact level of reasonable suspicion.

“If the officers do [have reasonable suspicion], then what they should do is say, ‘I’m looking into whether or not that drink you have in your hand’—maybe it’s a red plastic cup— ‘is an alcoholic beverage. How old are you?’ Most of the students who go here are not 21, the legal age in Florida and the United States for drinking alcohol. Maybe they’re checking that out,” Vacca said.

In Sept. 2019, the Sarasota City Commission unanimously voted to decriminalize possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana. However, because New College is the property of the state of Florida and receives federal funding, the local ordinance does not apply to the campus.

According to the Student Code of Conduct, the illegal possession, use, sale or attempt to obtain any drug can constitute an offense for which a student will be subject to the student disciplinary process. In the Code of Conduct the term “drugs” includes any narcotic drug, central nervous system stimulant, hallucinogenic drug, barbiturate, or any other substance treated as such and defined by the law as a drug or controlled substance. See New College Regulation 6-3004 for specifics regarding level of offenses and sanctions.

Medical amnesty Florida’s medical amnesty law, also known as the 9-1-1 Good Samaritan Act, says that if a person has experienced or witnessed an overdose and seeks medical attention they cannot be charged, prosecuted or penalized for possession of a controlled substance.

According to NCF’s medical amnesty policy in the Student Code of Conduct, when medical amnesty applies, the student will not be charged with an Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) violation by the Dean of Student Affairs or designee. However, the Dean or designee may mandate in such cases that the student undergo an AOD substance abuse assessment with the Counseling and Wellness Center (CWC). Failure to complete the CWC assessment may itself be considered a violation of the Student Code of Conduct.

Information for this article was gathered from ncf.edu, repository.uchastings.edu, wuft.org and eric.ed.gov

CATALYST Cohort '19

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 “The updated information will override the information originally collected during the Admissions process,” Wen said in an email. response to an email asking for information concerning demographics.

The demographics follow the U.S. Department of Education guidelines. The demographics are self-reported by students, however, under the guidelines, the ‘other’ pronoun option is not provided and may not accurately reflect the community.

The cohort of 2019 is made of 31 percent male and 69 percent female.

There was a 5 percent difference in the gender makeup from the cohort of 2018, 36 percent male and 61 percent female.

The statistics show that the entering cohort is disproportionate in gender, race and ethnicity.

Thesis student Alexandra Barbat is the Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion and hosts biweekly office hours to present and address student’s concerns, along with planning the best way to move forward with relevant incidents brought by students on campus.

“I’ve talked to a lot of students [of color] who feel like there aren’t many spaces specifically on campus for specific groups,” Barbat said.

“Staff, administration and students

Chile

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 nounced plans to begin a special investigation into the situation at Chile, as the conflict continues to grow.

“There was no reason for something that was so menial and so little to have grown into something

Brexit

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 requested to remain anonymous in the midst of Brexit decisions said, “We are not very far, and there is no doubt we will find a deal early next week,” hinting that this decision will be made fairly promptly and announced in a statement, rather than lengthy procedures within the EU. On Sunday, Oct. 27, two British opposition parties officially proposed an earlier election date than the Dec. 12 election offered by Boris Johnson in an attempt to force the Conservative-led government to delay the final decision on its impending EU deal. This election proposal could force Johnson to delay debate in the U.K. Parliament, stripping an issue critical to his campaign. This proposal will ensure that Johnson

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2019 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst

all work hard to create these spaces and provide these resources.”

However Barbat raised that although these spaces and support are available to students of color it’s hard to navigate how to establish a person’s identity as marginalized or a minority on campus outside of meeting together for that one hour in the week.

“I think part of it is white students not feeling like they want to engage in these spaces, so you have these students of color making their own spaces and other people not interacting with it at the level they had hoped,” Barbat said.

There are ways to support marginalized identities on campus within reason. There are times when it might be inappropriate for students not identifying with the marginalized identity to try and support.

However, if the event is public and welcomes everyone that would be an appropriate time to show support.

“Even if you don’t belong to part of the identity of the group that is hosting the event, you should still show up and respectfully support them,” Barbat said. “To see other people outside of those identities interacting and wanting to learn more about those identities, it’s really meaningful. I’d say when there are these public spaces made for these identities and when they are trying to welcome other people in, accept their offer.”

PAGE 11

Sarasota Opera hosts College Night Nov. 6 The Sarasota Opera is hosting a College Night for the Nov. 6 performance of “Rigoletto.”

New College students and faculty are invited to a reception at 6:30 p.m. in the courtyard directly next to the Opera House, at 61 N. Pineapple Avenue. Refreshments will be served. Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. performance may be purchased for $10 immediately before the performance.

Students and faculty wishing to attend should contact Maribeth Clark at mclark@ncf.edu.

CIW

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 tice.

“Our job was to get consumers to realize their position within the industry and how much power they actually have over the corporations,” Rodriguez said. “[We wanted to] get them to work together with us to demand that the companies use the same power they were using to get the best prices for them to actually demand human rights.”

Students, including those at New College, have played a major role in spreading the CIW’s message through their work within the Student/Farmworker Alliance, a supso big if there wasn’t some underly- porting network of young people ing cause for it,” Mercado-Harvey dedicated to securing farmworker said. “And the reason here is income rights established in 2001. In 2017, inequality. The reasons for what is New College SFA members particigoing on there are the same as why pated in a rolling fast, in which 13 people here are unhappy. It’s a huge universities across America fasted income inequality as a result of the in solidarity with Immokalee farmsame economic policies.” workers and their campaign.

“It was pretty incredible,” RodriInformation for this article was gath- guez said. “[The campaign] has been ered from cnn.com, wsj.com, railjour- very long, so many people have been nal.com and data.worldbank.org. involved, but we know that we’re going to win. We know that victory is must choose between holding an on the horizon, we just have to keep election to help its representation pushing harder.”

Although the CIW is always within Parliament and its end goal of looking forward and thinking about executing Brexit before said election.

Liberal Democrat leader Jo future progress, the group has a lot Swinson told the BBC, “The chal- to be proud of in terms of what they lenge is absolutely on [the Prime have accomplished so far. CIW memMinister], because if he is serious bers can now go into the fields and about wanting an election and if he’s educate workers about their rights genuine about having an election be- along with how to report abuse withfore Christmas, then he can back this out fear of retaliation or potential job loss. All reported cases of modbill.”

As of Oct. 28, the EU agreed to ern day slavery have been eliminated delay Brexit until Jan. 31, increasing since the introduction of the FFP, the chances of a U.K. election before 14 corporations in total have signed the end of the year and ending any on, over 2,000 complaints have been hope of a departure by Johnson’s resolved and over 32 million dollars have been distributed to workers promised deadline this week.

Professor of Economics and In- through raised wages. Additionally, ternational Studies Tarron Khemraj workers in other states and indussaid that “there was a net benefit to Britain for being part of the EU.” a significant impact in the long run, Khemraj believes that the U.K.’s but that “five years of negative immove from a common market to pact is a long time, so there’s a lot of “likely a free trade area” will not have suffering,” within the short term.

tries, such as Ben and Jerry’s dairy farmers in Vermont, have been able to use the methods implemented in Immokalee to demand that their own farms and connected corporations eliminate unjust working conditions.

While Food Chains, the documentary that the New College of Florida Student/Farmworker Alliance aired the following Saturday, Oct. 26, focused primarily on the CIW’s continuing fight to get Publix to sign on to the FFP, the group is currently focusing most of its efforts on their #BoycottWendys campaign, encouraging consumers to stop eating at the fast food restaurant until the company agrees to the CIW’s conditions.

“We’ve been pressuring Wendy’s for over four years to join the Fair Food Program, inviting them to be a part of the solution, to join all of their competitors in doing this, but instead they have turned a blind eye,” Rodriguez said. “Instead they continue to do business with farms where there is harassment, child labor, wage theft and all of these conditions without any consequence whatsoever. We have a national boycott, which is why we lead presentation like this all over the country, but also here at New College, hoping that you all can be aware of the boycott, participate, join us and get more involved in what we do.”

To learn more about the CIW and upcoming NCF SFA events, such as the group’s #BoycottWendys protest on Nov. 16, visit the New College Student/Farmworker Alliance Facebook page or contact NCF SFA members Lili Benitez (liliana.benitez16@ncf.edu), Nora Flowers (nora.flowers16@ncf. edu) and Amaranth Sander (lillian. sander16@ncf.edu).

Information for this article was gathered from ciw-online.org and sfalliance.org.

Information for this article was gathered from Vox, the Washington Post and the BBC.

CATALYST BASQUIAT

BACK PAGE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2019 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst

PAGE 12

HEADLINES HAITIAN EXHIBIT AT

THE TAMPA MUSEUM

BY CLAIRE NEWBERG

The Tampa Museum of Art houses a large array of artworks, from their extensive collection of pottery from the Classical world to the neo-expressionist photography of Sandy Skoglund. The museum has gotten some buzz recently from their temporary exhibition titled "Ordinary/Extraordinary: Assemblage in Three Acts," which focuses on Haitian and African-American art that portrays the Black working-class and immigrant experiences in America.

The "Ordinary/Extraordinary" exhibit features works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Purvis Young and select Vodou flags. All three extensions of the exhibit emphasizes individual objects that are turned into appreciated wholes. The Tampa Museum of Art’s website elaborates, “historical and socio-economic narratives informed by the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora, the Black experience in America, as well as European artistic influences, unite the artists featured in the series.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in 1960 in Brooklyn, New York and was an avid reader growing up, speaking English, Spanish and French by the age of 11. He found his artistic voice as a teenager through graffiti

OF

ART and tagging the walls of Manhattan.

His roots in graffiti can be clearly seen through his wordplay and sporadic portraits in his later works.

This portion of the exhibit titled "Jean-Michel Basquiat: One Master Artist/Two Masterpieces" includes photographs of Basquiat as well as his two works Yellow Door (1985) and Untitled (Word on Wood) (1985).

Yellow Door specifically features two self-portraits of Basquiat and the repeated word ‘milagro’ (‘miracle’ in Haitian Creole) slashed through, commenting on the experience of Black Haitian immigrants and the hardships they endured through harsh racism and prejudices in America, all the while thinking of their existence in America as a miracle.

Both featured works are remarkable, having been created just three years before Basquiat’s death in 1988 at the age of 27. The Basquiat sect of the exhibit is on view until Nov. 10, 2019.

Purvis Young was born in 1943 in Liberty City, Miami, Florida and never attended high school. He was

Artist unknown, St. Jacques Majeur, c. 1950-1970s.

Sequins and beads on cloth. 33 x 31 inches.

All photos courtesy of TMOA

All photos courtesy of The Tampa Museum of Art

Purvis Young (American, 1943-2010), Untitled, c. 1985-1999.

Paint on wood. 47 7/8 x 72 inches.

completely self-taught and never took any art classes, relying on his own experience to create art.

“From the get-go, I said, ‘I don’t want to just paint landscaping,’” Young stated in a 2006 interview during his Boca Raton Museum of Art retrospective exhibition. “So I started looking at people’s protests in America and all that and I started painting it.”

Purvis Young’s portion of the exhibit titled "Purvis Young: 91" includes an untitled work spanning three walls that took from 1985 to 1999 to complete. The work is made up of hundreds of painted wooden plaques, creating a business reminiscent of scenes from urban workingclass life, as if the viewer is peering into the windows of residents. Young used mostly muted earth tones with the occasional bright colors, echoing the landscape of Liberty City.

This portion of the exhibit is on view through Jan. 26, 2020.

Directly after Purvis Young’s exhibit is a smaller room painted a deep purple that contains Vodou flags that illuminate the room with their sequins and beads titled "Sacred Diagrams: Haitian Vodou Flags from the Gessen Collection." The Tampa Museum of Art official website states, “Often made of discarded burlap bags, repurposed fabrics, beads, and sequins, Vodou flags represent Haiti’s spiritually rich yet often misunderstood Vodou religion.”

Each flag is hand-made with ornate detail, with a few that feature biblical scenes similarly depicted to those of Byzantine church mosaics of Middle Ages. These flags were created for ritualistic purposes and often featured the names of different gods.

“Because [Vodou flags] have become a form of art which can be sold to art collectors and museums, the artists themselves have started to include their names, so much so that the names of gods are gone completely,” art historian Gabriel Toso stated in a 2011 lecture in London

about Hatian Vodou flags. “Traditionally, if you have a flag for a ritual, they have fringe on three sides, but the ones [created] for commercial purposes don’t have any fringe.”

The Vodou flag portion of the exhibit if on view through Jan. 26, 2020.

Information for this article was gathered from tampamuseum.org, youtube. com and khanacademy.org. For more information on the exhibit, visit the Tampa Museum of Art website at tampamuseum.org or call the museum at (813) 274-8130.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, 19601988), Yellow Door, 1983. Acrylic and oil stick on collaged wood door.

84 x 36 inches.