11/21/19 Full Edition

News: Wake Forest Opinion: Looking for a pleasurable aware of climate change ethos? Try hedonism!

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Sports: Clemson Tigers shred Demon Deacons 52-3 Page 11

Life: New Bojack — How is it? Is it good? Lets find out!

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Old Gold&Black

WAKE FOREST’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1916 VOL. 106, NO. 12

T H U R S DAY, N OV E M B E R 21 , 2 019 “Cover s the campus like the magnolias”

wfuogb.com

President’s Commission works to address campus-wide division The President’s Comission on Race, Equity and Community seeks to amend policies

BY NATALIE ALMS Staff Writer almsnj16@wfu.edu

Graphic by Will May/Old Gold & Black

University Counseling Center establishes walk-in clinic New model attempts to meet increasing student demand for counseling appointments

BY CAROLINE WALKER Asst. News Editor walkct18@wfu.edu As wait times spiked to three or more weeks for students trying to see a counselor for an initial visit, the University

Counseling Center (UCC) responded to the increased demand by transitioning to a walk-in clinic that prioritizes access for new clients.

Implemented on Oct. 21, the new counseling model features walk-in hours that are scheduled from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. during the week. The concept behind this walkin model is to decrease wait times for students and to respond more quickly to requests for crisis appointments.

UCC Acting Director Daniel Paredes explained that the walk-in hours have resulted in positive outcomes.

“The walk-in model has been great,” Paredes said. “It allows us to provide more of what most of our students want in terms of rapid access to support, while also allowing us to more quickly assess student safety, address present concerns and connect students with the right additional resources as needed.”

See UCC, Page 7

Ocean documentary makes waves Ocean Marine Conservation Club screens Sonic Sea and hosts Q&A with cast member

BY LUCY NELSON Asst. Sports Editor nelsld16@wfu.edu On Tuesday evening, students, biology professors, Sustainability Office representatives and more gathered in Pugh Auditorium for an event hosted by the Ocean Marine Conservation Club (OMCC). The event was a screen-

ing of the Emmy Award-winning documentary Sonic Sea, followed by a Q&A session with cast member Steven Honigman.

A brief introduction of Honigman, the former General Counsel of the Navy and recipient of the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award, was followed by the screening. The film immediately took the audience into the depths of the ocean with serene footage of whales and vivid graphics depicting the sonar waves emitted from industrial and military ships that are detrimental to marine life.

See OMMC, Page 7

Lucy Nelson/Old Gold & Black

Wake Forest ended racial segregation in its undergraduate college in 1962, according to a Wake Forest timeline on the Special Collections and Archives website of ZSR Library. But even with the 57 years between then and now, racial tensions continue to crop up on campus.

Over the summer, President Nathan Hatch announced the establishment of the President’s Commission on Race, Equity and Community in a campus-wide email. It’s charged with assessing Wake Forest policies and practices in order to make “actionable recommendations” to the administration and has been meeting throughout this semester. The goal is to draft the recommendations in the spring.

See Race, Page 4

Moving On — Part 3: An inside look at Parkinson’s effects Parkinson’s is an extremely complex disease with a seemingly paradoxical cause

BY CHRISTIAN GREEN Staff Writer greecm15@wfu.edu This is the third part in a series entitled “Moving On.” The Old Gold & Black will be publishing subsequent sections throughout the remainder of the semester, which can also be found on our website.

Two percent of respondents to the Shrag study — that is, more than 30 people — reported receiving no information at all at the time of their diagnosis. That number may feel small in the grand total, but each one is a life, with their own idea of a future and a family also affected by the disease.

And in each of these cases, they faced the same situation as Lawson, a diagnosis with no prognosis. No information. No hope.

See Parkinson’s, Page 5

OGB

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This column represents the views of the Old Gold & Black Editorial Board.

Senior Fifth should be approached with caution On Saturday, the Demon Deacons will be taking on the Duke Blue Devils in what will be a challenging rivalry matchup. Before the game begins, many Wake Forest seniors will likely be participating in a challenge of their own, the notorious tradition called "Senior Fifth."

Every year, the university implores students not to participate in the ignominous challenge, which, as most students are likely aware, involves consuming an entire fifth of liquor in before kickoff.

Reciting the dangers of consuming such an excessive amount of alcohol

The Editorial Board urges all seniors to use good sense and look out for yourselves and others." need not be done. Students are aware that no human being should be taking the equivalent of 16 shots in a day, but the reality is that no amount of university programming will dissuade some seniors from participating on Saturday.

Thus, if you or your friends are planning on engaging in extreme binge drinking on Saturday, the Editorial Board of the Old Gold & Black im-

Old Gold &Black

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF WAKE FOREST UNIVERSIT Y SINCE 1916 LILLIAN JOHNSON EDITOR-IN-CHIEF johnlg16@wfu.edu

REN SCHMITT PRINT MANAGING EDITOR schmwm16@wfu.edu

>> NEWS

Will May, mayws16@wfu.edu Assistant: Caroline Walker, walkct18@ wfu.edu

>> SPORTS

Rafael Lima, limara17@wfu. edu Assistant: Lucy Nelson, nelsld16@wfu. edu

>> OPINION

Kyle Ferrer, ferrka16@wfu.edu

>> LIFE

Emily Beauchamp, beauea17@ wfu.edu

>> DIGITAL MEDIA EDITOR Mary-Hallet Culbreth, culbmh16@wfu.edu

>> ADVISER

Phoebe Zerwick, zerwicp@wfu. edu

GRACIE FIRESTONE

BUSINESS MANAGER

firegk16@wfu.edu

AMANDA WILCOX ONLINE MANAGING EDITOR wilcaf16@wfu.edu

>> POLICIES

The Old Gold & Black is published Thursdays during the school year, except during examinations, summer and holiday periods, by Triangle Printing of Durham. Š 2014 WFU Media Board. All rights reserved. The views expressed in all editorials and advertisements contained within this publication do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the OGB. As part of our commitment to reporting news fairly and accurately, we will not remove any previously published content. If an error in either our online or print content is brought to our attention, we will revise the originally published article with an appended correction. In order to facilitate thoughtful and appropriate debate, profane, vulgar, or inflammatory comments on our website are not allowed and will be deleted. For more information on our commenting policy, please see our website. We reserve the right to reject advertisements deemed inappropriate. Our full policy, and how to advertise with the OGB, can be found on our website.

>> SUBMISSIONS

The OGB welcomes submissions in the form of story tips, columns and letters to the editor. Letters to the editor should be fewer than 500 words, and columns should be around 500 words. Send yours via e-mail to johnlg16@wfu.edu the Monday before publication. We reserve the right to edit all letters for length and clarity. No anonymous letters will be printed.

>> ONLINE MEDIA

Web: wfuogb.com Facebook: facebook.com/ogb1916 Twitter: @wfu_ogb Instagram: @wfu_ogb Snapchat: @wfu_ogb

plores you to exercise extreme caution. For a 170-pound male, taking 16 shots over an eight-hour period would result in an approximate BAC of 0.31, and a 140-pound female's BAC would be approximately 0.52 under the same conditions. A BAC of 0.52 easily could be fatal, and a 0.31 BAC is very close to potentially fatal levels.

Inevitably, there will be participants who require medical attention, and alcohol poisoning is not something to be taken lightly. If you notice any of your peers exhibiting the signs of alcohol poisoning (remember CUPS:

Cold Skin, Unresponsive, Puking or Slow Breathing), do not hesitate to seek medical attention for them.

Remember that the university encourages and expects students who are concerned about their own or a classmate's health due to substance use to seek medical assistance and as such has enacted the Medical Amnesty Policy to assuage fears of conduct action.

The Senior Fifth will likely be a part of campus culture for some time to come. As such, the Editorial Board urges all seniors to use good sense and look out for yourselves and others.

News | Old Gold & Black

BY HUNT WASDEN Contributing Writer wasdhh18@wfu.edu

Thursday, November 21, 2019 | Page 3

Deacon Profile: Derri Stormer

had shifts just like the officers, they had supervisors, the whole break down of ranking, all of that.

The daughter of a plant worker in Merry Hill, N.C., Derri Stormer has always been drawn to people. Finding those meaningful interactions in law enforcement, Stormer launched her career right out of college.

Her passion for community policing and desire to build community has made her a popular figure within the campus communities she has served, and Wake Forest is no different. Founding the Deacon Student Patrol in 2016, Stormer has always been an advocate for community and student involvement in the struggle to keep our community safe.

How did your experience with that program help mold the Deacon Student Patrol?

It’s different here, the academic rigor, the fact that people are so engaged. I haven’t met a student here yet that is not involved in two or three things and may have a job on top of that. So, it took a lot of tweaking. We figured out the hours that worked best and also established some stationary posts so students could still get some work done while still on duty.

How has the Deacon Student Patrol program been received by the student community?

Growing up, how was the relationship that people in your community had with the police?

It was different because Merry Hill had no local police, but we had the sheriff 's office. That being said, there might be only two deputies patrolling the whole county, and it hasn't changed much even today. My cousin is actually the sheriff there. It's also a good chance that [the deputy] was a relative. Everybody knows each other, so they'd show up, and it would be like, "hey, cousin such-and-such."

What inspired or drove you to get involved with law enforcement?

I think it's just always been there. I remember being as young as fifth grade and saying I was going to be an F.B.I. agent. I have no idea where it came from. There are no agents in my family.

I've heard back in the day there were some police officers, but my family’s more military. But even throughout all of high school, I said I was going to be an F.B.I. agent. And I still was going to do that. But of course, relationships happen, and things alter.

How did your career in law enforcement begin; where was your first job?

I was a criminal justice major at ECU, but ended up transferring for my last year to UNCWilmington. That’s when I really started looking at law enforcement more. I worked as a security guard with the police department and got really close with the cops there. After graduation, I moved back to Greenville and started the academy immediately. Afterwards, I was officially sworn in as an officer in the Winterville Police

It probably took a year for people to understand that they weren't snitches for the police department. We're not sending them in to dorms to spy and report back — that's not the goal. And it took a lot of speaking to different groups on campus to help students understand that they're just here to help you.

Photo courtesy of Wake Forest University Police Website

Department. Winterville was kind of like the suburbs of Greenville, and I liked the small-town feel because I love the one-on-one.

What led you to working at colleges?

I always knew I wanted to go back to a campus.

I started working part-time for ECU while still working full-time in Winterville and then eventually transitioned into a full-time job there. I was young, I loved the work, and with the pay raise I thought I'd hit the lottery. Community policing is natural for me and so is campus law enforcement. A lot of people leave cities and go to campuses as a second career. That's not me.

I love the fact that a university is essentially its own little city, and I live for the interactions that I get to have with students.

Speaking of community policing, the Deacon Student Patrol program that you direct here, was that inspired by past experiences?

One student involved with Deacon Student Patrol who I spoke with mentioned the strong diversity within the group. Why do you think this is?

Now, that is something that has always shocked me. I do go into a lot of those student spaces, and in many cases, people within those groups act as their own self-recruiters.

And how does this diversity add value to the program and its goals?

It really allows the Deacon Student Patrol to break that barrier. When our students go out and recruit even more people, others notice and start gaining trust in the program. And the diversity that comes from that really leads to a closer relationship between University Police and students who may come from backgrounds where there’s a poor relationship with the police.

Lastly, what’s the most fulfilling thing for you to see in the program?

Yes, they already had a program at ECU years prior to me. It evolved while I was there to the point where we had 30 students involved. They

There's nothing more rewarding than when students in the program promote it. They speak the truth about it because they are the ones living the experience. And to hear that they enjoy it enough to go out of their way to pitch the program to others — that's what makes me happy.

Abbey Mei Otis Reading Time: Nov. 21 at 6 p.m.

Location: Room 404, ZSR Library As part of the Dillon Johnston Writers Reading Series, 2019 Philip K. Dick Award and Neukom Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction finalist Abbey Mei Otis will be giving a reading, followed by a reception.

Fall Faculty & Guest Artist Dance Concert Time: Nov. 21-23 at 7:10 p.m., Nov. 24 at 1:40 p.m.

Location: Tedford Stage, Scales Fine Arts Center This show, directed by Nina Maria Lucas, will feature traditional and contemporary ballet performed by WFU dance faculty and guest choreographers. Both jazz and classical genres will be represented.

Wake Forest Football vs. Duke Time: Nov. 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Location: BB&T Field The Demon Deacons battle the Duke Blue Devils this weekend at the last home football game of the season.

They'll need your support, so bring plenty of pep with you and be sure to make some noise.

An Evening with Demetrius Harmon Time: Nov. 21 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Location: Brendle Recital Hall, Scales Fine Arts Center The universally lauded Shorty Award-winning Vine artist, guru and YouTuber will be discussing the trials he faced in his battle with depression. Come learn from an expert how to put the beat-down on your mental illness.

Laser Cutter/Etcher Workshop Time: Nov. 22 from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Location: WakerSpace Building, Lot Q WakerSpace is hosting an introductory course to the use of a Boss Laser Cutter/Etcher. Includes both safety and software training. The safety portion will require two seperate visits to WakerSpace. Registration is required to attend.

Creating a Winter Holiday Arrangement Time: Nov. 26 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Location: The Barn at Reynolda Village Those on the hunt for an austere and comely arrangement to match their frigid winter aesthetic need look no further.

Bring a pair of gardening gloves; containers, greenery and pruners will be supplied. Registration is required.

WAKE IN A WEEK

Page 4 |Thursday, November 21, 2019

Old Gold & Black | News

Race: Commission continues conversation Continued from Page 1

In recent years, videos of students using racial slurs, pictures of current administrators posing in front of Confederate flags in past editions of the Howler and racist hate emails sent to faculty and staff have raised awareness of lingering problems surrounding race on campus.

The commission “will help us work toward a community of belonging by seeing what the obstacles are and what sorts of recommendations could fix them,” said commission co-chairs José Villabla, the vice president for diversity & Inclusion and chief diversity officer, and Erica Still, the associate dean for Faculty Recruitment and Diversity & Inclusion, in an email interview.

Faculty members, administration members and students make up the rest of the commission. A full list, along with meeting minutes, is available on community.wfu.edu. There have been three commission meetings so far, which are scheduled monthly.

As of now, the group has discussed “the basic logistics for [their] work, [their] expectations for the Commission and the scope, gravity and potential impact of [their] efforts,” according to the co-chairs. The rest of the semester will be focused on current policies and best practices. According to commission member sophomore Ally Swartzburg, the commission was told not to consider scale or funding as roadblocks.

There are also six subcommittees within the commission that have also been meeting monthly. They are centered on academic initiatives, community engagement, equity and employment, evaluations and accountability, student recruitment, financial aid, retention and student social belonging.

Swartzburg is a member of the student social belonging committee. One thing her committee has discussed is the distribution of student social spaces and “how having a space or not having a space might impact student groups and different populations,” she said.

Beyond that, she says that they have talked about “intergroup dialogue, resident life and the recruiting side of admissions.”

As a whole, the commission is trying to break down what Swartzburg described as “wall between the picture of Wake Forest that stereotypical students have and the picture of Wake Forest and the experience of Wake Forest that more marginalized groups have.”

What the commission will have to decide, though, is how exactly they want to do that.

Some members are more in favor of making large, sweeping changes, while others want to the change to be more subtle, according to Swartzburg. Moreover, the existing mistrust and frustration toward the administration can play a role in the commission’s calculus as well. Some students and faculty

have been upset with not only with recent incidents and the myriad ways in which race impacts the lived experiences of minority students, but also with the response of the administration to these problems.

“We have this commission because Wake Forest hasn’t been forthright about addressing the truth about its past or taking positive affirmative action to try to improve the composition of students, faculty and staff,” said Joseph Soares, professor and chair of the sociology department. “We haven’t done enough.”

Although the commission doesn’t want to undersell its capabilities, it also is not in its own interest to make promises that will take a long time to follow through on, thus perpetuating the mistrust, Swartzburg said. That is an idea she said the commission is still navigating.

Soares is on the steering committee for the Slavery, Race, and Memory Project, which has been working to research the history of Wake Forest’s relationship with slavery and its implications. Although he admitted to having an outsider’s perspective on the President’s Commission on Race, he still holds his doubts.

“If all it does is spend a year writing a report that then goes to the president for the president to then discuss what are we going to do, I think it’s likely very little will get done,” he said. “My fear is that at the end of the year there will be a report, and it will lead to us having a meeting and a speech, and we’ll all feel

good that we’ve done something when very little has been changed.”

To him, the university should be pursuing the demands made last spring by the student-led Anti-Racism Coalition, such as renaming buildings on campus and having more outreach to increase diversity in both the student body and faculty.

Villalba and Still said that the work of the commission and other recently established initiatives on campus, like the Committee on the Intersection of Bias, Expression and Conduct, “will advance the efforts made by this institution to minimize the impact of structural and system discrimination.”

“These groups are composed of students, staff, faculty, Board of Trustee members, residents of Winston-Salem and alums,” Villalba and Still said. “And yet we all recognize that ‘resolving problems surrounding race on campus’ will take every member of our community working together toward the ultimate and aspirational goal of making Wake Forest a welcoming and valuing campus.”

Either way, there is at least a semester’s worth of meetings between now and any final product.

“It’s a room with a lot of people with a lot of opinions,” Swartzburg said. “Faculty have a lot of opinions, and their opinions are a lot different than administrators and are a lot different from students. And it’s a roomful of us.”

Photo courtesy of the Wake Forest Slavery, Race and Memory Project website

Wake Forest’s original campus, established in Wake Forest, N.C. in 1834, garnered notable support from the widespread southern insitution of slavery. The board of trustees auctioned enslaved persons for the university’s first endowment on May 7, 1860.

POLICE BEAT Drug Offenses • Offenders were found possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia by RA in South. Report filed at 10:45 p.m. on Nov. 14.

• Offenders were caught smoking marijuana in the alley behind Johnson.

Report filed at 10:12 p.m. on Nov. 17.

Auto Breaking and Entering • Unknown suspect entered the victim’s vehicle in Lot Q and stole a Maryland drivers license. Report filed at 11:35 a.m. on Nov. 15.

• Unknown suspect entered the victim’s vehicle in Lot Q and stole some loose change and a cell phone charger. Report filed at 11:35 a.m. on Nov. 15.

Miscellaneous • Victims reported that offender had assaulted them in Bostwick. Report filed at 12:03 a.m. on Nov. 15.

• Unknown subject(s) took victim’s vehicle from circle parking lot at Martin. Located by WSPD. Report filed at 5:03 a.m. on Nov. 15.

• Student had consumed an unknown amount of liquor. Transported to WFUBMC from Whicker Acres Lane. Report filed at 11:57 p.m. on Nov. 15.

• Unknown subject(s) placed victim’s book in a commode in Worrell.

Report filed at 3:39 p.m. on Nov. 16.

• Unknown subject(s) caused damage to victim’s drivers’ side on Allen Easley Drive. Report filed at 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 16.

News | Old Gold & Black

Thursday, November 21, 2019 |Page 5

Parkinson's: What occurs in the brain

Continued from Page 1

Lawson had to wait a full month until his first follow-up visit to the neurologist. In the meantime, he turned to the same resource millions of others do with their daily questions.

“I didn’t know where to start, so I just started Googling,” Lawson said. He says he quickly learned that websites like WebMD and Mayo Clinic didn’t offer much hope. “Those places are all just doom and gloom; they tell you all the worst things about what could happen to you.”

Next, he tried to find local Parkinson’s communities for help, but the Winston-Salem Parkinson’s support group did not have a website at the time. So he educated himself about his disease the only way he could. Those sites focused on how his symptoms might progress and offered little in terms of solutions. Lawson had found information, but it didn’t offer him any hope or agency. It wasn’t the information he needed.

In the first few weeks after diagnosis, Lawson fell into a depressive episode. “It left me in an incredibly dark place,” he said. “I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t know what to expect next.” In response, he withdrew from the world around him. His wife and children supported him as much as they knew how, but they also had their own daily lives to continue. When friends would ask what had happened to him, Lawson wouldn’t know how to explain it to them. Eventually, close friends and even some family members stopped reaching out.

Lawson doesn’t hold it against them. He imagines that they couldn’t understand what was happening to him or what they might do about it. He figures that probably made them feel uncomfortable, so instead, they stopped trying. He didn’t have the answers to his own questions about the disease; how could they know what to do?

Lawson describes that time in his life as “existing without living.” Instead of providing for others, he felt like a liability.

Unfortunately, depression and loss of community are both common themes in the story of Parkinson’s. “Do not be surprised to learn that not everyone is willing to be in your company when your symptoms worsen,” reads an article on the Parkinson’s foundation website. Another article on the website estimates that 50% of all people with Parkinson’s will experience depression at some point in their life. It is unknown if depression stems more from the physical changes in the brain caused by Parkinson’s or if it is brought about more by lifestyle changes influenced by the disease. Most likely, a crippling combination is at fault.

When Lawson finally met with his neurologist for a follow-up, communication remained stilted. Lawson believes it stems from an inability to put the science of the disease into laymen’s terms. He asked for reasons behind his thoughts and physical symptoms, but the answer he says he most commonly received was “well, that’s Parkinson’s for you.”

“It was so frustrating. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear,” Lawson said. “Maybe some people would rather not be aware of what’s wrong, but I want as much information as possible.”

Photo courtesy of scienceofparkinsons.com

The substantia nigra of the brain of a person afflicted with Parkinson's disease.

First it was the wrong information, then it was too little information. What makes access to the right kind of knowledge so difficult for a patient to reach?

Communicating medicine to a general audience is an already difficult art made tougher by the fact that Parkinson’s disease is a particularly complex diagnosis to fully explain. This is partially because Parkinson’s disease is such a paradoxical disease. Recall that its two most recognizable symptoms, tremors and bradykinesia, both deal with movement. Tremors are uncontrollable movements at rest; bradykinesia, meanwhile, slows and stops movement from occurring. How can the same disease create unwanted movements and prevent goal-directed movement?

The good news for Lawson is that, compared to other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or multiple sclerosis, we know a lot about the science behind Parkinson’s disease. The answer begins with a tiny cluster of nerve cells, or neurons, located right where your spine extends upward into your skull and connects to your brain. This group of neurons is called the substantia nigra. The name, which means “dark substance” in Latin, comes from the characteristic dark stripe it forms across the brain stem. The coloration makes the substantia nigra easily distinguishable, but little was known about its function until over a century after it was first described.

In 1893, a 38-year-old tuberculosis patient wandered into the ward of famed French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot.

He sought help from Charcot because he had developed a tremor on one side of his body. Charcot had no way to treat this at the time, but after the patient’s death, he performed an autopsy to try to discover what had been the cause. The autopsy revealed a small tumor in the patient’s brain. The tumor only affected one area, a small dark smear across the brain stem: the substantia nigra.

This finding remained only note of intrigue for a few years until one of Charcot’s pupils, Edouard Brissaud, finally made the connection. In 1895, Brissaud published the first paper to suggest the relationship between the destruction of the substantia nigra and the symptoms that would come to be known as Parkinson’s disease. It took another halfcentury and the discovery of a new chemical in the brain before anyone had a clue why.

In 1957, two scientists were independently exploring the same mysterious chemical, dopamine. First, Kathleen Montagu published a paper showing, for the first time, that dopamine was naturally present in the brain. Before this, scientists had just assumed it was an unimportant chemical byproduct found in the body. But Swedish scientist Arvin Carlsson showed the world that not only was dopamine present in the brain, it was a neurotransmitter, meaning that it functions as a chemical messenger, sending signals between nerve cells in the brain.

Through his research, Carlsson stumbled onto something unexpected. When he injected a chemical to destroy dopamine in live rabbit subjects, they turned completely immobile. No amount of prodding produced any muscle movement. When he reintroduced dopamine back into the rabbits with a drug called L-dopa though, they sprung back to action. His lab immediately connected these symptoms to those seen in Parkinson’s disease. If L-dopa could rescue the rabbits, then maybe, for the first time in history, they had hope for treating Parkinson’s disease.

Later, when they developed a technique to locate dopamine in the brain, they found a huge amount concentrated in a tiny, dark area on top of the brainstem. The substantia nigra was home to dopamine. All the evidence, gathered over decades, fit perfectly.

Today, scientists have mapped out the complicated circuit that initiates motor function and the exact relationship between the substantia nigra, dopamine and movement. We now understand that the substantia nigra is a production facility for most of the dopamine that exists in your brain. We also know that dopamine is an important neurotransmitter that can be released onto cells to activate or deactivate them. And we know that when someone starts to show the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, they are usually already missing at least 80% of those dopamine producing cells in the substantia nigra.

The susbstantia nigra is not directly responsible for movement, though. Instead, it exerts its influence by connecting to another part of the brain called the striatum.

The striatum is a major control center for movement. It receives signals which activate a complex mechanism of two competing pathways and then outputs a message to the rest

Photo courtesy of news-medical.net

Parkinson's degenerates the dopamine neurons in the nigro-striatal pathway. of the body. One pathway promotes movement while the other prevents it, but they both end at the same point in the brain, meaning that only one message can dominate over the other at a time.

The brain is full of these mutually inhibitory circuits, evolved to make certain that processes are regulated and not allowed to run haywire. In this case, the tug-of-war dictates movement signals traveling downwards from your brain to your body.

So the striatum is essentially an on/off relay station, and, here, dopamine returns to the picture. Dopamine, released from the substantia nigra onto the striatum, is responsible for making sure that the “on” pathway has an advantage in this constant tug-of-war. With dopamine, the “on” signals easily overpower the “off” pathway so that movement is smooth and easy. Without dopamine, the two pathways start to equal out and the relay station sends sporadic and conflicting messages down to the body.

That is, in a simplified way, why the substantia nigra is critical for everyday movement. By the time Parkinon’s is diagnosed, the substantia nigra cells are almost completely wiped out. With so little dopamine left, movements become weak and difficult to initiate. Actions that require a lot of micro-adjustments like balancing a spoon as you bring it from bowl to mouth, become frustratingly difficult because the striatum no longer has the energy required to synchronize so many actions. At the same time, lack of dopamine means that the striatum switches to its “off” position much more often, leading to the slow and rigid movements in those with the disease.

Today, that drug used by Carlsson to recover movement in his rabbit subjects over 60 years ago remains the most ubiquitous treatment for those with the disease. L-dopa is known as a precursor compound — when they body synthesizes a chemical, it does so in a series of steps. L-dopa is the molecule one step before dopamine, so it can be packed into a tablet, taken orally and make its way into the brain where it is transformed into dopamine and is able to substitute for all the dopamine that is no longer created by the substantia nigra.

The only other significant advancement in treatment over the past 60 years has been the development of a technique known as deep-brain stimulation, where an electrode is implanted directly into your brain so that it can activate bunches of neurons and help keep the “on” pathway of the striatum dominating. But this can be a costly procedure which requires surgery, and it does not always result in large improvements, making it relatively rare in the community.

There is one other treatment embraced by many in the Parkinson’s community. Movement therapies of all kinds, from boxing to improvisational dance, are offered for those with the disease. Though we currently have no way to prevent Parkinson’s symptoms from progress over time, it appears that the more a patient uses their motor pathways, the longer they are generally able to hold on to them. And that alone might be the single most actionable information for anyone diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The act of moving may actually keep them moving for as long as possible.

Old Gold & Black | News

Page 6 | Thursday, November 21, 2019

Wake Forest acknowledges climate change Wake Forest stands out relative to the rest of the country when it comes to comprehending climate change

BY HENRY PARKHURST Contributing Writer parkhd18@wfu.edu Congratulations Wake Forest, you understand it. But your parents might not, and they might not even want to.

For a campus that is conservative relative to other colleges and universities in the United States, there is still a clear consensus at Wake Forest: climate change is real and it’s happening.

“I’ve been here for 10 years,” said Chief Sustainability Officer Deedee Johnston, “and in those years not a single student has ever told me they don’t believe that our climate is changing.”

While young, educated students and faculty on college campuses have proven to be some of the strongest acknowledgers of the presence and severity of climate change, the United States still lags behind the rest of the world in coming to terms with the reality of climate change. A Yale University study on “Climate Change and the American Mind” revealed that 14% of Americans don’t believe in climate change and one in four don’t believe that human actions are having drastic effects.

Climate change denialism clearly still pervades factions of American political thought. Whether or not the intensely fortified roots of this belief can be quashed could be a determining factor in the world’s success in fighting off the damage humans have already caused, many environmentalists argue.

“Your politics are what predicts your accepting of science, which of course shouldn’t make any sense, but perfectly makes sense when you look at the psychology of it,” said Adrian Bardon, a professor of philosophy. “If people know that their group, where they’re

Photo courtesy of Wake Forest University Office of Sustainability Flickr

Participants pose outside the Pit for the Office of Sustainability’s initiative Greeks Go Green, an annual program designed for students to teach their peers about sustainability and proper treatment of the climate. from, their community or their political party needs to insist that it’s not true, they’re going to go along with it.”

The tribalism of climate change denial that Bardon explored may not be felt on Wake Forest’s campus, but is a reality in many of the communities from which its students come.

Particularly in communities whose livelihoods depend on the use of the land, water and their resources, the acknowledgement of climate change and the subsequent actions taken to address it would mean a temporary collapse of their way of life.

“The last time I was in church back home the preacher said that climate change was an aspect of the liberal agenda to get people to pay more tax dollars,” said sophomore Reece Adams. “I grew up in a small town in North Carolina where a lot of people work for oil companies, and they don’t want to believe in climate change because of what it means for their jobs.”

However, students who have grown

up with an environmentally conscious education claim that even in their young lives there have been palpable changes which motivate them to take action.

“I grew up in the suburbs of Boston, which is a pretty clean city,” said sophomore Amanda Mosher, “but in the past 10 years you can sense the worsening of the air quality, especially when you go from the city to the suburbs. And in the news, climate change is everywhere if you look for it. How could seeing rainforests on fire and ice caps shrinking not make you want to take a stand>” Evolutionary psychologists suggest that one of the largest contributors to denialism is humans’ innate fear of mortality.

As humans gain an increasing understanding of the world around them, the reality of their own demise leads them to cling to ideas that insist that everything will be okay.

“One of the biggest conclusions of the research into climate change denialism is that it’s not a literacy problem,” Bardon said. “With regard to climate science as

SG GENERAL ASSEMBLY

BY JESSICA SCHMIDT Staff Writer schmja19@wfu.edu I. Executive Reports President Mellie Mesfin began reports by speaking about the Code of Conduct in regard to the review process within bias reporting and the concern that accountability needs to be established. Following up on information from previous weeks, she reported that the Counseling Center is switching more to walk-in hours and will be working more closely with the Safe Office until positions in the Safe Office are filled. Interviews are being conducted in upcoming days to hopefully have the vacancies in the office filled by the start of spring semester.

Speaker of the House Miles Middleton discussed his meeting with Dean Matthew Clifford about creating awareness for the bias reporting system in order for it to have more influence on campus.

Secretary Laura Horton spoke about the affordability initiative relating to the allocation of printing money and textbook rentals from the bookstore.

She also reported on the idea to have condoms in the residence halls on campus and informed Senate that there will be further discussion regarding the idea. Staff Advisor Tim Wilkinson advocated for the Late Night Breakfast at the Pit on Dec. 4 — a night of free breakfast food before finals.

II. Committee Reports Campus Life Committee cautioned students from partaking in Senior Fifth at the upcoming football game. The Diversity & Inclusion Committee promoted the Period Party that is happening in Benson 401 Friday, Nov. 22.

The Judiciary Committee shared the results of their study of other universities’ student government systems. In comparison to Wake’s Forest’s Senate, other student governments are more complex and have more connection to their university’s Student Union. They shared the idea of incorporating this closer relationship with Student Union into the system at Wake Forest.

Physical Planning Committee spoke about the initiative “I’m not a thief, but I could’ve been”

a conservative, the higher level of your literacy, the more likely you are to be engaging in denial. There comes a point when the amount of education someone has stops making a difference.”

Bardon, frustrated by a sense of impending doom, mentioned that it’s nearly impossible to re-educate people on an issue they feel they understand. There are then really only two options: make environmental concerns a main focus of youth education throughout America, or wait until the crisis forces people to feel the immediate effects firsthand.

Unfortunately for the environment, the severity of the crisis coupled with the psychological need for drastic effects to be seen before action is taken could mean that the world’s climate will reach the point-of-no-return with regards to what has been deemed normal throughout its existence.

“The problem isn’t that humans don’t understand the science, it’s that they don’t want to,” concluded Bardon.

NOVEMBER 19 to encourage students to not leave personal items unattended in the library in order to save a table throughout the day. They also shared the idea of putting feminine hygiene products in the library.

Student Organizations Council reported that they had begun the research into other universities’ methods of chartering organizations to have ideas of what will work best for Wake Forest.

III. Announcements A resolution was brought to Senate asking for a Student Government co-sponsorship of the Classics Beyond Whiteness Initiative, as well as a monetary contribution of $400. The Initiative was created by the Department of Classical Studies as a way to include minorities and students of color who may have been excluded in the classics community in the past. The Initiative involves the exhibits of 16 minority classicist portraits that will be displayed in the ZSR Library. With a majority, the resolution was passed by the Senate. With Thanksgiving break beginning next week, there will be no Senate meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 26.

News | Old Gold & Black

Thursday, November 21, 2019 |Page 7

UCC: walk-in hours meet student demand

Continued from Page

Yet, the UCC’s decision to shift toward an accessoriented approach to counseling has also resulted in the drawback of diminishing the amount of long-term care available to each client. By increasing the workload of each counselor to include many of the new clients who come during walk-in hours, the walk-in model renders the UCC less capable of providing ongoing treatment and some clients with recurring needs for counseling are referred to off-campus options for extended care.

While the UCC has traditionally not viewed longterm care as a priority, with most students only attending one session in the UCC over the past few decades and the average client attending fewer than five sessions in the UCC over the last decade, the UCC will have to assess future increases in demand and need for access and treatment.

Even with this trade-off, the UCC’s new model appears to be striking an appropriate balance between access to counseling and treatment for mental health issues that meets the needs of the Wake Forest community. Many have expressed satisfaction with the new model, which has allowed them to see counselors quicker and address pressing issues in a timely manner.

Sophomore Maya Dalton, a representative of the student body as the co-chair of the Public Relations Committee for Student Government, explained her positive experience with the new walk-in model.

“It seemed like these hours were taking away appointment time from students wanting to schedule appointments with their regular counselor,” Dalton said. “However, I recently utilized the walk-in hours, and it was very helpful when I

needed a quick counseling appointment and could bypass the two-week or more wait time for a regularly scheduled appointment.”

Despite external changes to clinical operations, the UCC remains internally committed to addressing the mental health concerns of the Wake Forest community.

“I hope the UCC continues to be a place where students across identity statuses feel that they can go for confidential support,” Paredes said. “Oftentimes students come to us when they feel unable to express what they need or when thoughts and feelings have simply become overwhelmingly hard to manage.”

The UCC continues to serve as an important resource for students who need access to counseling, and this shift may be only one of many future changes as innovation becomes necessary in order to adjust to circumstances like rising demand.

Reflecting on the changes to the UCC and the needs of the Wake Forest student body, Student Government Chief of Staff Isabella Ryan expressed approval of the current measures and hope for the future.

“This shift in the model the UCC uses for first-time visits has the potential to meet the current needs of students,” Ryan said. “[However,] as stigma around accessing mental healthcare and helping resources on campus continues to decrease and more students feel comfortable accessing the various resources available on campus, it seems likely that an expansion of resources, through staff increases, will become necessary.”

Until larger structural changes can occur and more staff can be hired, however, the UCC will have to adapt temporarily to address growing needs and work with the rest of the Wake Forest community to develop solutions.

Photo courtesy of WFU University Counseling Center Instagram

Daniel Paredes is the Acting Director of the Wake Forest University Counseling Center.

This need for responsiveness and adaptability in the UCC is critical, especially as mental health professionals have had to provide additional care and support to those affected by trauma until the two vacant positions in the Safe Office are filled.

“As part of the Health & Wellbeing team (Campus Recreation, Learning Assistance Center, Office of the Chaplain, Office of Wellbeing, Student Health Services and University Counseling Center) at Wake Forest, I also look forward to us continuing to work innovatively to best support the psychological and emotional health of our students,” Paredes said.

OMCC: Screening of Sonic Sea hosted Continued from Page 1

“We are acoustically bleaching the ocean,” actress Rachel McAdams narrated over imagery of beached whales and dolphins, a result of the species trying to escape the excruciatingly loud human-made noise.

“Most people think of pollution in very tangible forms like plastic in the ocean or smog in the air,” said co-founder of the OMCC Oliver Hawkes. “But we don’t really think of other pollution such as light and sound, and so we really thought this film did an excellent job showing this impact that humans have on the environment and that not a lot of people were aware of — that I wasn’t even aware of.”

The film produced an impressive variety of interviewees, including oceanographer and National Geographic explorer Sylvia Earle, a Norwegian fisherman, leading senior scientists and the guest of honor, Steven Honigman.

Honigman appears towards the end of the film to address the issue of naval ships releasing sonar waves to detect enemy submarines.

“I don’t believe that national security and environmental protection are inconsistent at all,” he says in the film.

“I think there has to be a combination between those two principles where

the Navy can operate in a way that has the minimal impact upon the environment and still perform its training, and if necessary, its mission.”

Following the film, co-founders Hawkes and Libby Mohn led a panel on stage where they discussed how Wake Forest students can help reduce noise pollution in the ocean.

“You go out and you vote; you elect the right people that help the Navy do what it would like to do to be a responsible steward,” Honigman said. “If you convince people that they want to go on ships that want to be quieter, if you try to convince companies that import goods into America that they want to use ships that are quieter, that’s a way that everybody can have an impact on pulling change in the right direction.”

Honigman seemed eager to motivate younger generations to make change. He addressed the crowd not only as a politician and Navy veteran, but also as an environmental activist, explaining the importance of saving marine life given the fact that over a single whales’ lifetime, it absorbs carbon equal to thousands of trees.

Lucy Nelson/Old Gold & Black

Former General Counsel of the Navy Steve Honigman gave introductory remarks at the screening. He appeared in the film to discuss sonar waves.

“I thought it was really cool to have [Honigman] there because he put his law degree to such an interesting use,” said senior Emma McCauley. “You don’t see a lot of people with law degrees and then go work for the military end up being environmental activists. That was really inspiring because I know there were a lot of seniors in the audience, and we’re on the cusp of graduation and seeing that just because you take one path doesn’t mean you’re set to be in corporate forever — you can still be an activist no matter what.”

When asked by a professor in the audience how long it could take to reduce the noise, Honigman had an optimistic answer, saying that

while plastic and the warming of the planet are incredibly complex issues that could take decades and are irreversible, ocean noise can simply just stop or be massively reduced.

“I appreciated how [Honigman] ended on a really good note in saying how sound in the oceans, which is causing so much harm to the marine animals, is a problem that we can solve,” Hawkes said.

“It is very much within our grasp as a generation, especially among young students at Wake Forest.

Unlike smog that takes a lot of time and effort, sound is something that we can solve tomorrow if we put the right technology and the right regulations in place.”

OPINION

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“ Academia nourishes a dense, deep intellect The Liveliest Pleasure

The intellectual benefits of university form a kind of addiction to knowledge

Kyle Ferrer

Staff Columnist ferrka16@wfu.edu I wrote last week that my release from social media returned me to intellectual clarity. That I no longer have to hurdle over oncoming obstacles of images like the Google error bot has afforded me not a small amount of introspection. Though still beleaguered by innumerable articles, books and streamable content, a large portion of my mind is now free to wiggle and bore down. At least, I’d like to think so.

But my freedom had a catalyst aside from my antsy, incomplete thought patterns. The desire to unchain myself from Snapchat, Instagram, et al. was also pressured by the rich and difficult promises presented by academia. By academia, I mean the people in it — my professors — who, perched on

Art shold be difficult to some extent; an effort should be made to engage with art to understand its value.” the intellectual horizon, clarify, by degrees, its fuzziness. The more time you spend with them, the more your brain blooms like fire. When here at school, I’m at my sharpest, engaging with a history of ideas on a critical and creative level that, no matter how I fight it, wanes when I am not swaddled by minds warm with knowledge.

Plato said that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, and as I am continually exposed to literature, theory, knowledge networks and aphorisms, I gain the pleasure of insight. It is a kind of endless, additive evolution that spins an increasingly complex web of influence and ideas. In part, it is this endlessness that pushes me to read and refine, to hone my intellect as hard and as often as I can, because of the knowledge that there are people infinitely smarter than I. It’s a productive pressure, always latent, oftentimes viscerally felt, that forces me to thoughtfully expand.

Often I’ll merely squint out a window

for a period of time, trying to synthesize diasporic thoughts before they evaporate.

Other times, I’ll get red-faced and try to articulate those unassimilated thoughts to the class.

But even so, those processes would not be able to unfold if not for their inspiration.

However loosely, I’m able to tangle ideas from the literature with semi-memorized quotations or fingerling notions. This leads me, like a hungry sheep trailing a group of intellectual shepherds, to a set of obscure revelations. It’s a thrilling, often frustrating process of revision, connection and brief ecstasy. By ecstasy, I mean ekstasis, which, in the etymological sense, implies these various volts take me outside of myself and briefly relay the infinite. The perpetual contest for clarification elevates my thinking and in turn sophisticates my writing. Predictably, the rub often occurs when a fledgling complexity oversteps my facilities with language. But that difficult alignment, too, piecemeals a depth of understanding that attunes me to the voices of artists and to the one inside myself. The complexity (or confusion) of an idea can sometimes only be evident, to myself and others, in my own inability to clarify it. The written refinement, a

matching sought through a sea of possible words, formulates articulate footholds to return to.

To become a good writer, one must know those who came before them. Malraux said as much, commenting that “every young man’s heart is a graveyard in which are inscribed the names of a thousand dead artists but whose only actual denizens are a few mighty, often antagonistic ghosts.

The poet is haunted by a voice with which words must be harmonized.” I’m still sorting out the ghost bit, with a few stabs at turning “pastiche into style,” as Malraux continues, but am nonetheless invigorated by the process. The best professors (all my English professors) have a better handle on these ghosts than I, but are comfortable infecting me with their “antagonistic” genius. My hunger pushes me like nothing else to collect, synthesize and articulate a universe of thought. The mark of a good professor is one whose informed oration, to some degree, intimidates students into intelligence, in a dance of smart and smarter. Hunter S. Thompson borrowed this from Don Quixote for his unpublished book Polo Is My Life, which expresses my addiction to smarter people: “Arms, my only ornament — my only rest, the fight.”

of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. are already filled with slave owners and genocidaires, so a digital photograph of one of the world’s richest humans seems accordingly inconsequential. However, Bezos embodies two (related) distinctly American problems: that of the billionaire class and that of the detached and disinterested CEO. As progressive Democratic candidates for the presidency battle for attention and legitimacy, the issue of wealth distribution has become popularly contentious. Widespread considerations of wealth taxes in varying degrees have risen from the increasingly common notion that wealth accumulation in the billions is largely immoral, especially when much of the country is in dire need of financial support. Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates regularly jockey for the title of World’s Wealthiest Human, a terrifying and seemingly unjustifiable economic situation to be in.

It should be noted that Bezos’ award was for “achievement in business.” Bezos certainly achieved something; however it is seemingly ambiguous whether what he created is something worth celebrating. The increasingly pervasive and ubiquitous nature of Amazon has driven brick and mortar stores nearly out of business and has had especially dire effects for independent store owners. With the attractive convenience of extremely expedited shipping options have come increasingly unsustainable

shipping practices, with pressing implications for our country’s movement towards sustainable commerce.

In my opinion, the most reprehensible aspect of Bezos’ supposed achievements in business are the conditions of his workers. As Bezos enriches himself minute by minute, Amazon workers claim they are routinely punished for workplace injuries, withheld bonus and stock options and subjected to dangerous and inhumane working conditions.

Whole Foods employees complain of a similar decline in working conditions following the company’s acquisition by Amazon. Labor deficiencies, increasingly strenuous workloads and declining labour budgets are among their complaints.

Bezos’ achievements in business seems primarily exploitative in nature. To celebrate his immense wealth acquisition and exploitative labor practices as an achievement in business suggests a fundamental disconnect between negative perceptions of wealth acquisition and labor exploitation and positive impressions of the services Amazon provides. To laud Bezos’ business practices and immense and likely immoral wealth acquisition with a commissioned portrait to be displayed in the nation’s official gallery is an irresponsible use of artistic expression and an indication of the disconnection between the nation’s top cultural institutions and the quotidinal experiences of working class laborers.

Bezos’ award“belies his dubious business practice Public Plaudits

Portraiture memorializes heroes who ostensibly do good, but exist in dubious moral spaces

Jack Portman

Staff Columnist porttjt17@wfu.edu

This week the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. awarded Jeff Bezos the Portrait of a Nation prize at the biennial American Portrait Gala. Bezos and his fellow recipients, including Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda and members of the band Earth, Wind & Fire, were celebrated with humungous photographic portrait installations in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Bezos’ portrait, made by the photographer Robert McCurdy, is appropriately crude and uninspired, a fitting assessment of the Amazon CEO’s commitment to his employees.

Portraiture is itself a highly political medium.

It expresses how societies perceive political and commercial figures, as well as familial and working-class peers. We create portraits of our mothers, fathers, children and neighbors, as well as of influential political and commercial leaders. Por-

Bezos certainly acheived something, however it is seemingly ambiguous whether... [it’s] worth celebrating.” traiture can be highly official and traditionalized, such as the long history of Venetian Doge portraiture, or it can be organic and simultaneous, such as Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, likely the defining image to come out of the American Great Depression. Steve McCurry’s portrait Afghan Girl, which appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic, has been likened to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and penetrated the American political conscious. Portraiture is a versatile medium, with the capacity to encapsulate a personality and a moment. Bezos’ portrait is aesthetically unimpressive. Awkwardly obscured in shadow and uncomfortably composed, Bezos seems uninterested and unapproachable. His stare seems almost obsessive but at the same time absolutely vacant. The dimensions of the image are made strikingly clear by the photographs of Bezos admiring his portrait at the ceremony. Visitors of the Newly Acquired section of the National Portrait Gallery will be towered over by Bezos’ portrait; Bezos will stare directly over most visitors’ heads.

It is also important to consider whom we celebrate with the honor of portraiture. The walls

Opinion | Old Gold & Black

Thursday, November 21, 2019 | Page 9

Hedonism “is an ethos from another time Pleasure Centers

Different from decadence, hedonism offers a promising philosophy for modern life

Andrew Murphy Contributing Writer wilcaf16@wfu.edu

“A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?” — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray No longer is the cigarette a perfect pleasure, in our world possessed by attention to health and obsession with self-improvement. Decadent pleasures (though not hedonistic pleasures, more on that later) have become something démodé, as selfpreservation becomes more fashionable than self-destruction. Today it is desirable to be moderate in one’s pleasures, wholesome and never overwhelmed. Though I quite like cigarettes, I am drawn to more harmless things, for fear of ruining my teeth. I spend a good amount of my free time trying to figure out a way I can enjoy myself without con-

Today it is desirable to be moderate in one's pleasures, wholesome and never overwhelmed." sequences, and I think I have found a perfect pleasure for today: Trader Joe’s frozen Indian food — a pleasure ephemeral, yet somehow eternally suspended in time.

Allow me to set forth the differences I see between decadence and hedonism. I often see the two conflated, usually by people who do not understand the concept of Thanatos. There is, as Matei Calinescu writes in Five Faces of Modernity, “an acute and feverish sense of urgency” to decadence, a feeling that time is running short and of tiredness and decay. This feeling is summed up quite effectively by the following line from Paul Verlaine’s poem ‘Languour:’ “Je suis l'Empire à la fin de la décadence…” or by Nietzche in Ecce Homo: “already dead as my father, while as my mother I am still living and becoming old,” or, most comprehensively, by the character Jean des Essientes in J-K Huysmans’ novel À Rebours, who indulges in such excesses as covering his pet turtle in gold and gems, eventually leading to its death. Decadence is not the pleasure

of happy, healthy people. It is smoking a cigarette while fully aware that one has a cough, or drinking expensive wine so that one can fall asleep — it is desperate pleasure-seeking with no expectation of fulfillment.

In decadence, the vanity of one’s actions is fully acknowledged. On the contrary, hedonistic activities, such as eating good food or drinking with friends or spending a lot of time and money on one’s appearance, are things done by healthy people with a full expectation of enjoyment and pleasure. Frozen Indian food would fall into the latter category, but with a few distinctive qualities of its own.

The hedonism of frozen Indian food is not that of fat Bacchus drinking barrels of wine, but rather that of today’s self-conscious, overworked, overplanned person looking for any way — any — to forget for a moment their oppressive schedule.

We have in Trader Joe’s frozen Indian food a perfect example of Deleuze’s idea of the masochistic artwork: there is a frozen quality, quite literally, as it lies suspended in time in its hermetically-sealed tray. There it is, recumbent on its conspicuous altar halfway down the frozen-foods aisle, separate from more mundane offerings, glaring at me from its color-coded box and demanding to

be bought. I cannot resist its willconsuming gaze. Each time I go to Trader Joe’s, I return with one or two paneer tikka masalas or palak paneers, even if I resist the impulse to buy them.

The frozen Indian meal is a pleasure for the image-conscious. One can say, paraphrasing Deleuze on Masoch, of Trader Joe’s frozen Indian food, that “no one has been so far with so little offense to health.”

There is no possibility of excess here, no harm done to health; in its place a pleasure suspended in ice, perfectly partitioned to avoid getting fat. If one ate multiple frozen paneer tikka masalas, for example, the amount of material waste would be enough to make them ashamed of their overconsumption. As in Masoch’s novels, the language of Trader Joe’s frozen Indian food is one of “persuasion and education.”

We are persuaded to eat in moderation and educated about the dangers of overeating through shame.

As the contract enforces the scheme in Venus in Furs, so the portion size of frozen Indian food enforces the modern mandate that one should take care of their body’s health. In Trader Joe’s Indian food we have pleasure without danger, without questions of self-control.

I truly cherish that this time was carved out for me, because I now realize that I would have never done it for myself. Of course, I spend time doing these things. However, activities like reading for pleasure have always been much more sporadic for me — it has never been a part of my schedule, or something that I am conscious about including in my day-to-day routine.

As my return back to campus is rapidly approaching, I know that I need to find a way to translate my commute into something similar at Wake Forest. Whether this means reading before bed as much as I can or waking up early to listen to a podcast before class, I have found the value in inte-

grating these activities into a schedule. Although the age-old question of how to balance school work, sleep and a social life is something that I still struggle to answer, the one thing I have decided is that it is necessary to add another category to the equation: time for yourself.

While this may deepen the challenge of balancing a college lifestyle even more, I think it is necessary in order to transition into a post-college life; adulthood will be defined by solitude in a way that we college students have never experienced before, so it is necessary to make that time positive and personally productive.

“ Daily commutes can provide restorative solitude Stranger on a Train

We must carve out periods of solitutude to enrich our sense of self and the world

Olivia Field

Staff Columnist fielor17@wfu.edu There are many reasons that one would love living in London. The city is full of amazing museums, innovative restaurants and more parks named after royals than anyone could dream of. However, I think the one thing that I will miss most about my time here is something quite banal: my commute to work.

When I found out my internship was almost an hour away from my flat in London, I was pretty peeved.

The prospect of waking up early in the morning just to get on a crowded train for an hour was not very enticing. After my first two weeks of commuting, however, I began to adapt to the bustling tube stations and established enough confidence to push through the crowds when switching lines.

I was always somewhat confused when people talked about the phenomenon of feeling lonely in New

I was always somewhat confused when people talked of feeling lonely in New York City..."

York City, as it is one of the most densely populated places in the world.

Commuting in London allowed me to understand the truth to this — you sit on the same train, walk the same streets and use the same underground stations as so many other commuters and rarely, if ever, see the same people. It’s a strange feeling, being surrounded by so many other humans yet feeling so alone. For me, this has actually been much more of a positive than a negative. My commute ultimately translates to two hours of the day that I have completely to myself.

At first, I only listened to music on the tube (as a result of not exactly knowing where I was going and not wanting to be distracted enough to miss my stop). I shuffled between calm music when sitting on the train, and would then switch to rock or rap when hustling through the station.

Now, I can basically go on autopilot once I walk out of the door, which allows me to listen to long podcasts religiously, read and finish books for pleasure, write in my notebook or just stare at my reflection in the train window.

Photo courtesy of MCTCampus

Opinion | Old Gold & Black

Thursday, November 21, 2019 | Page 10

“ tax policy is not actually "radical" Redistributive Economic Policy

Wealth redistrubution is not an unfeasible moonshot but a fairer future

Amanda Wilcox Staff Columnist wilcaf16@wfu.edu

Lately, I’ve consistently heard critics argue that Democratic presidential candidates are suggesting “radical” economic policies and redistributive schema. That isn’t really a fair take. The plans that several campaigns have floated (think Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders’ respective wealth taxes) are instead efforts to undo the extreme wealth redistribution upward that has taken grip in the United States over the past 40 years.

Defending the status quo — or making inequality worse, as the Trump administration’s policies have done — is actually the radical position.

According to the nonpartisan think tank the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, both income and wealth inequality are at apogee. The think tank cites estimates from Stanford University economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, which report that the top 1% of Americans hold a fifth of total income in the United States and 42% of total wealth. Saez and Zucman also found that the share of wealth held by the very wealthiest 0.1% — a group of just 160,700 families who all had net worth exceeding $20 million in 2012 — tripled from Presidential Politics 7% in 1978 to 22% in 2012. By 2012, the wealthiest 0.1% held nearly as much wealth

The wealth tax is a prime example of a policy that is far less radical than their opponents claim." as the bottom 90%, who owned 22.8% of the total.

Some of the causes of today’s inequality (globalization, skill-biased technological change) stem largely from market forces.

Others (rent-seeking, asymmetric bargaining power between workers and firms) result from market distortions. However, just as markets began delivering more inequitable outcomes in before-tax incomes and transfers, policymakers simultaneously relaxed the federal tax code, propagating the Ronald Reagan-era myth that the benefits of lower taxes on the wealthy would “trickle down” to the middle and working classes. Indeed, in the past 40 or so years, the top marginal tax rate was lowered from 70% under Jimmy Carter to 28% under Reagan; it went up to 39.6% under Bill Clinton and down to 35% under George W. Bush and has essentially stagnated since.

More often than not, even in the face of market-driven increases in inequality, tax policy has helped the rich at the expense of everyone else. It’s worth keeping the numbers in mind when you hear commentators and critics call Democratic redistributive plans “radical.” They are really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to measures we must enact if we are to resolve the ways in which elected officials have failed working people.

The coming Democratic primary will be a good time to figure out which specific ideas make sense and which don’t. So far, the

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agenda looks pretty reasonable. Warren has a plan to increase workers’ bargaining power within corporations by requiring at least 40% of corporate board members to be elected by employees. Sen. Cory Booker has floated a “baby bond” program to reduce the racial wealth gap. Sanders, together with Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, has called for a policy to limit corporate stock buybacks.

Most importantly, perhaps, there is the wealth tax. Firstly, it is important to note the difference between income and wealth taxes. An income tax is defined as a tax levied on a person’s annual earnings; in contrast, a wealth tax is imposed on the market value of the assets owned by an individual. While income taxes can and should take a progressive structure, it is argued by many that a wealth tax would be a much more fined-tuned tool with which to combat economic inequality. (Recall that inequality of wealth is far greater in the United States than inequality of income). Warren has proposed to tax wealth above $50 million at a 2% rate and wealth above $1 billion at a 3% rate; the plan from Sanders would impose somewhat higher rates on the super-rich, reaching a rate of 8% for wealth over $10 billion.

The wealth tax is a prime example of a policy that is far less radical than their opponents claim. You know who already pays a wealth tax? Middle-class Americans, who every year pay a percentage of the value of their home (the biggest asset most families own) in property taxes.

If middle-income Americans can pay a yearly tax on their main source of wealth, then the top 1% obviously can too. It’s not radical. It’s called fairness.

Critics have argued that a wealth tax would raise much less revenue than expected due to tax evasion, loopholes or international tax competition. But as Saez and Zucman point out in a New York Times editorial entitled “How to Tax Our Way Back to Justice,” the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, and that if the right policy choices are made, the taxation of capital and globalization are perfectly compatible.

“The good news is that we can fix tax injustice, right now,” they wrote. “There is nothing inherent in modern technology or globalization that destroys our ability to institute a highly progressive tax system. We can countenance a sprawling industry that helps the affluent dodge taxation, or we can choose to regulate it.

We can let multinationals pick the country where they declare their profits, or we can pick for them. We can tolerate financial opacity and the countless possibilities for tax evasion that come with it, or we can choose to measure, record and tax wealth.”

Are these ideas for greater economic justice feasible politically? It is easy to be discouraged — money in politics and self-serving ideologies are a hell of a drug.

But the good news is that some political leaders have recognized that the current level of economic inequity is, in part, due to policy choices their predecessors have made, and also that they have the power to make different ones. The United States as we would like to know it — optimistic, future-oriented, progressive, a leader in global affairs — cannot survive the stagnation of collective economic security.

SPORTS

T H U R S D AY, N O V E M B E R 2 1 , 2 0 1 9

PAG E 11

Online at: www.wfuogb.com Twitter: @OGBSports Editor: Rafael Lima, limara17@wfu.edu Assistant Editor: Lucy Nelson, nelsld16@wfu.edu

OLD GOLD & BLACK

Men's soccer NCAA Tournament preview The Demon Deacons received the No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament and will open against either Maryland or Iona JB BLOOD Staff Writer bloojj18@wfu.edu For the fifth consecutive season, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons men’s soccer team has received a top-four seed in the NCAA playoffs. Since the NCAA introduced seeding in 1994, the Deacs are the only program to have received five consecutive top-four seeds.

Heading into tournament play, the Deacs have a record of 13-4-2. After a disappointing 1-0 loss in the ACC semifinals against the University of Virginia, Wake Forest is looking to make a run in the playoffs.

The Demon Deacons are led by First Team All-ACC midfielder Bruno Lapa, who finished the season with a team-high seven goals and 17 points. Other names to watch out for include freshman sensation Calvin Harris, who scored six goals on the season, and sophomore Kyle Holcomb who also had six scores.

One of Wake Forest’s key playmakers is junior forward Machop Chol, who led the team with seven assists. Additionally, junior Justin McMaster, who had four goals and an assist this season, will be a key player to watch in the postseason. In addition to Lapa earning First Team AllACC honors, Chol, defender Alistair Johnson, goalie Andrew Pannenberg and midfielder Isaiah Parente all earned

Third Team All-ACC honors. Harris was named to the AllACC freshman team.

As a team, Wake Forest finished third in the ACC in goals scored per game with two and second in the conference in goals allowed per game with an average of .67 per match.

Their average per game scoring differential of 1.33 was third best in the ACC, which was .77 greater than the fourth best.

Wake Forest had a strong regular season and conference tournament run that will set them up well for the NCAA playoffs. The ACC is widely considered to be the best soccer conference in the country, and three of the top four seeds in the NCAA tournament are from the ACC (UVA as the No. 1 seed, Clemson as the No. 2 seed, and Wake Forest as the No. 4 seed). The Deacs hope that their difficult schedule so far will prepare them well for the tournament.

They will open up NCAA tournament play on Sunday night at Spry Stadium against the winner of Maryland and Iona. Although Maryland is a low seed in the tournament this year, they won the national championship last season with a 1-0 victory over Akron. Wake Forest was upset by Akron in the third round of the tournament that same year.

Despite Maryland’s success last year, if the Terrapins and Deacs square off, the Deacs will likely be the favorite to win.

Playing the game at Spry Stadium will provide a solid advantage for the Demon Deacons. The loud atmosphere and high attendance levels give the Deacs one of the best home-field advantages in the sport.

If Wake Forest can get by Maryland or Iona, they will face Wright State, Notre Dame or Michigan. Of those teams, Wake Forest has only played Notre Dame, who they lost to 1-0. Michigan, as the No. 13 seed, is the favorite of the three to play the Deacs. Michigan finished the season with an 11-

4-5 record and lost to Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament Championship game in a penalty kick shootout after the match ended in a 0-0 draw.

If Wake Forest wins, they would likely play Big Ten Champion Indiana in the quarterfinal round before having the chance to travel to Cary, N.C., for the College Cup semifinals and finals. ACC teams are predicted to make up multiple teams in the final four and the Deacs hope to be one of them.

Wake Forest has the talent and skill to win the tournament this year for the first time since 2007. The question will be if they can execute at the high level they have demonstrated at their best.

Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications

Spry Stadium will provide a key home-field advantage for the Deacs in their second-round tournament debut.

Tigers shred Deacs to pieces 52-3 No. 3 Clemson handed the Deacs their worst loss of the season, dominating in all three phases of the game

BY RAFAEL LIMA Sports Editor limara17@wfu.edu Going into Death Valley to play Clemson can be a tough experience for any college football team, Alabama included.

Going into Death Valley without your two leading receivers and your leading tackler during Clemson’s Senior Night is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

The Tigers jumped up to an early 14-0 lead with their first two possessions thanks to short field positions due to a Jamie Newman interception and a 53-yard return by Clemson receiver Amari Rodgers.

Wake Forest stopped the bleeding a little after a fumble by Clemson running back Will Spiers set them up at Clemson’s 28-yard line. The Demon Deacons came away with a field goal, which marked kicker Nick Sciba’s 28th straight made field goal, a new ACC record and the longest active mark in the nation.

However, after an encouraging end to the first quarter for the Deacs, Clemson went on to score 38 unanswered points, while limiting Wake Forest to mere 86 total yards for the remaining three quarters, en route a 52-3 blowout.

“I’m not at all happy with the result,” Head Coach Dave Clawson said, as reported by Les Johns from 247Sports. “We clearly didn’t play well. We had less than 100 yards of offense, but it was different than a year ago. I really thought last year that our kids quit, but they didn’t quit today. They competed.”

One of the bright spots for the Deacs, if you can really have a bright spot in a 49-point loss, was the defensive line play over the first two quarters. Wake Forest was able to col-

lapse the pocket on Trevor Lawrence a couple of times and timely sacks by linebacker Ryan Smenda and lineman Rondell Bothroyd were huge to force punts by Clemson’s stellar offense early on.

However, the Wake Forest offense was unable to capitalize on any momentum generated by the defense, as the Deacs failed to generate at least a first down on six out of the nine offensive possessions they had during the first half.

Part of the offensive miscues were due to the absence of Scotty Washington and Sage Surratt, who caught 1,608 receiving yards over nine games this season.

“I would have loved to have had the challenge against [Clemson] at full strength. I would have loved to have had Scotty and Sage,” Clawson said, as reported by Les Johns 247Sports. “I don’t think those two players would have made a difference in the game, but some of those perimeter shots we take, I think those kids would have come up with a few of them. I think it would have been a more competitive game.

This was a short-term loss for a long-term gain. A.T. Perry, Waydale Jones and Donavon Green will all be better because of this game.”

True freshman Donavon Green was the only one out of the trio able to register a catch against Clemson’s tight coverage. He caught two passes in back-to-back plays for 12 yards before Newman threw an interception on what would be his third throw to Green on the game.

This was by far Newman’s worst performance in his career leading the Demon Deacons. Newman was averaging 287.4 yards per game going into the Clemson game, but only managed to pass for 41 yards while completing only six out of 14 passes with two interceptions and zero touchdowns.

Despite the horrible loss, the Deacs might still have an outside chance to go to the Orange Bowl. If Wake Forest wins out their remaining games (Duke and Syracuse) and if Virginia Tech, Virginia and Pittsburgh finish the season with four losses or more, the Deacs might end the season as the sec-

ond ACC team ranked in the CFP, behind Clemson, which would automatically send them to the Orange Bowl.

With Virginia Tech playing both Pittsburgh and UVA to end their season, this is a possible, albeit unlikely, scenario at this point.

The Deacs will now devote all of their attention to their 7:30 p.m. matchup at BB&T Field against the Blue Devils (4-6). Duke needs a win to keep their hopes of a bowl game alive, while Wake Forest can win the "state championship," as they already have wins against North Carolina and NC State.

“We have Senior Day at home with that game on the ACC Network. It's against Duke, big rivalry game, and this is a culmination to trying to win a state championship for us. It'll be the eighth time in history if Wake Forest can pull off a win that we've had a state championship in Winston-Salem,” said redshirt senior tight end Jack Freudenthal. “[Duke is] a good football team, and we're really excited, and all we have to do is focus on the game plan, do our jobs, control what we can control and if we can do that, it'll be a really fun night for us."

Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications

Defensive lineman Rondell Bothroyd registers a key sack for an 11-yard Clemson loss on second down.

Page 12 | Thursday, November 21, 2019

Old Gold & Black | Sports

Men's basketball continues inconsistent streak The Demon Deacons lost 67-65 in overtime against UNC Charlotte, thanks to late-game miscues

BY CHRISTIAN ODJAKJIAN Staff Writer odjact18@wfu.edu Last year, Wake Forest’s largest margin of victory was an 80-56 home win over UNC Charlotte.

That Charlotte team finished the season 8-21.

That Charlotte team graduated their only doubledigit scorer and best player, by far, in Jon Davis (21.6 PPG).

But this year, Charlotte defeated Wake Forest last Sunday, 67-65 in overtime. The loss now has the Deacs sitting at 2-2 on the season with the disappointing opener against Boston College, arguably the most beatable team in the ACC. The 49ers jumped to an early 12-0 lead, but the Deacs were able to tie it up by halftime at 29 apiece.

They played stout defense for a 10-minute stretch at the beginning of the second half, not allowing a single basket during the stretch. Charlotte was able to salvage eight points off of free throws during the drought, and were still leading with under eight minutes to play.

“For us, defensively, that was a good stretch to guard the way we guarded and limit their scoring opportunites,” said Head Coach Danny Manning, as reported by the Winston-Salem Journal. “We have to do a better job playing defense with our head and our feet.”

Tied at 54 with less than 30 seconds to go, Charlotte’s Malik Martin sunk a 3-pointer. Eight seconds later, the Deacs answered with a 3 of their own from

freshman Ismael Massoud, who has looked very good in limited action so far this year.

“He’s one of those players [that] with his height and release point, he can get that shot off against a lot of players his size or smaller,” Manning said.

That was enough to send the game to overtime, where Charlotte gained a six-point lead in the first two minutes strictly off of free throws. Down five with under a minute to go, guard Brandon Childress was able to get a tightly contested 3-pointer to go from the top of the key.

Wake Forest secured a defensive rebound with 17 seconds to go, having a chance to tie it up or take

Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications

Childress continues to shoulder the Deacs' offense, as he had 19 points and four assists against the 49ers.

the lead. Yet, the lack of good coaching was evident as ever, as the Demon Deacons settled for a tough 3-pointer with 10 seconds left on the clock, then inexplicably didn’t foul to extend the game.

Childress, who took the final shot for Wake Forest, didn’t regret his shot selection.

“It hit the front of the rim. If I put more leg into it, we win the ballgame,” he said.

He continued to lead the way for Wake Forest, putting up 19 points and four assists in the losing effort.

Olivier Sarr also had a nice game, contributing seven points, four blocks and 13 rebounds.

The Deacs' win over Asheville on Nov. 13 was a somewhat encouraging display, as the Bulldogs 1-3-1 zone did nothing to slow down the Deacs offensively.

Wake Forest shot a ridiculous 33-47 from the field, and the 70.2% success rate from the field was the second highest in program history. But somehow, the score was still knotted up at 72-72 with nine minutes remaining. Manning’s squad was able to pull away at the end to secure a nice 98-79 win.

Chaundee Brown went a perfect 11-11 at the line, and set a new career high with 23 points. Sarr notched his third double-double of the season, with 21 points off a perfect 9-9 from the field, a career-best scoring output for him as well.

The Deacs' next five games will be away from home, as they return to the Charlotte area to face Davidson on Friday. They will then travel to Anaheim, Calif., for the Wooden Legacy tournament on Nov. 28. The opening-round matchup is against the College of Charleston, and depending on the result, they will play either Providence or Long Beach State. Each squad in the eight-team tournament will play three games.

Astros are involved in signal-stealing scandal As first reported by The Athletic, the Astros used cameras on center field to steal pitchers' signals in 2017

BY WILL ZIMMERMAN Staff Writer zimmwj19@wfu.edu Ask a professional athlete why they play the game, and they will probably tell you that it’s because they love it. Ask that athlete what matters most at the end of the day, and they will probably tell you that it’s winning.

But winning is seldom easy, especially at the highest levels. Sometimes athletes or teams need a leg up, a little outside help. Sometimes, they cheat.

Cheating in sports is almost as old as sports itself. Whether it be Barry Bonds and Lance Armstrong taking performance-enhancing drugs or the Patriots deflating footballs, cheating to gain a competitive advantage has been around forever. However, according to The Athletic, there’s a new scandal to be added to the list.

Just over a week ago, The Athletic reported that the Houston Astros stole signs during the playoffs in 2017. Anyone familiar with baseball knows that stealing signs is part of the game. For most of baseball’s history, stealing signs came when a player on base (most likely on second base because a player here can see the pitcher, the catcher and his teammate: the batter) signals to the batter what kind of pitch is about to be thrown. The player on base may be able to determine what kind of pitch is about to be thrown by studying the hand signals the catcher gives to the pitcher.

Stealing signs via another player on the field is fair game and has long been utilized by MLB teams. Stealing signs using a camera positioned in center field, relaying a live feed to the dugout or clubhouse — as the Astros did — is anything but fair game. According to initial reports by The Athletic, this camera produced a live feed to someone near home plate, likely in the area between the dugout and the clubhouse, who would study the signals the catcher gave.

This person would work to decode which signals correspond to which pitches. Once the person determined this, they would watch for the signals and then bang on the side of a garbage can sitting near them to alert the hitter about what kind of pitch was coming. One bang could mean fastball; two bangs could mean breaking ball. This procedure broke MLB rules, which dictate that any in-park camera must be on an eight-second delay.

Conversely, many around the league have reason to believe that foul play was not the reason for the Astros' success at the plate. According to FiveThirtyEight, a popular analytics website, the Astros team strikeout rate went from the fourth-worst in the league in 2016 to a league best percentage in 2017. This data takes both home and road games into account. According to the article, during the year the scandal supposedly began, the Astros were an outlier compared to all other MLB teams in that they increased power and decreased strikeout rate, both at home and on the road.

News of the alleged rules violations have been addressed by many in the world of baseball, as many show discontempt with the effects the scandal has on competition within the league.

“I always want the ability on the field to determine who the winner is, and I just don’t think it’s a level playing field and it’s not good for our game, ” said MLB Chief Officer Joe Torre.

Others voiced their lack of surprise regarding the news, such as infielder Trevor Plouffe who tweeted: “Why are the pitch stealing allegations a surprise to anyone?? Do you know the stakes involved? That’s why guys still get popped for PEDs. The reward outweighs the risk for many. That goes for organizations and players.”

The entire scandal was brought to the forefront when pitcher Mike Fiers, who was on the team in 2017 and now pitches for the Oakland Athletics, broke the code of silence among players and detailed the accusations to reporters from The Athletic. In the wake of the scandal, the MLB has opened up an investigation and will ultimately have to decide what kind of punishment the actions warrant.

In response to the publishing of the article, the Astros released their own statement: "The Houston Astros orga-

nization has begun an investigation in cooperation with Major League Baseball. It would not be appropriate to comment further on this matter at this time."

It is unclear what kind of punishment the league will deliver to the Astros, mainly because cheating to this degree surpasses anything the league has had to deal with before. Back in 2017, the Boston Red Sox were fined for the use of smartwatches in sign-stealing activities, yet the lack of involvement from ownership and front office warranted a small punishment for the Red Sox. However, comissioner Rob Manfred did note that “future violations of this type will be subject to more serious sanctions,” per ESPN. Now, some around the league are calling for very serious sanctions surpassing fines such as suspensions, the forfeiture of draft picks and possibly championship titles.

DIRK SHADD/Times USA

Tampa Bay Rays starting pitcher Blake Snell pitching against the Astros at Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas.

Sports | Old Gold & Black

Thursday, November 21, 2019 | Page 13

Deacon Spotlight: Robbie Grace

BY LUCY NELSON Asst. Sports Editor nelsld16@wfu.edu Hailing from Minneapolis, Minn., is one of the top long jumpers in the nation: Robbie Grace. The freshman has a personal record of 20’ 1’’ and hopes to surpass that during her time at Wake Forest. Had she been in college at that time, that jump would have placed her 17th at last year’s Division I college national championships. Not to mention, she placed fourth in the 200-meter race and second in the 100-meter race at the Class 1A state meet this year. The versatile athlete is now training almost every day to make her mark as a Demon Deacon, even adding on the triple jump event that she has never competed in before.

Lucy Nelson: How did you come across Wake Forest?

Robbie Grace: I actually wrote this on my college application. My mom was like, “Wake Forest is a great school. Tim Duncan and Chris Paul went there — you should look it up!” and then I looked it up. (Laughs.)

LN: How do you like Winston-Salem and North Carolina?

RG: I love North Carolina. I also have family down here — my aunt lives an hour away and I was just with her, and then my cousin goes to UNCG so she comes to pick me up once in awhile to get off campus, because campus is kind of small, and it’s kind of hard with a busy schedule to get out and experience other things, so it’s nice.

LN: Long jumping is such an interesting and unique sport. How did you come across the event?

RG: It’s one of those things, especially in high school, that you try to see if you’re good at, because it’s really not that hard. You just run and jump and see what happens. And then eventually if you’re somewhat decent, then you’re like, ‘Oh how can I make this better?’ That’s basically what happened to me — the first time I jumped, I made high 15s, and my coach was like ‘Oh wait, that’s pretty good, keep doing that,’ and then every single year past that I’ve just been getting better and better and better until I am now. Yeah, long jump’s fun. It’s probably one of the better events of track because I don’t run that much.

LN: Wait, so you’re on track, and you don’t like running?

RG: I do like running! I just don’t do as much of it.

Like a lot of people hate the sport of track and field because of the running, and a lot quit their high school teams shortly after joining because it’s so much running. So finding a field event that I enjoy … it’s just a whole different experience to what people are used to thinking of track if that makes sense.

LN: You were in the local Minnesota news a lot in high school and were named the Star Tribune’s Metro

Girls’ Track and Field Athlete of the year. Was there any pressure that you felt coming into the season at Wake Forest?

RG: I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s pressure...

I was more nervous about what the transition of workouts would be like here versus at home, [but] they’re very similar. It’s honestly just about being committed and doing what you’ve got to do to get it done.

LN: How do you like the team?

RG: I like the team. The team is really small compared to other track teams in the ACC or just in general. So it’s really close-knit; everyone knows each other and it’s basically a family.

LN: Personal goals?

RG: For long jump I want to be consistent in the 20-feet range, because my personal best is 20 feet, literally just 20 feet, 20 feet 1 inch, and I just want to be more consistent in that range. Eventually, if I could personal record in something higher than that, that would be amazing. And for the triple jump, a realistic measurement goal is hopefully like 42, but that’s kind of a stretch because I’ve never triple jumped until this year. And for both of those, I want to place or score in the ACC for my team.

LN: Do you have a favorite restaurant in Winston-Salem?

RG: Not really, to be honest with you. I honestly just eat pasta like every day.

LN: Do you know what you want to study yet?

RG: I think I might be an health & exercise science major. I’m on the pre-med track so I honestly could do HES, biology, or chemistry. It depends on how the rest of my years at Wake Forest go.

LN: Pre-meet ritual?

RG: At home it used to be that I had to have a White Cherry Gatorade before every meet. Or a Body Armour — those are good.

LN: What events do you compete in?

RG: I did the 100 and 200 in high school as well as the long jump, but here I’m focusing on long jump, and then I learned how to triple jump, so I think I’m going to be doing those two things primarily.

LN: Who is your biggest inspiration in the sport?

RG: Sydney McGlaughlin. She is amazing. We do separate events completely — she’s a 400-meter hurdler, but she’s just iconic. Or for long jump, Tara Davis. She goes to the University of Texas, and she jumps consistently like 21 plus, and I just aspire to be something like her.

Jeff Wheeler/Minneapolis Star Tribune

DEAC NOTES Borna Gojo is one of seven selected to compete for Croatia in Davis Cup Finals

Sage Surratt named Biletnikoff Award semifinalist for best receiver in the nation

Three-time NCAA All-American Borna Gojo is currently competing at the Davis Cup Finals tennis tournament in Madrid.

Gojo is one of seven players to represent his home country, Croatia throughout the week-long tournament that started on Monday and ends this Sunday. He faced world No. 1, Rafael Nadal yesterday, and lost in an impressive match, 6-4, 6-3.

Wide receiver Sage Surratt was named a semifinalist for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the best receiver in the nation each year. Surratt leads the ACC with 1,001 yards and 11 touchdowns through nine games this season. Surratt is the sixth Wake Forest receiver to eclipse the 1,000-yard mark in a single season.

Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications

Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications

Page 14 | Thursday, November 21, 2019

Old Gold & Black | Sports

Cover three: the Ravens are for real in the AFC Ravens and Patriots distance themselves from the rest of the AFC, while Packers and 49ers will fight for NFC supremacy

BY LUKE MARTIN Staff Writer martl19@wfu.edu The Ravens dominating Houston, the Patriots winning a Super Bowl LII rematch, and so many more incredible stories were sadly overshadowed by something that should have nothing to do with the sport of football. On Thursday night, on an insignificant play to end a decided game between two noncontending teams, what should’ve fizzled out as trash-talking and chest-puffing turned much uglier. Mason Rudolph pursued confrontation with Myles Garrett, despite David Decastro’s attempted mediation. This episode ended when Garrett used Rudolph’s helmet as a weapon and struke Rudolph in the head. Garrett has been known as a great teammate everywhere he has been. One can only hope that, if granted a second chance by the league, he proves that this was a fluke in an otherwise admirable career.

Week 11 Recap Ravens 41, Texans 7 Before Sunday, never had Deshaun Watson lost by more than two scores in his whole football career, an absurd statistic that had to come to an end some day. Maybe a playoff opponent would win by 17 on their way to a Super Bowl win or maybe a team would be on their way to beating the Texans by 10 until a last second touchdown makes it more than two scores. Surely, a second-year quarterback wouldn’t beat Watson’s Texans by 34 in the regular season. Lamar Jackson enjoys defying expectations; Sunday was no different.

Falcons 29, Panthers 3 After coming into their Week 10 matchup against the Saints at 1-7, the Falcons have beaten two divisional opponents in a row. Calvin Ridley looks like he’s ready to do more than com-

plement Julio Jones. Atlanta’s defense picked off Kyle Allen, this game, but the loser of this one can save face by keeping it who had impressed coming off the bench this year, four times. close.

Ravens at Rams, Monday 8:15 p.m.

Panthers’ running back, Christian McCaffrey, was allowed 191 The Rams are likely the least-predictable team in the league yards from scrimmage but was held out of the end zone, as was the rest of the Carolina squad. The Falcons have looked like an this year. From beating the Saints by 18, to losing to the Bucs by 15, we simply never know what we’ll get when McVay’s squad absolutely different team over the past two weeks. takes the field. A very tough road lies ahead for the Rams in purVikings 27, Broncos 23 20-0 at halftime was a believable line prior to this game, in suit of a meaningful playoff appearance. The first challenge on favor of the Vikings, of course. However, in this week’s edition this road is Monday night’s matchup, as Lamar Jackson and the of “We Actually are Very Bad at Predicting NFL Games,” the Ravens come to town. Jackson is must-watch TV and is build3-6 Broncos dominated the first half against Minnesota. Bran- ing a strong case for MVP. Primetime in LA against the Rams don Allen threw for 240 yards with one TD and one INT. screams “MVP Moment.” Let’s selfishly hope we get just that.

That was decent, but ultimately futile against Kirk Cousins’ 319 yards, three TDs and no picks. The Broncos defense was true to form, holding Dalvin Cook to 26 yards on 11 carries.

The defense continued to do their part late and gave the Denver offense a chance at a game-winning drive, which stalled with three incompletions to run out the clock with only four yards away from scoring.

Week 12 Preview Raiders at Jets, Sunday 1 p.m.

Both of these teams are slowly finding their personality, and as they do, they’re both becoming more fun to watch. The Jets are largely paying for pride, and the Raiders have had a chip on their shoulder all year. To make this more interesting, the Raiders have maneuvered their way into a tie for the division lead with the Chiefs. The Raiders have a very favorable schedule the rest of the year, except for their huge matchup with the Chiefs next week. There is huge potential for the Raiders to look past the Jets in anticipation of their clash with the Chiefs. If that happens, expect this game to be incredibly entertaining.

Packers at 49ers, Sunday 8:20 p.m.

Week 12’s biggest game showcases the Packers visiting Levi’s Stadium. The 49ers bounced back from their first loss with an ugly win over the Cardinals last week. This matchup sets up Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun/TNS nicely as a matchup between the leaders of the potential best two divisions in the league. Both teams play up to big moments Matthew Judon (99) dominated against the Texans, forcon both offense and defense. Bottom line is someone has to lose ing a fumble, three TFLs and four QB hits in a 41-7 win.

Load management is the new NBA trend The importance of star players in playoff series has undermined their presence in regular-season games in the NBA

BY WILL ZIMMERMAN Staff Writer zimmwj19@wfu.edu Load management has long been a highly debated issue in the NBA, but has been increasingly brought to the limelight with the Clippers’ decision to “rest” star player Kawhi Leonard during nationally televised games.

The main supporters of load management in the NBA — and really most major sports leagues in general — contend that by limiting games played during the regular season, players will have more in the tank come playoff time when games are more important. Adversaries to load management assert that it undermines the integrity of the league and that it is unfair to paying fans who come to arenas to watch their favorite players work.

Dr. Marcus Elliott, who founded and now directs the Peak Performance Project, explained that load management is helpful in that it assists in “recovery and decreases the risk of injury or chronic fatigue,” as reported by ABC news station in Los Angeles. Load management, Elliot explains, is not necessarily about keeping a player sidelined to assure he doesn’t get injured during one specific game but is about taking precautions to make sure that players aren’t overworked and don’t overextend themselves, in ways that significantly increase the odds of injury.

Perhaps the question of whether or not to employ load management depends on the team in question. For a team such as the Rockets, managing James Harden’s games makes a lot of sense considering that this is a team that is almost certainly a lock for a playoff spot.

The Rockets front office understands that their team will almost-definitely secure a top seed come April, so why overwork Harden now?

On the other hand, a team such as the Dallas Maver- management isn’t as detrimental to the league as it is in icks, who don’t necessarily have a guaranteed playoff spot, current standing. For now, however, the NBA must dedon’t have the luxury of giving their best players nights cide what action to pursue, if any, regarding load manoff when the schedule gets dense. agement as it decides whether to prioritize the interests Everyone around the realm of the NBA seems to have of the club and longtime player health or league integrity their own opinion on what role, if any, load management and fan appeals. should play in the league. The GOAT, Michael Jordan, Supporters of load management also argue that the is an outspoken critic of load management. Jordan, who big picture must be kept in mind. ESPN’s Jay Williams is currently a majority owner of the Charlotte Hornets, points out that great players are not remembered for the has repeated multiple times that he’s paying his players to number of regular-season games they play, but rather for play 82 games each season. the number of championships they win. If sitting out Coaches and players around the league seem to agree games during the regular season equates to winning more with Jordan. Knicks Head Coach David Fizdale recently championships, well, that seems like a worthwhile traderesponded, “We gotta get off this load management crap” off. Additionally, load management may mean that playwhen a reporter questioned how necessary it was to keep ers can have longer, healthier careers. the team’s third overall pick, RJ Barret, in for almost the entirety of a game against the Kings in which the Knicks were getting blown out in. Similarly, Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo told Milwaukee’s front office he had no intention of sitting out games during the season to preserve his body. If the reigning MVP — who played in 72 games last season and averaged almost 28 points and 13 rebounds per game — doesn’t need time off, why should anyone else?

It’s hard, however, to argue against load management, mainly because Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors proved that it works. The Raptors 2019 campaign ended with the team hoisting the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy, thanks in large part to Leonard’s contribution.

Leonard played in only 60 games during that championship season and never played both games in back-to-back situations. By preserving some of his energy early in the season, Leonard was primed to shine come playoff time.

In series against the 76ers and Bucks, Leonard averaged 35 and 30 points, respectively. In the final series against the Warriors, Leonard still hadn’t run out of gas: he averaged over 40 minutes of playing time and almost 10 Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS rebounds and 29 points per game.

Commissioner Adam Silver has also reported that the Kawhi Leonard has missed five out of 16 games for league has discussed shortening the season so that load the Clippers so far in 2019 due to load management.

Thursday, November 21, 2019 |Page 15

Old Gold & Black | Sports

Chelsea impresses with youth revolution Winning nine out of their past 11 games, the Blues show impressive form behind bright youngsters

BY CHARLES HORN Contributing Writer horncs18@wfu.edu Since the 2003 acquisition of Chelsea by Russian oligarch and billionaire Roman Abramovich, the West London team has grown accustomed to success. Winning five Premier League titles, the ever-coveted UEFA Champions League (a competition of the best clubs in European football) and 10 other domestic trophies after the acquisition, Chelsea has experienced undoubtedly their best period of success. Yet at the outset of this 2019-20 Premier League season, this pattern seemed threatened. Chelsea faced a year-long transfer ban from FIFA for violations regarding the signing of academy players. Chelsea’s talisman Belgian winger Eden Hazard had left for Spanish giants Real Madrid, and Italian manager Maurizio Sarri departed after one season to Juventus.

All-time Chelsea leading scorer Frank Lampard was signed to manage the team, fresh off his first ever year at the helm at Derby County, playing in the second division of English soccer.

Lampard’s job seemed impossible, with many Chelsea fans welcoming the season with low expectations and the hope that the young talent within the team would be able to salvage results.

Yet, Chelsea has managed to thrive in chaos, a fact made only sweeter by the struggles of the other London giants like Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal. Chelsea’s Premier League season started with a disaster, a 0-4 thumping away at Manchester United, and was followed by a series of shaky results.

Since September, however, Chelsea has been dominant.

Winners of their last six matches, Frank Lampard captured

Manager of the Month for October, and the club currently sits at third in the Premier League, sandwiched between a resurgent Leicester City (winners of the 2016 Premier League) and defending champions Manchester City, with Liverpool currently leading the table by eight points.

The Champions League mirrors this success. Following an initial 1-0 defeat away at Valencia, Chelsea now occupies the top spot in their group, following two pivotal results against Dutch champions Ajax. After securing a 1-0 victory in Amsterdam, Chelsea and Ajax faced off in London on Nov. 5. Initially trailing 4-1, Chelsea capitalized on two Ajax red cards to secure a spectacular 4-4 draw.

The equalizing goal in the historic match was scored by Reece James, a 19-year-old defender, demonstrative of the dramatic shift at Chelsea that has excited fans and scared rivals. For years, Chelsea fans expressed frustration at the lack of youth involvement in the first-team. Chelsea’s youth team is consistently successful domestically and in Europe, yet there has always been a seeming inability to incorporate young players into the firstteam. Certified world-class players such as Kevin De Bruyne, star of Manchester City, and Mohamad Salah, star of Liverpool, have tried and failed to cement a place in strong Chelsea sides as young players.

This season could not be more different, with young players as the core of the team. The starting 11 against Crystal Palace were Chelsea’s youngest ever in the league, averaging just 24 years of age among the starters. Mason Mount, who played under Lampard at Derby, has played like a seasoned midfielder alongside a resurgent Mateo Kovacic and Jorginho, but Mount is only 20. Mount even scored his first international goal for England in the international break. 22-year-old Tammy Abraham sits second in goals scored in the Premier League with 10, a fantastic tally for a striker starting in the Premier League for Chelsea for the first time. Young defenders Fikayo Tomori and Reece James, perhaps the most promising of Chelsea’s academy products, have bolstered a previously porous defense. Callum

Hudson-Odoi re-signed with the club and remains the brightest attacking prospect.

Although not an academy player, 21-year-old American Christian Pulisic has proved invaluable following his $73 million transfer from German club Borussia Dortmund in January, a record for an American player. Playing off the left wing, Pulisic scored his first three Chelsea goals in stellar fashion, a perfect hat-trick against Burnley, resulting in “U.S.A” chants from the traveling Chelsea supporters. Since then, Pulisic has been stellar, scoring in three-straight Premier league games and creating chance after chance in the Champions league, while overcoming the doubts from the beginning of the season.

Chelsea’s position is far from secured, as they play Manchester City following the international break on Saturday. Yet their season thus far has blown past expectations while creating a young core of players seemingly with the world at their feet.

Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/TNS

Star of the U.S men’s national team, Christian Pulisic has been spectacular at Chelsea with five goals and five assists.

CFB In-Depth: No. 8 Penn State at No. 2 Ohio State Ohio State has their work cut out for them as they face a stellar Penn State defense in upcoming top-10 match up

BY BEN CONROY Staff Writer conrbd19@wfu.edu The Ohio State faithful will flood the Horseshoe this coming Saturday afternoon to watch their beloved Buckeyes (10-0) take on the visiting Penn State Nittany Lions (9-1) in what will certainly be their toughest test of the season thus far. The two teams have a history of duking it out in dramatic fashion, and this weekend will likely be no different. Both sides have everything still to fight for, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. With a potential Big Ten Championship berth on the line, all eyes will be trained firmly on Columbus as Ryan Day’s crew looks to continue its perfect regular season campaign.

The Bucks are favored by 17.5 points, but all bets will be off once the game is underway. Ohio State has won six of its last eight contests against the Nittany Lions, and this year’s squad will look to continue their recent dominance of their fellow conference contender. The visitors, however, will be out for blood, looking to snatch the lead in the Big Ten East and to make a late-season charge toward the top of the College Football Playoff rankings. For Ohio State, the Penn State game is second in magnitude only to the upcoming battle against the Wolverines in the Big House; a high-octane, wire-to-wire thriller is to be expected.

Penn State’s accomplishments this season are not to be diminished, as they have stumbled only once on the road against a red-hot Minnesota team who was No. 17 in the country at the time. Their resumé features crucial victories against No. 19 Iowa and No. 13 Michigan, outcomes that have helped the Nittany Lions cement their place among the Big Ten’s legitimate title contenders. This Saturday’s contest marks an opportunity to sully Ohio State’s postseason aspirations on their home turf, a chance James Franklin’s squad will not take lightly.

It’s no secret that the Buckeyes’ season thus far has been flawless in nearly every imaginable way. Ohio State is without a loss, and none of their opponents have come particularly close to knocking them off; their lethal combination of offensive and defensive weapons has left other Big Ten teams searching desperately for a chink in the Buckeyes’ armor. Ryan Day has captained his squad with poignance and thus far has proved himself a worthy successor of Urban Meyer. However, he’ll face the toughest fight of his young career this weekend as a loaded Penn State squad aims to sour the Buckeyes’ impressive regular-season run.

Players to watch Justin Fields (QB, Ohio State): Few players this season have put up numbers even slightly comparable to those of Justin Fields. The Georgia transfer has been a welcome ad-

dition to the Buckeye offense, scoring 41 total touchdowns and throwing just one interception along the way. His mix of pure athleticism and arm talent has proved nightmarish for opposing defenses, and he’ll look to use his unique skillset to wreak havoc on the Nittany Lions.

Sean Clifford (QB, Penn State): The Nittany Lions’ signal-caller has been a key factor in their success thus far.

Clifford has thrown for 22 touchdowns and six interceptions in his first year as a starter, proving beyond a doubt that he can hang with college football’s heavyweights at the quarterback position. A trend has emerged through Penn State’s first 10 games; if Clifford can manage to execute and perform, the rest of the team will follow suit. There’s no question that Clifford’s performance will have a monumental impact on the outcome of Saturday’s contest.

David Petkiewicz/cleveland.com

Justin Fields (No. 1) looks to propel the Ohio State offense in its biggest challenge yet against the No. 17 defense in the nation in the Nittany Lions. Fields has been averaging a 152.2 passer rating against top-25 opponents in 2019.

LIFE

T H U R S D AY, N O V E M B E R 2 1 , 2 0 1 9

PAG E 16

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OLD GOLD & BLACK

Play exemplifies artful enrichment Gruesome Playground Injuries was emotionally rich and affecting and a testament to the passionate work of those in the arts.

BY RYAN KING Staff Writer kingrm17@wfu.edu

Last year as a sophomore, I took an acting workshop class for fun. The course was in conjunction with a directing class, so a majority of the class time was spent being guided by student directors in various scenes. I think I did three scenes over the course of the semester, but I only remember one. That last scene, which was essentially my final exam, was from a play I had never heard of before (to be fair, I was really only familiar with about two plays by then) called Gruesome Playground Injuries, written by Rajiv Joseph. All I remember of the scenes before the one from Gruesome was that one was dramatic and the other was comedic. The scene from Gruesome, though, was kind of like a mix of the other two. My scene partner and I played middle-school children (I often find myself playing children and choose to believe others when they tell me this is a good thing), and my character’s immature and boyish rowdiness paired with her decidedly unenthusiastic reactions made for some funny moments of slinging stinky socks and dancing like a fool. But, this scene also contained a sincere and intimate undertone that made the character work very intriguing and made acting in the scene rather challenging. Though, even after all the character work involved and reading the entire play, it wasn’t until seeing a full production this year

Photo courtesy of Anthony Aston Player's Facebook

Photo courtesy of imdb.com

that I realized what emotional weight the show really carried.

So, yes, it’s of course not by chance that I choose to write about Gruesome Playground Injuries now. I saw the production, directed by junior Cassidy Noble, last week and knew there was something to say about its depiction of such a rich and affecting relationship. Knowing just what to say, though, is tough. The show is an entirely non-linear story of Doug (senior Matthew Crawford) and Kayleen (freshman Cameron Michles) jumping between different stages in their life, ranging from adolescence to middle age. Though their development as people very dependent on each other, their relationship is not as simple as a deeply personal friendship or romance.

At several points, they are each in unique and conflicting stages of feeling a need for the other, but that feeling cannot be reciprocated due to mental or physical health or emotional resolve. There’s an intangible and largely implicit push and pull between Doug and Kayleen that is as deeply and instinctively understandable as a viewer as it is difficult to rationalize and outwardly discuss for the characters. Joseph’s script is of course beautifully accomplished in achieving this deeply complex relationship, but that troubling bond could not have been as candid as it was without performances like Crawford's and Michles' and directing like Noble’s.

Delving into Doug and Kayleen was surely a job of deeply connected teamwork as well as personal introspection. The actors’ abilities to depict people that were so varying in composition and condition, yet so consistently unique in character, and therein create clearly differentiable scenes was artful and greatly impressive.

When I think back to my experience doing just one of the scenes from the play and how much subtle work was needed to tease out a sufficiently deep understanding of those characters, I realize how comparable the amount of total time spent was between my one scene and the full production’s entire show. An undoubtedly admirable amount of dedication and passionate work went into creating what resulted in such a resonating and human experience. I only wish I could tell you now that you can catch the show this weekend, but its run has come and gone.

The good news is that this wasn’t the first, nor will it be the last show to have been so passionately built by those in the theater department. And this will not be the last time I write about the wonderful and valuable experiences that those in the arts at Wake Forest produce. I am continually impressed and moved by what those creative minds make with the intent to motivate a widened understanding in others, emotional or otherwise. And I will, as always, continue to look forward to what’s next.

Thursday, November 21, 2019 | Page 17

Life | Old Gold & Black

Travel Column | OPCD Career Treks

Students trek through the Big Apple THE HOT Career treks allow students to LIST meet employers and alumni and discover opportunities

BY FRANK GALLAGI Contributing Writer gallfa18@wfu.edu Over this past fall break, I had the pleasure of attending the New York City Career Trek with nine other Wake Forest students and three Office of Career & Personal Development employees. For those of you who do not know what a career trek is, it is when a group of students travel throughout a city visiting different companies, organizations or agencies while learning about a possible career or industry and the skills that are necessary to succeed in that business.

The New York City Trek was focused on marketing, public relations and advertising. We were able to visit five Fortune 500 hundred companies: Sirius XM + Pandora, Vaynermedia, Tapestry, ESPN and Ogilvy. These five companies held creative presentations and discussions which created a dialogue for Wake Forest students to learn what it is like working at the company.

Our first stop was at Sirius XM + Pandora where we were met in a conference room and spoke with four current employees about their experiences working at the company. The conversation was fascinating and allowed us to engage with the employees and learn about the office environment and what

goes on day-to-day. The most exciting part of our visit was when we walked past Sway from “Sway in the Morning.” He brought us into his studio and put us “on air,” asking each of us to speak about our life and time at Wake Forest. It was an incredible experience that we will never forget.

The next stop was at Vaynermedia, which is an agency that creates digital content for companies. Currently, the CEO, Gary Vaynerchuk, is very well known for his inspirational messages and a large presence on the new social media app TikTok. Later that day, we visited Tapestry, which is a company that does marketing, PR and advertising for Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman, three renowned fashion companies.

At Tapestry, we were able to meet with three Wake Forest alumni: Amanda Hoecker Arena, Brooke Edgar and Sarah Stewart, who gave us great insight on life after Wake Forest and working at Tapestry. We ended our first day with a networking reception at the Cornell Club, where we were able to meet even more Wake Forest alumni and hear about their stories working in the industry and receiving advice from them.

During the second day, we visited ESPN and Ogilvy. ESPN was an unbelievable experience where we were able to meet people who directly worked with well-known advertising campaigns. Additionally, we were able to meet the vice president of marketing at ESPN, Seth Ader. Ader stressed the idea of being audience-centered. He explained that speaking for the audience

instead of at the audience will allow you to be a successful marketer.

The trek ended with our final stop at Ogilvy, which is an agency similar to Vaynermedia. At Ogilvy, we were also able to meet with employees and more Wake Forest alumni, Leigh Moriarty and Marshall Shaffer, and learn about their time working at the agency.

Going on the NYC Career Trek was an amazing opportunity because it allowed me to meet and learn from people who work in the industry that I strive to work in. If you are interested in attending a Career Trek please contact the Office of Career and Personal Development, as it is an opportunity you would not want to miss.

Top 10 Ways to Procrastinate Your Schoolwork

By Amanda Wilcox Just remember that any time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. Here are some fun ideas.

1.

3.

5.

Read War and Peace in one sitting

7.

Walk on the moon without a spacesuit

BY KATE TENDER Staff Writer tendke18@wfu.edu For the people who are curious about listening to a true crime podcast but are hesitant, My Favorite Murder is a good place to start. This popular podcast has been featured in many different magazines and is a recurring favorite on the iTunes top-10 comedy podcast chart.

Beginning in 2016, the show is hosted

by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, both comedians. Their fan base call themselves “murderinos” and the pair had an active Facebook group early on that has grown immensely. There are currently 196 episodes out.

Alternating weekly, one of the two picks a theme for that week’s episode.

Then, they both do research and talk about a murder relating to the theme.

For example, it could be a crime in a specific state, and then they tell each other what they’ve found. While it may seem morbid, it is considered a comedy show, and they do a good job of keep-

Swim across the Pacific Ocean

Prove all of mathematics Frank Gallagi/Old Gold & Black

The NYC Career Trek is a great opportunity to explore different job fields.

9.

Podcast attempts to understand crimes ing it lighthearted while being sensitive to the impact on the families or loved ones of the deceased. They both have dark senses of humor, so it caters toward an audience with a similar sense, but also incorporates a fascination with understanding how people could commit these atrocities.

The episodes have a casual feel to them and usually begin with the two catching up from their past week and updating their audience of any merchandise, tours, or important dates. This includes personal anecdotes from their lives and careers, which they often incorporate into the episodes as well. It’s this that creates a more personal connection and makes the podcast more lighthearted, despite some of the darker content.

In addition to their regular episodes, they include “minisodes,” which they get from their listeners. These are usually listeners’ hometown crime stories that Kilgariff and Hardstark share. Now, they have a listener fanbase that spreads globally, so these can range from Australia to Indiana. Including a global perspective can be interesting, especially since the news we normally hear is from the United States and more specifically where we live. It’s important to consider similar crimes happening around the world.

Examine witnesses in the impeachment inquiry Take a better quality photo of a black hole Reinvent the wheel

Podcast Review | My Favorite Murder

My Favorite Murder brings a light sense of humor to dark themes

Recreate Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam

My Favorite Murder had rapid success.

Growing to 20 million listeners, it is one of the most popular true crime podcasts out there. Now, they have live tours and performances, as well as a loyal fanbase.

The majority of listeners for this podcast and other true crime podcasts are women. In an article by the Washington Post, it is suggested this is because “they provide instruction on what not to do.”

One of the major lessons reinforced by Kilgariff and Hardstark is you don’t need to be polite if you feel unsafe or threatened. Many times, we can get in troublesome situations because it is our instinct to be polite, in case they are harmless.

However, they argue your individual safety is more important; you can always apologize later if it turns out to be nothing.

This genre is not for everyone; some people may not want to hear accounts of crimes. Others are fascinated by the subject and have a desire to understand the psychology behind these crimes. No matter the case, hearing these events can serve as cautionary tales to be learned from, even if it’s something as simple as don’t go into the woods alone at night.

My Favorite Murder has such a large fanbase for a reason; the hosts are personable and create an inclusive space to share true crimes of the past and present.

Find the meaning of life Actually study for your exams

DRINK OF THE WEEK Extra-Creamy Hot Is this a rip-off of a juice shop smootie? Maybe...

Chocolate • • • •

Hot chocolate mix Hot water Chocolate milk French vanilla creamer

Pour hot water in a mug, add hot chocolate mix and stir thoroughly.

Add a splash of chocolate milk and a dash of French vanilla creamer for that little something extra. Enjoy with someone special.

Courtesy of Lillian Johnson

Page 18 | Thursday, November 21, 2019

Old Gold & Black | Life

Movie Review | Charlie’s Angels (2019)

Charlie’s Angels empowers women The new reboot’s amazing cast effectively balances humor and action

BY EMILY BEAUCHAMP Life Editor beauea17@wfu.edu

The Charlie’s Angels reboot premiered on Nov. 15, and it bombed in the box office. I will say, as a woman who enjoys movies that empower women, I liked it. Full disclosure: it doesn’t take a lot to please me, and so I tend to like most movies. Needless to say, I liked Charlie’s Angels.

The plot follows a young engineer named Elena (Naomi Scott) as she attempts to save the world from her own unfinished creation. The company she works for is trying to cover up a deadly feature of an innocent clean energy product. Elena enlists the help of the Townsend Agency to help her recover the product and make the necessary alterations so that the device can no longer be weaponized.

Unfortunately, as soon as Elena meets with the Townsend Agency, she is attacked by an assassin (Jonathan Tucker). As a result, a group of agents, better known as Charlie’s Angels, take Elena under their wing and take matters into their own hands. This group is composed of Sabina (Kristen Stewart), Jane (Ella Balinska) and Bosley (Elizabeth Banks).

In terms of action and female empowerment, this movie hit a high for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed the plot twists and the female-led cast. In addition to this, the movie balances the action with humor. Stewart brings countless, welltimed jokes, and it was interesting to see her full acting range.

My biggest complaint has to be the character development. It’s obvious that the writers wanted several of their characters to have defined development moments, one of the most prominent being Jane’s. However, I felt like all the characters remained stagnant throughout the film.

From the very beginning of the movie, Jane seems to be set up as someone who wants to work alone, so when she’s told her next assignment will be a team effort she appears less than thrilled.

However, the movie never touches on why she hates working on a team, and honestly, you never see complaints. Occasionally Jane will go off on her own, but she always comes back for her team without a second thought. However, she is given a big “I need my team” moment which to me seemed unnecessary.

I was never really under the impression that she hated working with her teammates and so I felt it was unwarranted to give her a big realization scene.

In addition to this, it seemed like Elena was supposed to have a dramatic character change as well. In the beginning of the movie, she is shown throwing up after her close encounter with

Photo courtesy of imdb.com

Charlie’s Angels are spies that work for the Townsend Agency. Their actions are empowering and awesome as they save the world. death. It seemed like this was a set-up for her to be timid and anti-action. In reality, it took a lot of guts to stand up to her boss and to reach out to the Townsend Agency to begin with, so from the get go I felt like she was always headstrong. Even so, they give Elena a big scene where she makes a decisive decision to do something about her situation. Again, I felt like this was unnecessary as no one thought she was timid in the first place.

All in all, I felt like the character development was thrown in as an afterthought, and it would have been better if they had just left some of it out. Other than this, it’s a fun movie to watch. The casting was great, there are several “hell yeah” moments and I laughed a lot. I definitely don’t think it’s cinematic genius, but I do like the message it sends to young women and I think it’s enjoyable enough to watch again.

TV Show Review | Bojak Horseman

Bojack Horseman season six is a mixed bag Bojack Horseman, Netflix’s animated show about an alcoholic horse, is ending

BY WILL MAY News Editor mayws16@wfu.edu

Spoiler alert!

Fans of the acclaimed Netflix animated series Bojack Horseman are in for a real treat. The first part of season six premiered a month ago, on Oct. 21; as the timing of this review suggests, I needed some time to reflect before I wrote this review.

This is Bojack’s final season, news that was announced by Netflix upon the premiere of the trailer. The second half of the season will premiere on Jan. 31, 2020. The arrival of this season was ensconced in virulent conjecture and hearsay; numerous news outlets and internet forums have drawn a link between the show’s animators’ bids to unionize for higher wages, and it was a seemingly sudden announcement by Netflix that season six will be the show’s final season, a statement that contradicted many prior statements by the series’ creator, Raphael

Bob-Waksberg. But all of this context is immaterial if the series itself fails to retain that gorgeous mix of comedy and stark realism that we horse-fans of the horse-man know and love, right?

Does it live up to the hype?

Bojack is back, ladies and gentlemen, in a different kind of setting that he has ever encountered before: rehab.

After the brutal ending of the last season (quick recap: Bojack gets addicted to pain pills and violently strangles his show’s co-star in drugged-out haze, before finally listening to Diane and going to rehab) many viewers are probably wondering if they can ever sympathize with the eponymous mount ever again. And surprisingly enough, with a little on-screen soul-searching and a dash of Will Arnett-style charisma, you totally can.

Bojack’s guilt and ardent journey towards becoming a better horse are actually rather compelling — not nearly as compelling as the previous season’s descent into hell — but you still really want him to succeed.

The other characters are mostly entertaining. Mr. Peanutbutter’s arc is funny, Princess Carolyn’s is heartwarming and Todd does nothing, as per usual. The dialogue is as quick and witty as ever, the acting impecca-

ble as always, the animation as glossy and seamless as any adult cartoon out there. There’s just one miniscule modicum of a problem.

The writing, while entertaining, is the tritest it has ever been. Much of this appears to have something to do with the brevity of this semi-season; for after all, the previous seasons all had four episodes more for the storylines to breathe. However, the rushedness clearly isn’t quite the sole reason, for the ideas themselves are quite dull as well. With the exception of Bojack, most of the characters return to already-trodden-ground, or simply remain stagnant. Princess Carolyn has a bit of an arc with her new baby, but it is completely and utterly apparent from the first frame of the season what the arc is going to be: at the beginning, new baby makes life difficult for Princess, but she persists like she always does and works through it. A viewer with even the minutest understanding of storytelling conventions could figure that one out.

Diane, however, was probably the most egregiously underwritten character. Her coworker, a buffalo named Guy, becomes her new love interest immediately after the show introduces him. Then the writers attempt to in-

troduce this “will-they, won’t-they” tension, which worked great for established characters like Ross and Rachel on Friends, but not so well when one of the critical parties is a hand-drawn buffalo we viewers barely know. This kind of writing is utterly tensionless; if these writers were hired to support a tightrope walker, said walker would immediately plunge face-first onto the unforgiving circus floor and die.

And the politics, oh my god the politics. The show’s portrayal of political dilemmas are entirely black-andwhite. Complexity and nuance have never come extremely easy for Bojack Horseman, but now the show just shoves its messages down the throats of the viewers in the most ham-fisted, patronizing and pandering way imaginable. One example is their “satire” of mega-corporations: the fictitious company White Whale. This corporation is evil, run by an evil whale that is literally a murderer. And that’s it.

Bojack has eschewed any semblance of nuance in favor of pandering to the audience of underpaid millennials who watch it.

In conclusion, season six of Bojack Horseman is a must-see for fans who have stuck around this long. But maybe don’t get your hopes up too high.

Life | Old Gold & Black

Thursday, November 21, 2019 | Page 19

Jojo Rabbit reimagines Holocaust Taika Waititi's newest project empathizes with the atrocities of history while also retelling its story in a contemporary fashion

BY KYLE FERRER Opinion Editor ferrka16@wfu.edu

The gap between our contemporary conception of the Holocaust and that of its historical reality is often bridged by a series of grave images or narrative confessions. Both aim to impress the tragedy on our consciousness, but their directness — a frank admission of scale and depth — abstracts the event out of feeling and into fruitless logic. Our brains try to reason with the unreasonable, though it is nearly impossible to not only comprehend but then to understand the Holocaust’s countless victims. The word “Holocaust” has been emptied, voided of meaning because it now feels banal, a mix between a stand-in and a catch-all for the ungraspable, proving that empathy can only really bloom through tiny, individual intimacies. Though perhaps initial, honest accounts of the Holocaust helped us achieve a kind of clarity, by now, those images are mostly inert to contemporary audiences. We have been saturated with (moving) pictures so alien to our brain that they exceed its capabilities. The further removed we are from the colossal cruelties that took place, the more our reactions become prosaic and insincere, increasingly stymied by historical distance.

Jojo Rabbit, written and directed by Taika Waititi (The Hunt for Wilderpeople, Thor: Ragnarok) re-imagines history through the eyes of a fanatical 10-year-old German boy named Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), whose affinity for Nazism comes across as the type of obsession belonging to Star Wars or Harry Potter. Donning the party uniform and mindlessly reciting creed, Jojo, in his sincerity and obvious sweetness, epitomizes the desire of all young children for a clear, comprehensive universe. In this case, that universe is defined by the ethics of fascism, but the viewer suspects the Führer’s broadstrokes philosophy may be inadequate for a sensitive 10-year-old and needs only a convincing foil to crumble. Waititi himself represents Hitler as a diffuse illusion, pecking at Jojo’s mind with his goofy, empowering presence. For a young boy with few friends, Jojo's imaginary Hitler becomes a source of patriarchal encouragement.

Photo courtesy of imdb.com

Photo courtesy of imdb.com

The film begins as Jojo attends a kind of benighted, Boy-Scouts-for-Hitler boot camp, where a troop of 10-year-olds are to be trained as soldiers (Germany is on the verge of losing the war and is galvanizing all its resources). The children cheer at the prospect of murdering Jews, and the mood is one of bumbling and desperate inculcation. Trained by Captain Klizendorf (Sam Rockwell), a barely interested homunculus who knows the end is near, and Fraulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson, caricaturing the hyper-dogmatic type), the Hitler Youth act more like badly crowd-sourced sweethearts than nascent killers.

Yelps of mindless conscription pierce the air, taking the historical reality and divesting it of momentous evil. Instructors become the weary flag-bearers toeing the party line, inducting the young men into a tired club. The Nazi emblem burns above Rockwell’s shrimpy noggin as he is introduced in close-up, his symbolic strength belying an intrinsic puniness and, by now, his (and the regime’s) apparent failures. He never feels like a threat, more like a negligent nag, and Rockwell plays him with the faux-moxie required of a man whose cracked, stick-to-your-guns ethos is required all the way to execution.

When Jojo is unable to twist a rabbit’s neck, he’s nicknamed “Jojo Rabbit” for his weakness. But after a pep-talk from his imaginary Führer, he returns to prove his worth by charging through the crowd and hurling a grenade that bounces off a tree and blows up, barring him from the front and scarring his face in the process. In the hospital, we meet Jojo’s mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), a musical, strongwilled and thoughtful amalgam of everything the Nazis were not. She aches for the war’s end, which will hopefully allay Jojo’s insidious obsession, and though she shapeshifts from ebullience to melancholia to some introspective in-between, her fraught psyche is manifest. Johansson is stellar, precisely because her light is anathema to the simple darkness of others, a complex interjection of voices that collect in flashes of authenticity. She knows her son, almost unabashedly better than he knows himself.

As Jojo convalesces, he discovers Elsa (Thomasin McKensie, dew-eyed and crackling with suppressed intelligence), a Jewish girl living in his sister’s bedroom wall. Slowly, Jojo’s 10-year-old devotions are blinded by love as Elsa ruffles his pretenses with her penetrating intelligence and poetic sensibility. The two actors orbit each other wonderfully, trading jabs until they crash into compassion. Griffin Davis has features that bubble up in twitches of self-discovery, and McKensie, who first won my silent sympathies in Leave No Trace, plays Elsa with a soft, observant honesty.

The kind of de-mything in Jojo Rabbit has been done before, in various ways, that revealed historical

figures as running institutions of controlled chaos, not streamlined efficiency. In Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino’s renegade violence undermined the Nazis through historical invention and injected occupied France with a violent, comedic rebel spirit.

There is humor in Jojo Rabbit, too, but the entire film feels more confectionary than anything Tarantino has made, like the kind of less involved Wes Anderson we saw in Bottle Rocket, before style became sole substance. Yet Jojo Rabbit is never saccharine nor one-dimensional; instead, its sincerity clings to the emotional moments and accentuates its few gut-wrenching twists. Because the impenetrable gravity of history warranted a new sensibility, Waititi’s unique project resists feeling like a trivializing gloss. The film presents Nazism as another example of gaslighting, using circumstance as a vehicle for effective storytelling. It isn’t reductive, because the history has been over-lit and reiterated to the point of anesthesia. By quoting Will Hunting, Jojo Rabbit makes Nazism about as arbitrary as eating caramels and allows it to merely ornament a denser bildungsroman in a fresh and relatable way.

Jojo’s mother likes to dance, and often implores her hard-lined son to participate, as if it would release him from his premature cynicism. Elsa, too, claims the first thing she will do upon liberation is dance. Jojo’s youth has been co-opted by “adult” ideas of belonging, a ludic drive guided toward a narrow mania. Jojo Rabbit, though concerned with the perspective of a boy invaded by Fascist precepts, is broadly about the things we teach our children, at all echoes of relation. The historical analogue is extreme only because it takes an inscrutable regime and clarifies its parts, condensing a central human conundrum into a small boy’s squishy ideas of life.

The film is a miraculous feat, if one really thinks about it, to allow us to empathize with a historical atrocity, yet simultaneously extend its questions into contemporaneity.

The reality of social existence requires a degree of corrupted innocence, but the film seems to indicate that a total loss of imagination is what fertilizes philosophies of cynicism and isolation. The human instinct that feels through play must be granted light. To recognize life as a flux of the unknowable mixed with occasional human clarity is to give up some control, to believe the uncertain lives alongside philosophy. The strongest thing in the world, Rosie tells Jojo, is love, and it exists in a space of play. To quote Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio / than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Those things, Jojo Rabbit tell us, consist of spiritual melody, entangled emotion and the mind consciously falling into another’s universe.

Page 20 | Thursday, November 21, 2019

Old Gold & Black | Life

Crossword: Thanksgiving With today being Pitsgiving and next week being Thanksgiving break, here’s a fun crossword to complete!

BY EMILY BEAUCHAMP Life Editor beauea17@wfu.edu

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12

13 14 15 16

Across 3. Sport associated with Thanksgiving 6. He wanted turkey to be national bird 7. Orange pie 8. Character with the most appearances in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade 10. Defining feature of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade 11. Fuchsia side dish 12. Length of the first Thanksgiving 13. He proclaimed Thanksgiving as national holiday 14. You pour it on the turkey 15. Thanksgiving holiday spin-off 16. Meat served on Thanksgiving

Down 1. Day after Thanksgiving 2. Shove it in the turkey 4. The three sisters, in agriculture 5. Black Friday three days later 9. Slice the turkey 12. Speed at which a turkey can run

Answers can be found online at www.wfuogb.com