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SILHOUETTES 2021 EDITION

News

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SGB elections task force pittnews.com

Restaurants, bars open up to 75% capacity following state rule change

Suln Yun

Staff Writer For Gene Ney, the owner of the South Oakland bar Gene's Place, April 4 was an exciting day. Ney, a Pitt graduate and part-time professor at Carlow University, can now allow customers to sit at the Louisa Street bar once again.

Oakland restaurants and bars, along with other businesses statewide, were allowed to relax some COVID-19 restrictions following a state rule change that began Sunday. Alcohol service in bars and restaurants is once again allowed without the purchase of food and indoor dining capacity has been raised to 75%.

Many business owners like Ney have had to adapt to restrictions over the past year, through

means such as increased takeout availability and cocktails to go.

“I originally shut down on March 15, 2020, per state orders. I re-opened for takeout service only in late April, and resumed drink-in service in June for three weeks when we were allowed to,” Ney said. “When restrictions were imposed again, I discontinued drink-in service, and went back to takeout service only. I am now doing drink-in service at reduced capacity per state regulations but I have been offering takeout service since last June.”

Ney said he is thankful that the majority of customers are cooperative and understanding with their updated business hours and take-out services.

“I have to admit that all of the Pitt students

who frequent my establishment have been very good about observing mask and social distance policies,” Ney said. “In fact, University of Pittsburgh students have been extremely cooperative.”

JoAnne Chizmar, the manager of the Thirsty Scholar Bar & Grille, said she has been making small changes while continuing to open the business so she and her husband can safely run the Central Oakland bar.

“We originally opened in-person dining in August then shut down in December and reopened January 13th,” Chizmar said. “Most of our staff graduated after the March shutdown of 2020. We weren't sure what to expect when we reopened so we decided to keep everything as small as possible and not hire new staff.”

NOW LEASING 1, 2, 3, & 4 BEDROOM APARTMENTS close to campus | off-street parking available

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April 7,2021

Chizmar said they have made additional changes regarding the menu so they can minimize food waste.

“We also streamlined our menu so that we could cut down on food waste since we are following shorter hours and only open four days a week,” Chizmar said. “Thankfully, everybody was very understanding about what we are trying to do.”

Lailanie Chen, who owns Hunan Bar on Atwood Street with her husband Wei Fei Chen, said the restaurant was greatly impacted by the pandemic as the majority of their customers used to be international students.

“Pre-COVID, a majority of our customers were international students from China, since we specialize in very authentic traditional Chinese food,” Chen said. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, our business got hit really hard and we had no choice but to partner with a third-party company for delivery and takeout, which we never had to do before.”

Chen said her family has been working hard throughout the pandemic and never shut down the restaurant, continuing delivery and takeout orders.

“We never closed and even during the time when we weren't able to do dining service. Instead, we stayed open for takeout and delivery only,” Chen said. “We have had to use less employees only because the majority of our sales right now are still takeout and delivery, even though [a small capacity of] dining is available.”

Though their business is running small during the pandemic, Chen said her restaurants had very minimal issues with the community following the restriction guidelines as well.

“We never had anyone causing trouble regarding the guidelines. Also we don't have any problem with students crowding and [everyone is trying their best] to keep [the community] safe,” Chen said. “I believe that the Oakland community is keeping us all safe especially with signs on sidewalks and signs for guidelines to remind students out there.”

2

Students struggle to report large parties

Rashi Ranjan

Senior Staff Writer Out of concern for their peers amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, C. said they reported Oakland parties they saw both with their own eyes and also from social media — particularly among fraternities and sororities. C. reported these incidents through Pitt’s COVID Concern Connection system.

C. asked to remain anonymous due to fears of backlash from fellow students and friends who are a part of Greek life. While they used the reporting system three separate times, they said they never received any formal response or message from the University, as of last Sunday.

The latest report C. filed was on March 14 and included their contact information. After The Pitt News reached out to C., C. said they checked the system after not receiving any follow-up from Pitt. But C. found the status of the report marked as “closed” on March 18 “without any sort of response, no follow up, nothing” from Pitt.

Laurel Gift, an assistant vice chancellor who leads the Office of Compliance, Investigations & Ethics, said she reviews each complaint. The office, which Pitt formed last April, monitors internal investigations to ensure they are appropriately handled and are properly supported.

Gift said the COVID Concern Connection system is used to report behaviors broken down into two “issue-types” — behavioral concerns and medical concerns. She said the system has received 1,321 reports as of March 18. The reporting system — which is monitored by a team of Pitt administrators and staff members — gives the community an anonymous way to share concerns.

People can file reports for a number of different activities, such as large gatherings on or off campus, students, staff and faculty not masking or properly socially distancing, quarantine concerns as well as questions about COVID-19 testing. Every concern that is reported is reviewed daily by Gift. Gift said she makes sure every concern is routed to the right department and case manager, and then sends a summary report to the COVID Compliance Team.

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She said the team is made up of representatives from all regional campuses, Student Affairs, Student Conduct, the Office of Compliance, Investigations & Ethics, the Office of Community and Governmental Relations, Residential Life, Athletics, Pitt police, the COVID-19 Medical Response Office and University Communications and Marketing.

Gift said all users receive a confirmation that the complaint was received, and the COVID Compliance Team then decides how best to respond to the community member who made the report. She added that the team meets at least three times a week to discuss concerns. A University press release from last September also claimed that anyone who identifies themselves when they submit a concern will receive an email within one day from Gift that acknowledges it was received, provides a reference number and discloses “follow-ups taken.”

“The system allows for communications with reporting parties — even if they choose anonymity,” Gift said. “All users of the system receive an email once their concern is received. Most users receive follow-up questions from case managers, and the system alerts users when a case is closed out.”

But some students are not satisfied with the reporting system.

C. said they did not receive any followup email — only an automated acknowledgement of their post through the system itself — for each of their three reports. Their first report was to report a large gathering at Flagstaff Hill in the fall, according to C. “When we got [to Flagstaff Hill], it was really rowdy, and there was loud music. I think people were drinking, too. We weren’t a part of that at all, but I was getting really concerned about it,” C. said. “After we got back to campus, I decided to call the hotline to report what was going on because I wasn’t sure if the cops were really going to do anything because they didn’t seem to be stepping in or telling people to go.”

Besides filing a report through the COVID Concern Connection website, Pitt community members can also call or text a rep-

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April 7, 2021

3

Opinions

Pitt is letting down students pittnews.com

Mental health and mental illness are not interchangeable terms

Dalia Maeroff

Senior Staff Columnist Something I have noticed a lot lately is that people use the words “mental health” to describe mental illness and developmental disorders. I sat in class last week and listened to people talk about an essay concerning mental illness, and many students in the discussion used the words “mental health” and “mental illness” interchangeably like they were the same thing.

As someone who studies psychology and linguistics, nothing angers me more than people who do not use specific language when talking about mental disorders. Society has become much more aware of specificity in language when talking about minority or marginalized groups of people in recent years, which begs the question of why we haven’t updated our lexicon for people with mental illness and developmental disorders in the same manner.

The reason is simple — stigma. Everybody has mental health, so mental health isn't stigmatized. What are stigmatized are mental illness and developmental disorders. Using “mental health” to talk about mental illness and developmental disorders further stigmatizes them and diminishes the struggles of people with mental illnesses and developmental disorders.

Mental health is something that you need to keep up just like physical health.

You keep up physical health by eating healthily, exercising and maintaining a healthy sleep schedule. You can improve your mental health by taking a walk outside, spending time with friends or doing something that you love. Everybody needs a break sometimes and that's okay.

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Mental illness — and developmental disorders — are not that simple.

The words “mental illness” refer to mental disorders that are usually diagnosed in adulthood and can include mood, personality and psychotic disorders, among others. Some of these disorders include depression, bipolar disorder, general anxiety disorder, OCD and schizophrenia. Mental illness cannot be cured by a walk in the park or a self-care day. These mental illnesses are just that — illnesses of the brain. They usually require therapy and medication to get better, just as an injury requires medication and physical therapy to get better. Even with therapy and medication, they may not be cured. These disorders impact day-to-day functioning for people socially, physically and emotionally. Needing to take a day to relax for your mental health is not the same as not being able to move from your bed all day because of a mental illness.

How we speak about mental illness greatly impacts on stigma. Psychologists usually recommend using what is called “people-first” language, meaning that you should refer to someone as a “person with bipolar disorder” rather than a “bipolar person.” Throughout history and today, people with mental illness have been dehumanized due to their conditions — people-first language emphasizes the fact that people are people, separate from their mental illness. Oftentimes, people may be hesitant to say “mental illness” out of fear of being insensitive. It is more problematic to use “mental health” instead of outright referring to people with mental illnesses while using people-first language.

It is estimated that as many as 10.9% of

adults ages 18 to 25 in the United States suffer from depression. General anxiety disorder affects 19.1% of the United States population and is often comorbid with depression. 2.8% of adults have bipolar disorder in the United States.

About 1.2% of adults in the United States have OCD, and the same number have schizophrenia. That is a lot of people and a lot of symptoms to be pushing under the umbrella of “mental health.” People with mental illness all have mental health too, but it is not the same as the mental illnesses they struggle with, and maintaining mental health can be much harder with a mental illness.

Talking about mental illness as “mental health” demeans the everyday struggles of people with these disorders.

It equates being sad to depression, nervousness with anxiety, moody to bipolar disorder and hyper to ADHD. Everyday feelings and emotions are not the same as having a mental illness and insinuating that they only increase stigma when someone actually has a mental illness that cannot be fixed by a bath bomb, a cup of tea or a face mask.

Recently I’ve seen people talk about developmental disorders like ADHD and autism using the words “mental health” as well. They are not the same thing. Developmental disorders, also known as neurodevelopmental disorders, are disorders that are usually diagnosed in children. These disorders are often characterized as disabilities and include autism, ADHD/ADD, learning disabilities and others. When people talk about these disorders, many use the phrases “neurotypical” and “neurodivergent” to distinguish between people who do not have developmental disorders and people

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who are neurologically “divergent.” Many people with developmental disorders also prefer to use people-first language except for a large majority of the autistic population, who believe that autism is too large a part of their identity to separate it from themselves.

Of children ages 3 to 17, 17% were diagnosed with developmental disorders between 2009 and 2017. Developmental disorders are not mental health. Not being able to focus, hyperactivity and executive dysfunction are not aspects of mental health, they are symptoms of a developmental disorder.

When we separate the symptoms of a developmental disorder from the everyday behaviors of neurotypical people, disorders can be diagnosed faster and easier.

When the inability to focus or difficulty learning falls under the guise of “mental health,” it makes it something that everyone can experience, even though it isn’t.

This makes it harder, especially for children with developmental disorders to get diagnosed and receive the help they need quickly.

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

4

Culture

Women in horror pittnews.com

Local writers create anthology of Pittsburgh neighborhoods

Diana Velasquez Senior Staff Writer

What does Oakland look like as a neighborhood? College students strung across Flagstaff Hill with picnic blankets and wine bottles at night.

Ambulances speeding down Forbes on their way to Presby. Cathy standing as a beacon to us all from miles around.

This is just one neighborhood of Pittsburgh, but there are so many more to explore, none the same. In “The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook,” which was released on Tuesday, the local writers of Pittsburgh are telling the world about them.

Edited by Ben Gwin, a native of New Jersey who has family ties to the Pittsburgh area where he now lives, “The Pittsburgh Neighborhood

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Guidebook” is part of an anthology series from Belt Publishing. The anthology series chronicles the many faces of cities in the rustbelt like Detroit, Cleveland or Chicago.

White Whale Bookstore, located in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood, will hold a launch event for the book on Friday at 7 p.m. via Zoom. Tickets can be purchased for free on Eventbrite.

Gwin, who was asked by Belt Publishing to helm this project, said it was a long and daunting experience, especially because he started collecting stories just before the COVID-19 pandemic swept over the country.

“I mean it was in the middle of like COVID. And do I want to keep following up and badgering these people for an essay?” Gwin said. “I didn’t really know what to do. So it was interesting.”

But despite Gwin’s initial hesitancy about getting the anthology filled with essays and stories, he reached out to local Pittsburgh writers he knew, and word spread in the community. He also sent out a public call for submissions through Belt for anyone interested in participating.

Brian Broome, a Pittsburgh native and writing instructor at Pitt’s English department, had one of his pieces published in the East Pittsburgh section of the book. His short story “79,” named for the 79 bus, focuses on the East Hills neighborhood.

The East Hills, located on the very edge of the City, is a predominantly Black neighborhood often forgotten by the news according to Broome, unless it’s to report on a recent crime or the creeping threat of gentrification. Broome said he wanted to write about the East Hills and the

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people who live there because the media often only displays them in one way.

“I wanted to highlight the fact that the people in this neighborhood are real people,” Broome said. “People can't be seen as just a monolith, I mean, there are really good people in the East Hills but it only seems like the negative gets reported in the news.”

There are many pieces in the book that depict the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh in this raw and unabashed way. Gwin said it was one of his favorite parts about the stories. These writers conveyed what life was like “before” the pandemic that now dominates everyone’s lives — the good and bad parts about it.

Find the full story online at

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5

Instagram account seeks to reunite students’ missed connections Kaitlyn Nuebel Staff Writer

As she studied on the fourth floor of Hillman Library last fall, Rachael Stowe noticed an attractive guy with dark hair and pretty eyes looking at her.

“You know when you look at people and they just seem like they’re very down to earth and kind?” Stowe, a junior applied developmental psychology major, said. “All the interaction we had was from across the room on the fourth floor of Hillman, but there was just this energy he had, which I personally was drawn to.”

Stowe saw the mysterious guy, whom she refers to as “Hillman Boy,” sitting at the same spot in the library consistently in the coming days.

On each occasion they would look at each other and smile, but Stowe was hesitant to talk to him — she didn’t want to make things weird. It went on like that for weeks. Then months. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the University

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shut down. Stowe missed her chance.

But for Stowe and other Pitt students looking for their missed connections, it might not be too late. An anonymous Pitt student created Pitt Missed Connections on March 8, an Instagram account with the mission of putting students in contact with the person they wish they had spoken to — a cute COVID screener or person standing at the bus stop — but never did.

The creator of Pitt Missed Connections, a student who asked to be referred to by the pseudonym Timothy, said he posts about students’ missed connections submitted through an anonymous Google form, linked in the Pitt Missed Connections account bio.

“They can fill out a Google form describing the person they missed a connection with and hopefully the person in question will see it if they’re descriptive enough,” Timothy said.

“Then someone comments on that post if they think they’re the person in question, and the person who submits a missed connection can

then reach out to them.”

Timothy, who has played the role of matchmaker throughout his life, said he decided to start the account about an hour after coming across a missed connections account for students at the University of Vermont.

“I saw it and I just thought it would be so fun,” Timothy said. “I didn’t think it would blow up like it would, so I thought it would be a fun idea to try out, but it did end up getting really big.”

In less than a month, Pitt Missed Connections received over 130 posts from people looking for a missed connection, and almost 1,500 users followed the account.

Timothy said he started Pitt Missed Connections with a post explaining the account, and a few of his friends’ real missed connection stories. Then he followed hundreds of people he knew of but wasn’t friends with, to make sure the account couldn’t be tracked back to him.

“I wanted to remain anonymous and still do because I don’t want to deal with people saying, ‘Why did you not post this one? Why did you post this one and not censor it?’” Timothy said.

“I’m okay with that coming to an anonymous page with no name attached but I would not want to deal with that in my personal life.”

Missed connections began rolling in from other students. Timothy said he eventually received so many responses on the Google form that he had to cap the account at eight posts a day.

“For every 4, 5, 6, 8 that I post, I get double in the Google form,” Timothy said. “I think it’s because people see these posts and they want to have their own up there.”

One of those posts came from Stowe, who filled out the Google Form in hopes of finding Hillman Boy. “I decided to submit my Pitt Missed Connection through the page because I was like ‘why not? Maybe he’ll see it, maybe he won’t, maybe people will find it funny,’” Stowe said.

No one commented on Stowe’s post, but less than a week later she received a frantic text at 3 a.m. from a friend telling her to look at a new post on Pitt Missed Connections — a guy was looking for a girl he always saw on the fourth floor of Hillman library.

Stowe identified herself as the person who

April 7,2021

submitted the original Hillman post in a comment on the new post that received 35 likes.

“So many people were really drawn [to the story],” Stowe said. “I had people reaching out to me, so many people commenting on the post being like, ‘This is amazing, this is what I’m here for.’”

Kiera Dickey, junior marketing and business information systems double major, posted a comment comparing Stowe’s story to a quote on a wall in the Library.

“I feel like it’s a pretty universal Pitt experience to see someone in Hillman … so I thought that was adorable,” Dickey said. “My friends and I always look at the quotes on the wall in the staircase … there’s the one quote that’s like ‘I remember the night I met my wife in Hillman Library.’”

Lexi Handrinos, a first-year pursuing an emergency medicine major, said she also had her eye on Stowe’s post. Handrinos said that for many people, stories like Stowe’s offer a sign of hope in a difficult time.

“I think we’re all going through for a tough time right now, and seeing other people find happiness — even if it does end up in just a friendship or it does end up in a true love story — you see people happy to meet other people,” Handrinos said.

Stowe said she doesn’t know yet whether her story with Hillman Boy will be one of friendship or true love. While she has received 15 direct messages on Instagram asking if Hillman Boy ever reached out to her, she said she’s still waiting for a message from him.

“It’s sad that he hasn’t reached out, and maybe he never will, and maybe it’s not the person — there’s so many maybes here,” Stowe said, “but the fact that it gave people a distraction from everything else that’s been going on … I feel like it almost gave people an, ‘Oh my God these things can still happen even if our college experience is changing day by day.’”

Stowe said if there’s one thing she wants Hillman Boy to know, it’s that there is someone out there who noticed him.

“I just want Hillman Boy to know that somebody noticed him and that someone,

Find the full story online at

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6

Sports

Frozen Four preview pittnews.com

Pitt Athletics alums share concerns over Black History Month efforts

Alex Lehmbeck Sports Editor

Pitt’s official athletics Twitter account tweeted a message to its more than 38,000 followers on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month.

The tweet, accompanied by an Atlantic Coast Conference-created six-second video, revealed that the athletics department would share stories from Pitt athletes throughout February to commemorate Black History Month.

The announcement didn’t receive much attention, accumulating only a handful of retweets, but it came as a surprise to many familiar with Pitt Athletics’ social media presence. The primary athletics account did not post anything related to Black History Month on the first day of February last year, for example. Nor the year before, or the year before that.

This appears to be the first time in the account’s existence that it mentioned Black History Month at the start of February. The account typically encourages football fans this time of year to renew their season tickets for the fall.

Former Pitt track and field athlete Laila Ismail said the inactivity of the account, which did not have a single tweet related to Black History Month the two previous years, corresponds with a lack of attention the annual celebration received during her time in Oakland. Ismail, who graduated in 2018, said she never heard the topic

brought up during her entire college career.

“I honestly don’t even remember it being mentioned in Pitt Athletics, in my classes,” Ismail said. “February was all about the season starting.

I have no recollection of ‘Black History Month’ being uttered out of anyone's mouth.”

Pitt Athletics gave Black History Month more attention this year than in the past. The primary Twitter account had 17 tweets in February surrounding the subject, with a greater volume of content coming towards the end of the month.

This increase in attention comes during a year that Pitt Athletics has given conversations regarding race more of a platform on social media than it ever has. But former Pitt track and field athlete Jordan Fields, who won Pitt’s Senior of the Year award last year, said the sudden shift in rhetoric reeks of performative activism.

“A year ago, they were doing absolutely nothing,” Fields said. “The fact that they went from absolutely nothing to the bare minimum deepens the sense that a lot of what they’re doing is performative because we’re going from zero to 100.”

Pitt Athletics spokesperson E.J. Borghetti did not directly answer questions about the lack of Black History Month content on its social media accounts in past years.

Borghetti listed in a prepared statement some of the primary ways that the department has shown its dedication to “combatting racism and

discrimination in all its forms.” The statement primarily focused on the results of Panthers United, a committee created last summer with athletes, coaches and staff that strives to “promote an environment of inclusion” through “education, dialogue and through the celebration of our differences.”

Borghetti pointed out some of the results of collaborations with Panthers United — the creation of affinity groups, Until We Unite branding and enhanced education and training resources for the public. It also promoted the Voting Matters campaign, a program created to increase voter turnout from Pitt athletes.

The Pitt football account also promoted a 31-minute video on Pitt legend Bobby Grier to-

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wards the end of the month.

Most of the Black History Month-related tweets from the Pitt Athletics account featured current Black athletes explaining what the month means to them. The first of those short clips included first-year defender Zaria Stevenson from the women’s soccer team.

“Black History Month is a reminder of what my ancestors endured and overcame to get to the point where we are today,” Stevenson said in the 18-second video. “One thing it has helped out in today’s generation is diversity — specifically representation in authoritative roles, which is very important to connect with every ethnicity, race and gender.”

See BHM on page 8

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omet@pitt.edu

7

“The Pitt News is ultimately what helped me land my dream job.”

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BHM, pg. 7 But some former Pitt athletes question the authenticity that the athletic department allows when giving Black athletes this voice on a public platform. Former Pitt diver Lisa Coe, who graduated last year, said she wondered how much Pitt “censored” the messages its athletes wanted to share, and the University’s motivations behind the influx in “performative” efforts.

Coe compared the social media campaign to her own participation in past diversity initiatives as a member of the LGBTQ community, sharing a story about her contribution to the 2019 #NCAAInclusion campaign. She said Pitt asked her to submit a photo to post on the Twitter account for Life Skills, a program dedicated to preparing athletes for life after college, so she sent in a picture from a Boston Pride festival, which Pitt administrators questioned, asking if she was sure she wanted to post the picture instead of one from her sport. After Coe confirmed her intention, they posted the picture she chose.

“I was like ‘yeah, the whole point is this is a diversity campaign,’” Coe said. “Everyone already knows we’re athletes, it’s on the Pitt Athletics page.”

Borghetti did not address Coe’s story in his prepared statement, but Markeisha Everett, the assistant athletic director for marketing, said from what she knew of the social media campaign this year, the athletics department did not set any specific restrictions of what athletes could or could not say in the Black History Month videos.

Coe’s story raised a concern that many of the alums who spoke with The Pitt News shared from the start of their college careers — a perception that Pitt views them simply as athletes, with no more complexities in their lives or abilities to bring to the table. Ismail said celebration of Black athletes off the field, like Pitt’s recent spotlight on redshirt senior women’s soccer forward Taylor Pryce’s summer internship, is the type of content she would like to see more of.

“I feel like I was always only recognized as an athlete,” Ismail said. “There were other things I did on campus, but I feel like no one ever cared.

Even if it was just highlighting Black students that are also athletes, I feel like that’s such an important piece that was always missing.”

One problem that these alums seemed to unanimously agree upon is Pitt Athletics’ reliance on Black athletes to lead the dialogue surrounding Black History Month. The Pitt Athletics Twitter account posted a video of head men’s basketball coach Jeff Capel speaking on leading young Black men to an ACC Network

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interviewer, but has otherwise lacked any sort of messages from Pitt coaches this February.

Besides the short Twitter videos featuring athletes, Pitt Athletics released a 41-minute Black History Month athlete roundtable on YouTube titled “Panther’s Tribune,” where current athletes Chinaza Ndee (volleyball), Monica McNeil and Ade Jones-Roundtree (track and field) had an in-depth conversation. The roundtable did not include any coaches.

Coe said non-Black coaches could provide support as allies, and Fields delved into the bigger-picture problems that come with what she feels is a lack of leadership from coaches and staff.

“The issue with relying on students again for labor is Black people are doing all the work,” Fields said. “The kids end up doing a bulk of the work when it should be the adults and administrators who are being paid to get this stuff done, because, again, these people are not being compensated for their labor.”

Gabby Yearwood, the anthropology department’s director of undergraduate studies, has done extensive research throughout his career on structural racism within collegiate athletics.

Although Yearwood hasn’t followed Pitt Athletics’ Black History Month actions specifically, he pointed out Black students have been historically tasked with educating others about racism, particularly in the college environment.

He said because of the stresses student athletes face, particularly Black student athletes, administrators at universities should help take the lead on educational projects, allowing the students to make a difference without forcing them to bear too much additional pressure.

“While I think we should never get in the way of students leading, and I’m completely 100% in students leading in so many areas, we have to make sure they’re not taking on a burden of responsibility,” Yearwood said. “Part of that, even in leading, is reaching out and connecting with resources at the University that can move the needle for everybody.”

Everett said she placed a priority on amplifying Black athletes’ voices during her work for Black History Month. She said multiple coaches, including Capel and gymnastics head coach Samantha Snider, “raised their hands” and offered to contribute, but the primary focus remained on the athletes.

“The thing that we kept in mind is that our student-athletes expressed that their voices weren’t being heard,” Everett said. “My personal main focus was really on the student-athlete, go-

Find the full story online at

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8

Lance Aiken

The caretaker of Pitt Athletics Written by Alex Lehmbeck Photos by Thomas Yang When Pitt hired Jay Vidovich to lead its men’s soccer program in 2015, it didn’t take long for the highly touted head coach to get comfortable on the pitch. But new to the Steel City, Vidovich needed a tour guide, and, fortunately for him, he found one in custodian Lance Aiken Sr. Aiken now enthusiastically refers to Pitt head soccer coach Jay Vidovich as his “guy.” Vidovich said Aiken immediately helped him find his footing and get settled in the Pittsburgh area upon his arrival.

“I just thought he was a good guy, helpful, good person,” Vidovich said. “You could tell already he was a people person. I think I also felt like he already had a pulse on everything that was going on over here with all the teams and the kids.”

Although he began working in the Petersen Sports Complex at about the same time as Vidovich, Aiken had lived in Pittsburgh since 1993. He grew up in Buffalo, New York, where he had called home his whole life until he got laid off from his job at Buffalo General Hospital that year. Needing to provide for his son, he quickly

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grabbed an open custodial position at Pitt, a school he had grown familiar with while his brother, Curtis, played basketball there.

The determined Aiken came in with the intention to maintain a steady income and support his family, which the opportunity in Oakland presented. He didn’t expect that he’d still be here 28 years later, with no intention of ever departing the Steel City.

As Pitt Athletics has undergone changes in staff, facilities and athletes, Aiken has remained. When he first arrived at Pitt, the athletics department assigned him to work at Pitt Stadium. The venue was demolished in 1999, and he began working in Trees Hall, where he mostly cleaned the Pitt swimming facilities.

He went on to maintain the Graduate School of Public Health, Fitzgerald Field House, the chancellor’s office in the Cathedral of Learning and the School of Dental Medicine. Finally, Aiken settled back into athletic facilities, where he’s remained for the past six and a half years. He’s cleaned “just about every sport’s locker rooms” in his time here.

“I’ve covered them all,” Aiken said.

Members of the Pitt community said they have appreciated Aiken’s time and work in Pittsburgh. The impact he’s made from countless positive interactions extends from the people inside the

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Petersen Sports Complex, which Aiken maintains every day, to the peak of Pitt Athletics in Director of Athletics Heather Lyke. Aiken said he missed one of Lyke’s recent visits, and she noticed while going through COVID-19 protocols.

“Heather Lyke, the AD, they have to sit and do temperatures, and I was on vacation,” Aiken said. “I came back and somebody said Heather was looking, wondering where [I was] because normally they see me — happy-go-lucky Lance.”Petersen Sports Complex, home to Pitt’s baseball, softball, soccer and lacrosse teams. He arrives at the facility at about 7 a.m. every day, where he prepares the 12-acre complex for use in the coming morning. These responsibilities include laying down salt when it snows, scrubbing showers and bathrooms and running the walk behind machines, as well as sanitizing all touch points.

With only one other custodial worker in the building — who works the night shift — it may seem like a lot for one person to handle. But Aiken says he enjoys working alone. He doesn’t have to rely on any coworkers to get the job done the way he wants it, and both athletics staff and athletes provide all of the company he could ever need.

He said he feels a particularly upbeat atmosphere in the building when one of the teams gets an impressive win, mentioning that Pitt baseball’s recent sweep of Florida State even improved his own performance.

“They win a big game like that, I clean better, believe it or not,” Aiken said. “Everyone’s smiling and talking, then it moves on and they gotta get ready for the next one. It doesn’t last too long.”

As the contact person for the players and staff with any concern about the facility throughout the day, Aiken has embraced the countless interactions he has with everyone in the complex.

His supervisor, Earl Vojtash, said everyone can count on Aiken to brighten up any day.

“He likes to do his job and he likes to have a good time with the students that are up there,” Vojtash said. “He interacts pretty good with the students, so they have a good relationship up there.”

Former Pitt pitcher Derek West, now a member of the Houston Astros organization, said Aiken’s attitude represents the “gold standard” for Pitt Athletics.

“He’s very professional with his work, his personality, [he] goes above and beyond his occupation and cares so much for not just me and Pitt baseball but for every sport Pitt has to offer,” West said.

“Anyone who comes in contact with him, no matter how their day has gone, immediately feels even better.”

Athletics always felt like the right fit for Aiken, who played basketball for Burgard Vocational High School in Buffalo. He takes great pride in the success of Panther sports teams, and works overtime at the sporting events at the facility so he can catch the teams’ games.

While his typical work days end at about 4 p.m., Aiken usually works as late as midnight on gamedays. Before the event, he sets up tables and cleans the press boxes and visiting locker rooms. He usually monitors the bathrooms during the game, allowing him opportunities to catch the action on the field between checks. His favorite team to watch by far is men’s soccer — a sport that he used

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Melissa McGivney A shot of community Written by Siddhi Shockey Photos by Pamela Smith During her childhood, Melissa Somma McGivney often visited Bechtel’s Pharmacy in Slatington — a small town about an hour and a half north of Philadelphia.

While a routine visit for most, McGivney found herself in awe of the friendly neighborhood pharmacist, Joe Bechtel. He was well known in Slatington for helping neighbors pay their electric bills, contacting local hospitals when people had trouble and generally lending a hand without hesitation to a neighbor in need.

And at Pitt, McGivney — a professor and associate dean for community partnerships at the School of Pharmacy — is willing to do the same.

Nearly 20 years later, McGivney credits Bechtel as one of her greatest inspirations for becoming a pharmacist.

McGivney began her journey in 1998 after completing her doctorate in pharmacy and residency at Pitt. She started her career in 1999 as a professor of pharmacy at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre. McGivney began working at UPMC in 2002 where she collaborated closely with physicians to provide medications to patients. Now, after almost 20 years working as a professor at the Pitt School of Pharmacy, McGivney helps coordinate COVID-19 vaccine distribution efforts on campus and throughout Pittsburgh.

While working as a practitioner and teacher, McGivney quickly noticed a disconnect between physicians, pharmacists and the communities they were serving. As she thought back to the role Bechtel played in her hometown, she realized what she needed to do.

“As I continued my training and started working alongside physicians, I wanted to figure out how every community could have a community pharmacy like the one in my hometown,”

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McGivney said. “So the work that I have done is really helping to unravel some of those barriers.”

As a leader in the School of Pharmacy, McGivney spends much of her time coordinating programs between the University, the greater Pittsburgh community and other pharmacy schools across the state. Due to the pandemic, much of McGivney’s time is spent working at home, and she jokes that her son thinks her job is just to be on the phone all day.

Since the COVID-19 vaccine first became available last December, McGivney has worked to mobilize vaccination efforts in Oakland and surrounding neighborhoods. Realizing that the vaccine would be in short supply for some time, McGivney wanted to ensure that the pharmacy school was prepared with the tools for distribution.

“We wanted to be in the position to have the infrastructure, including the space, the people, the personnel, the policies and procedures, ready to go in whichever way vaccine may become available,” McGivney said.

The University tasked her with setting up a clinic in January to vaccinate patient-facing students, which meant joining forces between students, faculty and the Allegheny County Health Department. Around eight hundred health care personnel from six Pittsburgh-area colleges and universities were vaccinated.

One of her first steps in this large undertaking was getting pharmacy students licensed to administer vaccines. Pitt faculty and students from the schools of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Pharmacy, Nursing and Medicine administered shots at the clinic. She then worked with other faculty members, as well as staff at the Petersen Events Center, to set up the main concourse social-distance-style with tables and chairs, and to stock up on the necessary supplies to distribute the vaccines.

Following the success of this clinic, county

health officials contacted McGivney to take on a much bigger project — providing one thousand vaccines to senior citizens in Homewood and the Hill District. Pharmacy students again administered these vaccines, keeping in line with the School’s goal to help underserved neighborhoods and better exemplify to their students what equitable health care should be, as outlined by the new Pledge of Professionalism oath written this year.

“We had 72 hours to mobilize the entire operation, including working with our community organizations partners. The University’s Community Engagement Center leadership knew exactly who to call,” McGivney said.“That’s what's really inspiring about both of these neighborhoods is they had already been organizing, being

April 7,2021

ready for the moment where the vaccine was going to become available.”

In true Bechtel fashion, McGivney decided to reach out to various community health care organizers to begin their efforts. Her primary role was to provide the clinical setting to distribute the vaccine.

Shannah Tharp-Gilliam — director of research and evaluation at the Homewood Children's Village, an organization that is improving the lives of Homewood's children and reweaving the fabric of the community in which they live —

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Alaina Roberts Telling the truth about history

Written by Diana Velasquez Photos by Dalia Maeroff Growing up in Northern California, Alaina Roberts found her history classes to be relatively well-rounded. She learned about Native American history in her school, but as she grew older, and as she became a teacher herself, she learned that most of her students didn’t have this kind of background.

“We learned basic Native American history in elementary school, and a lot of it is tied to the mission system, which is in itself somewhat problematic,” she said. “But it's the idea that Native people don't exist that I hear from so many of my students all over.”

Roberts' interest in combined Native American and African American history stemmed from her own ancestral background. She has both African American and Native American lineage — her father’s ancestors were Black and mixed-race people who were owned by Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians.

Not many people are aware that some Native Americans owned Black slaves. Roberts said she spent extensive time researching this combined history, particularly the interactions between Native Americans and Black slaves in Oklahoma, many of whom traveled there on the infamous Trail of Tears in the mid 1800s.

“What does Oklahoma look like, as a space where we have Black people, Native people and white people living there?” Roberts said. “They’re trying to call this place home and basically fighting over who should have a claim to this space.”

This didn’t hold much significance to Roberts during her childhood, but once she got to college, she discovered that she wanted to bring light to the history of people like her ancestors, who have been left out of history books for far too long.

“History is a discipline and a general thing where you don't know what you don't know.

How can we understand the Native American experience today, in the modern world, without knowing Native American history?” she said.

“Because even well-meaning people, all we have to go on are stereotypes if we don't know the ac-

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tual history and the actual culture.”

Even though Roberts has only been at the University for three years, she has already made a significant impact on the history department and the course diversity for Pitt’s undergraduate students, according to former student Sydney Massenberg.

So when it came time for Massenberg to propose that Pitt add a mandatory Black studies course, she said there was no one she would have wanted by her side more than Roberts.

Massenberg initially proposed the course in June through a Change.org petition after the massive summer protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Months later, Massenberg’s proposal for a required Black studies course has reached far and beyond its initial roots.

Massenberg, who graduated last year and is now attending law school at New York Univer-

sity, said even though she isn’t a student at Pitt anymore, she feels confident that the proposal’s future is under Roberts’ watchful eye.

“She offered to sort of take over for me and do all of these things on my behalf, which I really appreciate because I really trusted her expertise and I knew we were on the same page,” Massenberg said.

Roberts has worked closely with John Stoner — a senior lecturer of history, as well as the cochair of the University Senate’s Educational Policies Committee — to get this proposal off of the internet and into the University’s formal channels.

Stoner said though the University has not implemented the proposal into its curriculum as of yet, he’s impressed with Robert’s dedication to the cause and the proposal’s driving force to change the way we learn.

“I think it sends a message to the world about

April 7, 2021

the kind of culture that it wants to create that will make Pitt welcoming to communities that it still struggles to serve, and to attract,” he said. “If she's willing to keep fighting this fight, I certainly look forward to having her as a partner and a leader in that regard.”

Despite hope for the future of the Black studies course, it might still have a long way to go — as of now, it’s working it’s way slowly through the official channels. Massenberg presented her case to the EPC with Roberts’ support late last summer, and now the proposal has moved on to a special committee.

Formed shortly after Massenberg’s presentation, this committee consists of members from the Educational Policies Committee, the Uni-

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