[TANGENT] Issue 1, Spring 2016

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TANGENT February 24, 2016

VOLUME XXXIV ISSUE

I

Harm reduction initiatives on campus

pg. 5

Whatever happened to our Walls?

pg. 8

Bike Shoppe’s past and present

pg. 13

Food Deserts

Two counties confront food disparities pg. 3

TANGENT The Tangent is an academic tutorial sponsored by Professor Maria Vesperi. It is developed in the Newspaper Production Office using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign and printed at Sun Coast Press with funds provided by the New College Student Alliance.

General Editor Kaylie Stokes Managing Editor Pariesa Young Copy Editor Yadira Lopez Online Editor Caitlyn Ralph Layout Editors Haley Jordan Audrey Warne Staff Writers and Photographers Bianca Benedí, Katelyn Grimmett, Giulia Heyward, Sydney Kruljac, Ryan Paice, Charlotte Redman, Jasmine Respess, Magdalene Taylor Direct submissions, letters, announcements and inquiries to: The Tangent 5800 Bay Shore Road Sarasota, Florida 34243 ncfcatalyst@gmail.com The Tangent reserves the right to edit all submissions for grammar, space and style.

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In this issue: Zika Virus .............. p.4 NBA Trade Deadline .............. p.6 Letter from Dean .............. p.7 COUP .............. p.14 © 2016, the Tangent.

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PAGE 2

Scalia passes and Obama is left to make a decision

by Jasmine Respess American flags across the country were at half mast. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died on Feb. 13. Scalia served from 1986 to 2016. His death means that there is now an open spot to be filled on the Supreme Court. President Obama will be able to nominate a successor before his term is up. Since a justice can serve on the Supreme Court for life, this is an important event. Obama has nominated two before, one being Sonia Sotomayor and the other Elena Kagan. The country awaits the president’s choice with bated breath, especially in this time of political change.

“I feel like many people don’t appreciate the gravity of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) appointments,” thesis student Raina Nelson said. “But yes, I feel really strongly about Obama taking his last chance to cull radical conservatism in the U.S.” Professor of Political Science Jack Reilly said that the issue is unlikely to hold anyone up at the ballot. “The average voter is uniformed about the Supreme Court,” Reilly said.

“A lot of people will be talking about it, but probably very little will come from the conversation,” Reilly added.

If Obama does nominate another justice, he will be among the presidents who have nominated the most Supreme Court justices during his term.

George Washington nominated the most at 10, but no other president has nominated more than three. With Congress having a Republican majority, the likelihood that the president will not nominate a conservative to the court is promising to those who would be considered more liberal. Presidents usually nominate those whose ideologies align with their own, but in this time of political polarization, it will be interesting to see what President Obama does, and what the reaction of the Senate, U.S. citizens, and even those who are running for the presidency have to say on the matter.

“Both Obama and the Senate have strong incentives,” Reilly said. “The Senate is likely to stall, since they hope to have a Republican president.”

Article III of the Constitution establishes the federal judiciary. Article III, Section, I states that “The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish,” The website for the United States Court states. “Although the Constitution establishes the Supreme Court, it permits Congress to decide how to organize it. Congress first exercised this power in Judiciary Act of 1789. This Act created a Supreme Court with six justices. It also established the lower federal court system.”

Reilly explained that Obama would likely nominate a middle of the road moderate, in hopes that the nominee would make it past the Senate.

Reilly also said it is the Republicans’ hope that they will have a Republican majority, as well as a

graphic courtesy of Dan Anderson-Little

Justice Antonin Scalia’s death has left an absence on the Supreme Court.

Republican president within the year. Therefore they could come to a Republican consensus on who could replace conservative Scalia.

The process has several steps. These steps have been laid out in the United States Constitution.

Although the president does have a great responsibility in nominating a justice, checks and balances lead to Congress having to approve the nomination for it to go through. The nominee and his or her witnesses are required to stand before the Senate Judiciary Committee and answer a series of questions. If the committee approves, then the nomination can move to the full senate to be voted on.

When a president is sworn in, White House staff prepares profiles of potential justices, in the instance that the president would need to nominate one justice or more.

During his 30 years on the court, Scalia was often on the opposing side of what the majority of the court had decided. He disagreed with the upholding of the Affordable Care Act and the affirmation of Roe v. Wade. His dissents will forever be remembered due to their intense rhetoric. Scalia was a proponent of looking at the constitution as a way to make legal decisions.

Scalia defined himself as a originalist. This means he thought the constitution should be understood in the way it was meant in the time of its creation. This ideology focuses very strongly on the original text of the constitution. His focus on history led to strong opinions on modern cases.

This is s commonly conservative idea, one which Justice Clarence Thomas shares.

Many conservatives would appreciate having a true conservative to replace Scalia, but Obama is

likely to nominate a moderate. Although, it is not likely that Obama will be able to nominate justices who are as liberal as the two justices he chose in the past. Republicans will likely try to stall the process as long as possible. “[Scalia] used his power as a Supreme Court Justice for his own neoconservative agenda under the justification of being a constitutional originalist,” third-year Kasia Burzynski said.

Burzynski expressed that she was glad he had passed, but she also stated that she did not understand why people were very hopeful, since Congress still has to approve any nomination by Obama. As of now, Congress has a Republican majority, and there has been constant pushback to plans Obama has put forward.

“I do not even know if someone like Sotomayor would be approved this time around,” Burzynski said.

“Every single Grand Ole Party (GOP) candidate has vowed to repeal Roe v. Wade,” Nelson added.

“They can’t have the power to throw the SCOTUS.” Not everyone is excited that Obama is going to exercise this specific presidential right.

“I heard someone comment that the president should wait and let the next president elect for the space that Scalia’s death left,” alum Bailey Peterson (’12) said. “That seems absurd.”

Peterson said that this comment was made and responded to even before Scalia’s body was processed. “[SCOTUS] literally has the power to legitimize or delegitimize our laws,” Nelson said. “And by extension entire schools of thought and cultural practice.”

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PAGE 3

Sarasota and Manatee tackle food disparities

by Katelyn Grimmett Try to imagine infinity. Now imagine everything that can possibly happen over a limitless amount of time and jam most of it into just one percent of infinity’s timeline, leaving the rest empty by comparison. This is what it is like to imagine the distribution of wealth in the world today. A report released in mid-January by the nonprofit Oxfam revealed that the top 1 percent of earners now grips more wealth than everyone else combined. As wealth inequality breaks records every year, the food gap on the planet follows suit.

In Florida alone, 2.5 million people live in areas with little to no contact with food markets within reasonable walking distance. These areas are designated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as food deserts.

“The USDA created an algorithm which helps identify a food desert and what they look at is approximated grocery stores, income in the neighborhood and also, along the income lines, eligibility for different benefits like SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program],” said Megan Jourdan, a New College alum and a community health specialist for the Florida Department of Health in Manatee County.

“There are different types of food deserts, layers of them,” she added. “The original food desert algorithm looked at whether or not somebody is within one mile of a grocery store. The next phase of food deserts expanded that to say, in an urban area, even if you’re within half a mile that can still count [as a food desert] because if you don’t have a car that is a lot of space.”

Jourdan participated in the National Environmental Health Association’s 2015 annual conference and exhibition. The project, referred to as the Manatee-Sarasota Food Access Improvement Project, created focus groups within local food deserts to involve residents in improving their community’s well-being.

“The health departments partnered across county lines – which isn’t common – to use the same methodology in food deserts across both counties so then we could say this is what the regional food system looks like, this is what we’re hearing from residents, and we’re implementing cross-county solutions that maximize resources.

In Manatee and Sarasota County combined, there are 19 food deserts affecting 77,583 residents.

“Technically, until the Walmart went up, we were in a food desert here,” Professor of Anthropology Erin Dean said. “Except if you were affiliated with the school and could eat at Ham. When there wasn’t Walmart, there was nowhere in this neighborhood to shop for groceries.”

The Food Access Improvement Project spent about a year collecting data from residents in local food deserts primarily by creating focus groups within each area. “The point of the focus groups was to develop themes around assets, barriers and solutions to accessing and eating healthier foods – primarily fruits and vegetables,” Jourdan

Katelyn Grimmett/Tangent

Katelyn Grimmett/Tangent

Jessica’s Organic farm welcomes the community to help glean their produce every Monday. explained.

The focus groups were held from January to March and in April and May transcripts from the meetings and themes which came up throughout were analyzed and used to create a survey which would gather specific data to base future plans upon. The next step was bringing this survey doorto-door in the residential neighborhoods involved with the assessment.

Several New College students contributed to the project through the Food Desert tutorial, which was held last spring. Students in the tutorial recorded the narratives of residents in local food deserts and presented them in a final video available on YouTube.

“The tutorial really helps because reporting on data is really boring and not engaging,” Jourdan said. “We wanted the interviews to show what was working well in communities and, if something wasn’t working well, what were ideas or solutions.

So what it did was it lent a face and a voice and a very personal story to something that might otherwise be dry.”

The project gathered an impressive amount of data from residents in underserved communities and interviews with key people in the area including reverends and school principals. Door-todoor surveys revealed residents’ thoughts on food inaccessibility and their ideas for improvement.

For instance, participants in Newtown – one of the food deserts involved in the assessment – reported price as an obstacle to a healthy diet and expressed interest in raised awareness of existing community assets such as gardens and farm stands.

Jourdan said that the department is working to make sure the solutions they come up with are driven by the residents and their needs. “Residents told us that they really wanted to be able to access

fresh healthy foods nearby so we applied for a USDA grant for a mobile farmer’s market and received that grant,” she added.

Another round of focus groups are currently underway in order to collect specific feedback from residents on intervention planning. “For example, residents are being asked where the Mobile Farmer’s Market should park, which days/hours residents would like to shop and what specific items the market needs to stock,” Erin Laird, Manatee Health Department’s CDC Associate, said in an email interview.

This past January, the Florida Senate Committee on Agriculture unanimously passed a bill supporting the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), a program with the goal of making nutritious food more accessible by providing grants to “construct, rehabilitate, or expand grocery stores and supermarkets in underserved communities.”

Essentially, the initiative provides financial incentives for stores to be built or rebuilt in areas without access to fresh foods.

“As a business owner, the places that need food resources are often low-income places and so they’re not the place that you look to start a business because you think maybe that neighborhood couldn’t support your business, and maybe it couldn’t,” Dean said.

On a national scale, the food gap is difficult to measure and address. But by focusing efforts within communities experiencing these food insecurities there can be specialized solutions developed to improve the availability of food and nutrition.

“I was surprised when I first moved here from Seattle, community supported agriculture was a really big deal there and I was surprised that there weren’t more examples of it here,” Dean said.

“Sarasota County is interesting because there are

“About 90 percent of the produce we purchase ourselves, anything that’s donated to the food bank is given out in addition to the three items,” Ryan Beaman, a distributor of Sprout produce said. probably areas close to the highway that are zoned for agriculture but most of it is suburban and urban.

So the farms tend to be further out.”

In Anthropology of Food, students will take a look at food access and insecurities during the last few weeks of the semester. “We are doing a local case study, we’re reading a publication put out by All Faiths Food Bank about hunger in Sarasota, particularly childhood hunger,” Dean said. “So we’re going to talk about the conditions that lead to hunger locally and how such a wealthy community can have a high instance of child hunger.”

One way to understand food insecurities in a community could be to consider the area’s culture and industry. For example, a recorded 929,000 tourists flocked to Sarasota in the 2014 fiscal year.

Compare this to the 400,000 permanent residents.

Needless to say, this is a city for tourists. So what does that mean for the people who actually live here?

At restaurantsinsarasota.com, a site that declares “you’ll never go hungry in Sarasota,” there are more than 145 restaurants listed. In comparison, there are only 5 Winn Dixies, 9 Walmarts and 11 Publix grocery stores in the area.

Most of the restaurants and stores mentioned are consolidated downtown. “We say you can take a bus downtown but depending on where you are in Newtown it’s difficult to catch a bus that goes there and some people aren’t particularly mobile so just catching a bus can be a challenge,” Dean said. “The problem in Sarasota isn’t bringing more local fruit and vegetables to the downtown farmer’s market, it’s bringing it to other neighborhoods.”

One successful initiative to bringing food right

Continued on page 15

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PaGe 4

World Health Organization declares public health emergency over Zika virus

by Charlotte redman

Outbreaks of the mosquito-borne Zika virus remained under control until its rapid expansion in 2015, which appears to be continuing into 2016.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Zika virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) earlier this month due to its connection to cases of microcephaly, a congenital condition, and other neurological disorders.

Originally discovered in a rhesus macaque monkey in Uganda’s Zika Forest in 1947, the virus was able to maintain a low profile for 68 years.

Only recently has it become recognized due to an uncontrollable outbreak in Brazil. A lack of data has left the exact number of infections in Brazil largely unknown.

Brazil’s Health Ministry suspects, however, that upwards of 500,000 to 1.5 million people have been infected. For this reason, the Zika virus’ swift proliferation across the Americas is troubling.

Especially so now that it has been detected in several U.S. states, including Florida.

This presence has compelled Florida Governor Rick Scott to declare a state emergency in the counties where Zika has been diagnosed. Up to now this list of counties includes, but is not limited to, Broward, Hillsborough, Lee, Miami-Dade and Santa Rosa.

“The level of concern is high, as is the level of uncertainty, ” Director-General of the WHO, Doctor Margaret Chan said in a press release. This unease is mainly due to the unpredictable growth of Zika, which is thought to spread in one of two ways: through sexual contact or, more commonly, through mosquitoes.

Transmission Only recently has the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the suspicion that sexual contact is a method of transmission for the Zika virus. In order to prevent and control the rate of sexual transmission, the CDC has issued interim guidelines for expecting families, non-expecting sexually active partners and all healthcare providers.

One of their suggestions is to employ contraceptive measures, such as condoms, that are known to help prevent the contraction of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). For NCF students, this form of protection is readily available. On campus, contraception is provided by both the Counseling and Wellness Center (CWC) and the Sexual Health and Relationship Education Resource Center (SHARE) located in Hamilton “Ham” Center. The CDC has stressed, however, that the primary method of Zika transmission is through mosquitoes, rather than sexual contact.

Zika is carried through the Aedes mosquitoes, one of the largest mosquito genuses, that are familiar to both tropical and subtropical regions of

the world. “Within the genus Aedes there are two of primary concern for being able to transmit the Zika virus,” University of Florida Professor Roxanne Connelly said. “Those are the Aedes aegypti, commonly known as the yellow fever mosquito and the other is the Aedes albopictus, commonly known as the Asian tiger mosquito.”

In reference to these mosquitoes, “we know that they are able to occur throughout the state [of Florida] and probably one or the other is in everyone’s backyard,” Connelly said. The CDC has recommended that people staying in mosquitoinhabited locations take precautionary measures by covering their bodies with clothing, by eliminating areas that are ideal for mosquito breeding and by employing mosquito repellent and nets.

“The primary thing that people can do is really focus on where these [mosquito] habitats may be – not only in your own backyard, but in your community,” Connelly added. “It’s going to take a community effort to really reduce these mosquitoes because the number of the potential places where mosquitoes can lay their eggs in any given backyard is limitless.”

NCF Physical Plant applies several safeguards to prevent mosquito reproduction. One of these procedures is to drain standing water. “There have been spots on campus where we have had standing water for extended periods of time, one was between Sudakoff and Z Dorm, and so we put another storm intake there,” Director of Physical Plant Alan Burr said. In addition, Physical Plant works to ensure that outtakes in detention ponds, such as the one by the Dortstein and Goldstein Residence Halls, are kept free of debris so that they drain properly.

Physical Plant’s job is not made any easier by the students, as “there have been a lot of screens on

buildings and they get removed,” Burr said. When found, these screens are stored to be reapplied the following semester. For students that want screens to be returned sooner, this request can be processed through filing a normal work order request online. “If the windows weren’t set up to have them [the screens], then we can’t put them on,” Burr cautioned.

Considering that mosquitoes are averse to air conditioning, the CDC has suggested that people remain in areas with air conditioning.

It is important to note that although the Aedes mosquitoes are classified as floodwater mosquitoes, they have a very specific habitat. “These two particular mosquitoes [the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus] are also classified as container mosquitoes. This means they lay their eggs just above the water line where it’s still a little bit moist, then the eggs will dry out and when water in those containers rises – from rainfall or irrigation – then those eggs hatch and you will have mosquitoes in the container,” Connelly said. “When I say container, I’m talking about anything that can hold water for a few weeks at a time. Some examples would be vases, cans, pet dishes, bird baths, wheelbarrows and one of the most common areas to find them are in used tires.”

Diagnosis After contracting Zika, one can only receive a diagnosis after undergoing laboratory testing to analyze blood or other bodily fluids for the presence of the virus. Several factors make this process challenging though, one of which is that the signs of Zika are largely inconspicuous and appear to be similar to other mosquito-borne illnesses, for instance, the Dengue fever.

Another element that complicates the

Travel-associated cases reported L:ocally-acquired cases reported

graphic created by Charlotte Redman

17 states and 2 territories have reported locally acquired cases of the Zika virus.

diagnosis process is that Zika symptoms are usually mild, lasting for only 2-7 days. Recorded symptoms consist of fever, rashes, conjunctivitis, headache and bodily fatigue, all of which may appear similar to signs of a common cold. The significance of these complications is that many people remain undiagnosed and could conceivably transmit the virus further, whether it be to other people or to mosquitoes.

“It’s a cycle that goes back and forth between mosquitoes and humans. So, if we start with a human who has been infected with the virus and they’re circulating the virus in their blood and they go outside where mosquitoes feed on them, there is a window there. I don’t know what it is – several days I’m sure, however long the virus is in their blood – and if the mosquito feeds on them then they would be able to pick up the virus,” Connelly said.

Once the mosquito catches the virus it will then spread through its body, including to the salivary glands. When a female mosquito feeds on a human she is inserting her mouth into the skin. This means “she’s releasing some saliva into the bloodstream as she’s taking the blood out. So, if she has the virus in her salivary glands then, when she releases her saliva, the virus goes out with it and that’s how she infects a new host,” Connelly explained.

Implications Implications of catching the virus include the development of potential neurological and autoimmune complications, which are currently in the process of being researched further by medical professionals. This notion is due to the observed increase in Guillain-Barré syndrome as well as the observed increase in babies suffering from microcephaly that correspond with the increase in cases of Zika.

Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a “rare condition” characterized by muscle weakness and tingling, occurring as a result of the body’s immune system attacking part of the peripheral nervous system. The onset of GBS is most often elicited by infections or viruses and is diagnosed based on the symptoms. Treatment consists of supportive care and supervision, from which most patients recover fully.

On the other hand, microcephaly is another rare, but more serious condition, by which a baby is either born with an abnormally small head or with a head that stops growing after birth. Most of the causes of this condition remain unknown, although the WHO believe that infections or viruses, exposure to toxins, genetic anomalies, or malnutrition may be potential causes. Unfortunately, there is currently no treatment for this condition and those born with it are at risk of dying shortly after birth or can develop developmental difficulties and learning

COntinuEd On PaGE 15

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PAGE 5

Harm reduction initiatives begin on campus

by Audrey Warne

Harm reduction is a public health philosophy centered on the principle that drug use has and always will exist in our society. Humans have had the inherent desire to alter their states of consciousness since the beginning of their existence, and attempting to reduce the risks associated with this potentially harmful behavior has been scientifically proven to be the most medically and socially sound solution.

According to the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), accidental overdose deaths are now the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, exceeding motor vehicle accidents, among people 25 to 64 years of age.

“Harm reduction is so important because sometimes by ingesting substances or by engaging in partying in general, people try and get away from their minds and they can forget to take care of themselves,” said second-year Hannah Procell, a member of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP). “Especially on a campus like ours, where we have so many people with mental health issues and disabilities, it’s so important that we foster a really great community environment that promotes selfcare.”

Harm reduction does not advocate for or support the use of drugs, legal or illegal. It simply aims to prevent the risks associated with drug use.

“It’s super important, especially on a college campus because there are extra risks associated with drug use, such as sexual assault,” added thesis student Janie Hepler, also a SSDP member. “When you have freshman who are coming in who have maybe never used substances before it’s really, really important to be educated.”

A large part of the implementation of harm reduction policies, especially on college campuses, is providing individuals with unbiased, factual information about substance use in the hopes that they will be able to make independent, informed decisions.

“If we go more with a harm reduction strategy, administrators can feel confident that our students have the education to make the choices. They [the students] understand what they’re getting themselves into. As administrators, there are things we have to do to keep the campus safe and students can also feel confident in their choices because they have the information,” said health educator Mandy Parente.

Addiction A major tenet of the harm reduction philosophy is the increased accessibility of drug and alcohol treatment for individuals struggling with drug addiction and abuse.

“Nearly 40 percent of people who wanted drug or alcohol treatment reported that they were unable to obtain it because they had no health coverage and could not afford it,” according to the DPA’s website.

Harm reduction emphasizes the treatment of addiction as a medical issue, not a social or moral

problem – as is often the case under the current zero-tolerance drug policies in place in the United States.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “estimates of the total overall costs of substance abuse in the United States, including productivity and health- and crime-related costs, exceed $600 billion annually. This includes approximately $193 billion for illicit drugs, $193 billion for tobacco and $235 billion for alcohol.”

Naloxone overdose prevention Along with advocating for the increased availability of treatment for abuse and addiction, harm reduction policies work to reduce the chance of death or injury from drug use. Naloxone is an opioid antagonist that works to block the absorption of opiates by the brain, reversing the effects of heroin and other opiates and stopping an overdose upon administration.

“You can get naloxone with a prescription now in Florida. Your doctor can give you a prescription based on the fact that you are taking opiates,” Procell said.

Naloxone is inactive if administered to someone who has not ingested opiates, making it impossible to overdose on. The medicine must be kept in a cool dry place or else there is a risk of lowered potency, making it difficult for law enforcement to keep the opiate-antagonist on them when they are on patrol or working out of their vehicle – especially in the hot, humid Floridian climate. “[The drug policy task force] were keeping track of the law that was going through the legislature about having the anti-opiate treatment [naloxone] available,” Professor of Biochemistry Katherine Walstrom said. Walstrom is the Chair of the Division of Natural Sciences, and a member of the drug policy task force created by President Donal O’ Shea.

The Good Samaritan Law and the Medical Amnesty Clause Good Samaritan laws attempt to encourage individuals to seek medical assistance in cases of drug overdose by providing amnesty from arrest and prosecution for minor drug and alcohol violations. The primary reason individuals decline to seek medical assistance in overdose cases is fear of police involvement and legal repercussions.

“I don’t think you can even pretend to have any kind of harm reduction if you don’t have a medical amnesty policy,” Walstrom said, adding that one of the task force’s goals was to rewrite New College’s medical amnesty clause and make it more clear.

Twenty states and the District of Columbia have enacted policies that provide limited immunity to individuals who seek help in the case of an emergency. Florida passed a version of the Good Samaritan law in 2012.

“When SSDP started it was a few students on campus who were working to expand the medical amnesty clause to include the person that calls for you [as the incapacitated individual] and to include substances other than alcohol,” Procell explained. “The medical amnesty clause, which is

currently being resubmitted for revision under the new policies, basically says that if a student is intoxicated and their friend is unconscious or they think they need to call for medical help, if you call for them they will be granted amnesty for their state of physical being [intoxication] and it won’t be held against you.”

Drug Policy at New College and the role of the Task Force The primary issue with the implementation of harm reduction policies at New College is the public association of harm reduction with the support of drug use and legalization.

“As a state institution I think there are limits to the types of harm reduction policies we can have that are still legal,” Walstrom said.

Due to New College’s association with the State University System of Florida, the school must abide by state standards in order to maintain funding and accreditation.

“My professional philosophy is to let the students be the experts on their campus,” Parente said. “I don’t know New College’s culture. I’m not an alum, I’ve only been here six months. You [the students] are all the experts on your culture and what is going to work and what messages are going to be received.”

The task force reviewed current policies and procedures and created a campus climate survey to assess existing attitudes toward drug use on campus. They also researched other schools’ drug policies, ranging from large state schools to small liberal arts colleges.

“We thought the Reed policies were the best sort of model to start with because most of the other SUS [state university system] policies were as opaque as ours, or they were really punitive,” Walstrom said. “We tried to find something that would work at New College but that also was more clear than the previous policy, which was a mess.”

The task force also assigned one member of the force to gather information on drug use and substances.

“Students are taking drugs for a reason. Some people do it for recreational purposes, but other students are self-medicating for different reasons, other ones are in pain. We were trying to think about what are some situations that would make it more likely that a student might use illegal drugs and would there be any way to deal with those situations before they started,” said Walstrom.

Walstrom also commented on the current status of the revised policy. “There is the chance to make comments on the policies. My understanding from the last faculty meeting is that the board of trustees is going to be able to review the current draft of the policies and everyone is going to have a chance to make comments on those policies. The board of trustees can review those [comments] and then the policies can be rewritten, if necessary, before the policies are voted on in June. President O’Shea was pushing for March [for the vote] because he really wanted student input, but I think the compromise was that students are having a

Florida’s Good Samaritan Law (1) A person acting in good faith who seeks medical assistance for an individual experiencing a drug-related overdose may not be charged, prosecuted, or penalized pursuant to this chapter for possession of a controlled substance if the evidence for possession of a controlled substance was obtained as a result of the person’s seeking medical assistance.

(2) A person who experiences a drug-related overdose and is in need of medical assistance may not be charged, prosecuted, or penalized pursuant to this chapter for possession of a controlled substance if the evidence for possession of a controlled substance was obtained as a result of the overdose and the need for medical assistance.

(3) Protection in this section from prosecution for possession offenses under this chapter may not be grounds for suppression of evidence in other criminal prosecutions.

chance to give input now, there will be time to do a rewrite after the March board of trustees meeting, and, hopefully, the students can have more input before the end of the semester.”

Resources The Zendo Project is an organization dedicated to psychedelic harm reduction whose goal is “to provide a supportive environment and education to help transform difficult psychedelic and psychological experiences into opportunities for learning and growth,” according to their website, zendoproject.org.

Founded by a New College alum, the Zendo Project has created a free, downloadable manual on psychedelic harm reduction that is easily accessible online. Psychedelic harm reduction is based on the implementation of harm reduction philosophies into a targeted system of dealing with the specific issues individuals may face while on hallucinogenic substances, especially in a turbulent environment like a music festival – or COUP. The four primary aims of psychedelic harm reduction can be surmised into a four-word phrase: Safely Sitting Through Difficulty. The four basic principles are: creating a safe place, sitting not guiding, talk through and not down, and difficult is not the same as bad.

“Check out Erowid, check out the Zendo Project website, there’s the bluelight forums for more indepth drug knowledge, or talk to one of us,” said Hepler.

Continued on page 15

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PAGE 6

NBA trade deadline passes without much significant action

by Ryan Paice

Another season’s NBA trade deadline has come and gone, and this particular season’s exemplifies exactly how most deadlines occur: a ton of – sometimes unfounded – rumors build up a fan’s hopes for action, only for almost all of the rumors to flame out and leave such a promising day unfulfilled. After last season’s crazy deadline, the dud of this season’s should have been expected.

Nevertheless, several low-impact trades made have very subtly changed the landscape of the NBA. All of the biggest names that were rumored to be possibly on the move – Houston’s Dwight Howard, the Clippers’ Blake Griffin, Cleveland’s Kevin Love, and the Hawks Al Horford and Jeff Teague – simply did not move at all, for better or worse. Blake Griffin and Kevin Love were not expected by most to actually be moved, but it was surprising that neither Dwight Howard or either of the Hawks’ duo were moved. Houston will most likely regret not trading Howard, as he will be an unrestricted free agent by the end of the season and will likely leave the Rockets due to his chemistry problems with James Harden both on and off the court. Atlanta might not regret keeping Al Horford, but keeping Jeff Teague when the team runs better with Dennis Schroder anyways was a questionable decision when this team could have really used additional talent on the wings.

But let’s stop focusing on the trades that did not happen and rather focus on the trades that did happen, beginning with the Orlando Magic’s Tobias Harris being traded to the Detroit Pistons for Brandon Jennings and Erson Ilyasova. The Pistons, currently one spot out of the playoff picture, added a very talented and versatile player in Tobias Harris to shore up the wing, while giving up their backup point guard Jennings, who is freshly recovered from last season’s season-ending injury, and Ilyasova, who is a decent floor-spacing and physical power forward.

Gaining a great young talent in Harris to round out their young core, while giving up very little in return, is a definite win for Detroit, who will be looking to claim a playoff spot of their own. For the Orlando Magic, it was a decent – albeit slightly confusing – deal, seeing as they just signed Harris to a team friendly deal last offseason. Jennings and Ilyasova should bolster Orlando’s current young core that has been struggling to compete, but Jennings will only further add to the guard logjam that the Magic are dealing with and the lack of Harris manning the wing will require Aaron Gordon to step up and claim the starting spot for his own.

While losing Ersan Ilyasova in the trade was certainly unfortunate for the Pistons, they later made another trade for Donatas Motiejunas and Marcus Thornton from the Houston Rockets, giving up Joel Anthony and a first-round pick in the upcoming 2016 draft. Motiejunas will make up entirely for the loss of Ilyasova, as he can come in and demonstrate his two-way ability as soon as he gets back to good health. The Pistons also gained

a decent bench scorer in Thornton, who should provide some shooting and microwave scoring off of the pine. This, coupled with Detroit’s first trade, has had many people claim that the Pistons were the big winners of the deadline, as they made two trades that rounds out its young core and prepares them for a playoff run.

Detroit is not even giving up too much in return, as the first-round draft pick will not be a particularly high one – and for a weak draft class – and getting rid of a largely irrelevant bench player in Joel Anthony. While the Pistons did not give up much of anything, the deal is still a win-win for the Pistons and Rockets, as the Rockets have as many as five other capable power forwards demanding playing time.

The second trade made before the deadline was the three-team deal that saw Courtney Lee and cash considerations being sent to the Hornets from Memphis, P.J. Hairston from the Hornets and Chris Anderson from Miami, and four separate second-round draft picks to Memphis, and Brian Roberts from Charlotte to Miami. The move really signifies Memphis giving up on the season, as they are sending away a starter in Courtney Lee who is one of their only legitimate shooters in return for a young player with decent potential in Hairston and four second-round draft picks. Anderson is a throw-in that might not even see the court in Memphis. For the Charlotte Hornets, the trade was an attempt to bolster their lineup for a playoff run, gaining a player who can shoot and defend on the wings in Lee. Currently claiming the 7 seed in the Eastern Conference – which is right inside the playoff picture – the Hornets will try to recapture their early-season performance and make a run into the playoffs.

The Heat, who received Brian Roberts in the deal for Anderson’s $5 million salary, have already traded him to the Portland Trailblazers along with another second-round draft pick for cash considerations. The purpose of all of their moves is to use their low-valued second-round picks to move their unnecessary contracts to get below the luxury tax threshold, which they have accomplished, and to gain back a second-round pick after sending many of theirs away, the Heat also traded Jarnell Stokes and cash considerations to the Pelicans for a second-rounder in the 2018 draft.

The next trade was pretty significant. It provides a contender with another good role player with the Cleveland Cavaliers trading Anderson Varejao and a future first-round draft pick to the Portland Trailblazers, a 2020 second-round draft pick and Jared Cunningham to the Orlando Magic, all for sharp shooting 6’11” power forward Channing Frye from the Magic and a second-round draft pick from Portland. All in all, the meaningfulness of the trade is that the Cavaliers spend a few draft picks for a solid role player who could help their team by providing solid depth of the bench, and that Portland and Orlando are stocking up on draft picks to gain young talent. Classic win-win draft

picks from a contender for a role player from a team that is rebuilding trade.

The next trade had the Denver Nuggets sending Randy Foye to Oklahoma City for DJ Augustin, Steve Novak, two second-round picks and cash considerations. The deal is understandable, as the Thunder need depth on the wing and Foye might be able to fill that role. However, he is having the worst year of his career and his shooting percentages have cratered, so the deal is not that spectacular for the Thunder. Receiving two second-round draft picks and two veteran – and waivable – players, the Nuggets got a pretty decent haul for a young player who is showing some decline.

The second-to-last trade made before the deadline had the Phoenix Suns finally sending Markieff Morris to Washington for DeJuan Blair and Kris Humphries – two solid role players – and a first-round pick in the 2016 draft. This was one of the most unsatisfying trades of the deadline, since Markieff Morris has been the most problematic player in the league since the Suns traded his brother away and will still no longer be on the same team as his brother. In addition, the Wizards giving up a first-round draft pick for an extremely problematic player who has been a detriment to his team for a while is questionable. Markieff Morris

had to be moved for the sake of all involved, but after everything, was anyone satisfied with this trade?

The last major trade of the deadline saw the Memphis Grizzlies sending Jeff Green to the Los Angeles Clippers for Lance Stephenson and a future first-round pick. This might be another sign that the Grizzlies are giving up on the year. Lance Stephenson’s horrendous shooting will do nothing to help the Grizzlies’ floor spacing, and although the first-round draft pick is sweet, Jeff Green was on an upswing and was contributing to the Grizzlies. They are arguably weaker after this trade, but it will help their future. For the Clippers, this is a decent but flawed trade, since Jeff Green can rejoin Doc Rivers on the Clippers and start immediately on the wing and contribute, it accentuates their already-existing weakness of a lack of depth.

Although there were not any real big names heading to any different places, the deadline still had pretty relevant action. The Detroit Pistons have bolstered their youth movement with a solid wing in Tobias Harris, the Cavaliers and Clippers have boosted their playoff hopes with solid roles players, and draft picks went flying. Not the most exciting of years, but still something.

Library late-night hours

by Jasmine Respess

There are fewer spaces for New College students to work on projects and homework late at night, every year. The Starbucks on University Parkway is no longer open all night, leaving only Perkins restaurant for all-nighters. The Jane Bancroft Cook Library is only open until 1 a.m. on Sundays and weekdays. New College students are forced to get creative when it comes to finding a stable place to work.

“I do homework in my bedroom,” thesis student Sydnie Petteway said. “It is quiet in there. No one bothers me.”

Some students are able to adjust to the lack of study spaces by working in there dorms, but others complained that they did not like to work where they sleep.

It was harder for those who did not enjoy working alone, because students often live in small quarters where it is hard to hold many people.

“I do homework with my friends,” thesis student Dannie Benedi said. “It keeps me motivated. I used to do homework at Starbucks, but now I work there, so I haven’t worked there all year.”

Benedi explained that when it came to having a space to meet with others late at night, there was a lack of choices.

“If you are doing your work or you are working in a group, and then suddenly someone shows up and you have to go, that is a bit of a problem,” Brian Doherty, dean of the Jane Bancroft Library said.

The library has undergone changes in the last couple of years. It has and remains open to the public, but with that come certain challenges. Last semester, there was a rash of instances of thievery.

During long study sessions, students would leave valuables such as laptops out, and on occasion they were stolen. The reaction on the part of the library, has been to hire security guards. These guards are not armed and cannot arrest anyone. “[The security guard’s role] is to check around and make sure things are okay and that people are safe in the library,” Doherty said. “If anything does happen, they immediately contact the police.”

Although this has solved the thievery issue, now the library cannot be open late without the guards.

The guards are screened by the police to ensure that they work with an official security company.

Through a company, the rate for a security guard is $15 per hour, Doherty explained.

“It’s by far the best rate we have been able to get,” Doherty said. “The security guard has worked out really well for us.”

The expenses for the guards are a part of why it is difficult to hold late-night library hours regularly, instead of just during finals and midterms, but Doherty explained that the largest cost would be funding a more permanent library staff. As of now,

Continued on page 15

TANGENT

NEWS

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2016 www.ncftangent.org | @ncfcatalyst

PAGE 7

News from the Capitol Policies and power in Florida

submitted by Dylan Pryor As an interning political correspondent and a member of the Florida Capitol’s Press Corps, I have been able to witness many of the legislature’s policymaking efforts as they happen. Here are a couple highlights from the last few weeks of the spring session.

Efforts to resurrect a disbanded archaeology program may be buried A bill pending in the House and Senate revisits an old program which permitted individuals to keep found submerged artifacts by reporting their findings, and is currently the subject of an ongoing debate among legislators and the archaeological community.

“This bill addresses the issue of people being charged with felonies for picking up artifacts down in rivers, streams and lakes,” Senator Charles Dean, R-Inverness said at a Feb. 1 committee meeting. “It establishes a permanent program, establishes rules similar to the Isolated Finds program from a decade ago.”

The Isolated Finds Program (1996-2005) ran for nine years and allowed people to keep found submerged artifacts provided they report their findings to the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research. It was ultimately discontinued due to frequent non-compliance by most diving collectors.

“The program was abused, there were people coming out with five gallon buckets full of arrowheads and claiming that they were found in an isolated find, and therefore had an exemption from the law on discovery of artifacts,” said Rivers Buford, the legislative affairs director for the Department of State when the Isolated Finds Act was in effect.

“We found a massive abuse in the program; the artifacts were turning up on the black market,” Buford said. “Your children, my children, were not

having an opportunity to see the artifacts or learn anything about them.”

Like the Isolated Finds Program, the new bill (SB 1054) and its companion legislation (HB803) would issue permits with a $100 fee to the public excavating submerged artifacts. It would also require people to report all findings to the Department of State, and transfer ownership rights from the State to the permit holder.

“Many sites start off as ‘isolated finds’, but with careful investigation and advances in field techniques they can develop into incredibly important archaeological sites,” a statement from the Pensacola Archaeological Society said in opposition of HB 803. “Allowing our shared heritage to be removed an artifact at a time would be like a death by a thousand cuts for many a site.”

When asked for an update on his currently postponed bill, Dean was concerned about its fate and explained that he feels people are confused about the motives of the legislation.

“I’m just trying to protect innocent people that pick up an artifact, as opposed to a fossil, and they get a felony charge, it isn’t right,” Dean said. “I want to protect the artifacts and I want to protect the fossils, and that’s not a problem, and I really don’t think that innocent citizens, moving in the direction we’re moving right now, should be worried about having that condition.”

New bill would require a unanimous decision for death penalty The Florida Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee moved a bill forward that would require a unanimous decision to impose the death penalty.

The bill comes after the Supreme Court last month declared Florida’s current method of death sentencing unconstitutional by a vote of eight to one. The court found that “the sixth amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death.”

Currently, Florida requires simple majority

courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

of seven out of 12 jury members to issue the death penalty, and the judge then has the ability to override their decision if certain “aggravating circumstances,” such as prior conviction, are found to exist.

Under current law, only 21 percent of death cases over the past 15 years had unanimous jury verdicts. Staff analysts said that a decline in sentences was likely, but the degree of decline is uncertain since only a vote of seven was required.

Under the bill, if the jury recommends life imprisonment, the court must impose that sentence. If the jury unanimously recommends death, the court may impose either the death sentence, or a life sentence of imprisonment with

no possibility of parole. This would effectively preserve the court’s ability to “override” a death recommendation. There can be no death sentence if the jury is not unanimous.

When the state seeks the death penalty, the prosecutor must provide a notice containing a list of aggravating factors to the defendant and the court. The jury must identify each aggravating factor by a unanimous vote in order to make the defendant eligible for death, and must determine whether aggravating factors outweigh mitigating circumstances.

Continued on page 15

In Search of Community - An Open Letter To New College Students

submitted by Mark A. Johnson, and nurturing a culture that resembles Boyer’s Interim Dean of Students community is hard work. Serious community

Dear Students, Having served in multiple roles during three different stints at New College over much of the past 30 years, I’ve engaged in many conversations about community at New College. Numerous conversations with students, faculty, alumnae/i, staff, prospective students and their parents, high school counselors, colleagues at other colleges and members of the greater Sarasota community, have only reinforced my belief that simply and accurately capturing the essence of the New College community is no simple task. In 1990, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published a book: Campus Life: In Search of Community. The book featured Ernest Boyer’s six principles of community: Educationally purposeful - a place where faculty and students share academic goals and strengthen teaching and learning on campus.

Open - a place where free speech is protected and civility is powerfully affirmed.

Just - a place where the sacredness of each person is honored and where diversity is aggressively pursued.

Disciplined - a place where individuals accept their obligations to the group and where well defined governance procedure guide behavior for the common good.

Caring - a place where the well being of each member is sensitively supported and where service to others is encouraged.

Celebrative - a place where the heritage of the institution is remembered and where rituals affirming tradition and change are shared.

When I first read the book a quarter century ago, I recall thinking to myself “why can’t New College be that community?” But building community at New College has never seemed easy.

I probably should not expect it to be. Developing

development requires community members to act responsibly and even courageously at times.

Speaking up when others are being silenced and holding all members accountable for their actions requires a major commitment. One may be comfortable advocating for civility, but standing up and challenging incivility requires an even greater commitment. The freedom that is so valued at New College, is sadly compromised whenever community members fail to take their responsibilities seriously. An individual’s obligation to the group can’t be ignored for long without diminishing the fabric of the community.

Today, having recently returned to the community as the interim Dean of Student Affairs, I’ve come to realize that the search for community is a never- ending process. It is a personalized endeavor. Upon reflection, I know that I have experienced a New College that has demonstrated the capacity to be that community suggested by Boyer. Yet that special feeling of a strong community that I envision, has too often been frustratingly elusive. Clearly, never-ending processes promise to be exhausting. But the pursuit is too important to abandon.

Few other institutions offer the tremendous freedom and opportunities available at New College. While individual freedom is regularly touted at New College, (we promote the credo “in the final analysis, each student is responsible for their own education”), that freedom should not be at the expense of the greater community.

A community of bright, motivated, and unique individuals offers such potential. I encourage every member of this community to vigorously pursue that potential to help build an even stronger New College of Florida. Throughout my tenure, I’ll look forward to working with you and contributing toward that end.

Whatever happened

by Giulia Heyward It is a Friday night and Palm Court is empty.

The year is 1971 and Florida has just become one of 30 states to have lowered the drinking age to 18 years old. There is a group of students sitting on the benches, a six-pack of beer between them.

All of them are waiting, hopefully, for something that would soon be known around campus as Palm Court Parties.

For the next several decades, these Palm Court Parties evolved into three large and heavily attended Center of the Universe Parties (COUP) and smaller weekly parties known as Walls. Walls are a tradition, a weekend staple and are funded by the Student Allocations Committee (SAC) on occasion.

At the beginning of every semester, students come together in the hopes of obtaining that perfect Wall slot under the supervision of the Vice President of Student Life (VPSL).

On Feb. 5, Wall sign-ups for the semester left students upset. Many argued that the sign-ups had begun too early, and that the process was unfair because multiple students had been able to sign up for more than one Wall. Due to student demand, thesis student Taylor Toro, who is the current VPSL, opted to re-do Wall sign-ups.

The following day, Student Court held a 12-hour meeting to come up with a list of recommendations for a new Wall sign-up system. Would-be Wall hosts will now have to submit a form with their theme and sample playlist, which will then be voted on by the student body, much in the same way as how themes are decided for COUP. What date these Wall hosts are allowed to choose will depend on how many votes they receive.

Despite being heralded by those happy with a more accessible and inclusive process, others have criticized the new system. With such dissent, it has led many to wonder: Whatever happened to our Walls?

In October of 2004, Tangent reporter David Higgins sent an inquiry to alums about any information they might have on Walls and PCPs. On Nov. 2, 2014, the Tangent published an article titled “Bearing the weight of the Center of the Universe: A brief history of Walls.” Dozens of alumni wrote back with stories of nudity, riots and psychedelic experiences.

According to Higgins’ story, music used to be played from speakers set on balconies or from cassettes and reel tapes. At times, multiple Walls would occur on the same night with each group playing different genres of music, from motown to reggae to classic rock. Wall hosts would compete to see which could attract the largest number of people, each blasting their music increasingly louder.

In a campus that then consisted of roughly 400 inhabitants, these parties were known for an openness that was not possible before. Alum Jono Miller (‘70) recalled one Palm Court Party in particular, where students of varying genders danced together topless. “[There was] the implicit affirmation that some long dreamt of reconciliation between the sexes had, at least momentarily, been achieved,” Miller wrote in an email to Higgins. “That seduction and ‘hitting on’ and all variety of mind, power and sex games had been suspended and that we were sharing a dance space without expectation.”

A photo of a Wall from 1997, courtesy of the NCSA Archives.

Palm Court Parties were also known for substance use.

“I recall one Palm Court Party that had a mixed drink bar set up in one of the H-classrooms, and another that was dispensing Purple Passion laced with windowpane LSD [Lysergic acid diethylamide],” alum Bill Rosenberg (‘73) wrote in an email to Higgins. “At that one, folks were still lying where they were the next morning.”

In 1975, New College went from being a private college to a public institution, which led to administrative changes that began to trickle down to parties.

According to alum Michael Armstrong (‘74), the campus police had previously consisted of one retired police officer from New York and several students who were hired as guards. This changed when the school became a public institution.

Noise complaints were rampant in the stories

told by alums then and now. Complaints would come from students sleeping or pulling all-nighters, elderly residents in the Sarasota area and even from the then newly built airport.

“One time someone who did not want to be kept up all night before an exam checked out the gear to keep it in her room in the hopes of cancelling the Wall for that Friday night,” alum Nik McCrory (‘87) wrote to Higgins. “This of course didn’t work and only led to an angry mob pounding on her door all night.”

And it was amongst this chaos, that the barebones of an organized system was adopted.

Palm Court Parties were soon separated into larger Walls officially dubbed PCPs and smaller Walls that took place on weekend nights. In the middle of the school week, the lowered drinking age still in effect, students would go door-to-door and collect money for beer runs. And somehow, at some point, the

A photo of alum Gwendolyn Roberts (‘03) taken by Austin Brown(‘03) before PCP.

to our Walls? name Wall began to stick.

“Walls, just like anything else at New College, evolve to suit the current population of New College students,” Toro said. “People have this nostalgia for New College and what it used to be. People would talk about the way that PCPs used to be or they would talk about the relationship that the NCPD used to have with students. I don’t know why people glamorize or sort of idolize something that they never experienced. They are hearing one side, they are not hearing the side of people who maybe didn’t have such a great time during that [period].”

Past Wall sign-ups have been known to last all night. In 2014, sign-ups began at 8 a.m. but students began lining up at 9 p.m. the night prior.

A representative would be responsible for staying in line for each individual group of Wall hosts at all times for the rest of the night. By having sign-ups online, this would eliminate having to show up in

person for a Wall slot.

“Walls have been a tradition going on for a few decades now and, since then, it’s become a lot more structured,” third-year and Chief Justice of Student Court Blaise Defranco said. “Taylor Toro and the rest of the Court already agreed that she would redo the sign-ups but also use this as an opportunity to move the sign-up to an online process based more on voting in order to give people better opportunities of securing Wall slots and just generally make the process more streamlined and accessible.”

Some, however, fear that the new online process and voting system will not allow those interested in throwing more obscure and less popular Walls the chance to do so.

“There is this idea that every event has to be for everyone and I think it’s impossible,” alum Dyl Robitaille (‘10), Nothing Arts Center co-founder, said. “I think that if you don’t acknowledge that,

you are excluding members of the community and marginalizing people.”

Nothing Arts Center is a warehouse founded

by New College alums that hosts a variety of music, art and film events under a safe space and substance free atmosphere.

“A big thing for me [about Walls] is that I was exposed to a lot of things I would not have necessarily signed up for or been interested in,” Robitaille said. “You have this idea of majority rule instead of consensus. When you are voting majority rule, you are an individual and you are saying ‘Yes. I want this.’ And the more individuals that say ‘Yes. I want this,’ the more votes you get. If we were doing a consensus, you’re not saying ‘Yes. I want this.

Let’s do this.’ [...] Consensus isn’t about the ideal situation, it’s about can you live with this? Because there is an understanding that not everyone can be happy.”

A collage of photos taken at Walls in 1997.

Regardless of what precedent the new Wall sign-ups will set for the decades to come, as of right now, Walls will still remain an ongoing tradition.

“You’ve got a crew of brilliantly quirky young folks, who, no matter how cool they may be, still harbor some trace of the residue of being a social misfit,” alum Guy Jara (‘93) wrote in his email to Higgins. “You bring them together in a place that brings them more freedom than they’ve ever known, or conceived of, and set them loose. Now many good things could and would happen, just with that storyline right there. But, since freedom of mind so often follows in the footsteps of freedom of spirit, or freedom of the ass, there is more to the story.”

The Tangent article by David Higgins can be found online at ncftangent.org.

courtesy of Joy Feagan

TANGENT

FEATURES

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2016 www.ncftangent.org | @ncfcatalyst

PAGE 10

Venturing outside the bubble: New College and National Student Exchange

by Caitlyn Ralph

Study abroad is expensive. Like, way expensive.

Fortunately, New College participates in the National Student Exchange (NSE), a nonprofit consortium of almost 200 schools. These schools exchange students through special programs that cut the cost of of study abroad and help fill in gaps where a home institution lacks.

Through NSE, New College students can study in a variety of locations, including the Netherlands, Spain, California, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, New York and Montana. The school also welcomes students from outside institutions every semester.

Since its inception in 1968 NSE has exchanged more than 113,000 students – with 2,266 in the 2014-2015 school year alone.

Applying to NSE Study Abroad Coordinator Florence Zamsky is the NSE mastermind on campus. She works with students from the very beginning of the study abroad process.

New College is under NSE’s “Plan B,” which means students pay their tuition at NCF, and their housing costs at the host institution. Paying tuition at New College rather than at an out-of-state school allows students to keep scholarships such as Bright Futures.

Participating in NSE is a generally painless process. The key is to start early. By starting early and working with faculty advisors, students can craft their curriculum to leave space for NSE while still finishing up area of concentration (AOC) requirements. Set up an appointment with Zamsky to discuss academic and personal interests relating to study abroad. Although some schools are on a wacky quarter system that is harder to deal with, most match New College’s semester system, so credits can transfer easily.

The most time consuming process is the research, but defining a primary requirement for host institutions, whether it be location or academic program, helps streamline the journey.

“I just basically ranked them by their biology – how much biology research they’re doing,” alum Neal Lacey (‘12) said. Lacey studied at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Different schools offer different placement availabilities. Essentially, a school defines what ratio of students it admits: some send out as many as they take in while some are open, with a few more options in between. Once a list of schools ranked from most desirable to least desirable (basically back-ups) is developed, the straightforward application process begins.

The deadline for students wanting to study in the fall, spring or for a full academic year is in midFebruary. Students don’t have to fret if they miss the initial NSE deadline, however. While the pool of available schools may shrink after the conference, Zamsky can and frequently does work with students

post-deadline to find schools, up until pretty close before the exchange dates.

While most institutions involved with NSE are within the U.S., there are ways to travel internationally through the program. Students at New College can put University of WisconsinGreen Bay at the top of their ranked list. From there, they can exchange to places such as Spain, the Netherlands, France, Japan, Denmark and Germany – all while still technically staying under the NSE umbrella.

“Because University of Wisconsin-Green Bay allows students on Plan B to participate in some of their exchange programs, they are not required to first go to Wisconsin-they can go straight [abroad],” Zamsky said. “That’s really neat because those for whom the programs in Spain or the Netherlands work, they can pay tuition and fees to New College, some fees to Green Bay, and get to some locations abroad.” Students apply with the normal NSE application – Zamsky simply makes a note in the system.

Previously a best kept secret, the word about the Green Bay hack is getting out there. Last year, four New College students decided to take this path, counting those who applied before and after the deadline. This year, with the deadline having just passed on Feb. 15, a whopping seven students applied for the Green Bay international exchange – the highest Zamsky has had – with others expressing interest. Because Green Bay is an open institution, students can wait to apply for the NSEslash-international exchange program in the fall if they’re interested in going away in the spring.

Zamsky said that NSE applicants on campus have noticeably increased. New College became a NSE participant in 2000. Last year’s deadline saw 10 students apply – this year’s deadline saw 18 students apply. Because there is still a possibility to apply after the deadline, last year’s numbers did, and this year’s number will, increase by the exchange date.

Why leave the bubble?

Second-year Mason Smith was one of the 18 applicants who applied to study through NSE next year. The Religion AOC will attend Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec during spring 2017.

“I don’t really have the funds to go to Europe or anything, so what’s the next best thing? A province that its main language isn’t English – it’s French – so that’s a study abroad-type vibe, while, at the same time, being just a couple miles from the Vermont border,” Smith said. “I wanted a different cultural experience.”

Smith was drawn to Bishop’s Islamic studies program. “I like barely dipped my toe in the water with religious studies [at New College],” Smith explained. “There really isn’t any like religious classes that have to do with Islam here, and I wanted to learn more about it, and they have that

image courtesy of Daniella Husband

“Montana is a beautiful place to go to school. I can’t get over how beautiful it is here. All the time too,” third-year DanielleHusband said about her time at University of Montana through NSE. “I am really into the outdoors. There have been endless opportunities to hike and see fantastic sites around the school and in neighboring states. The most memorable day was the first snow of the season. It was the first experience I had ever had with snow. Unreal.” at Bishop’s.”

At the University of Minnesota, Lacey was able to study with professors who are the top in their fields. Lacey also took advantage of the university’s soccer club. “I was trying to see what it would be like to go a big school with like grad schools,” Lacey said.

Third-year environmental science AOC Danielle Husband decided to stay at her host institution, the University of Montana, for a full academic year.

“This experience has been the best gift I could have given to myself,” Husband said. “I’m taking classes with grades, which is crazy coming from the New College contract system,” “I wanted a change of scenery away from New College. I’m a Florida native and as much as I do love and appreciate the state, I was ready to experience a different part of the country. At first I thought I would have to study abroad to get that experience. Little did I know

that I could be involved in NSE for a fraction of the cost!”

Husband added that a big motivation for NSE was that she was running out of classes to take for her AOC. She needed courses in geology and geography that she couldn’t get at New College.

Zamsky said that students are usually very happy with their experience coming back and are very excited about what they did at their host institution.

“It was definitely refreshing because I got back and felt really excited and rejuvenated to be at New College while also being slowly tortured by the thesis,” Lacey said.

Visiting New College Then there are those who want to venture inside

Continued on page 15

TANGENT

WeDNeSDay, February 24, 2016 www.ncftangent.org | @ncfcatalyst

SUBMISSIONS PaGe 11

BAD NEWS

Bears

Submitted by alum Ashley Strand (’92)

I’m old and I’m gravitating south (take that however you want). I’m sick of selling knives. I can’t take another winter in New York. I thought I was going to be teaching Shakespeare.

This is the swirl of thoughts that eventually found form in Intro to Stand Up, which ended up being one of the best experiences I’ve had. After 11 years of banging my head against a wall trying to be a professional comedian (20 trying to act) I decided it was time to investigate some back-up options. I had an old dusty MFA in classical acting that I’d been saving for the purpose.

I started the process late, of course, and didn’t manage to get an interview with Nova until 2 days before the deadline, which is when I discovered that Early Modern English theatre was already represented by two residents experts here at New College; but they both (Nova [Myhill] and Monica [Cross]) were intrigued by my stand up background.

I had just done a week of feature work at McCurdy’s and I knew that Les was committed to developing new talent, so I felt confident I could secure his venue for the final. Once I locked that down, the ISP became very attractive to the school/alumnae association, and that was that.

After the ISP, a student who attended the show asked me whether we had spent a lot of time reading and discussing comedy theory. He was very nice, and it was difficult not to laugh, but I thought, “boy, that’s why these kids need performance classes here.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that 90% of it was me shouting, “do it again!” at the students.

What I didn’t know going in was how the students would react to the discovery that comedy is a lot of work and often not fun at all, or how close we could get to achieving in a month what usually takes about six months to do. That depended on how hard I could push the students, and whether they would trust me, because I knew there’d be a long uncomfortable period in the middle (after, “Hello,” until, “we have two classes left”) where everyone would be feeling less and less funny with every meeting. I also didn’t know how any of the promotions would turn out, although, once [Provost] Steve Miles was onboard, I relaxed significantly on that front.

As it turned out, everything went as well as it could have. The students turned out to be very tough, they trusted me, and I was able to push hard all month, and ultimately everyone responded with a good show – not one bad performance on the final, which sold out a day ahead, and was very well received. I got lucky with this class, too, because no

one came in trying to imitate a known comedian, no one came in slinging hack premises, reaching and pandering. Everyone came in trying to express their own comic viewpoint, which is why the show was so varied and authentic.

The cherry on top was all the aftermath on the Forum. I was proud of how the students in my class reacted. They attempted to reason with their attackers, but when they found reason was being ignored, they did not lash back. This was a redemptive moment for me, because when I went here, I often clashed with the PC elements, and did not react as well as I could have. I’m very happy my students found a better way. My favorite comment was from someone warning that a refusal to apologize for the show would result in social death for the participants. The person said it would be “Bad News Bears,” which I imagine felt like a very hip way of saying something incredibly cruel. But I actually saw “The Bad News Bears,” in the theatre, and Billy Bob Thornton was not the lead. It was a great little movie about a rag-tag groups of misfits and rejects who pull together to overcome their shortcomings and the jeers of the cool kids, and wind up becoming champions. Along the way there’s hard work and tears, life lessons learned and friendships formed. They end up like a kind of family. Goddamn right we’re Bad News Bears.

Teaching the stand-up ISP was profound for me.

Once I secured McCurdy’s as the venue for the final project, I knew the course would be a great challenge for the students. College, by its nature, is insular, protective, and socially narrowing. At New College, these factors are heightened by it being an honors college, and its peculiar history and character. It’s a freaky little hippie enclave, which is what we all love about it. It’s a compelling, often intoxicating environment, where stunning intellectual and emotional growth can occur, but precisely because of this, it has a distancing effect on how students relate to people outside that environment. Having the show at McCurdy’s forced the students to relate to people outside their own peer group. This was a challenge beyond the fundamental vulnerability of stand-up. So I knew everyone who took the class had guts, or was nuts, or both. Fun guaranteed!

What I didn’t know was how much could be accomplished in one month given total focus on the task of creating a 7-minute set. Going to open mics every night, putting together your first tight 7 can take 6 months or more. I’ve been doing it 11 years and I still don’t have a tight 7. The biggest surprise people have when they take a stand-up class is how

much work it is, and that’s it’s often not fun.

One of the reasons it can take so long to build a set is it takes a lot of trial and error to finally break down your own assumptions about how things should be, and start to see them as they are. There are a lot of erroneous assumptions that comedians have to work through, but this is the most important one: If something’s easy the first time, you assume it’s going to be easier the second time, and that practice will produce consistent but diminishing returns along a fairly predictable curve. With stand-up this is not the case. Everyone is funny when they’re being spontaneous, inspired by the moment, friends, a shared experience. The project of stand-up is to recreate the joy of that moment with all of the factors that originally informed it removed. Now you’re working from a script, talking to a room full of strangers who have no context for your material other than what you give them. It takes time to make the joke as funny, consistently, as the moment of inspiration.

However, telling a joke for the first time, the task of communicating this idea in this new format for the first time, is its own source of inspiration. So often it happens that the first time you tell a joke, it goes great. When it goes great the first time, almost as a rule, it does not go well the second time. This is a source of consternation and wonder for beginning comedians. After a while, you figure out it’s just sophomore blues, and most jokes go through it, especially (and cruelly) the ones which are most inspiring when you conceive them.

Sophomore blues is what happens the moment all sources of inspiration have abandoned the joke and your performance of it. Now all work on the joke must be technical, which is, by its nature, a grind. How long you stay in the valley of unfunny after your inspiration has died is directly correlated to how much hard, technical work you do on the joke. If you lose faith in your original inspiration, you either drop the joke or work on it becomes meaningless. All of which is a long way of saying, the hardest thing to get comedy students to believe is that working through the hard part -- when it’s unfunny and you and everyone else is sick of it, and you’re feeling daily embarrassment with no perceivable reward -- is worth it. With an open time frame, comics figure it out themselves, or decide to spend their time on something else. With just a month and everyone has to perform at the end, you have to push them.

When you get into pushing performers, especially new ones, there’s a limit past which the

pressure shuts down their creativity and confidence.

Past that limit, you’re doing damage and the performer moves backwards. So two hours a day, five days a week seemed like enough to me, though we ended up doing more like 2:30 or 2:45 most days, and adding half-hour one-on-ones once a week in place of most of the screenings starting the third week. Almost everyone seemed to benefit from the less public feel of one-on-one work. Anyway, it was a balancing act, but for the most part I just pushed and pushed and pushed, and to the credit of everyone in the class, they all responded. I really didn’t know if everyone was gonna make through the valley of unfunny. By the end of the month I was stunned by how much progress everyone had made. They trusted me and themselves and kept grinding until they produced a really good show -an amazing show for first-timers. I had multiple people who were regulars at McCurdy’s tell me that some of them were better than a lot of the acts they see there, and it’s true.

This result is not an accident. It is expected when you think about how most acts are developed: without guidance. Developing your own voice is difficult, and without someone encouraging you to find a way to communicate what’s funny to you, instead of trying to figure out what makes everyone else laugh, it’s easy to fall into the trap of hacky, predictable, and safe humor -- because the rewards are more obvious and easier. The rewards of working to find and speak in your own voice were on display at McCurdy’s Feb.1. Each student was unique, fascinating, and funny. As a comedian, I feel compelled now to demand of myself what I demanded of my students. As a teacher I am tremendously proud of their work, and deeply touched by the trust they put in me. As an audience member, like everyone else who was listening with an open heart, I was delighted.

Being back as a teacher sometimes felt like the second half of A Clockwork Orange, where he comes back and reaps the harvest of all his sins. The Great Karmic Wheel of work avoidance techniques which I had cranked so shamelessly during my time here now flattened me daily as I encountered all my own behaviors multiplied by ten. The difference is, of course, the students I had took some cajoling, but they all came through and created something wonderful, so we won the game of push-and-pull.

I never managed to pull it together and create something this good as a student, so maybe in some way it was redemptive for me.

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What to watch for in the NFL now that the season is over

by Ryan Paice Now that Super Bowl 50 is in the books, many fans are left with a feeling of emptiness without a game to watch every Sunday. Luckily, the offseason can be almost as exciting as the real season, and this offseason is looking like it might be one of the most transitional offseasons in the recent history of the league.

Not that the offseason started with a ton of momentum anyway. After beating the Carolina Panthers 24-10 in the ugliest Super Bowl in recent memory, the Broncos are heading into the offseason with a championship trophy paired with a few major issues. Firstly, what is going to happen with Peyton Manning? After winning the big game at age 39 and reportedly on the outs with the Broncos’ GM John Elway, it would make sense to retire on the highest of notes and pass the torch to Brock Osweiler.

Talking about Osweiler, it will be interesting seeing how the Broncos will try to lock him up for the long-term, and whether or not they can reach an agreement on an extension. Last but certainly not least, the Broncos top priority has to be the re-signing of Von Miller, one of the best defensive linemen in the league and one of the key cogs in the Broncos’ league-best defense.

On the other hand, even though the 15-1 Carolina Panthers lost in the Super Bowl, they certainly still have a bright future, and should only improve in the offseason. Kelvin Benjamin, the Panthers’ first-round pick in the ____ draft and the team’s top receiving talent, should be finishing up his recovery over the offseason and back for the 2016 season. With his return, as well as the inevitable return of pro bowler Josh Norman – as the Panthers will either re-sign him or franchise tag their best cornerback. With Cam Newton’s continued growth, the return of the team’s best wide receiver in Kelvin Benjamin and best cornerback in Josh Norman, the Panthers should be right back in the Super Bowl mix next season.

While the Broncos and the Panthers were the cream of the contending crop last season, there were several fringe contenders including the Arizona Panthers, New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks – just to name a few of the teams that went the furthest in the playoffs – that could be in that mix with a little bit more talent. Be it through the free agent market or via the draft, there is plenty of available and prospective talent that could help a team.

The free agent market will not be a particularly interesting one, since the biggest fish on the market – Von Miller, Josh Norman and Muhammad Wilkerson – will either receive new contracts or get the franchise tag from their respective teams.

Regardless, the market boasts a wealth of midrange talent, and depending on where some of them may go might subtly restructure the landscape of the NFL. Players like San Diego’s Eric Weddle, Carolina’s Mike Tolbert, Chicago’s Matt Forte and Alshon Jeffery, and Miami’s Olivier Vernon and Lamar Miller could all make an impact on the team

that signs or re-signs them. While this writer will not speculate on where they might end up signing, some of the biggest free agent decisions of the offseason deserve examination.

The Indianapolis Colts are only a year removed from playing 11-5 football, which should give Colts fans some hope after a lousy 8-8 year where Andrew Luck regressed significantly and the team failed to be competitive in several games. Coupled with last season’s ugliness, Indianapolis has one of the toughest personnel decisions to make – deciding between their two young and talented tight ends, Coby Fleener and Dwayne Allen. Both Colts’ draft picks in the 2012 draft, both have proven to be positive offensive pieces. Dwayne Allen is the better blocker, but is a less productive receiver, accumulating 16 catches for 109 yards and only 1 touchdown in the 2015 season. Coby Fleener is not as effective of a blocker, but is a much more productive receiver, ending up with 54 catches for 491 yards and 3 touchdowns. Both will become unrestricted free agents in the offseason, and the general consensus is that the Colts will want to keep one of the players, as there will most likely be exuberant offers made for both that the team could not simultaneously match.

Another one of the toughest decisions that has to be made in the offseason is in the Washington Redskins’ hands: whether to re-sign Pierre Garcon – the team’s second-best receiver behind DeSean Jackson – or to release him, which would free up some money to use on Kirk Cousins. While Garcon had a decent year, accumulating 72 catches for 777 yards and six touchdowns, Kirk Cousins had a phenomenal contract year, throwing for 4166 yards, 29 touchdowns against only 11 interceptions, and the highest completion rate in the league at 69.8%.

After such a fantastic year, Cousins will be looking to cash in as perhaps the top quarterback free agent in the league, and the Redskins could use some cap room to make sure they get their young star back on their team.

Several teams across the league will have to make important decisions this offseason, as always, and for some of the teams that finished with the worst records, their most important decisions might be made in the draft. This upcoming draft has a lot to offer, including elite top talent, from one of the most league-ready offensive tackles in recent draft history with Ole Miss’s Laremy Tunsil to Ohio State defensive star Joey Bosa both declaring eligible for the draft. This talented young class promises to bolster the NFL’s already impressive wave of young players, including Khalil Mack, Russell Wilson and Le’Veon Bell.

The youth movement around the league is only assisted by the numerous retirements – and possible retirements – of veteran stars. Marshawn Lynch has decided to retire, as well as Charles Woodson.

The Broncos and the Lions are still awaiting the official decisions of Peyton Manning and Calvin Johnson, who are both strongly expected to retire.

If the two do decide to retire, the NFL will be losing several league legends, accentuating the youth

movement and what might be one of the most transitional offseasons in recent history. Another factor making this a possibly historic transitional offseason is the change of the locations of possibly two teams. After enduring season-long rumors that the St. Louis Rams would be moved to Los Angeles after the season, the news finally came to fruition with a league vote, deciding that the Rams would be moved to LA, and that the San Diego Chargers are allowed to move to LA with them if they choose to do so.

When the 2016 NFL season begins, the league will look very differently from what it did before.

While the free agent market will not be particularly exciting, the draft consists of several promising young players who will add to the NFL’s youth movement. With the bittersweet retirements of several league legends and possibly two teams finding a new home in Los Angeles, the offseason that has just begun is looking like one of the most transitional offseasons since the start of the new millennium.

God’s Country: The Coen Brothers confront faith and cinema in ‘Hail, Caesar!’ submitted by David Canfield

There’s an exhilarating combination of empathy and contempt in “Hail, Caesar!,” the latest comic concoction from Joel and Ethan Coen.

Immersed in the day-to-day of a Hollywood studio in the 1950s, the film follows the travails of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a “fixer” tasked with holding his looney actors in-check and keeping their scandals out of the press. In some instances, he’s an object of derision for the Coen Brothers: a man who quietly buries truths and enthusiastically promotes lies. But in others he’s an admired figure, manufacturing a sense of harmony behind-the-scenes to keep the wonders shown on-screen untainted, and open for full embrace.

Mannix’s main situation in need of “fixing” is the kidnapping of Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), a mega-star heading up a “Ben-Hur”-style epic titled “Hail Caesar.” A league of communist writers holds the dopey Whitlock for ransom, all but converting him in the process, while Mannix is left to hunt for his missing star and deal with a series of smaller crises along the way.

Even for the Coen Brothers, this structure makes for a disorienting, destabilizing and decentralized work. One that places Hollywood gloss and blind faith side-by-side in an effort not to instruct or satirize, but to search. Through methods equally absurd, heartfelt and dramatic, the film meditates on notions of enlightenment and escapism.

“Hail, Caesar!” is not quite madcap, like “Burn After Reading” or “The Big Lebowski,” but it’s not somber, either. Its formal and thematic bases are more ambitious and, perhaps, less sturdy. There’s undeniably too much going on here – cinematic homages, send-ups of classic actors, caper sideplots, lectures on communism, ruminations on religion – but that seems entirely the point. This is an overstuffed love letter to the movies – to the act of falling into an epic fantasyland or a musical fantasia for a few hours and checking reality at the door.

It’s unfortunate, then, that the movie tends to drag its feet. Though riddled with references and

imbued with a strong sense of purpose, “Caesar!” is often too disjointed to really click beyond its spurts of brilliance. Its best moments, which include great physical performances from Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson and breakout Alden Ehrenreich, don’t tie the film together in any significant way; they’re interludes instead, building in nostalgic contrast with the reflexive critique that drives the central plot.

“Hail, Caesar!” builds by juxtaposing its characters’ true selves and constructed personas.

In one revealing discussion, Mannix undermines the desire of two gossip columnists (rivaling twins, both played by the great Tilda Swinton) to break a scandalous story on the past relationship between Whitlock and Olivier-modeled director Laurence Laurentz (a sublime Ralph Fiennes). He questions the social impact of such journalism, challenging the women to consider what it means to dismantle an illusion that evokes warmth and positivity.

These conversations, too talky and played a little too straight, are indicative of the consistent problem that “Hail, Caesar!” runs into: the Coens strain to have their cake and eat it too, to build a farce out of a determined, even melancholic method of inquiry. It’s a dramatically challenging balance that the filmmakers only occasionally pull off.

Yet it’s exceptional when they do. There’s a scene in which a newly-“educated” Whitlock sits down with Mannix and rattles off some communist propaganda; the ensuing back-and-forth is rich with both surprising wisdom and, given Whitlock’s limited intellectual capacity, gleeful absurdity. Later, on-camera, he’s in the midst of delivering a speech so stirring about God and goodness and all things profound that he practically reels the audience in – until he forgets the most important word, “Faith,” to cap his monologue off. There’s the penetrating reminder: he’s just there to read his lines.

There’s an embedded critique in “Hail, Caesar!,” from pregnancy scares that turn actresses into symbols, to questions of sexuality that are buried to

Continued on page 15

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PAGE 13

Zines, alums and students tell of Bike Shoppe’s past and present

by Magdalene Taylor The Bike Shoppe began in a First Court Pei dorm room.

Now in its 26th year in existence, and its 22nd year in its current location behind the Fitness Center, the Bike Shoppe has functioned primarily as a place just to fix up your bike. But as zines from a decade ago, alums, and current students reveal, the place has long been an important social space.

Zines from 2005 and 2006 located in the Bike Shoppe reveal a different environment from the past. The zines, “Bike Sluts” and “Hub Hussies” were made by students who volunteered and worked at the Bike Shoppe.

In addition to providing pseudo-romantic musings on bikes and general advice on repairing, building and riding bikes, the zines also offer stories on the culture of biking at New College.

One story in the zine, titled “The Overpass of Doom” and written by alum Barry Kaminsky (‘05), critiques the size and location of the overpass across US41, while another by alum Elissa Lane describes an instance where the author accidentally crashed into a Physical Plant golf cart and fell into a worker’s lap while turning the corners of the overpass.

From information on properly locking up a bike to the rules of riding a bike with traffic, the zines are just as salient to New College riders today.

Copies of flyers in the zines furthermore reference concerts and other events held in the Bike Shoppe, including a weekend-long festival about biking featuring games, movie screenings, workshops and a cookout.

Though not directly addressed, the zines briefly speak to the perceived exclusivity and intimidating nature of the Bike Shoppe. In “How to Become Bike Shoppe Mekanix” by alums Abigail DeAtley and Jordan Dobson, the first step to become a Bike Shoppe mechanic is listed as follows: “Go. To the Bike Shoppe. Don’t be scared. Of the Bike Shoppe.

While they may be speaking bike talk, they also speak English pretty well, so don’t be afraid to approach them and ask about volunteering.”

Thesis student Hedda Cooper describes her early experiences with the Bike Shoppe as a social space. “I wasn’t biking my first year, I just knew people that worked there and would go for shows… there used to be Bike Shoppe shows all the time, like once a month,” she said.

Once she started biking, Cooper would go there more frequently to ask for advice. She cites there being four or five Bike Shoppe TAs and volunteers, all of whom identified as men. “I always felt fine just going there and asking ‘What is this?’ or ‘What am I doing?’ or ‘How can I upgrade my bike?’

First-year Kaithleen Conoepan has similarly used the Bike Shoppe as an introduction to biking.

Though she arrived at New College this fall with little prior knowledge about bikes, she has ultimately used her ISP to build a road bike of her own. She was given a TA position this February.

Third-year Francisco Perez likely has more

Magdalene Taylor/Tangent image courtesy of the Bike Shoppe

Cover of the 2005 Bike Shoppe zine. experience with the Bike Shoppe than anyone on campus as Bike Shoppe TA. He’s held the position since the first semester of his second year in fall 2014. Like Cooper, he recalls the Bike Shoppe primarily being run by men. In his memory, there was a woman who was a Bike Shoppe TA around four years ago.

Perez says there has been some criticism of the Bike Shoppe and its perceived level of inclusivity during his time as TA, as well. “I really do try to be as inclusive as I can be,” Perez said. “I could definitely do more if I knew that there were people out there who didn’t feel comfortable coming to the Shoppe… but I just don’t know of any instances. But I hear the word of mouth.”

He recalls a night in which the Shoppe had a “no boys allowed” type of event in which women and nonbinary cyclists were encouraged to spend time there. Perez says that he hopes for more events like this in the future.

“My first year, before I started working there, I was intimidated, too,” Perez said. “It’s a weirdly intimidating environment… I think people go there under the assumption that the people there know more about something than them… but the point of the Bike Shoppe is to teach.”

Perez added that he dedicates much of his time to helping others at the Shoppe and trying to make it an open environment to everyone. “I don’t like the term ‘bike boy’ because it implies a lot of things about my character that might not be true,” he said.

Perez is paid for four hours a week for being Bike Shoppe TA. “It’s true that it’s been a boys club in the past… but now we have Kaithleen working there.

I’m trying out a new thing called ‘Late Night Bike Shoppe’ on Friday nights… I kind of want to work on getting people to hang out there again,” he added.

Though the zines would seem to suggest that the Bike Shoppe used to be far more of a social space, Kaminsky said that these changes are normal. “I wouldn’t worry about the Bike Shoppe declining from year to year,” he stated in an interview via Facebook. “At such a small school, there’s only so many people there… It declined after my first year, but after I left a few years later it was basically recreated to suit the needs of the students.”

There are some old traditions the Bike Shoppe hasn’t held on to.

“I think one of my favorite memories was that there was a little fixed gear [bike] - it was made for a

A page from inside the 2005 Bike Shoppe zine of flyers for parties, announcements, and Shoppe hours.

3-4 year old. We would take turns seeing who could ride it the longest.” Kaminsky said.

Cooper also recalls a different tradition -the Huffy toss. “There used to be a huge amount of old bikes everywhere around the Bike Shoppe, and they would take really broken ones and draw a line on the road next to it and then there would be a contest to see who could throw the bike the farthest. That used to happen a lot.”

Alum David Podris (‘03) confirmed the tradition of the Huffy toss in an interview via email: “Huffy throwing was usually part of a general bike weekend that included all sorts of debauchery. I remember standing in line behind a professor at the keg while a mechanic did a keg stand in front of us.”

Podris said that the Shoppe used to organize critical mass rides monthly, taking a lane of 41 and heading downtown in rush hour traffic.

“I learned more in the Bike Shoppe than I ever learned in class,” Podris said. “Sometimes I wonder if I wasted my time at New College. Then I remember the other world at New College. Not the one made by the administration and faculty, but the world made by young people… Let me just say that I still proudly wear my Bike Shoppe crest.”

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Seven Deadly Sins: A night of debauchery

by Bianca Benedi Two months after New College students voted for Seven Deadly Sins to be the theme of the February Center Of the Universe Party (COUP), the hosts, first-years Emily Via and Austin Gray and second-year Sarah Cohen finally saw the fruits of their labor pay off.

Former Speaker of the Towne Meeting McAlister Grant (’12) originally suggested the theme. The hosts were in competition with two other themes to host COUP in December when the poll originally went up. It won with roughly a 300-point lead (students assigned 3, 2, 1, or no points to the options based on their preference) on Dec. 7.

On the night of COUP, Feb. 20, students and guests alike wandered between Palm Court and Ham decked out in colorful outfits representing different sins. One person was covered in candy jewelry, representing gluttony. Another, wearing a gold bikini and a thick faux fur cape, was representing greed. Others wore provocative outfits revealing ample amounts of skin to represent the titillating sin of lust.

“I wanted [COUP] to be something very cohesive across campus – to have that New College charm, things that are hand-made and hand-done,” Via said of planning COUP. “One of the coolest things I made were these giant fake lollipops for gluttony.”

Those lollipops did make their way around campus on COUP night in the hands of several students.

“I handled exclusively the BBT,” Via explained.

“The lust-rave space. And then Sarah handled the chill-out room. There were other things – we all worked on Palm Court and the Old Mail Room.”

Each space had a sin associated with it, and Via gave a run-down of each of them: the old mail room was wrath. The Black Box Theatre (BBT) was lust. Ham center represented gluttony, with tables loaded with food and drinks for party-goers, and the Ham tables, decorated as casino tables with chocolate poker chips, represented greed. The Nook, with a photo booth area and tripod for anyone’s use, represented pride. Palm Court, decorated in green string lights and balloons, represented envy.

“One of the biggest changes that happened was that in McAlister’s original proposal, he wanted to put lust in Palm Court and make it a KYC-type thing,” Via said. KYC, or Kiss Your Crush, is a popular wall that is held at the beginning of the fall semester yearly, with attendees donning green, yellow or red to indicate their interest in being kissed. Students ask each other for permission to exchange kisses. “We decided to scrap that entirely because of the nature of COUP, and how many people can’t consent, that was one of the biggest concerns whenever the theme was proposed.”

The alternative, moving lust into the BBT and turning it into a rave, was aided by alum Sean Patton, who Gray cited as a major help in decorating the BBT. “Lust was pretty low cost, because a lot of stuff was donated to us by Sean Patton. He really

Bianca Benedi/Tangent

Sailor Ripley plays in the Old Mail Room.

helped a lot,” Gray said.

Patton may have helped in the BBT, but in other spaces help was less easy to come by.

“The original idea was to get try to get seven people [as hosts], one for each sin, to plan an area,” Gray said. “We ended up getting about five, and then by the end of it, it was only us three because two had to drop out for personal reasons.”

“We did have some events for constructing things,” Via said. “Sadly not that many people showed up to the events. It was mostly us.”

Via said living in B-Dorm was convenient, “I have been corralling the people of B-Dorm because they’re all very artistic.”

“I’ve been working on the backdrop for the photo booth and it’s splattered in red paint and smaller things, and there’s some stuff I still have to paint today,” she said, the day before COUP. One thing that caught Via off guard was “how involved it is. And kind of realizing the night of that you can’t really party,” she admitted. “You have to be able to talk to Vanessa Van Dyke.”

“We’re trying to aim for the success of the last COUP,” she said. “I don’t think a single ambulance was called last time, which I found beautiful, so I would like to keep that tradition going and make sure that people stay safe. I’m thinking we’ve done enough and educated enough people that we’re going to make sure that everyone stays safe. That’s my priority.”

Working towards student safety was a main goal of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), who contacted the hosts about volunteering for COUP. “SSDP has been very helpful. They’re doing

COUP sponsors picked up supplies in the days leading up to the event and stored them in the NCSA Archives room. the fairies again,” Via said. SSDP members have volunteered to dress as fairies and provide water and other resources to COUP attendees for the past several COUPs, wandering around the event looking for anyone who may need help. They also manned the chill-out room, a calm space where attendees could go to lie down and relax if needed.

Making sure there were adequate resources, such as drinks and snacks, took up a significant chunk of the budget. “I think pretty appropriately the most money was allocated to gluttony to buy food,” Gray said. More than $600 of the $2,000 budget allocated to COUP was spent on food, with the biggest chunk of it – approximately $250 – going toward sushi.

The biggest expense in the budget was live music, with $400 going to paying bands that performed live in the Old Mail Room. Although most bands consisted of students and alums, two were not. Local band Sailor Ripley plays frequently at the alum-owned Nothing Arts Center, and the band Sunseeker, signed onto musician Jack White’s label, were brought to New College by second-year Ava Howard.

“Lust wasn’t as expensive because it was mostly student DJ’s,” Gray said.

“I’ve been saying that the key to having a good COUP is making sure that there’s good music,” Via said. Via, Cohen and Gray listened to samples of each live band and DJ set before approving them for one of the six time slots – an hour each from 10:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. – in the Old Mail Room, BBT and Palm Court, another DJ-run location.

“I was given advice by the last COUP sponsor,

Logan,” Gray said, referring to thesis student Logan Starnes, who was part of the team that threw Something Wicked This Way Comes COUP last November. “They said it was very important to set dates to do things, which I found to be very true.

If you don’t set a date, it will be up in the air and nothing will get done.”

Although most of the construction and preparation was done by Via, Cohen and Gray, there were a few student volunteers. “We only got a few [volunteers], but I appreciated the ones that came,” Gray said. “Clean up, there were even fewer volunteers, although I did hear people were volunteering at the end of the night. But in the morning everyone was passed out in their rooms sleeping, so it ended up just being like, me and Emily and my girlfriend Erika Johnson, and a couple more friends.”

Gray admitted that throwing COUP was stressful and a lot of hard work. “I would maybe take a minor job on someone else’s team,” Gray added about the possibility of hosting COUP again, “but as far as the involvement I had in this one... It was a good experience, but one I’m not looking to repeat anytime soon.”

Cohen said she enjoyed being a part of a young COUP organizing group. “At first I was a little worried about letting first-years organize a COUP, especially when they’d only experienced one before.

But it turned out great, so I’m satisfied, and I hope everyone enjoyed it.”

As for Via’s standards for a good COUP, the night appeared to be a success: no EMS was called at any point throughout the night.

TANGENT Food deserts

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2016 www.ncftangent.org | @ncfcatalyst

Zika Virus

Capitol News

continued from pg. 3

continued from pg. 4

continued from pg. 7

into residential areas is Sprout, a mobile pantry set up by All Faiths Food Bank in 2014. Sprout, which is basically a refrigerated truck, visits 10 different locations within neighborhoods and communities twice a month, providing free produce to residents and locals.

“We purchase 90 percent of the produce ourselves, we have stuff coming from local farms and anything that is donated is given out in the back,” Ryan Beaman, an affiliate with All Faiths Food Bank and volunteer coordinator said. “We can usually give out 12 to 15 pounds of produce per family but it all depends on what we have.”

Sprout’s number of customers ranges from 100 to 120 people per day. The Sprout stop in Newtown is at Roy McBean Boy’s and Girl’s club every first and third Tuesday of the month.

“I come here every time they come,” Greg Darnport, a Newtown resident said. From the menu displayed at the front of the truck, Darnport choose Idaho potatoes, red onions and carrots. “I usually cut the carrots up and cook ‘em, I make french fries with the potatoes and the onions I put in everything.”

There are a lot of factors involved when addressing the food gap. Many of them are economic concerns but others have to do with diet practices and food education.

“One of the strongest responses we got is that people don’t know how to cook the food, they don’t know how to buy within a budget,” Jourdan said.

“So you can put in as many access points as you want but if you’re not meeting the education needs they say they have then it doesn’t matter.”

“It’s important to critique the fact that our solution to hunger is to provide food, not to address the reasons that people are hungry in the first place,” Dean said.

disabilities.

For this reason, the CDC recommends that pregnant women or women planning on becoming pregnant do not travel to areas experiencing a Zika.

In order to aid this effort and to delay the increased transmission of the virus, many major airlines are offering to relax their change policies. Airlines such as American, Delta, JetBlue, SouthWest and more have implemented travel alerts that may allow for pregnant women to either refund, reschedule or relocate their prearranged flights to infected locations.

Management According to a White House press release, the administration is asking Congress for more than $1.8 billion in emergency funding to help combat Zika both domestically and internationally. This money is intended to be distributed between the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State. These departments’ goals include the support of Zika readiness and response capacities, the enhancement of mosquito control programs, the development of diagnostic tests and vaccines, and increased research into the virus’ connection to neurological disorders.

A similar bill, HB 7101, is currently pending in the House and sponsored by Rep. Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami. The key difference between HB 7101 and SP 7068 is that the former only requires a majority of nine votes to issue the death penalty.

“If there were to be, according to the subject matter experts, compromise on the unanimity position as it relates to recommendations of death, that would not necessarily insulate Florida from constitutional jeopardy,” said Mark Schlakman, the senior program director of Florida State University’s Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, in support of the Senate bill’s requirement for a unanimous vote.

While public defenders support the Senate’s bill, state prosecutors support the House version since it does not require unanimity.

“I support the death penalty, I’m unapologetic about that,” said Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming, who is also a former state prosecutor. “But I also have the duty to craft laws that will survive constitutional scrutiny from our courts, so if we went to nine to three, we would be in a situation where we had the lowest threshold of any state in the United States for voting to execute somebody.”

The committee, headed by Senator Greg Evers, R-Milton, passed the bill by a vote of five to zero.

House passes $1 billion tax cut When he delivered his annual “state of the state” speech at the beginning of the Florida legislature’s spring session, Governor Scott vowed to cut taxes by more than $1 billion dollars as part of his economic plan. On Feb. 11, the House of Representatives moved forward a bill that would make the cuts a reality.

The tax cut package features elements such as a permanent reduction in the business rent tax, the elimination of the manufacturing equipment tax, property tax reductions for disabled veterans and surviving spouses of veterans, and the renewal of the Back to School tax holiday and the college textbook sales tax exemption.

However, unlike Scott’s proposal, the House plan does not eliminate corporate income taxes on manufacturers and retail businesses, which was a major source of criticism when Scott first gave his speech in January.

“By returning $1 billion to Floridians, we will keep Florida’s economy growing and provide needed relief for families and job creators,” said House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, in an online release.

“Our tax cut package creates an environment where our business owners can create jobs and expand their businesses, gives parents and students the opportunity to save when they purchase the supplies and books they need, and makes Florida a more affordable state for our brave veterans and their families,” Crisafulli said.

Information for this article was taken from www. penniur.edu and www.acf.hhs.gov.

Library hours

continued from pg. 6 there is a mix of full time library, part-time workers, as well as part-time student workers. Doherty also said that oftentimes students have changing schedules and cannot always spend long hours as student workers in the library. The solution would be hiring full-time employees, but funding a library that was open 24 hours would be expensive.

Doherty said that during finals and midterms the library is open from 1 a.m.-3 a.m. Student workers staff the library during the late night hours that are held during finals and midterms.

“That is paid directly by student government,” Doherty said.

Information for this article was taken from www. cdc.gov, www.who.int and whitehouse.gov.

Harm reduction

continued from pg. 5 Other valuable harm reduction resources include rollsafe.org, dancesafe.org, and tripsit.me.

“All this is [rollsafe.org] is recognizing that people take MDMA all the time, and that people that who take MDMA are looking for information on how to be safer about it; there is a need for that information, and this website shows that we have some scientifically-backed up, proven information and research on MDMA that has been happening for years,” said Procell.

Increased accessability of accurate, scientific information on drug use and abuse is one of the simplest ways to ensure students are able to make educated decisions about substance use.

“Students on college campuses, especially campuses like New College where there are many high-achieving students, want the information, they want to have fun, but fundamentally they want to be safe,” said Parente. “Moving towards a place where our campus can be really safe and feel like a community again, is really what the ultimate goal of all of this is.”

Information from this article came from drugwarfacts.org, drugpolicy.org, drugabuse.gov, harmreduction.org, zendoproject.org, and rollsafe.org

Information taken from myfloridahouse.gov.

JUMPS PAGE 15

NSE

continued from pg. 10 the bubble. Third-year Brandt Coleman traveled to Sarasota from Kentucky. Back at the University of Louisville, Coleman studies environmental analysis and conservation with minors in anthropology and geoscience and a concentration in marine science.

“The whole reason I came to New College through NSE is because you can’t really study any sort of marine biology in Kentucky,” Coleman said.

“You can study aquatic ecology, but that involves river diving, and the Ohio river isn’t exactly the nicest place to work.”

Coleman is enjoying his stay at New College so far. “It’s very, very different from Louisville.

Louisville student population is 15 to 30 thousand; it’s very different going to a place that’s like 800,” Coleman said. “This is very small. It’s interesting to get to know everyone so quickly.”

Rose St. Pierre, a political science and communications major at the University of Quebec at Montreal, came to New College through NSE last fall. “I met friends that changed my life, switched my perspective on multiple issues, made me feel like I’m learning, that I’m growing,” St. Pierre said about her New College experience. “New College quickly felt like home.”

‘Hail, Caesar’

continued from pg. 12 preserve “traditional” conceptions of masculinity.

The film acknowledges that what we perceive onscreen may not be so, but ultimately argues that moviegoing isn’t always about knowing what’s what.

“Hail, Caesar!” never generates the momentum it needs to; it never gets into a solid groove, wherein a pacing issue or two could easily be forgiven and forgotten. Indeed, even if intentional, the movie is too busy – it jumps around so chaotically that its ideas and revelations lack crucial staying power. But its reckoning with sin and artificiality remains effective, and in an appropriately existential context.

The film begins and ends with Mannix stomping his grounds. He navigates his way through concrete lots, bordered by cathedrals of studio spaces and prop warehouses, and waves to the legends within them, icons made up of myth and imagination. Mannix’s Hollywood is where the sun shines down. It’s where the stories live on. It’s legitimized by believers and emboldened by skeptics.

It’s God’s Country.

Satisfactory.

“Hail, Caesar!” is now playing at Regal Hollywood 20 and Lakewood Ranch Cinemas.

TANGENT

THE BACK PAGE

WeDNeSDay, February 24, 2016 www.ncftangent.org | @ncfcatalyst

TEN QUESTIONS by yadira Lopez

PaGe 16

with Our lady of the library,

Caroline Reed

Caroline Reed has been awarded the Florida Library Association’s Leader of the Year award. A brief chat with Cook Library’s social sciences librarian. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You were a social worker before becoming a librarian.

How do these two careers compare?

Social work is not so different from librarianship. What happens is people come to you with a need, and you provide them with resources so that they can then help themselves. Well it’s a very similar thing in librarianship. You have people who have a research project or something that they’re interested in and so they will come to us with that question and we provide those resources for them.

What is a common mistake you see students make throughout the research process?

Sometimes it’s looking for too much material. There’s so much that’s available and they become overwhelmed with what they find. Very often they’re not quite sure what search strategies to employ so they’re using lots of keywords. One of the things that librarians can do is to give them kind of a controlled vocabulary. They might be finding some very old materials – but how do you sort that out so that you can find new materials? If you’re doing something that’s historical then of course you want those older materials, but if you’re working on a contemporary issue and you’re finding things from the 60s and 70s, we can help you to sort through that. Maybe one of the other common mistakes I see students doing is perhaps struggling a bit too much. And that’s when librarians usually can help.

How can students become better researchers?

I think ways that students can become better researchers is to use the tools that are available to them. Now we have the QRC, the Writing Resource Center, the Language Resource Center and of course the librarians so I think using some of those resources really helps. Also there are lots of tools available for students to use. Things like using a citation manager for all of their materials – so using something like RefWorks or Zotero can really help people become very organized. If they’re not familiar with a citation style, Purdue Owl is such a great resource that they can go to. Also, not to be afraid of getting things from other libraries because now they come so quickly. I think not settling for something that’s available makes students better researchers. And basically, they can become better researchers by really asking questions and asking for that assistance.

When you go to a library, do you look at it through different eyes? Do you pick up on things a non-librarian might not notice?

I probably do because you’re always noticing what’s different about that library compared to your own. I do tend to look around a lot to see where people are sitting, what are they doing in that library. I look at the placement of things – are things easily accessible for people. I also go on to library websites to see what databases they have available to them. This is probably a little aside but I remember when I was working on my library degree, when I had finally finished it, one of the first things I did was go to the public library and I just ran my hands over a section of the fiction books because I was so delighted that now that I had finished this degree I realized that I could just read anything for enjoyment that I wanted.

How have things changed throughout your 20 years at New College?

In the library, electronic sources have pretty much revolutionized how we do things. When I first came here we had about 60 databases and we had old wise terminals, which were basically text on a screen. It was green writing on a screen. You didn’t have computers that had a mouse. Everything was text and so you didn’t have things like pdfs of articles or remote access, so you had to still come to the library. You’d find what you needed, and then you had dot matrix printers, so it was a very different way to do things. For things like citing in APA style, you actually had to count the paragraphs if you were quoting or paraphrasing something. You had to go through in that electronic copy of that article so that somebody would be able to go back and find what you were quoting because it didn’t have page numbers, it was just one long article.

Is there something about the JBC library or librarians that might surprise readers?

Maybe that we have lives outside the library (laughs). We have people who serve on community boards. We have people who have large family commitments, who are organizing large events within their community. As an example, we have one librarian who has been involved in the St. Pete Science Festival as their co-chair for a number of years. We have a librarian who is now working with faculty and students to start an open access journal. I serve on the board for the Time Sifters Archaeological Society and that really fits in with my social science background. I think if I had gone into any other area it probably would’ve been anthropology. It’s always been a personal interest of mine.

What is your stance on the banning of books?

For the most part books aren’t really banned, they’re really challenged. Very often what happens is someone will object to either the content or the author. Many times what’ll happen is that the book is not actually removed from the library but it might be moved to a different section of the library. Many of the books that are challenged are in the children’s department. People will really look at those and scrutinize them. What might happens is that the book might move from the children’s department to the adult section of the library, because libraries really aren’t about not making things available to people. You don’t really have that as an occurrence in academia – I’m not saying that that doesn’t happen but you don’t necessarily have that prevalence of that happening in academic libraries. One of the things we’ve done with the Florida Library Association and the Intellectual Freedom Committee is we’ve created a book challenge form so that as people learn about challenges that are happening we can record that information and have that as a historical record. One of the things we’re doing at the conference this year is a Banned Book Reading. So many of the people on the committee are going to be reading from banned or challenged books as people are walking by. There’s recently been a challenge of four books in the Collier County school system, so we’ve made sure that those books are included in this reading.

Ebooks. How do you feel about them?

I think that it’s just wonderful that we have a whole different venue for books. I love the fact that you have things that were in the public domain. I really encourage students to use our electronic books. We have some wonderful subject encyclopedias. We have been purchasing a lot of electronic books. You’re no longer tied to the library and that one copy. I don’t necessarily read ebooks for pleasure but I just haven’t gotten into it. That’s sort of the world that I live in, but part of it is maybe not having the best iPhone. But in terms of research and helping students with research I absolutely love that we can access something electronically.

Hardcover or paperback? Why?

I do prefer paperbacks. One, they’re so much easier to carry around. And two, the paperbacks usually have either the artwork or the illustration on the front and then you usually get a biography of the author or snippets of the reviews on the back. With hardcover, the dust jackets often end up falling off and getting ripped and all of that so I think you lose a little bit of that information.

Plus, the fact that paperbacks are so much cheaper than hard copies.

What book do you think every New College student should read before graduating?

I really think that they should read “New College: the First Three Decades,” by Furman C. Arthur who worked at New College. I would love if people could read it in their first year here because it really is the history of the founding of New College. It’s so wonderful to know where the institution actually came from, and the school was very revolutionary at the time that it was established. I think that as New College students it would be a really important book for people to read. Oh, and we have copies in the library! You probably thought I was going to pick a piece of literature (laughs).