Marlboro Special Section

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Thursday November 14, 2019 • Volume 73, Issue 11

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

Marlboro Town Meeting addresses plans for merger Jacob Seitz, Beacon Staff MARLBORO, Vt.—Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley informed his community members Wednesday that it is not up to them to decide the fate of the campus— directly addressing concerns students raised about the future of the small liberal arts school on Potash Hill.

“I want to be really clear with the community: This is a decision that is going to be made by the Board of Trustees,” Quigley said at a Marlboro Town Meeting. “This is their decision. This is not a community decision.”

The decision made by the Marlboro Board of Trustees must then be approved by the Emerson Board of Trustees.

The meeting follows the announcement last week of a proposed merger between Emerson and Marlboro where the Vermont institution will donate its $30 million endowment and $10 million worth of real estate to the Boston school. The deal is in its early stages with many pressing questions left unanswered.

Town Meeting is a weekly forum of the Marlboro campus and the surrounding townspeople, where the community makes recommendations to the college through Selectboard, a group of Marlboro students and faculty who get elected to lead the meeting.

Town Meeting Clerk Felix Bieneman, a junior at Marlboro, said Town Meeting started because Marlboro did not originally have staff. Instead, the faculty all had administrative roles and voted on college-wide decisions in Town Meeting.

To receive accreditation and federal aid, the college created a staff, which now takes recommendations from Town Meeting and attempts to act on them.

The meeting then went to their scheduled agenda, which included a transition update from Quigley. The update included an announcement that several senior administrators including President M. Lee Pelton from Emerson would be on the Marlboro campus Nov. 20 to attend Town Meeting and do a campus visit.

See town meeting, page 6

“There’s such a wide range of emotions—excitement, despair, fear—[and] I just want to acknowledge that those are all valid.”

-Charlie Hickman

Head Selectperson Charlie Hickman (center left) addresses the Town Meeting Wednesday.

Lizzie Heintz / Beacon Staff

State primed to ban flavored tobacco and vaping products

Bright Lights screens controversial film ‘Adam’

Max Carter, Beacon Correspondent

Taina Millsap, Beacon Staff Emerson College screened Adam at the Nov. 12 Bright Lights Film Festival—students attended to watch and criticize the film on its allegedly inaccurate portrayal of the LGBTQ community. “[The author] wrote this for herself, it was her own personal project, and she was way too defensive, she was not open to criticism,” junior Kyle Eber said in an interview after attending the screening. “He was like, ‘Adam is similar to my friends, and I don’t feel like Adam is a satirical character,’ and the satirical characters are the queer people, and I’m like, ‘Oh, honey, you have a lot of internalized homophobia and transphobia to work through.’”

When the 2019 comedy film Adam premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January, it immediately drew negative attention from the LGBTQ community. Many queer people criticized the film for being homophobic and transphobic, with many calling for bans on the film with petitions.

See ‘Adam’, page 4

Lions swept in conference championship

By Lara Hill • p. 12

Grace Tepper (left, No. 21) jumps up for a kill in the quarterfinal matchup against MIT. Cho Yin Rachel Lo / Beacon Staff

INSIDE THIS EDITION

International news is worthy of our students’ attention.. Pg. 9

The Beacon online

A24 at Emerson organizes advance screening of ‘Waves’. Pg. 5

berkeleybeacon

BEACON HILL—The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday banning the sale of all flavored tobacco and vaping products in the Commonwealth.

The legislation, introduced by Rep. Danielle Gregoire in January, expands existing bans on flavored tobacco to encompass flavored vaping products and closes a loophole that exempted the sale of menthol-flavored tobacco products.

The bill, which passed on a vote of 126-31, also introduces a sales tax on vaping devices, whether they’re single-use or reloadable. If the Senate concurs with the House, Gov. Charlie Baker will have to sign it into law before the ban takes effect.

Baker recently placed a four-month ban on all vaping product sales in the state in response to a number of related health issues across the nation. His executive order will expire in December, and proponents on both sides of the issue are battling it out in this new wave of legislation aimed at dealing with the public health crisis.

See tobacco, page 2

Berkeley Beacon

The Berkeley Beacon

@BeaconUpdate

The Berkeley Beacon

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The Berkeley Beacon

November 14, 2019

2

Professor Michael Brown reflects on 49 years at Emer-

Faith Bugenhagen Beacon Staff

world were just uneducated people, I had to grow up and meet well-educated bigots to find A sign reading “if you think education is out that that was not the case,” he said. expensive, try ignorance” hangs in the office Brown filed a lawsuit against Emerson in of Michael Brown—the first professor of color 1977, and won the legal battle two years after to receive tenure in Emerson’s 139-year history becoming the first professor of color at the and the longest-serving professor at the college. college to receive tenure.

Arriving from Washington D.C. to attend “The year I officially got tenured, 1979, there undergrad at Northeastern University in Boston, were eight full-time black faculty at the college, he had not anticipated teaching at Emerson, but so I said [to myself] that this was fine, that this was offered a job after he graduated in 1970. is not a bigoted racist institution,” Brown said.

Brown took the position at Emerson while he Brown filed a lawsuit for the second time figured out his next career move. when the college attempted to fire him several “I thought I would be there [at Emerson] for years later. The department claimed Brown two, three, or four was not focusing years to figure out or prioritizing the what I was going to classes he was do,” Brown said. teaching because “In a sense, what my 49 Brown enrolled he was practicing in law school at law full-time years have meant to me, is Suffolk University while teaching, that I have outlasted all the after becoming a even though many full-time professor, teachers did the bastards.” impassioned by a same.

-Michael Brown concern for civil Brown said rights and social he acknowledges justice.

While that he can be completing law outspoken. He said school, he applied for tenure at Emerson he feels passionate about speaking his mind and although professors are required to have a Ph.D. fighting against what he believes is wrong. to qualify for the position. He asked the dean of “I have had difficulty with administrators admissions at the time to accept his J.D. instead and presidents, not because I did anything of the doctorate he did not have. The dean wrong, but because I said what was on my agreed this would be acceptable. mind,” Brown said.

Brown said he expected the process to go This persistence has given him the ability smoothly; however, the college hired a new to endure at Emerson and create a legacy as a academic dean who decided a law degree was professor at the college. not acceptable for applying to become a tenured “In a sense, what my 49 years have meant professor. to me, is that I have outlasted all the bastards,” “When it came to applying for tenure, the old Brown said with a smirk. academic dean was gone and the new academic Throughout these years, Brown witnessed dean and I did not get along,” he said. “They the lengthy process of the campus relocation. sent me a letter saying the J.D. was not an Emerson was originally located between acceptable degree.”

Marlborough and Beacon Street, before finding Brown said he was frustrated, knowing a home on Boylston. that he had received approval, and confused Brown said he believes that Emerson has as to why the academic dean wouldn’t grant reached new heights at the college’s new home him tenure. He did not see the school as and has the room to grow further and exceed the discriminatory or racist at the time, but the lack expectations that have been set for the college. of professors of color with tenure seemed odd “It’s really like [Emerson] has grown up, and unjust to Brown. This led him to believe his become professional, raised our national profile race was a factor in the college’s decision. in so many ways, and there’s no single person “Growing up, I thought that the bigots of the and no single event that did that,” Brown said.

Michael Brown filed a lawsuit against the college when they refused to grant him tenure in 1977.

Lizzie Heintz / Beacon Staff He stresses to students who attended Emerson at its previous location, to attend alumni events to see the differences between the new and old campus.

“I am always encouraging students to come back to alumni weekend, especially the students from the old campus, because they won’t believe what the college has become since they’ve been here,” Brown said.

Brown has been around for these changes, changes within the culture of the student body and the experience of the student body, but has always recognized the values of the community

Emerson has constructed.

“They still, for the most part, are the same people. They are independent, intelligent, creative, and irreverent,” he said.

Editor-in-Chief Chris Van Buskirk, Copy Managing Editor Abigail Hadfield, and Deputy Express Editor Tomas Gonzalez did not edit this article because they are currently enrolled in classes with Brown. faith_bugenhagen@emerson.edu

House moves flavored tobacco, vaping ban one step closer to reality Continued from page 1 If the Senate concurs with the House, Baker will have to sign it into law before the ban takes effect.

The House session convened in the wake of a slew of protests and rallies in the past few weeks arguing both sides of the bill.

Opponents, including the Boston Convenience Store Owners Association and the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association, reported over 100 members at a protest against the ban on Nov. 6.

NECSEMA argued that the ban will hurt small business owners and is an infringement on adults’ ability to make their own decisions.

Executive Director Jon Shaer said he hopes that legislators will find effective ways to regulate products without a ban.

“There is no question there’s a youth vaping problem, and there’s no question flavors drive youth appeal, but prohibition doesn’t work,” Shaer said in a phone interview.

The House session opened with proponents for and against the bill measuring the impact of the legislation.

Representatives opposed to the ban spoke about the financial risks disproportionately hurting small businesses in cities and towns close to the New Hampshire border. They argued that the prohibition of sales in Massachusetts would increase the number of people already crossing the border to purchase untaxed cigarettes. Rep. Susannah Whipps added that people who go to New Hampshire for their cigarettes might also pick up alcohol and fill up their tank on the way home.

“There is going to be a loss of revenue with this bill being passed,” Rep. Bradford Hill, the assistant House minority leader, said. “What would we lose? What will we gain? We need that information.”

Of 15 amendments introduced, four passed.

The first diverts 30 percent of the revenues from sales tax on vaping products to a trust fund set up to combat substance abuse. Two others restrict the exempted sale and use of flavored tobacco to licensed establishments like hookah bars and block EBT from being used to buy vape products. The final amendment changes the nicotine limit allowed in products.

Dozens of students from the Boston area convened at the State House Tuesday in support of the bill. The students recounted the rising statistics of a new wave of nicotine-addicted teenagers falling victim to colorful advertising, ease of access, and lack of education among teachers and parents.

“Our generation was targeted by an industry that doesn’t care about us, but we, standing here today, care about who’s coming next,” Sarah Ryan, a Boston College student, said during the rally.

Sen. John Keenan, who introduced similar legislation in the senate, learned about the trend from his children who told him about the rapidly growing popularity of vaping in schools. He called out the vaping industry for preying on kids who don’t understand the health risks of their products.

“We know, from talking to young people and from science that’s out there, that flavors are used to target young people,” Keenan said in an interview. “So if we can ban flavors across the board for cigarettes and e-cigarettes, we will prevent the industry from targeting the next generation,” Students and teachers from John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science showed up at the rally Tuesday in support of the ban.

Jamiyah Reed said she got involved in pushing the legislation because she feels African Americans were specifically targeted by the menthol exemption.

“Menthol products, the way that they’re advertised, they’re advertised to be targeted

The bill will ban the sale of all flavored tobacco and vaping products in the Commonwealth.

Lizzie Heintz / Beacon Staff towards the black community, especially teenagers,” Reed said. “So that’s why I support [the bill].”

According to representatives of the Cancer Action Network and the American Heart Association, the majority of youths smoking cigarettes is smoking menthols. They pointed out that physicians see that number rising since Governor Baker’s vape ban came into place.

“We’ve been trying to get the governor, and he has been very receptive, to look at the

targeting of young people, the targeting of a generation,” Keenan, who is hopeful they get the ban passed soon, said. “The governor’s always stood up for kids, so we hope, we trust, and we expect he will stand with kids now.”

maxwell_carter@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

November 14, 2019

News

3

ECPD looks to increase gender diversity, attract more candidates Diana Bravo, Beacon Staff The Emerson College Police Department plans to increase its gender diversity by expanding advertisement and using the college’s Human Resources Department to attract more people to the force this semester.

ECPD currently has one female officer, Talisha Casmir-Morris, who started working at the college in 2018. The department offered a position to another female candidate during the fall 2019 semester. The candidate turned the offer down.

Casmir-Morris declined to speak to The Beacon.

ECPD receives a much higher volume of male applicants than female applicants, ECPD Chief Robert Smith said. Since the department doesn’t have the time to interview all applicants, they would typically only meet with the most experienced individuals.

“We do want to have more female officers and, when we start interviewing for the anticipated openings, we will interview all of the female applicants that meet the minimum qualifications,” Smith said in an interview.

Smith said women tend to make up between

12 and 14 percent of applicants to law college expects on-campus officers to have enforcement positions nationwide. In 2017, a experience dealing with homeless individuals Politico article placed the number at 15 percent. and drug-related incidents, according to Smith.

As a small college police department competing Applicants also need to be comfortable with with other local schools, ECPD receives fewer computers and technology because most crimes female applicants than the national average. that impact students, such as telephone scams, About 7 to 9 percent of applications to the occur remotely.

Vice President and General Counsel Christine department come from women, according to Hughes said that Smith. hiring more female ECPD posts job officers could help listings on several platforms including “[Casmir-Morris] was head more students feel comfortable talking the Massachusetts and shoulders above the other to ECPD. Women in Law “I think in an Enforcement candidates when we hired her, institution that is website, which is an organization run by and that’s why we hired her.” majority female, when any student is women for women -Robert Smith in crisis, they want in law enforcement. to feel comfortable Smith said ECPD talking to the person also plans to meet who is trying to help with Emerson’s Human Resources Department to discuss them,” Hughes said. “I think our male officers how to attract more female applicants moving try very, very hard to be compassionate, but I know that our students and some of them will forward.

ECPD has more difficulty attracting naturally be more comfortable if they could tell qualified candidates in general because the their troubles to a female officer.”

Hughes mentioned that, in the 15 years she’s worked at the college, ECPD employed three female officers, including a sergeant.

Hughes and Smith both emphasized that when ECPD offers a position to anyone, regardless of gender, it is because they are the most qualified for that position.

“When we hire female officers, they are the best candidates available,” Smith said. “[Casmir-Morris] was head and shoulders above the other candidates when we hired her, and that’s why we hired her.”

Samantha Ivery, the Social Justice Center’s director for diversity and equity initiative, said the SJC is not involved in the hiring process for ECPD. “We are available to work with any office or department that asks us with regard to job description development, recruitment, hiring, training, and welcoming,” Ivery said in an interview.

diana_bravo@emerson.edu

College fails to meet city financial contribution goals for eighth straight year Charles McKenna, Beacon Correspondent Emerson College failed to meet Boston’s requested contribution to a program in 2019— the eighth straight year in a row.

The college paid just 57 percent of the 1.9 million the city requested of the college in 2019 as part of their participation in the Payment in Lieu of Taxes program, according to a report released by the city in August 2019. The program, which began in 2012, requests financial assistance for the city from institutions that own more than $15 million in tax-exempt property. In 2019, the college’s taxexempt property is valued at over $250 million, according to the report.

The city asks that participating institutions pay 25 percent of what they would owe if their properties were not tax-exempt. This number can be reduced by up to 50 percent by making contributions to community programs.

Since the PILOT program began, Harvard University, Boston University, Boston College, and Suffolk University have also missed the suggested donation every year.

A total of 47 Boston institutions participate in the program, including 21 schools, 16 medical institutions, and 10 cultural institutions, including museums.

Vice President of Government and Community Relations Peggy Ings said the college gave the city almost double the amount the program requested through other contributions beyond PILOT. In total, the college paid the city over $2 million last year, including the $141,591 they contributed via PILOT. Much of this cost comes from Rotch Field, which costs the college a quarter of a million dollars annually to maintain, according to Ings.

In July 2018, the field received new turf as well asand an updated lighting system. The college and the city share ownership of Rotch Field, but Emerson is responsible for management and upkeep of the field.

“I think if you look at the structure and how we have come to the plate and paid double what they’re looking for and doing the other service piece, it’s a remarkable example of what Emerson gives back to the city,” Ings said.

Boston resident Edin Eckstein is a member of the PILOT action group, an activist group that lobbies institutions in the area for greater participation in the program. Eckstein said increased participation from local institutions

The college paid the city over $2 million last year, including $141,591 they contributed via PILOT, according to Peggy Ings.

Matthew Barrett / Beacon Correspondent could help the city invest in solving some of the other issues it faces.

“Boston is really going through some incredible transformation, and we’re definitely suffering with major crises in our city in terms of housing and economic inequality,” Eckstein said in a phone interview. “We believe that these institutions want to be citizens of the city. They benefit from being in this very large, diverse city with incredible resources and therefore they should be paying their fair share for being in the city.”

Emerson contributes close to the same amount every year, $141,591—the amount only varied by $100 compared to previous years. Ings said that this is a set number the administration decided on in 2011 and that there

are no plans to change it.

The college releases a biannual report detailing the community benefits it has contributed to through the PILOT program.

Emerson released the 2017–18 report in July of this year. These benefits include the Emerson Prison Initiative, which provides college courses to people who are incarcerated in Massachusetts, and a documentary entitled “Piano Row: Cycles of History.” The college’s Media Technologies and Production Department created the documentary in conjunction with the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Director of Strategic Partnerships Casey Brock-Wilson wrote in an emailed statement to The Beacon that the city of Boston is pleased with the results of the program. The

results are difficult to discern since the city does not detail what it does with the money from PILOT. According to the city assessor’s office, participating institutions submitted $154.8 billion worth of community benefits, which has funded scholarships and grants for Boston residents and legal representation for underprivileged citizens.

“Boston has one of the most successful PILOT programs in the country,” Brock-Wilson said. “We’ll continue to work with our partners to grow this program going forward, working to 100-percent compliance.”

charles_mckenna@emerson.edu

Incident Journal: Ansin graffiti, trespasser in Walker The Emerson College Police Department provides the Incident Journal to The Beacon every week. Beacon staff edit the Incident Journal for style and clarity but not for content.

Tuesday, Nov. 5 A staff person from the Office of Housing and Residential Education confiscated drug paraphernalia taken from a student suite in 2

Boylston Place.

Wednesday, Nov. 6 An officer found graffiti writing inside a bathroom on the first floor of the Ansin Building.

The officer notified Facilities Management to remove the writing.

Friday, Nov. 8

ECPD found additional graffiti in the same first floor bathroom in the Ansin Building. The vandalism did not seem to be related to the graffiti found two days earlier.

ECPD was notified of alcohol found inside the Cabaret. ECPD confiscated a six-pack of beer and two bottles of wine from the Cabaret.

It turned out the beer and wine were used as a

prop for a stage performance.

ECPD officers responded to the third floor of the Walker Building for a person sleeping.

An investigation revealed that the person wandered into the building after attending a concert. ECPD officers interviewed the person and escorted them off the campus as they had no college affiliation.

Living Arts

The Berkeley Beacon

November 14, 2019

4

Emerson sends hundreds of socks across country for fundraising campaign Katiana Hoefle, Beacon Staff Over 400 purple socks featuring the Emerson logo and Boston skyline traveled across the world to reach donors for Tight Knit: The Emerson Sock Campaign—an initiative created to increase alumni participation in fundraising for the college.

Every individual that donates to Tight Knit: The Emerson Sock Campaign receives a pair of socks for their contribution. Jilian Naimo and Sasha Castroverde, associate directors of the Office of Institutional Advancement, created the event. The donations are alloted to any Emerson academic program or student scholarship fund the donor chooses, according to Emerson’s website.

Tight Knit ran from Oct. 28 to Nov. 4, raising a total of $17,979 through 434 donors, double its intended goal of 200 donors. Alumni made up 49 percent of donations. 23 percent of remaining donations came from parents, 16 percent came from faculty and staff, and seven percent came from students.

“We would love to turn this into an annual thing,” Naimo said. “But with different socks each year for everyone to vote on.”

Sock Club, a sock manufacturing company located in Austin, Texas, designed two socks for the campaign that the Emerson community voted on via Facebook and Instagram. The other option was a purple argyle sock.

“We got a lot of really positive reactions in engagement,” said Jenny Woodford

‘13, Assistant Director of Alumni Digital Engagement, who organized the social media posts to promote the campaign. “We had people sending us pictures even after the campaign of themselves with their socks on Twitter which is really cool. A lot of positive encouragement and feedback.”

While the Office of Institutional Advancement creates various donation projects every year, this was their first giftgiving campaign.

Naimo said the office decided on this type of donation initiative after researching campaigns at other schools and seeking what engaged people most.

“We see other schools hook up something similar to this, we added an Emerson twist, but we thought that it would be something fun to do,” Naimo said in an interview. “The Emerson twist was the sock design and getting people involved in the voting process and the email process.”

The Office of Institutional Advancement

worked with various departments at the college and community members, including staff, students, alumni, and faculty, to promote the campaign. In order to create a promotional video for the campaign, the office worked with Emerson Productions, the video production department for Emerson College.

Sophomore S u r y a Sundararajan modeled for the video along with eight other students.

“They just asked me to put on purple socks, and then I got in front of a yellow background and just danced around,” Sundararajan said in an interview. “It was fun!”

The campaign donation page allowed donors to become advocates for their cause of choice by sharing the page on social media or sending it to their friends with the hashtag #EmersonisTIGHTKNIT. Donors could also create their own videos or “personal pleas,” explaining why they chose to donate.

“I have this premonition that there is someone

“We thought that it would be something fun to do. The Emerson twist was the sock design and getting people involved in the voting process and the email process.”

- Jilian Naimo

out there, or maybe currently at Emerson, who would remind me so much of myself that it would freak me out a little who deserves to have the best possible experience at Emerson,” Alumni Engagement Assistant Kayla Carcone ‘19 said in her personal plea video. “It’s just the act of paying it forward to that person and those people that emboldens me to give.”

Naimo said the campaign specifically targeted alumni because higher-education reports use alumni participation to determine the school’s ranking compared to other universities.

“Publications like the U.S. News & World Report use alumni philanthropy as a factor to rank Emerson among other colleges and universities within the country, which has an impact in determining the strength of your degree,” the Office of Institutional Advancement’s home page reads. “Foundations and corporations also use these rankings as a factor when they evaluate grant funding.”

Many alumni were passionate about the program and the ability to give back to Emerson.

“Emerson has been a wonderful support system for me throughout my career,” Aimee Rivera ’07 said in her personal plea video. “It is only important to pay it forward and give back and give opportunities for other students to hopefully have the same success and support that I myself, and many others, got in the Emerson community.” katiana_hoefle@emerson.edu

Bright Lights screening ‘Adam’ draws criticism from LGBTQ community Continued from page 1 One petition with over 4,144 signatures at the time of publication claims the film’s subject matter inadequately represents lesbian and transgender culture in a harmful way.

“This movie is putting down trans men as not being real men. By implying that a lesbian would date a trans man,” the petition read.

“Which isn’t true, because a lesbian only finds women sexually or romantically attractive.

This movie puts down Lesbian and Trans culture. Which the LGBT+ community does not tolerate.”

The movie currently has a 2.2/10 star rating on IMDb and is the subject of a petition on Change.org to remove it from theaters.

The film is adapted from a book known by the same title, written by author Ariel Schrag.

Wicked Queer, a Boston-based LGBTQ film festival, co-presented the film as part of Trans Awareness Week. “[Schrag] was trying to make a story about trans people but completely pushed them aside and tried to focus on sexuality and the emphasis on that and only used trans people as a plot device,” Eber said.

Anna Feder, the Bright Lights Film Festival curator, said the story follows a cisgender boy named Adam who goes to New York City to spend the summer with his queer sister. While in New York with his sister’s friends, Adam meets a lesbian and tells her he is a transgender man in order to trick her into dating him.

Feder said she has heard the complaints made against the movie, but she believes the film holds its main character accountable for his actions in the end.

“I think a lot of the critiques I read about the book says that it’s misogynist and it’s racist and transphobic, and that’s the character of Adam,” Feder said in an interview. “You’re getting his perspective so this isn’t the voice of the author. It’s very much that character and yes it’s a problematic character and he’s not let off the hook in the book, and certainly not in the movie. This character is not shown to be a good person.”

The film was directed by Rhys Ernst, a trans man known for producing and directing Amazon’s web series Transparent, about a family who discovers that their father is a trans woman.

Feder said the film highlights Adam’s ignorance and growth processes and does not let his mistakes go unnoticed.

“This character is largely ignorant, it’s not that he is a hateful character,” Feder said.

“It’s trying to address the people who are just

completely ignorant when it comes to trans lives, trans issues, trans health.”

Diane Griffin, director of shorts programming for Wicked Queer, attended the screening to discuss the film.

“I know that it’s very controversial and I understand the reasons why people say its lesbophobic and transphobic but I ended up focusing on the characters,” Griffin said in an interview. “I mean this is a 15 year old boy who really hasn’t figured things out at all for himself yet and I thought it was interesting.”

Sophomore Jayse Matrishon thought the film was inconsistent.

“The movie tries to take itself seriously in some places, but then it tries to be comedic in others, and sometimes that can work, but in this movie it just doesn’t—it comes off as cheap,” Matrishon said in an interview.

Schrag responded to student criticism by sharing her reasonings for defending the character of Adam.

“If [audiences] didn’t feel like [Adam] showed enough remorse, then obviously that’s going to be your takeaway,” Schrag said during a panel after the screening. “I do think he was very in love and he thought he was doing what he could, and it was the wrong decision, you know. What he does is certainly portrayed as bad, and there are a few moments where he tries to get out of it ... he sort of half-ass tries to get out of it.”

Feder believes the film presents a chance to educate viewers and start a conversation around the problems surrounding Adam’s character.

After growing up as a queer individual and spending most of her adult life defending her trans siblings, Feder wants students to trust her and give the film Adam a chance.

“I wouldn’t show a film that I didn’t think we should be engaging with,” Feder said. “I always air with the side that even if film is a problem it’s worth watching it and discussing and talking about the problem.”

Eber, a trans man, met with Feder and James Hoppe, vice president and dean of campus life, to discuss trans students’ issues with the film.

At the meeting, Hoppe and Feder agreed to let Eber speak before the screening to warn the audience that this movie, according to Eber, does not show trans people in the best light. In addition, Eber brought up issues trans students have regarding housing, restrooms, and name and pronoun policy. There are no specific plans in place as of now, but Hoppe and Eber plan on meeting again soon to discuss solutions.

Eber, a former Emerson Advancement Group for Love and Expression member, said his main issue with the story comes from its portrayal

A review by Medium described Adam as the “most transphobic and lesbophobic film in decades.”

Cho Yin Rachel Lo / Beacon Staff of one dimensional trans characters that gives viewers the impression that every trans person is the same.

“The author is a cis woman and it’s not necessarilly her story to tell, and she can’t write about the ignorance when she hasn’t faced it,” Eber said.

Despite being a strong believer that boycotting the film is not the way to further the conversation around trans issues, Feder said she respects those who feel personally affected by the content.

“I understand how some folks don’t want to engage with it because it’s too emotional and too painful and that’s entirely fair,” Feder said. “But what I have a problem with is this idea of boycotting a film, especially a film by a trans director. I certainly understand the place where they are coming from, this emotional response to what you think the movie is about and wanting to be protective of a community that has been through so much.”

Griffin said the film brings a lot to the conversation around transphobia through the characters and their development.

“It’s a very complex thing, the first time I watched it I was very uncomfortable and I had to stop in the middle and come back and finish,” Griffin said. “I personally have a hard time with deception and there was a lot of that going on in

the film, but ultimately I thought it was a good film, as uncomfortable as it made me.”

Feder said the film is nothing like other films she’s seen regarding LGBTQ issues.

“This film shows a variety of trans bodies, there’s a scene where everyone goes swimming and you see a diversity and it’s such a beautiful scene,” Feder said. “I feel very strongly that this is an overall very positive film, not that every film needs to be positive, but it’s a film that folks might be really surprised by how sort of uplifting in lots of ways it is.”

After the screening, Feder moderated a conversation between the audience, Griffin, and Schrag, who joined via Skype.

The audience was split between Emerson students who were critical of the film and older attendees who enjoyed the message of Adam.

“I asked [Schrag], ‘Why are you writing this about gender when your experience is more with sexuality?’” Eber said. “That was my polite way of saying, ‘Why are you as a cis person writting a story about trans people?’ And she just went, ‘Uh’—it was the longest pause— and she knew that, like, ‘F— I don’t have an answer, why did I?’”

taina_millsap@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

November 14, 2019

Living Arts

5

‘Waves’ early screening attracts crowds to AMC Boston

Senior Kat Garelli works as an on-campus intern for A24 and helped to plan the ‘Waves’ screening.

Montse Landeros / Beacon Staff Shruti Rajkumar, Beacon Correspondent Northeastern University sophomores Alex Pesek and Holly Devarger decided to enjoy a night off of their college campus on Nov. 13 to see their favorite actress from the show Euphoria in a free advance screening of the film Waves held at the AMC Boston Common.

Devarger was happy to see such an event taking place outside of the typical film cities.

“Since the film and music industry focuses so much around LA and New York, it’s nice to have something in Boston for a change,” Devarger said in an interview.

A24 at Emerson held the free advance screening of the film Waves for local residents and students from schools within the Greater

Boston area.

A24 is a film distribution and production company responsible for award-winning films such as Ladybird, Moonlight, and Midsommar.

Directed by Trey Edward Shults, the film Waves follows the emotional journey of an AfricanAmerican family in the suburbs of South Florida as they navigate the aftermath of the death of a close friend and the imprisonment of a loved one. The film will be released nationwide on Nov. 15.

The film features multiple award-winning big names including This is Us actor Sterling K. Brown, Euphoria actress Alexa Demie, and Moonrise Kingdom actor Lucas Hedges.

Senior visual and media arts major Kat Garelli works as an on-campus intern for A24

free A24 events and film screenings both on and off campus and manages the A24 at Emerson Facebook page.

Garelli said she often works with Emerson organizations to co-host the events and promote the screenings.

All on-campus A24 screenings occur Mondays at 7 p.m. in the Bright Family Screening Room in the Paramount Center.

Garelli said films are chosen by A24 based on release date, what the students want to see, or a specific theme of her choosing. Even though Waves premieres nationally on Nov. 15, the company decided to give their college programs early access to the film.

Naj Khan, a 23-year-old Boston resident, attended the Waves screening after seeing the event on Facebook and appreciates what A24 at Emerson is doing through these free screenings.

“I think it’s really wonderful because movies are really expensive, but I feel like they’re a really great thing to experience,” Khan said. “[Movies are] like another form of art that you can learn from, so being able to give [screenings to] students who might not have the resources to access them is good.”

Garelli said she also holds workshops and talkbacks for Emerson students, often coinciding with the screenings. On Oct. 30, Garelli partnered with Emerson film organization Frames Per Second to hold a workshop on horror lighting, featuring tips from cinematography professor Joey Kolbe.

“It was like pulling together the student organization of FPS, the professor Joey Kolbe, and then the A24 content to do a fun Halloweenthemed workshop,” Garelli said.

The workshops, such as the one on horror lighting, have drawn a smaller crowd compared to screenings, she said.

“It was only 25 people, but that’s because the space that we were in could only fit that many people,” Garelli said. “But just to see students engaged and able to learn about different cinematic techniques was also really great. It’s about the quality of the connection rather than the quantity.”

Garelli said A24’s Emerson screenings seem to resonate well with the Emerson community.

All of the on-campus screenings have been completely sold out, she said.

“A lot of the Emerson community, even beyond VMA or film, are really excited about A24 content,” Garelli said. “And that’s really what my job is, catering to that and engaging with the students.”

at Emerson and collaborated with Harvard University’s sister A24 program to set up the advance screening of Waves.

A24 selected 12 schools nationwide in August 2018 to start outreach programs and create a presence on college campuses, Garelli said.

“A24 recognized that [Emerson] had a really big film community because of [the VMA major], and they chose us to start a program here so we can really engage the student community and bring A24 titles through screenings,” Garelli said in an interview.

Garelli became the on-campus intern for A24 at Emerson in January 2019, replacing alum Kyra Power after she graduated in December 2018. As an on-campus intern, Garelli launches shruti_rajkumar@emerson.edu

Read it and Weep: Boomers 1, Gen Z 0 Katie Redefer is a sophomore journalism major, deputy lifestyle editor, and The Beacon’s literary columnist.

As an elementary school student, I was that kid who got yelled at by the teacher for reading in the back of the classroom. With my nose tucked into The Lightning Thief or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, I tuned out the rest of the world and solely existed in a universe of fantasy and adventure, even if only for a moment.

Sixth and seventh grade mirrored elementary school, except I swapped my old books for new novels such as The Hunger Games trilogy and the Twilight saga. I flipped through young adult science fiction and romance like it was my job.

Yet, once I reached eighth grade, a monumental change happened in my life—I traded my old flip phone for my first iPhone.

I didn’t stop reading all at once—if anything, I read as much as I used to before having a smartphone. However, once I reached high school, teachers began piling on homework, and my extracurriculars became more timeconsuming, so suddenly my free time was cut in half. By the time I came home from school, my brain was fried. Every evening, I wanted to scroll through memes rather than read a book because of the mental exhaustion from all my responsibilities. Now that I’m in college, the problem continues due to even more activities and classes that occupy my mental space.

I want to clarify that I do still read for leisure, and it is still something I enjoy. However, I’ve found that the older I get the harder it becomes for me to focus on longer and more dense readings. In my youth, I could plow through a 300-page novel in a day or two. Perhaps I’m no longer capable of this because I read more challenging material, but at times I wonder if my increased internet time has taken a bigger toll on my attention span than I’m aware of.

Sometimes I feel I’ve lost a part of my old identity when I think about how much less I read when compared to my younger self.

I am not alone in this struggle with lack of motivation to read.

A study conducted by the American Psychological Association in 2016 indicates that only 16 percent of seniors in high school read a book or magazine every day, as opposed to the 60 percent of seniors who did in 1970. This same study also found seniors in 2016 spend twice as much time online as seniors in 2006 did, and that the average teen today spends six hours a day on their electronics.

To be frank, iPhones and computers are often more engaging than books. While I cherish nothing more than a good story, my Twitter feed has a much quicker pay off in entertainment than a novel. Once I opened the Pandora’s box

that is endless online content, it was hard to go back to traditional forms of leisure activities like reading a book.

I think most of us can agree the age of technology has lessened our attention span for books, especially when it comes to reading recreationally. This applies to all generations— an American Time Use survey found that the percentage of Americans who read for leisure on a given day dropped from 28 percent in 2004 to 19 percent in 2017. With constant notifications of the newest Kardashian drama or an international crisis popping up on our phones every five minutes, it’s hard to expect any age group to concentrate on a book. Naturally, the generation that grew up using the internet the most is going to have the hardest time ” paying attention to the pages of a book amongst electronic distractions.

It’s incredibly easy for me to sit here and list all the flaws of Generation Z, defined as the generation born between the years 1996 and onward by the Pew Research Center. The truth is that every generation has their varying flaws.

Take my boomer mother, for example, who thought she made a ground-breaking discovery when she realized there was a camera on the front side of her iPhone X—sorry, Mom. Maybe Gen Z spends too much time on their phones

“Every evening, I wanted to scroll through memes rather than read a book because of the mental exhaustion from all my responsibilities.

and laptops, but at least we have a base level of understanding how technology functions and how to optimize our use of such devices.

As it’s been said many times, Gen Z masters multi-tasking with our use of many screens and devices at once. So, while we may not be great at sitting down and actually reading an assigned book front to back, we can read four different online summaries at once and somehow write an A+ analysis essay without actually reading the first page.

So, fine—I’ll give the boomers one point for my generation’s lack of leisure reading time.

But I refuse to believe that Gen Z hates reading for fun, or never does it. Working in a bookstore for the past two summers, I witness people my age buy books more often when they’re on vacation and have the time to enjoy it. Perhaps my generation reads less books as a whole, but they do read—just on their own time.

Millions of teens and young adults also read online fanfiction on websites such as Tumblr and Wattpad, which I discussed in a literature column last semester.

Having less time and attention span to dedicate to reading during the school year has one upside. When I finally do have time to read, which usually happens during my summers at home when I have beach time, I enjoy reading so much more. I have time to quiet my mind and focus on the words in front of me, something I can rarely do at school. As I nestle a book in the summer heat, I reminisce of the days I spent reading as a child, and for just a moment, my mind slips into the sublime that is reading a good book. kathryn_redefer@emerson.edu

Marlboro Special Section

The Berkeley Beacon

November 14, 2019

6

Tight-knit community on Potash Hill bound by physical space Jacob Seitz, Beacon Staff MARLBORO, Vt.—Hunter Corbett, a junior at Marlboro College, described her campus as one where students go to tell stories over an open fire, gather around a stone circle crafted by alumni, and walk through a maze of humanshaped mirrors in the forest.

“It’s a magical place, it looks like a fairy circle,” Corbett said in an interview. “When you walk in you see your face [in the mirrors] and you’re like ‘oh my gosh I exist.’”

This is just one of many stories told by students of Marlboro about a campus whose physical location means as much to them as the students who inhabit it. “They wanted to do logging here in the 90s, and technically because of our contract with the land, they could do logging, any place not 50 feet from a trail,” Corbett said. “And so what a student did in the 90s was literally make trails, set the maximum distance was 50 [feet], so they couldn’t be logging. Students, since the 40s, have been just intrinsically tied to this land.”

Emerson College announced a prospective merger with Marlboro on Nov. 6, in which Emerson takes control of the Vermont campus and gives current Marlboro students the opportunity to finish their degree at the Boston campus. Marlboro College has roughly 40 academic and administrative buildings spread throughout its roughly 360 acres of hilly, wooded land.

The campus is built on a slope, so students frequently walk from the Science Center— dubbed the ‘Snack Center’ for having the only vending machine on campus—at the top of the hill to the dining hall in the middle, to the cottages at the bottom.

“You have to be kind of stocky to go here,” Griff Jurchak, an alumnus, said while walking up the historic hill.

The fate of the hill that Marlboro sits on remains uncertain, but Emerson and Marlboro formed working groups to work out the details.

One thing that is certain, though, is that no matter what happens to the land, Marlboro College will not be on Potash Hill in the fall of 2020.

Marlboro students met Wednesday in the dinig hall to discus the future of the Vermont campus.

Jakob Menendez / Beacon Staff Charlie Hickman, a junior at Marlboro and head selectperson on the Selectboard, which runs Marlboro’s Town Meeting, said the

Marlboro campus feels like their home.

“This place that I call my home has been taken from me,” Hickman said in an interview.

“I get to live in a house in the forest with my dog. I will not be able to get up in the morning and put a leash on my dog and walk out the front door, around the forest. I will not have the fall here.”

Hickman said that it’s hard to envision future students not attending the rustic campus.

“The hardest part about it is that no one else gets to experience Marlboro as we know it,” Hickman said. “While it is isolated, it’s hard to get to, it really sucks sometimes, it is such a big factor in the creation of this community that cares so much, and that works together, and it’s because we’re all stuck on this hill together.

And so we have to make it work.”

Ritu Mitra, a literature professor at Marlboro, said some students come to Marlboro because of its location.

“For some people, they come to Marlboro because they cannot deal with bigger cities, they cannot deal with that stimulation,” Mitra said. “For some people, they really don’t have another home to go back to. We’re on a hill, we’re stuck together and it forces us to do things a certain way.”

Tanner Jones, the director of resident life at Marlboro, said the college’s alumni are also connected to the campus because of its intrinsic nature.

“For a lot of the students and some of the alumni, it’s just like, ‘Oh, I’m just not there as much’ like there’s nothing to miss because it’s always there and you’re not losing it,” Jones said in an interview. “And now this is actually the first time that people will be, in a capacity, losing it. And so the mindset is ‘oh no one else gets to have this now,’ anyone who’s ever gotten it has always got to keep it.”

Hickman said one of their biggest concerns is not being able to show people the campus that helped shape them.

“I am devastated that I’m not going to be able to come back here and show people this college,” Hickman said. “I’m not going to be able to say, ‘look at what I did here, look at how much I grew here.’ This place made me who I am now.” jacob_seitz@emerson.edu

Marlboro president says campus fate is not up to community Continued from page 1 Quigley also announced an informal visit to Emerson on Nov. 24. “[Marlboro] college will be organizing transportation for students and faculty—we’ll get buses, vans, whatever we need,” Quigley said. “The program will involve a lunch at 12:30 and a performance of a one-act play called Iliad and a discussion afterwards.”

Quigley said they are still working out logistics, but that he is discussing a tour of campus for Marlboro students visiting Emerson.

Quigley then announced the establishment of five working groups on Marlboro’s side for the transition to Emerson. There will be groups for the future of the campus, student life, staff, finances, and faculty.

There will be nine positions on the working group for the future of the Marlboro campus.

The positions include Dick Saudek, chair of the board of trustees at Marlboro; board member Phil Steckler; and one representative from the Marlboro student body, faculty, and staff. There will also be one alumni representative and one member of the town of Marlboro, elected by Selectboard. Former vice-chair of the board of trustees Sara Coffey and Marlboro alumnus Dean Nicyper will lead the working group as co-chairs.

Quigley also said the Marlboro Music Festival would be invited to participate in the working group because of the 99-year lease the festival signed with Marlboro.

Selectboard opened online nominations for the student representative of the working group on Wednesday. The nomination process closes Thursday, and a vote on the nominees will take place next week.

Members of the community then repeatedly

There will be nine positions on the working group for the future of the Marlboro campus. • Lizzie Heintz / Beacon Staff asked Quigley why there were not more spaces allocated on the working group for students, staff, and faculty. Quigley said that because of the pace at which the committees need to move, it is best for efficiency to have only one representative from each of those categories.

Quigley said the other working groups are still being formed, but told attendees that there will be student, faculty, and staff representatives on all five committees.

Town Meeting then moved to pass a resolution to the Selectboard bylaws to allow

the Head Selectperson to be paid. The money for the compensation would come out of the Marlboro Community Activity fund, and the Head Selectperson will be offered a stipend based on a ten-hour per week work-study position.

During the meeting, Head Selectperson Charlie Hickman started the meeting with an address to the community, which filled the college’s dining hall. They spoke about the compassion they saw last Wednesday.

“There’s such a wide range of emotions—

excitement, despair, fear—[and] I just want to acknowledge that those are all valid,” Hickman said. “Last Wednesday I was filled with so much love for this community … The amount of compassion and caring across this campus over the past week has been really astounding to me, and just reminds me why I came here, why I love this place.”

jacob_seitz@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

November 14, 2019

7

Marlboro Special Section

Marlboro Graduate School facing imminent closure Diana Bravo, Beacon Staff MARLBORO, Vt.—Marlboro College’s graduate school is on a path to closure and could officially cease operations as soon as 2020, according to Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley.

The graduate school has been tracking towards termination for two years and stopped admitting prospective students at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year. The shutdown comes as the main campus also ceases operations following an announcement last week of Emerson College’s acquisition of Marlboro.

“They’re in a teach-out mode,” Quigley said in an interview with The Beacon. “They’re on a course to closure, and they’re on a timetable to try and wrap up next year.”

Should the school close, Marlboro is federally obligated by the Department of Education to find all active students a teachout partner—another accredited institution with

relative coursework willing to take on students staff—we all lose our jobs. And there was no until they complete their degree. mention of the graduate school.”

While Quigley painted a clear future for the Quigley said administrators committed school, Business Manager for Graduate and their focus heavily to undergraduate programs Professional Studies in recent years. In Danette Reynolds 2017, the college told The Beacon announced that that the college left the school’s faculty and students “We have, I think, 40 graduate graduate campus in the dark. in downtown students and we have no idea B r a t t l e b o r o , “We have, I think, 40 graduate Vermont would what’s going to happen to students and we close and that have no idea what’s operations would them.” going to happen to move to Marlboro’s them,” Reynolds rural campus.

-Danette Reynolds said. “They called “Our focus and the all-staff meeting the arrangement a week ago today to with Emerson tell everybody about is really on the the decision. They talked about the faculty, undergraduate program, which is the core of tenure-track and tenured. They talked about the what we do at Marlboro,” he said. “I want to undergraduate students. They talked about the underscore that this is a whole area that just

really hasn’t been the focus of discussion between Marlboro and Emerson.”

While the school is already on track to close, a small chance remains for the programs to be relaunched at Emerson, an option Quigley said will be discussed in the colleges’ ongoing negotiations.

The college’s graduate school offers three degrees—a master of arts in teaching for social justice, a master of science in management, and a master of business administration. The Center for New Leadership, a program within the school, offers training and certifications in collaboration with Vermont-based nonprofits.

Despite the possibility of Emerson taking on these programs, Reynolds said the graduate school’s future appears bleak.

“I’m assuming we’ll just be dissolved— whether they find another school with accreditation for us that our students can finish diana_bravo@emerson.edu

Marlboro College’s closure leaves community businesses concerned Belen Dumont, Beacon Staff BRATTLEBORO, Vt.—Marlboro College junior Sally Fletcher has worked at Mochajoe’s—a popular cafe—for about eight months, but the Vermont native will have to leave her barista position if she decides to attend Emerson College next fall.

“A lot of businesses rely on [Marlboro College students], such as Amy’s Bakery and a youth photography program that has students teaching there,” she said in an interview with The Beacon.

Marlboro announced last week that they would merge with Emerson College and close by the end of the 2019-2020 academic year, gifting the Boston school their $30 million endowment and $10 million worth of land in the process.

It’s not noticeable at first, but Marlboro College is one of the community’s connections to the outside, Fletcher said. She added that Vermont has an issue with bringing in and keeping residents but the campus on Potash Hill has drawn new individuals to the town that have stayed after graduation and further influenced the community.

“A lot of people in the community are alumni and a lot of Marlboro College alumni have worked at the cafe,” she said.

Fletcher said customers asked her about Marlboro College’s situation and what she plans to do next year.

“I have mixed feelings like a lot of students,” she said. “I think I’m probably going to come to Emerson because I’ve already transferred from a college, so I don’t really want to go through that again.”

Across the street, Marlboro senior Jan Raphael Cornell worked his Wednesday shift at Amy’s Bakery Arts Cafe.

Cornell began studying at the college in 2015 and then took a leave of absence. Since he moved back to the Vermont town in 2017, Cornell heard rumors that Marlboro was financially unstable.

“Students mostly felt betrayed because [Marlboro College] wasn’t transparent with the financial state of the school,” he said.

Cornell added that Marlboro is known to be a creative community and the college has attracted artistic individuals to the area, many of whom stay in the town after graduating.

Shin-La Restaurant and Sushi Bar employee Marcelin Mitchell said she decided to permanently live in the area after graduating from Marlboro College in 2017 since a lot of her friends planned to stay.

“A lot of the incoming population is because of Marlboro and the music scene draws people here,” she said. “[The college] brings that influx of educated young people coming here.”

Brattleboro Food Co-Op General Manager Sabine Rhyne said she knows of a few Marlboro faculty friends that are considering teaching at the Boston campus.

“We just found out about it like 48 hours ago through the paper,” she said. “Anytime something like that happens it impacts our customers and hires.”

Two current Marlboro students work at the

Rose Gundry rests behind the counter at the Chelsea Royal Diner, which sits beside Marlboro’s campus in Brattleboro.

Jakob Menendez / Beacon Staff local grocery store and the college’s bus—the Moover—stops by daily.

Further down the road from Brattleboro, Chelsea Royal Diner sits beside the winding road leading to Marlboro’s campus.

Waitress Rose Gundry said students typically come in at the beginning of the fall semester and back again during breaks with their families.

“At the end of the year [there’s a] big last hurrah at the Chelsea Royal diner for graduation,” she added. “Then people who still stick around in this area still come with their families, and then with their babies.”

Gundry said customers expressed immense disappointment about the college’s closure and concern regarding the Marlboro Music Festival.

“During those two weeks, that is a lot of our business,” she explained. “[The shut down of the college] is going to be pretty sad to see.

That’s going to impact us greatly and town in general.”

Owner of West Brattleboro Pizza Cengiz Karagoz said Marlboro’s closure will hurt most businesses in the area in various ways.

“If [Marlborough] closes, it hurts everybody,” he said in an interview. “It’s sad if they’re closing. This town doesn’t have an income, just from visitors. Some towns are growing, we’re going down.”

Karagoz said he doesn’t plan on leaving the town of Marlboro but the college’s absence will affect the community.

“If I could do something I would help, I would try,” Karagoz added. “Everyone knows Marlboro College, they’ve been there for a long time.” belen_dumont@emerson.edu

Sally Fletcher, a Marlboro student, stands behind the counter at Mocha Joe’s.

Jakob Menendez / Beacon Staff

Editorial The Marlboro College merger should be met with respect, not ridicule In a town hall last Wednesday, President M. Lee Pelton announced that Emerson College plans to merge with Marlboro College, a small liberal arts institution in southern Vermont.

The announcement of the merger last Wednesday came with a barrage of memes, “shitposts,” and negative outlooks. Emerson students took to the internet to ridicule the administration for acquiring a college that shares a name with a popular cigarette brand.

They devised memes about the hilarity of our school “buying” another school just for fun. They capitalized on the college’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for real estate. Photos of President Pelton proliferated students’ conversations in the Dining Center, their Facebook feeds, and their Twitter timelines. It became a school-wide joke—an opportunity for students to bond over their mutual grievances on both the state of our college and higher education institutions around the country.

It can be easy for us to joke about a campus that’s several hours away from our own and about students we have never met. With an undergraduate student population of around 150 and a 17-acre rural campus, Marlboro seems like it would be the antithesis of our urban institution. Regardless, we have to remember that we will be welcoming many of these students into our community in less than a year. As they leave rural Vermont and join our chaotic, construction-ridden campus, we should do what we can to guarantee they have the best possible welcome.

While Emerson students got caught up in the humor of a situation that benefits us, we failed to account for the other side of the story. While we laughed, hundreds of students faced the grim outlook of the institute they chose to attend for four years—the school that was supposed to be their alma mater.

Making fun of the drastic change Marlboro students are facing is an ignorant move that reveals the lack of effort Emerson students invested in researching the situation in Vermont before taking to the internet. Going forward, Marlboro College’s students, property, and legacy deserve our utmost respect.

Like Emerson, Marlboro College has a rich history. Walter Hendricks founded the school in 1946 on a 600-acre plot of land. The small liberal arts college aims to teach democracy as an objective and help students feel a personal sense of usefulness in the world, according to Hendricks’ obituary in the New York Times. The college also offers “fields of study” in place of traditional majors, which means students can choose to combine fields or create new majors.

In spite of the college’s 70-year history, a number of Marlboro students saw the merger coming. Before Marlboro President Kevin Quincy began collaborating with Emerson’s administrators, he talked to Bridgeport University in Connecticut. Since 2010, Marlboro college experienced

a 34-percent decline in enrollment. Its tuition revenue dropped by 50 percent.

Its deficit sits at an all-time high, wavering around $3 to $4 million. For years, uncertainty about the campus’ future lingered in the air, but we imagine the merger still prompted feelings of confusion and disdain.

Come 2020, the small college will donate its $30 million endowment and its real estate, valued at $10 million, to Emerson’s Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies program.

Marlboro students can choose to attend Emerson for the remainder of their college careers. Those who arrive at Emerson will join the interdisciplinary studies program and pay the current Marlboro tuition rate.

But a number of factors—future plans, academic affairs, and financial matters— remains unsorted. Working groups from both colleges have been created to hash out these plans.

As The Beacon reported last week, the administration does not know what uses the Marlboro campus will serve in the future. Regardless, just as a handful of our reporters have trekked up to the Vermont campus in the past week, it’s likely a number of other Emerson students will eventually make their way out there as well. In doing so, we must respect the institution’s lengthy history and its commitment to fostering learned graduates. And if in the long term the college begins to be used regularly for retreats or classes, our campus-wide mockery of the merger must subside.

Some of the students who will come from Marlboro are well on their way to graduating with a degree in ceramics, painting, anthropology, or ecology— majors that don’t fit neatly into our arts and communication focus. Other students whose fields align with our own will be bringing a novel worldview. This merger serves as an opportunity to learn from this new cohort of students and absorb knowledge from a community so uniquely different than our own. Going forward, Emerson students and faculty should focus on the positive aspects of the merger and keep Marbloro’s legacy in their minds.

Editorials are written solely by

November 14, 2019

The Berkeley Beacon

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The Berkeley Beacon

November 14, 2019

Opinion

9

How holiday sales capitalize on our impulses Jocelyn Yang Yang is a freshman journalism major and a Beacon correspondent.

A new tidal wave of holiday sales is coming.

Stores like Hollister, Zappos, and Macy’s email me every day to advertise discounts and remind me of the money I can save while shopping. However, in reality, none of these promotions financially help the shopper. Rather, they encourage me and others like me to make more purchases than I need. Psychologist Dr. Kit Yarrow pointed out in Time Magazine that the sale rush has “an addictive quality,” which further compels people to keep shopping.

I used to be obsessed with China’s Single Day Shopping Festival and Black Friday in the U.S. As these big sale days approached, I would start making shopping lists and budget plans. But what usually ended up happening was that I was so attracted to a wide range of promotional items, I eventually lost track of the things I purchased and the money I spent— which of course always ended up being more than I originally planned.

Come holiday sale season, it’s almost impossible to be a rational shopper. The only secret to not getting duped into sales is to think of the product’s practicality before purchasing.

Shoppers should be aware of the promotional wave the season brings and put their own financial health over their need to buy.

From the perspective of customers, the trick to shopping is striking a balance between fashionism and pragmatism. It sounds ironic whenever I’m about to swipe my card and make a new purchase. But I need to keep this balance in my head as a reminder to be reasonable while surrounded by a deluge of holidays ads and sales.

When I used to shop with coupons, I took

“The trick to shopping is striking a balance between our desires and pragmatism.”

Illustration by Ally Rzesa / Beacon Staff

advantage of items’ cheapness, which made me want to buy more without thinking about whether I truly need something. In other words, I purchased on impulse. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the term “impulse purchase” means a person buys without deliberating their purchase carefully. This action is often triggered by an emotional reaction to a product’s promotional message.

In holiday-sale advertisements, merchants also capitalize on consumers’ herd mentality to imply messages, something like “other people have bought it and you should buy it as well to catch up with trends.” Fashionable products like well-crafted notebooks and candy bars are

trendy, so they sell during these months even though they lack practicality. As a result, the average consumer evolves to have a need to act on their impulsive desires in response to advertisements.

The act of impulse buying has been exacerbated today by the internet, which makes it even easier to buy. For a very long time, I was addicted to the convenience Amazon’s oneclick purchase offers. By letting me avoid steps like adding items to the shopping cart, checking out, and confirmation, it saved me tons of time.

If I ever saw a cool, fashionable item I would like to have, I just clicked it without comparing the price or considering how much I would use

it. And then a few days later, it arrived at my home.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean I enjoy this kind of shopping.

Impulse buying is just an unhealthy and irrational outlet for me to relieve stress. To impulse buyers, irrational shopping is a way to “improve their mood” when they “experience less happiness,” writes Dr. Ian Zimmerman in Psychology Today.

Many times, I regret getting new clothing or makeup products while impulse buying because even though something looked so good and shiny in the store, it loses its pizzazz once I’m home. I feel like I’ve wasted my money after I purchased them. Plus, every time I move to a new place, the cool-looking yet inevitably nonuseful stuff had to be given away as I reorganize my room and wardrobe.

Impulse purchasing not only leads to wasteful spending—it also has an impact on the environment, particularly for the clothing industry. According to the Los Angeles Times, 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by clothing production, which consumes more energy than aviation and shipping combined. The rise of fast fashion also means people buy more and then dump out their old clothing at an increased rate. Huffpost found that the average American throws away 81 pounds of clothing per year.

Now, to all who struggle to make plans during the holiday-sale season, I say forget about those coupons and deals. These promotions have snowballing effects that lead to high consumption instead of financial benefits during holiday sales. From today on, your all-time shopping trend should be thinking before buying with a sustainable goal. jiaxuan_yang@emerson.edu

Integrate news from around the world in your news diet

“In the age of rapid globalization, breaking news happening on the other side of the world could impact people living in America.”

Illustration by Ally Rzesa / Beacon Staff Jiachen Liu Liu is a sophomore journalism major and a Beacon correspondent.

I learned about the protests in Chile while having dinner with a friend who works as a telescope researcher in Chilean labs for the University of California, Berkeley.

“It’s nationwide,” I recalled him saying with a serious face. “All the gas stations have shut down. I can’t even drive now.”

I told him I hadn’t heard anything and asked him to tell me more about the situation. He was shocked and confused by my response. “Aren’t you studying journalism at Emerson? You must at least have heard your friends talking about it, or seen it on the news?” he asked. A sense of shame rushed to my head. I couldn’t even look him in the eyes.

As a journalism student, I subscribe to both The New York Times and The Boston Globe. I

receive about five or six newsletters from each of them every day, and I usually browse the headlines to make sure I stay updated with news from around the world. However, I couldn’t recall reading anything about these protests.

After our dinner, I went home and searched “Chile protests” in my email inbox. Of course, I found that this international news was underreported in American mainstream news outlets. Even though the protests broke out on Oct. 6, the earliest mention of the situation was in The New York Times weekend briefing on Oct. 21. Out of the nine stories listed in the newsletter that day, the coverage of the Chilean demonstrations came fifth. Plus, the story did not include detailed coverage of why or how the protests happened, but rather an overview of global activism with the headline “Civil unrest is erupting around the world.” It spoke about protests in Hong Kong, Chile, Lebanon, and Haiti in one article. The Boston Globe’s

coverage wasn’t much different.

I understand that as one of the most prominent news outlets in the U.S., The New York Times would prioritize telling its largely American audience what is going on in their country. I don’t expect them to update us with every single international news story. But in the age of rapid globalization, breaking news happening on the other side of the world could impact people living in America. A recent example is Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg and her speech at the United Nations Climate Summit on Sep. 23. Her speech inspired additional strikes around the world and increased attention on climate change.

My peers at Emerson should seek out more international news stories. As students at a top journalism school, Emerson students fail to take the necessary initiative and should pay more attention to stories from outside their little bubble. When I asked my journalism friends if

they have ever heard about the protests in Chile, the demonstrations in Catalonia, and the truck deaths in the U.K., only two among the four of them knew what I was talking about, but even then, they barely knew the details.

On October 23, I found out via Instagram that 39 people were found dead in a truck in the U.K. Soon after, my friend told me that, according to the U.K. police, all the victims were Chinese refugees who fled Europe.

After days of investigation, the police updated their findings and confirmed that all 39 dead were actually from Vietnam. No matter which perspective media takes, this story is newsworthy. However, I have only saw it mentioned once in that morning’s briefing when it was widely believed that the victims were all from China, and never after that—even though there was an essential twist to the story.

But who am I to criticize them? Scrolling through all the newsletters I subscribe to, I am lost in tons of White House news, 2020 presidential polls, and impeachment developments. I only noticed the protests in Catalonia because I passed by a local Catalonian protest the past weekend. And I only checked on the updates in U.K. truck deaths story because at first, the police said the victims were from the same country as me.

I can’t help but wonder what impact more coverage on international news in our mainstream news outlets would have. Or what would be possible if we voluntarily read international news on worldwide news outlets like Reuters, Al Jazeera, or The Guardian?

Recently, I found out that Emerson’s Department of Journalism partnered with DailyChatter, a newsletter that hopes to focus on international news. On its website, it says it’s “proudly non-partisan and completely independent of all other media.” It has already teamed up with 63 universities in the U.S., and according to its statistics, 96 percent of college subscribers read the newsletter at least once a week. While the DailyChatter is just a start, I look forward to seeing Emerson students focus on what’s happening around the world, and as a result, truly care about the important stories occurring far from us. jiachen_liu@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18

November 14, 2019

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION WEEK 2019

GET A PASSPORT AND TRAVEL: PASSPORT DAY WHEN: 11:00 am – 2:00 pm WHERE: 120 Boylston St. (Walker Building) 10th Floor Common Ground & Conference Room INTERNATIONAL FOOD FESTIVAL WHEN: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm WHERE: 216 Tremont St. - Bill Bordy Theater

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19 GO FORTH AND BE YOU: A CONVERSATION WITH RETURNED STUDY ABROAD STUDENTS WHEN: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm WHERE: 172 Tremont St. - Owens Multipurpose Room WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 PUTTING YOUR STUDY ABROAD EXPERIENCE TO WORK WHEN: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm WHERE: Career Development Center - 216 Tremont St. GLOBAL PATHWAYS FILM FESTIVAL WHEN: 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm WHERE: 559 Washington St. (Paramount Center) - Bright Family Screening Room

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21 THINK SUMMER: GLOBAL PATHWAYS STUDY ABROAD FAIR WHEN: 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm WHERE: 216 Tremont St. - Bill Bordy Theater CONFLICT TO CONSCIOUSNESS: A CONVERSATION WITH SOC DEAN RAUL REIS & FORMER BRAZILIAN CONGRESSMAN JEAN WYLLYS DE MATOS SANTOS WHEN: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm WHERE: Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre (Paramount Center) - 559 Washington St.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22 NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST: THE BACKPACKERS' GUIDE TO HOSTELLING WHEN: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm WHERE: 172 Tremont St. - Owens Multipurpose Room

Want more IEW? View the schedule in full detail at: www.emerson.edu/iew

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November 14, 2019

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Wednesday November 20, 2019 6:30–9:00 pm Paramount Center Bright Family Screening Room

Celebrate the global art of filmmaking in a special evening screening of student- and-facultyproduced films coming from six of Emerson’s Global Pathway Programs.

Nektarinky Prague Film Program

Manantiales de Paz, Medellín, Colombia Mobility Medellín: Art, Research, and Social Change Program Emerson Celebrates James Baldwin James Baldwin Writers’ Colony at Kasteel Well Program

Through a series of interviews with program administrators, faculty, and students, Emerson celebrates the 95th anniversary of the life of James Baldwin.

La Magdalena del Norte Summer Rosarito Public Diplomacy Workshop Program

Tijuana is not all that it seems; it’s more. This short film offers a reflection of the complexity, beauty, and misunderstood nature of Tijuana and its inhabitants.

The undeclared civil war in Colombia, from the 1950s to the 2016 signing of the Colomban National Peace Accord, forced more than 7 million people inside Colombia to flee their homes and communities and build another life, often with their own hands, mostly in land surrounding Colombia’s urban centers. This is a story, told by the founders of a self-built community in the Andes Mountains surrounding Medellín, which they named Manantiales de Paz (Springs of Peace).

The community began with 14 families nine years ago and is now 15,000 people and growing daily.

On the Shoulders of Giants Art into Film at Kasteel Well Program

A young artist learns about the progression of art through the great painters of the past.

Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh impart their lessons to the struggling artist and teach her just how important history can be.

Finding Khaya South Africa: International Narrative Co-Production Program

This film chronicles the story of Ana, an African American woman who comes to Cape Town, South Africa, the home of her husband, to bury him after an accident in the US. Ana is pregnant with their child and must decide if she will return to the US after the funeral or stay in South Africa and raise their child.

A vast milk bottle collection and male penguin theory combine to detail the last days of our hero’s life. Bathed in vivid color and imagination, this dark comedy reminds us that milk, bottles, and life are but fleeting things in the cosmic arrangement.

Sports

The Berkeley Beacon

November 14, 2019

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UPCOMING ACTION WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: Gordon at Emerson, 7 p.m., Thursday CROSS COUNTRY: NCAA Regionals at Bowdoin College, Saturday MEN’S BASKETBALL: Tufts at Emerson, 1 p.m., Saturday WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: WPI at Emerson, 3 p.m., Saturday

Junior transfer makes early impact Ethan McDowell, Beacon Staff Following her sophomore year at California Lutheran University, Kailee Yan decided to leave the West Coast and transfer to a school she never saw in person.

Yan grew up in Mercer Island, Washington and said she never spent time on the East Coast other than visits to New York City and Washington D.C. In her initial college search, Yan said she did not want to leave the West Coast, but this changed after discovering Emerson on the Common Application website.

“It was a little scary at the time,” Yan said in an interview. “I had another option in California, but I really didn’t want to be in California anymore. I knew that either it was that, my old school, or coming here. This seemed like the best option.”

In two years on California Lutheran University’s basketball team, Yan appeared in 51 games for the Regals. Yan averaged 6.5 points per game in her sophomore year and led the team in three-point percentage at 35.7 percent. In her first regular season game in a Lions uniform, Yan scored 10 points and grabbed two rebounds off the bench. She made two of six three-point shots and recorded a steal in the Lions’ 59-53 win against Suffolk University.

“I didn’t know what she was—she could be playing a lot better or a lot worse,” head coach Bill Gould said in an interview. “All I know is what I see, and what I see is really good.”

Once her second season ended, Yan began to look elsewhere. Yan said Boston provides more of the urban environment she is comfortable

Kailee Yan played 22 minutes against Suffolk and scored 10 points. Photo courtesy of Kate Foultz with.

“My old campus was kind of in a small suburb of California, like 40 minutes from [Los Angeles] and about half an hour from the beach,” Yan said. “But being an athlete, you don’t have time to go do things. So Boston’s really great because there’s a lot of things to

do, and everything is within walking distance.”

Yan said she is planning on using her experience to contribute immediately, and Gould said Yan is already fitting in great with the Lions.

“She’s doing really well for us, and I’m really happy that she’s here,” Gould said. “I

think she’s going to make a big impact on our team, and I’m really excited.”

Gould said the team is beginning to adopt a modern style of basketball that does not focus on positions, and Yan will help make that transition smoother.

“We have really versatile and really smart kids, and she fits right in,” Gould said. “If I wanted to go back to a traditional offense, she would be a great point guard for us. She’s a great player in this offense because she’s so versatile.”

Yan describes her playing style as unselfish, but said she likes to score her own points as well. The Lions’ balanced style of play excites Yan. “Everyone’s going to get an opportunity on offense to score just because of the way that we will be playing,” Yan said. “Our defense is going to be super aggressive, so I think that’s also really great.”

The Lions lost two impactful players to graduation last year—Charlie Boyle ‘19 and Natalie Busch ‘19, who had a combined average of 20.4 points per game. The Lions will have to find a way to replace that scoring this season, and Gould said Yan will help fill that role. “[Busch] was a really smart kind of combo guard that could do a little bit of everything, and Kailee is very similar to that,” Gould said.

“She’s really crafty with the ball, smart, really understands the game, can shoot, is a good passer, and she can finish inside.”

Yan and the Lions play their first home ethan_mcdowell@emerson.edu @EthanMMcDowell

Lions close out successful season

The women’s volleyball team celebrates after winning a point in the championship game.

Cho Yin Rachel Lo / Beacon Staff Lara Hill, Beacon Staff The women’s volleyball team finished its season with a 6-4 conference record, its highest win total since joining the NEWMAC in 2013.

After playing in their first ever New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference playoffs, the Lions fell to nationally ranked Babson College 3-0 in the championship.

The Lions entered this season with only six returning players and brought on nine freshmen.

Junior outside hitter Grace Tepper said this brought uncertainty to the team at the beginning of the season.

“Having nine new freshmen on a team is a bit of a crapshoot,” Tepper said in an interview.

“You don’t really know what you’re going to get, but we got so lucky.”

The nine freshmen registered 41.2 percent of the Lions’ total kills this season and averaged 0.75 kills per set. Freshman setter Caroline Bond recorded 916 assists this season, the fourth highest total in the conference.

Tepper recorded 408 kills on the season and reached the 1,000 kill milestone in the Lions’ 3-2 victory over Wellesley College in the

NEWMAC playoff semifinals on Nov. 7.

When approaching the season, head coach Ben Read said he noticed a unique work ethic in the team.

“This group is a little bit different,” Read said in an interview. “They wanted to be pushed a little bit harder, and they wanted to bring out the best in them.”

Read said the leadership and energy demonstrated by Tepper and junior outside hitter Albany Alexander allowed the team to have fun during practices and matches.

“The look of the team has certainly changed to be more positive, inclusive, and trusting,” Read said. “If you watch this team, they have had the most fun out on the court that I think I’ve ever had coaching. If it wasn’t for the leadership of Tepper and Alexander, I don’t think the rest of the team would have followed suit and would have been as successful.”

Read asked the players to watch film of their upcoming opponents to help him prepare an overall game plan. He said this helped the team prepare for matches and understand their strategy more clearly.

“I think [the team] got more out of it this

Freshman Logan Steenbergen (No. 9) strikes the ball through a pair of blockers in the NEWMAC quarterfinal game against MIT. • Cho Yin Rachel Lo / Beacon Staff way,” Read said. “It allowed them to create their own thoughts. I like to compare what they thought to what I thought, and if it was the same, which it was most of the time, it was easier for the team to buy into what we want to do offensively and defensively.”

Read said this helped the team with in-game adjustments during important moments, which is something they struggled with in the past.

“Making the championship was huge,” Read said. “Obviously nerves were a part of it at first, but we were able to make some adjustments in the game against [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and Wellesley that we came out on top with where in previous years we have failed to do that.”

Read reached the 150 wins milestone at Emerson with a 3-1 victory over Brandeis University on Oct. 26. Read said he did not know about the milestone until the team brought it to his attention before their matchup against Springfield College on Nov. 2.

“It was awesome to go ahead and be surprised,” Read said. “I am not a fan of surprises, and they definitely did surprise me with that at the Springfield game. I wanted the

focus to obviously be on our conference game, but it was really nice to get that recognition from the administration, coaches, and players.”

Tepper said Read always managed to keep the team motivated and focused on their goal, even if matches did not go as planned.

“If we’re in the middle of a tough game or things are getting kind of crazy, he’s good at reminding us of exactly what we need to do to be successful,” Tepper said. “He’s constantly on the lookout for how we can improve.”

Tepper said Read’s emphasis on preparation and understanding opponents reminded the team of their roles and responsibilities during each match. “[Read] is so dedicated,” Tepper said. “I would always come into his office to ask him questions, and he’s always watching videos about our next team. I remember asking him about how we were going to beat Wellesley and he had so many answers. It’s nice to have a coach that’s so knowledgeable and wellprepared.” lara_hill@emerson.edu @larahill_