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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 31, 2021 ­| Volume 111 | Issue 83

Photos by Dalia Maeroff, Clare Sheedy and Thomas Yang

Pitt clarifies new ‘G’ grade policy, professors and students voice mixed feelings

Millicent Watt

Senior Staff Writer Even one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, and after four and a half online terms, grading policies and student and professor accommodations remain hot topics among the Pitt community.

Ilia Murtazashvili, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, said professors should understand that students cannot perform as well academically in the pandemic as they could pre-pandemic, and their grades should reflect the professor’s understanding.

“You need to recognize that what constitutes ‘A’ work in the pandemic is different from what constitutes ‘A’ work in normal times,” Murtazashvili said. “People should be able to get an ‘A,’ even if they’ve been at 50% ability to do their work or less for the past year.”

Pitt students had the option of making any classes satisfactory/no credit at the end of the

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semester — in addition to the beginning — last spring, when the pandemic started. In the fall semester, about 3,000 Pitt students signed a petition urging Pitt administration to implement the S/NC option again. Instead, an email announced that students will have a late withdrawal option and a note on their transcript saying, “Grades and credits earned were impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 global public health crisis.”

Joe McCarthy, vice provost of undergraduate studies, sent out an email on March 12 announcing that in addition to the “late withdrawal” option, Pitt will modify the “G” grade for students as a “fallback grade.”

“If you run into problems trying to complete a course, we will be modifying the ‘G’ grade (incomplete for extenuating circumstances) process to facilitate taking a bit more time to complete a course, if needed,” McCarthy said. “This new process will allow a ‘fallback grade’ to be recorded in cases where a student has done enough to achieve a passing grade in a course but would like more time to finish some well-defined final as-

signments. As with all ‘G’ grades, you will need to work out those details with your instructor.”

According to Chris Bonneau, a political science professor and president of the University Senate, professors usually use a “G” grade for when students couldn’t complete their coursework within one year. Students would work with the professor to complete the coursework before the end of the next semester, and once completed, the “G” grade would revert to a letter grade, Bonneau said. If the student hadn’t completed the coursework, the “G” would revert to “NG,” or “no grade.”

This new policy, according to Bonneau, still allows professors to revert “G” grades into letter grades if students complete the coursework, but now also allows professors to assign letter grades instead of “NG,” even if a student hadn’t finished the coursework.

“Let’s say, so far in my class you’re getting a ‘C.’ And you would get a ‘C,’ but you just didn’t do the final paper, or whatever else,” Bonneau said. “As an instructor, I can say, ‘Well look, you’ve done 80% of the work in the class, so if for whatever reason you can’t complete it, then your ‘G’ grade will revert to a ‘C’ as opposed to a ‘no grade.’’”

Bonneau said this new policy change allows students to still receive credits for a course by having the “G” revert to a letter grade — as students do not receive credits for an “NG” grade — even if they could not complete the coursework. He also said it is a way to “provide additional flexibility” to faculty members when evaluating students’ work.

In a March 16 meeting of the University Senate’s faculty affairs committee, Pitt faculty brought up concerns about leaving professors when assigning “G” grades after the semester ends. McCarthy said although the “G” grade process has not been fully established, it should have “no impact” on faculty.

“We have not yet established the process to be used for issuing a fallback grade. [But] … the grade would be noted at the same time as the G (and all other) grades,” McCarthy said. “So, there should be no impact on faculty that are on contract or that leave the University. We will communicate the process closer to the end of the semester.”

According to Pitt spokesperson Kevin Zwick, “students seem to appreciate this option,” as the

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“G” grade offers “more flexibility for the student” over the S/NC option.

Tyler Viljaste, SGB vice president and chief of cabinet, began talking with Provost Ann Cudd’s team during winter break about grading options, specifically pushing for the S/NC option. Viljaste said Cudd’s team originally agreed to allow one class to be S/NC, but decided against it after receiving “pushback” from faculty. Many professors, based on what Viljaste’s heard, felt they were accommodating their students and that students were “deserving” of the grade they received — therefore not needing alternative grading options like S/NC. Viljaste said the new “G” grade and late withdrawal option is an “inadequate solution” because it is not promoting flexibility, and is instead putting the “burden” on students.

“This seems like an already inadequate solution and it’s not addressing the needs of students, it’s not really promoting this Flex@Pitt model that a lot of us were anticipating and hoping for,” Viljaste said. “It puts a lot more burden on the students during an already stressful time.”

Students this semester, along with the “G” grade, can choose the late withdrawal option — which would appear as a ‘W’ on a transcript — if they are not satisfied with their grade in a course. Monitored withdrawal ends on April 20, and late withdrawal ends May 14.

Bonneau said there was more “leniency” in the fall because Pitt didn’t know how Flex@Pitt would work, whereas this semester, there are “no surprises.”

“In the fall, you could say, well, no one really knew how Flex@Pitt was going to work, no one really knew how — it was a new thing,” Bonneau said. “Professors didn’t know, students didn’t know and so, yeah, a little bit of leniency there was good, but this semester there are no surprises.”

Since Pitt administrators informed faculty about the new “G” grade policy — about three or four weeks ago, according to Bonneau — Bonneau said he hasn’t “gotten a lot of feedback.”

Bonneau said he usually gets a lot of feedback with other issues, but because he has not received much feedback, he sees the policy change as “not a big deal,” or that “there are 10 other fires that are

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2

Rallies call for unity, stop in anti-Asian violence Rebecca Johnson and Betul Tuncer The Pitt News Staff

Hundreds of people flocked to Oakland the past two weeks to protest antiAsian violence and stand in solidarity with Pittsburgh’s AAPI community following a mass shooting in Atlanta. The March 16 shooting left eight people dead — including six women of Asian descent.

This shooting is the latest anti-Asian attack in recent months, and they have increased dramatically over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that records incidents of violence and harassment that target Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, reported nearly 3,800 incidents from last March to this past February.

About 300 people gathered at the corner of Forbes and Oakland avenues for a “Stop Asian Hate” rally on March 20 organized by Thrash the State, a Pittsburgh advocacy group. Sandra Oh — an actress best known for her roles on “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Killing Eve” — made a surprise guest appearance at the rally.

Oh led the crowd, which included many college students, in a chant, saying, “I am proud to be Asian” and “I belong here.” Dozens of other speakers spoke about their personal stories of anti-Asian racism at the rally. The crowd marched down Forbes Avenue to Carnegie Mellon University, then to nearby Flagstaff Hill, and back to the corner of Forbes and Oakland avenues before dispersing.

The East Coast Asian American Student Union and the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance’s Pittsburgh chapter hosted the Pittsburgh Rally for Solidarity last Wednesday afternoon in Schenley Park, which brought together about 300 people. Several advocacy organizations, including Sex Workers Outreach Project Pittsburgh, Rangoli Pittsburgh, Black, Young & Educated, Welcoming Pittsburgh, CeaseFire

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PA, Pittsburgh Taiko, Sunrise Movement and more, participated in the rally.

After a few people spoke, Vinh Dang, an organizer and ECAASU’s communications director, led the group in a moment of silence. To honor the eight lives lost in the Atlanta shooting, attendees sat on the grass with their heads bowed toward the ground for eight minutes.

Outside of Oakland, a number of other rallies and vigils occurred throughout Pittsburgh. Dozens of people attended a candlelight vigil on March 21 at the City-County Building in Downtown.

The ANSWER Coalition also organized a rally Saturday afternoon at the corner of Forbes and Murray avenues in Squirrel Hill to protest anti-Asian violence and racism.

Ilyas Khan, a member of the Sunrise Movement, urged people at the Pittsburgh Rally for Solidarity to come together in order to dismantle systems that harm the innocent and perpetuate hate.

“We may have our differences but today we need to fight together. All of us not as individuals but as communities, whether you’re a white cis man or a Black trans woman,” Khan said. “We all have a part in dismantling the system and rebuilding it as something better, something inclusive, something that believes that we are all truly equal, that we are all valuable and that no one is above anyone else.”

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3

Opinions

Abolish the letter grade

Dalia Maeroff

Senior Staff Columnist In the United States, we grade on a letterbased scale, which is determined by a percentage. The letters range from A being the best grade, to an F or an E for a failing grade.

Funnily enough, most schools do not use an E in their grading system because back in the 1930s, there was a worry that it would be mistaken for “excellent”. Today, some schools, Pittsburgh Public Schools included, have switched back to E grades as a failing grade, because the F is just so stigmatized.

The current grading system is arbitrary, subjective, not truly reflective of a student’s strengths and weaknesses and breeds academic dishonesty. It creates an unhealthy learning environment in which people are more concerned about their grades than actually learning the material to the best of their ability, and pits students against each other to fight it out for valedictorian, which is not how learning should be. We need to adopt a grading scale that accurately measures the strengths of students and encourages a healthy environment where learning can flourish.

In the scientific method, when performing an experiment, it is essential that variables are operationalized, meaning that they are standardized in their measurements so we know exactly what we are measuring and so they can provide an accurate read of the sample population — in this case, the students. Theoretically, this is how grades should behave — they should give an accurate, unbiased, standardized measurement of how well a student performs. If a researcher proposed our current letter-grading system as a scale for survey results in a psychological research study, it would not be used because it is not a valid way of measuring student success.

With a letter-grade system, what kind of work constitutes an A or a B differs from teacher to teacher. Some teachers offer extra credit, some don’t. Some allow for looser deadlines, some don’t. Some will fail you based on how well you follow MLA style, and

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others beg you not to use MLA at all. Some class grades are made up of plenty of small assignments over time, while others are just based on two big exams. The teachers and their administration decide what questions to ask on tests, how much homework assignments are worth and if they give partial credit. But the teachers aren’t at fault — it is the fault of an inaccurate and inefficient grading system that is focused on the numbers rather than learning quality.

with higher levels of grit do better in school and in the long run. And yet, grades do not measure grit.

No one student is the same as the next.

One of the most significant downfalls of the letter-grade system is that it actively works against students with learning disabilities, developmental disorders and mental illnesses. Because letter grades do not measure effort or grit effectively, the students that may take longer to learn certain skills and ideas or

Dalia Maeroff Senior Staff Illustrator

In the current grading system, academic achievement and effort are unevenly weighted and subjective, and just one letter cannot show a student, their parents or a university whether they’re not putting in the effort they need to, just aren’t meeting the baseline for academic achievement in that level or are just turning some things in after the deadline.

The most important thing about the balance between academic achievement and effort in the grading system is that it doesn’t accurately reflect a student’s aptitude to do well. Angela Duckworth, one of my favorite psychologists, specializes in the study of grit — passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Her research suggests that students

learn them in different ways are left behind.

The letter-based grading system is not the only grading system out there. Pass/ fail grades, master/passer grades and narrative grades are all alternative options to the current grading system that foster a healthier learning environment, are beneficial for students in reducing pressure to get A’s and broaden what success in learning can look like.

Narrative grades, however, take the cake for being the best kind of grading system out there, and I wish I had had something similar when I was in grade school. Pass/fail and master/passer grading systems still do not create an open line of constructive criticism

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between teacher and student, but narrative grades do. Narrative grades are a commentsbased grading system in which teachers write an assessment of a student’s strengths and weaknesses. This form of grading is constructive, and based on the idea of a growth mindset — rather than just being labeled as a “B student,” students are recognized for communicating their ideas well in class but may need to work on turning things in on time.

With a narrative grading system, not only is there dedicated space to improve, but there is also increased collaboration with teachers to help students reach that goal.

When students get a report card with a “C” on it, they have to ask the teacher why they have the grade they do. This is when teachers pull up their grade book and show the student missing assignments, or tests they bombed — none of which is helpful to the student to improve their grade. But if students are given specific skills to improve upon before the next grading period, they know exactly how to improve their learning on a larger scale rather than just completing the assignments for the grade.

This method also allows teachers to be more receptive to what they themselves need to improve on — if multiple students seem to be struggling with the same skill, it may be at the fault of the teacher. If a student’s effort in assignments suddenly drops, teachers may be more receptive to that change after taking the time to properly evaluate a student’s current strengths and weaknesses in the classroom, and then can address the problem.

To see how well a student will actually do in school and in life, seeing exact strengths and weaknesses, dealing with criticism and learning how to improve will make all of the difference.

Dalia Maeroff writes primarily about issues of psychology, education, culture and environmentalism. Write to her at DAM291@ pitt.edu.

4

It’s OK if you haven’t found your friends yet Leah Mensch Opinions Editor

Being a first-year student is hard enough as it is. I had to learn how to navigate the City — that the 54 bus never comes on time, for example — and I had to balance studying and sleeping and eating and socializing. I knew I wanted to join a club, but I didn’t know how to pick a few out of the hundreds. I didn’t even know my way around campus.

At the beginning of college, there seemed to be a notion that the more acquaintances you had, the better adapted you were, and the more successful you’d be. I kept all of the tips people gave me, in regards to making friends, filed away in my mind. Keep your dorm room door open, join clubs, talk to the person next to you in the enormous psychology lecture. I did all of these things, and I still felt like I couldn’t form a meaningful connection with anyone. I was more overwhelmed than I was interested in the party scene, and I wondered if that was why I wasn’t making any friends.

Now, as I finish my last few weeks of undergrad, I realize I was struggling to make friends because I was just beginning a major life transi-

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tion, and I was a singular student amongst a sea of twenty thousand other undergrads. This was completely normal. It seems so strange to me now, that I expected to meet my lifelong friends during the first week, month or even year of college. But I did expect that to happen — it seemed like that was happening to everyone else — and it made me feel like my loneliness was warranted, that there was something wrong with me.

The hardest part of the first year of college — and the part nobody seems to talk about — is the loneliness. I imagine the pandemic has only intensified this. Finding your people is a process, and it’s a process that often takes a long time.

Being a lonely college student, according to sociologist Dr. Deborah Cohan, is normal.

College is a major life transition, and major life transitions exacerbate all sorts of mental health issues. Cohan suggests that, to combat loneliness, students attend big events, join social clubs and spend as little time in their rooms as possible.

Given the current state of the world, this is nearly impossible. First-year students on campus are taking classes from their dorm rooms, and up until last week, they couldn’t even sit in the dining hall or the lounge spaces in their residence

halls. The pandemic has been so hard on our collective mental health, and if you’re feeling lonely, be easy on yourself.

Social media made it seem like everyone else I knew, when I started college, was making friends left and right. When you tell someone you’re anxious, depressed or lonely, the go-to advice nowadays seems to be “well, get off social media.” I can attest to this — getting off social media for the most part is a great decision. But I also don’t think it’s plausible or fair to tell a college student struggling to make friends that they need to give up social media, especially if they’re using it to keep in touch with friends and family from home. Instead, you can try to limit your time — set screen time limits if you have an iPhone, or set aside an hour a day to turn your phone off. At the very least, just remember that most of what you’re seeing is fabricated. Most people probably aren’t having as much fun as it seems.

I also think I was under the impression that as soon as I joined a club, I'd find something I love, and also find my friends for life. I think I joined — and committed to — at least two or three organizations before I found one that felt right to me.

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I like to joke and say I joined The Pitt News because I had no friends. But in all honesty, that’s exactly the reason I joined. The newspaper brought me many of the people I love most in the world — the people I will miss most when I move away from Pittsburgh in August. I don’t know that it took me longer than most people to find my real friends, though I know that it took me longer than younger me would have liked.

But it was worth the wait.

Some of my friends remain close with people they met during O-Week, and other people who lived on their dorm floors their first year. I remember maybe five or six people from my floor, and I haven’t spoken to a majority of them since I took my philosophy final and moved out that spring. I know plenty of people who have maintained big, wonderful friend groups throughout college — they live together, and in pre-pandemic times, went out together and traveled together.

I don’t have a big friend group. For a while, I thought I needed to find one. Once I finally let go of that expectation for myself, I realized that

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5

Culture Pitt students curate ‘Pattern Makers’

exhibition at Westmoreland Museum of Art

Suln Yun

Staff Writer We see patterns in our surroundings every day, but those patterns are more than just repeating shapes. A new exhibit focuses on the visual effects of patterns drawn from nature, created by the imaginative manipulation of geometry to reflect social, cultural and economic life.

“Pattern Makers” is a temporary art exhibition from The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, curated by 10 members of Pitt’s history of art and architecture department. The purpose of the exhibit is to display items from the permanent collection that are not often on view in the museum. Open both in person and virtually until May 9, the museum is accessible for the Pitt community for free after

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registering online at the museum's website.

According to Claire Ertl, the director of marketing and public relations for Westmoreland, the exhibit tracks the presence and meaning of patterns across a selection of works from Westmoreland’s collection that are not often on view, and brings a startling connection across divergent styles and mediums.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the museum overall, including postponing the opening of “Pattern Makers” from mid-December to Feb. 7, Ertl said the pandemic has made the exhibition feel more special.

“Like many art museums across the county, Westmoreland postponed its temporary exhibition program due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Ertl said. “This provided the students [the ability] to explore the Westmoreland’s permanent collection and delve deeper into the stories of American art and develop an exhibition proposal.”

Still, according to Ertl, gathering students to bring out the stored collection of artworks in the museum makes the exhibition different from others, providing both graduate and upperclassmen art history students with an opportunity to have a real world curatorial experience.

Barbara Jones, the museum’s chief curator, said inviting Pitt students to collaborate on creating this temporary exhibition helps bring a new perspective towards the artwork that was stored for years.

“Inviting these students of art history from the University of Pittsburgh to really look at our collection with fresh sets of eyes has allowed us to explore new narratives,” Jones said. “Additionally, I believe this exhibition will encourage our visitors to think more fully about the processes of exhibition making as well as the connections across the history of American art.”

Though “Pattern Makers” is a temporary exhibition, the concept for the show was finalized after the team members had gone through a long process, from choosing the proposal to selecting the artwork.

Alex Taylor, an assistant professor and aca-

demic curator in the department of history of art and architecture, led the student curatorial team at Westmoreland. Taylor said the purpose of this project was to help the students learn how to develop curatorial storylines and interact with professionals across a museum to set a large-scale exhibition that the students have never experienced before.

“The concept for the show was one of the three exhibition proposals developed by students in my fall 2020 curatorial practicum class, and this was the concept that was ultimately chosen by the museum to be realized,” Taylor said. “For the class, three teams of students developed exhibition concepts inspired by works in the museum’s collection. From a collection of almost 4,000 works, the class narrowed their selection down to just 60 objects.”

Even though the students attended virtual meetings and used digital tools to research the collection of artwork, Taylor said it was disappointing that the process of preparing for the exhibition could not be done in person, as the museum was following the COVID-19 safety policies and procedures.

“We used digital resources including photographs, databases and other digital documents,” Taylor said. “Of course, it was disappointing to not be able to explore the collection in person, but the format also allowed some students who weren’t in Pittsburgh to be active members of the exhibition’s curatorial team.”

Though the pandemic has prevented the students from being able to work in person for most of the process, Annie Abernathy — who participated in the exhibition as an undergraduate student — said the team members were able to quickly process the preparation for the exhibition using an online database.

Abernathy, a senior history of art and architecture major, agreed with Taylor that she also had challenges preparing the exhibition during the pandemic.

“We relied heavily on the museum’s online database and other materials shared with us like spreadsheets and photos taken of collection files,”

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Abernathy said. “It was easier to comb through the vast collection virtually than if every artwork had to be taken out of storage, but it was difficult at times to get a sense of the object, especially in terms of scale.”

Still, Abernathy said there are specific reasons why she decided to contribute her work to this exhibition in particular, as she has never felt heavily responsible in other curatorial settings.

“I decided to contribute to this exhibition because this was really the first chance that I’ve gotten to have this much curatorial responsibility and see an exhibition through from start to finish in a museum like this,” Abernathy said. “In particular, I did curatorial research and wrote the wall labels for the quilts on display as well as a few other objects.”

Abernathy wasn’t the only student who was eager to share her passion in the local art industry. Working with nine other collaborators at Pitt as well as the Westmoreland museum staff, Vuk Vuković, a Ph.D. graduate student in history of art & architecture and film & media studies, said he wanted to build a connection between his talent and creativity to local art production.

“I wanted to take a curatorial course with Professor Taylor as I’ve been following his academic journey for a while, and this was an incredible opportunity to learn from him and engage with the local art scene,” Vuković said. “As a graduate student, I was in a constant quest to expand our research tools which the collaboration with The Westmoreland Museum of American Art enables us to do.”

While working with Taylor and researching the art collections for the show, Vuković identified one work that stood out the most to him.

“I had my eyes set on Donald Judd’s Untitled (1987) from the second I saw it in the museum collection. As someone who spent a lot of time studying the modern and contemporary U.S. American art, I was thrilled to see Judd’s sculpture in the Westmoreland collection,” Vuković said.

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6

Sports

Pitt stomps Wildcats in season finale, sets program record for single-season wins

Alexander Ganias Staff Writer

Pitt women’s soccer played its final game of the season against Kentucky on Monday, defeating the Wildcats 4-1 to earn a final 2020-21 record of 11-5 (3-5 ACC). The Panthers’ 11 wins in 16 games surpasses the program record for most victories in a women’s soccer season — 10 in 18 games in 2015. Pitt head coach Randy Waldrum appreciated the accomplishment but explained that this represents a mere step toward the ultimate goal.

“I think it’s really about the growth of the program,” Waldrum said. “There’s always going to be a new benchmark.

Until we’re winning national championships, we’ve always got something to strive for.”

The record didn’t look so attainable in the first 30 minutes of the match.

Kentucky got most of the shot opportunities, but none of them found the back of the net. Errant passes that turned into goal kicks cut Pitt’s chances short, and the team’s corner kicks all ended up in the hands of Kentucky senior goalkeeper Brooke Littman.

The Panthers finally broke through in the 33rd minute. Sophomore forward Amanda West cut through multiple defenders with the ball, threading the needle to first-year midfielder Emily Yaple, who squeezed past the defense and sent her shot into the net. West found an open midfielder again 10 minutes later when junior Celia Lopez received her setup and found twine with what would be the game-clinching goal. The half ended with the Panthers leading 2-0.

Waldrum admitted that Pitt started off slowly, but he saw the slow start as a

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more mental aspect of the game.

“I think it was two teams trying to feel each other out,” he said. “It was a little bit of a chess match early, not trying to make the first mistake. But I feel we really got it going with the way we played after 20 minutes or so.”

The second half also started off quite slow, but both squads had opportunities to score. Sophomore defender Athalie Palomo took a shot from the 18-yard box in the 54th minute, but Littman jumped and sent the shot over the crossbar. The ensuing corner kick hit the outside of the net for a goal kick.

Kentucky senior forward Julia Grosso’s attempt went straight into the hands of Pitt sophomore goalkeeper Caitlyn Lazzarini a few minutes later.

A Panther shot got past Littman in the 58th minute, but a Wildcat defender pushed it aside. Sophomore forward Leah Pais collected the deflection and put it into the net, extending the Panthers’ lead to three goals.

Pitt would only get two more really good chances to score. Palomo went for goal on a free kick in the 71st minute, but Littman swallowed it. Kentucky then put up three shots — two of them saved

by Lazzarini, and the third sailing wide of the net. Lazzarini finished the day with five saves.

The Panthers scored their fourth and final goal in the 85th minute. West drove toward the goal, crossed the ball past a defender and right to the foot of sophomore midfielder Landy Mertz, who put it in the back of the net for her third goal in two games at Pitt. Mertz emphasized the importance of stepping up during her limited time on the field.

“I didn’t really know what to expect,” she said. “For me to get the opportunity

to not only play and get minutes, but also to score goals and make an impact, I just feel really lucky.”

Mertz’s goal also marked West’s third assist of the match. Waldrum later retweeted the video of that goal with a positive spin toward the future.

The Wildcats wouldn’t leave Pittsburgh shut out, though. Kentucky sophomore forward Jordyn Rhodes used her head to give her team its only goal with just two minutes left to play. It would prove not nearly enough, and the Panthers claimed the victory 4-1.

With the regular season over, and the conference tournament completed in the fall, the only event remaining in college soccer is the College Cup in Cary, North Carolina. The Panthers must now hope that their resumé impresses the selection committee enough to earn an at-large bid. Both Mertz and Waldrum believe that Pitt has shown it deserves a postseason spot, but they can’t do anything else at the moment.

“I do think they want it really bad,” Mertz said. “My teammates did most of the work for the season, I was only here for two of the games, but we will definitely use this as fuel for next year.”

Waldrum felt that the team’s strength of schedule should help the team’s case for one of those coveted at-large opportunities.

“With 48 teams and 33 at-large bids, it doesn’t leave much room for teams to get in,” he said. “But we’re 11-5, we don’t have a bad loss on our record and after watching other conferences, I know that we’re a much better team than those that will be in the tournament.”

The Panthers went 6-1 at home this year and 5-4 on the road, and they won all eight of their non-conference games.

But College Cup or not, Pitt will go into next season with a young, hungry roster, which Mertz predicted will bring big things next year.

“A lot of [next year’s] freshmen are already here,” she said. “I think that’s really beneficial, because next fall there won’t be a period where we have to get used to all the new girls. We can just hit the ground running.”

The selection of teams for the College Cup will take place on April 19.

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No secu­rity deposit required. Rent is $960/ month including utili‑ ties. Background check and roommate ap­proval required. Please call 724‑816‑8111 for more infor­mation.

gmail.­com or call Joe at Photos & appoint­ments: Pitt researcher seeking 412‑467‑6678. Videos panther‑life.­com/avail‑ an applica­tions pro‑ at: tinyurl.­com/wardst able grammer to maintain, en­hance, and collabo­rate on projects to further 2BR houses and apart­ develop the EL‑FIT app ments, both with porch‑ (www.­el‑fit.pitt.edu). es. Available in August.

Expe­rience with iOS Unfur­nished, includes and Android. Contact off‑street parking. No Roxann at rmh82@pitt. pets. Atwood/S. Bou­ edu. quet. Call 412‑492‑8173

Employment Employment Other

Apartment for rent.

3BR. Available for 2021‑2022 school year.

Located At­wood St., Dawson St. and Mckee Place. For more info or schedule a view‑ ing, please call mike at 412‑849‑8694.

Fall 2021 Rentals ‑ 1 & 2 bedroom apartments one block from Forbes on Atwood St very close to campus, clean and well maintained, 24 hour laundry, con­trolled access. Rates starting at $775 with some util­ ities included. Call us today at

Camp counselors needed!

5/31/21 to 8/1/21.

Includes room, board, & meals.

Camp Agape, Hick­ory PA.

Contact: Karen Reardon. campa­ gapeprogramdirec­tor@ gmail.com

Office Intern ‑ Shady‑ side Property Manage‑ ment Com­pany seeks person with minimum 2 years college to in­terview & process rental applicants, answer phones, and help staff our action‑central of­ fice. Full time through August, with weekends 412‑682‑7622 re­quired. $14/hour.

Perfect job for cur­ Recently renovated rent sophomores and 4BR 1.5BA house in S juniors, seniors who are ** 5BR/2Ba Brick Oakland. $1950/mo plus planning to enter grad Home! Large Patio to enjoy! Large Bed­rooms! utilities. High ceilings, school, returning grad large win­dows, back‑ stu­dents, and first‑year 2 Full Baths! Located yard, pa­tio. W/D, DW, law students who are on Ward Street. PITT high efficiency furnace. learning re­motely!

Shuttle stops di­rectly Off‑street parking avail. in front of house, only Panther Properties, Mozart Manage­ment: 15 minute level walk 412‑328‑6236, pan­ 412‑682‑7003/thane@­ to PITT/CMU/Car­ mozartrents.com low. $2995+. Avail­able therproperties@g­mail. com.

8/1/2021. NO PETS. Email: coola­partments@

Summer Employ­ment at one of Pitts­burgh’s old‑ est and finest Children’s Day Camps.

Camp Deer Creek is a traditional day camp, boys and girls ages 4‑15.

Looking to fill fol­lowing positions: ‑Arts & Crafts, Mu­sic, and Drama spe­cialists. ‑Nature, FIeld Games, and Archery specialists. ‑General councelors, Life­Guards, and Riding Instructors. ‑Maintenance.

Please contact camp. deer.creek.­online@ gmail.com for more info/apply­ing.

South Oakland

pittnews.com

March 31, 2021

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