The Spectrum Volume 63 Issue 38 by The Spectrum Student Periodical

International students decide where to spend holidays UB students to attend SUNY Model European UN

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT PUBLICATION OF THE UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SINCE 1950

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Women’s b-ball drops second straight game

Friday, November 22, 2013

Page

Volume 63 No. 38

Courtesy of Ken Ilgunas

Ken Ilgunas stands next to his parked 1994 Ford Econoline, which he lived in for two and a half years while attending graduate school at Duke University, in front of the Duke Chapel.

SATISFYING HIS SOUL

UB alum Ilgunas makes national waves with unorthodox adventures

BY BRIAN KESCHINGER Creative Director t had been months since Ken Ilgunas had a real conversation. He was daydreaming in the library at Duke University, watching the hairs on his arm rise and fall gently, when he began to get hot flashes. He rushed to his van in the parking lot and hastily reached for his garbage can. He made it just in time, as vomit exploded out of his mouth. His head was throbbing when he noticed the water dripping onto his leg. There was a hole in the roof of his van and rain was falling through it. He would have gone home, but the van was his home. This was the moment he most doubted his life decision.

Ilgunas, a UB alum, spent two and a half years living in his van so he could attend graduate school without accruing debt. Ilgunas’ van-dwelling story led him to: writing an article for The New York Times, talking on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and publishing a novel-length memoir entitled Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom, which has sold over 18,000 copies since its May release. But the van experiment wasn’t his first or his last freedom-seeking trip to push himself. SEE ILGUNAS, PAGE 6

Courtesy of Ken Ilgunas

Using a self-timer camera, Ken Ilgunas poses on a pipe in Saskatchewan during his 1,700-mile hike from Alberta to Texas along the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. His hike took just over five months to complete.

Fifty years later, Kennedy’s death is still felt Mapping trajectory while studying rapping’s directory Faculty reflects and expands on president’s assassination Course teaches UB students the history and social factors of hip-hop genre

SAM FERNANDO

Senior News Editor

On Nov. 22, 1963, the news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas echoed throughout the United States. It was the fourth time in U.S. history that a president was killed. Now, 50 years later, Kennedy’s death still has a profound impact on media coverage, American history and the people who remember it. Mark O’Brian, a professor of biochemistry, recalls his family members being quiet and somber, and anywhere he went had the same solemn atmosphere. “I felt the whole weight of it, even at 5 years old,” O’Brian said. “For the first time, nothing seemed certain.” O’Brian said the impact was especially deep because it was the first time a tragedy had been so visual. Modern television was still in its infancy and the coverage allowed the event to enter Americans’ homes. At the time, Kennedy was “wildly popular,” O’Brian said. He had a high approval rating and a glamorous wife, and he symbolized a changing United States.

Courtesy of U.S. Embassy of New Delhi

Courtesy of Justin De Senso

Even 50 years later, President John F. Kennedy’s death has a profound impact on media coverage, American history and the people who remember it.

UB’s AAS 117, “Hip-Hop and Social Issues,” class made a trip Friday to Cornell University’s Hip-Hop Collection. (Back, left to right): Brie Bourdage, Courtney St. George, Ezekiel Porter, Joseph Mercedes, instructor Justin De Senso, Sonny Tedesco, Peter Barth, Shaq Jones, Nelson Clark. (Front, left to right): Leah Brown, Delmar Jones, Brodie Tedesco, Ben Ortiz.

Kennedy, who was America’s 35th president, was a World War II hero and the youngest elected president. The Democrat and former Massachusetts senator influenced America’s youth to get involved in public service. He was also a Civil Rights activist. O’Brian said Kennedy represented a sense of hope in the country. SEE JFK, PAGE 2

Correction A Nov. 20 article, “Can you hack it?” incorrectly stated the student in the picture was Nate Burgers. The caption should have stated the student was Zach Wieand, whose name was misspelled “Wienand” in the article. The Spectrum regrets these errors.

GISELLE LAM

Staff Writer

Beats, rhymes, pimps and hoes. According to Justin De Senso, professor of AAS 117, “HipHop and Social Issues,” this is what people think of when they think of hip-hop. His course is focused on teaching students to take hip-

hop seriously. The class isn’t just a place for students to listen to rap songs and analyze lyrics. “[The course is focused on] trying to map the trajectory of African-American trauma through hip-hop,” De Senso said. Students discuss conflicts in African-American history, gender, race and class, and how SEE HIP-HOP, PAGE 2

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Friday, November 22, 2013

Continued from page 1: Hip-hop the topics are related to the upbringing of the musical genre. On Friday, AAS 117 students accompanied De Senso on a trip to Cornell University’s Hip-Hop Collection (CHHC). CHHC collects historical artifacts of hiphop culture. Its preservation makes these artifacts accessible for future generations, according to the CHHC website. Students experienced the history of hip-hop and were exposed to the artifacts, which included party fliers from the late ’70s, vinyl records and old spray cans from graffiti artists. “It’s better than what they have at the Smithsonian,” De Senso said. De Senso held this trip to Cornell to make the class as meaningful and memorable as possible for his students. He said it is about the academic takeaway his students can get from the event and that indulging in education is not always about the classroom setting revolving around objectives and learning outcomes. “It was great to have a real-life visual to things I had been learning about earlier in the semester,” said Brieanna Bourdage, a freshman communication design major. The collection, which opened in 2007, displayed themes that

revolved around the four basic elements of hip-hop: the graffiti artists, the DJ, the MC (rapper) and the B-boy (breakdancer). Multimedia was used to showcase the history of hip-hop. In addition to earphone ports for an audible experience, visitors got the full audiovisual feel through videos and glass-encased pieces. CDs and records from original releases decorate the walls. De Senso said one the most amazing things he saw there was the archive of the IGTimes – originally called the “International Graffiti Times.” It was a worldwide mini magazine, or zine, dedicated to graffiti. Alongside this were letters written by readers from around the world and from different backgrounds. De Senso said he witnessed numerous handwritten letters from graffiti artists. They would ask for the publication to send things to them so they could keep up with hip-hop and graffiti. Included with many of the letters was their own graffiti art. They would sketch letters out to display the authenticity of their talents and passion for the art. “Hip-hoppers really wanted to be at the heart of it,” De Senso said. “They wanted to feel the pulse and to be in the know.” CHHC Curatorial Assistant

Ben Ortiz guided the class. He gave presentations to the students and showed them the composition of hip-hop history. Ortiz’s job at the museum also includes hunting for artifacts. He contacts hip-hop figures for information and fragments from the past. Oftentimes, he asks for graffiti artists’ black books, where graffiti artists practice their art and sketches. De Senso plans on teaching an AMS 111 course on contemporary popular music and he hopes to bring his prospective students to the CHHC collection as well. The spring class will also be hiphop based and will focus on either Jay Z or Tupac. Bourdage said she learned a lot about the social, economic and political implications behind the music and the motivations of the hip-hop artists. “You start with basics, from hip-hop’s birthplace and what influenced its creation,” said Joseph Mercedes, a senior communication major. “Then, gradually, you build into the social and political influence it has on the U.S., as well as our debacle with the criminal justice system, among other things.” He said that through the class, he has been able to think critically about the true meaning and

purpose of hip-hop. He said it is not what mass media makes it out to be. De Senso, who had been teaching hip-hop based courses for five years, said that what he teaches is not how people view the genre. “We think of Drake; we think of Gucci; we think of 2 Chainz or Miley Cyrus,” he said. “But we don’t think of hip-hop as having these artifacts … that are worthy of study.” De Senso said that he received an email from one of his higher authorities stating that “hip-hop is a less demanding subject.” De Senso felt it was demeaning hip-hop as a whole. He later interviewed students on this situation and he said most students were “flabbergasted.” He said it takes students responding to the issue in order for the subject to take on a bigger role in the university. “There are generations on this campus that need to be convinced of the intellectual merits of the value of studying hip-hop and what it offers,” he said. In the past 10 years, the study of hip-hop has grown all across the country. The University of Arizona has a minor in hip-hop culture, which is under its Africana Stud-

ies Program. Harvard University also has a hip-hop archive on its campus. In addition, Harvard recently honored famous rapper Nas by launching the Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellowship. Alex Porco received his Ph.D. from UB in 2011. His focus was rap music. De Senso’s “Hip-Hop and Social Issues” course features a 30page syllabus dictating every topic in hip-hop, from historical contexts to “social (in) justice.” The class demands daily readings, book reviews and research papers. His class is currently reading The New Jim Crow, which he describes as “not an easy read.” The book focuses on the current criminal justice system in relation to Jim Crow and slavery. It also covers social forms of racial oppression. De Senso hopes to show how students have the interest and desire for the study of hip-hop. He wants to show departmental figures the students’ demand for the subject and how complex and intellectually rewarding hiphop truly is. email: features@ubspectrum.com

Continued from page 1: JFK A big reason the death had a strong effect on America was because of the Zapruder film – a 26.6-second video and firsthand account of the assassination filmed by Abraham Zapruder, a bystander in Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was killed. Almost immediately, people could see the graphic images of Kennedy getting shot, O’Brian said. “People were experiencing these things in real time, and reacting to it in real time, collectively in real time,” O’Brian said. “It was something very new. A certain innocence was lost and people were really struck by it.”

The event continues to have an impact on government today and it changed the way security protects the president. O’Brian said it is almost unheard of today for a president to drive in an open carriage with minimal security protection. The Kennedy assassination also created many controversies surrounding whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the only one involved in killing the president. Over 50 percent of Americans believe the assassination was the work of multiple men, according to a Gallup poll. O’Brian thinks these conspiracies, which some people still believe even 50 years later, allow other conspiracies to gain sup-

port. He said without the Kennedy conspiracy theory, perhaps other conspiracy theories, like those surrounding the moon landing and 9/11, wouldn’t have emerged. Debra Kolodczak, an American studies and communication professor, said the Kennedys left lasting “images” that have riddled the memory of American history. One image in particular stands out in her mind. On the day of Kennedy’s funeral, four days after his assassination, there was a moment when John Kennedy Jr., Kennedy’s son, left his mother’s side and saluted. The moment was captured on camera and has become an iconic picture. Kolodczak said it was especially memorable because no one told him to do that. His mother was veiled in grief and his sister was consoling his mother. In an instant, Kolodczak said, “the entire nation was in tears again.” She added that hindsight puts the “Kennedy story” into perspective. The reason why Kennedy’s death is still so emotional is because Americans, including Kolodczak, know the aftermath. She said looking back enhances our memory. Five years after his brother’s murder, Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Thirty-

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one years after that, John Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash under mysterious circumstances. “What makes these images grow in their iconic value is what happens afterwards,” Kolodczak said. “This family represented the American Dream and the American nightmare.” Kolodczak said JFK’s assassination was an event that revolutionized the news industry. Never before had there been continuous and immediate coverage of such a tragic event. It became the “benchmark,” she said. The immediacy of the news was evident then and seems to be the driving force in today’s news, according to Kolodczak. Fifty years after the tragic event, Kolodczak said her memory of the moment is still vivid. She said it is important to recall and reflect on these major moments in our country’s history. “When a tragedy happens, the reality sets in in a whole different way,” she said. “It is important to recognize how the past can shape the future.” email: news@ubspectrum.com

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EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR IN CHIEF Aaron Mansfield MANAGING EDITORS Lisa Khoury Sara DiNatale OPINION EDITOR Eric Cortellessa NEWS EDITORS Sam Fernando, Senior Joe Konze Jr. Amanda Low, Asst. LIFE EDITORS Keren Baruch, Senior Sharon Kahn, Senior Alyssa McClure, Asst. ARTS EDITORS Max Crinnin, Senior Rachel Kramer, Asst. Felicia Hunt, Asst. SPORTS EDITORS Jon Gagnon, Senior Ben Tarhan, Senior Owen O’Brien PHOTO EDITORS Aline Kobayashi, Senior Juan David Pinzon, Asst. Daniele Gershon, Asst. CARTOONIST Jeanette Chwan CREATIVE DIRECTORS Brian Keschinger Haider Alidina, Asst. PROFESSIONAL STAFF OFFICE ADMINISTRATOR Helene Polley ADVERTISING MANAGER Emma Callinan Drew Gaczewski, Asst. Chris Mirandi, Asst. ADVERTISING DESIGNER Haley Sunkes Ashlee Foster, Asst. Tyler Harder, Asst.

November 22, 2013 Volume 63 Number 38 Circulation 7,000

The views expressed – both written and graphic – in the Feedback, Opinion, and Perspectives sections of The Spectrum do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board. Submit contributions for these pages to The Spectrum office at Suite 132 Student Union or news@ubspectrum.com. The Spectrum reserves the right to edit these pieces for style and length. If a letter is not meant for publication please mark it as such. All submissions must include the author’s name, daytime phone number, and email address. The Spectrum is provided free in part by the Undergraduate Mandatory Activity Fee.

OPINION

Our generation’s loss A time of remembrance for a president we never knew What he was, he was: What he is fated to become Depends on us. - W.H. Auden, “Elegy for JFK” (1964) It is hardly just the 50th anniversary of former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination when we reflect on his life and death. And it is hardly just those who were alive when it happened who mourn the loss of an elegant and inspiring leader. For our generation, of those young and in college now, he still means a great deal. But for us, it is not that we lament losing a president we admired – we weren’t there for it; it’s that we lament the loss of an attitude he cultivated in others – a youthful confidence in the possibilities of participating in the political process. Kennedy’s legacy will always belong to the young – the young in age and the young in spirit. More so than any other figure in American history, it was he who motivated America’s youth to become involved in public service. He came to symbolize that politics is a noble calling and that government is an engine that can solve our greatest problems. It says something that both sides – liberals and conservatives – want to claim him as one of their own. The meaning of his life is still deeply embedded in the vision of America to which many want to cling: a sense of widespread belief in the country’s potential. Most of the historical evidence points to that he began his political career as more of a conservative and wound up as more of a liberal; the significant speeches toward the end of his life about the need for civil rights, nuclear disarmament and peace have become a rallying cry for liberalism and American progressivism. And the ideological course his brothers Bob and Ted would take, and the rest of the Kennedys who would go on to run for office, further indicate the former president’s political principles and shape images of his legacy.

ART BY JEANETTE CHWAN

Nevertheless, the question of what he means for the young people of today still beckons further consideration. It was not long ago that another senator who ran for president gave a large amount of people a great deal of hope – and excited young people in particular. As Robin Williams said in a standup bit in 2008, “Obama may be Kenyan for Kennedy.” Even as Obama, well into the fifth year of his presidency, disappoints the campaign he led of “hope and change” that so many deeply believed in, like Kennedy, he carries with him the mark of a celebrity president. But on this anniversary, very few are comparing Kennedy’s political life to Obama’s, as much as his death to Sept. 11, 2001. When young people today talk to their parents or grandparents about Kennedy’s assassination, the first thing they say is where they were that day or what they were doing.

Those of us in college now do have an experience similar to that – we all remember where we were on Sept. 11. Each of these two events were tragic and signified desolate meanings of massive implications. But we know who carried out the 2001 attacks; we know who the mastermind was behind it. But there is still a large cloud of mystery looming over Kennedy’s death. Any visit to any bookstore throughout the country will verify how many writers (and readers) are still obsessed with the facts surrounding that fateful day. The uncertainty of everything deserves the relentless attention of historians and those who dare to undertake one of the most vexing questions in American history. But for us, today’s youth, the question we should be focusing on is quite different.

In 1963, after the assassination, the American journalist Mary McGrory cried to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “We’ll never laugh again.” To which, Moynihan replied: “Heavens Mary, we’ll laugh again. It’s just that we will never be young again.” This is true of us, too – we will never be young again. But we are young now. And we should remember how the power of youth (and believing in youth) has impacted our nation’s history. Today, as the country remembers Kennedy and all his vigor and sense of incipient dreams, pay attention to how much Americans miss the sense of youth that he brought to America. It is probably because of how badly we still need it. email: editorial@ubspectrum.com

The Spectrum is represented for national advertising by MediaMate. For information on adverstising with The Spectrum visit www.ubspectrum.com/advertising or call us directly at (716) 645-2452. The Spectrum offices are located in 132 Student Union, UB North Campus, Buffalo, NY 14260-2100

Letter to the Editor ANNE MULROONEY After reading the Spectrum article entitled “College democrats seek open-minded discussion rather than debate,” I was delighted to have the opportunity to engage in respectful and civil discussion with my fellow peers on Planned Parenthood’s services. President Quinne Sember was quoted to have said “prochoice/pro-life debates have gotten old” and her club’s focus on “joint discussions rather than debates” sounded like the perfect medium through which I could express my opinion. Here was a club that championed the power of an open mind; that appreciated the diversity of opinion; that encouraged respectful and informed political conversations; whose own flyers advertised “all opinions welcome!” – what could go wrong? At the meeting’s start, Quinne Sember, president of UB Democrats, emphatically stated that the police inside the room would enforce a series of “rules.” These “rules” included that no one but the presenters and herself would be allowed to speak; no one could take any pictures

or record this public meeting unless they were on the executive board of UB Democrats; no one could freely distribute any kind of literature; and if that were not enough, Sember also stated that all questions would be pre-censored or unasked based on her subjective criteria. UB Democrats made it clear that there would be no open discussion after this presentation. I had expressed my discontent with Sember’s policies through email, and I received a response stating: “I don’t actually care if I’m being inconsistent or unfair with this event. That’s just the way it has to be. Again, I apologize for this, but that’s the way it’s going to be done.” Questions for discussion needed to be emailed to Sember or written on a piece of paper before the presentation began, and a multitude of questions were written down due the lack of the statistical substance in Planned Parenthood’s presentation. A friend of mine asked how many mammograms Planned Parenthood provided per year; another friend wanted to know how many adoption referrals take place compared

to the number of abortions; I wanted to know how abortion could make up only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services while earning them over $150 million in revenue (according to their own publicized statistics). These questions were relevant to Planned Parenthood’s services, based on honest curiosity, and rooted in objective observation. But were they answered, or even asked? Unfortunately, most never made it past the page. Sember’s method of choosing questions was nothing if not completely outrageously subjective and shameful. Instead of focusing on questions relating directly to Planned Parenthood’s services, Sember flipped through the inquiries of students and dismissed each and every one with the exception of perhaps two that that were entirely elementary and required only the most basic of answers. She then decided to ask her own questions, which were also entirely irrelevant to Planned Parenthood’s services and not the least bit educationally concerned. Here’s an example: “So, like, where is the nearest Planned Parenthood

from here?” Besides being a violation of the attending students’ civil liberties, these offenses were shockingly undemocratic and against everything the club had claimed they championed. Where was the open-minded discussion that was so cheerfully advertised in The Spectrum? Where was the respectful and informed conversation? Where was the celebration and welcoming of diverse opinions? Alas, it seems that Sember did not find these ideals worthy enough to be upheld for this particular event. What a disappointment. This event was shamelessly censored and absurd. The forbidding and censorship of honest questions is the prerogative of dictatorship, not democracy. I am ashamed on behalf of the UB Democrats, and I certainly hope they improve their act sooner rather than later. Anne Mulrooney is a junior English major.

Friday, November 22, 2013 ubspectrum.com

LIFE, ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Traditional and new celebrations Some international students celebrate holiday season in Buffalo, others return home KEREN BARUCH

Senior Features Editor

Myrto Anastasiadou, a freshman history major, misses her family back home in Cyprus. Though some students don’t have the opportunity to go home for the holidays, Anastasiadou is counting down the days until her flight takes off from Buffalo to her home in Greece. She is one of approximately 5,500 international students at UB – some of whom are making new holiday traditions in Buffalo, while others are reuniting with family abroad. As a freshman, Anastasiadou is getting used to being far from home for an extended period of time. Before she spends her winter break at home, she plans to celebrate Thanksgiving in New York City and looks forward to exploring the city for the first time. “As Greek Christians, we go to church on Dec. 25,” Anastasiadou said. “My whole family celebrates Christmas in one house. We eat food, especially my mom’s stuffed turkey.” She couldn’t imagine celebrating the holidays anywhere other than her home. She misses traditional Greek food, especially “souvia” – a dish with either chicken or pork, roasted over a flame. It’s a typical Cypriot food, she said. On New Year’s Eve, Anastasiadou and her family go out at night and, on the first day of the

Courtesy of Sharon Vadapalli Sophomore biological sciences major Sharon Vadapalli and her extended family in India are used to getting dressed up in their saris and having big celebrations during the holidays. This year, she will be celebrating the holidays in Buffalo.

new year, they exchange presents. On New Year’s Day, Santa Claus traditionally visits her home, she said. On Jan. 6, she and her family celebrate the day that Christ was baptized. “It’s a tradition that mostly old women do,” Anastasiadou said. “They go to the rivers and drop fruits and vegetables into it because the water is holy that day.” She and her family participate in that tradition, too. Afterward, they go home and cook honey puffs called “louk-

oumades,” which she said are “very delicious.” The workload and cultural differences in Buffalo make her miss home even more, but thinking of going home for the holidays in just a few weeks helps her push through. “Christmas is a great motivation to work hard for my finals,” she said. Anastasiadou is eager to visit her family and engulf herself in her culture’s traditions before she has to return to her studies at UB.

Some students don’t have the opportunity to visit their homes for the holidays. Sharon Vadapalli, a sophomore biological sciences major, is used to large festivals and celebrations during the holidays. She is accustomed to colorful saris, loud Indian music blasting through speakers, colorful lights covering the streets, dancing and good food. Vadapalli was born in India, where her extended family still lives. She and her parents moved to Buffalo 17 years ago; though she loves the city and America’s op-

portunities, she misses the Indian culture and her family most during the holiday season. She, as well as other UB students who have extended families in other countries, feel lonely celebrating with small groups when they are used to grand celebrations. “We go back and visit every two or three years, but we don’t do much [in Buffalo] involving the Indian culture during the holidays,” Vadapalli said. “We just wear our fancier Indian clothing.” This year, Vadapalli will celebrate the holidays as a traditional American, as she and her family will eat turkey at the dinner table on Thanksgiving and decorate their house for Christmas. Her family got a tree, which they will cover with ornaments, and they plan to put presents under the tree on Christmas morning. She is excited to celebrate the holidays traditionally, however, she does wish she could celebrate with the rest of her Indian family. “The problem is distance, but we do Skype to make it seem like we are there,” Vadapalli said. “And we still make the best of holidays here.” Vadapalli and her parents plan to go to the Christian Fellowship Church in Amherst, in hopes that celebrating with their church will fill the void of their extended family back home. email: features@ubspectrum.com

Europe or bust

UB students to attend SUNY Model European Union Conference in Belgium JOE KONZE JR

News Editor

As soon as Elise Roberts found out that she would be representing Italy at the upcoming SUNY Model European Union 2014, she began researching the backgrounds and types of policies the country supports. Her reasoning? She would be acting as its foreign minister. Roberts, along with five other UB students, will participate in the competition in Brussels, Belgium, one of EU’s political centers, from Jan. 8-11. “Once we [divided] into roles, we actually did some research on the person and their actual role,” said Roberts, a senior triple major in Italian, international studies and political science. “[We] try to use that idea of the person that you are representing to respond in the way you think they would.” Groups of four to five students from around the SUNY system and the Northeast will play as political figures from international governments in preparation for a European Council Summit. They will also have the opportunity to meet and work with students from all over Europe. William Swift, a senior political science major; David Harary, a junior economics and international trade major; Alexandra Macken, a junior political science

and economics major; Stephanie Griner, an interdisciplinary major; and Dan Guadardio, an economics major, will all participate this winter break. The group is in its temporary stages, and it received funding from Student Life. With the funding, each member will receive $400. They have even created a ‘Go Fund Me’ page to raise money for the trip. “This is my fourth year doing it and it’s the first time we have [received] funding,” Roberts said. “My first year, it was in New Paltz, so funding wasn’t an issue. But the second year, it was in Exodur in the U.K. Getting funding feels like we have the support of the university.” While Roberts and Macken will debate for Italy, Harary and Swift will represent Slovakia. Swift said the most difficult part about representing a small country is getting information about the government. But he said it helps participants gain a better understanding of other nations. “I know one of the personal challenges for me is, as the head government of Slovakia, you can’t find much [about Slovakia’s stance in] Syria because they don’t have much of an opinion, I found,” Swift said. “I had to research what they were doing and had to form it.”

• • • • •

Chad Cooper, The Spectrum (From left to right) Jacob Swift, Elise Roberts, Alexandra Macken and David Harary are four of the six students who will attend the SUNY Model European Union 2014 in Brussels, Belgium, Jan. 8-11.

Macken said the conference will be a great experience for the group and it is not only serious business, it’s about having fun. “After we have our designated meeting times, once they end we won’t stop debating,” Macken said. “We’ll go out that night and then still be forming a coalition with each other and try and co-

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erce each other. It’s relevant because it really happens.” Although the students’ focus is primarily on the conference, they hope to eventually be recognized as an SA club. “We sent in the application at the beginning of September and there were some revisions that had to be made,” Roberts said.

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“It’s just a matter of submitting the revised applications.” Members of the UB Model European Union hope the trip brings more awareness to their group and draws in other interested students to join. email: news@ubspectrum.com

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Blue love

Brilliant performances and craftsmanship make for an astonishing display of artistry

Film: Blue Is the Warmest Colour Buffalo Release Date: Nov. 15 Studio: Sundance Selects Grade: A ERIC CORTELLESSA

Opinion Editor

Ever since I was a teenager, and in the early-though-not-quite-initial stages of my movie-going career, I’ve been going to movies alone. As Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer says in Annie Hall, when confronted on his proclivity for New York women, “Well, not just, not only.” Well, I don’t just like going to movies alone, but depending on my mood or perhaps even the film, sometimes, the movies can be best enjoyed as a solitary act. But as a solitary act, movies can sometimes be made more dangerous. As spectators, we are already voyeurs – sitting in the dark and watching the lives of others. But the voyeur of most movies is a bit different from the voyeur of Blue Is the Warmest Colour, which has just arrived to Buffalo. Last Sunday, I went to see it by myself not knowing what to expect. I came out of the theater under a hypnotic spell – exhausted and consumed, and enraptured. With all the anticipation this film has received and all that is being said about it, the experience of actually seeing it is wildly unprecedented. When Blue Is the Warmest Colour showed at the Cannes Film Festival in May, it provoked intense response – it received as much outrage as it did praise. And chants from the galley bellowed that this is a three-hour film packed with one thing above all else: sex, sex and sex. When the jury, chaired by Steven Spielberg, awarded the Palme d’Or to the director, Abdellatif Kechiche (Black Venus), and the two leading actresses, eyebrows were raised and suspicions grew – the film may have solidified its place in history as a movie that, like Pauline Kael once said about Last Tango in Paris, “will be argued about for as long as there are movies.” Much like Tango, Blue’s actresses complained about their treatment by the director, and since it came to America, it has received its share of indignant response –

Courtesy of Sundance Selects

the IFC Center in Greenwich Village has received complaints from parent groups for letting teenagers in to see the NC-17 film and the Flicks art house cinema in Boise, Idaho has refused to even show it. There have been detractors who claim the film is one long patriarchal gaze on lesbian sex and the female appetite; and some say they don’t know whether they are watching a porno or a film (they are quick to point out how most lesbian porn is made by straight men with straight actresses for male consumers). This film may contain one of the most explicit, most intense sex scenes in the history of movies – but it is no pornography. Unlike porn, which supplies the tamest form of mechanized sex, Blue is an emotionally fused work that leaves its audience in a state of shock from its primitive power.

The sex in this film doesn’t disturb its audience because of its physicality; it makes us uncomfortable because of its emotional aggression – the magnitude of visceral force has rarely before been brought so vividly to the screen. Blue is at once the sexual coming-ofage tale of Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a high school student who begins a romance with Emma (Léa Seydoux, Grand Central), an art student in college who is a few years older, and an epic love story. Set in the northern French city of Lille, the story is spread out over many years. Much of the film moves melodiously and yet episodically. The French title is La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2 (Adèle: Chapters 1 & 2), which is appropriate in its suggestion that life is a series of chapters. The film is loosely based on a graphic novel, Blue Angel, written by Julie Maroh, and La Vie de Marianne by Pierre de Marivaux. At the beginning of the film, Adèle is reading Marianne in her class. She later calls it her favorite book. Musings by her and her classmates provide a meta-commentary on the film through those discussions. And fittingly, Marianne is an unfinished novel. Adèle’s transition from the pre-lapserian to the post-lapserian state entails her realizing that life does not weave itself into facile conclusions – the various elements are often left unfinished. At first, Kechiche does nothing that hasn’t been done before – he portrays the day-to-day life of an adolescent. (Spielberg would note that there is more of Truffaut in this film than Bertolucci.) The searing loneliness of Adèle is what’s most poignant and most affecting. But then, the film becomes one of the most in-depth character studies of recent memory. The quotidian rhythms of her life are altered when she meets the blue-haired Emma. She first sees her one day randomly on a crowded street, and then runs into her again when she spontaneously ventures into a lesbian nightclub. The two begin a rapturous affair – emotionally charged and physically explosive. The incredibly graphic sex scenes aren’t there as a physical stimulant; they are there to express the characters’ desires.

The intensity of their eroticism is the only way they can articulate their feelings for one another. Adèle’s inarticulateness itself becomes a character – nothing important is said by her; it is all implied. Emma’s level of sophistication is a bit beyond her new lover’s ken – she teaches Adèle about art and philosophy, and she tells Adèle to read Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism Is a Humanism and explains the meaning of “existence precedes essence.” Later, Adèle jokingly proclaims, “Orgasm precedes essence.” As the years pass, Adèle and Emma live together while Adèle becomes a kindergarten teacher, and later she moves up to the first grade. For a film in which the immensity of feeling comes from the sense it possesses of passing time, the movie itself has the effect of stopping time. As a cinematic bildungsroman, the film is largely about the development of character. And for all the rumbles surrounding this film about its sex, more time is spent on Adèle with her students in the classroom than with Emma in the bedroom. Kechiche is deliberate in placing Adèle in a classroom – it’s about her learning and growth, her formation. Blue Is the Warmest Colour doesn’t suggest that sex is what forms someone, but rather, it plays a large role in shaping one’s life. Adèle’s love affair with Emma is the learning of how to live while knowing that you will die and love will go. Moments, minutes, hours and days after viewers leave the theater, they are likely to continue thinking of Adèle. Exarchopoulos delivers one of the most daring performances ever – of a young woman teetering on the exultation of lust and the desolation of rejection. At the end of the film, viewers will realize they are not watching a film so much as witnessing the most private, most intimate moments of a person’s life. And whether they came with company or by themselves, they may leave the theater feeling more like a voyeur, but less alone. Blue Is the Warmest Colour is now playing at the Dipson Amherst Theatre. email: arts@ubspectrum.com

ubspectrum.com

Friday, November 22, 2013

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ILGUNAS “T

he soul must first be caged before it can be free,” Ilgunas said when he returned to UB for a talk this past Monday. Just before graduating from UB in 2007 with a double major in English and history, Ilgunas applied to 25 paid newspaper internships. He was an aspiring journalist with experience after working for The Spectrum for two years and interning at Artvoice, but he was rejected from all 25. With $32,000 in debt from student loans and no job, Ilgunas was desperate. So he did what most would in that situation – call a previous employer. He had spent the summer between his fourth and fifth years at UB working as a maid in Coldfoot, Alaska – a town with a population of 10, according to the 2010 U.S. census. Ilgunas was offered a job as a tour guide and began to pay off his debt. Most people would have found a job in their hometown while living with their parents to pay off college loans. But Ilgunas is an adventurer. After working as a maid for some time, he decided to hitchhike 5,500 miles, canoe another 1,000 miles across Ontario with “voyageurs” (people who reenact the lives of 18th century fur traders), work on a trail crew in Gulfport, Miss., and finally finish paying off his debt back in Coldfoot as a backcountry ranger in the Gates of the Arctic National Park. But Ilgunas still wasn’t satisfied with his adventures. He had found a “renaissance” at UB, as he calls it, where for the first time in his life he had goals, values, dreams and aspirations. Ilgunas wasn’t mentally stimulated from the hard work he had done in the past few years. “My brain just feels like this orange left out in the sun, just like withering away, and I had this deep craving for the liberal arts,” Ilgunas said. “I wanted to re-immerse myself in a world of thought and ideas and ancient texts of the classics.” But there was something standing in the way of going back to school and getting the education that he missed so much: money. “Going into debt at that point was unthinkable,” Ilgunas said. “Working so hard to pay it off – there was no way I was going back into debt.”

lgunas says he told his mom, Tina Ilgunas, that he was going to live in a van while attending graduate school at Duke University a little while before moving to Durham, N.C. She claims that he never told her before actually doing so. Ilgunas thinks her lapse in hearing was a “momentary defense mechanism.” After Tina was questioning her son about where he was living and even provided him with some housing options, she received an email from him that casually buried what his new home was in between daily rudimentary conversation. She was concerned. “I just thought something was wrong [mentally], that somebody would have to do something like [live in a van],” Tina said. But there was nothing wrong with Ilgunas. He saw the van as a “practical way of avoiding apartment rent,” and, of course, as an adventure. “Going into an apartment, even if it was offered for free, I don’t know if I would’ve taken it,” Ilgunas said. “[The van] was kind of me embracing this simplistic life. At the same time, it was a challenge … It was kind of an experiment to see what I needed in an urban planet-state – to try to find the line between my true wants and my true needs.” Though it might sound exciting and freeing, it wasn’t always easy. Ilgunas was lonely. If he told anyone about his newest home

of the Duke parking lot, which was conveniently located next to a senior apartment complex, he risked being exposed. The parking lot’s location helped keep the 1994 Ford Econoline van with the red-toblack gradient paint job from looking like it didn’t belong. Campus security most likely assumed the owner lived in that building. Even still, caution was a top priority. Ilgunas would peek through the mini blinds attached to his windows every morning before exiting and would make sure nobody saw him get in at night. The whole situation made it very difficult to build relationships. “I sort of felt sorry for him,” Tina said. “I thought how lonely it must be and I worried about his hygiene. And he always had an answer for me that made sense.” Ilgunas would shower at the university gym and would eventually meet some people who could be trusted with his secret. Approaching people with the idea was always a tricky situation. “You can’t say, ‘Hey, I live in a van.’ That’s like saying, ‘Hey, I have this hideous, separating STD,’” Ilgunas laughed. He still managed to maintain a romantic relationship for a few months during his twoand-half year stay at Duke. Date night in the van included a movie from the library, Ilgunas’ laptop and his -20 degree Fahrenheit sleeping bag. Though his rent was free, Ilgunas’ tuition was not. He found that if he “demonstrated financial need” he could receive up to 66 percent off his tuition, but that still meant he had to pay for that remaining one third. During his stay at Duke, he participated in over 25 paid experimental studies. “I was zapped by electrodes, pricked by needles, dazed by pharmaceuticals, and I can even say that I shared three of my four primary bodily fluids,” Ilgunas wrote for Duke Magazine. Ilgunas had finished the semester successfully without ever being revealed. He could now return to Alaska, where he would work for the summer and make enough money to get an apartment when he returned to Duke in the fall, which was the plan all along. But when he returned to that familiar parking lot surrounded by dogwood trees with his van, he felt home. Ilgunas eventually went public about his van-dwelling adventure through graduate school by writing an article for Salon.com entitled ‘I live in a van down by Duke University’ that December. There was nothing in Duke’s parking policies against what Ilgunas was doing, and if Duke responded negatively to his admission, it would have been a public relations nightmare for them. After all, he was just a struggling student who wasn’t harming anyone, living in a van while attending graduate school. So he continued to live there for the following two years until he completed his Master’s degree in Liberal Studies, but he did leave a piece of his unorthodox legacy behind. “They created a law at Duke prohibiting any future van-dwellers from living on campus,” Ilgunas said. “I feel pretty bad about that – preventing someone else from experiencing it.”

GRAPHIC BY BRIAN KESCHINGER

“C

razy ideas, they sometimes represent some aching, existential need that has gone unfulfilled,” Ilgunas told UB in his talk on Monday. With no trails, guides or guidebooks available, the 1,700-mile hike from Alberta, Canada, to Port Arthur, Texas, is certainly a ‘crazy idea.’ This hike, the potential future site of the Keystone XL pipeline, was Ilgunas’ most recent, self-stimulating adventure since graduating from Duke. After hitchhiking 1,500 miles, he began the hike in Hardesty, Alberta – which is the beginning of the would-be $5.2 billion pipeline. Thirty-six inches in diameter and sitting at least four feet below the earth’s surface, this express line would carry 830,000 barrels of oil a day from the oil sands of Canada to the refineries in Texas. Ilgunas describes the oil sands as “essentially just this giant, apocalyptic mud pit.” Workers will extract bitumen from this Floridasized “mud pit” and refine it to a more liquid state to be transported in the Keystone XL. “Getting the bitumen out of the ground is an energy-intensive process producing far more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere than conventional sources of oil,” Ilgunas said. With just his 30-pound pack of essential needs, Ilgunas began his 5-month trip in September 2012, right on the cusp of a brutal Canadian and midwestern winter. After just three days of intense hiking, he had to cover his toes in duct tape to avoid spreading his Athlete’s foot. He had blisters all over his feet, and his ankles were cut up. But slowing down wasn’t an option. It was not all bad, though, as Ilgunas began to fall in love all over again with the wilderness, just as he had done before in Alaska. “I get used to the chatter of coyotes around my tent each night,” Ilgunas said. “When I’m walking, I’ll see this giant herd of deer of 50 strong, running across this butterscotch field, and all leaping together all at once over a barb-wired fence. Sometimes, I’ll see 5,000 ducks rise from a hayfield and swirl through the sky.” He went three or so days at a time without seeing or talking to another person, but when he did meet people, there was plenty to talk about. Ilgunas had to be careful, though, considering he was crossing through what is the heart of red state America as a liberal environmentalist. “To break through to people who you disagree with, I find that just being respectful and intelligent, you get respect and intelligence back,” Ilgunas said. People often laughed at his views, but that didn’t matter to him because he was generating important discussion about an

“The soul must first be caged before it can be free.”

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Living expenses per month* *All numbers courtesy of kenilgunas.com. Numbers are estimated, but based on American national averages.

Total amount per month Average American*: $1,401 Ken Ilgunas: $412

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VEHICLE REPAIRS

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lgunas returned to UB to deliver two talks this week, on Monday and Tuesday. He spoke on his adventure to conquer student debt and offered advice for current prospective students. “I think a lot of people heading into undergraduate school, especially, they’re attracted to certain schools for the wrong reasons: for prestige or for a good football or basketball team or for lavish amenities … What’s really important is that there’s a good professor in a small classroom,” Ilgunas said. He encourages students to narrow down what’s important in a school and commute from home if possible. He said he has “nothing but fond” memories of UB and that is part of the reason he returned to school when he enrolled at Duke – because he wanted to recapture the feeling he had here. Ilgunas is currently writing a book about his hike down the pipeline titled Trespassing across America. But it’d be foolish to think his adventures are over. Next, he wants to condense all 200,000 years of human history into five significant phases and live out all the phases in one year. The phases: hunter/gatherer in Africa, primitive farmer in the fertile crescent, a tradesman, a textile mill worker in China and some sort of high-tech employee. He figures to finish editing and publishing Trespassing across America in the next year. His first book, Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom, is available on Amazon. Sure, he has moments of doubt, like the time he purged his insides in a garbage can as he sat in his van and rain fell on his leg. But the next day, he cleaned his van from top to bottom, scrubbed all his pots and pans and refocused on his goal. It was a setback, but setbacks are inevitable in any adventure. Ilgunas doesn’t think his explorations are that eccentric – he just sees them as a quenching to his soul’s thirst for adventure and experimentation to push himself. He urges everyone to satisfy their own soul’s need. His thirst led him from UB to hitchhiking across America to living in a van to trekking along the Keystone XL Pipeline. Where will yours lead you?

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important topic. Ilgunas received coverage of his hike through CBC News, The New York Times, Huffington Post, NPR and more along the way. Every day, people would pull over while they were driving to offer him rides, money and even bags of McDonald’s. “When someone who is living in abject poverty pulls over and offers you $20, it is just heartbreaking,” Ilgunas said. Tina was happy to see her son making an impact on the world. “The thing that kept me straight and narrow was when I’d read his blog every day and read the adventures he had when he was on the pipeline,” Tina said. “I loved reading about the people he met and how he was treated and I looked forward to it every day, and I knew he was OK.” Ilgunas’ hike hasn’t gone unnoticed, but will it be for naught? Construction on the Keystone XL has already begun as certain phases have been approved, although several other phases have not. Because TransCanada, the company that is building the pipeline, is a foreign company, President Obama himself must approve the construction. “This is a unique opportunity in which it is just up to one person, and if the citizens can convince this one person, President Obama, then it is a battle won,” Ilgunas said. Ilgunas believes that there is a new awareness surrounding the issue of climate change, saying that “97 percent of climate scientists assert that there’s a man-made cause to climate change.” Five months after he began his hike in Alberta, Ilgunas started to notice a change in the air. As he drew nearer to Port Arthur, Texas, his destination, there was a smell that he struggled to define. When he reached the end of his trip, he was finally able to articulate it. “It’s like a bonfire was put out by a gallon of Windex,” Ilgunas said.

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