The Phoenix Feb 24

FEBRUARY 24, 2011 • THE CAMPUS NEWSPAPER OF SWARTHMORE COLLEGE SINCE 1881 • VOLUME 133, ISSUE 19

PHOENIX

Inside: SBC to reorganize inconsistent shuttle service Students perform in “The Vagina Monologues” Swim teams have strong showing at Conferences

Board of Man agers

approves To wn Ce nter We st am id co nt ro ve rsy p. 5 But should the college have a monopoly on a liquor license? p. 16

The Phoenix

Thursday, February 24, 2011 Volume 133, Issue 19

The independent campus newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881.

Page

14 Jakob Mrozewski Phoenix Staff

Rebecca Ahmad performs her monologue “Hey Miss Pat” during Friday night’s performance of “The Vagina Monologues” in Sci 101.

News

Wedged between western and eastern Europe, Hungarian identify remains confused, pessimistic and sometimes proud.

PAGE 10

Shuttle services get added Freshmen finally gain support Growing discontent in the student body knowledge, learn how to over shuttle services has resulted in initial talk efforts to increase organization. PAGE 3 Concerns raised at fireside chat The Student Council and the Dean’s Office addressed student questions and concerns over the Strategic Planning process in an open fireside chat on Monday. PAGE 4

Town Center West Project finally moves forward Following the Board of Managers’ approval of the Town Center West Project this weekend, the administration is now faced with the task of addressing issues of controversy.

PAGE 5

Boateng awarded prestigious grant for grad school Sylvia Boateng was recently awarded The Fellowship for Aspiring Teachers of Color, a very selective $30,000 grant towards graduate school. PAGE 6

Living & Arts Haverford Symposium addresses disability in the arts This Friday Haverford College is hosting the In/Visible Symposium, a dialogue where prominent professors of disabilities studies can discuss disability in the arts.

PAGE 8

‘King’s Speech’ poised to take top Oscar honors Tim offers up his guesses as to which actors, director and movie will win top honors at the Oscars this weekend, as well as his thoughts on who should win. PAGE 10

Freshmen may have finally learned how to coherently express themselves, but everyone on campus is overwhelmed by all the knowledge they possess. PAGE 11

Steve says: let’s give online dating the ol’ college try Steve Dean spills all about his research on online dating sites. Everyone should consider giving them a try, but some sites are better than others. PAGE 13

Monologues raise awareness for women’s sexuality

The Democrats who fled the standoff in Madison are forgotting their roles as elected officials, Tyler argues. PAGE 17

Sports Fans reinforce athletes’ quests for huge salaries Recent contract demands by Albert Pujols and C.C. Sabathia have sparked Tim to think about the fan’s role surrounding these demands. PAGE 18

Women’s basketball closes out season with win The men’s and women’s basketball team finished off their seasons against Haverford with the women winning 65-60.

PAGE 18

“The Vagina Monologues,” performed last weekend by Swarthmore students, brought issues of women’s sexuality and violence against women to the forefront. PAGE 14

Swim teams place third at Conference Championships

Professor co-authors biography about Spanish writer

The Garnet had a strong showing at the Centennial Conference Championships with many swimmers receiving individual medals. PAGE 19

Last Thursday, the Modern Languages and Literature department hosted Professor Israel Rolon, who wrote a new book on Spanish author Carmon LaFuenta, for Professor Maria Guardiola’s course “La guerra civil en la literatura y el cine.”

PAGE 14

Ceylan Bodur finishes stellar career with 1,001 points Last week in the Garnet’s win over Bryn Mawr, senior Ceylan Bodur became the eighth player in Garnet history to reach 1000 career points. PAGE 20

Opinions

Corrections

Borough’s liquor laws should be reexamined now

FROM THE FEBRUARY 17, 2011 ISSUE:

The Town Center West project should not have a monopoly on alcohol in Swarthmore; the issue should be on the ballot in May. PAGE 16

In last week’s issue, the article “Track & field bests season times at Boston Invite” stated that the women’s distance medley consisted of Kenyetta Givans, Rebecca Hammond, Stephanie Beebe and Emma Saarel.

The team consisted of Givans, Hammond, Beebe and Rebecca Painter ’13. Saarel did not run the race.

Unions are the key to real education reform After seeing “Waiting for Superman,” columnist Jon Erwin-Frank is reminded of the potential unions have in bettering our education system. PAGE 17

Hungarians are caught between the East and the West Wisconsin Democrats must 2

face their responsibilities

EDITORIAL BOARD Camila Ryder Editor in Chief Marcus Mello Managing Editor Menghan Jin News Editor Adam Schlegel Assistant News Editor Susana Medeiros Living & Arts Editor Dina Zingaro Living & Arts Editor Olivia Natan Opinions Editor Paul Chung Photo Editor Allegra Pocinki Photo Editor Julia Karpati Graphics Editor Peter Akkies Director of Web Development Eric Sherman Director of Web Development Jeffrey Davidson Editor Emeritus STAFF Jeffrey Davidson In-Depth Reporter Navin Sabharwal News Writer Patrick Ammerman News Writer Sera Jeong Living & Arts Writer Steven Hazel Living & Arts Writer Steve Dean Living & Arts Columnist Alex Israel Living & Arts Columnist Ariel Swyer Living & Arts Columnist Aliya Padamsee Living & Arts Columnist Timothy Bernstein Film Critic Renu Nadkarni Artist Naia Poyer Artist Ben Schneiderman Crossword Writer Holly Smith Crossword Writer Tyler Becker Opinions Columnist Danielle Charette Opinions Columnist Eva McKend Opinions Columnist Jon Erwin-Frank Opinions Columnist Emma Waitzman Artist Ana Apostoleris Sports Writer Daniel Duncan Sports Writer Renee Flores Sports Writer Timothy Bernstein Sports Columnist Hannah Purkey Sports Columnist Andrew Greenblatt Sports Columnist Renee Flores Copy Editor Lauren Kim Copy Editor Susanna Pretzer Copy Editor Jakob Mrozewski Photographer Eric Verhasselt Photographer BUSINESS STAFF Ian Anderson Director of Business Development Patricia Zarate Circulation Manager GRAPHICS Julia Karpati Cover Design Parker Murray Layout Assistant CONTRIBUTORS Henry Kietzman, Rachel Killackey, Aaron Kramer, Anna Rothschild, Eli Siegel, Mihika Srivastava, Brent Stanfield OPINIONS BOARD Camila Ryder, Marcus Mello, Olivia Natan EDITORS’ PICKS PHOTOS COURTESY OF: (clockwise from top left): http://tiny.cc/wtff9 http://tiny.cc/fi38m http://tiny.cc/wdnhg http://tiny.cc/mit9v TO ADVERTISE: E-mail: advertising@swarthmorephoenix.com Advertising phone: (610) 328-7362 Address: The Phoenix, Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081 Direct advertising requests to Camila Ryder.

The Phoenix reserves the right to refuse any advertising. Advertising rates subject to change.

CONTACT INFORMATION Offices: Parrish Hall 470-472 E-mail: editor@swarthmorephoenix.com Newsroom phone: (610) 328-8172 Address: The Phoenix, Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081 Web site: www.swarthmorephoenix.com Mail subscriptions are available for $60 a year or $35 a semester. Direct subscription requests to Camila Ryder.

The Phoenix is printed at Bartash Printing, Inc. The Phoenix is a member of the Associated College Press and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.

All contents copyright © 2011 The Phoenix.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.

For these and any other mistakes we may have unintentionally made, we extend our sincerest apologies.

February 24, 2011

THE PHOENIX

News

swarthmorephoenix.com

events menu Today Faculty Lecture: Randall Exon Studio Art Professor Randall Exxon will be showcasing his works of art at 4:30 p.m. in the Scheuer Room.

Shuttle services get added support

“Quartier Mozart” Film Screening Head over to Sci 101 at 7 p.m. for the African Film Series showing of “Quartier Mozart” (1992) by JeanPierre Bekolo of Cameroon.

Study Abroad in Spain The Spanish Department will be hosting an informational session in Kohlberg 318 at 4:15 p.m. on the study abroad opportunities in Spain. Former participants will be available to answer any questions.

Tomorrow Honors Acting Thesis: Three Tall Women See Eva Amesse ’11, Nell BangJensen ’11 and Isa St. Clair ’11 in their Honors thesis production of Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” at 8 p.m. in LPAC. Additional performances will be held Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.

WRC Birthday Party Kick off Women’s History Month by celebrating the birthday of the Women’s Resource Center with cake and Grapevine at 7 p.m.

Saturday, February 26th Direct Action Training Seminar Training for Change’s co-organizer Daniel Hunter will be leading a training session on developing successful techniques for social activism and campaigning from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Lang Center’s Keith Room.

Mr. Engineer Pageant Overseen by special guest judge Martin Warner, contestants will compete to demonstrate engineering prowess, grace, and verbal ability in Upper Tarble at 7 p.m.

Mainstage Musical: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Come to LPAC at 7:30 p.m. to watch and participate in this musical about evil, love, laundromats and hammers.

Monday, February 28th A History of One's Own: Asian America in the Global Age The annual Genevieve Lee ’96 Memorial Lecture will be given by Prof. Sucheta Mazumdar of Duke University in Sci 199 at 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, February 29th Pizza and Parable Swarthmore Progressive Christians will be hosting a time to study Scripture and enjoy pizza in the Bond Common Worship Room at 6:30 p.m.

E-mail submissions for the events menu to news@swarthmorephoenix.com

tHe PHOenIX

Allegra Pocinki Phoenix Staff

SBC Manager Naomi Liang hopes to reduce shuttle inconsistencies and increase effectiveness of services through additional organizational measures, such as the Shuttle Status Guide.

BY ELI SIEGEL esiegel2@swarthmore.edu

Recently, there have been student complaints with the Student Budget Committee’s morning shuttle, which goes from Parrish Circle to PPR and Mary Lyon. Students are frustrated because the shuttle is consistently not on time and the schedules are not clearly posted.

“When I lived in Mary Lyon I was frustrated by how sporadic the morning shuttle was. There were days when the shuttle would not show up and we didn’t know anything about it,” Julio Alicea ’13 said.

“Sometimes the morning shuttle doesn’t exist,” a student from Mary Lyon who wished to remain anonymous said. “It would be better if there was a place to check to see the shuttle times if it were delayed.”

The way to report and update the morning shuttle’s status is a long process. If a driver cannot run the shuttle, he or she must e-mail other drivers to see if someone can fill in. If another driver cannot be found, Naomi Liang ’12, the Student Budget Committee (SBC) manager, updates the SBC website to say that the shuttle will not be running or will be delayed.

“It is important that students contact me when the shuttles aren’t running so that I can confirm this,” Liang said.

However, because this process takes time to be completed, the SBC website is not immediately updated, meaning that

students often wait for the shuttle for long periods of time — even if it is not running.

The most effective way for students to find out if the shuttle is running is to call Public Safety to see if the key to the shuttle van has been picked up.

“Every morning, I receive calls every five minutes from students to see if the morning shuttle is running. It is not the students’ fault,” said Ellie Jamison, the communications supervisor at Public Safety.

“The students are depending on the shuttle to transport them to campus for class. Due to the inconsistency of the shuttle running, students have to call Public Safety because it is the only way for them to see if the key has been picked up and the shuttle is available for that day,” she said.

The evening shuttle that’s run by Public Safety has a more consistent track record and students find it to be more dependable. “The evening shuttle is more reliable,” the same student from ML said.

Unlike the morning shuttle, which is run by students, Public Safety employees drive the evening shuttle. “Although sometimes there are delays because a driver is out due to an emergency, the evening shuttle very, very rarely doesn’t run,” second shift Sergeant Dominick Martino said.

However, Liang and the SBC are conducting ongoing attempts to make their shuttles more efficient and to make their schedules more easily accessible

February 24, 2011

for students.“A priority that I have is to create a manual for drivers to know what to do,” Liang said.

In addition, Liang has created a Shuttle Status Guide on the SBC website where students can check whether or not a shuttle is running the day it is scheduled. She is also considering the possibility of a morning shuttle hotline where the driver would leave messages updating the status of the shuttle.

Students could then call this hotline and hear the driver’s message.

These modifications would help streamline the process for reporting when a driver cannot make their shift and would bring student’s attention to this more quickly.

Similar communication issues have affected Public Safety’s Philly Shuttle, which was requested by Student Council in 2002. The online form through which students sign up for the shuttle listed different times from those that the Public Safety personnel saw when they logged into the administrator section of the site. Public Safety recently discovered this problem and are working with the college’s Information Technology Services to correct the issue.

“We are always trying to fine tune things and improve reliability,” Director of Public Safety Owen Redgrave said.

If students have any issues or opinions on the SBC shuttles, Liang expressed that they should approach her.

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Concerns raised at fireside chat

Week in piCtures

from study abroad because there are far fewer work opportunities abroad than there are for students on finanThis Monday, the Dean’s Office cial aid who stay at Swarthmore. and Student Council co-hosted an The college currently asks stuopen discussion of Swarthmore’s dents who go abroad to take out loans ongoing Strategic Planning process. to replace lost work income. Talbot Students met with a panel to discuss said that the Committee will address the College’s admissions, access and this concern. affordability.

Another student raised the conAbout 20 students spoke with cern that international students may Laura Talbot, Director of Financial be deterred from applying because Aid, Jim Bock ’90, Dean of the college does not accept them on a Admissions and Financial Aid, need-blind basis.

Suzanne Welsh, Vice President for Though this policy predates Finance and Treasurer and a few Talbot’s career at Swarthmore, she StuCo reprebelieves that sentatives. the rationale is President that internaR e b e c c a tional students “It’s an opportunity for us Chopp and are far more to think about the way Dean of expensive to Students Liz fund, mainly Swarthmore is now and Braun were because they why it is that way.” also in attencannot receive dance. federal aid.

Simon Zhu ’11 StuCo ran a “All of their survey asking funds have to StuCo President students what come from topic they Swarthmore,” would like to Talbot said, discuss for the next Fireside Chat. “but that doesn’t mean that this poli“We want to get students’ voices cy won’t change … The committees heard,” Simon Zhu ’11, StuCo will discuss it.”

President, said.

The chat reflected broader stuStudents wanted to address finan- dents’ concerns about the amount of cial aid and admissions policy. Zhu money available to students, espesees the chats as a way of increasing cially given the recent economic the avenues of representation in downturn and the fact that college order to translate student concerns tuition costs are steadily increasing. into Planning Committee discussion. “We look at the growth in national “The way Swarthmore is now is family incomes … Our tuition has because someone did or didn’t speak been increasing parallel to that,” up before, so it’s an opportunity for Welsh said. us to think about the way The college tries to accommodate Swarthmore is now and why it is that families that cannot keep up with way,” Zhu said. this growth. “If tuition is increasing “The people on that panel are very but a family’s income is not increaseager to just hear from students and ing as much, they can apply for more get as much feedback as possible … financial aid,” Welsh said.

It’s very easy to feel that Strategic The Board of Managers has had to Planning is just something that is deal with the decline in the college’s going on … I encourage everyone to endowment. get involved.”

“We’ve decided to balance cuts,” Panel members hoped that the Welsh said, “There was a theme of chat would ferret out student sugges- shared sacrifice. We were able to pretions on policy in order to discuss serve the academic program, finanthem in the Planning Committee. cial aid [and] we didn’t have layoffs “We want to give students extra of staff.” opportunities to advise the This year, the college has not Committee,” Talbot said. reduced the budget allowance for “I think [the Chat] had a good financial aid. Some highlights of the turnout, but we always want more changes include a 3.4 percent people to come ... There’s been a lot of increase in student charges, an effort to get everyone involved,” she increase in staff salary and student said. “We always want to hear from scholarships, and a $1.2 million fund students.” for technology capital projects.

Panel members began by giving However, spending from the the audience an overview of current endowment for the operation budget, admissions as well as financial aid even with the raised student charges, rules and practices. The panel then has increased. opened the floor to discussion.

Inevitably, the college will have to Those who attended the chat pri- make further cuts if the endowment marily discussed admissions out- does not grow. “Rather than do it all reach, financial aid policy for inter- at once, we said ‘let’s just wait and national students and the perceived see how [the endowment] develops,’” changing composition of incoming Welsh said. classes.

The Committee hopes that stuThe chat addressed a number of dents will bring further concerns and student concerns about financial aid suggestions forward. Budget and policy. A student worried that low financial aid policy and statistics are income students might be dissuaded available on the college’s website.

BY AARON KRAMER akramer2@swarthmore.edu

Paul Chung Phoenix Staff

Alumni formed a panel to celebrate the Lang Opportuniy Scholars Program as well as the general contributions of Eugene M. Lang to the college.

Paul Chung Phoenix Staff

Jacob Krich spoke about opportunities provided by the Rhodes and Goldwater Scholarships last Thursday.

Allegra Pocinki Phoenix Staff

On Tuesday, Jonathan Githenz-Mayer gave a lecture on Islamism and radicalization in contemporary Britain.

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February 24, 2011

tHe pHOeniX

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Town Center West Project finally moves forward

BY PATRICK AMMERMAN pammerm1@swarthmore.edu The Town Center West Project, which hopes to build a new inn, bookstore and restaurant on Swarthmore’s campus, was approved by the Board of Managers this past weekend. The project is to be located on the south side of Swarthmore’s campus, near the Ville. “[This is] not just putting things down in the Ville but it serves very much some of the needs of our community,” President Rebecca Chopp said, who announced the decision to go through with the project in a thorough, 1,450 word e-mail to the student body on Monday.

According to supporters of the project, the hotel could provide numerous benefits for the college community, such as providing college guests with on campus lodging — which would also enable the college to better host academic conferences — creating new tax revenues for the Borough and acting as what Chopp calls an “intellectual living room” for the campus.

The hotel has been the subject of much controversy on campus since the idea’s conception. “[Some are concerned] it may further erode green space, hinder existing retail outlets, create the possibility for public safety and health hazards, and not be economically viable,” Vice President for Facilities and Services C. Stuart Hain said in an article published in The Phoenix, the Daily Gazette and the Swarthmorean this past September.

Another major issue surrounding it has been a proposed neutrality agreement, designed to protect workers’ rights at the new hotel, which has not been enacted thus far.

The school administration acknowledges that the project has many points of

contention, and has proposed several chances for students and community members to have their voices heard, which will begin next week and continue on for the rest of the semester. “Being the kind of place that we are where we really value civil discourse ... we’re going to host a couple of meetings that are going to be open, that we can come to that borough residents can come to where we can look at some of the issues that people want to be heard about,” said Melanie Young, Vice President of Human Resources.

On Monday, Feb. 28, Rick Pastorino, a hospitality industry expert, will present an overview of the nation’s hospitality industry. In addition, on We d n e s d a y, March 2, three industry experts, including a super vising attorney for the National Labor Relations Board, will participate in a panel discussion of issues regarding neutrality agreements.

The idea for a hotel located on Swarthmore’s campus originated from research done by two planning groups for the college and also the Borough. In 1999, they published a report of their suggestions, one of which was a high-scale inn and restaurant of about 65 rooms.

Before any planning could begin, however, the school needed an ordinance from the town, which was finally given to the college in 2005. In a narrow vote in 2001, precinct voters voted to maintain

Swarthmore borough as a dry town, with the exception of the college having the opportunity to purchase a liquor license for the inn’s proposed restaurant. This would make the project more economically appealing and viable for developers.

Borough voters have also previously passed a piece of legislation granting a liquor license to the proposed restaurant, as means to make the project more economically viable.

Work began in earnest after 2005 to further think the project through, but according to Hain, “it’s taken us until now to come up to this through a series of iterations and conversations with developers.”

Some key changes that have been made over time include the reduction of the inn from 65 rooms to 40-45 rooms, the dismissal of creating residential apartments as a part of the project, and the decision to self-develop and not hire an outside developer.

According to Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Suzanne Welsh, “we will own it and arrange for it’s operation.”

“There are lots of decision points still ahead,” Chopp said. For example, the college still needs go through land use processes and zoning processes with the Swarthmore borough.

“It’s not usual when you build a building on a college [for it to take this long],” Chopp said, comparing the project to the recent building of a library at her previ-

“It’s taken us until now to come up to this through a series of iterations and conversations with developers.”

Stu Hain V.P. for Facilities and Services

ous position at Colgate University.

Chopp hopes that having a hotel on campus will help Swarthmore become more of a leader in shaping the direction of higher education. “People have looked to us as a place of leadership,” Chopp said.

“This will also provide us a space to host those kind of conversations in [a] national and international place,” she said.

Students and community members are encouraged to participate in the dialogues the school will be holding for the rest of the semester, which will help to guide the direction for future planning of the project.

Groups such as Swarthmore Labor Action Project (SLAP) have been unable to make the administration take concrete steps to address major issues in the planning of the project thus far. However, Chopp promised in an email to hold “numerous campus conversations about this proposal,“ including such issues as workers’ rights.

“We want to make sure that since it’s on college land and built with college money, people who are working there have good jobs,” Adam Bortner ’12, a SLAP leader, said. He is frustrated with the lack of responsiveness from the administration with regard to the wishes of students and community leaders.

Last semester, SLAP presented to Chopp a petition in favor of a neutrality agreement for the future in workers which had around 700 signatures, representing almost half the student body.

Those who are concerned about seeing that this and other issues are addressed fairly by those in charge of planning the project should be sure to attend next week’s two events as well as future discussions surrounding the Town Center West Project.

News iN brief

SLAP rallies for worker neutrality in Town West Project planning Last Friday afternoon, a group of about 60 students and faculty gathered in Kohlberg courtyard.

“This is an opportunity to demonstrate the strength of our voices as students and staff when we stand in solidarity with workers and make it clear that our demands cannot be silenced,” read an e-mail which made its way around the student body on Thursday evening. The e-mail called students concerned about workers’ rights, specifically workers who will presumably work at the Town Center West inn, restaurant and bookstore, to join in the rally.

The protesters gathered in the courtyard, disseminating cardboard posters and one or two noisemakers to the students. A cheer went up from the gathered students as President Rebecca Chopp passed the protesters and entered Kohlberg.

The protest coincided with the first of two days of the Board of Managers meeting in Kohlberg’s Scheuer Room, a meeting which culminated in the approval of the project that President Chopp announced to the student body on Monday through e-mail.

Shortly after Chopp walked by, the group began to march around the west side of Kohlberg, reciting chants that highlighted the need for a democratic process in planning the Town Center West project, as well as the need for a neutrality agreement to be put in place to ensure that the future inn operates under fair labor practices.

After circling twice around the Scheuer Room side of Kohlberg, the group gathered again in Kohlberg Courtyard where Danielle Noble ’12 addressed the crowd.

THe PHOeNiX

“[As of] right now, the Board of Managers has not taken us seriously,” Noble shouted.

She expressed to the crowd her frustration that past meetings with Swarthmore’s administrators had thus far produced no neutrality agreement, although the meetings have been happening on and off for two years.

“We’ve been communicating directly with the administration … especially during this past school year, just to make sure they put some protections in place so that Swarthmore’s commitment to social responsibility and the Quaker heritage are enacted and kept solid as they get in to this new endeavor,” said Adam Bortner ’12, a SLAP leader.

Bortner is frustrated that people who have been involved in the planning of the Town Center West Project still have not addressed the issue of worker neutrality since his joining of SLAP in his first year.

The rally itself was well attended. “We just wanted to have a visible demonstration of students who care, so that they’d hear our voice,” Bortner said.

Students were enthusiastic; by some reports, the chanting and cheering could be heard throughout the science quad and from as far away as Willets.

“There was a lot of energy,” Patrick Walsh ’14 said.

After Monday’s announcement that the Board of Managers permitted the project, SLAP’s stance did not change. “They are still delaying any real action,” Bortner said .

SLAP’s effort to get the college to commit to putting in place worker protections is still ongoing.

BY PATRICK AMMERMAN

February 24, 2011

Paul Chung Phoenix Staff

In Kohlberg courtyard last Friday afternoon, students and faculty gathered to join SLAP’s rally for workers’ rights.

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Boateng awarded prestigious grant for grad school

BY BRENT STANFIELD bstanfi1@swarthmore.edu Sylvia Boateng ’11, a Political Science and Education Special Major, Black Studies Minor, and Richard Rubin Scholar recently received the prestigious Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship for Aspiring Teachers of Color. “I was completely shocked to find out that I got the award! Now, I’m so excited to learn how to teach, get certified, and begin my teaching commitment of 3 years in a high needs school.”

Boateng said.

The Fellowship for Aspiring Teachers is a $30,000 stipend for graduate school, guidance in attaining a teacher certificate after graduate school, and support from a mentor for the first three years of teaching. The fellowship was established by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 1992 in an attempt to support prospective teachers of color.

Only a select 25 applicants are

chosen every year for the fellowship. A large number of fellows have become teachers through this program, and have remained so for many years.

The goal of the fellowship is to improve teacher quality, diversity and effectiveness through recruiting, supporting and retaining teachers of color in the public school systems in America.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), which established the Fellowship, has the goal of advancing social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable and peaceful world. The fund joined the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, a foundation that seeks to decrease the achievement gap between racial and socioeconomic groups in the United States by providing fellowships to promising teachers, in 2009.

Boateng became interested in the achievement gap between racial and socioeconomic

groups in working with Dare 2 Soar, a student-run program in which Swarthmore students tutor children in communities in Chester, PA, during her first year.

“I was tutoring second graders … and would see some of [them] struggling with their homework, but also that some of them were doing really well, so I became curious as to why there was such a difference between students in certain classrooms,” Boateng said.

The Dare 2 Soar program also helped Boateng better understand education. “Dare 2 Soar has helped me to learn how to be a facilitator and learn how to do classroom management,” Boateng said.

While at Swarthmore, Boateng has been a member of the Swarthmore AfricanAmerican Student Society (SASS) and Swarthmore Womyn of Color Collective (SWOCC), among other groups.

“SASS and SWOCC have

helped me in terms of general thinking about life, about teaching, about my own identity, and that has helped me go into things like Dare 2 Soar with a critical perspective,” Boateng said.

In Fall 2008, Boateng and Sable Mensah ’11 co-sponsored a program at Columbus Elementary School called Powerful Young Writers Literary Magazine.

They received a Swarthmore Foundation Grant and created and delivered a poetry-focused curriculum. “She has really been an amazing person to collaborate with ... because of her ability to listen, pushback, adapt and learn.” Mensah said, “this [The Literary Magazine Project] is certainly a part of the solid foundation that will make her an impactful, effective, amazing educator.”

Boateng is currently working with Professor Frank Grossman on her thesis statement.“What impresses me about Sylvia is

arounD higher eDucation

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Bars asked to dismiss State Patty’s Day event

BY ZACH GEIGER collegian.psu.edu, Feb. 23, 2011 Long lines outside of local bars at 10:30 a.m. may be a thing of the past as students prepare to celebrate State Patty’s Day this weekend.

This coming weekend is going to be “business as usual” for bars in State College, Downtown State College Improvement District Director Jody Alessandrine said.

Local businesses — including downtown bars and clothing stores — were asked to refrain from participating in the “faux holiday,” Alessandrine said. “We are really appreciative to those that have refrained [from participating],” Alessandrine said. “The relationship with all parties is strengthened with the cooperation.”

In 2007, some downtown bars opened their doors early to accommodate lines of patrons. The Phyrst, 111 E. Beaver Ave., opened its doors at 10:30 a.m. that year.

The student-created holiday has continued to grow each year, and in 2010, State College police received 365 calls and made 160 arrests over the course of the weekend.

About 24 total alcohol overdoses were reported. Police also issued 241 citations — and 151, or 62 percent, of those cited were not Penn State students.

But with town and gown officials denouncing the event, many bars said they will not acknowledge the holiday in any way. Mad Mex, 240 S. Pugh St., will hold its normal business hours and late night food specials, general manager Colleen McIntyre-Luke said. “We are treating it like any other Saturday,” she said.

The Darkhorse Tavern, 128 E. College Ave., is not doing anything special to mark the weekend and will also hold normal business hours, manager Danielle Hannah said. Downtown bars under the Hotel State

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her passion, her ability to relate theory to real world situations, her commitment to social justice, her commitment to her community, and her profound intelligence,” Grossman said.

Boateng is seeking to pursue a Master’s degree program in teaching next year and plans to earn a teacher’s certificate in secondary social studies. As such, Boateng has applied to graduate schools through the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers, an institute which supports students committed to diversity and addressing issues concerning racial disparity in schools. The University of Pennsylvania, Brown, New York University and Stanford are among the 11 schools to which she has applied. At present, she has been accepted into the University of Pennsylvania but is waiting to hear back from the other universities. After getting her graduate degree, Boateng aspires to become a middle school social studies teacher.

Thinking about summer courses?

College liquor license, such as Zeno’s Pub, 100 W. College Ave., and Indigo, 112 W. College Ave., will operate as usual, a company spokeswoman said.

“As a company, Hotel State College will have normal business hours,” she said.

Duke Gastiger, owner of the AllAmerican Rathskeller, said the bar is opening at its regular time. The Rathskeller won’t have any drink specials on Saturday but will have food specials — one way of “managing the chaos,” Gastiger said.

“We are a tavern that’s been around for almost 80 years now, and we’re catering to students,” Gastiger said. “We would never close on a Saturday for any contrived reason, but I think you have to be a little flexible in what you offer. I think not having specials is part of that.”

Last year, the Tavern Association denounced State Patty’s Day when downtown bars unanimously decided not to open early or promote any holiday specials.

This year, university officials such as Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Sims — as well as Alessandrine and Borough Manager Tom Fountaine — sent letters to local bars and retailers asking them to refrain from participating in promoting State Patty’s Day, Alessandrine said. Alessandrine said those local businesses — not just bars — are aware of how their actions affect the community at large. “It shows that we’re communityminded,” Alessandrine said. “We’re all in this together.”

State College Police Department Chief Tom King and Tavern Association President Jennifer Zangrilli were unavailable to comment by press time Tuesday.

Managers at Café 210 West, 210 W. College Ave., and Kildare’s Irish Pub, 538 E. College Ave., could not comment on their weekend hours.

February 24, 2011

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Around higher educAtion

Admissions integrates undergrads in recruitment

BY SETH ZWEIFLER dailypennsylvanian.com, Feb. 22, 2011

The future of Penn admissions may depend largely on one group — current Penn undergraduates.

At least that’s what Dean of Admissions Eric Furda believes.

Nearly three years after coming to the helm of the Admissions Office, Furda said he is now looking for ways to better integrate Penn students in the recruitment and outreach process for high-school applicants.

“We’re trying to refine and build upon how we represent the Penn experience in an authentic way,” Furda said. “To me, undergraduates are a largely untapped resource that might help us achieve that goal.”

Though the Admissions Office began working with minority groups like the Lambda Alliance and the Latino Coalition last year on various recruitment initiatives, Furda believes there’s “definitely work to be done” to get a greater number of students involved.

To help turn his vision into reality, Furda recently led the creation of the University’s first-ever Admissions Dean’s Advisory Board. Seventeen student members of ADAB met with Furda for the first time last December.

College sophomore and ADAB member Alex Amaniel said the group exists “to be Furda’s eyes and ears on what students think about admissions strategies.” ADAB is made up of “representatives from a diverse variety of cultural and academic backgrounds on campus,” Amaniel added.

While ADAB does not directly make admissions policy, student members have been working over the

past few weeks on various video projects about their he said.

“Penn experience.” When completed, Amaniel said Michael Goran, a 1976 College graduate and that the videos will be shown to prospective students. founder of IvySelect College Consulting, said that In addition to ADAB, Furda helped oversee the for- high-school applicants often show greater enthusiasm mation of the Quaker Opportunity and Access Team toward a college that takes a personal interest in last semester. Quaker OATs includes representatives them. from the 5B — Penn’s five minority coalitions — as “When it’s not a clear-cut choice, direct contact is well as student members of the Kite and Key Society something that can definitely help bring a student and representatives from the Admissions Office. over to the other side,” Goran said.

College junior and Quaker OATs chairwoman But for Goran, personal outreach strategies aren’t Jewel Lester said the group serves as a way to “bring everything in college admissions. Since high-school together a lot of different students today are applying stakeholders to push forto more schools than ever ward Penn’s admissions before, Goran believes that “We’re trying to refine and build “no single factor can make and recruitment goals.”

When admissions decior break the deal.” upon how we represent the sions are released on Mar. Furda said that his goals 30, Quaker OATs will host Penn experience in an authen- center around a desire to letter-signing parties and “find out how Penn admistic way.” phone banks in an effort to sions can help students “reach out personally to make more informed deciEric Furda more prospective stusions in this process.” Still, Dean of Admissions dents,” she added. however, he admitted that Furda said he also hopes yield rates are always an to make “flagging” applicaimportant consideration tions for specific academic and personal interests a when implementing any new initiatives. more common practice for Penn admissions.

Penn’s yield rate has hovered right around 63 perCurrently, the Admissions Office flags applications cent over the past three years. This application cycle, from members and supporters of minority groups on Furda’s approach to increasing that number is one campus. However, Furda hopes to extend that out- that he describes as a “zone defense.” reach to encompass a wider variety of academic and “I think that yield efforts start right when a stusocial interests. dent receives mailings from us, sometimes in their “If a student’s essay is about their interest in a sophomore year of high school,” he said. “Our goal is field like art … then that’s something we’d like to to provide a collective experience from many differpass along to a particular community here at Penn,” ent parties — from admissions, faculty and students.”

Around higher educAtion

Students with ties to Egypt concerned, proud of country

BY ANH HUYNH pittnews.com, Feb. 22, 2011

When photographs of the Egyptian protests dominated the front pages, the average student looked at a revolutionin-progress. Others looked for family members who were part of the protests.

These students who call Egypt home or have family members in the country only grew more invested in Egypt’s affairs after the start of the revolution.

With all her relatives in Egypt, senior Sarah Moawad, president of Students for Justice in Palestine, began to pay closer attention to Egypt even before the protests began in late January.

“Interestingly, the week before Jan. 25, we were talking about the rallies in Tunisia and wondering when it would be Egypt’s turn,” she said.

Some of Moawad’s family members took part in the protests, she said, including one of her cousins who was shot with a rubber bullet and another who was beaten by the police.

“I was more worried and scared when they later sent me photos of the injured,” Moawad said.

But soon her concern gave way to pride.

“I’m so proud to be an Egyptian. I’m proud of Egypt and the people there.

They proved to the world that they could implement change through peace, and they all did so by themselves, with no outside intervention the PhoeniX

said that young people had been angry whatsoever,” she said.

While Moawad speculated on the for so long they were ready for an antipossibility of a protest in early government movement.

Youssef Ragheb, an Arabic profesJanuary, the events took senior sor at Pitt, said there was more to the Ahmed Gharib by surprise.

Gharib, who visits Egypt every year revolution than just the protesters. He to see family, said he thought Egyptian said the Egyptian government’s ignopeople in the past seemed to support rance, the country’s lack of enemies, Egyptians’ craving for democracy and Mubarak and his administration.

“That’s why I wasn’t expecting it at modern technologies all played a role all. Nobody saw it coming. No one in ousting Mubarak from his position.

Although the protests did much for knew the Egyptian people had it in democracy in the country, they also them,” Gharib said Gharib tried to contribute to the presented a situation where people protests as much as he could by organ- were destroying Egyptian landmarks and harming izing rallies in foreign jourfront of the nalists.

Cathedral of Moawad Learning to “I was more worried and said “the peoraise awarescared when they later sent ple who did ness of Egypt’s the destruchappenings. me photos of the injured.” tion” were His actions Sarah Moawad paid by the weren’t the to only contribuU. Pitt Students for Justice government distort the tions coming in Palestine President country’s from the image. “True United States. protesters Moawad said the U.S. media and social media helped protect the museums and foreign journalists,” Moawad said. sites helped mobilize the Egyptians.

Ragheb said that the government She said that websites like Facebook and Twitter did a good job of instructed most anarchists to attack covering the protests and putting the foreign reporters and damage the situation at the forefront of global country in order to strike fear into the mass population. news.

“Some anarchists could have been But Moawad, who also visits Egypt every summer, attributed most of the acting all by themselves out of dire revolution’s success to Egyptians. She needs,” Ragheb said.

February 24, 2011

Regardless of the damage incurred during the protests, these students predict a bright future for Egypt and the Middle East.

Gharib said that events in Egypt could be the beginning of more revolutions throughout the area.

The fact that a ruthless government like Egypt’s could be toppled will empower other Arab countries to stand up for themselves and demand democracy, he said, adding that the protests in Egypt helped break the barrier of fear that has been stifling the Arab world and made it possible for further peaceful uprisings to follow.

Sophomore Hussein Mohamed agreed.

“Egypt is the leader of the region, so when we do something, everyone follows,” he wrote in an e-mail.

These students said the unrest won’t stop them from visiting over the summer. All three said they planned on making trips.

Mohamed, though, had planned his return since he bought a plane ticket last August. He said that before the protests began, he wondered how he was going to find a job in Egypt postgraduation.

Although Egypt has a high rate of unemployment, he said he now has a good reason to return home.

“After I saw hope in our youth, the ones that decided that enough is enough and now is the time for true change, home has got dearer to my heart,” he said.

7

Living & Arts Haverford symposium addresses disability in the arts

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BY HENRY KIETZMAN hkietzman1@swarthmore.edu Typically, identity is defined as race, ethnicity, nationality, class and gender. However, many forget to recognize disability as an identity category.

Relatively new, the interdisciplinary field of disability studies attempts to establish disability as an identity through destigmatization, as well as by challenging the notion that disability is defined solely by medical rehabilitation.

Disability studies explore the factors defining disability as a social and cultural construct, and also attempt to discover more about its social role through critical response and dialogue. Haverford College will host a dialogue this Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. in the Stokes Auditorium as part of the In/Visible Symposium, which is an opportunity for prominent professors of disability studies to discuss their experiences of and opinions on disabilities and the arts.

Both Debora Sherman and Kristen Lindgren of Haverford’s English department and writing program organized the event. In the past 10 years, the two professors have organized three symposiums concerning disability studies with the hopes of bringing awareness to the larger college community.

“None of these colleges have courses or curriculums in disability studies. We bring in scholars and artists and practitioners and advocates to demonstrate that there is a scholarly field as well as [an] artistic practice. This one in particular focuses on the arts,” Sherman said. The speakers chosen are quite prominent in the field. “We wanted to bring together scholars, artists and curators so that we had the point of view of art practice, of art criticism, and also curatorial practice,” Lindgren said. “The conversation will span those three areas.”

The symposium will begin with each panelist giving about a half an hour presentation of their own works before leading into open discussion about disability and the arts between the panelists and the audience. The panelists include authors Tobin Siebers and Georgina Kleege, artist Katherine Sherwood and co-curators Ann Fox and Jessica Cooley.

Access is one of the critical issues Lindgren and Sherman hope to address. “Access to the art itself and access to gallery spaces and museum spaces,” Lindgren said. “Access even to the surface of the painting, at what point do you represent bodies that are not ideal? To what extent does that interrogate and contest our notions of what one should look like?” Sherman said in light of accessibility to artwork.

Another significant component of disability studies is analyzing one’s own reaction when difference is depicted in art. Lindgren explained that the symposium will focus on “how people are often more able to look closely, to stare, at a piece of art representing disability in some way then they are an actual person with disabilities. It can give someone an opportunity to explore their own reactions to disability.”

Ann Fox, associate professor of English at Davidson College, is a speaker for Sunday’s panel.

Currently, Fox serves as the chair of the MLA Executive Committee of the Division on Disability Studies, and has served as a member of the executive board of the Society for Disability Studies. Also, she is the co-curator of two disability-related art exhibitions: Re/Formations: Disability, Women, and Sculpture and STARING. Fox first became involved with disabilities studies through her interactions with a local theater, The Disability Project, while working at Washington University in St. Louis. “I’d never thought about disability as a culture; I’d never thought about disability activism or disability rights,” Fox said.

Disability studies attracted Fox, who originally studied feminist theory. “It totally made sense to me to think about how gender is used to ‘other’ people, certainly it makes sense that people whose bodies deviate from what we think is ‘normal,’ how they might be ‘othered’ by society” Fox said.

In anticipation of Sunday’s discussion, Fox hopes to share her expertise on the practical issues of being a curator for a disability-related art exhibit. “This is all fairly new, we’re used to thinking about gender or race as identity in the museum, but we’re not used to

8

thinking about disability in the museum or the gallery, in ways other than the very traditional,” Fox said. She desires to explore the questions prompted when disability and art were placed into conversation.

Also, Fox hopes that the symposium will “defamiliarize what we think we know about disability and see it as an identity, as a culture, and not just as a condition or something to be cured or something to be avoided.”

In addition, she believes that Swarthmore students can be prepared to hear “some really exciting challenging ideas from [her] colleagues on the panel and hopefully from [her].”

Georgina Kleege, an English professor at UC Berkeley as well as a creative writer, will also speak at the symposium. “My main interest is in access to the visual arts for people who are blind. I am myself blind so I have a vested interest in this,” Kleege said.

In the early 1990s, she began her work in disability studies. “It was very exciting to find a field of study that allowed me to explore issues that were personally of interest to me,” Kleege said. Her primary focus within the field is representations of the disabled community in literature and popular culture.

At the symposium, she hopes there will be an opportunity to meet colleagues and students with an interest in disability studies. “Students are going to

be exposed to a whole range of different facets of scholarship and art and culture related to disability,” Kleege said.

Tobin Siebers, another panelist, is the V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor in the English department of the University of Michigan and the author of both “Disability Theory” and “Disability Aesthetics.” In his latter book, Siebers explains that he explores “the relation between disability and modern art, arguing for the centrality of disability to the modern in art.”

Siebers first became interested in disability studies 10 years ago when he noticed, “many works of modern art seemed implicitly, if not explicitly, to rely on images of disability for emotional effects.” He believes that people with disabilities are portrayed in specific ways and thus, art provides a context in which these images can be considered, debated, and contested.

Haverford’s symposium tomorrow afternoon will provide insight into art’s relationship to disability studies through an artistic standpoint, a scholarly perspective, and a curatorial view. “By interrogating some of our most precious habits of thought about human inferiority and superiority, about what is beautiful and what is ugly, and about what is healthy and what is sick, the symposium will demonstrate both the critical and cultural value of disability studies,” Siebers said.

Crossword ACROSS 1. Deep gap 6. Noggin 10. Comic Kaplan of “Welcome Back, Kotter” 14. Michael’s romantic interest in “The Office” 15. Auto shaft 16. “_____ your thirst” (Sprite’s former 4-Down ) 17. “What _____!” (“That’s funny!”)

18. Run rampant in the streets 19. Make someone 25-Across 20. SPOT 23. The Sun Devils of the N.C.A.A. 24. Scorsese, e.g.: Abbr.

25. Act that’s “contagious” 28. Droop 31. Common airline carry-on, these days 36. Coach Parseghian of the Fighting Irish 37. “I’ve _____ up to here!”

39. Clear, as a winter windshield 40. SPOT 43. Hockey fakeouts 44. Not striped, as a billiard ball 45. “_____ making myself clear?”

46. “The Tempest” king 48. Early night, to a poet 49. Chrysler Building architect William Van _____ 50. Kind of screen, briefly 52. Joe Namath, for most of his career 54. SPOT 62. The people over there 63. “What _____ mind reader?”

64. Austin Powers’s father 65. Soothing cream 66. Shows silent approval 67. _____ fell swoop 68. “Three Men _____ Baby” 69. Hydrocarbon suffixes 70. Cosmetician Lauder

7. Lighted sign above a door 8. Not silently 9. Particular bit of info 10. Mongolian desert 11. Peek-_____ 12. Capital of Switzerland 13. CBS logo 21. Lazy girl?

22. Sent to another team 25. When said three times, “et cetera” 26. Disney mermaid 27. Nutcase 29. Does simple math 30. Doll for boys 32. Foot: Lat. 33. Kind of wave 34. Entreaty to “all ye faithful” 35. A square _____ a round hole 37. Big inconvenience

38. Fable 41. Baseball’s Griffey 42. One who may be sneaking around campus on Valentine’s Day 47. 87 or 93, at the pump 49. Diet doctor 51. “Good Will Hunting” star Matt 53. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Banks 54. Martial artist Jackie 55. Grasped 56. Jane Austen classic 57. Sweep under the rug 58. The “m” of E = mc2 59. Gershwin’s “_____ Rhythm” 60. Hawaii’s state bird 61. Musical-comedy series on Fox 62. Not yet decided, on a sched.

BY BEN SCHNEIDERMAN

DOWN 1. Online activity 2. Cry from Santa 3. Baseball’s Moises or Felipe 4. See 16-Across 5. Legendary stories 6. Mata _____ (W.W. I spy)

February 24, 2011

For the solution to this week’s puzzle, see The Phoenix’s online edition at www.swarthmorephoenix.com.

THE PHoENIX

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T

UICE NT JAZZ

—A.

F

PLACE TO BE

PAC I F I C A RA D I O

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m.org February 24, 2011

9

Living & Arts

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‘King’s Speech’ poised to take top Oscar honors

BY TIMOTHY BERNSTEIN tbernst1@swarthmore.edu Best Supporting Actress Should Win: Jacki Weaver, “Animal Kingdom” Will Win: Hailee Steinfeld, “True Grit” With Melissa Leo of “The Fighter” forced to combat both the backlash from her personalized “for-your-consideration” ads and potential vote-splitting with co-star Amy Adams, this award is Steinfeld’s to win. Either way, the Academy will be overlooking an incredible performance by Weaver, a longtime Australian actress who is virtually unknown outside of her home country. As ‘Smurf’ Cody, the matriarch of a Melbourne crime family, Weaver manages to be both menacing and desperate, usually within the same scene. Pound-for-pound, she’s the strongest of the five nominees, but in a category that begs for showy performances and has a history of young winners, Steinfeld has the edge to join Anna Paquin and Tatum O’Neal as Oscar winners who couldn’t get in to see their own movie.

Best Supporting Actor Should Win: Geoffrey Rush, “The King’s Speech” Will Win: “Christian Bale, “The Fighter” Very tough call: It’s almost impossible not to admire the lengths Bale went to for his turn as the crack-addicted ex-fighter Dickie Eklund. It’s not an exaggeration to say he steals the movie, and that might have been part of the problem: the performance is so aggressively showy, so show-stopping and so much more potent than Mark Wahlberg’s main character that it can barely be called support. Of course, he’ll win for it, and it’s hard to call it undeserved, but Rush’s performance as the plebeian foil to Colin Firth’s King George VI is what provides the movie with the narrative momentum to keep moving forward. Both men are fantastic, but it will be Bale’s abundance of highlight-reel moments that make him a lock to take home the statue.

Best Actress Should and Will Win: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan” Following the rule of “Which performance will most

likely still come up in conversations five years later?,” this is something like a no-brainer. As Nina, a ballet dancer with a couple of unresolved issues (but just a couple), Portman took on a role that required her to go in about five different directions simultaneously, and somehow pulled each one of them off with total conviction.

Annette Bening in “The Kids are All Right” still holds dark-horse status, but there’s no reason to think that this won’t be Portman’s coronation as one of the best actresses of her generation.

Best Actor Should and Will Win: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech” The last time there was a lock like this in the acting categories, it was for Helen Mirren playing the Queen of England, and it’s probably not a coincidence. Firth’s performance as the reluctant King George VI, who must overcome a debilitating stammer to address his nation, is Oscar bait through and through. Nonetheless, he’s awfully good in it, generating a reservoir of sympathy for a man and a problem that otherwise might not have seemed so sympathetic. “The King’s Speech” takes its lifeblood from the performances: It’s Firth, going toe-totoe with Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist, that gives “The King’s Speech” its raison d’être. Anyone else accepting this award on Sunday night will not only be the upset of the century, but may also jump-start the War of 1812: Part II. Best Director Should and Will Win: David Fincher, “The Social Network Simply put, no one did a better job interpreting material this year. The contradiction of pairing Fincher, a peerless visual stylist, with the inert style of writer Aaron Sorkin has been noted elsewhere, but that makes the director’s ability to make Sorkin’s script race no less remarkable. Having brought back the cinematographer from “Fight Club” and editors of “Zodiac,” Fincher infuses the privileged world of Facebook’s creators with a tone that’s just the right amount of sinister. No matter how happy Zuckerberg and Friends seem to be, Fincher

never lets us forget that the other shoe is still dangling above them, just waiting to drop. And then it does.

Best Picture Should Win: “The Social Network” Will Win: “The King’s Speech” If conventional wisdom holds true, “The King’s Speech” will become the seventh movie in the last 30 years to win Best Picture without its director taking home a trophy as well. The other six: “Crash,” “Chicago,” “Gladiator,” “Shakespeare in Love,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” and “Chariots of Fire.”

If you had to make a list of quintessential “liked it, didn’t love it” movies, wouldn’t all six of these make your list immediately? As it happens, “The King’s Speech” actually fits their profile pretty well. Other than “Crash,” every single one of these films is a period piece, with the last four centered on relationships between people of different social classes. Not that these films weren’t perfectly good, it’s just that they happen to be the Oscars’ version of French toast: Other breakfasts can be good too, but when are you ever not in the mood for French toast?

That said, I enjoyed “The King’s Speech,” but admired it the same way I would admire the figure-skating routine that won the silver medal: it was well-executed, there were a couple of great moments, it hit all the notes it was supposed to … and that’s it.

Nothing less, but also nothing more, and when you’re talking about the best movie of the year, shouldn’t there be something more? Look at it another way: In 2016, can you picture anybody still talking about “The King’s Speech?” “The Social Network” however has that staying power, not least because the story of Facebook has yet to be completed.

It’s a 1930s gangster epic disguised as a movie where scores get settled through aggressive coding. Across the board, the film excels: Pitch-perfect performances, crackling script and direction that made two hours race right by. It’s enough to make you wish, for the sake of the Oscars, that Facebook were founded by a flawed British king and a commoner who showed him the way.

Hungarians are caught between the East and West M y childhood astonishm e n t revisited me. The only difference was that I was reading the H u n g a r i a n Maki Sakuma Quarterly, Quest for the a journal of art and Hungarian Identity literature written in English by Hungarian scholars, rather than the world atlas. I stumbled upon an article in there on Sandor Marai (1900-1989), a Hungarian journalist and novelist who was popular during the time between the two great wars. The author of the article quoted one of Marai's novels, “Strangers,” where, in a hotel in Paris, an Albanian mistook the Hungarian protagonist for a Turk. After 15 years in my life, here it was, another appendix to the innocent hungry-turkey pun. Six-year-old me: Hungary is actually close to Turkey. Now: The people also look quite similar. But this scene was not a trivial moment for the protagonist. Here is how he reacted: “This had never occurred to him.

10

Unconsciously he lifted his hand, he wanted to touch his face, as if to find a change, as if he had grown a wart, or perhaps during the night, while he was dreaming, his nose had developed a crook of its own. ‘What makes you think so?’ he asked timidly, taken aback. ‘Your eyes,’ said the Albanian.”

He seems overly shocked for what is, in the end, simply a mistake of nationality or ethnicity. Even Gregor Samsa had a milder surprise upon his metamorphosis. Now think. What kind of a person would be astounded in such a way because he was mistaken as a Turkish person? There is a hint, later in the novel.

“He took a quick breath and quickly said, ‘Tell me, do you consider me a white man?’ The black man looked up, rolled the whites of his eyes, and measured him up and down. In a flush of excitement he [the protagonist] added: ‘I mean, am I a real white man, one hundred percent? I know that I am neither black, nor brown, nor yellow. But recently I have been beset by doubts ... I think you are an expert.’”

In Marai’s novel, we see a Hungarian in the 1920s obsessed with how he appears ethnically, but the question of

his appearance is only an allegory to the yet deeper and broader question: namely, is Hungary part of Europe? Of course Hungary technically resides in Central Europe, but Europe in this context is not just a geographical place but a cultural space where the only legitimate culture is Western European culture. Sandor Marai is just one of the many Hungarians who have asked this question. They ask in a hope for the affirmative, but the answer has never been given conclusively. My landlady also mentioned this to me a few times.

One of the occasions was when we went to a small exhibition, where there was a picture of the Holy Crown of Hungary. She said, for all the wish of the Hungarians to be included in the West, this Crown reminds her of their standing. According to her, St. Stephen (967?-1038), the first king of Hungary, decided to be crowned by the Byzantine Emperor (capital now in Turkey), considering their tribal origin in the East, even when the Pope, the symbol of the West, was more than willing to crown St. Stephen in order to extend his influence.

There are, however, multiple legends concerning the origin of the Crown, including the one that the Pope sent it to St. Stephen, but this multiplicity of legends all the more suggests the Hungarian ambivalence between East and West.

February 24, 2011

Then again, Hungarians can be more positive. In the encyclopedia of Hungarian culture, which I quoted in my last column, there is an entry, mindenki magyar — “everyone’s Hungarian.” There it says that mindenki magyar is “a subject which comes up time and again in conversation, especially when people talk about all the famous individuals who have (or might have conceivably have) some connection to Hungary."

An example includes Attila, who "has been popular [among Hungarians] since the late 18th century, when the nascent science of historiography discovered evidence of a Hun-Magyar relationship in ancient legends about the Eastern origin of the Magyars, and though modern science has never given it credence … still National Romanticism conceived of Atilla as the proud ancestor of a great Magyar empire that would one day rise, phoenix like, up out of its ashes."

Wedged between Western and Eastern Europe, Hungarians seem to have a feeling of great uncertainty.

Hungary is neither exactly West nor precisely East. But from a different perspective, Hungary is both sort of West and kind of East. It is in such fuzziness that the Hungarians get their idiosyncratic character, which keeps my pen.

Maki is a junior. You can reach her at msakuma1@swarthmore.edu.

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Living & Arts

swarthmorephoenix.com

S ­ wat­Style­Snapshot Name: Christopher Gray Year: 2014 From: Carteret, New Jersey Current Residence: Wharton What He’s Wearing: From head to toe, Gray’s outfit relies on several of his closet essentials. He is wearing a red-checkered flannel shirt featuring gray panels, a shade that extends from his shoes and jeans. Underneath his unbuttoned flannel, he sports a slim-fit, cotton T-shirt. Gray said, “The foundation to every outfit is a T-shirt.”

T-shirts are a staple in his wardrobe, and he purposely coordinates his T-shirt with his shoelaces. “That’s my own little thing,” he said. For this ensemble, the subtle hints of yellow on the print of his T-shirt peer out, which complements the color of his shoe laces. To top off his outfit, Gray sports a gray beanie that his mother crocheted. Finally, a black cardigan neutralizes the array of prints and colors.

How He Describes His Style: Gray describes his style as “a combination between skater and prep,” reflecting his skateboarding and prep school background. His interest in skateboarding tends to influence his preference of skinny jeans. In addition to being in vogue, wearing skinny jeans assists him in skate tricks. Unlike baggy pants, there is no excess fabric to obstruct his skateboard landings. Gray has worn skinny jeans since 10th grade, which was a time he believes that fitted denim was not yet popular fashion.

His penchant for wearing cardigans and sporting a more polished skateboard style started back in his prep school days. The dress code required Gray to wear a shirt and tie daily, along with khaki pants and a cardigan.

Gray’s interest in dance has also influenced his style considerably. His appreciation for color in his ensembles emerges from the Jerk Movement, a hip-hop dance culture that started in California and whose performers often sport bold colors.

Where He Shops: Before arriving at Swarthmore, Gray shopped extensively in anticipation that there would be few shopping precincts nearby. “Number one spot would be PacSun or

Hot Topic, then Urban Outfitters, Tilly’s, H&M and Zara,” he said.

Despite bringing only a selection of his clothes to campus, Gray has enough clothes to last him over a month without doing laundry.

Shopping for new glasses is a big deal, Gray believes, particularly because he wears his glasses on a daily basis. Currently he wears a pair of black-rimmed Burberry rims, which features the Burberry signature plaid pattern along the armband of the glasses. The subtle yet sleek feature convinced Gray to buy the pair.

Style Icons: Gray finds fashion inspiration in artists like Pharrell Williams, Chris Brown and Lupe Fiasco, who are all known for their polished, urban look. He also borrows a few style elements from Fonzworth Bentley, rapper and former assistant to Sean Combs (Diddy). Gray considers his style to be quite different from Bentley’s and said, “even though [Bentley’s style is] really ‘out-there,’ most of his fashion sense is on point.”

Favorite Item in His Closet: Gray’s khaki Converse blazer is a favorite of his, and was purchased by his grandmother who, he believes, has a good eye for unique finds. Though he chooses to wear it only occasionally, he appreciates its versatility. Gray said, “It’s unique. I’ve never seen anybody else wear it or in a store.” His appreciation for fashion runs through his family, as his grandparents were fashion designers during the ‘80s.

Thus, they gifted Chris with plenty of clothes, including vintage pieces such as ties and leather jackets. “A lot of the items they gave me are one of a kind,” Gray said. In making outfit selections, he tends to balance old-school pieces with more trendy items.

Do you think you (or a professor) have great style? Then submit a photo of you in your best outfit to phoenixlaed@gmail.com. Please include your name and contact information.

TEXT AND PHOTO BY SERA JEONG

Freshmen finally gain knowledge, learn how to talk I f asked, m a n y freshmen would say that they d o n ’ t know how to talk.

“We don’t know how to talk,” they say.

Ariel Swyer “Other Let’s Be Serious students do know how to talk, it’s weird.” This of course, is not true.

Freshmen do know how to talk; they’ve learned. Last semester we did not know how to talk. However, “this passage demonstrates that Kierkegaard’s knight of infinite resignation maintains a relationship with the finite, which may be characterized as, to use more or less precision than anything else and definitely as much as an elephant which one must consider comparable to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle based on the distinctly precarious, much contested and, furthermore, indisputable notion that both concepts contain the letter ‘e,’ entrenched in a

THE PHOENIX

hetereonormative paradigm and extremely funky” is something I can now say, for instance. From the above statement, it is clear that I, a second semester Swarthmore freshman, do know how to talk and, perhaps more notably, actually know what I am talking about. (Heisenberg’s cat — used to demonstrate that, on a macro level, if left in a box long enough, Kierkegaard will fall asleep).

Last semester, however, if I were asked to synthesize information and produce a statement in the manner shown above I would have come up with something a bit different: “Indisputable finite elephant based in Heisenberg’s the letter ‘e’ maintains more definitely a much contested and distinctly infinite funky principle,” I would have said. These two statements differ primarily in that the latter doesn’t make very much sense, whereas the former makes a great deal of sense. It is true, of course, that even the second statement would have been an improvement over anything I might have said at the very beginning of the semester when I would have sounded more like this: “elephant much and on that a with to funky the,” etc. Yes, that’s right, all first semester freshmen spend most of their time being virtually unintelligible.

One might have found a first semester freshman shouting, “Am hello help lost I!” or “Know you where do music building the is?!” A large number of first semester freshmen simply gave up and refused to move, declaring, when spoken to, that they were lobsters. It seems that somewhere between orientation week and senior year, Swarthmore students transform from a clinical word salad to consistently producing articulate, logical, insightful comments (most of which do not involve any mention of lobsters).

Already as a second semester freshman, I have had moments of wild comprehensibility, as was demonstrated at the beginning of this piece. We freshman learn very quickly. Why? Because we are at Swarthmore, and we are obsessed with learning things. All we want to do is spend all day desperately shoving information into our brains.

Often we are in such a frenzied state that we become confused and literally try to put other things in our brains.

Just the other day someone wandered over to where I was sitting and proceeded to place my shoe on his head since he must have, I must assume, mistaken it for either knowledge or a hat. Too frequently I find myself putting things on my head — cups of tea for instance, or telephones, neither of

February 24, 2011

which are knowledge or hats.

Unlike comprehensibility, this is a situation which is not in any way restricted to freshmen. Everyone seems to be confused in the realm of distinguishing things from knowledge or hats. I am forced to wonder whether this is a problem that follows Swarthmore students out into the world. Are there ordinary citizens everywhere, united by the condition of having been through Swarthmore, spontaneously putting things on their heads in the misguided effort to learn them? As in, “Aaahhgghh!!” goes the public defender, “I really have to learn this pencil!!! Or maybe it’s a hat??!!”

Certainly, this is something to feel legitimately concerned about if midterms and global warming just aren’t cutting it. Personally, I am quite concerned. I’m also wondering whether I might have handed in my shoe instead of my philosophy essay last week. Of course, I suppose it’s probably better to mistake one’s shoe for one’s philosophy essay than for one’s astronomy problem set. Oh well, best not to think about; Swarthmore professors must be accustomed to that sort of thing. Besides, I have to go!

There’s learning do much too lobster!

Ariel is a first-year. You can reach her at aswyer1@swarthmore.edu.

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WSRN // 91.5 FM // Spring 2011

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THE CHEM LAB B . PA L E Y

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DEMOCRACY NOW!

DEMOCRACY NOW!

DEMOCRACY NOW!

PAC I F I C A RA D I O

PAC I F I C A RA D I O

PAC I F I C A RA D I O

THE LAND BEFORE THYME

ASHOROTH

K. STOEVER—E. MCAFEE

A. FORREST—M. GOODMAN

VOICES IN YOUR HEAD

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04

L.BARKIN

T HAIR PAIR C. HUNTINGTON—Z. GERSHENSON

D. SYMONDS

(500) DAYS OF HYPEM

DONNY'S MID-DAY MOJO

A . VO G E L

D. THOMAS—M. CARAMBO

MY GIVE A DAMN'S BUSTED M. LONG

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P IS FOR POWER A . N I WAG A B A

08 DA FOUR LOCOS A . L AG O S — K . S ATA O M E — R . Z U N I G A

PHOENIX RISING

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T . P OW E R S — W . D U N C A N

SNOWCAP CATNAP L. GALLANT—N. SWIFT

OUTER LIMITS 12

WHACK NATION

N. BLUM

SYNTHASE

A . C O O P E R — B . R AT C L I F F E

BROS

YOUNG ROMANS

MELLON COLLIE

J . N AG L E

E . L AU

TACTICS B. O'NEILL

T. EISENBERG—R. LI

J. HOLLER

STAR'S BEGINNING

DISNEY AFTER DARK

REUPTAKE PUMP

S . L I S S — S . H AW K I N S — S . G R I G G S

C . RO G I N E — H . RO A C H

TROUBLES, TROUBLES (Troubles On My Mind)

Z. WEINSTEIN

THE HEDGEHOG PRESERVATION SOCIETY A. SWYER

PAC

BEYOND IRON CURTAINS

E . PA D G E T T

DOUBLE AND TRIPLE THREATS

DEMOC

JAZ

NO SOAP RADIO

T . E I S E N B E R G — P . F L OY D

J . K WA N —

ADVENTURES IN HYPHENATED FOLK S. PRETZER

E . S O KO L S K AYA

BEAT TREATS

JU JOIN

CHASING RABBITS T. BOUCHET

SWAT DA SHOW A. MITTER-BURKE—D. BANKSTON

A. FORR

BIG

C

THE A D . L E AC

PSYC

T. EISENBE

GROO A GR

P . F L OY D

MUSIC FOR C W . G L OV I

LEGACY S

B. E

DA

LET'

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POWERS OF TED T. JOHNSON

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THE PHOENIX

Living & Arts

swarthmorephoenix.com

Steve says: let’s give online dating the ol’ college try For the past four months, I h a v e scoured the Internet in search of the best online dating sites available.

It all began as a joke — Steve Dean a friend of Life Tips from a Dean mine created an account on OkCupid.com just for the fun of it, and he immediately began regaling me with tales of the messages he was sending to random girls. Initially, I scoffed at him; that is, until those random girls started replying to him, and he began talking to me about the conceivability of going on actual dates with said girls. Still skeptical, I nevertheless created an account and decided to give online dating the old college try. Within a few short weeks, however, my voracious consumer instincts took over and I became

have huge member bases (Match.com has over 96 million registered users), although their interfaces leave much to be desired. Gay and lesbian daters take note: eHarmony does not offer same-sex dating options. Instead it directs you to its affiliate site CompatiblePartners.com. A relatively new and hip pay site to enter the fray is Zoosk.com. Zoosk has a much more eyefriendly interface and integrates very smoothly with Facebook and other social networking sites. As a final note about pay sites, I’ll have you know that if you would prefer not to pay at all, and instead have someone pay for you, the internet will not leave you stranded.

Check out SugarDaddyForMe.com – it markets itself to both sugardaddies and sugarmommas, as well as those seeking extramarital relations (disclaimer: this is one of the only sites that I did not join up with for the purposes of my review, so I cannot make any qualitative claims about it. That said, if you have experience here, I’d be thrilled to hear about it).

Many of the popular free sites around today vary significantly in their themes, intended demographics and levels of sketchiness. Cupidtino.com unites its users through one central interest: Apple products. It is still in beta testing, but it seems tidy, upbeat and p r o m i s i n g .

However, its design, typical of many Apple products, is

determined to survey the market in search of the very best online dating site. I now present you with the forbidden fruits of my lascivious labors.

OkCupid.com is far and away my favorite online dating site. It is famous for its emphasis on statistics reducand unique matching algotionist rithms, which appeals to my to a inner-nerd. Its interface is fault, offering simplicity clean and user-friendly, and it at the expense of funccontains virtually everything tionality. It lacks many you could want in a dating of the search, matchsite: written profiles, user ing, and personalizaphotos, compatibility tion features that q u e s t i o n s , make other sites personality/lifestyle engaging and tests, forums, diverse comRenu Nadkarni The Phoenix worthwhile. munication options (messages, Jdate.com focuses IMs, awards, winks, etc.), and a robust primarily upon Jewish singles or people match search engine. Importantly (for seeking Jewish singles. The interface is me at least), it contains a significant a bit clunkier than that of OkCupid, but college and recent-graduate population, I noticed that it has a rather large foland I especially like how it sends you lowing in the Philadelphia area, and it frequent match recommendations offers comparable services. JDate and based on your stated preferences (fac- OkCupid also have integrated mobile toring in your location and OkC's accessibility. HowAboutWe.com takes a famous compatibility ratings). Did I novel approach to dating by centering mention that it’s free? around the experience of the date itself On the topic of expense, I would per- (as opposed to things like personal comsonally not recommend any dating sites patibility). Users list their ideal date that require you to pay money upfront activities and locations, and those interin order to join. These sites typically ested can request to go on the date, or, attract an older population, and the more subtly, declare that they are people who are willing to pay $40+ per “intrigued.” Some sites, however, are month in order to access a more eco- downright sketchy. PlentyOfFish.com nomically advantaged dating pool are boasts over 23,000,000 registered users, probably looking for someone for the but you might not actually want to meet long haul. If you do have the funds and any of them in real life. My first red flag are looking for someone with economic was the lack of security on the website. capital, go for a pay site like the uber- The site uses no encryption when you popular Match.com or eHarmony. They type in your email address or password, THE PHOENIX

an oversight that deeply offends my time and has the most members, inner techster. Furthermore, the site though Grindr’s mobile network is the looks as though it were assembled by a most frequently accessed at the first grader. The photos are largely moment. The novelty of these types of stretched and distorted, and the lack of sites is that you can make your exact basic text wrapping causes the text to location known online via your GPSfrequently run off the page. The general enabled smartphone, and you can site design is drab and dominated by immediately see how close you are to text. everyone else who is logged in — quite The one positive thing I have to say interesting for finding other singles about PlentyOfFish is that it has a stag- right here on campus. I am not a memgering ber of any amount of of these o n l i n e location[OkCupid.com] is famous for its users at based netany given works, but emphasis on statistics and unique time (typimy trusted cally over matching algorithms, which appeals source has 200,000), been using to my inner-nerd. but I can’t them for help but y e a r s . shake the There are feeling that most of these users still fre- also some sites available for queer quent MySpace (another red flag, in my women, like PinkCupid.com, but I have book). I would definitely like to hear yet to determine their efficacy.

Professor Barry Schwartz’s thoughts I hope that my brief review will prove about the prospect of sifting through useful to you in your online endeavors.

200,000 potential partners on the All of my comments and critiques, Internet. unless otherwise noted, are based on my If sifting isn’t your thing, and het- own experience with these sites, but erosexuality isn’t either, then you can keep in mind that your experience could try out one of the location-based mobile be totally different (for better or for networks like Grindr, Scruff, ManHunt worse). Here’s hoping that in the future, or Adam4Adam. The former two mar- if your dating prospects go down the ket themselves more as networks for tube, that tube will be definitively fiber finding friends, and the latter two seem optic. to be geared more towards hookups.

Steve is a senior. You can reach him ManHunt has been around for a long at sdean1@swarthmore.edu.

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Living & Arts Monologues raise awareness for women’s sexuality

swarthmorephoenix.com

BY STEVEN HAZEL shazel1@swarthmore.edu

Since its debut in 1994, “The Vagina Monologues” has toured throughout the United States and the world, but it was not until last weekend that it came to Swarthmore College. Last Friday and Saturday, a group of Swarthmore women performed “The Vagina Monologues” with the hopes of reminding their audience of a topic often unexplored — women’s sexuality and in particular, vaginas. “As the play says, no one talks about them enough,” said Lisa Sendrow ’13 who was the show’s assistant director. “What does it mean to be a woman? How can we create safer spaces to discuss these issues?”

Mary Reindorp, director of this year’s performance and resident of the Ville, explained that it all began in 2009 when she noticed an audition announcement in The Swarthmorean for “The

Jakob Mrozewski Phoenix Staff

Emma Thomas performs “My Angry Vagina,” a humorous monologue about injustices against the vagina.

Vagina Monologues,” directed by fellow resident Satya Nelms. She auditioned for the play, made the cut and was instantly hooked. “I found the whole rehearsal process energizing and fun. In September 2010, Satya contacted me to ask if I’d be willing to direct [this year’s production] … I was very happy to say yes, knowing I’d be providing an energizing experience for others as well as raising funds for a really good cause,” Reindorp said.

As a women’s rights activist, Eve Ensler wrote “The Vagina Monologues” after interviewing dozens of women with questions concerning their sexuality.

Using these stories and also addressing audiences directly with personal stories about sexuality and violence against women, the monologues bring women’s issues and domestic violence into the spotlight. However, Ensler did not stop there. Following “The Vagina Monologues,” she wrote more wildly successful plays such as “The Good Body” in 2001 and “Necessary Targets” in 2005. Last month, she published “I Am An Emotional Creature,” which is a parallel of her watershed work that looks into the inner lives of young girls today.

In 1998, Ensler formed V-Day, an organization that seeks to end violence against women and girls.

V-Day — the “V” stands alternatively for Valentine’s, victory, or vagina — allows groups to perform “The Vagina Monologues,” usually during Valentine’s Week, in an effort to raise money for local projects that help end violence against women.

Since the debut performance in New York in 1998, V-Day has developed into an organization that sponsors 5,400 performances each year. It has raised millions of dollars for projects to end local domestic violence, as well as violence worldwide from China to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

As a part of the V-Day program, the proceeds from the performance of Swarthmore’s “The Vagina Monologues” will go to the Domestic Abuse Project of Delaware County in Media, which provides shelter for abused women and services to more than 5,400 residents of Delaware County each year.

“Women age 18-24 are the age group statistically most likely to become victims of rape. I hope [to convey] that each of us can be a part of trying to reduce violence against women and build a culture of peace,” said Katie Kenyon, the manager of outreach and education for the project, in a speech after the performance on Sunday.

Months before, during the auditioning process, Reindorp worked along with Sendrow to match each actress in the production with ‘her’ monologue.

“Our hope was that each woman would enjoy the artistic challenge of trying to find how to bring the character speaking in the monologue to life,” Reindorp said. With her efforts to make the performance at Swarthmore College a reality this semester, Sendrow explained that she was inspired by a conversation with a friend about feminism. “I wanted to shed light on women’s issues, work with the borough and have many people on campus involved in the production,” Sendrow said.

The actresses performed more than a dozen monologues covering a wide range of topics.

Monologues included an emotional, yet sometimes humorous story of an older woman reminiscing on her first love, a sex worker relishing in her ability to pleasure her female clients, a woman whose lover helps her see her vagina as beautiful, and a New Orleans resident angry about the change that has yet to come, among others.

Despite their brevity, each of the monologues carried a poignant message. “I really feel that [the director and assistant director] did an incredible job in selecting our monologues. The roles assigned fit each woman so beautifully,” said Kylin Navarro’ 11, who performed “My Vagina Was My Village.” Her monologue highlighted the violence inflicted on women during the war in Kosovo and Bosnia in the late 90s.

Additional monologues called attention to the violence inflicted against women in Afghanistan and Haiti. “It was great to hear various stories from different parts of the globe and to hear [different] perspectives on women’s sexuality,” Riana Shah ’14 said after watching the show.

In addition, the actresses considered the play an opportunity to remind the audience of the importance of self-awareness in regards to women’s sexuality. “Some women have deep, beautiful and complex relationships with their vaginas, some women have painful and scarring relationships with their vaginas, some women have a combination of both, and some women don’t yet have a relationship with their vaginas at all,” Navarro said. “The monologues aim to raise awareness about women’s bodies and women’s lives and I hope that that’s what we’ve done.”

Professor co-authors biography about Spanish writer

BY MIHIKA SRIVASTAVA msriva1@swarthmore.edu

On Thursday, February 17, the Modern Languages and Literature department hosted Professor Israel Rolon of Immaculata University to give a presentation about the biography he recently co-authored with Professor Anna Caballe of the University of Barcelone.

The presentation took place in the Science Center and attracted students and professors from the Spanish and Latin American studies programs.

The biography, entitled “Carmen Laforet: Una mujer en fuga,” focuses on the life and work of Spanish postwar author Carmen Laforet.

The program was part of a course offered this semester entitled “La guerra civil en la literatura y el cine,” which focuses on the impact of postwar Spain as depicted in film, literature and other forms of culture.

Professor Maria Luisa Guardiola, who teaches the course, organized the presentation.

“The purpose of this lecture and my course is to show how it is important to study post-war Spain through literature and film,” Guardiola said.

“Carmen Laforet’s story is crucial to

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understanding the history of this period.”

About 20 people composed the audience, which included students from the Spanish, Latin American studies program, as well as professors of the departments. To begin his lecture, Rolon spoke about Laforet’s life and career as a feminist post-war novelist.

“I could talk forever about Laforet!” said Rolon.

Then, Rolon proceeded to delve into stories about her life and struggles as a female writer. He believes that Laforet was one of the most important writers in post-war Spain since she began writing when art had completely died out because of the war. Her most famous work - the book “Nada” won the highly acclaimed Premio Nadal in 1944.

After the success of this first groundbreaking novel, Laforet continued to publish five novels and articles, though none were as well received as “Nada.” “Most people thought after ‘Nada,’ there was nada! [the Spanish word meaning ‘nothing’] but this wasn’t true at all,” Rolon said.

Rather, Rolon explained that as a young graduate student, he became extremely fascinated by Laforet’s life and work. For him, the biography is

an “exhaustive and meticulous look into the life of Carmen Laforet and is the culmination of his doctoral dissertation.” Though Laforet stopped publishing novels and articles, she continued her writing in the forms of letters to several people in her life.

This recent biography relies on Rolon’s personal interactions with Laforet, interviews with people from her life, and also, much of her epistolary work.

Following the presentation, Rolon took questions from the audience, which explored Laforet’s life and relationships, the view of post-war Spain and Rolon’s personal interest in Carmen Laforet. The detailed, in depth questions from the audience demonstrated the listenerr’s interest in both Laforet’s and Rolon’s work.

After the presentation, Evelyn Fraga ’13 had mixed feelings. “On one hand, I did become a little familiar with who Carmen LaForet was, but at same time I [was] looking for a little bit more,” Fraga said. She explained that she felt less interested in Rolon’s writing process and more intrigued by Laforet’s work since she was unfamiliar with the author. However, Fraga enjoyed Rolon’s discussion of Laforet as a feminist.

February 24, 2011

“Carmen Laforet’s novels and her own story is set in Spain but it is a universal one,” Rolon said, at the end of his presentation. Though she was the first Spanish writer to express notions of feminism, Laforet stressed that feminist themes could be appreciated by individuals worldwide, particularly in the United States. Rolon explained that the timelessness of Laforet’s work and story inspired him to write her biography.

Courtesy of http://tiny.cc/2zdjm

Spanish post-war author Carmen Laforet expressed universal ideas of feminism.

THE PHOENIX

swarthmorephoenix.com

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Prom Redo anyone?

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Feb. 25 at 8 p.m.

Feb. 26 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Feb. 27 at 2 p.m.

LPAC Frear Theater

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Don’t forget the corsage and breathmints.

Hosted by L.a.S.S. at Phi Psi

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s r o j Ma

n e s e pr

ll n” a T e e e m r o “Th W

editor’s P I CK S

Saturday, Feb. 26 10 p.m. - 2 a.m.

By Dina Zingaro

DRAMA BOARD presents

“DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG”

SOUL SHACK

WHEN? Friday Feb. 25 at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday Feb. 26 at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday Feb. 27 at 2 p.m.

WHERE? LPAC Main Stage

Want to hear great music and soulful poetry?

Come celebrate Black History Month!

Saturday Feb. 26 at 7 p.m.

Black Cultural Center

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Opinions

swarthmorephoenix.com

Staff Editorial

Borough’s liquor laws should be reexamined now Rather, the petition currently being circulated to The borough of Swarthmore has been traditionally dry, following its Quaker heritage and the legacy put a referendum on the ballot which would deterof prohibition. In 2001, a ballot measure to make an mine if the borough should be entirely dry or entireexception to the law was passed. Now, only a restau- ly wet is more appropriate. In Pennsylvania, every rant in a hotel on college-owned land can purchase a two years, local liquor laws can be voted on. If this is to be decided before breaking ground in June, it liquor license.

The results of the election were extremely close, must be put on the May’s ballot.

The rhetoric circulated by the college surroundwith a margin of less than 100 votes. The precinct near the proposed site for the hotel was not in favor ing the project emphasizes how the Town Center of adding the exception to the dry status of the bor- West project will benefit the entire community of ough, whereas the northern precinct, which con- Swarthmore, but as it stands the college will reap a tains the college, voted in favor of the successful ref- disproportionate amount of the gains, mostly from the monopoly on liquor. erendum.

First, if the college wants to support the wishes of When it was passed, however, there was no hotel project imminent, just the shadow of a future proj- a community that wants to be dry, the hotel shouldect. Now, with the grant from the state and the n’t serve liquor at all. Second, if the community recent approval of the college’s Board of Managers, wants the hotel to have a liquor license, there is no reason that the the Town Center West other businesses project is a reality. in Swarthmore The vote in 2001 was To subsidize the future operations of should not have a good measure of the community’s interests Town Center West with the profitability that same access. town wants when the project was of the sole liquor license in the borough Ifno thelonger to be not imminent, but it does not fairly repreis inequitable [and] unbecoming of the completely dry, the college should sent the opinions of the project and the college’s misson. not have special community today. privilege, and the As such, the issue of right should be the borough being dry should be put on the ballot in May. A petition cur- extended equitably to other businesses. Third, the rently being circulated can be signed until March 8 college should at a minimum allow the borough by borough residents and students who are regis- community to vote on this matter, if not actively work to support the possibility of the entire borough tered to vote here.

Furthermore, it is not enough to repeat the same being wet.

The borough could thoroughly benefit from havreferendum conducted in 2001. Why is it that the college-owned and -run inn should have the monopoly ing more than one liquor license. Rudi’s, a restaurant that opened last year, closed after three on liquor?

The project is already highly subsidized by the months. The restaurant was BYOB, but it would grant from the state. To subsidize the future opera- have had a much greater chance of success if it had tions of Town Center West with the profitability of been allowed to have a liquor license.

Much of a restaurant’s profitability can be generthe sole liquor license in the borough is inequitable, unbecoming of the project and the college’s mission ated by selling alcohol, and outside developers would not have been interested if the project couldand ultimately unacceptable.

n’t have a liquor license.

As such, it was paramount for the Town Center West to be able to procure a liquor license. If this referendum were to pass in May, Rudi’s and other borough restaurants would gain significant potential for revitalization not offered by the Town Center West project alone.

Though the college has made efforts to reach out to the community — in the broader sense of the term, not just the college community — these efforts do not counteract the overwhelming presence the college’s opinion has in the direction the Town Center West project is moving.

Not only is it unfair in principle for there to be a restaurant with a monopoly on the sale of alcohol, but also the community input on this matter is outdated. Attempts thus far to include the input of borough residents and businesspeople have put them in a merely advisory capacity without any real power over the direction of the project.

The Town Center West project must still go through land use and zoning processes, but in a project as large and relevant as this, the input of the Borough Council and relevant commissions cannot fairly and thoroughly portray the opinions of the Swarthmore community.

In order to accurately realize the goal of the project — that of providing a link between the college and the borough — the only way for the project to go forward is to consistently take input from both sides. Furthermore, it would be against the mission of the college to deny the democratic process, especially in a matter that will thoroughly affect the community of Swarthmore.

After March 8, the chance for this issue to be addressed won’t come up for another two years. We strongly encourage students, faculty, staff and administrators who are registered with up-to-date information in Swarthmore to sign the petition.

The community must be allowed to vote again on the issue of the borough becoming wet with the recent changes in the status of the Town Center West project.

Letter, OP-eD anD cOmment POLicy

Emma Waitzman Phoenix Staff

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Letters, opinion pieces and online comments represent the views of their writers and not those of The Phoenix staff or Editorial Board. The Phoenix reserves the right to edit all pieces submitted for print publication for content, length and clarity. The Phoenix also reserves the right to withhold any letters, op-eds or comments from publication.

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February 24, 2011

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tHe PHOeniX

Opinions

swarthmorephoenix.com

Unions are the key to real education reform I got weepy watching “Waiting for Superman,” Davis Guggenheim’s documentary on high performing public charter schools and their lottery admissions process. Caught up in the moment, I wondered how corrupt bureaucrats and self-interested unions could cheat children out of an education and a chance Jon Erwin-Frank at a better life.

Yet something about the Sensible Socialist simplicity of the film’s argument made the loyal lefty in me uncomfortable. I started to peruse the web to see what the pro-union folks had to say. One blogger pointed out what should have been obvious. She asked why the public lotteries, which seemed to cruelly advertise the misfortune and trauma of those not chosen, were necessary. Wouldn’t a letter or phone call suffice?

The obvious answer is that they are a public relations campaign, designed to draw attention to the plight of children with little opportunity to get a quality education. But couldn’t that be done in a less sadistic manner? I read more and grew more skeptical.

As I sought to learn enough to competently take a stand on the school reform debate, a few things became clear. The first is that for the most part we know what works. The right formula for success depends on community context, but almost universally includes the following: independent but accountable administration; capable and dedicated teachers; aggressive outreach to and active involvement of parents and community members; a cohesive school community that encourages professional development, longer school days; quality art; music and extracurricular programs and a school culture that assumes hard work; achievement and a path to college.

If a school can accomplish all of these, it can succeed even in the most impoverished community with the most disadvantaged students. This does not mean that context

doesn’t matter. Bringing these requisites about will of of wealth.

I’m still waiting for the groundswell of support that course be much more difficult in some neighborhoods will sweep the American socialist party to power, end the than in others.

Trying to significantly improve student achievement wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, raise taxes on the rich and in disadvantaged communities without addressing prob- spend it all on education. In the meantime I see only one lems outside of schools would be less effective and less force with the potential to amass the political power to efficient than a comprehensive approach. Yet it is possible truly reform U.S. education — that force is the unions.

I don’t deny that improving our education system will and those who feel it is important to push for social justice in every sphere of American society should not hesitate to require greater accountability for teachers and their unions. In many cases making it easier to fire teachers expound the possibilities of real education reform.

Many proponents of the currently popular brand of would be a good thing. Merit pay might also be a good school “reform” point to charter schools as the answer to idea, provided evaluation is based on more than test our woes. Some acknowledge the fact that nationwide, scores. Merit pay based on scores viewed in light of concharter schools perform no better than comparable public text as well as surveys of students, parents, other teachers schools. They point to those such as the Harlem and administrators could have a significant positive Children’s Zone (HCZ) and the Knowledge is Power impact. But accountability mechanisms will do little if Program (KIPP) that have achieved extraordinary results there remains a dearth of qualified people who want to against what seem like impossible odds. These schools teach and if those who teach well lack the infrastructure have eliminated the achievement gap in some of the poor- they need to help students achieve.

Teachers unions would do well to remember the old est and roughest neighborhoods.

But their success is not an argument for replacing pub- cliché: a good offense is the best defense. They should accept that in some cases lic schools. The Harlem more accountability is Children’s Zone spends needed but argue that submillions — much of it Attracting the needed number of stantial and widespread donated by magnanimous Wall Street billionaires — quality teachers and administrators reform can only come with the combination of more to create what is supposed could only be done by making resources and structural to be a comprehensive reforms that do not safety net centered on its these jobs more attractive. involve vouchers or recent charter schools. KIPP’s graduates of prestigious model is somewhat less universities. reliant on corporate The Teachers Union needs visionaries. Union leaders largesse, but like HCZ it benefits from an elite network and has the clout to attract young talent willing to work should point to the HCZ promise academies, KIPP schools and successful public models and say: that’s what we longer hours for less pay.

In any nationwide effort to replicate these programs, want to do everywhere, and we’re the only one’s that can. that pool would quickly dry up. Attracting the needed If unions in Wisconsin succeed in beating back the governumber of quality teachers and administrators could only nor’s assault—and even if they do not—the next step be done by making those jobs more attractive. That means should be to go on the offensive. How about targeting higher pay, better benefits and the respect and prestige Milwaukee’s notorious public school system for real they bring. Replicating these programs on a large scale reforms that reflect my city’s socialist tradition?

Jon is a senior. He can be reached at jerwinf1@swarthwould require an enormous infusion of dollars and human capital; it would require a massive redistribution more.edu.

Wisconsin Democrats must face their responsiblities L a s t Thursday, a bill was coming through t h e Wisconsin state senate to cut the budget to bring the state out of its debt crisis.

Tyler Becker The bill would elimiThe Swarthmore nate collecConservative tive bargaining rights of the state’s public sector employees, raise the amount of their salaries going into their pensions, and raise their healthcare premiums. The pension and health plans would end up looking more like those of private sector employees, the majority of the workforce. Rather than cast votes in opposition to the measure, the Wisconsin state senate’s 14 Democrats left the state.

That’s right. Fourteen democrats simply loaded a bus and headed down to a resort in Illinois. Their reasoning is that since they do not want this bill to pass, they cannot be in the state house, or even the state, because there needs to be 20 senators present in order to vote. There are 19 Republicans, so only one Democrat is needed to vote.

There are two reasons for the bill itself. First, the bill is a reasonable response to the budget crisis in THE PHOENIX

Wisconsin in which there is over $400 million in unpaid bills in addition to money owed to Minnesota. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reported this falsely saying that the state will have a surplus.

This is simply not true; Wisconsin will have a budget shortfall next year that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars when these other costs are factored in, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. It is also not true that Republican tax reforms are causing the deficit, as those lower tax rates do not take effect until the next budget cycle and are likely to raise revenue.

Second, the government promised too much to public employees in the past, and, now that cuts need to be made, protesters are swarming the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison. The truth is that nobody wants to have cut government spending. Some think that the government just had a bottomless piggy bank.

This could not be farther from the truth.

In fact, the reason Wisconsin is going to be in a budget crisis is due to the excessive spending completed by the previous legislature and governor in the state.

Prior to the 2010 midterms, both houses of the legislature and the governorship were controlled by Democrats.

In order for the Democrats to work toward balancing the budget, they took $200 million from the “Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund,” a highly controversial maneuver that the state supreme court later ruled unconsti-

tutional. Now, the state owes the fund that $200 million.

So, in the last legislative session, rather than making difficult spending cuts, the Democrats in Wisconsin took money out of a fund illegally. This left the dirty budget cutting task to the newly elected Republican majorities in the Wisconsin senate and assembly, as well as newly-elected Republican Governor Scott Walker.

Governor Walker and Republicans in the state senate found that raising healthcare premiums and raising state employee contributions to their pensions to the levels of private sector employees would help close the budget shortfall.

Since the pensions cause such a strain on the system right now, the bill includes a provision to eliminate collective bargaining rights for state employees with regards to their pension plans.

Employees would retain collective bargaining rights for wages and benefits.

Essentially, this story has been blown out of proportion by the media and union bosses. Governor Walker is not trying to eliminate public sector unions or take away the benefits teachers receive. He is doing the best he can to balance the budget when he was left with a deficit. And, on top of that, his proposals are sensible and will avoid massive layoffs in the Wisconsin government. If these concessions are not made, upwards of 12,000 state workers may be fired in order to close the budget gap.

Despite these facts, the Democrats in

February 24, 2011

the Wisconsin state senate will not return. They are preparing to stay out of the state for weeks if necessary to prevent a vote on the bill from happening.

The Democrats are playing a game that they have already lost. Once they do return, Republicans have more than enough votes to pass the legislation.

The Democratic state senators are trying to move public opinion in their favor, but that is not happening. Despite support from Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee, and President Barack Obama, the public opinion tide is not turning in favor of the state employees.

The New York Times reported Monday that while the focus has been on the capital Madison, where state workers and University of Wisconsin-Madison students are protesting the cuts, the rest of the state is supporting the plan put forth by Governor Walker and the Republicans. The Times wrote that “… away from Madison, many people said that public workers needed to share in the sacrifice that their own families have been forced to make.”

The Democrats in the Wisconsin state senate need to return to the state and stop ignoring their duties as publicly elected legislators. Elections have consequences and budgets need to be balanced. The Democrats should quit the politicking and get back to work like the rest of their state has to do each and every day.

Tyler is a first-year. He can be reached at tbecker1@swarthmore.edu.

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Sports Fans reinforce athletes’ quests for huge salaries

swarthmorephoenix.com

Think about the numbers in those last two paraThere’s a beautiful mechanism in place that graphs. I mean, really think about them, because it’s allows us to decide how become so easy to get desensitized to those types of figwe, as a society, feel about ures. Now think about how many times you’ve heard things. First, something the word “greedy” used to describe Pujols during all of gets built up too much and this. How about Sabathia? My total comes out to zero, so we tear it down. When and forget about Cliff Lee. To hear the response to his we’re tired of doing that, accepting a shorter contract to play for Philadelphia, we build it back up a little you would think that he agreed to pitch in exchange for until it feels like it’s in the a warm bed and three square meals.

A disclaimer might be necessary here: I am not — right place. People, places, things, ideas, it’s all the repeat, not — calling any of these players greedy, nor Timothy Bernstein same and all of it has to go am I questioning the right they have to seek the highest through the steps. It’s per- possible compensation for their extremely valuable Bullet Points petual, it’s self-correcting, services. The thing is, neither is anyone else, and this and in a police-state kind is the incredible shift that seems to have happened to fans as the battles over obscene amounts of money of way, it’s perfect.

All this serves to underscore just how fascinating it become less and less the exception and more and more is to watch that process in motion, before the pendulum the rule.

Gone are the days where athletes are written off as stops swinging, and that’s where Albert Pujols and C.C. Sabathia come in. The two of them have been making greedy or soulless when they leave a small market to spring-training headlines over issues with their respec- cash in with a big one. Gone are the days when tive contracts. Pujols has recently reported to spring Rodriguez was a national villain for leaving Seattle to sign his version of the training after negotiarichest contract in histotions for an extension ry. Not only do we now broke down, and it expect players to chase looks like he will Gone are the days where athletes highest dollar, but we become a free agent are written off as greedy or soulless the defend to the death their when the season is right to do it, to the point over. The main stickwhen they leave a small market to where it becomes more ing point, it has been cash in with a big one. than a little ridiculous. said, is that Pujols The central irony here wants his next contract is that this shift is occurto be the richest of all time, which means that it must eclipse the $275 million ring even as the values of these contracts turn astronomical. The time when star players negotiated for a that the Yankees are paying Alex Rodriguez.

Sabathia’s situation is a little different, but there’s pay raise that would allow them to live comfortably is some common ground: his current contract with the so far in the rearview mirror, it might as well have Yankees (7 years, $23 million per year) contains an opt- been a different game. We are now pulling for players to out clause he can exercise after this year should he graduate from obscene wealth to the level where you want to return to free agency. Despite pitching bril- can hunt humans for sport on your private compound.

Should Albert Pujols be able to try and earn as much liantly the past two seasons, he has been adamant that the clause was just “precautionary” and that he enjoys money as he can? Certainly. All the same, when your pitching in New York. Now, however, the inside word is chief motivation is simply to make sure that nobody that, should he have the chance, he is expected to opt else is making more than you are, isn’t there something out of his contract at the end of this year and seek an just the slightest bit petty-sounding there? Just how even more lucrative deal. While Sabathia has been coy much passion should really be stirred up for someone as to the reasons for his sudden 180-degree turn, there is who, in the worst possible outcome of all this, will sign speculation that he once again wants to hold the con- an agreement worth over two hundred million dollars?

The same goes for Sabathia, who doesn’t seem to tract with the largest annual value for a pitcher; since he signed with New York, Cliff Lee’s new deal with the care what he makes just so long as it’s more than any Phillies pays him $25 million yearly, albeit for fewer other pitcher. Yes, they have every right to do this if someone out there will pay them, but the shift is so drayears.

matic that now, it’s almost as if they have to. As if they owe it to their families. We’re not even finished with “he has to put food on the table,” a line so outdated that it’s become hilarious. Unless the table in question is solid gold with legs made of elephant tusk, Pujols and Sabathia could probably manage just fine with the salaries they have now.

One of the unfortunate side effects is that even the slightest deviation — Cliff Lee again — gets the kind of ecstatic praise that, upon further review, could stand to be scaled back somewhat. Yes, there is something to be said for taking less money to pitch where you want, but when the choice is between $125 and $150 million, the sacrifice seems just a little bit less … sacrificial.

This isn’t to say that athletes who pursue the biggest contract are no longer criticized, but most of what’s left isn’t so much criticism as it is bitterness, fueled solely by the betrayal of the small market that got abandoned or passed over by the athlete in question. Mark Teixeira is still roundly booed in Baltimore because he refused to sign with them at a hometown discount (although, in all likelihood, whatever discount he took would have still allowed him to stay off food stamps), but everywhere else, the sentiment at the time was mostly the same: Why shouldn’t he have tried to get the most money he could have? What’s more, how dare anybody try to say that he shouldn’t!

The root of all this is deceptively simple: expectations get lowered to the point where the mentality is no longer “expect loyalty” but “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” It’s Stockholm Syndrome prepared special just for players and their fans, where after years and years of getting our hearts broken by players looking for more money, we’ve gone over to the other side.

Now we’re cheering on their quest for the highest number, and we’re cheering them as passionately as our forefathers would have ripped them apart with charges of avarice.

The only hope is that the process is not yet complete, and that the balance has yet to be reached. It isn’t a bad thing that the blanket statement of “greedy athlete” has been taken off the table, but holding a franchise hostage simply to make sure that your pay is higher than anyone else’s is not necessarily cause for martyrdom. In all likelihood, Pujols will get the money he wants, and Sabathia might as well.

Maybe, by the time that happens, we’ll have settled down to the point where we can calmly say, “Sure, they can do whatever they want, but they wouldn’t exactly have starved otherwise.”

Tim is a sophomore. You can reach him at tbernst1@swarthmore.edu.

Women’s basketball closes out season with win

BY DANIEL DUNCAN dduncan1@swarthmore.edu When the buzzer sounded for the final time at Haverford on Sunday, it was the last the Swarthmore basketball teams will hear for several months. The men closed out the season with a 75-52 loss, while the women walked off the court with a 65-60 win.

The men were led in the game as they were all season: by the dynamic duo of Jay Kober ’14 and Will Gates ’13. Kober scored 13 points to pace the Garnet, while Gates added eight points and eight rebounds.

Gates’ points gave him 457 for the season, the seventh best season in Swarthmore history for a men’s basketball player.

Down by double digits after the first half, the Garnet couldn’t rally and Haverford cruised.

The Garnet could not generate enough offense to counter Haverford’s shooting.

The Fords, who needed a win and Ursinus to lose to qualify for the Centennial Conference playoffs, shot nearly 50 percent for the game and found four players reach

18

double figures. Swarthmore, in a position to control another team’s destiny, opened the door for the Fords.

The Garnet finished 6-19, 3-15 in the Centennial Conference, but Sam Lacy ’11 found that the record did not reflect the team’s talent.

“We had the individual talent to make the playoffs but routinely failed to live up to our potential,” he said.

The wom-en needed a win and a Franklin and Marshall loss to advance to the playoffs. While the Garnet did their job on Saturday, the season ended prematurely, as the Diplomats throttled Dickinson 75-35.

Despite tying for fifth place in the Centennial Conference in the regular season, the Garnet lost out on the last playoff

spot on tiebreakers. The Garnet were swept in the season series by the Diplomats.

Kathryn Stockbower ’11 ended her career in style, recording yet another double-double to fix the NCAA Division III record at 83 in a career. She scored 15 points while grabbing a season-high 22 rebounds.

Katie Lytle ’14 got a double-double of her own, adding 14 points and 11 rebounds to the Garnet attack. Madeline Ross ’13 poured in 14 points as well.

The Garnet looked to be in control after a 14-0 first half run, leading 38-27 at the half. But Haverford mounted a late rally to make the last few minutes tense. Leading

“[The Haverford victory] was a particularly meaningful win for me. The rivalry between Swarthmore and Haverford runs deep ...”

Kathryn Stockbower ’11

February 24, 2011

by just three, Stockbower came up with a rebound with nine seconds left and put the game away at the free throw line when fouled.

While disappointed to not qualify for the playoffs, Stockbower said beating Haverford was a good way to go out.

“It was a particularly meaningful win for me. The rivalry between Swarthmore and Haverford runs deep, especially since my sister is a sophomore at Haverford, so this was definitely a fitting final game,” Stockbower said.

The Garnet finished 15-10, 11-9 in the Centennial Conference.

As the season ends, so do the careers of the Swarthmore seniors. After four years of representing the Garnet, it is a bittersweet moment.

“Playing basketball at Swarthmore has been a truly amazing experience and I cannot believe that this time is coming to a close,” Stockbower said. “Basketball has been such a huge part of my life over the past four years and I feel so blessed to have had the chance to share this experience with such a wonderful group of women.”

THE PHOENIX

Sports Swim teams place third at Conference Championships swarthmorephoenix.com

BY ANA APOSTOLERIS aaposto1@swarthmore.edu At the beginning of the 2010-2011 season, the Garnet men’s and women’s swim teams were at very different points — the men were protecting their reputation as one of the top teams in the Centennial Conference, and the women were looking to bounce back from a disappointing finish to the 2009-10 season and facing the task of filling the void after Anne Miller ’10 graduated.

However, the teams converged at the end of the road last weekend, as both the men and the women rode strong individual performances to a pair of third place overall finishes at the 2011 Centennial Conference Championship meet at Gettysburg. The teams finished behind host Gettysburg and defending champion Franklin & Marshall.

Garnet swimmers won 21 medals combined over the course of the three-day meet and staged an assault on the history books, setting or tying three Swarthmore school records, two American records and a Gettysburg pool record.

“My expectations [going in] were my usual expectations: to have a perfect meet,” coach Sue Davis said. “We didn’t have the perfect meet, but everybody did swim season best or lifetime best times … Everybody that we took placed.”

Pacing the men were Daniel Duncan ’13, John Flaherty ’14 and Sam Bullard-Sisken ’12, who set a school record. Leading the charge for the women was Margaret Regan ’14 who enjoyed a successful breakout meet.

Duncan, Swarthmore’s top performer throughout the dual meet season, brought home the most hardware from Gettysburg, winning two silver medals (200 IM, 400 IM) and two bronze medals (200 butterfly, 400 medley relay).

“I was really unhappy with how I did last year, so I just wanted to come out with a medal to prove myself,” Duncan said. The medals were the first of his collegiate career. “[Assistant coach Casmera Wick] helped me a lot with relaxing and staying comfortable with the beginning of my races.”

All three of Duncan’s individual medals came in tightly-contested competitions with teammate Flaherty, whose threemedal haul (two bronze, one silver) was one of the biggest surprises of the meet, according to Davis. “We knew he’d be fast,” she said. “I just didn’t expect to see him on Dan Duncan’s heels.” Flaherty came in third, just behind Duncan, in the 200 and 400 IM, and reached the wall ahead of his teammate by three-tenths of a second to take silver in the 200 fly.

Even Flaherty was surprised by his own speed, and seems thrilled by the results. “I was stunned,” he said. “In the 200 IM on the first day at prelims, I dropped seven seconds from my best time in the regular season, and five seconds from my lifetime best.” Before the Gettysburg Conferences, Flaherty had only raced the 200 fly once before. “To … [grab] that silver medal — it was surreal, and I’ve never been happier.”

“John had an awesome meet,” Duncan said of his teammate and competitor. “I think we fed off each other and kept it going all weekend.”

Flaherty and Duncan were not the only outstanding performers on the men’s side, as Bullard-Sisken and Tim Brevart ’12 both rewrote the record books. Bullard-Sisken broke a 15-year-old school record in the 100 backstroke (52.73), earning a silver medal.

Brevart tied the Swarthmore record in the 50 freestyle (21.23), matching the mark set by his former captain, Doug Gilchrist-Scott ’09. Brevart finished fourth.

Brevart dropped over half a second off

the PhoenIX

his season best to reach the record. “I was thrilled and at the same time in disbelief,” he said. “Knowing that I [share the record] with Doug gave me a sense of camaraderie with my friend and former teammate.”

Swarthmore’s final individual medal came courtesy of Jake Benveniste ’13, who won bronze in the 1650 freestyle on the final day of competition.

Travis Pollen ’12 continued to set the national standard in sprint freestyle for his Paralympic disability class (S9). He broke the national record in the 50 (24.74) on Friday, and then broke his own American record in the 100 (54.73) on Sunday. Pollen, an above-knee amputee, will compete in the Paralympic National Championships this spring.

On the women’s side, Regan broke out in a big way in her first Championship meet, taking gold in the 400 IM and silver in the 200 butterfly, plus a fifth place finish in the 500 freestyle.

“She was ready,” Davis said. “Maggie’s a great competitor.”

Her gold medal was the only first-place finish either Garnet team recorded in the meet. Her time of 4:39.55 was a Gettysburg pool record and three-tenths of a second off the Swarthmore record.

Like Flaherty, Regan expressed surprise at how well she swam over the weekend. “I felt good at practice the week before Conferences, but I had no idea that I was going to swim that fast,” she said.

In the qualifying heat of the IM, she led the field and earned the top seed in finals.

“I had never been seeded first for an event ever in my career as a swimmer, so it was something that I didn't really know how to react to or handle, besides being really nervous but really excited at the same time,” Regan said.

There was no sign of nerves in the final heat, as Regan found herself trailing by a full second at the halfway mark, but pulled ahead on the breaststroke leg of the race and wound up touching almost four seconds ahead of the silver medalist. The comeback, Regan said, was part of the race plan from the beginning.

“Butterfly is my weakest stroke,” she said, “so the plan is to always stay close enough to my opponents so that I know I will be able to catch up to them later in the breaststroke. When I saw that I was closer to my opponents than usual and I had not died yet in the butterfly, I knew that I had it in me to pass them and win the race.”

Regan also swam a fast 200 breaststroke, coming within half a second of the gold medal.

The women saw one school mark fall, as Rebecca Teng ’14 finished up a spectacular rookie season by breaking the Swarthmore record in the 200 IM. Her time of 2:11.96 gave her a silver medal.

According to Teng, she was not focusing on the record going into the race — in fact, she wasn’t even aware of it. “I had no idea what the school record was, which I think worked out well for me,” she said. “I wanted to go after the [gold], and not necessarily a record, so it was a really great surprise. ” The 200 butterfly accounted for the rest of the Garnet girls’ medals, as Erin Lowe ’14 grabbed silver (2:09.69) and Hannah Gotwals ’13 earned the bronze (2:12.82).

The production of the freshmen this season was “wonderful,” according to women’s captain Allison Bishop ’11. “They're a reflection of [the women’s team] in general.

They swim while sick, they swim while injured, they get their job done so that the team gets what it needs. [I] love that about them.”

The meet was the last of Bishop’s collegiate career; it also spelled the end of the

Dave Evans for The Phoenix

Hannah Gotwals earned the bronze in the 200 butterfly with a time of 2:12.82. road for seniors SaSa Bedolfe, Chelsea Brett, Santiago Lombo and David Dulaney.

Bishop said that she could not have gone out on a better note. “The last event I swam was the women's last event of the meet,” she said. “I got to anchor our A [400 freestyle] relay. It was awesome — swimming with Chelsea [Brett], and 2 of my freshmen, and I just got to put everything I had left into that water.”

Regardless, the future looks bright for both the men and the women, given the dominance of first-years and sophomores on both sides. The women will lose a core of distance swimmers in Bishop and Bedolfe, and a formidable sprinter in Brett, but Regan, Teng and Lowe have proven themselves more than capable of filling that gap.

“I love getting to see what the [first-years] do,” said Bishop, “because it does show us where the team is going in the future.”

The men stand to lose only Lombo and Dulaney, and will retain the large group of first-years and sophomores that propelled the team’s success this season. “It’s still a young team,” Wick said, who acted as head

coach pro tempore during Davis’ sabbatical in the first half of the season. “It won’t be good losing [Lombo and Dulaney], but it’s two guys as opposed to four or five. That’s exciting.”

Brevart sees only positives in the future of the team. “If our freshmen class next year is half as clutch as the current one, I have no doubt that the 2011-2012 season will hit the record books harder than ever,” he said.

As the coaches and swimmers begin to look towards next year’s journey, all can agree that this season set an example to be proud of. The men’s team will, once again, go into next season as one of the Conference’s teams to beat, and the women proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it takes more than a few graduations to slow them down. “They set lofty goals, and they achieved them all,” Wick said.

“Both of these teams were great teams, and they were fun to coach,” Davis said.

“They showed a tremendous amount of heart all year.”

garnet athlete of the week

February 24, 2011

Margaret regan fy., swiMMing, Montclair, nj.

what she’s done: the first-year won the garnet’s only gold medal at the centennial conferences in the 400 iM (4.39.55). regan’s 400 iM swim is the second fastest in garnet history. she also captured a bronze medal in the 200 breaststroke (2:26.76), the third-fastest in swarthmore history.

favorite career MoMent: “Beating Ursinus, washington and dickinson because those were all tough meets where we never gave up and put all that we had into every race. this spirit is also what came out this weekend.”

Best season MoMent: “winning the 400 iM and getting second in the 22 breaststroke this weekend at conferences. also, having the team place third overall of conferences.”

favorite 2010-11 Movie: Jakob Mrozewski Phoenix Staff

“toy story 3.”

19

Sports

swarthmorephoenix.com

Ceylan Bodur finishes stellar career with 1,001 points

BY RENEE FLORES rflores1@swarthmore.edu Recently, Ceylan Bodur, a senior on the Swarthmore women’s basketball team, garnered a lot of attention due to her career-ending torn ACL. The injury occurred in the Garnet’s home game against Gettysburg College on January 29 where she scored her 999th career point, leaving her just shy of the 1000th point.

However, Bodur returned to Tarble Pavilion for the WBCA Pink Zone game against Bryn Mawr to perform the final layup of her competitive basketball career. In the last game of the regular season, Bodur stepped onto the court and reached her 1,000th point in a show of sportsmanship that embodied her remarkable basketball career at Swarthmore.

Sarah Brajtbord remembered Bodur as a first-year who would spot-up for a three-point shot by looking down to see if she was on the line, then “sink it in your face.” Bodur’s talents have grown on the court to include plays that no one would attempt because they are “ridiculous.” Brajtbord said that Coach [Renee] DeVarney would get angry about a layup because it was not in good form, until she realized it was a good play and just smile.

Bodur is described as the “X-factor” of the Garnet, pulling impressive plays and getting the team to play at her level.

“When she has amazing games, everybody has amazing games. She changes the pace of the game by playing Ceystyle basketball. She is the clicking factor,” Brajtbord said. “[Being the X-factor] carries a lot of responsibility, and she has stepped up so much.”

DeVarney agreed about the X-factor Bodur adds to the game. “Cey is that person who doesn’t get the big notoriety, but we’re not successful unless she’s playing well. She’s big in her own right,” she said.

Jakob Mrozewski Phoenix Staff

Bodur hits an uncontested lay-up at the start of the Garnet win over Bryn Mawr.

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Bodur is credited for her passion of the game. Brajtbord and DeVarney both immediately used this word to describe Bodur. Brajtbord said that Bodur is a player who is really in her element on the court, adding that she is proud to have had the chance to play basketball with her. DeVarney agreed, saying that she loves to watch Bodur on the court as “an exciting, creative player and a passionate person.”

Bodur began her basketball career when she was 10 years old. Prior to playing basketball, she played tennis.

However, she wanted to play a team sport, and she never turned back. “It’s really addicting,” Bodur said. Before coming to the United States, Bodur played basketball in Turkey throughout high school, but said it was never as serious as when she started at Swarthmore.

Bodur faced the challenge of being a student-athlete, but claims that the team itself was what helped her in her adjustment. “As an international [student], being on a team, it made my experience really different from other international students. It was easier because I was part of a team. It felt like I belonged,” she said.

At Swarthmore, the academic environment proves to be rigorous, but when athletics is added to that, it is necessary for student-athletes to balance their time. “Being a student-athlete is definitely a challenge, but it’s fun.

[Balancing your time] happens on its own. Basketball organizes your time, especially if it’s something you love.

This is what we do,” Bodur said. “In the spring, I feel lost. I don’t know what to do with all the time.”

DeVarney remembers when Bodur was a first-year, recalling that Bodur was unable to bench press the 45-lb bar in the gym for the team workouts. “You can see the definite improvement in her. She has surpassed that and doubled it since then. To see this growth, as a coach, that is rewarding.”

“To sacrifice so much time, your focus changes. Maybe it’s just my obsession with basketball, but I find myself thinking only about basketball,” Bodur said. Bodur’s passion and love for the game has led her to a long list of career stats. She was named All-Tournament at the Swarthmore Tip-Off Tournament in her first year, named to the Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll her sophomore and junior year and received Centennial Conference Honorable Mention as a junior.

Bodur played in every game for her first three years and would have continued to do so as a senior were it not for her injury. Bodur has been the second leading scorer every season of her four years, recording 1,001 career points and making her the eighth in Swarthmore program history to reach the 1,000 mark. Bodur led the team in 3-point field goals, racking up 89 in her career.

Bodur’s favorite shot was a buzzerbeater she made against Dickinson last year that won the game. However, the game that gave her the most satisfaction was the NYU game during winter break this year. “Beating a team from the AAU Conference was a good statement. It said we were a competitor.

With that win, we won their tourna-

Jakob Mrozewski Phoenix Staff

Ceylan Bodur, applauded by teammates Eliza Polli and Kayla Moritzky, makes her way to the court in the Garnet’s WBCA Pink Zone game victory over Bryn Mawr. ment,” she said. The team quickly [Basketball] really keeps you going.” adjusted to the other team’s level of “The program is losing an incredible play, something DeVarney emphasizes player and an incredible teammate. She as a key to winning. is a unifying force. She cares so much All the attention revolving around about her teammates, which is someBodur’s final moments on the court left thing you can’t always find in a great her sentimental and also appreciative. player,” Brajtbord said. Brajtbord “It was such a symbolic moment. It described the two types of players: was a great those who are way to supstatistically port our significant school, sportsand those that “The program is losing an manship, are intangibly Division III. I significant, incredible player and an was glad it got who incredible teammate. She is a those attention,” exhibit hard she said. work, dedicaunifying force.”

Bodur walked tion, passion Sarah Brajtbord ’11 off of the and teamcourt with her work. “This is fellow senwhat makes iors, which allowed her to have a last her special, and difficult to replace. Not thrill on the court and play the game a lot of players bring that, and Cey she loves. does.”

When reflecting on what she loved “For as key a player as she has been the most about Swarthmore basketball, to the program, I never felt she got the Bodur said it was her team and her attention and credit she deserved. That coaches. “Having a set goal that you is the blessing to all of this [her injury]. share with 15 to 20 other people is so dif- She is finally getting that,” Brajtbord ferent from other academics. said.

February 24, 2011

THE PHOENIX