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T h e i n d e p e n d e n t s t ude nt ne w spap e r of t he U niversity of Pittsburgh | PIttnews.com | october 2, 2019 ­| Volume 110 | Issue 34

MEMBER OF CENTRAL PARK FIVE DISCUSSES WRONGFUL INCARCERATION

TITLE IX RELEASES DATA, HOLDS FIRSTEVER TOWN HALL Emily Wolfe News Editor

Dr. Yusef Salaam of the Central Park Five spoke at an event hosted by Pitt Program Council on Tuesday night. Hannah Heisler | senior staff photographer

Benjamin Nigrosh Staff Writer

Right up until he lost his trial, Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, believed that the system would prove him innocent.

“The word ‘guilty’ echoed so many times that I lost count,” Salaam said.

A sold-out crowd of 500 students came to the WPU Assembly Room Tuesday night to see Salaam speak about his experience being wrongfully incarcerated. In 1989, Salaam and the other four young men were wrongfully convicted of assaulting a young woman in New York’s Central Park. The five were exonerated in 2002 following the confession of the actual perpetrator. Their highly publicized case and exoneration brought about a national conversation concerning wrongful imprisonment.

Since his release in 1997, Salaam has worked with The Innocence Project, a nonprofit that works

to exonerate wrongly convicted criminals. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 for his work with The Innocence Project.

He opened the event Tuesday night, which was sponsored by the Pitt Program Council, by reading the poem that he gave as his final statement during his trial in 1989.

“I’m not going to sit here at your table and watch you eat and call myself dinner,” Salaam said. “Sitting here at your table doesn’t make me dinner, just like being here in America doesn’t make me an American.”

According to Salaam, nothing that he said could have set him free.

“Because of the color of our skin, we hadn’t been given the opportunity to be seen as innocent until proven guilty,” Salaam said. “They looked at us and said ‘they had to have done it.’”

One of the things Salaam said he remembers

most about his trial was the national attention that it received. Two weeks after the trial of the Central Park Five began, Donald Trump took out a full-page ad in the New York Daily News that read “Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police.” Salaam still had the ad and showed it to the audience.

In addition to Trump’s ad, political commentator Pat Buchanan published columns in New York newspapers calling for acts of violence against the Central Park Five, which Salaam said made him feel like the nation’s rage about the trial was directed at him.

“He said ‘let’s take the eldest one and hang him from a tree in Central Park,’” Salaam said. “Then he said ‘we should take the others and strip them naked and horse whip them. Maybe this will make the city’s parks safe again.’”

All five members of the Central Park Five received letters from angry Americans. Salaam read See Salaam on page 3

For the first time since its creation in 2015, Pitt’s Title IX office released data this summer reporting its activity over the course of the school year. The data describes the number of reports the office received — more than 200 — along with the number of investigations it launched and a breakdown of the incidents reported.

According to Katie Pope, the coordinator of the Title IX office, the report is part of a general push to make the office more accessible to the Pitt community. A sparsely attended town hall Pope hosted Tuesday in the William Pitt Union’s sixth floor meeting room was another part of the initiative.

“We’ve been discussing in the office ways we can really be more present on campus and better ways for faculty and staff to get to know our office,” Pope said at the town hall, comparing the event to the monthly Dean’s Hour sessions hosted by Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner.

And although almost no one who wasn’t affiliated with Title IX attended, Pope said the office hopes to reach more students with other events in the future, including another town hall in November.

Pope, the first full-time Title IX coordinator at Pitt, was hired in 2015 after the amount of rape reported on campus doubled from 10 reported incidents in 2013 to 20 in 2014. The office, which has five full-time staff members, has conducted close to 90 investigations since the start of the 2016-17 school year.

According to the data from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Pitt’s Title IX office received 247 reports during the 2018-19 school year, launching and completing 37 investigations based on those reports.

Each investigation lasted an average of 70 days. Almost half of the reports came from students, and 86% involved sexual harassment or rape. In more than 90% of cases, the report alleged misconduct by a student or a member of Pitt’s faculty or staff.

See Title IX on page 3

News

SGB APPROVES FOSSIL FUEL DIVESTMENT RESOLUTION

FORMER PA. GOVERNORS TALK IMPEACHMENT, WHITE SUPREMACY Rebecca Johnson Staff Writer

This week, the board voted unanimously in favor of Executive Vice President Anaïs Peterson’s resolution to support the fossil fuel divestment movement.

Kaycee Orwig | senior staff photographer

Brian Gentry

Senior Staff Writer Last night’s Student Government Board meeting tied up many loose ends from prior meetings, starting with a report-back from Sunday’s task force meeting on the recent changes made to SORC naming guidelines. The guidelines would prohibit independent student organizations from including University trademarks or wordmarks like “Pitt” and “Panther” in their names.

SGB announced two weeks ago that a task force — with members from SGB and student groups, among them Pitt Sailing, Pitt Dance Marathon and Pitt Archery — would convene to discuss ways for existing organizations to keep their names. Sunday’s meeting with stu-

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dent group leaders proved productive, SGB President Zechariah Brown said, but revealed that student groups have desires that are at odds with those of the University.

“Most of what we found was that student groups don’t want to see any change,” Brown said.

The primary model discussed at Sunday’s meeting was a so-called “tier model,” an infrastructure that would establish a spectrum of high-to-low involvement between student clubs and the University. But student groups largely rejected this model, Brown said, since the student groups wanted their relationship with the University to remain the same overall.

Brown said benchmarking for a new See SGB on page 4

Former Pennsylvania governors Tom Ridge, a Republican, and Ed Rendell, a Democrat, called for an investigation into the impeachment of President Donald Trump over his dealings with Ukraine at a bipartisan lecture Tuesday night at the Carnegie Music Hall auditorium.

The Reflection of Leadership, Governance, and Politics lecture, hosted by Philadelphia public radio host Dave Davies and attended by about 100 people, presented a venue for Ridge and Rendell to discuss their own experiences and the current political climate. The lecture was sponsored by the Dick Thornburgh Forum for Law and Public Policy, the Office of the Chancellor and the University Honors College.

Rendell, Pennsylvania’s 45th governor and former mayor of Philadelphia, was adamant on his stance against the president.

Trump was recently accused of abusing his presidential power when he called Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky and offered American aid to the country in exchange for an investigation into Democratic opponent Joe Biden.

“What the president admitted to is, in my judgement, a crime and it is a high crime, because he solicited a foreign country to get involved in the United States election, which is clearly illegal and prohibited by the United States Constitution,” Rendell said. “Donald Trump put the nation at serious risk to advance his own political interests.”

Ridge, Pennsylvania’s 43rd governor and former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was more hesitant than Rendell to condemn Trump, but said Trump’s actions mandate an investigation like the one Speaker of the House of Repre-

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sentatives Nancy Pelosi has initiated.

“That conversation is worthy of the kind of investigation that Speaker Pelosi has laid out on behalf of the House of Representatives,” Ridge said. “I’m not in a position to say whether it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor, but I find it beyond disturbing.”

But not everyone in the audience believed Rendell and Ridge were in the position to discuss impeachment at all. Melissa Hart, a Republican and former member of both the State Senate and the House, didn’t think the discussion was a valid topic at the event.

“I wish they hadn’t tried to make Rendell and Ridge talk about impeachment because it’s not what their thing is,” Hart said. “If you want to talk about the political climate, which they did at the end, I find that more useful.”

Continuing on the overarching theme of bipartisanship, Rendell and Ridge also shared similar views on the rise of white supremacy in the United States.

Rendell said that he wants to improve and expand opportunities for African American citizens through programs, but is adamantly opposed to reparations for descendents of former slaves.

“It drives me crazy when people in my party talk about reparations,” Rendell said.

“What we did to African Americans was unconscionable, but we can’t get involved with reparations. What we should get involved with is creating every possible avenue of opportunity for African American kids in this country.”

Ridge said that Americans need to call out racism, but he doesn’t see the purpose of labeling President Trump as a racist.

See Governors on page 4

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Title IX, pg. 1 Pope said there are many reasons the office might not open an investigation based on a report.

Sometimes the other party isn’t a member of the Pitt community, so Title IX can’t investigate. But usually, according to Pope, it’s the choice of the person reporting — often, victims approach Title IX seeking support or education, and don’t want to deal with an investigation.

“In a lot of cases, when individuals come forward, they don’t want there to be an investigation,” Pope said. “They want to address their own concerns, whether that’s with counseling, whether that’s with safety, whatever that may be, and they’re not interested in moving through an investigative process.”

Soon, the office will start working to evaluate the responses from the Campus Climate survey, which was sent out to all students in the spring, Pope said. Pope added she hopes the results, which Pitt plans to release in mid-October, will help the Title IX office evaluate its performance over the past several years and work to develop strategies for the future.

In addition, the office is waiting for news on the Trump administration’s updated guidance for Title IX offices at universities and K-12 schools. Pope said she was “disconcerted” by the proposed chang-

Salaam, pg. 1 the audience one of the letters that he was sent. “‘This letter is to let you know that your name has been placed on the list of enemies of society by the citizen’s army, New York City branch,’” Salaam said. “‘So just remember that 20 to 30 years from now, some people will never forget. And maybe the one time that you don’t check your back is the one time that somebody might just be there to say hello.’”

Being incarcerated exposed some of the bleakest parts of humanity, Salaam said, but this did not prevent him from finding hope. While incarcerated, he said he was given time to meditate on his purpose in civil rights, and his purpose in the greater picture.

“I was taken out of the world and placed in the belly of the beast,” Salaam said. “As I look back at the journey, I am amazed because I can see the hand of God all throughout it. It is a story to show you that a person can be brought low only to rise because the atruth can never stay buried.”

When a community is buried and power structures abandon it, Salaam said, it is an opportunity for that community to realize its true purpose.

“You were born on purpose,” Salaam said. “You were born with a purpose. Tied to you are the abilities that you are supposed to produce in the world.”

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es as announced by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in November, which include a requirement for parties involved in an investigation to face each other during a hearing.

The new guidance, which met significant criticism from higher education groups when DeVos announced them, would direct Title IX offices to adopt a narrower definition of sexual harassment. Where Obama-era regulations defined sexual harassment as any “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” the new guidelines would define it as “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies a person access to the school’s education program or activity,” The Washington Post reported last year.

“The original documentation suggested that they were going to change the definition of what constituted gender and sexual harassment under Title IX, which would make it completely different from any other civil rights law currently on the books,” Pope said.

While Pitt’s Title IX office hasn’t received direction from the federal government to implement the new guidelines yet, the direction could come “any day,” Pope said, reaching behind herself to knock on wood.

“It’s going to be a rough week,” she said. “That’s the last thing I need to wake up to tomorrow.”

Michele Welker, the coordinator of the Office of Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Education in the Counseling Center, asked Pope about the unique situation of graduate students dealing with sexual harassment.

In her position in the Counseling Center, Welker sometimes talks confidentially with students in those situations, often in an “isolated” environment or lab where they’re working closely with just a few others. Welker advises them of their options and helps them evaluate the potential repercussions of launching a Title IX investigation, she said.

“I wanted to see what other initiatives and projects [Title IX] is working on to reach out to students to let them know that we understand their unique vulnerability, particularly in the context of a small space,” Welker said after the meeting.

The Title IX office has been working for several years to expand resources for graduate and professional students, Pope told Welker. Currently, about 85% of new graduate students undergo training and education for dealing with sexual harassment, Pope said, and the office aims to eventually make it mandatory for all new graduate students.

“Graduate students have a very special set of challenges,” Pope said. “We recognize that they often need different kinds of support, especially because, as students, they’re so closely tied to an individual faculty member who may be advising

Salaam’s speech prompted a standing ovation from the audience, which held hundreds of Pitt students.

Their turnout didn’t surprise sophomore marketing major and PPC’s director of lectures Ellie Simmons, who led the effort to bring Salaam to campus. “[Salaam] is an amazing man,” Simmons said.

“The way he speaks, the way he can move a room, the way he tells his story is so beautiful, so I can totally understand why it sold out.”

Simmons said that she is proud to have Salaam on Pitt’s campus, as she thinks that the school’s student body represents a progressive group of young people that converge upon the ideals that Salaam speaks on. Simmons also said that she hopes that Salaam’s presence on campus will help show Pitt students that they can have a voice in the political discourse.

“I am extremely proud and think that Pitt’s campus is very diverse and very forward-focused,” Simmons said. “I think that his role here is to remind us that what we are doing isn’t forgotten.”

Following the speech, Salaam turned to the audience to ask for any questions that they had for him.

One student asked why Salaam has forgiven those who thought he was guilty and those who

threatened his life.

“It seems like you forgive these wrongdoings even though you still remember the past,” the student said.

Salaam’s memories of the trial and his incarceration still feel fresh, he said, but he has decided to learn from them instead of being tormented by them.

“It’s far better for us to live in harmony than for us to live looking over our shoulders,” Salaam said.

In a similar question, Salaam was asked if he blames the prosecutors who wrongly convicted him and the rest of the Central Park Five.

“Do you or any of the Exonerated Five ever place blame on the members of the jury, or do you see them as falling victim to a lack of [a] justice system?” the student asked.

No matter what has happened in the past, Salaam said, he refuses to hold a grudge.

“We can’t change the past, but we can most certainly learn from the past,” Salaam said.

After giving students time to ask questions about his life, Salaam returned his ideas to the central theme of his speech — people must be cognizant of how they treat others, because they are the ones that have to live in this world with one another.

“Whatever we put in the earth, we are one day going to sit under the shade of those trees,” Salaam said.

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or overseeing in their research and that can make it doubly scary to come forward and make a report.”

Pitt is also working to make sure it complies with all aspects of a new sexual harassment law signed by Gov. Tom Wolf in July, which requires all universities in the state to enable online, anonymous reporting. Pitt has had that policy in place since 2015, along with the “Good Samaritan” policy also required by the law, which protects witnesses or victims who report an incident that occurred while they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

The University is working on adding a victim’s bill of rights to its sexual misconduct procedures in order to fully comply with the new law, Pope said.

Amy Filip, a junior sociology major who attended the event, works as a peer educator in Pitt’s Sexual Assault Facilitation and Education training program. Filip said she hoped more students would come to the next town hall, adding that she thinks sexual violence is an important issue to many people on campus.

Filip herself is particularly concerned about the possible implications of DeVos’ new Title IX guidance, she said, though she is confident that the Title IX office, which she works with, will continue to do what it can for the Pitt community.

“I know that the folks at Title IX are going to do their best to care for survivors and provide resources even under new guidelines,” she said.

Dr. Yusef Salaam speaks about his experience being incarcerated after being wrongfully accused of rape as well as his life following exoneration.

Hannah Heisler | senior staff photographer

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SGB, pg. 2 policy, which has yet to be determined, will be completed by Saturday. The board will introduce the proposal to University officials on Oct. 10 and subsequently discuss it at the next SGB public meeting on Oct. 15.

Among other unfinished business from last week’s meeting was a resolution introduced by Executive Vice President Anaïs Peterson to support the fossil fuel divestment movement. This week, the board voted unanimously in favor of the resolution.

“Now we finally have this joint call from SGB and the students where we finally see this unified moment that I think is going to give us a lot of power,” Peterson said.

This vote comes in light of events at Friday’s Board of Trustees meeting at Pitt’s Johnstown campus, where Peterson and other members of the Fossil Free Pitt Coalition interrupted Chancellor Patrick Gallagher to demand the Board of Trustees vote on divesting from fossil fuels by Feb. 28, 2020 and fully divest by April 2020.

She said last week’s interruption at the Friday meeting was a result of “miscommunication” between University officials and students about how to express public opinion.

“So much of the work that Fossil Free Pitt does and the fossil fuel divestment movement is around transparency,” Peterson said. “There’s this miscommunication between students and the Board of Trustees of what we view as proper channels of communication.”

She said the Tuesday passage of the resolution is the first step in the University being accountable to students. She cited last year’s SGB election, in which more than 90% of students who voted in a referendum were in favor of divestment.

“We’re prioritizing students,” Peterson said. “It’s all about making sure that Pitt’s a university that’s accountable to students and not running like these corporations where they don’t listen to us.”

Among newly proposed initiatives at the meeting is the Pitt Civics task force, introduced by board member Scott Glaser. Pitt Civics would be a collaboration between Pitt Civics Club and SGB to

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make civic engagement opportunities more accessible to the general student population.

Glaser said this collaboration is the logical next step for the Pitt Civics Club.

“Pitt Civics as a club reached a standstill in which we’re not really sure where to turn,” Glaser said. “We’re hoping to bring it through SGB to give it some more force.”

The primary goal of Pitt Civics would be to consolidate a list of civic engagement opportunities at a single location and to offer more opportunities as well.

Glaser said involvement in civic engagement is important for students to prioritize.

“Civically engaged students are better students. But the issue is that the University only promotes civic engagement opportunities to a certain select group of people,” Glaser said. “We want to get Pitt to be a better civically engaged population.”

Judicial Committee Chair Grace Nelson also said the board will research University policy regarding excuses for missed work and absences for religious reasons. The Pitt News reported last week on difficulties that Jewish students face when making up missed work or absences due to observing High Holy Days.

“We’re still in a phase of trying to review that policy … to better understand whether, first, intervention is necessary on the part of our committee on the Student Government Board, and second, what the scale and necessity really is,” Nelson said.

She said SGB is working with students and faculty to determine how the policies affect students.

“The goal is to understand whether these policies are best serving the student population, and if they’re not, how we can mitigate that situation,” Nelson said.

Brown closed Tuesday’s meeting with a reminder that October is Mental Health Awareness Month. Throughout the meeting, board members and chairs provided lists of events this month that focus on mental health.

“As this month focuses on mental health, I’d like to implore all of you to make that your priority, not just for October but for every month following this,” Brown said.

Former Pennsylvania Governors Ed Rendell and Tom Ridge answer questions moderated by Dave Davies (pictured left to right) at the Carnegie Music Hall on Tuesday night as a part of the 2019 American Experience Distinguished Lecture Series hosted by the University of Pittsburgh.. Caela Go | staff photographer

Governors, pg. 2 “If you as a leader suggest that those who come across the border are rapists and drug pushers, the conclusion you may want to draw is that this president has refused to accept the diversity of this great country,” Ridge said. “I don’t like the rhetoric. Accusing him of being a racist may make people feel good, but it doesn’t solve the problem.”

The two former governors also discussed their respective proposals to reform the campaign finance system.

Ridge said all donations more than $1,000 should be published online for transparency, and politicians shouldn’t take donations from groups or people they aren’t comfortable with acknowledging publically.

“I think any contribution in excess of $1,000 ought to be on the internet 24 to 48 hours after you give it,” Ridge said. “I think constituents are entitled to know where those dollars of support or opposition came from.”

Rendell spent more time defending his record on campaign finance, specifically on his endorsement of the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act, a piece of legislation that regulated the funding of political elections.

“I think there should be transparency, but there should be limits,” Rendell said. “I endorsed McCain-Feingold and the [Philadelphia] Daily News wrote the next day that ‘having Mayor Rendell endorse McCainFeingold is like having Ali Baba endorse a

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ban on thievery.’ I didn’t think that was very fair.”

After the former governors’ debate onstage finished, Pitt student Tilman Cooper said he enjoyed the lecture, even though he was one of the only students in attendance.

“I really enjoyed the event. I thought it was interesting to have both perspectives — Republican and Democrat — and for them to go about it so civilly, complementing each other and making a positive environment,” Cooper, a sophomore finance, marketing and supply chain major, said.

Hart said in the wake of 2020 Democratic hopeful Beto O’Rourke’s Oakland campaign rally last week — which drew a large number of Pitt students — she did not understand why they chose to see O’Rourke, as opposed to the experienced governors.

“If they were invited, it’s unfortunate that they would come to see a one-term Congressman from Texas who doesn’t have a clue over people who’ve been there,” Hart said. “It would have been great to have that room filled.”

Ridge noted the disparity in audience ages at the end of the lecture — noting that young people ultimately have the power in the politics of the future.

“The only thing that would have made this a better evening was if a couple thousand Pitt students had showed up,” Ridge said. “Government and politics is about tomorrow, and young people at the University of Pittsburgh have far more tomorrows than Ridge and Rendell.”

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Opinions

YOUTH ACTIVISTS DESERVE MORE RESPECT, LESS CRITICISM Remy Samuels Staff Columnist

Right-wing conservatives have recently found a new outlet on which to unleash their anger: Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden. Following her recent speech at the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit on Sept. 23 in New York City, she has faced an overwhelming amount of criticism.

“How dare you!” she said at the summit.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying.

Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

The number of hateful tweets and comments this young girl has received over the last few weeks is shameful, especially because some of the attacks have been centered on her Asperger’s diagnosis.

But these vicious attacks against a youth activist like Thunberg are not out of the ordinary. Throughout history, people have been quick to criticize activists who enter the public sphere at a young age because they are threatened by their message and power to influence. Youth activists should not be underestimated, since they have historically proven that they have the power to affect change.

Thunberg has made many headlines not just as a result of her powerful U.N. speech, but also for inspiring the Global Climate Strike, in which more than 150 countries are participating. Last year, Thunberg started her own solitary strikes against climate change in front of the Swedish Parliament, but has since inspired millions of young people and other supporters to join the movement.

In response to the climate protests that have been happening around the world and to Thunberg’s speech at the U.N., Daily Wire commentator Michael Knowles went on Fox News and attacked Thunberg, denouncing her position because of her disorder and her age.

“If it were about science it would be led by scientists rather than politicians and a mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her par-

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ents and by the international left,” Knowles said.

Accusing a girl with Asperger’s syndrome of being “mentally ill” when she is clearly basing her climate change argument on scientific fact is really a weakness on Knowles’ part. He is not only insulting the entire Asperger’s and autism community, but he is also a grown man who is unnecessarily attacking a young child for something she cannot control.

Youth activists of the likes of Thiinberg have historically taken huge personal risks by entering the public eye. Often times, older people who are set in their ways do not feel anything needs

a victim of child abuse, not climate change.”

This accusation about her parents manipulating her is eerily reminiscent of 16-year-old English girl Dora Thewlis, who was part of the women’s suffrage movement in the early 20th century. Her critics also accused her parents of being inept, and Thewlis herself was even accused of joining the movement in order to gain male attention. More recently, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., dismissed a group of children who visited her office in February urging her to support the Green New Deal. Critics were quick to jump on the incident, claiming the adults at the

David Akintola | staff illustrator to be changed, so they are quick to attack young people who think they can make a difference. But this is unfair to children and young people who have worked hard and made sacrifices in order to gain their platform, so adults should treat these kids’ words with respect. Just because someone is young does not mean their ideas are inferior or weak. At the end of the day, these children are doing much more for the world than the adults sitting behind their computer screens, attacking young activists.

Other conservative commentators besides Knowles have also criticized Thunberg’s parents for exploiting her to promote their ideas of climate change. Candace Owens, a conservative commentator and political activist, tweeted on Sept. 23 that one day Thunberg will “realize she is

event were using the children to push a political agenda, ignoring the children’s own thoughts and motivations. But the reality of these accusations is that the people who are hating on Thunberg and other child activists are simply threatened by their messages and want to belittle their arguments by denying them autonomy.

Another senseless criticism that has been thrown at Thunberg is that she is being used a piece of Nazi propaganda. Because Thunberg almost always wears her hair in two long braids, some conservatives, such as Dinesh D’Souza, have likened her to the white Nordic girls with braids who were displayed in Nazi propaganda.

There is a parallel here between Thunberg and the Parkland, Florida, student activists who gained a lot of public attention for their stance

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against gun violence following the mass shooting at their school. Not only were these teenagers accused of being elitist and privileged, but they were also likened to promoting Nazism and white supremacy. A photo of David Hogg, a Parkland student activist, with his fist in the air at a March for Our Lives rally, was compared to the Nazi salute, and Emma Gonzalez was called a “skinhead lesbian” by Republican House candidate Leslie Gibson of Maine.

These irrational comments are reflective of the current discourse that is used in American political culture. President Donald Trump bases his platform off of “telling it like it is,” and as a result, other public figures have followed suit. But this kind of discourse has translated itself into a form of hate speech that targets young activists.

Because of the accessibility to social media today, many people are latching onto this culture of cancelling people because if the president of the United States is saying whatever he wants, why shouldn’t they?

It’s ironic how people are quick to condemn youth activism, when in reality, they are doing so much more than many adults who have positions of power. Thunberg recently responded to the extreme hate that she has been bombarded by a stream of tweets.

“As you may have noticed, the haters are as active as ever — going after me, my looks, my clothes, my behavior and my differences,” she wrote. “I honestly don’t understand why adults would choose to spend their time mocking and threatening teenagers and children for promoting science, when they could simply do good instead.”

Thunberg in no way deserves the backlash she has received for pursuing a cause she views as an imminent danger to our ecosystem. Like so many youth activists throughout history, she deserves more respect for her autonomy as a person and for her bravery to actually stand up to the powerful and demand change. But the joke is really on her haters, because all the criticism only gives her more fuel to her the fire.

“Don’t waste your time giving them anymore attention,” she tweeted. “The world is waking up.

Change is coming whether they like it or not.”

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from the editorial board

College athletes deserve opportunity to capitalize on endorsements The long-held belief of the National Collegiate Athletic Association has been that student athletes should pursue a degree and not money for playing a sport with their university.

The state of California challenged this belief Monday when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that, starting in 2023, would allow student athletes to hire agents and take endorsement deals — something the NCAA has blocked them from doing in the past. Given the size of the college sports industry and the increased demands on athletes’ time and schedules — which can impede on their ability to work towards a degree — the California law seems sensible and strategic, and will hopefully prompt the NCAA to change its endorsement rules.

The sports industry earned $14 billion last year. College athletes put in a

lot of hours practicing and playing for their universities, but they don’t get to share in the billions of dollars made each year off of their hard work. The compensation they get from their schools for their hours spent representing them at matches, meets and tournaments takes the form of scholarships, which of course is no small payment.

But while their scholarships do save them tens of thousands of dollars that non-athletes might regard with a bit of jealousy, college athletes also have the opportunity to make money from other sources by promoting products and companies — something those who don’t go on to play professionally will never get the chance to do. The NCAA has blocked athletes from capitalizing on these opportunities in the past, but as Newsom points out, this isn’t exactly fair.

“Every single student in the university can market their name, image and likeness; they can go and get a YouTube channel, and they can monetize that,” he told the New York Times. “The only group that can’t are athletes. Why is that?”

The NCAA has been looking into changing its rules on endorsements, but is firmly against the California law.

“As a membership organization, the NCAA agrees changes are needed to continue to support student-athletes, but improvement needs to happen on a national level through the NCAA’s rules-making process,” the NCAA said in a statement Monday. “Unfortunately, this new law already is creating confusion for current and future student-athletes, coaches, administrators and campuses, and not just in California.”

The confusion to which the statement refers is the fact that the law only applies to California, setting up the possibility of the NCAA either having to bar California universities from participating in sporting events or change its endorsement rules for all athletes nationwide.

The latter possibility is why California’s law was a good idea. Lawsuits will most certainly follow now that Newsom signed the bill, which will force the NCAA to take a look at its endorsement rules and possibly change them according to the court’s decision. Regardless of how the matter gets decided in court, the law has been effective by making it impossible for the NCAA to ignore the issue.

Hopefully athletes will get the opportunity to market themselves to earn some money, as other students are able to do.

The Pitt News SuDoku 10/2/19 courtesy of dailysudoku.com

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Sports

Waiver Wire Weekly: No superstars, no problem pittnews.com

MCGOWENS, PANTHERS POISED TO TAKE NEXT STEP Kyle Saxon

Staff Writer Last Thursday, sophomore guard Trey McGowens sat down in the newly minted Pitt Studios, practice jersey draped around his neck, and began the first press conference of his second year with a pleasant, but unsurprising statement.

“I felt like this summer I worked harder than I’ve ever worked before,” McGowens said. “I’m more confident with my shot, a better leader, a better talker. I just got better.”

McGowen’s message was what the entire Pitt men’s basketball program has preached since the ouster of maligned former head coach Kevin Stallings and the hiring of current head coach Jeff Capel: to rebuild this program, they need to improve at every opportunity.

Capel began using #ZooEra in the early days of his tenure as head coach, because that’s what Pitt needed — to turn the page from a historically depressing and demoralizing era of Pitt basketball.

And just like Capel promised, last season marked the start of a new era for Pitt basketball. Capel immediately put his seasoned recruiting and development abilities on display, and had the Panthers playing a more up-tempo, exciting brand of basketball. In Capel’s first year, Pitt improved by six wins, four of them against conference opponents, from their historically poor 2017-18 season.

The Panthers enter the 2019-20 campaign coming off of a 14-19 season in which they finished tied for 14th in the ACC. Though their exponential progress may not be fully reflected by their record, everyone in and around the program feels this team can do big things this season.

The focus of last year’s team was its highly touted newcomers: Jeff Capel’s trio of four-star first-year players. This year, the spotlight will be on those same players, now in a new role as veterans and leaders. Their development on and off the court will make

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Trey McGowens (2) is the highest-ranked player on the men’s basketball team. Knox Coulter | assistant visual editor or break this basketball team this season.

Sophomore guard Trey McGowens is ready to embrace that role — and as the highest-rated player of Capel’s first recruiting class, McGowens showed he won’t shy away from the pressure and expectations that comes with stardom.

“I always try to lead by example, but now I have to be more vocal,” McGowens said.

“If one of the younger guys is getting down, or misses a couple shots, you know, that’s something I kind of experienced last year.

Knowing how that felt, I just gotta be able to pick them up.”

The South Carolina native averaged 11.6 points per game as a first-year, a middling figure that can accurately tell the story of his highs and lows during his first year. McGowens had some quiet games and seemed to lack confidence for stretches throughout ACC play, but he appears poised to use what he’s learned from that experience to progress as a player and leader. “(Last season) was a lot of ups and

downs. A lot of learning … I just learned I need to be levelheaded. It just comes with maturity,” McGowens said.

During those ups, however, McGowens could be found flying through the air for posterizing dunks and acrobatic finishes through contact. The explosive combo guard tallied 33 points in a win over Louisville — the program’s first conference win in over a year — as well as 30 points in an upset of No.13 Florida State and 26 points in Pitt’s ACC tournament win over Boston College.

The Panthers were 8-2 when McGowens led the team in scoring, 4-2 in ACC play.

His athleticism translates to the defensive end as well, and he prides himself on lockdown defense. McGowens emerged as perhaps the team’s best defender and sparked runs with his knack for forcing turnovers. Even through his periodic offensive struggles, McGowens remained one of the best perimeter defenders in the conference, ranking fourth in the ACC with 1.9

October 2, 2019

steals per game.

“I always just feel like if your shot’s not falling, you’ve gotta find another way to try and help your team win, and defense is just something I love to play in general,” McGowens said.

McGowens showed he can be breathtakingly spectacular on both sides of the ball.

When he played his best basketball, the Panthers beat high-caliber teams, and could compete with anyone. But to take his game and the team to the next level, Capel says McGowens will need to show more consistency this season.

“Trey is as important as anyone on our team,” Capel said. “When he played well last year, in conference, we won. Period. So we need him to become consistently good …

Trey showed he can be dynamic. I think the big thing with him is confidence.”

If McGowens consistently plays at the level he did in Pitt’s ACC wins last year, there’s no telling what heights he and this Pitt team can reach. Paired with 2019 ACC All-Freshman point guard Xavier Johnson, as well as exciting new perimeter players and a deeper, more talented frontcourt, the Panthers could find themselves on the NCAA Tournament bubble this March.

“I feel like this summer, we all made a big jump. We’re not looking to rebuild this year. We’re looking — NCAA Tournament is the goal,” McGowens said.

Pitt, from top to bottom, will need to make great strides to attain the goals it has set out for postseason play. But McGowens’ role as an X factor makes his development paramount. Flashes of greatness and loads of excitement, but ultimately a lack of experience and consistency kept McGowens and the team from being great overall.

If Pitt plans to open with a win against Florida State at home on Nov. 6, it must show up more mature, confident and consistent than last year. By the sound of it, McGowens and the Panthers are ready to do just that.

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