The Flat Hat December 4, 2024 by The Flat Hat

BOARD OF VISITORS

Demonstrators march to board reception

Students

stand with signs in hall lounge while attendees enjoy food

MONA GARIMELLA FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR

Tursday, Nov. 21, students at the College of William and Mary protested a Board of Visitors reception at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business with the Whole of Government, Military and Veteran Afairs staf and ROTC program staf to demonstrate their disappointment with the failure of the College’s administration to divest from Israeli-owned companies.

Te demonstration fell on the same date as the National Students for Justice in Palestine’s call for an international strike, with the College’s chapter hosting a teach-in on Palestine’s history and the boycott movement hours before the demonstration.

On Instagram, the College’s SJP chapter posted about their intent to host a teach-in and walkout Monday, Nov. 18. Te College Socialists and Dissenters also promoted the event.

“Instead of going to class Tursday afternoon, join us for teach-ins on Palestine, the BDS movement, and W&M's connections to colonialism and war,” the post’s caption read. “We will end with a rally to protest the administration's refusal of the student body's demand for divestment. Tis institution is reliant on us, the students and faculty, to give it value. Let's reclaim our power from the administration!!”

At the teach-in event in Lodge One of the Sadler Center, students and faculty spoke on the purpose of the event, highlighting the tumultuous history of the Gaza strip and how students can make an impact by participating in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

SJP Co-President Salma Amrou ’26 recited a poem highlighting the lasting efects of settler colonialism on the Palestinian people.

“Colonizer, you have cut of my tongue and I speak in yours to make you understand,” Amrou said. “I speak in yours to make you understand that life does not end with death. Tat our spirit transcends the rise and fall of a breathing chest. Tat all this violence is simply the beginning of a new era.”

Members of SJP, Dissenters and College Socialists then presented on topics related to Palestine and the BDS movement.

“We are holding this today because the National Assembly has declared November 21st a national university strike against genocide,” a College Socialists member said. “Will we boycott classes, boycott the institutions of genocide, and build our own institutions? Because once the school no longer serves us, we can build our own school and our own institutions that don't serve war, but serve the community and serve the people.”

Amrou spoke more on the history of confict in the region, concluding that the history is vast and goes beyond the phase of violence that started Oct. 7, 2023.

Tis has been going on for longer than October 7th, and that as much as they would like to have you believe that everything started on October 7th, there is a long history and context behind what happened,” Amrou said.

SJP Co-President Iqra Ahmad ’26 similarly spoke on the longevity of the issue.

Oﬀ-campus

housing conditions raise concerns for student residents

The bathroom Brian Des Roches ’25 shares with his neighbor is covered in black mold. The shower is crammed under a staircase, making it difficult to stand up while using it. On multiple occasions, the toilet has stopped working and the bathtub has filled with sewage.

Des Roches is going on two years in his off-campus apartment. While he noticed many problems early on, he was often hesitant to make a fuss.

“In my first year, living off campus was like, ‘oh well, I’m just lucky to have somewhere to live,’” Des Roches said.

Des Roches’ story is not uncommon. Across Williamsburg, many College of William and Mary students live in poor, dysfunctional and sometimes uninhabitable rental properties. These students often put up with negative conditions as they see no other options.

Beyond the bathroom, Des Roches’ apartment has no air conditioning and only a small, ineffective radiator. His front door is broken and lets in bugs.

There is also a mystery sludge under the floor.

“In between whatever the real floor is and the laminate, there’s sludge kind of,” Des Roches said. “I can kind of peek into it because where it doesn’t quite meet the wall, there’s this really thin layer of grime and dead bugs. But when it gets wet, it leaks.”

Gregory Klingensmith ’26 similarly recalls moving into a dirty house filled with fleas, ants and rats.

“I just had to be on the lookout all the time,” Klingensmith said. “I placed traps in different places. I remember there was one morning where I woke up around like five and walked into the kitchen, and a rat up here jumped and almost landed on me.”

Conditions for Klingensmith and his roommates

got so bad they decided to move out just a few months after their lease began.

“We started the moving process once some of the parents came and they were like, ‘yeah, we’re not letting our kids live here,’” Klingensmith said. “My one friend’s mom is an attorney and she was like, ‘yeah, this is illegal.’”

Rats are a common occurrence, especially in the older houses near campus. One student who wished to remain anonymous explained that none of their roommates go to the first floor at night out of fear of the rats.

“Food has been eaten and like, nibbled on,” they said. “There’s been rat droppings all over our bathroom. You can hear them scurrying through our ceilings and walls.”

Elizabeth Fretz ’23 remembers rats being one of many problems with the house she rented as a student. She had to invest much of her own money into buying rat traps, installing curtains and figuring out alternatives to their broken heating system.

It took six weeks for Fretz and her roommates to get their landlord to send someone to fix the heating, and she will always remember her interaction with the electrician.

“He goes, ‘did you know that there was just a live wire underneath your house, like running the length of the kitchen, not connected to anything?’” Fretz said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, you mean a live electrical wire underneath our wooden floorboards of our very old house? That’s super cool. I love that.’” Before living in the house, Fretz knew it had problems such as warped floorboards, rotted porches and a general lack of maintenance. Still, she decided to move in because the property had been

passed down through her sorority.

“I think because it was like a house that had been passed down, I was kind of willing to overlook all of that just for the sense of community that I would have living there,” Fretz said. “But definitely looking back, I should have taken a closer look at that.”

Fretz and Klingensmith both found their previous houses from their Greek life organizations and cited community as one reason for moving in. Like many other students, Klingensmith also identified location as a primary concern.

“I don’t have a car, so I wanted to be somewhere close to campus, but kind of have my own crib not being like a dorm or something like that,” Klingensmith said.

One of the biggest factors contributing to students’ housing decisions is a lack of options.

The anonymous student said that she was aware the house she was moving into had problems with rats, cockroaches and heating. They decided to go forward with it anyways, as she couldn’t keep paying for transportation from an apartment far from campus.

“There was no other option,” they said. “Like genuinely, I got put on the waitlist for the on-campus housing, and it was basically presented to me that as a rising senior, my options were just like, I couldn’t do that.”

The College is currently undergoing a 10year comprehensive plan to renovate dining and residence halls. As a result, there are fewer beds available for upperclassmen students. In 2023, 548 students were placed on a waitlist for oncampus housing.

SA Senate passes resolution calling for new hall renaming practices

Sponsor retracts call for student Design Review Board member, asks for direct student involvement opportunities

should have a voice when it comes to making long-lasting decisions such as the naming of buildings.

was introduced.

Tawfk sees the passage of this resolution as a sign of its signifcance for all students.

Tuesday, Nov. 19, College of William and Mary Student Assembly

Sen. Mayer Tawfk ’27 proposed and passed Te Naming Architecture with Meaningful Epigraphs (N.A.M.E.) Resolution in the SA, advocating for more inclusivity with regards to student voices when naming new buildings on campus. Tis comes in response to students’ frustration that the names of residence halls are honoring people with legacies not in alignment with the current student body, and the values that the College claims to uphold.

Tawfk also had personal motivation for moving forward with the resolution, as he believes students

“I thought there isn’t student representation in the naming process at all, and a lot of the controversies that arise are somewhat of a surprise to administration, and that comes from a lack of having students in the room when they’re talking about different names,” Tawfik said.

“Someone who’s a representative could be like, ‘this isn’t my personal view, but I could see how students could be upset from this.’”

Te resolution was introduced to the Senate Tuesday, Nov. 12 and was assigned to a committee where it received feedback the following Sunday. It passed voting the next Tuesday, Nov. 19, one week after it

“I think it’s important that the people who occupy certain buildings, like residence halls, people who occupy classrooms, are proud of the legacy that the school is honoring through that building, and are proud of that person’s achievements and that person’s refections of the school’s values,” Tawfk said.

Tawfk and other senators intentionally wrote the resolution to be open-ended, allowing for a wide range of ways it could be implemented when discussing future steps with College administration.

“I didn’t want to put concrete action steps, and then go and

have those conversations and find out steps one through five are impossible, or you need to try again,” Tawfik said. “So the language is a little vague on purpose to where we can have those conversations, understand our knowledge, how it’s flawed or where it needs expanding, and then evaluating the steps after and being like, okay, we misunderstood the process. This new version of the process, maybe we can pivot and include students that way or find specific gaps where they’re not represented.”

Dozens of individuals from other multicultural organizations and advocacy groups on campus signed the resolution, demonstrating that there is widespread support for this outside of Student Assembly.

“Te great thing about Student Assembly is everybody is involved in a whole lot of things,” Tawfk said. “And because of that, when you have a team as good as ours, and these are all class of ’27 senators, and class president, these are all people I know well and people who put a lot of work into the projects they pursue. So they came on the sponsors and instantly started to reach out to their circles and the organizations they’re involved in, and that helped a lot.”

In an email to The Flat Hat, Diana Kim ’25, former director of the Asian American Student Initiative, described why she was the first nonStudent Assembly student to sign the bill.

ANNA ARNSBERGER AND AGAVNI MEHRABI // THE FLAT HAT

PHOTOS

news insight

Our goal is to continue the conversations. We donʼt want people to stop thinking about the landscapes around them or to simply normalize these harmful figures being mythologized and put on literal & figurative pedestals.

SA Senate passes five bills, confirms Chloe Jones ʼ25 as Student Experience secretary

Tuesday, Nov. 19, the Student Assembly Senate of the College of William and Mary passed five bills. The chamber also confirmed Chloe Jones ʼ25 as the new SA secretary of Student Experience, replacing Julian Green ʼ25 who resigned earlier last month.

Jones served as SA undersecretary of the Arts/Arts Experience. She has also served as an orientation area director, is a co-director for AMP and helped found the Music Student Action Committee, an organization focused on supporting musically-involved students.

Jones believes that because her duties involve more organizing than handling money, her position will not involve a conflict of interest.

“So definitely time blocking to make sure I have time to do specific tasks, and also that my attention is devoted to those solely, and that they get kind of all of my energy and commitment,” Jones said regarding her time management style.

The senate passed all five bills considered, including one calling for reforms to the hall renaming process. The bill aims to increase student participation in and transparency around the naming of new residency buildings.

‘Hello, thank you’: Beloved dining hall worker Jerrie Cowles greets students daily with a smile

Cowles shares journey before work at the College, love for conn ections with students

Students entering Sadler Dining Hall are often met with “Hello, thank you,” as they swipe in. Jerrie Cowles, a cashier in the dining hall, has been welcoming students at the College of William and Mary with a smile for almost four years.

Cowles grew up in Dinwiddie County, Va. She moved to Williamsburg in the early 1980s when she married her husband, who is from the area. Cowles worked in retail at Williamsburg Pottery before getting a housekeeping job in Colonial Williamsburg, where she worked for 30 years. She touched on the unique experience of working in the historical tourist destination.

“We had repeat guests that would come in, because they liked learning about the history there,” Cowles said. “Then they started renovating and, to me, they took a little tradition out of it. They used to have wooden foors there where they made it carpet.”

After retiring from CW, Cowles sought out a part-time job. She heard about a position in the Sadler Dining Hall from another dining employee. The job Cowles was ofered ended up being full-time, but she feels she fell into a role that suits her well.

“When I frst got hired, the manager said, ‘Miss Jerrie, I have a position for you,’ and I was like, ‘Okay.’ He said, ‘You love to talk, so I’m going to make you a cashier,’” Cowles said.

Cowles works swiping Tribe Cards and greeting students walking into Sadler every day from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. She emphasized her consistent presence in the dining hall, being there for all three meals of the day.

“Basically, the students see me all day. That’s how most of them really know me,” Cowles said.

Known for her cheery greeting, Cowles described how she maintains her positive energy as students’ frst welcome into the dining hall for many hours each day.

“With a big smile,” Cowles said. “If I smile with my big smile, it makes their day and it makes my day, because I’m happy and they’re happy.”

Cowles noted that her sociability is a natural part of her personality that she displays in and out of work. She said that the energy she brings in her interactions with students is authentic, as she feeds of of the conversations.

“I love it, and I love to talk,” Cowles said. “That’s my biggest goal, is talk.”

Overall, Cowles said that interacting with students is her favorite part of her job, and one that keeps her coming back to work even after retirement.

“I love those students,” Cowles said. “Because to me, it’s like, most of them are a long ways from home. So me, myself, and I, I like talking with the students and being there for them, because when you’re a long ways from home, you have no family. So I like just blending in to make the kids happy.”

On that note, Cowles touched on what makes college students unique customers to interact with day to day.

“It’s like real school, but it’s a more growing-up environment, more education, and just basically seeing what they’re coming here to be,” Cowles said.

her inspiration behind forming ASIG.

This semester, two new heritage-based Greek life organizations are being introduced to the College of William and Mary. Fifteen female students have joined Asian-interest sorority Aspiring Sisterhood of Identity and Growth, which was founded shortly before fall 2024. ASIG intends to connect female students of Asian descent through shared cultural experiences and values. Similarly, a chapter of Latinx-interest fraternity Lamba Upsilon Lambda (LUL) is coming soon to the College campus.

“La Unidad Para Siempre,” otherwise meaning “united forever,” fully encompasses the Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity’s goal of encouraging academic success, professional development and cultural awareness among Latinx and multicultural students.

LUL was founded in 1982 at Cornell University after the discovery of dropping admissions among marginalized communities across the country. It is the frst Latino-based and multi-ethnic organization to be founded at an Ivy League institution.

Eleven undergraduate students and two individuals from Cornell’s faculty organized the fraternity dedicated to promoting the educational advancement and unifcation of diverse communities.

At the College, ASIG, founded by a group of students seeking to expand representation in Fraternity and Sorority Life on campus, held its inaugural interest meeting this September.

Co-president Kathleen Ulanday ’26 shared

“The idea came about during my spring semester of freshman year,” Ulanday said. “I refected on the sense of community I was always searching for as an Asian-American student. My friends and family members at other schools had shared their experiences with Asian-interest sororities, and their stories inspired me to create something similar at my own campus.”

Ulanday explained that the organization aims to create a sense of belonging for students.

“I felt strongly that establishing this organization could fll a gap not only in my own sense of belonging but also for others who might be seeking a space to connect, celebrate our shared identities and ultimately support one another,” Ulanday said.

Contrary to traditional panhellenic social sororities, ASIG places strong emphasis on fostering cultural pride and awareness.

Public Relations Chair Sophie Rush ’26 shared the inspiration behind establishing the organization.

“There’s not a lot of representation for Asians within sororities, and so we thought that this is something that could really be something good for William and Mary, and something that is needed to create another community and more representation,” Rush said.

DEI Chair Samirah Habib ’26 added what the growing sisterhood meant to her.

“A smaller organization, like ours, makes it a little easier to fnd people who relate to you,” Habib said. “ASIG is meant to build a closeknit community within the Asian community,

and I feel like we’ve had a close bond. I feel like it’s just a close knit community that I can always rely on.”

Habib also refected on another member’s personal anecdote of fnding a home at ASIG.

“One of our new members was saying how she was struggling to fnd her own place,” Habib said. “[After joining ASIG,] she felt very comfortable and felt like she belonged. It was nice to know that there was a sorority for her.” ASIG has yet to attach itself to a formal chapter, but members of the executive board are continually working to establish the sorority as a formal organization on campus. Rush elaborated on the group’s progress of acquiring a charter.

“We are not currently part of a chapter, but we are working towards submitting a bid to then become a part of a national chapter. One of the frst things I remember we did was becoming recognized as a student organization within William and Mary, so we could get some funding and start actually hosting fundraisers and events. We became a recognized organization at the end of the last spring semester. This semester we’ve started doing fundraisers, diferent workshops and collaborations with other clubs or Greek organizations,” Rush said.

Co-community service coordinator Lily Engelhardt ’27 provided additional insight into the process of receiving formal recognition.

“We’re still active in getting it fully recognized as a sorority,” Engelhardt said.

FLAT HAT NEWS BRIEF

COURTESY IMAGE

Jerrie Cowles worked in Colonial Williamsburg for 30 years before starting at the College dining hall, where she has been working for almost four years.

SACHI PALLEM / THE FLAT HAT

Realistically, how many Spicy Tuna Rolls could I buy with my meal plan?

By now, every student on campus has that one spot that has managed to suck up all their dining dollars. Whether it’s the smuices at Town Center Cold Pressed or the sushi from the Student Exchange, there are many options that are too delicious not to spend your dining dollars on. However, dining dollars and meal swipes aren’t always unlimited.

This is why it’s important for upperclassmen to carefully consider what meal plan they will purchase next semester or next year. There are many factors to consider, like how much you are willing to spend each semester on food, your willingness to prepare your food or even how much you value social interaction in dining halls. If you are unsure about which meal plan is right for you, hopefully, this breakdown will help.

CAMPUS

Freshmen and sophomores are more limited in their meal plan options as they can only select the All-Access meal plan. However, juniors, seniors, commuters and graduate students can choose from several meal plans and are only required to select a meal plan if they live in campus-managed housing.

One factor to consider is how many meals you will eat on campus at the dining halls and how many you will cook yourself.

If you chose Block 125 or Block 100, that saves you $558 or $901 when compared to the All-Access plan. This money could then be spent on groceries which can be purchased at Food Lion, Trader Joe’s, Target or Walmart, among other options. From the center of campus, the Food Lion is only a 10-minute walk, and the Trader Joe’s is a 15-minute bus ride or five-minute drive.

Another factor to consider is the value for each meal swipe. Te All-

Access plan gets the most bang for your buck at $8.27 per swipe, while the other plans are priced at $17.70 per swipe. If you don’t enjoy the quality of the food at the Commons Dining Hall or Sadler or don’t feel it’s worth the $17.70, then you might not want to purchase a dining plan at all and save that money for your groceries and prepare your own meals.

Another beneft of having a meal plan is pre-paid dining dollars accepted at many on and of campus vendors. Te number of dining dollars you have varies from meal plan to meal plan. Tese include Commons Dining Hall, Market Place, Sadler, Student Exchange, Tribe Market, Town Center Cold Pressed, Starbucks at ISC, Boehly Café (Business School), Chick-fl-A, Column 15 at Swem Library, De Jure Deli (Law School), Te Bake Shop, Dominos and Bento Sushi.

Perhaps you might be okay with sacrifcing meal swipes if it means more dining dollars for your favorites, like the Column 15 cofee or the Bake Shop bagel sandwiches. While Block 100 has fewer meal swipes it has $100 more in dining dollars, which when budgeted correctly, can aford you about $31 per week in dining dollars. Block 125, like the AllAccess plan, would still provide you with about $25 per week in dining dollars, so if you select that plan, you will still need to make one or two meals on your own per day.

Now back to the more important question, the sushi at the Student Exchange is a crowd favorite, so how many spicy tuna rolls could one really buy with dining dollars?

Selecting the right meal plan for you is all about knowing your own habits. Where do you want to spend your money? How much do you like to eat on campus versus spending the time and money to cook at home? Hopefully, after reading this article, you feel better equipped to choose the meal plan that will satisfy your needs as a student.

CCL&I releases Findings & Landscape report authored by students, faculty

Members of committee share insights, hopes for future, students work to contexualize history of College buildings

LILA REIDY FLAT HAT CHIEF STAFF WRITER

Friday, Nov. 15, the Committee for Contextualization of Campus Landmarks and Iconography at the College of William and Mary released its 2023-2024 Findings & Landscape Report, an annual document that updates the community on the historical context of the College’s campus. Te committee comprises undergraduate students and a faculty afliate, Dr. Robyn Schroeder, working under the direction of the Student Assembly.

Te CCL&I was created in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd and serves as an aspect of the Student Assembly’s “Te Plan,” according to the report’s Executive Summary. Te organization was formed to alter campus culture and recognize the impact of Black and Indigenous people on the College and its formation. Tey update their standing research every year to provide the community with the most current information.

On their website, Committee leadership voiced how vital their work is in preserving memory during a time of suppression and erasure.

“Amidst an infux of the suppression, erasure, and denial of histories — important and truthful histories — we are reminded of how crucial memory is,” the CCL&I Heading Statement states.

CCL&I Lead Chair Camille Batts ’26 commented on how this annual report differs from those in the past.

BOARD OF VISITORS

Tese annual reports truly place an emphasis on the inaction of the College. We see very little change in the campus’ landscape and who is truly represented within it — and most of the little change we see is due to the Vision 2026 eforts, not from intentional eforts to reconcile with the College’s harmful histories,” Batts said. “We also approached this report with our intentions — emphasizing that our criticisms and recommendations for the College come from places of love and care. We wouldn’t do this work if we didn’t care about the College and believe that it has the capacity for change and progress.”

Te committee’s work found that currently 25.75% of buildings at the College are named after enslavers and 31.68% of buildings are named after recognized white supremacists. Tese numbers are estimated to decrease signifcantly in the next eight years with new construction and demolishing old buildings across campus through Vision 2026. Although changes are in the works, the Committee’s analysis shows that no changes have been made in active renaming of buildings that memorialize racists and enslavers. Te new construction will bring the percentage down of buildings named after enslavers, but without the consideration of the implications of these buildings’ namesakes, the College’s diverse community cannot be accurately refected.

Bemnet Legesse ’26, CCL&I’s Public Relations Chair gave her thoughts on the committee’s mission.

“I think the goal, as is the purpose of the

committee, is to provide important historical context that is very easy to gloss over in campus tours or casual conversations on campus. I think the Landscape Report itself is an important way in which we provide this context because as we update and release it annually, likely with little to no change, we make a point about the lack of progress on our campus. It is also a more practical way for us to provide the campus with digestible information outside of the write-ups on our website,” Legesse said.

Batts also offered her vision for the report’s impact.

“Our goal is to continue the conversations. We don’t want people to stop thinking about the landscapes around them or to simply normalize these harmful fgures being mythologized and put on literal & fgurative pedestals. We also hope that, with the annual release of these reports, our recommendations will be considered and implemented on campus. Tese recommendations usually pertain to student involvement and say in decisions such as renaming buildings — largely calling for transparency in this and similar processes. Students should not only have a say in these decisions, but we also deserve to know how these processes work and when they are taking place,” Batts said.

In the Building Audit section of the landscape report, the Committee made it clear that their

findings were not presented as a criticism of the College’s administration, but instead as an opportunity to reflect the truth behind the enabling of racist attitudes. They treat the report as a call to action, one that encourages students in cooperation with administrators to redefine the culture surrounding injustice at the College.

Legesse expressed excitement about the publication of the report in general.

“We put a lot of work into updating and reformatting the report — although not as much work as the first CCL&I board that created the first report — and it’s so great to see it making its rounds in all the student organizations that work in the same space,” Legesse said.

Batts provided her final thoughts on the report’s impact on campus culture.

“The reports are quite well received. I feel as though we take things that people either already know, assume, or don’t think twice about, and challenge those ideas. We push them to think about why those things are how they are, or why that building is named what it is. I’ve found that our statistics regarding buildings and monuments have been the most shocking — to myself and the community, as seeing many of the numbers laid out is both damning and rather hard to dispute,” Batts said.

Board creates data science department, fnance chair talks tuition decrease

College President Katherine Rowe announces 2025 ʻYear of the Environment,ʼ visitors meet in November meeting

SAM BELMAR AND MOLLY MARTIN

THE FLAT HAT

Wednesday, Nov. 20 to Friday, Nov. 22, the College of William and Mary’s Board of Visitors convened for its second quarterly meeting of the 2024-2025 academic year. In a change from September, the Board met at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business rather than the School of Education. It is expected to return to Blow Memorial Hall in February 2025 once repairs on the building are fnished.

Te Board’s eight committees met individually to discuss matters pertinent to the College’s functioning, and the full Board gathered Friday morning to report back on discussions and vote on resolutions proposed in the committees.

Academic Afairs

Te committee on Academic Afairs opened their session Friday morning by passing various resolutions, including a resolution to create the Department of Data Science.

David L. Peebles Professor of Business Scott Swan, the committee’s faculty representative, shared the Faculty Liaison Committee report, where he highlighted the importance of the changes being made to the faculty handbook and the privilege he and other professors feel to be teaching students of

the College.

“Few other places enjoyed such an environment last year. We would expect them to be concerned with all the innocence in the world, concerning the wars, the environment, the State of the Union. Teir full-pressure answer to these concerns is to focus and learn and prepare for their time in leadership. Tese strong minds and good hearts help keep faculty here,” Swan said.

Followed by Swan’s report, James D. & Pamela J. Penny research professor and Hugh & Nolie Haynes professor of Law Adam Gershowitz presented the Faculty Handbook revision project update.

Tese changes will clarify the roles of the deans of each school, shorten the old and lengthy preamble and include the new School of Computer Science to ensure its participation in campus governance, among other changes.

Te meeting closed with a presentation by Provost Peggy Agouris, focusing on the College’s Strategic Plan.

Agouris explained that with the new 2025 Carnegie classifcation criteria used to distinguish levels of research universities, the College will become an R1 level institution, the highest designation an institution can receive. To achieve the R1 level, the College needs 70 PhD students and $50 million spent on research, which Provost Agouris

ensured the College surpassed.

However, Agouris mentioned that because it is more achievable to be designated as an R1 institution, it is critical that the College maintains this designation by possibly expanding the College’s PhD programs.

Academic Affairs committee student representative Courtney Maynard ’25 raised concerns about a new emphasis on graduate student research, as the College’s emphasis on the ability to do research as an undergraduate is a deciding factor for many students.

Maynard was concerned that undergraduates will be left behind in favor of more experienced graduate students and suggested integrating PhD research with undergraduate research, should the College expand its graduate programs.

“I think the focus on undergraduate research is a large draw for students to come here. I know for me personally, I came to look at undergraduate education, I knew that ultimately, my goal was to pursue a doctoral degree. So, I wanted to come to a university that would allow me to get involved in research,” Maynard said.

Institutional Advancement

Te committee on Institutional Advancement met Tursday afternoon to discuss existing projects and initiatives

related to Vision 2026, as well as branding eforts to boost name-recognition, applications and enrollment. No new resolutions were passed.

Chief Marketing Ofcer and Associate Vice President for University Marketing Heather Golden presented the College’s revamped brand platform for 2025.

Citing survey data between 2019 and 2023 on institutional familiarity among prospective students, Golden remarked that the College is not as well-known as the Board originally believed.

“In 2019, we conducted our frst brand positioning study for the university,” Golden said. “And that was an opportunity for us to really take a look at our brand awareness. It was eyeopening for us and showed that we are not as well-known outside of Virginia as we would like to believe. So that has, in Vision 2026, really informed our goal about expanding our reach.”

Golden also addressed the decline of out-of-state applications since 2022. Te College’s 9,837 total applicants for the Class of 2028 represents a more than 10% drop compared to 2022, when 10,994 students applied. In addition to lower name recognition, Golden suggested other causes for the decline, which she says has been a consistent trend across college applications nationwide.

“Tere’s a couple of reasons that we think factor into that,” Golden said. “Some in our control, some not in our control. Afordability, rankings. Postpandemic, we’re seeing students tend to want to go to school closer to home. Te value of higher education is in question, and we’re seeing that particularly in males who are choosing not to pursue college as a pathway.”

Te College’s rebranding eforts to remedy these changes include a new digital advertising strategy called enrollment marketing. Golden claims the College has already seen positive dividends from these eforts since the Board’s last meeting in September. College President Katherine Rowe then unveiled a new theme of ‘securing national preeminence’ as an institution. She likened the internal rebranding to an interdisciplinary liberal arts model, where each committee approaches the same end goal from a diferent vantage point.

She believes the new approach will promote collaboration between committees, help address the College’s weaknesses more efectively and build out Vision 2026.

“We had so many strengths that we weren’t aligning intentionally with problems to solve,” Rowe said. “Tat’s the key to a strategy as I see it.”

Unreponsive landlords, uninhabitable conditions among of-campus complaints

Students often forced to house ghost tenants, Collegeʼs inaction leaves students in tough spot

Long waitlists have forced students to seek rentals of-campus. Williamsburg City Councilmember Caleb Rogers ’20 recalls the desperation students felt after being waitlisted.

“I remember students knocking on my door because I lived on Richmond Road at that time, just assuming it might be a student rental and asking if we had any available rooms that next year,” Rogers said. “So that drove students to a level of desperation of literally door knocking for housing.”

Director of Housing and Residence Life Harriet Kandell emphasized that all students have gotten of the waitlist in recent years.

“Te past 3 years Residence Life has managed a waitlist of 500-600,” Kandell wrote in an email to Te Flat Hat. “Each year we have been able to ofer housing to all who remained on the wait list by late July.”

However, the precarity of the waitlist means that many students are too scared to wait until July to secure housing.

“Yeah maybe everyone on the waitlist does get of,” Bella Hammond ’26 said. “But that’s probably because the majority of the waitlist has to go fnd of-campus housing as they’re not secured on-campus housing until very, very close to the start of the year sometimes.”

Student Assembly Secretary of University Policy and Student Rights Hannah Cawley ’25 views the last-minute scramble for of-campus housing as contributing to students living in poor conditions.

“School housing comes out much later than when you would need to work on getting a house lease or work on going to Midtown,” Cawley said. “So people were stuck in a really bad situation at that time. It led a lot of people to take apartments or ofers on houses that looked sketchy and were infested with rodents or were just gross.”

Des Roches faced difculties fnding an apartment after being told that there wouldn’t be housing available on-campus.

“You’re kind of lucky to get anything,” Des Roches said. “Because of that, people are so thankful that they kind of let landlords walk over them.”

Beyond school policy and resources, Rogers and many others feel that Williamsburg does not have enough housing to meet student and community needs.

“There’s just an ever-present demand, but it’s growing,” Rogers said. “One, because Williamsburg doesn’t have a ton of room, but two, people are always wary in any community about any more housing. That’s a difficult position to be in where it’s hard to build here.”

Te City of Williamsburg does not allow more than three unrelated people to live together, except in certain cases. However, feeling they have no other options, many students break that rule and live with “ghost tenants.”

I’ve defnitely heard just a lot about packing into houses illegally

STUDENT LIFE

and having ghosts on the lease, and then that leads to a lot of issues of overcrowding,” Cawley said. “Tat makes students afraid to contact a landlord if they have issues.”

In many cases, illicit overcrowding is a move of desperation.

Te sewage is just going out in homes or like, toilets are not working and so people have to go across the street or come to academic buildings to use the bathroom, which is quite literally insane,” Cawley said. “And I know in the house that I lived in like previous years, they had taken in frat guys who were illegal on their lease when the water stopped working there.”

In 2021, the Current Midtown Apartments opened and were expected to ameliorate some of the city’s problems by ofering additional housing for 650 students and young professionals. However, this development is far from a perfect solution.

When Hammond moved into Midtown in August, she found the apartment to be “flthy” and noticed water damage. Her air conditioning was also broken and didn’t get fxed for two months, despite constant requests to management.

Tat’s not what they advertise,” Hammond said. “Tey advertise this new place because it was built not that long ago. So it’s marketed as, ‘Oh look, this brand new nice apartment complex.’ Anywhere you have to be okay with a level of there’s going to be stuf that isn’t perfect, but I think it’s very telling how they respond to it.”

Current Midtown Apartments did not respond to a request for comment.

Hammond believes Midtown’s hands-of management is partly related to the fact that many tenants are students and that there will always be a demand for housing. Across Williamsburg, these factors have impacted landlord-tenant relationships.

During his own student years, Rogers remembers dealing with an absentee landlord who would take a long time to respond when the door, dryer or washer broke down.

“Our experience was not one where the landlord was incredibly responsive, and I think the house was more treated like a cash cow,” Rogers said.

Some property owners are more guided by proft than supporting tenants. Cawley pointed out how a few landlords own a lot of properties in Williamsburg. She also recalled one trying to get her to pay more than the advertised rent in what felt like an auction.

“He was like, ‘Okay, how much more are you willing to pay a month?’” Cawley said. “He was like ‘$25 each more? $50 more? $75 more?’ And that puts students in a really bad place, in my opinion.”

Especially given extra charges like a concierge fee and an ambiguous ‘residential benefts’ package, Des Roches refected on the disparity that often arises between the money demanded for rent and the service provided.

“I feel like they’re trying to extract every ounce of proft for me with

as little efort,” Des Roches said.

Landlords are able to charge so much because of the high-demand housing market in Williamsburg, in which there is no shortage of students looking for a roof to keep over their heads.

Te demand is so high that landlords recognize rent can always go up,” Rogers said. “Tere always will be more students. Tose students might always be willing to pay more.”

Being a full-time college student presents unique challenges when navigating landlord-tenant relationships. According to Hammond, it is especially challenging for young, busy students to fnd the time to know their rights and advocate for themselves.

“[Landlords] don’t really care because they know we’re students who are focused on other things or just don’t know a lot about renting and all that kind of stuff,” Hammond said. “It’s very unfortunate that they can take advantage because they know that.”

The financial limitations of paying for college also leave students at a disadvantage, sometimes requiring them to add ghost tenants as a means of shouldering high rents. Klingensmith described one such situation.

“Tere’s nothing we really could have done,” Klingensmith said. “If we wanted to say something, it was at that standstill where it was like, ‘Oh, well, you did this,’ but ‘Oh, well, you guys had seven people in here.’ And it’s like, how else do you expect to pay for $5,500? For three people?”

Fretz is currently in law school in Boston and has noticed a difference between the treatment of tenants there versus in Williamsburg. She believes that in Boston, it is more common to withhold rent or take a landlord to court in response to poor housing conditions.

“There are just a lot more protections for tenants that exist in Boston, like if our landlord here tried to ignore me the way that my landlord in Williamsburg did, that would be totally unacceptable,” Fretz said.

All the challenges of being a student renter make it hard when individuals want to do something about their poor conditions. When possible, students rely on their parents to advocate on their behalf. Klingensmith, Fretz and Hammond all had their roommates’ parents, who were lawyers, contact their landlords.

“They just started ignoring me,” Fretz said. “So then I had to get my mom to start reaching out on my behalf because they would respond to my mom. Eventually they got sick of responding to my mom, so I had to enlist the help of my roommate. My first year living there, my roommate’s dad was a lawyer, and so he started having to reach out on our behalf because he was scary I guess. I don’t know. And eventually they stopped listening to him, too.”

Students hold discussion on West Woods Two housing project

Third-party design ﬁrm collects feedback, students desire space s that promote well-being

FLAT HAT

Tuesday, Nov. 19, students gathered for a discussion hosted by the Ofce of the University Architect on the West Woods Two housing project. At the meeting, students shared their opinions on the College’s current housing options, as well as future design ideas they would like to see implemented at West Woods Two.

Te project, facilitated by the Goody Clancy design team, will contain three new residence halls with a total of 450 new beds. Two of the buildings will contain a mix of semi-suite and traditional housing, and one will contain all traditional housing. It will replace the current Randolph Housing Complex. Goody Clancy representative Lisa Ferrara described the company’s outlook on the site.

“It’s very lush, this is a very unique site,” Ferrea said. “And a lot of people meander through the woods. Tinking about its unique characteristics is part of the design projects we’re considering.”

One of the main concerns about the Randolph Complex site is the sloped terrain. Te complex is situated on a variety of hills, which makes it difcult to create accessible paths.

After a general introduction to the site and its difculties, the Ofce of the University Architect opened the discussion to students, handing them notecards with three key questions: How can the design of buildings support students’ wellness? How can residence halls support sustainable practices? How can privacy and community spaces best be balanced?

In regards to wellness, students were particularly interested in the ways their current dorms either encourage or discourage their mental health and well-being. Students mentioned ways lighting choices could impact their mental health, with most preferring natural and warmer light, especially in their rooms.

“We all want dimmer, lower light situations and something that kind of feels more like home, not the overhead harsh lighting that we have throughout the rest of campus,” Cassie Palmer ’27 said.

Students also discussed how furniture can impact their mental health. Most expressed a preference for more homey furniture, such as that found in the former Brown Hall, rather than the colder and simpler furniture in more modern buildings like the Sadler Center’s Slice.

“I think making the commitment to being

homier and not following the trend of Te Slice and other new buildings where they just try to make it as corporate and cold as possible is important,” Mateo Huerta ’25 said. “Making it feel like you could have stepped into somebody’s living room and not tinto someone’s hotel lounge… because those things suck.”

Sustainability was another key aspect Goody Clancy wants to prioritize, hoping the West Woods Two project becomes their frst LEEDS certifed platinum building, a designation awarded to environmentally-friendly structures by the U.S. Green Building Council. Ferrera said they wanted their frst certifed platinum building to be a dorm.

Students were passionate about sustainability on-campus as well. Tey took a much more practical approach, focusing on issues such as laundry, inroom sinks, accessibility to composting and trash and recycling dumpsters, and sheltered bike storage.

In that same vein, students expressed favoritism towards building practices that embraced the natural area around them. As the West Woods Two complex will be located in a heavily wooded area, students highly favored integrating nature into the building’s design.

“I think we need to have a better mix of

sustainable materials, like wood and glass,” Huerta said.

Lastly, students answered questions on how private and community spaces could best be integrated. Students living in the newly renovated Monroe Hall expressed satisfaction regarding their dorm’s balance of both aspects.

“God, I love it,” Anne Hensley ’28 said. “Te thing about Monroe is it is so special because there are so many community spaces. Te foors have really developed individual identities.”

Students in the Randolph Complex expressed similar beliefs about their community spaces, highlighting that they were the area of their dorms they loved most. Students also shared their desire for study rooms in the dorms, as well as an equal distribution of community spaces within freshman and upperclassmen halls. While freshman dorms often centralize community spaces in the foor plan, upperclassmen dorms tend to isolate lounges in a corner.

“I feel like Hardy is hospital-like,” Palmer said. “You never have a situation in which you have to interact with someone, you could go the entire day without seeing a single person.”

STAFF COLUMN

Love letters to opinions

bacteria they research.

After the extremely rigorous analysis that you would expect from a Flat Hat data editor (about 15 minutes of making snap judgements about how the people around me would answer extremely dumb questions) my very serious and official quiz was created. I never would have anticipated the power of GroupMe as a grassroots networking tool, but somehow after just a few days more than 2,000 twamps had discovered their true twamp identities.

The results were highly predictable: a lot of NoVa representation. Out of the 2,318 responses collected, 716 were sorted into what I like to think of as the default character of the college. From “just outside DC,” the NoVa kid is more than likely some sort of social sciences major who will boomerang right back to the city post-grad as a consultant of some form or other. They get a lot of hate, mostly from themselves, but I’ll be the first to say there is nothing wrong with being from a boring suburb! As an out-of-state student, I didn’t realize that part of my education at this college would be learning the nuanced differences between Arlington and Alexandria, between Fairfax County and Loudoun County or picking up on the fact that “TJ” is a high school but also a complex social construct that people refer to with a mix of envy and disgust. So NoVa Kids, thank you for your service to this school, and I hope the money saved via in-state tuition will serve you well.

The next most popular twamp was the “History Buff Twamp,” with 597 responses. It is no surprise that a college situated right across the street from Colonial Williamsburg herself would attract some A-tier history buffs to its campus, but boy are these types of twamps are a special bunch. This is the kind of William and Mary student that is just a little bit too excited when telling people that Thomas Jefferson went here. They can almost certainly be found strolling through CW or reading in Aromas in a thrifted outfit, with at least 4 layers that somehow complement each other perfectly despite all the laws of fashion implying otherwise. It is undeniable that this type of twamp is an essential part of our campus,

because who else could carry class discussions with such eloquence?

The next most popular twamp, at 545 responses, is what I like to call the “ISC rat” twamp. This personality type represents some of the most dedicated academic weapons on campus: the STEM majors who have made the ISC into a second home. Whether they are pre-meds praying that the 35% they got on their last orgo exam won’t tank their admissions chances, or wannabe researchers who would spend 24 hours a day in the lab if they could, these lab rats are a critical part of the the College’s campus, working ceaselessly to disprove the rumours that liberal arts students don’t learn anything useful.

The final category of twamp I identified, with 463 responses, was one that certainly has a reputation on campus: the B-School kid. These students are probably the least likely to identify as a twamp, but just because they might have actual job prospects post-graduation doesn’t mean that they are any less of a typical liberal arts kid. All the finance bros, future accountants and shareholder value maximizers make up a small yet strong force of businesscasually dressed twamps who makes the Cohen Career Center proud with every LinkedIn update.

This rigorous and highly scientific analysis proves that more than one type of twamp exists on campus, and that each type of twamp adds something unique and special to this community. There is not one typical William and Mary person, but there are exactly four; no more, no less. I will accept absolutely no suggestions or criticisms on this matter. If there is one lesson you can take away from my dumb quiz it’s this: you should never be ashamed to be any sort of twamp, because it’s true what they say: who comes here, belongs here. Whether you found the College because you were already a twamp or if something in the Williamsburg water brought it out of you, don’t be scared to let your twamp flag fly.

Lisa Coleman ‘25 is an economics and data science double major who servesasaFlatHatdataeditor.Comesay hitoherbehindthebarattheColumn15 in Swem Library or email her at lecoleman01@wm.edu.

Making a TWAMP-y home for the holidays

I think I finally get Perry Como’s song “Home for the Holidays.”

For me, it’s weird being in Williamsburg for December. No tree with the super ugly homemade ornaments from me and my brother’s kindergarten days. My dog isn’t here trotting around with a jingle bell collar, trying to sneak some cookies off the table. My neighbor’s giant Santa

inflatable that I always worry is about to take a nosedive and crush me isn’t around either.

All those things are at home. It’s my first semester here, and it’s not that Williamsburg isn’t home. It is, or at least it’s becoming that. It’s full of friends and charm and the Sadler ice cream that I will dearly miss over winter break. It’s home, but at the same time it’s not.

For me, December has always been a time for slowing down, spending time with the people I love and drinking copious amounts of hot cocoa. It also happens to be finals season, which I believe is terribly unjust, but that’s really a rant for another article.

If you’re also lamenting the special Decembers you enjoy when you’re not in a dorm writing a paper that’s due tomorrow, then listen up:

Here’s what we have to do, folks. In order to erase that happiness-startswhen-finals-ends mindset, we’ve got to start making our own traditions.

Yep, you’re here in Williamsburg. It’s a typical roasting hot December. Just because it’s time for finals does not mean we must live a winter as sad as the album “Stick Season.” So it’s time to gather your wonderful TWAMP friends and get holly jolly (or whatever emotion best matches the holidays you’re celebrating this month).

We are all creating a new home here, whether you’re a freshman or a senior, on-campus or commuting. You get to decide what you fill that home with. Best of all, you can get the chance to start some killer traditions, or just have some fun, in the process.

Here’s a few ideas for what to do:

Dear readers, It’s going to be hard as hell to concisely wrap up all of my thoughts on this wonderful section. I’m honestly stuck. I don’t want to be too dramatic and I especially don’t want to try and make jokes I know won’t land. First, I want to thank my co-editor Mollie Shiflett. She’s an extremely hard worker, knows how to keep it real at all times and has written some truly amazing articles for this section. I couldn’t have asked for a better co-editor (and she could have definitely asked for a better one at some points).

Over the past two years, this section has grown quite a bit. We have been getting a lot of interest among interns and we have been receiving guest submissions — especially this semester — left and right. Yikyak loves us, the administration loves us, we can’t be stopped! In all seriousness, I am extremely proud of the growing popularity of our section on campus, and I want to extend thanks to everyone who has submitted an article to us — it takes a certain amount of courage to try and articulate an opinion that could be read by almost everyone in your immediate social circle.

However, there are still some things I want to see. With each new semester, I think more students are beginning to realize the opportunities to be heard through the Opinions section. Yes, we have movie reviews, food opinions and Adam’s stoic advice, but we also have a platform to spearhead meaningful discussions on this campus. So with that, I offer my last opinion of the semester: the Opinions section should never be boiled down to a section with only goofy articles. I’m not saying it ever has been — I actually think that the Opinions section has found a good balance between serious opinions and more fun ones. However, I want readers to understand that this section is a chance to call out bullsh—t. A chance to call out the incompetence of administration when it pretty much comes to anything. A chance to call out some of the more volatile parts of campus culture (I am keeping this intentionally vague, don’t want to ruffle too many

Bake something, anything! (Time to put that secret family recipe to good use?)

Walk around Colonial Williamsburg and admire the ice skating rink while in a t-shirt and shorts, because global warming can’t stop us from enjoying winter sports!

Make a fall semester time capsule and hide it in the crypts. (Just kidding, that would be illegal and unoriginal, because it was my idea first. Please be creative and legal about your hiding spot.)

Write letters to your friends and tell them how they remind you of Reveley the Griffin because they are so awesome and inspiring!

Learn something new and artsy and/ or check out the Makerspace.

Watch your favorite movie and start a fanbase for it.

Dance in the middle of Sunken Garden like nobody’s watching.

Go stargazing and pick a star just for you, so one day you can look up at the sky and get all teary-eyed about the College of William and Mary and the good old days.

Bring a tradition from home, wherever that is, and share it on campus.

Not to get too deep or anything, but

feathers without digressing). The point is, please use this section. Use this section because what you have to say does matter (despite the troglodytes on Yik Yak who will say otherwise).

Best wishes, Avi Joshi

Dear Readers, First off, like Avi, I’m not exactly sure what to write for this… After all, I might still be doing this next year, so reminiscing seems premature. When I started at the Flat Hat, I didn’t really know what to do, and Opinions is something I just sort of fell into. I never expected to become section editor as a freshman (who would?) but I’m so grateful that I did, because through that, I met some of the best (and most interesting) people that I’ve ever met. And I do need to thank Avi. For two years, he has been the best balancing point I could ask for. As someone with a tendency to take things too seriously, he has always known how to keep things light (and how to curate a great playlist once he finds a speaker).

Since we’ve reached (pretty much) the end of the semester, it’s time to start looking towards the next one. Hopefully the Opinions section keeps going strong. There are things we’ve done well and things that we could work on, but primarily I think that the most important thing that we grow is our ability to reach out to the student body. The opinions section should be a forum for discussion for everyone on campus, like Avi said. Not to put too fine a point on it, but student journalism does attract a certain type of person, so as much as I love the opinions associate editors and everyone else on staff who will write a quick blurb for us, they do have a lot in common with each other. If more different, diverse people contribute their opinions, this section can become a place for impactful conversations and the spread of ideas, which is what an opinions section should always be about.

But on a less serious note, I hope that everyone who writes an opinion has some fun with it. Lots of the opinions that people want to write are serious opinions, but writing should always be fun… or at least cathartic.

Mollie

Mollie Shiflett ’26 is a double major in history and linguistics, not that she knows what to do with that. She plays on Women’s Club Soccer Gold for the College of William and Mary and is an avid fan of most sports — except golf. EmailMollieatmrshiflett@wm.edu. Avi Joshi ‘26 is an English major. He is a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and wind ensemble. Contact himatasjoshi@wm.edu.

here’s a big lesson I’ve learned: Life is really what you make of it. Thus, college and December and finals season are really what you make of them. We are here to work hard, but we are also here to have fun and make memories. Honestly, I won’t remember what’s on my psychology final or even what score I get on it a few years from now. But what I might just remember is an ugly sweater crafting night with my friends or that weird star an article in The Flat Hat Opinions told me to name many moons ago. I refuse to wait for the joy of the holidays to commence only when finals are over. I would be wasting a few perfectly awesome weeks! I might not be “Home for the Holidays” in the Perry Como sense during the start of December, but I am at the College for that time. And I believe we have a decision to not just call this place home but to make this place home. So, cheers to a TWAMP-y (TWAMP-ful? TWAMP-ilicious?) holiday season! Alexandra Hill ‘28 is a prospective English major and creative writing minor. She does research at the IIC Conservation GIS lab and is a member of Vox. Contact her at abhill@wm.edu.

FLAT HAT OPINIONS EDITORS

Mollie Shifett and Avi Joshi

GRAPHIC BY CATHERINE STORKE / THE FLAT HAT FLAT HAT DATA EDITOR Lisa Coleman

GRAPHIC BY MOLLIE SHIFLETT / THE FLAT HAT

Grant’s Greatreads #2: In defense of pure color

So much of being an artist entails a constant self-awareness: What does this feeling mean for me, for my future, for my ability to create and for my art? How can I describe this in a way that is important and meaningful? This is useful to a point, but when you start asking “How can I articulate this in a way that will be successful, that has a guaranteed appeal?” things begin to fall apart. Originality demands risk, demands a leap into the unknown and away from safety and convention.

When a friend lent me the book “Pure Colour” by Sheila Heti this summer, what surprised me was the faithfulness to the first questions and complete lack of consideration for the last one. The book is honest right up to (but not to) a fault: Heti says exactly what she thinks, what she feels to be significant enough to bind up in a book and distribute. She is not interested in catering to modern tastes or appeals: hence the book’s 3.41 rating on Goodreads. After reading and being genuinely moved in a way few works of art have moved me in my life, I was shocked not at the people who found the book too obscure or eclectic, but at those who found it mediocre. And it occurred to me reading 3 star reviews: Some writers were unwittingly supplying the self-consciousness that Heti avoided writing with.

“Pure Colour,” as a book primarily about grief, looks unflinchingly at what it means to love and lose a parent. It does not cover up the uglier or more uncomfortable sides of this process to represent grief in a safe and pretty way. For some, this is a major transgression. Reviews belie the reviewers’ discomfort with how Heti presents love: One describes the motivating force of the novel, the narrator’s relationship

STAFF COLUMN

with her father, in a shockingly stupid and insensitive manner: “daddy issues… perhaps more accurately termed enmeshment.” She takes issue with the “very deep earnestness” of the novel, which she finds juvenile — not like her mature and nuanced stance on how Mira has daddy issues, paired with a psychological term that says absolutely nothing of the actual success of the novel. Every work of art can be simplified to being “about” something, but even if, like this reviewer claims, “enmeshment” is the motivating force of the novel, how Heti treats it should be the relevant point, not how this reviewer (an author herself) feels about the topic itself. This should be obvious.

This tendency to simplify observations about love to psychological terms or faults is addressed directly in the novel, and this makes people’s reviews even more shocking. Heti herself looks honestly at the usefulness of the study of psychology, a sensibility that seeks ultimately to help people, even as arrogant as the systematic study of the human psyche present in psychology can be today. But her observations about the use of psychology to moralize and decide how we should approach family matters remain intact, despite the feeling that her work is too deeply earnest, or freudian, or overlyabstract or conclusive. It seems obvious from the novel’s format that Heti contradicts herself as Mira navigates her grief, but people seem to be trying to read an experimental novel as a philosophical treatise when it treats philosophy with tenderness and levity. Her conclusions about psychologists being bad (a major simplification, but one that keeps the spirit of one of the novel’s movements) is subtly contradicted multiple times and faulted for being an overly-simplistic view, and yet people review the book as if Heti staked her soul on this claim.

Generally, it seems that Heti’s sensibility is ahead of her time. The pretense of absolutely understanding people, their connections and what these connections mean through psychology is evident in the inability of people to accept Heti’s presentation of multiple contradictory truths about grief because they do not adhere to easy summary. Great works of art do not avoid embarrassment or humiliation, but end up often stumbling upon these things: finding worthwhile things to say requires working with uncomfortable and conventionally perverse, unsaid impulses. If anything, these ineffectual reviews speak to the greater artistic depth of the novel than the cliche and plaintive compliments it would’ve earned had it retained the self-consciousness that people approach the book with. GrantYoon’27isaprospectiveEnglishmajor.Theyenjoy writingpoetryforthecampusliterarymagazine,TheGallery, andreadingwhateverbookshaveagoodvibetothem.They alsolikesittingbylargebodiesofwater,drinkinglotsofcoffeeandoverthinkingmovies,songsandthingsingeneral. Contactthematgiyoon@wm.edu.

Adam’s Apple #9: It’s not goodbye, it’s just another apple

FLAT HAT OPINIONS ASSOC.

This is the last installment of Adam’s Apple that will ever grace the pages of The Flat Hat, or at least the last installment written by me.

You see, my time at this illustrious post has come to an end. Why has it been brought to such a swift conclusion? I’m sure myriad hypotheses of scandal and conspiracy are tripping over one another in your minds.

Perhaps Adam was killed by a shadowy megacorporation for sharing wisdom and advice which would make the common person too powerful to be controlled.

Perhaps the higher-ups at The Flat Hat decided to kick him to the curb because he followed his own code above all else, never bending the knee to false idols like “ethical journalism practices” and “respect for truth and fairness” which rule everyone else on staff.

Perhaps he is just the newest victim of ruthless, vindictive “cancel culture.” Everything he said about William Eisen was true — and definitely needed to be said — but perhaps in this soft, sensitive era we live in, that truth was too “offensive” and “defamatory” to be tolerated.

While those are all very reasonable guesses, and I should note that the shadowy mega-corporations have been close to succeeding in silencing me on multiple occasions, the reason this is the last installment of my time at Adam’s Apple is actually far more insidious and terrifying: I am a senior.

At The Flat Hat, positions are held from January to December, meaning one must commit to a role for a full calendar year. Because I am graduating in the spring, I am in no position to accept a position for the next term.

But wait! Couldn’t I at least continue writing through next semester? Surely an exception could be made, and I could be kept on staff as a sort of emeritus staff member to write periodically at least until I graduate. And actually — wait again — can’t anyone write Opinion articles? That means I wouldn’t need to be a formal staff member or even a student here to keep writing! In theory, I could keep writing this column forever!

Fair points, through and through. Clearly, you can see through my façade. I should never underestimate the intelligence of my readership. The truth is that my seniority is not the only reason I am hanging up the apple. In truth, I am very tired. You think that maintaining this column is some walk in the park? You think someone could maintain any shred of mental health while being forced to crank out content at such an untenable pace (a single article

once a month)? You think that writing 750 words of pure nonsense once every four weeks doesn’t take a brutal toll on a man? Over the past year, I have been squeezed dry of all nonsense in my body. Every ounce of silliness and absurdity has been wrung out of my limbs. The wringing out process is excruciating on a physical level, of course, but more importantly it means that there is no silliness left for other aspects of my life. I can’t joke around like I used to. I can’t do bits or impressions anymore. I haven’t laughed since 2023. I live in a constant state of joyless, zombielike limbo, perpetually awaiting the loud knock on my door accompanied by the demand for a new article. It’s horrible. Okay, now here’s a really awkward segue: I am in the market for someone to replace me as the Adam of Adam’s Apple. Note that at the beginning of this piece I clarified that this was the last Apple which would be written by me, not necessarily the last Apple ever. So, if someone out there feels inspired to carry on the mantle, please reach out to me or someone you know at The Flat Hat. I haven’t actually run this idea (of continuing the Apple) through any of my bosses, and it is very possible they were hoping the column would die a quiet death with me, but I think that continuing the noble work we are doing here would be

a wonderful thing. Naturally, not just anyone could step into the role. Here are the desired qualifications: My replacement should possess “a limitless fount of knowledge,” with references ready to attest to such a fount.

A profound lack of interests, hobbies, goals and friends, such that this position can and will always be the only thing they care about. Able to handle the immense fame, prestige and praise that comes with the post. Named Adam, I should think. I guess this isn’t technically non-negotiable, but it would make the transition a lot easier. For all non-Adam applicants, e.g. someone named Salazar: I would leave it to you whether to keep the name of the column as Adam’s Apple, whether to adapt it to Adam’s Apple (by Salazar) or whether to make a radical switch to Salazar’s Apple. It’s a big decision. Benefits of the position, aside from the aforementioned fame and praise, are extensive. Unfortunately, I am out of room here to enumerate them. As I said, please direct any inquiries about the position to myself or to someone else. Friends, it has been an honor. AdamJutt’25isamathandeconomics majorfromCincinnati,Ohiowhowritesarticles sometimes.Contacthimatadjutt@wm.edu.

traveling tips

a friend here or there when the stars align (that is, when we happen to be going to the same airport at around the same time), but that’s once in a blue moon. I don’t have social media, so any organized group of people dedicated to giving each other rides on there is personally out of my reach. The Community Love and Mutual Aid GroupMe is helpful for the little things, but requests for a ride (with an attached offer to share the gas money, mind you) tend to be met with crickets. The school does offer a shuttle service for special seasons like Thanksgiving, but the limited times it’s available is not very convenient for the price of $50. Lastly, the Amtrak does offer a route to Richmond for about $15, two times a day. The problem is that the Amtrak can get heavily delayed, and it doesn’t extend to Norfolk. Yes, I acknowledge my privilege in saying I am willing to fork over $60 for a ride share to save myself the headache of coordinating my flight times with the hiccups of mass transportation. Anyways, here’s a few pointers when it comes to using an Uber or Lyft.

Don’t pre-book a ride the night before. The ride share apps seem to know that people prefer the peace of mind that comes with knowing a ride will be available at the time and place of their choosing, ahead of time, since they charge a premium for that feature. A theme, apparently, is that convenience costs extra cash.

With tip #1 in mind, please do just wake up half an hour before you would if you had pre-booked a ride. Yes, that means less sleep, but you will thank yourself when you see that it can take 30 minutes to get into a car. Some of that time goes to getting matched with a driver, who will sometimes drop you without warning, after they have literally made you wait and watch them inch painfully slowly towards you on the app’s little map. Some of that time goes to finding a new driver. Some of that time may also involve them having trouble finding you and looping all around the area again before successfully doing so. The reason, truthfully, varies.

Do share your location with someone you trust. I’m a little woman who may, depending on her hairstyle, pass as queer and look like she is still in middle school. Let’s just say it offers me a little bit of comfort to know someone knows where I am, when I’m in a car with a fifty year old man who may or may not have been to a Trump rally recently, rolling down an empty wooded road at 10:00 p.m.

Another reason sharing your location is a nifty hack is that some weird, albeit harmless, stuff can happen. When you’ve been riding as many times as I have, you collect such quirky moments like a girl scout gathers badges. Take the time my driver asked if he could use the restroom in the middle of nowhere, halfway to Williamsburg. Or the time another driver asked cryptically if we could take a “more scenic route” that would only add “a few extra minutes” to the trip. Needless to say, I emerged from those instances unscathed, but it’s good to have someone in the loop for when you take an unexpected stop or detour.

Do prepare to be uncomfortable when you’re in the car sometimes. I’ve had a guy talk to me about deer belly button perfume, a lady tell me why she always keeps a gun in her pocket, and a man tell me why he is scared for his children when transgender people can just traipse into the bathroom willy-nilly. There’s been an individual who used the word “yellow” to describe a person’s ethnicity. I’ve also heard someone listen to the same song on an hour and a half loop, and someone tell me about how many times they have had their heart broken. The key to navigating political comments or oversharing is to be prepared and remain as calm, polite and courteous as you can throughout. They’re only a driver, and your life is technically in their hands — it’s not worth an argument or your distress.

Let’s fast-forward to when you arrive at the airport. You may notice a few things. Those things come with their own tips.

It’s almost empty (cough Norfolk or Richmond), and you might have gotten there early. Or the TSA line is spilling out the airport doors (cough Fort Lauderdale International Airport), and you may not make it to your gate on time. The key is to know how busy your given airport tends to be and plan your arrival time accordingly.

Your airline is telling you that you can only take your backpack with you for free (cough Spirit Airlines). If you’re hearing the “sorry, no carry-ons,” welcome to the club. Coping with this limitation can come in many forms. On my part, I start packing days in advance. It typically starts with a brainstorming period, in which I think about what I want to take with me to keep at home permanently, what I want to take with me but bring back, what I want to bring back from home and what I don’t need to take because I have it at home. This helps me keep track of just how much open real estate I have in my bag. Then I rank what I wish to put in my bag the most. And then I stuff that buddy to the brim. Another tactic I sometimes turn to is layering myself like the Michelin man in order to maximize what I can take. Picture two pairs of leggings and jeans, plus multiple bras and t-shirts and sweaters… The airport has no Starbucks. Norfolk does, by the way. It’s

READ MORE AT FLATHATNEWS.COM AgavniMehrabi’26isdoublemajoringingovernmentandfinance. OutsideofTheFlatHat,AgavniisamemberofWCWM90.9,Library AmbassadorsandArcheryClub.EmailAgavniatalmehrabi@wm.edu.

Adam Jutt

GRAPHIC BY GEORGIA WESTBROOK / THE FLAT HAT

GRAPHIC BY CATHERINE STORKE / THE FLAT HAT

variety

Happily ever after

AGAVNI MEHRABI // FLAT HAT EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Is the College of William and Mary truly a place where people meet and get “William and married”? To get to the bottom of this, some field research was done during Homecoming Weekend, Oct. 19-20, by yours truly. At the end of the day, the results were mixed: out of eight couples that were approached, only three met during their time at the College. These are their stories.

Kathy “Healy” Fitzimmons ’87 and Brian Fitzimmons met in 1995 at a local Catholic faith club back in their hometown in New Jersey. While Kathy graduated from the College, Brian was an alumnus of Saint Bonaventure University.

“You meet your lifelong friends from college, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the soulmate or the person you’re going to be with or anything like that,” Brian said.

In terms of lifelong friends, Megan McGill ’22 and Emma Ackerman ’22 were roommates for all four years at the College and are still best friends with other freshman year hallmates from Jefferson Hall. Both of them met their partners outside of the College: Ackerman met hers through a friend before college, and McGill met hers on the first day of graduate school at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The pair agreed that students should not feel pressured to find their other halves from the get-go.

“Don’t stress out, because you’re so young, and college is supposed to be fun, and it’s going to work out eventually,” Ackerman said.

In fact, the Fitzimmons explained that while they did not go to the same university, they do share a valuable bond through how they both feel towards their alma maters.

“I will say the fact that we both loved our universities; we got it. It wasn’t like ‘What is your problem that you’re so into this,’” Kathy said. “It helped the relationship because, okay, he’s super gung ho. He’s like, she’s super gung ho. He wasn’t like, ‘you’re strange,’ you know?”

Brian added that another pleasant part about meeting someone after college is the ability to become a member of a new community.

“What’s great about going to different colleges is that for me, while not having gone to William and Mary, I like to say I married into it or I was adopted, because I love it down here. I love coming down here. I love the spirit. I love everything about it,” Brian said.

Meanwhile, James Crooks ’94 and Karyn Ferdella met through Bumble about four years ago, long after both finished undergraduate school. After studying finance at the College, Crooks moved from Washington, D.C. to Boston to Westchester County, New York, before settling back down in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island to reopen an old brewery. It was not until then that he found Ferdella. Crooks offered his two cents on the moral of his story.

“Well, I mean, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again, right?” Crooks said.

Ferdella graduated from Brandeis University in ’97 and worked for the Peace Corps in Africa before settling back down in Worcester, Massachusetts, when she met Crooks. She provided her own advice for finding “the one.”

“Everything happens when it’s supposed to happen,” Ferdella said.

Jay Black ’87 and Lori Black also met after graduating from their respective schools, and they are each other’s second marriage. Jay joined a Rotary club, a chapter of service organization Rotary International, in 1991 at the behest of his former high school principal, which is where he met Lori in 2010.

“She came one morning as the guest speaker of one of our members. I was like, ‘Wow, who’s that,’” Jay said.

Of course, a few couples visiting for Homecoming did meet at the College. Carol Anne Swagler ’64 and Peter M. Crow ’64 worked together on The Flat Hat, where Swagler covered women’s sports and Crow edited features, news and editorials. However, Swagler first got married to a good friend of Crow’s, and it took a while for the two to become more than friends.

“We did not get along when we were undergraduates,” Swagler said. “He was in my first wedding, but we got back together — we’d always been friends and had mutual friends — at the 25th reunion. We were both single then.”

Similarly, it took Merry Thomas ’86 and Jon Thomas ’85 three years to start dating after they met at a fraternity party during their freshman and sophomore years, respectively. Merry was in Orchesis Dance Company and Tri Delta Sorority, and Jon was in Radio Club, The Flat Hat and several intramural sports teams. Jon counted about eight other couples he knows who met during their time at the College, thanks to such events and activities.

“We have a lot of friends who actually met their significant others here. Part of that was just because they got out: they were out doing things, they were socializing, they were interacting through intramurals, through parties, through clubs and activities, different things,” Jon said.

After college, the pair had to transition to a long-distance relationship once Merry found a job in New York and Jon took a position in Washington, D.C. Jon visited almost every weekend, until he eventually decided to move in with Merry for good. With this experience in mind, Jon spoke a few words of wisdom to any students nervous about the state of their relationships after graduation.

“If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” Jon said. “It sounds very cliche, but it’s true.”

John Hickman MBA ’92 and Kristy Melker Hickman JD ’94 met while at the College for graduate school. John is originally from the eastern shore of Virginia and went to North Carolina State University for undergraduate school, and Kristy hails from Louisiana and attended Louisiana Tech University. While John decided to go to the College for graduate school to

be back on the mid-atlantic shore, Kristy chose to go to law school here after paying a friend a visit.

“My spring break of my junior year, I went to visit him in Richmond, and we came to Colonial Williamsburg as a visit. I had never even been up to this part of the country, and I fell in love with William and Mary,” Kristy said.

The two eventually crossed paths as neighbors, as they both lived in off-campus housing on Indian Springs Road, across from the Muscarelle Museum. It all started when Kristy first caught sight of John’s roommate Ed.

“I kept telling my law school roommates, ‘There’s this really cute guy that lives two doors down. We’ve got to meet these people that live two doors down. He’s really cute,’” Kristy said. “Then we started talking to them when they would walk by, and that’s how we started doing dinners together; we would do a potluck and then I started hanging out with him.”

The two further bonded over the common experience of having another neighbor who was not too happy about having students in the neighborhood. After they started dating, in the two years between John and Kristy’s graduations, Kristy stayed in Williamsburg while John relocated to Atlanta, then Richmond. The two stayed together however, which Kristy attributes to a gut feeling.

“Within the first couple of months you are going to know whether it’s meant to be or not meant to be,” Kristy said.

John reflected on how at the end of the day, relationships from college — whether romantic or platonic — have a special strength. He pointed out that many alumni come back to visit, which can present an opportunity to catch up with past connections.

“My insight is that you have something in common. As a young alumnus, you still come back to Williamsburg probably at least once a year for a football game or a basketball game, to go to Colonial Williamsburg and get a Cheese Shop sandwich for whatever reason,” John said. “So you’re going to sometimes run into each other here anyway, and you’ve got somebody that you’ve got a commonality of where you went to college with. You have traditions that overlap. Even though sometimes there’s that time gap, you may not get married right when you’re graduating, but you keep in touch.”

Fast forwarding to long after John and Kristy got married, their daughter met her husband at the College as well.

Altogether, students of the College may find in these stories a hopeful message on each side of the coin. That is, there is not only a chance of falling in love in Williamsburg, but also of catching cupid’s bow beyond its boundaries. Underclassmen could certainly bump into someone special in Sadler, but single seniors could also absolutely find a beau later down the line.

It was the Thursday before Thanksgiving break and I was sitting in a dark room writing notes on this silly movie I decided to watch. They consisted almost entirely of quips that jumped out to me (there are a lot of quips) and question marks that cover almost half of the first page. I was watching the movie “Venom: The Last Dance” by the way.

This movie is a lot of things. Not good things, but things. And while it would be really easy to fall back on the classic “Marvel slop” arguments, that’s not the kind of incisive writer I am. Sure, everything since “Avengers: Endgame” has proven to be slop, and Marvel hasn’t shown that it’s capable of producing anything like what it had with the original Avengers, but to say that anything made post-”Avengers: Endgame” is simply terrible is a lazy and unexamined argument.

With that being said, this movie sucked. I know I might get some criticism for overanalyzing a movie made for entirely commercial purposes, but it is hard not to make a comparison to the earlier Marvel movies (and even just the earlier two Venom movies) and see a distinct falloff of anything good in the modern superhero movie. Oh, and on the subject of just enjoying things? Well, I didn’t. This movie was genuinely hard to watch. Let’s get into it.

Two of my biggest problems with this movie have to do with the lack of a real staple villain, as well as the often confusing and jumbled plot. On the first point, there is technically a villain in the movie, named “Knull,” but he never actually makes an appearance on Earth, instead sending his little cockroach-esque monsters through portals to attack the titular Venom. The opening scene introducing him gives little to

no information about him (although apparently the character has great significance as a villain in the Marvel Comics), and it felt, like many other moments in “Venom: The Last Dance:” visually cluttered and all over the place. By the way, the guy playing the villain? Andy Serkis. “Hey!” I thought. “Hasn’t Andy Serkis already been a villain in Marvel movies before?” The answer to that: obviously, yes.

Oh boy, I sure hope this isn’t indicative of a wider trend in Marvel movies of them returning well-known faces to the screen in order to pull people to the box office. No, I’m sure this is only a one-time thing. Wait. You’re telling me they’re doing this exact same thing with — Robert Downey Junior? The guy who had the most heartbreaking and consequential death in a billion dollar franchise spanning twenty-three movies, completely invalidating everything you hold dear and proving that Marvel doesn’t care about anything other than profits? Wow. This is an article about “Venom: The Last Dance,” by the way. On the matter of plot… oh boy. In attempting to juggle several different plot lines — a doctor with a bad past, a dysfunctional family on a road trip, Mrs. Chen’s return for some reason and the villain trying to kill Venom — this movie somehow fails to deliver on any of them. The whole doctor storyline is not explained well, the family that Eddie finds himself hitchhiking with feels like an afterthought and is borderline cringeworthy at times, Mrs. Chen’s return feels like a piece of candy the screenwriter threw in like, “Hey! You remember Mrs. Chen, right?” and the villain was never even dealt with, leaving the end of the movie basically pointless.

This, when compounded with the classic Marvel hallmark of crappy one liners made by all-too-jolly superheroes, really drags on the viewer. And while I understand that the jokes are allowed to flow more freely because Eddie has made peace with the Venom symbiote, I somehow think Venom shouting “hola b*tches!” to a bunch of Mexicans was less than stellar. After that, Eddie and Venom have an Instagram Reelsworthy scene in which they struggle to say “we are Venom” at the same time, resulting in Eddie dropping the awe-inducing line of “we are totally gonna need to work on that” before literally eating several guys’ heads off. Really great stuff.

This leads into another one of my big gripes with the movie: tone. It feels like it can’t decide what it wants to be. Does it want to be a continuation of the first movie’s grittiness with quips thrown in, or does it want to expand in a new direction with side characters? Though the latter feels like the answer, the side characters are so undeveloped that it becomes almost entirely Eddie and Venom — a dynamic that was already wearing thin by the second Venom movie.

To his credit, Tom Hardy is an incredibly solid actor, but even his performance cannot save the dazed plot from dragging on from one idea to the next. I say “idea” here because that’s exactly what each individual scene felt like. Venom goes to the casino? Venom dances with Mrs. Chen in a bizarre musical number? The family Eddie hitchhikes with tries to make him sing with them? Why is any of this happening?

To end the movie, which was almost entirely carefree in terms of plot direction up until the final twenty minutes, the gravity of everything suddenly intensifies

tenfold, and, spoiler alert, Venom sacrifices himself to kill one of the bug things. The sacrifice feels utterly pointless in the grand scheme of things. It hurts a little, sure, but it just feels like none of this had to happen. Once again, why is any of this happening?

A movie that was supposed to be a bittersweet sendoff for a beloved anti-hero, “Venom: The Last Dance” instead falls completely flat on its face, due to a confused plot that destroys any real meaning to be found in the ending of Eddie Brock’s storyline. It feels instead that “Venom: The Last Dance” was a stepping stone to later movies that might involve Knull and the aforementioned doctor, completely invalidating Eddie Brock as a character in favor of moving forward. Tom Hardy performs well, yet the movie that was supposed to be Venom’s last dance instead feels far more like an execution of the character, and perhaps the audience too. Overall, I’d rate it a 4 out of 10; it’s unwatchable.

TOM HARRISON // THE FLAT HAT

JAMIE HOLT / THE FLAT HAT

REAPING WHAT THEY SEW

Costuming Club hones cosplay craft, prepares for conventions

Every Friday at 6 p.m., James Blair Hall room 229 transforms into a creative workshop full of fabric, wigs and costuming expertise. The College of William and Mary’s Costuming Club is home to cosplayers of all genres, and members boast costume designs based on Disney characters, anime video games, horror podcasts and more.

Costuming Club’s weekly meetings teach members important costuming skills and help them prepare cosplays for conventions. Whatever the niche interest and experience level, Costuming Club welcomes any student excited to learn more about the imaginative world of cosplaying.

“Cosplay is really just meant to be a fun way to express your love of some form of media,” Costuming Club president Alex Vuono ’25 said.

Costuming Club Vice President Anaya Temple ’25 began

ABBY BORGESON // THE FLAT HAT

cosplaying in sixth grade with cosplay YouTube videos and Disney princess dresses. Temple later evolved into crafting more intricate, handmade designs, including Te Ka and Tefiti from “Moana,” upon joining Costuming Club at the College.

She especially prides herself on her Te Ka costume, detailing the painstaking process of creating the character from sketch to final product. After researching and sketching a concept, the building began. For fabric-based costumes like Te Fiti, Temple brainstorms what fabrics suit characters best.

“A lot of the process is just me looking at the character and thinking what would go best with them,” Temple said. “Once I have that all together, I spend lots of time and lots of money trying to bring it to life.”

Vuono also found her love of cosplaying in middle school.

“I found a lot of myself through that community. Ironically enough, sometimes the best way to figure out who you are is to dress up like somebody else,” Vuono said.

By the time Vuono joined Costuming Club at the College, she had been immersed in the cosplay sphere for five years, sparked by her interests in anime and video games. Her first trip to Nekocon, Virginia’s longest-running anime convention, during seventh grade introduced her to the costuming community and the exciting possibilities for crafting costumes.

“It was absolutely amazing, and I had such a great experience,” Vuono said. “I met a lot of people there, and I realized that there was actually a strong community within it, built on a lot of really cool skills.”

Vuono cosplayed as Will Turner from the “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Azul Ashengrotto from the Japanese mobile game “Disney Twisted-Wonderland” and Gerard Keay from horror podcast “The Magnus Archives” for this year’s Nekocon.

“One of my favorite things is going to a convention, dressing up as some obscure book character or whatever and then I find someone who might not even be dressed from the same fandom that immediately recognizes me, and we get to nerd out for hours about our shared interest,” Vuono said.

The Nekocon convention is Vuono’s favorite to attend and one of the two major cosplay conventions Costuming Club visits every year. Katsucon, hosted in National Harbor, Maryland, is the second main event. Last year, the club competed and performed in the Katsucon Masquerade competition and brought home a win in the intermediate Journeyman category with its comedy skit performance, an anime villain spoof on “Better Call Saul.”

As head of the club’s Convention Committee, Temple is

largely responsible for taking care of convention-related tasks, including securing tickets and transportation, and helping members with anything they need to start and finish their costumes. Vuono explained that, before going to conventions, experienced executive officers will hold presentations during weekly meetings to help members with navigating the venue’s layout and to provide safety tips so everyone can have the best experience.

When the club is not preparing for a convention, its weekly skill workshops teach members sewing, prop making, makeup and wig styling. Last year, Vuono brought in bags of old unused wigs, curling irons, straightening irons and combs and held a wig styling workshop for members to experiment with using different techniques they had learned from previous meetings.

No matter the form of media, Costuming Club has a member experienced in the field ready to help new cosplayers.

“Everyone knew a lot about different niche topics, whether it was sewing, or prop making, or makeup,” Costuming Club Secretary Tyler Blessington ’25 said.

Beginners are welcomed and encouraged by the club to learn any and all new skills regardless of their prior costuming experience. Blessington had never costumed before joining the club at a friend’s suggestion but was inspired to keep learning after attending a few workshops. For new cosplayers, Blessington’s advice is to not worry about skill level and enjoy the social aspect.

“I definitely found it as a greater outlet for that — a way to use that skill in a way that I can be proud of, creating something that other people would have a lot of appreciation for outside of just a practical usage,” Blessington said. “It’s also good to talk about it with other people and friends that are also in that general scene.”

Costuming Club brings together costumers of all interest, and it strives to be a no-judgement space where threads of creativity can run wild and tangle into new ideas.

“I have met, genuinely, some of my absolute best friends through this club,” Vuono said. “It has always been a place where I could go, and really feel at home with people. Obviously, we poke fun at each other as all friends do, but there’s no judgment, there’s no, ‘oh, this is weird.’”

Current executive board members hope to continue the positive environment that welcomed them in as freshmen so students always know they have a creative safe haven where they are free to be who they are and make who they are not.

“We make sure that people who maybe wouldn’t indulge their interest in it normally get the opportunity to see what’s up. Even if they don’t continue with it after college, it can

PENNE FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

Whether you’re a freshman or a senior, a chemistry major or a music major, an early bird or a night owl, students at the College of William of Mary share a common experience: With December comes final exams, with final exams come stress and with stress comes a desperate and deep desire for delicious delicacies. Or, you know, just some good snacks. Here’s a breakdown of my personal favorite places and orders to keep me energized through finals, organized by the severity of exam-related predicaments.

Say you’re in hot water. You had the “oh, I should start studying” moment a couple of weeks ago, made a plan, have consistently said, “it’s fine, I’ll study tomorrow” every day since then and now you’re realizing that your only option from now until exams is to lock in. And before you ask, no, I have definitely never ever been in this position with any class. In this scenario, my best suggestion is a Wawa run. Requiring just a short walk along Richmond Road, Wawa is the college student’s dream: convenient and relatively cost-efficient. When it comes to quick meals, keeping in theme with being “in hot water,” excellent options include macaroni and cheese and ramen; all you need to turn these Wawa finds into delectable dorm dinners is some water and a microwave. While you’re there, you can also stock up on other snacks or beverages. Apple juice with a king-sized Almond Joy bar is my personal go-to for a late-night-Wawa-induced fuel, but their soft pretzels are also great if you’re looking for something with a little more sustenance. Maybe, however, you’re feeling okay about finals. You’ve started studying, or you don’t have many exams to worry about. You have time to go places and get slightly elevated food, maybe even study with friends. Or maybe you need to be in a dynamic environment away from the alluring warmth of your bed to motivate you to concentrate — I definitely do. Either way, my favorite place to go, and best recommendation for either of these states, is Town Center Cold Pressed in the Sadler Center’s Lodge 1. Not only is the atmosphere incredibly conducive to productivity — if you

can get a seat — but the food is good too! The “smuices” are full of fresh flavors (especially the Berry Blast, and there’s also a wide selection of coffee). Additionally, if you’re someone who benefits from little rewards as you study,

makes that super easy! My favorite study sessions involve a bit of studying, ordering a coffee, some more studying, ordering an eggand-cheese sandwich and then a last period of studying before I continue with my day. If

we happen to get a particularly nice day out in early December, you can also take your food out to Sadler Terrace and do your studying there for a nice environment change.

Another option for this stage of feeling okay about finals is the Bake Shop. Yes, it’s a student favorite so there’s always lines, but going forces you to take a step off campus and interact with people. If you do go, don’t forget to order whatever seasonal lemonade is available! If you’re looking for lunch, I love either the veggie sandwich or a bagel with hot honey schmear. Lastly, if you’re looking for a snack, try whatever danish is available that day. While you’re there, maybe even grab a couple of bagels to go for your room!

For the last stage on this stress scale, let’s say you’re at the point in studying where you know everything you are going to know. You’re ready. That means it’s time for an off campus adventure! My number one recommendation would be to go to the one and only Trader Joe’s. Located just a short WATA bus ride away, Trader Joe’s has a multitude of snacks and treats to stock up on for a last-minute energy source before you head out to ace your exams. Almond-butter-filled pretzels, frosted shortbread

ELLA GREENE // THE FLAT HAT

sports

Green and Gold drops two more games during Rock Hill Classic

minutes remaining.

Friday, Nov. 22, William and Mary men’s basketball (3-5, 0-0 CAA) lost to North Carolina State (5-2, 0-0 ACC) 84-61 at the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, N.C., kicking off a North Carolina road trip.

The Green and Gold came into Friday’s contest against the Wolfpack with a 3-3 record and something to prove against one of the most prolific programs in college basketball over the last two years. The Tribe stormed out of the gates with a seven-point scoring run, and senior guard Gabe Dorsey put William and Mary on the board with a corner 3-pointer. However, the Wolfpack would ice the Tribe’s hot start with back-toback 15-0 and 8-0 runs, only broken up by eight William and Mary points. With less than five minutes remaining in the first half, NC State was up 20 points, 35-15. While the Tribe showed some life in the remaining time, it retreated to the locker room staring down a 19-point halftime deficit, with the Wolfpack leading 43-24.

As the clock wound down, though, NC State took advantage of sloppy William and Mary play and put the nail in the coffin with a 16-2 scoring run. The Wolfpack cruised to 84 points, while the Tribe finished with 61. Overall, the Wolfpack shot an impressive 48.4% from the floor to the Tribe’s 37.3%, taking advantage of 21 Tribe turnovers to convert 29 extra points.

In a postgame interview, William and Mary head coach Brian Earl identified unforced errors and the team’s consistently high turnover numbers as major obstacles in the way of success.

“[There’s] just a lot to work on,” Earl said. “Obviously, 21 turnovers, I didn’t think many of them were forced, it was just us sort of making the wrong decision. And we looked a little scared, and that’s new, so we have to try to improve on some of those things quickly as we go into another game in two days.”

Although the Tribe found its groove by the beginning of the second half, Earl emphasized the need to avoid errors when playing strong teams such as NC State.

“I think we started playing the way we want to play, but when you go to play NC State on the road, you have to do that the whole game, and so we sort of figured some things out, and then it just fell apart again,” Earl said. “We just need to figure out how — in those moments when it gets tense — to not be the team that throws it to the wrong team, and we’re still working on that.”

Earl credited Collier’s impressive 25-point performance to the Tribe’s stronger second half showing.

“He fights hard and plays out there,” Earl said. “He’s got a warrior mentality, and I think he did a lot to help us.”

Sunday, Nov. 30, William and Mary headed west, losing 79-76 to Appalachian State (4-2, 0-0 SBC).

William and Mary hit the ground running once again in the second half, coming within 13 points of the Wolfpack’s lead less than four minutes into play. However, the Tribe failed to maintain this gained ground and the Wolfpack quickly responded with another run, holding the Tribe scoreless for almost three minutes and reclaiming its 20-point cushion with just over 14 minutes left. The tug of war continued from here into the last few minutes of the game, as the Green and Gold offense showed real fight and reclaimed the momentum from NC State.

Obviously,

The Tribe started hot just as it did Friday, with a strong early six-point scoring run. The Mountaineers quickly came roaring back with two spurts of unanswered 3-pointers, leaving them with a 15-point lead with under five minutes remaining in the half. The Tribe responded with three unanswered baskets, which included consecutive threes from freshman guard Ryan Jackson, Jr. and graduate student forward Malachi Ndur. Still, the Tribe couldn’t match Appalachian State’s white-hot 56% first half shooting from threepoint range and again found itself behind the eight ball at halftime. The Mountaineers took the lead at 42-30.

However, the second half showcased the Tribe’s penchant for late comebacks. The half started poorly for the Green and Gold, as Appalachian State continued to pour it on from deep, making four of its first five 3-point attempts of the period. With only 12:35 on the clock, the Mountaineers had a 19-point lead. It was at this point that the Tribe found a spark. Collier took control of the floor, kicking off a Tribe run with a scoring drive to the basket, an offensive rebound and dish to freshman guard Isaiah Mbeng in the paint and a laser to graduate student forward Keller Boothby on the cut for a layup. With just over 10 minutes left, the Tribe had sliced the deficit to nine points.

The William and Mary offense retained this momentum heading into the final minutes of the game and went seven for its last nine over the last five-and-a-half minutes. With about two minutes left, junior guard Kyle Pulliam scored on a fastbreak layup to whittle the

Mountaineers’ lead down to just two points at 71-69. However, the Mountaineers quickly answered in the form of a 3-point play from senior guard Myles Tate. Tate again came up big for Appalachian State, converting on a hasty step-back mid range shot and putting the Mountaineers up at 76-73. William and Mary failed to answer on its next possession but quickly forced a Mountaineer turnover on the other side of the ball. Then, with 19.5 seconds left on the clock, Collier bore down in the post and used a double spin move to score, drawing a foul in the process. He converted his free throw to complete the 3-point play and finally tie the game at 76.

Appalachian State inbounded the ball and advanced hastily downcourt, looking for a game-winning bucket as the clock wound down. With just five seconds left, Tate had the ball at the top of the key, threatening to shoot and come up clutch a third time for the Mountaineers. The Tribe rushed to answer the threat, with two defenders moving to double-team Tate. This left junior guard Dior Conners open on the left wing, and Tate quickly dished him the ball. Conners drained the game-winning three with just 0.2 seconds left on the clock, as the home fans roared and the Mountaineers stormed the court. The spoiled Tribe comeback was William and Mary’s second loss at the buzzer in the last two weeks, after the team fell to Winthrop in similar fashion on Nov. 15.

Talking after the game, Earl took responsibility for the Tribe’s last-second defensive mishap and the ensuing Mountaineers game winner. He highlighted the team’s strong second-half showing and expressed optimism that the Tribe’s new fast-and-loose playstyle will pay dividends going forward.

“The last shot was all on me,” Earl said. “I made a call to try and double that kid, and [it was] just trying to be a hero by the coach a little bit. I thought once we overcame a little bit, our guys played hard, and when we play hard and loose and believe in it, we have some moments.”

Collier starred again in Sunday’s showing, leading the team with 19 points and eight rebounds. Ndur was another standout, notching 13 points while going six-forsix from the free throw line. Meanwhile, Pulliam recorded 12 points of his own coming off the bench.

Earl highlighted consistent shooting numbers from the field as an offensive strength and key to the team’s success.

“We’re getting open shots, and we have been missing them in stretches, and then they start going in, and we have by design a lot of shooters out there,” Earl said. “So when they don’t go in, it can look weak at times, and I thought it was just how we play that those shots started going in in the second half, and lucky for them, they had a lead. But I was hoping for a few more minutes on the clock at the end.”

William and Mary’s struggles continued on Monday, Dec. 2, losing to Old Dominion (3-6, 0-0 Sun Belt) 88-83.

The Green and Gold will look to right the ship when it hosts Virginia Lynchburg (0-9) on Dec. 4 at Kaplan Arena in Williamsburg,

“

I thought once we overcame a little bit, our guys played

Meanwhile, senior forward Noah Collier scored seven unanswered points amidst a 10-2 Tribe scoring run, highlighted by an electric 3-point play with roughly five

Va.

GOODMAN / THE FLAT HAT Senior Matteus Case has been a solid guard off the Tribeʼs bench, averaging 6.4 points per game this season.

Head coach Brian Earl

sports

Mathis helps Green and Gold secure historic CFB record

Graduate student QB/REC/RB posts 1,000 receiving, passing, rushing yards

Saturday, Nov. 23, graduate quarterback/wide receiver/ running back Hollis Mathis ’23 became the second player in college football history to record 1,000 receiving, 1,000 passing and 1,000 rushing yards.

Mathis, however, does not credit this historic feat solely to himself.

“Those 1,000 yards were based on the receivers doing a great job making catches and plays on the field and the offense blocking for me,” he said. “It’s one of those situations where it seems like an individual record, but it is in no way, shape or form a record that I was able to get myself.”

Mathis described this achievement as a “William and Mary football record,” further emphasizing the support of his teammates and coaches.

“It’s not just about me,” he said. “It’s about the entire William and Mary football history that I’m now part of.” Offensive coordinator/offensive line coach Mario Acitelli emphasized Mathis’s team-oriented mentality and versatility on the field.

“He’s the ultimate team guy,” Acitelli said. “He’s willing to do whatever it takes for the team, whether that’s blocking, catching, throwing or running.”

Hailing from Pittsburgh, Pa., Mathis started playing football at just seven years old. Despite wanting to play college basketball during his early years at Penn Hills High School, he also served as the school’s quarterback.

“My frame and my size kind of panned out to be better for football,” Mathis said. “My family’s also a football family, so I decided to use my athletic ability to find a way into college.”

At Penn Hills, Mathis set records for career passing yards (5,431) and touchdown passes (68) and was a two-time firstteam all-state selection.

Head coach Mike London’s coaching philosophies — or “Londonisms” as the team calls them — largely influenced Mathis’s decision to attend William and Mary. Mathis highlighted “faith, family, football” as one of London’s favorites.

“

It’s one of those situations where it seems like an individual record, but it is in no way, shape or form a record I was able to get myself.

” - Graduate QB/REC/RB Hollis Mathis ʼ23

“Once I saw the school and what it was about, it made it a very easy decision,” Mathis said.

Although Mathis began his William and Mary football career in 2019 as a quarterback, a shoulder injury and the COVID-19 pandemic limited his playing time. When standout senior quarterback Darius Wilson joined the Tribe in 2021, Mathis realized sticking with his former position would no longer be a viable option if he wanted to maximize the team’s success on

the field.

Mathis described his team-centered mindset as the “catalyst” for his jack-of-all-trades playing style.

“I really had the want, the willpower to go out there and affect the team positively in any way, especially since I had been injured for so long,” Mathis said. “I wanted to do whatever the coaches asked of me to help the team, to help us win games, to help us move the ball down the field.”

Over his six seasons with Tribe football, Mathis has seen changes in the team’s competitiveness as a squad.

“I think we are a somewhat tougher team than we were in 2019,” Mathis said. “Everybody wants to compete every day, and we’re working every day trying to get each other better.”

Mathis also recognized his personal growth as a leader from his days as a new recruit in 2019 to being named a captain for the 2024 season.

“As I’ve gotten older, it wasn’t about how much better of an athlete I could be,” he said. “It was about making sure that my teammates got better, that the guy across from me and next to me got better, because we all had a common goal of trying to win some games.”

According to Acitelli, Mathis’s selflessness lends itself well to his leadership.

“The best way to describe him is as a selfless team player,” Acitelli said. “He’s incredibly thoughtful, and he’s always very much trying to look at the big picture. He’s always very intentional with how he approaches life.”

Although Mathis’s injuries were major obstacles, he credits them to his development as a leader.

“After I got the injuries, I had to figure out new ways to try to be just as effective to the team without being on the field,” he said.

Despite not playing in the 2022 Coastal Athletic Association Championship game, Mathis identified the victory as one of his favorite moments with the Green and Gold.

“I was extremely excited to be part of that team and a

contributor to it,” Mathis said. “I think that is something I will never be able to forget.”

Mathis also mentioned his first touchdown and final game against Richmond as notable memories, acknowledging his teammates and coaches.

“Just being able to have a group of guys that were my peers helped me through this entire experience, as well as a group of older guys,” he said. “There have been a ton of people that have helped me become the man and player I am today.”

In addition to London, Mathis attributes his success to his teammates — particularly quarterbacks coach Ted Hefter ’20, Nate Atkins ’19, MBA ’20 and senior safety Marcus Barnes — and family members.

“Ted Hefter has been my mentor literally before I even stepped foot on campus,” Mathis said. “He was a player on the team my freshman and sophomore year who was instrumental to making me the player and person I am today.”

Mathis will graduate with a Master of Business Administration from the Raymond A. Mason School of Business in the spring and hopes to apply his communication and leadership skills to his future career. In 2023, Mathis graduated with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and exercise science.

“I’m probably going to miss the team aspect of it most,” he said. “As a student-athlete and with a team of people you truly care about, you physically, mentally and emotionally grow a lot.”

Mathis will also miss living in close proximity to his friends.

“I will miss the times where my friends are just chilling in OTP or GGV together,” he said. “I think I’ll miss that team camaraderie aspect of playing with my friends the most.”

Most importantly, Mathis expressed gratitude for those who have supported him throughout his Tribe football journey.

“I know from the outside it looks like I have accomplished so much, but it is a huge credit to everyone that has helped me,” he said. “I want to say thank you as many times as I can to everybody that has put their hands on me in my career.”

early struggles continue, team drops game to Howard

Friday, Nov. 29, William and Mary women’s basketball (1-6, 0-0 CAA) came up short in its third consecutive contest, losing 74-63 to Howard (5-2, 0-0 MEAC) at Kaplan Arena in Williamsburg, Va.

The Tribe — whose slow start in 2024 has surprised Green and Gold fans — fell into its second three-game skid before the team even enters Coastal Athletic Association conference play.

Friday’s game started strong for William and Mary, largely thanks to impressive shooting from multiple Green and Gold players. Senior forward Anahi-Lee Cauley got early points on the board for the Tribe, scoring the home team’s first three points of the day, courtesy of a free throw and fastbreak layup midway into the fifth minute. After multiple Howard buckets and two made free throws from junior forward Kayla Rolph, graduate forward Rebekah Frisby-Smith drilled the Tribe’s first 3-point shot of the day with just under three minutes left in the first quarter. After junior guard Alexa Mikeska converted on a tough layup in the paint, with four seconds left in the first, sophomore guard Cassidy Geddes drilled a 3-pointer. Heading into the first break, the Tribe posted a 13-11 lead.

Geddes’s hot hand picked up right where it left as the second quarter began. After a Howard three from senior guard Nyla Cooper, Geddes knocked down her second three of the day, stretching the Green and Gold lead to four with just over nine minutes left in the half. Over the next five minutes, both teams battled to control the lead. After back-and-forth scoring, with just under three minutes left in the half, graduate forward Kaiya Creek knocked down a clutch three for the Bison, giving Howard a 27-25 lead. Less than a minute later, Geddes responded with yet another three of her own, reclaiming the Tribe lead. 40 seconds later, sophomore guard Monet Dance tacked on another Green and Gold three, extending the William and Mary lead to four. As the second quarter came to an end, both teams scored 21 points apiece, and the Tribe entered the break ahead of the Bison at 34-32.

Unlike most of the first half, Howard completely controlled the third quarter.

The Bison started the second half on a 5-0 run, courtesy of a free throw by Creek and a successful tip-in and jumper from junior forward Nile Miller. William and Mary

responded quickly, thanks to two free throws from Frisby-Smith and two 3-point makes from Geddes. However, the Bison could not be slowed down. Creek drilled a three of her own, cutting the Tribe lead to 42-40 before freshman guard Saniyah King tied the game with a tough layup in the paint. Creek then converted on a fastbreak layup, and after another successful tip-in from King, the visitors found themselves on top with just over three minutes left in the third. Geddes tried her best to respond, drilling a short jumper in the paint, but the Green and Gold’s defense was no match for the surging Bison offense. Howard finished the quarter on a 5-1 run and entered the fourth leading 51-45 after outscoring the Tribe 19-11 in the quarter. In the fourth, Howard slowly pulled away even further from the Tribe. After two Bison layups and a 3-point make from graduate student guard Destiny Howell, William and Mary trailed by double digits for the first time all game. Despite nine fourth-quarter points by Geddes, Howard’s lead proved too large to overcome. As time expired at the end of the fourth, William and Mary dropped the matchup at 74-63.

Despite the loss, Geddes’s career-high 23 points was one of the few bright spots in what seemed to be a dark day for the Green and Gold. On a similar note, William and Mary’s bench outscored the Bison bench 27-24, despite its starters getting outscored 50-36. Friday, Dec. 6, the Green and

Gold look to defeat McNeese State (4-3, 0-0 Southland) as part of the Shirley Duncan Classic in Farmville, Va.

MAX GRILL FLAT HAT SPORTS EDITOR

JONAH PETERS / THE FLAT HAT

Although Mathis began his Tribe football career as a quarterback, he has emerged as a jack of all trades. He credits his success to his teammates, coaches and family members.

RYAN GOODMAN / THE FLAT HAT

Sophomore guard Cassidy Geddes led in scoring against the Bison , recording a career-high 23 points on the day.