Swarthmore Phoenix, November 30, 2017

Today in OPINIONS: Editorial: Fixing the academic calendar A4, Letter to the editor: SCF and anti-queer policies A4,

PHOENIX

THE

Athlete of the Week: Connor Harkins

VOL. 144, NO. 10

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SSUCC hosts open mic comedy show

November 30, 2017

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The independent campus newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881

SGO sees resignations, calls for change

by George Rubin News Writer Co-president Josie Hung ’19, Chair of Student Life Ivan Lomeli ’19 and Senator Christian Galo ’20 resigned from Swarthmore’s Student Government Organization last week as the group debated improvements on its structure, communication, and efficiency. The body will hold elections for these open positions after winter break.

In an e-mail to SGO members announcing her resignation, Hung said she left the post for “personal and mental health reasons.” She also described her goals for the organization, which included making

The week ahead

structural changes and increasing its inclusivity and ability to represent all students. Hung expressed frustration at the difficulty of achieving these goals.

“There are times when I was disappointed that the effort and time dedicated to pushing for these changes did not play out to the same degree in results,” she said in the e-mail.

“However, I encourage people to still engage with these complex issues, no matter how difficult they are to address.”

SGO Senator Akshay Srinivasan ’21 echoed Hung’s call for persistence.

“I respect her decision,” he said, “and I hope we can carry on and enact the plans she had set out to achieve.”

Galo was also annoyed with SGO’s structure, which was one of his reasons for leaving. He expressed a desire for the group to experiment with other forms of team organizing. As a first-year in SGO, he said, it was unclear what his committee actually did, and he spent significant time discussing that. The Academic Affairs Committee, according to Galo, doesn’t have much power other than to make suggestions to the Chair of Academic Affairs, because the Chair is the only one included in the college committee meetings where the action actually happens. Galo was more interested in committee work than debating SGO structural politics.

“I felt like I was just sitting there listening to people deliberate on what it meant for SGO to do something,” he said about Senate meetings.

“I don’t understand why I’m a necessary part of this conversation because I’m not saying anything.”

Last week, senators discussed the effectiveness of the organization’s use of point teams and committees to turn initiatives into the concrete proposals it submits to the administration.

SGO is structured on a system in which senators appoint members of the Senate to committees covering different policy areas. These committees then meet and draft proposals advocating for a certain policy

which can be sent to members of the administration. However, these committees have vastly differing obligations. For example, the Student Life Committee has only four members, but its responsibilities are vast.

“Anything that’s not sustainability or academics could essentially fall into student life: dining, dorms, everything else,” said David Pipkin, co-president of SGO. This is what necessitated the creation of point teams, which are more informal teams — not listed on the website — created to deal with specific issues, like dining for example.

Appointing point teams on continued on page A2

Parrish chalkings respond to allegations against SCF

THURSDAY At 4PM, join the English Department for “Careers for Humanities Majors: A Conversation and Resumé Workshop.” in LPAC 301. Learn how the panelists navigated careers in a variety of fields and how their backgrounds as humanities majors prepared them for their current professions. Note: workshop space is limited. To pre-register, send your resumé to englishswarthmore@gmail.com FRIDAY Living the Liberal Arts: A Celebration of Eugene Lang ‘38, H’81. This day’s events celebrate the vision and legacy of Eugene Lang ‘38, H’81 who, in his generous support of the arts, education, and the common good at Swarthmore College and around the world, let his life speak and inspired many others to live liberal arts lives. Living the Liberal Arts Presentations: 1:30 PM - 4:00 PM Location: Pearson-Hall, Lang Performing Arts Center.

Living the Liberal Arts Poster Sessions and Reception, 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM Location: Lobby, Lang Performing Arts Center.

HIR by Taylor Mac will be staged on Friday at 8PM, Saturday at 2PM and 8PM, and Sunday at 8PM in the Frear Ensemble Theater.

Taylor Mac’s HIR is a hysterically queer spin on the classic American living-room drama that asks the age-old question – what makes or breaks a family?

MONDAY There will be a Visibility Zine Interest Meeting on Monday at 7PM. you’re interested in learning more about the publication, info on how to contribute your work (art, essays, ruminations, poetry, photography, paintings, sketches, ideas for a better and more beautiful world, etc. etc. etc.) or if you want to join the zine team ($$) please make sure to come by the IC on Monday.

Grace Zhang / The Phoenix

After an op-ed discussing Swarthmore Christian Fellowship systemic anti-queer policies was published in campus publications, a series of queer-affirming chalkings appeared overnight in front of Parrish and around campus.

by Abby Young News Writer Recently, there have been changes made to the offcampus study program that have affected students’ experiences. Some of these changes include the use of a single travel agency to book tickets for travel and a new system to calculate credit from studying abroad, the latter of which has the most impact on students, especially those seeking credit for off campus study. Pat Martin, director of the off-campus study office, estimates that over

50% of students have study abroad experiences that include credit.

According to an email from Martin, other changes include a new domestic off campus study program, Semester in Hawaii, at the University of Hawaii. In addition to the new domestic option, students studying abroad receive a budget that covers living costs during break periods abroad if their programs or universities do not provide them accommodations during those times.

In that email, Martin also noted that starting last semes-

Next semester, the college will begin the planning process to build a new dining hall and renovate Sharples as a student union space.

In the last few years, the college has created two comprehensive reports about necessary improvements to the campus and student life in general: the Campus Master Plan in 2013, and the Student Experience Visioning Study Report in Feb. 2017.

These two reports cover a wide variety of issues and include input from students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

The reports includes recommendations ranging from “adjustment in faculty members’ teaching load,” to making McCabe more open and limiting the “fortress-like appearance.”

Both reports also included much about the need for a change in the way food is served on campus, and the need for a student union space. The new construction project is meant to address these problems.

“We engaged both a dining consultant and an architect last summer just to give us some ideas and I’d say sort of the key findings there was that the existing Sharples building has outlived its useful life as a dining hall,” said Greg Brown, Vice President for Finance and Administration.

Sharples was built in the 1960s and was designed to hold around 900 students. As the college has grown and student preference has changed, the building has seen different limitations.

Both the design and the size of Sharples lead to limitations. The small size makes it difficult for continued on page A5

ter, students with a “demonstrated high level of financial need” are able to apply to the Dean’s Office emergency fund if they have uncovered costs such as visas and immunizations but are subject to the emergency fund’s rules.

All of these changes are relevant to the entire off-campus study program, which includes all international student trips, Lang Center sponsored activities, conferences, debates, athletic competitions, and externships. However, the new changes most prominently affect students who are study-

ing abroad for credit. Students who receive off campus credit typically do so through end of semester courses that have an international field component, summer courses, and fall/ spring semester study abroad.

In terms of receiving credit for study abroad, there is a new online credit evaluation system built by ITS. Students who will study abroad next semester will use this system.

Martin explained that the previous system required that students “physically go from department to department to request credit and to obtain

signatures on a piece of paper.”

In addition, the new system replaces a similar “paperbased” system that applied to students who sought credit after returning to campus.

The benefits of the new system, Martin explained, are that it allows all parties involved in the process of transferring and approving credit to see where courses are in the approval process and that students are now able to utilize the system to ask for additional courses to be approved from abroad.

In spring of 2017, a new continued on page A2

Student Disability Services gains new directors

by Reuben Gelley-Newman News Writer

The Training Tuesdays series will continue this week with “Hook-ups to Break Ups: When Good Relationships Turn Bad” at 4PM in Science Center 105.

Come learn strategies for ending harmful relationships and supporting those navigating them.

CONTENTS Campus news A1-A2 Arts news A3 Opinions A4 Sports A5-A6

Copyright © 2016 The Phoenix

by Lauren Knudson Editor-in-Chief

Online system, travel agency among changes to study abroad

TUESDAY

Read more at swarthmorephoenix.com

College to make plans to build new dining hall, update Sharples

Shelby Dolch / The Phoenix

Following the resignation of former director of Student Disability Service Leslie Hempling in late October, assistant directors Erin Leuthold and Jenna Rose are supervising the office. “[Leuthold and Rose] were selected for their roles after a competitive national search process that involved the opportunity for students, faculty, and staff to provide feedback on candidates during the process,” said Tomoko Sakomura, associate dean for academic affairs, in an e-mail.

As Sakomura shared in an Aug. 16 email announcing the change to the campus community, Leuthold’s and Rose’s position is a fixed 10-month term for the 2017 - 2018 academic year. Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs Dean Liz Derickson anticipates searching for a

permanent director of disability services in the spring.

Leuthold and Rose, having worked with students with varying accommodations and disabilities for many years, bring years of experience to the role.

Leuthold was a K-12 teacher in public schools in Rochester, N.Y., taught students with intellectual disabilities at Camden County College, and served as the coordinator of disability services at Holy Family University since 2014. Rose worked with college-age students with disabilities at Bowling Green State University and The College of New Jersey and served for four years as an assistant director of Marvin’s Camp, a camp for children with disabilities at the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island.

Leuthold reiterated the goals of Student Disability Services in an e-mail.

“The primary goal of the Student Disability Services office is to provide equal access to students with disabilities through providing reasonable accommodations,” said Leuthold.

These accommodations include academic, housing, and dining accommodations.

In the process, the office is guided by laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The ADA is described on a government website as “one of America’s most comprehensive pieces of civil rights legislation,” and “an ‘equal opportunity’ act for Americans with disabilities.” It defines a disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having s continued on page A5

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THE PHOENIX NEWS

BEP to enter new phase of construction

by Trina Paul News Writer

On the northwest corner of campus, construction for the new Biology, Engineering, and Psychology building persists as the fall semester comes to an end. Since enrollment has risen for the biology, engineering, and psychology departments, BEP is being built to provide these departments with more space.

BEP is in part the result of Eugene Lang’s $50 million donation, the largest gift in the college’s history, and is to house the biology, engineering, and psychology departments.

It is expected to be completed by fall of 2020 with the first stage opening up summer of 2019. BEP will be a five-story building with one floor below ground. The building is expected to have meeting spaces, lecture halls, classrooms, a greenhouse, and a solar lab.

According to Carr Everbach, head of the engineering department, after student protests for divestment in 2013, the college’s Board of Managers agreed to allot additional money to equip BEP with more environmentally sustainable features.

“This process of defining what BEP was going to be continued until the spring of 2013 in which Mountain Justice and other students asked the Board of Managers to divest from all fossil fuel stocks and the Board of Managers refused. There were subsequent protests and possibly as related consequence of those concerns the Board of Managers agreed to allocate an additional $12 million to make it [BEP] as environmentally sustainable as possible,”

Everbach said.

According to Larry Warner, the BEP project manager with Skanska — the firm managing construction for the BEP project — the college was proactive about implementing these environmentally sustainable features.

“One thing the college has asked the design team and construction team to come up with is a way to monitor the energy savings of the building. A lot of the systems, like the mechanical and electrical systems, are designed in a way to be energy efficient. Each of these components was built with energy efficiency in mind,” Warner said.

Andrew Ward, head of the psychology department, looks forward to these characteristics of the new building.

“The sustainable aspects of the new construction, including climate control provided by geothermal wells, is a boon to Swarthmore,” Ward said in an e-mail.

As a psychology professor, Ward has been involved in the planning process for the building for several years.

The psychology department was formerly housed in Papazian Hall. After the destruction of Papazian to make space for the BEP building, the department was, and currently is, housed in Whittier Hall. With the creation of a new shared space, Ward also looks forward to the potential collaborative work between the biology, engineering, and psychology departments in the new building. “[Psychology, biology, engineering] department members will, for the first time in many decades, have offices on the same floor as one another,

November 30, 2017

some.

“It’s a painful process getting those nice facilities and we’ve already suffered some this semester with construction, and we’ll have to endure two more years of it. We do understand that construction is dangerous, noisy, and messy and that we have to tough it,” Everbach said.

Warner says that certain precautions are being taken to ensure that the construction process is not overly disruptive to the students or faculty.

“One of the things we take into consideration is the disruptions to the community. A lot of the planning that occurs behind the scenes is about how we limit the disruptions to the community,” Warner said. “It starts with our deliveries: there are large signs that tell trucks where they can and cannot go.

All of that was coordinated with the borough of Swarth-

more and the college.”

Currently, the BEP building is in Phase One of construction.

According to Janet Semler, the director of capital planning and project management at Swarthmore, Phase One involves constructing permanent foundation walls for the basement floor of the building.

In the next few weeks, however, the next phase of the process will begin: the erection of structural steel, the columns and beams that will form the skeleton of the building. This next stage in the construction process is expected to continue throughout the spring semester before decking and roofing is installed in the summer.

For the time being, the sounds of construction and the flying dust will continue even as the semester comes to a close.

making it easier for us to engage in informal contact with each other,” Ward said. “At the same time, the sharing of a building with biology and engineering promises to enhance collaboration between our departments. With the growth of interdisciplinary initiatives in such fields as neuroscience and cognitive science, we believe that being in the same building with faculty and students in related fields will be a tremendous asset to us and to the college.”

Everbach echoes this sentiment about prospective cooperation between departments.

“The biology, engineering, and psychology departments have all functioned very separately both curricularly and in different buildings. There are some connections between them but they have been remote, but by putting them in the same space there will be opportunities for collaboration, discussion, and possibly for co-teaching and co-projects. I think at the very least, students from these departments will be intermingling and interacting and there will be some effect on the faculty and the curriculum because of that,” Everbach said.

Everbach also notes the benefits that a new space will offer the engineering department.

“Biology and psychology have a space and a quality of space problem. Hicks Hall is a stone box with little opportunity for moving the walls around inside or adding on things,” Everbach said “BEP will offer more square feet, more highquality square feet, and more flexible and reconfigurable square feet.”

Nick Kaplinsky, associ-

ate biology professor and the department’s representative for the BEP project, also noted the lack of space in Martin Hall, the building currently housing the biology department.

“Everyone in the department has deep historical attachments to Martin Hall.

But Martin’s lack of space and age place limitations on what we’d like to do and so it is time for a new building,” Kaplinsky said in an email. “We will have more space and, in many cases, labs that are customized for the particular types of experiments that are being taught by individual faculty members. An example of this is that in our current building there is no classroom where we can have 12 students working with soil.

BEP will have one.”

Though many are excited by the prospect of a new building, the construction process can be lengthy and disruptive for

tive Board elections happen in March, but Senate elections six weeks into the fall semester so first-years could participate.

Pipkin suggested that having Senate elections in April would allow the executive board and Senate to plan their initiatives for the next year and be ready to get to work on the first day of the fall semester.

“The fact that I have an executive board for four months of half student government is hobbling,” he said. “And then you have the added problem [that] you had the school year start later than usual.”

Also, while Senators are on the committees and have the power to vote on who is on those committees, the constitution doesn’t give the Senate any power to vote on amendments. All this power is given to the executive board. The

Constitutional Review Committee is working to change this.

Srinivasan believes the new constitution needs to give the Senate more of a voice and include clear goals for each committee. A voting process for passing amendments should also be present, and the document should be four pages and easily readable.

SGO has put a focus this year on listening to different student groups and bringing their concerns to Senate meetings.

While it has received input, Srinivasan believes it hasn’t been able to make big policy pushes because of the long lines of communication between the Senate, point teams, and committees.

Srinivasan said, “We try to get a lot of input, we’re hosting more events to get input, but the big thing isn’t that we’re

not getting their views. It’s that we’re not actually able to act on them very quickly because if I went to visit SASA, they gave me something to do, and I brought it up in a meeting two weeks later, it would be sent to a committee and we’d do something in like March.”

SGO has also been focusing on being more transparent and communicating better with the student body, Srinivasan said.

It has worked to increase the number of e-mails it sends out, and to be more transparent in its operations, especially when it comes to the charter process for new clubs. One of the reasons this is the case, according to Galo, is that many students just don’t care what SGO is doing.

Pipkin noted that part of this problem comes from the fact that Swarthmore has issues

with communication in general.

SGO is currently trying to use the TV screen in Pearson that displays notifications as a place to reach students.

Despite getting a late start to the semester and coming up against structural problems, SGO has lofty policy goals this year. These include striving for greater transparency, clarifying the club chartering process, and revising and simplifying SGO’s constitution.

when they get back to show that all the work will get credit.

And now all that can be done electronically.”

Lefkowitz also said that students abroad this semester are still using the old system.

The new system is only being implemented right now, so everyone who is coming back to campus this fall or next spring used the old system. The effects of the new system will be clear in fall 2018, when the students abroad during this spring semester return.

Jamie Starr ’19, who is studying in Greece next semester, is using the new online system.

She explained that she uploaded a list of all of the classes she’s interested in taking abroad as well as the syllabus.

“The study abroad office has given me an estimate of how many credits I will likely get for each class,” Starr said.

She then added that once she returns, she will have to upload the work she’s done in order to get approval for the credits by department.

Though the new system is paperless and intended to ameliorate the process of applying and receiving credits, there are potentially some unintended consequences.

Lefkowitz expressed concern that there might be some problems because there will be less opportunity for students and

professors to speak face to face. “[Getting forms signed] meant that at the very least there’s a moment of a student and professor talking about the experience. Now I worry that the moment is threatened,” he said.

He said though his worry does not outweigh the benefits of a paperless, more streamlined process, his concern of an “unfortunate side effect” still remains.

“I hope that it’s not going to lead to less personal interaction between faculty and students who study abroad,” he said. “It’s not meant to lead to less interaction. It’s meant to save paper and make the process smoother … It’s not meant to take the place of mentoring.”

However, Valerie Blakeslee ’19, who is planning on studying abroad in Milan next semester, doesn’t think that the lack of interaction is an issue.

She said that in person communication with the professors doesn’t really matter unless it’s important to a student’s particular circumstance, such as if they’re trying to ensure that they receive four credits from studying abroad. Four credits count as “full credit,” and everyone who goes abroad must get full credit.

“Just recently, they finally, officially switched to the electronic system but since I was

petitioning for my program, I had to know if I would receive credit in advance, so I had to use the handwritten way of doing things by going to different heads of the departments and getting them to sign off on things,” she said.

She added that the process of going to individual professors was “troublesome,” mainly because of the conflicting schedules between Swat and the program abroad. She noted that using an electronic system probably would’ve been easier.

“When I had to do the paper version, I had to email all the heads of those departments and have a brief meeting with them, which is kind of a hassle.

But with the online system, the heads of the departments are just notified by email.”

Another change that has occurred is that students can now book their travel through Key Travel in Philadelphia. Prior to this semester students were given an allowance in order to arrange their own flight but did not have a travel agent.

Starr said that students are required to contact with someone from the agency once they are accepted into the study abroad program and have completed parts of the study abroad application page. Students give information about the dates of the program to the travel agency, which then responds

with options for travel and will book the flight with the student’s approval.

Starr also noted that Swarthmore pays for the flights as long as the cost doesn’t exceed the price of a flight from Philadelphia to the final destination.

According to Lefkowitz, it can be expensive if students wait to buy plane tickets, so having the booking centralized through a travel agency can minimize the cost. “[Booking] was pretty easy for me because I looked at specific flights beforehand,” Starr said. “But I have a few friends who had some issues because they were put on some flights where the timing didn’t work for them.”

While explaining the role of the travel agent, Lefkowitz said, “It’s probably going to save money, but we don’t know yet.

There’s kind of a hope that it streamlines things and makes things easier to manage … Pat Martin put a lot of thought and time into this, and she’s been trying to get it to be something we can do for years.”

However, at this point in implementation of both the online system from ITS and the travel agent, it is still unclear what the real-life effects will be in fall 2018 and later.

Grace Zhang / The Phoenix

SGO, continued from A1 a voluntary basis, according to Pipkin, “makes more sense … because frankly, you have to advocate for things over a longer period of time, and you have to do it consistently, and having only four people do that for a wide range of issues isn’t a rational expectation.”

Srinivasan argued during last Sunday’s SGO meeting that the committee and point team system, as it exists now, takes too long to turn ideas into concrete results, and the fact that many of their directives overlap adds to the confusion.

“It becomes really convoluted when we try to create all kinds of teams to address problems and we don’t have a clear directive,” said Srinivisian. “It’s not necessarily that the committees aren’t effective, it’s just that it’s really hard to find a time to meet and then

review for things that I think, personally, are very simple and we can do quicker.”

The body has created a Constitutional Review Committee to fix some of the structural flaws that give SGO the impression of being inefficient. Pipkin said that the document was put together hastily and has some practical issues that need to be addressed.

“SGO as an entity has in its construction deep flaws,” said Pipkin. “The SGO constitution … as it exists now was drafted because they lost the first one, so they did it hurriedly without really thinking through everything.”

One of the major problems with the document, according to Pipkin, was that Senate elections and the executive board elections take place in different semesters. Execu-

Study abroad, continued from A1 change was added that guarantees students four credits for “successful completion of coursework that was preestimated for at least four Swarthmore credits” during a semester abroad. Before this change, it was possible for students to receive less than four credits for that work because the credits were determined by departments.

Molly Murphy ’18 detailed her study abroad experience in the summer of 2016 in Beijing through a Harvard program.

Because it was a language-intensive program, she exclusively interacted with the Chinese section at Swat.

“Getting credit coming back was a bit of a process because first I had to submit all of my study materials like my homework, tests, and papers and my textbook and my transcript to the department office in Chinese. Then I figured they were just going to forward it to the registrar, but they didn’t and it was getting towards the end of semester and they didn’t receive my transcript … so I had to order a new transcript,” she explained.

She noted that when she studied abroad, the credits got approved by various departments and the department heads chose what courses counted and for how many credits.

“I didn’t really utilize the study abroad office,” Murphy added. “I thought that [my study abroad program] wasn’t the kind that they deal with … but I was wrong about that because they do follow up with students going abroad over the summer, especially if they’re intending to get credit, even if it’s not formally through [Swat].”

Professor Jeremy Lefkowitz, who is the faculty advisor for students who will study abroad, says that despite the new online system, students will still have to bring back every paper from their study abroad trip, like Murphy described.

“The important part is that students still have to keep everything that they get, all the work they do… [It] should come back,” he said.

This requirement exists because students must upload their work in the new system when they return from abroad in order to determine how much credit they have earned.

He also explained the previous process for receiving credit abroad and how the new system from ITS is making that easier.

“Students would have to go around and get signatures from specific departments related to the coursework they plan to do abroad. They have to get signatures before they go, and they have to get signatures

ARTS

November 30, 2017 PAGE A3

Running Olde Club and Working on Dying show

by Joe Mariani Arts Editor Olde Club is a popular student space for dancing and for watching musical performances, often at the same time.

Friday, Nov. 17th was no exception, when music collective Working on Dying and artist The Khan came to perform. The performance marked a semester of performances by artists brought to campus by students managing Olde Club this semester, Julian Turner ’18 and Gabriel Meyer-Lee ’19. Turner and Meyer-Lee are both music aficionados and have closely followed hip-hop music by independant artists for years, gaining a pretty significant knowledge of the scene. Both were big fans of Working on Dying and The Khan for about two years, and Turner had seen Working on Dying perform in Philadelphia.

Working on Dying is a production collective of musicians and producers from North Philly. The composition is not fixed, but their signature is a sample of a woman eerily saying “I’m working on dying” that appears at the beginning of many of the songs they make or collaborate with others to produce Working on Dying members Lil Zubin, F1lthy Forza, F1LTHY., OOGIEMANE, The Loosie Man, and Dizzy Santana all preformed at the Olde Club show.

The Khan, whose Sound Cloud profile states that he is from 14th & Wild, Washington D.C., had worked with Working on Dying before. The Khan’s track, “VICES” featured Lil Tracy and was produced by OOGIEMANE.

Both Working on Dying and The Khan make music that can be classified as underground hip hop. Underground hip hop artists typically are not signed to labels, publish their music on platforms like SoundCloud, and perform at small but hip venues like Olde Club. Their lyrics, music, and personal style are usually innovative and outside the mainstream, though many underground artists have gone on to become some of the most prominent musicians in the country. Artists Aesop Rock and Homeboy Sandman both started out in the underground rap scene before achieving wider prominence. They promote themselves on social media, especially Twitter. It was over the ladder platform that Turner found out how to contact The Khan and Working on Dying.

“The Khan’s manager’s email was in his twitter bio. For Working on Dying, I just had to [direct messaged] F1LTHY,” said Turner.

Working on Dying travels to Los Angeles frequently, which Turner said is a major hub for up and coming hip hop artists.

“They go out there a lot to meet with record labels or just to play shows. LA has a huge population that just consumers this underground hip hop music and the infrastructure to support it,” said Turner.

No Jumper, an LA-area D.J., who regularly does long-form interviews with underground hip hop artists ,had Working on Dying on his show a year ago. While LA is a major part of the underground hip-hop scene, Julian pointed out that both Working on Dying and the Khan have continued to live and work in their respective

hometowns.

“They still stay here in Philadelphia, they haven’t moved to LA. I think it speaks to what is going on in Philadelphia and its cool of Working on Dying that They want to help build it up and to represent that way,” said Turner.

Turner and Meyer-Lee have been to several Working on Dying performances in Philadelphia and they noted the unique atmosphere of the shows.

“It’s a really great environment. The crowd was always young, super energetic , but also really very positive and inclusive,” said Meyer-Lee. Meyer-Lee thought the show was a great way to bring local artists to the attention of college students. He added that Working on Dying and the Khan had an appeal to Swarthmore students not just because of their music but their overall style.

“With this show we wanted to bring swarthmore and this underground philly rap scene together. Swarthmore students ability to really just like fully commit to something, fully embrace something especially if it’s unusual or different or strange and just really get into it,” said Meyer-Lee Turner gave a specific example of Swarthmore students embracing something they were not familiar with.

“Boozy [Mohammad Boozarjomehri ’19] was there and he was just entirely embracing it, turning up to the sound,” said Turner.

Turner and Meyer-Lee showed up at Olde Club at around 7:30 p.m. to set up.

After preparing Olde Club green room for that night’s

performers and setting up, they went to Wharton to hang out before the show. In addition to booking the artists, Turner and Meyer-Lee have to coordinate with them the night of the performance. The Khan’s only request for the green room was a “Philly Cheesesteak with all the works.” Meyer-Lee and Turner had to get the Khan to sign some paperwork the day of the performance, but they noted that that had happened before with other artists. They also had to call all the performers uber’s after the show.

When asked how he stays on top of the dynamic underground hip-hop scene, Turner describe it as being like exercise, but with a lot of social media involved instead of gym equipment. .

“Its definitely a muscle that develops over time. You have to be excited about the music.

If you go one my twitter or instagram, it’s honestly just a lot of rappers and they’re always posting music. I also follow a handful of people on Sound Cloud and My feed on there is actually pretty fire and that’s pretty much curated for me,” said Turner.

Turner also said his interest in Djing leads him to find new music.

“I like DJing and making a mix … putting together tracks I like in a way I find pleasing. I listen to a lot of other DJs and find good tracks from that as well.”

The tight knit nature of the artistic community Working on Dying and the Khan inhabited was exhibited in a sad but poignant way at the show. Both members of Working on Dying

Shelby Dolch /The Phoenix

and the Khan had known the rapper Lil Peep, who had tragically passed away just a couple of days before the show. Turner and Meyer-Lee were both aware of Lil Peep’s death but did not know how well the Khan and Working on Dying had known the artist. The Khan talked about his grief over Lil Peep’s death during the performance, but also noted his excitement to perform. The show was supposed to end at 1:00 a.m.,

but the music was still playing until around 1:30 a.m. when it finally was broken up.

Swarthmore students probably have not heard the last from the Khan and Working on Dying, even if they never come back to Swat.

“Probably a year from now their going to be producing hit songs They already have worked with big artists… it just has not come out yet,” said Turner.

SSUCC show causes laughter

by Abraham Lyon Arts Writer We were late to the throng of hundreds of people waiting outside the Wells Fargo Center. As I stepped out of the car, all my anxieties about getting through to our seats and missing part of the performance ended. I relaxed into the flow of the concert: beer bottles strewn across the sidewalk, the noise, the smoke, and the push and pull of the crowd.

Everyone was there for the music, from the smelly middle agers from the 60s and 70s with long beards sporting tie dye t-shirts to the college students, like myself, who were relatively new to the cultural phenomenon that is the nearly mythic band the Grateful Dead.

The Grateful Dead, formed in 1965 and living in a communal house at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco, emerged as a stand-out performance in the local music scene and built a large fan base on the now-legendary public LSD parties and ‘happenings’ prior to the drug’s criminalization. By the end of the 70s, the Grateful Dead had created their own distinctive sound and aesthetic, establishing themselves as national psychedelic rock sensation and the ultimate cult band.

The Grateful Dead broke up in 1995 following the death of singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia.

Dead & Company was born twenty years later in 2015. The latest associated act features original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, joined by the former Grateful Dead keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and newcomers Oteil Burbridge (Allman Brothers Band) and guitar prodigy John Mayer filling the role of Jerry Garcia. Due to their immediate success, Bob Weir is considering passing the entire band onto a new generation.

My dad, who was born in the 1960s, grew up with the Grateful Dead. He saw them tour in their heyday and has seen them several times during their latest revamp as Dead & Company.

He had wanted to bring me to a Dead show for some time and finally, there we were, standing in line for the show.

“I think what’s incredible about the Grateful Dead today is their complete mastery of their music. They have continued to improve over decades, and they’ve brought in incredible talent to compliment them technically, energetically, and spiritually… they’re brilliant,” he said.

As we walked through the interior hallway of the stadium, my dad suddenly turned on to a passageway that led into the stadium. We ducked through a veiled entryway and found ourselves standing backstage of the

show. We looked down through the pillars of the set onto the band. They were playing a cover of “Dancing in The Street” by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas and beyond them, beneath a soft haze of smoke and lights, the crowd swayed to the music. We stood in silence for a few moments, reveling in the treasure we’d stumbled upon. Had my dad known where he was going?

He stood apart from my cousin and I, entranced in the music he loved. He probably had an inclination. As we walked down the aisle towards the stairs, intending to approach the stage from behind, a voice spoke out of the darkness right behind us saying we better get out. We turned out the next door and continued around the stadium past hitched merchandise shops and food stands towards our seats.

We eventually ended up at our seats located around half court on the left side of the stage.

From eight until nearly half past eleven, the band jammed and grooved, playing a total of twenty songs through two sets. I never really understood, before the concert, that the Grateful Dead was meant to be a live act; their studio albums seem to lie in the shadow of the limelight. Instead of following the guidelines of their records, the band played freeform. They challenged the linearity of their songs, often returning to a cho-

rus after ten minutes of instrumental riffs.

For me, Chimenti’s keyboard solo during the “Uncle John Band” and John Mayer’s overall performance of “Truckin,’” including several unbelievable guitar riffs, were the highlights of the show. Additionally, during a brief intermission between the two sets, Mickey Hart performed a drum and synth worldbeat fusion piece, combining international cultural influences. Hart’s work with drummers around the world incited an interest in the mythological role and spiritual capacity of the drum, producing in a deeply moving performance of wild, meditative noise that seemed to grind and tear at my insides. Overall, the experience was unlike anything I’ve seen before. The way the band seemed to flow from song to song, instrument to instrument yet still maintain their distinct sound was, in my dad’s words, brilliant.

While I was at first hesitant about the addition of John Mayer, primarily due to his more folky singing style, by the time he stepped back onstage for an encore of “Black Muddy River,” I was all in. Mayer and Weir together command the stage and the audience, a blend of new and old, bringing the Dead back to life in a way few thought possible.

Shelby Dolch /The Phoenix

Andi Cheng /The Phoenix

Dead & Company at the Wells Fargo Center

by Joe Mariani Arts Editor

Note: In an unusually energetic mood I decided to take a stab at gonzo journalism. But you will not be able to take me seriously, because I am a joker.

On Friday, Nov. 10th, the Swarthmore Stand Up Comedy Club in the first floor lounge of the Alice Paul dormitory. It was a cold as snot in Siberia and and windy as hell, enough to blow a girl and her dog on a bicycle off the Kansas plains and over the rainbow. I had volunteered to perform, along with a line-up of comic Swatties.

I was nervous to do my act; I had not prepared very much and I was going to tell jokes I had never told before so I had no idea if they were going to work. But when I arrived in Alice Paul and saw the rows

of chairs neatly set up I forgot my nerves and greeted the event organizers. David Levy ’18, Rachel Hilburn ’19, and Ari Liloia ’20, young comedic stars on this campus, had recruited performers, found a performance space, and they seemed excited to see their plans come to fruition.

The crowd came in and was bubbling with excitement. Usually when people assemble at this school to watch somebody talk its for a lecture. Unlike lectures, which are only incidentally funny, this stand-up performance was intended to be so. The AP lounge was filled to capacity, and even some of the dwellers of that dormitory stopped on the stairs to the second floor or came out of their rooms to see what all the commotion was about.

Hilburn opened the event

with jokes and some information about SSUCC. The crowd was loosened up when Hilburn drew roars of laughter, and sitting with all the performers it seemed like we were all enthusiastic to get up and tell jokes.

Before jokes can be told, they have to be thought of. Comedians are somewhat analogous to sprinters. That have to put a lot of work into perform a specific task for a short time. And like runners, comedians have different styles that are reflections of their personality and of the nature of humor. Some comedians write jokes, some perform skits, and some people are able to comedians by simply being themselves. Pablo Picasso once said that “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.” Thinking of jokes can also involve lying; I know

I often lie, and people tell me I’m funny. Telling jokes about your life is possible by tweaking certain details of things and thereby constructing hilarious scenarios. Sometimes it useful and good to construct strawmen; for example when you are making scarecrows. One of my first jokes is an example of this.

“My friend Tyler he was like one of those guys that was always carrying around baseball bats. He goes to nursing school now.”

The organizers of the event were happy about how the event went, especially by the big and friendly crowd that came to watch.

“Initially we were worried because there was so much other stuff happening that night but what ended up happening was the people who were

there really wanted to be there so we had a great crowd of people who were excited to see us perform, and who didn’t just come because there was nothing else happening,” said Liloia, who also performed at the event.

According to Hilburn, the show was a success and organizing and promoting the event was not too difficult.

“I think it was pretty straight-forward organizing it: we reserved the space and contacted the club to see who wanted to perform. We then did promotion on small posters and social media and through friends and the club. I think it was a successful show and we had a great turn out with a good crowd,” said Hilburn.

Members of the audience also seemed to enjoy the show.

“I thought the show was real-

ly good! It was really low pressure and inclusive, and wonderful to have people attend a nice community event at the Barn that wasn’t just a normal party I hope there are more events like it in the future,” said Gus Burchell ’20, who came to the show with friends.

SSUCC is in a transition as a club. Originally started

by Joe Bonniger ’16 after he helped organize and perform at an Open Mic, the club, for two years, usually had weekly meetings and several shows a semester. Like all clubs at Swarthmore, it is attempting to redefine itself and to recruit new talent. Whatever form SSUCC takes, this show will surely not be the last laughs that student stand-up comedians draw on this campus.

OPINIONS

November 30, 2017 PAGE A4

When you checked your finals schedule for this semester, you probably crossed your fingers that your exams wouldn’t fall on the last day of

EDITORIAL

finals, Saturday December 23rd.

This is the latest day that the semester of anyone currently on this campus will experience.

For some on campus, this will mean less time with family during important religious or otherwise holiday times. For others, it’s simply a later end of semester date. Regardless, as we at the Phoenix have written about throughout this semester, we should keep our larger community in mind as we consider campus policies.

To offset some concerns, we recognize that not everyone at

the college celebrates religious holidays that occur near the 23rd, and therefore, this date may not matter to them in a critically spiritual way. However, whether or not religious celebration occurs in every household, many students will face steep travel prices and fares in their departures because the 23rd and surrounding days are some of the busiest travel days of the year.

A philosophy of the college is to make sure that each student has access to the activities any student should have regardless of economic status or available funds. While is true that the cash-free campus cannot reasonably extend beyond campus at all times and in all instances, the college should take care to make experiencing college,

including the breaks from it, easy on students.

In addition to students the late start date makes things harder for faculty and staff.

After students leave campus, staff have to stay on campus in order to close things up. As we at the Phoenix have discussed, prioritizing staff’s time and their well being is also critical to the health of the campus.

The staff supports the campus family, but the college’s calendar should not degrade the participation in their families or lives beyond work.

We recognize that there are many considerations that go into making the academic calendar, including other members of the tri-co, and that these calendars are made years in advance. We know this editorial

is not going to change when finals end this semester, or even change the academic calendar set out for next year, which has finals ending on the 22nd, but it is important that the college keeps considerations of religious holidays and travel costs in mind when developing a calendar. To guide the process, here are suggestions from other schools.

Peer and near by institutions for the end of the Fall 2017 academic semester: Amherst 2017 - Dec 22 Williams 2017 - Dec 19 UPenn - Dec 21 Penn State Dec 15 University of Maryland - December 19 Villanova - December 19 Drexel - December 16

Sharing stories, creating stories As my study abroad experience is beginning to reach its end, I can’t help but reflect on the scenes I have encountered and the stories I have heard from such a diverse spectrum of people. On one hand, looking back, it seems easy to feel despair about the current state of the world. In Vietnam, I was struck by how people had to wear air-masks outside each day

BRITTNI TERESI SWAT GLOBAL because of the contaminants in the air. But, I was even more struck by how westernization had caused people in Vietnam to be ashamed of their skin, wearing long-sleeves and jeans in the 100 degree weather as an attempt to make themselves more “white.” In South Africa, I witnessed the very real effects of apartheid, including black communities remaining significantly more impoverished and faced with more crime than white communities; never mind the fact that there shouldn’t have been a separation between black and white communities in the first place since “apartheid

is over.”

Even in Argentina, there are so many injustices that link to global issues and cause an unimaginable amount of human suffering. Argentina also faces a huge disparity in environmental living conditions and access to basic resources between the rich and poor. Similar to the United States and South Africa, immigrants in Argentina face struggles of obtaining citizenship or assimilating into the country.

Recognizing how these disparities have been issues across the world, I find moments where I can’t help but feel hopeless. How can problems of human suffering and access to basic human rights even begin to be addressed when the problems seem so universal?

How does one remain optimistic to creating change when there is so much politics or negativity against them?

Yet, while studying abroad has given me a broader perspective on the scope of world problems, it has also granted me insight into how to remain part of the solution. It has demonstrated to me that, while one person can not eliminate an entire global problem, creating local solu-

tions can make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of people and begin to inspire other communities around the world to create change. Through the power of story and sharing the successes of one community in addressing a problem, a global movement can begin to be created.

When visiting an environmental injustice community, I witnessed the power of narrative firsthand. Isla Maciel is a low-income neighborhood in the Greater Province of Buenos Aires. It is located next to the Riachuelo River, which is one of the most polluted rivers in the world and houses petroleum companies and a power plant. In Isla Maciel, not only are members of the community exposed to a greater amount of environmental toxins, but they are also plagued with problems of inadequate housing and lack of access to jobs. As one member of the community described, these people live in the community because “the poor are forced to have the land that no one else wants.”

Nevertheless, the community of Isla Maciel has not succumbed

to their hardships. Instead, they continue to implement their own solutions. The Isla Maciel Foundation has established “the micro-credit program” to tackle inadequate housing, “El Comedor,” a soup kitchen, and “Casa de Maria,” a “problematic substance consumption” intervention, to ensure access to basic needs. They have even created a job training program for youth, which includes a computer repair workshop, a screen printing workshop, and a healthy baking program.

During my visit to Isla Maciel, I had the opportunity to talk with the teenager who manages the screen printing workshop. It is impossible to describe how incredibly inspired I was, noticing the light in eyes as he discussed how the workshop made him excited for the future because not only did the workshop mean he had an employable skill, but it also meant he had a passion that he could continue to share with other teenagers in the community.

But, their narrative of resilience has not stopped there.

As I continued to learn about the community, the Isla Ma-

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ciel Foundation continued to describe their work by telling me about the lives of community members or children whose lives had been changed. In doing so, they utilized the power of story to illustrate how local solutions can contribute to a global movement. At the end of my visit to Isla Maciel, the coordinator told us that the foundation encourages people to visit their community so that they may “defeat barriers, destigmatize communities, and form relationships with people who wouldn’t otherwise know.” In doing so, they spread knowledge of interventions on how to address problems and serve as a voice for similar communities around the world. And I can guarantee that they succeeded. Upon leaving the community, I began to tell everyone about the strength and solutions of Isla Maciel, and I am still motivated to do so because I find Isla Maciel a story of hope and a testimony that meaningful change is possible.

Through Isla Maciel and my time in Argentina, it has become evident that Argentina is only one place in a global network where social justice move-

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ments begin. Around the world, communities are implementing solutions for injustices, sharing those stories through the power of narrative, and therefore creating global movements. It is also an example of why communities need to continue to advocate for their own rights and create new solutions, even if it feels as if the problem is simply too great to be solved.

As Swatties, it can be easy to become disheartened by our fight for social justice issues, especially as we learn about the scale of a problem or the barriers for creating change. However, it is important to remember that every action toward making a difference counts, no matter how small. By creating change locally, you are not only helping the lives of people in that community, but you are also implementing innovative solutions of change that can be scaled up across the world. Through the power of narrative, a dialogue of solutions is created, allowing innovative programs to be replicated in a larger context.

Swarthmore Christian Fellowship has a sexuality problem In the spring of 2015, Dayna Horsey ‘18 was confident that she would be the one of the next leaders of the Swarthmore Christian Fellowship (SCF).

She had been happily active in the group, going to SCF events almost every day, and was under the impression that most who

EDUARD SAAKASHVILI ‘17 LETTER TO THE EDITOR applied for a role would be given a leadership position .

What she didn’t know was that her application was doomed from the start: over Sharples dinner one night, SCF’s president, David Tia Zhou ‘15, explained to Horsey that she was too accepting of gay sexuality to be a leader in the group. Then, he hugged her and wept. “[H]e was just, like, crying on me,” Horsey recalled.

Not becoming a leader didn’t bother Horsey too much. “I’ll find something else to do,” she remembers thinking, and indeed, she left SCF soon after. But she was angry—while she wasn’t queer herself, she had queer friends who had been hurt by religious intolerance. And she was shocked at how wrong she had been about SCF, Swarthmore’s largest Christian group.

“I didn’t realize at the time how conservative SCF was,” Horsey said.

Here’s how conservative it is: SCF’s leadership believes that God designed humanity for only one kind of romance, heterosexual marriage. Any relationship should exclude pre-marital sex, be heterosexual, and lead to marriage.

People who disagree with this stance, or those who date people of the same sex, cannot be leaders within SCF.

This policy may be littleknown around campus, but SCF makes no attempt to hide it. The SCF leaders interviewed for this article did little to sugar-coat their beliefs or evade questions; rather, they gave long, candid interviews in which they explained their doctrine and clarified how their policies work in practice.

“According to the Bible, God has a specific design and purpose for sexuality,” SCF copresident Michael Broughton ‘19 said in an interview, adding, “the act of sex is designed for a specific purpose that can only be enacted in [God’s] will between a husband and a wife, specifically.”

To practice any other form of sexuality, in the group’s eyes, is sin. To many Christians, sin is a sort of spiritual crime, an action out of sync with God’s plan. Other sins include murder, theft, and, according to some, premarital sex. Sinning doesn’t necessarily condemn a person to the eternal torment of hell—SCF believes that everyone occasionally slips up and falls short of God’s teaching. However, failing to recognize and repent for your sins means that you haven’t truly accepted Jesus Christ as God, which is the only path to salvation and eternal paradise.

In SCF’s eyes, that means you must resist your same-sex attractions, rather than celebrate them, because these desires are tempting you towards sin. “[T]o not repent—to not orient one’s lifestyle away from all sin, where ‘sin’ happens to include homosexual conduct—is a very likely indication that the process of accepting salvation has not been fully experienced,” Broughton wrote in a follow-up email.

“And yes, not accepting Christ’s salvation is grounds for spending eternity in hell.”

By this logic, being gay alone does not send you to hell; however, rejecting what SCF believes are the Bible’s teachings about sexuality might make eternal damnation more likely, though God makes the final decision about the fate of your soul. More immediately, a queer-affirming opinion makes you ineligible to be an SCF leader: Students who do not agree that acting on same-sex attractions is sinful cannot be leaders, period.

SCF’s beliefs also have effects outside of leadership selection. For some queer students, leaders or not, it translates into an unwelcoming environment throughout the organization. In a group that both current and former members describe as a close-knit, cathartic spiritual community where people build long-lasting friendships, this institutionalized homophobia can be a bitter deal-breaker that pushes members away. And at a time when Christians across the United States increasingly embrace queer love, SCF’s position shows no signs of softening.

Before I go on, a little digression about terms: When this article uses the word “queer,” it mostly refers to cis students who are attracted to individuals of the same-sex, since it’s unclear how trans folks fit into SCF’s view of sexuality.

One thing should be clear: SCF’s leadership policies apply to behavior and beliefs, rather than identity itself. Celibate queer students who condemn their same-sex attractions (or “lust”) are welcome to lead, and students of all sexualities and opinions can join the organization as regular members.

PAIN No story I heard embodied the SCF position’s murkiness

and potential to cause suffering as concisely as David Falk’s. In August 2013, David Falk arrived at Swarthmore for freshman orientation. With an outgoing, gregarious personality, he made an immediate splash. “[David] is a hoot,” Director of Religious and Spiritual Life Joyce Tompkins recalled, smiling.

When Falk told me his story over video chat, his backdrop rarely stopped moving as he paced in circles, sometimes giddy about his exciting present, at other points riled up about the painful past.

Falk enrolled at Swarthmore a devout Christian. In high school, he had come out as gay, but had lived a sheltered four years.

When he arrived on campus, he dated a series of male students and joined SCF, assuming, based on Swarthmore’s liberal reputation, that it was a relatively tolerant Christian group.

Although he worried about how fellow Christians might see his sexuality, he himself felt he had reconciled his faith with being gay.

“I kind of just expected, ‘Okay, Swarthmore’s kind of progressive and there shouldn’t be any problems. I’ll just fit in,’ ” Falk recalled.

David Falk during his freshman year at Swarthmore.

Photo by Ashlen Sepulveda ‘17, provided by David Falk At first, he seemed to fit in just fine. Once in SCF, he enjoyed being a member and began to think about becoming a leader.

Then began a painful step-bystep discovery that would test the harmony between his faith and his sexuality. Falk’s first clue was the existence of Swarthmore Progressive Christians, a much smaller alternative to SCF. “I was like, ‘Huh, that’s in-

teresting. Does that mean, like, they’re more progressive than Swarthmore Christian Fellowship?’ ” he said.

The answer he received was that SCF was more politically inclusive, so it included both conservatives and progressives.

For a while, that put Falk at ease, but he began to hear about queer students who had fallen out with SCF leadership. After asking around, he discovered that SCF was a member of InterVarsity, a national, evangelical network of Christian student groups.

That led him to Google, and soon he was reading reports of InterVarsity chapters around the country forcing queer students off of leadership. SCF didn’t just welcome conservatives—it was conservative.

This discovery began Falk’s alienation from the group. Other events worsened it, like the realization that dating his thenboyfriend would disqualify him from leadership.

SCF’s position on same-sex dating is muddier than its position on sex. SCF leaders clearly disapprove of it, but they aren’t sure if dating someone of the same gender makes you a sinner.

“The idea of ‘dating’ in a very basic sense might not technically be sin,” Broughton wrote in an email, “but there are various physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries that those in dating relationships tend to cross before they get to marriage, and crossing those boundaries in a homosexual context would probably come closer to constituting sin.” Plus, he said, dating someone of the same gender probably means you disagree with SCF’s conservative ideas about sexuality.

“For these reasons, same-sex dating would disqualify some-

one from being a leader,” he concluded. Sin or not, same-sex dating and SCF leadership do not mix. (Again, it is unclear how trans students fit into this Continued on Swarthmorephoenix.com w

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SPORTS

November 30, 2017 PAGE A5

Swat Swimming season preview

by Elizabeth Curcio Sports Writer

Fall sports are officially over, paving the way for winter sports to take center stage here at Swarthmore. Among these winter sports, the Swarthmore Men’s and Women’s Swim Teams seem to be emerging as strong contenders in their respective conferences. Going into December, both teams are currently undefeated, Men 3-0 and Women 4-0, and are hoping to continue that streak as the season continues. With a little less than three months and eight more meets left in the season, Swat Swim believe their hard work and sense of team unity will be enough to carry them to the

Centennial Conference Championships.

After winning the 2017 Centennial Conference Championship in style, Men’s Swim hope to defend their title this year and go back-to-back. So far, the team seems on track to do just that. Having swum and won three meets, Men’s Swim are working hard to ensure another victory.

When asked if winning the 2017 Conference Championship has put any added pressure on his team, Jeff Tse ʼ19 curtly responded no. His lack of concern about pressure shows his confidence in his teammates as well as in himself. He did elaborate about how his team stays excited about swimming throughout the entire

winter season.

“We stick together and motivate each other,” said Tse. Hopefully this motivated and tight-knit team will be able to continue breaking school records and be a contender for another championship. If you want to see this championship team in action, the team’s next meet is at home versus Ursinus College on Dec. 2 at 11 a.m.

Swarthmore Women’s Swim Team have also started off their year incredibly fierce with four conference wins. Finishing third last year at the conference finals, Women’s Swim hope to come back this year even stronger. Sophie Moody ʼ19 elaborated on the team’s goals for this season.

“This season, we hope to go undefeated in dual meets and place within the top two teams at conferences. Other than working hard in the pool and the weight room, we’ve really been working on keeping up our team energy, cheering each other on, and holding each other accountable, and we plan on continuing this momentum and hard work as we progress through the season,” said Moody.

This goal seems like a reasonable endeavour considering how well the season has started out.

Having lost only four seniors last year and added six freshmen this year, Women’s Swim seems to be set up for a terrific year. Kalli Segel ʼ20 is also looking forward

to the conference championships and believes that the team can move up in the rankings this year. The winter season is one of the longest sports seasons at Swarthmore, so Women’s Swim has to find a way to motivate one another to stay strong through each early morning lift and grueling swim practice. Sophie Moody ʼ19 expanded on how she and her teammates stays focused before each meet.

“Before every meet we all get breakfast together as a team at Sharples before we head to the bus or the pool to start warm-up.

Also, as a women’s team, we take turns making little goodie bags for each other filled with snacks, toys, and always tons of tempo-

rary tattoos. We spend the time right before we start warm-ups to get all tatted up in matching temporary tats for the meet, ” said Moody.

It is this type of motivation as well as working towards a realistic team goal that will help Women’s Swim come back to conferences even stronger this year.

If you want to see this motivated and talented team compete, come out to Ware pool, Saturday Dec. 2 at 11 a.m. to see the Garnet face off against Ursinus College.

Both teams hope that they can continue to make a splash in the Centennial Conference.

the project as quickly as possible, but estimates that the planning process will take at least one year with the construction of the new dining hall taking approximately one year to 18 months after the planning.This means that the earliest the new dining hall could open up would be in Spring of 2020 with the Sharples renovation following that.

Brown and Braun both recognize the importance of finding a balance between the needs of current students and future students.

“I think we’ve also tried to be thoughtful about a balance of longer term projects and also shorter term projects that can provide more immediate benefits

to current students. So when you think about some of the smaller residence hall renovations that we’ve been able to do, the matchbox went up pretty quickly, Sprowl’s going to be open in a year. So I think we’ve tried to create a mix of opportunities, some things that students will be able to access in their time,” said Braun.

In addition to the new dining hall and Sharples renovation, the college is also beginning to think about plans for Martin once Biology moves into the BEP, what upgrades can be done to athletic facilities, and upgrades to the libraries. While designing these projects, the college focuses on designing spaces that can be flex-

ible throughout time.

“The other thing we have to recognize is what students want today both in terms of classroom space and social space and residence hall space might not be what students want 15 years from now, 30 years from now, so every project that we’re doing we’re trying to build in a level of flexibility so that if in 10 years from now students wanted to use things in a different way it would be relatively easy to convert it or to kind of reimagine how something’s set up,” said Braun.

Students who are interested in getting involved in renovating Sharples and building a new dining hall can join SGO’s Sharples Renovation Committee.

the day, because the demand is so high. I’m really thankful that the institution made this call to expand this office.”

Natasha Nogueira ’18 thinks that Hempling did a good job as director but thinks that Student Disability Services has a mixed reputation.

“I think there are mixed feelings surrounding Disability Services at Swarthmore. I think a large percentage of students utilize the office and have accommodations. I’ve also heard a lot of complaints about the office,” Nogueira said. “However, I have always had an extremely easy time getting accommodations and resources, [and] I have no complaints. But it is always difficult being in an environment

like Swarthmore, where students and professors expect hard work and diligence, and dealing with a disability that can hinder one’s progress or effectiveness makes that that much harder.”

Nogueira also feels that the change is a bit sudden but agrees with Leuthold and Rose that having two staff members could aid in the office’s work.

“I do think that having more than one person in charge of Disability Services is essential, because it is a large job and very important,” she said. “I’m hoping they will work on improving awareness and understanding between students with disabilities and professors, especially, as one of the largest complaints I hear within the community is

that students with disabilities always have had at least one bad experience with a professor who was not very kind or understanding about their disability.”

Sakomura expressed optimism about Leuthold and Rose’s work in the community and said the academic affairs team was providing support for them.

“Erin and Jenna bring great experience to their roles,” she said, “and they make a great team.”

As they said in an email reintroducing themselves to the campus community, Leuthold and Rose invite any student to contact either or both of them using their e-mails or phone numbers, which are available on the Student Disability Services website.

Campus construction, continued from A1 students and faculty to find a place to sit and enjoy themselves while eating.

“In my experience meal time is one of the few times where students really give themselves permission to [give themselves a break], and if we don’t have enough space where students feel like they can linger a little bit and have those conversations about the seminar or what’s going to be happening this weekend, it really takes away from one of the most important opportunities for those kinds of connections that we think are so crucial to [students’] experience” said Liz Braun, Dean of Students.

In addition to the size, the construction of the serving room

leads to limitations in how food can be served. According to Brown, many peer institutions are utilizing more individualized cooking methods that are not feasible in Sharples.

The current plan is to continue serving food in Sharples as the new dining hall is being constructed. Once the new building is complete, food service will move, and Sharples will be renovated and turned into a student union space.

This will allow the college to meet the demand for both a better dining facility and a student union. Until it burned down in the mid 1980s, Old Tarble served as a student union space where people could gather in a social

capacity. The two reports show that students and alumni believe the campus is missing this kind of space now.

“The space in Clothier that includes Essie Mae’s and [Paces] was intended to replace that and it does certain things well but it really doesn’t function as a student union, and that was the feedback we heard over and over again from students, and then we heard it also when we were talking to alums, gosh what’s really missing from campus is a place.

A place where we can gather as a student body,” said Brown.

Planning for this project will begin next semester. Brown stressed that the college has an aggressive plan to try to complete

Student Disability Services, continued from A1 such an impairment.” The law places the burden on college-age students to ask for accommodations and on institutions to ensure accessibility, according to Leuthold and Rose.

The office attempts to raise campus awareness about varying abilities through programming and events, such as the screening of “DEEJ,” a documentary about a nonspeaking young man advocating for autistic civil rights, on Oct. 26. According to Leuthold and Rose, the event was a success.

There were over 100 community members in attendance.

“In the process of destigmatizing disability as identity, … our office, and the work that our office does, we want to make the barriers for students who are

looking for accommodations to be as thin and as transparent as possible,” said Rose. “And I think a huge step to that is being present on campus, and showing that we’re here and we’re here to support you.”

The new appointments come as the number of accommodations requests has grown tremendously both at the college and nationwide, partly due to the broader definition of disability in the ADA’s 2008 amendment.

According to Leuthold and Rose, about 30 more people requested academic accommodations at the college this year than last year, bringing this year’s total to about 120 requests.

Given the increased workload, Leuthold and Rose feel that hav-

ing two people in the office is very beneficial.

“It’s nice to have somebody else to consult with, and with the amount of work that I feel we both have, it really makes sense to have two people,” said Leuthold.

Rose agreed, adding that it increases the office’s ability to work on campus outreach.

“The ability of dividing the caseload between two people gives us more opportunity to do that campus outreach and that disability as identity work on campus, that I don’t think one person would be able to do,” said Rose. “If 50% of both of our days is meeting with students, I could easily see how one person could meet with their students 100% of

Weekly Crossword

Created by Alex Robey Solve online: http://www.cruciverbalex.com/49/ Across 1.

9.

15.

16.

17.

Madonna hasn’t used one in years Gets lippy with Red army’s enemy?

Swipe

18.

19.

Actor who interviewed the drug lord “El Chapo” in 2015 Event won by Roger Fe derer for five consecu tive years Leash, e.g.

20.

22.

23.

25.

27.

28.

31.

“Full Metal Jacket” grp.

Child tender Citi Field ballplayer Genius Bar worker Queue after Q For Fam. member

33.

“You had your chance!”

35.

“Janie’s Got a Gun” rock band 38.

Carryall bags 39.

Knight’s trainee 40.

Toy with, kitty-style 42.

Tear to pieces 43.

Impala cousin 45.

It’s under Italy’s boot 47.

Louvre Impressionist collection 49.

Affirm one’s humanity?

50.

Explosive sold by Acme 51.

Abbr. in cookbooks 52.

Academic, as a point 54.

Couple of swimmers?

56.

“Put ____ writing!”

58.

Dram or gram, for two 60.

Riverine mammal 64.

Eye in awe 66.

Nobel person 68.

Everlasting, in verse 69.

Thought highly of 70.

Does a landscaper’s work 71.

Like some grapes or watermelons

DOWN 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Glasgow girl Grateful Dead album “Without ____” Top-of- the-bill artist Midmorning break time, briefly Siesta takers Broke fast?

List with sides German Surrealist painter Max Plasterwork Vocal light bulbs Priory of ____: “The Da Vinci Code”

12.

13.

14.

21.

24.

26.

28.

29.

30.

32.

34.

36.

37.

41.

44.

conspirators Sectarian Commensurate Hill slot Coal miner’s concern Sub, e.g.

Like the dog days All bark, no bite type Home business?

They may stand tall in a church Illicit relationship Abandoned Wine opener?

Smallest prime number Torus on a Taurus Dampen, as a

46.

48.

53.

55.

57.

59.

61.

62.

63.

65.

67.

headlight Thick-skinned Sales trails Roof slates Mill metal Plucky emperor?

Charge a criminal?

Hardly heartpounding Times for many Tours tours Wine shop array Pairing word Cheyenne’s foes, once

Answer to last week’s puzzle

November 30, 2017

THE PHOENIX SPORTS

PAGE A6

The week ahead in sports Thursday

Saturday

Women’s Basketball vs. John’s Hopkins at Swarthmore College 6:00 p.m.

Women’s Basketball vs Dickinson College at Dickinson College 2:00 p.m.

Men’s and Women’s Track & Field Jack Pryah Invite at Haverford College 11:00 a.m.

Women’s Swimming vs Ursinus College at Swarthmore College 11:00 a.m.

Men’s Basketball vs Dickinson College at Dickinson College 4:00 p.m.

Men’s Basketball vs Muhlenberg College at Swarthmore College 8:00 p.m.

Men’s Basketball season preview

by Jacob Brady Sports Writer If you take a walk through the lobby of the Fieldhouse these days, you’ll likely hear the sound of a ball repeatedly striking hardwood. That’s right, basketball is back in season, and the Garnet Men’s Basketball team are making a statement to start the season.

They’ve so far gone 4-0, averaging almost 95 points a game, the 20th most in the nation, while outscoring their opponents by nearly 15 points a game. Coming into this season, the Garnet were ranked No. 25 in the nation and were the preseason Centennial Conference Champion selections, and now they find themselves at No. 12 in the most recent rankings.

The Garnet reached their first NCAA basketball tournament last season after winning the Centennial Conference for the first time. However, this year’s team only returns six of last year’s players. Key losses include Sam Lebryk ʼ17, career 1000 point scorer Chris Bourne ʼ17, and former starting point guard Matt Brennan ʼ18. How-

ever, they retain the services of point guard Cam Wiley ʼ19, who had an absolutely phenomenal breakout sophomore season and was named the first ever Garnet All-American after setting the program singleseason record for scoring. He is also joined by Zack Yonda ʼ18, a two-time All-Conference selection. Big man Robbie Walsh ʼ18 also returns for the Garnet as a force in the paint. Last year’s top rebounding team has been well serviced by him so far, along with fellow big men Zac O’Dell ʼ20 and Nate Shafer ʼ20.

All three already have at least 20 boards each on the season.

Jim Lammers ʼ18, the final returner for the Garnet, has tallied the second most minutes on the team and is perhaps best known for his spectacular defense.

Because of all of those personnel losses from last season, the Garnet brought in a very large first-year class of seven.

“The freshman are doing a good job getting acclimated to our system and have continued to improve as they get more reps in practice and more game experience. Since we only have

6 returners from last year they will have to play a big role since many of them will need to play significant minutes for us,” said Walsh.

Already some of the firstyears are having a big impact for the squad. In the first game of the season, when the Garnet blitzed Hood College for 111 points, first-years sharpshooter Conor Harkins ʼ21 had a career performance in his first career game as he scored 27 points, all coming off of three pointers. Abass Sallah ʼ21, another first-year, has already taken on the role of primary ball handler for the Garnet whenever Wiley is off the floor, and he recorded eight assists in the game against Hood. Ryan Ingram ʼ21 has also been playing significant minutes for the squad.

In terms of expectations coming into the season, Yonda’s might have been initially tempered.

“Because we have so many new, young guys, I realized coming into this season that we might have a slower start than past years. It’s a lot easier to start the season strong when we’ve have a team full

of seniors and juniors that all have three plus years of experience under their belts. I wasn’t expecting us to struggle at the beginning because we brought back some key guys and brought in a ton of talent, but I was prepared to face some tough ‘learning experiences’ early on,” said Yonda.

However, as the Garnet have opened with a four-game win streak, the team’s performance has surely exceeded his initial expectations.

“The young guys have been doing an incredible job at picking things up quickly and absorbing information and have exceeded my expectations in that regard. Their performance so far is a huge part of why we already have four wins,” Yonda said.

Head coach Landry Kosmalski, in his five years at Tarble Pavilion, has managed to transform the Garnet from the dregs of the Centennial Conference into a regional powerhouse. Last year’s Mid-Atlantic Region Coach of the Year and two-time Centennial Conference Coach of the Year took over a team that had only won

three games the previous year and by last year had brought them to NCAA tournament and their most successful season in program history.

The Garnet already have a game under their belt in conference play as they travelled down to Maryland to face the Shoremen of Washington College. Wiley scored a gamehigh 18 on an efficient 7-of-13 shooting as the Garnet pulled out a 79-70 victory in their lowest-scoring game of the year. Yonda added 17 points, including seven from the charity stripe. Shafer and O’Dell both had near double-doubles as Shafer went for 11 points and nine rebounds while O’Dell scored 10 and grabbed eight boards, in addition to adding four blocks.

If there is anything to complain about in the Garnet’s performance so far, it might be their slow starts. In their game against Albertus Magnus, they trailed at the half before going on to win by a comfortable 10-point margin. In their game against Misericordia, they only scored 33 in the first half to find themselves tied, before go-

ing on to score an astounding 60 points in the final twenty minutes. The Garnet have consistently made up for any slow starts with rousing second-half performances and have managed to win all their games by fairly comfortable margins.

“We’re winning games because we are talented and can really turn it on for short periods in games which not many teams can handle. You saw that in the Misericordia game with the second-half run that blew the game open. I think we’re doing a good job right now sharing the ball and getting good shots on offense, and also our bigs are doing a tremendous job defensively protecting the rim,” said Yonda.

The Garnet open home conference play tonight against Muhlenberg at 8:00 p.m. as they hope to keep their hot start going. Perhaps another NCAA tournament appearance awaits later this season. In any case, they’ll surely be an exciting team to watch.

rivalry - as professional rivalries can be just as bitter and malevolent - it does move the attention away from institutions that have their academic reputations affected by something as ultimately inconsequential as a game. Furthermore, these rivalries logically tend to occur at the largest state institutions, where the universities themselves have greater scope of influence and the fan bases have greater friction. It is for this reason that it is hard to write off all of Division I collegiate athletics as too competitive, but nevertheless, the problems exist largely at the Division I level.

These rivalries and their negative consequences do simply add to the growing argument against the current state of Division I collegiate athletics. Although the increase in camaraderie and school spirit is no doubt beneficial, these is a point at which the universities and the NCAA have lost

sight of the true meaning of sport. With all of this pressure, it becomes easier to understand why coaches cheat the recruiting system to get a leg up, or cover up terrible actions of both coaches and players simply because they are too valuable to their program. The stakes are high enough already, and the rivalry games only make it worse. Particularly now, with the start of the collegiate men’s basketball season, it will be interesting to see how rivalries like Duke University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill play out. Nevertheless, it is imperative to keep in mind the true purpose of sport, and to and to seriously examine the use of collegiate athletics and their influence as a justification for nefarious actions.

Have college rivalries gone too far?

by Adam Schauer Sports Writer Collegiate athletics play a significant role in the cultures of higher education institutions and their surrounding communities. This is especially the case at the Division I level with higher enrollments, millions of dollars in scholarships and sponsorships on the line, and increased regional influence. The pressure placed on individual athletes and their respective athletic programs to succeed is immense, and the repercussions of failure have tremendous and lasting effects on the lives of student-athletes.

The gravity of the situation is evident with the constant controversy over the ethical issues that athletic departments ignore to ensure the on-field success of their teams.

Now, taking all of this drama, pressure, and controversy and adding the increased stakes of a rivalry, the nature of the

sport changes from competitive fun to all-out war. This is a truly startling part of collegiate athletic culture.

After this thrilling past weekend of NCAA Division I collegiate football, there is no more telling and intriguing phenomenon in American culture than the collegiate athletics rivalry. Auburn and Alabama.

Oregon and Oregon State.

South Carolina and Clemson.

Ohio State and Michigan. All bitter rivalries, all duking it out on the gridiron this past weekend. However, the actions of the fans and players alike have simply added to the already-growing argument that collegiate athletics have moved too far away from their roots and purpose: creating studentathletes. The media attention and heightened emotions of these rivalries only seems to bring these problematic actions to light.

This past week at the Clemson University versus Univer-

sity of South Carolina rivalry match-up, fans on the USC side threw trash all over the field once they were losing in some kind of defensive show of pride.

Not only did Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney denounce the acts, but he also pointed out that it proved dangerous for his own players and staff. At the same time, the Ohio State University’s starting quarterback J.T. Barrett suffered a pregame knee injury at the hands of a sideline photographer, in what seemed to mimic some kind of twisted Tonya HardingNancy Kerrigan assault.

However, these nefarious actions have not only just come about this year. In the Iron Bowl, the affectionate moniker given to the annual University of Alabama versus Auburn University football matchup, both sides have participated in their own illicit actions. While the game is notoriously chippy throughout, the fanbases on both sides also take action,

most notably with Alabama fans poisoning Auburn’s famous trees in Toomer’s Corner.

This trend is not unique to Alabama, and college football rivalry week brings out both the best and the worst in many institutions’ respective fanbases. In all of these examples though, it is one thing to have school pride, but it is another to do so at the expense of personal dignity, ethics, and the welfare of others.

It is of particular interest to note that these “worst” rivalries tend to follow some common trends. For one, the most bitter rivalries tend to occur in regions of the country with fewer professional sports teams nearby, allowing the public to turn their attention and passion towards the collegiate athletics. South Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon, and Alabama are all prime examples of this phenomenon. Although this does not necessarily solve the problem of over-competitive

Athlete of the Week: Connor Harkins The Men’s Basketball team started off this season hot, with a high-scoring 111-89 win over Hood College. Freshman Guard Conor Haskins from Greenwich, Conn. made a big arrival on to the collegiate basketball scene in his first career game, sinking nine three-point shots and scoring 27 points to lead the Garnet in scoring. The Garnet are now 4-0 and ranked 12th nationally, and will play their conference home opener tonight against Muhlenberg College in Tarble Pavilion.

Shelby Dolch // The Phoenix

Jack Corkery: What is your intended major, and what made you choose it?

Conor Haskins: I’m not entirely sure yet, but I am leaning towards majoring in economics. I have always been interested in the areas of business and finance and feel that an economics major would best capture that together.

JC: How did you decide to attend Swarthmore College?

CH: There were a lot of factors that went into making me choose Swarthmore. The biggest thing that I saw in Swarthmore were the endless opportunities. Between the top-notch academics and a talented basketball team, Swarthmore seemed like the perfect fit for me. Additionally, on my visits here all of the players and coaches and even other students I met were all nice and fun to hang out with. It was also a great location, being just over two hours away from where I live so not too far but far enough that I didn’t feel like I was still at home.

JC: How has the adjustment to college life been athletically and academically?

CH: At first it was a big adjustment trying to find the right balance

and way to manage my time. I think what helped me and I’m sure the rest of the freshmen a lot was the fact that our first semester here is pass/fail. This made the workload seem a little less stressful, and allowed for me to figure out how to schedule my time between sports, academics, and sleep. As for basketball, it is similar to how I thought it was going to be work-wise. It is obviously more serious and takes up more time than high school sports, but it is something I love and am passionate about so it doesn’t seem like a hassle to me. By this point I would say I am pretty settled in and have gotten used to college life, but the biggest difference was just trying to figure out how to effectively use my time.

JC: What was it like sinking 9 threes and scoring 27 points in your first collegiate game?

CH: Going into the game I was definitely a little nervous, but I was also really excited. Scoring 27 points in that first game still feels surreal to me, but it felt great just to simply help the team get a win in the first game of the year. To hit nine threes in my first collegiate game is definitely something I’ll remember for a very long time, and it was a pretty special moment to have both of my parents there for it as well.

JC: Do you have any personal or team goals for the remainder of the season?

CH: Our team goal is to simply be the best we can be everyday.

We talked about at the beginning of the year being a top team in the Centennial Conference and even the nation, but Coach Landry does a great job of keeping all of us focused on the next practice or next game, rather than a season-long goal.