Holiday Travel

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

Thursday, Nov. 19, 2020 • Volume 74, Issue 12

Holiday travel could accelerate virus, experts say

COVID surge brings increased on-campus rules

Andrew Brinker

Charlie McKenna

Beacon Staff

Beacon Staff

The end of Emerson’s in-person semester has arrived—and with it, a dangerous caveat.

In the coming week, Boston, now overwhelmed with new infections of coronavirus, will bear witness to a mass migration of college students. Tens of thousands will pour out of dorm rooms and off-campus apartments. They’ll scatter across the U.S. and join families and friends for Thanksgiving. Some will soon return to the city. Others will remain at home, possibly until the spring semester.

Either way, the pandemic is poised to accelerate.

Cases are shooting up in Massachusetts and nationwide, as a second wave of the pandemic grips the country. The U.S. is nearing 200,000 new infections each day.

Health experts and government officials, weary of indicators that the already bleak situation may worsen in the coming weeks and months, are sounding the alarm on Thanksgiving travel and gatherings.

Trips on public transportation during one of the busiest travel seasons, coupled with the possibility of young asymptomatic carriers bringing COVID-19 home, may accelerate the rapid pace at which the virus is already spreading, several experts told The Beacon.

“This could be the greatest risk from the semester,” Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University said in an interview. “People may take [COVID-19] home with them and infect people who really are susceptible to severe complications.”

Over the past months, coronavirus cases in Massachusetts have taken a turn for the worse, nearing totals last seen at the virus’ peak in April. The majority of cases are appearing in younger groups, specifically those aged 20 to 29, according to the Massachusetts Department of Health.

That trend, while a potential sign this second wave may not bring about the same amount of death as the first, offers concerning implications for the possibility of unwitting spread of the virus.

Young people are far more likely to be asymptomatic after contracting COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That means without appropriate precautions, they could carry the virus onto airplanes or trains and into their communities—though the possibility is contingent on the presence of the virus where students are embarking from, Siegel said.

“It’s going to vary based on each campus,” he said. “The more cases you have, the more of an impact it’s going to have when students return back to their communities.”

At Emerson, COVID-19 infections have remained relatively low, though the college reported a sudden uptick of 12 new cases in two days on Wednesday, higher than any weekly total since the testing requirement began in August. As of

South Station (top) and the Tufts Medical testing center (bottom) Photos Hongyu Liu & Lizzie Heintz publication, 25 students are in quarantine on campus, and two are in isolation. Administrators said Wednesday night that none of those infections were a result of community spread.

But regardless of on-campus infection rate, potential for spread varies based on a person’s contacts and how they travel, Siegel said.

“It can spread very quickly,” he said. “There are examples where a single person has resulted in the infection of hundreds of other people—a so-called super spreader. On the other hand, one person could spread it to one other person, and it could end at that point. It’s all about risk, and we don’t know the numbers, and we can’t control it.”

Travel, Pg. 2.

‘This could be the greatest risk from the semester’ Dr. Michael Siegel

Marine charged in Daniel Hollis’ death Beacon Staff

Frankie Rowley Beacon Staff

Flu shots required for return to campus Pg. 2 Editorial: Cancel in-person classes for our safety Pg. 4

Emerson administrators do not believe the sharp spike in positive coronavirus tests on campus since Monday is a result of a case cluster or community spread.

Contact tracing efforts revealed no links between the 12 positive cases reported on Monday and Tuesday, Assistant Vice President for Campus Life and “COVID Lead” Erik Muurisepp told The Beacon.

“At this point in time, [the cases] do not appear to be related,” Muurisepp said in a phone interview.

“If we believed that there were connections, or there were concerns for in the classroom experience, or any residence hall cluster, or a dining cluster, or anything like that, we would take the appropriate action that was needed.”

The positive tests were likely a result of spread somewhere in Boston, he said. Massachusetts has reached a second wave of COVID-19—the state reported 2,744 new cases Wednesday, close to the number of cases reported at the virus’ peak in April. Hospitalizations are surging as well, with 855 reported Wednesday, compared to 311 Oct. 18.

The surge in Emerson cases led administrators to cancel all non-academic in-person activities, including student organization meetings, through the end of the semester. In-person courses will continue as scheduled through Wednesday, when most students head home for Thanksgiving. Muurisepp said officials made the decision after learning the new cases were not a result of classroom spread.

“The classroom experience is not one that we are concerned about,” he said. “For exposure, the way that the rooms have been set up and the diligence paid there for faculty to make sure they’re adhering to that, students adhering to [mask wearing]… It’s those other meetings and other gatherings that become more concerning for potential exposure. So it’s where we felt it would be smart to move in that direction, and not allow those other gatherings.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quantify the risk of infection in an in-person learning model like Emerson’s as “some to medium.”

Nancy Allen, a professor in the Marlboro Institute who teaches a course on infectious disease, says she has been awaiting a surge in Emerson’s cases since the beginning of the semester. The decision to end in-person activities was a necessary measure, she said.

The twelve students who tested positive Monday Administrors, Pg. 2.

Charlie McKenna

Voting for SGA? Here are the candidates on the ballot

INSIDE THIS EDITION

@berkeleybeacon // @beaconupdate

The Student Government Association’s fall 2020 elections will feature six candidates running to bolster the ranks of an organization that has struggled to make forward progress under its newly established structure.

The five positions on the ballot are executive vice president, communication studies senator, class of 2024 president, class of 2024 vice president, and Marlboro Institute of Liberal Arts senator. Executive Vice President Jehan Ayesha-Wirasto is running unopposed for re-election while current Executive Treasurer Thomas Coughlin is not competing to extend his tenure. Both were appointed to their positions in August.

This fall was SGA’s first semester under its new SGA memebers voting in 2019. Beacon Archives legislative model, which aims to give the organization’s members a platform to make concrete change at the college. So far, that change has not come to fruition. Newly established bodies are President-elect Joe Biden is our still unable to meet due to a lack of members, and Emo King Pg. 6 the group has passed just one piece of legislation (legislation is intended to be a call to action to adReminiscing on the fabled Emerson ministrators).

Hockey Club Pg. 8 SGA, Pg. 3.

A reservist in the Marine Corps has been charged in the death of Daniel Hollis, an Emerson student who died in fall 2019 after an altercation outside a Brighton house party.

The man, identified as Lance Corporal Samuel Boris London, has been charged with one count of murder with intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm, one count of voluntary manslaughter, one count of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of assault consummated by a battery, and wrongful use of a controlled substance, according to a statement from the Daniel Hollis Foundation.

A group of college-age men confronted Hollis, who was a sophomore, and his friends as they were leaving the party in the early morning hours of Sept. 28, 2019. Hollis was pushed and hit his head on the cement, suffering extensive brain injuries.

Despite successful surgery immediately following the incident, doctors said Hollis would not recover.

He died four days later on Oct. 2.

The Marine Corps identified London as a suspect in the initial investigation, led by the Suffolk County District Attorney, in November 2019 and were in the process of removing him from service so he could face potential charges.

A grand jury declined to charge London following a five-month investigation by the DA’s office and Boston Police Department.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service took Hollis, Pg. 2

The Berkeley Beacon

November 19, 2020

2

Emerson to restrict campus access to those who return without flu shots Dana Gerber Beacon Staff Emerson students will be barred from campus at the beginning of the semester if they do not provide the college with documentation of a flu shot, per a Massachusetts mandate.

Students must submit proof of receiving the shot to the Student Health Portal, managed by the Center for Health and Wellness, by Dec. 31. If they fail to do so, they risk restrictions to their campus tap access, Assistant Vice President for Campus Life Erik Muurisepp said in a phone interview. Staff and faculty will communicate with Human Resources to affirm their vaccination.

“As we get into the coming weeks, we’ll do targeted outreach to those that are not in compliance that don’t have a flu shot on file yet, and we’ll continue to do that through January,” Muurisepp, who also serves as the college’s “COVID Lead” said.

The state mandate, announced by the Massachusetts Department of Health in mid-August, requires students older than six months and younger than 30 attending child care, pre-school, kindergarten, K-12 or colleges and universities to receive the immunization

by Dec. 31 if they plan to attend in-person classes in the spring.

Students studying remotely or with approved religious or medical exemptions do not have to be vaccinated.

Students are able to upload their “signed immunization verification document” in the “uploads” tab of the health portal. Students are also supposed to enter the date they received the shot, though there is currently no option on the portal to do so. Despite an email from Cam-

pus Life stating “the flu vaccine is now listed as a requirement in the Student Health Portal,” influenza is not listed under the “immunizations” tab where students typically submit proof of vaccinations.

The requirement aims to curb the surge in flu infections that typically accompanies the winter months, so as to not divert necessary resources from COVID-19 patients. Coronavirus infections and hospitalizations in the state are skyrocketing, with single-day cases topping 2,000 five times this week.

Though local hospitals say they are now better prepared for an uptick in COVID-19 cases than they were at the onset of the pandemic, compounding those cases with an influx of flu patients—who may also require respiratory support—would further stretch healthcare resources.

Other local schools, like Northeastern University and Harvard University, are also requiring documentation from students to access their campuses in the spring semester. At Suffolk University and Boston University, students may not be eligible to register for or alter their spring semester class schedules if they fail to submit vaccination documentation.

A new outreach campaign from Emerson officials is attempting to inform students of the requirement via Instagram posts and emails from the Office of Campus Life, though communication didn’t begin until Oct. 8. Outreach will soon increase for students still unaware of the mandate, Muurisepp said.

“We will continue to reference it, and it will have some targeted specific emails just about the flu shot requirement,” he said.

The Center for Health and Wellness is holding a two-hour immunization clinic before campus shutters for the semester, on Nov. 20. There, students can receive flu shots, which cost $33 without insurance. That cost

Erik Muurisepp in 2017. Beacon Archives

A poster reminding to get a flu shot.

Diana Bravo / Beacon Staff is covered by the student health insurance plan. Students must pre-register for the clinic, as a limited supply of vaccines are available. The CHW held a similar clinic on Nov. 13. “[The Center for Health and Wellness] ordered X number of vaccines,” Muurisepp said. “It’s pretty hard to increase that, so we were not able to increase that for this year based on this requirement.”

The college is also recommending immunization clinics near campus, like the CVS at the corner of Boylston and Washington streets, which costs about $40 without insurance.

If a student already received an immunization but didn’t get documentation, Muurisepp said they should reach out to the clinic they visited.

“They should be able to get a receipt or some sort of documentation from them,” he said. “They can always go back to where they got it from.” dana_gerber@emerson.edu

Thanksgiving travel may drive up virus Cont. from Pg. 1 Siegel, who has been a vocal critic of Boston-area college reopenings, said local administrators are not doing enough to ensure students are COVID-free before embarking for home.

He said a quarantine requirement prior to students travelling home could have ensured students would be less likely to spread the virus to their communities. Experts believe it can take up to two weeks for the virus to incubate before a person would begin testing positive or showing symptoms.

A mandatory testing requirement before students leave, while not surefire as some tests can be false negatives or positive, could have added an additional layer of security. Students could also test negative soon after contracting the virus as the possibility of a false negative is high immediately following exposure, according to the Medical Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“I would probably want to have a test before I went home,” Nancy Allen, a professor in the Marlboro Institute who has a degree in public health from Tufts University, said in an interview. “Even if it’s not foolproof, even though there’s still a potential for a false negative, it’s something.”

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker joined six other state governors from the northeast Tuesday in urging colleges to provide students a COVID-19 test no more than 72 hours before leaving campus.

Emerson administrators missed the deadline to enforce a quarantine requirement and have not directly instructed students to receive a coronavirus test before travelling.

Without those precautions, Siegel said community spread may be inevitable, and that administrators would be responsible for it.

Instead, college officials have ramped up messaging encouraging social distancing and mask wearing. Assistant Vice President for Campus Life and “COVID Lead” Erik Muurisepp said students can choose to be tested outside of the weekly testing requirement as an extra measure of caution.

“We committed to having our testing program go through the very end,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “Students that wanted to get testing right up until Wednesday at noon, if they needed to, could do that. So they can safely travel home, and we don’t want the spread of the virus to go from Boston, anywhere else.”

But even tightened restrictions cannot ensure a student does not spread the virus to their community after taking public transportation, where travellers pack into closed spaces, often with poor ventilation systems, for extended periods of time.

Allen, who teaches a course on infectious disease, is telling her students to leave campus early if they can. Crowded public transport could be a breeding ground for the virus, she said.

“You’re traveling during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year, so you just have more people,” she said. “By the time we hit Thanksgiving, there’s a much higher likelihood that there will be somebody who has COVID on your transportation. So I say, if you have the option to leave early when it’s less crowded, do it.”

Few scientific studies related

to spread on public transport have been conducted, Siegel said, but it is clear that the circumstances of such travel could easily allow for virus transmission. The likelihood of spread is directly correlated with the number of people on a vehicle and the duration of the trip, he said.

“A ride on the T for five minutes is probably not a huge risk factor,” he said. “But if you’re on a plane for six hours going across the country, that’s a different story. Because the more people, the greater the chances that there is someone who’s infected on that conveyance. And greater duration means the greater the amount of potential exposure.”

And the concern should a student contract the virus while travelling, he emphasized, is not for the student. It’s for the older, disabled, or immunocompromised people who they may infect, and are at an exponentially higher risk for developing serious or deadly virus complications.

While it is impossible to eliminate the chance of contracting the virus on public transport, travellers can still lower their risk by wearing a mask for their entire trip, Allen said.

But her biggest worry is students contracting COVID-19 at home, in communities that may reject safety restrictions. Fourteen U.S. states do not have statewide mask mandates.

“There’s the potential for students who have done a really good job here in Boston—socially distancing, wearing masks, spending time in rooms that have good ventilation—and they’re going to be going home to communities that may not be as willing to wear masks and socially distance,” she said. andrew_brinker@emerson.edu

Administrators committed to keeping up in-person classes Cont. from Pg. 1 or Tuesday will not be able return home for Thanksgiving. The 25 students in quarantine as of Wednesday, who were identified as close contacts of those who tested positive, may also have their travel plans disrupted. Muurisepp said those in quarantine would remain in college housing through Dec. 2, while those in isolation would remain through Nov. 27.

“Students can’t travel while in those categories… for a quarantined student, we could look at having them transit via private vehicle.”

Those students will stay in the Paramount Center residence hall, along with other non-infected or exposed students who may be staying on campus over the break.

“We’re not at that breaking point yet, I guess if you want to call it that,” he said. “But we would also monitor that if we needed to make that adjustment. There’s still capacity in Paramount for quarantine and isolation and our plans for this Thanksgiving winter break.”

Coronavirus cases have ticked up at other local colleges in recent weeks. Northeastern reported its second-highest daily positivity rate on Nov. 8, while Boston University reported its single highest total of new infections on Nov. 1. The state’s higher education positivity rate has risen this month as well from 0.12 percent to 0.34 percent. Department of Public Health data shows the number of positive cases amongst colleges rose to 566 the week of Nov. 10—up from 362 cases the week prior and 175 at the end of October.

Allen, who holds a masters degree in public health from Tufts University, said her students were worried on Wednesday. Many told her they

would not attend in person classes out of caution.

Ten of the 12 new positives at Emerson came on Monday, the college’s dashboard revealed. Muurisepp’s email to the community Wednesday afternoon said that four of the positive tests came from on-campus students, four from off-campus students, one from a faculty member, and one from a food vendor.

Previously, the college has refrained from providing any identifying details of those who test positive.

Officials were more transparent about the new cases so community members would not be overly concerned, Muurisepp said.

“We wanted to make sure we could share as much information as possible,” he said. “We felt like it was important to be able to clarify for folks [because] we don’t want panic.

There’s no need for panic. There’s no need for a rash decision.”

Any changes to college protocol would be made based on any new details related to the cases.

“Our commitment, obviously, is to the academic experience,” he said.

“We wouldn’t just say, you know, we’re shutting down and moving out.

We would move to remote, we’d say, okay, if we had to isolate or quarantine an entire building or a floor, we could do that as well. So those are a lot of the potential levers that we would pull on a case by case basis as we got that data from Tufts and the Broad [the institute responsible for processing tests from Emerson and several other area schools].”

Andrew Brinker contributed reporting charles_mckenna@emerson.edu

Hollis’ suspect charged with six counts Cont. from Pg. 1 over the case in June and officially charged London on Sunday.

“It has been almost 14 months since Dan was attacked outside of his friend’s apartment,” the foundation’s statement reads. “We miss him every minute of every day. We know his loss is felt far beyond our immediate family and while nothing will bring him back, there is no longer the frustration and despair that the accused would not be called to account for their actions. It may be later than we had hoped, but the justice system is at work.”

Hollis, a marketing communications major, was a goalkeeper for the college’s lacrosse team.

Those that knew him remembered Hollis for his kindness, humor, and positive attitude.

Men’s Lacrosse Coach Matthew Colombini told The Beacon last year that Hollis always showed up to practice with a smile on his face.

“He just had a great personality, great energy,” Colombini said in an interview. “He was smiling the whole time, he asked a bunch of great questions. He was just excited about the school, and lacrosse, and was just very outgoing.”

Hollis’ family launched the Daniel J. Hollis Foundation after his death. The foundation seeks to provide scholarships and learning experiences for the community.

The college released a statement noting the ongoing nature of the investigation.

“The Emerson College community continues to mourn the loss of Daniel Hollis ‘22 who died tragically in the Fall of 2019,” the statement reads. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Hollis family as they continue to seek justice and closure following his death. charles_mckenna@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

November 19, 2020

3

COVID-19 forces professors to consider pausing path to tenure Camilo Fonseca Beacon Staff

With professional timelines thrown into disarray by the pressures of the pandemic, some Emerson faculty are weighing whether or not to “stop-theclock” on their paths to tenure.

Due to various roadblocks that have arisen due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Office of Academic Affairs is now allowing faculty to opt in to a one-year extension on their requirements to be considered for tenure, the status of indefinitely-assured employment at Emerson. The option, which effectively pauses the tenure timetable, is open to all eligible “tenure-track” professors— full-time faculty members working towards the job security and the academic freedom associated with tenureship.

The “stop-the-clock” option was made available to tenure-track faculty in the spring after Emerson shut down campus operations, Michaele Whelan, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, said. Typically, tenure-track faculty are expected to meet several academic criteria, including completion of various creative and professional projects, to be considered for tenure.

“Maybe they were going to be shooting films, but that wasn’t happening, or they had performances scheduled, but the theaters went dark,” Whelan said in an interview. “They had these special research or creative work opportunities lined up, and then those didn’t happen.

So we recognize that.”

There are approximately 55 assistant professors who, unlike lecturers, specialists, or adjunct/affiliated faculty, are currently considered tenure-track, Whelan said. Those professors are in various stages of their five-year “probationary periods,” during which they are expected to fulfill their department’s yearly benchmarks for tenure advancement. After their fifth year, they can submit their candidacy for the

A faculty assembly meeting. Beacon Archive final review.

“Depending on when they come in, they’ll go up [for tenure],” she said.

“We have six faculty going up for tenure and promotion this year, and that has been fairly consistent [over the past few years].”

Whelan said that, as of Nov. 8, only six professors had declared their intentions to “stop-the-clock”—a decision which, once submitted, is irrevocable.

Nevertheless, she said she felt that there were no major disadvantages to opting-in, especially compared to the potential disadvantages of not taking the extra time to satisfy the requirements.

Faculty members who do not receive tenure status after their probationary period face the possibility of their contracts not being renewed.

“There’s a downside in the salary, which is true,” she said of the delay in eventually reaching tenure. “But if that allows you to build a stronger case [for

your own candidacy], the benefit is the job for life. And if you don’t build the stronger case, then you don’t continue at Emerson. That’s a really big consequence.”

Julia Halperin, an assistant professor in the Visual and Media Arts Department, is debating whether or not to pause her tenure requirements until the pandemic subsides. Right now, Halperin is scheduled to have her third-year probationary review in the spring of 2021 before devoting her fourth year to heading the production of a film project. But that objective is now up in the air.

“I can’t even entirely guess what all the implications are,” Halperin said of how her project has been affected by the pandemic. “The film that I will be making is totally different than the film I would have made if COVID hadn’t happened. What I was planning to make was something that, even a year

from now, isn’t realistic—nobody’s going to want to do a crowd scene or things where people are in close physical contact.”

Despite her own concerns, Halperin recognized that for some faculty members, it may make more sense to continue with the tenure process as usual.

“They either don’t feel like things will be significantly different a year from now, or they feel like they’re far enough along with whatever they were doing that they can sort of struggle through,” she said. “I would imagine it varies a lot by the kinds of research and creative work that people do.”

Halperin said many professors in the VMA department have been finding ways to adapt their work to the pandemic so they won’t be forced to delay their tenure schedules.

“Their projects might be changing, but not necessarily in such a way that they need to stop the clock,” Halperin

said. “It’s just like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to do a documentary about music clubs in Boston because they’ve all closed, but I’m going to do a documentary about the fact that they have all closed,’ or something like that.”

For those professors still undecided, the window for “stopping-the-clock” will remain open until the Jan. 29, 2021 deadline.

While the option remains available for faculty members on track to meet the tenure requirements, the Office of Academic Affairs is considering extending the option to new tenure-track faculty members who will be hired for the Fall 2021 semester.

“Those are the only ones that weren’t offered [the option of stopping the clock],” she said. “So that would be a question to think about.”

Halperin said professors working through the process anticipate the relative job security in their positions—as well as the academic freedom—that is promised by tenure.

“The only kind of stability that exists in academia is lifetime stability,” said Halperin. “[Tenure] provides more input into how your department is run—and more money—but also a guarantee that you can take intellectual risks or creative risks, and you know you’re not going to get punished for it.

That’s why the system exists.”

Despite the increased flexibility the option offers, Halperin said she is concerned that it may not be enough to compensate for the rapidly changing landscape of the pandemic.

“Stopping the clock is one aspect of it, but really, the larger questions are, ‘What is the film distribution landscape going to be?’” she said. “‘What is the scholarly landscape going to be?’ It’s unclear. Academic Affairs has done a good job, but nobody really knows the answers to those questions.” camilo_fonseca@emerson.edu

Class of 2024 President only contested race this semester Cont. from Pg. 1 SGA hasn’t conducted their usual election press this semester.

Typically, campaign posters flood Emerson’s campus and candidates launch Instagram accounts to garner attention for their campaigns.

The organization also didn’t host its planned Instagram takeovers, where candidates typically explain their platforms to students.

With just five positions set to be filled, the organization will once again stare down a slew of vacancies, especially in its legislative branch. A number of senators who were appointed this fall are not running for official election. Elected senators serve for a full academic year, but appointees must seek election to continue serving. In total, twelve senatorial positions—including Business of Creative Enterprises senator, Honors Program senator, Journalism senator, Marketing Communications senator and Visual Media Arts senator—will be vacant at the beginning of the spring semester, as well as the treasurership.

The organization faces even more vacancies in its class councils as nine positions are set to be vacant in the spring.

SGA officials have said they are not concerned about having to fill potential vacancies.

Polls run from 7 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18 to 7 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 20.

Ayesha-Wirasto declined a request for an interview, and Coughlin declined to comment on his decision not to run for re-election.

Academic Senate The academic senate is composed of representatives from each of the college’s academic departments. Senators meet with depart-

ment chairs to advocate for students in their respective major programs and convey their needs. The academic senate is also responsible for producing the academic initiative, which highlights issues in each of the academic departments, which SGA aims to address.

Incumbent Individually Designed Interdisciplinary Program Senator Pranint Chand is running unopposed for a second semester representing the new Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts. Chand was first appointed to the role in a student assembly meeting on Sept. 14.

Chand is running for reelection in hopes of making life for Marlboro students at Emerson better after the merger. The controversial merger between Emerson and Marlboro College was finalized in July, and sent a select number of Marlboro students to Emerson to finish their degrees.

This was those students’ first semester at Emerson, and Chand said they currently feel that their voices aren’t being valued in discussions surrounding dilemmas that have emerged in the merger’s wake.

At Marlboro, students often had the opportunity to work closely with professors on academic work.

Currently, those students feel they aren’t getting the same kind of personalized support, and Chand proposed an official channel for students in the IDIP program to work with professors.

“Students need to get the right kind of courses they’re demanding, the right support from professors, and the right academic sources,” Chand said. “ I would say that we want to make a channel through which the students are able to connect with the faculty members that they want to work with.”

Chand also floated the idea of a peer mentor program that would connect Marlboro Institute students with alumni of the program.

Chand aspires to create a more inclusive community for Marlboro students at Emerson, one that meets both their social and academic needs.

“Every Friday we meet up, chat, have dinner together, and it’s been fun,” Chand said. “ Besides that, … we’re doing things like taking people out on field trips going on hikes going to museums, things like that.”

Ryan Jackson, who is running unopposed for a second semester as communication studies senator, did not respond to requests for an interview.

Class Council Class council is designed to advocate for the needs of each individual class. Each class has a council, which consists of a president, a vice president, a treasurer, and two senators. Senators represent their class in either the Financial Equity Committee or Student Experience Senate.

The contest for president of the class of 2024 is the only contested race set for the spring elections.

Aryan Chaudhari and Hannah Flayhan are both running for the position.

Chaudhari hopes to create a council suggestion box where students can voice their concerns.

“I plan on listening to the students, because whatever their concerns are I wish to fulfill and if we’re not doing things right… I want to hear what they think of it and what we should do to fix the problems that are currently facing our class,” he said in a Zoom interview.

SGA at a Fall 2019 Joint Session meeting. Beacon Archives Chaudhari said one of his major goals is combatting feelings of isolation amongst first-year students by implementing a “buddy system.”

“A system in which people [who feel] unsafe heading to wherever they want to can put in a request or google form for a buddy to assist them in any way,” he said. …”They can have that companion and further progress their friendship maybe later on during the semester or throughout the four years we’re here.”

Currently, the Emerson College Police Department offers a similar program where students can use the LiveSafe App to request an ECPD officer to escort them to and from their destination.

Flayhan did not respond to requests for an interview.

Joseph Naileth is running unopposed for Class of 2024 vice president. He said the most pressing issue for his class and the college as a whole is social responsibility, specifically when it comes to the college’s relationship with the homeless community of Boston.

“I think that the biggest issue fac-

ing the general community in which we live, right now is that there is an ongoing homelessness epidemic in Boston,” Naileth said. “I feel like college students and college administrations and anybody who was a stakeholder in college life, should bear some of that responsibility.”

Naileth hopes to create a mutual aid program, where students can work on different initiatives to aid the homeless.

“There are some classic things that we can always be looking for that I know a number of organizations are already doing their own versions of,” Naileth said. “ There’s a lot of room for clothing drives.

There’s room for canned food drives that people are grabbing something extra from the Max, if they have extra board bucks, to just be able to pick up some things that wouldn’t even put a dent in their own wallet, that could make a huge difference in somebody’s day.”

Charlie McKenna contributed reporting. frankie_rowley@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

November 19, 2020

Opinion Emerson, cancel in-person classes immediately Editorial This week feels like a much-anticipated moment is finally upon us.

Emerson went almost three months without seeing a significant uptick in COVID-19 cases. For so long, it felt like we might actually make it through the semester—at least until Thanksgiving break when we go online—with so few cases. It felt like we were just a little safer than we were last April, or over the summer.

It felt like the city of Boston was on a commendable path forward.

That isn’t the case anymore.

In an effort to mitigate a sharp increase in cases on campus, the college limited access to non-essential buildings, cancelled athletic practices, and banned non-academic gatherings Wednesday afternoon.

After seeing positive test results grow from 32 to 44 in just one day, administrators almost immediately sent out an email announcing the changes. Their efforts to keep the community safe are welcome—and necessary.

But limited gatherings and group meetings aren’t going to stop a virus that aggressively jumps from person to person. Closing the gym and restricting capacity in the Dining Hall won’t slow a worldwide pandemic that’s taken almost 250,000 lives in the U.S. We have to revert to our springtime quarantine ways.

We have to once again rely on takeout for meals and Zoom chats with friends for socialization.

And administrators, you have to cancel in-person classes, and you have to do so immediately. No amount of bureaucratic hoops are too many to jump through to save a life. The time has come for real, bold leadership. The community needs you to rise to the occasion.

Failures in this critical time will not be correctable in the form of performative statements on theatre signs and social media.

Emerson should opt to have the last week of in-person learning remotely as soon as possible. In fact, administrators should enforce this rule until we once again live in a country where it’s safe to get together with your family, go out to eat, or even go to the grocery store.

Until that fateful day arrives, it’s a disservice—and a dangerous decision—to tell students, faculty, and staff to come to campus and engage in courses they could have attended online.

It’s arguable that for many stu-

© 2020 The Berkeley Beacon. All rights reserved.

The Beacon is published weekly. The Beacon receives funding from the Student Government Association of Emerson College.

(617) 824–8687 berkeleybeacon.com contact@berkeleybeacon.com 172 Tremont St., Boston, MA 02116

dents and faculty, classes are the longest period of time they are exposed to people they don’t usually mingle with. Sure, they’re masked and socially distanced.

Some scrounge up enough wipes to clean their small, black tabletops before lectures begin. Others pull out mini-bottles of hand sanitizers from their backpacks before typing notes on their laptop. Everyone sits in desks placed barely six feet apart while squinting at white boards and listening to their muffled instructors at the front of the class. Still, all it takes for this virus to spread is one unhealthy person. One wayward cough. One instance of accidental exposure. And with our first uptick in cases spawning amid a nationwide second wave, it’s safe to say that cases on campus will increase, rather than go in the opposite direction.

Outside of Emerson, cases in Massachusetts have increased alarmingly throughout the past month, almost reaching record high numbers we haven’t seen since April. In the past three days, daily case counts have risen from 1,967 reported on Monday to 2,744 reported today. Within Boston alone, there are more than 3,400 active cases, according to numbers from the city government.

We know there’s less than a week of in-person instruction left.

Soon all students will once again be attending classes exclusively through Zoom, to the dismay of community members who miss what the educational experience used to be just months ago. As such, many professors have set up their curriculums around final presentations, group discussions, and activities that benefit from people being in the same space.

But that fact alone does not justify putting thousands of us at risk.

The virus is here in our community. It’s spreading. It’s not some kind of far-off threat. The moment to take every single precaution we can take is right now—before we send thousands of students home to their families for Thanksgiving.

It’s about to be too late. It’s the responsibility of the college to act before it is.

This editorial was written by the Beacon’s editor-in-chief, managing editors, and opinion editors. The opinions expressed by the Editorial Board do not impact the paper’s coverage.

Editor-in-Chief Diti Kohli Managing Editors Domenico Conte (Content) Tomás González (Visual) Dylan Rossiter (Operations) Section Editors Andrew Brinker (News) Taina Millsap (Living Arts) Jocelyn Yang (Opinion) Christopher Williams (Sports) Lizzie Heintz (Photo) Advisor Rachel Layne

Courtesy Diti Kohli

Letter from the editor

What we still have to do Diti Kohli

Beacon Staff The Beacon’s first print issue of the semester in early September initiated a wave of resignations from almost 20 staff members. Some felt deeply mistreated and silenced by our newsroom’s culture. They rightly took issue with several stories going back years that hurt or mischaracterized marginalized communities.

Others left in solidarity, choosing not to stay at a paper that repeatedly wronged their peers.

In the 11 weeks since, our remaining reporters, editors, and photographers have put out important work (in my very biased opinion). We’ve reported on campus life, the pandemic, and the election. All the while, we’ve slowly been chipping away at the promises we made three months ago—promises on which we intend to follow through.

I’m writing now in an effort to be transparent with our community. So much of these conversations are happening in our group chats, Slack channels, town halls, and private chats. But everyone deserves to know what is happening behind “closed doors.”

There’s still so much institutional and personal work to be done. We cannot magically fix ourselves— or the systemic problems in journalism—in 12 weeks. That said, our editorial staff is making a deliberate effort to scrutinize what we publish and how.

Here’s what we’ve done so far: The Beacon instituted mandatory bias training for its staff and frequent correspondents with Robert Amelio, a former Emerson employee with decades of professional experience. The first session touched on the basic definitions of bias, stereotyping, and inequity and how they apply in our everyday life. Three weeks later, the second hour-long meeting addressed the past of the paper and specific issues in journalism. With the help of the staff, I briefed Robert on The Beacon’s past, including a written list of individual instances and articles where we fell short. The third session touched on how to have

difficult conversations, especially with people and organizations we have wronged in the past. The Beacon is committed to continuing this training in the spring and for semesters to come. We are working with the Student Government Association to earmark necessary funds to keep this important educational experience.

In the future, we plan to be more deliberate in recording the sessions and following up with those who do not attend all the required training. We also plan to work with whichever professional leads the sessions in the future to ensure The Beacon’s past content is addressed more explicitly than in this semester’s sessions.

With the help of several staff members, The Beacon’s management team has also put together a new constitution that will be voted on and hopefully approved this week. (That would require two-thirds of our staff to vote ‘yes.’) The ratification of this document will help hold future Beacon editors accountable for the pledges we made this year.

The constitution includes several subsections—each addressing a concrete change in the way in the paper functions.

It adopts a more democratic editor-in-chief and managing editor nomination and election process. It includes more voices in the newsroom. We hope this will ease the unsettling power dynamic multiple former staffers told us persists in our newsroom.

As long as the constitution passes this week, this newfound hiring process will be implemented next month to assemble our Spring 2021 masthead.

The constitution will also create an advisory board of professional journalists to consult on stories covering communities we have harmed, There will be an open dialogue with our editorial staff. These past months, we’ve consulted an informal cohort of professors and reporters of color to preview and edit select articles ahead of the formal ratification.

Also in the document: weekly section meetings, bi-monthly town halls, and a semesterly audit of our coverage.

The Beacon also undertook

some smaller efforts we intend to continue. The managing team briefed new correspondents on The Beacon’s troubling history in our first community-wide meeting and to individual contributors when they asked questions.

We’ve set aside more time to deliberate and write editorials, so they are not insincere statements on behalf of The Beacon.

We fell short this semester by not completing an audit of our coverage. We had hoped to run through a number of our stories this last year and document their writers, sources, photographers, and photo subjects in an effort to evaluate the diversity—or lack thereof—in our coverage. In our initial memo, we wrote we would complete this effort by early November and share it publicly by the end of the semester. We admittedly missed our deadline and now hope to finish this year’s audit by the end of the calendar year. We want to be deliberate and thorough in our audit, and it’s taking more time. We currently have a team of editors that we hope to grow who will begin auditing stories dating back to August of 2019 who each night begin this upcoming Thanksgiving break.

Despite the continued implementation of these changes, we at The Beacon know we cannot expect community members to forget our mistakes. Healing is time-consuming and exhausting. The pain this newsroom has caused to members of our community cannot be erased in weeks, months, or possibly even years.

The Beacon will continue to report on all communities on campus because we operate as a learning institution and because it is our job to do so. But we hope to do so with more consideration, compassion, and understanding of marginalized communities. In what will inevitably and rightfully be a slow process. The Beacon must regain the trust of student organizations, intercultural groups, and every single person on Emerson’s campus. diti_kohli@emerson.edu

4

The Berkeley Beacon

November 19, 2020

5

I was diagnosed with ADHD in my first week of college.

Handling online classes has been difficult

Theo Wolf Beacon Staff

Back in March, it was easy to chalk up the changes in my mental state and my struggles with online classes to the fact that every CNN notification felt like it came straight out of Stephen King’s The Stand. Following the transition to online learning, I struggled to focus on my readings. Assignments that would have taken me an hour to complete back on campus consumed nearly my entire day at home. After reading and re-reading articles for my copyediting course, I was nearly in tears over the number of mistakes I wasn’t catching. I felt, in a word, stupid. Coursework seemed to come so naturally to other people, yet I was barely managing things that felt so much easier before.

To deal with my stress, I turned to crafts projects. Even before the pandemic, I typically had a few projects going at once. I usually bring small knitting projects to lecture-based classes, but now that I couldn’t work or leave my house, I threw myself at every pattern that interested me, only to abandon the half-finished sock to start a cardigan instead.

When I found one that grabbed my attention, I would sit for hours on end, not moving until it was dark and I realized I had sat on my porch for 14 hours without even getting up to eat. But I never managed to finish a project. They began to pile up around the boxes from my dorm room that I couldn’t bring myself to unpack. I wanted to finish these projects desperately, but the sheer number overwhelmed me. When I did manage to unpack half a box, I would inevitably become derailed, never returning to finish the job.

My saving grace came at the end of May, when I started interning for an Emerson professor’s media production company. We’d discussed it on the last day of class in the fall, and fortunately, it easily transitioned online. There, I edited podcast transcripts and held myself to a routine of editing an episode every night. It quickly became the one anchor in a sea of time blindness. Entire days would slip away from me before I realized it. But every night at 7 p.m., I knew it was time to put on music and open up the content manager.

When I got to sit in on the rehearsals and performance of a Zoom live show of the podcast, I knew it would run for

Illustration Joshua Sun

over an hour, so I grabbed the cardigan I was knitting before I logged on. I knew that occupying my hands was the only way I could get my brain to pay attention to anything on screen. On the call, my professor mentioned me and the work I was doing, and I joked about how I had knitted my way through his class, too. He said that many of his students, especially those with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), needed small ways to occupy their hands during his classes. There, it felt as though the world slammed to a halt. I think I froze mid-stitch like I was a cartoon character.

I knew the common symptoms of ADHD—my best friend and my girlfriend had both been diagnosed with it the year before—but I never thought it applied to me. Something about that throwaway comment, though, felt like the final piece of a puzzle slotting into place. I frantically researched symptoms for the rest of the summer, and I learned that ADHD in women is incredibly under-researched. But I can’t have ADHD! I would think. I do well in school! I thought about how every single one of my report cards for the first eight years of my education had comments about my daydreaming or reading books under my desk. My struggle to save money? Impulsive spending. My 14-hour cross-stitch marathon? Hyperfocus and

time blindness. Panic while driving?

Overstimulation. Things I considered personal faults, like my procrastination (again, time blindness), social struggles (rejection-sensitive dysphoria), and trouble initiating tasks I wanted to do (executive dysfunction)—all symptoms of a disorder masked by my performance in school.

Many high-performing students who are neurodivergent go undiagnosed until later in life because one of the major indicators for early-life diagnosis is trouble in school. In my case, I dedicated all of my energy to my grades, spending all of my time completing forgotten or last-minute assignments or trying to recover from a full day of hiding my symptoms at the expense of my social life and mental health.

In October, I finally had a telehealth appointment with a psychiatrist, where it took all of fifteen minutes to officially diagnose me.

But a formal diagnosis isn’t a silver bullet. Because of my prior anxiety diagnosis, I was put on a non-stimulant, which has to build up in your system before you feel any effects. I felt the side effects far before I felt any desired effect, nearly fainting in class three times before realizing that, despite what it said on the bottle, I needed to eat before I took a dose. And even on medication,

outside factors can still worsen symptoms. Things like lack of sleep, stress, and irregular schedules all worsen the symptoms of ADHD, and 2020 has brought these factors to everybody in spades.

When in-person classes resumed in the fall, I started bringing knitting projects to class again, and all of my professors were understanding when I explained I was recently diagnosed with ADHD (although one professor thought I meant COVID. He said “recently diagnosed? Shouldn’t you be quarantined?”). This move to hybrid learning brings nearly every major distraction into the learning environment with no better option. Attending class in my dorm room makes it harder to make my mind shift away from relaxation and into “learning.”

ADHD means my brain cannot filter and prioritize information. That means that as much as I want to pay attention to Zoom lectures, if I notice one of my plants needs to be watered, it takes on the same level of importance in my brain as writing down my notes.

ADHD causes an inability to move information from short-term to long-term memory, so deadlines that are hidden away in obscure Canvas tabs and only come up once in class immediately fall by the wayside, no matter how many

efforts I make to keep a planner or Google Calendar.

Connection and communication issues stemming from Zoom discussions trigger the disorder’s inability to regulate emotions more easily, leading to frustration and anger that can last the whole day, no matter how minor the issue. The cruel irony is that the more I think about how I need to pay attention, the less I actually pay attention.

This coming spring will follow the same flex learning model, and I’m bracing myself for another semester of these struggles. I’ve found some skills to manage the most frustrating symptoms; reading text out loud forces me to slow down and makes it easier to catch mistakes. By no means am I calling for a return to in-person classes.

It would be premature and incredibly dangerous, and I wouldn’t feel safe spending so much time in a classroom yet. Memory issues, dysregulated emotions, overstimulation, executive dysfunction, auditory processing delays, social struggles, time blindness, and yes, inattention and hyperactivity are all worsened when class is no longer face-to-face. But I feel as though complaining about what many perceive as “just ADHD” sounds like I’m making excuses to everybody around me. What you don’t see when I turn off the screen is my pacing in a desperate attempt to stimulate myself, or the frustration that leads to tears when I re-read the same page of a novel for the tenth time.

We’re all struggling right now, but people with ADHD and other invisible learning disabilities may be struggling more than you know. And a lot of us may not know why we’re struggling.

I thanked my professor at our next check-in. Without him picking up on my symptoms, it would have been impossible to know how long I would have gone without a diagnosis.

All I ask is for your understanding if I trail off mid-sentence while I talk on camera, or if I look like I’m not paying attention as I fiddle with my sock yarn. My brain just works differently than yours, and this is what I need to do to get through five consecutive hours of Zoom meetings. All I ask is a little consideration for your fellow students struggling with invisible disabilities.

There are more of us than you might think. molly_wolf@emerson.edu

Take a moment and appreciate the food at the DH Mariyam Quaisar Beacon Staff

Why are the doors to the dining hall so heavy? My noodle arms absolutely cannot handle so much weight.

Why does it always smell so funky in the dining hall? Where is the normal food? Talking through a mask is so difficult; they can never understand what I’m saying. Why is there even a soup station? I mean, how many people have actually gotten soup here? Ugh, of course there’s no French dressing for my salad. I wonder if the sandwiches are actually listed correctly today. Ew, never mind, they look inedible. There’s never any milk for my morning coffee. Where are the bananas? Oh my god, I heard that tofu gave someone food poisoning. Why is the pizza so dry? Yeah, I can’t handle the dining hall today, I’m going to Tatte.

I’ve heard every single one of these phrases in the dining hall. Granted, it does smell “funky” sometimes, and the sandwiches are occasionally list-

ed incorrectly. But that smell is from non-American cuisine, and animals were killed for those sandwiches before they landed in our dining hall.

I will admit that I have also said some of the things listed above. My arms genuinely do feel like noodles when I go to open the dining hall door.

I do think the pizza looks dry sometimes. But after great thought and a lecture from my mom, where she reminded me of the poverty-stricken streets of her hometown in India, I realized my privilege. The realities I don’t see in front of me every day— like poor families living under tarps, eating whatever they can find—are ignored when I whine about there being no croissants in the dining hall.

With Emerson’s $65,000 a year tuition and housing costs and its majority-Caucasian student population, Emerson is mostly home to students from the same demographic: advantaged and white. These students, like me, take food for granted, when in reality it is a privilege. Emerson’s dining hall provides a variety of food, including glob-

Illustration Joshua Sun

al cuisine, like yakisoba noodles, Thai red curry tofu, enchiladas, and chicken curry. But instead of appreciating the options, students often diss them.

Approximately 821 million people, or 11 percent of the global population, are starving around the world, according to the United Nations in 2018. But for us students, all we have to do is tap in to gain access to meals, while so many people in other places don’t have those resources. Understanding privilege is a basic quality everyone must have. Having access to a diverse

selection of food is a blessing. Why do we not see it that way?

Hundreds of years ago, people were growing and hunting for the food they ate. There wasn’t access to a Trader Joe’s or the ability to diet. Granted, not all of the Emerson population matches the privileged demographic. But quite a few students can afford cold brews every morning and attend B/SPOKE spin classes for a quick workout. Living such a lifestyle can blind people to the reality of poverty around the world, allowing them to whine and complain

about a lack of French dressing at the expensive college’s dining hall.

Students, take a second to look at your surroundings. Educate yourself about those who have the bare minimum. Ignorance is not bliss; ignorance is foolish. Be grateful for what you have and take advantage of what you’re given.

Next time you enter the dining hall, appreciate the luxury of food that surrounds you. mariyam_quaisar@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

Living Arts

November 19, 2020

6

Emo never dies: Joe Biden is the King of Emo. Let me explain

The Henry Winkler panel was a part of a virtual series hosted by EIV, Emerson Revisited. Courtesy EIV.

Henry Winkler ‘67 on acting, Emerson, and his childhood

When I think of emo music, I used to think of Gerard Way, Patrick Stump, Brendon Urie, or Hayley Williams. After the 2020 presidential election, I now know the truth—President-elect Joe Biden is the undisputed King of Emo. Dear readers, let me tell you a story.

The year is 1972; Joe Biden is running for U.S. Senate in his home state of Delaware. While working on Biden’s campaign trail, Dale Lewis and Peter Wentz II, two young legislative Kaitlyn Fehr assistants, meet and fall in love.

Beacon Correspondent If, like me, you’re familiar with emo, you probably recognize one of those names. Yes, Pete Wentz, the famous bassist of the band Fall Out Boy, came into existence because both of his parents campaigned for Biden.

Wentz himself acknowledged this in interviews around the 2008 election, stating, “If it weren’t for Joe Biden, I would not exist as a human being.”

Joe Biden and Wentz’s parents are so close to Biden that he even attended their wedding and took pictures with Wentz as a child. Wentz shared the photo to his Tumblr on Election Day in 2008, in which he officially endorsed the Obama/Biden campaign for president.

So what does all of this have to do with emo, you ask? In 2001, in a quiet Chicago suburb, Pete Wentz and Joe Trohman formed an emo-rock band now known as Fall Out Boy. Soon after their formation, and after Patrick Stump and Andy Hurley joined the band, the alternative label Fueled by Ramen signed the band.

While Fueled by Ramen is a giant in the alternative music scene today, it was relatively unknown at the time.

FOB’s debut studio album, Take This to Your Grave, sold over 500,000 copies worldwide and charted at #17 on Billboard. The band’s massive rise to fame also meant increased popularity for the label, and today they represent massive alternative artists like Panic! At The Disco, Paramore, and Twenty One Pilots.

For all the emos out there, former or current, FOB’s influence on Fueled by Ramen is directly responsible for bands like A Day to Remember, All Time Low, The Front Bottoms, Cobra Starship, Gym Class Heroes, Yellowcard, and of course, 3OH!3. I guess in a way, Joe Biden is tied to the iconic lyric “Tell your boyfriend if he says he’s got beef/ That I’m a vegetarian and I ain’t fucking scared of him.”

Under Fueled by Ramen, Wentz and Stump decided to create their own label called Decaydance Records. The very first band that Decaydance Records signed was none other than Panic! At The Disco. A young Brendon Urie sent his tracks to Wentz on the ancient blog-based social platform LiveJournal, and

won two Golden Globes for his performance in Happy Days, as well as an Emmy for his role in Barry.

Winkler told aspiring actors that if they are willing to pursue their ambitions, there will always be room for them in the industry.

“If you are good, if you are willing to just jump off the precipice and fly with your imagination, there is room for you,” Winkler said during the panel. “If the part is right and you’re supposed to have it, you will get it.”

Winkler grew up in New York City, the only child of, as he put it in the panel, “short Jewish and German parents.” Winkler also struggled with dyslexia in his youth and said he barely graduated high school, after passing a geometry class he had flunked four years in a row.

Winkler went on to apply to 28 colleges, but was only accepted into Park University in Missouri and Emerson.

“I packed my bags, came up to Boston, nearly flunked out my first year and got kicked out of my drama major in my second year, but I was able to finally graduate,” he said.

Happy Days, which premiered in 1974, ran for 10 seasons. It gained Winkler fame and recognition as the bad boy character Fonzie, whose trademark catchphrase was “Eyy,” and whose character inspired the term “jumping the shark”—which has come to describe when a show or a film loses its believability. The term comes from the episode near the end of the show where Fonzie literally jumps over a shark while jet skiing.

In the television show Barry, a show about an ex marine gone assassin who falls in love with acting,

Winkler plays Gene Cousineau, a self-centered acting teacher trying his best to reach his students. When asked about his Barry character in the panel, Winkler said that the original character of Cousineau was much more arrogant and rude, but he recognized some warmth and put his own spin on it.

“You start with, what does the author say about you?” Winkler asked.

“What do other people in the script say about you? How do you feel about how you’re acting to other people in the script?”

Winkler gave similar development advice to screenwriters.

“If you don’t write the human being in your mind, the actor doesn’t know what to do,” he said.

For this reason, Winkler recommended writers and directors take an acting class because “it’s really important for you to know what the actor goes through and what the process is, so you can communicate what your vision is in the actors’ language.”

He also advised directors to “invest [their] money in a really comfortable pair of shoes, because when you direct, you’re on your feet all the time.”

He even recommended New Balance shoes specifically.

During a slow time in his career before he landed Barry, nearly 17 years ago, Winkler was pushed to write a book about his experiences.

After meeting with his writing partner Lin Oliver, they developed Hank Zipzer, a series of 35 children’s books centered around a young man with dyslexia. All of the books have a specific font that works to make reading easier on people with dyslexia and were adapted into a three season TV show that premiered in 2014. “[It was] something I thought I couldn’t do,” Winkler said. “You don’t know until you try, until you put one foot in front of the other, and suddenly you amaze yourself!”

But Winkler’s final word on acting?

Stay away from self doubt.

“I always wanted to be an actor. I never let the idea out of my mind,” Winkler said. “Once any of you decide what you want to do, don’t second guess yourself…. Everything you do is focused on getting where you want to go.”

Wentz liked what he heard enough to sign the band. Clearly, with the band’s success and massive yet sometimes irritating hits like “High Hopes,” Wentz made the right decision.

This small label ended up influencing a large chunk of the early 2000s music scene. Soon after signing Panic!, Wentz signed a band called Gym Class Heroes.

While this band is iconic in its own right with hits like “Stereo Hearts,” it’s even more significant for the personal connections it spawned between Katy Perry, Tyga, The Kardashians, Blac Chyna and Joe Biden. Mostly, Gym Class Heroes lead singer Travie McCoy is responsible for these connections through his former relationship with Katy Perry, and his cousin Tgya’s relationships with Blac Chyna and Kylie Jenner. It’s also important to note that Tyga once worked as an artist at Decaydance as well.

Fall Out Boy’s influence extends beyond their label and the emo genre—into music as a whole. In an article with Rolling Stone, Taylor Swift acknowledged that Fall Out Boy is one of her biggest influences. She specifically stated that their songwriting influences her lyrically.

Even though it pains me on a personal level, I should also acknowledge the connection between Swift and Urie with their bubblegum pop song “Me!” Fall Out Boy massively influenced these two artists, and even though I would like to forget that the song exists, it proves how far Fall Out Boy’s influence extends since their debut in 2001.

And remember kids, none of this would’ve been possible without emo king Joe Biden and his run for Senate in the ‘70s. Now in 2020, Fall Out Boy endorsed Joe Biden for President, making the story come full circle. On January 20th, when Joe Biden takes office, remember to thank him for his service to emo.

Winkler discussed acting, childrens books at the Nov. 4. panel.

taylor_kellymcmahon@emerson.edu

kaitlyn_fehr@emerson.edu

Taylor Kelly-McMahon Beacon Correspondent Famed actor Henry Winkler ‘67 chatted about his beloved career in Hollywood and roles in fan favorite television shows during an Emerson Revisited Series event on Nov. 4.

“The world is competitive, yes, but so what?” he remarked in the discussion, hosted by Emerson Independent Video.

Winkler touched on his legacy and small screen wonders like Happy Days, Parks and Recreation and Barry in the hour long discussion, which was attended by nearly 50 Emerson students.

EIV’s Emerson Revisited Series was created in October 2020 to bring alumni back to the college to talk about their experiences in their field and their time at Emerson.

During the panel, Winkler laid out a timeline of his career, beginning with his aspirations to become an actor which he had since before he could remember. While his family didn’t fully support him becoming an actor, he always looked up to actors like the recently deceased Sean Connery, best known for playing James Bond between 1962 and 1983.

Luckily for Winkler, at 27 years old, he landed a role in Happy Days, where he played Fonzie, a greased up bad boy. By the time he turned 72, he landed a role on HBO’s hit show Barry. Between those shows, Winkler went on to play Dr. Saperstein on Parks and Recreation, Barry Zuckerkorn in Arrested Development and Coach Klein in The Waterboy to name a few. He also

Joe Biden holds a baby Pete Wentz

The Berkeley Beacon

November 19, 2020

7

Mike Cantalupo ‘15 creates docuseries highlighting the value of elders’ wisdom Christina Horacio Beacon Correspondent Video journalist Mike Cantalupo ‘15 explored the experiences of old souls, specifically those who are or exceed 100 years of age, in his new docuseries entitled Centenarians.

The docuseries consists of one centenarian interview per episode.

There is currently one episode out, with the second on the way, though no release date has been finalized yet.

All episodes—and more short stories and features of other notable centenarians—are available on Cantalupo’s website, www.100.film.

“What we believe is that the wisdom of 100-year-olds and people of extreme age can guide us as younger generations to a more thoughtful future,” Cantalupo said in a phone interview with The Beacon.

NewMemory LLC, a video production company co-founded by Cantalupo and partner Andriy Kyryllov, produced the project. The company capitalizes on Cantalupo’s passion for interviewing and Kyryllov’s skills as a director. Cantalupo originally began the process of creating Centenarians with Kyryllov after leaving the Total Pro Sports YouTube channel, where he served as a host from 2016 to 2018.

He said that although he found success with Total Pro Sports, reaching around 300,000 viewers each day, he felt a longing to work on a project with a deeper meaning.

“At a certain point…it didn’t feel like I was communicating a message that was important to me,” Cantalupo said. “From [there], I decided ‘Okay, well let’s go out and try to figure out what message I can convey—the story that I can tell.’”

Cantalupo cites his relationship with his grandparents, who he lived with growing up, as one of his largest influences in making Centenarians.

“I spent most of my time as a child, as an eight-year-old, talking to 80-year-olds, whether it be my grandparents or my grandparents’ friends,” Cantalupo said. “So from a very young age I was able to conversate

Cantalupo ’15 interviewing his first subject, Joane Rogers, for the “Centenarians” docuseries Courtesy Mike Cantalupo with them, and I grew very comfortable with that generation.”

Cantalupo attended Emerson College as a visual and media arts major.

He credits Emerson for highlighting the importance in uplifting voices that are not adequately covered. Cantalupo said he felt that the voices of elders were not amplified as they should be in the media, leading him to decide to launch his docuseries.

When it came to finding centenarians to interview, Cantalupo said it was easier than he anticipated. Chapter one’s star, Joane Rogers, was said to have sort of “fell into [their] lap,” since he was living in Miami and stumbled upon a centenarian celebration a few towns over—a mere week and half after he solidified the concept of Centenarians in his head.

Cantalupo said that of the thirteen centenarians present, Joane, a former New York City dancer, clearly stood out to him.

“Her love for technology and her love to keep going… she was very clearly a star very quickly,” he said.

After Rogers finished filming the

episode, Cantalupo said she exclaimed “this [had] been one of the best days of [her] life.”

Cantalupo found Garth Reeves, the subject of the unreleased chapter two, in a similar manner. The filmmaker saw a post about Reeve’s 100th birthday celebration in the Miami Herald.

Reeves owned and served as the publisher of the Miami Times, an influential Black newspaper, from 1970 to 1994. The paper, originally established

by Reeves’ father in 1923, is one of the oldest Black-owned businesses in the city.

Cantalupo attended the party and then secured an interview about two months before Reeves’ passing.

“I remember when we saw Garth, we were in the office, jumping up and down, celebrating, because this [was] exactly the man that we needed next: a man of true history,” he said.

Cantalupo explained how Reeves gained a shining reputation with the Miami Times, which gained popularity nationwide because of how it gave a voice to the Black community. He also was said to play an intricate part

in both the desegregation of Miami’s beaches and golf courses in the late ‘50s.

Despite these important contributions to the civil rights movement, Cantalupo said Reeves’ story is often not included in the history books.

“It’s this certain level of people that get the history books—and there’s nothing wrong with that, but there is so much more to the history,” he said.

“There’s so many more history-makers around, and the coolest part about it, with Centenarians, with me, is that now these people are going to be listened to.”

In showcasing these history-makers, Cantalupo hopes to give viewers who have differing views on historical events an opportunity to learn about the other side.

“It invites people who may not be interested in the civil rights movement, or may have different views of what actually happened. [It] may actually open up the conversation, and allow them to listen,” Cantalupo said. “[It’s] a firsthand account as well.

That’s the important thing. These peo-

ple lived these experiences, so there’s no denying what reality is.”

Cantalupo adds that he wishes there was a sort of “mass major cinematic preservation,” similar to Centenarians, about past generations.

“We would have [recordings] from former slaves, the perpetrators of the end of the indigenous people, who were victims of the Trail of Tears,” he said. “And we would have this history that would be preserved in a way that would still be approachable today.

We’re looking to utilize the newest technology, the best technology, so in 50 years or 100 years, these voices are still relevant to the conversation that is being had in the future.”

However, he said there are challenges in creating a project that would accomplish that kind of preservation.

“The biggest obstacle, thus far, has been still trying to prove that these voices are worthy of being amplified [and] get more funding to be able to really tell these stories in the way that they deserve to be [told],” Cantalupo said. “It’s been a year and a half of that obstacle… people who could actually make the decisions don’t care as much as the regular viewer.” But even with these obstacles, he describes the experience of making the series as “magic.”

Cantalupo received a wide amount of support for his newest project and has found the Emerson community to be a great source of feedback. He said two Emerson students are helping him with social media, and that he would want to involve more students in the future as well.

He spoke highly of Emerson Channel, which he contributed to during his college tenure.

“Emerson Channel was everything to me. Like I went to Emerson for the Emerson Channel,” he said. “I learned so much that was beyond anything that I really gained in television. The Emerson Channel [was an] intricate part of my existence. I worked at least 40 to 50 hours a week on Emerson Channel for pretty much all of my Emerson existence… and [that is] definitely what shaped me into becoming what I am.” christina_horacio@emerson.edu

‘Stand-up in the Park’ provides a space for live comedy amid COVID-19

Bowen performs his routine in the Common. Bobby Wu / Beacon Staff

Campbell Parish Beacon Correspondent As the sun sets in Boston Common, laughter erupts as Emerson students come together for a little bit of entertainment.

“Stand-up in the Park” is an hourlong comedy show that features skits from 10 Emerson students that occurs at 12 p.m., 4 p.m., and 8 p.m. in the park every Friday.

The idea came together at the beginning of the fall semester when first-year comedic arts majors Jonah Bowen and Eddie Tarr accidentally met in a Little Building common

room. After realizing their shared frustration with COVID-19 regulations, which hinder the typical firstyear college experience, they came to a solution: performing stand-up comedy in the Common.

The co-founders said the most rewarding things about the show are the smiles they help bring to students’ faces despite the harsh circumstances of 2020. The more Bowen and Tarr talked with other students, the more they realized how Stand-up in the Park could give students a break during a stressful semester, all while getting them out of their dorm room.

“People are stressed, people are upset about things; if you can, for five

minutes of your day, put a smile on someone’s face, then that’s the best part,” Bowen said.

Performers are free to choose the focus of their own skits. Bowen sometimes chats about how being an only child affects him and the lengths he would go to get a free water bottle from an Army recruiter.

“My favorite part [of performing] is the feeling of stepping off stage after you did really well, that feeling is like all of the hugs that you didn’t get when you were little,” Tarr said. “It’s great. It’s such a good feeling.”

Performing stand-up routines in the Common certainly isn’t ideal, Tarr said. However, because in-person gatherings on campus are restricted to small groups, the duo didn’t have many other options for how to host the show. Tarr and Bowen have all performers and audiences wear masks while performing, as well as practicing social distancing.

“The idea of doing stand-up in public parks wasn’t ours. It arose during the pandemic mostly because doing stand-up in a park sucks, it sucks,” Tarr said. “All the energy is lost to the surrounding environment, it’s terrible, it’s not good. Now, in this pandemic, it’s what we have to do.”

Stand-up in the Park gives opportunities to students to get out of their comfort zone, even if they are not performing. It’s a way to meet people and to be socially active while staying safe from COVID-19, audience member and first-year Selin Tiryakioglu said.

“Because of COVID, a lot of the social activities that we can do on campus are pretty limited,” Tiryakioglu said. “It’s a fun activity to do outside while also being safe and socially distant. It’s actually made me make a lot of new friends.”

Bowen and Tarr encourage students to reach out to them to sign up for a performance via their Emerson email addresses. They are always looking for new performers of all experience levels, years, and majors.

Sophomore comedic arts major Nick Durvasula said it is important to

adjust to the Emerson audiences’ taste in comedy when performing.

“I love [that] specifically at Emerson, it’s such a weird atmosphere because it’s so political and it’s so one direction,” Durvasula said. “If you say anything that’s outside of that stepping, it’s very hard to make people laugh and push boundaries.

It’s such an exceptional writing tool to see where that line is. If you can get this audience on your side with any sort of material, you can do it anywhere.” campbell_parish@emerson.edu

Student gather in Boston Common every Friday to watch others perform their stand-up comedy routines. Bobby Wu / Beacon Staff

The Berkeley Beacon

Sports

November 19, 2020

8

Remembering Celtics legend Tommy Heinsohn Brendan Beauregard Beacon Staff

A former Emerson club hockey player. Beacon Archive

A look back on hockey at Emerson Nate Lannan Beacon Staff Boston is clearly a hockey town.

When winter arrives, people in New England lace up their skates, grab their sticks, and hit the ice.

The city is home to the Bruins, one of the NHL’s oldest and arguably best teams, as well as several reputed college hockey programs.

But since 2015, Emerson hasn’t been a part of that environment.

The college first immersed itself in Boston’s vibrant hockey culture in 2005 when first-year journalism student Matt Porter ‘08—now the Bruins beat writer for the Boston Globe—started the Emerson Hockey Club with a close friend, Evan Goldman.

Since the team called Cambridge’s Simoni Memorial Rink home for practices and a majority of its games, players often hauled their equipment on the green line to the Lechmere station. The team eventually joined a men’s league representing Emerson College in their first year and acquired purple practice jerseys.

The club’s founding members successfully garnered formal status and funding from the athletic department that year, and “things kind of took off from there,” Porter said. He cites that first meeting in 2005 as one of the more memorable moments of the club’s inception.

“We actually had somewhere between 20 and 25 people that showed up and said, you know, yeah, I’d like to play hockey,” Porter said in a phone interview.

Porter played as a defenseman and was voted as the team’s captain. Without a permanent coach, responsibility fell on the players—especially Porter—to run the program smoothly and organize practices. Porter said that his teammates acknowledged his role and referred to him as coach as well. To get the club started, Porter put up flyers around campus and secured a spot at the annual Org Fair.

“We had a spot at the Org Fair

to try to draw some interest, and, eventually, I got an email list together,” Porter said. “From there, we rented some ice and started to get together and play.”

At first, games drew about 50 or 60 fans to Simoni. Jesse Leibman, an Emerson alumnus and former member of the Hockey Club, said family and friends were usually the only ones in attendance.

“The fans in attendance were either just roommates of our teammates or their girlfriends or whatnot,” Leibman said. “Occasionally, parents would be in town.”

The energy at these games was infatuating, and that vibe was best reflected during the Boylston Cup, an annual matchup of the Emerson Hockey Club and Berklee College of Music’s club. Both clubs joined the burgeoning hockey community around the same time and jumped at the opportunity to create an annual rivalry game. Berklee, similar to Emerson, is a relatively smaller school in the Fenway neighborhood with less of a sports presence than schools like Boston University, Harvard University, and Northeastern.

The schools played at Boston University’s Walter Brown Arena, a neutral site. The turnout was often much larger than in normal games, and the fans were far more raucous, Leibman said. The game became a sort of spectacle. Paul D’Amato, also known as the villainous Dr. Hook McCracken from the hockey movie Slap Shot, even coached Emerson in a Boylston Cup one year.

The team once asked journalism professor Mark Lecesse to coach a game. After losing to Berklee one year, he was under the suspicion that not all of Berklee’s players went to the college.

“I swear that most of those players on the other team were not for Berklee,” he said. “My guess is they rounded up students from colleges around Boston, you know...wherever they could find students.”

Fans from each school would chant and taunt each other at

games, with Berklee students often shouting “Safety school!’’ at Emerson students. The Emerson fan base chanting “Back to bandcamp!” in response.

Leibman reminisced on the atmosphere the Boylston Cup generated, like in 2008 when his friends showed up with his name painted on their midriffs. He called it a “truly special moment.”

“I’m skating by the boards on my way back to the bench there along the glass,” Leibman said.

“They lift up their shirts, just expose their midriffs, and they have my name “Leibman” on their stomachs. I was like, ‘Holy shit.’

Everyone was so fired up. That is something that is gonna stick with me forever. I mean, it still does 10 years later.”

Jesse also described a goal he helped set up, which electrified the fans.

“Somehow, I ended up with the puck on my stick. I flipped a backhand pass right into the slot loop and jammed it home...we were up 1-0,” he said. “I was never a talented hockey player by any means.

But, for one small moment, that was what I imagined it would be like to play for a Division I college hockey team.”

The club disbanded in 2015 after a lack of student support hamstrung them. Those involved with the club described an environment that was clearly electrifying to be a part of, and one that sparked excitement and interest. While it would certainly require some effort, and a solid amount of money to recreate the team, Lecesse said it may not be impossible.

The most obvious and glaring problem of restarting the hockey club would be finding the money to rent ice and buy equipment.

But with enough interest, he said it could happen.

“You could find enough people at Emerson who played hockey,” Lecesse said. “You know, you just have to identify them.” nate_lannan@emerson.edu

When I heard Tommy Heinsohn passed away on Monday, Nov. 9, a random memory came to mind. Almost ten years ago during a Boston Celtics regular-season game, Greg Stiemsma, a former Celtics big man who was on the team almost as long as someone going in and out of Dunkin’ with their dark roast, blocked a shot against the opposing team.

Heinsohn, who was color commentating the game alongside his longtime broadcast partner Mike Gorman, likened Stiemsma’s blocking ability to Bill Russell’s. How wild of a comparison is that? A guy like Stiemsma compared to an 11-time NBA champion and Hall of Fame Celtic Bill Russell. Of course, only Tommy would say that.

Tommy Heinsohn is a legend among Celtics fans in many different ways. He played all nine seasons of his NBA career with the Celtics from 1956 to 1965, winning eight championships and averaging 18.6 points, 8.8 rebounds, and 2 assists per game. He also played alongside Celtics greats and Hall of Famers like Russell, Bob Cousy, and Sam Jones. Heinsohn’s number 15 was retired by the Celtics in 1966, and he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1986.

It didn’t take Heinsohn long to rejoin Boston as head coach in 1969.

Coaching the Celtics for nine seasons, Heinsohn had a career .619 winning percentage. Tommy also coached Boston to two more titles in 1974 and 1976 with teams consisting of Hall of Fame Celtics like John Havlicek, who Heinsohn played with, Jo Jo White, and Dave Cowens. His coaching career resulted in his second induction to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015. Imagine having an NBA championship ring for each finger and being in the Hall of Fame twice? That’s one heck of a resume to be happy about, folks.

Personally, Tommy’s impact on my Celtics fandom came from behind the broadcasting table alongside Mike Gorman. Whether it was roaring “THE LITTLE GUY” anytime 5’9” guard Isaiah Thomas made a huge shot, yelling at the refs any chance he could, applauding Celtics like Kevin Garnett or Marcus Smart for another good hustle play, or giving out “Tommy Points” to the scrappy players on the floor, Tommy made watching Celtics games so much fun. Heinsohn was like that grandfather who had words of wisdom from time to time, said whatever he pleased, and never passed on a good chuckle.

Sure, Heinsohn was biased towards the Celtics, but he simply lived and breathed Celtics basketball. Cousy accurately summed up Tommy’s legacy to NBC Sports Boston’s Chris Forsberg following Heinsohn’s passing.

“I think Tommy symbolizes, more than any other Celtic that has come through this thing since 1950, the Celtics dynasty,” Cousy said.

No truer words have been spoken.

It’s also important to note what Gorman said about Tommy in a tweet last week.

“Roughly 2800 times I sat down with Tommy to broadcast a game.

Every time it was special. HOF player...HOF coach...HOF partner. Celtics Nation has lost its finest voice. Rest In Peace my friend. It has been the privilege of my professional life to be the Mike in Mike & Tommy,” Gorman said.

It won’t be the same without hearing Tommy’s voice on the call during a Celtics game. Bu,t somehow, someway, Celtics fans will still call out a stupid foul call by a ref or burst with happiness after a great Celtics play, just like Tommy would always do.

Rest in peace, Tommy Heinsohn. You are, and will always be, Mr. Celtic.

Celtics Hall of Famer Tommy Heinsohn going up for a layup.

brendan_beauregard@emerson.edu