The Dartmouth 04/20/17

VOL. CLXXIV NO.64

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Ian Sullivan ’18 elected Student Assembly president

CLOUDY HIGH 63 LOW 43

By JULIAN NATHAN

The Dartmouth Staff

Ian Sullivan ’18 and running mate Matthew Ferguson ’18 were elected as Student Assembly president and vice president, respectively, the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee announced Tuesday night.

Sullivan received 707 of the 1,960 votes for SA president. Garrison Roe ’18 and Aaron Cheese ’18 finished in second and third place with 646 and 580 votes, respectively. Ferguson received 718 of the 1,960 votes for vice president, with Sydney Walter ’18 (706 votes), who ran with Roe, and Austin Heye ’18 (508 votes), who ran with COURTESY OF IAN SULLIVAN

OPINION

MALBREAUX: THE CORNEL WEST WING PAGE 7

SANDLUND: THE MYOPIC NERVE PAGE 6

BROWN: THE LAST GENERATION PAGE 7

ARTS

ALUMNUS Q&A: ALEXANDER STOCKTON ’15 PAGE 8 READ US ON

DARTBEAT TYPES OF PROSPIES AT DIMENSIONS HOW TO TROLL TOUR GUIDES FOLLOW US ON

TWITTER @thedartmouth COPYRIGHT © 2017 THE DARTMOUTH, INC.

SEE SA PAGE 3

Ian Sullivan ’18 (right) and Matthew Ferguson ’18 (left) received 707 and 718 votes, respectively.

Tuck students start mobile car-servicing company

By ALEX FREDMAN

The Dartmouth Staff

Russ Walker Tu’17 and Ed Warren Tu’17 know a thing or two about cars, perhaps more than the average student at the Tuck School of Business.

When they first started driving as teenagers, both already knew how to change the oil and maintain their own cars. Now, as they prepare to graduate from Tuck in June, Walker and Warren have re-launched Zippity, a mobile car-servicing company, into a full-time company this March. The

business provides a convenient way for Upper Valley residents to have their cars worked on while they are at work or school.

Zippity, which began as a parttime company started by Walker and Warren in September 2016, brings many of the services of an auto mechanic shop to the parking lots of major employers in the Upper Valley, including Dartmouth.

“We partner with large companies, and then they turn around and offer SEE ZIPPITY PAGE 2

ALEX FREDMAN/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Zippity staff use their trailer on-site to service cars.

Q&A with classics professor Timothy Baker ’08

By ALEXANDRA STEINBERG The Dartmouth

Growing up in Buffalo, New York, classics and religion professor Timothy Baker ’08 was interested in folklore, fairy tales and religion, a fascination that led him to take Latin in middle school and study religion when he came to Dartmouth as an undergraduate in 2004. After earning his B.A. in religion and Jewish studies, Baker earned both his master’s and Ph.D. in theology from

Harvard Divinity School. Baker also has a diploma in Manuscript Studies from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, Canada. In his office in Reed Hall, Baker discussed how his interests in religion manifested and how religion and science can coexist.

How did your upbringing influence you?

TB: I was always interested in religion, and I was always interested in medieval stories, folklore, fairy

tales, those types of things. And that interest was something I thought I wanted to pursue, graduating from high school. I had taken a lot of Latin as a middle and high school student and knew I really liked Latin, and knew that I liked it more than the Spanish I had taken, so I wanted to pursue something like that. So when I came here [as an undergraduate], I pretty quickly attached myself to the Latin program here and to the religion department, because that’s what I thought I liked, and

it turns out I really didn’t like that kind of thing. So even though I spent quite a bit of my time taking courses — I would usually take four or five, sometimes six courses a term — and kind of bounced around to different departments, the core was in religion. So I took almost all the course offerings in religion, or at least as many as I could.

What interests you about it?

TB: What I study now is the practices SEE Q&A PAGE 5

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

PAGE 2

DAILY DEBRIEFING Former NFL star Aaron Hernandez was found dead in his prison cell yesterday morning, according to CNN. A statement from the prison said that Hernandez tried to block his door by jamming it with various objects and eventually killed himself with a bedsheet tied to the window of his cell. Former tight end for the New England Patriots, Hernandez received a life sentence in 2015 for the killing of Odin Lloyd, the boyfriend of his fiancée’s sister, and was serving at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts, when he committed suicide.

On the previous Friday, Hernandez was found not guilty in the double-murder of two men outside a nightclub in Boston in 2012.

Although Hernandez was still convicted of illegal possession of a firearm, his attorneys were planning to appeal for another trial in the Lloyd case, and Jose Baez, one of the attorneys, said he was optimistic in the overturning of the case. He also said that Hernandez was hoping to prove his innocence, and that both Hernandez’s family and his legal team were shocked at the news of his death.

Bill O’Reilly’s career at Fox News ended today amidst allegations of sexual harassment from five women, as reported by BBC. In a short statement, Fox said that O’Reilly would not be returning to his post after a thorough review of the allegations.

Reports have surfaced recently that the women had received $13 million in legal settlements due to O’Reilly’s behavior. The most recent allegation was made on Tuesday by an African-American former clerical worker at Fox, whose lawyer claimed that O’Reilly had called her “hot chocolate.” After his dismissal, O’Reilly insisted in a statement that the claims were “completely unfounded.” An internal letter to Fox employees, signed by Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch and his sons Lachlan, co-chairman of 21st Century Fox and James, the chief executive officer of 21st Century Fox, recognized O’Reilly’s accomplishments as a TV personality.

“The O’Reilly Factor” drew an audience of about four million viewers per night. According to Fox, broadcaster Tucker Carlson will be taking over O’Reilly’s primetime slot.

-COMPILED BY HEYI JIANG

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017

Zippity mobilizes car-servicing FROM ZIPPITY PAGE 1

it as a benefit to their employees,” Walker said. He added that Zippity makes arrangements with these businesses to bring their carservicing trailer directly on-site, and employees can sign up in 60 seconds online to have their car serviced while they work.

Walker said that the main a d v a n t a g e o f Z i p p i t y ove r traditional mechanic shops is convenience, and its services are designed to be easy and straightforward for customers. “[The process] is designed to be as non-intrusive and nondisruptive to someone’s schedule as possible,” Walker said.

On the day of their service, customers can park in their normal spots at work or school and leave their car keys in a Zippity kiosk, which is a small locker located inside their business. At the kiosk, customers sign in on a tablet and using a mapping application place a pin where their car is located.

After customers sign on, the Zippity staff receives an electronic notification, collects the car keys from the kiosk and picks up the car itself, which is taken to the service trailer. Zippity then provides whatever services the customer requested online out of a preset list, which includes oil changes and interior detailing.

When the work is complete, the Zippity staff drives the car back to its original parking spot and returns the key to the kiosk. At this time, the customers receive a text message notifying them that the service is complete and that they can pick up their keys as they

leave work or school. “[Customers] just have to walk over to our kiosk, drop their keys off and their car gets done while they work,” Warren said. “It’s almost effortless for them to get their car serviced, and that’s just a game-changer.”

Warren added that the process of taking a car to a mechanic shop for service can often be timeconsuming and inconvenient for customers.

“We found a way to take a mobile mindset and a technologyenabled system to reshape the entire car care experience around the customer,” Warren said.

Executive director of infrastructure and operations at Tuck Steve Lubrano Tu’87 said his personal experience as both a repeat customer and cooperating employer speaks to Zippity’s quality of service.

“I’ve used [Zippity] three times, and it’s been as good, if not better, than some of the more established locations that are offsite,” Lubrano said. “They care about their clientele.”

Lubrano added that from an employer’s viewpoint, offering this service to their employees is a benefit that allows workers to have one less personal item to stress over. As a result, they can be more focused on doing their best work, Lubrano said.

Walker said that he had first started thinking about the concept behind Zippity before he even arrived at Tuck. He said that before he and his wife began a car trip from Utah to New Hampshire, he had set an appointment to get his car serviced at a mechanic shop.

His wife, however, was reluctant to take the car in because she felt uncomfortable and “stereotyped” around mechanic shops. Walker said that this was a telling experience for him and got him thinking about how people without much knowledge of cars can be uncomfortable with the traditional way of getting their cars serviced.

“There’s lots of men and women who don’t know a lot about their car,” Walker said. “Whoever has a lack of knowledge feels they can be taken advantage of, and we wanted to make something that was very transparent, very straightforward [and] easy to use.”

Warren said that both he and Walker had independently been talking to fellow students, even before they knew each other, about creating a business focused on cars.

After a mutual friend connected them, they sent out an email to Tuck students and faculty to gauge possible interest in their idea.

Within 24 hours, Walker said, they had received 80 responses.

This enthusiasm prompted them to begin developing the concept that became Zippity, a process that occurred through much of 2015 and 2016, Warren said.

Walker said that in the future they plan to continue growing Zippity in the Upper Valley region and then begin expanding into the Boston area. He said this growth may include developing companyowned stores as well as franchises.

“It’s a start-up business, so they want to do a great job,” Lubrano said. “They know that the success of their business is going to largely depend on the quality of their service.”

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM

CORRECTIONS We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth.com.

Correction Appended (April 17, 2017): The article “Daryl Roth wins Centennial Circle Award” stated that Dartmouth Hall burned down in 1914, when in fact it actually burned down in 1904. The article has been updated to reflect these changes.

Correction Appended (April 18, 2017): The article “Daryl Roth wins Centennial Circle Award” stated that Roth produced “The Flick,” when in fact she did not produce it but had an investment in the production.

TIFFANY ZHAI/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Patrons peruse Susan Walp’s still-life exhibition in the Jaffe-Freide gallery.

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

PAGE 3

SA election voting participation rises House Senate seat winners. Writein candidates from the Classes of Cheese, coming in second and third, 2018, 2019 and 2020 were selected as North Park House Senate seat respectively.

The number of ballots cast this winners. A write-in candidate from year represents an increase from the Class of 2018, Shoshany and previous elections, with 1,556 ballots Yu were selected as School House cast in the 2016 election and 1,632 Senate seat winners. A write-in in 2015. EPAC chair Derek Whang candidate from the Class of 2018, ’17 attributed the larger number Richard Yang ’19 and Jamie Park ’20 of students that voted to a new were selected as South House Senate voting system through the OrgSync seat winners. A write-in candidate interface and increased publicity of from the Class of 2018, Matthew Riley ’19 and Timothy Holman ’20 the election.

Matthew Goldstein ’18 and were selected as West House Senate John Glance ’18 were elected 2018 seat winners.

EPAC will announce the names of Class Council president and vice president, respectively, both running write-in candidates once they have unopposed. Goldstein received been screened by Judicial Affairs 282 of 603 votes for Class Council and confirm their interest in serving, president, and Glance received 279 Whang said.

Sullivan said that one of his main of 604 votes for Classic Council vice goals is to convince College officials president.

In order of most to least votes, to reinstate need-blind admissions Danny Li ’19, Josephine Kalshoven for international students, a policy ’19 and Asaad A. Al Raeesi ’19 that ended in 2015. Sullivan said were elected as 2019 Class Council this reinstatement will be his priority executives. Lily Clark ’20 , Lizzy because he feels that it is unfair to Clark ’20 and Brandon Yu ’20 consider international applicants’ were elected as 2020 Class Council ability to pay tuition when making admissions executives. d e c i s i o n s. H e N i c o l e noted his desire Beckman ’20, “The issues that for Dartmouth Bradford Stone [Judicial Affairs] to set an example ’19, Glance, for other D h u n g j o o deals with, such as institutions to Kim ’19, Cory academic dishonesty follow; currently, S h o s h a ny ’ 1 9 o n l y H a r va rd a n d R i c h a r d and drinking and drug University, Yale Yang ’19 were U n i v e r s i t y, s e l e c t e d a s violations, are fairly Princeton m e m b e r s o f universal [across U n i v e r s i t y, the Committee A m h e r s t on Standards/ genders].”

College and the Organizational Massachusetts Adjudication -NICOLE BECKMAN ’20 Institute of Committee.

Te c h n o l o g y B e c k m a n have need-blind received 829 admissions votes — with procedures for Stone and the international others receiving applicants. He 596 or less — said that Student which was the g reatest number of votes any Assembly will have a role in doing so individual candidate received in the by discussing the topic with College officials in policy meetings. election.

Sullivan also hopes to position the A write-in candidate from the Class of 2018, Kenneth Moussavian residential system as a complement ’19 and Kojo Edzie ’20 were to the Greek system, rather than an selected as Allen House Senate seat opponent. He added that he wants to winners. Write-in candidates from increase the transparency of Student the Classes of 2018, 2019 and 2020 Assembly by providing the student were selected as East Wheelock body with monthly updates detailing FROM SA PAGE 1

what the Assembly has accomplished or is planning to do.

Beckman said that she is looking forward to increasing awareness of College policies among the student body, faculty and staff as part of her role on the COS/OAC, which adjudicates students and organizations who have been accused of College policy violations. She explained that students sometimes misunderstand or are not aware of College rules and regulations.

Beckman said that while she is proud to be the only woman elected to the COS/OAC in this election, she does not expect that this will change the way she approaches her duties.

“The issues that [Judicial Affairs] deals with, such as academic dishonesty and drinking and drug violations, are fairly universal [across genders],” she said.

Beckman added that she feels it is important that the demographics of the COS/OAC align with those of the student body.

Yu said he hopes to increase the importance of the house system both in his role on the 2020 Class Council and as a School House representative. He added that since members of the Class of 2020 are the first class that will experience the house system for the entirety of their time at Dartmouth, they have a unique opportunity to set a precedent that will dictate the role of the house system in campus life for future classes. Yu also said he is looking forward to bringing a diverse perspective to Student Assembly and hopes his election will encourage other minority students to run in the future.

“I think my perspective as a lowincome student and a person of color will greatly benefit Student Assembly and [the campus community],” Yu said.

Al Raeesi said he was surprised by the fact that only three students ran for three openings on the 2019 Class Council. He said he was especially eager to run given that the House system is relatively new and in a critical stage of its development and is excited to bring a new perspective to the Council as both an international and transfer student.

Goldstein is a member of T he Dartmouth Staff.

THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS

PAGE 4

DARTMOUTHEVENTS

SEARCHING IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017

Matthew Goldstein ’18

TODAY

4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Artist Talk: Luis Delgado-Qualtrough, Strauss Gallery, Hopkins Center for the Arts

4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Lecture: “Russia’s Game: From the End of the Cold War through the Election of 2016,” with State Department official Daniel Fried, Dartmouth Hall 105

4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.

Lecture: “The FARC’s Final March and the Making of Contemporary Colombia,” with Princeton University history professor Robert A. Karl ’03, Carson Hall L02

TOMORROW

4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Lecture: “Rap on Trial,” with University of California Irvine criminology professor Charles Kubrin, Haldeman 41 (Kreindler Conference Hall)

7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Film: “Speed Sisters,” directed by Amber Fares, Loew Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts

8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.

Performance: “The Gloaming,” Irish folk music group, Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts RELEASE DATE– Thursday, April 20, 2017

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

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40 “Ali” and “Milk,” e.g.

43 Early arrival 44 Daisy preceder 45 Got slick after sleet 48 “More __ a Feeling”: Boston hit 49 Tear 50 Tweed lampooner

51 __ Bator 52 Wound protection 53 Spring month in Porto 54 Forest feline 55 Tax pro 56 Loser to Meade at Gettysburg 57 That, in Barcelona

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

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04/20/17

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017

PAGE 5

Classics and religion professor Timothy Baker ’08 talks research FROM Q&A PAGE 1

by which one becomes God, and not the way one becomes God in a kind of arrogant sort of way, but the way one becomes God in the sense of humbling oneself and through that act of humility, or debasing, rising up – so descending to ascend, as the language goes. I find human spirituality fascinating, partly because I find human beings really fascinating.

Recently, there’s been a bit of a debate over whether science and religion can coexist, what do you think about that?

TB: I think it depends on what the goal of the debate is. If the goal of the debate is, at its very core, to discredit one another, then it is flawed at the outset. Those kinds of debates, I really have no patience for. I think that kind of black and white thinking, that binary, is divisive and not inclusive. I think that it just doesn’t do service to the historical realities of anything, really. Depending on the kind of religion, if we just took Judaism, Christianity and Islam as the three big ones, Judaism has always been quite comfortable with scientific advance, mostly because Judaism is, at its core, a religion of practice, as well as belief. The idea of Judaism is that you perform certain duties, certain actions, and thereby have respect for the divine. So what you believe or think or study, while important, is not something that necessarily infringes the way it would potentially infringe, if we’re thinking about those kinds of contemporary debates,

on something like Islam or necessarily; for instance, if you Christianity. There would be need to calculate when is the issues there, because those kinds appropriate time to celebrate a of religions have certain kinds of holiday like Easter, you need to faith-based statements, and I think make solar and lunar calculations that’s at the core of how some in order to do that. of these things There’s a fear go; you make that if we allow certain claims “There’s a fear that both perspectives of faith and if we allow both to exist at the same therefore time, there’s a kind those must be perspectives to of cheapening or incompatible exist at the same denigrating one or with science. the other. But that T h a t t e n d s time, there’s a kind seems quite naïve to t o b e w h a t of cheapening or me, in that it should you see. That possible — in denigrating one of be being the fact, it seems to be case, it’s just the other. But that the marker of an historically person — seems quite naïve intelligent true that much to hold the positions of the scientific to me.” in one’s mind that advances of one disagrees and the Greeks and agrees with. It the scientific -TIMOTHY BAKER should be possible, a d v a n c e s ’08, CLASSICS AND and it is possible, to of Arabicentertain ideas that s p e a k i n g RELIGION PROFESSOR are both coincident countries were with one’s thoughts maintained and contradictory a n d to them. In order championed to have debate, or

by Islamic to have inquiry, one societies has to be able to through much entertain multiple of the Middle perspectives.

Ages. It’s also I t ’s r e a l l y q u i t e manifestly true dangerous to decide that a lot of the scientific advances that one’s own perspective is in the West and in the East, when the only one, or the more valid we’re talking about Christians, perspective, and that the other were maintained and upheld by perspectives should be attacked the Church, with some notable or removed. exceptions. For the most part, there are ways in which the two H o w d i d y o u b e c o m e intersect consistently and pretty interested in Jewish studies?

BBQ BUDDIES

NICK SAMEL/THE DARTMOUTH

Bait and Bullet held a barbeque on the Robo lawn yesterday afternoon.

COURTESY OF TIMOTHY BAKER

Timothy Baker ’08 earned his master’s and Ph.D. in theology from Harvard Divinity School.

TB: When I matriculated here, Judaism — modern Judaism, the my freshman advisor was Ehud Holocaust, historiography, things Benor in the religion department, like that. She and I got along really, amazingly well and I and it just was have stayed in touch one of those with her ever since. coincidences of “It should be It just so happened fate, that he has possible, and it that the people with both been and whom I studied here, is a remarkable is possible, to particularly Benor influence on what entertain ideas and Heschel when it interests me and comes to the Jewish how I go about that are both studies framework, pursuing things, coincident with their enthusiasm for and we got along their topics and my just famously. I one’s thoughts found his way and contradictory enthusiasm coming in for those kind of experiencing o f t h i n g s, w e r e and investigating to them.” such that I chose to the world to be be a minor in the something that -TIMOTHY BAKER program and then really resonated applied for a special with me. He is ’08, CLASSICS AND a n d h a s b e e n RELIGION PROFESSOR i n t e r d i s c i p l i n a r y m a j o r i n Je w i s h enormously studies because I s u p p o r t i ve o f just wanted to do me, so I stayed more with that sort with him as my of thing. It’s just thesis advisor. I stayed in touch with him over my awesome that students still get to time at Harvard, and I stay in touch have that experience with them with him now. Then, I went on the because I can only hope to be a religion FSP, and I happened to be fraction of as good and influential on it when it was led by Susannah to my students as they were to me.

Heschel, who is currently the chair of the Jewish studies program This interview has been edited and and who also teaches courses in condensed for clarity and length.

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST WILLIAM SANDLUND ’18

STAFF COLUMNIST MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN ’18

The Myopic Nerve

Not Quite Free

Considering the strangeness of the past, and how we understand it.

While avoiding writing this article, I began to clean out my room. It started when I saw an engorged duffel bag oozing under my bed and decided to investigate its long-forgotten contents.

The most powerful object I unearthed amidst dozens of woolen socks was the CamelBak bottle I received during orientation. I had totally forgotten that, once, every ’18 on campus was suckling at these leaky containers. We were also given stickers to try and “break the ice,” remember? “My name is _____ and _____ sustains me.” I had scrawled “Billy” and left the second blank, well, blank.

Or perhaps it had been rubbed off. I suspect I was too shy to write something sarcastic and couldn’t bear being sincere. As I held this red piece of plastic, I contemplated throwing it away.

Instead, I peeled off the sticker and returned the bottle to the black duffel bag, where it continues to sit as you read these words.

It would have been better if I had simply not written anything at all, because the sight of my awkward handwriting next to a lonely blank space brought me painfully close to memories previously buried. I was reminded of a faltering sense of self I felt when I first arrived at Dartmouth.

Every time we walk around campus we can have one of these moments. There may be that person you once saw crying in your freshman common room. Or someone you smoked with freshman fall. You were really close, if only for a few weeks, but there was a comfort in that relationship that may have taken years to create in other circumstances. And now you say “hi” — or you don’t. With some of these people you can reminisce, but if your current relationship holds no water, you are running on the vapor of past experiences. And that knowledge makes whatever you are reliving feel somewhat empty, because you can feel this great distance forming between two souls. Even if the ocean is purely a projection, that doesn’t stop it from being real. So you say “hi,” or you don’t. You almost never stop to reminisce, because sometimes remembering feels more like dismembering.

When we remember a memory, we are remembering the last time we remembered the event. Each time you bring it forth, you wear it out like a thumbed polaroid. It becomes ever more diluted with whomever you are now. Perhaps what made me uncomfortable with the red bottle was the immediacy of the memory — it arrived with

such force because it had never been recalled but lived inside me nonetheless. Now, I can’t get the vision of a sun-baked Collis patio filled with herds of nervous ’18s out of my mind.

If you’re lucky, you have friends you can reminisce with, because when it happens and the memories feel good, our physical campus becomes a landscape for nostalgia. Certain buildings and rooms store memories for each of us; a sediment of sentiment collects in certain nooks and crannies like gold dust in riverbeds. When you revisit them, it can be life and identity affirming.

Technology means our generation can meet and lose more people than ever before. We use social media to try and maintain “contact,” but without touch, it is easy for relationships to fade.

Family and dear friends remain the only true constant in our lives. In a world where we lose people, it is important to keep our unloseableones dear, because they are the storehouses, the strongholds for our memories. These are the people who ground us when we drift, and we ground them, too.

We all also possess memories we try to suppress — some sort of trauma, however small, that you don’t realize you are avoiding until you think of it. Oddly, the act of recollecting some trauma can itself be traumatic, overwhelming whomever we thought we had become. These memories often need time unvisited before being remembered.

That may be why denial is the first stage of grief — after all, death is the greatest of traumas. And yet without trauma, we do not have stories and life narratives. Without rupture, there are no reference points. Meeting a lost friend or finding an old water bottle rarely exists on this level of intensity.

But the act of avoiding a memory — to keep it pure or to give yourself space to reflect — is part of being human. It helps us maintain some vision of ourselves.

The process of bringing unobserved memories to the surface of your consciousness is somewhat violent. It reminds me of the sound of uprooting a tree. There is a satisfying crunch even as you sever whatever perception you had of yourself in the moment before you saw the red bottle. In the aftermath you have an uprooted tree — and that gratifying sound is gone. It’s up to you to determine how to feel about this state of affairs.

But sometimes you can’t help but wish you hadn’t started cleaning your room.

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ISSUE

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

PAGE 6

NEWS LAYOUT: Jasmine Mai

SUBMISSIONS: We welcome letters and guest columns. All submissions must include the author’s name and affiliation with Dartmouth College, and should not exceed 250 words for letters or 700 words for columns. The Dartmouth reserves the right to edit all material before publication. All material submitted becomes property of The Dartmouth. Please email submissions to editor@thedartmouth.com.

The United States is not as democratic as we are led to believe.

Universal suffrage is arguably the most fundamental privilege accorded to American citizens. However, the grasp the United States has on the helm of global electoral freedom may be slipping. In 2015, the United States ranked 20th in the world in an Economist report on democracy that factored in “electoral process and pluralism,” but persistent unjust features of the American voting landscape caused Freedom House to rank the U.S. behind at least 61 other countries in electoral process in 2016. Gerrymandering, voter identification laws and the role of money in elections round out the pantheon of the most pressing threats to Americans’ abilities to shape the course of their nation. Despite the popular conception of America’s place at the forefront of international democracy, these patently anti-democratic laws and processes infringe upon freedoms that, per the rhetoric of U.S. exceptionalism, Americans ought to have.

Gerrymandering, the process by which legislatures or others manipulate the boundaries of states’ Congressional districts, has been part of the public consciousness since at least 1812. It is also, according to Brian Klaas, a Comparative Politics Fellow at the London School of Economics, “why American democracy is broken.” For readers with only a cursory familiarity with gerrymandering, imagine a Congressional district that’s 60 percent Republican and 40 percent Democrat. Through gerrymandering, the Democratic state legislature can nearly arbitrarily redraw the lines of that district so they encompass all of the district’s Democrats but only half of the Republicans.

Voilà — you now have a district that votes blue. Districts can also be redrawn to ensure that a certain population has influence within one district only and has little representation in others.

Gerrymandering explains — and is named for — the odd, contorted shapes of many Congressional districts. Its opponents, who span the entire political spectrum, believe that gerrymandering lets politicians pick their constituents when it should really be the other way around. And they have a point: in 2016, despite Congress’ 15 percent approval rating, only eight out of 435 incumbent representatives were defeated. The average margin of victory?

37.1 points — a suspiciously high number for a population so disillusioned with its leaders. Yet this is to be expected when voting blocs have been shoved together into funhouse-mirror districts.

Ultimately, gerrymandering allows a party in the numerical minority to seize an electoral majority. It is a systematic denial of proportional representation.

Voter identification laws, thought they affect fewer Americans, serve as another bar to outright electoral freedom. Unlike gerrymandering, this push to force voters to show up to the polls with satisfactory identification is strictly partisan. Republicans generally support voter ID measures, arguing that Democrats might reap electoral advantages from widespread voter fraud. Democrats generally respond that Republicans are just trying to suppress turnout, as it is generally “students, the poor, minorities and the elderly who are most likely to vote Democratic” — and most likely not to

have ID, due to cost and other logistical factors.

In fact, a federal judge in Texas has ruled that the state’s voter ID law — a law that resembles many others across the country — intentionally discriminates against minorities. And while actual voter fraud might also be anathema to Democrats whose voters are disenfranchised by these laws, conservative worries in the 11 states with so-called “strict” voter ID laws just don’t conform to reality.

One study, published in The Washington Post, found only 31 credible instances of voter fraud from 2000-2014, a span of time in which over one billion ballots were cast; that’s a fraud rate of less than 0.0000031 percent. The numbers being what they are, it is clear that discriminatory voter ID statutes are restrictive of Americans’ electoral freedoms — and offer no compelling reason why they should be.

While the foregoing discussions have concerned overt ways in which voting freedoms are curtailed, money — especially corporate money — pumped into electoral politics does the same, albeit more subtly. No, a company’s contribution to a PAC supporting its preferred candidate does not prevent anybody from driving to the polls. It does, however, unduly influence a person’s voting decisions in the name of an entity whose interests may be squarely opposed to that person’s. Citizens United v. FEC, the landmark Supreme Court decision, granted wide license for money to be considered speech and allowed copious amounts of it to be acceptable in the course of elections. The influx of political contributions post-Citizens United subjugates politicians with hopes for re-election to the wealthiest groups contributing to their re-election campaigns. Analyzing 2012 electoral results, a study published in The Atlantic demonstrated that “the size of [a] winning candidate’s victory corresponds to how much more that person spent” than her opponent. And politicians’ positions, which directly affect their constituents, must to some degree be determined by the interests that prop up those winning campaigns.

So while big money in politics does not prevent people from voting, it enables ad blitzes and other techniques that unduly influence people to vote for politicians who, in the end, will better represent the interests of their funders than their voters. Freedom to vote means the freedom to vote for the candidate you believe will be best for you. Citizens United obscures the bases for such belief.

There are other putative violations of the Voting Rights Act at the state and federal level that warrant discussion, but space constraints dictate otherwise. Regardless, it is quite clear that a large part of American freedom exists in electoral freedom, which, as shown above, is under assault on multiple fronts. There are definite solutions to these issues — algorithmic apportionment of Congressional districts, rollbacks in voter ID laws and restrictions on monetary political contributions— but they are easier said than done. In the meantime, remaining cognizant of the ways in which our electoral freedoms are incomplete is better than nothing.

This is the third article in “Liberty Abridged,” a series of columns by the author about American conceptions of freedoms and the laws that are purported to advance those ideals.

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

PAGE 7

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST MATTHEW BROWN ’19

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST TYLER MALBREAUX ’20

The Last Generation

The Cornel West Wing

Generation Z faces unprecedented challenges as it comes of age.

I was recently informed that I’m no longer a Act and Edward Snowden; needless to say, very millennial. The inexact art that is generational few have any memory of 9/11. While parenting studies has apparently rechristened those style influences how different generations born from 1995 to 2012 from the ever-aging respond to events, the events themselves heavily “Millennial” generation to a new, vastly different influence each generation’s eventual attitudes.

“Generation Z.” Personally, I only have foggy memories of a I admittedly rolled my eyes when I first day that may have been 9/11, but I definitely heard this assertion. I don’t deny that thinking have no memories of living in a country not of populations with a generational lens in mind at war. Many of the people who make up can help contextualize many phenomena in Generation Z were born after al-Qaida was society, but all generations have their fair share of founded and have grown up knowing of U.S. geniuses, creatives, idols and do-nothings — it’s involvement in Iraq. Some of the oldest members how these people manifest in the environments of this generation — including peers of many they grow up in that matters. When you consider Dartmouth students — are now fighting in a that many of whom we are calling Generation war that started when they were in elementary Z are not even out of elementary school, and school. that their lives will be impacted far more by The backdrop for this new Generation CRISPR-style gene editing, virtual reality and Z is a world significantly more uncertain artificial intelligence than the social media and open-ended than the one occupied by that impacts us today, I anticipate that future previous generations. The impact of issues generational studies will such as terrorism, climate reclassify this group once change, globalization and “The backdrop for this social movements such more.

Still, the Generation Z new Generation Z is as Occupy Wall Street reclassification did make and the Movement for me think about how a world significantly Black Lives will form different my childhood more uncertain and the backdrop of the was from that of the Generation Z psyche. Most open-ended than 30-somethings in my life, members of Generation Z and how despite our the one occupied by will only have Obama and similarities and shared previous generations.”

President Donald Trump slang, there are clear as references for what a differences between the president should be. If this Snapchat and “Finstagram”-using teens of today emerging generation is different from those prior, and their older Facebook and Myspace-using it’s simply a response to the capriciousness of the cousins. If I, a 20 year old, could already see a society it’s found itself in, not some pragmatic divergence in how my peers and I interact versus inter-generational parenting. how adults in their late twenties interact, then I Generation Z would also be the most diverse imagine that the differences between a middle generation in American history, something that schooler and the latter group are tremendous. analysts evidently take for granted. I wonder Much of the literature and media on the to what degree the attitudes of Generation nascent Millennial/Generation Z divide, Z-ers will be informed by the fact that many however, is focused on what I consider are children of immigrants, many of different superfluous differences. The business and religions, in a time when race and class are at marketing worlds, who have naturally been the the forefront of the American conscience. It’s first to take notice of the nuances of America’s all but guaranteed that the youngest batch of young people, color popular opinion on the Americans will continue the urbanization seen new divide. Where the Millennial is supposedly for the last century, and given our already hyperoutgoing, self-righteous, idealistic and financially connected qualities, I wonder what implications unstable, Generation Z is independent, reserved such trends will have on our national future. and hyper-conscientious of the world. Analysts All of this is under the assumption that such like “generational expert” David Stillman turn divisions will even matter five years from now. analyses of these different generations into a Personally, I still think that my peers and I have business model, arguing that Generation Z’s more in common with the 20-somethings of supposed qualities are the product of more today than with a fifth grader or even a high cynical Generation X parenting styles, as schooler, but perhaps that’s just part of the art opposed to Millennials, who were largely raised of generational studies. I do believe, however, by the much more lenient baby boomers. This that if Generation Z is to be a coherent group, assessment has appeared in most of the early it’s going to be a generation far more important media and literature on the topic. than their Millennial predecessors. These are the Yet beyond different parenting styles, people young people coming of age during the advent are the products of their circumstances. Any of many technological changes, the precipice meaningful delineation between Millennials and of social change and the turning point for our Generation Z-ers must also consider the socio- efforts against climate change. Boiling down the political context that each generation grew up Generation Z impact as marketing gimmicks in. Millennials, classified as those born between would be insincere to how pivotal the kids of 1980 and 1994, are old enough to remember today will be for our future. With that much 9/11 and were at least young adults during riding on the latest cohort of citizens, I believe former President Barack Obama’s first election. it’s important to entertain the implications of Generation Z, by contrast, will have no concept the latest, but hopefully not last, generation in of a world without smartphones, nor The Patriot America.

A controversial academic is coming to Dartmouth, and you should care.

While finishing problem sets at a dimly lit desk around 1 a.m. this past Thursday, a phone notification called to me the arrival of a fresh batch of news from Vox Daily.

Scrolling through the typical quotes and announcements, I noticed that the outspoken “brother” — as he affectionately calls everyone — Cornel West will be visiting campus on April 27 to deliver a lecture on the importance of the humanities in the President Donald Trump era.

Given his provocative style and radical, socialist views, I am surprised he is not well known amongst most students I have spoken to. Dartmouth students I have encountered either do not know him at all or can only describe vague instances of hearing his name without recalling anything else about him. One would think that at a center-left school like Dartmouth, West’s works would be, at the very least, familiar to the average humanities major.

In black intellectual circles, though, West’s name carries a lot of weight. He has held professorships at the most elite institutions, including Harvard University, Yale University and Princeton University.

His books “Race Matters” and “Democracy Matters” have topped bestseller lists and sold thousands of copies. Yet it seems that his influence has waned over the years.

But why? His self-described “black prophetic tradition,” similar to the styles of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, once made him popular with many, from political leaders to celebrities like Sean “Diddy” Combs (West was once asked to attend Combs’ gun possession and bribery trial for “moral support”). However, since the election of former President Barack Obama in 2008, West’s public profile has deviated from that of the all-wise civil rights leader toward the more outlandish radical that critiques almost every other black political leader that does not agree with him. The result has been a rebuke of West by the mainstream black political establishment and the decline in West’s popularity.

His downward trend in the eyes of the black community began with a public feud with Melissa Harris-Perry, then a professor at Princeton University. The African-American studies department at Princeton University, where West taught at the time, had recruited Harris-Perry as an associate professor in 2006. After being denied a full professorship by the African-American studies department, Harris-Perry left Princeton to teach at Tulane University in New Orleans. West saw Harris-Perry’s book “Sister Citizen” as an academically unimportant text that did not hold up to Princeton’s standards.

“There’s not a lot of academic stuff with her, just a lot of twittering,” West said in an interview with Diverse magazine, calling her book “wild and out of control.”

West did not stop at Harris-Perry, however.

An ardent supporter of Obama during the 2008 presidential election, he quickly became a critic following Obama’s inauguration.

He accused Obama of not being a true

progressive, instead referring to him as a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface.” In 2013, he likened Obama’s use of drone strikes in the Middle East to George Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon Martin, calling Obama a “global George Zimmerman.” On an airing of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” he went to the extreme of calling Obama a war criminal, along with every other U.S. president since Jimmy Carter.

Obama’s allies are not safe from West, either. He called Rev. Al Sharpton a “mascot” for the administration, working in the metaphorical fields of the “Obama Plantation.” Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State in Obama’s administration, was also, according to West, one of the many neoliberals — he uses this term pejoratively — who were puppets of the Wall Street machine and did not care about the plight of blacks and minorities in undeveloped communities.

I do not wish to say that West’s claims are completely baseless. Obama’s drone strikes killed at least 117 civilians during his presidency — and even that high figure is called too low by some human rights groups and media figures. It is also true that, while the unemployment rate decreased during Obama’s presidency, black unemployment remains at 8.8 percent as of last year, twice as high as it is for whites. But to scold Obama with such degrading remarks — to call him a “black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats” — should be below West’s stature. Furthermore, it is a mischaracterization of the Obama legacy of attempting to end societal ills in minority communities.

Maybe West does not factor in the amount of political capital needed to advance complex policy priorities when assessing Obama’s presidency. After all, West is somewhat removed from the plight of the nation’s poorer communities, as his current home in Cambridge, Massachusetts is not afflicted with the kind of poverty that, say, the South Side of Chicago faces. In addition, spending most of his life learning and teaching in elite institutions makes West prone to accepting idealistic solutions to messy, real-world problems. Even though West considered Obama’s use of drones to be reckless, he never mentioned that the number of slain non-combatants in wars has diminished in recent years thanks to drones’ technological precision. While the loss of innocent lives is always tragic, the increased use of drones has prevented the need for unnecessary deaths that could be caused by deploying U.S. troops to unstable regions.

Even though I think his rhetoric can be abrasive and incendiary, I look forward to attending West’s lecture. His contributions to academia should place him alongside some of the greatest thinkers of our time. With a little bit of careful reframing of his ideas, I think West could reintegrate back into the political mainstream of the black intelligentsia and cement his legacy in American black political thought.

THE DARTMOUTH ARTS

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THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017

Alumnus Q&A: ‘Transient’ writer-director Alex Stockton ’15

By MADELINE KILLEN

The Dartmouth Senior Staff

Alexander Stockton ’15, a film and media studies and economics double major, will screen his first feature-length film, entitled “Transient,” at Loew Auditorium on Monday, April 24 at 8:30 p.m.

He wrote and filmed the entirety of “Transient” during his junior year at Dartmouth. Stockton currently works for VICE News Tonight on HBO as a graphics editor.

How did your interest in film begin?

AS: When I was 6 or 7 years old, my mom bought me the movie “The Matrix” for Christmas. One, it was an incredible movie, but two, it was the first rated-R movie I could see, so I treated it all special and watched it countless times and just dissected it. I was way too young to really understand it because

it’s a pretty complex movie, so I just had to watch it over and over, and it gave me an appreciation for the fact that a movie is a construct of a lot of parts and you have to put it together. So since I was really little, I’ve always just loved movies and been fascinated with watching movies and dissecting movies and, later, making them.

I did a lot of different types of art growing up. Drumming was my life for the longest time. I did photography with my dad for fun.

On the weekends, we’d go out and shoot nature. Eventually, that all merged together into film, and I just started making films late in high school and decided that’s what I want to do for a living, merging my passions for all these different kinds of arts with this interest I’d had in film from when I was really little.

I made my first short film my junior year in high school. It was at

COURTESY OF ALEXANDER STOCKTON

“Transient” is Alexander Stockton ’15’s first feature-length fiction film.

this summer camp at the University of Texas. We were split up into teams. I directed this one short with a group of people, and we screened it there for the public. After that, I made lots of little films. For my senior year, I think I was making one short film a week. They’re all terrible, but it got me into this spirit of just making things and showing them and posting them on YouTube and holding little screenings at my house with my friends.

Can you tell us about “Transient”?

AS: So my roommate and best friend in college Varun Bhuchar ’15 — he and I decided pretty early on that we were going to make a feature film and spent all of sophomore year trying to figure out how we were going to do it and what it was going to be. Eventually, I settled on this character, Frankie, who’s an undocumented immigrant, and I wrote a script about him. I took my first eight terms on at Dartmouth from my freshman fall through my sophomore summer, and then I took all of junior year off to both do internships at the start of it but also make this film. I wrote the film from January of 2014 to summer of 2014, which is when I shot the film.

It’s a 99-minute fiction feature film about an undocumented immigrant who grew up in the United States but was born in Mexico, and early on in the film, he gets deported back to Mexico and goes on the physical journey to get back to the United States and his home and the emotional journey to really discover what home means to him. It was all shot in Texas. The majority of it was shot in Austin, and then some of it was shot in the Rio Grande Valley, which is where I’m from.

What do you hope your next steps in film will be?

AS: Right now I’m having a blast working at VICE. I’m in a very creative position; I’m very lucky to be in such a creative position so soon out of school. I definitely want to stay there and grow there.

I’ve done a lot of things — a lot of editing, a lot of graphics, some producing — and I want to continue to explore all of those.

COURTESY OF ALEXANDER STOCKTON

Alexander Stockton ’15 majored in film and media studies and economics.

In my free time, before work every morning I wake up at like 7 a.m. and go to a coffee shop and write.

Currently I’m working on a script for another fiction feature, and I want to continue to do that so eventually I can take on another big fiction feature project.

In school, I taught myself how to edit and spent a lot of time on set thinking those were skills I could learn that would be useful to get a job. Writing and directing and producing — yes, they are skills, and it takes a lot of work to get good at them — but it’s really hard early on to get a job in those things, so the majority of writers have to take jobs in something else while they write in free time before they become employable writers.

How do you think Dartmouth helped prepare you for a career in film, and what advice do you have for Dartmouth students interested in film?

AS: I was very nervous about going to Dartmouth at first because all my filmmaking friends were going to film school, but I was also really nervous about the idea of going to film school because I just love learning. I didn’t like the idea of just focusing on the skills necessary to becoming a filmmaker; I wanted to continue learning in all areas, and that’s what I liked about Dartmouth, but I also knew it was a risk because if you just know this wealth of knowledge, how does that help you to make a film?

Does studying philosophy matter if you don’t know how to organize a bunch of people together to shoot something? But it turned out — at least, I hope, since I’m

not successful yet — I learned a tremendous amount, and it directly led to me being able to make this film. A lot of the key positions on this film were filled by my fellow Dartmouth students. In editing the film my senior year from my dorm room, I was sending cuts to film professor Jeff Ruoff, and he was giving me tons of notes that were incredibly helpful. It was just this community that cared and that was really intelligent and also loved film and the purpose of the movie.

All of that worked together to help me to make “Transient.”

Also, I think Dartmouth fulfilled me in that I was able to make a lot of films on my own, and I was also able to spend my time at school studying other things. To me, that’s the perfect combination because I wanted both of those things. I wanted to be able to make films and to learn, and I think Dartmouth was unique in that it enabled me to do both of those things.

As advice to other students, I would encourage them to do both of those things: to develop their skills in projects outside of school and to also realize that all the things they’re learning in the classroom that seem so abstract are also the greatness of Dartmouth and to fully take advantage of those and see how you can tie these two realms together.

What’s your all-time favorite movie?

AS: “The Matrix.” Still. I probably watch it once a year and love it every time I see it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.