Vol. 108, Iss. 14 | Tuesday, September 25, 2018
The Flat Hat The Weekly Student Newspaper of
The College of William and Mary
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The College of William and Mary hosted Women’s Weekend Sept. 22-24 in celebration of its 100th year of co-education with performances, panels and keynote lunches with female graduates from the College. Snapshots: Portraits of a World in Transition, led by journalist Anna Smith, included interviews Smith had done over the years, which she performed in the Sadler Center’s Commonwealth Auditorium. In “A Heavy Sense of Resignation,” Smith read the remarks of a woman named Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, who worked as a physician at the nowdefunct, publicly funded Charity Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana. Five days after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, members and staff of the hospital had yet to be evacuated. Kurtz-Burke, who tried to remain optimistic, said she didn’t realize what her patients already had — that they would be the last ones evacuated. “It wasn’t a shock to anybody,” Kurtz-Burke said in her interview with Smith. “But the fact that it wasn’t a shock to people was so shocking to me. You just see the desperation of being poor in this country, and in some ways, the distress — I mean, deep down, that this is not the first time that this has happened to people. You know, I’m privileged — this is the first time that I have ever been totally abandoned by my government. But this wasn’t the first time for my patients or the nurses or the other people that worked at Charity Hospital.” In Powering Possibilities in the Nonprofit Sector, moderated by Lynn Miller ’72 M.Ed ’73, three College alumnae discussed their work in the community along with their successes and challenges in the different spheres of their lives as women. Director of Student Leadership Development at Vanderbilt University Krystal Clark ’05 said that during her volunteer work, she discovered that organizations struggled to make ethical decisions and would not recognize the impact on other volunteers who took on the brunt of those decisions. When she became the president of the Junior League of Nashville, Clark said she was motivated to change the approach to tough personnel decisions. “As women, sometimes we shy away from having super hard,
A weekend of women MADELINE MONROE // FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR
College celebrates 100 years of coeducation, invites alumni, faculty, students to participate in panel talks accountable conversations, especially in volunteer organizations,” Clark said. “So we thought a lot about, ‘How do we equip women with that skill set in these positions? How do you have that tough conversation? How do you hold people accountable? How do you set clear expectations?’ And I don’t think we had done that very well before.” As the first African-American president of the Junior League, Clark said she tries to encourage other women of color to ascend professionally and grow in their roles as she grows in hers. “For me, serving in the way that I do in my community has allowed
me to open doors for and opportunities for other women who look like me, who thought those spaces did not belong to them,” Clark said. “I am very clear that my presence is an invitation. My presence is presented as an opportunity. I am very public about the service that I do because I want other young black women to say, ‘Oh, I can join that group. I can have that opportunity. I can learn those things because she’s there.’” Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Operation Strategy of Bright Horizons Michelle Kang ’96 said that as a member of boards, she has found that when other women participate, they help move multiple facets of an issue or project forward at once. “I think that we as women bring so much richness to the table,” Kang said. “Historically, and I think even nowadays, it’s still hard sometimes in a conversation to feel confident bringing that perspective.” Cleveland Metropolitan School District Leadership Coach and Strategist Marcy Shankman ’90 said that in her experience, women have a relational style of leadership which facilitates cooperation. “I think that boards that are more diverse and inclusive of women have a stronger fabric of relationships because there’s a tendency of women to lead through relationships,” Shankman said. “That’s a power of having women involved in any organizational or collective effort.” One of the biggest challenges Shankman said she faced in her nonprofit work was an identity crisis. While she wanted to help, she felt she lacked the resources do to so, which would put her family at risk. “[It was] more of an internal struggle around wanting to be all things to all people and feeling like I was jeopardizing the health and wellbeing of my family because I was wanting to serve the community,” Shankman said. “So it was a very personal challenge of ‘When can I move into that community space in an authentic and genuine way and give at the level that I wanted to give of my time and my talent?’” Clark stressed the importance of role models whom young individuals can identify with and said that she was grateful for her time at the College, which helped her solidify her desire to help others. See WOMEN’S WEEKEND page 3
STUDENT LIFE
Students United stages demonstration to protest College’s use of prison labor Hunger strike lasts for three days on Sadler terrace as students summoned for probational hearings
MADELINE MONROE FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR
Starting Wednesday, Sept. 19, a three-day demonstration was staged by a group calling themselves W&M Students United to protest the College of William and Mary’s use and purchase of furniture from Virginia Correctional Enterprises. According to W&M Students United’s Facebook page, the demonstration serves to emulate a prison cage using the College’s own chairs. The demonstration’s hunger strike, which meant to underscore the $2 a day worth of food afforded to prisoners, saw one student referred to as Aditi go without food for 54 hours. “In an attempt to resist the state’s efforts to degrade and disappear prisoners, and to make the William & Mary community confront the system of slavery that they are encouraged to disregard and forced to be complicit in, comrade Aditi has put themselves in a cage on the terrace,” the group said in a statement on their Facebook page. “This cage has been symbolically constructed from furniture that Virginia forces prisoners to make for almost no compensation. Aditi will stay in the cage from Wednesday to Friday. They hope that witnessing a student living, working, sleeping, sacrificing their “normal” or prescribed lifestyle in a cage, right at the center of campus will shake William & Mary out of its state of apathy.” According to College spokesperson Suzanne Clavet,
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the College spent an estimated $1.2 million on VCErelated products and services in the 2017 fiscal year and $504,000 in the 2018 fiscal year. In comparison, the College spent $984,000 in FY17 and $240,000 in FY18 on products and services outside of VCE. Clavet said what makes up the most of the College’s VCE purchases is furniture for residence halls. “Although formerly required to purchase certain goods and services from VCE, William and Mary has been granted additional discretion in the area of procurement,” Clavet said in an email. “As a result, the university last year began adding other vendors for these purchases and reducing furniture purchases directly from VCE. We have been closely following the issue raised recently on our campus and are studying our own options, which we have invited student leadership of those concerned to discuss.” Maura Finn ’20 said she believed the demonstration helped bring people of all viewpoints together to converse on campus, instead of keeping the conversation within student Facebook pages like Discourse. “I think it really did raise a lot of awareness — a lot of people came up and talked to the people around and learned more information and wanted to get more involved,” Finn said. “… It was cool to see things able to be talked about in real life rather than just over Discourse because its real person to real person in a way that is very different than Facebook or other online platforms.” Individuals associated with Students United met
with Student Assembly Sept. 18 to voice their concerns regarding the College’s use and purchasing of furniture from VCE. Students United intended for SA to work with them to create a resolution that would address these concerns and condemn the College’s use of prison labor, which they see as perpetuation of modern slavery, according to the group’s Facebook page. “… I’d like to offer that I believe [W&M Students United’s] participation in the Senate meeting on Tuesday is an excellent example of an opportunity for productive dialogue within our community and this is why the Student Assembly exists; to hear from the student body so all parties can work together to find appropriate avenues to share concerns and work towards positive change,” Associate Director of Student Leadership Trici Fredrick M.Ed ’05 said in an email. During the livestreamed meeting, individuals with Students United suggested that SA, with its connections to the administration, provided an ideal platform to raise awareness about the College’s use of prison labor, and also asked SA to support them if and when they feel that the administration has not done so. The group representing Students United also expressed interest in bringing the issue to the attention of the Board of Visitors, which meets Sept. 26-28. Students United also hosted a meeting Sept. 24 focusing on organizing action at the College. Virginia Student Power Network, which is a parent organization for autonomous student organizations around the state,
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Waiting to rush enrichens college experience
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helped lead the meeting. Four students who have been involved with Students United are scheduled to appear for conduct hearings Sept. 26, according to a post on the group’s Facebook page. “It would mean a lot to our comrades if the community showed up to support them and at their hearings,” the Facebook post said. “There will be a discussion of activism and suppression in universities. While the administration has no interest in what the community has to say about the matter, moral support from their peers and the rest of the community would be invaluable to our friends.” Finn, who said her hearing has already taken place, is on disciplinary probation for the rest of the semester for failure to comply with directions. Displinary probation is defined as continued enrollment under certain conditions where if the individual engages in additional misconduct, they may be separated from the university. The probation notice was given by Community Values and Restorative Practices, which is a department in the Dean of Students Office. “How we see this is very much as a student repression issue and the administration is trying to silence our voices in this,” Finn said. “Essentially, we don’t agree with the citations and the fact that they’re likely to get probations like the rest of the people who have their hearings on Wednesday.”
Ethan Brown ’21 thinks that waiting until sophomore year of college to go through fraternity rush greatly improves the overall experience. page 5
Doyle takes the reins
New volleyball head coach Tim Doyle, hired this year, lays out his vision for the program, drawing on his past experience as an assistant coach. page 10