VOL. CLXXIII NO.136
CLOUDY HIGH 43 LOW 30
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2016
OpenAccess Week to feature guest speakers
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Christopher Vale ’18 remembered for spirit and enthusiasm By TIANHANG DONG
The Dartmouth Staff
ARTS
ALUMNUS Q&A: PETER NIGRINI ’93 PAGE 8
ARTS
FILM REVIEW: ‘MORRIS FROM AMERICA’ PAGE 7
OPINION
LU: AN EPIDEMIC OF DISHONESTY PAGE 4
OPINION
MILLER: ABROAD, BUT CLOSE TO HOME PAGE 4 READ US ON
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TWITTER @thedartmouth COPYRIGHT © 2016 THE DARTMOUTH, INC.
KATE HERRINGTON/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
Students, faculty and visiting lecturers met yesterday on Berry Main Street to discuss access to research publications.
By JULIAN NATHAN The Dartmouth
Open Access Week, formed with the intent to foster discussion about the open access movement, began yesterday at the College. The movement aims to combat barriers preventing complimentary access to academic journals and published research, said James Adam’s, the College’s data
and visualization librarian. According to engineering professor Rachel Obbard, open access is an especially important consideration for those in developing countries, who may not be able to afford subscriptions to research journals. This week, students and faculty will have the opportunity to hear from guest speakers and other lecturers. Barbara DeFelice, the College’s program director
Pollan gives lecture for Food Day
By ALEX FREDMAN The Dartmouth
Last night, about 500 students, faculty and community members filled the Hanover Inn’s Grand Ballroom — standing room only — to listen to a lecture by Michael Pollan, an awardwinning journalist and author of nine books on food, diet and agriculture. As this year’s George Link Jr. Environmental Awareness Lecture, the event coincided
with National Food Day, a nationwide celebration urging Americans to change food policies and the way we eat. Pollan, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, is best known for his 2006 book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” and for his catch-phrase: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly SEE POLLAN PAGE 5
for scholarly communication, said that this week’s programming will feature public talks, lectures and workshops. Today at 3 p.m., CEO of the Social Science Research Network Gregg Gordon will talk to students and faculty in Rockefeller Center 003 about the changing rules, roles and responsibilities of both researchers and publishers given the rise of the open SEE ACCESS PAGE 3
For his friends, Christopher Vale ’18 was an inspiration, a role model and a person who could not be encapsulated by a word or a speech. A devoted climber, Vale died in a Sept. 5 accident in while descending the East Ledges of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. On Sunday afternoon, members of the Dartmouth community gathered in the Dartmouth Outing Club house for the memorial and celebration of Vale’s life. William Braasch, a graduate student at Dartmouth and Vale’s friend, opened the memorial with brief remarks. Afterward, College President Phil Hanlon delivered a speech about Vale’s life. “Today we gather to celebrate the life of Chris Vale, a true
son of Dartmouth, a beloved family member, a friend to everyone in this room,” he said. “Losing a treasured member of the community so tragically and suddenly is very difficult. There is no time to prepare. It’s tough to deal with the sorrow and sadness. But today we are committed to celebrate his life, to share joyful memories of someone who inspired others through his kindness and courage.” Although Hanlon did not know Vale personally, he created a vibrant picture through the words of Vale’s friends. Hanlon described Vale as an embodiment of adventurous spirit, and as “the heart of the Dartmouth community.” He was an outdoor adventurer of the finest order, a member of Dartmouth Mountaineering Club and an engineering SEE VALE PAGE 3
Phi Beta Kappa inducts 20 new members Monday night By SARA MCGAHAN
The Dartmouth Senior Staff
Dartmouth’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa inducted 20 new members from the Class of 2017 last night. The annual induction ceremony was held at College President Phil Hanlon’s house. The Class of 2017 inductees are Marielle Brady ’17, Brian Chen ’17, Hae-Lin Cho ’17, Liza Couser ’17, Carrie Ann Davison ’17, Christopher DiPreta ’17, Devyn Greenberg ’17, Hallie Huffaker ’17, Daniel
Lee ’17, Daniel Magoon ’17, Meghana Mishra ’17, Olivia Powell ’17, Abiah Pritchard ’17, Yue Wang ’17, Qi Wei ’17, Alisa White ’17, Yerin Yang ’17, Zhecheng Yao ’17, Yichen Zhang ’17 and Ran Zhuo ’17. To qualify for membership, an undergraduate must have completed eight resident or off-campus terms at the College, and rank in the top 20 students in their class based on GPA. The Phi Beta Kappa
Sophomore prize is given to students who have completed five resident or off-campus terms at the College and have the highest academic rank. Seven members of the Class of 2018 will be awarded with this prize: Katherine Clayton ’18, Lillian Eisner ’18, Patrick Harvey ’18, Kevin Kang ’18, Hung Nguyen ’18, Nicholas Norwitz ’18 and Jean Zhou ’18. Huffaker is a member of The Dartmouth Senior Staff.
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
PAGE 2
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2016
College installs new Solaflect solar panel near Moore Hall
KATE HERRINGTON/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
Construction of a solar panel marks a step towards fulfilling the mission of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
By PETER CHARALAMBOUS The Dartmouth
Construction on a new photovoltaic panel adjacent to Moore Hall has just completed. This panel will serve as a model for the implementation of solar energy generation on campus, said Timothy McNamara ’78, associate
director of real estate for the College. Solaflect, a Ver mont-based photovoltaic panel developer and manufacturer, built the newlyinstalled panel. The panel’s design allows it to track the sun both up and down and sideways. Furthermore, an anemometer on the
SCAFFOLDING COMES DOWN
KATE HERRINGTON/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
Construction of Baker Library nears its end in preparation for Homecoming Weekend’s bonfire and festivities on the Green.
CORRECTIONS We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth.com.
structure will signal the panel to move into a vertical position in strong wind conditions, preventing possible damage. The panel’s design also allows it to shed snow easily. As a whole, the technology on this panel makes it 40 percent more efficient than a fixed photovoltaic panel, McNamara said.
“It’s a wonderful technology in that it allows us to offset consumption of fossil fuels and have zero emissions of greenhouse gas that you’re generating,” McNamara noted. “There’s just no emissions associated with it” Other colleges have used similar technology to become more environmentally-friendly. Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts recently installed photovoltaic panels in June. With the largest campus solar energy system in New England, Hampshire will be able to attain 100 percent of its electricity from the sun. The new panel at the College will supply 4,300 watts of power to Moore Hall, generating enough electricity to power about three household hairdryers whenever the sun is out. The sustainability task force, created in April in order to further the College’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, spearheaded the construction of this panel beginning in May. “I am troubled by the lack of options for running a campus like this without having environmental impacts,” said Andrew Friedland, environmental studies professor and a co-chair of the task force, noting that 80 percent of the Col-
lege’s power comes from oil. Friedland said that he hopes the panel will serve as a scaleddown model for the expansion of photovoltaic panels across campus. The task force is scheduled to publish a report with recommendations in the spring. If the panel is sucessful, Friedland said that the report may recommend construction of more panels which would produce over a million watts of power. Built without any federal or state subsidies at an estimated cost of about $20,000, this panel is the second photovoltaic panel on campus. The only other solar panel on campus was built on the roof of Murdough Hall over 20 years ago. This new panel will begin producing energy in coming days, and its performance can be tracked online on Solarflect’s website. The panel, which is located in a highly trafficked pedestrian corridor, will serve as a reminder of Dartmouth’s goal to become more sustainable as well as carbon neutral, Friedland said. Friedland noted that the sustainability task force aims to have the College be not only carbon neutral, but even carbon negative within the next 20 to 40 years.
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2016
Vale memorial service held Sunday FROM VALE PAGE 1
major, Hanlon said. Hanlon also stressed Vale’s passion for challenging the seemingly impossible, as seen in his “Introduction to Engineering” class. Vale’s group invented the BivyPac, a portable shelter that is part bivy sack and part backpack, but weighs only half the amount of a normal bivy sack. Jessica Colin ’18 also spoke at the service about Vale’s uniqueness. She said it was hard for her to find the proper words because as soon she started writing, she began to crystallize Vale, to capture him and to put him into the confines of the page. “But, Chris was never someone you could constrain or put him into a box. The very nature of remembering him in this way defies logic,” she said. Colin conveyed her admiration of Vale’s adventures and also his determination of conquering difficulties. “He was doing the things people could never think of doing,” she said. “Chris, to me, was the essence and spirit of adventure.” She focused on how his qualities influenced all of his friends. “Chris was a reminder to do the
things that we love now, to pursue the dream, to crush the goal and to do it authentically,” Colin said. “Chris had a way of inspiring in us the very things we admired in him.” Brett Seeley-Hacker ’18, who first met Vale in their shared engineering class, talked about how they worked out the idea of the BivyPac, fi nished their fi nal presentation and bonded over mountaineering adventure stories. “One of the things that impresses me most about Chris was the fact that he was never afraid to prioritize what he was most passionate about,” Seeley-Hacker said. “I am sad that my time with Chris was so brief. But, I think the way he inspired me in that short time speaks to the strength of his character.” Taryn Hunt-Smith ’19 spoke about their relationship and remembered his enthusiasm. “I was struck by Chris’s passion and confidence the first time I met him,” she said. “He talked about his gap years traveling around the world and I literally refused to believe that he was a sophomore. His life experience and knowledge so exceeded his years.” After Hunt-Smith’s remarks, Vale’s family members and friends
spoke and expressed their feelings. His father, Ron Vale, talked about how Vale’s life was full of love, which he received in abundance from family and friends. Chris Vale also gave his own love to the students he tutored from disadvantaged families, and he further cultivated his empathy by spending several months in a Tibetan refugee area. When mentioning Vale’s career aspirations, his father remembered how he said “I do not want to spend my life making toys for privileged people. I want to do something that is going to have greater value in society.” Vale’s father emphasized that, in other ways, too, Vale changed his family’s perspective of the world. Vale taught his father new sports and introduced him to the wider world. “I gave him my camera, but he turned out to be a much better photographer,” his father said. “And then I learned so much about photography from him because he had such a different eye for the world.” A f t e r s h a r i n g c o m mu n i t y thoughts and memories, people were given an opportunity to write down their words on cards and talk with one another. Braasch then delivered closing remarks.
PAGE 3
Events highlight access to academic journals FROM ACCESS PAGE 1
access movement. This Thursday, DeFelice and Scott Millspaugh will host a faculty workshop titled “Opening Access through Canvas Legally.” This workshop will inform faculty about how to make educational materials available to students through the Canvas interface in a legal manner. Programming will culminate on Friday with a faculty workshop titled “Author Rights and Scholarly Identity.” Jen Green and Lora Leligdon will serve as instructors for this workshop, which will discuss faculty rights as authors of published work and teach various tools for increasing the impact and accessibility of research. Reference librarian at Feldberg Library Emily Boyd explained that this week’s programming ties into national trends in academia and elsewhere. Boyd will be attending OpenCon in November, which will take place in Washington D.C. Boyd explained it is easy for Dartmouth students to take their access to published research for granted. Individuals who are not affiliated with well-funded universities often struggle to access published work because of
paywalls that require high fees in order to view content, she noted. Obbard added that student-led initiatives at other universities have focused on the student benefits of open access. Problems that university students often face are textbook costs, which can act as barriers to their educations. Organizations such as the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition have proposed open textbooks as a viable solution. DeFelice explained that open access has become an increasingly important issue during the past couple of decades. She indicated that progress has been made in this area and explained that in the past 10 years, public grantsupplying organizations including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have made taxpayer-funded research be available to the general public due to a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy mandate. However, despite this progress, there is still more that needs to be accomplished, she said. Reflective of these efforts, “some faculty are making an effort to use more open resources and are starting to think about publishing open access textbooks themselves,” said Obbard.
THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
PAGE 4
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2016
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST LUCY LI ’19
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST ELIANA MILLER ’20
An Epidemic of Dishonesty
Abroad, but Close to Home
It’s time to change the conversation and start speaking with intention. There are so many different ways to lie. We may convey false information, withhold the truth or tell white lies, saying what we want people to hear. Other times, we only tell half the story, convolute the story or make a new one. When it comes to telling the truth, however, there’s only one way to do it, and that is to express what you want and what you mean as accurately as your words and body language allow you to. Language is an imperfect instrument of self-expression evident in those moments when words don’t quite roll off the tongue, or when a simple facial expression gets your point across better than a sentence can. There are not enough words to express exactly what we feel. No experience will ever mirror another and no feeling will ever feel the same the second time around; the human range of emotion is too expansive to categorize into words. However, we make do, and we try to express what we feel by choosing our words with as much accuracy as we can. As members of a community, it’s impossible to be completely honest all the time. Empathy teaches us to sand down the edges of our words to not hurt other peoples’ feelings. Our innate need to belong drives us to speak in a way that fits the occasion, and we choose our words carefully to put up a front. It is for this reason that our most genuine thoughts rarely ever take form as tangible words, and are silently lost within our own mental monologue. Considering the limitations of language, it amazes me how often people still intentionally say what they don’t mean. There are already so many opportunies for honest words to be misinterpreted. By deliberately saying what we don’t mean, we are wasting a uniquely human gift. If we’re lucky, our lies sometimes end up dissipating into the void; most of the time, though, they become weapons. And when these weapons are put to use, they have the power to be hurtful. The world we live in encourages and perpetuates dishonesty. Lying has infiltrated the very essence of our culture. Not saying what we mean has become so normalized that I see real reactions of surprise and discomfort when someone is too genuine or actually bold enough to acknowledge an elephant in the room. Not
saying what we mean perpetuates the lack of conversation around pervasive social issues, including sexual violence, mental illness and racism. Not being honest about the problem fuels the very issue that we claim to abhor. It is the ultimate form of apathy. Apathy has become our generation’s medication for fear, to the point where we give our words as little meaning as possible to escape commitment and manage our insecurities. Empty phrases, like “Let’s hang out soon,” have become normalized. It has become too normal to take someone’s words with a grain of salt. We completely undermine the value of language by refusing to acknowledge the weight and commitment that words have. Words, no matter how they are said and with whatever intentions, don’t mean anything unless your actions follow through. I called my dad recently to vent about my frustration and anger over this epidemic of dishonesty, and he told me, “Think about it like this. People who don’t say what they mean have to remember everything they ever said because they might have to defend it someday. But they can’t possibly remember everything they say, and eventually others will realize what kind of people they are.” I don’t believe that people say what they don’t mean to be malicious; if anything, they do it with the best of intentions. However, the side effects of those words we choose based on what we think other people want to hear can potentially be disastrous. We don’t know what other people want, so it’s best to say what we mean and let the other person decide for themselves what they want. We are all guilty of perpetuating this epidemic of dishonesty because we are all human. My dad, having decades more experience than me with human interaction, reminded me that people will be people. “Forgive others, and forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for seeing the good in people, and don’t stop being yourself just because other people might not be like you.” No one will ever tell the truth all the time, but that does not mean that it isn’t worth it to start changing the dialogue. Every person who decides that lying isn’t worth it is an activist in this movement for honesty and speaking with intention.
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We’re missing out by not participating in the Twelve College Exchange. Dartmouth is known for its off-campus Dartmouth is one institution among opportunities. We have over 40 Foreign Study hundreds in the United States, and gaining Programs and Language Study Abroad op- a wider breadth of knowledge on a subject portunities that allow students to travel the facilitates career decisions down the road. globe, from Lima to Tokyo to Berlin. Students Connecting with new professors and other make use of these programs, with more than colleges can also lead to new research and 50 percent of undergraduates participating mentoring opportunities for undergraduates. in an FSP or LSA. One off-campus program Dartmouth students can look to the Twelve is overlooked, however: the Twelve College College Exchange as a chance to further Exchange. their studies in a given area of focus while I stumbled upon the Exchange at the begin- also experiencing a new social environment. ning of the term and have been asking around Three of the participating schools — Wellesabout it ever since. Through the Twelve ley, Mount-Holyoke and Smith — are allCollege Exchange, Dartmouth students female colleges. Many of the other schools have the opportunity to easily transfer for a are Greek-life free, including Amherst and semester and study at another Northeastern Vassar. And most of the colleges are smaller college. The Frank J. Guarini Institute for than Dartmouth, providing students with a International Education website gives only more intimate educational setting. a brief description of the program and a list Besides offering new courses and a new of the colleges that participate: Amherst Col- environment, the Twelve College Exchange is lege, Bowdoin College, Connecticut College, one of the only opportunities for Dartmouth Mount Holyoke College, the National Theater students to escape the College completely. Institute, Smith College, Trinity College, FSPs and LSAs are taught by Dartmouth Vassar College, Wellesley faculty, and, for better College, Wheaton Color for worse, they simply lege, William College’s “Besides offering new transplant and move Williams-Mystic program courses and a new the College to a foreign and Wesleyan University. country. The Exchange Joyce Kenison, pro- environment, the Twelve does not involve any gram/exchange coordina- College Exchange is one Dartmouth faculty, and tor for the Frank J. Guarini instead allows underInstitute for International of the only opportunities graduates to have an Education, explained that for Dartmouth students entirely new commuthe program has fallen off nity with new professors, the map in recent years. to escape the College students and courses. Typically, more students completely.” Dartmouth is the only in the program come to participating school on Dartmouth than leave a quarter system, which Dartmouth, due to the Colmeans that exchange lege’s prestigious academic strength. Students students are able to experience a semester at smaller schools can even make use of the system. Students can take more classes than Thayer School of Engineering’s dual-degree they would during a term at Dartmouth and program or take courses at the Tuck School can engage with these courses for a longer of Business. But these smaller institutions period of time. Through the semester system, have much to offer as well, and Dartmouth a student typically takes four courses over a students miss out by not participating in the 15 week period instead of three courses over Twelve College Exchange. a 10 week period. While it may seem like Dartmouth can Of course, the Exchange is not for evprovide everything one needs and more, we eryone. Athletes bound by sports commitoverlook many opportunities and experiences ments will find it difficult to leave campus, nearby. Despite being able to choose from over and the semester system of the eleven other 2,000 classes at Dartmouth, the College does participating schools may not coincide well not offer certain fields of study and specialized with some students’ D-Plans. But the program classes that are absent from our curriculum. is the perfect opportunity for international For example, through the exchange, theater students who want a change of pace without majors can hone their skills at the National having to adjust to yet another new country. Theater Institute, those interested in marine Students can study off-campus without having biology can attend Bowdoin’s Coastal Studies to apply for a visa or experience the culture Center and future film directors can partici- shock of a new country. With the 12 schools pate in Wesleyan’s film studies program. residing in a radius of only a few hundred Katie Billings ’16 studied for a term at Bow- miles, transfer students can easily come home doin College in Maine. A clinical psychology for big weekends, such as Homecoming and major, Billings said she wanted to take more Winter Carnival, without feeling as though behavioral science courses, as Dartmouth’s they’re missing out on Dartmouth traditions. social psychology department leans heavily The Twelve College Exchange allows towards the neuroscience field. At Bowdoin, Dartmouth students to become part of two Billings was able to work with Barbara Held, schools and gain a unique perspective on their a leading clinical psychologist, while also area of study. Those looking to experience a seeing firsthand how the department stacked smaller school, an all-female school or even up against Dartmouth’s. She described the a warmer school should not overlook this experience as invaluable. program.
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2016
Environmentalist visits Dartmouth FROM POLLAN PAGE 1
plants.” “He is one of the most articulate, influential thought leaders in the arena on issues that connect food, how our food is grown, [and] what are the impacts on the environment and on our health,” said environmental studies professor Anne Kapuscinski, who introduced Pollan at the event. Pollan talked about the process by which he wrote his new book, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.” Pollan began by discussing his earlier books, which focused on the industrialization of food production. He argued that our desire for fast food dictates the process by which our food is produced. “[The fast food industry] has driven the industrialization of our agriculture,” Pollan said. “Our desire for a nice long french fry leads to a whole chain of consequences leading back to a pesticide.” He added that large corporations ultimately cook food differently than people do by using the cheapest possible raw materials and excesses of salt, sugar and fat. Cooking can be a potential solution to the growing industrialized food system, Pollan said. To set the stage, he made the following comparison: In 1965, people spent an
average of one hour per day on home cooking. Today, people spend only 27 minutes a day on home cooking. The effect of this discrepancy is profound: “People who eat homecooked meals eat better diets and weigh less than people who don’t,” Pollan said. “When you let corporations cook for you, you lose control of your diet.” Pollan also discussed that as television cooking shows grow in popularity, people now spend more time watching cooking on TV than cooking themselves, something he calls the “food paradox.” In closing his speech, Pollan emphasized the many benefits that cooking brings to our society. Cooking, he said, makes food more nutritious, and has allowed humans to evolve smaller guts and larger brains than other primates. More importantly, he argued, cooking is a means by which individuals can protest against the specialization of food production by what he calls “Big Food.” “I really believe that cooking is a political act, a therapeutic act, an agricultural act,” Pollan said. Following the lecture, Pollan engaged in a 30 minute conversation with Kapuscinski. The event concluded with a brief question and answer session followed by a book signing.
Kapuscinski said Pollan’s expertise lent a unique opportunity to combine the annual George Link Jr. lecture with Food Day celebrations. At the College, Food Day programming has occurred over the last two weeks, including apple picking, an Organic Farm Fest and last Thursday’s Harvest Dinner at the Class of 1953 Commons. Oliver Edelson ’18, an environmental studies major, helped facilitate the event. Edelson is part of an organization called Plate of the Union, which promotes a food policy campaign on campus. “A lot of what Mr. Pollan has worked on his whole life — studying how we as a society relate to our food — is a really exciting viewpoint to hear,” Edelson said. “I think food is extremely important to our makeup, and I don’t think it’s given its time. To hear people dedicate their career to it is really exciting.” Pollan gave the George Link Jr. lecture once before at the College in 2004. This combined with his growing notoriety in his field prompted the environmental studies department to invite him back, Kapuscinski said. “It was clear he’s a very humble, down-to-earth person, and he cares a lot about education,” she said. “I think he’s very interested in how young people are interacting with food issues.”
PAGE 5
CULTURAL CONVERSATION IN FAHEY
LAUREN KIM/THE DARTMOUTH
Students of the South Asian Student Association and Dartmouth Asian Organization came together for a dinner discussion on colorism in the Asian community on Monday night.
THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS
PAGE 6
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2016
DARTMOUTHEVENTS TODAY 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
“Open Access and the Social Sciences: Changing rules, roles, & responsibilities,” Gregg Gordon, Rockefeller Center 003
4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
“Toward Maintaining Control of Industrial Control Systems,” doctor Raheem Beyah, Georgia Institute of Technology, Steele 006
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Musical performance by Ian Bostridge and Thomas Ades, Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts
TOMORROW
4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
“Obama’s Uncertain Legacy: Peace, Justice, and Democracy,” Richard Joseph ’65, Dartmouth 105
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
“So What were they Fighting for? Germans in World War II,” professor Nicholas Stargardt, Oxford University, Carson L01
6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
“Spymasters: Can We Kill Our Way Out?,” moderated by filmmaker Chris Whipple, Filene Auditorium, Moore Building RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 1 __ for the course 4 Proverb 9 Wire fence stickers 14 Winner of the most 2016 Olympic medals 15 Prize founder 16 Accustom (to) 17 __ Tin Tin 18 “We’re done here. Please leave” 20 For mature viewers 22 Foot prettifier, briefly 23 Miss. neighbor 24 Grape-Nuts cereal brand 26 Big Board letters 30 Lone source of local entertainment 33 Pop in a glass 34 Wonder 35 Longtime name in Syrian leadership 36 Prereq for a lifeguard 37 Fred Flintstone’s boss 40 CBS logo 41 Yoga position 43 Conservationist’s prefix 44 Part of 14Across: Abbr. 45 Eschew modern conveniences 49 Worrisome grades 50 Misplace 51 Tennis do-over 52 Open house offering 54 Great suffering 57 Like the child of your first cousin, to you 62 Great Lakes’ __ Canals 63 Baseball legend Satchel 64 Dior skirt style 65 “__ the President’s Men” 66 Does’ mates 67 Cares for 68 Sound on Old MacDonald’s farm
39 One may be 56 Modern-day DOWN stubbed carpe diem 1 Sound of a 42 Retirement fund spelled out at the contented kitty starts of 18-, 30-, 2 Great Wall setting 44 Belligerent god 46 Chimney part 45- and 57-Across 3 Deliver a tirade 47 Word processing 57 Black __: covert 4 Sometime soon category missions 5 “Let’s Make a involving page 58 D.C. ballplayer Deal” selection dimensions 59 Spy novel org. 6 __ Dhabi 48 Moves smoothly 60 “¡Viva el 7 Emerald, e.g. 53 Lodes and lodes matador!” 8 Slip by 54 Patch up 61 __ Scully, Dodger 9 Texas city of 1.3 55 Hershey’s announcer for 67 million, familiarly caramel candy seasons 10 Consecrates with oil ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: 11 It may be unearned 12 Compadre 13 Clinch, with “up” 19 Mythical Himalayan 21 Singer Fitzgerald 24 Feline feet 25 Brunch servings 27 Ill-tempered Looney Tunes character 28 Persuaded 29 Week or rear add-on 30 “My bad!” 31 Needlefish 32 Scottish denial 33 Nearly boil 37 Long March leader in 1930s China 38 Tylenol target 10/25/16 xwordeditor@aol.com
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10/25/16
THE DARTMOUTH ARTS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2016
PAGE 7
Hartigan’s ‘Morris from America’ is unapologetic, emotional By SEBASTIAN WURZRAINER The Dartmouth
As Jeru the Damaja’s profanitylaced rap song “Come Clean” began to play over the opening credits of “Morris from America,” I could practically feel every person over 60 in the theater clench up inside. It didn’t take long for the couple behind me to walk out. When that happened, I thought to myself, “I’m going to enjoy this movie.” I can’t help but admire a movie that begins with a bang and weeds out any audience member not interested in meeting it on its own terms. Morris Gentry (Markees Christmas) is a 13-year-old American
who has just moved to Heidelberg, Germany so his father Curtis (Craig Robinson) can be a soccer coach for the local team. Inka (Carla Juri), Morris’s eccentric but compassionate German teacher, encourages him to participate in activities at the local youth center, where Morris eventually meets Katrin (Lina Keller), a 15-yearold German girl who playfully flirts with our naïve American hero. The rest of the movie chronicles Morris’s attempts to get Katrin to see him as a potential romantic partner rather than a silly little boy from across the ocean. “Morris from America” works on so many different levels. For one thing, Christmas is a natural talent,
and I genuinely believe that he could eventually become quite the film star. He manages to perfectly embody Morris’s mixture of emotions as the character tries to make friends and impress others in this foreign, uncaring environment. The script seems intelligent enough to realize that Morris doesn’t have to be some sort of angelic child to be relatable. He can be stubborn, irrational and occasionally even prone to anger, but Christmas always finds a way to make him likeable and charismatic. Robinson is also fantastic as Morris’s struggling father. Curtis recently lost his wife and is clearly still grieving, but we only notice this in moments when no one else is around. The
rest of the time, Curtis is trying to do the best job he can raising a son whose rebellious tendencies mirror his own. At the very end of the film, Curtis tells Morris the story of his first time in Germany, allowing the audience to understand his unique but surprisingly effective parenting method. That scene is Robinson’s show stopper; he sells every line without being sappy. The rest of the cast ranges from excellent to passable in all of their roles, with the most noticeable standout being Patrick Güldenberg as Sven, the counselor in charge of the youth center. He probably has less than five minutes of screen time, but he makes the most of it, perfectly capturing the sickly sweet hipster youth counselor that we’ve all encountered at some point in our lives. Although the storyline is pretty standard, it still manages to be effective. The ending didn’t wrap up the story in the way I had predicted. I certainly won’t spoil what happens here, but suffice it to say the film leaves Morris’s future slightly ambiguous in a way that feels true to real life. Speaking of real life, the film subtly addresses the racism that Morris and Curtis face in this new environment. Every time these every-day moments of racism take place, the audience feels the sting right alongside the characters. The film doesn’t set out to make a point but instead allows these incidents to be naturally incorporated into the story, reminding the audience
that so often it is the little things in life that inflict the most pain. For all of its charm and warmth, “Morris from America” does have two minor but very noticeable flaws. The first is the director’s stylized approach to certain scenes. Every once in a while, the film will abandon realism and make a specific moment feel slightly surreal. The intention behind these sequences is clearly to get inside Morris’s headspace so that we can better experience what he’s going through. The stylization, however, is so irregular that it comes off as incredibly jarring. It may give the film a unique flavor, but that flavor tastes of dissonance. The other, slightly bigger, issue is the film’s inclusion of emotionally charged moments that often don’t feel properly justified. Once in a while, Morris will just act out in anger or in sadness and these scenes, once again, feel jarring within the context of the film. It’s not that we don’t understand what he’s going through so much as the movie doesn’t effectively build up his emotional outbursts. They just come out of nowhere and recede just as quickly. Those problems, though, are minor nitpicks and did little to impede my enjoyment of a truly funny and heartfelt film. “Morris from America” is very much like its protagonist: it goes its own way and it really doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. I mean that in the best possible way. Rating: 8/10
ALL THAT GLITTERS
ELISE HIGGINS/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
The Donald Claflin Jewelry Studio provides a creative outlet during midterms.
THE DARTMOUTH ARTS
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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2016
Alumnus Q&A: Peter Nigrini ’93, Broadway projection designer By ELISE HIGGINS
The Dartmouth Staff
Peter Nigrini ’93 is a projection designer for productions both on- and off-Broadway. At Dartmouth, Nigrini studied theater and film with a focus on backstage production but did not discover projection design until after college. Nigrini has designed projections for various projects ranging from Broadway productions to concerts. Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do after college or did you discover that along the way? PN: I definitely did [have an idea of what I wanted to do]. I maybe hadn’t fully admitted that that’s what I wanted to do, but in retrospect, it’s so clear to me that that was actually my intention all along — that I was interested in and excited about a career in the theater. I allegedly was considering engineering, but I never actually took an engineering course, so I clearly didn’t think about it too hard. What does your job as a projection designer entail? PN: I design projection for a wide variety of live performance and theater. It can be plays, operas, dance, musicals or concerts. A projection designer is kind of a new theater design discipline. What we are really doing is figuring out how the moving image and the way the modern world, which is full of media
and images, become part of a theatrical tradition as a tool that we can use to tell stories. So that’s the grand version; what it involves in a more practical sense is not dissimilar to what a set designer or a lighting designer might be doing in the theater where you are part of a group of designers — a set designer, a lighting designer, a costume designer — who work with a director and conceive a visual world that a production might live in and then sort of create each of those as visual moments on stage. Where do you usually get your inspiration from when beginning to design projections? PN: Everywhere and anywhere if I’m lucky, and nowhere if I’m in trouble. I think it very much depends. One of the things that is interesting about being a theater designer and artist, as opposed to say a visual artist or a writer, is most of the time when I join an artistic endeavor, there’s already a kernel of an idea. There’s a writer who has decided they want to write a play, and then somewhere after the writer decides they want to write a play, I get involved. Sometimes there’s already a director and a set designer and a design and there’s already a world that’s been made, so as a designer, it’s rare that that spark comes from a blank page. Usually there’s some other artist that I’m responding to, so certainly that’s always a jumping off point and a place to begin a collaboration. But then I think what’s unique, what I enjoy, is
taking what is often not visual, be it a text or music, something that’s not a visual idea, and finding the visual way to support that, to tell that story, to expand that, and to build out of an idea to a world. As far as where the inspiration for that comes from, I feel the wider I can throw my net, the better. I certainly look a lot at the work of other artists and photography and a lot of other cultures. The inspiration usually isn’t a direct line, it’s more being open to often what I intuitively feel is exciting and is interesting in relation to a project. What is the most difficult part of projection design? What is the most rewarding part? PN: Specifically as a projection designer, I’ve chosen a medium to work in as an artist that involves both a great reliance on a very large number of resources. You need an audience, or it can’t continue to happen. There’s both a great reliance on all of these external forces that allow me to make my work as an artist and also sort of a great distance between the kernel of an idea in my head and its realization on stage. Working in the theater and working projection — which is so technology heavy it’s a little bit like trying to thread a needle in a spacesuit — it’s so far from the picture that’s in my head to getting something to actually happen on stage effortlessly and beautifully. There’s a lot of frustration that comes with that. There’s times when you’re like can I just get up there and get a paintbrush
WORLD VIEWS
COURTESY OF PETER NIGRINI
Peter Nigrini ‘93 majored in theater and film at Dartmouth.
and throw some paint at the thing, but it’s not my medium, it’s not what I do, so there’s a lot of coaxing my way towards realizing what I ultimately want to put on stage. In terms of the most rewarding, it’s really what I think almost every theater artist would say — it’s about being in the same room with other people and affecting them. There isn’t always a story in a traditional sense, but having them take that journey with you — and it’s not a distant group of people like it would be in film. They’re actually sitting right in front of me, sitting in the theater. Those real live human beings that you’re sitting right next sharing that experience — that’s the best part. What has been your most memorable production?
KYLEE SIBILIA/THE DARTMOUTH
Osher at Dartmouth features the work of six photgraphers in an exhibit called “World Views” this month.
PN: That’s hard because they’re so different in such wonderful ways. I think the thing that I find most exciting about theater is how different the things I get to do are. Last June I was designing “The SpongeBob Musical” and “Don Giovanni,” and that was my day. My day was “You need to think about [both] at the same time.” That’s such a gift. How would you say your Dart-
mouth experience shaped who you are and the path you’ve taken? PN: While I did theater, projection was not something I did much of while at Dartmouth. Certainly working in the theater was something that I did and very much shaped where my career went. What I find the most interesting about it is the most important theatrical experiences I had at Dartmouth were not in class. The most important things I learned about theater at Dartmouth were from having the opportunity with the professors and the mentors who were there to actually make theater, and I think that’s true about the arts in general. The way you learn to do it is to do it. You do it with smart people around who might be pointing at what you’re doing wrong, but the theoretical aspects are really secondary to the act of doing. I think it’s something that’s often overlooked in the formal world of going to college. There’s a whole informal world of educating yourself that doesn’t work if you want to be a doctor, but in the arts it absolutely 100 percent works, and it’s probably the best way to become an artist. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.