Swarthmore Phoenix, April 25, 2019

Today in OPINIONS: Callen Rain ’15 on Phi Psi A5, David F. Hill IV ’13 on DU A5, Bryce Wiedenbeck ’08 on Greek Life and Quaker Values A6

PHOENIX

THE

Athlete of the Week Meet Lauren Holt of track and field

VOL. 147, NO. 12

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Terpsichore Concert Elisabeth Miller on

Terpsichore’s spring performance

April 25, 2019

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The independent campus newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881

Phi Psi Leak Sparks Questions On Frat Culture Bayliss Wagner & Naomi Park Managing Editor & News Editor Content warning: sexual assault Last week, the college saw 121 pages of documents that members of Phi Psi fraternity circulated on a college listserv between Spring 2013 and 2014.

On campus and in the alumni community, discussions surrounding the fraternities and their roles on campus were reignited.

While the minutes are from 2013 and 2014, some students have emphasized the lack of fundamental change within Phi

The week ahead Today Prepping For The End(game): Infinity War 9:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.

Join OSE for the screening of Infinity War the night before Endgame comes out!

Parrish Beach Friday AxAA Heritage Month Showcase 9:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

In honor of Asian x Asian American Heritage Month: Acts may range from spoken word, dance, song, instrumental, etc and may be either individual or group performances!

Parrish Beach Saturday Swarthmore College Orchestra 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Swarthmore College Orchestra, directed by Andrew Hauze, performs their spring concert.

Lang Music Concert Hall Sunday SBC Weekly Meeting 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m SBC Committee weekly meeting to discuss budget-related matters and consider supplemental funding requests for the week.

Sharples Room 209 Monday Swarthmore Swing Lesson and Social Dance 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Swarthmore Swing Dance Club has a lesson with professional teachers from 9pm-10pm and social dancing from 10pm11pm.

Upper Tarble Tuesday Amreeka Film Screening 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. celebrate Arab American Heritage month with a screening of the Cherien Dabis film AMREEKA. Amreeka is a critically acclaimed film about a woman and her son who move from Palestine to rural Illinois.

Sci 101 Wednesday Opening Reception for Transnational, Transmedial: Graphic Fiction across 4:15 to 6:00 p.m.

Join us for the opening reception to celebrate this studentcurated exhibition.

McCabe Library Atrium

WEATHER Don’t put your raincoats away yet :(

CONTENTS News A1-A2 Arts A3-A4 Opinions A5-A7 Sports A8 Read more at swarthmorephoenix.com Copyright © 2019 The Phoenix

Psi and fraternity culture since the “Spring of our Discontent,” a period of heightened activism in 2013.

One Phi Psi member, to whom we will refer in this article as Jason*, joined the fraternity arrived at the college in fall 2013. Coming to the college as a first-generation, Hispanic student from conservative Orange County, California, he saw pledging Phi Psi as an opportunity to have the typical American college experience his high school peers expected.

He didn’t join until his sophomore year, after he had come out as gay, and he became a full member in spring 2014.

Reflecting on 2014, Jason said he recognized there was something problematic with the minutes, but felt as though he was peripheral to them.

“I saw the minutes but I didn’t read most of it … I didn’t want to waste my time with it because it seemed like idiotic banter that very much was inside jokes,” Jason said. “They were incredibly self-reflexive

and inside jokes within a niche in the Phi Psi community that I did not have access to.”

But a little over a year after joining, Jason decided to leave the fraternity.

According to Jason, he had only seen parts of the minutes through other people his first year. When he became a member of Phi Psi, he recounted not being included on the listserv initially, though he stated that other members of the pledge class were, and felt he was not a part of the inner circle that circulated the minutes.

“I can look at everything that happened now in retrospect.

I read the minutes now, and it’s shockingly obvious disgust at this kind of thing. I honestly don’t think that me as a 19-year-old boy, reading those things, understood the gravity of what they represented,” he said.

According to Jason, efforts to make Phi Psi more inclusive following the “Spring of Discontent” existed but felt unsubstantial.

“I felt like it was incredibly superficial. When I joined I thought there were so many issues within the frat that upperclassmen in the frat were trying to change from within,” said Jason.

In an interview with The Phoenix, 2016 Phi Psi President Conor Clark stated that Phi Psi’s work on changing attitudes within the fraternity since 2013 should not be overshadowed by the actions of members at the time. “[The minutes] will probably dominate kind of like the topic of your discussion in this article. However, if we’re talking about Phi Psi, especially in your time period that you’ve been in contact with it...I know I obviously have a biased point of view but I’ve seen significant improvements,” he said. “ They’re on a very positive uptake.”

Another former Phi Psi president said that the changes the fraternity made should not be seen in isolation.

“Phi Psi was undergoing

changes throughout my four years,” Girardi said. “To look at it in a snapshot in time is to do a disservice to those who spent their time and talents trying to improve the organization.

With that said I think that that spring was a very eye-opening experience for both the leaders of Phi Psi at that time as well as its rank-and-file brothers.”

According to Clark, the improvements to the fraternity included workshops and trainings for pledges which Andrew Barclay, Greek Life liaison and Director of Student Activities, is in charge of overseeing these trainings along with the Title IX office, now directed by Bindu Jayne.

One effort to improve the relationship of fraternity culture to the campus community resulted in a video from August 2016. The video was created by a group of students in the Title IX advisory team led by former Title IX Coordinator Kaaren Williamsen. continued on page A2

Intercultural Center Vandalized with Paint

Shelby Dolch / The Phoenix

On April 19, a door of the Intercultural Center was vandalized with paint. SZW created artwork, that was left in the IC Courtyard, that was also vandalized.

Students notified Pub Safe of the incident but they have yet to reveal any public information regarding the incident.

After Phi Psi Leak, O4S and Coalition to End Frat Violence Take Action Trina Paul News Editor After the publication of 2013 Phi Psi internal documents revealing sexist, homophobic, and racist attitudes, O4S and the newly formed Swarthmore Coalition Against Fraternity Violence determined a course of action that would pressure administration to end the leases of fraternities on campus.

Shortly after The Phoenix and Voices published stories on the Phi Psi documents, the Swat Coalition to End Frat Violence posted an Action Network campaign to send letters, asking for the termination of fraternity leases, to Board Chair Schuchman, President Smith and The Committee on Social Life. As of April 24, the campaign has garnered 894 submissions.

The Swarthmore Coalition to End Fraternity Violence was formed by Daria Mateescu ’20, Morgin Goldberg ’19, Olivia Smith ’21, and Amal Haddad ’22, amongst others after the leak of internal Phi Psi documents. The organization was first conceptualized when the Swat Fraternities Tumblr was launched on April 3 by some of those who formed the Swat coalition. The Tumblr accepts anonymous submissions from people who wish to share either their own experience or others’ experiences of sexual violence, sexism, racism, homophobia or other issues at the fraternities on campus.

The Swat Coalition to End Frat Violence was formed to focus more specifically on the attitudes and violence created and perpetuated by fraternity culture. According to Mateescu, the objective of the organization is to help others in movements against the fraternities.

“The basic idea of the coalition, as I see it, is that the coalition is a way to bring more people in the room to organize around the fraternity structure, in all the ways it harms students.” Mateescu said.

Magda Werkmeister ’22, a core member of O4S, says that unlike the coalition, O4S seeks to focus less on fraternityrelated issues because of the way that certain perspectives are prioritized in conversations about Title IX related issues.

“We talk a lot at O4S about not wanting to center the fraternities, because, in a way, centering fraternities also centers a privileged survivor dialogue,” Werkmeister said.

“Someone who goes to the fraternities is already in a privicontinued on page A2

Mumps Emerges at Swat After Philly Outbreak Gidon Kaminer News Writer Two days after informing the campus community that a student had symptoms of mumps, Director of Health & Wellness Services Alice Holland confirmed that the student did in fact have the disease on April 19.

“Mumps is a highly contagious viral illness that is transmitted by respiratory droplets or saliva. In the past two months, more than 100 cases have been detected at colleges, universities, and high schools in the Philadelphia area,” Holland wrote in an email to students.

“The case last week was classified by The Department

of Health as suspected mumps. The Pennsylvania Department of Health assisted in identifying close contacts.

The immunization status of close contacts was reviewed and appropriate action taken.”

Worth has been working with the Department of Health continuously on the matter.

“My colleagues and I in the College’s Health and Wellness Center work closely with the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Centers for Disease Detection in risk surveillance and response when a student presents with symptoms that may be consistent with mumps.

Our concern is the health and safety of the student exhibiting symptoms and the campus community.”

According to Holland, the student is doing well.

In her email to students, Holland listed the signs and symptoms of mumps. These include headache, fever, muscle aches, tiredness, loss of appetite, and eventually swollen salivary glands near the ears and jawline.

“Symptoms can appear [twelve] to 25 days after exposure. People with mumps are considered infectious from two days before swelling begins through five days after the start of swelling,” she said.

“Mumps is usually selflimited and most individuals recover completely within a few weeks.” she said. Treatment would involve mainly “supportive care,” wherein

healthcare providers would alleviate symptoms and wait for the disease to run its course.

Higher rates of vaccination against mumps contribute to herd immunity against it, according to Holland.

“Mumps outbreaks can still occur in highly vaccinated communities, particularly in close-contact settings such as colleges. High vaccination coverage helps to limit the size, duration, and spread of outbreaks. Pennsylvania State requires students complete two doses of measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine,” she said.

Holland offered advice to students for preventing the spread of mumps. Flu prevention practices are similar

to mumps prevention practices consist of covering one’s mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, washing one’s hands often, avoiding sexual contact and utensil sharing with sick individuals, and staying home when sick.

“Students who experience symptoms of mumps or have concerns should contact the Health and Wellness Center at 610-328-8058 or the afterhours on-call nurse at 610-3288548,” she said.

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THE PHOENIX NEWS

April 25, 2019

Frats, continued from A1 The video features Conor Clark ‘16, president of Phi Psi in spring and fall 2016 as well as a member of the Title IX Liaison team, and Raven Bennett ’17, who went on to become a Title IX Fellow for the 2017-2018 and is now a staff member at the college.

Members of the classes of 2020 and 2021 watched this video as part of their freshman training and orientation. The video now remains on the college’s Sexual Harassment/ Assault Resources and Education website.

Bennett, who said she very rarely or never attended fraternity parties in college, started working with Phi Psi and DU after members of the executive board approached her in 2014, during her sophomore year, about starting a program that would later become the Fraternity Mentorship Program. The FMP, which was adopted by Delta Upsilon, the other on-campus fraternity, for two years, paired upperclassman members of the college’s two fraternities with pledges. They would meet once weekly and attend “special topic trainings on topics including masculinity, gender and sexuality, consent and allyship, bystander intervention, and alcohol and other drugs.”

She worked closely with Clark as it developed, and led workshops with fraternity brothers.

Bennett said that when she began the project, she was hopeful about the change she could make by opening dialogue with members, though she told members later during her time at the college to relinquish their leases on the fraternity houses. After the release of the documents, however, Bennett wrote in an email to the Phoenix that she was disappointed and disgusted.

“I felt betrayed because I had been very forthright with members of the fraternities, including sharing my own experience of being sexually assaulted at Swarthmore, and it seems they did not reciprocate that same level of transparency,” she wrote.

While the goal of Bennett’s

collaboration with the fraternities was harm reduction, she said that she believes that the trainings have not been sufficient.

“If Phi Psi has truly embraced a commitment to developing a culture of accountability and inclusion, as they claim, they would recognize that participating in trainings is not sufficient to repair the harm that has been done, and the only way of truly taking accountability is for current and past members to endorse forfeiting their house,” she wrote.

Jason noticed that fraternities on campus did feel pressure to reform themselves. After joining Phi Psi, however, he noticed a halt in the progress of reforming fraternity culture.

“I think when I joined [Phi Psi] in 2013, you could just feel there was a shift and a pivot in a different direction. Whether or not the direction was a good one, I think we can let the last five years inform us,” Jason said. “But then within the next year, 2014, there was a stagnation; it didn’t really feel like much had changed.”

Morgin Goldberg ’19, a core member of activist group Organizing for Survivors, believes that the training and education that fraternity members receive are ways that they can talk about sexual violence. But she doubts that there is a there is an overall commitment to enacting that training.

“I do not think [Title IX trainings have] foundationally really impacted the behavior or norms of the fraternity,” said Goldberg. “And that’s not to say there are no individual men in the fraternity that are invested or trying, but there is something structurally impossible about reforming the fraternities.”

Phi Psi is largely structured by its connection to the men’s lacrosse team, from which it recruits the majority of its members each year. Some students say this has created insular communities among the groups; Jason described this process as creating “layers of exclusivity.”

“I mean, if you look at the sports team at Sharples, [they’re] exclusive in the sense that they’re very much in their own world for obvious reasons,” said Jason. “But to have that in another exclusive space again, I don’t really think that that affords inclusivity unless you’re actively trying to create the structures within the space.”

Tess Wild ’19 is a current women’s lacrosse team member who regularly attended the fraternities in her first two years, but later stopped. She feels strongly that the connection between Phi Psi and the lacrosse team is harmful because it discourages those involved from addressing issues that arise.

“The relationship with athletics is really complex and damaging in the way that the teams are linked. The women’s teams have relationships with those guys. I think it’s hard for people on the teams to speak out because it’s removing yourself from the culture of the team,” said Wild. “Not only are you taking yourself out of the party culture because there’s not much party culture outside of the frats; I think when you’re vocal about being against the frats and you go, they take it as a personal attack,” she said. “I think there’s an emphasis on being a chill girl and being okay with a lot of the stuff that happens and I definitely felt that pressure.”

Christina Labows ’18 is another member of women’s lacrosse who stopped attending fraternity parties. She said that social pressures to attend were among the reasons she stopped attending fraternity parties.

“At Sharples if everyone’s talking about like, ‘Oh, did you see so and so on Saturday night,’ and I don’t know what they’re talking about, you know, you start feeling like an outsider, you start feeling like you aren’t ‘on the in’ in the team,” said Labows.

Wild also dated a Phi Psi member and men’s lacrosse player for two years, and believes the culture of the fraternity leads the men in it to

prioritize their social connections over holding each other accountable. “[When] my relationship ended, [I told him], ‘You need to be able to talk to your friends about this kind of stuff,’ and his explanation was, ‘I do have a problem with it and I can’t do anything about it because they won’t be my friends anymore.’

That is the leveraging of validation: they were going to withdraw the validation if he was not complicit,” said Wild.

For Wild, the structure of Phi Psi impacted not only her relationship, but everyone proximate to the fraternity.

“The violence that takes place in the frat was the rupture in my relationship. it was the reason it [my relationship] ended and it was a constant problem throughout the relationship,” Wild said. “It’s not just my friends and women who are harmed by this. We know that patriarchy serves no one and masculinity serves no one but this is a place on our campus where masculinity and patriarchy are turned way up and that’s harmful to the people involved in any capacity.”

Wild also described parties at the fraternity as harmful towards women, and described an atmosphere at Phi Psi where women are regularly talked about in derogatory and sexually explicit terms.

“At parties, the culture was not respectful of women. I saw girls being passed around. The way that [members of the men’s lacrosse team] talked about who they hooked up with or who they called ugly because they didn’t want to get with them and stuff like that,” said Wild.

According to Goldberg, who was sexually assaulted by a Phi Psi member her freshman year after a winter formal, Phi Psi’s ownership of the space and the power that accompanies it create pressure on female partygoers.

“You feel special if you’re friends with them, and they’ll give you alcohol and other privileges, like you can go upstairs to the balcony, you can go downstairs... And that ob-

viously [is significant] when somebody is trying to hook up with you, right?” [You think], ‘Isn’t this their house? Aren’t they doing me a favor by giving me alcohol and inviting me into the space...? So it made it really hard to say ‘no’ to people’s advances,” said Goldberg.

The pressure to remain silent — for social connections as well as other factors — affects both men and women who frequent the fraternities. Goldberg felt this pressure after her assault, when she feared retaliation from members as well as other regular partygoers she had gone out with during her freshman year. She said it prevented her from reporting the assault immediately.

“And so I didn’t report for a year, I didn’t report for a year afterwards. And that’s something that came up in my [Title IX adjudication] hearing: ‘Why did you take a year?’ And that was really part of it, ‘I don’t want to take that risk. And I’m a freshman and I don’t have... stable relationships yet,” she said. “And [I worried], ‘Am I going to piss off these guys that I also see doing other kinds of aggressive things where they’re also yelling and fighting and using slurs and screaming at people?’”

Daria Una Mateescu ’20, another student who regularly attended the fraternities until the beginning of this school year, initially believed that fraternities at Swarthmore did not suffer from the same problems as those at other colleges.

“Freshman fall, I really bought into the myth that swarthmore’s fraternities were not like other fraternities. And I thought that because I was friends with many frat members. And I thought that they cared about me and protect me and treated me as a human being a number of ways that the stereotypes about frats were untrue that in the Swarthmore context, things were different,” she said.

But after three years at the college, she feels differently.

“It’s something that I think from the outside, they very

much mastered the art of making it appear like a much more innocent thing than it is in reality,” she said. “I think you have to go through the process in some ways of really seeing how bad it is.”

Currently, the college’s Task Force on Student Social Events and Community Standards is in the process of compiling their recommendations on fraternities at the college. They are set to be released on May 10.

how can someone be so tonedeaf and so unaware of themself.”

According to Mike Hill, director of Public Safety, multiple students reported the incident but no information about it has been publicly shared.

While neither D.U. nor Phi Psi held open or closed parties last weekend, O4S core members went to the Office of Student Engagement on April 22 to ask Andrew Barclay, the fraternity liaison and one of the individuals who approves of party permits, to not allow the fraternities to host parties for the remainder of the school year and to remove brothers currently living in bedrooms in the fraternity houses.

Werkmeister believes that if the fraternities continue to host parties, students could still be potentially harmed in those spaces.

“We’re worried that in the meantime, there will be more students who will be harmed.

He [Barclay] told us that it was not his decision unilaterally. He told us that Dean Nathan Miller also has to sign off on this,” Werkmeister said. “We asked that he take a moral stand because he definitely has a part in it. He definitely has the ability to say ‘no’, but he did not want to engage in dialogue with us.”

In response to the action taken by core members in the OSE, Dean Jim Terhune released an email on April 23, denouncing the student protest,“a group of students went to the OSE office where they disrupted an existing meeting, harangued staff members, delivered ultimatums, and recorded and posted video of staff members without their permission.”

In his email, Dean Terhune also broadly discussed the response of activist groups on campus to the Phi Psi leak.

“I share your disgust at the vulgar, sexist, violent, homophobic, and racist content of those documents. But that outrage, or impatience with the process that is examining social

life on campus, does not give license for disruptive, unproductive behavior.”

Dana Homer ’21, who attended the task force protest, believes that while the college emphasizes its Quaker values, the administration does not recognize students’ right to nonviolent protest.

“The email [from Dean Terhune] was a pretty clear sign that they don’t want us protesting. They [the administration] have been sending really mixed signals,” she said. “On the one hand Swarthmore is like we’re all about Quaker values and we support your right to protest, but when we [students] actually peacefully protest, they say that we’re bullying and harassing them and that feels very disingenuous.”

O4S released a statement addressing Dean Terhune’s claims about the nature of O4S’ actions.

“Our protest comes after administrators’ continuous, dangerous disregard for what is an urgent safety concern. And yet, those who demonstrate for what is right and just have been met with disbelief, accusations of being “combative” or “un-

civil”, or directed to continue waiting for change that does not come.”

The statement also reasserted some of the organization’s requests such as taking interim measures like banning fraternity parties for the remaining school year, ending fraternity leases, and releasing the task force report prior to May 10.

On April 24, O4S members also protested outside of Dean Nathan Miller’s office, asking about his lack of oversight over the fraternities, as an associate dean of students and director of student conduct.

The same day, a meeting was also held between members of O4S and the Swat Coalition to End Frat Violence and faculty members. Goldberg, who attended the meeting, believes that the college should work to address the concerns of both faculty members and students.

“We did meet with faculty members as a way to inform and involve them as concerned community members. Many faculty members I’ve spoken with are pretty concerned about fraternity violence and the way the college has thus far neglected to meaningfully ad-

dress it,” Goldberg wrote in an email to the Phoenix. “Faculty members should be aware of the issues impacting their students. O4S is, separately, pushing for a faculty governance model of college decision-making because we do think faculty members are well-equipped to responsibly weigh in on a variety of matters, from Title IX to divestment.”

Recently, a Google form titled ‘No Donation Pledge: Swarthmore must terminate its leases with fraternities’ has also circulated online. The form, created by Priya Dietrich ’18, is for alumni and parents of students who wish to stand in solidarity with current students asking for the college to terminate the leases of the fraternities. Interested individuals are asked to stop donating to the college until action is taken.

As the semester winds down, O4S and the Swarthmore Coalition to End Frat Violence have just weeks before the Task Force is set to release its recommendations to President Smith and the Board of Managers. President Smith will then make a decision on whether to terminate the leases on the fraternities.

O4S, continued from A1 leged position and because there are communities on campus, students and women of color who don’t feel comfortable going to the fraternities in the first place, stories that are coming out of the fraternities from the victim side are often already privileged in different ways, like class and race.”

O4S and the Swat Coalition to End Frat Violence also met on April 18 to plan a protest during a Task Force on Student Social Events meeting in Parrish the next day. The task force met on Friday about a report that will “critically examine social life on campus — including Greek life and programming in campus social spaces.” The report will include recommendations for President Smith and will be released no later than May 10.

According to a recent Voices article, members of the Task Force at the meeting included co-chair David Singleton ’68, co-chair Professor Lisa Meeden of the CS department, ITS director of support services Aixa Pomales, O4S member Olivia Smith ’21, Phi Psi member Arjun Madan ’21, Charlotte Pohl ’21, Dean Tomoko Sakomura, men’s basketball head coach Landry Kosmalski, and Dean Shá Duncan Smith.

Protestors in Parrish demanded that the task force release their recommendations immediately.

After the meeting was over, Singleton told the crowd of around 100 people, “we [the task force] will not finish with our work today, so if you’re looking for a report from the meeting, I am sorry to tell you we will not have one today.”

While the task force was unresponsive to the demands made by protestors, another event called ‘Transforming the Frat Spaces: Takeover and Sleepover’ was held the following night. The event was a collaboration between Sync-Up Zero Waste, O4S, and the Swat Coalition to End Frat Violence.

The event begin at 9:00 p.m. and took place outside of the

Phi Psi and D.U. houses.

The goal of the takeover, according to Goldberg, was “a way, following and preceding other intense direct actions, to reclaim and reimagine those buildings, which have served as locations of violence, harm, and exclusion for so many of us.

It was a way to create different associations and meanings in the space. ” Vanessa Meng ’20, founder of SZW, had planned on doing an event on April 20 months beforehand — SZW’s event just happened to coincide with O4S’ plans. Prior to the release of the documents, Meng was contacted by a core member of O4S who asked if SZW was interested in collaborating to throw a party.

“All of our parties in a way have been a protest, it’s all about manifesting values that we believe in which are these [eight] principles that we made up. The reason why [we collaborated with O4S] is that we’ve always seen the assault of the earth and the assault of women as a connected issue,” Meng said. “We truly believe that it comes from the same type of energy. The destruction to women and the destruction and disrespect to nature is really the same.”

Meng and other members of SZW made artwork for the event in the I.C. courtyard on April 19, the day before the event. After leaving their artwork in the I.C. courtyard, members of SZW discovered that their artwork had been vandalized with paint.

A door of the I.C. had also been vandalized with paint.

“We left our stuff in the [I.C.] courtyard to go to Battle of the Bands and when we came back two bottles of paint were used to spray all over the walls, floor and one of the paintings. I was really upset. ” she said. “We spent all day trying to come together making art, it was only good things. I also thought this is so tone-deaf, we just got a leak and all of it was about how people vandalized the [I.C.] and

Atziri Marquez / The Phoenix

ARTS

April 25, 2019 PAGE A3

Terpsichore Showcases Range in Dynamic Spring Performance Elisabeth Miller Arts Writer

T

his past Saturday, the student dance collective Terpsichore held its Spring concert to showcase the work it has done this semester. The group, named after the Greek muse of dance, consists of about forty dancers of varying levels of experience. The show was equally accessible to the audience members as it was for dancers; there was something for everyone to enjoy, no matter how familiar they were with contemporary dance. The nine pieces performed ranged from calm and relaxing to dark and thought provoking, giving variety to the types of stories and styles the groups was able to showcase.

The show was also choreographed entirely by students, including Ella Small ’19, Iris Liao ’22, Lucy Jones ’20, Gwyneth Fletcher ’22, Maggie Zoz ’19, Adriana Knight ’21, Jessica Yang ’21, Omar Saleh ’22, and Francesca Rothell ’21.

Nine dancers walked onto the LPAC main stage and opened the show with a number choreographed by Small set to a mashup of familiar pop songs. They were wearing uniform outfits — a pair of denim shorts and a button up shirt — but it looked as though the items came straight from the dancers’ closets. There were times when the horde of dancers looked messy and chaotic, and it was hard to choose which corner of the stage to pay attention to.

This wasn’t distracting though; if anything, the informal costumes and disarray on stage added to the authenticity and fun of studentled groups. This theme remained throughout the show, as dancers in different colored t-shirts and all-black outfits swept across the stage from one number to the

next.

Large group pieces were interspersed with smaller duets and trios, such as the trio entitled “Hide,” choreographed by Jones.

The piece featured Jones, Rothell, and Liz Lanphear ’19. Performed to the song “Hide” by FKA Twigs, Jones asked viewers to decide for themselves if the contemporary dance was about “the three fates or the witches from the Scottish play?”

Later on in the show, a contemporary duet entitled “Trust Fall,” took the stage. The piece was choreographed by Knight, and featured Knight and Hannah Watkins ’21. The two were dressed in all white, and Knight wore a blindfold as Watkins led her around the stage to the song, “Unsteady,” by X Ambassadors.

Knight described the piece in the program as, “an exercise in trust, dedicated to the people who catch me when I fall.”

Other highlights included a relaxing and whimsical piece entitled “Paper Airplanes,” which was choreographed by Liao. The program explained that it was “center[ed] around the themes of memories of childhood, and the bittersweet knowledge that though we can think of them, we can never return to them.”

While the show did not have a formal intermission, Terpsichore took a moment in the middle of their show to call attention to the recent Voices and The Phoenix coverage of past misconduct in Phi Psi. Representatives of the group offered solidarity with student activists and journalists and stressed the importance of the “transformative power of art.”

The dance number that followed this speech, entitled “Brink” and choreographed by Zoz, featured a number of couples dancing

together to tell, “a story of nostalgia, missed connection, and love.”

The dancers closed the show with a dramatic number to the song “River” by Bishop Briggs and choreographed by Terpsichore president, Rothell. The dance ended in a flurry of flashing lights and a synchronized drop that left Jones standing in the center of the stage before everything went dark.

Jones, both a member of the group as well as the Events Coordinator, commented on her experience with the dance collective.

“Terpsichore has really grown since I’ve been abroad and it’s really exciting to have so many dancers and pieces, not to mention our first solo show in a couple of years. I really appreciate the variety of styles and points of view that we get to express through our individual pieces. The show was a huge success for us.”

Before honoring graduating seniors, the dancers performed a portion of the iconic “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” scene from the movie “Dirty Dancing.” What started as two couples grew into many as the stage became crowded with dancers celebrating the end of a successful show. Members of the audience stood and clapped along to the music, caught up in the nostalgia of the classic 80s dance sequence.

Rothell reflected on the show and said, “Each of these dancers and choreographers have dedicated so much of their time this semester, rehearsing every weekend, and it really showed. Thank you LPAC staff for helping us put this together and thank you everyone who came to support us!”

Nara Enkhtaivan / The Phoenix

Nara Enkhtaivan / The Phoenix

“The Unicorn Brigade” Shows How Defying Convention Can Become Innovation Anatole Shukla & Powell Sheagren Chief Copy Editor & Arts Writer

Last Friday and Saturday in Sci 101, a space that is normally reserved for classes and lectures, a stage unfolded with chalk drawings, unicorn emblems, and drawings galore. A hushed crowd was drawn in to this old-yet-new space, waiting to see the complex parable of hard work and forced excellence.

“The Unicorn Brigade,” written and directed by Alex Kingsley ’20, presented to us a narrative about the darker aspects of the meritocracy and the way that it systematically destroys bright students. The performance shone as an example of the potential for large-scale student-run theater productions on campus — the extensive workshopping process that it underwent showed the strength of collaboration, and its making use of an inadequate theater space was indicative of student-led innovation for theater at Swarthmore.

The play had relevant themes and sparked important discussions around the darker aspects of school and studying. The performance itself could have been improved with smoother transitions, better cohesiveness, and a more apt acting space. Nevertheless, the show was a step in the right direction for student theater on campus, and it told an important story that all students can understand and learn from.

“The Unicorn Brigade” takes place on the campus of the most prestigious secondary school in the world, Fransdale Academy.

The show’s title, “The Unicorn Brigade,” comes from the school’s coveted unicorn mascots that students are forced to wear on their cardigans. Fransdale, according to Kingsley, is based on the American school system, in which students are taught obedience and treated as either “good” or “bad.” Fransdale forces their students to take weekly tests, the resulting scores of which determine whether or not they can return home for va-

cations. Because Fransdale was built on a small island, there is allegedly no other means of escape for students. The catch, inspired by “Catch-22,” is that every time a student gets the highest possible score, Fransdale raises the scale of the tests. Abusive staff, cutthroat competition, and fake letters sent to parents exacerbate the isolation and stress-driven atmosphere of the school.

The show opens on the protagonist, Casey Watts (Camryn Slosky ’22) being introduced to Dr. Marlow, a therapist (Gwen Gilfond ’22) that Fransdale’s headmistress (Lydia Churchill ’22) hired to help Casey. Casey is the school’s drug dealer who went crazy a year ago, and spends the majority of the show relating her story to Dr. Marlow. The play then displays Casey’s experience as Fransdale’s top student, and the school’s overall brutality. For example, the headmistress and her crony, Larken (Youogo Kamgaing ’22) actively pits Casey and her roommate, Katya (Lydia Churchill ’22) against each other for the Golden Crabapple, an award for the best student at the school. The tension builds between Katya and Casey until Casey’s winning the award results in Katya’s suicide. In addition to this academic abuse, Fransdale staff punishes a student named Clark (Shail Modi ’21) by dressing him in a worm costume and turning him into a table. Because of the stress, Natalie (Jaimie Lopez ’22), Casey’s younger mentee, stops eating and sleeping in an attempt to emulate Casey’s success.

Casey, distraught after losing Katya and finally seeing through Fransdale’s shallowness, decides to destroy the school from the inside out by first disrupting the ceremony for the Golden Crabapple award. She then convinces students to refuse to take the tests, and to remove and discard their coveted badges. She then proceeds to lie to Mr. Stevens (Amaechi Abuah ’21), a school staff member, and the school’s nurse, Nurse Jackie (Emily Branam ’21) about

having rickets so that she could hide in the infirmary. Eventually she figures out that Fransdale had only hired Dr. Marlow to convince Cesy to take her own life. This revelation, through a series of twists, leads to Fransdale burning down and leaving only three survivors. The play has no complete resolution, instead implying that students stay at Fransdale because they want to instead of being forced to, and that the staff plans on covering up the school’s abuses.

The play masterfully balanced comedy with moroseness, and scenes rapidly pivoted between making audience members giggle uncontrollably and making them gasp because of Fransdale’s horrors. The events of the show were hilarious to the audience because of their sheer outlandishness and absurdity. Slosky stated that while the audience laughed, however, the ridiculous punishments scarred the characters.

“Perhaps at different times the environment seemed humorous to the audience, but in the eyes of Casey, none of the events are “humorous,” rather, they are absurd and cruel. I think the humor came from the fact that, to the audience, all of the events were so outrageous and ridiculous that it came off as funny … There are scenes that go from outrageous hilarity to extreme drama in a matter of seconds and it took a lot of fine tuning and practice to mirror these shifts.”

“The Unicorn Brigade” is also unique in that, according to the show’s program, the play underwent an extensive workshopping process before rehearsals began. The workshop lasted for two months, and Kinglsey stated that in that time, “a lot changed” about the play, including a fleshing-out of characters. The workshop allowed actors to alter and connect to the piece in an act of in-depth collaboration that is not normally associated with theater.

Kingsley also thanked Emma Pernudi-Moon ’19, the show’s dramaturg (a literary editor for the-

ater), for leading the workshop.

“The original script was really all over the place, and the workshop helped me focus in on a few key themes. For instance, the workshop inspired me to have Fransdale on an island to emphasize the sense of isolation. In fact, Fransdale didn’t even have a mascot in the original script, so the entire unicorn motif was completely an invention of the workshop.”

In another interview, Slosky also commented on the actors’ contributions to the play through the workshop.

“One way that the actors helped to shape the script was through character complexity. For example, initially, characters like Arnold (Collin Paul Spangler ’20) and Annie (Emily Branam ’21) were not very complex … Through the workshopping process, however, we were able to provide both of those characters with more dimensionality.”

The play followed a timeline anything but linear, given that the majority of the show took place through the eyes of Casey as she related her tale to Dr. Marlow.

Scenes jumped back and forth throughout Casey’s four years at Fransdale, and it oftentimes became difficult to keep track of events as they occurred.

Kingsley stated that this confusion and fractured timeline was entirely intentional.

“Ironically, the original draft of the play had many more time jumps, but readers pointed out that even with the timeline in the background, it was too confusing to track the story ... I still wanted to keep that fractured timeline, though, because I think it serves as a mirror for what’s going on in the [character’s] head ... This is a story about a girl who thinks she is going crazy. What if in watching that story unravel, the audience begins to feel like they are going crazy too? I also know that I do not process events chronologically. When I recount events to my therapist, like Casey, I don’t always know where to begin because I don’t really know where the beginning is

... When you’re trying to understand your own narrative, it is near impossible to keep straight.”

Slosky wrote that the nonlinear plot presented a challenge to the actors with regards to portraying the characters’ development.

“The nonlinear plot was one of my biggest challenges in portraying Casey … In order to jump back and forth for the majority of the play but then settle on her final form in the last few scenes required me to know Casey’s linear progression inside and out. I oftentimes had to think about what Casey would be thinking or where her mental state would be at this current memory.”

Rather than in a traditional theater, the show took place in Sci 101. Kingsley wrote about her choosing this space as a statement about the inaccessibility of theater spaces for students, and the challenges of staging a full-length production in a classroom.

She wrote, “Sci is long and shallow, the opposite of what you usually want from a stage. It has hardly any backstage, so we covered the sides with tapestries.

The podium doesn’t move, so we incorporated it into the set ... The school makes it very hard for us to use department theater spaces.

We did the show in this space to prove a point: we need to support students arts by giving student artists a useful space to perform in. When the best space you have to perform in a classroom that is actually pretty awful to perform in, that’s when you know that there’s a problem.”

The cast and crew of “The Unicorn Brigade,” despite the shortcomings of the show’s physical location, certainly manipulated the area to the full extent of its capabilities. To help audience members keep track of the show’s timeline, the dates of the show alongside Casey’s test scores were written on the chalkboards. Gilfond, who played Dr. Marlow, then slid the chalkboards up and down to reveal new dates every time a new scene occurred. Before both acts of the play, a minute-long video

played about Fransdale. The first was an ad for the school, and the second was a similar video which portrayed the “real,” maniacal Fransdale.

While Slosky was initially skeptical about staging a full-length play in Sci 101, she was pleased with the final result.

“When I first found out that the performance was going to be in Sci 101, I was unsure as to how the staging would work. I quickly realized, however, that the space actually fit the message of the play incredibly well. I also think Alex handled the staging with excellence, deciding to split the stage into three distinct areas: Dr. Marlow’s office, the courtyard, and a general classroom/dorm room space.”

Despite the complexity of the story and the physical location, “The Unicorn Brigade” managed to transform Sci 101 — a space that so many of us normally associate with stress and fear — into a space that represented even more imminent stress and fear. The play, while its social commentary on the American education ranges from roundabout and abstract to immediately viable for extrapolation, serves as an introspective glance on the flaws of basing self-worth on the meritocracy. While the second act of the play was admittedly slower than the first act, it forced the audience to think about environments to which young students subject themselves in the name of success. The cast and crew seamlessly integrated the plot with Sci 101, and delivered line after line of hilarity that was synonymous with Fransdale academy.

As for the future of “The Unicorn Brigade,” Kingsley stated that the play was recorded and will soon be online, both on YouTube and in the Underhill archive. She also plans on putting the play’s script in the National New Play Archive, so its text will soon be accessible to all.

PAGE A4

THE PHOENIX ARTS

April 25, 2019

“Control & lack thereof”: The Stunning Culmination of Three Swarthmore Seniors’ Artistic Endeavors Photo courtesy of Grace Dumdaw

Lauren Maguire Arts Writer

B

etween 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. on April 18, the List Gallery buzzed with activity as friends, family, community, and art enthusiasts attended the reception for the senior thesis art exhibition “control & lack thereof” featuring the works of Maximillian Barry ’19, Guinevere Mesh ’19, and Simona Dwass ’19.

Barry’s geometric wax sculptures cut through the gallery, providing it with a sense of symmetry while Mesh’s powerful oil paintings lined the walls of the elongated rectangular section of the gallery.

Although Mesh’s pieces did hold a common thread, the content of the pieces threw the symmetry off kilter, drawing one’s focus all around the room. In the square annex, Dwass’s aesthetically pleasing wood cuts and oil paintings hung on the walls, each piece equidistant from one another.

This satisfaction was only extenuated by the symmetry provided by Barry’s pieces.

As an art and engineering major, Barry married components from both of his majors in his senior thesis creations. He initially saw the overlap between the two fields while working to design his own dorm room as part of his final project for his Drawing Architecture class at Swarthmore.

In his thesis, Barry wrote about the intersection between his areas of study.

“I have found that both fields can learn from one another, as the

ability to communicate information visually is necessary for engineers and understanding the behavior of our world is something artists have yearned to know for millennia.”

These ideas were very evident in the forms he created: the texture, color, and shapes chosen were precise while owning a subtle fluidity. The process of letting the wax flow followed by freezing it in itself points towards a metamorphic quality that Barry’s pieces alluded to.

His passion for art pervaded through not only his pieces, but also the manner in which he spoke about the experience of creating art after realizing that he was going to major in it.

“It wasn’t even work, it was just like I have to do this for my own sanity, for my own like being. Like, I just have to keep making art.”

Barry also discussed the overall message and theme of his displayed collection.

“I think it is mainly about listening and like paying attention. I am usually a very quiet and softspoken person … This is my effort to try to communicate and to try to get people to listen and pay attention, so it is very much detail oriented and it is very much for me about like the surfaces as landscapes and like places for the eye to explore and the forms are mainly to extenuate that fact.”

For Dwass, art came as unexpected love following some art classes she enjoyed partaking in her freshman year. Dwass was not sure about why she specifically

majored in art, but she said, “I didn’t anticipate loving it so much … It was a lot of fun — a lot more fun than I had expected.”

Like Barry, Dwass is both an engineering and art major, and her affinity for both fields was evident through the precision of her edges and experimental approach to making art. Her works for the exhibition were influenced

by Keith Wilson and Ron Rumford.

Throughout the semester, Dwass worked to perfect the clarity and sharpness of her woodcuts and the strokes she created using oil paint. While talking about using oils, Dwass expressed her enthusiasm for the way in which she felt the medium gave her a lot of control through the ease with which she could choose the color and edit when necessary. During the process, she considered intricate details that others may often overlook and even spent time “really thinking about edge in and of itself, not just edge within a painting.”

To create a piece, Dwass would make a sketch on paper or on a computer of a photograph and then decide which colors to use.

She experimented with colors that deviated from reality and explored how colors complement one another. The colors combinations she put on display at the exhibit were prominent, bright, and nuanced — a particularly intriguing color combination included a deep, almost brown or black shade of purple and a slightly green tinted blue that appeared to be close to turquoise.

When looking at Dwass’s pieces, one feels satisfaction with the arrangement before them. There is no need to look for some deeper meaning as the pieces are formalistic in their style — the art de-emphasizes the content and instead places emphasis on the aesthetic.

Despite being influenced by the Vienna Secession Movement, German and Austrian Expressionists, and American Abstract Expressionists, Mesh, both a Biology and Art major, has created an oil painting style that is distinctly her own.

The variety of colors, hues, shapes, and brushstroke intensities showcased her ability to be flexible while staying true to her individual style. Her paintings all had an air of whimsicality about them.

For this exhibition, she took easily recognizable objects, such as oranges, and dismembered them in her paintings.

In her thesis, she wrote about the intention behind her collec-

tion.

“I want to not only preserve emotion in my paintings but suffuse emotion in my audience … I believe that in obliterating objects and making them momentarily unrecognizable, the viewer loses their care for what objects in the painting are in reality and instead focuses on how the painting contributes to an individual experience.”

Mesh also talked about her choice of using still-life subject.

“The reason I chose innocuous objects like still-life and oranges and apples is because I didn’t want the viewer to come to a piece already having certain ideas about the subject matter. By taking something that’s as normal as like an orange or a cup or something like that I want the viewer to be able to kind of put and project what they want to onto the painting.”

In providing the viewer with

white space, she gave them the space to reflect and come to their own emotional response. After taking her first art class at Swarthmore, Mesh realized how important it was to her and used it as a structure for expression.

All artists expressed their gratefulness for Swarthmore’s art department and the availability of resources and recommended taking art courses at Swarthmore. Although the works created by Barry, Dwass, and Mesh are no longer on display at the List Gallery, there are more senior thesis exhibitions to come before their conclusion on May 20. Come to the List Gallery to see what your fellow Swatties have created before they graduate and take their artistic talents with them!

Rhythm and Motion Energizes Swarthmore’s Mainstage Tristan Alston / The Phoenix

Atticus Maloney Arts Writer Last Friday, Swarthmore College and Bryn Mawr College’s bicollege dance group, Rhythm and Motion, put on a show-stopping performance on the Lang Performing Arts Center’s main stage.

After having collaborated with Terpsichore for previous performances, this semester RnM took to the stage by itself. Through audience participation and a student fueled choreographic process that expresses a strong commitment to community, RnM produced a synergetic performance.

It seemed that the crowd’s reaction was incredibly positive. There was an abundance of applause after every piece, and the audience often couldn’t contain their excitement during them. It seemed that the dancers had as much fun on stage as the audience did while cheering them on.

Furthermore, the audience was blown away by the show’s unique elements. Lighting effects were used to produce shadowy outlines of the dancers in James Bond-like dramatic poses. Later, the combination of fog and strobe effects served to maintain a high level of audience energy. There was even a

piece done entirely in high-heels, exhibiting exceptional balance and practice from the dancers. As a hip hop group, RnM used many elements of hip-hop movement, and the movements of the dancers often had the feel of a music video.

I asked around to learn more about this group from the members themselves. Ashley Mbah ’19 mentioned that RnM’s mission is to keep their music, movement, and message rooted in the African Diaspora. Another dancer, David Melo ’21, said that the dances themselves are inspired by the styles and music that the diaspora has brought about through black communities.

One dancer, Meena Chen ’21, told me about her favorite moment of the show.

“I’d say my favorite moment was definitely during the newbie piece, because we always try to hype up the newbies backstage, and it just reminds me of how fun and supportive the space that we all create together is.”

This theme of community definitely ran through the performance as dancers and audience members interacted to produce an amazing show.

Melo spoke of this audience

participation as his favorite moment.

“My favorite moment of the show was when the audience just cheers for any one of us. I love it when I hear the audience shout out their friends or react to anything going on in the show. It gives us, the dancers, so much life and energy that we really need to keep going,.” Melo said.

Yet the process of creating this performance was not as easy going as the relaxed and polished form of the dancers lead us to believe. Mbah told me that as coordinator, “it’s a lot of planning, like scheduling. Especially coordinating rehearsals between the two schools.”

This trouble was illustrated by the other dancers as well, such as Chen.

“I haven’t had a free Saturday and it’s kind of hard, but worth it! We also go to Bryn Mawr every other week since we’re a bi-co dance group and that’s like a thirty minute drive.”

Lia D’Alessandro ’21 echoed a common response in the group to these troubles.

“Just like anything, there were ups and downs throughout the practice process but I think our dedication to the group and our

love of dance certainly fueled us through the semester.” From the dedication and effort that the audience witnessed on stage, it certainly seems that the RnM dancers share D’Alessandro’s motivation.

One incredible aspect of this show for students is that the pieces were choreographed by our peers. Each student choreographer had complete control over all aspects of their piece, from the mood they want to convey to the more specific movements.

Melo offered the perspective of a student choreographer.

“It’s a very hard process because you only have a semester to think about the moves you want to use and the concepts you are trying to use. You have even less time to teach it because you only have an hour once a week to teach a piece of about three to four minutes.”

Chen echoed his point, saying, “I think there’s a lot of pressure on the choreographers to put out art they are proud of and then there is pressure on the dancers to be able to bring that on to the stage.

There’s a lot of tiny details that go into our shows, and there are a lot of things to keep track of, but we all figure it out eventually.”

As with the dancers, it seems that a strong sense of community

fuels the choreography process as well. Chen said, “hanging out and dancing together really lightens up the stress and the work of it all” and for D’Alessandro, community made it possible for her to put on an especially challenging piece.

She told me about her experience choreographing a piece entirely in heels, “This semester was the first time I choreographed for RnM and I was so fortunate to be able to do it alongside Naomi [Park ’21]!”

D’Alessandro went on to discuss their footwear decision, “Naomi and I really wanted to bring something new to the group. We had to develop a great sense of balance and confidence to dance fluidly in heels. Our dancers killed it and the whole show was an absolute blast!”

All in all, the Rhythm and Motion show represents the energetic, beautiful product of much labor that has been done behind the scenes. Yet for these dancers this “work” represents the opportunity to belong to a nourishing and flourishing community of artistic talent.

Tamagawa University’s Taiko & Dance Group Booms with Cultural Joy and Prestige Powell Sheagren Arts Writer

Twenty minutes before the start of the show, the Lang Concert hall with its 420 seats was full to the brim with adults, children, and students alike. By fifteen minutes before the show, there was not a single seat left in the massive space. The anticipation was palpable as the start of the show creeped closer, but no one could have prepared the audience for the cultural explosion that was to follow.

Tamagawa University’s Taiko & Dance group’s sixteenth annual American tour came last Monday to Swarthmore’s Lang Concert Hall. The performance included ten taiko and traditional Japanese dance pieces. Taiko, which literally translates to fat drum, is a traditional Japanese drumming style that utilizes different sizes of drums ranging from small to large. Performers use their drumsticks, or bachi, to play rhythms and act out choreographed motions to the song. Alternating be-

tween the energetic drum beats of the Taiko players and the more calming performances of the traditional dancers, the show was rich with Japanese culture and tradition.

Tamagawa University is a Japanese University in Machida, Tokyo. While they have other departments of study, their department of performing arts is especially well known. In addition to their tours throughout the United States, the group has done tours in countries such as Greece, Malaysia, and the U.K. The Tamagawa University brochure for the event explains that the university seeks to “raise appreciation of the arts in society, not only by training artistic people, but also by promoting the arts in Japan and abroad.” They succeeded in doing just that by bringing the power and grace of traditional Japanese art to the United States, both in Swarthmore and beyond.

The Taiko performances varied in tone and rhythm, but each was energetic in its own right. The group of Taiko performers, which

consisted only of men, swapped costumes, drum positions, and members for each piece, bringing a new experience with each new set. The men were impressively energetic throughout all the pieces, shouting and cheering sometimes in their performances, striking poses, and supporting each other in solo sections. The audience could tell that they were very much enjoying the work they were doing, and their joy and radiance spread into their performance a masterful blend of skill, practice, and passion.

The traditional dance aspect of the performance was a necessary contrast to the Taiko section.

The group of dancers, which conversely consisted of all women, performed traditional Japanese dances that utilized fans, hats, formations, dance techniques, and swords to cite various cultural emotions, festivals, and dances.

The dances were often slower, but more mobile, as the performers were not tied down to drums like the Taiko ones were. The group used many different styles and

techniques of traditional dance that each spun a distinct kind of beauty. Eventually the two groups came together in finale in a large dance number with gold and silver fans that sparkled and emanated enthusiasm.

In addition to the performance

by Tamagawa University, there was an additional Taiko performance by the Swarthmore Taiko program as a part of the lunch concert series. This performance in the lobby of the Lang Music Building showcased some of Swarthmore’s Taiko talent in order to advertise for the Tamagawa taiko and dance show as well as their future performance at the dance department show at the end of the semester. The Swarthmore Taiko group, with performers such as Jason Wong ’21 and Daisy Lee ’22, did two performances, one with a few members drumming on a set of drums and the other with a larger group of performers on singular drums.

The performances themselves were massively powerful, captivating, and skillful with choreog-

raphy and good but improvable timing. It was a great preamble to the performance later in the night — although not quite as powerful, it warmed up the audience to the allure of the booming drums, and inspired more people to go to the performance.

The festival first came to Swarthmore College through the partnership of the now retired Swarthmore Professor of Dance, Kim Arrow, and retired instructor from Tamagawa University, Isaburoh Hanayagi. It was mentioned in the performance that Swarthmore College is the only stop the tour has come to every year as a show of good faith and companionship between the two schools. Resident Professor Joseph Small ’05, the current head of the Swarthmore Taiko department and a former student of Tamagawa University, is continuing on the tradition of Taiko in Swarthmore like Arrow did before him.

Professor Small acknowledged the importance of the interschool cooperation.

“I am deeply appreciative of Prof. Kim Arrow and Prof. Isaburoh Hanayagi. Because of their friendship, Swarthmore’s Taiko program exists, as does Tamagawa University’s annual tour. Both of these have flourished and grown over the past [sixteen] years (and Tamagawa’s tour actually relies on Swarthmore as a logistical base).”

He then restated a comment he made at the concert.

“I mentioned in my introductory speech at last week’s concert a couple expressions in Japanese - en, which in context might refer to serendipitous fate, as well as okagesama de - an expression of thanks which on a more formal level might connote “Everything I am is thanks to you”.

So, to receive the opportunity to come ‘home’ after so many years and teach at Swarthmore College is both a case of en, one where I say to them (and all my teachers), okagesama de.”

OPINIONS

April 25, 2019 PAGE A5

Callen Rain ’15 Op-Ed Contributor

I

was a member of Phi Psi at Swarthmore from the Fall of 2011 to the Spring of 2015.

I’m writing to publicly call for the removal of fraternities from campus.

Violence, disparaging language, and other behavior attributed to Phi Psi members have been partially documented by the Swarthmore Fraternities Tumblr. I can confirm these are not isolated instances but come from a culture that pervades this institution. Rather than documenting more episodes, however, I’ll focus on why these behaviors will persist unless the fraternities are removed. I can only apologize for not sharing this perspective earlier; I prioritized my social comfort as a member of the group.

Failure to hold Phi Psi members accountable for their behavior explains the persistence of a toxic culture despite repeated claims of improvement. There are several parties responsible for this failure.

These include the leadership and membership of the fraternity, along with the school administration. The privileged treatment that the Swarthmore administration grants, as well as their severe incompetence in handling complaints against the fraternity members, has been well documented, so I will focus on the fraternity itself.

During my time at Swarthmore, the leadership of Phi Psi consistently failed to expel members of the group or otherwise sanction them for their behavior, which primarily took the form of sexual violence, and homophobic and misogynistic language. Moreover, members of leadership were responsible in that they were either perpetrators of the behavior or had

social relationships with those profound silence. Both Phi Psi and the Swarthmore men’s laimplicated.

This persistent failure of the crosse team amplify the byPhi Psi membership to publicly stander effect. Members of these groups committed violent speak out against the behavior openly taking place is the offenses, and the rest of the strongest evidence of a deeply group chose to joke about it, compromised institution. The minimize these crimes, degrade impacted, group’s affiliation “One of the most those or stay silent. In with the lacrosse most cases, brothteam, a group I unsettling parts ers who called out was also a part of, others for their partially explains about these behavior were igthis inaction. This institutions is nored or pacified. misguided associAny contrition ation begins even how they infect members before admittance otherwise-decent that expressed was to the school, usually for harmwhere players people with a ing the image of on the team who deep and prothe group rather were fraternity than for the immembers would found silence.” pact of their acoften bring prospective students to the house. tions. When members did pursue institutional change, it was As a result, they communicated a not-so-subtle message that largely motivated by a desire to the fraternity was simply a improve perception among stunatural extension of the team, dents.

Some brothers, including putting pressure on players to me, attempted to rehabilitate join. I noticed that players who did not join the fraternity fre- the image of the fraternity dequently quit playing lacrosse spite knowing that members expressed behaviors which we after a year or two.

Rather than integrating knew conflicted with our mesthemselves more throughout sage. For example, Phi Psi hostthe student body, many mem- ed educational trainings on bybers of Phi Psi spent most of stander intervention and rape their social time with a small culture while being completely group of people in an exclusive embroiled in both. However, these workshops were only location on campus. One consequence of this insular and mandatory for pledges, even concentrated social culture was though a significant portion of that fraternity members rarely the offenses I witnessed were empathized with the voices carried out by leadership and calling for institutional change. older members of the fraternity. While recognition of these When confronted, fraternity members used the social sham- concepts is better than nothing, ing they experienced as proof of I do not think they were interan apparent disingenuousness nalized. I learned that several of their opponents’ positions, members that attended these workshops were later found rather than as a valid expresresponsible for sexual misconsion of anger.

One of the most unsettling duct and assault. It is clear now parts about these institutions that these educational soluis how they infect otherwise- tions were insufficient on their decent people with a deep and own and delayed real change.

w

PHOENIX

THE

I Was a Member of Phi Psi — Swarthmore’s Fraternities Must Go

The bystander effect explains Shreya Chattopadhyay, Editor-in-Chief some of the unwillingness to Bayliss Wagner, Managing Editor speak publicly about what was Laura Wagner, Managing Editor happening. Members were also directly pressured to ignore NEWS or fail to report behavior they Naomi Park, Editor otherwise would not tolerate.

Trina Paul, Editor Other members resorted to retaliation if this norm was not ARTS maintained. I witnessed this Esther Couch, Editor several times, ranging from Nicole Liu, Editor ostracism of those raising concerns about fraternity activities CAMPUS JOURNAL to explicit threats of violence.

Dylan Clairmont, Editor Because Phi Psi holds power and influence in campus life, OPINIONS public disavowal of fraternity Shelby Dolch, Editor culture lends itself to exclusion Max Katz-Balmes, Editor from a large part of campus social activity. This dynamic conSPORTS tinues after graduation, and exJack Corkery, Editor plains the continued silence of alumni or defensive pleas that the fraternities are beneficial to the school.

Ultimately, Phi Psi is an insti- lend little credibility to the tution inherently incapable of statements made recently by holding perpetrators account- current fraternity leadership.

Similarly, Phi Psi “committed” able for their behavior. The solution is not to create bet- itself to “words of change” in ter guidelines for behavior or the fall of 2013: Last spring, students raised continued education. Abuse of concerns with the practices and power is not remedied by eduattitudes of our institution, incation, but by justice.

The solution, in part, is to cluding heteronormativity and remove some of that social the objectification of women. We power that fraternities have intend to change this perception, by terminating the leases they as well as work to eradicate sexhold. The environment fostered ism, racism, homophobia, and other forms of disby the fraternity crimination not may change in- “The solution is only in our house, crementally from not to create bet- but also throughgeneration to generation, but ter guidelines for out campus.

I helped write the behavior that behavior or con- that statement.

I experienced durcommitted ing my time there tinued education. It Phi Psi to a goal has been reported that could not upon for decades Abuse of power be achieved. At by those affected. is not remedied that time, even There has been leadership little visible result by education, but the of the fraternity other than words by justice.” had no intention and symbolic gesof changing their behavior, but tures, but not a curtailment of saw an opportunity to “save the behavior itself. We should

PHOTOGRAPHY Atziri Marquez, Editor LAYOUT Sarah Chang, Editor Catherine Zhao, Editor COPY Anatole Shukla, Chief Editor BUSINESS Robert Conner, Manager SOCIAL MEDIA Abby Diebold, Editor DIGITAL OPERATIONS Daniel Chaiken Navdeep Maini EMERITUS Keton Kakkar Ganesh Setty

face” by associating with those words. They were still enjoying the “minutes” being distributed over the group listserv. If the current membership of Phi Psi actually internalized the affliction that the institution suffers from, they would not continue to be a part of it.

Ultimately, suggestions for solutions should come from the survivor community, not from the privileged and powerful that caused the harm. I am grateful to those who have shared their experiences and demanded action. Please listen to these voices and publicly support them. I’m certain that their perspectives will foster change and create a social environment at Swarthmore that prioritizes safety and equity.

I suspect many Phi Psi alumni agree with these positions.

I encourage my peers to resist the existing culture of silence, share their perspectives, speak out, and demand that the fraternities are removed from campus. Incremental change is

I Was in DU — Swarthmore’s Fraternities Must Go David F. Hill, IV Op-Ed Contributor

In the Spring of 2013, I wrote an op-ed in the former Daily Gazette defending the continued existence of the Delta Upsilon fraternity based on my experience as a D.U. brother.

In the final paragraph, I wrote: “If I believed that [D.U.] or any other organization were a credible threat to [Swarthmore], I would lead the charge for its abolition.” Though the time to lead that charge is long past, given the tireless and largely thankless work of individual students and alumni and groups such as Organizing for Survivors, I am nonetheless joining their call for the abolition of fraternities at Swarthmore, or, at the very least, the ending of fraternity house

leases.

My experience with D.U. was a positive one for me personally. I formed bonds with my brothers, which led me to view them, and the organization, more favorably than I should have. This is not to say that all fraternity brothers are bad people. On the contrary, I believe most of them are morally good individuals who would condemn racism, homophobia, transphobia, and sexual misconduct. The problem is that when brothers fail to live up to that standard, the bonds of brotherhood serve more as a shield against consequences than a sword against the conduct. This not only protects the perpetrators of harm but increases the costs to the victims.

For years, and perhaps even

decades, there have been reports of sexual misconduct perpetrated by fraternity members in the fraternities’ houses themselves and outside their confines. While I never observed any sexual misconduct at D.U. by D.U. brothers, I have been told first-hand by survivors about their experiences with such. I listened to these accounts, expressed sympathy, and, when required by Title IX, reported them to the appropriate authorities. I also reported these accounts, with permission, to D.U. leadership. Although they were sympathetic towards the survivors, absent an adjudication by the school or arrest by police, there was little that could be done under the bylaws of the organization.

To my immense shame now, I remained a brother, believing

that these actions were perpetrated by bad apples and the fraternity itself was blameless.

I was wrong. The fraternity, by building strong bonds between its members, while excluding others, inherently leads us to believe and protect, even subconsciously, our brothers and organization at the expense of non-members.

This bias is made worse by the fact that fraternities currently have exclusive possession of their houses. In D.U., we were required to memorize the history of the house, which spans more than a century. Additionally, almost all of D.U.’s brotherhood events, from pledging to initiation, occur in the house. That learned affinity, setting aside the advantages associated with having an exclusive wet-space on

a campus with ever-increasing group of men who can pay alcohol restrictions, serves as dues.

Delta Upsilon’s a tangible, homemotto is “Justice, like possession “There can be Our Foundation.” to defend against no justice while There can be no those who would justice while extake it from the exclusive orgaclusive organizabrotherhood. nizations with tions with wellI freely admit that it is hard to well-documented documented and extensive hisgive up someand extensive tories of abuse thing that means maintain inordiso much to many histories of positions of brothers, espeabuse maintain nate power and privicially something lege on Swarththat brothers inordinate posimore’s campus. have paid to actions of power It is time to end cess. But, for the Swarthmore the good of the and privilege on fraternities’ school as a whole, house leases, and that bond must Swarthmore’s it is time to end be severed and campus.” fraternities at the fraternities’ houses opened for the good Swarthmore. of everyone, not just a select

SwatTeam Leadership Statement: End Fraternity Violence Moniher Deb, Rose Ridder, Najla Nassar, Eleanor Ghanbari, Stewart Silver, Samuel Sheppard on behalf of SwatTeam Op-Ed Contributors

We, the members of SwatTeam Leadership, would like to reach out to the Swarthmore community to address our role at events, including fraternity parties, in light of recent reporting about various violations of student safety committed by the fraternities. These complaints include violations of student safety related to sexual assaults as well as blatant racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, classist, and transphobic content.

SwatTeam Leadership cannot in good conscience staff a fraternity party while these cycles of violence are ongoing. We call for Swarthmore College to immediately and permanently revoke the fraternity leases.

SwatTeam Leadership refuses to staff any fraternity party

while the fraternities and their ing smoking/vaping indoors, members still hold positions and monitoring general levels of power, especially in owning of intoxication/substance use.

We will intertheir own premises.

Staffing will not re- “SwatTeam Lead- vene when we sume until demon- ership refuses to become aware of non-consensual strable changes are staff any fraterni- i n t e r a c t i o n s , made. ty party while the including any form of vioSwatTeam’s role: lence, harassSwatTeam is a fraternities and ment, assault, student-led orga- their members hazing, abuse nization employed of substances, by the Office of still hold posior any instance Student Engage- tions of power, where there is a ment that promotes lack of or inabilstudent safety at especially in all public campus owning their own ity to consent.

Our presence at events where alcoany event demhol is being served. premises.” onstrates our These events include PubNite, fraternity par- commitment to student safety, ties, and other publicly regis- not our promotion of any given tered and large-scale events event or hosting organization. such as Halloween and Winter Addressing violations of safeFormal. Our commitment to student safety includes check- ty: SwatTeam Leadership has ing in both Swarthmore students and non-Swarthmore read the leaked Phi Psi Historiguests, preventing the distribu- cal Archives, the anonymous tion of hard alcohol, prevent- personal accounts of harm from

current Swarthmore students on Tumblr, and campus publications regarding these documents. The violations of student safety depicted in these documents are abhorrent and must be addressed with direct and immediate action. Racism, homophobia, sexual violence, and harassment are not tolerated by SwatTeam and we will not allow these violations of student safety to be perpetuated and continued by the fraternities. We condemn the violations of student safety and we believe survivors who have shared their truths.

We are actively monitoring the swatfraternities Tumblr feed, and take each reference to SwatTeam’s actions as an opportunity to improve future responses to such incidents. We have noted two Tumblr posts that directly address SwatTeam responses. One incident addresses a physical altercation that occurred, and the other includes the distribution of hard alcohol by fraternity brothers.

We had no prior knowledge of these specific events and we want to address them immediately. If you have any further information and specifics (names, dates, locations) about these or other situations, we invite you to submit an official Swarthmore Incident Report using Maxient.

For SwatTeam specific feedback or comments, we will be in communication with the entire campus community in the coming weeks with opportunities to provide feedback and suggestions on how we can best support safety and community.

We are aware that SwatTeam’s responses to situations may not always be explicit or observable to all party attendees. We take these situations very seriously and work to address them in as timely a manner as possible while ensuring the immediate safety of party guests and following college policies to ensure issues are reported.

Addressing Phi Psi’s response: We are more than happy to address safety issues and work with fraternity members to improve safety conditions. However, Phi Psi’s statement to Voices which says that the process of joining the fraternity consists of “SwatTeam training” is false. This school year, only one Phi Psi brother completed the SwatTeam training requirement, and historically, we have documentation of fewer than five current brothers who have completed SwatTeam training.

In their statement to Voices, Phi Psi reported, “Our process for joining the fraternity consists of Title IX training, mindfulness training with Josh Ellow, bystander intervention and masculinity workshops, and requirements to become host trained and [SwatTeam] trained. We go above and beyond the basic community education that the average Swarthmore student receives because continued on page A6

PAGE A6

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April 25, 2019

SwatTeam statement, continued from A5 fully aware of our heightened responsibilities.”

The claim “we are fully aware of our heightened responsibilities” concerns us because Phi Psi brothers are not always as helpful or responsible as they imply, which interferes with our ability to do our jobs. We have occasionally observed Phi Psi party hosts drinking while being responsible for other students’ safety in their role as party hosts. Many Phi Psi members have indeed been host trained, but if brothers are intoxicated while hosting, this training is useless. Additionally, in a recent group meeting with the entirety of Phi Psi, brothers deflected some of the responsibilities detailed in Phi Psi’s Event

Management Plan onto SwatTeam, when we explicitly do not have those responsibilities.

To state they are “fully aware of [their] heightened responsibilities” while also claiming that their outlined responsibilities are not their own and shunning their host responsibilities is misleading, to say the least.

At any party, SwatTeam works closely with hosts to promote a safer, more inclusive space.

We cannot adequately serve the community without Phi Psi brothers’ cooperation and active engagement, and we encourage all hosts to engage in opportunities to be better prepared for the responsibilities of hosting and being responsible community members.

Course of action: SwatTeam Leadership cannot in good conscience staff a fraternity party while these cycles of violence continue. Therefore, SwatTeam will not staff any fraternity party for the remainder of this year or until demonstrable changes are made.

In the meantime, SwatTeam will continue to improve staffing and responses. Many are responses which are already in place, but we feel it is important to reemphasize and improve them in light of additional events and information.

We will continue to 1) Increase SwatTeam vigilance in lesstraveled areas and around the perimeter of parties - outdoor

areas, hallways, etc. 2) Increase expectations for timely reporting to ensure that information is appropriately documented for administrative follow-up, including requiring members to immediately alert managers via text in writing of any reports of misconduct 3) Hold additional trainings in the coming year to further emphasize responses to Title IX and Clery Act responsibilities, student reports, and more assertive bystander intervention training to mitigate problematic party behaviors 4) Host an annual presentation about SwatTeam’s responsibilities at First-Year Orientation 5) Reemphasize attentiveness and vigilance throughout parties, as per our current policy

6) Introduce a feedback system for campus to constructively make recommendations on the performance of SwatTeam at events.

SwatTeam Leadership echoes the Coalition to End Fraternity Violence’s call to action. As students given the responsibility for student safety, we must revoke the protections and privileges enjoyed by the fraternities with their continued leases. To voice your support in making the College safer, please submit a letter to the College calling them to revoke fraternity leases. We cannot condone the normalization of predatory behavior, or the exclusivity and administrative protection that is afforded to Swarthmore Fra-

ternities and their brothers.

If you would like to report any incident you have experienced on or off campus, please feel empowered to submit an official Swarthmore Incident Report using Maxient. The full link to the incident report can be found in the online version of this article.

For SwatTeam-specific concerns or comments, we are actively determining how best to receive your suggestions and we will be in contact with the student body in the coming weeks with more information.

Important resources for support may be found on the SHARE website and the Swat Fraternities Tumblr Resources Page.

The Frat Leak Matters — Even If You Don’t Go to Frat Parties EDITORIAL Last week, both The Phoenix and Voices published articles documenting histories of racist, sexist, and homophobic practices within Phi Psi during 2013 and 2014, along with documents describing their pledging process, all from leaked internal documents.

Since then, Swat alums — both former fraternity members and not — have spoken out against the continued existence of the college’s fraternities. Students

have protested at a Task Force meeting, Andrew Barclay’s office, and Nathan Miller’s office. Petitions have circulated amongst students and alumni.

Still, the fraternities are not (at least superficially) the central part of campus life — fewer than 10% of the student body are fraternity members, and Swat has no reputation for being a “fratty” school.

But the actions of the frats have an impact on more than just the brothers, or the sports teams, or the regular partygo-

ers. The actions of the frats affect all of us on campus, because the frats have different resources than other student groups on campus, altering the power they have over the Swarthmore social scene. Unlike other groups, frats have guaranteed party spaces in the form of the fraternity houses, which they lease from the college. Unlike other groups, frats can charge dues, providing guaranteed funds for alcohol.

Unlike other student groups, frats have a bedroom in their

party spaces that members alone control. These spaces and abilities were referenced throughout the leaked documents.

And they are able to host parties despite frequent violations of college policies over time. In the last two years, Phi Psi has been shut down for a full year and on probation for another; D.U. was on probation for several months. In 2013, the college’s fraternity advisor, Tom Elverson, a former D.U. brother, left amid a scandal concerning

the mishandling of sexual assault allegations against fraternity members. In 2018, former Dean of Students Liz Braun resigned following protests of her mishandling of allegations as well.

Whether or not you go to frat parties, the fraternities’ presence on campus changes the social context in which Swatties exist. On a given weekend, fraternities are often the only open party space, so the behavior and values of the fraternity matters even more. For

students who go to fraternity events, the culture of the fraternity impacts their immediate experience. The culture of a fraternity also determines who feels comfortable in the space, and thus who feels comfortable attending what are often the only open parties. Fraternities have power over social spaces, so their attitudes and actions reverberate not only through party culture, but through campus culture writ large.

Greek Life is Antithetical to Swarthmore’s Quaker Values Bryce Wiedenbeck ‘08 Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Op-Ed Contributor As I approach the end of my second four years at Swarthmore, I am sad to be leaving such wonderful students and colleagues, but I am perhaps even more saddened by the deep flaws in my alma mater’s student culture highlighted by the revelations in the April 18 issue of The Phoenix. No one should be surprised by what we saw in those documents. We all know that this is what fraternities are, and that these are the things they have always done and will continue to do.

The real problem, however,

is not hazing, but sexual as- ating safe party spaces, especially in the face of contradictosault, and these documents are equally important to that con- ry testimony from other, braver versation. They show that the students.

I mean no fraternities simhostility toply cannot be “...if Swarthmore ward individual trusted. None of cannot take the members of their claims to have put hazing lead in standing up the fraternities or sororities; I and bigotry be- to fraternities and typically don’t hind them hold know which of water, as the putting the needs my students are members from of survivors first, members, and 2013 would I suspect that have undoubt- how will American some of my top edly said ex- higher education students have actly the same. been among Similarly, the ever change?” them. However, college should view with extreme skepticism any organization electing to call itself a fraternity or sororthe fraternities’ claims to be eliminating misogyny and cre- ity is endorsing historical bag-

gage that from a 21st century viewpoint is almost exclusively negative. Fraternities and sororities have always existed primarily for the purpose of creating artificial in/out groups by excluding people. Their benefits accrue almost entirely to their already-privileged members, and their harms are felt by our most vulnerable students. I firmly believe that fraternities and sororities are antithetical to Swarthmore’s culture and mission, and therefore consider it imperative that the administration take action to remove them.

The changes that Swarthmore’s administration has implemented in response to O4S have been too small and

too slow. Changes regarding Greek life seem to be hampered in part by an incorrect belief that the college would suffer financially from taking a stand against fraternities. I stopped donating to Swarthmore in 2013 in response to the decision to allow sororities. I told the alumni office that I would resume donating if and only if fraternities and sororities were banned from campus. My financial contributions were always a token amount, and since then I have given far more in time and effort than I ever could have in cash. However, I stand by my pledge and encourage other alumni of greater means, as well as new and soon-to-be alumni in greater numbers, to

Open Letter to the Students who Vandalized the Intercultural Center Gene Witkowski & Chase Smith Op-Ed Contributors

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally edited by and for publication in Voices.

Last weekend, on the night of Friday, April 19, the Intercultural Center was vandalized with neon purple and orange paint, splattered not only across artwork created by a community in search of a safer, more united campus, but also left on the pavement in front of, and the door to, the IC Big Room. This is not the first time that the IC

has been vandalized; in 2013, urine was found on the main door to the IC, and as a result of this prior vandalism, the IC has installed surveillance cameras.

Public Safety and the Bias Response Team are in the process of investigating the most recent incident.

Upon hearing the news via social media, those of us who work as IC interns were aghast to see a space we hold so dearly be disrespected. The Intercultural Center, is, has been, and will continue to be a safe space and a source of community for all students at Swarthmore, regardless of their race, eth-

Sincerely, the following Intercultural Center Interns: Gene Witkowski Chase Smith Olivia Robbins Shelby Dolch Daniela Gómez Wilber Dominguez Dakota Gibbs Josie Hung Paul Buchanan Kenny Mai Zain Talukdar Ferial Berjawi Sokeyra Francisco Robby Jimenez Mohammed Bappe Clarissa Phillips Kent Chen Taty Hernandez

nicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ability, class, or any other social identity they may possess, but especially for those whose identities have historically been marginalized. We choose to work at the Center, to come in weekly for shifts and project hours, because we recognize the incredible potential that the IC holds to serve as a home for the student body. We uplift the IC as a space for meaningful and powerful student advocacy. As interns, we also strive to foster a safe, multicultural and multi-background community for Swarthmore, one that is

kind, respectful, and supportive; that embraces difference; that values and grows from its diversity. The vandalism of our community space, a space that for many of us is the closest to a home that Swarthmore has to offer, threatens the safety of our beloved Intercultural Center. In committing this act, you, the vandals, have tried to intimidate exactly those voices which we as an intern team aim to uplift.

We write as members of the IC Intern team not only to express our disgust and anger but also to make a call to action: hold yourself accountable for

join me in pressuring the college to take the right stand.

I am leaving for a tenure-track job at another institution where I suspect that these problems are far more deeply ingrained, and I wonder: if Swarthmore cannot take the lead in standing up to fraternities and putting the needs of survivors first, how will American higher education ever change? With twenty years of hindsight, the college’s decision to drop football looks downright prescient.

The time has come to do away with another tradition where the costs now outweigh the benefits. I hope Swarthmore can once more take the bold steps necessary to promote the well-being of all its students

your actions. Apologize to the any more pain. We do not want Swarthmore community, the IC any more damage. We want to staff, and the IC interns. Work come together as a community to grow, reflecting on the purwith us in our goals of cultipose of the IC. vating a safe and You will not inloving community. “We will heal timidate us, and Learn more about with or withwe will continue to the IC and the work be there for each we do. Attend our out you, and other. Though your events. Speak to though we actions have disreour staff. Although spected our comwe recognize the may be shakmunity, we are potential for your words to be empty en, we will not strong, empowered, impassioned, and and without re- be broken.” inspired. We will morse, we still offer heal with or withyou the chance to participate in a healing process out you, and though we may be in good faith. We do not want shaken, we will not be broken.

April 25, 2019

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PAGE A7

The Mueller Report: No Conspiracy, Maybe Obstruction, Lots of Denial James Sutton Op-Ed Contributor

T

he final (redacted) version of Robert Mueller’s report came out last Friday, and we’ve learned that President Trump is a devious and incompetent liar, Russia definitively attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections, and that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia. In other words, nothing new, unless you’ve been mainlining the fevered conspiracy theories of cable news media straight into your veins for the past two years. Which, it appears, quite a few Americans on the left and right have been doing.

As the investigation has spun on, with month after month of inquiry turning up nothing but Paul Manafort’s penchant for ostrich leather jackets and a handful of convictions unrelated to the original reason for the investigation, the passionate belief that the Trump campaign of course, obviously, was in the pocket of Putin looked increasingly like a superstition. It really was a massive exercise in wish-fulfillment: if Trump was elected on illegitimate grounds, then the media and political elite could avoid having to learn any lessons from the past several years.

It was always somewhat ludicrous to believe that the association of grifters, political neophytes, and idiot children that ran the Trump campaign was capable of serious collusion. They didn’t seem capable of colluding to order lunch, much less pull off what, if the breathless accounts of MSN-

BC anchors and the New York Times had been true, would have been one of the greatest crimes in American history.

Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. are many things, but masterminds they are not.

Of course, impeachment is still in play. It’s within Congress’s powers to impeach a President for basically anything within the bounds of reason; the process is almost entirely political, not judicial.

But it seems Democratic leadership is reluctant to take that step, given that it would certainly fail and that very few Americans are going to change their opinion of the President based on the report. However, the odds of Mueller finding “legitimate” grounds for impeachment seemed increasingly slim as the investigation dragged on, and the rising tide of doubts was confirmed by Attorney General William Barr and then Mueller himself. Some holdouts are clinging to the slender thread of obstruction, but it’s very unclear how the head of the Executive branch discharging his constitutional powers would meet the legal standard for obstruction. It would be massively unethical and politically unwise, but an impeachment effort without airtight legal logic would split the country even farther apart and be guaranteed to fail.

A large portion of Americans, especially in the media and political class, genuinely seemed to believe that Trump was a Manchurian candidate hopelessly compromised by Russian intelligence. No one

seemed to question that the main source of this conjecture was the Steele dossier, a piece of opposition research by the Clinton campaign that turns out to have almost entirely relied on hearsay. The fact that the current administration took a harder line on Russia than President Obama’s by ramping up arms sales to Ukraine, initiating new nuclear programs, and actually killing several hundred Russian mercenaries in Iraq, fazed nobody.

Why, however, did this belief in grand conspiracy persist against reasonable objections?

Americans have always been prone to conspiracy theories — the Revolutionaries fervently believed that there was a grand British conspiracy to take control of the colonies behind their relatively tiny tax increases. More recently, the theorizing sprung from the fact that Americans who opposed Trump (and this is by no means only Democrats) were desperate for something, anything, to deny the fact the he had been elected fairly. I can sympathize with this — I would not have voted for Trump if I had been old enough to vote in 2016, and I plan to happily vote against him in 2020 regardless of who the Democrats run (although as I write this I have a nightmare vision of Beto O’Rourke becoming America’s best hope against Trump). And to be clear, while the document clearly exonerates the Trump campaign of collusion, it doesn’t show somebody fit to hold the office.

But the brute fact remains that he was legitimately elect-

ed. Spare me the complaints ally impossible to determine about the Electoral College — and nowhere near significant those are the rules both sides enough to take the drastic step have played by for centuries. of declaring an election illegitimate. It’s of course disturbing, And the assumption that because Clinton won one per- but Russians did not convince centage point more of the vote Hillary Clinton to stop visiting Wisconsin, or for voters in means that she would have easily won a popular vote elec- Detroit to turn out at far lower rates than in the tion is wronglast election. headed. A na- “Honestly, howAmericans tionwide popular ever, the whole who desperately vote campaign would look so debacle is refresh- waited for a messianic Mueller different than ingly clarifying.

Report, one that our current elecwould expose a tions that the The idea that conspiracy exact results are American journal- vast to undermine almost imposthe Republic, sible to predict. ists are somehow have been disThere are plenty sacred guardappointed. You of scenarios in wouldn’t neceswhich it would ians of the truth sarily know it not go the Demand not simply from the headocrats’ way. One lines.

Journalthinks of the ordinary people ists seamlessly tens of millions pivoted to highof extremely low who are prone light that the returnout Republi- to groupthink, port declined to cans in the agriclear, or charge, cultural belt bor- wish fulfillment Trump of obdering the West through headlinestruction. These Coast.

Their pseudo-charges votes would sud- writing, and fitare serious, but denly matter just ting facts to narwe already knew as much as those of the much- rative deserved to the President is unethical. The discussed Texas be shattered. ” narrative tireDemocrats’. lessly promoted by the media The constant references to “Russian bots” as somehow for two years has been one of swaying the votes of millions collusion and conspiracy. But of Americans are also absurd. it’s now been brushed to the The few dozen Russian hackers side, and discussion of obwho made memes about Black struction is now presented as Lives Matter and Pizzagate the only thing that ever rewere a grain of sand in the in- ally mattered. Honestly, howsanity-filled beach of internet ever, the whole debacle is repolitical discourse; their actual freshingly clarifying. The idea effect on the campaign is liter- that American journalists are

somehow sacred guardians of the truth and not simply ordinary people who are prone to groupthink, wish fulfillment through headline-writing, and fitting facts to narrative deserved to be shattered.

This isn’t to say that good reporting doesn’t exist: national publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post still produce somewhat unbiased reporting on day-to-day politics and international affairs. But whenever a story looks like it may have a connection to the TrumpRussia narrative, journalistic ethics and process go out the window. This ends up helping, not hurting, Trump by nuking what little credibility the national media has left. However, it’s probably good for citizens of a democracy to be reminded that hackery doesn’t end where journalism begins.

In the end, the Mueller report leaves us exactly where we started. Our country is currently run by one its most dishonest, unqualified, and plain stupid candidates in recent memory. He was elected fairly, running against one of the least popular candidates operating one of the worst run campaigns in modern political history. And he is a malignant symptom of serious national illnesses: racism, xenophobia, elitism, a persuasive sense of disenfranchisement and powerlessness. It would be better for everyone if we faced those concrete facts, rather than try will others into existence.

America Has Grown Tired of “Collusion” Jacob Brady Op-Ed Contributor The fact that Russian actors engaged in attempts to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election is not a matter of debate. What has been up to debate since the summer of 2016 is to what degree Donald Trump and his campaign coordinated with Russia to improve his chances of being elected. Robert Mueller was appointed in May of 2017 to investigate just this.

His report, which was released last Thursday, indicates that, at least for the short term, Trump is secure in his office.

Although Congress has the option to continue to investigate Trump and the election interference, they would be unwise to do so. Mueller’s investigation has polarized America for much of Trump’s term in office, and if Democrats want to win the White House in 2020, they should focus on uniting Americans against Trump’s lack of efficacy as president.

For nearly two years, America waited with bated breath for the release of the Mueller report. Every few weeks, a new indictment of someone related to the Trump campaign came out, although the actual charges were rarely related to the campaign itself, and the suspense regarding the final report would grow.

On March 22, the final 448page report was sent to Attorney General William Barr. On March 24, Barr sent a letter to Congress that detailed his interpretations of the report.

According to Barr, the report was based on a somewhat controversial legal principle that didn’t actually say much of anything. The letter confirmed a sitting president cannot be indicted through the justice that Russia did indeed engage system for any in attempts to influence the “Mueller’s investi- crime, but must impeached election, not exgation has polar- be first. This leaves actly a surprisopen the possiing finding. ized America for that Trump The report, much of Trump’s bility could be indicted however, said leaving that investiga- term in office, and after office. That is tors did not find if Democrats want somewhat unsufficient evilikely given the dence to pursue to win the White principle of not charges against pursuing charges Trump or his House in 2020, against political campaign on al- they should focus rivals, assumlegations of a ing Trump is conspiracy to on uniting Amerifollowed by a influence the cans against Democrat. But it election.

On also means that the allegations Trump’s lack of Congress could of Trump’s ob- efficacy as presipursue charges struction of the of impeachment. i n v e s t i g a t i o n , dent.”

Ultimately, Barr stated that the report had left it up to the nothing in Mueller’s report Attorney General to decide on was particularly surprising.

Prior to the actual release of charges because the report did the report, here were constant not reach a conclusion. Barr said that he had ultimately de- information leaks regarding interactions between Russian clined to pursue charges.

When the actual redacted representatives and members version of the report was re- of the Trump campaign. One of the most prominent of these leased to the public last Thurswas a meeting in June 2016 day, the contents were more between Trump’s son, Donald or less in line with what Barr had stated in his letter, at least Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared with regards to the short-term Kushner, and a number of Ruseffects that the report will sian lobbyists who supposhave. Technically speaking, edly had “dirt” on the Clinton campaign. There was no doubt just because Mueller did not that there were interactions find sufficient evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and between representatives of the Trump campaign does not the Russian government and members of Trump campaign. mean that one didn’t exist. The decision to not pursue charges But according to Mueller, no based on obstruction of justice interactions rose to the level

of conspiracy, which requires malicious intent and in general is a very high legal standard, both for individuals and for the campaign as a whole.

Trump also rather publicly engaged in actions that could be considered “obstruction of justice.” He publicly called for the firings of officials who were responsible for his investigation, including FBI director James Comey, who he ultimately fired, and Mueller himself.

He also directed White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to Mueller about Trump having tried to fire Mueller. But there is little evidence that he actually tried to get individuals to lie about interactions between his campaign and Russia. Indeed, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, testified that Trump didn’t actually direct anyone to lie about this. Part of what makes this all confusing is the fact that Mueller didn’t actually find that Trump committed the crime of conspiracy, so what exactly he was obstructing is unclear. Actually, one of the more amusing parts of the report was the claim that Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice failed in many cases because those that he ordered to engage in obstructive acts simply did not follow his orders. Mueller ultimately stated that Congress was free to pursue obstruction charges through the process of impeachment.

The real question is if congressional Democrats should choose to pursue impeachment of Trump. Ultimately I believe they should not. For more than

two years, the Mueller investigation has winded on and at this point America has grown tired of these investigations.

According to a Huffington Post poll taken right after the release of the Mueller report, only one percent of Trump voters in 2016 believed the report made him unfit to be president, while 98% of Clinton voters thought the report was damaging. Ultimately, Mueller’s report did not change minds.

Any congressional investigation, especially more than three years after the election, is unlikely to have any more of an effect.

In addition, any impeachment proceedings will almost certainly fail. While Trump will likely be impeached due to Democrats’ majority in the House, there is little chance that he will be convicted in the Senate as conviction requires a two-thirds majority. Currently Republicans control the Senate, and they would be very unlikely to vote for Trump’s conviction. Over the last forty years, no party has held a twothirds majority of Senate seats, and an outright two-thirds majority for Democrats would likely be necessary to actually convict Trump. Two American presidents have been impeached, Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson, but neither was convicted.

All such congressional proceedings will likely do is give Trump more ammunition with which to attack his Democratic opponents, the media, and reinvigorate his base as he calls out any congressional inves-

tigation as a witch hunt. It is also questionable whether obstruction of justice rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional requirement for impeachment.

Clinton was impeached on an obstruction of justice charge, but that accompanied a charge of lying to Congress. And Clinton’s impeachment was one of the more absurd episodes in American politics as the perjury charge was based on his personal life.

There are many more important issues that Democrats should be focusing on for the 2020 election. The best appeal to those who voted for Trump in 2016 is simply to point to the fact that his economic policies have not been effective.

Trump’s promises to “bring back coal” in 2016 have not had any effect on the coal industry.

Wage growth has slowed down since he assumed the presidency. His 2017 tax cuts have had nowhere near the effect that he claimed they would. He has not proposed any free market alternatives to Obamacare in spite of repealing the law’s individual mandate, thus basically removing its authority by eliminating penalties for not having insurance. Admittedly, Democrats are unlikely to suggest any free market solutions either. Trump is a historically unpopular president who has no signature moment in office.

He is a weak candidate, but continuing to pursue the Russia collusion angle is not an effective path to victory. It’s time to move on.

SPORTS

April 25, 2019 PAGE A8

NCAA Votes Against Adding Third Baseball Assistant Ricky Conti Sports Writer

T

he NCAA Division I Council recently voted to disallow Baseball and Softball programs from adding an additional paid assistant coach.

As it currently stands in NCAA Division I Baseball and Softball, programs are only allowed to have three “countable” coaches, meaning coaches who are both paid and legally allowed to recruit student-athletes to their institution. Given both the sizes of the average roster and the variety of positions within both sports, most college coaches have felt three isn’t enough.

NCAA Bylaws prevent programs from hiring more than three coaches, so any additional members of a coaching staff must be volunteer.

It is very common for pro-

grams to bring on not just one, but several volunteer coaches.

These coaches work hard to establish relationships with players, come to as many games and practices as they can, and assist the head coach in as many ways as legally possible.

Unfortunately, the burdens of life makes being a volunteer coach a difficult task, as many volunteer coaches struggle with making ends meet for themselves and their family, while also attending to the needs of their program. There are countless stories of excellent volunteer coaches having to quit due to a conflict between limited time and energy, not enough income, and having to support a family in general. Furthermore, volunteer coaches don’t receive the same health benefits that paid coaches receive The Southeastern Confer-

ence, one of the most popular conferences in college athletics, recently put forth NCAA Proposal 2018-34, which requested that the number of maximum countable coaches be increased to four.

The proposal was officially made back in August, giving both the NCAA and Athletic Directors plenty of time to think about their decision. It does not require schools to add an additional coach, but simply increases the maximum. This way, schools that can afford another will simply pay for another, and schools that can’t won’t.

The proposal was not controversial at all, with most if not all head coaches in Division I supporting the additional of another paid coach. Unfortunately, the NCAA disappointed the college baseball and softball worlds, voting down the

proposal.

Baseball, of all NCAA sports, has the worst coach to player ratio, measuring in at one coach to twelve players. No other sport has a ratio greater than one to eight. Not only would an additional coach be very affordable for most schools, but it also drastically improves the well-being of the both the coaching staff and the players.

To be fair, the NCAA in and of itself did not vote down the proposal, the Division I Council did. The Council consists of 40 members, with at least one member from each of the 32 Division I conferences. To complicate things, not each member receives the same amount of voting power. There are 64 total votes, a product of some members of the conference receiving four votes worth of voting power. Essentially, the decision was

made by the Athletic Directors of Division I institutions. Each A.D. simply votes yes or no, and whichever choice is the majority represents the vote for the conference.

Kendall Rogers and Aaron Fitt of D1Baseball.com have been closely monitoring and studying the proposal, and are even slowly releasing the list of conferences that voted “No” on the proposal. So far, we know that the Big Ten and Big Twelve, voted against the proposal, while the Pac-12 voted in favor.

In the coming weeks, we will learn why some conferences voted the way they did. It is unclear exactly why certain Athletic Directors would oppose the change. The most obvious might be competitive advantage. Not all conferences are revenue generating in baseball

and softball. Revenue generating conferences would be quick to hire another coach, whereas non revenue generating conferences might be reluctant. The additional coach could give wealthier schools and advantage.

Even on the baseball team here at Swarthmore, the presence of volunteer coaches have made a huge difference. The role that athletics plays on campus is much different at the Division III, but the role that coaches play in the lives of players is the same.

One thing is certain: the addition of another countable coach is heavily supported by coaches and student-athletes.

I would not be surprised if we saw this proposal again in the near future.

NBA Playoffs Kick Off, Missing a Familiar Face Kevin Liao Sports Writer With the NBA season finally in the books, the playoffs are underway. For the next few weeks (from April 13 through the start of June), sixteen different teams will vie for the title of ‘world champions,’ and the opportunity to be immortalized in basketball history forever. For those interested in catching up on the action, here are some of the top developments so far.

The biggest story of the playoffs, so far, is the absence of the NBA’s biggest star — LeBron James. James, long the “face” of the league, had not missed a playoff appearance since 2004, making nine NBA Finals and winning three of them.

Alongside his superhuman athleticism and unforgettable moments, ‘King James’ also has an extensive off-court influence — his own school, lucrative endorsement and entertainment deals, and a globally-recognized brand. Any team that managed to sign him would instantly become title contenders, and have a guaranteed playoff spot. So when the Los Angeles Lakers announced they had signed James, the expectations were clear — a return to

the glory days of the old Lakers dynasties, and immediate Finals contention.

So when the Lakers missed the playoffs completely this year, ending with a mediocre 37-45 record and a tenth-place conference finish, people were in shock. The fantasy of the unstoppable James, who could will any team to the postseason and win any game, was shattered. Much of the blame was laid upon injuries — James sat out 27 games — and the change in supporting cast, surrounded by unproven rookies and a motley crew of odd free agents.

But some blame also laid with James — playing with far less enthusiasm and energy, and taking numerous plays off defensively.

In terms of an immediate impact, the biggest change has been in the Eastern Conference.

Since 2011, LeBron’s teams had dominated the conference, winning the conference for eight straight years. Now, without him, the East is wide open, with several of James’ former rivals the Milwaukee Bucks, Toronto Raptors, Philadelphia 76ers, and Boston Celtics, all hoping to take the King’s former place atop the Eastern Conference throne.

The other major story re-

volves around the heavy-favorite Golden State Warriors, and their star small forward — 10-time All-Star Kevin Durant.

After falling to the LeBron-led Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals, Golden State managed to recruit Durant from the Oklahoma City Thunder. In doing so, they accomplished two goals — crippling their chief rivals in the Western Conference, and creating a core of four AllStars (Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green) that made the Finals all but a foregone conclusion.

Now on pace for his third Finals victory, though, Durant appears to have finally satiated his desire for championships.

Now, most rumors indicate that Durant will likely move on from the team, looking to establish himself as the face of his own franchise. Several major names have been floated out as potential landing destinations — the New York Knicks, Brooklyn Nets, and Boston Celtics, among others. Even the Lakers have been considered as a destination, with Lakers fans holding onto the dream of a LeBronDurant duo.

Regardless of where he goes, though, the balance of power will shift drastically within the NBA. Arguably the premier

scorer in the league and still in his prime, Durant would launch any team into instant-contender status, but more importantly remove one of Golden State’s chief weapons, dropping them from their perch of overwhelming favorites.

Of course, Durant’s departure hinges on a number of factors — the Warriors winning again, Durant finally being satisfied with three championships, and wanting to head elsewhere to be the star of the team. Which will emerge - a continuation of the NBA’s latest dynasty, or a new era of unpredictability?

Only time will tell.

Thus far, the playoffs have largely gone as expected, save for two series — those between the San Antonio Spurs and the Denver Nuggets, and between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Portland Trail Blazers. While the favorites have dominated every other series, the seventhseeded Spurs have fought to a 2-2 series tie against the second-seeded Denver Nuggets.

The series has shown the Spurs’ resilience, bouncing back not just from the loss of their franchise superstar Kawhi Leonard, but also the departures of Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, the last holdouts of the Spurs dynasties of the early 2000s.

In a season where many expected the Spurs to miss out on the playoffs, they roared back, stunning the Nuggets at home — a place where Denver had only lost seven games all season. Led by DeMar DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge, San Antonio has also been aided by its supporting cast, exemplified by Spurs point guard Derrick White. After averaging 9.9 points all season on 48% shooting, White has exploded against Denver, averaging 19.3 points at a 65% clip. This was capped off in Game 3, when he scored 36 points on 83% shooting. Instead of rolling over and accept their fate, the Spurs have refused to die just yet.

Meanwhile, for the Thunder, it’s yet another story of disappointment. Oklahoma City entered this season with promise — after star forward Paul George signed a long-term deal, their core of George, Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams looked poised to make a splash in the Western Conference. The first-round embarrassments of the last two years would be forgotten, in a return to form of the old Thunder, when Westbrook and Durant led OKC to the NBA Finals.

Instead, it’s been the same old story. After a mid-season

skid pushed them back to the middle of the pack, the Thunder finished as the fifth seed, losing home court advantage to the Portland Trail Blazers. Four games later, they find themselves facing elimination again, down 1-3 and heading back to Portland for a decisive Game 5.

Much of the credit for Portland goes to the Blazers’ dynamic backcourt duo of CJ McCollum and Damian Lillard, who have averaged a combined 55.1 points per game.

But just as much credit — or blame, depending on which side one roots for- goes to Westbrook’s erratic play thus far.

Aside from a breakout Game 3, the Thunder superstar’s shooting has been abysmal, a mere 36.3% from the field, highlighted by Games 2 and 4, where he shot a combined 10-for-41 (24.4%). While he has contributed through his playmaking and rebounding abilities, Westbrook’s failing hero-ball may be what costs Oklahoma City the series.

At the end of the playoffs, only one team will be left standing, with the title of NBA Champion. But until then, to find out how all these stories unfold, sit back, tune into the playoff matchup of your choice and enjoy!

Athlete of the Week: Lauren Holt ’21 Jack Corkery Sports Editor Swarthmore Track and Field continued their successful season last weekend at the Widener Invite. At the meet, Lauren Holt ’21 stood out amongst the Garnet athletes.

She ran the 400-meter dash in 56.82 seconds, which is now the ninth-best time across all of NCAA Division III. Holt was also part of the school record-setting 4x400 meter relay, along with Kayla Camacho ’19, Mirayda Martinez ’20, and Sydney Covitz ’20. The relay is also currently ranked tenth in the country. The Garnet return to action today and Friday as they compete in the world-famous Penn Relays at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jack Corkery: What is your major and what led you choose this field of study?

Lauren Holt: I’m majoring in Biology and minoring in Spanish. I’m pre-med and I really enjoy taking science classes and labs, but I love languages and reading too.

JC: Why did you choose Swarthmore?

LH: I actually hated my first tour at Swat but ended up coming back a year later and really loving it. I felt very aligned with the academic and moral principles of students on campus. Swat is very close to but also very different from where I grew up so I enjoy the security of being near home without feeling like I never left.

JC: Why did you first start running track?

LH: I started running track in middle school because I was super lanky and uncoordinated and just bad at other sports.

JC: What is your favorite Sharples bar?

LH: Caribbean bar or mac and cheese bar!

Runa Cheng / The Phoenix

JC: What is your favorite spot on campus?

LH: I love being outside especially now in the spring, but I’m also really lazy so probably my own bed.

JC: What was it like to win Centennial Conference Track Athlete of the Week?

LH: It’s exciting because a lot of other talented Swat athletes that I’m friends with have won and also it’s just cool because it’s not something I expected.

JC: What is one thing you would change about Swarthmore?

LH: My shins and I would love a new indoor track.

JC: You’re currently ninth in the country in the 400m and on the tenth-ranked 4x400m. What does it feel like to be amongst the best in the country?

LH: It feels very ephemeral because the rankings change so much every week after each meet, so I am constantly checking the list to see if my name is still there.

But it’s also incredible to be a part of such talented relays and such a dedicated team and finally seeing the results of that hard work.

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

LH: Everyone works so hard for basically the entire school year and I really want to see that pay off in the next few weeks. It’s amazing to watch your teammates run, throw, and jump well and break their own records and win events so I’m really just looking forward to that at conferences. I also want to see our relay go far and to keep the season going past next weekend because we have such good momentum and it’s just fun to run well with your friends.