The Pitt News
The independent student newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh | PIttnews.com | April 18, 2017 | Volume 107 | Issue 162
PITT UNVEILS NEW CLUB SPORTS DOME PAGE 8
Remembering RooneY: funeral in oakland tuesday Janine Faust
Senior Staff Writer
Chancellor Patrick Gallagher, Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner and others cut the ribbon during the grand opening of the Pitt Sports Dome Monday morning. Thomas Yang STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
IMMIGRANTS SHARE STORIES OF HARDSHIP, UNITY Ashwini Sivaganesh News Editor
When Benedict Killang returned to Sudan after 30 years — because he was displaced from his home country during the 1983 civil war — his mother told him that most of his childhood friends were no longer alive and he was lucky to be living in the United States. Killang shared his story with more than 25 people who attended Immigration Journeys: Old and New as part of a project by the Allegheny County Library Association. The
event featured three-to-five-minute videos that showed immigration experiences from 10 different individuals from the South Hills community. FORGE — a student group involved with refugee awareness on and off campus — hosted the event Monday night at the O’Hara Student Center. After spending a few minutes conversing over pizza, the audience watched an hour-long presentation of the 10 videos followed by a panel discussion. The panel featured some of the storytellers from the video who talked about their
experience being an new immigrant in the United States, from learning English to familiarizing themselves with local bus routes. The videos included five stories of people who have lived in Pittsburgh for a long time but had ancestors who were immigrants to America, and five stories about recent immigrants –– mostly people displaced from their countries that had to seek a home in America as a refugee. Some of the videos included full names of the subjects, while others just mentioned first See Immigrants on page 2
In honor of former Steelers’ President and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney, Pittsburgh residents took over Heinz Field Monday and will commemorate his death in Oakland Tuesday. Rooney died last Thursday, April 13, at the age of 84. On the day following his death, Gov. Tom Wolf ordered the Pennsylvania commonwealth flag to fly at half-mast throughout the state. “Mr. Rooney was truly loyal and dedicated to the tremendous organization he built and the city and country that he loved,” Wolf said in a press release. Throughout the day Monday, admirers and fans visited Heinz Field to pay their respects at a public viewing from 2 to 7 p.m. His private funeral mass is set for 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Saint Paul Cathedral in Oakland. One or more lanes along Fifth Avenue between North Neville Street and University Place will be shut down from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. for Rooney’s processional, according to the Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety. See Rooney on page 3
News
Pitt students hold inaugural film festival
John Hamilton
Assistant News Editor
Nick Freeman had until 5 p.m. Saturday to submit his film for the first Pitt Film Festival, a showcase of short Pitt student films. He submitted it two minutes before deadline to Jake Savitz, the festival’s organizer, who would hand Freeman the festival’s most popular picture award two days later. Freeman, a sophomore political science major, started working on a script for his latest thriller in November 2016. After winning a camera rental in a raffle in January, he was motivated to assemble a crew — actors from Carnegie Mellon University and Pitt and some production assistants from UPTV. Shot on his free Canon C300, Freeman’s “Collusion” tells the story of Nick — an RA — and his resident, Connor. After Conner becomes involved with Nick’s girlfriend, Nick punches him and attempts to frame his resident by slicing his arm with a knife that he claimed belonged to Connor. Just as two unlikely The first Pitt Film Festival presented 14 short films to about 50 people in the heroes caught the incident on video, seeming to ruin Nick’s ruse, the film Frick Fine Arts Auditorium. John Hamilton CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Immigrants, pg. 1 names to keep privacy. The stories from people who were not first-generation immigrants talked about the conflicts their European ancestors had to escape — such as wars and limited job opportunities — and the parts of their culture they brought to America with them, like religion or trade crafts. The videos about recent immigrants also talked about strife –– specifically about how circumstances in their country, including Bhutan, Mexico and Sudan, forced them out of their country to find a new home as a refugee. Jared Gustafson, who recently interned for the ACLA, helped the 10 storytellers figure out what story they wanted to tell and how to represent it through video during four workshops put together by the ACLA in January and February. Photo montages of personal pictures from the storyteller and stock photos that depicted a
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particular emotion captivated audience members. “One of the best things was that we paired the older participants with teenage immigrants in the community during the last two workshops to help with the digital part of the project and that was a great way to engage and connect more of the community,” Gustafson, a sophomore political science major and tutoring coordinator with FORGE, said. Cecilia Oliveros, a senior economics and environmental studies major, said watching the video made her want to get more involved with the refugee community and learn another language in addition to English. “Watching these videos intensified the emotion behind refugee stories for me because it was a tangible thing,” Oliveros said. “People need to understand that it is unrealistic to expect people to know English.” The presentation was followed by a panel, moderated by Elaine Linn, assistant director for academic affairs for the Global Studies Center,
featuring Ashok, Narad, Rebecca and Meyri — four of the immigrants who made videos but didn’t want to share their last names for privacy reasons. Ashok spoke first, talking about the difficult circumstances in Bhutan during the ethnic cleansing in the 1990s. It was hard to leave some of his family and homeland behind, but he is glad he came to the United States in 2009 because he gets the chance to be a part of a more diverse and accepting community in Pittsburgh through projects like this. “Coming [to the United States] was easy [once we were allowed to] — we just had to get on a plane,” he said. “The way that we were greeted in America when we landed — I was so emotional.” Fellow panelist Narad, who also immigrated from Bhutan in 2015, said learning English has been one of the hardest parts for him since coming to the United States. He said it’s important for people to learn English, but also for people locally to get to know the immigrants in
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ended abruptly — to applause from the shocked audience. The audience’s reaction was what Savitz had been waiting for. “When I make it, I see it every day. I can’t even tell what works and what doesn’t,” he said before the screening. “I’m excited to see how other people respond to it.” Monday night, the 50 students and faculty gathered in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium clearly responded well to Freedman’s film, awarding “Collusion” the most popular picture at the festival via a text-in vote after the films were projected. The festival handed out another award for best picture, chosen by a panel of five judges. The award went to Samantha McCoy for her one-take dance film about a rape at a college party. The festival showed 13 other short films — ranging from the lighthearted “Perks of Being a Waffle,” a comedy about a human and a waffle that switch bodies, to the darker “Follow Me,” about a stalker-for-hire who snaps photos for See Film Festival on page 3 their community. “It’s important to have interpreters who can help us understand immigrants ... but there are many different languages from many different parts of the world,” Narad said. Rebecca and Meyri both shared how the experience brought them closer to their families — for Rebecca it was a way to share the story with her children, while for Meyri it was a way for her to get closer to her mother and finally talk about the shared experience they had immigrating to the United States. Sally Rafson, 57, the project manager for this ACLA endeavour, closed out the panel and said that while some of the stories expressed by the refugees were powerful on their own, allowing the immigrants to talk about them in their communities was a way to empower them. “[The videos] show how easy life is [in the United States], but we are living with the history that everyone else has had — it brings the reality of the world to us,” Rafson said.
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Film Festival, pg. 2 his clients but gets into trouble with police because of his own obsession. Savitz, a sophomore film studies major, started the festival to showcase student work in a more communal platform than Facebook or YouTube. “It’s a chance for everyone to get together and see other films,” he said. “A formal premiere event — in front of your peers on a screen — is something people might not get to experience.” Demetrius Wren, a visiting professor at Pitt teaching topics in feature films, said screenings like this are an important part of the filmmaking process because they allow filmmakers to gauge reactions. “There is a process to making a movie. Unfortunately, in the internet world, the last process –– which is presenting it to an audience and seeing how they react — is lost,” Wren said. “You can feel a room become breathless and you can feel where things don’t land.” Wren and his fellow judges picked McCoy’s “I Don’t Know How it Started” — which left the audience silent and re-
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ceived the biggest applause of the night when the audience caught their breath — as the festival’s best picture. The short film was shot in a single take in Schenley Plaza as a group of dancers enacted a rape at a college party. A voice narrated the story — “They let it happen, even though I was drunk” — as the camera floated around the dancers who grabbed the victim and moved her into vulnerable positions. Wren and another judge, Aaron Henderson, studio arts assistant professor, said they looked for a film that demonstrated both technical skills and emotional intelligence. “I was looking for something that had a person’s voice coming out of it,” Henderson said. The first festival had submissions from Pitt filmmakers only — but Savitz said he hopes the festival can grow into a Pittsburgh-wide student festival. “A writer at CMU could have someone directing from Pitt, borrowing equipment from Duquesne while a person at Point Park is the cinematographer,” he said.
Rooney, pg. 1 Only residents will be able to access the block of North Dithridge Street that is bordered by Bayard Street and Fifth Avenue from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m., and South Dithridge Street will also be restricted to residents from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. President Barack Obama, who appointed Rooney to the ambassador position he held from 2009 to 2012, will also attend the funeral, according to a statement Trib Live received from Obama spokesperson Kevin Lewis. “Dan Rooney was a great friend of mine, but, more importantly, he was a great friend to the people of Pittsburgh, a model citizen and someone who represented the United States with dignity and grace on the world stage,” Obama said in a statement released on Twitter April 13. Rooney, the son of the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers Art Rooney, served as the Steelers second president from 1975 to 2002, according to his Pro Football Hall of Fame profile. As a prominent and beloved NFL executive, Rooney was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2000 for his work with the Steelers. While working with the Steelers, Rooney also co-founded The Ireland Funds, global philanthropic network promoting and supporting peace, culture, education and community de-
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velopment throughout the island of Ireland and Irish-related causes around the world, in 1976, according to its website. Now active in 12 countries, The Ireland Funds continues to support philanthropic causes for the Irish people. President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins released a statement following Rooney’s death, remembering Rooney as “deeply committed to Ireland and the Irish people” and “always conscious of his Irish roots.” Higgins also said Rooney’s work with The Ireland Funds left a “tangible legacy” and began the process to bring peace to Ireland. Mayor Bill Peduto said in a statement released on the day of Rooney’s passing that both the city and the nation owe much to Rooney. “Thank you for your service to our country. Thank you for your devotion to your family and the Steeler nation. Thank you for all you have done for Pittsburgh,” Peduto said. Wolf also released a statement that day offering his condolences to Rooney’s family and honoring the dedication and loyalty he showed to the NFL and to his country. “[Rooney] will be missed, but his legacy will live-on forever in the hearts of the countless players, fans and citizens [who] were lucky enough to experience his passion and grace,” Wolf said.
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Opinions column
from the editorial board
Harvard gender rules change takes step in right direction When Harvard announced their decision to effectively outlaw single-gender organizations on campus last spring, reactions were mixed. The policy, which will be implemented starting with the class of 2021, will preclude members of unrecognized single-gender organizations from holding leadership positions elsewhere on campus, as well as from receiving letters of recommendation from faculty members. In making the decision, the university cited findings of “deeply misogynistic attitudes” in single-gender organizations that contribute to unsafe sexual environments. On the surface, the change seems positive. But some, including Harvard graduates Morgan Arenson, Eugenia Huh and Ariel Stoddard, expressed fear of disenfranchising women in the social scene as a result of the rules change. In a column for The Harvard Crimson, the three noted that if male organizations become co-ed, subsequent women members will be at a disadvantage due to the male domination of these groups, both historically and in their alumni networks. Additionally, there’s a fear that women’s groups that traditionally acted as female-centric safe spaces will go extinct. But inclusivity is not incompatible with safe spaces — gender diversity benefits all, and Harvard’s rules change seeks to express this. The change will help to reduce sexual violence and empower people to seek out whichever social circle they prefer to join. And while the new policy may not do much to ensure that currently single-gendered organizations will diversify any time soon, the issue isn’t that simple. This is especially true of traditionally male-only organizations. Cultural perceptions of fraternities linking them to misogyny and rape culture mean that women might not join in droves. In the long run, however, fraterni-
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ties will hopefully lose that social stigma and become co-ed, philanthropy-centered organizations that truly exist for the benefit of the community. While concerns about disruptive men coming into all-female spaces and threatening members are certainly valid, they are likely also overemphasized. Clubs would still have the ability to eject troublemakers regardless of gender. Women’s spaces will still be supportive of women — the only difference will be a greater degree of inclusiveness for men and non-binary individuals. And, for now, traditionally female organizations don’t have to worry about an immediate upheaval of their structure. Noting the concerns of Arenson, Huh and Stoddard, as well as the historical inequity faced by women, the university granted a three-to-five year “bridge period” to these traditionally female groups to empower them to continue to focus on women’s issues while transitioning into inclusive organizations. The goal is that currently existing safe spaces will continue to exist while figuring out how to be safe and inclusive simultaneously, which will require more than accepting a member’s gender identity as assumed support. After the bridge period, the contributions of the organization will be assessed, as well as their progress toward gender inclusivity. Until then, Harvard shouldn’t be criticized for failing to protect women’s spaces. By allowing students to join organizations regardless of gender identity, the change will both help men’s organizations distance themselves from a culture of sexual violence and make femalecentric spaces more inclusive. While rule changes such as this won’t end rape culture overnight, it’s a step in the right direction toward more inclusive communities. And that’s something everyone can benefit from.
Period taboo harms all women
Raka Sarkar SENIOR STAFF ILLUSTRATOR
Jaime Viens Columnist
It’s “that time of the month” again. The euphemism is a playful, if not condescending, way to avoid actually having to discuss the reality of periods. But not all of us can use a little wordplay to so easily avoid the subject matter. Menstruation is not only a reality, but a serious financial, emotional and physical burden that billions of women around the world can’t avoid. But enduring stigma about periods and their surrounding issues allow societies to ignore the fact that many women still lack access to even the most basic feminine hygiene prod-
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ucts. An open dialogue between the people who legislate about tampons and those who use them would enhance education about the fundamentals of menstruation. Honesty about periods would also spread awareness about — and potentially help alleviate — the severity of menstrual hygiene conditions for women living in poverty both in the United States and other countries. While officials at many levels of government across the world don’t view it as a priority, feminine hygiene is a necessity. With basic expenses for food, water and See Viens on page 5
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Viens, pg. 4 clothing, the additional costs of menstrual hygiene products can be highly restrictive, especially for the more than 800 million women and girls who subsist on less than one dollar per day. This is especially striking when you consider the fact that the average American woman will spend nearly $2,000 on tampons in her lifetime. For American women living below the line of poverty, access to menstrual sanitary products can be even more difficult as the food stamp program doesn’t cover feminine hygiene products. Most American women live in one of the 46 states that still maintain some form of “tampon tax” — Pennsylvania is among the handful that doesn’t consider tampons a “luxury item” and doesn’t place a sales tax on it. The inaccessibility of menstrual products is a problem all across the world — even in the United States and western Europe. A disproportionate level of female students from low-income backgrounds in Leeds, United Kingdom, are relying on
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their teachers to provide them with tampons and sanitary pads or missing school when they can’t get access. And the loss of school days translates far too often to female dropouts from school and constrained career choices as a result. In India, for example, menstruation is so highly stigmatized that it’s actually viewed as making women impure. Menstruating women are not allowed to enter certain areas and are sometimes not even allowed to touch other people during their period. The impact this has on these women’s interaction with the rest of society is enormous — it’s almost impossible for them to exist independently when social rules constrain their actions so strictly. “The shame and internalized misogyny girls feel keep them from seeking help,“ explained Lauren O’Brien, CEO and co-founder of Pauline Juliet — a nonprofit dedicated to providing women in Uganda the education and empowerment necessary to effect change — in an interview. In India, 88 percent of women are forced to employ unwashed and reusable cloth, ash, leaves and husks as alterna-
tives to sanitary hygiene products that are simply too expensive to be truly accessible. But this method is dangerous and can even become fatal. According to a 2011 survey of gynecologists conducted by The Times of India, a lack of menstrual hygiene leads to increased rates of cervical cancer, toxic shock syndrome, reproductive tract infection and a number of other bacterial infections. Similar problems plague other parts of the world, including Sub-Saharan Africa, where women often resort to using rags, toilet paper or old newspapers to combat the monthly blood flow. Even when it’s a human being’s life at risk, social norms often dictate that these vital conversations that need to be had about menstruation are just too “awkward” to bring up. Instead, we pile social discomfort onto the physical discomfort menstruation already affords a woman. Beyond the risks concerning a woman’s life that come with making menstruation into a taboo subject, refusing to talk about the biological reality puts her livelihood at stake as well. A UNESCO report estimates that 10 percent of girls attending school in Sub-
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Saharan Africa miss up to 20 percent of the academic year due to menstruation. In India, 23 percent of female students drop out altogether after menarche. “In Uganda, [girls] who menstruate miss an average of 25 percent of their school year,” O’Brien said. “There are many factors that contribute to [the issue] such as not having menstrual products, not having proper medical care, not having separate bathrooms for girls and social taboo.” It should never be the case that a woman can’t fully participate in society due to a sanitary inconvenience. Menstruation is not an option, and neither are the products we need to deal with them in a sanitary way. So why do we treat them as if they are? Girls should not be forced into an inferior social role because of society’s inability to discuss women’s issues. If we can’t do better for our girls and women, then we can’t do better — period. Jaime primarily writes about social and environmental issues for The Pitt News. Write to her at jrv28@pitt.edu.
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Culture
Education and incarceration
A program at Chatham University, Words Without Walls, brings creative writing instructors into Pittsburgh’s prisons. In the fall, Pitt will begin a similar program. | by Salina Pressimone, Staff Writer
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fter getting arrested in front of her 4-month-old daughter and serving two years in prison, Sarah Womack turned to prose and poetry to stage her comeback. “I come from alcohol. Uncle Kenny, glass shaking in his hand — yellow, gray, bloated. / I come from alcohol. I seize and hallucinate in my hospital bed,” Womack writes in one of her poems. Womack wrote the poem at the Sojourner House — a residential rehabilitation house for mothers and their children — in 2015, through a program designed to help inmates and recovering addicts express themselves through words. The program, called Words Without Walls, is a writing outreach program at Chatham University that has MFA students teach creative writing courses to interested students at the Allegheny County Jail Downtown, the State Correctional Institution-Pittsburgh just west of Downtown and the Sojourner House in East Liberty. Founded in 2009 by Chatham University alum Sarah Shotland and program director and professor Sheryl St. Germain, Words Without Walls teaches 18 classes every year and publishes an anthology of its students’ best work at the end of every cycle. After teaching in a prison in Iowa, St. Germain wanted to start a similar program in Pittsburgh. The idea caught Shotland’s interest and the two spearheaded the program at Chatham. The program aims to use creative writing to bring down preexisting “walls” — both physical and metaphorical — that separate inmates and recovering addicts from the rest of the world. With 49,914 offenders in the system in 2015, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has no shortage of potential students for programs such as Words Without Walls. Pitt will soon join Chatham in working to help people find their voice. Beginning in the 2017 fall semester, Pitt will hold courses at the State Correctional Institution-Fayette through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program — a national program that brings educators into prisons to teach classes to inmates. Inside-Out, which began in 1997 and has spread to nearly 100 colleges and universities, differs from Words Without Walls in that the classes include an equal number of undergraduate students and incarcerated students in the same classroom — in Pitt’s case, these classes will take place inside the State Correctional Institution-Fayette building. Also unlike Words Without Walls, the Inside-Out program teaches a wider variety of classes than just creative writing — the program through Pitt, for example, will teach literature and political science classes.
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Photos courtesy of Sarah Shotland and WordsWithoutWalls.com Pitt political science professor Chris Bonneau, who will be teaching a course in Pitt’s Inside-Out program in the fall, heard about the program on NPR and immediately identified a need for such a program in Pittsburgh. Bonneau worked with Pitt English professor Shalini Puri to establish a chapter of the program at the University. “Most of these individuals are going to be released at some time. And a lot of them want to improve themselves,” Bonneau said. “So if we can help them improve their situation, to give them a skill like critical thinking or writing, or help facilitate that … we have, I think, an obligation to do that. And that helps everybody.” Pitt’s program will share many similarities with Words Without Walls, whose instructors often have to adjust on the fly to new group dynamics as well as a variety of educational backgrounds. The non-traditional students in Words Without Walls also often have a variety of interests, ranging from fairy-tale literature to U.S. citizenship. Many students, such as Womack, have backstories rooted in pain or regret, and take a chance on the writing program as a means of trying to heal. “When you’re out there using drugs and alcohol, you don’t believe that you’re worth anything, you don’t believe that you’re good at anything anymore,” Womack said. “[Words Without Walls] gives people who don’t have a voice, a voice.” Pitt National Scholarship Adviser Ian Riggins — who got his
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MFA at Chatham and is a former Words Without Walls teacher — heard about the program through word of mouth from graduate students already teaching in the program, and was immediately drawn in. He said he was excited to practice creative writing with a new demographic of students but quickly discovered just how new of a teaching style he would need. “We created this whole syllabus and all these things we were going to focus on, but after the first day, we realized our syllabus wasn’t going to work at all,” Riggins said, referring to the erratic student attendance that comes in a prison classroom setting. “You could be locked down in your cell, for example, and not be able to get out and do something or someone might not be able to attend class because of that.” To adapt to the new setting, Riggins begins a class session with a writing prompt, followed by a reading and group discussion and finally another writing prompt in response to the reading. “Chatham gave us a lot of freedom to do what we wanted to do with the class and what we thought was best,” Riggins said. The program has helped students receive national recognition and opportunities for publication of their work, pursue MFAs of their own and gain a more in-depth experience with its Maenad Fellowship program at Chatham University. See Words Without Walls on page 7
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Words Without Walls, pg. 6 Admitted fellows, such as Womack, participate in a 12-week series of creative writing practices, weekly seminars and a final public reading fundraiser — which took place April 13, at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination in Bloomfield. Words Without Walls impacts not only its students, but its instructors as well. MFA Program Assistant at Chatham and recent alumna Brittany Hailer was a first-year MFA student in 2013 when her father — a drug addict — suffered a mental breakdown on the first day of classes at Chatham. He disappeared and has since remained unknown and absent from Hailer’s life. St. Germain suggested Hailer shadow a Words Without Walls writing class. “I came to my first day of class and was trying to pretend like I belonged, but I felt very out of place. And [St. Germain] recognized it immediately,” Hailer said. From there, both Hailer’s public and private written lives began to stabilize. “We were asking these women to write about their trauma and to be very confessional, and I myself wasn’t doing that,” Hailer said. “So I started to write alongside of them and it completely changed my writing.” Hailer not only saw the liberating effect that writing was having on the women at Sojourner House, but also learned to cope with her own pain as well. As a result, her own writing has become more transparent and more focused on social justice issues. “There’s something about the community and literature that unlocks something,” Hailer said. But it doesn’t come easily. Students in prisons or treatment centers often have reservations at first about opening up and facing their past head on. Hailer addresses this apprehension by, for example, encouraging her students to tell their own histories through the lens of fairy tales.
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After having students read a fairy tale poem, such as Anne Sexton’s “Cinderella,” Hailer asked the students to consider the evil stepmother with questions such as, “How did she become who she became?” “And then they’re writing about themselves
they normally don’t think about visiting and that they’ve tried to repress in an effort to block and run from their past selves or mistakes. In expressing their own honest thoughts and inner vulnerabilities — on the page and in the classroom — the teachers establish a kind of credibil-
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I want other women to know that they’re not the only ones who have experienced the things that I’ve experienced
- Sarah Womack
as the stepmother,” Hailer said. “Not only are they writing a metaphor without even realizing it, it’s also easy to write from a voice that isn’t necessarily your own.” Hailer brings her students to a state of mind
ity among the enrolled students. “Something that I try to do is create empathy between us. I tell them about my dad the first day, and, because I am the child of an addict, they then realize that maybe their kids could
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someday get a master’s degree,” Hailer said. Sharing words and experiences is just as crucial as writing them in Words Without Walls, which is why the curriculum always entails students reading their work aloud, a part that former Words Without Walls teacher Megan Pahos said was integral to the program’s success. “I think aside from the writing, some students found a place to talk about some things that had been on their minds and on their hearts, that they weren’t able to talk about in other settings,” Pahos said. “For me, that’s the most important part of writing.” Womack said, because the program emphasizes sharing and exchanging feedback, she struggled during her time at Sojourner House with reading pieces aloud about losing her daughter or her history with using drugs, but says it was fundamental to her healing process. “I’ve had such an overwhelmingly good response from being honest about my experiences and writing them as honestly as I can,” Womack said. “And it’s important for me to read them publicly or to have them published because I want other women to know that they’re not the only ones who have experienced the things that I’ve experienced.” Since completing the Words Without Walls program and now nearing the end of her Maenad Fellowship, Womack plans on submitting some of her work for publication and has already been contacted by Pittsburgh Parent Magazine to do some freelance work. Through Words Without Walls, Womack’s past became more than just history — it became a story. But of course, Words Without Walls cannot guarantee a future for Womack. The remaining pages are left up to each individual student, as Hailer has learned from personal experience. “You can’t make anybody make the right decision,” Hailer said. “But you can give them the tools to grow confident and talk about themselves.”
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Sports DOME SWEET DOME: PITT UNVEILS $13.2 MILLION CLUB SPORTS FACILITY
Pitt students play games like cornhole and spikeball inside the brand-new Pitt Sports Dome on Monday afternoon. Thomas Yang STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Ryan Zimba Staff Writer
Pitt students and club sports athletes received a much-needed facilities upgrade Monday morning, as the University officially opened the Pitt Sports Dome to the student body. The sunny sky and warm weather were in stark contrast to the dome’s primary purpose as a functional winter facility, something Chancellor Patrick Gallagher joked about during his speech in front of the students and faculty who came to honor the occasion. “Of course, on a day like today, you may be thinking, ‘Why did we build a sports dome? It’s so nice,’” Gallagher said. “But Pittsburgh weather doesn’t always bless us with days like this.” The dome — located behind the Charles L. Cost Center — will serve as a new practice facility for many of the University’s club sports teams and as a recreational field space for student organizations to reserve. Standing at 80 feet and covering 100,000 square feet,
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the $13.2 million facility contains three full-size turf fields. Until now, Pitt’s club and recreational sports teams have had to share the space at the Cost Center to hold practices, with some teams meeting late into the night. The new facility will help to relieve the congestion at the Cost Center by providing clubs with extra space. Club lacrosse player Brian Stefan said the dome will help his team organize practices at more convenient hours. “[Scheduling practices] for the lacrosse team specifically, it’s been absolutely terrible,” Stefan, a senior natural sciences major, said. “We can normally get about two nights a week and they’re always after 9 [p.m.] ... and then we have to share it with [a few] other sports teams.” According to Vice Provost and Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner, the process of building the dome began in 2012 under former Vice Provost and Dean of Students Kathy Humphrey because students often talked
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about wanting more on-campus recreation facilities. The dome was formally announced this past summer, and construction began shortly afterwards, with the giant white bubble being inflated Dec. 20. Since then, the construction team has installed the turf and lighting, among other necessities The unveiling of the dome, Bonner said, was an important milestone for Pitt’s club sports teams and recreational organizations. “Today is a mark in a long journey for us to look at how we can improve our campus recreation facilities,” Bonner said. Bonner said the benefit of this facility to the campus will outweigh its hefty price tag. Considering Pitt’s urban landscape, he’s pleased the University found room to construct it and he hopes the students will come to see it as a worthwhile investment. “I think it’s a pretty big step [for student recreation],” Bonner said. “I think that having something like the See Dome on page 9
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Dome, pg. 8 Pitt Dome gives our students that much more space to participate in recreation, particularly during the winter months.” Linda Morse, a member of Pitt’s women’s ultimate frisbee team, agreed the dome would be extremely useful. “I think that the dome is going to be a great addition and definitely a draw for incoming Pitt students,” Morse, a senior applied statistics and mathematics major, said. “The Cost Center just isn’t a practical use and the dome is a state-of-the-art facility that shows that the school not only cares about the Division I sports but also about all the Pitt students.” At the base of the structure, Gallagher, Bonner and Club Sports Council Member Maddie Wirth gave speeches before the group finished the on-stage event with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. “This project itself was a direct reflection of what happens when our student organizations identify a need and our Pitt community dedicates itself to finding an answer,” Gallagher said in his speech. The Office of Student Affairs then invited those in attendance inside to take a first look at the indoor facility. Students immediately flocked inside the enormous bubble to take part in games like cornhole and Spikeball. Players hit the ball back and forth, diving and lobbing it to their teammates — some in athletic shorts, some in business attire. Several club sports teams who plan on using the fields had tables set up to show off their accomplishments and give students information about their group. Student Affairs distributed free blue Tshirts and water bottles commemorating the dome’s grand opening. Outside the dome, the University held a catered lunch for both students and faculty. Gallagher and new Pitt Athletic Director Heather Lyke ate sandwiches while chatting with Pitt’s club hockey athletes, who sported their retro-colored jerseys for the opening. Student Government Vice President and Chief of Cabinet Rohit Anand was one of the strongest advocates for the dome. His role, he said, was to bring forth the students’ opinions to those
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higher up in the administration. “I mostly met with [Assistant Director for Facilities & Aquatics] Jason Miller,” Anand said. “I just talked to him about how students really wanted to see campus recreation [and] some of the feedback we got from students and how we could work together to go about improving it for all students.” Without the students voicing their opinion, the facility would not have been built this quickly. But not everyone was happy about the spending. A group of student activ-
ists decided to voice their displeasure by unfurling a banner which stated, “$13M+ for the Dome but not $15 for workers?” referencing the recent push for an increase in minimum wage. Anand — a graduating senior — has no such complaints. While he won’t be able to enjoy the Dome, he’s proud of what he and his peers accomplished. “This is a huge achievement for Student Affairs and for all students,” Anand said. “It’s awesome just seeing this coming in and knowing how much of an impact it’s going to make.”
The Pitt News SuDoku 4/18/17 courtesy of dailysudoku.com
April 18, 2017
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