Swarthmore Phoenix, January 31, 2019

Today in OPINIONS: Laura Wilcox on the government shutdown A5, CAMPUS JOURNAL: Ash Shukla on crushing on people A7, Gidon Kaminer on Peripeteia Weekend A8

PHOENIX

THE

Winter Sports Swimming,

Basketball, and Track and Field prepare

VOL. 147, NO. 1

for the end of the season

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Hilma af Klint

A review of a Guggenheim showcase

January 31, 2019

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The independent campus newspaper of Swarthmore College since 1881

King’s Legacy: Swarthmore Community Remembers MLK Tiara Tillis News Writer

F

or the fourth year in a row, the Swarthmore campus and community kicked off a week long celebration and remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. with a day of service on January 21, 2019.

This week long event was a collaboration with the Black Cultural Center, the Office of Religious and Spiritual life, and the President’s Office. The events for the week included the day of service, a film screening and

The week ahead Thursday 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Come and hear Martin Palomo ‘19, winner of the 2018 Newton Book Collection Competition, talk about his book collection “Steal this collection: A Collection of Radical History and Activism”, and enjoy some refreshments while you browse his collection.

McCabe Atrium Friday 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Come join the IC for their featured poet of the month and stay for our open mic as part of the First Fridays IC Arthouse.

Saturday Groundhog Day Sunday 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 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Kurt raises awareness of important issues through epic storytelling and laser-sharp detail. His book, A Mind Unraveled, documents his life with epilepsy, including challenges he faced as a student here at Swarthmore, and his ensuing decades-long battle to not only survive, but to thrive.

7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Hormel/Nguyen Intercultural Center at Sproul Hall Room 201 Multi-Purpose Room Tuesday A Doctor’s Experience with Ebola Outbreak 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

A firsthand, eye-opening account of the devastating impact of an infectious disease outbreak, which has the potential to spread worldwide.

Wednesday Humanitarian Predicaments: Protracted Displacement and Palestinian Refugee Politics 4:30 to 6:00 p.m.

Palestinian refugees’ experience of protracted displacement is among the lengthiest in history. In her breathtaking new book, Ilana Feldman explores this community’s engagement with humanitarian assistance over a seventy-year period and their persistent efforts to alter their present and future conditions.

WEATHER Warmer than Chicago

CONTENTS News A1-A2 Arts A3-A4 Opinions A5 Campus Journal A6-A8 Sports A9-A10 Read more at swarthmorephoenix.com Copyright © 2019 The Phoenix

talk back for the film, “Selma,” on January 21, 2019, a candlelight vigil on January 23, 2019, and ended with a Martin Luther King Jr. Collection on January 25, 2019. The well-attended events fostered community bonding, according to some, but some students feel that they also failed to genuinely engage with Dr. King’s legacy.

Prior to the establishment of Swarthmore’s MLK week, the Black Cultural Center and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life hosted luncheons, talks, and activities for years geared

towards remembering Martin Luther King Jr. and his message.

It was not until the 2015-2016 school year that a push from President Valerie Smith with the help of Dean Dion Lewis, assistant dean and coordinator of the Black Cultural Center, and Joyce Tompkins, director of religious and spiritual life, that a structured week dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. was created and that classes were cancelled on MLK Day. “To me, the service day is a big triumph that our community has taken MLK Day as not

just an ordinary day, and invited others to come out and do service for the larger community because I think that’s what we should do in honor of Dr. King. Not just say it’s an extra day off, but to come together in honor of him and service,” Tompkins said.

The MLK Day of Service is an “organized community service project to benefit the youth of Chester, PA. Community members assembled packages of collected school supplies to be distributed to Chester Community Charter School, Ches-

ter Eastside Ministries, Chester Boys & Girls Club, God’s House of Glory and Community Action Agency of Delaware County,” read a school wide email that Dean Lewis sent.

To prepare for the festivities this year, the Black Cultural Center and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life began planning and asking for school supplies donations from the community at the beginning of the Fall 2018 semester in which they received support continued on page A2

BCC Holds Candlelight Vigil to Honor Martin Luther King Jr.

Atziri Marquez / The Phoenix

A candlelight vigil at the Black Cultural Center was held on Wednesday, January, 23 as part of the weeklong celebration of the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. The vigil honored those who have suffered while promoting equity and inclusion.

Danawell Complex in Hot Water over Cold Water Ganesh Setty Editor Emeritus For some Swatties returning from winter break, Swarthmore can hit hard; for the residents of Dana, Hallowell, and Danawell, Swarthmore hit just a bit harder.

From early in the day on January 20 to the night of Jan. 22, the Danawell Complex completely ran out of hot water. As temperatures reached as low as 25 degrees Fahrenheit, the 239 residents of the complex had to either brave freezing temperatures or traverse the outdoors to find the nearest shower.

As the College’s facilities department fixed a defective heating coil that led to the disappearance of hot water, Director of Residential Communities Isaiah Thomas sent an email to RAs and residents recommending that students shower in nearby Wharton.

Despite that recommendation, some students like Will Bein ’21 and Kathy Nguyen ’21 chose to endure cold, albeit short showers.

“I regrettably dealt with it and took four showers during that week in the FRIGID cold water because I can’t stand the feeling of not showering,” wrote Nguyen, a resident of Danawell Connector, in an email. “They suggested walking to Wharton to take a shower, but that was really out of the way. I would not wish that experience on anyone. Ice cold showers were absolutely terrible.”

“I chose to take showers despite the cold on both the 21st and the 22nd, but both showers were extremely uncomfortable to the point that I contemplated going to shower in Wharton on the 22nd, although I ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the walk,” said Bein. “Honestly it wasn’t much more than an inconvenience for me, although it was definitely not much fun to deal continued on page A2

New Year New Me: Swat’s Website Adopts Younger Look George Rubin News Writer The College recently finished an 18-month process of redesigning its website, the first major change to the site’s theme since 2015. The new website features a reimagined look, ambient video of the campus, and new content in order to highlight the student experience.

Swarthmore’s Information Technology Services team worked on the site in conjunction with Bluecadet, a web design company that has built websites for Princeton Admissions and NASA, and interactive displays for The Franklin Institute. The project involved focus group research into the ways that students, perspective students, faculty, parents, and alumni engage with the website, said Giardinelli. The ITS team had weekly to monthly meetings with Bluecadet, during which the company would present a proposed design and receive feedback from ITS, said Mensah. Once Bluecadet finished most of the design, framework, and structure, they handed the site over to ITS to add specific pictures, navigation, styling, and text, he added.

The previous version of the website, known to students and faculty by its garnet banner and maze of tabs, went online in 2012. According to Alisa Giardinelli, interim vice president of communications, the website was significantly updated in 2015 because it wasn’t responsive on mobile devices. This time around, designers at ITS

and Bluecadet prioritized a mobile-first approach so the site would look great on phones, iPads, and smaller laptops, said Front-End Developer Michael Kappeler. There was also a need to clean up and modernize the look of the website, said computer science student Richmond Mensah ’21. Mensah participated in the SPEED program this past summer, in which he worked with web developers from the ITS team.

“They wanted to have that new, cleaner type of website that’s really chic and really powerful,” said Mensah ’21.

Another main goal for the site was to showcase the college community and the uniqueness of the campus, said Giardinelli.

The new website makes use of a full-width, borderless display and high definition ambient video to achieve this goal.

“We wanted to make a beautiful engaging website that showcased some of the things on campus that were hard to express on our previous website,” said Kappeler. “First of all, how beautiful it is here. It’s hard to explain that and express that without large imagery.”

The site also offers more content and easier navigation for current and prospective students said Mensah.

“I definitely didn’t go to the website as much as I do now,” said Mensah. “It’s just more organized and structured with a much cleaner look. It brings out more things that were hidden in the old website….It’s easier to navigate; I think prospective students will be more amazed by it, especially with a lot of the

imagery.”

According to Kappeler, the design team sought to refocus the content on students and prospective students. They worked on surfacing information about campus life such as clubs and activities which was more difficult to find on the old website.

“The previous version of the site reflected a lot of the organizational chart of the College, which the staff use a lot,” said Kappeler. “We’re probably some of the primary users of the site, whether it’s finding contact information for other departments to coordinate things, but we wanted to make sure that we were surfacing information that the student body was interested in.”

The website is now complete and online; however, ITS is still working to integrate the site with other platforms such as The Dash and course catalog.

The Dash runs on Drupal, the system that keeps the website up and running behind the scenes. The course catalog, however, is stored on a separate system which still has the look and feel of the old website.

ITS is in the process of migrating that information over to the new system, as well as creating a resource for browsing courses throughout the Trico.

“We are pulling that information in from the course catalog but at the moment there are two separate things,” said Kappeler. “We are definitely working to make that a more unified experience. It used to be that you would see Swarthmore courses separate from Haverford and Bryn Mawr courses if you are looking for a Trico course to take, and that’s something that’s something outside the scope of the redesign.”

As for the webpages of individual departments, ITS gives

each department control over their own content, said Kappelar.

“We have an approach that is slightly different than many of our peers and some other institutions everything is controlled by a Communications office,” said Kappelar. “Here we offer training to all of the academic and internal departments on campus and they really have control over their own sites.”

Now that the main website is finished and online, ITS can evaluate how the new design influences the way prospective students, parents, and alumni view the community. With the BEP building nearing completion and the process of building a new dining hall set in motion, the website seems to be a step towards modernizing the college for the twenty-first century.

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THE PHOENIX NEWS

January 31, 2019

Terhune Implements Pilot Program for Dean’s Division Gidon Kaminer News Writer Towards the end of Winter Break, Jim Terhune, Interim Dean of Students, emailed the student body to announce a new way in which students are assigned to deans. Instead of being assigned to a particular dean based on their class, sophomores, juniors, and seniors will each be assigned to one dean, with whom they will remain for the entirety of their college career. First years will continue to be assigned to Dean Henry. The motivation behind this change, as explained in the campuswide email to the student body, is that it will enable students to establish lasting, close relationships with their deans.

“We believe the individual support we provide to students is the most valuable and important function the Dean of Students Office provides,” said Terhune.

The hope is that with stronger relationships, students will come to see the dean’s office as an indispensable resource for issues that may come up through the years, and will therefore meet with their dean more often.

According to Terhune, “by having students remain with

the dean they are assigned ... we hope to enable students and their deans to establish, build, and maintain relationships in ways that will better serve students over time.”

Terhune clarified that while this change might at first seem like a fundamental upheaval in the way in which deans and students connect, the change is actually not as fundamental as this.

“In practice the [previous] dean structure doesn’t actually reflect how the office functions in terms of supporting individual students,” said Terhune.

When a student comes to the dean’s office seeking assistance, they often do not simply go to their class dean and proceed with them from there.

“Most of those connections are made on an ad hoc basis as issues arise which means that they are overwhelmingly reactive to a problem that has arisen,” said Terhune. “A significant percentage of students actually work with one of the academic or other deans.”

Alternatively, a student might deliberately connect with one particular dean, who may or may not be their class dean, because they already have an established relationship.

The class dean system does

initially had his doubts about the new system.

“It was sort of pitched as making it easier to find out who your dean was, which I didn’t think makes sense, so at first I was a bit apprehensive,” FeldmanFitzhum ’19 said.

According to FeldmanFitzhum, it would be easier to find out who exactly your dean is with the previous system, requiring just a quick Google search instead of navigating menus on the notoriously unusable and unsightly mySwat online student portal. However, he believes that the change will ultimately be beneficial and will hopefully turn out to be successful.

“What makes the change good is that you stay with the same dean across years. And that is really important,” said Feldman-Fitzhum.

He expressed excitement for the prospect of students building stronger relationships with their deans.

“I went to talk with the deans a couple of times but never built a relationship with them, I just went for a temporary problem or to vent,” said Feldman-Fitzhum.

“You have to have a lot of faith in these people to just do that a couple of times, but if you go back to the same person you

not reflect how students perceive the current structure.

“Because the way that students end up assigned to a dean is not well known or understood, we have heard from many students, faculty, coaches, and staff that there is confusion that can serve as an obstacle to accessing the support the deans can provide,” explained Terhune.

Terhune believes that the change can make the system less confusing to students, thereby making it easier for students to get help from deans.

“The nature of the deans’ day to day work does not change,” he added.

The change will also allow the dean’s division to better manage the multiple roles that all deans play. Because every dean has more than one responsibility in addition to their role as a dean — Dion Lewis is the director of the Black Cultural Center in addition to being the current dean of the Junior class, for example assigning particular deans to particular students would allow the office to have more control over each dean’s individual workload, and will be able to tailor their assignments to their position with more consideration to their other obligations.

Tobin Feldman-Fitzthum ’19, a senior who is currently a SAM,

Atziri Marquez / The Phoenix

build a relationship. I was skeptical at first, but I actually think it’s a good idea.”

Feldman-Fitzhum did express some doubts about whether it would actually be possible to foster such a close relationship with a dean.

“The Deans are busy, and as much as there is an idea to build a relationship with them it will never feel as personal as going to a professor I trust, just walking into their office, which I’ve done way more than seeing deans,” he said.

Even if the change doesn’t lead to students gaining longlasting relationships with their dean, Feldman-Fitzhum still believes that the change will at

least “preserve everything that’s good about the deans now.”

“We believe the approach we are piloting offers important benefits that can help us to further improve the service and support we provide to students,” Terhune said. “But this is structured as a pilot because it is very much a work in progress and we are eager to assess and evaluate what works and what may need to change. I have every expectation that we will need to make adjustments along the way. And if in the end we determine this approach isn’t right for Swarthmore, then we will do something different.”

The Swatter: Common Resident Life Reports Laura Wagner Managing Editor

This infographic portrays selected

categories

incidents

from

Swatter

reported

of The over

the Fall 2018 semester.

The Swatter reports can be found by going to The Phoenix’s

website

and

searching “the Swatter.”

Hot water, continued from A1 with.”

According to Director of Maintenance Ralph Thayer, a threeyear-old heating coil that absorbs heat from the college’s gas-powered burner broke, causing the Danawell Complex to lose all hot water. The building’s heating, however, remained functional.

“It came as a surprise to us that we would have a catastrophic failure of a major component so soon,” said Thayer, adding that repairing the coil was not an easy fix.

Before repairs, Management had to get the coil’s vendor to come to the college on the morning of the 22nd in order to qualify for a warranty claim. Because a replacement coil could only be found in New York City, the coil had to be shipped on the same day as the vendor began to dis-

assemble the water heater and remove the defective coil. By the night of the 22nd, the facilities department installed the new coil and hot water was at last restored to the Danawell complex.

“Water heaters are fairly robust, but commercial heaters are subject to a lot of stress from mass amounts of water flowing through them and the amount of heat required to bring the water up to the desired temperature,” continued Thayer. “I wish I could say we could predict water heater failures, but the nature of them is water heaters are good until they are not.”

As this week’s single-digit temperatures rise into next week, the college’s facilities department hopes that this should be the last of the college’s heating troubles.

Photo courtesy of Ralph Thayer

MLK Day of Service, continued from A1 from staff, students, businesses like the Swarthmore Campus & Community Store, and community members.

“We started working on this last semester because there are a couple of components for the day of service. First it starts with finding the after school tutoring sites that we give the materials to, so we have to figure out which sites we are going to work with it and what they need. Then we have to collect donations, and when it gets close to the time, we have to get our volunteers,” Tompkins said.

Aside from programming early to account for the series of parts associated with the day of service, the BCC and IC also believed it was a way of ensuring that there would be plenty of time to collect enough supplies to fill the backpacks.

“The day of service is this big event that has been in the works for six to seven months.

In knowing that some of our colleagues are parents and they are going out school shopping anyways, we start telling people early July, ‘as you are school shopping, think about MLK Day in January’. We do get some trinkles of stuff in throughout the semester,” Dean Lewis said.

After a semester of collecting and sorting supplies, volunteers, community members, staff, and students gathered in Upper Tarble on MLK day to begin making backpacks for the Chester, PA community. Among those in attendance was BCC intern, Terence Thomas ’21, who worked closely with the BCC, IC, and all the volunteers.

“We collected everything and even had some students come back early to sort the materials because we had a bunch of supplies. On Monday morning, we laid everything out on the table and handed everyone a list of items specific to the charity they were making backpacks

for. They just walked around the tables, collected the supplies, and put them in the backpacks,” Thomas said. “It was a great community bonding experience.”

The backpacks serviced over 170 students from Chester ranging from the ages of five to 18 by providing backpacks full of school supplies to five agencies: Chester Community Charter School, Chester Eastside Ministries, Chester Boys & Girls Club, God’s House of Glory and Community Action Agency of Delaware County.

As the week continued, the BCC and IC hosted numerous events to honor and celebrate the ideas, contributions, and memory of Martin Luther King Jr. With these events came a sense of community and yearning to maintain Martin Luther King Jr’s message throughout the year.

“One of the things that is important is that this truly is for the community, but I think there are ways that we should think about not just doing these things for the day or the week.

We really need to understand that Martin possessed certain personality traits and tenets that we should all live by. There are so many ways that we can use our talents to help those around us,” Dean Lewis said.

While the intent of these festivities was to commemorate the work and contributions of Martin Luther King Jr., some students, such as Taylor Morgan ’19, felt as though Swarthmore’s attempt did not fully honor his legacy or call attention to the critical issues at hand.

“To me, the Day of Service was more symbolic than effective. It mostly symbolized doing service in honor of Dr. King, but the problem is that it isn’t connected to larger systems and questions like, ‘why do we

have a day of service?’, ‘why is there poverty?’ and ‘why do these kids need backpacks with supplies in the first place’,” Morgan said.

Morgan was asked by Tompkins on the day of service to attend and recite a quote at the MLK Collection. Though Morgan said she was slightly skeptical, she agreed to be a part of the event. Upon receiving the quotes for the Collection, she said she felt angry and uncomfortable with the message they conveyed.

“Some of the quotes talk about violence being a descending spiral and only love being able to drive out hate. I think I and Dr. King, especially later in his career, would agree that America was a settler colonial nation that was founded on violence and genocide,” Morgan said. “To condense that narrative and history into the idea that we should steer away from violence and in our movements not perpetuate hate or speak out in a way that is deemed an unrespectable form of protest is not doing Dr. King justice and in my view, reinforces those same structures of white supremacy that Dr. King was trying to dismantle.”

In her discomfort, Morgan reached out to friends about how to approach and reconcile her feelings with the collection. The night before collection, Morgan headed to Twitter where she found a list of quotes she felt were more representative of Dr. King’s message. After making a Facebook post about her feelings towards the event, five students volunteered to read some of the quotes on her list. On the day of collection, Morgan, along with Abby Diebold ‘20, Gabriel Evans ’19, Killian McGinnis ’19, and AynNichelle Slappy ‘20, planned to recite the quotations Morgan collected.

“Everyone came in with their little slips of paper that I cut out the night before. Abby, Gabriel, and Annie said their quotes, but then I was surprised the ceremony got cut short before me and another student could read our quotes, but I’m not sure why,” Morgan said.”The room seemed to get uncomfortable when Gabe was reading the quote about the white moderate. People weren’t expecting that, but I think that was the point.”

In the future, Morgan wants to increase the dialogue being had around MLK, his message, his legacy, and Swarthmore’s positionality within the grand scheme of these structures Dr. King was trying to fight against.

“I think there at least needs to be acknowledgement of using MLK’s legacy for their own comfort rather than engaging with really difficult and uncomfortable concepts like why does our institution have almost 3 billion dollars in wealth, but the most we are doing is packing backpacks once a year,” Morgan said. “Maybe have a panel to think critically about Dr. King’s negative favorability rating or why he was assassinated and the death threats he got or the context of his really radical and revolutionary ideas. I think we should be asking questions that get at the larger systems of violence Dr. King was advocating for.”

Swarthmore put forth months of time and effort to celebrate Dr. King’s memory and message through service and community collections, but for some students, much was left unsaid.

As Swarthmore continues their tradition of commemorating Dr. King, there is a call for going beyond just the day or week and addressing the root of his legacy and ideas.

ARTS

January 31, 2019 PAGE A3

Days of Swatties: Living as an International Student Sicheng Zhong ’21 Days of Swatties: this is a project that goes into the hearts of the Swarthmore students by listening about their lives. Wholesome, sad, and all other kinds of stories are carried by Swatties. I choose to present as little personal information as possible because I think the specific backgrounds of students are irrelevant to this series: it is a place for individual people who make up the narrative of Swarthmore as a whole. It will be an archive, but also a window into Swarthmore today.

Jeremy Chang Arts Writer

How do you feel about your home country, especially as a student who is studying abroad in the States?

“Home (China) feels suffocating to me: no political freedom, no human rights, no access to Facebook and Google. The political and human rights situation is getting even worse and worse in the age of Xi. More student activists and human rights lawyers are getting arrested and tortured, and thousands of ethnic minorities are forced into camps. Many of my peers are educated to be nationalistic, apolitical, and inward- looking, and they are expected to choose a major that would not necessarily interest them but would pay well.

I want to change what’s happening back home so badly,

but at the same time, I also feel the urge to escape from that kind of authoritarian and repressive environment. Studying in the States became a natural choice for me when I graduated from middle school, as it would give me the academic freedom, abundant resources, and a diverse cultural environment I desired. I’m also well aware of the fact that studying abroad is such a privilege: having a family that has the vision and economic resources to send me to the other side of the planet is not something most of my peers back home could enjoy.

To realize one’s privilege and understand how to use it wisely is important. It made me more passionate about the rights of those who are often oppressed yet voiceless in China: those feminist activists who are starting the #metoo movement in China, those student labor activists who are fighting for the rights of workers but are secretly arrested and legally detained by the government, and Muslim ethnic minorities who are being put into camps. I think we overseas Chinese students need to care more and fight for our rights wisely.

Studying in Trump’s America also feels a bit weird and disheartening; the America that I admired, the America that would stand for the good no longer existed. What I’m instead seeing is the breaking apart of a liberal democracy and those values we used to believe in —- diversity, good governance, globalization, internationalism, free trade, rational arguments and debates, rights of immigrants. As an immigrant-to-be, while I enjoy the liberal and diverse bubble I live in, I’m also very worried about the direction of this country.”

James Blake Conquers Demons, Finds Love on “Assume Form” Max Gruber Arts Writer

Electronic music producerturned-solo-artist James Blake has been a fixture in the pop and alternative R&B scene for a number of years. While his last record, “The Colour in Anything,” was released in 2016, Blake has kept busy with a number of high profile songwriting credits on albums such as “Lemonade” and “Blonde,” as well as more recent features on “King’s Dead” off of the “Black Panther” soundtrack and “Stop Trying to be God” from Travis Scott’s 2018 blockbuster “Astroworld.” Now Blake is back with a new full length project, “Assume Form.” Sonically diverse, lyrically poignant, and at times simply stunning, “Assume Form” is my favorite effort from the British artist since 2013’s “Overgrown” and a triumphant declaration of flawed, human love which is sure to resonate with listeners in its earnestness.

The album begins with the titular, “Assume Form,” which sees Blake crying out in his trademark falsetto over a piano

line which is equal parts ominous and glamorous. Halfway through its runtime, the track changes in key and momentum as the drumline gets subtly more prominent and some distorted vocals hum a melody which, while distant in the mix, wedges itself in the listener’s mind. Blake repeats the melody of the backing vocals in the song’s climactic moment, crying out declarations of “Don’t you know your best side shows when you’re unaware … Doesn’t it feel more natural? Doesn’t it see you float?” The instrumental then swells to match the vocals, with the whine of the strings and the increasingly urgent drums propping up Blake’s almost desperate exaltations, and for a moment there is the illusion of suspension in air.

While the track has plenty of poignant and striking moments, the song as a whole is relatively structureless, a factor which might leave some listeners feeling bored or in need of some sort of direction.

“Mile High” offers a moody, nocturnal instrumental with contributions from Atlanta

producer Metro Boomin. It is because of Metro’s drums that the Travis Scott feature goes off relatively well, although the track never really builds to anything as grand as the songs which follow. From this point on, the album goes on a tear of excellent tracks, with each subsequent song displaying Blake’s versatility and songwriting abilities. “Into the Red” is a ballad which begins with Blake sounding relatively distant, his vocals distorted by a vocoder. However, the song delivers one of the most satisfying moments on the album, as Blake’s voice truly soars over the crescendo of the strings and the slightly off-kilter, twangy keyboard notes. The lyrics are particularly compelling here, as Blake is singing to a woman whom he portrays as having supported him at great personal cost: “She saw every hand in my pocket / She sold her gold rush / She watched me lose face every day / Rather than lose me / She was the goldrush, she was the goldrush.”

The album is chock full of starry-eyed love songs, with Blake guiding the listener

through the bliss of new love as on “Can’t Believe the Way We Flow.” While the lyrics are certainly sweet, the track’s success lies in its inventive production, which structures Blake’s cascading lead vocals over a marching, glittering instrumental. The warbly, chipmunked vocal samples which pop in throughout the track are also a welcome addition. Similarly lovestruck is the song “I’ll Come Too,” which features a number of smooth and sweet backing vocals sampled from Italian film composer Bruno Nicolai.

Indeed, the track feels as if it is meant to score a love story, giving off an intoxicating, moonlit aura as Blake sings of eschewing quotidian concerns in an effort to be with his lover. While Blake has received much deserved credit thus far, “Assume Form” would simply not be as impactful without stellar features from Rosalía and Andre 3000. The Spanish pop phenomenon Rosalía, whose latest release, “El Mal Querer,” was one of my favorite records of 2018, meshes excellently with Blake on the surreal and haunting “Barefoot

in the Park.” Also, Andre 3000 is predictably sharp and contemplative, delivering a verse recounting feelings of paranoia and fear on the neurotic “Where’s the Catch?” While the closing track, “Lullaby For My Insomniac,” is certainly pretty, it feels a bit too lowkey to serve as the closing statement for an album this engaging.

Some, though not all, of James Blake’s music has become somewhat of a meme in the world of musical criticism for what some publications dub

as a half-baked, mopey, “sadboi” aesthetic. However, the songwriting on “Assume Form” is simply too earnest and human to be characterized in this way. And even if it weren’t, the instrumentals and vocal performances are strong enough that one might not care. Even for those who are not engaged from front to back, “Assume Form” contains a number of highlights, making it a wholly worthwhile listen and a great achievement for the British jack-of-all-trades.

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THE PHOENIX ARTS

January 31, 2019

Abstract AF: Hilma af Klint’s Evolution Rachel Lapides Arts Writer

T

he remarkable spiraling structure of the Guggenheim Museum compels museumgoers to experience art along an upwards, evolving pathway. In “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future,” exhibit and environment intertwine as af Klint’s revolutionary pieces evolve right along with us.

At the bottom of the museum, viewers may disparage the “girliness” of af Klint’s earliest works.

The soft pastels, swirling patterns, and motifs of butterflies, snails, and rainbows in “Ten Largest,” may call to mind children’s doodles proudly pinned on refrigerators. However, this reductionist “girly” viewing stems from a male-dominated history of abstract art. The straightedged, bright, primary colors of Mondrian, moody swatches of Rothko, harsh brushstrokes of de Kooning, and ejaculatory splattering of Pollock all assert themselves on their canvas in decidedly unfeminine ventures into the abstract. In contrast to this stormy, typified canon, af Klint’s delicate strokes seem juvenile, simple, unassuming. But the themes of motherhood and creation in her wombed loops reflect another kind of nascence: the genesis of abstract art itself.

Af Klint created her first abstract painting in 1906. This remarkably early start predates that of Wassily Kadinsky, who has long held the status of being

the original abstract artist. The Guggenheim Museum even permanently houses some of Kadinsky’s work as a testament to his acclaim as a pioneer. In contrast, af Klint never even had a gallery showing, ordering in her will that her paintings shouldn’t be shown to anyone until 20 years after her death. Truly, as the exhibition title suggests, these paintings were “for the future.” Cognizant of how ahead of her time she was, af Klint prepared for a point in which people would be able to appreciate her work without disrupting her spiritualism, allowing us the unique opportunity to experience her entire journey as a unified collection.

Feeling a bit like Dorothy, I followed Frank Lloyd’s White Concrete Road along af Klint’s evolution, a phrase which can describe both her subject matter and her ability. “Primordial Chaos” aptly begins the exhibition with elementary watercolors hinting at snails, bacterium, wheats, and grasses. It is easy to judge these preliminary curlicue explorations of nature as meaningless amusements; however, these microscopic detailings achieve great significance in juxtaposition and parallel with their later macroscopic counterparts, echoing the esoteric belief, “as above, so below.” Increasingly provocative canvases punctuate the twisted pathway, showing the creation of different worlds and the consolidation of the human mind and spirit. As the paintings become more bold

and abstract, gigantic prisms and tiny sword-wielding angels make it clear that “we aren’t in Kansas anymore.”

Wall after wall of paintings, notebooks, and sketches make af Klint seem like one possessed — and in fact –– she believed she was. As the turn of the twentieth century brought both scientific discoveries and religious fervor, many consolidated the two in Western esotericism, and af Klint was no exception. A strong believer in theosophy and the

occult, the artist held séances with other women, in which she believed spirits contacted her. It is through these spirits that she found her inspiration for her art.

The rampant dichotomies in her watercolors — masculine and feminine, earth and heaven, body and spirit, biological and geometric — parallel the mix of symbolism and science of theosophy, which promotes unifications and the discovery of the absolute.

In fact, many of her presumed squiggles of eggs, petals, and worms correspond to specific words and phrases that she denotes in her notebooks. Even without knowing this detailed planning, the value of her works as non-concrete images remains.

While critics may use her spiritual inspiration to downplay af Klint’s originality, her theosophical commitment actually reinforces her importance as a theorist. Af Klint uncovered her own theosophical absolute in the new universal language of abstract art, able to hibernate until over a hundred years later, unifying her time with ours.

This timeless quality is exemplified by the final collection of the exhibit, which is not by af Klint at all. Contemporary artist R.H. Quaytman perused af Klint’s thousands — yes, thousands — of notebooks. Taking artistic liberties, Quaytman created the col-

lection “+x, Chapter 34.” Klint often uses “+x” in her notebooks, encapsulating the theosophic exchange between spiritualism and science, as mathematical characters connote the addition of the unknown while retaining the figurative meaning of two crosses. The motif — both + and x — is repurposed from the crucifix of Christianity into a geometric tool of separation, symbolizing the division of the human experiment. The Guggenheim, too, is divided into sections, and Quaytman used each section to represent a page of this book, each slight variations on a theme. All are punctuated by a white circle on a black square, reminiscent of the moon. In each section, these circles occupy slightly lower positions in each section, which looking from the very top of the museum, has the

effect of the moon slowly fading down in the sky: the final combination of geometry and nature coming to an end along with the life of af Klint and her giant volume of work.

On my way back down, I felt a strange sadness, as if I was Benjamin Button, or watching a life in reverse. The rudimentary depictions from the start of the show unveil this pain of birth and motherhood: that of the miniscule — tiny bacterium and snails, or even particles like in “Atom Series”; that of the impossibly large — the creation of matter from light, the Tree of Knowledge; but mostly that of af Klint herself, whose private birth of work corresponded to a huge worldwide movement of abstract art.

sex for money, she won’t have a place to stay. And she won’t have food to eat. It doesn’t take much thought to see that this is unacceptable. Tagouri vows to put her energy into helping homeless youths in hopes of ending the cycle of homelessness and sex work, and this feels like a genuine goal, an actual way of helping that doesn’t involve a hashtag. She doesn’t claim to have all of the an-

swers, and this makes for both an educational and engaging series that never veers off into preaching. This podcast shows exactly what America is selling, because it’s not just sex.

It’s vulnerability, negligence, marginalization, among a host of other things, and Tagouri leaves it to us to decide when we will stop buying.

What We’re Selling in America Elisabeth Miller Arts Writer Noor Tagouri begins her podcast series “Sold in America” with a story from her childhood. As she tells of a trip she took to Saudi Arabia with her parents, her voice shakes, and she pauses and stumbles over her words. She recounts how, in the elevator of her hotel, a man attempted to assault her. She was twelve. Her vulnerability creates an immediate connection with the listener: we are horrified and shocked, yet we can’t help but keep listening.

She says that this experience, “the fear of being touched by a stranger, or the fear of violence,” is the foundation of her series. Her work in journalism has been largely focused on violence against women, and the ultimate goal of her podcast is to figure out how exploitation and sex trafficking exists in the United States today. However, Tagouri doesn’t attempt to come up with a single answer, nor does she approach the journey as a straight line. Instead, with the same authenticity established in the first episode, she explains how her own perceptions of the sex industry have shifted throughout the course of her research.

The series follows Tagouri all over the country, to places such as Kentucky, Nevada, and Washington, D.C., as she interviews people with varying degrees of involvement in the sex industry. These people include members of law enforcement, sex workers, former trafficking victims, and doctors — all of whom bring a different perspective to this complicated conversation.

Notably, Tagouri focuses on societal factors that influence the sex industry, and she walks her

audience through intricate issues such as the rampant drug epidemic in Kentucky, the failures of child welfare programs, and short-sighted attempts by lawmakers to “save” sex workers.

Tagouri’s power lies in her ability to subvert the traditional narrative surrounding the sex industry. One such moment presents itself when she analyzes how well-intentioned laws actually further endanger sex workers. Through discussions with sex workers and lawmakers, Tagouri examines the passage of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, and the negative repercussions of these laws. The FOSTA-SESTA package makes it illegal for websites to knowingly support any form of sex work, so sites like Backpage can no longer publish ads for escort or erotic services. While these laws are meant to eradicate online child trafficking, police officers say that these websites can actually help locate victims, so lawmakers may in fact put victims further in the dark. FOSTA-SESTA also has detrimental effects for sex workers. The laws erase forums made by sex worker communities where they review clients and give tips in order to promote safety. While Tagouri is careful to not place blame on the laws themselves, she does point out that this ignores and further criminalizes sex workers who have no other options.

The passage of these laws approaches the sex industry with tunnel vision, focusing on one goal without considering all of the other factors involved.

The most compelling part of Tagouri’s subversive narrative, however, is the evolving defini-

tions of victim and villain. It’s important to note that defining these terms is a difficult feat, and the podcast does tread carefully. Through interviews with victims of sex trafficking and current sex workers, Tagouri shows her own progression as she realizes that neither she nor anybody else has the right to label someone else’s experience. One woman whom Tagouri interviews shares a story that seems to be a clearcut example of sex trafficking, but through her interview she explains that she refuses to accept the label of a victim of trafficking. She states that she was making a choice, no matter how limited that choice may seem to listeners. Tagouri reflects on this and considers the benefits of a binary labeling system such as “victim and villain.” She admits her own flawed perceptions of this nuanced concept, and she nudges rather than pushes her listeners to think more critically and abandon such strict definitions.

Through this exchange, she encourages her audience to realize, as she has, that assuming all sex workers are victims of trafficking not only diminishes the experiences of survivors, but also ignores the larger societal issues at play.

There are real victims, real people being trafficked in this country, but there is a fine line between help and harm. Arresting sex workers is harmful. Assuming all of these women are being forced by other people to engage in sex work is harmful. However, complacency with the existence of sex work is also incredibly harmful. Tagouri shows that misplacing all of the blame on traffickers hiding in the shadows misses an entire piece of this puzzle,

and she plants questions in the minds of her listeners without explicitly trying to guide anyone’s journey. What about the broken government systems we continue to perpetuate? What about the stigma and obsession in our society surrounding sex?

Tagouri uses the term “survival sex” to describe the necessity of sex work to some of her interviewees. One woman states that if she doesn’t have

OPINIONS

January 31, 2019 PAGE A5

Laura Wilcox Op-Ed Contributor

T

hough the longest government shutdown in history has finally ended, permanent damage has been done to our government and democracy. The costs of the shutdown are staggering: national parks lacked supervision, and visitors did potentially irreparable damage to fragile ecosystems. Some scientific research was paused.

Economists predict that economic growth will be approximately zero in the first quarter of 2019, in part due to impact of the shutdown. Even the implementation of the 2020 Census is threatened because the Commerce Department lacked funding. Most significantly, the shutdown had an unprecedented personal cost, as about 800,000 federal workers were either furloughed or working without pay.

Though federal workers certainly faced the immediate hardship of not getting a paycheck, the shutdown will also do long-term damage to our norms and institutions. It will further fray public trust in the ability

of government to do good work and improve people’s lives. Before the shutdown began, the Pew Research Center found that trust in the government is already near a historic low, as only 18 percent of Americans say they trust the government to do the right thing. People were clearly already unhappy with how the government works prior to the shutdown, and public trust in the government has been on a steep decline in recent decades. When the Pew Research Center first began collecting data on trust in government in the 1950s, about threequarters of people reported that they trusted the government.

The shutdown will only make distrust in the government more severe, as it provides a clear example of the government being unable to fulfill its basic responsibilities. The hardships the shutdown caused for federal workers are highly salient, as many people personally know someone who was furloughed or working without pay. The media has also heavily reported on federal workers who have been struggling to put food on the ta-

THE

The Shutdown Discourages Public Service

w

PHOENIX

Shreya Chattopadhyay, Editor-in-Chief Bayliss Wagner, Managing Editor Laura Wagner, Managing Editor

PHOTOGRAPHY Atziri Marquez, Editor

ble or pay the rent. Even though the shutdown is over, government workers will probably have to wait at least a week before they get a paycheck, according to the Washington Post. The shutdown confirms the popular (and false) perception that the government is incapable of getting anything done.

The Pew Research Center has also found that most people feel frustrated about the government, as opposed to angry or satisfied. This sentiment was likely reinforced as the shutdown dragged on and Congress was unable to come to an agreement to end the shutdown, even as people faced significant hardship.

Erosion in public trust in the government has serious consequences. If people don’t trust the government, they will probably prefer a smaller government that will do less to provide services and promote equality.

They also may be less likely to vote and be politically active in other ways, which would make our government less democratic. Additionally, trust in government has become a highly par-

tisan issue in recent decades, as voters for the party in power are significantly more likely to trust the government. Since the causes of the shutdown are so bitterly partisan, it will probably widen the partisan divide when it comes to trusting the government.

Second, the shutdown will deter qualified people from entering public service. People who otherwise would have taken government jobs may look at the pain and instability the shutdown has caused and enter the private sector instead. Current government workers could even be frustrated enough by the shutdown to start looking for new jobs outside of the government. The government needs talented, qualified people to provide services and do research. If these people decide that government work is not worth the pain and hassle of a potential shutdown, then the government will miss out on their talent. This problem could contribute to public mistrust in the government, too. If fewer people go into government work or people know fewer govern-

ment workers personally, then they might be less likely to think that government does good work and has good intentions.

People may assume that the consequences of the shutdown are over because the shutdown is over. However, while the shutdown certainly has done severe economic and personal consequences that are being felt right

now, it has also done institutional damage that will persist for decades. As trust in the government declines, political participation may fall, weakening our democracy. Partisan divides surrounding trust in government may widen. Additionally, competent and talented people will be less likely to want to enter public service.

ist other aspects of Israel than simply the conflict.

Birthright never claims to be representative of the myriad of perspectives and narratives that exist surrounding the modern state of Israel and the conflict. The point of Birthright is to forge a connection between diaspora Jewry and the state of Israel. This is a very important connection when, in the modern world, many Jews, especially diaspora ones, are losing their religious and cultural connections to Judaism. I do not think it would be wrong to say that Birthright advances a singular view, or more accurately a grouping of closely related perspectives that reflect a single worldview: a Zionist one.

Zionism is becoming a dirty word on college campuses as it has become associated with some of the more right-wing perspectives on Israel. But at the end of the day, all it means is that you support the right of the state of Israel, as a Jewish state, to exist. That is the narrative that Birthright advances.

Organizations and individuals that oppose Birthright do no better at trying to advance a “balanced” narrative, other than perhaps to present a cursory glance at competing viewpoints. I participated in a conflict tour of Israel and the West Bank during the summer of 2017 and practically the only “pro-Israel” perspective

we heard was from a number of West Bank settlers. That meeting seemed like more of a straw man that a genuine attempt to consider the other side. Birthright does no better in that the vast majority of trips do not meet with Palestinians; ours did, however, and we had an incredibly engaging conversation with him as we heard about his family’s experiences during the Second Intifada. His experiences certainly provided a competing narrative as we had only heard about the Second Intifada from an Israeli security perspective. Our meeting with him was surely the most significant topic of conversation for the remainder of the trip after our meeting.

Many complain that Birthright advances a singular narrative, yet they choose only to engage with a single narrative of their own. Even if one doesn’t support the State of Israel, isn’t Birthright an invaluable experience to learn about how “the other side” thinks and what shapes their beliefs and their perception of the world and the conflict? Regardless of how you feel about the State of Israel, traveling there and learning about it is the only way to begin to understand it. And I don’t mean traveling there to view it through the lens of the conflict, although that is an incredibly invaluable experience in its own right. I mean trying to en-

gage with it from a neutral perspective to learn about all its merits and its flaws, which certainly includes learning about and viewing the conflict, and then maybe to begin to form an opinion about it. A ten-day trip is only enough to scratch the surface.

I am a Zionist, but not because of Birthright. I am not a Zionist because of the conflict.

I am a Zionist because of the many years I have spent learning about Israel and Palestine and hearing from the perspectives of those who live there, Israeli and Palestinian alike.

I am a Zionist because of the holy city of Safed, where the greatest codification of Jewish law was written. I am a Zionist because of the kibbutzim that have made the desert bloom.

I am a Zionist because of the Western Wall and the ruins of the temple. And ultimately, I am a Zionist because of my great-grandparents who were murdered in Auschwitz.

I believe in the state of Israel for all of these reasons, but my belief is not mutually exclusive of a recognition of the pain that Palestinians endure. My Zionism doesn’t mean that I endorse or support everything Israel does, just as I question what the American government does. But it does mean that I support the existence of a Jewish state in the ancestral homeland of our people.

At the end of the day, when you chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” you are calling for the destruction of the state of Israel even if that is not actually the explicit outcome you desire. I don’t mean that in the violent sense of the term, but instead in the erosion of the Jewish character of the state until it is no longer a Jewish state. I will not try to discuss what a solution to the conflict looks like as ultimately that would require at least ten more op-eds. But I am someone who believes that a Jewish majority state is essential for the preservation and protection of the Jewish people because of the recent extermination of one-third of the Jewish population in the Holocaust and continuing anti-semitism throughout the world. Regardless of what the finals borders of Israel or Palestine look like, the end of the Jewish state is something I cannot accept.

The anthem of Israel is “HaTikvah,” literally, “the hope.”

It is the hope of the collective Jewish soul to live freely in their homeland. Only when the Jewish people perish from this earth will that hope be extinguished.

I invite anyone who is interested in having a conversation with me about Israel/Palestine to reach out to me (jbrady2@ swarthmore.edu). It’s probably my favorite thing to discuss.

after day.

From a distanced, unattached point of view, the idea of not being able to get up is funny. It seems to, on the surface, stem from an unstoppable instinct to procrastinate responsibility and skirt culpability. It seems like the classic picture of a college student we have so often painted — tired, sluggish and brain just a little too full of information to have any motivation to keep going. Yet, we did not create this image by accident. We created this image because that is, in fact, the typical college student. You get thrown into college with little to no real-life experience or understanding and are suddenly told you have to learn to be a full adult, all by yourself. It’s hard, and it drains you. So yeah, that is funny.

But where must we draw the line? Because if you bother to look hard enough, you can see that some people are not just tired from the amount of re-

sponsibility that was suddenly given to them, but also from a deeper source. Their very souls are tired. And joking about having a heavy heart each day, struggling to feel anything more than pain or sadness does nothing to get at the root of the problem.

Depression ruins lives and relationships and yet we laugh at it like it’s nothing more than a gag reel on a silly sitcom.

We take aspects of this painful mental health problem and giggle at them, as though that will make the harsh reality of them a little easier to handle.

But that’s no way to deal with a devil. Spinning depression into a joke undercuts the true traumatic experiences of individuals living with it. It discourages people to be real and vulnerable with what they feel because no one wants to have their pain become the butt of the joke. Sometimes, the jokes can make depression even worse if everyone is laughing at their

pain and is seemingly okay with self-medicating, then why should we even try for a better, healthier life? What’s the point of seeking treatment and help if we normalize being depressed?

At the end of the day, depression is not the natural state of the human mind. If it was, then we would never even notice it because it would be completely ingrained in us. If depression was the natural state then there would be no movements for healthy living, for clearer, more positive minds. And while laughing at it and making jokes may be helpful for some on their road to betterment, we need to recognize that the jokes are not a universal helper, but can become weights on someone’s shoulders. We need to recognize that we can do better, and we should do better, because we know better now.

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

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

On Birthright Jacob Brady Op-Ed Contributor Controversy regarding Birthright, a free trip to Israel for Jewish individuals aged 18-26, has become very public in recent years. This past summer, a number of individuals associated with IfNotNow, a leftwing Jewish organization that protests the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, walked off their Birthright trips because their groups were not meeting with or hearing the stories of Palestinians. Additionally, some students have been removed from trips this winter after supposedly causing “disruptions” that inhibited the learning experiences of others. All this comes amidst claims that Birthright serves to advance right-wing propaganda regarding Israel and the occupation.

However, as someone returning from a Birthright trip over winter break, I would strongly disagree with the idea that the spread of right-wing propaganda or the indoctrination of American Jews is the point. For one thing, very little of our trip actually dealt directly with the conflict, instead focusing on modern Israeli society in addition to some of the ancient history of Israel. Some see this as a problem in and of itself, believing that any discussion of Israel needs to include a discussion of

the occupation and the Palestinians.

When you exclusively frame Israel in the context of the conflict, however, or require that any conversation regarding Israel be focused through this lens, you lose the rest of the picture that makes the modern state of Israel such a unique place. You lose out on the history of the Jewish people who have maintained a near-constant presence in the holy cities of Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem, and Hebron since the beginning of the first millennium A.D. You lose out on the technological achievements that Israel has spread throughout the world, like the USB drive and drip irrigation. While both perspectives are important, they should certainly not be conflated with each other and can be dealt with separately.

You lose out on the spirituality that is so central to Israel, for Jews and non-Jews alike. As a Jewish person, it is an incredible experience to be surrounded by other Jews, to be able to have Shabbat services at the Western Wall, only meters away from where the Shechinah, the divine presence of God, manifested itself during the days of the Temple. None of this excuses the conflict, and none of this makes permissible injustices committed by Israel. But what it shows you is that there is another side, that there ex-

Stop Laughing at Depression Giorgia Piantanida Op-Ed Contributor Content Warning: Depression and mental health, Eating Disorders Depression can often be a slippery slope. One negative thought leads to another, which leads to another and another until you feel like you’re suffocating under the weight of all the disappointments you have swimming around in your mind.

Depression is an extremely personal and unique thing to deal with, and anyone who has gone through any bout of it will know that. But despite depression’s unique ways of harming individuals, the way it makes you feel is universal — like you’re not good enough, like you will never be good enough. Saying depression makes you sad is an understatement — sad doesn’t begin to describe the way it tortures your soul day in and day out, how it cripples you to

nothing. And yet, for some reason, we live in a society that seems to glorify it. We treat depression like a companion that we’re forced to have for the rest of our lives, like baggage that we can never make lighter or discard. We blame depression for our falling grades, weight fluctuations, mood swings and fractured relationships. We make depression the reason behind our mistakes but not in any serious way — we joke about it. We make memes about depression and its detrimental effects on our lives, making this very serious mental health problem the butt of the joke.

We live in a society that glorifies depression rather than faces it head-on. It’s easier to make fun of depression and the way it destroys your life rather than at least trying to find ways to live alongside it.

At the height of my depression in my sophomore year, I was sitting alone in my single in the basement of ML for hours

on end. I watched as my Bio 2 grade plummeted and the number of classes I couldn’t get up for increased. I remember waking up at 8 a.m. one day and not being able to get up from my bed until 1 p.m., only to actually leave ML at 2:30. I self-medicated in numerous ways, from not eating to eating everything, from drinking until I was sick to not speaking to anyone for days. And yet, in the moment, I thought I was perfectly fine.

I would reason that the feelings of inadequacy and deep sadness were normal. Everyone around me seemed to be on the same struggle bus as me, so why worry?

When I spoke of my life with other friends, these struggles seemed normal. Other people were not only accepting of my behavior, but also making jokes about my total lack of control on my own life. It was funny to us that I was desperately trying to feel alive, but only sinking further into my depression day

Campus Journal

PAGE A6 January 31, 2019

ARTS FASHION FOOD LIVING PHILLY PROFILES ST YLES

WHO’S YOUR CRUSH? Ari Liloia CJ Writer

S

o you’re back at Swarthmore for the spring semester, but something is clearly very wrong. You’ve been seeing ghostly figures appear and disappear in between bookshelves in McCabe, or in the corner of your room at night. Street lights flicker or burn out when you walk underneath them. You might be feeling like the Calder outside the Science Center looks more and more like a face every day, and its eyes are following you everywhere. Maybe some mornings you wake up to find that geometric shapes have been drawn all over your arms in ash, and when you try to wipe them off, your head hurts so much that you have to lie back down.

Well, it’s not an omen, and it’s not a curse. News flash, buddy: You’re crushing, and you’re crushing hard. But who is your mystery man? Take this quiz, and maybe it will get easier.

(Remember! Don’t pick any of the letters more than once. For example, once you pick A for one question, you can’t pick A for any other question.)

1. You get an email that a package just arrived for you at the post office. What is it?

The package itself is a massive cardboard box. Even though it’s so big you can barely fit it through the door of your room, it’s so light it feels almost empty. The only thing inside the box is a single playing card, the seven of spades. Puzzled, you leave

it on your desk. Eventually, your roommate comes back. When they see the card, all the color drains from their face and they look like they’re about to cry.

They leave the room and you don’t see them again for the rest of the semester.

It’s a thick yellow envelope that smells like a musty old book. Inside the envelope are twenty-six index cards; each one has a letter of the alphabet written on it in beautiful calligraphy. You take it back to your room, but the next morning, the letters that make up your name are missing.

It’s a CD-R in a plastic jewel case. It looks like something was written on the back of the case itself, but it’s been scratched out. Your name is written on the disc itself, surrounded by little geometric shapes. You put it into the CD drive on your computer to find that there’s music on it. The songs are so quiet you can barely hear them, even with the volume turned all the way up. At first, it sounds like static, but as your ears adjust you start to hear birds and people’s voices. It’s very peaceful, and you feel good after listening to it.

There’s no package, and there’s not even a post office.

There’s never been a post office at Swarthmore. What were you thinking?

2. It’s Friday night! It’s been a stressful week, and you’re ready to unwind. What are your plans?

You decide to check out what’s happening at the Barn.

As you walk toward the porch,

you see your roommate from freshman year hiding behind one of the trash cans. You ask if anything’s wrong, and they point to what looks like an empty parking space. You see that their hand is shaking, so you hold it. Your head starts to hurt again, and you notice a shape drawn on their hand in what looks like charcoal. You see that you smudged part of it when you touched them, so you apologize, but they don’t notice.

You decide to check out what’s happening at Paces. The room is filled with fog, and the sounds of chirping crickets are playing over the speakers so loudly you can’t bear to be in there for more than a few minutes. Every party on campus so far this semester has been exactly like this. You leave disappointed and confused.

Your favorite Sharples bar is tonight, so that’s your first stop by default. Even though it’s 6 p.m., it’s completely empty. It sounds like there’s a band playing somewhere far away. You settle in the quiet room and look at the colorful painting while you eat. Something in the back of your mind is telling you not to look away. The music gets louder and louder, and your head starts to hurt again.

You snap out of it to find that Sharples is actually full of other students. The only thing on your plate is a six-sided die.

Nothing interesting is happening, so you decide to go to Cornell.You get a lot of work done and hand in your problem set several days before it’s due.

Very proactive of you!

3. You’re out on the town, and you feel an unfamiliar wind.

What’s it like?

The wind is coming from the north. It’s freezing cold and it sends a chill up your spine.

You remember how once during recess, when you were in third or fourth grade, another kid pushed you and you fell into some mud. You ran back inside, even though it wasn’t allowed, and you took your clothes off in a single-stall bathroom and scrubbed them with soap and water. When you got back to class long after recess ended, your teacher didn’t believe you when you told her what happened. You remember sitting in class, wishing you had come back covered in mud, just to show her.

There’s a light wind blowing from the east. You remember how one day when you were maybe seven or eight, your parents had to go somewhere, but they couldn’t take you, so you spent the day at your Grandma’s house. The two of you sat in her living room watching TV all afternoon. You got hungry, but you were too shy to ask for food, so when she left to use the bathroom, you ran into her kitchen.

You started rummaging around in her cabinets for something to eat, but nothing looked good.

You were still searching when you heard the toilet flush. You panicked, and without thinking, you grabbed a box of uncooked spaghetti. You shoved it under your shirt and went back into the living room, hunching forwards to hide the shape it made and to keep it from falling out.

You walked past Grandma and into the bathroom, where you sat on the toilet and ate about half the box. It was crunchy, but it softened up a little in your mouth. You remember how it tasted like burnt wood.

The wind is coming from the south. You remember a game you used to play with your little sister, when your Mom dragged you along on trips to the grocery store. You knew where they kept the scented candles. and you would close your eyes. Your sister would find a candle and hold it close to your face, and you’d guess what the candle was called based on its smell.

If you got it right, you’d switch roles, and the game continued.

Working together, you could make your way through all the candles in a store. You remember and you feel proud.

You feel like there’s a word on the tip of your tongue. It’s really bothering you, and the longer it takes you to think of it, the more frustrated you feel. Suddenly, you feel a gust of wind coming from the south. You look over and you see the word on a sign.

The word is “Renato.”

If you didn’t get any As: your crush is DANIEL. Tall, sweet, breakable. Nervous and sensitive. Catalog reader. Doesn’t trust good luck charms or fortune tellers. No favorite foods, not yet.

If you want to tell Daniel how you feel, go into the woods and find the tallest tree you can.

Stand so close to it that your nose is touching the bark, then look up and whisper your name.

If you didn’t get any Bs: your crush is LOUIE. A singer, a songwriter, a teller of tall tales. A kid with a lot to prove, especially to you, so break a leg!

If you want to tell Louie how you feel, find an object made of metal or glass that has some sentimental value. Take it outside and make a circle around it with salt, then leave it there until rain washes the salt away.

If you didn’t get any Cs: your crush is MINESS: Freak, bleak, unwashable. Bends but doesn’t break. He has long fingers, and he drinks lots of soda.

If you want to tell Miness how you feel, write your name as neatly as you can on a piece of paper, then fold it in half once as neatly as possible. Take your time with this and do not rush, it will pay off.

If you didn’t get any Ds: your crush is VITTORIO: Old-fashioned, gentlemanly. Tough as nails, but sweeter than a cherry pie. Don’t worry about his mean streak, it’s offset by a sweet spiral.

If you want to tell Vittorio how you feel, turn off the lights in your room and lie down in bed. Close your eyes tight and think about the last four digits of your social security number.

When you forget what you were thinking about, open your eyes and turn the lights on again.

Dean Terhune Reassures Student Body that He Received Email* Gidon Kaminer CJ Writer

The three months since October 30th, 2018, when students received an email from Director of Public Safety Michael Hill about a campus security incident, have been filled with apprehensive anxiety. This terrible nervousness was finally ended a few days ago when Interim Dean of Students Jim Terhune made public his reaction to Michael Hill’s email, in a response to the entire student body.

Hill’s October email of “a concern involving a nonSwarthmore individual” elicited a uninamous reaction among the entire student body: namely, how would Dean Terhune respond to this news?

Unfortunately this pressing question would go unanswered for the next fifteen weeks, until Dean Terhune finally revealed his long awaited answer a few days ago in reply to the entire school, which read “Thanks, Mike. This looks good to me.”

The weeks of silence that preceded this recent fortunate development were difficult for most students, who wanted nothing more than to know Terhune’s opinion on the matter.

“I was jittery all day. On edge.

I’d try to take my mind off of it but I just couldn’t,” said Blane Philip ’20. “I spent most of the time since that fateful October day sitting in Kohlberg’s coffee bar, refreshing my inbox every ten seconds just waiting for that email from Dean Terhune.”

Katey Church ’21 had a similarly harrowing experience over

these last few months. “It was especially difficult near the end of the semester,” said Katey, “because not only was I stressed for finals, I was also stressed about how Dean Terhune would respond to that email that Mike Hill sent.” Speaking in further detail on how this waiting period affected her significantly, Katy explained, “the worst part was not knowing when it would come. If I knew he’d send the email on a particular date I could at least count down the days, mark my calendar, make a game of it.” Katy said. “But I had no idea when it would come, I didn’t even know for sure if it would come at all.”

“I’ve lost a lot of sleep over this,” said first-year Zane Gallegos. “My sleep schedule is bad enough already between my social life, my extracurriculars, and my schoolwork, but it was even worse because I would consistently stay up in bed for hours wondering how Dean Terhune would respond to Mike’s email, hoping that we’d know soon.” Zane continued, saying, “I kept my phone right next to my bed so I could check my inbox right before I went to sleep and first thing when I’d wake up in the morning.”

Dr. David Ramirez, director of Counseling and Psychological Services, says that CAPS

saw an increase in the number of students seeking help for paralyzing worries caused by the uncertainty about Dean Terhune’s response to Michael Hill’s email. “This was a difficult period for us. Existing staffing issues were only further exacerbated by this terrible phenomenon. I’ll admit, we were unprepared to deal with such a situation.” Dr. Ramirez added, “It was unprecedented, both in scale and in severity.

I am not saying this as an excuse for our inadequate preparation, I fully believe that we should have done better.” Dr. Ramirez ended on an optimistic note, concluding, “This has

been a learning experience for us. I am confident that in the future if, for example, President Valerie Smith neglects to publicly respond to an email from Martin Warner about add/drop period ending, we will be fully equipped to deal with the masses of students that will surely come to Worth Health Center seeking assistance dealing with the situation.”

With Dean Terhune’s response finally known, the mood on campus has abruptly shifted from omnipresent distress to palpable euphoria. Elated students gathered on Parrish Beach, collected in the Amphitheater, reveled in Sci Quad, and came together in Wharton Courtyard to celebrate the arrival of the long awaited email.

“It’s just such a relief, such a release!” exclaimed senior Jessica Hills. “This long, dark period of our lives is ending, all uncertainty is dispelled, the future is bright.” In between keg stands in Worth Courtyard, Korey Barron ’20 displayed a similar sentiment, saying, “It’s just so good to finally know, you know. Everything is good.

Jim approves. That’s all I ever wanted to know.”

Though Dean Terhune’s words were few, expert analysts have been quick to point out that they are not at all lacking in meaning. “These seven words are actually packed with information, though that might not be visible to the average consumer of this literature,” explained a professor in the English department. “Right from the first words, ‘Thanks, Mike,’ we can understand that

Dean Jim Terhune has an incredibly close relationship with Michael Hill. So close in fact that he offers his gratitude with the contracted ‘Thanks’ instead of the more formal ‘Thank you,’ which is then followed by a direct address to him in the vocative case, using Michael Hill’s nickname ‘Mike’ instead of his actual first name. Simply fascinating.” The professor continued the analysis, adding, “The meat and potatoes of this statement is that ‘This’ looks good to Dean Terhune. The meaning of this definite article is not immediately evident from the words themselves. In order to find out what Dean Terhune is referring to, one must look back all the way to October 30th, 2018, when Michael Hill sent out an email to the entire school about a public safety incident. Just absolutely captivating.”

Dean Terhune has yet to respond to a request for comment on this article. It is, however, reasonable to predict that he will in fact offer a valuable and thoughtful reply sometime in April, or at least before the end of the semester.

*Editor’s note: this piece is satire.

January 31, 2019

THE PHOENIX CAMPUS JOURNAL

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The Crushing Dilemma: The Dilemma of Crushing Anatole Shukla CJ Writer Crush. When I first received an email about this week’s Campus Journal theme, I felt a wave of excitement. After all, I spent countless (and I really want to emphasize the word “countless”) hours last semester devoted to writing and copy-editing for The Phoenix, and greatly looked forward to this semester’s challenges.

The email’s subject line read, “CJ IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!” with exactly that number of exclamation points, and after several sentences outlining the general premise of Campus Journal, the words “the theme is CRUSH” appeared on the screen. The word “crush” stood out in a font size approximately six times larger than any other word in the email.

My mind went blank. The simple five-letter word evoked

an embarrassingly large album of memories and mental images for me. Some of these, of course, entailed the most common definition of crush: the feeling of romantic or platonic love. Some involved the idea of being physically crushed by a person or object. Crush, the second-rate orange-flavored soda, came to mind. And despite the plethora of images and memories that I associated with “crush,” my mind went blank for an entire week as I contemplated and revised ideas that fit the general “crush” theme.

In other words. To put it simply. I felt crushed. Crush crushed me.

Crushing and being crushed, however, doesn’t always have to carry its typical heartbreaking and unequivocally painful connotation. Crushing, in my humble experience, has the capability of becoming both uplifting, and on the other hand,

well, crushing in the most fundamental sense of the word.

What has always struck me about Swarthmore is that it stands as an institution in which everyone has, over time, developed a profound appreciation for the crushing sensation. That is, in which everyone has learned to appreciate the strengthening nature that challenges tend to pose to one’s very sense of self. On the other hand, however, we often underestimate the force of the crushing sensation. In this, we ultimately fail to draw reasonable distinctions between the beneficial varieties of crushes — the romantic, the growth-inducing, the think-outside-thebox crushes — and those that overwhelm us to the point of inevitable failure.

Quite frankly, in some capacity, Swarthmore College manages to crush me every single day. Sometimes, this crushing

forces me to exit my comfort zone and explore avenues that I never would have otherwise considered. Oftentimes, experiences at the College not only crush me, but make me feel as if every part of me is drowning.

For example, while brainstorming for overly-abstract Campus Journal themes crushed me in the sense of forcing me to commit to less-concrete, freer modes of thought, MATH 026 (Advanced Topics in Single Variable Calculus) crushed my life, my soul, and my general self-esteem. The former mode of crushing, though difficult, proved rewarding when I stared at the shape of my words on a formerly-blank Word document and thought about how, mere hours ago, that exact pattern of words had never existed. The latter extended me nothing, no mental recompense, except for a sigh of relief when the ordeal finally ended.

Not all crushes are created equally, and indeed, the prescriptive notion that all challenges are made for all people is plainly false. Perhaps it rests as a matter of personal preference, but I wish that I had learned earlier in life that blindly facing all challenges and crushing scenarios regardless of one’s strengths and weaknesses is not nobler than picking and choosing one’s battles. While this criticism is not at all unique to Swarthmore, it is especially pertinent in our liberal arts bubble which encourages oftentimes-unhealthy challenges with a fatal evenhandedness.

It’s often said that we need to choose the hills that we want to die on, so that we don’t find ourselves caught up on emotionalyet-meaningless discourse. In this vein, I believe that we as a society also need to exercise far more caution when it comes to choosing the ordeals that we

allow to crush us. If we refuse to discriminate between which crushes are worthwhile and which are not, the crushes that truly matter for one’s personal development fail to maintain any sort of meaning. Similarly, if we fail to challenge and, in the process, crush ourselves, then we remain unchanged at the most essential levels of ourselves. Becoming a Renaissance man, while a pleasing concept, is outdated and unattainable in the modern day when undertaking to excel in all disciplines requires parting ways with the most basic aspect of humanity: the notion of choice. Instead, we ought to pick and choose our battles—those we will avoid— and those we will thoroughly allow to crush us.

This Game Will Change Your Life This Valentine’s Day

Jaimie Lopez CJ Writer Brought to you by the makers of “Decide the Sharples Menu for the Next Week: The Game,” we have come to fix your semester! With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, it seems like find-

ing a boo in time is impossible, especially with your schedule!

Well, lucky for you, we have devised the perfect game to help you choose a date on this campus! Forget about asking someone that you have actual feelings for! We have created this simple game so that you never have to

develop feelings for anyone on this campus ever again. Yes I’m talking to you, you emotionally closed-off student! Welcome to Cygnet Roulette!

Instructions In your web browser, open Cygnet.

Across: 1. “Famous” cookie maker 4. What an asthmatic has 8. It’s dynamite, in an ACDC song 11. Casual greeting 12. One whose pants are on fire 13. *Contact for first responder 17. Vow 18. *Massive pharmaceutical companies 20. Typical house pet 22. Sound of surprise 24. Nickname for rapper West 25. Greek market 28. Sounds heard in a yoga class 30. Act on the side of caution 31. Golf clubs 34. Bachelor’s residence 36. Goal for a pitcher

Pick a Criteria Card from the Criteria Card deck. This will let you know exactly what you’re looking for in a Swattie (Ex. If the card contains just the letter “a,” you must type in “a” into Cygnet. This may also pull up everyone who lives in a dorm that contains the letter “a” in the name, but at this point you are so desperate for affection that you can’t afford to be picky.

Example cards: “Mary Lyons J” “Willets’ Rats”.)

Print these pages (Note: it is important that you print these pages in color, as you will need to see these faces for your future crush.)

Hang these pages on a wall, leaving every photo visible.

Putting on the blindfold (included), stand in front of your Cygnet wall. Using the dart (included), throw it at your wall.

Mark down whom it lands on, as this is your bae for Valentine’s

37. Breakfast food 38. 2014 concern 39. Pasta topping; or, a hint to this puzzle’s starred clues 40. Ordinance Down: 2. Mickey’s wife 3. Join a candidate on the trail 5. Duo 6. *“______? I barely know her!”

7. White wine cocktail 8. Hue 9. *What is not yours 10. Attempt 12. Michele, of Glee 14. Title for a knight 15. Age 16. Type of boot

Day. Congrats! You have successfully completed Cygnet Roulette! You now know your perfect match!

Optional: If you are still unsure of what to do with your potential beau, roll dice (not included)! If you land on: 1 : You should ask this person out!

2-6 : This person is better off as an intense crush! Never look this person in the eye or share a coherent thought with them! A true Swarthmore crush is all you need to make your life more interesting.

For those Swatties who enjoy living on the edge, try “Cygnet Roulette: Extreme Edition.” For this version, you follow almost all of the same rules as the regular edition, but with the Extreme Edition Criteria Card Expansion Deck, you only have three op-

tions: you Cygnet everyone in your hall, you must look for your ex’s roommate (shoutout to those of you who live in a quad), or you must Cygnet everyone in your nine-person seminar. This is a perfect way to spice up your hall’s culture and make your semester as awkward as possible.

Happy Playing!

Cygnet Roulette is on sale now at the Swarthmore College Community Store. Swat Points are not accepted as valid currency. Blindfold and dart included. Some assembly necessary. Cygnet Roulette is not liable for any accidents, heartbreak, or extreme discomfort that may occur while playing this game.

18. Writer’s credit 19. Jim of CNN 21. Shrek or Fiona 23. Language of Moses 26. Where Bikini Bottom is 27. Santa saying 29. Future Swattie?

30. U2 guitarist 32. Steal 33. Zilch 35. Comics outburst

Crossword by Cassandra Stone ’20

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THE PHOENIX CAMPUS JOURNAL

January 31, 2019

Swat Ed: Lights On

BY P. AFDERSEX ’69

Swat Ed is The Phoenix’s biweekly sex education Q & A. We accept all questions and they are kept completely anonymous. If you’re looking for medical advice or a diagnosis for that weird thing on your genitals, get in touch with a medical professional!

For everything else, email swatedquestions@gmail. com. Today’s subject matter is body image.

I recently began having sex and I am struggling with the way I feel about my body. I don’t want to get into details but there’s definitely some ways that it doesn’t look good. My boyfriend wants to go down on me but I don’t feel comfortable with him seeing me like that. I try to keep the lights off all the time but he wants them on and I usually end up caving and then feeling really stressed. I’m not really enjoying how anything feels and I think part of the reason is that I am just too tense and stressed out.

-Don’t Look At Me This is a really common problem to have and you are not alone in it. I think that there

are two areas to be addressed here: body image issues in general and body image affecting the way you have and feel about sex.

The ideals that our society projects around bodies leave just about all of us with insecurities about how we look, with and without clothes. Let’s see if we can break down a few of them. In general, it is not the norm to have perfect, unblemished skin. Just about everyone has moles, freckles, acne, scars, stretch marks, and often skin irritation or little bumps.

It’s completely normal. It is not the norm to have a perfectly lean body with skin over muscle except for breasts, butt and thighs. Most women have natural fat pads on their lower abdomens that mean the stomach does not look absolutely flat. It’s completely normal. If you want to exercise and eat attentively to improve your health, that’s great. However, your looks do not hinge on your body mass index.

There is a massive and beautiful natural diversity in genitalia. It’s normal for breasts to be different sizes on the same person, to have stretch marks, and to be any shape from teardrop to V. Vulvas can have long in-

ner labia, or barely visible inner labia. Clitorises can be so tiny you can barely see them, or an inch long. They can be any color and different colors on the same one. Penises are a variety of sizes, can be circumcised or uncircumcised, and can be a lot of colors too.

The point that I’m getting at is that the body parts that might seem wrong or different to you are definitely normal. The reason they seem abnormal or unattractive is because you’ve been socialized to compare everything to an airbrushed ideal. As obvious as this is, it’s important to reiterate it to understand that the negative feelings are the wrong thing here, not your body. Fixing the way you feel has nothing to do with changing your body, it has to do only with expunging those feelings.

To deal with this, I would recommend several courses of action. To begin with, there are some awesome online resources. The r/sex FAQ lists a number of online galleries in the Body Image section that are simply pictures of ordinary people, naked. This can be a really good way of reminding yourself that the naked people you’ve seen before — in porn, in movies and

TV — are artificially selected and do not represent the real diversity of real people. Another thing to do is think critically about how you view your partner’s body. Do you scrutinize them and clinically deduct points based on perceived imperfections? Chances are that you hardly notice what might seem really obvious to you on your body. If you’re not looking judgmentally, your partner probably isn’t either. Finally, to handle the anxiety of the moment, it can be helpful to outlogic your own brain. When the voice in the back of your head is whispering that your partner thinks you’re unattractive, you can simply say, “If he thinks I’m not sexy, explain why he is at this exact moment having sex with me.” Telling this to yourself authoritatively can be a great way of taking back control over your emotions.

Having addressed sexual body image and ways to feel more comfortable in your skin, let’s look at how body image changes the way we have sex.

As you commented, the tenseness and lack of comfort in the moment are probably making it a lot harder to enjoy anything.

Stress contributes to literal muscle tension that can make

vaginal penetration uncomfortable or outright painful, and psychological relaxation plays a massive role in the female orgasm.

Incorporating the suggestions I listed above should help reduce that stress. There are a few additional things you can do as well. One is to drag out foreplay and undressing. Sometimes, as partners grow more used to each other, they progress from fully clothed to naked really quickly, which can be a lot to handle if one person is less comfortable with nudity than the other. So try only removing clothing when you really want to, instead of rushing from stage to stage. If you’re anticipating and excited for the next step of sexual activity, you won’t be as worried about how you look. You can also think about what positions you’re using. Porn depicts positions that are unnaturally contorted in order to show as much as possible to the camera. To start out, being face-to-face with maximum skin and eye contact can be really relaxing. It doesn’t put your whole body on display, and the close presence of your partner is extremely comforting. You can always transition to different ones as your confidence

Faculty Teach Classes at Peripeteia Weekend*

Gidon Kaminer CJ Writer

In one of the most beloved and intensely “Swarthmorean” traditions on campus, this coming weekend will feature the eagerly anticipated “Peripeteia,” three days of classes in unorthodox disciplines taught by students and faculty who would not otherwise be teaching them. This fourth iteration of the annual tradition will feature a host of classes taught by professors and staff at the college, a few of which have managed to generate audible buzzing and murmuring on campus.

Professor Bryn Lyn Holter is slated to teach a class titled “How to Not Return Student Work for 14 Months.” Excitement for this class has been building for months among students who have taken Professor Holter’s Snack Engineering course. “I took Snack Engineering spring of my sophomore year, and I still haven’t gotten my grade back,” said senior Aahil Reader. “Honestly at this point I’m not even mad, I just want to know how she does it.”

Cheyanne Coffey, who gradu-

ated in 2010, displayed similar sentiments. “It’s been almost ten years now, and nothing about my undergraduate education matters anymore, but I am still kept up at night wondering how it’s possible that I still have not received my grade from Snack Engineering yet.”

Also in the Engineering department, Professor E.N. Gineering will be teaching a class on how to keep students in the engineering department. “I’m not in engineering anymore,” said sophomore Kareena Redmond, who dropped the major after taking E006 with Professor Gineering. “But if I ever start my own engineering department I feel like it would be useful to know how to keep my students from abandoning the department because of my class.”

Andrew Worde, who taught a similar class at Stanford, will be teaching a class on how to not bring up Stanford every five seconds. “I feel like if I got a PhD in Psychology at Stanford I’d probably end up mentioning that constantly,” said Lucien Nixon, who is currently in Professor Worde’s Intro to Psychol-

ogy class. “But I’m worried that it might kind of annoy my students so it’d be better if I just found some way to manage that impulse.”

By popular, near universal demand among the sophomore class, Dean Lin Herrickson and Dean Timothy Samuel recently submitted a last minute application to teach a class titled “How to Sing ‘Baby Shark’ (correctly) in Front of the Entire Sophomore Class.” Sophomore Augustus Timms said he was left “bewildered” by the deans’ performance during Chocolate, Chai, and Choosing, since “they didn’t actually say the right words.” This was, understandably, a disappointment to Timms. “So I’m looking forward to this course, because it will be an opportunity for them to reconcile their mistake - more than an apology, a real step forward, in true good faith.”

Also in good faith, Zil Nuarb will be returning to campus to teach a class titled “How to Not Mishandle Sexual Assault Cases.” This has caused a bit of an uproar on campus recently, but most of the controversy was quelled when Nuarb explained

that “No one is more fit to discuss this topic than me, owing to my previous experience in the matter.”

Among many others, roommates Carole Lott and Mea Cummings have expressed great interest in Director of Campus Cohabitation Ignatius Hausamann’s class “How to Create the Most Dysfunctional Roommate Pairings.” Lott said, “Mea and I are complete opposites in every way, and we absolutely hate each other. Clearly Ignatius Hausamann has some kind of remarkable ability to identify exactly which student should be paired up with which other student to create the perfect match, and then to instead do the exact opposite of that.

It’s actually quite remarkable.”

Fighting the sandman during his recent philosophy class with Professor Carl Laff, junior Kajus Roth expressed interest in his professor’s upcoming Peripeteia class titled “How to Fight Narcolepsy in Class.”

Roth explained, “Laff is a great professor, and he’s taught thousands of students, the majority of whom I’m sure have gained a tremendous amount from his

teaching. So he must have some sort of secret technique that he teaches to prevent his students from falling asleep every time they’re in his class. I must have been asleep when he taught us how to do that, I guess.”

Rebecca Black of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics will be teaching a class on “How to Wake Up in the Morning at 7:00 a.m., Get Dressed, and Go Downstairs,” among other things. “She teaches my Math 025 class at 8:30 a.m.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday,” said Korben Mackie with a certain dread in his voice, “getting up so early to go to calculus is such a drag, but somehow I feel like Rebecca Black is perfectly suited to teach about what the ideal morning routine should be. I can’t quite put my finger on why.”

At press time, several other professors and faculty members announced that they will be teaching classes. Biology professor Serena Rollins, whose lectures students describe as “too focused on biology” and “lacking any content about particles and things on the molecular scale” will be teaching a

grows. Being in the dark can be helpful as a stepping stone, but you shouldn’t be permanently dependent on it. Since your partner doesn’t seem to be as much of a fan, you could propose dim light or candlelight as a middle ground.

All of these strategies won’t work overnight, so remember to be happy with progress. This might mean backing off from full nudity or certain sex acts if it’s not something you’re comfortable with, and that’s completely fine. A relaxed, comfortable and mutually pleasurable makeout session beats stressful, uncomfortable intercourse every time.

physics class. Tim Pock ’90 will be teaching a class titled “How to Make Out With Your Partner in Just the Right Place On Campus So That A Photograph Of the Smooch Becomes Immortalized in Your Yearbook”. Finally, a few linguistics professors will teach a class on “How to Somehow Be Even More Awkward Than a Swarthmore Student”, and the Classics department will teach a class titled “How to Attract Large Numbers of FirstYears to Your Department”.

*Editor’s note: this piece is satire.

SPORTS

January 31, 2019 PAGE A9

Checking in on Swarthmore Winter Sports Elizabeth Curcio Sports Writer While we were enjoying our last two weeks of winter break, Swarthmore’s winter teams were on campus training for the remainder of their season. With a little less than three weeks of the regular season left, these four teams have a lot to do before conference play.

Women’s basketball has six games left in their season, with their final game on February 13th at Haverford. Even though they most likely will not have a chance at post-season play this year, with their current record of 1-14 in Conferences, they still are making the best out of their remaining three weeks left to play.

Lizzie Stiles, a junior guard who currently leads the team in scoring an average of 8.9 points per game, shared her team’s goals for these last three weeks of their season.

“We’ve discussed this a lot as a team since we don’t have much of a chance at post-season with our losing record. We’ve really arrived at the conclusion that we have to keep going and play for each other. We’re looking to have fun and see every day as an opportunity to play the game we love,” said Stiles.

While the team might not have

a chance to make the Conference playoffs, they still do have other milestones to look forward to. Like Senior Day, which is this Saturday against Gettysburg at 1:00 p.m., where the team will be celebrating their one senior and captain, Audra Woodside.

Men’s basketball, currently ranked No. 17 in the D3hoops national poll, is once again on the road to play for another Centennial Conference Championship.

Over break the team played eight games, five of which were against teams in their conference, and came away with a 7-1 record.

Over winter break, the team also extended their winning streak to 10 wins in a row, which is the longest winning streak in Swarthmore men’s basketball history since 1940. Zac O’Dell ’20 was awarded Centennial Conference Player of the Week after his outstanding performance against Middlebury. During that game he led his team in scoring with 25 points, his highest total of the season, in the 28 minutes he played.

Their current conference record of 9-3 has Swat men’s basketball positioned No. 2 in the Centennial Conference standings, behind only Johns Hopkins who has a current 10-2 record in Conference. With six games left in their regular season these

rankings could change, especially if Swarthmore can beat Johns Hopkins in their last regular season game against them next Wednesday at Tarble Pavilion.

Having only lost by three points during their last faceoff with Johns Hopkins, this could be another good game with hopefully a better outcome for Swat. Men’s basketball’s next home game is this Saturday against Gettysburg at 3:00 p.m.

Women’s swimming, with a record of 4-1 in Conference Meets, is hoping to get themselves back into the Centennial Conference Championship, where they placed second last year, their best finish since the 2008 season.

Some key returners who played pivotal role in last year’s success and continue to do so this year are Hannah Kloetzer ’21, who won the 1,650-yard long distance race. Liz Staton ’19 and Sophia Lee ’21 placed in the top eight of the 20 breaststroke and Hyeyun Chae ‘21 finished fifth in in the 200 back. These athletes, along with the rest of their team, were able to achieve the team’s best finish in the last 10 years and look forward to come back into Conferences this year and take first place from the defending champions, Ursinus.

Currently ranked No. 2 in the Conference Standings it looks

like another championship run is in their future and their training over winter break allowed them to prepare themselves for this endeavour. The team ended their break with a 10-day training trip to Puerto Rico that left the team with a renewed hunger to win. During these 10 days the team had 15 practices allowing them to come back to school in even better shape than when they left. Dani Gomez ’22 shared her thoughts about her first ever training trip.

“I think our training trip really did the best to prepare us for our conference championship which is coming up at the end of February. As a team we really grew because we were able to excel under really tough circumstances and some really challenging practices. Even if we don’t complete our goals of conference it is not for a lack of trying,” said Gomez.

Men’s swimming also had the luxury of spending their last week of break in Puerto Rico as they, too, trained with the goal to win Conferences this year, as they did two years ago. Last year they were defeated in the Championship despite winning all their head-to-head meets during regular season. Although they did not come away last year with a championship they did finish in second place. Alec Menzer ’21

received the Outstanding Rookie Performer award at the end of the meet, after winning the 200-meter fly and setting a new conference and championship record with his time of 1:51.88. Michael Lutzker ’19 won gold 1,650-yard freestyle by an entire lap and Jeffrey Tse ’19 placed second in the 200-meter backstroke. With these key returners as well as many others, Swarthmore men’s swimming seems to be in a good spot going into Conferences this year, especially with their current 4-0 record giving them the number one spot in the Conference standings. Over break they competed in three non-conference meets, of which they won two, and Jeffrey Tse ’19 was awarded his fourth Centennial Conference swimmer of the week honor. They have two more Conference Meets before the Conference Championships, which take place from February 21 till the 24. Their next home meet is on Saturday, February 2, at 1:00 p.m. against Dickinson.

Swarthmore’s men’s and women’s track and field team competed at the Coach I Open hosted by Franklin & Marshall over winter break. Jared Hunt ‘19 broke his own Swarthmore school record with a 50 ft 8.75 in. throw in the shot put, winning him first place.

Daniel Belkin ‘19 also took first

NHL: The Importance of the Final Push

Francis Eddy Harvey Sports Writer

Unlike most other American sports leagues and despite a long 82game season, the National Hockey League structure allows 16 of the 31 teams to make the playoffs; that’s over half. This makes for a lot of parity in the playoffs. Consider the last ten years, where only once has a team with the best overall record in the regular season, also known as President Trophy winners, gone on to win the ultimate prize, the Stanley Cup. That was the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2012-2013 season, during which only 48 games were played due to the NHL lockout. Even more surprising is that in the same time period, only one other President’s Trophy winner even made the Stanley Cup Finals, the Blackhawks notwithstanding.

To understand the reason for these non-intuitive statistics it is first important to understand the structure of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They consist of four gruelling best-of-seven series. On average, the championship team will play 22-25 games in a playoff campaign, equivalent to more than a fourth of their regular season. Therefore, teams that do very well throughout the entire regular season tend to burn out, and such is the reason why the President’s Trophy winner tends to exit the playoffs in the first or second round. The last three President’s Trophy winners have all lost in the second round.

Therefore, rather than picking the hottest team over an entire season to win the Stanley Cup, it is much safer to pick the hottest team in the NHL over the last 30odd games or so. This theory perhaps holds no truer for the Pittsburgh Penguins, who have won three Stanley Cups over the past ten years.This deviates from the rationale that the longer a season, the fewer teams should be allowed to make the playoffs and is instead rooted in the idea that the longer a season, the more likely teams will have a record they deserve. Take the MLB for example; a league with 30 teams, each team playing 162 games, and only eight of them play best-of-seven games in the playoffs. This amongst other reasons like the lack of a salary cap is why baseball franchises such as the New York Yankees have such outstanding records, the short nature of the postseason decreases the likelihood of being upset.

The Penguins Championship season in 2008-2009 got off to a rocky start and the Penguins Organization fired head coach Michel Therrien. In

With all this being said, the current NHL season just concluded all-star weekend, meaning teams have played 52 of their 82 games. With 30 games

of these teams, when considering injuries and fatigue, it is unlikely either of these teams will continue their form through the playoffs, and even more

M ar ch an d A pr i l Re co r d s o f S tan l ey Cu p W in n er s

Year

Team

Wins

Losses

2018

Capitals

13

5

0

2017

Penguins

12

6

3

2016

Penguins

16

5

0

2015

Blackhawks

11

7

1

2014

Kings

13

6

2

2013

Blackhawks

19

7

2

2012

Kings

11

4

3

2011

Bruins

10

6

4

2010

Blackhawks

11

7

3

2009

Penguins

14

2

3

2008

Wings

12

3

1

2007

Ducks

11

3

4

2006

Hurricanes

13

8

4

2005 2004

Overtime Losses

No season due to NHL lockout Lightning

Mid February, when the Penguins were five points outside the playoffs. Under their new coach, Dan Bylsma, the team went 18-3-4, and 10-1-2 in their last 13 games before the playoffs. The Penguins followed a similar path in the 2015-2016 season, firing Bylsma midway through the season and finishing the season as one of the hottest teams in the NHL. The importance of the last 20-30 games of the regular season is shown below with the March and April records of each Stanley Cup Winner.

11

remaining, teams have just the right amount of time to generate momentum to carry a team throughout the playoffs. The current teams that are most likely to not win the Stanley Cup, based on recent history, are either the teams at the very top of the league or very bottom.

The Tampa Bay Lightning have looked exceptional this season and sit five points clear of first place with a 37-10-2 record. The next best team is the Calgary Flames who have a 33-135 record. Unfortunately for supporters

5

1

unlikely they win the Stanley Cup in June.

Conversely, it is even more unlikely that the two worst teams in both conferences, the Ottawa Senators (Eastern) and La Kings (Western) with records of 19-26-5 and 20-26-4 will win the Stanley Cup, it would be miracle if they even make the playoffs. This leaves 27 viable contenders to hoist the Cup in May. But there are other factors to consider when predicting which teams can do well in March and April. The most important is likely the

place in the high jump and currently is ranked No. 13 Nationally in Division III. Three other male Swarthmore athletes took home metals including Vaughn Parts ‘20 for his second place finish in the 3000-meter run, Alex Flowers ‘21 with his second place finish in the pole vault, and Robert Eppley ‘19 who came in third for the 60-meter hurdles in 9.00 seconds, which is a new Swarthmore record. For women’s track and field Sydney Covitz ‘20 took home the first place metal in the 400-meter dash and Naomi Bronkema ‘20 took third place in the high jump. Both teams have four more meets before the Centennial Conference Championships on the weekend of February 23. Last year the women’s team was able to finish second in the Conference Championship Meet, which was the best result they have had in the past 20 years.

The men’s team finished third, behind only Haverford College and Johns Hopkins University.

Despite the weather turning cold, these teams seasons have continued to turn hot as they all push towards their respective Conference Championships.

With less than a month left, the Garnet look to finish the year strong with more exciting performances.

trade deadline.

The trading window for the NHL ends on February 25th, meaning after that day no teams will be permitted to acquire, sell, buy or trade for new players. Players acquired in February tend to be instrumental in how well teams do during the final stretch. Therefore, without knowing how roster will change up until then, it is hard to predict which teams are most likely to win the Stanley Cup, however, given the current roster and injured is still worthwhile to consider which teams have the most potential.

It has been three years since a team in the Western Conference won the Stanley Cup and last year’s finalist, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, look like the most likely team to break the trend. This year they are sitting fifth in the Western Conference 62 points and a 29-19-2 record.

WIth most of their team from last year unchanged, the Golden Knights now have the experience to make another deep run. If goalie, Marc Andre Fleury continues his stellar performance, the Golden Knights should hope for a better result in the final.

In the East, the Penguins and Capitals have been dominate for the last three years, however the lasting fatigue of long playoff runs, will likely prevent either of these teams from winning again.

The Montreal Canadiens, led by all-star goalie, Carey Price, and defensemen P.K. Suban, have a very legitimate chance of winning their first Stanley Cup since 1993.

If the past decade of the NHL tells us anything, it is that the NHL playoffs are a different beast compared to the regular season.

The speed and intensity of play is on another level. Some current seasoned veterans like Penguins’ captain, Sidney Crosby, understand the delicate balance between playing well enough to make the playoffs and having enough energy to elevate their game during the playoffs.

Crosby despite not having a sensation regular seasons in 2016-2018 ended up winning the MVP of the playoffs in back to back years. Whichever team ends up winning the Stanley Cup this year will need to have players like Crosby that are able to play their best hockey during the playoffs and a team that has the capacity to elevate their game as the playoffs approach.

PAGE A10

THE PHOENIX SPORTS

January 31, 2019

Recapping the WWE Royal Rumble 2019

Kevin Liao Sports Writer

O

n January 27th, World Wrestling Entertainment held its annual Royal Rumble pay-per-view, from Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona.

Headlined by the Royal Rumble Match (a battle royale featuring 30 competitors —- where the objective is to throw your opponents out over the top of the ring), the event also featured title changes, rivalries and plenty of drama all around. Here are some of the top takeaways from the event!

First, in a classic David-versus-Goliath matchup, Finn Balor faced Brock Lesnar one-on-one for the Universal Champion, the world title for WWE’s RAW brand.

Balor, the challenger, was the underdog heading into the match, but his incomparable speed and technique gave him the tools to take down even WWE’s strongest competitors. At the same time, his never-say-die mantra and stone-chiseled physique endeared him to the fans, with a dedicated fanbase known as the “Balor Club”. He had a rightful claim to the Universal title, as he had never lost it (Balor had been forced to vacate the title after a severe injury in 2016, after win-

ning it in Lesnar’s absence), and with the endorsement of icon John Cena, it looked like it would finally be Balor’s time to shine again.

But if Balor was chiseled from stone, Brock Lesnar was the mountain itself —– a suplexing, fighting machine. With four4 inches and 96 pounds on his challenger, the champion also boasted an impressive resume, with both WWE and UFC title reigns to his name, and a recent Universal Championship reign of 504 days. In wrestling, Lesnar has also had numerous other accomplishments —- ending the legendary streak of the Undertaker, destroying John Cena in a matter of minutes for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, and defeating former wrestling legend Goldberg at WrestleMania 33. And for all of Balor’s support and backing from the audience, when the bell rang, the Beast Incarnate (as Lesnar is nicknamed) was just too much.

After surviving an early flurry of offense when Balor targeted his abdomen, Lesnar barely kicked out of the Coup de Gras, Balor’s finishing move, before locking in a Kimura lock submission, and forcing the challenger to tap out.

After the match, though, Lesnar appeared visibly angered by the

close victory, laying out Balor after the match before finally storming off with his championship. Though he still managed to hang on to his title, the end of the Beast’s reign as Universal Champion could be coming soon.

That end, of course, would likely come at the hands of Seth Rollins, another RAW superstar, and the winner of the 2019 Royal Rumble. The Rumble itself was an absolute roller coaster, featuring returning legends like Kurt Angle, and a plethora of superstars from NXT (WWE’s developmental brand). It even had —not kidding —- an RKO to female superstar Nia Jax, who had attacked the original final entrant, R-Truth, and entered the match herself. But at the end of the day, Rollins, who entered tenth, outlasted his opponents, earning himself a match at WrestleMania 35 against the World Champion of his choosing. The match ended with Rollins facing off against Braun Strowman, another RAW powerhouse with his sights on Lesnar, but a curbstomp from Rollins as both men were teetering on the edge of the ring gave Rollins his first ever Royal Rumble win. It was the fitting way to wrap up what has been a chaotic year for Rollins —- losing both his former best friends, Ro-

man Reigns and Dean Ambrose, in the same night, and enduring a months-long rivalry with Ambrose after the latter finally snapped. From October to now, Rollins seemingly lost it all —having his best friends, and holding both the Intercontinental and RAW Tag Team Championships, to standing alone without a single title to his name. Now, with a shot to dethrone Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 35, Rollins has another chance to climb atop the mountain, and become the face of the WWE. With the Royal Rumble victory, this could finally be the year of Seth Rollins.

In the women’s card, the main event featured Becky Lynch, another fan favorite challenger, and Asuka, the dominant SmackDown Women’s Champion. Lynch’s rise to the top of the division was meteoric —- berating the crowd and company for never giving her the opportunities or support she deserved, and going on a massive winning streak. Intended to turn her heel (in wrestling, a villainous archetype meant to draw ire and boos from the audience), the change made Lynch even more popular, drawing comparisons to wrestling legend Stone Cold Steve Austin, as both used their rowdiness and anti-authority angles to draw the crowd. After

a long title reign where Lynch styled herself “The Man,”, feuding with RAW Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey, and her former best friend Charlotte Flair, she finally lost the title to Asuka in a three-way ladder match between herself, Asuka, and Flair.

Demanding her rematch at the Royal Rumble, the feud was on between Lynch and Asuka, who had never been defeated in NXT, and had no intention of losing her title so soon. After a backand-forth match, featuring both superstars using their opponents’ signature moves, Asuka managed to pull out the win, forcing Lynch to tap out to her signature move, the Asuka Lock submission. Though “The Man” had given it her best shot, she just wasn’t enough to defeat the champion. The Empress of Tomorrow, as Asuka is called, was still the champion of today.

Lynch, though, immediately entered the Women’s Royal Rumble match, still determined to make her moment. After the 28th entrant, Lana, was injured and couldn’t make it to the ring, The Man went out for redemption. After finally getting clearance from backstage officials to replace Lana, Lynch stormed down to the ring to Nia Jax, the same woman who had injured

her last November. After getting her redemption by eliminating Jax, Lynch was injured at ringside, as an irate Jax dragged her out of the ring and threw her into a set of steel stairs. On one leg, Lynch seemed doomed to come up short yet again, especially after Flair, her last remaining opponent in the Rumble, attacked the bad leg immediately. Yet despite all odds, Lynch managed to pull out the win, taking advantage of Flair’s arrogance to eliminate her, and win the Women’s Royal Rumble. With her eyes set on Ronda Rousey and the RAW Women’s Championship, the stage is set for The Man and the Baddest Woman on the Planet to lay it all out at WrestleMania.

The Royal Rumble may now finally be in the books, but that doesn’t mean the fun is over —- far from it. With the Road to WrestleMania finally starting to take shape, the action is only getting started, as superstars aim to cement their place in wrestling greatness at WrestleMania,- the WWE’s equivalent of the Super Bowl. To see how it all unfolds, tune in to your show of choice (RAW on Monday nights, SmackDown on Tuesdays, and NXT on Wednesdays), sit back, and enjoy!

How to Watch the Super Bowl as a Swattie Who Knows Nothing About Football

Joseph Barile Sports Writer

The Super Bowl is Sunday, and I’m here to give you, the standard Swarthmore student swamped in problem sets and papers, a few good reasons to watch it. First, you don’t need to know anything about American football to watch the Super Bowl, so that is not a viable excuse to skip the game for studying. At this point, if you have no knowledge of the rules, that’s fine. There’s no time to learn them all anyway. What you need to know is this: football operates like most other sports.

There are two teams, trying to score more points than the other in a variety of ways, and the team with the most points at the end of the game wins! However, if you still fear being exposed as a clueless spectator by some of the sports fanatics you may be watching with this Sunday, just blurt out “What even qualifies as a catch anymore, am I right?” or “Tom Brady (bray-dee) is a system QB.” That should be enough to throw the room into furious debate and divert attention away from you.

Briefly, I’ll describe the two teams playing, but in Swarthmore terms so that you’re some-

what in the loop as to what’s on the line. First, the New England Patriots: they’re the Economics major. The Pats have consistently been at the top of the league for over a decade, just as economics has been one of the most popular majors at Swarthmore for a while now. The Pats are efficient with a well-established and working system, just like the economics major, which requires just eight credits and a comprehensive exam for the degree. The Patriots’ opponent, the Los Angeles Rams, are representing the Computer Science major.

They’re fresh, exciting, and dynamic. They are also on the rise and probably going to overtake the previously dominant force as the top major in the school, or in NFL terms, team in the league.

Here’s another analogy in dorm form if you’re not too familiar with those majors. The Patriots equal Alice Paul, which opened in 2004, the year the Pats won their second of five Super Bowls in the past 15 years. AP has been one of the most desirable spots on campus for the past decade or so, with the delightful combination of air conditioning and a great location, just as the Patriots have been a great franchise to play for. The Los Angeles

Rams, on the other hand, are the new and flashier New PPR apartments: the soon-to-be-if-not-already top dorm in the school, or again in NFL terms, team in the league.

You don’t know enough about those dorms, you say? The Patriots are the Science Center, the Rams are the new BEP. Pats equal Essie’s. Rams equal the Crumb Cafe. It’s the seasoned veterans vs. the new kids on the block. You get the idea.

The New England Patriots are led by a legendary coach, Bill Belichick, and quarterback, Tom Brady: think Adam Smith and John Keynes, except living. The Los Angeles Rams, on the other hand, are led by a younger coach, Sean McVay, and quarterback, Jared Goff: think Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Now that you know what game is being played and who’s playing, we can start working on what to watch for. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend who to root for. As Swarthmore students residing outside of Philadelphia, we won’t get any tangible benefit from one team winning unlike last year when the Eagles won. Sorry, but no rioting in the streets this time. However, there are still parts of this game to

get excited about. On the actual football side of things, these are two of the top offensive teams in the NFL. You can expect to see a lot of scoring in this game, so if you were ever dissuaded from attending sporting events because of that one time you went to a 90 minute soccer game that had no goals, do not be afraid.

There are also reasons to watch the Super Bowl entirely separate from the sport of football itself.

There’s the famous Super Bowl halftime show. Now be warned: sometimes these concerts can be utterly awful. The Black Eyed Peas, Madonna, and LMFAO all have done halftime events that were largely received negatively: picture a dysfunctional disorientation weekend. However, artists like Beyonce and Bruno Mars and have done brilliantly in their performances in the past: imagine Worthstock. Either way, it’s always worth it to see what kind of ridiculous stunts the NFL brings out for the show. This year, the big name artists performing will be Maroon 5 and Travis Scott, who make up a good combination of vocal talent and awesome stage presence. At least this part of the Super Bowl will have something you can talk about, so make sure you stick around for it.

Another component that can have a huge impact on the quality of your Super Bowl experience is the food. Picking the right snacks to eat from a wide array of options is essential if you want to ensure your time is a good one.

Now, if this is your first time at a Super Bowl party, the choices may appear to be overwhelming, so it’s best to just pretend you’re at Sharples. The wings at the party are … the wings at Sharples.

Not great, not awful, messy, but probably worth the plate space.

The chips and dip? They’re the french fries. You know you probably shouldn’t have them but they end up on your plate anyways. The celery, broccoli, and carrot dish? That’s your least favorite bar. Avoid at all costs.

Finally, an essential aspect of a Super Bowl viewing that needs mentioning is the commercials.

Super Bowl commercials are notorious for being topic of mass discussion across social media platforms. Like the halftime show, you can expect a solid combination of good and bad commercials. GoDaddy.com’s “kiss” commercial as well as various Bud Light and Doritos commercials have captured the nation’s attention in the past. Additionally, a 30 second commercial

block cost 5.5 million dollars last year, so it’s always amusing to watch a company’s commercial completely flop on Twitter or Instagram. Expect some memes to come out of these commercials as well, so if you want to understand why a picture of a small kid with a phrase “I would have done X, but I died.” (look it up) keeps appearing on your timeline, stay seated during the breaks. Again, this is something you could easily talk about with your party comrades. Sometimes it feels like the game has more commercials than actual football, so make the most of it.

So in sum, it’s Economics vs.

Computer Science, whoever scores the most points wins, the non-football part is just as fun as the football part, and “Tom Brady is a system QB” is your golden ticket to safety. The Super Bowl is fantastic opportunity to spend time with your sporty friends who have been trying to get you into football since you admitted you didn’t know what a safety is, so do them and yourself a favor by watching the game.

Perhaps you’ll even go viral for a tweet about a commercial.

Athlete of the Week: Faith Nation Jack Corkery: What is your major, and what led you to choose it?

Faith Nation: I’m planning on majoring in Psychology here at Swarthmore. I’m pre-med and didn’t necessarily want to major in a natural science, so I chose this because I find it interesting to understand people’s behaviors and think that being able to understand people and relate better would be a good skill to have as a doctor.

JC: Your background is unique, as you did not play for the basketball team as a first-year and joined as a sophomore. Could you talk more about how you made the decision to play this year?

FN: I had played basketball throughout high school but had some injuries so I wanted to take time off to let my body really heal. I also wanted to make sure that I’d be able to keep up with the rigor of Swat’s academics since playing a sport is such a large time commitment and I didn’t want my grades to suffer.

Jack Corkery Sports Writer Over the past week, the Swarthmore women’s basketball team has put up some spirited efforts. Despite not coming away with any wins, the Garnet have had many strong stretches in each game and have shown promise for the rest of their season and years to come. In last week’s loss to Muhlenberg, the Garnet received a strong performance from sophomore Faith Nation. The guard from Allentown, PA put up a game-high 17 points while sinking three shots from beyond the arc. The Garnet return to action this Saturday with a home matchup against Gettysburg. The game will be at 1:00 p.m. at Tarble Pavilion.

JC: As someone who has been both a student-athlete and a non-athlete, could you talk about some of the biggest differences between both lifestyles here at Swarthmore?

FN: You spend a lot of time with your teammates which is great since I get along with them really well, but it’s a large time commitment so my “free time” that I had last year has been taken up by basketball.

JC: What led you to choose to attend Swarthmore?

FN: My oldest brother went here so I had heard about Swarthmore through him and instantly fell in love with the school when I came here to see him graduate. I also only

live an hour away so the security of knowing that I can go home pretty easily if I want to is nice.

JC: What is your favorite place around campus?

FN: I like Essie’s because it’s a change from Sharples with regards to food, but also another space where I can go to do work and focus.

JC: What led you to originally begin playing basketball?

FN: Basketball’s definitely a big thing in my family but I started playing the latest out of all of my siblings. One of my friends needed an extra player for her rec team when we were in sixth grade and she asked if I wanted to play with them so that’s when I officially started.

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

FN: I’d want a path put across Mertz field so that when I cut across to walk to the Fieldhouse my shoes don’t get super muddy.

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

FN: We’ve struggled some this season so honestly just continuing to stick together as a team and consistently play our game and maybe even getting a few wins under our belt would be an awesome way to finish out our season.