Swarthmore Phoenix, February 21, 2019

Today in OPINIONS: Laura Wilcox on Modern Monetary Theory A5, Lily Goldman on Israel-Palestine A5, Rachel Flaherman ’16 on Helen Plotkin and Beit Midrash A5

PHOENIX

“Radium Girls: In Concert” Glows with Intersectional Messages

THE

Lynette YiadomBoakye

Opens a new exhibit at the Jack Shainman

VOL. 147, NO. 4

gallery in NYC

A5

February 21, 2019

A3

The independent campus newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881

BDS Vote Leaves SJP Frustrated, SGO Divided Daijing Xu News Writer

A

s reported by The Phoenix last week, the Student Government Organization (SGO) voted down a resolution brought to them by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). After objection from many members of the student body, SGO is deciding between a re-vote or changes to the statement of the resolution.

Entangled with the question of the BDS resolution are discussions about the nature of SGO as an organization.

SJP introduced the resolution to SGO during the January 27 SGO Senate meeting. Throughout the

The week ahead Today Oilcraft: Folkways of Imperialism and Anti-imperialism in the 21st Century 5:00 to 6:30 p.m.

Lecture by Robert Vitalis, Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania Scheuer Room Friday Aretha Franklin Tribute 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Join the Black Cultural Center for a tribute to the late legendary singer Aretha Franklin.

Lang Music Concert Hall Saturday 4th Annual Economics and Finance Forum 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

4th Annual Economics and Finance Forum this February 23rd.

Hormel/Nguyen Intercultural Center 201 Multi-Purpose Room Sunday SBC Weekly Meeting 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m Meeting to discuss budgetrelated matters and consider supplemental funding requests for the week.

Sharples Room 209 Monday Fellowships and Prizes Dinner 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Join the WRC and Melissa Mandos to learn about fellowships and prizes that could be right for you! We will focus on opportunities for womxn, and anyone who may identify as underrepresented in the workplace BUT all are welcome!

Kohlberg 116 Tuesday Sonalee Rashatwar, The Fat Sex Therapist on Diet Culture 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Sonalee Rashatwar, popularly known as The Fat Sex Therapist is an award-winning speaker and organizer whose expertise in body image issues and racial identity issues will be discussing body image, colonialism, and diet culture Hormel/Nguyen Intercultural Center Room 201 Multi-Purpose Room Wednesday James Wallner at Swarthmore 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.

Mr. Wallner researches Congress, especially the Senate, the separation of powers, legislative procedure and the federal policy process.

Sci 101 WEATHER Cold, then warm, then cold again.

Thankfully, it does not rain men.

CONTENTS News A1-A2 Arts A3-A4 Opinions A5 Sports A6 Read more at swarthmorephoenix.com Copyright © 2019 The Phoenix

following two weeks before the vote, SGO was in constant discussion with SJP regarding the topic.

According to Kelly Finke ’21, sophomore class senator, the resolution was also discussed by SGO on February 3, but was not voted on due to the lack of attendance. The topics of that discussion were then brought to the meeting on February 10 when the vote took place, despite the presence of a student outside of SGO. SJP’s resolution expressed explicit support for SJP’s Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The resolution calls for SGO to advise the board of managers to reverse the 1991 ban on political statements through the

endowment. BDS would oblige the college to divest from the seven companies that are directly invested in the Israeli occupation, such as Lockheed Martin, which supplies the Israeli air force with fighter jets, and Caterpillar, a construction company that produces bulldozers that are used in the demolitions of Palestinian homes by the Israeli government. The vote that occured on February 10 decided whether or not, in that moment, SGO would send out the exact statement that SJP previously proposed The BDS online petition from October 2018 has received more than 1000 signatures, which the general student body considers to be a representation of the major-

ity’s view. Throughout the past week, students have expressed concern that SGO failed to represent the majority of the student body by not passing the resolution.

According to Kendelle Durkson ’20, Chair of Diversity and Inclusion, who initially commented regarding this topic in Voices, SGO is justified. He believes that SGO also needs to value the voice of the one-third of the student body, who disagreed with BDS or did not vote.

“Despite the fact that 66 percent of the students may have or may not have supported the BDS campaign, we still have 33 percent of the students, one-third of the students, still saying no or did not respond or did not poll.” Durkson

said. “We may have students within the 66 percent that aren’t fully educated on the issue. So we need to make sure that SGO sends the whole message to the student body that this is a forum where everyone can come and bring their political opinions, despite their political ideologies.”

However, Nathalie Baer Chan ’19, a SJP core member, expressed frustration that SGO has communicated that the amount of majority support BDS had was not enough.

“We think it is very harmful to say that 1000 voices and the voices of oppression and narratives of continued on page A2

Radium Girls Light Up the Stage

History Majors: A Thing of the Past?

Veronica Yabloko News Writer With the boom of tech and computer industries, an increasing number of students are choosing to major in the S.T.E.M. fields.

Even in liberal arts colleges, humanities majors are finding themselves fewer in number each year.

One especially dwindling major is the history major, whose students make up less than eleven percent of the graduating class in many elite liberal arts schools (Swarthmore Institutional Research). Within Swarthmore, the number of history majors dropped from nineteen students in 2010 to ten students in 2017, or from five percent of the graduating class to three percent of the graduating class (Fig. 1). With the exceptions of Pomona and Bryn Mawr, history majors decreased significantly across the board, including Swarthmore, where there was a stark drop (Fig. 2).

Low numbers of history majors, however, are nothing new. As far back as 1981, history majors still made up less than ten percent of the graduating class at Swarthmore. Though in 1990, history majors passed the ten percent mark, they soon dipped back down, reaching their lowest in 2017 (Fig. 3). Nationally, history majors made up less than eleven percent of the college’s graduating class back in 2010, and in 2017, history majors made up less than seven percent (Fig. 4).

Professor Megan Brown, an assistant history professor,believes that students who aren’t taking history classes are missing out.

According to Brown, the interdis-

Photo courtesy of Atziri Marquez / The Phoenix

continued on page A2

Students Often Relocated to ML After Accommodations Requests Bess Markel News Writer At the end of the fall semester, some students request a room change for a variety of reasons, including those related to mental health. Due to lack of space and standard procedure, the process can confuse some students.

The process for receiving accommodations consists of completing forms on MySwarthmore, presenting documentation, and meeting with a staff member from Disability Services, who will evaluate the accommodation request.

The process includes many procedural steps that must followed for the request to be considered.

The site specifically states that all emails to Disability Services must come from a Swarthmore email account.

Director of Residential Communities Isaiah Thomas explained that the Office of Student Engagement receives room accommodations for students from Student Disability Services. OSE then finds an available room with the specific accommodations that the students need.

“Student Disability Services works with the student to determine reasonable housing accommodations and, if the student is approved, Student Disability Services will notify the Office of Student Engagement. The Office of Student Engagement will then work directly with the approved student to identify a room that meets their approved accommodation,” said Thomas. “Room availability is extremely limited, especially singles, and we can only offer what spaces we have available.”

As a result, when a student requests a room change in the middle of the semester, particularly if they request a single, they often find themselves placed in Mary Lyons, as it is a slightly less popular dorm located off-campus.

One student, who requested to remain anonymous, requested a room change at the end of fall semester after deciding that they

needed a single to help manage their anxiety. The student was dealing with stressors from home and needed their own space to process.

“Whenever I’d come back to my room I just wouldn’t want to talk to anybody because I was so upset.

I was already dreading going back to my room,” they said.

The housing accommodations page on the Swarthmore website states that students must provide official documentation for their housing accommodations to be approved.

The documentation must be from a licensed medical provider.

“Documentation … should state and describe the diagnosis and must include a description of any symptoms of the condition that currently cause substantial limitations to the student’s ability to live in campus housing,” according to the website.

When the student began to explore the process of changing rooms, they found this requirement to be particularly intimidating.

“It was really scary. I was reading Disability Services protocol and they said that you need documentation from your doctor,” said the student, adding that they did not have documentation and believed that it would not be possible to get any due to familial reasons.

This caused them to believe that they would not be able to get accommodations.

Once they began working with Disability Services, however, they found the process easier than they expected and felt supported through the process. They were eventually given a single in Mary Lyons basement.

Disabilities Services assigns each student in the process a Disabilities Services staff member to work with the student to determine the student’s accommodations. This staff member meets with the student and ultimately decides what accommodations the student qualifies for.

The website states that “recom-

mendations made by the evaluator should include reasonable modifications that would allow the student an equal opportunity to participate in residential life, with a clear rationale and an indication of the level of need for each one.” “ I emailed the Disabilities officer [Monica Vance] and she was very nice. It was very easy to talk to her,” said the student.

Once a student obtains accommodations from Disability Services, Isaiah Thomas is notified that the student has accommodations but is not informed why due to privacy reasons.

While the anonymous student has friends in Mary Lyons and did not find the transition to be too difficult, they believe that M.L. can be a difficult dorm to move into to due to the fact that the community is already tight-knit and that most open rooms are in a certain location.

“They stick everybody that has issues [in the basement], it kind of makes you felt like there’s something wrong with you,” said the student.

Mary Lyons basement is the only floor of M.L. that does not have private bathrooms, which the student believes creates issues for students who are placed there.

“I don’t understand why [students are placed in the basement]

Photo courtesy of Emma Ricci-De Lucca

when there are rooms upstairs that are available. They act like there are no rooms available, but there are,” said the student.

Thomas explains that there are some rooms on campus that remain empty for emergencies and are not available to students switching rooms.

“There are some rooms on campus that are not available for students to select. Vacant beds allow us to accommodate needs that might arise from any type of facilities or maintenance issue. Keeping some beds offline also helps us ensure that we can meet the needs of a student who has a short-term emergency. It is also important that we keep a variety of spaces available to meet the various short-term needs of students, such as access to an elevator or lowerlevel room, spaces in gendered and

gender inclusive communities,” said Thomas.

The student also adds that Mary Lyons has a very strong sense of community within the dorm and that it can be hard for new residents to find their place within that community. The student feels this could particularly difficult for students struggling with their mental health.

“The social atmosphere might make you feel like you’re left out of something. It’s hard to introduce yourself when everybody is already talking as friends. There are always a billion people in the lounge hanging out,” said the student.

All students interested in either learning more about the process or students who believe they need accommodations are encouraged to contact Disability Services.

VCDC: A Call to Action to the Swarthmore Community Tiara Tillis News Writer Volunteer Council of Delaware County (VCDC) co-directors Yi Wei ‘21, Maleyah Peterson ‘21, and Terence Thomas ‘21 founded the group in Fall 2018. Since then, VCDC has been brainstorming a series of Workshop programs with help from their volunteers and college partners, meeting with Chester community leaders and high school counselors, arranging visits with Chester high schools to bring students to Swarthmore’s

campus to utilize resources such as our libraries and writing centers, and planning a community launch tentatively scheduled for March 29, 2019.

The VCDC aims to be a central hub for collegiate student leaders from surrounding universities, such as Swarthmore College, Widener University, Delaware County Community College, Pennsylvania State University, Cheyney University, Neumann University, and University of Pennsylvania.

As a collective, they will act as a source of mentorship and

academic support to the Chester community.

In what Thomas refers to as the “brainchild” of the three core members, VCDC is a cooperative collaboration and mixture of the core member’s ideas, visions, and experiences when it comes to educational access.

“We all came together from our variety of experiences and interests. Luckily we found each other and decided to come together in the fall semester and really work on the project. continued on page A2

PAGE A2

THE PHOENIX NEWS

February 21, 2019

History majors, continued from A1 ciplinary nature of history makes it broadly applicable to many different kinds of jobs.

“When I’m thinking about studying history it’s quite interdisciplinary because there are so many other parts of academia that are really enlightened by a study of history. For example, if you’re pre-med, thinking through medical ethics only really makes sense if you have some sense of the kind of building blocks and sometimes very problematic history of medicine and science … If you’re excited about being a lawyer or going into some sort of public advocacy or being an educator and you don’t have a sense of what kind of inequalities shaped people in the past and helped to shape the laws today, you really need history to do that.”

Brown also emphasized the plethora of interdisciplinary skills students attain from the history major, including reading, writing, research, and analysis.

“Just as importantly the skill sets that students learn in the history major are ones that they’ll take to employers, that are transferable, that are appealing and desirable to employers, and those are skills of exceptional writing, the ability to conduct research and then to interpret and analyze that research, the ability to read critically and think analytically, and also … the ability, no matter what you do, to think through how we got to this current place.”

Emma Novak ’21, a prospective history major on the pre-med track, agreed that the history major was exceptionally interdisciplinary.

“I think history is interdisciplinary … there’s a lot of crossover with courses I’ve taken, even in music! So while I do take a lot of science and math courses I feel like history is a place where a lot of my interests intersect,” Emma

said. “I [also] found history classes to be a place where people … who are interested in a lot of different disciplines are able to come together and have very productive conversations.”

Gabriel Hearn-Desautels ’20, a current history major, agreed that history classes facilitated discussion exceptionally, saying that history classes were the most discussion oriented classes he had taken.

“I think in history classes there’s more conversation between individual students. They also cover facets of just about everything — economics, political science, philosophy, etc. History is fairly allencompassing, which is one of the things I like about it.”

Brown and Novak both acknowledge the decrease in history majors, but Brown believes this stems from a misunderstanding of the utility of a history major, which she argues aids various career paths.

“Coming out after the great recession, I think a lot of people are really concerned about getting hired after college. I think that the gut reaction is you want a major that has a very obvious career path after it,” Brown said. “What I would say to that trend is to think through all the things you can do with a history major. Being a history major does not close paths at all, you can become a doctor or a contemporary dancer even with a history major.”

Novak expressed that she felt history majors were not always taken seriously. Even so, she chose to pursue the history major instead of biology or chemistry because of how much she enjoyed and valued the content.

“To some extent I feel like history is not included in the sphere of pre-professional… but that’s not what I believe,” Novak said.

“Studying history had made me … less focused on how I live, how the

people around me live, and think about how there’s a whole world out there that’s been shaped in different ways over the course of time.”

Both Brown and Novak also highlighted the importance of history in understanding current and future events. Brown reiterated the importance of understanding the past to understand the present and the future.

“Everything that we are experiencing today has a past,” Brown said. “If we don’t know where we came from, we really aren’t ready to think through what’s going to happen next.”

Hearn-Desautels said that his experience here as a history major has been quite positive. One topic in particular which sparked Hearn-Desautels’ interest was Islamic history.

“The first history class I took was called ‘The Formation of the Islamic Near East’ which got me interested in Islamic history as well as Middle Eastern history more broadly. I then took the ‘History of the Modern Middle East’ with Professor Shokr, as well as a seminar called ‘The Social Construction of Disease in the Modern World’ with Professor Armus,” Hearn-Desautels said. “I’ve enjoyed all of my classes thus far and am looking forward to writing my thesis next year.”

Hearn-Desautels hopes to apply his history major to a career in journalism, specifically reporting on and working in the Middle East.

“I want to do war/conflict zone reporting and then hopefully work as a Middle East correspondent for an organization like Al Jazeera or something similar.”

Though Brown, Novak, and Hearn-Desautels all felt confident about the relevance of history to all forms of study, the fate of the discipline in the long term remains to be seen.

Figure 1. Median of ten liberal arts colleges’ history majors by percentage of graduates ± IQR in 2010 and in 2017.

Figure 2. Bar plot of the number and percentage of graduates with a history major from ten liberal arts schools in 2010 and in 2017.

Figure 3. Line graph of the number of graduates and percent of graduates with a history major since 1981.

VCDC, continued from A1 For me, I wanted to start the mentee-mentor relationship program between Swarthmore students and Chester high school students,” said Thomas.

Upon realizing his goals for the Swarthmore community,

Thomas was put into contact with Wei, who gained firsthand experience with Chester’s access to resources as a Chester Community Fellow in 2018.

“Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work with

Chester on creating a new college access center after their old one got shut down,” Wei said.

“Through that experience, I realized there were a lot of connections that could have been made continued online

Figure 4. Median of institutions’ history majors by percentage of graduates ± IQR in 2010 and in 2017. Institutions represented are all those included in Swarthmore’s institutional research.

SGO, continued from A1 oppression are just not enough to sway,” Baer Chan said. “This is especially because there is a history of movements against white supremacy being called divisive, being called fringe groups, when in reality, what we are asking for is just not that much. It is important and an undeniable issue that we need to confront at some point.“ Fouad Dakwar ’22, another member of SJP, also thinks that SGO’s response to the outcome of the vote has been harmful to the Swarthmore community. He believes that the college prioritizes the discomfort of anti-BDS Israeli and Jewish students over Palestinian students.

“They are saying that they are worried about Israeli and Jewish students feeling uncomfortable, right? What they are saying is that those students are above Palestinian students. Not to mention that the Israeli and Jewish students I know on campus are pro-BDS,” Dakwar said.“I feel like this is an opportunity to tell Palestinian students, other Arab students, and anyone that cares about humanitarian crisis in Palestine that we are on your side, and they totally ignored that.”

While some are enthusiastic about sending a national mes-

sage about BDS, other students are cognizant of threats that activists for Palestinian human rights constantly face. These are exemplified by phone calls and emails that SGO members received last week, as The Phoenix reported.

Abby Saul ’19, a member of SJP and a Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) core member, calls the community to action in spite of threats.

“In the face of this, in this particular moment, it is more important than ever that we don’t stop talking, especially those of us who have privilege to not be as affected by those threats,” Saul said. “We have to keep on talking and keep on pushing. If we stop then they will win.”

Marios Vafiadis ’22, an international student from Egypt, felt the danger of attaching his name to the cause of Palestinian human rights activism and decided to refrain from SJP. “My parents told me to not get involved with SJP, because back at home this is a very contentious issue. That’s why I stopped regularly attending the meetings,” Vafiadis said.

Following contact from rightwing journalist Joel Griffith to some of its members, SGO faces internal division regarding the

nature of the organization. Tyler White ’22, freshman class senator, asserted that the vote against the resolution positions SGO as a political body.

“When you support things for SGO, or when you support other things through funding, that is a political stance, and there is no way to be apolitical, ever, period.

Whatever you buy, whatever you consume, that’s a political stance,” White said. “[SGO is] using this as a scapegoat to not offend or upset the status quo, I think that’s very cheap. I think we have to be consistent if we have to say we don’t want to political, but we can’t pick and choose when we get to be political.”

However, Durkson believed that SGO should remain apolitical. He expressed support for a referendum instead, so that the Swarthmore student community can make a decision altogether as a student body.

Durkson said, “fundamentally, I believe that SGO has to act as an apolitical or unbiased forum where all students can bring their grievances.”

In regards to the discussion surrounding the definition and role of SGO, Baer Chan feels that SJP needs to recenter its mission

instead of getting tangled up in SGO’s internal changes.

“In the last couple of weeks, SJP and our campaign, our mission, our purpose, has become entangled with a dialogue about internal processes at this college, dialogue about SGO and what SGO means. I think that is a very important conversation to have, especially based on SGO’s very harmful history,” Baer Chan said. “I also think that we need to get back to what BDS is, we need to get back to thinking what our campaign is. I think it has really decentered Palestinian rights when we are talking about this.”

SGO faces divisive choices regarding the resolution: a re-vote or a differently worded resolution.

According to Finke, there are two reasons why SGO should have a re-vote: the unexpected presence of Matthew Stein ’20, co-president of Swarthmore Students for Israel, during the voting procedure and the inclusion of the votes of newly elected senators. Due to the fact that SJP was not given a platform after Stein presented his argument against the BDS campaign, Baer Chan considers the voting process as unfair and supports a re-vote on the resolution.

“But at the end of the day,

[Stein’s] was the final voice they heard... in a very different setting.

We were meeting in Sharples, in lounges, talking over Facebook Messenger.” Baer Chan says, “to give a diatribe before the vote was an explicitly unfair way of expressing opinion when it is not shared on the other side, particularly because SJP had no idea this was happening.”

At the Executive Board and Senate meetings on Sunday, Ash (Anatole) Shukla ’22, chair of outreach, advocated for a re-vote due to the occurence of a violation of voting procedure and thinks of it as a step to correct SGO’s mistake. (Shukla serves as Chief Copy Editor at The Phoenix but was not involved in the production of this article.)

“I think it was supposed to be a private vote, and other people shouldn’t have been there, but Matthew Stein was there, which breaks the voting procedures.”

Shukla said at the open SGO meeting last Sunday, “I think it would be wrong for us to not vote on it again, even if it would have the same result. If we do something that breaks our own bylaws, we should right it.”

In the aftermath of the vote, Baer Chan says that SJP’s next steps are to educate the student body; SJP

has a mass training at some time later in the semester in addition to coming events that center Palestinian narratives. While there are no formal plans for potential SJP collaboration with SGO, Baer Chan is hopeful for potential future support despite facing external pressures leading up to the vote.

“Unfortunately, standing for BDS and for Palestinian rights often means facing intimidation tactics, and many of us have felt it before.” Baer Chan said, “I hope we can support SGO as they navigate that, and frankly I hope they will double down on their commitment to Palestinian rights after seeing some of the tactics used to silence this movement.’”

Several upcoming events in Swarthmore community follow up on the fate of the BDS campaign. SJP hosts its regular open meeting on Thursday. The Board of Managers has a meeting on Friday in which the 1991 ban will be discussed. On March 24, Kehilah is sponsoring a town square discussion for Jewish students on BDS with funding from SGO. Following the aftermath of the vote, the conversation around BDS campaign continues to buzz.

ARTS

February 21, 2019 PAGE A3

Bringing the 1920s to 2019: “Radium Girls: In Concert” Glows with Intersectional Messages Ash Shukla Chief Copy Editor

L

ast Friday and Saturday at 7:00 p.m. in Olde Club, a packed, standing audience murmured amongst themselves as they waited for a show to begin. A band featuring two guitarists (Bailey Jones ’22 and Spencer Tate ’22), a drummer (Maximillian Barry ’19), and the bassist, writer, and director of the show (Fouad Dakwar ’22) entered the stage and began to warm up. After a couple of minutes, the house lights of Olde Club faded to black, and the band played a flourish of gentle rock music as the four principle actors entered the stage, technicolor lights glowing onto their figures. The 1920s came alive in 2019 fashion, and we entered the world of the Radium Girls.

In “Radium Girls: In Concert,” Dakwar expertly handled the frankly sickening and unequivocally horrifying subject of the Radium Girls. The Radium Girls were women who, during World War I, painted watch dials with the newly-discovered element radium. During this time, more female workers than ever entered the workforce due to the lack of male workers. While the U.S. Radium Dial Corporation gave men heavy protective equipment, they failed to give women any protection, instead telling them to routinely lick the radium-coated paint brushes for a finer point. In addition to being exposed to toxic chemicals from licking the radium-covered brushes, many female workers, unaware of the risk, painted their skin and faces with the deadly chemical. After radium poisoning took the lives of countless women (then thought to have died due to syphilis), five brave women filed a now-famous lawsuit against the corporation that had knowingly destroyed their bodies and lives. “Radium Girls: In Concert” focuses on the lives of two out of these five women (Katherine Schnaub, played by

Samantha Ortiz-Clark ’22, and Grace Fryer, played by Eva Low ’22), as well as those of two other women who succumbed to radium poisoning (Mollie Maggia, played by Katie Phillips ’2021, and Ella Eckert, played by Youogo Kamgaing ’22).

In the end, Katherine (OrtizClark), the last Radium Girl of the four, begrudgingly took a plea deal from the U.S. Radium Corporation that promised financial help to her family as long as workers stopped protesting to expose their true working conditions. After signing the plea deal, Ortiz-Clark angrily unplugged the microphones from the speakers, and stormed off the stage.

The ending refrain of the musical “What’s it all for? Does it never add up to something more?” slowly faded out as the Radium Girls exited the stage and the once-brilliant technicolor lights faded to black. The evident anticlimax of the concert left the audience whispering, “Was that it?” and wondering if the show would end with another flourish of rock music. Soon thereafter, however, the lights of Olde Club turned back on, accompanied by a voice screaming at the audience, “You can mingle now!”

“Radium Girls: In Concert” was over, and its harsh conclusion recalled us to the real-life demise of the real-life Radium Girls. There were no winners in their story.

They had raised awareness for workers’ rights and mistreatment of women in an era during which the two now-prominent social issues were considered irrelevant, but at what cost? Their bodies had fallen apart and their jaws were beset with incurable necrosis — an illness now known as “radium jaw.” The show reminds us that despite our expectations, we are not guaranteed happy endings. Often, as in the case of the Radium Girls, it is irresponsible to expect anything but endings that make us consider the suffering intrinsic to the human condition.

“Radium Girls: In Concert” positively glows with its deeply intersectional commentary on subjects such as abuse, systemic misogyny, and workers’ rights.

In an email interview, Dakwar highlighted the significance of intersectionality to the show.

“Not only did I want to share this story, but I also wanted to highlight its significance today,” he said. “The significance of both feminism as well as workers’ rights within the dial painters’ case is a perfect example of what we now often call ‘intersectionality.’ Not to mention the prominence of sexism and workers’ exploitation (and their intersections) in American society continues today, often in different forms. This story is today.”

Dakwar also acknowledged his experience as writing an allfemale show as someone who doesn’t identify as female or female-aligned.

“I recognize that this story is not entirely mine to tell. I am neither a woman nor a factory worker and I entered the process of both writing and directing the show with this at the front of my mind …

Furthermore, the intersectional nature of the story, the militarization of the media within it, the imbalance of power between the two parties involved in the trial, and the unending suffering of these women reminded me of my personal struggles as a Palestin-

Photos courtesy of Atziri Marquez / The Phoenix

ian ... I hope that people can have the amount of empathy for my struggles that I have for those of the [R]adium [G]irls.”

Aside from the show’s feminist and pro-workers’-rights messages, its more tangible aspects also actively engaged the audience.

At different times, the audience teared up, swayed to the music, and shouted alongside the protesters in the show. The performers’ vocal harmonies, many of which they arranged themselves, maintained the idea of unity and friendship among the workers, and the transitions between energized rock and melancholy ballads kept the audience wide awake.

On wearing the hats of director, writer, music director, and bassist, Dakwar acknowledged the necessity of teamwork.

“I’m not the sole writer of this show, nor the sole director, nor the sole music director,” he said.

“I’m just the asshole who took credit for it all.”

The only aspect of “Radium Girls: In Concert” that left something to be desired was the length of the show. The brief 35-minute running time left several plot points to be fully explained and fleshed-out, and the rapid transitions between scenes often left audience members confused as to what was really going on. The show would have benefitted from

gentler shifts of pace that took careful time to guide the audience through its labyrinth of storylines, rather than forcing the audience to comply with its brevity.

Given the time constraints and the month-long timeline of the project, however, the show managed to maintain a fairly polished, if not somewhat rough, look to it.

As for the show’s future, according to Dakwar, the performers are considering releasing an album version of the show. This could take either the form of audio from a live performance or a full studio recording. Dakwar also plans to submit this piece and its live recording to theater festivals in hopes of future development.

knows just as much as listeners do even though she’s always ten steps ahead of her audience. But she lets the audience feel connected to the action in way that makes us all amateur detectives. This is the genius of “Serial,” and this is why we still talk about it. Sarah Koenig is the perfect clueless investigator, wondering out loud at every twist and turn in the evidence, and this makes us trust her. We trust her to tell us the truth, not proclaim to know all the answers, and to feed our morbid fascination with crime.

This genre definitely has offshoots that stray from the strict

reporting style of “Serial.” Comedic true crime shows such as “My Favorite Murder” and “The Last Podcast on the Left” stray from this mold through a non scripted conversation about a different crime each week, but this is for a niche audience and will probably never reach the same kind of cultural acclaim that Koenig’s show has. Even as the true crime podcast genre continues to explode, we will probably keep talking about “Serial,” and not just because we want to know if Adnan Syed really killed Hae Min Lee.

Why We Still Talk About Serial Elisabeth Miller Arts Writer If you listen to podcasts, or are remotely interested in accumulating this strange form of cultural capital, then you are most likely familiar with season one of “Serial.” “Serial” was the fastest podcast to reach five million downloads on the iTunes store, and it topped the charts for months, even after the conclusion of its first season. After its release in 2014, it also won a Peabody award in 2015. Largely considered the first breakout podcast, and paving the way for fellow NPR darling “S-Town” and the controversial “Missing Richard Simmons,” “Serial” became a cultural phenomenon. Season one of the show continues to captivate listeners, even as subsequent seasons have proved to be less than stellar.

Serial is the brainchild of reporter Sarah Koenig. After receiving a phone call from Rabia Chaudry, a family friend of Adnan Syed, a man who, while still in high school, had been found guilty of his ex girlfriend Hae Min Lee’s murder in 1999 , Koenig heads to Baltimore to dive into a case that was supposedly closed over a decade ago. In interviews with Chaudry, Koenig presents a side to Syed that

prosecutors tried to cover up.

A loving son, devoted friend, and the golden boy of Baltimore’s Woodlawn High School, Syed had to have been wrongly convicted. Koenig then tries to break down this persona, revealing to her listeners that she worries that she herself will be manipulated by Syed’s charm.

Through phone calls with him, listeners get to hear this charm, and that makes Koenig’s efforts to find out what really happened to Hae Min Lee more understandable.

In the end, Koenig doesn’t offer any sort of conjecture about Syed’s innocence or guilt. She admits that she doesn’t know.

Some friends say he did it; some deny he would ever harm anyone. Some experts call the work done by Baltimore police negligent and a gross mishandling of justice; others say that they would have done the exact same thing. It’s a case without answers. While Syed will be receiving a new trial due to publicity from the podcast, Koenig leaves listeners wondering, much as she does herself, what exactly happened to Hae Min Lee that January afternoon so long ago.

True-crime podcasts have become a staple of the industry.

The 2017 series “Atlanta Monster” models itself after “Se-

rial” pretty closely. The series follows journalist Payne Lindsey as he investigates the Atlanta Child Murders that took place in 1979-1981. As in “Serial,” Lindsey conducts phone interviews with Wayne Williams, the man who was convicted of the murders and still maintains his innocence, as he traces the original investigation in an attempt to find out what really happened. Also like “Serial,” and probably to the frustrations of many listeners, “Atlanta Monster” leaves it up to listeners to decide who they want to believe, which has become a trope of the genre. More often than not, these shows expose different issues, such as the mishandlings of the justice system or the ways in which a crime affects a certain community. No one has any answers, but we’ll spend ten hours binging the evidence.

Even though “Atlanta Monster” didn’t receive as much acclaim as “Serial,” it gained attention because the format established by “Serial” works.

The ambient soundscape used by both shows of people chattering in the background, leaves in the park where the body was found, or the sounds of doors being slammed in the reporter’s face are immersive.

They allow the listener to fol-

low their reporter to the very scene of the crime and feel as though they are solving the problem right alongside them.

The scratchy audio of recorded phone calls with prison inmates has started to become cliche and overdone in the years since “Serial,” but we still listen and love to become involved in the story. Because at the end of the day, listeners don’t want to be told a story; we want to experience a story, or at least be given the illusion that we are experiencing the story alongside the journalists who have more authority than we could ever have. Koenig acts as though she

PAGE A4

THE PHOENIX ARTS

February 21, 2019

Color, Form, and Humanity Mark Another Arresting Exhibition from Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Max Gruber Arts Writer

lays an intricate carpet under the kneeling figure. The reds and blues which punctuate the I first encountered Lynette carpet’s pattern might have Yiadom-Boakye’s painting at seemed obtrusive if not for their relatively muted values. the New Museum in 2017. The British painter’s exhibition, The piece is a virtuosic display “Under-Song For A Cipher,” of Yiadom-Boakye’s prowess as was a revelatory experience, a draftsmen and a colorist. As displaying a breathtaking com- such, “Amber and Jasmine” is an mand of the canvas through excellent point of entry.

Continuing through the galexpressive brushwork and provocative color. “Under-Song lery, visitors contemplate the For A Cipher” featured Black intimate, if simple, diptych men and women in a number “Nearer than Kith, Further from of colorful, domestic scenarios. Kind” alongside a depiction of The wardrobes, furniture, and a woman with a brilliant smile even some animals added a and a book titled, “God of all new dimension to what might Reason.” More impressive still seem to be a painterly tech- is the work in the main galnique firmly rooted in art his- lery space, especially the two torical tradition. The appeal of paintings “A Monday Midnight” the exhibition was perhaps best and “5AM Friday.” While both encapsulated by the painting, paintings depict men in striped “Mercy over Matter,” which de- shirts, the chronological titles picts a seated black man, bare- are an enigmatic hint at somefoot, intently contemplating thing greater. Are these two the blackbird which is perched men somehow unified beyond on his index finger. Whether it their wardrobe? Could we be was the man’s stare, the han- looking at the same man later dling of the silhouettes, or the in the night? The difference in swaths of pale and saturated the men’s shirts (one is short orange, I couldn’t say. What sleeved and the other long) as was clear to me then was that well as their facial hair suggest this was something truly com- not. In fact, these questions will pelling: a contemporary, figu- remain unanswered because of rative painting that felt fresh the fictitious construction of and exciting. On January 10, each painting’s subject. Yiad2019, Yiadom-Boakye’s most om-Boakye’s paintings are not recent exhibition, “In Lieu Of painted from models, but are instead executed completely from A Louder Love,” opened at the W 20th and W 24th street lo- her imagination. These fictioncations of Jack Shainman gal- al yet intimate portraits which lery in New York City. Engaging play out on the canvas, then, and intimate, the exhibition have no living counterparts, no makes a strong case for Yiad- frame of reference. This artistic om-Boakye as one of the most conceit adds great depth to the fascinating painters producing canvas, as our own imagination work today by marrying excep- prompts us to inquire further tional painterly technique with about the environment we find multidimensional subjects that ourselves peering into. And yet, the painting alone would be demand sustained attention.

Upon entering the 20th street enough to sustain attention. gallery, viewers first encounter “A Monday Midnight” appears “Amber and Jasmine.” Unlike atmospheric and dark from most of the exhibition’s works, afar, but closer looking reveals the painting features a wide “Amber and Jasmine”a kaleidoscope of unexpected array of colors that drive the color in the man’s shirt. Violet, viewer’s eye across the canvas. sapphire, and clay accents lick Initially striking is the amber- the edges of the shirt stripes to hued wall which is juxtaposed near illusory effect. “5 AM Friagainst a stormy palette of day” is less adventurous with greens and browns. Straddling color, but the way in which the the two lies a kneeling figure, shirt stripes seem to grapple admirable both for its delicate with each other, vying for more and expertly executed pose real estate in an uneven and and the way in which her ward- claustrophobic battleground is robe rhymes with and unifies undeniably compelling.

Sprinkled throughout the galthe seemingly dissonant background. Stopping here would lery, the canvases with multiple have yielded a fascinating can- figures greatly enhance the sevas, but Yiadom-Boakye also lection of paintings, bringing

“A Monday Midnight”

“Amber and Jasmine”

Yiadom-Boakye’s attentive eye for intimacy and compassion to the fore. “3 PM Blackheath,” for instance, presents two figures engulfed in hunter green, at once nearly touching and yet seemingly a world apart. “Les Corbeaux,” on the other hand, is a diptych of two dancers in costume. While the left figure is lost in thought and pensively extends his fingers along the floor, the right figure confronts the viewer with his glance. His discolored eyes and raven-like costume are arresting, as is the size of the canvas. Another group image, “Sister to a Solstice” feels the most voyeuristic, as a group of three women sit at a dinner table. While the central woman’s turned back and the toast which occurs on the left initially exclude the

viewer, the rightmost woman shoots a careless glance which rooted me in place, making me feel as if I had somehow stumbled into a domestic vignette of great affection, a moment reserved for family and friends.

“Holy Provocations” marries all of Yiadom-Boakye’s differing artistic appeals. Expressive brushwork divides the canvas into swaths of blue, olive, and coral. However, the indulgent curl of a finger and the contentedly closed eyes bring the viewer back to the men. Lynette Yiadom Boakye’s painting declares its love of humanity in every brushstroke. How lucky is it, then, that her eye for color and form is just as insightful?

See her work at the next available opportunity. It will stay with you long after you leave.

All photos courtesy of Max Gruber

“5AM Friday”

“Every Building on the Sunset Strip”: Ruscha’s Celebration of the Vernacular Elena Moore Arts Writer In 1966, Omaha-born, L.A.based artist Ed Ruscha began self-printing 5,000 copies of one of his few art books, “Every Building on the Sunset Strip.”

While printed cheaply and intended to break free from the constraints of fine art books, “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” went on to become an iconic book in the world of pop art and photo-based conceptualism. Today, it is housed in museums in glass cases and the few copies available online sell for thousands of dollars. Interestingly, the college owns a copy, located today in McCabe’s rare books section.

“Every Building on the Sunset Strip” is an accordion book of photos that folds out to an extensive 25 feet, giving the viewer two views of the monumental mile-and-a-half stretch of the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. It functions similarly to Google Street View; however, the photos are stitched together much more casually, with occasional jaggedness and gaps.

The book was not Ruscha’s first attempt at crafting an artist’s book — he was continually inspired by vernacular architecture, documenting arbitrary landmarks like gas stations and apartment complexes in other books in the 20th century. Similar to these other books, “Every

Building on the Sunset Strip” was self-published, cheaply printed, and crudely produced in a monochromatic black and white palette. Even its cover speaks to the book’s unassuming and minimalist nature: it is a simple white shade with the title, the author, and the year spelled out in black square-serif capital letters.

Ultimately, “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” redefined the identity of the art book. It was cheap and accessible at $1 per production cost. Furthermore, there is minimal text, one of the unusual features of a book — the only text is on the cover and on street labels.

Rather than describe the nightclubs or destinations shown in the photos, Ruscha lets their signage speak for itself. As my eyes wandered across the stitched together photographs in the book, I realized that Ruscha manages to successfully tell a nuanced story without the use of a single sentence.

Ruscha’s book is versatile, lending itself to a variety of uses and interpretations. Art aficionados appreciate Ruscha’s honed usage of the motorized camera; architects respect his fascination with the vernacular and the mundane; planners recognize the potential for urban planning research that “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” affords. While meticulously specific in its fo-

cus, the book opens doors to a breadth of research and exploration. Not only is the book versatile, but it is innovative, proving to be a crucial piece of the narrative of West Coast pop art and conceptualism. By photographing recognizable, conventional architectural elements of Sunset Boulevard, Ruscha solidified his understanding of the vocabulary of mainstream America and bridged the seemingly disparate worlds of high art and popular culture.

“Every Building on the Sunset Strip” provides a comprehensive glimpse of the Sunset Strip at a specific point in history — 1966. While streets and neighborhoods are dynamic and ever-changing, the book provides a static, documentarylike snapshot of this particular environment. In Ruscha’s photos, the Sunset Strip appears modest, unpopulated, and like a symbol of the California mundane. In particular, I was struck by the omittance of pedestrians in Ruscha’s photographs. While surely a choice to highlight the architectural qualities of the boulevard, it further distanced the boulevard from the crowded and bustling 21st century identity that I recognize. Today, the Sunset Strip attracts hordes of tourists, glimmers with lights at all hours, and is filled with blinking billboards.

Thus, Ruscha’s book provides a baseline for research and can

Photo courtesy of The Iris: Behind the Scenes at the Getty

be used in conjunction with demographic data, news stories, and property data to reveal the social, cultural, and political transformations of iconic Los Angeles streets over the last 50 years. “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” surpasses genre constraints, instead proving to be a pivotal resource in art, architecture, planning, and urban history alike.

Gazing at the expansive layout of photographs in “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” is a conflicting experience. The

copies that remain today are generally housed in libraries; rare book collections; and architectural, art, and design archives. Thus, even getting the chance to view the book takes careful consideration and coordination — something that is almost the antithesis of Ruscha’s methods of production for the book. While Ruscha emphasized the ordinary and mundane nature of the California built environment with his black and white photographs, I couldn’t help but be in awe. His photo-

graphs only reveal the facades of buildings and thus seem to fulfill a solely aesthetic purpose at first glance. Yet beyond the facades, his photographs document the social history of the space — how it was used and by whom. The photographs, conceived and compiled with simple, utilitarian purposes in mind, have instead adopted a dynamic identity, highlighting the ever-changing nature of an urban history.

OPINIONS

February 21, 2019 PAGE A5

THE

w

Modern Monetary Theory Isn’t a Panacea Laura Wilcox Op-Ed Contributor

M

odern monetary theory, which holds that the government can massively increase spending without worrying much about the deficit, has recently been thrust into policy debates by progressive members of Congress. Some members have advocated for MMT to shape how Congress thinks about making a budget for the federal government. Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez (D-NY) has said the idea that the government doesn’t need to offset spending with raising revenue should be “a larger part of our conversation.” Advocates for MMT aren’t limited to freshman representatives; one of the theory’s leading advocates, Stephanie Kelton, has served as an economic advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (IVT). As appealing as we find dramatically expanding the scope of government with few consequences, modern monetary theory is not

supported by economics. Even if it was, implementing it according to experts’ recommendations isn’t politically feasible.

Adherents to MMT posit that a government that issues its own currency can’t go bankrupt because it can always print more money, so policymakers shouldn’t be hugely concerned about a government deficit. Mainstream economists generally agree with modern monetary theorists that deficits can be healthy under certain economic conditions. Modern monetary theorists, however, take this perfectly reasonable position and leap to conclusions that are unsubstantiated by economic research. For example, advocates of MMT argue that the government can undertake large spending increases, such as single-payer healthcare, without increasing tax rates because they believe that MMT provides so much fiscal flexibility. Going even further, MMT advocates for as big a budget as necessary to reach full em-

ployment, without giving much thought to the effects on the deficit.

The only consequence of massively increasing government spending, MMT adherents claim, is that inflation might increase because the government would be funding itself by printing money.

In this case, modern monetary theorists believe that taxation is the appropriate instrument for reducing inflation.

Even though a massive expansion of government spending is an attractive idea, MMT doesn’t align with economics. Large deficits can negatively impact the economy.

Analysis by economists at the Brookings Institution has shown that deficits have a negative effect on long-term economic growth because investors may lose confidence in the government to control inflation. Temporary deficits can be perfectly healthy in recessions, when the economy needs fiscal stimulus to get to full employment, but these economists

argue that permanent deficits lead to concern about inflation and discourage investment.

Modern monetary theory is also completely impractical to implement from a political standpoint.

Adherents to MMT recommend that taxation be the instrument to control inflation, so we’d have to trust Congress to raise taxes when prices are increasing rapidly. Since tax hikes during periods of inflation would be extremely unpopular because people would have to contend with rising prices and less disposable income, it doesn’t seem likely that Congress would follow through. Currently, one part of the Federal Reserve’s mandate is to control inflation. Since the Federal Reserve is an independent agency, it doesn’t face the political hurdles Congress would face when it comes to controlling inflation. If the government were to adopt MMT, the Federal Reserve would give up its control of inflation because it would have to print money to finance fiscal policy. We

PHOENIX

Shreya Chattopadhyay, Editor-in-Chief Bayliss Wagner, Managing Editor Laura Wagner, Managing Editor NEWS Naomi Park, Editor Trina Paul, Editor ARTS Esther Couch, Editor Nicole Liu, Editor CAMPUS JOURNAL Dylan Clairmont, Editor OPINIONS Shelby Dolch, Editor Max Katz-Balmes, Editor SPORTS Jack Corkery, Editor Ping Promrat, Editor

shouldn’t hand over control of inflation to a political body lightly because Congress shouldn’t be trusted to make politically unpopular decisions to address inflation.

Modern monetary theorists largely agree with mainstream economists about the role of gov-

On Shame, Empathy, and Israel-Palestine Lily Goldman Op-Ed Contributor

I proudly supported the twostate solution from the moment I realized my Jewish day school had indoctrinated me on the discussion of Israel and Palestine. I was repeatedly told that Israel was my home for all nine years of my Jewish education. The Israel-Palestine conflict was never taught or explained to me — Israel was simply the victim of Palestinian terror.

Believing in the two-state solution was liberal for my insular Jewish community, which had maps of “Israel” in every classroom that did not acknowledge any Palestinian land. I took Professor Sa’ed Atshan’s course on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict last semester, and for ten days this past winter break, 35 Swarthmore students from the class and seven professors, administrators, and community activists toured East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israel proper.

What I realized on Swarthmore’s study trip was that supporting two states — even if they are equal and democratic — was not an opinion many, if any, participants expressed. I do concede that I am not sure what “equal” means at this point, given the rep-

arations Israel owes Palestine. On the bus one evening, I overheard someone say, “I don’t see how a state with a Jewish majority could exist without being an apartheid state.” I think this could be true, but it’s not absolute.

Speaking about the Israel/Palestine conflict on campus has proved incredibly difficult. The issue is complex and confusing, and incredibly emotional. Every person who holds an opinion on the conflict has a reason for their beliefs.

Six years after my first visit to Israel proper, after learning extensively about the conflict and visiting Palestine, I still believe in the two-state solution, only now I fear I will be criticized for holding this belief. On a certain level, the twostate solution forgives Israel’s actions pre-1967, such as the Nakba, when 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in 1948.

I worry that if I say that I do believe in some form of a culturally Jewish state with a Jewish demographic majority, people will assume I do not support Palestinian human rights. One night in East Jerusalem, a fellow student told me she did not understand how a person could identify as a “Zionist” and support human rights. I believe in

equal rights for Palestinians and for all humans. I deplore Israel’s military occupation and settlement of Palestine. I think the State of Israel was formed immorally and shamefully in many ways.

But, after the Holocaust, survivors had nowhere to return. Yes, Zionism is an idea that was started many years prior to the Holocaust.

The Holocaust still happened, however, and should never be disregarded. Jewish people also do originate from the region. While most were exiled 2000 years ago, some remained. Jewish people upheld the belief in and love for Israel for thousands of years in communities in Europe and the Middle East, a tenet of Jewish religion that was outwardly criticized by my classmates and one of the tour guides on our trip. I personally feel comfort when I see a Jewish woman walking with her young child on a street in Tel Aviv. On a basic level, seeing this makes being Jewish feel safe. The Pittsburg Synagogue Shooting of this past October made me a little more fearful of being a Jewish person in America.

I wish that I didn’t feel ashamed by the fact that I like and love parts of Israel. I worry that I will be judged by my peers for it, and

I judge myself. I abhor so many of Israel’s actions and I think many Israelis — as well as myself as a Jewish American, to an extent — are complicit in its crimes. Despite this, I do not want to see the Israeli side of the 1948 established borders cease to exist.

Halfway through the trip, our group toured Hebron. Hebron is a Palestinian city that the Jewish religion considers holy to Jewish people. Jewish settlers and the Israeli military currently occupy Hebron. There are certain roads in Hebron that only citizens of Israel can access. The Israeli military guards the settlement and uses force and terror to keep Palestinians away. My initial reaction to Hebron was simply that what I saw was not Jewish. It is not the Judaism I grew up feeling proud to be from. I felt angry that the people who settle in Hebron claim the land in the same name as my Judaism that fights for justice and a better world. I am disgusted by the settlement, army presence, and atrocities committed in Hebron. I want to do everything in my power to see Israel’s military occupation of Palestine end.

However, I do see visiting a synagogue in Tel Aviv as Jewish, just as attending a Shabbat service in any

city would be. So when the head rabbi of the synagogue we visited personally welcomed our group to the congregation and said in his sermons that he hoped we return, and a Swarthmore student sitting behind me rhetorically responded, “I’m good” to the people sitting around her, I felt deeply upset. I do believe we can separate criticism of Israel from Judaism, but criticizing a synagogue for being just that is not a judgment of Israel. It’s a criticism of Judaism.

More than one month has passed since I returned from Professor Atshan’s course study trip.

In the month since my return, SGO voted against showing support for divestment from Israel, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (DMN) tweeted “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” while discussing how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee gains its supporters, and several Swarthmore students started a Jewish Voice for Peace chapter on campus.

I understand why SGO chose not to write a letter in support of divestment. Not every student on Swarthmore’s campus wants to divest, and it’s hard to express an opinion other than the one that so many students vocally hold. As for Ilhan Omar’s tweet, while I do

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

ernment, such as that the government should do more social spending and that government deficits aren’t necessarily cause for concern. MMT, however, takes these well-reasoned positions to an extreme that is politically and economically infeasible.

think there is truth in what she said — that AIPAC maintains strong support for Israel through money — I also think she should have known better. Her statement was offensive because American support for Israel does not only exist because politicians are bribed, and because her choice of words, does sound similar to a very antisemitic trope. Omar could have found a more respectful way of making a statement about AIPAC and its use of funds. Yet she will receive criticism regardless of what she says when it comes to Israel and Palestine because she’s a woman, she’s Muslim, and she openly talks about this divisive issue. I accept her apology. Finally, I joined Jewish Voices for Peace not because I agree with every principle the organization stands for, but because I care about preserving the integrity of Jewish religion and culture within the eyes of Swarthmore’s community.

One state or two, the reality on the ground is a deeply upsetting and emotional crisis. I hope we can all try to find more empathy for one another, even when doing so feels impossible. This is the only way I can imagine seeing a peaceful resolution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

Letter to the Editor: On the Departure of Prof. Plotkin

Dear President Smith and Provost Willie-LeBreton,

Professor Helen Plotkin, who taught me ancient Hebrew at Swarthmore and continues to be a mentor to me, told me that her contract with Swarthmore is being terminated on the grounds that she does not have a master’s degree in pedagogy or a Ph.D., but rather only has a master’s in Hebrew and eighteen years of experience teaching Hebrew at Swarthmore. Furthermore, when I expressed my concern to you about this, you did not indicate any intention to hire a replacement Hebrew teacher, but rather suggested that students could study ancient Hebrew at UPenn.

Are eighteen years of teaching at Swarthmore not an adequate substitute for a master’s degree in pedagogy? Professor Plotkin was one of the best teachers I had at Swarthmore. On the first day of Hebrew class my freshman year, Professor Plotkin baked cookies in

the shape of every Hebrew letter.

The cookies welcomed us to the sweetness of learning, but they did not signal that the class was going to be easy. The cookies were also Professor Plotkin’s way of introducing students to the language’s nuance. She included in her sugar cookie alphabet the oftenoverlooked “dagesh,” the dot that distinguishes a “v” sound from a “b” sound. While most Hebrew instructors mention the “dagesh” only in passing, Professor Plotkin wove for us a rich understanding of this little dot. She taught us that it is a vestige of dropped letters, signaling the linguistic origin of a word and the historical context in which its meaning arose. This is how Professor Plotkin teaches Hebrew. Every dot on the page is a window to a universe of meaning and millennia of scholarship.

And Professor Plotkin made sure we nailed it—any “dagesh” in the wrong place lost you a point on a test.

What is Swarthmore if not a

place that cherishes the ancient written word and cherishes our Swarthmore family? Professor Plotkin is a Swattie through and through. She graduated from Swarthmore as an undergrad and pursued computer programming and Mandarin Chinese before becoming a rabbi, earning a master’s degree in Hebrew, and returning home to Swarthmore to teach.

Swarthmore is not a corporation that can simply prune departments for the sake of modernization. We are a community, and pruning injures the entire tree.

Eliminating Hebrew instruction will reduce Swarthmore’s academic prestige, particularly our linguistics department’s ability to attract aspiring linguists interested in Semitic languages. It will cut away the opportunity to study ancient Jewish texts, which are fundamental to the Judeo-Christian world. They hold particular relevance today as antisemitism rears its ugly head; students may need to look to these books for

their deep wisdom in the face of evil and suffering.

Most importantly, perhaps, to eliminate Professor Plotkin’s position is to doom her lovingly created library, the Beit Midrash.

Although you have said that the Beit Midrash will remain even after Professor Plotkin’s termination, your assertion is based on a flawed understanding of the Beit Midrash.

The Beit Midrash is far more than a collection of books. It serves as a gathering place for students to study Torah, do biology homework, and observe Jewish holidays.

I spent hundreds of hours and did some of my best learning there.

And while we students rushed in and out, Professor Plotkin was our rock, bringing guest speakers, teaching us to use the books on the shelves––Torah commentary is impossible to decipher with an untrained eye––and cultivating a space where we felt welcome to come and learn.

I am guessing that the books will

Don’t Impose Identities on Others Giorgia Piantanida Op-Ed Contributor

Assumptions are some of the earliest developed tools we humans have, ingrained in us from those older ones who “know better.” Whether learned through stereotypes or overdone jokes, it’s not particularly uncommon to have ready-made expectations about what identities people may have the first time you meet them. It’s very human to feel the guttural need to categorize new

people, whether it’s to remember them more easily or for our own personal interests. This initial reaction, however, often creates false identities for people in our own minds, associating them with other people, things, or events that they may have absolutely no ties to. And it is for this reason that I honestly believe that we need to stop the urge to fit people in ready-made boxes with neat labels and instead try to see the immensely intricate layers they have. We need to try

to recognize people’s own unique identities, rather than the ones that make the most sense to us upon first inspection.

Today, we are seemingly innocuous individuals who are trying to make the best of our own journeys whilst constantly chancing upon new and unknown ones.

And in these new encounters, the instant labeling of people sometimes comes as second nature.

When people initially meet me — and often even after several months of knowing me — they

see a white girl who speaks English fluently and almost inevitably see a vivid scrawl of “American” on my character. When I identify as Italian, the statement is usually ignored until actual Italian is heard from my mouth, which is quite rare for me to do around most people. People are then usually surprised because they realize they need to change their initial assumptions, and it suddenly becomes a topic of conversation. And to be quite frank, it never rubs me the right way,

soon be transferred to a room in McCabe after Professor Plotkin’s departure. I have no doubt that the lovely library staff will do a good job of keeping the books safe and clean, but to be frank with you, the books will go unread. They will fall into obsolescence. Professor Plotkin keeps these ancient texts alive by creating a community environment where students want to learn. Unless you hire another Hebrew teacher interested in cultivating this spirit of learning, Hebrew study at Swarthmore will die.

You have said that students are welcome to take Hebrew classes at UPenn and that you will maintain Professor Plotkin’s collection of books. But I don’t think Swarthmore would justify cutting astronomy instruction by telling students, “You are welcome to take astronomy at Haverford, and we are committed to maintaining the telescope atop the Science Center for you to use.” The telescope has little relevance if students have no instructors to teach them to make

sense of the stars. The books in the Beit Midrash have no relevance without a teacher.

In Hebrew, numbers can be represented by letters in a system called gematria. The number eighteen is denoted by a “chet” and a “yud” together, which spells “chai,” the Hebrew word for “life.” Professor Plotkin has taught Swarthmore students for a full eighteen years, and to terminate her would be to terminate the flourishing “chai” that she has created for the minds and spirits of all who come to learn. While it is admirable that Swarthmore is seeking out high-quality instructors, the time for using a master’s degree in pedagogy as a proxy for teaching skill is at hiring, not after eighteen years.

Why are you cutting Hebrew instruction at Swarthmore?

because if they had just listened and bothered to actually get to know me, they would’ve never needed to change their assumptions. Brushing aside the identities I give to myself benefits noone and instead tends to promote divisions between myself and others.

Since the start of my semester in Northern Ireland, which has been focused largely on identity, my peers and I have been learning to separate our assumptions from the facts that are then given

to us. While the conflict that occurred in Ireland has been largely assumed to be about religion, with Protestants pitted against Catholics, the actual details paint a much more complex picture.

Each person that has welcomed my cohort into their country and shared parts of their story with us has, for the most part, quickly labeled themselves. These labels have sometimes separated people from their Northern

Sincerely, Rachel Flaherman ’16

continued online

SPORTS

February 21, 2019 PAGE A6

Australian Open Star Breaks Up with Coach Neel Gupta Sports Writer

A

fter winning two consecutive Grand Slams at the age of 21 and achieving the rank of world No. 1, Japan’s Naomi Osaka leads the generation of stars poised to break out in the twilight of Serena Williams’ career. However, despite her recent successes, Naomi Osaka fired her coach and hitting partner Sascha Bajin for reasons not made public.

The announcement followed a triumphant Australian Open in January and an unmistakable change in Osaka and Bajin’s relationship, as Osaka practiced multiple times without Bajin during the Australian Open and sessions with Bajin failed to last more than ten minutes. Even more telling was Osaka’s post-championship Instagram post after defeating Pe-

tra Kvitova in the Australian Open finals, a customary ritual usually saturated with appreciations and gratitude from the champion.

Osaka wrote in reference to Bajin, “...Thank you Sash for hitting with me these past two weeks.”

By relegating Bajin to the role of hitting partner, Osaka was denying and diminishing Bajin’s role as her coach. Notably, Osaka’s appreciation for Bajin was only that one sentence hidden amidst more effusive praise, peppered with emojis and inside jokes, dedicated to the rest of her team. Finally, in an interview after the final with Kvitova, Osaka said, “Yeah, no, we haven’t really been talking, to be honest, before any of my matches here. He would tell me one thing; then I would be, like, OK. That was it.” It is clear that Bajin and Osaka’s relationship was strained. If so, Osaka’s run through the Aus-

tralian Open draw is even more impressive; to defeat five seeded players with different game styles without extensive coaching is a remarkable feat.

Speculation is rampant regarding the reasons behind the split after such a successful and fruitful partnership. Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated wonders if the split was simply a reflection of the trend of the WTA and sports as a whole. Coaches are seen less as permanent mainstays or as partners but rather as sources of finite knowledge from which to extract all that one can before moving on.

Bajin, the longtime hitting partner of Osaka’s idol Serena Williams, started working with Osaka in the lead-up to the 2018 season, when she was ranked 68th in the world. The job with Osaka represented a huge career jump for Bajin, as Bajin had never served

in a head coaching capacity previously. Immediately, the duo found success, winning the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, a WTA Premier Mandatory tournament, the level immediately below a Grand Slam, and then defeating Serena Williams in Miami the following week. Under Bajin, Osaka defeated Serena twice, won two Grand Slams, and rose all the way to No. 1 in the world. Bajin also earned himself a Coach of the Year award in 2018 to accompany Osaka’s title spree.

Coaches are figuring more and more prominently in the media coverage of the WTA; they have more interviews and press conferences than ever before, and they are often former stars from the tour itself. Sascha Bajin himself was the hitting partner to Serena Williams for seven years, and Serena had likened Sascha to a “broth-

er” before their split in 2015. In other words, Sascha Bajin represents a public personality and is a brand unto himself. There is a very real possibility Osaka wishes to distance herself from the legacy of Serena Williams through moving on from Sascha Bajin, thus asserting her own individuality and stardom. Just as possible however, is an interpersonal split, supported

by Osaka’s recent unfollowing of Bajin on a number of social media platforms and Osaka’s comments about not wanting to prioritize “success over happiness.”

Regardless, futures are bright for both Bajin and Osaka. On the tour, while the turnover rate has risen recently among coaches, the coaching pool itself remains more or less constant, and Bajin is likely to be hired within the year, especially after experiencing such rapid success with Osaka and

Fighting in The NHL Continues in Its Downfall

Kyle Jones Shah Sports Writer

The NHL has always struggled to add new followers to their sport. Viewership across America is dwarfed by the NFL, MLB, and NBA. Many cannot name more than three or four teams outside of their local organization. However, one thing almost everyone knows about hockey is its fighting. Whether it be John Scott, the infamous all-star enforcer, or a Kevin Bieksa “Superman punch” knockout, fighting is all over the NHL. Fighting is what draws most casual fans to see a game in person, not the fast-paced and high end skill that is on display night in

and night out on the ice. Over the years, the league has both helped in fighting’s demise and advocated for it’s staying in the game. Fighting is what made the SPHL, Southern Professional Hockey League, a hit in the Southern states and allows those teams to gain fans and grow the sport in places where seeing ice hockey is as almost as common as seeing a ghost. Despite this, fighting is on its way out of the NHL. Take a look at NHL rosters from fifty years ago, and you will see a group of men, the majority of which were paid to be boxers on ice. In the seventies and eighties, one could expect to see more than one fight per game. The reason for

this was simple; referees simply did not use their whistle. Instead, the game would be “policed” by the enforcers on each team. Every time there was a play that upset one team, that team’s coach would look to the end of his bench and call on the enforcer to make sure there was justice for the infraction.

The history of fighting in NHL is just one example of the traditionalist nature of the sport relative to other leagues, where players get suspended, fined, and banned for fighting rather than a five-minute rest in the penalty box. The need for enforcers and fighting existed.

The desire to win hockey games, however, would turn out to be the reason enforcers started to get cut

from rosters across the league.

Common and die-hard fans both get excited when two players drop the gloves and brawl it out for a few minutes. It adds energy to the crowd and the team.

During the enforcer era of hockey, the job of fighting rested squarely on their shoulders, with very few skilled players choosing to fight and risk injury. This led to a severe skill gap between players on every team. Newer coaches began to realize that if they removed enforcers from their lineup and included players that could skate faster and shoot better, they would score more goals and in turn win more games.

So the natural decrease in fight-

WWE Elimination Chamber 2019 Kevin Liao Sports Writer

On February 17, World Wrestling Entertainment held its Elimination Chamber pay-per-view, live from the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. The second to last major event before WrestleMania, it is a prominent stop en route to sports entertainment’s biggest spectacle. “‘Mania,” as many fans call it, is the biggest wrestling event of the year — tens of thousands of people gather to watch the WWE’s top matches, and is often the only time of year where

professional wrestling enters the mainstream media focus. Thus, for performers, it’s imperative to make it onto the WrestleMania card, to have their moment while the whole world watches. While the groundwork has been laid for WrestleMania’s marquee matches, the event offers another shot at glory — that is, for those who survive.

The pay-per-view derives its namesake from its gruesome main event, the Elimination Chamber — a 27-foot tall, steel enclosure, where six competitors do battle, but only the winner survives. With

two competitors starting in the ring, the remaining four start in pods, which are unlocked at intervals to allow the wrestlers into the ring. With no disqualifications or limits, the only restriction is one’s imagination, and how far one is willing to go for a shot at wrestling immortality. While there are seven matches during the event, here are the storylines around the two biggest matches of the night — the Chamber matches.

First, for women’s wrestling, the revolution continued, as female superstars have firsts in two regards — the WWE Women’s Tag

Team Championships, and the first Women’s Tag Team Elimination Chamber match. In a surprise announcement last Christmas Eve, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon,in a Santa costume of all things, declared the creation of tag team championships for women. Despite not being closely involved with either RAW or SmackDown programming over the last few years, McMahon came out to announce the titles, a headscratcher to many fans. Over the following weeks, Alexa Bliss, a then-injured fan favorite, unveiled the details surrounding the titles.

earning a Coach of the Year award.

It’s difficult to gauge the impact of a coach, and while Osaka did excel after hiring Bajin, it’s impossible to know whether her breakthrough was motivated by Bajin or if she would have developed as such regardless. Clearly, Osaka believes the latter. By March, Osaka is expected to have a new coach.

As she recently stated, “It’s not really ideal to go to Indian Wells without a coach.” Results in March at Indian Wells and over the clay court season in Europe in the summer will provide a litmus test for Osaka’s decision. However, Osaka’s talent is undeniable, and she projects to have an incredibly successful career with or without Bajin.

ing in the NHL began. Fighting was still a mainstay in hockey, but around 2000, one could expect to see around 0.6 fights per game, down from the 1.3 fights per game in 1987. Although fighting was on the decline, teams still had an enforcer, but their role and time on ice was significantly reduced to the point that they only played when they were told to fight. That is why fights stayed in hockey at about 0.5 fights per game till 2013.

In 2013, there was a lockout in the NHL. The lockout did not directly affect enforcers or fighting, but it did allow most enforcer contracts to expire as many enforcers signed year to year with their longevity always being questioned.

Starting in that next season, teams were featuring fewer fighters, because no manager wanted to sign an old fighter to a new contract when young, fast players with high potential could fill that void.

The sentiment in the NHL had changed. The need for an enforcer was outweighed by the positive impact of adding another scoring forward to a team’s roster.

As you might expect, fighting comes with a lot of injuries.

Enforcers were cycled through quicker than any other player on the ice. Research into head trauma opened up the concussion debate, and in the NHL, it hit the enforcers the hardest. There were enforc-

hey were not brand-exclusive, so female wrestlers from both of WWE’s prominent brands (RAW and SmackDown Live) could compete for the titles. In addition, the titles would be contested within the Elimination Chamber match, with 3 female tag teams from RAW and 3 from SmackDown, all locked within the Chamber and left to duke it out until one team would be left standing. After several qualifying matches, six teams would enter the Chamber: — Sasha Banks and Bayley (RAW), Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan (RAW), Nia Jax and Tamina (RAW), Sonya

Deville and Mandy Rose (SmackDown), Carmella and Naomi (SmackDown) and Peyton Royce and Billie Kay (SmackDown).

For every team in the Women’s Chamber Match, each had its own unique personal background, cohesion and reason for winning the tag team titles, giving them a special flair. For Sasha Banks and Bayley, two best friends, it was about proving the power of their friendship— — that no matter what the odds or obstacles, their bond could overcome anything.

continued online

continued online

Letter to the Editor: In Response to “Should Swarthmore join NCAA Division I athletics?”

Diana Davis Visiting Assistant Professor

In an eponymous article, Adam Schauer asks, “Should Swarthmore join NCAA Division I athletics?” The answer is an unequivocal “no.”

Swarthmore is the ideal liberal arts college: students are focused on academics for the major-

ity of their day, and they spend a couple of hours each afternoon doing sports. Students at Swarthmore are intellectually curious, and their top priority in college is academics. It isn’t like that everywhere; it is unique and wonderful, and it’s something that we should all cherish and preserve. Joining Division I would change this culture for the worse.

For the purposes of this letter, I researched the past five years of competition history for all of Swarthmore’s athletic teams.

Across the five seasons for each of the twelve men’s and women’s game sports, Swarthmore won 52 percent of the games. Across the eight men’s and women’s swimming, cross country, and indoor and outdoor track teams, in 40

seasons they sent a total of 16 athletes to the Division III national meet. In its entire history, Swarthmore teams have won four national championships, all in men’s tennis.

With the current studentathlete population, Swarthmore would not be even remotely competitive in Division I. To be competitive, Swarthmore would have

to accept different students, who are more focused on athletics than academics. At Williams College, my alma mater and previous place of work, the classroom feel can be quite different — one Williams professor famously called it “a Nike camp with enrichment classes.” Even so, and despite winning over 75 percent of its games, and winning 36 national champi-

onships in eleven different sports, Williams has remained in Division III, with a primary institutional focus on academics. Swarthmore, with its wonderful culture of intellectualism, should definitely do the same.

Athlete of the Week: Kendall Tribus ’21 Ping Promrat Sports Editor Kendall Tribus, a sophomore from Madison, Wisconsin, finished the Swarthmore women’s basketball season strong. Tribus, a 5’11” forward, scored twelve points in the season finale against Haverford. She scored all twelve points from behind the three-point line, finishing the season with five games scoring in the double digits. The team ended its season with a 3-22 record but will look to bounce back strong next year.

Ping Promrat: What is your major, and why did you choose it?

Kendall Tribus: I am currently planning on majoring in psychology and minoring in classical studies. I chose psychology because I have always been interested in the factors that influence people’s behaviors.

I’ve taken a couple classes in both

the psychology and the classics departments at Swat, and I have really enjoyed them.

PP: What was your favorite moment outside of basketball with the team this year?

PP: What made you choose Swarthmore?

KT: My favorite moment outside of basketball with the team this year was probably when we went to Cape May over fall break and ended the trip at our captain’s house.

KT: I visited Swarthmore a couple of times before making my decision, but apart from the incredible academics, I ultimately decided on Swarthmore because of the professors and the community on and around campus.

PP: How did the season go? What were some of the personal and team highlights?

KT: Our season did not go as well as we’d have liked this year in terms of our record, but a highlight was our latest game against Bryn Mawr, when we outscored them 25-2 in the 3rd quarter and won 74-54.

PP: If you could change one thing about Swarthmore, what would it be?

KT: If I had to change something about Swarthmore, I would want to add more dining/food options on campus.

PP: Who is your role model in the sport and why?

KT: One of my role models in the sport is probably Giannis Antetokounmpo on the Milwaukee Bucks, because he works incredibly hard

but also really seems to enjoy what he does. He always has a great attitude but still competes and leaves everything on the court.

PP: What are some of your personal interests outside of the sport?

KT: When I’m not playing basketball, I love to read, spend time with friends, hike, and ski.

PP: What are your goals for the team for the rest of your Swarthmore career?

KT: For the rest of my career at Swarthmore, I would like to see us get a lot more wins and compete for a place in the conference playoff tournament, but I also hope we all stay together and enjoy playing a sport we all love.