Tuition rises, vaccines fall through

Emerson College’s student newspaper since 1947 • berkeleybeacon.com

Thursday, March 25, 2021 • Volume 74, Issue 22

@berkeleybeacon // @beaconupdate

TUITION RISES, VACCINES FALL THROUGH Vaccine partnership dissolves

Emerson to increase tuition, room, board for 2021-22 Dana Gerber, Alec Klusza & Charlie McKenna

Dana Gerber & Frankie Rowley

Beacon Staff Tuition, room, and board rates will increase by 2 percent for the second academic year in a row, in part due to the college’s financial COVID-19 related losses, according to a Thursday afternoon email from President M. Lee Pelton.

The tuition increase, which amounts to $1,025.28, is equivalent to the hike set in place for the 2020-21 academic year in July, and follows over a decade of steadily increasing costs at the college. The increase comes as the pandemic continues to ravage the finances of many students and their families.

The July decision came just two weeks after administrators told faculty they were bracing for between $33-76 million in losses as a result of the pandemic. Since then, the college appears to have avoided a worst-case scenario with a projection of $30 million in losses during the 2021 fiscal year.

“So far we’ve been lucky that we have lost less than we thought, but there’s still been losses,” Vice President and Dean of Campus Life Jim Hoppe said in a Zoom “COVID Q&A.” “There have been quite a few cuts to different programs and services that people are going to want to have reinstated.”

Despite the college’s losses being less than projected, Pelton and Board of Trustees Chair Jeffrey Greenhawt cited the pandemic as a contributing factor in the decision to once again raise costs.

“The Board has worked hard to balance the ongoing budgetary impact of the viral pandemic with meeting the College’s operating and capital needs, and investing in the people and programs that sustain and advance Emerson as the nation’s premier institution of higher learning devoted to communications, the arts, and the liberal arts,” Pelton and Greenhawt wrote.

Hoppe said it was necessary for the college to be able to set aside money in next year’s budget for faculty and staff raises, benefits that were slashed to ward off significant losses as the pandemic took hold.

“It would be very difficult for the college not to have a tuition increase and still have raises for faculty and staff,” he said.

Negotiations between the staff union and the Board of Trustees to regain the raises and other benefits have not produced any changes to date. The college’s budget for the next fiscal year has not been solidified, according to Hoppe.

Emerson is heavily reliant on tuition for its revenue— with 89 percent of annual revenue coming from those costs according to the college’s financial statements.

The decision to raise tuition once again comes more than a month after Emerson announced it will once again hold in-person classes under its hybrid model during the 2021 fall semester. It also comes just two-and-a-half months before Pelton is scheduled to depart his post as President to head the Boston Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

Pelton and Greenhawt indicate in their email that Emerson will work to offset the monetary impact of the increase for students with “demonstrated financial need and/or changing financial circumstances.” The email directs students to an “increase off-set fund,” where they can submit an appeal to the Office of Financial Aid by June 1 to be considered for additional aid to mitigate the tuition hike.

“Next year’s tuition and fees take into account the continued investment that the College will make to ensure a safe and robust academic experience for all of our students—along with the deep recognition that many students and their families remain affected by the economic difficulties resulting from the pandemic,” Pelton and Greenhawt wrote.

Tuition, Pg. 2

Beacon Staff

Emerson will not be able to depend fully on Tufts Medical Center for distributing COVID-19 vaccines to students, staff, and faculty, despite a tentative partnership announced in January, college officials said last week.

Assistant Vice President for Campus Life and “COVID Lead” Erik Muurisepp wrote in a Thursday email that vaccine supply constraints and the timing of the entrance to Phase Three of the state’s vaccination plan will prevent the previously announced partnership from going through. Vaccine appointments are slated to become available to the general public on April 19— just 10 days before the end of the spring semester.

In light of the partnership falling through, Muurisepp encouraged students to sign up to receive a vaccine on their own before or after they leave campus.

“Certainly we are aware that for some situations, Graphic Dana Gerber students may have easier access to get it,” he said in an interview. “We also know others may not have as easy access. We are working on … a clinic for vaccination upon return. Hopefully, the supply chain will be rectified by then and it will be aplenty.”

Muurisepp added that Tufts Medical Center, which offers vaccines publicly to eligible individuals, may be able to offer students their shots in the Boston area over the summer.

“We will certainly work with students, if they’re still around the Boston area, to help guide them through there once everyone is eligible on April 19,” he said.

Vaccines, Pg. 2

Former student sues Emerson over ‘insufficient’ spring learning experience

There is no excuse for Asian hate crimes Mariyam Quaisar Beacon Staff

The Little Building stands tall on an average day. Zhihao Wu / Beacon Staff

Chris Van Buskirk Beacon Contributor

A former student is seeking a tuition and fee refund in response to Emerson College’s decision to move classes online last spring as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a lawsuit pending in Massachusetts federal court.

The lawsuit, filed last fall by former visual and media arts student Ryan Porter, argues that the colleged failed to provide a sufficient alternative to in-person learning after classes moved online in Spring 2020. While the court has not set a trial date for the case, lawyers for the college have requested oral arguments before Judge Rya Zobel, court documents say.

Porter’s suit follows a national trend in which students are seeking legal actions against higher education institutions for the decision to transition classes online and send students home at the onset of the pandemic in March of last year. The lawsuit against Emerson notes that tuition for one semester typically costs just under $24,000, a service fee runs $436, and room and board comes out to just over $9,000.

The text of the lawsuit and related documents are available to the public and were obtained by The Beacon through PACER, a service that provides access to federal court records.

“In short, Plaintiff and the members of the Class have all paid for tuition for a first rate education and on-campus, in person educational experiences, with all the appurtenant benefits offered by a first-rate college,” the lawsuit reads. “Instead, students like Plaintiff were provided a materially deficient and insufficient alternative, which constitutes a breach of the contracts entered into by Plaintiff with the College.”

Three lawyers from the Boston-based firm Hongyu Liu / Beacon Staff Shapiro Haber, & Urmy, LLP are representing

Porter, along with a lawyer from the New York firm Leeds Brown Law, P.C. The college enlisted Boston’s Holland & Knight, LLP to represent them according to court documents.

“Emerson has been served with a complaint in this case and has filed a motion to dismiss,” Emerson College spokesperson Sofiya Cabalquinto said. “More than 300 cases of this type have been filed by class action lawyers against institutions throughout the country in the past year. The college has no other comment on the matter.”

Lawyers from Shapiro Haber & Urmy did not respond to The Beacon’s request for comment via email and phone calls. Porter could not be reached for comment over the phone.

Lawsuit, Pg. 3

The recent murder of eight people, including six of Asian descent at three different locations—a massage parlor in Acworth, GA and two spas in Atlanta, GA—calls for an addressing of hate crimes against Asian Americans in the United States.

Since the beginning of this pandemic, there has been a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans. According to a recent California State University report, in major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, attacks against Asian Americans rose by about 149 percent in 2020. The worst part is that while the overall rate of hate crimes in the U.S. declined, attacks targeting Asians significantly increased. But there’s little surprise in that when our former president himself condoned calling the coronavirus names such as “kung-flu” and “the Chinese virus.”

Hate Crimes, Pg. 4

OPINION

INSIDE THIS EDITION

163

Emerson Faculty Assembly approves spring break solutions Pg. 2 Founding director of Elma Lewis center launches City Council campaign Pg. 3

.16%

Editorial: Why seniors deserve consideration for an in-person graduation Pg. 4

101,000+

First- year sells floral-beaded necklaces with ‘Stupid Jupiter Jewelry’ Pg. 6

positive COVID-19 tests

positivity rate

tests completed

*Accumulated from 2020-2021 school year

He’s Got Spunk: How the pandemic has lead to sex fatigue Pg. 5

David Dobrik’s kingdom of bullying topples following misconduct allegations Pg. 7 25 Emerson athletes awarded spot on NEWMAC Academic All-Conference teams Pg. 8

News

The Berkeley Beacon

March 25, 2021

2

Emerson faculty approve spring break alternatives Frankie Rowley Beacon Staff

Emerson’s Faculty Assembly voted to approve two spring break alternatives, wellness passes and a “flexibility week” on Friday, meant to alleviate stress and burnout for students in light of the October cancelation of spring break.

Wellness passes and “flexibility week” are intended to serve as a compromise for students demanding an actual break, which the college said it could not do as a result of accreditation and financial aid requirements. Wellness passes are redeemable at any time throughout the semester as a one-time excused absence per course. The flexibility week, which spans March 22 to March 26, allows professors to “reduce the pressure of assignments” by extending due dates, holding more asynchronous class days, and other class-specific solutions.

Emerson canceled the break in

October, which college officials said was an effort to discourage students from traveling amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To offset the lack of a break, the college pushed back the start of the semester by a week and added a “free day off” on March 12.

In the March 15 email announcing the alternatives, Vice President and Dean for Campus Life Jim Hoppe and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Michaele Whelan said they did all they could to give students a break without jeopardizing the college in other areas.

“While diverging from the proposals in the SGA legislation, [the plan] provides relief for students and respects how difficult it would be for faculty to make major adjustments in their already established teaching schedules and designs in the College’s flex hybrid modality so late in the semester,” a March 20 email from Hoppe and Chair of Faculty Assembly Heather May said.

The Student Government Asso-

ciation initiative passed on March 8 that spurred the two alternatives— An Act To Advocate For The Community’s Well-Being—suggested five options, ranging from a five-day break to a period of no assignments, all of which Emerson said would not be legally or logistically viable.

Communications Professor Vincent Raynauld, a member of the calendar committee, said the two new policies are a product of figuring out loopholes to give students a break without jeopardizing the college’s accreditation.

“We worked with [SGA] to finetune everything, but we weighed out every scenario that students proposed,” Raynauld said in an interview with The Beacon. “If we were to take a five-day break, we need to make that up somewhere.”

Raynauld said the college’s solutions offer students the independence to gauge their individual needs. ”It gives students the agency to be able to choose when they want to

Students sit in the 2B alley. Hongyu Liu / Beacon Staff

take a break,” he said. “It creates an environment where people can get relief when they need it, yet the class can still operate in a way that’s not disruptive to everybody.”

Many students, however, say these solutions fall short. SGA ushered out a subsequent petition following the announcement of the wellness passes and flexibility week, prior to the approval by the faculty assembly on March 19, asking students if they would rather take days off and replace them with Saturday classes or add additional days to the end of the semester to make up the days taken off.

The college has made no mention of any progress with that petition, but Whelan repeatedly told The Beacon no changes could be made to the academic calendar once it was finalized.

Doran McCormack, a sophomore visual and media arts major, said the solutions avoided addressing the issues at hand.

“It’s all part of the same theme at Emerson,” McCormack said. “Look at what happened last November [during the ESOC Week of Action].

Students have to fight for things that Emerson should have addressed. For example, right now, people’s mental health and burnout and COVID fatigue should have been addressed [at the start of the semester] and gave us a week of wellness right when we came in. But that’s just not the case.

It just makes you [ask]: Are you really valued?”

McCormack said the one-time wellness passes are a way to “cut corners.”

“It doesn’t matter [if] Emerson would give us one wellness pass, two wellness passes for class,” McCormack said. “All this kind of crap

is just dodging giving us the time off that all students are entitled to—and it’s not like other universities aren’t doing it.”

Myriad colleges in Boston have also slashed their spring breaks and developed a range of substitutions.

Tufts University canceled its spring break outright and replaced it with a long weekend in March, and Boston University added “wellness days” off on March 18 and 31. Suffolk University will have a “mid-semester-break-day” in March, and Northeastern University canceled their break but did not add any extra days off.

Luke Colombero, a first-year theatre and performance major, said wellness passes and a flexibility week weren’t adequate substitutions for the week off he said he is in need of.

“It’s disrupting classes [because professors are trying to] adjust their whole schedule around this flexibility [week],” Colombero said. “It’s probably going to put everyone behind, then for the wellness passes, [there’s no] wiggle room. You can’t use it on [quiz and presentation days and] those are the days students are going to want to use them the most.”

With hordes of students reporting their mental health is continuing to suffer, Colombero said a regular weeklong spring break would have been the most helpful for students.

“One week off would help so many of the students here,” he said.

“I’m lucky that I take care of [myself], a lot of students don’t have the same access to resources or community that would keep them mentally healthy.” frankie_rowley@emerson.edu

Vaccine plan falls through after Tuition increase upsets student body supply constraints, timing hurdles Cont. from Pg. 1 Hoppe said the college will continue its efforts to increase financial aid to students most affected by the tuition increase.

“We made a really concerted effort to not only raise financial aid for those entering but for those returning, because that’s always been an issue too in terms of tuition, [it] would go up but perhaps your financial aid would stay similar to what it was when you were admitted,” Hoppe said.

Suffolk University does not plan to increase tuition for the 2021-22 school year, President Marisa Kelly said in an October email. Boston University and Northeastern University do not appear to have announced plans at the time of publication.

One student, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the college, is recruiting students through Instagram for a strike against the tuition increase—demanding Emerson undo the raise or have a clearer sense of what the extra funds are used for.

“The problem is really the principle of the matter,” the student said. “At any college the whole point of paying is the college experience—which is community activities, [and] all these different things that you can’t do [during] COVID—and now the college has the audacity to ask us for more money for objectively less.”

The student said part of the campaign is to determine specifically where the profit generated by the increase is going. The email from Pelton and Greenhawt listed several recent initiatives, such as five new classrooms with updated technology and new full-time faculty hires.

“When they just say, ‘Give us two percent more, just trust us money will go somewhere,’ we know that that money is going to administration, to the president of the college, to the people at this college who make money and profit off of this,” they said. “[It’s not going] to the people who actually put the work in, our teachers, the dining hall staff. That’s the biggest insult of this whole thing is the fact that they can [raise tuition] and continue to not deliver.”

Samantha Herrmann, a first semester senior journalism major, said she thinks the tuition hike is both economically and psychologically harmful for current students.

“There’s definitely a lot of problems that accompany that tuition increase,” she said. “Especially if you’re budgeting at the beginning of your college experience, and then they keep raising the tuition that you didn’t account for.”

“Financial [stress] definitely can impact your ability to be successful in school and classes as well,” she said. patrick_pierce@emerson edu

Cont. from Pg. 1 He also noted that students are welcome to ask for housing extensions if they are able to get the first shot of the two-dose Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines prior to leaving campus and need to stay in the state to receive the second dose.

Abby Griffith, a first-year theatre and performance major, said she understood the logistical difficulty of vaccinating students prior to the end of the semester.

“I’m from California, so I think I’ll be able to get one when I get back home, but I was … kind of counting on the school to be able to deal with that and not have to stress about finding an outside place to do it,” she said. “Everyone in Boston wants to get vaccinated, so it makes Students receive hand sanitizer outside testing location. Maximo Aguilar Lawlor / Beacon Staff sense that we’re not able to.”

Muurisepp said the college has nocompromised mother is inocu- a day after Emerson announced not yet decided whether vaccina- lated than focused on his own shot. its partnership with Tufts Medical tion will be required upon students’ While he said he was never expect- Center had faltered.

“I was super relieved that I was ing Emerson to be able to adminreturn in the fall.

The state’s vaccine rollout has ister vaccines, the anticipation is able to sign up and get it, because I know now a lot of students are received waves of backlash, with now his main concern.

“I was just like, ‘This isn’t going trying to get it through CVS since appointment scheduling hurdles, halting distribution to hospitals to to happen,’” he says of Emerson fa- that news came out,” MacMillan supply pharmacies and vaccination cilitating vaccinations. “Now that said. “I have to go all the way to sites, and conflicts with essential we’re going home, it’s going to be Dorchester and it’s going to be a hike, and I am going to have to workers over their eligibility. As of a free for all” Haley MacMillan, a junior vi- leave one of my classes early, so Wednesday, about 16 percent of the state’s population is fully vaccinat- sual and media arts student, got I was disappointed that Emerson ed, a metric on which Massachu- her first shot of the Pfizer-BioN- just isn’t able to accommodate and setts is currently 15th in the coun- Tech vaccine on Wednesday af- give us vaccination times that were try, according to The Boston Globe. ter becoming eligible because she close to campus [that] would work Calvin Kertzman, a first-year teaches children figure skating and with my class schedule.” visual and media arts student, said works in a retail store. She pre-reghe’s more relieved that his immu- istered through CVS last Friday, contact@berkeleybeacon.com

The Berkeley Beacon

March 25, 2021

3

Elma Lewis Center founder mounts city council campaign Camilo Fonseca Beacon Staff

Kelly Bates has a laundry list of qualifications in her bid for the Boston City Council—not least among them her tenure as inaugural director of Emerson’s Elma Lewis Center.

Bates—who headed the college’s civic engagement center housed within the Social Justice Center from its creation in 2013 to 2015—announced her campaign for City Council on March 15. She will be one of over a dozen candidates contending for the four city-wide at-large seats in the Nov. 2 election.

Two of the incumbent at-large councilors, Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George, have foregone re-election in order to participate in the mayoral race, which will also be held Nov. 2.

Bates faces a crowded field of opponents, including David Halbert, aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, and Ruthzee Louijeune, senior counsel for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign.

“Boston, the city I love, is in a crisis,” Bates said in an interview with The Beacon. “My background is as a crisis management leader.”

Before she headed up the Elma Lewis Center, which promotes marginalized narratives, Bates served as executive director of the Access Strategies Fund, promoting voting rights and civic engagement for marginalized communities in Massachusetts.

She left Emerson in 2015 to take

up her current role as president of the Interaction Institute for Social Change.

For Bates, her experience working towards social equity has shaped her approach to social justice issues on the campaign trail.

“Whatever decisions we make, we have to look at them through a number of lenses,” Bates said.

“How do we help people economically with whatever we’re doing?

How do our decisions affect the future of our climate? How do we make sure every decision is through the lens of equity? There are other criteria that are important, but [those are] crucial.”

Like most other candidates in the race, recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is a central plank of Bates’ platform. Through a program of “very targeted” low-interest loans and grants from the city’s credit union, as well as reform to the building permitting process, Bates envisions a revival for Boston’s small business scene.

“They’re going to need economic support, especially our small businesses, our restaurants and our arts organizations—oh my God, the arts have just been devastated,” she said. “We need to figure out what they need and how to provide those resources.”

For Bates, the path forward from the pandemic—economic, social, and psychological—is necessarily tied to social justice, pointing to inequities in the state’s health outcomes and vaccination rollout.

“It’s visible how much of a public health issue [racism] is,” she said. “Black communities, Latino communities, people with disabilities are more likely to die from COVID, more likely to have really difficult outcomes. It’s literally a life-or-death issue people of color are facing at this time.”

Bates acknowledged the challenge of addressing racial disparities within Boston goes beyond pandemic relief.

“We really need to think about how to invest in communities that have been impacted by violence, by racism,” she said. “COVID has really worsened some deep, underlying issues people have, or it’s created new ones.”

By promoting community-wide programs and youth leadership initiatives, Bates said she hopes to

Courtesy Kelly Bates reverse the worrisome effects of income inequality. She pledged to work towards zoning reform and rent control as a means to lower spiraling housing costs in the city.

“It was already bad in Boston, and it’s only gotten worse through COVID,” Bates said. “We’re really going to have to think about how to stabilize the rents in this city. How do we continue to build pathways toward homeownership?

How can we house folks who are homeless? Shelters are [not] going to be a silver bullet.”

In general, Bates said the city needed to radically reevaluate its infrastructure with the future in mind. Her goal of eliminating ridership fees to promote public transportation is in keeping with the forward-looking climate con-

sciousness of the city’s Imagine Boston 2030 initiative.

“We can create housing that is more reliant on renewable energy sources,” she said “We can creatively use our parks and open spaces to help with the ways we work, the ways we live. We have to figure out what is the public infrastructure around transportation, around climate, around this virus—what are we building for the long term?”

Shibani Chakrabarty, Bates’ campaign manager, said Bates, who is biracial, has a breadth of lived experience that allows her to uniquely advance her platform of social justice.

“She stands for equity for women and girls—but that goes hand-in-hand with housing and economic security, with providing resources for mental health, for addiction,” Chakrabarty said.

“It’s an acknowledgment of the cross-sections of class and race and gender.”

Chakrabarty, who served on the congressional campaigns of Sens.

Doug Jones and Jon Ossoff—both longshot Democratic candidates who won in reliably red states— said the Bates campaign would employ similar campaign strategies as those races. In particular, Chakrabarty said her approach includes an emphasis on youth outreach.

“We’re going to be hiring a few youth fellows,” she said. “Young people have tools they can use to get their colleagues and their friends excited about the election.”

Bates’ focus on youth outreach, she said, stems from her time at the Elma Lewis Center, where she worked with students and faculty to advance the artistic voices of marginalized students.

“I know that I will be better at running because of the faculty and students that taught me things about communications just by watching how they move, how they work, what they do,” she said. camilo_fonseca@emerson.edu

Lawsuit alleges inadequate transition online Cont. from Pg. 1 The lawsuit seeks to establish a “class,” which would include students who paid tuitions and fees to attend the college for in-person “educational services and experiences” for the spring 2020 semester, according to court documents. The court would need to certify the scope of the “class” for other students to have the opportunity to receive money from a ruling in favor of Porter.

A federal judge ruled in December that Northeastern University would have to face parts of a class action suit filed by students seeking tuition refunds for similar reasons as both the Emerson and Boston University cases, Law360 reported.

The lawsuit said lawyers for Porter may notify students at the college of legal action through court-approved notification methods like U.S. mail, email, internet postings, or published notices to join the suit. The lawsuit also says it is impracticable to bring the individual claims of every student at the college before the court, but notes that Porter is “a more than adequate class representative.”

The lawsuit does not list whether other students have joined the class-action, and it is unclear at this time whether additional students have joined.

Porter consulted the course catalog before the Spring 2020 semester and enrolled in classes, according to the lawsuit. He “understood and believed” that every course would be taught in-person at the college’s Boston campus, the lawsuit said.

The college transitioned classes online on March 10, 2020, and then three days later, asked students to leave dorms as cases of COVID-19 first began to rapidly surge in Boston.

Porter argues in the lawsuit that his payment to the college was contingent on the “understanding and belief” that learning would be in-person and on campus—as the course catalog indicated—rather than in “hybrid” or “online” formats.

“Thus, the in-person nature of the course was part of the benefit of the bargain, and Plaintiff would not have paid as much, if any, tuition and fees for the Spring 2020 semester at Emerson College had he known that the course would not, in fact, be taught in-person,” the lawsuit read.

In Porter’s case, the college made several attempts over the past few months to dismiss the case, according to court dockets. The latest attempt came on Feb. 10 and Porter’s lawyers requested additional time— until March 19—to respond to the motion.

The college argued in their motion to dismiss the case that Porter’s legal arguments are “impermissible challenges” to the quality and value of the education he received.

“Plaintiff’s claims for damages based on the quality and value of his education are not actionable and are barred as a matter of law,” the motion read. “Plaintiff’s claims also challenge how Emerson’s curriculum should be taught, and therefore constitute unlawful interference with the college’s constitutionally protected freedom to make its own judgments about how best to perform its educa-

tional mission.”

Students have taken similar legal actions at other colleges across the country and in Massachusetts, including one from a group of Boston University students. In that suit, filed in the state’s federal court system, students are seeking room, board, and fee reimbursement following the closure of the institution’s campus due to the pandemic.

A Rhode Island federal court dismissed several claims from students at three separate universities in the state who also sought tuition refunds after classes transitioned to remote learning. The presiding judge said “no plausible reading” of student course catalogs or policies offered a contractual agreement for in-person education, according to The Boston Globe.

Like the Rhode Island cases, Porter argues that the college’s failure to

Emerson’s Ansin Building on Tremont Street. Hongyu Liu / Beacon Staff provide services for which tuition and fees were intended to cover constitute a breach of contract, the lawsuit said.

Lawyers for the college say Porter has not alleged a specific contractual promise that Emerson allegedly breached, court documents read.

As a result of the pandemic, the lawsuit said online-only learning options offered to students were “different in practically every aspect as compared to what the educational experience afforded plaintiff and the members of the class once was.”

The lawsuit alleges a lack of classroom interaction among teachers and students that typically occurs during in-person instruction.

The lawsuit alleges online formats are not as rigorous as regular classroom instruction as they do not require “development of strong study skills.”

Porter also takes issue with the decision to allow students to choose a pass/fail option instead of receiving a letter grade. College officials previously said the pass/fail option allowed students more flexibility as they coped with fear and anxiety as a result of the pandemic.

That decision, the lawsuit said, allowed for “educational leniency.”

“The ability to receive a pass-fail grade rather than a letter grade provides educational leniency that the students would not otherwise have with the in-person letter grading education that was paid for and expected,” the lawsuit said. ‘Students, like Plaintiff, have been deprived of the opportunity for collaborative learning and in-person dialogue, feedback, and critique.” c_vanbuskirk@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

Opinion Emerson, reconsider an in-person commencement Editorial As college students, the driving force to get us through 8 a.m. classes, midterm exams, and the ever-rising tuition rate is the monumental closing event of our college experience: graduation.

But since the pandemic made large social gatherings virtually impossible, the loss of in-person graduation is another important memory lost for Emerson seniors, even as other colleges in Boston are moving forward with in-person ceremonies.

A virtual commencement ceremony for the class of 2021 is set to be held during May’s “Emerson Week,” along with a celebration ceremony for the class of 2020, whose commencement was postponed in July. One can reasonably assume the college would prefer to hold an in-person commencement if it were not for COVID-19, but this doesn’t make the news any less disappointing to seniors, especially as their friends at other area institutions prepare for in-person celebrations at America’s oldest ballpark. To that end, it would be foolish not to recognize that by not having an in-person ceremony, the college is poised to save thousands of dollars.

After four years of college culminating into an unusual senior year, students looked forward to commencement. Senior comedic arts major James Richardson told The Beacon the cancellation of

in-person commencement felt like a “gut punch.”

“This school has moved mountains before [and] done incredible things,” Richardson said. “I just can’t help but feel that Emerson only strived to have that many in-person classes to avoid the complaints of ‘We should be charged less because it’s all online.’ Since there’s no complaints relating to graduation in that way, they’re like ‘We don’t have to try.’”

In a normal semester, commencement is held at Boston University’s Agganis Arena. Under current state social distancing guidelines, the arena can hold 850 attendees. Surely Emerson could split its graduating class of about 900 students in two and safely hold the commencement ceremony students who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to earn their degrees at the college deserve.

It’s understandable that Emerson may be hesitant to take a chance on an in-person ceremony, just as vaccines are rolling out more rapidly and we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel for this pandemic. However, it’s hard for seniors to ignore the various colleges in the area that are announcing their upcoming in-person graduation ceremonies.

Boston University, Northeastern University, Suffolk University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst all have in-person ceremonies planned that will be held outdoors, all with testing

requirements, mask-wearing, and other safety guidelines in place. There is also the option to omit guests. Friends and family aren’t given the option to attend UMass Amherst’s graduation ceremony this year, and we think Emerson should consider a similar option if that is the cost to have an in-person option.

Certainly, we know and expect the college will continue to remain compliant with state and federal guidelines.

While large gatherings still pose risks, it’s clear that masking, social distancing, and other measures work. The NFL made it through an entire season with in-person spectators at stadiums in jurisdictions that allowed them without any superspreader events. And just this week Massachusetts moved into Phase 4 Step 1 of reopening, allowing for 12 percent capacity at indoor and outdoor venues.

Unlike parties and superspreader events that continue to result in many positive cases over the past few months, most (if not all) in-person graduations will be outside and socially distanced this year. This is because it is 20 times less likely to transmit the virus outside than it is in person.

COVID-19 cases have plateaued in the state and the vaccination rate has sped up rapidly in recent weeks. We’ve already had to give up so much during the past year. This isn’t just another party we will be missing out on—it’s our graduation, the moment many students have waited for their entire life.

Seeing as numerous colleges and universities feel confident in their ability to host an in-person graduation, it raises the question of ‘Why not Emerson?’ Kean University, Brown University and Dartmouth College are all planning in-person ceremonies. Meanwhile, Emerson students look back on the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent to study at this college, many wondering if an in-person graduation could have been possible after all.

Take Boston University, for exam-

March 25, 2021

4

People walking by the Agganis Arena. Hongyu Liu / Beacon Staff ple, which will hold an in-person Commencement on May 16 at Nickerson Field for their graduating class, allowing friends and family virtual access to the ceremony. Meanwhile, Northwestern University and Emerson’s cross-common rival Suffolk plan to hold ceremonies at Fenway Park.

Emerson’s COVID-19 response has, for the most part, held up. Aside from a few busted dorm parties, there haven’t been any major superspreader events since the pandemic began. Students are now tested twice a week and are constantly monitoring their symptoms.

Biden expects all adults to be eligible for the COVID vaccine by May 1, so why not even consider a delayed, socially distanced graduation?

We understand guidance can change quickly and what might be allowed today may not be an option tomorrow. As the stars begin to align in the right direction, we must adapt to the new normal.

Emerson seniors deserve the creativity that would be required by an in-person

graduation. Perhaps another postponement is in place to give room for a potential in-person commencement later this year.

The Berkeley Beacon Editorial Board is the voice of the student newspaper that looks to serve the Emerson College community with thoughtful insight into ongoings and occurrences affecting their everyday lives.

The board’s positions are determined by its members. The board consists of the editor-inchief, managing editors, and opinion editors. The opinions expressed by the Editorial Board do not impact the paper’s coverage. You can respond to a position brought forward by The Beacon Editorial Board in the form of a Letter to The Editor by email: Letters@BerkeleyBeacon. com.

Anti-Asian racism must be eradicated in the United States

Courtesy Mariyam Quaisar

Cont from Pg. 1 Over the past year, about 3,800 incidents of anti-Asian attacks and hate speech have occurred, including shunning, slurs, and physical attacks, according to a report from Stop AAPI Hate.

From Mar. 19, 2020 to Feb. 28, 2021, 503 incidents—like verbal harassment—occurred in 2021 alone. Verbal harassment makes up 68.1 percent of such reports, shunning makes up 20.5 percent, and physical assault makes up 11.1 percent.

The names of the Asian women who were killed should be remembered. The victims, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Yong Ae Yue, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, and Suncha Kim all had different lives. Tan would have turned 50 on Mar. 25, and she left behind a 29-year-old daughter. She was dedicated to giving her family a good life through her business—Young’s Asian Massage— which she created from nothing.

Feng, 44, was a recent employee of Young’s Asian Massage, she was kind and quiet. Yue, 63, was a mother who loved to cook Korean food and spend time with her friends. She was also an avid reader. Grant, 51, was a single mother supporting her two sons and she loved to dance. Park, 74, was an employee at one of the Atlanta spas and she had a family that she loved. Kim, 69, was also an employee at one of the Atlanta spas.

She was a grandmother, a wife for over 50 years, and a line dancer.

All of the lives lost on March 16 were innocent, and would likely be here today if it were not for the anti-Asian racism plaguing our country.

The 21-year-old shooter blames his violence on a “sex addiction,” a claim that many news outlets such as the New York Times defend, and some news outlets are putting a question mark after “hate crime.”

How is what occurred in Atlanta anywhere close to a question? Call it what it is: a hate crime. This was an attack on an entire race of people and this is not the first time. The targeting of Asian-American communities has occurred for years.

The shooter’s so-called “sex addiction” was defended, and accounted for under the foundations of evangelicalism, and what evangelical christians believe in. Combating improper sexual thoughts and pornography is a large theme in evangelical culture. Historically, evangelical leaders have connected violence and pornography to the heavy emphasis on keeping a pure mind, and not “falling out of God’s grace”—which is the reasoning the shooter used when speaking to the police. The lead pastor of First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Heath Lambert, said “the obvious root of the violence was the pornography that the accused gunman ‘was using and trying to get away from.’”

A painfully familiar story is that of Ted Bundy’s crimes, where he used his addiction to pornography as the reasoning behind his heinous actions. To Bundy’s claim, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, wrote, “What a tragedy!

There is a possibility, at least, that it would not have occurred if that 13-year-old boy had never stumbled into the pornographic magazines in a garbage dump.’”

Last time I checked, that is an incredibly ridiculous excuse because it is not an excuse, neither Bundy or the crimes in Atlanta. If you can’t control your urges, then that’s a problem. It also begs the question: why were Asian women his

target?

Asian women are “sexualized and objectified” and have been since they first migrated to the United States, according to Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Pacific Women’s Forum. Choimorrow says when Congress passed the Page Act of 1875, it essentially prohibited East Asian women from coming into America because they were seen as prostitutes. This historical outlook is directly connected to the murder of the women in Atlanta, as Asian women are still fetishized.

During the 1850s, hate against Chinese immigrants spiked when workers from China came to the United States to work in gold mines and factories and take agriculture jobs. Unfortunately, as more Chinese laborers came to America, anti-Chinese sentiments grew stronger, to the point where legislation was created to limit Chinese immigration, titled the Chinese Exclusion Act. Due to the “Chinese Must Go” movement, Chinese immigration declined from 39,500 in 1883 to merely 10 in 1887. Tension between Chinese laborers and non-Chinese workers grew for years, Chinese workers and their families were treated horribly and were constantly discriminated against, which sounds a lot like what is happening 200 years later in modern day America.

More discrimination came about in school systems as the San Francisco School Board created a Chinese Primary School solely for Chinese children to attend, segregating the community in the early 20th century. As Japanese workers also migrated to the United States, anti-Japanese legislation and violence surfaced. In 1942, Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps and isolated.

The 10 facilities were considered “concentration camps” by President Franklin Roosevelt himself, where many Japanese Americans died from lack of proper medical care and emotional stress.

When immigrants from South Asia,

like India, entered the United States, following Chinese exclusion, they became farm laborers and were referred to as as the “Hindu invasion” and the “tide of the turbans.” Later on, Congress declared India as a part of the Pacific-Barred Zone of excluded Asian countries, which was part of the Immigration Act of 1917. This was well over a century and a half ago, so why are we still seeing such discrimination now?

Anti-Asian hate and attacks have increased significantly due to the pandemic, and our former president, along with other public officials, have blatantly blamed the Chinese community for it. Well, that claim is just as ridiculous as him.

As an Asian American student myself, with parents and family born and raised in Northern India, I’ve experienced my own fair share of racially motivated bullying and name-calling growing up.

Whether it was other students making fun of my home-cooked delicious lunch, or my complexion while purposely excluding me because I am brown, I have faced discrimination my whole life.

My high school soccer coach was blatantly racist—he once told a Muslim student she could not wear leggings under her uniform because she “had to dress like everyone else.” My “friends” asked (and still ask) me to “pass the hookah” in an Indian accent due to my Islamic background. When my mom cooks and the house smells like spices, people love to comment on the “odor.” I can go on and on.

Eventually, I found it within me to stand up for myself and not take the bullshit I was experiencing. But those innocent women in Atlanta didn’t even get the chance to defend themselves before they were ruthlessly murdered. And while all the racists believe they can say and do whatever they feel in this white supremacist nation, without proper reform or action taking place to prevent their incredibly harmful actions, what can those

discriminated against do?

Asian American discrimination seems to be a double-edged sword. On one end, we are stereotyped as being smart and good at math. We are expected to become tech geniuses or doctors, and that expectation takes a large toll on the mental health of students. Being constantly reminded of the model minority myth to become a doctor or computer engineer stresses children out to become just that and nothing else, as if there is no other option. On the other hand, people make fun of but also appropriate our culture.

FYI: wearing a bindi—which is worn on a woman’s forehead in various Indian communities—as an accessory without knowing their purpose, is appropriation; getting a tattoo of a Chinese symbol without knowing what it means, just because it looks cool, is appropriation.

Our nation simply does not address discrimination of non-white communities. It took numerous cases of filmed police brutality to incite action against anti-Black officials. There are hundreds of thousands of cases of police brutality that are unheard of, both against the Black community and other POC communities.

My own teachers would let it slide when they heard another student being racist.

Hell, there are Emerson professors who participate in microaggressions themselves. The trend is getting a little—actually more than a little—tiring.

The United States has a lot to work on.

It’s essential we come together and end the discrimination of all communities in our country. Just because it has been embedded in our history does not mean we need to keep such a harmful tradition alive. Stand together for the fight against hate and racism, so more young kids don’t grow up hearing racist taunts, and so innocent people don’t lose their lives. mariyam_quaisar@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

March 25, 2021

5

Private corporations must be held accountable for climate change Juliet Norman Beacon Staff

For as long as I can remember it has been ingrained in me that helping the planet is my individual responsibility.

Posters in the hallways of my middle school urged me to “go green” and television ads told me to reduce my carbon footprint, reminding me that the future of the environment was in my hands.

A 2015 study from Oxfam found that 10 percent of the wealthiest population is responsible for 50 percent of global emissions, while the world’s poorest population contributes only 10 percent. Worrying about the climate is a valid concern, and we all should care— but these concerns should be amplified towards those who have control over the funding for resources that would improve the environment, not individuals of the working class.

Activism and public scrutiny has, historically, created positive change.

Celebrity activists like Leonardo Dicaprio and Mark Ruffalo have publicly condemned climate pollution and worked to promote environmental awareness. Dicaprio used his 2016 acceptance speech at the Oscars to ad-

But is climate change really the responsibility of the average American? I can buy a reusable straw and remember to turn off lights, sure. But most people are already doing this. 90 percent of American businesses practice some form of recycling. Many European countries like Germany and Austria have recycling rates of 63 and 62 percent. And 59 percent of U.S. homes have curbside recycling implemented. Challenging regular people to clean up the planet themselves feels a bit like screaming into the void. This focus on the general public should be redirected towards the large corporations that actually have the capability to create measurable change.

Recycling started in the early 1970s, yet only 6 percent of Americans regularly recycled. By 2018, these rates have increased sixfold to 32 percent. It’s gratifying to know that recycling has become normalized in our society and that people are vigilant about creating less wasteful habits.

Organizations like Greenpeace and National Geographic constantly put out PSA videos that urge the public to make it their duty to fix issues like pollution and energy waste. In reality, the bulk of the world’s pollu-

Environmental organizations and activists give us the impression that as a whole, our planet is running out of time before global warming becomes irreversible. If the Earth is truly at risk of this impending reality, instilling fear into the public does little to solve the problem at hand. The only solution is to halt the direct sources of environmental poisons as quickly as possible.

Unless you are a business mogul or a Rockefeller, shrinking your carbon footprint will not create the same level of difference that a corporation would by changing their waste methods. Deciding not to fly on a private jet is not the same as turning off the sink water while you brush your teeth.

Your friends and family just can’t be held accountable in the same way as billionaires or powerful politicians who deal with policy. Instead, we should be pushing for political action like the Green New Deal, a proposal that works to reduce dangerous toxins throughout the country, or by electing officials that want to improve public transportation and solar energy systems.

At the end of the day, we as individuals do not have as much power as we think we do. 69 million American homes now recycle on a daily basis.

Gary Sowder. / Illustration Ally Rzesa

He’s got spunk

‘COVID fatigue, sex fatigue’ Gary Sowder Beacon Staff

Illustration Lucia Thorne

dress the danger climate change poses and has produced several documentaries about global warming amongst other environmental issues.

In 2015, Ruffalo published a short op-ed in Grist, an online magazine, about the importance of climate change action. He calls on young people in particular to “do something about it.”

“As students across the country walk across graduation stages, wrestling with what comes next, I want to remind all of them of the power they have and the responsibility they bear,” he wrote.

tion comes from fossil fuels. I don’t like how media conglomerates try to pin the failing climate on the general public when the actual problem comes down to corporate greed. Just 100 of the world’s largest corporations are the direct cause of greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming. This is who is to blame for pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If Chevron, for example, committed to using more renewable energy, greenhouse gas emissions would likely decrease significantly more than the individual actions of millions of people collectively.

© 2020 The Berkeley Beacon. All rights reserved.

Editor-in-Chief Katie Redefer

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Managing Editors Charlie McKenna (Content) Madison E. Goldberg (Content) Maximo Aguilar Lawlor (Multimedia) Dylan Rossiter (Operations) Section Editors Dana Gerber (News) Mariyam Quaisar (Living Arts) Juliet Norman (Opinion) Christopher Williams (Sports) Hongyu Liu (Photo) Advisor Rachel Layne

Sea levels have risen 8 inches in the past 200 years, and The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that over the next century, we can expect a temperature rise of up to 10 degrees in fahrenheit. Our planet is arguably in worse shape than when we started recycling fifty years ago.

By making the everyday person personally liable to preserve the future of the planet, attention is directed away from giant corporations that are held less accountable for their part in destroying it. juliet_norman@emerson.edu

Letters to the Editor: If you want to respond to, or share an opinion about, an article in The Beacon, you can write a short letter to the editor. Email it to letters@berkeleybeacon. com. Please note that letters may be edited.

Submissions for print must be fewer than 250 words.

As we reach the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdowns, the morale of the world is in a downward spiral—a spiral only exacerbated by this year’s particularly harsh winter. At the onset of quarantine, the weather was sunnier and we could go out on socially-distanced walks in our booty shorts and roast marshmallows at night in cozy sweaters, but now I have to brave the Commonwealth Ave wind tunnel just to get groceries. We’re inside more, and that’s no good for our mood.

I’ve struggled with depression my entire life, first experiencing symptoms when I was 11, but it’s never been like this. It takes hours to get out of bed, my apartment is constantly a mess, and I procrastinate assignments simply because I cannot find the motivation to start them.

My therapist has coined this feeling as “COVID fatigue,” and this feeling has permeated my sex life.

In the past, I averaged four or five hookups a week, which is excessive, but I consider it research.

Now I’m rarely on the apps, barely hooking up, and hardly feeling good afterwards. Earlier this year, as I was coming home from a Grindr hookup, I felt uneasy, confused, shameful.

Why? He sent me a negative COVID test, he had been vaccinated, he was nice, he was sexy, he let me stay the night. So, what was it? Everything was fine, but I felt like garbage.

I couldn’t help but wonder: am I suffering from sex fatigue?

Sex in 2019 was exceedingly different. I’d meet guys in bars, clubs, and dingy house shows. We’d shoot the shit, cultivate some sort of emotional intimacy, dance together, buy each other drinks. When I met guys on Grindr, I’d usually head over to their place as the night was winding down, asking for their address on the walk back from the club, surrounded by a posse of my best––and drunkest––friends. There was something exhilarating about ditching your girls to meet up with a hot guy, the bow on top of an amazing night.

Now, sex is the night; since there are no bars and no parties, it’s usually all we have lined up. And there’s only one way to find it. Online.

Like Postmates, there’s an impersonality to online hookups, especially on Grindr. The getting-

to-know-you portion is just fluff, padding until you get to the real stuff: exchanging pics, inquiring about sexual preferences, asking about COVID safety. There’s a routine to it, and there’s only so much bush to beat around until he invites you over.

In a time where we’re so desperate for connection, emotionless hookups only fill that void in one way: the physical one.

When we remove in-person meetups and sex becomes more about fulfilling a need, it leaves us feeling unsatisfied and lonely. That’s because loneliness in the pandemic is much different from 2019’s loneliness.

Pre-pandemic, my loneliness came in bursts, but it was always remedied by going out to dinner with my roommates, partying with my friends, or going to class. Now, going out to dinner isn’t a thing, neither is partying, and with social distancing and masks, in-person classes can sometimes feel even more isolating than Zoom.

COVID-19 has forced us to shrink our friend groups, eviscerated our night lives, and made spontaneous interactions with strangers impossible. We see the same people every week, over Zoom calls or in person, and the opportunity for new connections is outside the realm of possibility. We can’t tell a girl to dump her boyfriend in the Tam bathroom or split a joint with a kind Italian man outside of the Fire House. The borders of our social circles are more rigid than ever. The only opportunity we have to meet new people has to happen in the ether.

I usually end my columns with a nugget of advice, something for you to take and ruminate on the next time you go on a date or have sex.

However, I don’t think that’s a possibility with this article. We can’t eliminate sex fatigue until things return to normal, and there’s still no timestamp for when that will happen.

Instead, the advice I’ll give you all is to stay conscious of your emotions. If sex isn’t making you feel as satisfied as it used to, listen to those feelings. If that dissatisfaction outweighs the sexual positives, listen to that. COVID-19 may have pushed us inward, forced us to spend more time with ourselves. But the benefit of that is we are given all of this time to start listening to our emotions, really sitting with them, and making changes to feel better about yourself in this, honestly, depressing time. gary_sowder@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

March 25, 2021

6

Living Arts

First-year sells necklaces with ‘Stupid Jupiter Jewelry’ Christina Casper crafts pieces ‘made with love’

Courtesy Christina Casper

The necklaces charms are made of polymer clay, and the beads are glass. / Courtesy Christina Casper

Campbell Parish Beacon Staff

Thanks to first-year Christina Casper’s handmade jewelry business, Stupid Jupiter Jewelry, brightly-colored floral necklaces are creating a sense of community among students on the Boston campus.

Casper, a visual media arts major, said she has a passion for creating things that extend beyond the classroom with her jewelry business. Casper has always had a knack for creating jewelry, and her crafty hobby is catching the eyes of many Emerson students through her Instagram account, @stupidjupiterjewelry.

“I always liked making bracelets and necklaces and stuff,” Casper said. “Now this is just my necklace

hobby.”

Stupid Jupiter Jewelry started with Casper making necklaces for herself and her friends, eventually growing to her Instagram account, where the necklaces are currently being sold via Google form. Casper said her friends encouraged her to start Stupid Jupiter Jewelry after last semester.

First-year Mason Standish was one of the first people Casper made a necklace for and helped encourage her to start selling them.

“She gave me a necklace that she made while she was back at home during break, and I thought it was super dope, so I put it on immediately, and I’m wearing that one right now,” Standish said.

Casper said she is mainly selling her necklaces to Emerson students at this time, with free delivery to the

Little Building and other residence halls on the Boston campus. Recently, she added shipping all across the country for an additional $5, so now the brightly-colored necklaces can be soon spotted nationwide. A total of 85 necklaces have been sold to primarily first-year students, but also a few upperclassmen, non-Emerson students, and other shipments outside of Boston. She hopes to expand her business into an Etsy shop over the summer to grow her business.

“People every day, pretty much, would ask me about the necklaces,” Standish said. “It made sense for her to start selling them. Everyone in the student body was pretty interested in them.”

While walking around campus, you can spot Casper’s brightly-colored necklaces with a flower pendant all around—whether you’re in

Tatte or the elevator headed up to your room in the Little Building.

Students will recognize Casper’s jewelry and strike up a conversation with each other, building a small community during an isolated semester. “[Stupid Jupiter Jewerly] is a bit of a cult,” Standish said. “Every day in the elevator, I see someone who has one on, and then it’s like, ‘Oh my God.’ You immediately have this thing in common. That’s been one of the most fun thing about it.’”

The necklaces are made of glass beads, elastic string, and a flower pendant. When purchasing the necklaces, customers can pick what color beads and flower pendants they want.

“They are really comfortable,” Casper said. “They are super stretchy, durable, reliable. I think it’s really cool [that] a lot of people like them and they wear them, and not just buy them to support [Stupid Jupiter Jewerly], they wear them, too.”

First-year visual media arts major Michael Rivera was one of the first customers of Stupid Jupiter Jewelry.

Rivera said he often sees students in

Courtesy Christina Casper Boston Common wearing Casper’s jewelry and sparks up a conversation with them. He said he loves the community aspect that the jewelry has created, even wearing his necklace during the time of his interview with The Beacon.

“It’s made with love,” Rivera said.

“Casper puts a lot of care into it, and she was telling me a couple of weeks ago, when it first started out, she wanted to create a community around the necklaces. You could see someone with it, and you just start talking about it, and then you become friends that way.”

Casper said she loves creating things in her free time. Stupid Jupiter Jewelry only takes orders for her necklaces via Google form, which is linked in her Instagram account @stupidjupiterjewelry. campbell_parish@emerson.edu

From stages into classrooms

How Emerson theatres survived the pandemic Alexander Vassilopolis Beacon Correspondent

In March 2020, the stages of Emerson College fell silent for the foreseeable future. One year later, in March 2021, these stages are still just as empty.

Fortunately, the college has utilized the stage spaces as new classrooms for students in the year since they closed.

The Paramount Center and the Cutler

Majestic Theatre are some of the most prominent performance spaces on campus, both of which are managed by ArtsEmerson.

Scott Wallace, senior manager of production for ArtsEmerson, spoke with The Beacon to discuss how COVID-19 has changed the way Emerson theaters operate. “[Office of the Arts have] worked with the college and the administration to pivot in order to be able to open up

In-person class session in the Paramount Center. Zhuoli Zhang / Beacon Staff

Emerson’s Cutler Majestic Theatre. Maximo Aguilar Lawlor / Beacon Staff

the theaters for classroom space,” Wallace said. “The Office of the Arts staff has been dedicated to supporting the academics of the college in all of our theater spaces and being extra flexible helping Emerson Stage to fulfill their digital content.”

As the physical spaces change around them, artists that previously performed on stage had to adapt to the new digital realm of performance.

Joe Antoun, a senior faculty member with the performing arts department, has directed over 20 shows at Emerson since 2001. Antoun is currently teaching classes while also directing the student-written play Going to California.

Rehearsals have been entirely over Zoom, with students practicing remotely in their dorm rooms and other spaces on campus. When the show goes up, the actors will perform from separate studios. Each are equipped with a green screen and a computer.

“Students really are much more adaptable; it’s been a totally positive experience as far as directing the shows with the actors and the stage-management team,” Antoun said.

He also spoke about how theater over Zoom is not quite the same as it is on stage.

“I would be lying to say that this is the way of the future, maybe it is, but I don’t find it as exciting as live theater.”

On Feb. 25 of this year, the Baker and Polito administration announced plans to advance to Phase 4 of their Massachusetts COVID-19 reopening plan, which includes the reopening of theaters with a limited audience capacity. However, due to these performance centers now being utilized as classrooms, there is an issue of how the space will be managed.

“Right now, because academics are fully ensconced within the spaces, there will be no disruption of that—we will

The Paramount Center / Beacon Archives

continue on to support academics in the spaces per COVID protocol,” Wallace said.

While talking about the more distant possibility of reopening, he said that conversations between the Office of the Arts and the administration will be underway around May of this year.

“There’s a hope that the theaters will open up for regular use in October, although I don’t know what that might mean quite yet,” Wallace said.

Although Emerson stages may continue to be silent for the rest of the semester, the art created by students and faculty alike continues to be powerful regardless of any new locations or limitations. a_vassilopolis@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

March 25, 2021

7

Quarantine boredom inspires retail therapy, handmade crafts

Roommates Alaina Fitzpartick (left) and Tess Greenwald (right) out shopping.

Courtesy Tess Greenwald

Juliet Norman Beacon Staff

At the height of quarantine—the neverending stretch of summer break between campus closure in March 2020 and the beginning of the fall semester, students had to get creative.

It would be months before they’d be occupied with classes and extracurriculars.

To combat the boredom following the early cancellation of her senior year of high school after lockdown began in March, first-year Tess Greenwald started to browse online websites to fill up her free time. Six months later, Greenwald and her roommate, first-year Alaina Fitzpatrick, spent their first day of the fall semester on a shopping trip at Primark.

Greenwald said her habit of both online and in-person shopping has only increased since March. The mindless scrolling and browsing through companies like American Eagle and Amazon was relaxing and entertaining for her, especially at the peak of COVID-19 cases when shopping in-person wasn’t possible. Seeing shopping recommendations on her TikTok feed influenced her to indulge in impulse buys.

“I definitely bought some stuff where I was like ‘I did not need that,’,” Greenwald said.

After working her retail job at Marshalls over winter break in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado, Greenwald spent some of her earnings (online) during the campus’ enforced week of quarantine for students before spring in-person classes started.

Her online shopping purchases include a portable water bottle blender that broke right after it arrived, a new backpack—even though she had just gotten a new one the previous semester, swimsuits, and decor for her dorm room.

Fitzpatrick, who often orders jewelry from Amazon, said that she uses online shopping as an easy way to distract herself. She said being on the Emerson campus allows her to express her fashion sense, more so than she is able to in her hometown of Worcester.

“At my high school, we would wear sweatshirts and leggings,” Fitzpatrick said. “That’s all people would wear. It’s fun to dress up here because you fit in—everyone dresses up.”

After getting back from their 12 p.m. classes on most weekdays, the

girls usually ask each other, “Do you have homework?” If the answer is no, they’ll head to Target (masked-up) or spend the afternoon browsing online sites together.

To minimize the financial impact of their shopping, Greenwald and Fitzpatrick typically flock to the sale sections of Old Navy and H&M. “We try to ball on a budget,” Greenwald said.

Junior Rebecca Hirschhorn said that quarantine has also affected her shopping habits, leading her to buy

Rebecca Hirschhorn holding her first stuffed animal.

Courtesy Rebecca Hirschhorn

extra sets of dice for the fantasy board game Dungeons & Dragons that she “doesn’t need.”

Hirschhorn, who transferred to Emerson in Fall 2019, said that because the pandemic stunted the ability to form new friendships and

YouTuber David Dobrik’s kingdom of bullying Kaitlyn Fehr Beacon Staff

CONTENT WARNING: This column contains mentions of racism, ableism, and sexual assault.

Over the past couple of years, the YouTube community has seen the rise and fall of many internet giants on the platform. From Shane Dawson, Jeffree Star, James Charles, and the Paul Brothers, massive creators have lost thousands of fans after being exposed for horrendous acts. But almost no one expected David Dobrik, the unofficial King of YouTube, to be the next one canceled.

Dobrik joined YouTube in 2015, much later than some of the creators listed above. Similarly to them, Dobrik filmed vlog-style content that let people into his personal life and made them feel like they were a part of his infamous friend group, the “Vlog Squad.”

His videos were short, filled with pranks, and easy to consume. Needless to say, he quickly amassed a large following and many lucrative sponsorships. Some of his following came from his previous use of the now-defunct app Vine, but he has definitely grown a separate audience from Vine.

As of Feb. 2020, Dobrik had more than 15 million followers and a net worth of over $7 million. He became popular enough to collaborate with multiple celebrities, including Josh Peck—a frequent guest in the vlogs— Justin Bieber, Kylie Jenner, and even Jennifer Lopez.

Dobrik’s prank-style videos outlasted the era of actual prank YouTubers like BFvsGF and Sam Pepper, and with his level of celebrity, it seemed as if he was almost untouchable.

The first hint of controversy surfaced in 2017 when Dobrik posted a vlog featuring a member of the Vlog Squad dressed up in Native American apparel while making insensitive jokes.

The vlog also featured two of his friends wearing blackface. Dobrik’s audience spoke out against the racism, and he responded in his next vlog by saying, “I’m sorry if you were offended.”

The second hint of rumblings came in 2019 after a member of the Vlog Squad and Dobrik’s friend, Jason Nash, broke up with YouTuber Trisha Paytas,

YouTuber and former Viner David Dobrik.

a relationship that sparked drama in the group.

In a now-deleted video, Paytas discusses how a running joke about Nash wanting a threesome with fellow YouTuber Tana Mongeau made her uncomfortable, and despite knowing that, Dobrik “provokes people for vlogs.”

Paytas mentions that she doesn’t want to get into every “horrible, evil thing that David has ever done.”

The comments on a re-uploaded version of Paytas’ video are generally negative towards her, claiming that she only spoke out against the Vlog Squad and Dobrik because she was mad about the breakup. Until now, Paytas’ claims about Dobrik largely went ignored.

In summer 2020, Dobrik seemingly began to sense the trouble coming for him, deleted the offensive 2017 vlog, and apologized—vaguely, by saying he, “missed the mark” on some of his past videos—on his podcast for his past racism.

It’s likely that Dobrik didn’t do this because he wanted to, but rather because Seth Francois, a Black man and former member of the Vlog Squad, posted a video a month earlier highlighting clips from when the Vlog Squad has been racist. Francois explained why he compiled the video, saying, “I’m sorry for not speaking up and staying this stuff is wrong. If we can’t be accountable for the stuff we create... then we will never make any progress.” Francois included all of the clips from vlogs that he felt

were offensive in an effort to educate his audience.

None of these former incidents garnered much media attention even though they should have. Dobrik was a god, and the YouTube community was willing to ignore his sins.

In early 2021, Paytas brought up Dobrik again on episode 18 of her podcast, Frenemies, with fellow YouTube personality Ethan Klein of the H3 podcast.

While the pair doesn’t delve too far into the entire situation, Paytas makes her distaste for Dobrik clear and tells Klein about the entire Tana Mongeau situation. Klein states, “You can’t play with people’s lives for your fucking vlog,” and with that came the beginning of the end of David Dobrik’s career.

As a direct result of this conversation, Klein brought former Vlog Squad member Nik Keswani, better known as BigNik, onto his podcast, H3 After Dark. Keswani was born with dwarfism and is blind in his left eye. Throughout many different vlogs, Dobrik mocked Keswani’s height in his jokes. Keswani admitted that it genuinely hurt his feelings and negatively impacted his mental health. In 2018, Kewswani left the Vlog Squad due to the group’s ableism and bullying.

Then, in Feb. 2021, Francois joined Klein on his podcast to talk about how Jason Nash sexually assaulted him directly under the instructions of David Dobrik—and uploaded the footage to his channel as part of a vlog.

participate in events on campus, she’s started to talk on the phone more often.

“I always probably talked on the phone more than the average person in my age group, but now I probably call a friend every day,” Hirschhorn said. “I just need to hear a human voice. Texting someone is just not the same.”

During the fall, Hirschhorn needed something to do with her hands while binge watching sitcoms on Netflix and Dungeons & Dragons live play shows.

Having known how to sew since childhood, Hirschhorn began hand making stuffed animals, specifically frogs or pink rabbits. She used dozens of paper bags she’s accrued since the start of the fall semester to design patterns for her stuffed animals.

Since making her first stuffed rabbit in October, Hirschhorn has sold several stuffed animals to other Boston area students for $20 each through her Instagram account, @sketchbeckpages.

Due to the lack of fabric stores in Boston, Hirschhorn said she has resorted to buying sewing and art supplies online. Quarantining in her dorm room has prompted her to start various other crafting projects, including book binding and embroidery.

An excess of spare time in quarantine also led sophomore Ryan Rosenthal to take up new hobbies. Rosenthal used the extra time to teach himself music theory composition, an interest he’s had for a while, to help improve melody and harmony techniques for musicians.

Along with building on his music abilities, over the summer, Rosenthal In a since-unlisted video, Dobrik tells Francois, 23, to sit on a couch and close his eyes under the assumption that he’s going to kiss Vlog Squad member Corinna Kopf. Instead, Nash, 45, dons a scary grandma mask and kisses Francois. Francois didn’t consent to kissing Nash and is visibly disturbed in the video when he realizes what just happened to him.

In the interview, Francois admits just how traumatized he was by the incident and how it took him a long time to realize what Nash and Dobrik did to him was sexual assault. Francois asked Dobrik to take the video down multiple times, but instead, Dobrik unlisted it, meaning anyone who has the link can still watch the video.

Dobrik and Nash talked about the “prank” on their podcast, claiming it was the best prank they’ve ever pulled.

The pair acknowledged that Francois is from Compton, and Nash states, “As Seth tells it, homosexuality is not so accepted where he comes from. Dudes kissing dudes is not so accepted—at least straight dudes kissing straight dudes.” They also state that there is no way a reaction as “good” as Francois’ in the video could have been faked.

A recent Insider article also revealed that former Vlog Squad member Dominykas Zeglaitis, better known as Durte Dom, sexually assaulted a young woman in 2018 after getting her blackout drunk. This incident happened in Dobrik’s house while he was present, and he used the footage from that night that included the victim’s face in a vlog.

While Dobrik didn’t sexually assault the girl himself, it seems that he all but stamped his approval.

As a result of the backlash, Dobrik uploaded a two-minute video last week titled “Let’s Talk” to his podcast channel, which has less than a quarter of the subscribers of his main channel. The title is incredibly ironic when you realize he disabled comments and likes/ dislikes for the video, effectively destroying any chance of a conversation.

In the video, Dobrik gives a vague apology, stating that “consent is something that’s super super important to [him].” He also mentions that all he has ever wanted to do is make people happy, and that he’s “been disappointed by some of [his] friends” and their actions.

Six days later, Dobrik uploaded another apology to his main channel where he addressed how bad his previous apology was and how he never

First prototype of Hirschhorn’s stuffed frog Courtesy Rebecca Hirschhorn

and his dad started to play chess together as a way to cope with the dullness of quarantine.

“We were very bored in the house and sort of looking for stuff to do,” Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal, who has continued to practice the game during the school year, said his chess skills have improved significantly since the summer.

Since returning to campus, Rosenthal exclusively plays games online since he left his physical board at home.

“I wanted to win so I started getting more into it,” Rosenthal said. “It’s my main procrastinating tool; it’s so dangerous.”

Despite the inconvenience of the pandemic, it’s clear that this extra time had its advantages. With vaccinations being distributed across the country, it’s unlikely that students would have had another chance to pursue their hobbies otherwise. juliet_norman@emerson.edu should have ignored the allegations against Zeglaitis. This time, Dobrik left comments on, and they seem mostly convinced that he only apologized as a result of losing sponsorships.

The public outcry has led to Dobrik losing multiple sponsors, ranging from DoorDash to Amazon giant Audible, a frequent sponsor of YouTubers. One of Dobrik’s main sponsors is SeatGeek, and after the brand came under fire on social media for not yet ending its partnership with him, they announced they would not be working with him in the future.

But what does all of this mean for YouTube? I’ve been an internet gremlin for over a decade now, and I’ve seen the rise and fall of dozens of YouTubers. Hell, I once, as a minor, hugged a creator named VeeOneEye who later turned out to be a self-admitted statutory rapist.

As an audience, we have a tendency to forget that YouTubers aren’t our friends. In the early days of YouTube, we saw inside creators’ lives and felt like we welcomed them into ours, and those parasocial relationships became normal and almost expected. Dobrik was essentially the last of those creators, even though he came to the platform later. Almost all of the early, welcomeyou-into-my-life style YouTubers have fallen off or changed their content, leaving Dobrik as the last man standing.

Dobrik serves as a reminder that the audience sees only a tiny fraction of what a creator’s life is really, truly like.

We have no idea who they are in reality.

For many of these creators, the adoration of their fans and the power they have over them seems to make them feel invincible. They have more access to their fans than traditional celebrities might, and they have a parasocial relationship with their viewers that makes the audience trust them by default.

Dobrik is the perfect example of why creators should not be glorified simply because of the size of their following, or the surface level content they create.

The cancellation of David Dobrik marks the end of the period in time where an audience could trust a creator just because they get glimpses of their daily life. Moving forward, the YouTuber-audience relationship needs to be reworked into something that can’t be exploited and corrupted by power-drunk content creators. kaitlyn_fehr@emerson.edu

Sports

The Berkeley Beacon

March 25, 2021

8

Emerson women’s lacrosse falls to Coast Guard 17-9 Dylan Rossiter Beacon Staff

Quinton Copeland steps up to bat in 2020. / Courtesy Emerson Athletics

Emerson baseball stumbles in opening doubleheader Joey DuBois Beacon Staff

Emerson’s baseball team fell to Wheaton 10-3 and 25-5 in their season-opening doubleheader on Saturday.

The outing was the team’s first since the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the remainder of the 2020 season.

While the final scores paint a one-sided picture, head coach Nicholas Vennochi saw plenty of positives.

“I think we stayed together, stayed positive,” Vennochi said in a virtual press conference. “It’s easy to put your head down and say, ‘Yeah that’s tough’, but I thought we stayed up all the way through and we battled and no one gave up.”

Sophomore AJ Ortega started the first game, pitching 3.2 innings and giving up two earned runs. Vennochi was impressed by Ortega’s performance against a formidable opponent.

“He did everything we could’ve asked him to do today,” Venocchi said.

The Lions fell behind 2-0 in the top of the fourth after RBI singles from Wheaton’s Andrew Manni and Stephen Quigley. Wheaton’s lead extended to 4-0 in the top of the sixth on runs from Patrick Santorella and Brody Ashley.

In the bottom half of the frame, Emerson’s Josh Cohen and Matt Nachamie reached base when Thai Morgan stepped into the batter’s box. Morgan delivered a three-run home run to left field and the Lions found themselves within striking distance at 4-3.

Wheaton pulled away down the stretch as baserunners piled up and con-

The women’s lacrosse team lost its opening game of the season Saturday, falling to Coast Guard 17-9 at Rotch Field.

Senior midfielder Kelli Mark and first-year attacker Lauren Longstreet led the Lions in scoring, contributing three goals each.

Longstreet opened up the content with two quick goals to give Emerson its first and only lead.

“She really set the tone, and especially coming from a first-year, I think it makes everyone want to

play at a higher level,” head coach Jessie Koffman said after the game. “She had an amazing first game as a first-year, coming out really not intimidated.”

Coast Guard quickly returned fire, scoring five goals before Mark added a tally with 3:34 remaining in the first half.

The Bears added two additional goals for a 7-3 halftime lead.

Mark, along with junior midfielder Julia Mallon combined for three unanswered goals to start the second half before Coast Guard responded with a goal to make it

a two-goal contest. The Hermosa Beach, Calif native, and Longstreet responded with a pair of goals tieing the game with 19:30 remaining. Coast Guard followed up with a momentum-shifting 6-0 run over the next 15 minutes.

Sophomore midfielder Ainsley Basic netted the final Emerson goal before the Bares added two goals to their lead with under two minutes left on the clock.

Emerson will next travel to take on Wheaton at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 27. dylan_rossiter@emerson.edu

tinued to come around to score. Vennochi said he was proud his team kept it close for the majority of the game.

“If you were there, you could feel the intensity,” Venocchi said. “They felt us.

Respect was earned in that first game.”

In the second game of the day, Wheaton got off to a sizable advantage. The Lyons nabbed a 5-0 lead on Emerson northpaw Johnny Maffei in the first inning and never looked back. The lead expanded to 13-0 in the third.

“That’s a real solid opponent, I think it’s pretty clear that they are because of how many [runs] they put up in that second game,” Venocchi said.

Emerson’s lineup came alive in the third inning with an RBI single from outfielder Quinton Copeland. The next inning, Louis Davolio hit a solo home run deep to center field. Then in the sixth inning, Jake Okamoto picked up an RBI when he was hit by a pitch, and Jake Hatch followed that up with a 2-RBI single.

Even though Emerson was competitive, Vennochi still wants to see more progress from his team.

“We’re not into moral victories here because that’s not where we’re at as a program, but when you don’t execute, that’s what happens, and we didn’t execute all the way through,” Vennochi said.

The Lions have another home doubleheader next weekend as they take on Coast Guard on Saturday, March 27, at 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. joseph_dubois@emerson.edu

Senior Kelli Mark (center) is one of four captains for the Lions in the 2021 season. / Courtesy Emerson Athletics

25 Emerson athletes awarded spots on NEWMAC Academic All-Conference teams Joey DuBois Beacon Staff The New England Men’s and Women’s Athletic Conference Academic All-Conference Team for each fall sport was full of Emerson Lions, as 25 student-athletes were recognized for their achievements in the classroom earlier this month.

Emerson was represented by four members of the women’s volleyball team, eight members of the women’s soccer team, nine members of the men’s soccer team, and four members of the women’s cross country team.

Each student-athlete was chosen for earning a minimum GPA of 3.5, being at least a second-year athlete at Emerson, and playing on their respective team for the whole semester.

Senior women’s volleyball outside hitter Grace Tepper knew she was going to be asked to be more than just a volleyball player when she came to Emerson. At Emerson, the idea of a “student-athlete” is emphasized from the recruiting process until gradua-

tion.

“Emerson is an expensive school, so I wanted a good academic program, to be able to afford it, and to play some good volleyball,” Tepper said in a phone interview.

As a Division III school, Emerson is unable to offer athletic scholarships, nor does it have much leeway in getting students through the admissions process solely on an athletic basis. Academics are the key aspect of getting any student-athlete into the college, Athletic Director Patricia Nicol said.

“I feel Division III and Emerson, we really epitomize and value the term ‘student-athlete,’” Nicol said in a phone interview. “We recruit student-athletes that are going to be successful academically as well as athletically.”

The college is also well-known outside of athletics for its focused curriculum, as it has been ranked as the No. 3 best communications college in the country and the No. 5 best film college in the country by College Gazette. According to head men’s

soccer coach Bryan Harkin, most students attend Emerson for a specific major or program that is offered, which can potentially lead to missing out on some student-athletes. However, Harkin also sees the other side of that coin.

“The type of school Emerson is, they gotta want exactly what we have,” Harkin said in a phone interview. “So what I find is because we’re so niche, the type of student that we attract to Emerson really wants to be here, and they really want to do the type of degree that Emerson offers.”

Head men’s and women’s volleyball coach Ben Read echoed the importance of academics when recruiting.

“If you’re a good student, admissions is going to want you, and you’re more likely to get an academic scholarship,” Read said in a phone interview. “We all know that Emerson doesn’t exactly give the best financial aid, so earning an academic scholarship kind of helps fill the void of what people need.”

The attention coaches and adminis-

trators place on academics is not lost on the student-athletes. Sophomore women’s soccer and lacrosse player Hannah Beck explained that coaches are more than willing to help athletes if they need academic help during the season.

“They are very understanding and understand that academics come first at Emerson,” Beck said in a phone interview. “They make it really easy to value your academics.”

Sophomore men’s soccer defender Aidan Ferguson said student-athletes have faced trying times this year along with the rest of the Emerson community, dealing with the uncertainty of practices and when they will be able to resume normal competition. Ferguson said he is proud of his teammates for succeeding academically while dealing with other distractions.

“It just shows we have a group of hard working guys who are going to be persistent, even during COVID,” Ferguson said in a phone interview.

While Nicol is proud of seeing so many athletes recognized for their academic achievements, she said she is

not necessarily surprised.

“The skill set they acquire as student-athletes, they’re very good with time management, very good at prioritizing their tasks, and our coaches understand that and support that,” Nicol said. “It’s a team effort. The faculty is wonderful, student support is wonderful. We’re just very proud because I know how much the athletes have on their plate, and they really come through.”

Head men’s and women’s cross country coach Brandon Fox said he appreciates the dedication his athletes display day in and day out, both when they’re running and in the classroom.

“It really is no surprise at all,” Fox said in a phone interview. “This group of girls, in particular, they go above and beyond what’s asked of them. It’s not uncommon for them to be talking about what they’re working on outside of practice and running. I’m a lucky coach to be able to have them on the team.” joseph_dubois@emerson.edu