4-20-17

The Pitt News

The independent student newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh | PIttnews.com | april 20, 2017 | Volume 107 | Issue 164

Peduto calls for more diversity in city hiring

VIRTUAL REALITY

James Evan Bowen-Gaddy Assistant News Editor

Mayor Bill Peduto implemented new measures Wednesday to amp up diversity efforts in city hiring procedures.

According to a press release from the mayor’s office, Peduto issued an executive order April 19 to create the position of a diversity and inclusion officer — who will work to produce policy focused on recruiting diverse employees — as well as a task force and a set of actions that aim to promote higher diversity in city-related hiring.

Kevin Acklin, Peduto’s chief of staff, said that while the intent of the executive order is geared toward the employment of women and minority groups, Peduto will consider other populations as well.

“The administration is open to consider other categories of disadvantaged populations upon recommendation of the task force being formed under the order,” Acklin said. The administration did not offer other possibilities for what disadvantaged populations could mean.

City officials will make up the task force, but the mayor’s office has not yet announced their names, according to Katie O’Malley,

Pittsburghers, virtually fly through California as part of Sunkists “sensory experience” tent in Schenley Plaza Kyleen Considine STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Arrests made in Meyran vandalism spree John Hamilton

graffiti at 4:05 a.m. Tuesday while on foot patrol, according to Pitt spokesperson Joe Pitt police arrested two women Tues- Miksch. They chased and eventually apday in connection with graffiti painted on prehended two suspects in dark clothing.

The vandals had spray painted “[House sidewalks, vehicles and houses on Meyran number] Meyran has drugs” and other acAvenue. cusations directed toward two individuals Pitt police noticed freshly painted See Rooney on page 5 on sidewalks on the 300 block of Meyran Assistant News Editor

and a parking space on the 3500 block of Louisa Street.

The suspects also graffitied nine cars and two houses, Miksch said. They targeted a house on the 300 block of Meyran — the same one they accused of See Vandalism on page 5

Roundup of first mayoral debate Stephen Caruso

Contributing Editor For the first time Wednesday night, all three of Pittsburgh’s Democratic mayoral candidates took to the same stage.

Live on WTAE, City Councilperson Darlene Harris, Rev. John Welch le and a current Mayor Bill Peduto traded opinP ions, arguments i and occasional a barbs in a fight b for Pittsburf ghers’ votes in the primary May 16.

The minute long answers sometimes left candidates lost for words or presenting unclear opinions, but three topics showed clear differences — how to fix the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, when to release police body camera footage and whether Pittsburgh should be a sanctuary city.

Darlene Harris While the veteran councilperson said she was disappointed she didn’t get a chance to bring up her hatred of bike lanes, she did put her moderate view of governing on display.

Harris focused more on fixing potholes and strong policing instead of longer term issues like housing developments.

Harris, who represents much of North Side, said the reason for the PWSA’s myriad issues — from lead in the water to overbilling — is mismanagement. She asserted that under Peduto, the authority let go of too many employees, leading to less expertise

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Mayor Bill Peduto speaks to student government representatives on March 23. John Hamilton CONTRIBUTING EDITOR and overstretched staff.

Harris also said she supported a bill currently in the Pennsylvania House that would give police final say on the release of body camera footage.

“We have to trust our police, we have to trust our law enforcement,” Harris said.

And on sanctuary cities, while she expressed her support for immigrants, she rejected the notion that the city should risk losing any funding by refusing to cooperate with federal authorities to deport undocumented immigrants.

“We cannot afford for the people that live

a city whose c r i sis was so bad it became a state and federal disaster area.

To solve the problem, Welch, who has never held elected office, advocated the city proclaim a state of emergency and provide filters to every resident — a solution Peduto has announced but has yet to implement.

On body cameras, Welch, who marched in Ferguson during the controversy surrounding the shooting death of Michael Brown by police, was adamant for transparency.

“It should absolutely be made available to the public,” he said of body camera footage.

And on Pittsburgh becoming a sanctuary city, Welch was fully in favor, saying, “Pittsburgh police will not act as an extension of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”

Bill Peduto As for the incumbent, Peduto spent the night firing back at Welch’s quips. When the reverend claimed he gave out a specific tax credit “like Tic Tacs” to developers, Peduto responded he’d only given one.

After Welch decried autonomous vehicles

in Pittsburgh to lose any of our federal or state funds,” Harris said.

John Welch Welch, a social activist and dean of students at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, hit Peduto hard, calling Uber, a company Peduto has partnered with, an “unethical corporation” and questioning his fundraising from Pittsburgh developers.

That disagreement carried over to his solutions for the city’s problems. Welch stressed the threat that lead in the water posed to Pittsburghers, and compared the city’s water situation to Flint, Michigan — See Debate on page 5

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Pitt researchers identify new cancer risk Rose Luder

Staff Writer Scientists have identified a new cancer risk associated with chromosomes, according to a 22-year-long study from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

Jian-Min Yuan — a professor in Pitt’s School of Public Health, a physician and researcher — conducted research indicating that the length of telomeres — the protective caps found on the end of genetic material, called chromosomes — might be related to cancer risk.

Chromosomes are a thread-like structure made up of DNA and proteins. During cell division, the ends of chromosomes are damaged. Telomeres are made up of unimportant genetic material, so that when chromosome ends are damaged, it is the telomeres that suffer, rather than DNA that is necessary for survival.

According to Yuan’s research, which he presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research April 3, longer telomeres could indicate that

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an individual is at higher risk for developing cancer.

“If the cell has a longer telomere length it has a tendency to survive more. With each division [of chromosomes] you can have more errors. This could be a part of the reason,” Yuan said.

The implication of this, Yuan said, is that, individuals with exceptionally long telomeres will be able to take preventative measures against the risk of cancer. If an individual knows that they have long telomeres, then they can get more regular cancer screenings and start treating cancer earlier.

Patricia Opresko, a faculty member in the environmental and occupational health department at Pitt and a researcher at Hillman Cancer Center, said telomere length primarily depends on genetics, but environmental factors can also alter the length.

“Some human population studies indicate that exposures to environmental factors — including air pollution, cigarette smoke and pesticides — are associated with See Telemere on page 4

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Wikipedia Creative Commons

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Telemere, pg. 3 telomere shortening, whereas exposure to arsenic is associated with longer telomeres” Opresko said.

The study, conducted by Yuan and a team of five other scientists, began in 1993.

The team examined blood samples collected from more than 28,000 people enrolled in the Singapore Chinese Health Study, and then followed the electronic health records of participants for 22 years.

At the conclusion of the study in 2015, 4,060 of the 28,000 study participants had developed cancer. Yuan and his team used this information to determine a relationship between cancer and telomere length. Blood samples revealed that the one-fifth of participants with the longest telomeres had a 33 percent higher chance of developing cancer, after accounting for age, health and lifestyle factors.

According to Bennett Van Houten — Richard M. Cyert professor of molecular oncology in the department of pharmacology and chemical biology and associate director for basic research at the UPMC Aging Institute — Yuan’s study is groundbreaking, but he also said it is important to see the study’s limits.

Van Houten, who also works as the coleader in the program of molecular and cellular cancer biology at the Cancer Institute, said there are too many variables in cancer to simply say that telomeres and cancer have a causal relationship. He said sometimes telomere studies miss part of the picture because they don’t look at telomere lengths in tissues.

“All the work that’s being done is on personal blood, and very little work is being done on the tissue and [tissue studies] are important,” Van Houten said. “Telomeres can vary in different cells, in different [tissues].”

According to Yuan, the issue of telomere length has to be approached carefully, since telomere shortening is known to be a significant cause of aging.

Researchers at institutions including Duke and Stanford universities are conducting studies about telomere-lengthening in an effort to slow down the aging process.

Yuan warns against this kind of research, since telomere shortening has produced negative effects, and the effects of telomere lengthening are not known.

“The mentality should be, ‘We need to

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April 20, 2017

have optimal length of telomeres — we can’t have too short because of increased aging, and we can’t have too long because of increased cancer rate,’” Yuan said.

Although his research indicates that shorter telomeres might reduce the risk of cancer, Yuan said, for now, lifestyle factors should be prioritized over genetic modifications.

“All we can really do is live a healthy life for now, and maybe one day genomic-based medicine will give us a different solution,” he said.

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Vandalism, pg. 1

Debate, pg. 2

Rooney, pg. 1

possessing and selling drugs — as well as a white garage door on York Way. Police arrested a female not affiliated with the University on charges of criminal mischief, criminal conspiracy, processing instruments of a crime, harassment/ threat and loitering and prowling at night.

Police arrested the other suspect, a nonaffiliated juvenile female, on charges of criminal mischief, criminal conspiracy and possessing instruments of a crime.

Many of the vandalized cars were parked on Meyran, where Arden Hawes, a senior communication science and sociology major, was parked Tuesday. She walked out of her house near noon to drive to her babysitting job in Squirrel Hill. As she walked down Meyran she saw graffiti on the sidewalk and other cars and started to worry the black paint might be on her car as well.

“Low and behold there it was. It was kind of like this huge build up to seeing my own car,” Hawes said, adding that she isn’t planning on pressing charges. “She obviously had a really bad day.”

for taking away jobs, Peduto made clear that resistance to automation was futile.

“The question of whether automobiles are going to become shared, autonomous and electric, it is not debatable,” the mayor said.

On the PWSA, Peduto claimed the authority needed more investment, and that the lead in the water was a result of “bad infrastructure.” He also thought Welch was overstating the extent of Pittsburgh’s problem with a Flint comparison.

Peduto sought to find middle ground between Welch and Harris on body cameras.

The 12-year City Council veteran said while he backed the release of police body camera footage, he thought police had some right to hold footage in special situations — though he didn’t clarify any criteria.

When asked if Pittsburgh should be a sanctuary city, Peduto said that in practice, Pittsburgh already was — regardless of any official proclamations.

“It’s not just following [the policies of a] sanctuary city,” he said. “It’s following the constitution of the United States.”

communications coordinator at the mayor’s office. The task force will work to “identify and examine the barriers within city policies and processes,” according to the order. The task force will also work to push similar hiring measures within safety bureaus such as the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police.

The diversity and inclusion officer will oversee the implementation of these measures and other aspects of the executive order.

O’Malley said Janet Manuel — who currently serves as deputy director of human resources — will fill the role permanently as part of her current duties.

Under Manuel’s leadership, the department of personnel will also begin a study assessing the “city’s practices and policies related to wage disparity for personnel of different race, color, creed, gender, national origin or any other class.” The department will present an outline of the final study to City Council for consideration and adoption by May 1, 2018.

Peduto will require the department of personnel to submit an annual report reviewing the order’s progress by looking at the cur-

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April 20, 2017

rent makeup of the Pittsburgh workforce.

The order also enacts a guideline similar to the Rooney Rule of the National Football League, which was put into effect in 2003 by the late Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney and required teams to interview minority groups for coaching staffs. Peduto’s guideline will require the administration to “interview at least one external and one internal diverse candidate before the final selection of a candidate” for any position that requires supervising other employees.

“I am honored to follow Mr. Rooney’s example and implement similar diversity measures in his beloved city,” Peduto said in the release.

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Opinions

Editorial: What we can learn from Tennessee SEE ONLINE

Correction: In an editorial published yesterday, The Pitt News used an outdated figure for the number of student groups that make up Pitt’s Fossil Free Coalition. The coalition is now composed of 44 groups. The Pitt News regrets this error.

column

column

weed prohibition costs americans millions

drug testing cheats applicants, employers

Elise Lavallee

Columnist After 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 Down-

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TNS town, the State Correctional InstitutionPittsburgh 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 pre-existing “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

Liam McFadden STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

Nick Eustis

Columnist With graduation right around the corner, the harsh realities of life after college are on a lot of people’s minds. But for some soon-to-be graduates, the typical horrors of moving away from friends and finding a job seem insignificant next to something even more disheartening — the drug test.

Initially encouraged by the Reagan administration as an anti-drug appeal to employers, drug testing has become an increasingly routine part of getting a job. Background screening company HireRight estimates that 58 percent of job hunters in the United States today will be drug tested at some point.

On the surface, this policy makes sense — discouraging drug use in the workplace seems like a logical step for an employer to take, especially in a hazardous or high-pressure environment.

But at its heart, drug testing has a big probSee Lavallee on page 7

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lem: how to deal with marijuana users, both recreational and medical. Current drug testing methods put marijuana users at a disadvantage over hard drug users because of how much longer cannabis stays in the human body. The tests create unfair gray areas for those who use medical marijuana.

According to numbers from clinical testing company Quest Diagnostics, weed is currently the most common drug found in positive drug tests. And even a trace of cannabis in your system can lead to a decision not to hire. This trend continues in spite of both marijuana’s relative safety compared to other drugs and its increasing medical application.

It makes sense that weed would be the most frequently detected drug in screenings — marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug in America. According to a 2013 study from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 19.8 million people, ages 12 and up, have used marijuana.

See Eustis on page 7

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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.

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 Pitts-

Eustis, pg. 6 But just as consequential is how long the chemical remnants of the drug remain in your system — often close to a month, according to a 1989 study from the University of Uppsala.

A drug test will look for the chemical byproducts of various drugs, usually from urine, saliva or hair. For someone who uses marijuana daily, it could take one to three months of detoxification before those byproducts are gone.

This waiting period is longer than any other illegal drug.

A heavy cocaine user, by comparison, would only have to abstain for seven to 10 days to pass a screening, effectively giving hard drug users an advantage in the job market over weed smokers.

This is unacceptable when weed is quantifiably safer than even legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco — drugs few companies test for.

Compounding the problem is the contradictory, patchwork nature of marijuana laws in this country. Currently, marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, but 28 states have some kind of medical marijuana program, and eight of those have also legalized recreational marijuana.

This stark difference between state and fed-

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burgh. 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.”

Read the rest online at Pittnews.com. eral law creates legal gray areas when it comes to drug testing medical marijuana patients. In 20 of the states that allow medical marijuana, including Pennsylvania, there’s nothing stopping an employer from firing someone who tests positive for marijuana, even if they have a doctor’s recommendation.

Take the case of Brandon Coats, a quadriplegic man from Colorado who sued his former employer, DISH Network, for wrongful termination after he tested positive for marijuana use on a drug test. Coats had a doctor’s recommendation for medical marijuana, which is legal in Colorado, to treat crippling muscle spasms.

Unfortunately, Coats’ lawsuit failed, not just because marijuana is still illegal under federal law, but because Colorado lacks legal protections for medical marijuana patients. States like Arizona and Minnesota have provisions in their medical marijuana laws that make it illegal for a company to act on a positive test for marijuana if the employee has a medical card.

From a legal perspective, it’s understandable why Coats’ lawsuit failed, given that his actions were illegal under federal law.

Read the rest online at Pittnews.com.

The Pitt news crossword 4/20/17

Lavallee, pg. 6

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Culture

Correction: In the April 18 story “Education and incarceration,” The Pitt News mistakenly reported that Sarah Womack was in rehabilitation in Sojourner House in 2015. Womack was actually in Sojourner House in 2013. The story also misidentified Maggie Pahos’ name. The online version of the story has been updated to reflect the correct information. The Pitt News regrets these errors.

Pitt jazz students play at the James Street Gastropub. Facebook | Pat Bruener

Playing the streets:

Pitt jazz students take music outside of the classroom

Eric Heckler Staff Writer

Shane McLaughlin, a 24-year-old recent Pitt graduate, finishes singing his rendition of Bill Wither’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” to a group of strangers in Schenley Plaza on a 75 degree day in April.

Strumming an acoustic guitar, his case open in front of him, Mclaughlin gets a smattering of applause from the people listening and the crowd disperses, dropping $1 and $5 bills into his guitar case as they continue along their walk.

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The musician often plays on the streets of Pittsburgh to make money. Busking — a term coined by musicians as a way to differentiate themselves from the average panhandler — is something McLaughlin has been doing for more than six years. He and his brothers used to busk in high school in Virginia.

“We had seen other people doing it when we were younger and always knew it was the next step in playing,” Mclaughlin said.

McLaughlin graduated from Pitt as a finance major in December 2015, and now works in sales for SolarCity, a solar power

service company, but — like many other musicians carving out their own spaces for performance — also plays music in his free time.

During his time at Pitt, McLaughlin played guitar in Pitt’s Jazz Ensemble, a “big band” that usually consists of about 20 members who must audition to become a member.

Off campus, many members of Pitt’s jazz band — former and current — play in bars, restaurants, open mic nights or in the streets.

Some of these musicians regularly busk in order to network with other artists, make a few extra dollars or just get a chance to play.

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McLaughlin often busks by himself at Schenley Park and at the Roberto Clemente Bridge before Pirates baseball games. The big yellow bridge is closed off to vehicles on game days, and the foot traffic from people coming across from Downtown — in their Pittsburgh Pirates gear, excited for the game they’re about to watch — is an apt opportunity to make money.

McLaughlin said he usually makes $30 to $40 in a two- to three-hour busking session when he plays by himself. When he plays with other people, he makes double that amount. There’s more energy when he plays with other people, he said, which passersby seem to notice as well.

McLaughlin is involved with a few different musical groups in addition to his busking. One of the groups is a band — Manic Soul — where he plays guitar with his friends Aidan Epstein on bass and Dhruva Krishna on drums.

“In the summer, I’m trying to do it as much as possible, because now I have an acoustic band,” McLaughlin said, referring to Manic Soul. “We try to have as many practices as we can outside, at least a couple of times a month, which is a way to busk at the same time as practice with the band.”

Ethan Dunbar, a Pitt senior who is majoring in music on the jazz track with a minor in physics, busks on the street with his saxophone a few times a month. Dunbar said street playing helps him network and that he gets recognized for it at some performances at restaurants and bars such as The James Street Gastropub and Speakeasy in North Side.

“I’ve met people [while busking] I’ve later played with, and some pretty cool people who are part of the same crowd,” Dunbar said.

“But it’s fun to play what you feel instead of playing to impress.”

The best part of busking, in Dunbar’s opinion, is that people appreciate it. He typically plays in Shadyside because he can see and play in front of more than 100 people in just a two- or three-hour time span.

One day during his first year at Pitt, See Jazz on page 10

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Ministries make room for intersecting identities Brandon Marx Staff Writer

As a young, closeted gay man in a Presbyterian church north of Pittsburgh, a young Wil Forrest often felt alienated by his congregation’s narrow interpretations of scripture. Sunday sermons preached that there were limits to God’s love — a message that did not line up with his understanding of the Bible.

Ultra-conservative Christian churches and strict readings of Judeo-Christian teachings have earned religious institutions a reputation for being unaccepting of and even hostile toward the LGBTQ+ community.

“I was not raised in a theologically inclusive environment and that was an issue for me growing up in terms of my understanding of my relationship with God and my own salvation,” Forrest said. “I wasn’t able to work out those things until I was older and able to gain different theological perspectives.”

But at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church — where Forrest has found a home — the LGBTQ+ community is not only ac-

cepted, but celebrated. Known as the Cathedral of Hope, perched on the corner of Penn and Highland avenues, ELPC is one of many congregations across various faiths challenging the pervading misconception that being LGBTQ+ and religious are mutually exclusive.

An inclusive community has been a cornerstone of the ELPC since before Forrest, 47, joined the congregation more than 12 years ago. In the lawn outside the gargantuan stone building sits a digital billboard flashing the church’s slogan, “Progressive, inclusive, diverse” — a fitting juxtaposition to the gothic architecture that dominates the East End’s skyline.

Forrest, whose small office on the second floor is plastered with rainbow stickers and colorful posters leaning up against the walls, is an ordained deacon and staff member at the church who has been openly gay since coming out in his early 20s. One of his responsibilities is acting as the coordinator for the LGBTQ Ministry, which started in 2013.

See Religion on page 11

Wil Forrest is the founder of the LGBTQ ministry at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church. Anna Bongardino STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Pitt News SuDoku 4/20/17 courtesy of dailysudoku.com

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Jazz, pg. 8 Dunbar went outside to practice the saxophone. He was asked by passersby if he had a hat or something to put money in and he opened up his case, a little surprised people would pay him.

Since his first busk, Dunbar continued to play his saxophone outside throughout his four years at Pitt.

While playing on the streets, McLaughlin also enjoys chatting with strangers — finding an audience-performer connection made more natural without the barrier of a stage or ropes.

“I was playing at the Pirates game and there was this woman walking her dog that stopped to talk to me about the game,” McLaughlin said. “We got to the point where she shared an intimate story about something going on her in her life, so I played her a song I had just written that she ended up loving.”

Epstein, a first-year Pitt grad student majoring in jazz studies, plays bass in Manic Soul and loves to improvise as well.

He’s also the assistant director of Pitt’s Jazz Ensemble and is involved in Pitt’s combo band — a smaller, more relaxed jazz group that offers a chance to stay connected to undergraduate students who need help bettering their music.

“After all my playing with groups, I still like to practice on my own as much as I can,” Epstein said. “I usually play anywhere from 15 to 17 hours a week total.”

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Epstein co-hosts a jam session at the James Street Gastropub and Speakeasy every Sunday, where musicians can play without signing up. He also does other performances that aren’t necessarily jazz at many other clubs in Pittsburgh, fiddling between genres such as rock and afro-pop which helps him expand the type of music he’s comfortable playing.

Donning business cars with his name and number on them at all times, Epstein finds opportunities for gigs while performing. He also says Facebook is a great tool, as potential employers are able to look him up and contact him.

For Epstein, Dunbar and McLaughlin, playing outside of Pitt’s campus has created opportunities to play with professional players. Through networking, Epstein spent a few months being on-call for performances from famous Pittsburgh jazz player Lee Robinson. “[Robinson] would call me and say, ‘I have a gig on this date, here’s the music, it pays this much, just show up and play,’” Epstein said. “It’s kind of a common thing to happen in the jazz scene.”

The three musicians all want to have a future playing and teaching jazz, but are enjoying the time now where they can find a spot in the sun, take out their instruments and brighten strangers’ days.

“When you go busking, you’re in a certain kind of headspace, and you never know who could be walking by,” McLaughlin said. “It can allow you to really connect with someone sometimes.”

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Shane McLaughlin plays guitar at James St. Gastropub and Speakeasy. Facebook | Pat Bruener

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Religion, pg. 9 The ministry often gets together for meals and to have a monthly gathering of Bible study, reading a book together or listening to a speaker. During the Spiritual Gathering, members of the ministry meet with a focus: “Learning to Accept God’s Love,” for example.

No matter what the activity, the monthly session always closes with members telling stories of their struggles with being both LGBTQ+ and religious, and a discussion in which other members offer advice and share similar stories.

The ELPC’s LGBTQ Ministry started after some members approached Forrest saying they either did not know how to have a relationship with the church or that they had complex personal histories with religion — a struggle he’s familiar with.

“While we’re inclusive, we realize there are other things we could be talking about,” Forrest said. “The spiritual walk is a little more complex than just saying, ‘You’re accepted, so now let’s move on.’”

What Forrest does on a weekly and monthly basis with members of his congregation, others are exploring outside of the church setting. Professor Rachel Kranson and the religious studies department followed a more academic route, addressing the tenuous territory inhabited by religious members of the LGBTQ+ community.

The religious studies department ran a series twice this spring, called Queering Religion, which explored the diverse ways in which religions can construct sexuality and some of the ways that popular assumptions about religion are shaped by preconceptions of normative sexuality.

“The purpose of this series is to help us think through the ways in which categories like sexuality and religion not only intersect with one another, but also constitute one another,” Kranson said in an email.

Through student panels and visiting speakers, the series questioned the ways in which sexuality and religion shape each other.

“We want to have a better understanding of how these entanglements play out in political and interpersonal ways,” Kranson said in an email.

Kranson and Benjamin Gordon — another professor with the University’s department of religious studies — originally orchestrated the series. Kranson is a core

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faculty member of the Jewish studies program and gender, sexuality and women’s studies, and Gordon is the coordinator of the Jewish studies certificate.

A 2015 demographic study “America’s Changing Religious Landscape” from the Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual hold a religious affiliation.

Although 41 percent of the study’s respondents are unaffiliated with any religion, of those LGB respondents, 48 percent identify as Christian and 11 percent identify with faiths other than Christianity.

Kranson said that she and her colleagues originally thought to organize the series after the shooting at the Orlando nightclub, Pulse, and the coverage of the tragedy that followed.

They were disturbed by aspects of the shooting’s coverage, specifically the ways in which nativist Christians were using Pulse to vilify Islam, portraying it as an extreme and intolerant religion — “an expression of Muslim angst over homosexuality” — even though those same Christian groups actively, and sometimes violently, oppose gay rights.

“We were also struck by how this portrayal of the Pulse nightclub tragedy assumed religion to be necessarily antithetical to homosexuality, and erased the possibility that individuals could identify both as deeply religious and as queer,” Kranson said.

Kranson said in an email that the series offered an opportunity for members of the campus community who identify as both queer and religious to share their thoughts and experiences.

Answers to these questions not only vary across multiple faiths, but often vary across the denominations within a particular faith.

Exploring those questions within Judaism is a special interest of BD Wahlberg — a Pitt graduate who identifies as non-binary and has plans to become a rabbi. They were one of the six individuals on the Student Workshop panel March 30.

“I grew up Reform, which is a sect of Judaism which recognizes that the Torah was written by human hands,” Wahlberg said.

“And that you have to be able to adapt for the modern world and that you have to find the Judaism that’s most meaningful to you.”

Reform Judaism is a sect that teaches equality across genders with female leaders and teachers.

Read the rest online at Pittnews.com.

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Sports

Baseball team falls to Kent State, 12-8 SEE ONLINE

Josh Gibson: Unsung, until now

Bayard Miller

Assistant Sports Editor After decades of relative obscurity, a Pittsburgh legend will finally have his story told — albeit in an unlikely place.

The Pittsburgh Opera will perform the world premiere of “The Summer King,” which chronicles the life of Negro League baseball star Josh Gibson, from April 29 to May 7 — tickets are discounted for Pitt students Pitt students and faculty through Pitt Arts. The show will be the first world premiere in the Pittsburgh Opera’s 78-year history.

Gibson is recognized as one of the greatest baseball players of all time and is the only player to hit a home run out of the old Yankee Stadium. But due to early 20th century racial discrimination, he never got the chance to play in the all-white Major League. Instead, he spent his career with the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays, the city’s two Negro League teams.

The legendary slugger is notable enough in western Pennsylvania for a portrait on the walls of Oakland’s Primanti Bros. alongside other Pittsburgh sports heroes including Franco Harris, Terry Bradshaw, Roberto Clemente and Mario Lemieux. But his tale is less famous than Jackie Robinson’s, the first black man to break baseball’s color barrier when he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

Robinson was an exceptional ball player, winning the National League MVP Award in 1949 and the World Series with the Dodg- Alfred Walker stars as Josh Gibson in “The Summer King,” an opera about ers in 1955. Major League Baseball retired his the baseball star’s life opening April 29. Courtesy of David Bachman Phonumber 42 league-wide on the 50th anniver- tography sary of his debut to honor his bravery for inteThe statistics kept for Negro League games Bonds’ 762, according to the Major League grating the leagues, and he was inducted into were spotty, so the exact number of home record. the Hall of Fame in 1962.

Daniel Sonenberg, who wrote the muruns Gibson hit will likely never be known.

But Robinson wasn’t the best player dur- But over the course of his playing career, sic and co-wrote the libretto — the opera ing his time in the Negro leagues — that which stretched from 1930 to 1946, baseball term for lyrics — said he’s glad Robinson has honor was reserved for Gibson. Hall of Fame historians estimate that Gibson hit more than achieved such cultural prominence, but the pitcher Satchel Paige, a legend in his own 900 home runs. fact that Gibson isn’t known in the same way right who played with Gibson on the CrawThat’s more than Babe Ruth’s 714, more just adds to the tragedy of his story. fords, referred to Gibson as “the greatest hitter than Hank Aaron’s 755 and more than Barry “I think Jackie Robinson has arrived as who ever lived.”

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sort of an icon of American culture,” Sonenberg said. “But at the same time, I get the sense that everyone thinks that the history of black baseball players started in 1947 or something. It didn’t.”

Baseball was Sonenberg’s first love, but after realizing he didn’t have much of a future as a pitcher due to his lack of command, he devoted himself to the study of music.

As a music major at Bard College in Manhattan, Sonenberg knew little about opera until his girlfriend at the time convinced him to dish out the $14 then required for standing room tickets at the Metropolitan Opera.

He fell in love with the genre and soon realized that the art form would be the ideal medium for telling Gibson’s larger-than-life story. He began work on “The Summer King” in 2003 and has been working on it on-andoff ever since. “[Opera is] really a very emotional art form,” Sonenberg said. “The opera format allows characters to sing their innermost feelings and frustrations and emotions, supported by an orchestra in a very, very visceral way that I think is just ideal for a story like Josh’s.”

“The Summer King” is a defiantly nonclassical opera, eschewing the typical Italian or German for an English libretto and incorporating more modern musical styles into the score.

In addition to teaching music at the University of Southern Maine and composing operas, Sonenberg played the drums in his rock band “Lovers of Fiction.” His eclectic tastes are evident in “The Summer King”’s music, and the score features elements of jazz, the blues and even mariachi for the scenes that describe Gibson’s playing days in Mexico.

“You can’t have a scene in Mexico without a mariachi band,” Sonenberg said. “There aren’t too many mariachi bands in opera, but we’ve got one.”

Gibson’s story requires the grandest of art forms because that was the nature of his life.

Born in Georgia in 1911, Gibson moved to Pittsburgh with his family when he was 8 See Opera on page 13

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Opera, pg. 12 years old. His father found work in the steel mills, and Gibson found baseball in the sandlots of the North Side.

Gibson soon attracted the attention of Cumberland Posey, the founder and owner of the Negro League’s Homestead Grays. At age 19 he started playing professional baseball for the Grays — and immediately started mashing home runs.

But just after Gibson’s career began and he started down the road to stardom, his wife Helen died in childbirth. He never remarried and devoted the rest of his life to baseball.

Over the years, Gibson turned increasingly to drinking and drugs and suffered from head-splitting migraines brought on by a brain tumor. At 35 years old, he died from a stroke in his mother’s Hill District home on Jan. 20, 1947, less than three months before Robinson broke into the majors.

Gibson’s painful and unceremonious death is featured prominently in the show.

The climax of the opera comes in the second act when Gibson, played by Alfred Walker, has an imaginary conversation on his deathbed with New York Yankees Hall of Fame

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outfielder Joe DiMaggio.

Without the help of two Pittsburgh natives — Pitt history professor Rob Ruck and Gibson’s great-grandson Sean Gibson — Sonenberg’s dream may never have come to fruition. The two proved invaluable with regard to Sonenberg’s research into Gibson’s life.

Sonenberg met with both in 2007 when he visited Pittsburgh for the first time to add context to the story he was working on.

Ruck, who’s established himself as one of the nation’s foremost Negro League scholars with his books “Raceball” and “Sandlot Seasons,” gave Sonenberg feedback on an early version of the libretto.

On the same trip, Sean took Sonnenberg to a Pirates game and showed him some of the old ball fields Gibson played on almost a century before.

Sean keeps his great-grandfather’s legacy alive through his work as the executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation. The organization provides academic and athletic programs for underprivileged children in Pittsburgh and notably restored Ammon Field, the former Hill District home of the Crawfords now known as Josh Gibson Field.

After years of researching the Negro

leagues, Sonenberg described his experience visiting the only city with two black baseball teams as similar to “going to Mecca.” But he’s not the only one to use religious terms to describe his journey toward making this opera come to life.

Denyce Graves — who will play the opera’s female protagonist, Grace — said Sonenberg was “born to write this opera” and that “he was a gift.”

“I believe that the gods chose him, he was the ambassador to bring this story forth because of the tenacity he has,” Graves said.

Such high praise from Graves carries more weight, considering her standing as one of the most sought-after opera singers in the world right now.

The Washington Post has described Graves as “almost too good to be true ... a vital artist, a beautiful woman, a regal presence,” and USA Today said she is “one of the singers most likely to be an operatic superstar of the 21st century.”

One of the reasons why Graves and the cast are so appreciative of Sonenberg’s opera is that it gives black opera stars the rare chance to play black characters — drawing comparison to a similar racial hierarchy that left Gibson out of white-only leagues so many

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years ago.

Most operas have been written by Europeans and consequently, most opera characters are written as white. But for years, “color-blind casting” has been used in opera companies around the world, using voice as the sole determinant in the role-giving process.

But Walker said there’s something different about playing a black character as a black man.

“Sometimes you wonder before or after the performance how the audience will receive you [for playing a white character],” Walker said. “For example, I play the Flying Dutchman — and I ain’t Dutch. But being a character you naturally look like? It brings a comfort, and it brings a pride.”

For Sonenberg too — a lifelong Yankees fan — this opera is the actualization of a lifelong dream, one in which he’ll finally be able to raise the curtains on a man he’s always known as a legend.

“I don’t remember not knowing about Josh Gibson in the same way I don’t remember not knowing about Babe Ruth,” Sonenberg said. “To me, they should be corollary figures in our consciousness, but somehow they’re not.”

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