VOL. CLXXVI NO. 19
PARTLY CLOUDY HIGH 52 LOW 43
OPINION
REGAN: READ A BOOK PAGE 6
TRUONG: PAYBACK TIME PAGE 6
LEUTZ: STOP THE MADNESS PAGE 7
AHSAN: THE MEAT OF THE ARGUMENT PAGE 7
ARTS
NATIVES AT THE MUSEUM: REFLECTING ON COLONIAL SPACES THROUGH ART PAGE 8
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THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019
Five Dartmouth students selected as Fulbright scholars B y CASSANDRA THOMAS The Dartmouth Staff
Last month, five Dartmouth students and one recent graduate were informed that they had been selected as 2019 Fulbright scholars. The scholars will receive grants to teach, research or study in their respective commissions in international programs. The six recipients are Gabrielle Bozarth ’17, Ashley DuPuis ’19, Bethany Malzman ’19, Victoria McCraven ’19,
B y LORRAINE LIU
A legendary figure in the field of debate coaching, Ken Strange not only inspired many students with his hard work and strategic thinking, but also shaped college debate coaching. “There are probably three or four debate coaches in the history of college debate in the United States who kind of stand
Luke Cuomo ’20 elected Student Assembly president
Arista Ngodinh ’19 and Neerja Thakkar ’19. There were also seven Dartmouth students selected as alternates for the scholarship whose n a m e s h ave n o t b e e n released. The Fulbright scholarship applications were due in August 2018, but Dartmouth applicants were required by the College to submit their application essays by July 1, according to DuPuis, who SEE FULBRIGHT PAGE 3
Former debate coach remembered for hard work, intelligence The Dartmouth Staff
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
in the similar competitive and influential point today,” said Dartmouth Forensics Union director John Turner ’03. “He was a part of a generation of coaches that really made the activity what it was.” A former director of the Dartmouth Forensics Union for 35 years and founder of the Debate Institute at Dartmouth, Strange passed SEE STRANGE PAGE 5
COURTESY OF LUKE CUOMO
Luke Cuomo and Ariela Kovary will be the next Student Assembly president and vice president.
B y THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF By a margin of just 34 votes out of over 1,700 cast, Dartmouth’s student body elected Luke Cuomo ’20 to become the College’s next Student Assembly president, according to a press release from the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee. The Student Assembly vice president will be Ariela Kovary ’20, who ran on a ticket with Cuomo. Cuomo received a total of 796 votes. His opponents Tim Holman ’20 and Sydney Johnson ’20 received 762 and 232 votes, respectively. Kovary
received 1,520 votes. The presidential race margin is the closest since 2012, when Suril Kantaria ’13 defeated Erin Klein ’13 by 11 votes. “I’m grateful for the student body for putting their trust in us to serve their interests and work towards a better Dartmouth for all,” Cuomo said. Cuomo and Kovary ran on a platform that included creating a unified policy on sexual misconduct, more student representation on the Board of Trustees and increased values for Dartmouth Dining Service meal swipes. Cuomo’s student g ove r n m e n t ex p e r i e n c e
includes serving as the past chair of the SA finance committee, as a member of the Elections Planning and Advising Committee and as a SA senator from North Park House. He has also participated in Dartmouth College Democrats and Model United Nations. Kovary has been as a designer for the Aegis yearbook, worked as an undergraduate advisor and was a member of the Allen House executive board. “I’m super grateful that the student body has recognized that Luke and myself will serve as great leaders and deliver the SEE ELECTION PAGE 2
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THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
Limited parking on campus limits options for commuters B y SAVANNAH ELLER The Dartmouth Staff
The limited amount of parking spaces on campus has affected daily commuters to campus, some of whom live significant distances from Hanover. For staff members, this paucity results in a more complicated commute. For members of Dartmouth’s faculty, this issue can lead to fewer office hours and more instances of working from home. A new construction project begun by the College in January is seeking to address these concerns by building the first parking garage on Dartmouth’s campus. “Core campus parking is very tight,” said David Newlove, the associate vice president overseeing transportation and parking services at the College. “Basically, if you get here by [8 a.m.], there’s no parking for you.” Instead, many faculty and staff park in one of several lots on the periphery of campus. To the north, the Dewey, Maynard, Gillman and three other lettered lots serve those
with green or tan parking permits, while the Thompson and Ledyard lots take overflow parking in the south and west of campus, respectively. Each large lot is at least a 10-minute walk to the center of campus. The College also has small parking lots scattered throughout campus for green permit holders, though these spots often fill quickly during peak commute hours, according to Newlove. As the most expensive option for faculty and staff, the green permit does allow drivers to park closer to central campus in lots like Massachusetts, Channing Cox and Cummings. One of the most notable exceptions to these lots is the reserving of spots for senior administrators, such as the lots for the president and provost next to Parkhurst. James Muirhead, chair of the government department at Dartmouth, said the relative lack of parking is having a detrimental effect on the availability of professors to their students. According to Muirhead, younger faculty who live farther from campus must choose whether to spend
time parking and walking to their offices each day or to work and do research from home. “The cost of entering their offices can be just high enough that they decide to work from home,” Muirhead said. With professors spending less time on campus, students have less access to office hours and meetings, Muirhead said, adding that it would best to incentivize professors to work out of their offices as much as possible. Students with cars on campus face a similar problem finding affordable, convenient parking. Grant Larson ’21, who parks daily in A lot, said he pays around $80 per term for a spot that put him 15 minutes away from the core of campus, something he calls “frustrating.” Chris Bacotti ’20 said he used to have a car on campus but brought it home last year when a friend moved out of an apartment where he had allowed Bacotti to park for free. He said he would have kept his car on campus if he had better parking options.
“I wasn’t going to pay for A lot,” he said. Like Bacotti, many students choose to park in private lots on or near campus. Fraternities offer permit parking in their lots for an unregulated fee, according to Newlove. Local fraternity Chi Gamma Epsilon, for example, is located on Webster Avenue and charges $400 per spot during the spring term. At perhaps the greatest disadvantage in finding parking are commuters who work or study in the campus’ West End, where there are few spaces, according to Newlove. The College is trying to remedy this issue in the coming years by building a new 340-space parking garage in the area. The garage will be located under a new building which will be shared by the Thayer School of Engineering, the computer science department and the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship. Newlove said the College hopes to have the garage open in 2021. “We need parking that is close to where people work and go to school,” he said.
Judith Esmay, chairwoman of the Hanover Planning Board — the town regulatory committee that approved the West End project — said she thought the new garage might also bring some relief to traffic in downtown Hanover as more commuters are diverted from the main roads going in and out of the College. “We were certainly persuaded that it will assist in the flow of traffic downtown,” Esmay said. Esmay said overflow parking from the College is a burden on Hanover’s economy, taking parking spaces away from customers downtown. “It does have an effect on business because people do expect to be able to park close to the store or office that they are visiting, and if they cannot, then business very well might fall off,” she said. Muirhead said more will have to be done in the future to address parking on campus, including adding more parking garages. “Everywhere, colleges and universities have had to invest in a parking infrastructure,” he said.
Cuomo and Kovary succeed Walters and Knape FROM ELECTION PAGE 1
Dartmouth they deserve,” Kovary said. Cuomo and Kovary will succeed current president Monik Walters ’19 and vice president Nicole Knape ’19. In the race for senior class president and vice president, the ticket of Anjali Chikkula ’20 and Colby Conner ’20 defeated Lily Clark ’20 and Lizzie Clark ’20. Chikkula received 310 votes, while Conner received 314 votes. Lily Clark received 271 votes and Lizzie Clark received 268 votes. Nate Stockmal ’21 was elected as
one of the three 2021 Class Council executives. According to the EPAC press release, due to run-offs and write-ins, the other two executives will be announced by Friday at 12 p.m. Blake McGill ’22, Dominique Mobley ’22 and Alexis Klimaszewski ’22 were elected as the three 2022 Class Council executives. McGill is a member of The Dartmouth Staff. Another article with more information will be published in the near future.
CORRECTIONS We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth.com.
THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
Student recipients will study around the world FROM FULBRIGHT PAGE 1
received a Fulbright scholarship to study in Budapest, Hungary. DuPuis also said that Dartmouth supports its Fulbright applicants by assigning them a faculty advisor to guide them throughout the application process. DuPuis said she has a pointed interest in migration and asylum studies, and when she discovered the Budapest Fulbright commission, she knew it “checked off all the boxes” of her interests. She delayed a job offer by a year in order to commit to the scholarship. DuPuis plans to work at a think tank in Budapest, where she will be studying issues related to the Visegrád Group, or V4, which consists of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. “I’m looking at the history of migration and asylum policy in law in the V4,” DuPuis said. “There are similarities in their policies, but there are also nuances in their policy, so I’m trying to tease out those nuances.” DuPuis said that the Fulbright scholarship allows scholars to stay in their country of research for an entire year, allowing students to immerse themselves in ways that go beyond a vacation or study abroad program. “[Budapest] is a beautiful city,” she added. “To experience life there, not just for a few days on a vacation, but to actually live there for nine months is going to be fantastic.” Malzman will use her background in education and communications to teach English as a second language to students in northern Spain next year. As a Dartmouth student, she visited the country on a study abroad program, and was able to teach English there during an off-term. Malzman said she is confident that her experience abroad will make the transition much easier. “I loved my off-term so much, I felt like I was learning every day being there from the kids and the other teachers,” Malzman said. “I chose Spain based on the culture. Since I had already been there for six months
of my life, I’m more acclimated to their culture and way of life.” McCraven received a Fulbright to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She will be enrolled in a one-year master’s program. McCraven said the course of her academic career changed after she took a class called HIST 16, “Race and Slavery in US History” at Dartmouth. In the class, she learned about an African American man named Augustus Washington who studied medicine at Dartmouth in the mid-1800s and then emigrated to Liberia. McCraven said her studies will delve into African-American migration to West Africa during the mid-nineteenth century and the photography that was produced by American migrants to West Africa. “Ideally, this year will be an opportunity for me to learn about Liberia, to learn about the techniques used … and hopefully go there and do research after I’ve done all my preparations and possibly pursue a Ph.D. in the U.S. or in the U.K.” McCraven said. Thakkar had a similar experience in a Dartmouth classroom that introduced her to the research that would inspire her Fulbright application. In a computational photography class, Thakkar was introduced to the work of a computer scientist in Spain who studies cameras that can capture the speed of light. Next year, Thakkar will be working alongside that scientist in his lab. Thakkar lauded the Fulbright program for fostering dialogue among scholars from across the world. “The research community is very international,” Thakkar said. “There’s a lot of cool work going on everywhere and a lot of people working together to come up with really cool, new ideas and projects. I think this is a great way to be a part of it … It’s important that we’re all working on this collectively and globally, not just in one sphere.”
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THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS
DARTMOUTHEVENTS TODAY
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Speaker: “Margaret Atwood: Dorset Fellowship Lecture,” sponsored by the Ethics Institute, Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts.
4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Lecture: “From Quintilian to Dred Scott: An Issue in the Jurisprudence of Slavery,” Matthew Leigh, Oxford University, sponsored by the Department of Classicst, Carpenter Halll, Room 13.
5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Lecture: “The Question of Mercy: Reflections on African American Literature from Phillis Wheatley to Toni Morrison,” Farah Jasmin Griffin, Columbia University, sponsored by the Department of English, Sanborn House, Wren Room.
TOMORROW
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Lecture: “Shaking Things Up: How Treefrogs Use Vibrations to Detect Predators, Choose Mates and Defend Territories,” Michael Caldwell, Gettysbrurg College, sponsored by the Department of Biological Sciences, Life Sciences Center, Room 201.
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Film: “Women’s Adventure Tour,” sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts, Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center.
TRANSITION
Laurel Dernbach ’22
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THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019
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THE DARTMOUTH NEWS
Strange directed the Dartmouth Forensics Union for 35 years Forensics Union in 1980. While coaching debate with away on April 4, 2019 at the age of DFU, Strange churned out teams of 69, according to his sister Kay Grange. Dartmouth debaters who succeeded He was interred yesterday at a private at debate tournaments across the family gathering in Oklahoma City. country. Under his directorship, He is survived DFU won three by his sister and National Debate “A lot of the coaches stepdaughter To u r n a m e n t L i n d s e y just provided advice, championships, Gideon. placed second five [but] he also helped “He showed times and placed me what hard us do research and third nine times, w o r k w a s , ” worked aggressively according to a Gideon said. Facebook post by with us on particular “He was always DFU. there, he was arguments. As a result, B e yo n d t h a t , r e l i a b l e, h e he really inspired the under Strange’s was kind [and] rest of us to also work lDe aa rd temr sohui tph, humble.” B o r n a n d hard.” consistently ranked raised in as one of the top Oklahoma, col l ege debate S t r a n g e -MARK KOULOGEORGE ’85 teams in the demonstrated country, according his intelligence to Turner. He said at an early age, that Strange had recalled Kay Strange. at least one team win an elimination “He was a precocious child, round at the NDT for 30 years. from what others have told me,” she “That’s a competitive streak that is said. “He was unlikely [to] ever be always a very equaled in college bright student, “Ken was someone debate,” Turner h e e n j o y e d who was very good said. school.” According to S t r a n g e at taking a set of Mark Koulogeorge p a r t i c i p a t e d information and ’85, Strange was in debate k n ow n fo r h i s turning it into a throughout “unique level of h i g h s c h o o l coherent strategy. engagement” with and continued Not just knowing the debate team, as to pursue this he helped students activity while he something about the with research and studied political topic, but knowing argumentative science at strategies in this is exactly where Northwestern addition to simply U n i v e r s i t y. we want to aim our providing them During his years argument.” with instructions. of pursuing an Koulogeorge and undergraduate his teammate and master’s -JOHN TURNER ’03, Leonard Gail ’85 degree at were the 1984 DARTMOUTH FORENSICS Northwestern, National Debate h e c o a c h e d UNION DIRECTOR To u r n a m e n t debate at local champions with high schools. He Strange as their taught debate coach. at the University of Iowa before “A lot of the coaches just provided becoming the director of Dartmouth advice, [but] he also helped us do FROM STRANGE PAGE 1
COURTESY OF JOHN TURNER
Strange, center, helped lead the Dartmouth Forensics Union to three National Debate Tournament championships.
research and worked aggressively with us on particular arguments.” Koulogeorge said. “As a result, he really inspired the rest of us to also work hard. He was a coach who was working with us, not just instructing us.” Tur ner, who also trained with Strange while he was an undergraduate student at Dartmouth, echoed Koulogeorge’s sentiment about Strange’s strategic coaching style. “Ken was someone who was very good at taking a set of information and turning it into a coherent strategy.” Turner said. “Not just knowing something about the topic, but knowing this is exactly where we want to aim our argument.” Turner recalled that when he joined the team as a first-year without too much debate experience, he felt immediately welcomed because Strange assigned him to do research that later contributed to the work of advanced debaters.
“For him, the team was his family,” Koulogeorge said. In 1986, Strange established the Debate Institutes at Dartmouth, which features premier summer debate workshops that train high school students for different types of debates, according to lifelong friend David Baker. Baker, who worked with him for 16 years, said that Ken started the Institutes because of his passion for bringing quality debate education to more students. “I think Ken started the Institute because he really wanted to provide a high-quality program for exceptional students,” Baker said. Apart from producing nationally successful policy debaters for more than 30 years, the Debate Institutes also attracts students to apply to Dartmouth. Steven Sklaver ’94, who attended two summer debate workshops at the institute before coming to Dartmouth and was a 1993 National Debate Tournament champion alongside Ara Lovitt ’94,
said he applied to Dartmouth because of his high school debate experience with Strange. “Ken is my Dartmouth experience,” Sklaver said. “He is the reason I went to Dartmouth and the reason I chose my roommate, and I am extremely grateful for it.” After his directorship at Dartmouth ended in 2015, Strange worked as the assistant head coach at the Wake Forest University debate team for two years. Strange inspired his students in many different aspects that are not limited to simply college debate. Craig Budner ’87, a member of the second-place team at the NDT in 1987, said that Strange taught him how to “work, research, and frame arguments in a way that someone else could understand.” “I would say that he was probably the teacher who played the most influential role in my life,” Budner said. “He made me who I was, and I think about him every day.”
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THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
STAFF COLUMNIST JOSEPH REGAN ’19
STAFF COLUMNIST VALERIE TRUONG ’21
Read a Book
Payback Time
Or a haiku, something, anything! “The temple bell dies away/The scent of flowers in the evening/Is still tolling the bell.” As a senior at Dartmouth, my time here shortens as the days lengthen. For me, this haiku represents the fading beauty of a familiar scene that I am soon to leave without ever forgetting. If I had not given myself some time to read before bed, I never would have had the chance to feel myself reflected in these words Bashō wrote a long time ago in a faraway place. I did read, though, and that melted all the world’s differences away into the goosebumps raised by a man from long ago who never even spoke my language. Reading requires engagement with both oneself and the world. Books synchronize the mind with the heart as the reader draws up personal meaning for the words. Readers think about feelings and feel thoughts. Through their works, authors leave the reader a record of their search for meaning. People have every right to disagree with my sentiments, but I’d argue that they have yet to find the right book. Just words, yet sometimes they hit home. Many books stand as acts of rebellion that never fade into irrelevance. Leo Tolstoy, author of “War and Peace,” a text that some refer to as the greatest novel ever written, was known in his own time as a “netovshchik,” or naysayer. In an essay about “War and Peace,” professor of Russian Lynn Ellen Patyk wrote that “Tolstoy took great satisfaction in purposefully defying and confounding (that is, disappointing) the cherished beliefs and expectations of his contemporaries.” 587,287 words of literary jabs at his contemporaries, and my own contemporaries are still buying it 150 years later! The truth has no expiration date, and thanks to writers like Tolstoy, you can read all about it at your local library. Writers are worth reading when they
bravely write to be read and demolish pretension with their words. Favorite books act as mirrors that reflect who one was when first discovering the book and the changes that have manifested themselves since then. The older I get, the more I appreciate Ernest Hemingway the writer over Ernest Hemingway the man. Learning to make that distinction has enriched my understanding of a book like “The Sun Also Rises,” which ends with the famous question, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” I read that line for the first time in high school and thought, “Pretty good.” Now, I finish “A Farewell to Arms” in college and my eyes tear up. Hemingway’s thoughts and feelings are frozen in ink while mine still move — as I change, his books remain as a poignant point of reference. Reading is a basic activity that deserves more press than it gets. Recently, a professor asked my classics class of 16 how many people read the paper regularly. Just one other student raised a hand. I felt diminished. Reading the newspaper is an especially good habit to get into because it encourages engagement with the world of today. Newspapers are like global diaries: They inform the reader about the world as it is and form a record of humanity as we always have been. The more one reads, the more one comes to know the rhythm of the human condition. Books echo in us when their truth meets our own. “From the very beginning nothing at all has lasted,” spoke Gilgamesh in the oldest written story on Earth. The “Epic of Gilgamesh” has lasted since 2100 BCE. Gilgamesh is gone, but his wisdom and his story remain everlasting. Literature presents a psychological profile of the writer and the written about. Say it truly and well and it waits for readers, whatever it is and whoever they may be.
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“Reparations” are no solution to racial inequality. Last Thursday, the students of Georgetown Israel more than $7 billion in 2014 dollars as University voted in favor of a measure to reparations for the Holocaust. Over the course impose a $27.20 fee per semester in honor of 12 years, Israel’s economy and infrastructure of the 272 slaves once sold by the university. bloomed: its GNP tripled, and reparation funds Proceeds from the fund would directly benefit played a significant role in the development the descendants of those slaves. This news of the country’s electrical grid and railways. comes just as multiple Democratic 2020 However, German reparations to Israel presidential hopefuls have come out in support are crucially different from reparations for of reparations for descendants of slaves. slavery. The Israeli case featured one separate, While no major candidates have called for sovereign state transferring money to another. direct compensation, many have proposed When a nation gives reparations to its own reparations in the form of reduced monetary citizens, however, the transfer occurs between strain. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) has individuals with a shared national identity. advocated for tax credits to middle- and Germany might remain separate from Israel working-class citizens of any race, and Senator and offer reparations to the Jewish people, Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) came out in favor but Americans remain connected by bonds of free or reduced-price of nationality. Americans child care for low-income of different races cannot families. “Symbolic reparations apologize for past wrongs I laud the two and go their separate ways. cannot be used as candidates and others for They remain together as acknowledging America’s an excuse for failing part of one nation, a nation h i s t o r y o f r a c i s m , to address racial in which they need to look especially with regard to beyond simple financial African Americans. But inequality.” compensation and address the candidates’ proposed the deep-set causes of racial policies are not reparations inequality. since they do not specifically benefit African I worry that the use of the term Americans or any other racial group. Rather, “reparations” by politicians will prove as I see it, these policies are merely convenient incendiary toward race relations in this incorporations of buzzwords and likely country. Reparations very likely won’t make just a strategy to gain support from African all citizens acknowledge the past. Instead, they Americans amid the early stages of a crowded may only lead to bitterness over having to pay campaign. for something that, as some may argue, presentSince 1989, the House of Representatives day Americans did not directly do. If, as I fear, has seen repeated introductions of H.R. 40. reparations only serve to foment discontent and The bill would establish a federal commission anger between racial groups, then they hardly to study how slavery and subsequent systematic achieve racial equality. Instead, they would racist policies affect African Americans today be symbolic policies whose costs threaten to and prepare reparation proposals accordingly. drive resentment and perhaps even worsen Multiple Democratic hopefuls have voiced race relations. support for the bill. It’s possible that they That said, the discussion around reparations, genuinely want the bill to pass, but it seems both at universities like Georgetown and in likely that they’re using it as a political tool, national politics, is a step in the right direction. dredged up from the garage of the House, to But no matter what form reparations take, they garner support. Indeed, the bill has received cannot be a transaction in the typical sense. little attention in the past 30 years. Only when Symbolic reparations cannot be used as an a few candidates jumped on the reparations excuse for failing to address racial inequality. bandwagon did other Democratic hopefuls Rather, our society must work to promote true rush to reparations as a quick one-word racial equality, through anti-discrimination response to address America’s racial wealth laws, equity in public education, race-based gap and inequality. affirmative action and other concrete policies. Historically, the term “reparations” has Those measures, not symbolic reparations, implied a transactional act, something paid or are what the United States needs if it wants done to compensate for some wrongdoing. A to make any real improvements in a country classic example is when West Germany paid fraught with racial divisions.
THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019
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THE DARTMOUTH OPINION
STAFF COLUMNIST PETER LEUTZ ‘22
STAFF COLUMNIST SAJID AHSAN ‘20
Stop the Madness
The Meat of the Argument
It’s time to compensate college athletes. Last week’s Final Four generated an estimated $142 million of revenue in its host city, Minneapolis. And that was just the start; CBS and Turner Sports made $1.32 billion in advertising revenue last year, and advertising revenues have consistently increased each year since 2014, which means that this year’s total may be even higher. Social media platforms and live streams allowed American workers to spend an average of six working hours per year watching the NCAA tournament, which would present a problem if their bosses weren’t also watching. Las Vegas casinos handled over $300 million in estimated betting volume on this year’s tournament, and with states beyond Nevada fully legalizing sports gambling for the first time, gamblers in the U.S. wagered an estimated $8.5 billion on the tournament. With its unmatched size and scope, March Madness is an extremely lucrative form of entertainment. Colleges receive cash prizes for their perfor mance in the tournament, state governments tax gambling, many sponsors rake in profits and TV providers post huge earnings. The players, meanwhile, go back to school on Tuesday. They don’t receive any money for their role in the tournament. This is blatantly unfair and exploitative, especially since athletes underpin the entire March Madness industry. College athletes are anything but amateurs, and they should be able to market their likeness as compensation for the revenue they generate. This isn’t just fair; given the recent expansion of sports gambling, allowing athletes to profit off their likenesses will preserve the NCAA Tournament’s integrity. This is the first year that sports gambling has been fully legal in states other than Nevada. The National Basketball Association has been especially vocal in its support for the transition, jockeying for a share of the resulting revenues from sports gambling. Major league salaries have grown so high that players have less of an incentive to gamble on their own games, like Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds notoriously did in the 1980s. As such, sports gambling no longer threatens the integrity of America’s favorite games as it used to. That is, so long as the players are being paid. The integrity of collegiate competitions remains at risk of cheating by players. Players are often young, and many of their families’ economic situations rely on their athletic achievement. Put in that situation, and
otherwise unpaid, players risk being bought out by big whale gamblers looking for a “sure thing.” This is precisely why the NCAA sued the state of New Jersey over sports gambling in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The NCAA still opposes all forms of legal and illegal sports wagering. The NCAA is at a crossroads in its debate over player compensation. The league would be wise to allow players to sell their likenesses. Doing so would disincentivize corruption, which, since the Supreme Court struck down the federal sports betting ban, the NCAA will need to find a way to combat. Some argue that offering salaries to college players would distort the economics of college athletics, effectively creating a bidding war for top high school talent and pricing smaller colleges out of participating. That’s why compensation for college athletes should not come in the form of a salary. Rather, the NCAA should allow players to license their names, images and likenesses. Athletes would be rewarded for the amount of revenue that their names generate, whether through autograph signings, endorsements or the sale of memorabilia. The highest level of college athletes deserve this kind of compensation, and it’s time that the NCAA permit it. Allowing this sort of income for college athletes would reduce the possibility that highlevel athletes desperately seeking income would resort to bribery and gambling corruption. In addition, allowing college players to sell their likenesses would give them an economic incentive to stay in school; such an incentive currently is nonexistent, and that can prove disastrous for students who can’t make ends meet. If the goal is graduation, as the NCAA holds at the heart of its mission, then players who could make millions at the professional level should have an economic incentive to stay in college for longer than just one year. The current system allows colleges and universities across the nation to make millions off of players, who meanwhile have to wait a year in fear of injury before bringing any revenue home to their families. Allowing these athletes, who dominate our culture every March, to profit off their likenesses would not only protect one of America’s favorite sports competitions from corruption but also keep our favorite players in it for more than a year. And, above it all, it would offer players the deserved compensation they currently lack.
People’s defensiveness about eating meat is revealing.
There’s no shortage of pop psychological The reality is that any decrease in animal drivel that claims that one can tell a lot consumption is on the whole beneficial about people by what they eat. But in my for the planet. As of 2018, the animal experience, the more interesting question agriculture industry accounts for 14.5 percent is how people react to what others eat. I of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. It have been Muslim my entire life, and I’ve seems increasingly likely that any sustainable rarely, if ever, experienced future will include, among skepticism or pushback other changes, a significant when I’ve declined to eat “My diet was suddenly scaling back of the animal pork and bacon. What I no longer my business agriculture industry. To chose to eat or not eat was the extent that personal my business, between me but grounds for an consumer choices can have and my beliefs. argument that seemed any real impact, reducing I noticed a peculiar one’s consumption of to have little to do thing, however, when animal products is a my reason for abstaining with me at all.” positive step, even with the changed. I started not to occasional lapse. After all, eat meat because I became the point is not about being a vegetarian. And I would, on occasion, be satisfied with one’s own moral consistency but met with people who wanted to debate the about reducing harm where possible. merits of vegetarianism or point out what they There is something about the instinctive saw as other flaws in my reasoning. I found defensiveness shown by some towards the idea this odd; my diet was suddenly no longer my of not eating meat for ethical or environmental business but grounds for an argument that reasons that suggests some underlying issues seemed to have little to do with me at all. or concerns not brought to the surface. I Some of my friends and colleagues seemed know that this can be the case because it was to react as if they were being judged by an my experience for years before I became a internet stereotype of a moralizing PETA vegetarian. Although never outright hostile crusader, a sort of person I’ve never met in to vegetarianism, I found myself deeply the real world. invested in finding evidence that proved that Another strange there was no real difference tendency I’ve noticed is between eating or not an eagerness to find some “I somehow felt eating meat. I somehow evidence of hypocrisy in that if vegetarians felt that if vegetarians my vegetarian friends, as if we re i n c o n s i s t e n t o r that somehow renders their were inconsistent hypocritical in some way, argument for decreasing or hypocritical in that fact would absolve meat consumption moot. me of any responsibility some way, that fact An occasional meat I might otherwise feel to allowance or a flexible would absolve me of examine what I consumed commitment is treated any responsibility I and why. a s ev i d e n c e t h at t h e It wasn’t until I lifestyle is untenable and might otherwise feel had to consider the ethics hypocritical, proof that the to examine what I of animal consumption for smarter, more consistent a Dartmouth philosophy consumed and why.” option is to simply not try at c l a s s t h at I re a l i ze d all. This also takes the form how I’d started with a of a sort of whataboutism, often pointing to the predetermined conclusion then tried to justify resource destruction caused by certain kinds it in order to exculpate myself. of plant agriculture like almond cultivation or My intention here is not to proselytize for the abuse of migrant farm workers by large vegetarianism. It’s simply to suggest that for fruit farming corporations. While these are others like me, the intrinsic discomfort felt critically important concerns, I find it difficult at the thought of vegetarianism might stem to take these arguments seriously when they more from underlying concerns about eating come from people who are otherwise perfectly animals than from some urge to play devil’s happy to eat beef, almonds and fruit. advocate.
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THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019
THE DARTMOUTH ARTS
Natives at the Museum: Reflecting on colonial spaces through art B y sabena allen
The Dartmouth Staff
Native Americans and museums have historically had a tenuous relationship which is tied to the root of both what museums are meant to do and how much Native “art” over the years has made it into museums. I am by no means an expert, but I will attempt to provide some context on this subject. I am Tlingit, a tribe native to southeastern Alaska. I am Raven moiety from the Ganaxteidi clan. My Tlingit name is Andaxjoon. I am a beginning student of my language, which I have tried to use in this piece, though English grammar has been applied to some of them for the purposes of the article. Some items created by Tlingit people are in possession of the Hood Museum of Art, and thus, I will mostly be using those as examples in this article because they are the items on which I have the most authority to speak. As another disclaimer, in terms of my own community, I am no cultural authority. My thoughts on these subjects are in a constant state of growth and development. Thus, this column will not just be a reflection on the Native American collection at the Hood but also a reflection on my own evolving relationship with that collection. In Tlingit, “naaxein” refers to a Chilkat blanket; a robe woven from dyed mountain goat wool that forms intricate patterns both on the scale of the weaving and the formline design of the blanket itself. Naaxeins are meant to be worn and danced in ceremonies and celebrations; they move and live with the dancer. When these robes are in museums, they are often tacked to the wall or held up in a glass case. Indeed, the Hood possesses one of these blankets from the 1850s-80s, and it, too, is tacked to a wall. According
to Hood records, it was taken from an unknown community, and later gifted to Dartmouth by Robert L. Ripley ’39, whose relation to said community is unknown. Regardless of how the Chilkat robe got to Dartmouth, this naaxein, as with all naaxeins, is meant to have a place in the cultural activities of a community. In contrast, the work of famous Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary — whose work is also on display in the Hood — is primarily known for translating these sorts of traditional designs into glass works. One such example is a glass clan hat Singletary flipped to sit like a bowl decorated with formline designs. When you shine a light down on the hat, the designs are beautifully reflected underneath. As I said, these designs are highly traditional, yet Singletary’s work is meant first and foremost to be art. It was meant to be displayed in a gallery or museum, not unlike a portrait or landscape painting which is meant to be hung on a wall. Currently, the Hood has a blue version of Singletary’s clan hat on display, “Tlingit Crest Hat.” These two Tlingit pieces — the Chilkat robe and Singletary’s hat — illustrate the contours of museum spaces; although the glass clan hat is clearly art, the naaxein is not. Rather, it is “at.óox,” or clan property intended for ceremonial use — not something that belongs in a museum. One might argue, as archaeologist and conservationist Dean Sully does in his piece “Colonising and Conservation,” that museums can adapt their practices to respectfully conserve and protect these so-called “artifacts.” But this idea has its limitations. In Tlingit culture, of course, we care for important at.óox and preserve them for our ceremonies, celebrations and culture. Museums generally negate this important context, transforming items like at.óox
into “artifacts.” I spoke with curator of Native American Art at the Hood, Jami Powell. We discussed the trouble of reconciling with museums and what they have taken from communities. Powell recognized the contentions surrounding the display of such objects in museums, but also how they allow visitors to think about communities that they otherwise would not know existed. In terms of education — both for outsiders of a community and those trying to learn traditional art — these collections can certainly have some sort of benefit. Powell has been working at the Hood since May 2018. She is a member of the Osage Nation and has a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One thing she said she is concerned with is conceptions of Native people within non-Native society. Although I have spent the bulk of the column thus far expressing my concerns about Native “artifacts” in museums, it is necessary to note that the Hood intentionally places these “artifacts” in conversation with its contemporary Native art gallery, indicating a continuum. Powell said that the Hood places contemporary Native art front and center rather than in the corner. Above the stairs leading to the Native American Gallery, there is a canvas consisting of six red panels. In black lettering, they read, “Red Man,” “Full Blood,” “1/2 Breed,” “1/4 Blood,” “1/8 Blood” and “1/16 Blood.” The piece is called “Blood Line or Accepted Federal Government Standard for Blood Quantum” and is by George C. Longfish, a halfSeneca, half Tuscarora artist. “Blood quantum” has historically been used by the federal government to determine whether someone is “Native
enough” to be eligible for certain treaty rights and other laws relating to Native people. This practice has also been used by tribes to determine who can be enrolled. Thus, it begs the question from all sides, “Are you Native enough?” Given the tension surrounding this concept and the type of feelings it elicits, this Longfish work is a striking piece to open the gallery with, as it sets the visitor up to engage with contemporary artwork by Native artists. The first section of the gallery is spatially centered around a massive sculpture, “WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHEN DO YOU WANT IT?” by Jeffrey Gibson, an artist who is half Cherokee and part of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. The sculpture has an indeterminate form and wears some sort of blanket/skirt. I have a feeling that many visitors will not find it inline with what they think of as “Native art,” which is precisely why it is brilliant to feature it so prominently. As you move out of that room, there are some older pieces such as the Chilkat blanket, woven hats and baskets, carved pieces and other contemporary items. What immediately struck me about the layout of the artwork was how walking into a space of contemporary Native art challenges what Native scholar Thomas King calls the “Dead Indian” paradigm. King theorized in his 2013 work “The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America,” that there is a form of imperial nostalgia in which non-Native audiences prefer images of Native Americans that conform to specific fantasies about “noble savages” who have all long since disappeared. The Hood’s infusion of older pieces with contemporary works, such as Singletary’s clan hat, requires visitors, as Powell said, to experience how older
traditions of creation inform the new generation and can provide context for when artists choose to innovate and when they maintain and incorporate traditions. The relationships between Native communities and museums are infinitely complex, but it is important to talk about them because they remind us that museums are inherently colonial, and thus will never not be problematic. Based on my conversation with Powell, however, I can see now how the Hood is giving Native students and artists a space to illustrates the immediacy of their communities. Powell, for instance, said she plans to invite a variety of Native artists to Dartmouth to make, display and talk about their work on May 3 at the “Art, Artists, and the Museum: A Conversation” event. This even will go beyond just a discussion of the work itself and into how the artists want their work to be displayed, which will be discussed at a symposium in May. Powell also wants to expand the presence of Native art at Dartmouth beyond the boundaries of the museum and acquire pieces that show Native people in a contemporary context, including through Native humor. One recent acquisition, “Burt Reynolds,” is a paddle featuring a formline design of a naked Burt Reynolds by Tlingit artist Alison Marks. This piece is hilarious and also facilitates Powell’s initiative to balance out the Native collection and include more work by indigenous women. Despite Dartmouth’s troubling history with these communities, which I intend to explore in later installations of this column, there may still be ways to move forward. I will re-iterate for the people in the cheap seats: Museums will always be inherently colonial. But if there is a way to counter that narrative, it will inevitably be through self-representation.