The Pitt News
T h e i n d e p e n d e n t s t ude nt ne w spap e r of t he U niversity of Pittsburgh | PIttnews.com | March 17, 2021 | Volume 111 | Issue 77
MARCH MADNESS PREVIEW
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Sports
Was this worth it?
Reflections from a season covering COVID basketball Stephen Thompson Assistant Sports Editor
I wasn’t able to attend a Pitt men’s basketball game in person until Jan. 16, when the Panthers and Syracuse clashed at the Petersen Events Center. After covering the team remotely for two and a half months, I witnessed — live and in person — Pitt win in dominant fashion, picked up a hard copy of game notes and reconnected with colleagues that I hadn’t seen in almost a year. Those moments have become luxuries that are no longer taken for granted. The fact that I was able to continue covering the team through a pandemic
has been a blessing too great to describe. But this season was missing something, and I wasn’t able to pinpoint just what that something was until I had filed my last game story. As the season wore on and I experienced, firsthand, more of the pandemicinduced procedures that made putting on a college basketball season possible, I couldn’t help but feel as if the sport had lost some of its purpose. At every Pitt home game, I sat in a mostly empty arena, far removed from the main action. Media members had to be masked, remain socially distant and couldn’t wander down closer to the floor in order to get a closer glimpse of who
they were there to write about. Everyone was under the same roof, but interviews were still conducted over Zoom, subjects separated from reporters by a screen. College basketball isn’t a great sport because there is something inherently “good” about a group of 18-to-22-yearolds putting a ball in a metal ring. College basketball is thrilling because of its pageantry and is deeply personal — especially for a student journalist — because you can write about a player dominating national television one night and go to class with them the next morning. It’s a chaotic and confounding sport, but in that same vein it is deeply human.
The small rosters allow you to notice finer details, and the fact that the stars are students makes the game feel much more accessible than its professional counterparts. But putting screens and masks in between audience and spectator made realizing and experiencing these abstract benefits difficult. Windows to talk with players and coaches are short, technology created constant hindrances and the fact that communication existed almost exclusively through the internet removed the personal connection that is created when reporters are in the same room together with the people they cover. It didn’t feel fun or rewarding. When you strip away a sport to its bare bones, you’re left with a robotic collection of X’s and O’s, wins and losses, quantifiable components that ignore the personalities behind them. More often than not, I found myself questioning what the point of these games was. Over the course of the season, Pitt head coach Jeff Capel was gut-wrenchingly honest about how difficult this season was. In media availabilities throughout the past five months, Capel repeatedly called attention to pandemic basketball’s innate cruelty, from his own bout with COVID-19 to the struggles of his players. “I feel for these young people,” Capel said during a December media availability. “I see what it’s doing to my 13-, 11and eight-year-old. I see what it’s doing everyday at home. I see what distance learning is doing. I see what not being able to see their friends is doing. I see what being cooped up in a house all day [is doing]. And [my players] are going through the same thing, except they’re See Thompson on page 10
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2
March sleepers Predicting dark horses in each region
Kyle Saxon
Senior Staff Writer The NCAA Tournament Selection Show aired this past Sunday for the first time in two years. March Madness has returned, which means it is time for college basketball fans to take another shot at the first perfect bracket. Completing an NCAA Tournament bracket is essentially attempting to predict the unpredictable. The “Cinderella” stories that seem to occur just about every year often wind up as the most beautiful aspect of the Big Dance. While many people focus on what programs with a double-digit seed will manage to win a game or two, they often neglect the likelihood that any lower-seeded team can beat out the titans of its region and reach the Final Four. The Final Four has featured at least one team with a seed of five or lower in the past 10 NCAA Tournaments. While one of these under-the-radar teams will likely make a deep run, it’s difficult to pick which one will do it. Fortunately, I’ve got you covered. Here are the most dangerous dark horse candidates from each region of the bracket. West: No. 7 Oregon The seventh-seeded Ducks come in as one of just five teams from the Pac-12 conference to make the trek to Indianapolis for the NCAA Tournament this season. While the team faltered in the semifinals of its conference tournament, Oregon has as much talent as just about anyone in the country. While they rarely had all of their best players fully healthy, the Ducks provide a matchup nightmare at full strength. Senior guard Chris Duarte and junior guard Will Richardson lead the Ducks, bringing invaluable experience and lethal shot-creating ability to the floor as one of the best backcourts in the country. Perhaps the scariest part about Oregon would be length, with all five of its leading scorers standing above 6-foot-5. The versa-
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tility and athleticism of players like Duarte and senior forwards Eugene Omoruyi and LJ Figueroa affords head coach Dana Altman many lineup options. Five-star recruit N’Faly Dante mans the center position, possessing a size advantage on most big men in the tournament. Besides the matchup problems they present, the Ducks also boast an extremely wellrounded and experienced roster. They have five players who average double figures in scoring, and if one player has an off night, the rest of the team steps up. Altman is no stranger to the Final Four, and the Ducks certainly look far better than their seed reflects. Top seeds in its region, such as No. 2 Iowa and No. 3 Kansas, will certainly lose sleep at night pondering a potential matchup with Oregon. While a potential Elite Eight matchup with No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga would be an extremely tall task, the Ducks have a chance against any opponent in the field when playing their best basketball. South: No. 6 Texas Tech The last time an NCAA Tournament occurred, Texas Tech suffered a heartbreaking defeat in the national championship game. Close defeats have defined the Red Raiders’ season two years later. While the Red Raiders managed some big wins over teams such as Texas and LSU, they never truly hit full stride throughout the season. The team owns a pair of fivepoint losses to Oklahoma State, as well as a crushing one-point loss to West Virginia, and these games proved the difference between a No. 6 seed and something much higher. But Texas Tech hasn’t proven incompetent during close games, and its record may deceive the blind eye. Junior Mac McClung, who averages 15.7 points per game, leads the Red Raiders as one of the most dynamic lead guards in the nation. They also boast tre-
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March 17, 2021
3
MARCH CONFERENCE POWER RANKINGS
Big 12 boasts unparalleled depth
Dalton Coppola Staff Writer
To the delight of sports fans across the nation, it’s finally time to start filling out March Madness brackets after a long hiatus. Maybe this is the year the coworker in the Zoom call actually picks the outcome of all 63 games correctly. Odds are, neither you nor your coworkers will have a scot-free bracket. Even with some knowledge of college basketball, mathematicians give a startling 1 in 120.2 billion chance of making a perfect bracket. Nevertheless, filling out a March Madness bracket is a longstanding tradition for many Americans. This season felt different than most, notably thanks to the reduced number of non-conference matchups. Knowing which conference reigns supreme this year could make or break your bracket. 1. Big 12 The Big 12 is far and away the strongest and deepest conference in the country heading into the tournament. The conference boasts a stunning total of six teams in the Associated Press top-25 rankings — including the No. 2 Baylor Bears. This conference is no cakewalk and features the most battle-tested teams in the entire NCAA heading into the tournament. Vegas considers Baylor one of the favorites to win the tournament, behind only Gonzaga. The Bears have an electric offense — winning the battle in the paint and shooting a lights-out 42% from three this season. The team went 22-2 while playing in the best conference in the country, making them the team to beat going into the tournament. Blue-blood program Kansas sits at second in the conference, posing an intimidating threat to any team it steps on the hardwood with. West Virginia boasts a staggering offense that averages 77.3 points per game. The Mountaineers gave Baylor a run for their money, taking them to OT earlier this season, and came just a few turnovers short from taking down one of the best teams in the nation. Not to mention that Cade Cunningham, the projected number one overall pick in the NBA Draft, calls the Big 12 home as a member of the Oklahoma State Cowboys — who stunned the college basketball world with an upset of the Bears in the conference tourna-
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ment last week. The Big 12 has a plethora of teams that coaches around the country fear. The odds of a team from the Big 12 making a deep run into the tournament remain high — many having a real shot at the national title. 2. Big Ten Although the Big Ten boasts four teams in
Iowa. The Big Ten may not be as deep as the Big 12, but the top teams of the conference can certainly hold their own against any opponent. 3. SEC The fall-off from the first two conferences listed and the others is quite steep, but the SEC leads the rest of the pack. Kentucky, the
Mike McGuirl (00) of the Kansas State Wildcats controls the ball as Davion Mitchell (45) of the Baylor Bears defends during the quarterfinal game of the Big 12 basketball tournament at the T-Mobile Center on March 11 in Kansas City, Missouri. Jamie Squire getty images, tns the AP’s top 10, the fall off after these teams becomes much more drastic than Big 12’s. The elite tier of the Big Ten has the liberty of beating up on the lesser competition in the basement of their own conference — half of the league boasts a record under the .500 mark. Ohio State and Purdue have proven themselves legitimate contenders to make the Sweet Sixteen or Elite Eight, but haven’t earned the reputation of programs with a chance to take down Gonzaga or Baylor. Despite the lack of parity in the Big Ten, it still boasts some of the strongest teams and players in the country, including the backto-back conference player of the year, senior center Luka Garza, and the AP No. 8 Iowa Hawkeyes. The top three Big Ten teams have become known as teams that could make serious runs in the tournament — the Michigan Wolverines, Illinois Fighting Illini and
annual SEC powerhouse, had a horrific year and will miss the tournament for the first time since 2013. But multiple teams have stepped up in the Wildcats’ wake. The Associated Press poll has two teams from this conference in its latest ranking — the Arkansas Razorbacks and Alabama Crimson Tide. The Crimson Tide have an excellent offense that can pose a threat to any team in the nation when it gets in a rhythm — posting nearly 80 points a game. Alabama doesn’t take its foot off of the gas either, winning by an average of 9.8 points. Sophomore guard Jahvon Quinerly looks to lead the Crimson Tide to a deep run in the tournament with a team-leading 44.3% 3-point percentage. Once again, the weakness in the SEC lies in its lack of depth. After the top two teams, no true contenders emerge. Tennessee and LSU have talent but remain several pieces
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away from contending for a national title. The SEC is certainly the best of the rest, having two contenders, but these teams have yet to play teams at the level of the Big Ten and Big 12 and will face tough tests as the tournament progresses. 4. ACC The historically feared ACC endured one of the conference’s worst collective efforts in recent history with just three teams ranked in the top 25 at the end of the season — none in the top 10. Blue-bloods Duke and North Carolina spent the majority of the season looking up at Virginia, Florida State and Virginia Tech, and the Blue Devils endured one of their worst seasons under head coach Mike Krzyzewski to miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995. Some regard the Florida State Seminoles as potential contenders, but Vegas still lists them as 20-1 odds to win the title — the best odds of any team in the ACC. The Seminoles beat up on the ACC’s weak competition in the regular season, but we will see how the team matches up with the nation’s best. The ACC lacked its usual competitiveness and failed to produce a national title contender. The conference may see a few teams make deep runs into the tournament, but the odds of these teams competing against the top dogs in the Big Ten and Big 12 are slim to none. 5. Big East The Big East has several programs that many regard as sleeper teams to make Cinderella runs in the tournament, but much like the ACC, lack a true powerhouse this year. Villanova is the number one ranked team in the conference, but the team’s top player, senior guard Collin Gillespie, tore his MCL and will not return for the tournament — significantly diminishing the Wildcats’ chances to make a run in the tournament. Creighton is another team that people view as a potential sleeper team — but still have yet to play the nation’s best outside of one contest with Kansas in which Creighton lost 73-72. But the Patrick Ewing-coached Georgetown Hoyas have caught fire at the right time.
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4
‘Heartbreaking’: Panel discusses rise in anti-Asian violence during pandemic
Allison Radziwon Staff Writer
For Sam Huynh, the steady rise of anti-Asian violence and rhetoric spreading throughout the country as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is “heartbreaking.” She said since much of the violence is targeted toward the elderly, it’s been harder to process. “In Asian cultures, people are really community oriented, and most of the crime that’s been happening has been occurring to the older generations,” Huynh, a junior communication science and disorders major, said. “When I see that, it’s like my own grandmother or grandfather, and it’s kinda just heartbreaking in that sense, too.” Pitt’s department of sociology, Global Hub and Asian Studies Center co-sponsored a Monday panel via Zoom, titled “Combatting Anti-Asian Violence Amidst COVID-19,” to raise awareness about the increase in anti-Asian violence during the CO-
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VID-19 pandemic. The panelists discussed ways to combat this violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities as well as how to stand in solidarity with victims of racism and xenophobia. Christina Ong, a Ph.D. sociology student, moderated the event. Pitt has yet to deliver a statement on this rise of violence and hate targeted toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. But the Asian Student Alliance released a statement last April condemning the increase in targeted violence, saying it was standing in solidarity with the victims of hate crimes, and the Asian community must “stand united.” Other groups across Pittsburgh joined with the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance to release a statement in early March denouncing the violence. Ong said it’s been “hard to process this wave of violence” against AAPI communities. She said many of these victims are friends, family and other loved ones.
“I know that in our lives a lot of us are encouraged to swallow our grief and our anger and our sadness,” Ong said. “But today I encourage us all to sit with those emotions and to let those big emotions be present with us today.” Huynh — a panelist and the event coordinator for AQUARIUS, a group dedicated to Pitt’s queer Asian community and its allies — also said it's important for activists to avoid being “performative,” and proper activism takes “time, labor and emotion,” so it’s necessary to “set boundaries.” Huynh said it’s important to amplify students' voices in order to raise awareness on causes such as anti-Asian violence. “I think one way is making sure that student organizations feel supported, and that they’re given good spaces and platforms to move the messages they wanna advocate for,” Huynh said. “I think for Pitt specifically and Asian American and Asian organizations, do not marginalize … and also
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recognizing different identities and different groups require different resources, and you can’t just throw us all one thing.” Tiffany Diane Tso — a panelist and a current leadership committee member of the Asian American Feminist Collective, which focuses on feminism within Asian and Pacific Islander communities — said it’s important to “educate yourself ” on these important topics, but also to “amplify voices” and “show solidarity.” She said it’s important to recognize how many minority groups are impacted by systemic oppression in similar ways. “I think that honestly, for me, it’s always just been about showing up and offering your services however you can. Be like, ‘this is the resource that I have, and this is how I can offer it to you and your needs,’” Tso said. “And so, for example, solidarity can be like
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5
‘Beannachtai na Feile Padraig dhuit!’ Irish reinvent traditions for St. Patrick’s Day
Colm Slevin Staff Writer
St. Patrick’s Day, a day of celebration and fun for many, will look much different this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Though the pandemic postponed the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Pittsburgh and many of the other ways people would normally spend the day, members of the Irish community have managed to find ways to celebrate their heritage. The Irish Nationality Room committee and Rince na gCathrach Cruach, the Pitt Irish dance team, are some of the local organizations who have put together new programs in order to celebrate the holiday. Maria Cristina Lagnese, a community relations and scholarship administrator at Pitt and a part of the Nationality Rooms program, said the Irish Room committee decided to do something virtual this year. “This year, because it's kind of not pos-
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sible [to go out and celebrate with the Irish community],” Lagnese said, “[the Irish Room committee] said, ‘let's do our own St. Patrick's Day, and let's ask the community and our friends to give us videos and join in.’ But prior to this, they would go out and join in the fun and celebration.” The committee started releasing videos on Sunday and will continue up until St. Patrick’s Day. The virtual celebration featured music from Irish artists Bladderack and Steel Clover, videos on the history of Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day, readings of the Book of Kells, which contains the four Gospels in Latin, and a poem about fairies and leprechauns. According to Lagnese, this is the first time the Irish Nationality Room has hosted a St. Patrick’s Day celebration for at least a decade, but COVID-19 forced the committee to try something new. She said she is excited by the virtual presentation the committee put
together. Marie Young, the faculty leader of the Irish language program, grew up in Dublin. Young said back in Ireland, St. Patrick's Day was still a big holiday, but it wasn’t as much of a party. “It’s a very different atmosphere here than it would be back at home,” Young said. “Growing up at home it was a Catholic feast day, and I was raised Catholic so we would have gone to mass, we didn’t have any school, and for us as children it was our day to break Lent. So it was our day to eat sweets because that's usually what we gave up.” Young said her first time celebrating in America was much crazier, but now she usually celebrates by walking in the parade. “I came to America and ended up at 8 a.m. eating green eggs and drinking green beer in Market Square,” Young said. “It was madness. I’ve never seen the likes of it. Now we always march in the parade, so I’m able to bring [my] boys. I’m able to march in the parade and avoid that madness.” With the parade being postponed this year, Young had to find a new way to celebrate. She said she is celebrating by going to her son’s class and spending more time with her family. “Having no parade, it’s such a downer this year,” Young said. “For my two boys, there's nothing we can do. We can't even watch the parade on TV since it's not gonna be on. So it's hard that way, but we'll try and celebrate it. I'll go into my 7-year-old son's class and I'll read them a story or something.” Mary Grace Mooney, a junior civil engineering major and president of Rince na gCathrach Cruach, said the Irish dance team is shooting a video to the song “I’m Shipping up to Boston” by the Dropkick Murphys to celebrate this year since the team can’t perform live. “It’s a few of our girls dressed up around campus, it's just a little something to have,” Mooney said. “It's really difficult because most of our activities were canceled and we can't do our competition that we typically do, so it's just a little something to do.” Mooney said before COVID-19, the Irish dance team would go to local Irish pubs and
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dance to raise money to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. “A lot of people will go around to different bars and dance and kind of pass the hat almost like a fundraiser,” Mooney said. “That's like traditional funds and doing lots of different shows, sometimes like nursing homes, or restaurants, schools, like, all that kind of thing.” In her Irish Culture and Traditions class, Young is bringing in Daniel Mulhall, the Irish ambassador to the United States, the Tuesday before St. Patrick’s Day. “I'm thrilled we're going to get him in,” Young said. “I think that'd be really nice for them.” At the end of the day, St. Patrick’s Day is about celebrating Irish culture whether you’re Irish or not, Lagnese said. She added that even though she isn’t Irish, she feels Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, and that is what the day is truly all about. “I'm not Irish. But I have a lot of Irish friends,” Lagnese said. “And I feel a lot of camaraderie with them, they're inviting me and I feel like they’re opening their hearts to me.”
Rince na gCathrach Cruach, Pitt’s Irish dance team, performed outside of the Cathedral of Learning on Sunday in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. Pamela Smith staff photographer
6
Opinions
The importance of nurturing your brain during the pandemic
Julia Kreutzer
Senior Staff Columnist My brain feels like mush. My 50-minute Zoom lectures feel hours long. Writing one page takes me three times as long as it used to. The walk from my bed to my desk to my couch is the only exercise I’m getting — I bet my Apple Watch thinks I’m dead. The most exhilarating thing I felt capable of this week was making homemade focaccia bread with my roommate. We joke that we feel trapped in the minds of a 75-year-old retired couple. Some way to spend your final years of college, eh? I’m not the only one feeling that their brains are letting them down, according to UC Irvine neuroscientist Mike Yassa. “We’re all walking around with some mild cognitive impairment,” Yassa said. “Based on everything we know about the brain, two of the things that are really good for it are physical activity and novelty. A thing that’s very bad for it is chronic and perpetual stress.” In other words, prolonged social distancing is our brains’ worst case scenario. While the pandemic is hopefully nearing its 11th hour due to mass vaccination, it seems our abilities to focus, remember and create have been altered indefinitely. It’s not your fault if your brain has turned to soup, but by nurturing our brains through this traumatic time, we can get a head start in returning to some semblance of normalcy. A psychological theory called Cognitive Load Theory offers a clear explanation of why the pandemic has been so catastrophic to our mental capacity. According to Christian Jarrett, psychologist and contributor for the BBC, this theory basically asserts that our brains are complex information processing systems. In foreign situations, we process this information through our “working memory,” or the part of our brain that extrapolates from what we already know. The more unfamiliar a problem, the more we rely on our working memory. But when
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dealing with issues that frequently appear in our routine, we can activate our long-term memory and go on “auto-pilot.” “What’s happening now is that disruptions to life caused by the pandemic are forcing you to draw on your limited working memory capacity more often, at a time when — if you’re more stressed and your anxiety levels are raised, or you’re juggling multiple tasks and commitments — you have diminished working memory capacity,” Jarrett said. “It’s the worst of both worlds, and another reason why you’re feeling mentally drained.” Basically, we’re increasingly reliant on a part of a brain that is already being hindered by the state of the world. Virtual lectures and asynchronous assignments still feel quite foreign, so I’m forced to work from my working memory, which is strained from a full year of doom scrolling and inaction. The Atlantic’s Ellen Cushing writes about another side effect of the pandemic, which she calls the "Winter of Forgetting.” She writes of her inability to remember what going out on the weekend feels like, about reaching for the names of restaurants she used to visit daily or forgetting how tall her boss is. “In the spring, we joked about the Before Times, but they were still within reach, easily accessible in our shorter-term memories,” Cushing said. “In the summer and fall, with restrictions loosening and temperatures rising, we were able to replicate some of what life used to be like, at least in an adulterated form: outdoor drinks, a day at the beach. But now, in the cold, dark, featureless middle of our pandemic winter, we can neither remember what life was like before nor imagine what it’ll be like after.” Last week we saw the first signs of this period of the pandemic coming to a close. With temperatures reaching 70 degrees in Pittsburgh, and Pennsylvania nearing the start of its second phase of vaccinations, we’ll soon be able to safely gather in small groups. But there’s no data suggesting how
our brains will recover from this season of forgetting. We know that a lack of socialization, anxiety and depression can impact our short- and long-term memory. But luckily, we also know that humans tend to forget things quickly as a means to adapt. While this has been a huge factor in the awfulness of the pandemic, it may also be what helps us rise from it. If we can forget the “Before Times,” maybe we can forget “These Uncertain Times” once they’ve reached their conclusion. The key to dealing with our mushy brains is not seeking to “fix” them now, but nurturing them so they can bounce back most effectively when this hellscape comes to an end. I know that establishing a routine is easier said than done, but working to implement
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a very loose plan for your days can lighten the load on your mental capacity. It can be as easy as committing to wake up by 9 or 10 every morning, or setting a fixed skincare regimen to complete before starting your day. Or maybe you can just commit to getting dressed in real pants every morning. Do your best to cut out the doom scrolling — by now, it’s clear that if something important happens, you’ll hear about it. Removing specific stressors and anxiety triggers — like deleting Twitter or unfollowing that COVID case tracker account — can, too, allow your working memory to operate more effectively.
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7
It’s time to talk about OCD Alex Dolinger
Senior Staff Columnist If you’re one of my many adoring fans, you may have noticed that I’ve been pretty absent as of late. I’ve been very busy doing very important things, such as cleaning my apartment in the middle of the night and turning light switches on and off more than normal for more than half the days. If you weren’t able to guess already, I’ll clue you in. I, like millions of other adults in the United States, have obsessive compulsive disorder. I’ve developed a sense of humor about it, but it’s definitely a bummer. What’s even more of a bummer, however, is that we are still in a massive pandemic that is not only a very specific nightmare of many people who already have OCD, but it also might bring about more diagnoses in people who have yet to show symptoms.. Another significant bummer is the fact that getting diagnosed with OCD is hard for a multitude of reasons. Mental
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health care can often be inaccessible, and OCD can feel cosmically designed to make finding health care a monumental task, depending on the person. Then, even when you make it to a doctor, OCD is often misdiagnosed. A recent study found that 50% of primary care doctors presented with fictional OCD patients couldn’t recognize their symptoms as those indicative of OCD. You might find this shocking. When you imagine someone with OCD, don’t you imagine something very specific? How could so many doctors be unable to recognize these symptoms? This brings us to yet another bummer — a lot of people don’t actually know what OCD is. Luckily, with some proper education, it’s actually pretty simple. There are two components to OCD — obsessions and compulsions. It’s very aptly named. The International OCD Foundation puts it quite nicely. “Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images, or urges that trigger intensely distressing feelings,” the foun-
dation states. “Compulsions are behaviors an individual engages in to attempt to get rid of the obsessions and/or decrease his or her distress.” This definition covers a wide range of symptoms. Someone with OCD can have all kinds of obsessions — such as contamination, loss of control or morality — and they can have all kinds of compulsions to reduce distress — like cleaning, checking and repeating. Here’s some hypothetical people with OCD. Person X has repeated intrusive thoughts that they’re going to send pornography in an important email. In an attempt to remedy this, they might check their sent emails several times per day to make sure they all say what they’re supposed to. Person Y has repeated mental images of themselves murdering their entire family. To keep it from happening, they might blink exactly five times. These hypotheticals might be pretty jarring, and if you get your OCD knowledge from movies and TV shows, you might not have ever seen anyone like Person X or Y. Even so, these behaviors are pulled right off the list from the International OCD Foundation, and they’re things that someone you know might be working on in therapy. Unfortunately, many people don’t recognize these symptoms because of the neat-freak caricature of OCD we often see in the media. While this isn’t always incorrect, it’s not representative of the entire community. This outward fastidiousness has resulted in a lot of similar media representations. I can’t adequately express to you how often I have had to explain to people that Emma Pillsbury from “Glee” is not the end-all and be-all of OCD representation — I’m sorry I can’t be her. While it may not be Emma’s fault, lack of adequate education has made most people associate OCD with perfectionism. I’m not a scientist, but I’m pretty sure that’s why we have the monstrosity that is shirts that say “Obsessive Christmas Disorder” making national news. Big bummer. All jokes aside, this skewed perception does have negative consequences. Remember what I said about medical doctors being unable to recognize OCD
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symptoms in patients? It’s much harder to recognize OCD symptoms in yourself, your friends and family when the reference you’re using is a two-dimensional character written by Ryan Murphy who is famous for cleaning grapes. All jokes aside for real this time, I have been displaying symptoms of OCD for most of my life and no one had any idea, least of all me. For as long as I can remember, it’s been difficult for me to go to work and school and being social has always been a very distressing necessary evil. When 12-year-old Alex got their first cyber-safety lesson, all hell broke loose, and I’ve been a compulsive emailand camera roll-checker — or avoider — ever since. While this made life very difficult and frightening, myself and others simply thought I was being healthily conscious of hackers and my own human error. It was my therapist who recently helped me make the discovery, but I’ve been expressing my concerns to health care professionals — psychological or otherwise — for years. This is a reality for millions of people, but in my opinion, there’s no big bad in this story. It was not Agatha All Along. The mental health conversation is getting more inclusive every day, and I have no doubt that one day columns like this will be rendered unnecessary. However, it’s looking like we don’t have the luxury of waiting this out. As previously stated, the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating a lot of obsessions that people already have, while also making it more difficult to treat them. In a Healthline article, Dr. Patrick McGrath explains that the treatments most commonly used for OCD aren’t always COVID-compliant. On the other side of this, we might start seeing people who previously didn’t show OCD symptoms sliding into obsessions brought on by pandemic-related anxiety, like fear of contamination and for the health of oneself and loved ones. Soon, there might be millions more people with OCD, which means millions more people who aren’t receiv-
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8
Ron Donoughe paints landscapes from ‘Brownsville to Braddock’
Sona Sharma Staff Writer
As a professional painter, Ron Donoughe sees the world through shades of light and shadow, travelling throughout western Pennsylvania and capturing the view of the landscape through quick brushstrokes on canvas. Donoughe painted different landscapes across the Monongahela Valley for more than a year, from industrial plants to wide hills and landscapes, and compiled them into a book documenting the current state of the area. The University of Pittsburgh Press recently published the book, called“Brownsville to Braddock,” in March. It captures the sights of the Monongahela Valley and explores views from neighboring towns such as Brownsville, Donora, Clairton, Duquesne, Braddock and California. The Monongahela Valley — or the “Mon Valley,” for short — has had a varied history over the years. It was once an area that thrived economically due to the presence of large industrial plants and steel mills, but has now settled into difficult times with the decline of manufacturing jobs and the closing of factories. “Brownsville to Braddock” is not the first landscape painting project Donoughe has worked on, having previously published “90 Pittsburgh Neighborhoods” and the “Essence of Pittsburgh.” The Mon Valley drew his attention in particular due to its varied history.
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“I’ve done these yearlong projects where it gives me a chance to dig deeper into a particular area. With this particular project, I’ve always been curious about the Mon Valley,” Donoughe said. “[This project] was a way to learn about the history of the Mon Valley and how it affected the growth of Pittsburgh.” Donoughe travelled to many different sites within the Mon Valley over the past year to paint landscapes within the region. Donoughe utilizes a style of art called plein air painting, which focuses on painting outdoors and capturing the scenery as is. He paints directly on site — bringing a canvas and set of colors and brushes near the area he intends to capture — and loses himself in the painting for a while. “Each painting takes around three hours. Because, after that, the light has entirely changed and it’s a different shadow, and you might as well start over,” Donoughe said. “I don’t like to work with [the paintings] too much when I bring them back because I feel like it possibly can lose the spirit of the piece.” Donoughe said he considers painting an important visual tool when documenting an area, as well as a valuable way to capture the feelings behind a particular place and convey it to the viewer. Despite many favoring the convenience of photographs during the modern era of cellphones and other instant technology, Donoughe said he believes landscape painting can offer a different visual experience to the viewer when compared to looking at a photograph. “I think our eyes are sensitive and we don’t realize that until we start comparing a photograph with actually being on site,” Donoughe said. “There is that spirit of place that enters into me as an artist and gets into the painting and shows light and shadow in a very clear, genuine way. You are using all of your senses.” Donoughe’s paintings capture a unique aspect of the history of the landscape of western Pennsylvania, accord-
ing to Frank Kurtik, a current employee of Pitt's Heinz Chapel who previously worked in the University’s Archives and Special Collections as a photo curator. He said while there were a few painters who captured the industrialization of the area during the rise of the steel industry, there was never a focus on painting landscapes within the area. “There was a group of painters, a very informal ‘school’ known as the Scalp Level painters, and they would go out to the area east of Pittsburgh and Cambria County or Johnstown and then sometimes paint the nature and the City itself in desperate environments,” Kurtik said. “But there was never that concentrated focus on painting nature as it existed.” The Scalp Level painters, like Donoughe himself, utilized the plein air painting style when capturing landscapes and urban areas around Pitts-
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burgh. “Ron’s work fitting into these painters came later,” Kurtik said. “He painted what was around the City and in the environment in general. And he continues that tradition of going out and doing his work, outdoors and finishing up a few sketches back in the studio.” Donoughe said he hopes his art and his work on projects such as “Brownsville to Braddock” not only show western Pennsylvania in its raw beauty, but also serve as a collection of history that captures the current state of the area. “The way that we work and live are changing before us so quickly,” said Donoughe. “Part of my mission is to document [the area] as a time capsule. And these books are one way of keeping that together visually for future generations.”
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Thompson, pg. 2 away from their families.” But the question remained — if the players and coaches were suffering, who did we put this on for? Who benefited from a season defined more by its shortcomings than its successes? Looking back on the totality of the season, what did we gain from a regular season during which unpaid athletes risked long-term detriment to their mental and physical health and took the floor for our own entertainment?
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The truth is that it was largely selfish, and it all leads back to March. Bookending the pandemic experience is the annual Division I men’s college basketball tournament, the spectacle known as March Madness. Its cancellation last year was one of the harbingers of fundamental changes society was about to experience, and its return is a welcome reminder that we are close to reaching the other side of a nightmare year. Fans, institutions and teams needed college basketball for varying reasons. Teams needed to play basketball because
it’s what they do, what they know, what they love. Institutions needed basketball because of its absurd revenues — the end-of-season tournament alone is a billion-dollar enterprise. But we — the fans — simply wanted it. The tens of millions who spectate and commentate on the sport wanted to return some sense of familiarity to an otherwise unfamiliar experience. But that desire quickly turned to desperation. We put on the games at the expense of what makes them so valuable — the sense of community that comes with being one of many enjoying a common experience.
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But while the regular season was, for the most part, a slog during which postponements, cancellations and COVIDcasued absences were commonplace, the drama of conference tournament week offered some respite. This was most clear at the conclusion of the ACC Tournament this past Sunday, when unlikely champion Georgia Tech’s excellent senior lead guard Jose Alvarado gave a stirring post-game interview during which he laid out what made the win mean so much. “This is like a dream come true, and I’m proud of my guys,” Alvarado said. “I love this win. This is gonna last me a lifetime. I got my daughter in the stands, I got my dad … I’m just so happy I get the chance to tell them I’m a champion, and I’ll bring a trophy home.” I hope that the coming national tournament gives us more of the same euphoria along with every other emotion that high-stakes sports evoke. The agony of defeat and thrill of victory are two sides of humanity that made past iterations great. I look forward to watching and experiencing March Madness and hope that by the end, we can confidently say that playing basketball during a pandemic was worth it.
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