Vol. 96, Iss. 14

THE ESSAYIST

VOL. 96 ISSUE 14

Read stories from our writers on Pages 8, 9 and 17.

temple-news.com @thetemplenews

A watchdog for the Temple University community since 1921.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

THE RIPPLE EFFECT OF STUDENT DEATH When students die, how does the university respond, and how do loved ones grieve?

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS Mary Ciammetti lost her son, Christian, in January 2015 when he died from alcohol poisoning in an off-campus residence.

BY MICHAELA WINBERG & GRACE SHALLOW For The Temple News

T

his semester alone — in the span of 14 weeks — five students died suddenly.

Their names are Jenna Burleigh, Richard Dalcourt, Cariann Hithon, Michael Paytas and James Orlando.

For each student, there is a family that will never be the same; a service held that honored a young life cut short; a statement sent out by President Richard Englert or other

GRACE SHALLOW/ THE TEMPLE NEWS Photos of senior social work major Erin Wilson hang in her mother’s home in Linwood, New Jersey.

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS Kiana Pittman, a 2014 psychology alumna, was Agatha Hall’s roommate before she was killed by her boyfriend in August 2015.

university officials with all-too-familiar phrases like “coming together in times of tragedy.”

When students die, there is an undeniable ripple effect — it is tragic for family members, friends, professors, advisers.

The grief is widespread.

“No one ever sends their child to college thinking that that’s going to be the place where they pass,” said Dean of Students Stephanie Ives.

Englert wrote in a statement to the Temple community about Hithon — who was killed by police in October, a month before Paytas and Orlando died — that this number of student deaths in one semester is “unusual.” Still, loss is expected on a campus of more than 40,000 students,

administrators said.

The Temple News examined the procedures the university undertakes and the challenges it faces when students die. We spoke to former roommates, significant others, friends and family members who are still grieving, no matter how much support Temple provided.

S T UDEN T DEA T H PAG E 4

ONLINE

Explore our interactive story about student death at longform.temple-news.com.

Lauer still holds Lew Klein award Matt Lauer, who received a Lew Klein Excellence in the Media Award in 2009, was fired from NBC’s “Today” show for sexual misconduct allegations.

BY KELLY BRENNAN Assistant News Editor

chael Paytas wanted to open a breakfast and lunch restaurant with his father after he graduated from Temple.

If he wasn’t in the kitchen, he was playing guitar and having “jam sessions” with his friends, his father said. Michael Paytas could easily learn to play any song on the guitar after one listen.

“He just had that ear,” his father said. “He amazed me.”

Michael Paytas, 24, died from accidental overdose last week, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office reported.

The future of Matt Lauer’s 2009 Lew Klein Excellence in the Media Award remains unknown after sexual assault and harassment allegations against him surfaced last week.

Klein College of Media and Communication Dean David Boardman said he plans to organize a meeting to discuss Lauer’s award.

Boardman wrote in an email to The Temple News that the college is “monitoring the situation as details emerge” about the allegations.

A woman who worked with Lauer told NBC executives that Lauer locked her in his office and sexually assaulted her in 2001, the New York Times reported.

The woman told the New York Times that she feared she would lose her job if she reported the incident in 2001. NBC fired Lauer after 20 years of hosting the “Today” show last week.

Lauer is just one of the dozens of high profile men who have fallen from grace after sexual assault, harassment or misconduct allegations surfaced.

The Lew Klein Awards began in 2001 in order to celebrate and honor achievements in the media.

There are 17 individuals awarded the Excellence in the Media honor and 132 alumni inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame, according to its website.

“I don’t go back further with anyone in this room than I go back with Lew Klein,” Lauer said in his acceptance speech at the 2009 Lew Klein Awards.

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A WA RD PAG E 3

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS

PROJECT MAKES NOISE ABOUT ARTS FUNDING

Musicians participating in the Symphony for a Broken Orchestra, a project between the School District of Philadelphia and Temple Contemporary, rehearsed on Saturday at the 23rd Street Armory in Center City. The group performed on Sunday using broken instruments. Read more on Page 11.

Two students overdose in one week James Orlando, a junior Fox School of Business student, was found dead in his offcampus residence.

Michael Paytas, a senior marketing major, was found unresponsive in Paley Library.

BY GILLIAN McGOLDRICK News Editor

BY KELLY BRENNAN Assistant News Editor

Junior Fox School of Business student James Orlando died from an accidental overdose and was found dead Saturday morning in his off-campus apartment, officials said.

Philadelphia and Temple Police responded to a 911 call about Orlando on Saturday morning to a residence on Berks

O RL ANDO PAG E 2

David Paytas said his son, Michael Paytas, loved to cook. He was always in the kitchen experimenting with new recipes. Michael and David Paytas often cooked together, making all their dishes from scratch.

Senior marketing major Mi-

NEWS | PAGES 2-7, 10

OPINION | PAGES 8-9

FEATURES | PAGES 11-16

SPORTS | PAGES 17-20

Parliament passed a resolution for the university to teach students to administer Narcan.

Read more on Page 3.

Five students wrote personal essays about their feelings and experiences. Read more on Pages 8 and 9.

Two freshmen published a parody of the popular poetry book, “Milk and Honey.” Read more on Page 11.

Student-athletes wrote personal essays for our annual The Essayist issue. Read more on Page 17.

NEWS PAGE 2

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

RESEARCH

Opioid crisis a topic at community research day More than 100 faculty members across nine schools are researching the national opioid crisis.

BY ALYSSA BIEDERMAN For The Temple News The College of Public Health will host a Community-Driven Research Day in the Student Center on Tuesday.

The annual event aims to bring together researchers and community-based organizations in order to answer questions about the health problems North Philadelphians face.

The event features presenters from community organizations as well as researchers from Temple and other local institutions.

CDRD is in its eighth year.

This year’s theme is “Local Solutions to Health Challenges.”

“We try to keep the theme broad in or-

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS Chen Li, an assistant researcher for the Center for Substance Abuse Research, works with an electrophysiology machine on Monday morning at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine. The machine records neurological activity from a single neuron.

der to include the widest range of participants,” said Pam Mason, assistant director of the Office of Clinical Practice and Field Education in the College of Public Health and a CDRD organizer.

Jerry Stahler, a geography and urban studies professor and a member of Mayor’s Task Force to Combat the Opioid Epidemic, said he believes this year’s event should focus on the opioid crisis.

“Philadelphia is really at the center of this opioid crisis, and we have one of the highest rates in the country of overdose deaths,” Stahler added. “It’s really bad, and it’s preventable.”

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 64,000 people died nationally of overdose in 2016. Of those cases, 907 people died in Philadelphia.

This year, Center in the Park, a Germantown nonprofit senior center, will present at the CDRC about opioid addiction in older people, particularly grandparents and those with chronic pain, Mason wrote in an email.

Strides in finding a solution to the opioid crisis have been made at prior CDRDs. Michael Halpern, a professor in the College of Public Health, is collaborating on an ongoing study with the Public Health Management Corporation — a Philadelphia-based nonprofit focused on building healthy communities — about the prevention of opioid misuse after Halpern met with the group at last year’s CDRD.

“The intersection between managing chronic pain and preventing opioid misuse was a good match of interests between myself and some of my colleagues in the college of public health, as well as PHMC,” Halpern said.

Researchers said it is important to connect with the community on issues of public health.

“There’s an incredible amount of interest, activity, research and community engagement in this area,” Stahler said.

Temple’s opioid research includes about 115 faculty members from 28 departments in nine schools.

The Lewis Katz School of Medicine spearheads many opioid research and prevention initiatives at its Center for Substance Abuse Research.

“It goes back to the importance of recognizing the interests of the community and what they want to learn more about or making changes to,” Mason said.

“Clearly opioid abuse is a very complex area that involves lots of different components,” Halpern said. “We want to work among the Temple community and more broadly, across the Philadelphia community so that we can work together and share resources to help individuals prevent developments of opioid overuse.”

alyssa.biederman@temple.edu @BiedermanAlyssa

CONSTRUCTION

Developer breaks ground for housing near TUH LaCorte Property Management will build a 15-unit apartment complex near Temple University Hospital.

BY JULIE CHRISTIE Enterprise Editor A 15-unit apartment complex broke ground at 17th and Venango streets near the Health Sciences Campus on Nov. 28, in the first phase of a three-block project that will ultimately yield 90 units. This is the first large residential development near Temple University Hospital for several years.

LaCorte Property Management, a Philadelphia-based developer run by Tom and April LaCorte, will develop and act as the landlords for the apartments.

Tom LaCorte said the apartments will be marketed toward students and “young professionals” in the area who likely work at TUH. The complex will be divided into five separate buildings, each one called a “triplex,” containing three floors, with one unit on each floor.

“There hasn’t been any development here for a long time,” Tom LaCorte said, emphasizing the nu-

merous vacant lots in the area.

There are almost 4,000 vacant housing units in the same ZIP code as LaCorte’s development, according to the United States Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey.

He added that the project is expected to cost about $2 million for this first phase, however it is not the only development LaCorte Property Management’s plans for the area.

People will be able to move into the apartments in about three months, Tom LaCorte said.

Six other units are already built on 16th Street between Westmoreland and Ontario streets, Tom LaCorte said. People moved into those units seven weeks after they were completed, he added. Eventually, there will be 90 total units.

About a year and a half before securing the property, Tom LaCorte met with Larry Kaiser, the president and CEO of Temple University Health System and dean of the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, and Alan Rosenberg, the vice president, chief of staff and chief administrative officer of TUHS, to discuss this development.

“They were excited about the idea,” Tom LaCorte said. “But I

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

ORLANDO Street near 18th, university spokesman Brandon Lausch said.

Orlando was pronounced dead after police arrived to the residence, Philadelphia Police Officer Tanya Little said.

On Monday morning, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Orlando’s death on Saturday was caused by an overdose.

This is the second Fox School of Business student to die suddenly last week.

Senior marketing major Michael Paytas died of an accidental overdose last Monday.

Orlando was an initiated member of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of Zeta Beta Tau, according to a fraternity official.

“We join the entire Temple University community to mourn the loss of this young man,” Laurence Bolotin, the executive director of ZBT’s national headquarters, wrote in a statement to The Temple News.

News Desk 215.204.7419 news@temple-news.com

knew other developers said they’d build and never did. ... I’ll have to let them know we’re building.”

Renderings on the developer’s website show more traditional brick facades with large bay windows, rather than the modern, industrial style many developers often use. LaCorte said when he went to community meetings, residents said they didn’t want the modern style. Half of the buildings in the zip code were built before 1939.

Verna Tyner, the president of Tioga United, a community group near the development, said the residents wanted the new development to reflect the architecture of the rest of the community.

“Development like this can be good, but it can also cause concern because of taxes going up and people feeling like they’re being pushed out,” she said.

She added residents think development like the apartments at 16th and Venango will “bring back quality of life, remove blight...and have a domino effect on safety.”

The apartments are part of a “small boom” of potential development in the area, Tyner said. Other developers are expressing interest to community groups or are in the process of acquiring properties.

“We send our deepest condolences to his family and friends during this difficult time.”

ZBT is not recognized by the university.

Students are “discouraged from associating” with ZBT, according to the Student Activities website.

ZBT’s national headquarters is not currently investigating Orlando’s death, but is “focused on making sure the men who just lost a brother and friend receive the support they need,” Bolotin wrote in an email to The Temple News. He added that ZBT appreciates the support from the Temple community.

A friend of Orlando created a GoFundMe page called the “James Orlando Memorial Fund.” The page, created Saturday, has raised $1,800 of its $5,000 goal as of Monday.

“James was a carefree fun loving [sic] guy, he cherished moments with his friends,” the page read. “He was always first to crack a joke to ease tension and the first to make someone feel welcome.”

Many friends who commented on the

JULIE CHRISTIE / THE TEMPLE NEWS LaCorte Property Management is a 15-unit apartment complex on two vacant lots at 17th and Venango streets.

Community groups like Tioga United often partner with developers because it’s difficult for nonprofits and community groups to fund their own developments.

“If we had the dollars and cents, we would do it ourselves,” she said. “But if we the community don’t stick together, then we let others tear us apart.”

The complex will also be made with modular construction, Tom LaCorte said. This means

GoFundMe page noted Orlando’s caring attitude and love for his friends.

The Temple News reached out to ZBT chapter members.

Some did not respond to an interview request. Others declined to comment while processing the loss of their brother.

When asked whether Temple Police would investigate Orlando’s death further, a university spokesperson said he did not have “anything additional” to share.

University officials and Temple Student Government issued responses to Orlando’s death on Monday morning.

“We are extremely saddened by the passing of James Orlando, a thirdyear business student from Reading, Pennsylvania,” university officials said in a statement. “He was 20 years old. We grieve alongside everyone who knew James and encourage all members of the Temple community to think of and pray for his loved ones.”

Moshe Porat, the dean of the Fox School

each floor will be constructed and painted off site, then lifted into location, reducing noise and disruption in the area, he added.

The foundation for the basement and the walls will be poured this week, then the modules will be lifted into place.

“It should jump start the area,” Tom LaCorte said.

julie.christie@temple.edu @ChristieJules

of Business, said in a statement that Fox is “saddened” by Orlando’s death.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with James’ family and friends, to whom we send our heartfelt condolences,” he added.

TSG also issued a statement, noting Orlando “We are grateful for the years we had with James and are heartbroken to see his time end so abruptly.” It also encouraged those who are impacted by Orlando’s death to utilize on-campus resources, like Tuttleman Counseling Services.

“These past few months have not been easy for a single member of the Temple Community,” the statement read. “To the family, friends, colleagues, coworkers, professors and peers of James: we mourn with you.”

gillian.mcgoldrick@temple.edu @gill_mcgoldrick

temple-news.com @thetemplenews

NEWS TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 3

TSG

Parliament passes resolution for Narcan This is the fifth binding resolution Parliament has passed since it was created in Spring 2017.

BY AMANDA LIEN Copy Editor Parliament, Temple Student Government’s legislative branch, passed its first binding resolution of Fall 2017 during its final meeting of the semester last week.

This is the fifth binding resolution passed by Parliament since its formation in Spring 2017.

The resolution, proposed by sophomore class representative Alex Mark, calls for the Wellness Resource Center and other university departments to teach students how to administer Narcan — the brand name for naloxone, an opioid overdose antidote — and other life-saving techniques.

“Most students aren’t aware that in Philadelphia, there’s a standing order, which means any-

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PAYTAS Temple Police was alerted at 11:40 a.m. on Nov. 27 of a student found unresponsive in a third-floor bathroom in Paley Library. Michael Paytas was found unconscious, and police officers began performing CPR. He was then rushed to Hahnemann University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, university spokesman Brandon Lausch wrote in an email.

The official from the Medical Examiner’s Office did not disclose what drugs were found in Michael Paytas’ system.

Michael Paytas, who is from Holmes, Pennsylvania, transferred to Temple in 2014 from Delaware County Community College. He attended Ridley High School in Folsom, Pennsylvania.

Michael Paytas struggled with dyslexia from a young age.

David Paytas remembers his son being frustrated with homework when he was younger, but he received help as a child and worked hard. He went on to make the dean’s list at his community college.

David Paytas remembers the “huge” milestones in Mi-

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one can go to a pharmacy and get Narcan,” Mark said during Parliament’s session. “Who knows how many overdoses could be stopped if more students had this knowledge?”

According to a map by the Pennsylvania Opioid Overdose Reduction Technical Assistance Center, the retailer closest to Temple sells naloxone in the form of a nasal is a Rite Aid on 3rd Street near Lehigh Avenue. Two doses of the nasal spray costs around $125.

Opioids are regularly prescribed by doctors after certain medical procedures to help manage pain, and they are also often sold illegally. Both of these distribution methods contribute to high rates of overdose fatalities. In 2016, Philadelphia reported 907 fatal overdoses, according to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

Two Fox School of Business students, James Orlando and Michael Paytas, died of overdoses last week. The city’s Medical Exam-

chael Paytas’s life — his senior prom and high school and community college graduations.

“I lost my best friend, roommate and son all at once,” David Paytas said. “He had such a bubbly personality. He had such a heart for everyone.”

“The loss of a student affects the entire Temple University community,” wrote Moshe Porat, the dean of the Fox School of Business, in a statement to The Temple News. “This is an extraordinarily difficult time for Michael’s family and friends.

We share their sadness, and extend our thoughts and prayers to them at this time.”

President Richard Englert informed students of Michael Paytas’ death with an email statement on Wednesday, two days after he died.

“We extend our thoughts and prayers to Michael Paytas’s family, friends, classmates and faculty,” the email read.

Michael Paytas’ parents will accept a posthumous degree on his behalf from the Fox School of Business.

“He was so looking forward to graduating,” David Paytas said. “If there is a possibility he’s looking down, he’ll be so happy.”

Temple Student Government posted a statement on

iner’s Office did not report which drugs Paytas, a senior marketing major, or Orlando, a junior Fox School of Business student, used before they died. Naloxone only prevents overdoses caused by opioids.

In August, junior printmaking major Nora Wilson held a workshop during which she taught students how to administer Narcan nasal spray, The Temple News reported. There were no university officials involved with the event.

When Parliament passes a binding resolution, TSG’s executive branch is required to update Parliament about steps being taken to address the resolution, implying that the executive branch must at least consider implementing it, according to TSG’s constitution.

Mark said he met with Alison McKee, the director of the Wellness Resource Center, while drafting the resolution. He said they discussed potential changes to new student orientation materials, like the online “Think About It” cours-

es that every student is required to take during their first semester at Temple, to include information about Narcan.

Since the resolution passed, Mark met with Alex Schmied, TSG’s director of health and wellness, to discuss how TSG will act on the resolution next semester.

Mark said he will also meet with Parliamentarian Jacob Kurtz and Speaker Bridget Warlea to coordinate efforts between TSG and Parliament.

Schmied doesn’t want to “step on [Mark’s] toes” when it comes to working with the university in implementing educational materials. Mark will continue working with McKee, while Schmied and TSG will raise awareness on Main Campus, she said. “[TSG] will be focusing more on things like tabling and pamphlets,” Schmied added. “I think raising awareness of naloxone and how students can get it, and even things like medical amnesty, is the best thing we can do.”

Sophomore English major Nick Cipolla said students should have access to information about naloxone, but it’s disappointing that this effort came after Paytas and Orlando died.

“It’s too late for them,” Cipolla said. “It just takes too long for this stuff to be adopted. When it comes to universities and administrations, they’re just so slow when it comes to this type of thing.”

“This resolution was a great start,” Cipolla added. “But there needs to be more of them, and I hope Parliament is actually effective when it comes to them.”

“Parliament is definitely going to keep working on this issue,” Mark said. “I think it affects everyone on campus in some way or another. It’s vital that student government gets involved.”

amanda.lien@temple.edu @AmandaJLien

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AWARD

VIA FACEBOOK Mike Paytas was a senior marketing major who transferred to Temple in 2014. He was found dead in Paley Library on Main Campus on Wednesday.

Twitter on Sunday. Friends said Michael Paytas “loved his family” and always helped his friends, the statement read. TSG referred students to Tuttleman Counseling Services if they are struggling.

“This has been a difficult semester, Owls” the statement read. “We have endured multiple tragedies in just one semester.

We will continue to push unity and peace through these times, because pain is always easier to deal with when you have people surrounding and encouraging

you.”

Michael Paytas is the fourth of five students to die suddenly this semester. James Orlando, a junior Fox School of Business student, died of an overdose in his off-campus apartment on Saturday, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office ruled on Monday.

kelly.brennan@temple.edu @kellybrennan

Lauer’s first job was for Gateway Communications, a TV company with four stations on the East Coast.

Klein was the president of the company.

Lauer isn’t the first individual honored at the Lew Klein Awards to later face controversy or criminal allegations.

Bill Conlin, a 1961 alumnus and former Philadelphia Daily News columnist, was inducted into the Lew Klein Alumni Hall of Fame in the fall of 2011.

Shortly after the awards, three women and a man alleged Conlin sexually abused them as children in the 1970s, the Inquirer reported in December 2011. Conlin retired from the Daily News just days after the allegations surfaced.

Conlin was editor-in-chief of The Temple News during his time at the university and worked at the Daily News for four decades. His name is still listed on the Lew Klein Alumni Hall of Fame website, despite allegations.

Conlin, who died in 2014, was never charged for sexual abuse because the statute of limitations expired, according to NJ.com.

Shortly after Brian Williams received his 2014 Lew Klein Excellence in the Media Award, he was suspended from NBC Nightly News for falsely reporting that in 2003 he was inside a helicopter that was attacked in Iraq. It was proven that Williams was in a different helicopter than the one that was attacked, The Temple News reported in 2015.

Boardman told The Temple News in 2015 that the college did not need to revoke his award because the fabricated story did not negate Williams’ past work.

Justine Freed, a freshman advertising major, said she is “on the fence” on whether these men should get their awards revoked.

“The best thing that happens is almost like erasing the person. You might as well just take it away,” she added. “Temple should do everything they can to show that they are in support of the victims.”

“It may tarnish the Lew Klein name and the school,” said senior media studies and production major Nick Pfaff. “It’s their name, it’s their school, it’s their award. They have the right to take it away or not.”

kelly.brennan@temple.edu @_kellybrennan

News Desk 215.204.7419 news@temple-news.com

NEWS PAGE 4

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

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STUDENT DEATH

THOSE WHO RESPOND When students die, several university staff members work as a team. Each administrator has complementary responsibilities to inform people and help the Temple community grieve.

DEAN OF STUDENTS OFFICE

When students die, the Dean of Students office leads the university response, organizing several other staff members who provide outreach and resources to the Temple community.

Dean of Students Stephanie Ives has a protocol for addressing student death, but it is tremendously influenced by the specifics of each case: the way the student died, the student’s personality and the needs of their family and friends.

Her first responsibility is to collect information about the student who died. Ives looks into as many aspects of a student’s life as she can: academics, athletics, participation in clubs, even their social circles.

“We want to get a sense of who

How do we feel like they’re recognized and acknowledge that they touched each person in life?’” Ives said.

If a student is particularly affected by a student’s death, Ives might recommend them to the CARE Team, led by Senior Associate Dean of Students Rachael Stark. The CARE Team, made up of several university staff members across disciplines, meets weekly to talk about students who — for multiple reasons — might be of concern. For example, if a student misses class for an extended period of time or makes alarming statements in a paper, they might be added to the CARE Team’s list.

“We can just assess the situation, check in and ensure that this student is being supported,” Stark said.

Sometimes, the Temple community comes together for a vigil

SOURCE: STATEMENTS FROM UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT RICHARD ENGLERT DESIGN BY COURTNEY REDMON / THE TEMPLE NEWS

trained in an intervention method called critical incident stress management, or CISM, Tuttleman Director John DiMino said. The focal point of the strategy is a debriefing, which is a conversation led by a counselor for a group of people impacted by a traumatic event.

“The conversation is structured in such a way to get at facts

TEMPLE SEMESTER TUITION VS. AVERAGE FUNERAL COSTS $20,000

$15,000 $15,264

$10,000 $9,360 $7,181 $5,000

$0 PA Residents

Non-PA Residents

Funeral

SOURCES: BULLETIN.TEMPLE.EDU & THE NATIONAL FUNERAL DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION’S 2014 SURVEY OF MEMBER FUNERAL HOMES DESIGN BY SASHA LASAKOW / THE TEMPLE NEWS

that student is,” Ives said. “We look at their records, but then we talk to people, getting a sense of this student’s history, their personality, their likes, their commitments in life. We get a real sense of the student as a person, because they are obviously more than their records.”

Once Ives collects all the information she can, she reaches out to everyone in the Temple community who might have had a connection to the student who died. She offers resources, like the walk-in hours for Tuttleman Counseling Services. She often emails students’ professors to excuse them from class so they can attend services and take time to grieve.

Ives also reaches out to family members to coordinate different resources they might need. Parents are faced not only with the initial shock and long-term grief, but also several administrative tasks, like coordinating with financial aid.

“I want to offer myself as a person that will answer those questions, make those connections for them, so they don’t have to think about it,” Ives said. “I want them to know I’m there when they need them and when they want those answers.”

Ives also helps organize oncampus vigils or memorials if students express interest.

“There’s always a desire to feel like, ‘How do we celebrate them?

News Desk 215.204.7419 news@temple-news.com

to memorialize a student who died.

Other times, President Richard Englert will send an email statement recognizing the student and offering condolences to those who knew them. Ives said there’s no specific set of rules for how the university responds to student death. Instead, the process is dictated by the “special circumstances surrounding each student’s death,” Ives said.

“Some families want to be very private about the circumstances and about the passing,” she added.

“For other families, they may want to do something to memorialize their child, to leave recognition with Temple.”

“We try to take it step by step, case by case.”

TUTTLEMAN COUNSELING SERVICES

The responsibility eight fulltime employees at Tuttleman Counseling Services face providing mental health treatment on a campus of more than 40,000 students is only heightened after traumatic events, like a student’s death.

After these incidents, the student body is often encouraged to access Tuttleman’s services by university statements or administrators.

All Tuttleman counselors are

first and then what people are thinking about the event or what still stays with them now,” he said.

“Then, it gets into more gut-level, emotional reactions by asking

questions like, ‘What’s the worst part of this for you?’ And then it gets into symptoms.”

After hearing patients’ symptoms, the counselor will “teach survival skills in the situation of a tragedy,” DiMino said. For example, if someone feels especially anxious, the counselor may ask what activities help the patient relieve stress and encourage them to take part in them regularly, he said.

He added that counselors lead debriefings with “identifiable” groups of people who are clearly impacted by a traumatic event, like professors whose student died.

Debriefings are often organized after someone impacted by the incident reaches out for support.

CISM is the only training DiMino requires every Tuttleman staff member to complete when hired. He said it gives counselors the skills to handle necessary tasks that are required following traumatic events like death notifications, which is when a Tuttleman counselor tells a group of people — like a class — about a student passing away.

Students can also access individual support by visiting Tuttleman during walk-in hours for an intake appointment. A specified “counselor-on-duty” will immediately see any student “in crisis,” even if Tuttleman has reached its capacity of 35 walk-in appointments, he added.

After moving to a bigger office space and hiring more counselors this year, wait times for Tuttleman’s services were shortened from four and a half weeks

to about three weeks, The Temple News reported in October. Of the 761 students who visited Tuttleman during walk-in hours between Sept. 1 and Oct.17, 66 were asked to return another day because of overflow.

Sometimes, Tuttleman will follow up with students who express concerning symptoms, but it’s not a standard part of response to traumatic events, DiMino said.

“Everyone has different expectations of, ‘What does it mean to be in counseling?’” he added.

DiMino, who has worked at Temple for 21 years, said he thinks Tuttleman has enough resources to do its job, and the university’s outreach to the Temple community after a student passes away provides sufficient support.

“I think we do a good job,” DiMino said. “We’ve been doing the CISM stuff for many years, so we’re comfortable with it. We know it works, we’ve seen it in action.”

UNIVERSITY HOUSING AND RESIDENTIAL LIFE

When students die, Kevin Williams is responsible for making arrangements with family members to pick up a student’s belongings from their residence hall.

The details change with each passing student. Some families want to visit the residence hall one last time and personally pack up the belongings. Some ask Wil-

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SUDDEN STUDENT DEATHS

These are the student deaths to which Temple Police responded from 2015-2017.

TUPD does not record all student deaths.

Date

Gender

Age

Location

Circumstance

1/15/15

Female

18

Center City - Walnut Street

Suicide

1/18/15

Male

20

Off-Campus Apartment

Alcohol

9/9/15

Male

21

Student Residence

Illness

11/13/15

Female

22

Off-Campus Apartment

Suicide

6/18/16

Male

25

City Avenue

Illness

9/27/16

Male

22

Frankford Avenue

Suicide

10/8/16

Male

20

Off-Campus Apartment

Overdose

10/23/16

Male

18

Off-Campus Apartment

Overdose

11/1/16

Male

27

Off-Campus Apartment

Suicide

11/4/16

Male

22

Off-Campus Apartment

Overdose

11/11/16

Female

23

Lehigh Avenue

Auto Accident

2/22/17

Male

21

Off-Campus Apartment

Suicide

4/3/17

Female

22

Off-Campus Apartment

Suicide

8/31/17

Female

22

Off-Campus Apartment

Homicide

10/8/17

Male

19

Student Residence

Suicide

11/27/17

Male

24

Paley Library

Overdose

12/02/17

Male

20

Off-Campus Apartment

Overdose SOURCE: TEMPLE POLICE DESIGN BY SASHA LASAKOW / THE TEMPLE NEWS

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NEWS TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 5

DESIG N BY

SASH A LAS

AKOW / THE TEMP LE N

EWS

HOW TUPD RESPONDS TO STUDENT DEATH

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS Executive Director of Campus Safety Services Charlie Leone works in his office at Temple Police’s headquarters on Montgomery Avenue near 12th Street. TUPD officers are often the first responders when students die.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 liams, the director of University Housing and Residential Life, to pack up for them. Some families forget to bring their own boxes — in those cases, Williams is prepared to lend them some.

“This is someone’s life,” Williams said. “They raised them for 18 years and they dropped them off, and now they’re picking up their belongings.”

Williams has worked at Tem-

It’s the worst thing that can possibly happen in the work that we do. You train and prepare for this, but this is the hardest part of your job.

KEVIN WILLIAMS

DIRECTOR, UNIVERSITY HOUSING AND RESIDENTIAL LIFE

ple for more than 10 years. In that time, he said he’s encountered “many” instances of student death.

In some cases, those students died in or around their on-campus residence halls.

“It’s the worst thing that can possibly happen in the work that we do,” Williams said. “You train and prepare for this, but this is the hardest part of your job.”

For Williams, his personal response has to wait. First, he has to ensure everyone in a residence hall community has the support they

need after learning one of their neighbors died.

Resident assistants often host an “after-action debrief,” which Williams said is an informal, optional meeting where students can share their feelings and seek support.

Simultaneously, an RA will often refer students to resources at the university, like Tuttleman Counseling Services, the Wellness Resource Center and the Dean of Students office.

Oftentimes, RAs plan future residence hall programming around relevant topics, like stress relief or coping with loss. RAs are also responsible for following up with students who seem particularly upset by an incident.

“This is hard, hard work, and it’s even harder for these RAs,” Williams said. “These are residents on their floor, these are friends, these are people they feel responsible for.”

In some instances, residence hall communities also come together on their own to remember students.

This semester, flyers are posted in various residence halls encouraging students to donate warm clothing and food items to a homelessness charity called Jenna’s Blessing Bags — named for junior film and media arts student Jenna Burleigh, who was killed in August.

This work never gets easier for Williams, he said — but over the last decade or so, he’s tried to learn the best ways to support people when students die.

“I can remember them all,” Williams said. “You don’t forget,

but you learn how to cherish those students, learn from those experiences and help parents cope as best you can.”

TEMPLE POLICE

When students die, Temple Police is almost always involved.

Charlie Leone, the executive director of Campus Safety Services, is at the helm.

As a first responder to many student deaths, Leone can’t help but think of his own children.

“You have to push through the emotions,” Leone said. “Especially

when you’re there and you’re seeing things. It’s horrible. It really is.”

“It’s professional, but it’s emotional,” he added. “At some point, you have to move forward and do your job, do right by what’s happened here and keep people safe.”

In responding to student death, TUPD officers have various responsibilities. The department follows a general step-by-step process, but that changes with every student and is often complicated by specific circumstances.

But when the process is complete, TUPD’s job isn’t necessarily done. For some officers, there is a long road ahead to deal with the emotional trauma they may have experienced by responding to a student’s death.

“In the beginning, we’re in our mode, doing what we’re supposed to do,” Leone said. “And then it starts to hit more and more, how tragic it is.”

Leone does his best to help officers heal: he’s informed some officers that they can access Tuttleman Counseling Services for support, and he’s organized a few mental health debriefings for officers following tragic incidents.

“The officers, they always go back to their training and they’re professional,” Leone said. “But we always want to be aware that they’re human too, and we have to treat them as such and make sure that they have the support that they need.”

TEMPLE STUDENT GOVERNMENT

Last semester, a student who lived in the Edge on 15th Street

near Cecil B. Moore Avenue died.

Student Body President Tyrell Mann-Barnes was the student’s resident assistant.

“It was very difficult navigating that and getting myself the resources I needed,” Mann-Barnes said. “I wanted to use that as an example for my residents, that it’s OK to be sad, it’s OK to go through grief and it’s OK to get help and talk to someone about that.”

Mann-Barnes said Temple Student Government’s main responsibility after a student dies is to encourage students to practice self-care by accessing on-campus resources like Tuttleman Counseling Services.

Mann-Barnes added TSG’s role isn’t necessarily to help students “move on” from a traumatic event after a student has died, but to process it as a community.

He said he’s “not sure” if the university could do more to support the Temple community.

But he commended the university’s response to student deaths this year, like the murder of junior film and media arts major Jenna Burleigh in August. TSG and President Richard Englert released a statement about her death, and Englert and Mann-Barnes spoke at a vigil honoring Jenna in Founder’s Garden in September.

“It’s a case-by-case basis,” Mann-Barnes said. “For the school to lay out an exact protocol of how to deal with death kind of disregards how different situations require a different type of response.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

MARISSA HOWE / FILE PHOTO Student Body President Tyrell Mann-Barnes addresses the Temple community at a vigil for junior film and media arts major Jenna Burleigh on Sept. 7 in the Founder’s Garden.

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NEWS PAGE 6

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

THOSE WHO HAVE DIED After a loved one dies, the grief individuals face is immense and never-ending. Family members and friends find their own ways to cope.

CHRISTIAN CIAMMETTI

M

ary Ciammetti watched a photo of her son, Christian, flash across the scoreboard during halftime of the 2015 Temple vs. Penn State game.

She organized the presentation to promote a program she founded called Don’t Stall, Just Call, which educates young people about the dangers of binge drinking.

Christian, a junior landscape architecture major, died from alcohol poisoning in an off-campus apartment in January 2015.

Ciammetti collaborated with administrators from the Dean of Students office and put the presentation together on a tight deadline to have it shown at Lincoln Financial Field.

When the time finally came — and the 69,000 fans in attendance saw Christian on the Linc’s scoreboard — Ciammetti felt sick.

“It felt like we won the lottery for the worst thing in the world, to see our child up there,” Ciammetti said. “It was horrible.”

Christian was both shy and social. When he first met Julia Miller during their freshman year living in White Hall, she said he was awkward. She later found out that was because he had a crush on her — the two dated off and on until Christian died two years later.

They loved skiing together, and Miller often watched Christian garden at his family’s property in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

“He was always very himself, which I think is hard for a lot of people in college,” said Miller, a 2016 neuroscience alumna. “Anyone would say that about him.”

He was devoted to landscape architecture and spent most of his time at Ambler Campus. He liked working with his hands — he built his mother a fire pit that still sits in her backyard. This is just one of the “really beautiful things” Christian built before he died, Ciammetti said.

Ciammetti said she doesn’t remember any administrators from Main Campus offering her support after Christian died. She would have loved an announcement of Christian’s death to the Temple community, or for a representative from Main Campus to have attended his funeral.

“If someone was there at the funeral as a representative from the administration, that would

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS Kiana Pittman, a 2014 psychology alumna, was Agatha Hall’s roommate during her junior year. She wishes she had received university outreach following Agatha’s death.

PHOTOS COURTESY / JULIA MILLER & MARY CIAMMETTI DESIGN BY SASHA LASAKOW / THE TEMPLE NEWS

Christian Ciammetti, a junior landscape architecture major, died from alcohol poisoning in January 2015.

mean something,” Ciammetti said.

“It just would’ve been thoughtful.”

“I’m sorry if our response didn’t meet her expectations,” said Dean of Students Stephanie Ives.

“She’s been through a terrible, terrible experience. No parent should ever have to lose their child, and I greatly appreciate all she has done to bring attention to the issue of dangerous drinking.”

Miller said after Christian died, she received an email from Ives offering her resources. Ives directed Miller to Tuttleman Counseling Services for support and emailed each of her professors individually to excuse her from class or assignments for as long as she needed.

“I was really happy that someone from the school reached out,” Miller said. “That really helped alleviate that extra stress, because I didn’t want to be the one emailing my professors. I didn’t want to write that in an email.”

Although Main Campus didn’t reach out to Ciammetti after Christian’s death, administrators have been supportive of her oncampus efforts. Director of Student Activities Chris Carey started working on Don’t Stall, Just Call in 2015, helping distribute its magnets around campus and printing its logo in the planners handed out

by University Housing and Residential Life.

“She’s often the driver of ideas and the creator of what she would like to see happen and then I try to support her in whatever way pos-

sible to actually bring those ideas to fruition,” Carey said.

After Christian died, Ciammetti founded The CTC Wellness Foundation in his memory — CTC stands for Christian Thomas Ciammetti. The foundation has multiple components. Don’t Stall, Just Call educates college students about the signs of binge drinking through workshops and presentations. Ciammetti also organizes a memorial 5K run at Ambler Campus every year, and she’s working on introducing a $1,500 scholarship for a junior landscape architecture major at Temple.

Perhaps Ciammetti’s most somber outreach comes annually on Main Campus: a vigil held annually at the Bell Tower in collaboration with Student Affairs. It’s not just for Christian — she modeled the memorial after a similar monthly one at Texas A&M University, which commemorates every student, staff and faculty member who died.

Ciammetti attempts to contact the families of every student who passed at Temple and invite them to the ceremony.

“People did die, and we want to acknowledge the loss on the campus,” Ciammetti said. “We want to acknowledge that these people walked these streets, used these facilities. They were a member of this community, and we want to remember them in a good, positive way.”

AGATHA HALL

I

n some ways, the Temple community was Agatha Hall’s closest family.

Agatha, a finance major, came to Temple from a refugee camp in Ghana. Many of her relatives lived an ocean away from her off-campus apartment on Park Avenue near York Street. Her mother died in 2015, and her sister was her only immediate family member in the United States.

“Her family was scattered all over, so the school community was her family,” said Kiana Pittman, a 2014 psychology alumna and Agatha’s former roommate.

Agatha regularly hosted her friends for the holidays — Thanksgiving and Christmas meant Agatha was in the kitchen, cooking her favorite foods like potato greens and rice. She was eager to share.

“She was always cooking, making sure everybody was fed and having a good time,” Pittman said. “She was very giving, very open, very nurturing. It’s cliché, but she would literally give you the shirt off her back.”

In August 2015, when she was 21 years old, Agatha was murdered in her apartment by her boyfriend.

For grieving friends and family, what followed was a lengthy trial — about 13 months passed from the day Agatha was killed to the day her murderer was convicted — that proved emotionally challenging for friends and family.

“It was really hard to move on, because we had to go to trial, which kind of brought it up to relive it over and over,” Pittman said.

“Once the trial was over...it was

kind of a bittersweet moment, to say the least. You were happy that they found him guilty, that they found out the truth of what happened, but you were sad that the truth was what it was.”

“I’m not even quite sure I completely grieved it,” she added.

After Agatha died, Pittman didn’t receive any outreach from the university offering support or resources — but she didn’t expect to. Pittman was no longer a student at Temple, having graduated a year before Agatha died.

Pittman said she wasn’t sure whether any of Agatha’s family or friends received outreach. Agatha’s family could not be reached for comment.

In retrospect, Pittman wishes she received university support.

She would’ve appreciated some recognition of Agatha’s life, like an email sending condolences or an on-campus vigil to remember her.

Pittman added that if the university offered, she might have sought support from Tuttleman Counseling Services.

“Some people aren’t aware of the counseling services that are offered, or don’t know where to find them, or don’t feel comfortable,” Pittman said. “When you go through something that traumatic, you don’t immediately identify it as a traumatic experience. You’re upset about it and you’re hurt about it, but you don’t realize the ways it could affect you.”

“You never want the memory of someone you loved and cared about to fade away,” she added.

“Sometimes, just a simple acknowledgment makes a lot of difference.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

PHOTOS VIA FACEBOOK DESIGN BY SASHA LASAKOW / THE TEMPLE NEWS

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS A photo of junior landscape architecture major Christian Ciammetti hangs on the wall among other family photos in the Ciammetti home in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

News Desk 215.204.7419 news@temple-news.com

Agatha Hall, a finance major, was killed in her off-campus apartment in August 2015.

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NEWS TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 7

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

GRACE SHALLOW / THE TEMPLE NEWS Liz Daley lost her daughter, senior social work major Erin Wilson, in November 2016. She sits in her Linwood, New Jersey home, where Erin’s bedroom remains the same as it was while she grew up.

ERIN WILSON

W

hile working late on a Friday night in November 2016, Bernie Newman’s phone rang. Seeing it was Michelle Lai, the assistant dean of finance and administration in the College of Public Health, she picked up and quipped, “I’m working late, what the heck are you doing working this late?”

“I don’t have good news,” Lai responded.

Senior social work major Erin Wilson was struck and killed by a car while leaving her internship at Temple University Hospital’s Episcopal Campus, she told Newman, who was then the interim chair of the School of Social Work.

The first thing Newman did when she got home that night was embrace her 23-year-old son Eric. Erin was the same age when she died.

“It was very disconcerting to have one of our young undergraduate students, who was just finishing her senior year, to be taken like that in a car accident,” Newman said.

“I always think of her,” she added.

“She just had a vibrant personality and was like [a] quintessential social [worker], kind, very giving, very compassionate.”

Erin transferred to Temple from Atlantic Cape Community College in 2014.

She joined Temple’s chapter of the national social work honor society Alpha Delta Mu and — unhappy with the organization’s operations — became president. She “completely changed” the organization by making meetings and service hours mandatory, said Sarah Kim, the communications chair of Alpha Delta Mu and a senior social work major.

“She would be humble to the point of being dishonest,” Kim said. “She would be like, ‘I don’t do anything,’ and that’s just a lie. She did so much. ... She could make people kinder just by talking to them.”

Erin was honored with a posthumous degree in May 2017, even though they are typically only awarded to students who die during their final semester. Newman and other social work faculty members petitioned the Board of Trustees to approve the degree by writing letters about Erin’s character and excellence as a student.

Liz Daley, Erin’s mom, accepted the degree at graduation.

Daley said it was “horrible” sitting in the Liacouras Center during the ceremony, thinking about how hard Erin had worked for the degree she was about to

accept, but she felt like she had to do it for her only daughter.

Daley said Dean of Students Stephanie Ives called her the day after Erin died to offer support and provide information about Erin’s Sallie Mae loans, which were ultimately absolved.

In retrospect, Daley said she would’ve liked Temple to host an on-campus vigil for Erin since she was so entrenched in the university community, but no amount of administrative support could’ve dulled the pain caused by her death.

“They were very warm and supportive but, my God, my daughter’s dead,” Daley said.

Erin’s giving spirit is still “strong,” Daley added. As an organ donor, Erin’s corneas helped two people gain sight.

Members of Alpha Delta Mu completed a blanket drive for patients in the psychiatric unit at Temple Episcopal, where Erin worked. Erin started organizing the drive before she died.

Alpha Delta Mu was hosting a Free Food and Fun Friday in the Student Center when they learned about Erin’s death, Kim said. They found an empty room upstairs, where they sat together to grieve and talk about Erin for several hours.

Newman said the School of Social Work’s faculty was mainly concerned with students’ well-being after Erin’s death, but she was proud of the way students and faculty came together to support each other.

The Monday after Erin died, several social work professors sat in a lounge on the fifth floor of Ritter Annex — where the School of Social Work is stationed — so students could discuss Erin and their grief.

Kim, who worked in the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards, said Senior Associate Dean of Students Rachael Stark reached out with condolences and referred her to Tuttleman after she told her boss about Erin’s death. She is not aware of any other Alpha Delta Mu members or social work students who received university outreach.

Kim said resources like Tuttleman weren’t necessary for her because of her school’s built-in support system.

“My hope for all of this...is that people can look to the School of Social Work almost as a model,” Kim said. “I was comfortable asking people for help when I needed it because I do that on behalf of clients all the time, but I don’t think that other majors and other university schools are equipped to do that.”

PHOTOS COURTESY / ERIN WILSON & LIZ DALEY DESIGN BY SASHA LASAKOW / THE TEMPLE NEWS

Erin Wilson, a senior social work major, died after she was hit by a car near Temple University Hospital’s Episcopal campus in November 2016.

PHOTOS & LETTERS COURTESY / KAITLYN NEVIN & HAL LEVITT DESIGN BY SASHA LASAKOW / THE TEMPLE NEWS

Daniel Levitt, a sophomore pre-pharmacy major, died from an overdose in his off-campus apartment in October 2016.

DANIEL LEVITT

O

n Oct. 23, 2016, Hal Levitt lit a candle and placed it on the stovetop in the kitchen of his Baltimore, Maryland home. Earlier that day, his son Daniel, a sophomore pre-pharmacy major, died of an overdose in his off-campus apartment on Diamond Street near 10th.

The grieving father has kept a candle burning every day since — a lasting vigil for his son.

Photos of Daniel, past school IDs and tests also hang on the kitchen’s walls. Daniel’s room remains untouched — milk crates full of his textbooks sit on the floor and Temple T-shirts hang in front of his bed “waiting for him,” Levitt said. He keeps two of Daniel’s notebooks near his pillow and kisses them each night before saying a prayer for his son and going to sleep.

“I think that when you lose a child, it’s not something that compares to your grandmother, grandfather passing, even if they’re fairly dear to you,” Levitt said. “That doesn’t compare to what happens when you lose a daughter or son.”

“You feel [like] your loved one...is disappeared or vaporized,” he added. “People, as they need to, quickly move on with their lives, their tests, their exams and whatever else they have to do to live. We’re frozen in time.”

Temple officials reached out to Levitt and his wife, Denise, after their son passed to offer condolences. They received emails from Dean of Students Stephanie Ives, the College of Science and Tech-

nology’s Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies Evelyn Vleck and Ruth Ost, the senior director of the Honors Program, in which Daniel was a student.

The Honors Program sent a statement about Daniel’s death to all honors students. Ost also reached out to students who were Daniel’s close friends to organize a memorial held in Anderson Hall in November 2016.

“Who counts are the people who most loved the person and who are most grieving,” Ost said. “I had a way to help and so if you have a way to do that, you must.”

Ost said she helped with the logistics of setting up the memorial. She completed tasks like reserving a space in Anderson Hall, but students were responsible for making the event “deeply touching.”

Junior sport, tourism and hospitality management major Kaitlyn Nevin, who met Daniel her freshman year, took the lead on organizing the memorial.

At the memorial, Nevin and other friends of Daniel’s read letters they wrote to their friend about shared memories, and Nahla Ward, a 2017 senior criminal justice and Spanish alumna and Daniel’s Owl Team Leader during his freshman orientation, sang “Amazing Grace.” It was catered by Auntie Anne’s, one of Daniel’s favorite places to eat.

Ost sent a video of the memorial to the Levitts, who could not attend.

Nevin remembers taking spontaneous trips into the city with Daniel, like the time he took her to get her first Philly cheesesteak at Jim’s Steaks on

South Street.

“He was very curious, he was very outgoing,” Nevin said. “He loved to be out meeting people. I think everyone that met him always kind of just loved him immediately.”

After Daniel’s death, Nevin said she and a group of his close friends received an email from the Dean of Students office offering condolences and reminding them about resources like Tuttleman Counseling Services.

The outreach was sufficient for her, and “Temple did a good job in reaching out to us and making sure [we knew] they’re here, because at the same time...they didn’t bug us about it,” she added.

But junior advertising major Julia Ostrovsky, who had known Daniel since their senior year in high school and spoke at the memorial, said the only university outreach she received was an email from Ost asking her to be a part of the on-campus memorial and referring her to Tuttleman. Days after his death, Ostrovsky had to personally email professors and ask for an excused absence so she could attend Daniel’s service in Maryland.

“I just don’t really understand the university’s process for how they...publicize and have memorials for some students, or email [statements] for some,” Ostrovsky said. “I know a lot of the incidents that happened this year were very public and extremely tragic, but I don’t know what the hierarchy is for that.”

news@temple-news.com @TheTempleNews

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS Ruth Ost, the senior director of the Honors Program, sits in her office inside Tuttleman Learning Center. During her 22 years at Temple, she has supported the friends and family of several students who have died.

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OPINION TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 8

THE ESSAYIST

This week’s writers shared personal stories about their loved ones, their favorite places and politics.

My grandmother’s lessons A watchdog for the Temple University community since 1921.

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EDITORIALS

Hold accused honorees accountable Temple: respond to substance use ONLINE Read this week’s editorials at temple-news.com.

E

A student explains how her grandmother’s example influenced her tutoring style.

very Wednesday morning I take the train to the Holmesburg neighborhood of Northeast Philly for my tutoring session at Riverside Correctional Facility.

RCF is a women’s prison. Every week, I tutor a group of about five women who are hoping to earn their GED before they re-enter society.

Many of the women I work with struggle with reading comprehension skills and simple multiplication. They also struggle with having confidence in their ability to even attempt class work.

There have been days I’ve gone home from RCF in tears. It saddens me to see 30-year-old women struggle to read basic sentences. But I find myself the most heartbroken after sessions where a student calls herself stupid or says she “knows” she can’t do a problem, even before reading the question.

Maybe I’m arrogant or just naive, but there’s never been a homework problem or academic task that I thought I wouldn’t eventually be able to understand with some practice.

After tutoring at RCF, I’ve realized this is because I’m lucky. My confidence is undoubtedly because of the many people in my life who have believed in my ability and talent, but most especially because of my grandmother.

For a time I lived with my grandmother growing up, and she kept

CORRECTIONS In a photo caption that ran on Page 2 in the Nov. 28 issue, headlined “On-campus housing adds $300 winter break fee,” The Temple News misidentified freshman Matt McGonagle as Anand Ghorpadey.

Accuracy is our business, so when a mistake is made, we’ll correct it as soon as possible. Anyone with inquiries about content in this newspaper can contact Editor-inChief Michaela Winberg at editor@temple-news.com or 215-204-6737.

BY JENNY ROBERTS

me focused on my school work. As my parents went through a nasty divorce and my father struggled with substance use, it could have been easy for me to fall off track academically. But my grandmother is a large part of the reason I excelled instead.

She picked my sister and me up after school each day, and I remember being excited to talk with her. My excitement peaked on Wednesdays because this is when we brought home our graded tests.

I took joy in telling her how many tests had “100 percent” written across them in red ink. In truth, I became a bit of a showoff.

She would proudly display my honor roll certificates and other awards on her fridge and boast about me to friends.

One time, she helped me memorize a study packet with dozens of pages filled with words in preparation for a middle school spelling bee — I got out in the second round.

I’m sure I was upset at the time, but now all I remember is that my grandmother spent hours helping me study.

For years, my grandmother also helped pay the tuition for my sister and me to attend private school. And at my high school graduation, she teared up as I won award after award — probably not realizing how much credit I owed her for my success.

I didn’t realize how much her presence in my life positively impacted me, and how much she taught me just through her actions until lately.

By taking the time to study with me all those years, she taught me that SASHA LASKAOW / THE TEMPLE NEWS hard work is

all that’s necessary to achieve my goals. By telling me the story of how she married my grandfather before graduating high school, but returned to earn her GED in her early 50s, she taught me the value of education. By watching the nightly news with me and shedding tears at any sad story, she taught me compassion.

My grandmother taught me a lot, and I miss her deeply since she died last year. I often wonder if the women at RCF were fortunate enough to have role models like her in their lives as they were growing up.

I’ve never asked. In tutoring sessions, I don’t pry into students’ personal lives or ask questions about what factors may have led them to prison. Still, I can’t help but wonder.

But I simply try my best each week to teach them with the patience, compassion and encouragement my grandmother showed me.

I’m never completely sure if I’m making a real difference, but as of late, I’ve begun leaving tutoring sessions with happy tears welling up in my eyes.

Just a few weeks ago, a student named Julie said she was having trouble with a problem. I asked if she actually read it.

“Yeah, before you I didn’t even do that,” she told me.

It’s a small victory, but I’ll take it.

Ultimately, I hope when my students feel like no one thinks they can succeed, they know I believe in them. But eventually, my year of tutoring will come to an end, and I won’t be there each week to tell them this in person.

By then, I hope they believe it for themselves, and they can leave incarceration and achieve their dreams, while helping and encouraging other women along the way.

jenny.roberts@temple.edu @jennyroberts511

Independent bookstores foster community

B

A student embraces the publishing of her upcoming chapbook and highlights the charm of independent bookstores.

y the end of this semester, I will have published a short collection of poetry, known as a chapbook, exploring themes of femininity, healing and astrology.

The process has taught me about the community’s role in bringing a book into the world. I’ve spent time editing my manuscript with other poets and made visits to my former art teacher to use her supplies.

This sort of teamwork is standard for bookmaking. In the 1960s and ’70s during a period known as the Mimeograph Revolution, many poets relied on collaboration to self-publish their work, using the new copy production machine.

This included working with independent booksellers who’d carry their books, host readings and offer supportive networks for unique writers and their readers.

Even though a lot has changed since this self-publishing movement, community has always been important to authors, and it should remain important to readers too. But technology challenges these communal aspects.

The rewards of buying from a bookseller in-person — like browsing around the store for hours and exchanging book recommendations with strangers — are lost in online purchases.

A few weeks ago, I went to an independent bookstore called Inkwood Books with this in mind. I needed a new journal, but

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BY BASIA WILSON rather than getting it on Amazon, I decided I would buy it from somewhere local. I wanted to be in a space with people who admire books as much as I do.

Inkwood Books is located in Haddonfield, New Jersey — not far from my hometown of Collingswood. The store isn’t big, but it’s cozy and welcoming. The shelves are packed with a rainbow of book spines, a diverse collection of hardcovers and paperbacks that extends from the hardwood floor almost to the ceiling.

I quickly found a journal I liked at Inkwood — one with a cork cover and flecks of gold underneath — then thumbed through the poetry section. A portion of the poetry shelf was dedicated to local poets like Rocky Wilson, author of “The Last Bus to Camden.”

Wilson, greatly influenced by Camden-native Walt Whitman, offers his perspective of life in the region in this collection.

It’s rare to see bookstores like Barnes & Noble spotlighting local writers, so the local poetry section at Inkwood was special to me.

I ended up choosing “Works and Days,” a collection of nature poetry by Bernadette Mayer. I also picked up “Envelope Poems,” edited by Marta Werner and Jen Bervin. It’s a collection of poetry by Emily Dickinson that includes photos of handwritten drafts

scrawled on envelopes by Dickinson herself.

I enjoy this collection for the way it presents rough drafts and scraps as significant and meaningful.

“Envelope Poems” is another book I would never find at Barnes & Noble, nor has it ever appeared on the automatic recommendation lists Amazon always sends me. I was thrilled to find it at Inkwood.

As I was checking out at the register, I shared my excitement with the cashier and asked if she had heard of “Silk Poems,” another project by Jen Bervin.

“I haven’t! What’s it about?” she asked, grabbing a pen and paper to write the title down. She seemed genuinely invested in supporting customers and finding books that match their interests.

She also voiced gratitude about how the local community is so invested in poetry and told me about the open mics Inkwood hosts.

As 7 p.m. grew closer, I was one of the last people to leave the shop. But I didn’t feel pressured to hurry up like I do while I’m shopping at other places, where voices boom over loudspeakers to remind customers it’s time to leave.

Instead, the cashier had joined me at the front of the store to show me the shelf full of books recently selected by the Inkwood staff as favorites. I appreciated how intimate and personal the shopping experience was.

“We have a book club too,” the cashier said enthusiastically. “One Wednesday a

month people come in to discuss a book.

There’s wine, snacks and people of all ages that come. It’s great!”

Events like book clubs and open mics are part of the reason why I love indie bookstores. Even though reading is a solitary experience, stores like Inkwood give readers an opportunity to share book culture.

Community is a vital component of bookmaking, but it doesn’t lose importance once a book hits the shelves. It takes a community to help books reach an audience. It takes a community to give books the pulse that keeps them alive.

As a writer and reader, I feel proud to support small businesses like Inkwood that are not just willing, but passionate and excited to do this wonderful, valuable community work.

basia.serafina.wilson@temple.edu

SASHA L

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temple-news.com @thetemplenews

OPINION TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 9

Escaping into her memories

W

A student reflects on her grandmother’s storytelling and how it helps her learn about her great-aunts, who suffered from dementia.

e found a VHS tape while visiting my grandmother last summer. My mother, brother, grandmother and I knew there was footage of a past family reunion on it, so we popped it into the video player.

It didn’t start with footage from the reunion.

Nona, my great-grandmother who immigrated to Massachusetts from Naples, Italy, in the early 1900s, sat at a kitchen table. One of her daughters, who is my Great-Aunt Bena, and Nona’s granddaughter Rebecca were asking about her life.

In a thick accent, she told the story of coming to the United States with her sister and her mother as a young girl; sometimes she’d slip into Italian and a bit of the story would be lost to us.

It was the first time I heard the voices of four generations in one room.

Then the video cut to the reunion. We all fell into a specific role for watching: my brother laughed at the snarky jokes the cousins exchanged; my mom would comment on how young everyone looked and how little some had changed; I stared hungrily at every frame that contained my grandfather, who I had so few memories of outside the hospital visits when I was little; and my grandmother named everyone who appeared — a difficult feat for

someone watching a fuzzy video of more than 50 people.

She’s the only one left who can do that.

As I grew up, my grandmother’s sisters were diagnosed with dementia, and one by one their memories begin slipping away. Her brother Tony and sister Lily died when I was young, so I remember very little of them.

I didn’t quite understand what dementia meant when my mother first tried to explain it to me when I was in elementary school.

It seemed more like a catalyst for funny stories: Bena, always the precocious one, had even less of a filter than usual, and Jo, her sister, would sometimes go off on adventures that sent people into a panic, but almost always ended in laughter.

It was when they stopped recognizing me, I understood. Then they didn’t know who my mother was — but they always knew my grandmother.

Bena died several years ago, then Jo died last week. I was never as close with them as I am with my grandmother, Viola.

When my mom told me about Jo on Thursday, she said my grandmother called to say Jo was failing fast, and they should visit her in the coming day or two. A few minutes after hanging up, she said my grandmother called again to say Jo was gone.

“That’s so fast,” I said. “There was no chance to say goodbye.”

“She’s been saying goodbye to them for a long time,” my mom said.

She was right.

Jo’s body died on Wednesday, but the person left in it was only a couple of threads of memory.

I remember when she was vibrant. Jo, like my grandmother, had bright white hair and a warm smile.

She would take my face in both her hands and kiss my cheeks, then squeeze my face and shake my head a little, saying, “Oh now, look at you. You’re so big!”

It’s a generic memory, I know, but that’s what I have.

I also have the little gibes my grandmother’s sisters would direct at each other. Somehow, while slowly forgetting the rest of us and who they were, they never stopped being sisters.

I know it’s going to be a difficult week for my grandmother, because even though she still has her sister, Gloria, she’s not the same person since her diagnosis. I called her on Friday to ask about Jo, and it was hard hearing the tired sadness in her voice. The cracks weren’t because of her age, and I heard her take a breath before going on.

She said Jo was “full of the dev-

A resort that feels like home

julie.christie@temple.edu @juliechristie

COURTNEY REDMON / THE TEMPLE NEWS

A student struggles while thinking about recent cases of high-profile sexual misconduct.

BY COURTNEY REDMON

BY EMMA CASELLA

W

hen word of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct surfaced, I wasn’t all that surprised — a lot of men do a lot of problematic things. In a nation where the current president has openly bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, I’d resigned myself to that truth.

I didn’t think much of the Weinstein scandal. It seemed like these kinds of stories peppered the news cycle every once in a while, only to quickly fizzle out. But then the floodgate of allegations opened and names like Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer came rushing out.

I felt violated and oddly betrayed. These were talented men I’d laughed at, rooted for and identified with — I had watched these men in movies and on television, and had grown to respect them. There was a time in the not-sodistant past when I even identified as some sort of female Louis C.K., but not anymore.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised that a man like Louis C.K., who had made masturbation jokes an integral part of his comedy routines, was being decried for unsolicitedly exposing himself and masturbating in front of women.

Our society has operated within a crudely imbalanced system of expectation, accountability and consequence for a long time. When men — especially straight, white men — make mistakes, they are slapped on the wrist and given a warning. This fosters a world where men feel free to do as they please, often at the expense

he reason my hometown of Hawley, Pennsylvania is so special to me is because of Woodloch Pines

Resort.

Woodloch Pines is a resort much like the one in the popular ’80s movie, “Dirty Dancing.” There are plenty of activities, games and contests in which guests can participate, as well as a relaxing lake, evening entertainment, family-style meals and so much more.

My father, Joey, has been the entertainment director at the resort for more than 30 years. And my mother, Ruth, was once vacationing away from her home in Long Island, New York, as a guest at Woodloch when she first met my father.

When my mother’s oldest sister moved to Pennsylvania after finding love at the resort, my mother began spending her summers there with her, working as a cocktail waitress at Woodloch. She immediately caught my father’s eye, and after some time, they began dating.

They have been married for 25 years.

I practically grew up at the resort, but that’s only half the reason why I hold Woodloch so close to my heart. When I was 16 years old, I started working at Woodloch in their social department. And it changed my life.

I greeted hundreds of guests as they entered the dining room for a meal, geared them up for the zipline and taught them to water ski.

Sometimes my job entails quizzing a room full of around 200 guests on how well they know music and covering guests in mashed potatoes and cheese as a part of a competition in which hundreds of guests participate. And that’s not even the

for my grandmother. She was back in the dance halls with her sisters, or pranking the local police department (even though she maintains they always “walked the straight and narrow”).

At 20 years old, I can’t quite figure out what it’s like to escape back into my memories. But I know how much it must mean for my grandmother to do so, because they haven’t escaped her.

The tip of the iceberg

A student shares the influence her hometown resort had on her personal growth.

T

il,” and that Nona had called her “little kangaroo” in Italian because she always bounced around the house.

“Say ‘dance’ and she’d be gone all night long,” my grandmother added.

But then she started telling me other stories about growing up with her sisters.

“They never called me Viola,” she said. “It was always Baby. ‘Baby do this. Baby, go get that.’ Because I was the youngest. When I was older, I became one of them.”

As she told me these stories, I knew the room was melting away

BY JULIE CHRISTIE

COURTNEY REDMON / THE TEMPLE NEWS

half of it.

To someone who has never been to Woodloch, this can be confusing and downright weird. But the guests love every second of it. I have brought friends to Woodloch in the past, and the crazy games and competitions did not amuse them like I thought they would. I was so excited for them to experience everything the resort had to offer, but it was not as special to them as I hoped it would be. To them it was just a resort, but to me — it’s my upbringing.

During my four summers working at Woodloch, I met the most amazing people, some of whom quickly became my best friends. I have created my favorite memories, encountered a summer romance that easily could have been made into a romantic comedy and learned some valuable lessons along the way.

Because of Woodloch, I am more patient, creative, understanding and cheerful than I could have ever imagined being.

For me, Woodloch surely felt like more than a summer job. Woodloch has always been my second home. In fact, sometimes it feels more like my first.

of others. They know they are untouchable and they wield that to their advantage.

So the reactions to all these accusations of sexual misconduct have come as a pleasant surprise. For the first time, people are listening and taking action. Titans of industry and masters of talent are being exposed, one by one, and crumbling at the hands of their own wrongdoing. For once, men are being held accountable for their actions.

As more time passes, the more confused I’ve begun to feel about these high-profile “revelations” of abuse, assault and worse. I’ve had no idea how to go about unpacking these complex issues, or how I should feel about the pieces of art and media these men have created.

I’m not sure where to draw the line and divorce the man from the work. I don’t think all things done by problematic people cease to hold merit in light of the despicable things they’ve done in their private lives.

Countless men throughout history — from Thomas Jefferson to Bill Clinton— have been celebrated for their achievements while their problematic qualities go relatively unchecked.

This has begun to change in recent years, but often at the expense of acknowledging the positive impacts they may have had. It’s a fine balancing act, but I believe these men deserve more thoughtful consideration.

Does that make me an apologist, or a sympathizer? Does that make me less of a feminist?

I don’t know. I hope not. Does it make a difference if I admit that I, too, am a victim of sexual assault? I guess that depends on the reader.

We shouldn’t treat individuals accused of sexual assault or harassment as isolated incidents; they’re not outliers. Viewing them as either entirely good or bad, and then ostracizing the bad doesn’t lead to real change.

These problems are certainly bigger than just individuals here and there. They’re systemic and ingrained within all aspects of our society — they always have been. Working to dismantle something as massive and deeplyrooted as the patriarchy may seem like an impossible task, but it’s something I feel morally obliged to attempt.

courtney.redmon@temple.edu @_ourt

emma.casella@temple.edu @emmacaselllla COU

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letters@temple-news.com

NEWS PAGE 10

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

CRIME

THE PROSECUTION’S TIMELINE OF JOSHUA HUPPERTERZ’S WHEREABOUTS BETWEEN AUG. 30 AND SEPT. 2

TUPD was called twice on night of Burleigh’s death A student testified she heard loud bangs and screaming on the night of Burleigh’s death.

BY GILLIAN MCGOLDRICK News Editor The night junior film and media arts major Jenna Burleigh was killed, Temple Police were called to the residence of former advertising student Joshua Hupperterz, who has been charged with her murder.

Noelle Sterling, a graduate student in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, lives directly above Hupperterz’s first-floor rear apartment on 16th Street near Cecil B. Moore Avenue. She testified at a preliminary hearing last week that she called Temple Police twice on Aug. 31: first when she heard banging from the rear backyard that only Hupperterz and his roommate had access to, and again at 4 a.m. when she heard a female screaming for three minutes.

When Temple Police first arrived, Sterling let the officers into her second-floor rear apartment where they questioned her about the noises she heard. She described these to the officers as the sound of gravel getting shuffled around outside and abnormal banging sounds.

She also said she was afraid someone was breaking into the building since she had never heard these sounds before.

The officers told her they would inspect the backyard and other places in the building, and advised her to get some sleep, she testified at the Justice Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice in Center City

on Wednesday.

Sterling testified that she did not see officers check the backyard and did not hear them knocking on other doors in the six-unit residence.

The banging continued for more than an hour — between 2:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. — while Sterling stayed awake, speaking with her mom on the phone to help her calm down. After this call with her mother, Sterling attempted to sleep. She was not fully asleep when she was awakened around 4 a.m. to female screams.

“It was like a horror movie, but worse,” she testified during the preliminary hearing.

When TUPD arrived again — this time with two plainclothes officers — the officers walked directly up to her apartment where she described the screams, and noted erratic barking from a dog that lived in Hupperterz’s apartment. She told police she thought it may be in the apartment building next door or it may be out front, but she knew it wasn’t coming from the backyard like the noises she’d heard earlier.

Officers again told her they’d inspect the area in the building, but she did not hear officers knock on any other doors within the residence.

Temple defended its police force’s actions in a statement.

“This matter involves criminal prosecution, so we cannot discuss details related to the case,” said university spokesman Brandon Lausch.

“However, the actions of responding officers have been reviewed internally, and it has been determined that they acted in accordance with accepted police practice.”

AUG. 30

AUG. 31

Philadelphia Police spokesman Capt. Sekou Kinebrew told the Inquirer that PPD’s protocol if an officer responds to a woman screaming and cannot find the source of the screaming requires the officer to remain on the scene and call a supervisor. The supervisor will respond and decide whether the circumstances of the screams appear dangerous enough to access the residence through forced entry, without a warning.

TUPD’s protocol seems to vary from a Philadelphia Police protocol, which was instituted in 2005 after several instances of domestic abuse led to the policy change, the Inquirer reported.

Police said Burleigh died in Hupperterz’s residence on Aug. 31 from blunt force trauma and strangulation.

Burleigh was missing for two days before her body was found more than 100 miles from Main Campus in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, inside a plastic storage container on a property owned by Hupperterz’s grandmother.

Burleigh’s disappearance shook the Temple community after a statewide search for her body. After Burleigh was found dead, Temple Police reported higher usage rates of its Walking Escort Program, which allows students to request that a TUPD official walk them home any time from 4 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Hupperterz is in custody on charges for murder, abuse of corpse, tampering with evidence and separate drug-related charges. He will be arraigned on Dec. 20.

Hupperterz and Jenna Burleigh are seen in security camera footage as the last two people in the main bar at Pub Webb. The two leave the bar around 2:07 a.m.

Joshua Hupperterz arrives at Pub Webb on Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 16th around 11 p.m. on Aug. 30, after drinking at other on-campus bars like Maxi’s and the Draught Horse.

Hupperterz is said to frequent Pub Webb by the bar’s owner, Samuel Webb.

Video footage from multiple locations shows Hupperterz and Burleigh walking from Pub Webb to his 16th Street apartment. Hupperterz is seen stumbling around the streets.

The two enter the apartment around 2:11 a.m.

A graduate student who lives above Hupperterz calls Temple Police twice — once at 2:15 a.m. for disruption in the backyard, and again at 4 a.m. when she heard female screams that lasted three minutes.

Hupperterz uses a ride-sharing service to get one of his wounds stitched on his hand around 3 p.m. at an UrgentCare in Horsham, Pennsylvania.

Hupperterz travels back to his Philadelphia apartment, where his cousin comes to meet him around 5:45 p.m.

When his cousin arrives, Hupperterz is cleaning blood up from around the apartment.

Hupperterz asks his cousin to drive him to his mom’s Jenkintown home to exchange plastic containers.

Hupperterz and his cousin carry the 100-pound plastic container in which Burleigh’s body is held. It is placed in the backseat of his cousin’s Nissan Altima. His cousin is unaware that Burleigh’s body is inside.

Hupperterz returns to his Philadelphia apartment and goes out to bars in South Philadelphia.

The two travel to his mother’s home in Jenkintown where they place the tub with Burleigh’s body in the garage and exchange it for a container of bedsheets and towels.

SEP. 1 At 11:27 a.m., Hupperterz hails a Lyft from Willington Street. He brings two bags and his dog in the car. After putting in a false location, Hupperterz asks his Lyft driver to turn off the app and says he will pay him $200 cash for the ride.

gillian.mcgoldrick@temple.edu @gill_mcgoldrick The Lyft driver turns off the service and drives him to his mother’s Jenkintown home to pick up Burleigh’s body. The container sat directly in the backseat next to Hupperterz for the remainder of the ride.

Hupperterz directs his Lyft driver to his grandmother’s home in Hawley, Pennsylvania.

After an hour-and-40-minute drive, the Lyft driver helps him move Burleigh’s body in the container. The driver is unaware what’s inside. He jokes that it might be “rocks.”

After an investigation on Main Campus with Temple and Philadelphia Police and the FBI, police locate Hupperterz through a cell tower.

State police visit the grandmother’s property and ask him to come to the local police barracks for questioning.

SEP. 2 Hupperterz is then transported back to Philadelphia and charged with murder.

LEFT VIA TEMPLE POLICE / RIGHT VIA PHILADELPHIA POLICE Jenna Burleigh (left), a junior film and media arts major, was allegedly killed by former advertising student Joshua Hupperterz on Aug. 31.

SASHA LASAKOW / THE TEMPLE NEWS

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FEATURES TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 11

MUSIC

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS Symphony for a Broken Orchestra, a collaborative music project between the School District of Philadelphia and Temple Contemporary, rehearses with broken instruments from the school district on Saturday at the 23rd Street Armory in Center City.

PERFORMANCE SHOWS ‘BROKEN’ SYSTEM Symphony for a Broken Orchestra highlights the lack of funds in the city schools’ music programs.

BY MAUREEN IPLENSKI For The Temple News

Z

aki Hagins said that through his education in the School District of Philadelphia, he encountered a lot of broken instruments.

“I remember seeing one particular closet that was just full of instruments that apparently did not

work,” said Hagins, who graduated from Julia Reynolds Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School on Spring Garden Street near 17th in 2015. It’s really disheartening.”

Temple Contemporary and the school district are collaborating on a two-year project that began last year, Symphony for a Broken Orchestra to shed light on the lack of arts funding in the school district.

Hagins, who is now studying music composition at the Community College of Philadelphia, played a broken violin in a concert on Sunday. This was the second of

three phases that manifested in a public performance by 400 musicians at the 23rd Street Armory, an event venue on 23rd Street near Chestnut. All of the instruments the musicians played in the performance, like clarinets and harps, are broken, highlighting the lack of resources in the school district’s music programs.

Musicians in the performance included students and teachers from the school district, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Philadelphia Mummers and music Ph.D. candidates from the Curtis Institute, a music conservatory on Locust

PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW

Street near 17th.

Temple Contemporary received a $300,000 grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage to fund the concert.

“What really got it started was when I got an understanding of just how many broken instruments there were in the School District of Philadelphia,” said Robert Blackson, the director of exhibitions at the Tyler School of Art. “It’s pretty safe to say that there are over 1,000 instruments in disrepair.”

Blackson was initially inspired to organize the effort when he found a room of abandoned pianos

at the Edward W. Bok Technical High School in South Philadelphia, which was shuttered in 2013.

“I was hoping there was a way we could...expand the awareness of this challenge in a way that was not simply a fundraising solution, but to get people to really care about having more art and music within the public schools in Philadelphia,” Blackson said.

Last fall, Temple Contemporary received hundreds of donated broken instruments from schools in Philadelphia as part of the first

I N S T RUMEN TS PAG E 16

PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW

STUDENTS PARODY ‘MILK AND HONEY’ Two freshmen created a parody based on the bestselling poetry book “Milk and Honey.”

BY KHANYA BRANN For The Temple News

EVAN EASTERLING / THE TEMPLE NEWS Hazim Hardeman, a 2017 strategic communication alumnus, is Temple’s first Rhodes Scholar. He sits in the atrium in Annenberg Hall on Nov. 30.

Scholar to go from 23rd and Diamond to England Hazim Hardeman university’s first Scholar.

is the Rhodes

BY EMILY SCOTT Features Editor

When Hazim Hardeman rode his bike with his friends as a kid, crossing the boundary of Main Campus felt like a “transgression.”

The scholar grew up at 23rd and Diamond streets and said Temple always felt like home to him, even though he never knew anyone who

went to the university when he was a child.

“We knew that people where we were from didn’t go to this school, so being there, we wanted to be seen,” Hardeman said. “This was our neighborhood.”

Now, more than a decade later, he walks on Main Campus as an adjunct instructor and a Rhodes Scholar, a prestigious postgraduate scholarship for students to study at the University of Oxford in England for two to three years with 80 other people from all over the world.

RH ODE S PAGE 15

During Thanksgiving break, Adam Gasiewski and Emily Beck threw a party where they autographed friends’ copies of their Amazon bestselling book.

“It was crazy to see that we had turned into celebrities overnight,” said Adam Gasiewski, a freshman computer science major. “It wasn’t just our friends, but distant family members, random neighbors and even people from other colleges who gave books to our friends so that they could get us to sign them.”

On Oct. 22, Gasiewski and Beck published “Milk and Vine: Inspirational Quotes from Classic Vines,” a parody book based on Canadian poet Rupi Kaur’s bestselling book, “Milk and Honey.” Gasiewski tweeted photos of the book and a link to its Amazon page on Nov. 3, which was retweeted more than 60,000 times.

“Milk and Vine” has sold 115,000 copies so far.

Gasiewski and Beck were in a Barnes & Noble in October when Gasiewski picked up a copy of “Milk and Honey.”

“We liked how simple the style was, and thought it’d be cool to parody,” said Beck, a freshman political science major. “Adam had always wanted to write a book and I thought, ‘Why not put vines in it?’”

In place of Kaur’s minimalist poems and accompanying illustrations, Gasiewski and Beck included transcripts of their favorite Vine videos — short six-second clips that users uploaded to the now-defunct Vine app before sharing them across other social media platforms. The two paired their selections with quick sketches Beck drew with her finger on an iPad. Gasiewski and Beck — who have been dating since high school — published the book as a joke for their friends. They never predicted the success that would come once they published the book through Amazon’s self-publishing platform, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, near the end of October.

The attention garnered from the book hasn’t all been positive. The couple received backlash for parodying “Milk and Honey,” and some have accused them of plagiarism.

“People have been making parodies for centuries,” Gasiewski said.

“We’re not taking away from Rupi’s sales. Our book has a complementary relationship with hers. It helps both parties.”

Beck added that on Amazon, both

V I N E PAG E 16

FACULTY | PAGE 12

DESIGN | PAGE 12

TUJ | PAGE 13

LIVE IN PHILLY | PAGE 14

Marc Lamont Hill, a Klein faculty member, opened a coffee shop and bookstore in Germantown last week.

Two Tyler School of Art students won a data analytics design challenge and a $2,500 prize in November.

For events related to Temple University Japan’s 35th anniversary, the focus was on historic preservation.

The Elfreth’s Alley Association hosted the annual Deck the Alley holiday celebration this weekend in Old City.

F E AT U R E S PAGE 12

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

FACULTY

Klein chair opens Germantown cafe, bookstore Uncle Bobbie’s is one of the few Blackowned bookstores in Pennsylvania.

BY KHANYA BRANN For The Temple News

Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee and Books is the culmination of a dream Marc Lamont Hill has had for more than a decade.

The stars aligned when Lamont Hill, an author, activist and CNN commentator, returned to Philadelphia last spring. A building at Germantown Avenue and School House Lane, which was previously home to a daycare center, opened up for rent.

After months of researching, planning and building, Lamont Hill, the first Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions in the Klein College of Media and Communication, transformed the space into Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee and Books, which opened on Nov. 27.

He named the shop after his late uncle, Bobbie Lee Hill, a World War II veteran and the person he credits with exposing him to Black literature and critical thinking.

“He showed me how to look at the world through a critical eye,” said Lamont Hill, a 2000 education alumnus. “He encouraged me to ask tough, unpopular, dangerous and sometimes counterintuitive questions about the world.”

Lamont Hill also lives in Germantown and didn’t want to have to leave his neighborhood to find a space like Uncle Bobbie’s where he could hang out and connect with people through books.

“Toni Morrison said, ‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,’” he said.

“I feel like if there’s a space I want access to, for myself and my community, then I have to build it.”

Uncle Bobbie’s is one of the few Blackowned bookstores in Pennsylvania.

In December 2015, Ariell Johnson, a 2005 accounting alumna, founded Amalgam Comics and Coffeehouse on Frankford Ave-

nue near Huntingdon Street and became the first Black female comic book store owner on the East Coast.

When Lamont Hill decided that he wanted to open Uncle Bobbie’s, he stopped

by Amalgam looking for some insight into the process of opening a bookstore and coffee shop from someone with experience.

Johnson herself had spoken in-depth with two other comic bookstore owners before opening Amalgam, and was happy to share her knowledge and experience with Lamont Hill.

“She’s a genius and visionary,” Lamont Hill said. “There’s so much bureaucracy and logistical and practical challenges when trying to open up these places of coffee and literacy. She gave me great advice on how to navigate the process.”

Johnson added that Black-business ownership is important.

“It feels like a tide is shifting and I want us to keep up the momentum,” Johnson said.

“As business owners, we make the decisions.

We decide what goes on the shelves and we give a space and a platform to people who look like us to share and exchange ideas. It’s empowering.”

Lamont Hill selected all of the books available for purchase at Uncle Bobbie’s.

In addition to common genres like Humor, Personal Growth and Young Adult Fiction, rows of books are categorized under titles like Repression/Resistance, African-centered and Queer Studies, which many mainstream bookstores don’t feature.

Tote bags, T-shirts and other merchandise with slogans, like “Black Father,” “Don’t Let These Degrees Fool You” and “Books Saved My Life” also line the shelves at Uncle Bobbie’s. On the menu, Uncle Bobbie’s offers a variety of coffee drinks and teas, sandwiches, soups and salads.

Asia Brown, a senior film and media arts major, got a sneak peek of the store a couple days before its grand opening last Monday.

She and her stepmom, who are both Germantown natives, were driving in the area when they spotted Uncle Bobbie’s with its front door wide open. The floor wasn’t quite finished yet and Lamont Hill was busy talk-

KHANYA BRANN / THE TEMPLE NEWS Marc Lamont Hill serves customers at Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee and Books on Nov. 27 in Germantown. Lamont Hill is the Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions in the Klein College of Media and Communication.

ing to a contractor.

“They weren’t open to the public yet, but my stepmom asked if we could just take a peek,” Brown said. “Marc gave us a whole tour. We asked him when the grand opening was and he told us Monday, and added that it wouldn’t be grand. Even then I knew he was wrong.”

Tiffany Gill, an author and Africana studies and history professor at the University of Delaware, lives within walking distance of the shop. Gill was one of nearly 500 people who visited the store on its opening day.

“It’s a beautiful space,” Gill said. “The great natural light that comes in makes it very warm and inviting. It has a beautiful vibe to it. It feels like community, even though it’s our first day here, it feels like home.”

Lamont Hill plans to host community

events both at Uncle Bobbie’s and in the event space next door. On Friday, he hosted the shop’s first free author reading, featuring writer and Rutgers University history professor Erica Armstrong Dunbar. Dunbar read from her book “Never Caught,” which was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award.

In addition to author events, Uncle Bobbie’s will present film screenings, open mics, poetry slams and children’s reading activities.

“I’m grateful for all the love that the community has been bringing into the space,” Lamont Hill said.

khanya.brann@temple.edu @_AfroKhan

INSIDE THE CLASSROOM

Tyler students win award for data visualization Senior graphic and interactive design majors used data from Comcast to create their awardwinning project.

BY AMANDA LIEN Copy Editor For some students, the best result of a month-long class project is a passing grade.

But graphic and interactive design seniors Luke Harding and Charles Attisano not only earned an A, but also won $2,500 for an animated video they created in the span of 31 days.

As part of a senior design seminar, Abby Guido, a graphic and interactive design professor, gave her students an assignment: enter the annual Temple Analytics Challenge, a university-wide contest where students submit a graphic analyzing data sets provided by Comcast, Pfizer and QVC. The challenge is organized through the General Education Program and the Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies.

Attisano and Harding entered and they found out they won on Nov. 13.

“It was exhilarating, kind of, even though we were completely

JAMIE COTTRELL / THE TEMPLE NEWS Senior graphic and interactive design majors Luke Harding (left) and Charles Attisano were awarded a $2,500 prize in the graphics category for the annual Temple University Analytics Challenge, presented by the Fox School of Business in November.

features@temple-news.com

on the run the whole month,” Attisano said.

Guido, who is also on the advising team for the challenge, said she wanted to build the challenge into her syllabus so her students would have dedicated class time to work on a time-consuming project.

“I love giving it to design students because...I like to challenge the students and show them that they too can analyze the data, even though it’s outside the realm of what they normally do,” she said.

“But it’s a big undertaking, so I know the students who do it outside of coursework can be very overwhelmed.”

While most of Guido’s 25 students chose to create a “flat graphic,” a single picture with minimalistic graphic design which she originally assigned, Harding and Attisano went above and beyond.

“Animation is a lot more timeconsuming,” Guido said. “I wasn’t being completely serious, but I threw it out there that if anyone wants to pair up and do an animation that I would allow that. [Harding and Attisano] took me seriously and took on the task.”

Harding and Attisano used data from Comcast to create a three minute-long video using animation and motion graphics to explain what makes a movie a “box office success.” They used animated movie reels and tickets to draw graphs showing the financial costs and other factors that contribute to the success of a film.

What would normally be a semester-long project, Guido said, was accomplished in four weeks.

Because the deadline was so short, Harding and Attisano worked “nonstop.”

Harding and Attisano spent the first two weeks analyzing the Comcast movie data, drafting the script for their video and planning how they would animate the video.

Harding worked on the graphics while Attisano focused on animating them.

Their video’s style was inspired by Vox, an online news website that creates animated infographic videos with voiceovers.

During their weekly class meetings, Guido would look at Harding and Attisano’s progress.

She was “very impressed” with their work and offered critiques and suggestions. Because they were on such a tight schedule, she wanted to make sure they created something that was advanced and worth their time.

“There was a moment in week three when they presented and I gave them a bunch of feedback, and I could feel Charles glaring at me,” she said. “It’s easier to make a change on a flat graphic than it is in the animation and I think he was adding up the hours it would take to incorporate the changes.”

The class critique sessions really helped Attisano when he was working on the video because he had a place to get feedback, he said.

When their project made it among the finalists, Harding said

he and Attisano were “hopeful” they would place in the competition. When the announcement came that they had won first place, they were both excited and relieved, Harding said.

“It was pretty cool,” Harding added. “All the hard work paid off.

It was nice to get recognized.”

“It was kind of reassuring,” Attisano said. “Knowing that taking the initiative to animate it had paid off in the end, it was exciting.”

One of the judges for the analytics challenge told Harding that he was impressed by the way their entry showed the data in a clear way.

“That’s kind of something that we learned throughout the process,” Harding said. “No matter how well you analyze the data, if you don’t communicate it effectively, it doesn’t really matter. You can do all this ridiculous analyzing, but as designers, we’re also storytellers.”

Harding is unsure how he’ll use his prize money, but Attisano said he will use it to purchase graphic design software or for living costs after graduation. Both want to pursue data visualization in their future careers.

“We got an A,” Harding said.

“But we didn’t do it just for the competition, we did it because we really like animation.”

amanda.lien@temple.edu @AmandaJLien

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F E AT U R E S TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 13

INTERNATIONAL

TUJ celebrates 35th anniversary The TUJ community is working on historic preservation of the campus during events celebrating its anniversary.

BY LAURA SMYTHE For The Temple News Less than five years after Temple University Japan opened, it was in financial shambles.

In 1983, one year after the university opened, Richard Joslyn, the former TUJ dean, said a business partner stole tuition money, leaving TUJ financially unstable.

The institution found a new business partner to take over until 1992, and during this time period, TUJ enrollment grew, along with its faculty and programmings.

TUJ suffered once again under Japan’s economic crisis known as “The Lost Decade of the 1990s,” which was a period following the crash of real estate and stock market prices. Because of the crisis, TUJ almost closed, but Main Campus assumed responsibility for TUJ in 1996. The campus became completely run by Temple without a business partner, and it has remained that way since then.

“It’s a very positive time right now,” said Joslyn, now a political science professor on Main Campus.

“Enrollment has recovered. The student body’s nicely diversified, [and] there’s a stability to the curriculum.”

This year marks the 35th anniversary of TUJ, Temple’s only fouryear international university. TUJ hosted a film festival titled “Alumni Success Stories” on Monday, which was the final anniversary event of the year. The documentaries and features produced by the TUJ Communication Department highlighted the accomplishments of alumni.

Other anniversary events held throughout the fall included an alumni reunion and an art exhibition.

As a foreign university, 37 percent of students are Japanese, 41 percent are American students and 22 percent are students from other countries.

TUJ Dean Bruce Stronach, said

the central theme of the anniversary is historic preservation of TUJ. The main anniversary event was the symposium “Developing a Successful Overseas Branch Campus: TUJ Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” which highlighted TUJ’s history.

The symposium was held on Oct. 21 at Showa Women’s University in the Setagaya district of Tokyo. It focused on TUJ’s growth into a successful foreign university.

As part of the historic preservation, Joslyn is running the Temple University Japan Campus History Project. Joslyn has been gathering documents related to TUJ from offices across Main Campus during the last year, focusing on finding records of TUJ events from 1982 to 1995.

“The people who were involved in TUJ’s creation and early development were forgetting things or the documents were being lost,” Joslyn said. “[People] were passing away. So the institutional memory of the early years was in danger of being lost, and I thought that was a shame.”

Joslyn has accumulated writings, photographs and videos of TUJ’s history during its early years, including a video of the Temple basketball team touring Japan in 1990 and videos of early TUJ graduation ceremonies. Once the collection is complete, Margery Sly, the director of the Special Collections Research Center, will create a TUJ archive in Paley Library. Joslyn said he anticipates the archive will be complete next semester.

In addition to the records, Joslyn has reached out to faculty, administrators, students and alumni to write personal essays about their time at TUJ. So far, Joslyn has received 18 completed essays at about 6,000 words each.

“I’ve enjoyed reading [the essays],” Joslyn said. “I’ve learned some things I didn’t know about the campus. They’re also very heartfelt, very personal.”

He suspects the completed essay collection will be enough to make a 250-page book. Joslyn is meeting with Temple University Press to discuss publishing the es-

say collection.

Yuri Suzuki, an undeclared freshman at TUJ, was born and raised in Tokyo. She said interacting with people on trips the Office of Student Services hosts, like short day trips to different Tokyo neighborhoods and overnight excursions to areas outside of the city, fosters interaction among the campus’s diverse student body.

“It makes me really happy to know that a lot of people from other countries are interested in Japanese culture,” Suzuki said. “They ask me a lot of questions about Japan and language. It’s been my pleasure that I can help them with being able to speak Japanese.”

Stronach said the 35th anniversary also intersects with TUJ’s plans to relocate its campus in 2019 and merge campuses with Showa Women’s University. TUJ currently exists in two office buildings in the Minato District of Tokyo, but the new campus will be a single sixfloor building on the SWU campus.

Suzuki said she is concerned about TUJ’s relocation because she thinks the new neighborhood isn’t as diverse as its current location, which is close to a lot of tourist destinations, like the Roppongi district.

“A lot of students here, although they learn Japanese, still don’t feel comfortable to fluently speak Japanese,” Suzuki said. “I’m assuming it takes time for them to adjust themselves to [the] Japanese norm, but since we have an international environment near here, I think it helps them feel more relaxed.”

The two universities will not only share a campus, but will also offer a dual-degree program. Stronach said the merger will benefit TUJ by furthering students’ interaction with Japanese culture. He added he hopes the move increases a feeling of community for students.

“I really hope people don’t focus just on facilities and understand what a really unique relationship this is going to be between a Japanese university and an American university,” Stronach said.

VOICES “How do you feel about recent sexual assault allegations against high-profile men?”

ISAAC SMOLER SCHATZ Freshman Undeclared

I think it’s really noteworthy that a lot of the follow-through in terms of holding men accountable is in media. I think that sooner or later that’s gotta extend into the political sphere. … I think the news is hesitant to pick up stories of women [of color] or women of a lower socioeconomic class because the story won’t ride as far. And I think that’s just even more telling of the current state of our country.

JACQUELYN OBERDORF Sophomore Political science

laura.smythe@temple.edu @lcs_smythe

Whether it’s someone you don’t like in your workplace, or a classmate, or a teacher, or a sex worker...sexual assault is sexual assault. … It’s kind of ironic because the reason why these men are getting away with it is because of their place of power, and the only reason these people are getting their voices heard is because they also have some sort of power. So we need to look at the people who aren’t in the same positions of power.

KAILA ALDERFER Sophomore Psychology

MARGO REED / THE TEMPLE NEWS Yuri Suzuki, an undeclared freshman at Temple University Japan, volunteers at “Alumni Success Stories,” a film festival celebrating TUJ’s 35th anniversary, on Dec. 4.

Women have been saying it forever, and have been calling out these guys, but as soon as a man calls it out, now it’s starting to get more recognized. … I feel like people are very quick to be like, ‘Oh, well it was in the past. It’s OK.’ But like we can’t excuse it because that totally goes into rape culture and these things are still gonna keep happening.

features@temple-news.com

F E AT U R E S PAGE 14

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

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Elfreth’s Alley in Old City hosts holiday celebration The Elfreth’s Alley Association hosted its annual Deck the Alley holiday event on Saturday in Old City. Deck the Alley provides visitors with a glimpse of the United States’ oldest residential street. This year, owners of more than 20 homes on Elfreth’s Alley opened up their first floors or ribboned off their doors so visitors could see inside the historical residences.

The alley was decorated with Christmas lights and holiday plants, like poinsettias and green ferns. Carolers were dressed in colonial garb and walked around Old City singing Christmas songs.

“We came to see all of the houses and lights,” said Ilyssa Strugats, who lives in Philadelphia and brought her children, Fin, 6, and Archer, 4. “We figured it would be a good history lesson. Fin is learning about Benjamin Franklin in school.”

The celebration also featured “Making Christmas,” a pop-up exhibit about the transformation of Christmas traditions in the U.S. from the 18th to the 19th century. The exhibit will be on display on Friday and Saturday nights in the Elfreth’s Alley Museum House until Jan. 1, 2018.

features@temple-news.com

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F E AT U R E S TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 15

ON CAMPUS

HELPING REFUGEES ‘WHO ARE JUST LIKE US’ Temple Refugee Outreach raised more than $3,000 for scholarships for refugees on Friday in Mitten Hall.

BY ASHLEY MIR For The Temple News

In 1991, Madap Sharma was expelled from his home country of Bhutan for practicing Hinduism.

He spent the next 19 years living as a refugee in Nepal. In 2010, Sharma moved to the United States before settling in Philadelphia two years later to be with his mother and father, who came to the U.S. in 2012.

“It was in those conditions, in the camps, that I rebuilt my life,” Sharma said.

On Friday, Sharma told his story at the Breaking Bread Across Borders Gala in Mitten Hall. The event, which was hosted by the student organization Temple Refugee Outreach, raised $3,100 for Books Not Bombs, an international campaign established by the Karam Foundation, which provides college scholarships for Syrian refugees. The foundation, a Chicago-based nonprofit, has provided aid to Syrian families and developed education programs for young Syrian refugees.

More than 2,500 refugees arrived in Pennsylvania between October 2016 and September 2017, according to the Pennsylvania Refugee Resettlement Program.

“I think the concept of Books Not Bombs was so powerful and close to my heart be-

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

RHODES Hardeman, a 2017 strategic communication alumnus and a communication and social influence adjunct instructor, is the university’s first Rhodes Scholar.

Hardeman plans to study sociology and political theory at the university.

“Just being in the heart of North Philly...it just felt like it was the place I needed to be,” he said.

Hardeman briefly attended school in North Philadelphia as a child. His mother, Gwendolyn, falsified their ZIP code to send him and his older brother to Shawmont School in Roxborough from third to eighth grade, where she hoped he would have more access to resources.

School officials eventually found out, but since they were good students, officials decided to bus them 20 minutes to the school every day.

“There was a culture of investment in the students,” Hardeman said. “Even when I wasn’t on my

cause I know how I felt and the struggle of my own education,” Sharma said. “I was suffering. I had to choose either food or books.”

About 200 people attended the gala, including representatives from the Office of International Affairs and Temple’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, which is housed in the Department of History.

Senior global studies majors Erin Heald, Alex Voisine and MacKenzie Bonner and senior marketing major Katie Pfeil founded Temple Refugee Outreach together last year.

“We wanted to bring a platform to Temple where students could connect with locally displaced people, [specifically] in Philadelphia,” said Heald, the president of Temple Refugee Outreach.

Temple Refugee Outreach held several fundraisers for the gala on Main Campus at places like Maxi’s to pay for the gala and raise awareness about issues refugees face in Philadelphia and across the U.S., which can include lack of access to housing and employment.

Student Body President Tyrell MannBarnes spoke at the gala. He told attendees it is important to find ways to reduce barriers to education for vulnerable populations, like refugees.

One of the gala attendees, Shanna Washington, a senior Spanish and psychology major, said she was impressed the event was organized just by students.

“It’s important for Temple to be involved,” Washington said. “It’s scary that an entire generation of potentially educated people can be wiped out.”

Heald said Temple Refugee Outreach

game as a student, there was still a general ethos of the school that has been formative in instilling me that I can be a successful student, that I am smart, and my experiences are valuable.”

“It has always stuck with me whenever I’ve had self doubt,” he added.

Hardeman is the first in his family to go to college. He credits his mother, who thought education was central to his future success, for pushing him every step of the way. When she moved to Atlanta without him while he was in high school, his grades plummeted.

“With her being removed from the situation, it was easy for me to lose sight of what was important,” he said.

But once she came back, he was able to excel again as a high school student. He graduated high school in 2012 and enrolled in the Community College of Philadelphia.

Hardeman excelled at CCP, graduating in 2015 from its honors program. The communications classes he took were his first exposure to the subject that would later

hopes to meet with administrators next semester to discuss waiving tuition for 10 refugee students in Philadelphia.

“These are Philadelphia residents who want to go to school who are just like us,” Heald said. “We wanna get them here.”

Heald first contacted Sharma after watching his TED Talk on his journey as a refugee. And after communicating via email for the past month, Heald invited him to share his story at the banquet.

In the early 1990s, Sharma was one of about 100,000 Nepali Bhutanese, or people ethnically from Bhutan’s neighboring Hindu country Nepal, who were expelled or fled from the country. This refugee crisis resulted after the Bhutanese government adopted a “One Nation, One People” policy in 1989, which forced the culture of the Drupka, the majority ethnic group in Bhutan, on the Nepali Bhutanese through a compulsory dress code and a ban of teaching Nepali language in schools.

After protests by the Nepali minority against these policies, the government destroyed many of their homes and forced them off their lands, according to a 2003 Human Rights Watch report.

During his next 19 years living as a refugee in Nepal, Sharma said he used his unfortunate circumstances — the lack of a permanent home and citizenship — to motivate himself to gain an education and become a teacher.

“I took that as an opportunity to produce something,” Sharma said. “I didn’t have anything to lose.”

Sharma went on to earn a master’s in

become the main focus of his studies.

He then transferred to Temple to study strategic communication with a focus on rhetoric and public advocacy.

“To explicitly be engaged in work that not only you’re passionate about, but work that you see as having transformation in the world was important to me,” Hardeman said.

Hardeman said he learned a lot from his research and policy fellowship in the Mayor’s Office, but his relationships with his professors and Temple’s Honors Program has been most important in molding him as both a thinker and a person.

If it weren’t for Ruth Ost, the senior director of the Honors Program, he wouldn’t have applied for the Rhodes. She saw him speak at the closing ceremony in Spring 2016 for Temple’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program — an educational program where students and incarcerated people take a semester-long course together — at Graterford Prison in Mont-

English from Tribhuvan University in Nepal and a master’s in sociology from Kumaun University in India. He then completed his master’s of philosophy in English language education from India’s English and Foreign Languages University.

During his time in Nepal, Sharma trained teachers in remote districts of the country. He also founded an English school with a focus on educating girls.

“In the school I was teaching, in one of the classes, there were about 50 students and only one girl,” Sharma said. “I could see she was cornered, and the teachers would only focus on the boys.”

Once in Philadelphia, Sharma founded the Bhutanese American Organization, which provides new Bhutanese refugees with assistance in areas like education, employment and cultural integration.

For Sharma, the gala was an important step in alleviating the obstacles young refugees face when seeking an education.

“When I first heard about [the gala], I was so moved,” Sharma said. “I was so thankful that it came, there couldn’t be a better time.

There are so many men and women who want to go to school and pursue education… but cannot because of external factors.”

ashley.mir@temple.edu Alex Voisine has written columns in the Opinion section of The Temple News. He had no part in the reporting or editing of this piece.

gomery County, Pennsylvania.

After his speech, Ost told him that he had what it takes to be a Rhodes Scholar.

In his personal statement for the Rhodes, he talked about how his dialogue with incarcerated people at Graterford made him think more deeply about what jails and prisons should look like.

He said he went from asking questions like, “Who did it and how can we punish them?” to “Who is hurt and how can we make them whole?”

Most of his scholarship work has been focused on pedagogy, the theory and practice of teaching, but he’s also written about topics like prison abolition, the movement to reduce or eliminate prisons.

For his honors thesis, Hardeman wrote about critical pedagogy, an educational philosophy in which a teacher realizes their role in society and challenges power structures in academic settings.

His thesis focused on how to implement critical pedagogy in the classroom.

Kim Goyette, the sociology de-

partment chair, had Hardeman as a student in her Sociology of Education class. She also assisted him in the process of writing his thesis.

Goyette said she was so excited that she screamed when she read the email that Hardeman won the Rhodes scholarship.

“He is a listener and takes time to hear people, so I think he will really listen to what people say and think about how that works with his point of view,” Goyette said. “I think he will be a public intellectual.”

Hardeman, who leaves for England in October 2018, said that after he finishes his degrees, he plans to get his Ph.D. at a university in the United States.

“I think it will bring me into contact with people who have radically different worldviews than I have,” Hardeman said. “That’s a challenge, but it’s something that I’m most excited about.”

emily.ivy.scott@temple.edu @emilyivyscott

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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

EVENTS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

INSTRUMENTS

Paley library hosts women in music symposium On Wednesday, Paley Library will host “She Persisted: Women in Music Then and Now,” a symposium to celebrate women’s contributions to music throughout history. Paley Music Librarian Anne Harlow will host the event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Paley Lecture Hall. Caitlin Shanley, a liaison for the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies department, will run a workshop on contributing to Wikipedia articles on underrepresented topics, like women in music.

The conference is in conjunction with “Female Keyboard Composers,” a doctoral keyboard literature seminar created and taught by Joyce Lindorff, a keyboard professor. The symposium concludes with a concert at 7:30 p.m. in Rock Hall featuring students, faculty and musicians in the city.

This symposium is part of “Beyond the Notes,” a series from the Boyer College of Music and Dance and Temple University Libraries.

phase of the project. The broken instruments were on display at Temple Contemporary until October 2017.

Within the past year, audio specialists recorded sounds made by each of the broken instruments. The sounds made by the instruments were sent to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, David Lang, who developed a composition for the musicians to perform on Sunday.

As a product of Los Angeles public schools, Lang said he feels a connection to this project.

“Without music within the public schools, I would not be a musician today,” Lang said.

In the last decade, the School District of Philadelphia’s instrumental music budget has decreased drastically. In 2007, the program was supported by a budget of $1.3 million. In 2017, the budget for arts programs was $50,000.

Composing a piece for broken

instruments wasn’t easy for Lang. He wanted to form a piece that was possible to perform with the instruments, which were in various levels of disrepair.

“Every instrument in the orchestra is unique, so the problem we needed to confront is how to form a piece that plays nicely together and also honors the fact that everything the instruments do [is] different,” Lang said.

“So if you give everyone one simple job, to play the notes as simply and purely as they can, you get this very complicated, changing buzzing sound that shows that the musicians are trying to play together, but the instruments don’t let them.”

As some of the instruments emit only the sounds of the clanking keys, while others produce only a limited range of notes, Lang and the musicians within the orchestra were forced to creatively incorporate these instruments within the performance.

This was accomplished by altering the method in which the instruments are commonly played.

Hagins’ violin didn’t have a bridge,

a device that transmits the vibration from the string to the instrument to produce the resonating sound, so he had to put his finger underneath the string and pluck it to create a note. “[The composition] is not a piece that just depends on melody and harmony,” Lang said. “It does not work the way we expect an orchestra piece to work.”

The Barra Foundation, a Philadelphia organization that provides grants to projects, will support the final phase with $180,000 to fund the repairs of instruments and the distribution of music repair kits to teachers in Philadelphia public schools.

The repaired instruments will be returned to the school district by Fall 2018.

“You are taking people...from a variety of backgrounds,” Blackson said. “But all of those differences disappear when they’re just trying to make music together.”

maureen.iplenski@temple.edu

-Emily Scott

Tyler and CPH students showcase collaboration Occupational therapy and Tyler School of Art students will present their collaborative projects for children with disabilities in the Adaptive Design Showcase on Wednesday from 4:30 to 5:45 p.m. at Temple Contemporary. The students came together to help improve the lives of children with paralysis.

Inspired by the work of Temple’s Institute for Disabilities, students constructed inexpensive and functional equipment with cardboard, like a food tray for a wheelchair. As a collaborative effort, students from the occupational therapy program constructed the equipment and Tyler students worked with Adaptive Design Greater Philadelphia to help paint and decorate the adaptations.

-Maureen Iplenski KHANYA BRANN / THE TEMPLE NEWS Adam Gasiewski (left), a freshman computer science major, and Emily Beck, a freshman political science major, read from their bestselling book “Milk and Vine: Inspirational Quotes from Classic Vines” on Sunday in the Student Center.

LGBTQ a capella group to perform first concert Pitch, Please, Temple’s coed LGBTQ advocacy a cappella group, will perform a concert in Rock Hall on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. The “coming-out concert” will include songs by artists like ABBA, Vulfpeck and Queen. Pitch, Please will be accompanied by LiaChorus, another coed a cappella group at Temple.

Pitch, Please was founded in 2014 “to spread positivity, empowerment, and unity through our music,” according to the group’s Facebook page. The group has performed at several A Cappella Serenades throughout the semester.

-Rachel McQuiston

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

VINE books are advertised as being “frequently bought together.”

Recently, other Vine-related books have been popping up on selfpublishing platforms. “Vine and Tea”

by Max Stein, which came out Nov. 5, is another parody of “Milk and Honey,” based on a similar idea.

Julie Stapleton Carroll, the program director of Blackstone Launchpad, a campus-based entrepreneurship program, helped connect the couple with legal advisers when copyright issues first arose.

“I feel like the criticism is being a little harsh, and a lot of the folks are mostly just jealous of them,” Stapleton Carroll said. “It’s a brilliant, really creative idea. They’ve gotten the legal counsel that assures them that they’re not in violation of anything.”

The copyright statement about

the book that Beck shared on Twitter reads, “We’ve tried in the past to find the names of the Viners, but it is difficult, as many accounts have been deactivated and many Vine videos don’t feature the person who uploaded it.”

Gasiewski was recently able to add a list of credits to the back of the book. He said bugs in Amazon’s publishing platform made it difficult to make edits.

Rivers Jackson, a 19-year-old film major at the University of Alabama, bought “Milk and Vine” and has started citing the original creator of the Vine video on each page of the book.

He tweeted a photo of some of his adaptations with names of the Vine creators written under the illustrations.

Jackson thinks the Vine creators should have been given credit for their “art,” but he appreciates Vine compilation books for their role in keeping the memory of Vine alive.

“The act of dying made Vine that

much better,” he said. “Like how artists’ voices are often amplified after their death. This is the same thing, except instead of just one artist, it’s the whole platform that’s being celebrated.”

Gasiewski and Beck are currently working with other publishers on a sequel set to come out in early spring of next year. In “Milk and Vine,” the couple mentioned a follow-up based on tweets instead of Vine videos.

They aren’t harboring any negative feelings about similar parodies.

“We’re happy that we inspired other people to independently publish their own books,” Beck said. “People are free to take our ideas and do what they want with them. That’s the beauty of the Internet.”

khanya.brann@temple.edu @_AfroKhan

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PAGE 17

The walk-on

Official visits. Athletic scholarships. National Letters of Intent. This is the way the majority of student-athletes start their college careers.

But for me, this was not the case.

I officially walked onto the Temple track and field team in October 2016 during my junior year. My path to the team was unusual, especially because of my age and how long I had already been at the university.

I joined Temple’s Class of 2018, and I had an amazing freshman year. I made it a point to make new friends because I was very shy and kept to myself in high school.

Even though I was having a lot of fun, when I was honest with myself, something was always missing.

I got injured during my senior year of high school trying to qualify for the New Jersey Meet of Champions. I was long jumping, and on my second attempt I felt a pull in my hamstring that made it impossible for me to sprint and finish that meet. I was devastated.

I decided to start strengthening my hamstring during my sophomore year of college so I could run competitively again, because working out on my own was not enough. I could not see myself quitting sports completely. I was known in my hometown of Hackensack, New Jersey, as the athletic girl.

It was my whole identity at home and all I knew since I was 10 years old when I started recreational track, soccer and basketball.

In the year and a half that I did not compete, I joined Moore Elite Track and Field Club in Philadelphia and — slowly but surely — progressed to a new level of athleticism. I ran in a few meets for the club, but the workouts and practices were what really helped me.

I was with the club for about five months before I had to go back home for

A senior on the track and field team reflects on feeling like she didn’t belong at Division I meets.

BY RE’ONA PETTWAY

COURTNEY REDMON / THE TEMPLE NEWS

the summer. I trained with my high school coach in preparation for the tryout in September 2016.

I remember I was so nervous I was shaking, and I could barely get my legs to move through the warm up at the tryout. Days passed, and just when I came to the conclusion that I did not make the team, coach Elvis Forde emailed me and let me know that I was in.

My transition from student to studentathlete was surprisingly smooth. I was already good at managing my time, and everything else fell into place during the preseason.

It wasn’t until competition came around that I started feeling an emotion I have never felt while running track — anxiety.

Before meets, I would be so paralyzed

with nerves that it would make me sick, and my whole body would be tight before I even stepped on the starting line. This emotion sabotaged my whole season, because my body would be so tense that I could not run the times I was running comfortably in practice.

I remember one really great practice in which I hit all my times in my reps of 500 meters, 400, 300 and 200. I left that practice with so much confidence. Three days later, I got on the line to race at Ocean Breeze in New York and ran a terrible 400.

I remember being frustrated to the point of tears after every meet.

“Why do you feel like this now?” I asked myself. “This is what you wanted so badly, so why are you feeling like this at meets?”

It took a lot of time and some raw honesty, but I realized I felt like I could not measure up to athletes who were recruited and on scholarship. I also felt like I had been out of competition for too long before joining the team, and I would not be at the same level of fitness as everyone else.

This anxiety stayed with me through my first indoor season and for a good part of the outdoor season. My wonderful teammates, in particular, my training partner Jazmyne Williams, brought me out of this rut.

Jazmyne is the most positive person I have ever met and reminded me every day that I was here for a reason and that I had a lot more to give. We pushed each other through every rep and every workout. With her and the rest of my team, my confidence grew.

I am now in my second and final year with the team, and I am so happy with the progress I have made in such a short time. I am stronger and faster, and my form is better than it ever was before.

Now I look at the team and the walk-ons we have this year and I wonder, “Do they feel how I felt last year?”

To the walk-ons: It doesn’t matter how you got on your team as long as you’re working hard and producing results. I want you to know that you are not less of an athlete because you lack scholarships.

Walk-ons are special because their only reason for joining a team is their love for the sport and competition. So keep training, keep competing and keep letting people know why you’re here — to win. Just like everyone else. reona.pettway@temple.edu

A letter to the next No. 2

After playing her final volleyball game last week, a senior writes a letter to the player who will wear her number next.

Dear No. 2, First, I want to say congratulations. Becoming a Division I volleyball player is an accomplishment in itself. This is the culmination of years of dedication and sacrifice for a single sport.

Being a freshman at a Division I institution is single-handedly the most difficult transition you will ever encounter. You will have to wake up at 6 a.m. for workouts every day. You will lose your breakfast at some point during sprints.

You will miss class in the name of traveling. You will return to campus from Kansas, for example, at 1 a.m. on a Monday and be expected to be sitting in your 8 a.m. class that same morning.

You will go through

COURTNEY REDMON / THE TEMPLE NEWS

physical, emotional and mental stress beyond your comprehension. You will forfeit Thanksgiving with your family every year. You will not see home for the entire Summer II and Fall terms. I could go on and on about the trials and tribulations that are ahead of you.

So why bother? Why willingly put yourself through such difficulties during what are supposed to be “the best four years of your life?”

Foremost, playing a sport in college brings the promise of an education at either a reduced cost or for free. Temple is an amazing institution with an even better academic reputation. The knowledge that you will gain at this school is priceless, beyond the cost of an athletic scholarship.

No matter what you decide to study, whether it be political science or international business, take it seriously. Because of my focus, I was able to graduate in three years and earn my master’s degree during what should have been my senior year. You have the opportunity to be whoever you wish academically, and your athletics should not and cannot overshadow that. You are a student before you are an athlete; remember that, always.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20

MACWILLIAMS Brian Clarhaut, who assistant coached from 2012-15 and is now the coach for Nyköping BIS, a Division I professional team in Sweden. “They didn’t know really about us, and we had some good older players that were there. It was a good accomplishment. We hoped to move forward with that.”

Sandwiched between the 2013 and 2015 seasons, however, was a 2-14-2 finish in 2014. MacWilliams called it “one of my toughest years as coach.”

MacWilliams’ tenure started in 2000, when the program recorded its longest losing streak ever at 11 games. By 2003 and 2004, Temple had won double-digit games

BY JANINE SIMMONS You also get the chance to play the sport that you love at the next level. For female volleyball players in the United States, participating at the collegiate level is the highest level you can play at besides the Olympics. You are considered a professional at your sport, and that is an accomplishment.

Somewhere between the endless workouts and practices, there will be days when you cannot remember why you fell in love with the game in the first place. During the spring semester of my junior year, I was juggling practices, workouts, 18 credits, an internship and a student government campaign. I found myself incredibly overwhelmed and overworked.

I was able to utilize volleyball as an escape rather than another chore on my to-do list. This allowed me to fall back in love with the game the way I did when I started playing at age 13.

I implore you to hold onto the love that you currently feel for volleyball. Being an athlete will teach you perseverance, responsibility, trust and determination. Most importantly, it will teach you how to ask for help. It will be tough, but

in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1986 and 1987.

“I think obviously when I came to the program, it was tough,” he said. “We did our best under the circumstances and the budget restraints.”

Once Temple joined The American in 2013, it ranked near the bottom of the conference in spending, MacWilliams said. In 2015, Temple spent $2,622,507 on men’s sports excluding football and basketball, according to the most recent data from the United States Department of Education.

Data was not available for UConn, but the other six schools in The American that sponsor men’s soccer spent more than $3 million.

After 2004, the Owls missed the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament in the next three seasons, including 2006, when they lost 14

nothing easy is ever worth having.

Above all, remember to have fun.

Playing at Temple also means that you will get to experience life in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. My personal escape lies within the walls of Reading Terminal Market, where any type of food you could think of is at your fingertips.

Take advantage of the city and all that it has to offer. Get off campus and explore. Get involved in community service in your neighborhood. Make Philadelphia your home.

Single-handedly, the best part of being a college athlete is your team. When you step on campus, hidden within the chaos of preseason and transitioning into college life, you will realize that you have 14 built-in, lifelong best friends.

The team will be your backbone when you are feeling weak. It will be your sounding board when you think you are crazy. It will be your support system when you need someone to talk with. It will happen, trust me.

Above all, it will become your family. Love and cherish the experiences you will have with your teammates because, in the blink of an eye, four years will fly by.

As a senior who has hung up

games, got shutout a program-record 10 times and scored the fewest goals in a single season in school history.

They rebounded in 2008 to place second in the regular-season standings with the help of J.T. Noone, the Owls’ first All-American since 1986.

MacWilliams also coached seven second-team players in The American, including freshman forward Alan Camacho Soto and sophomore forward Thibault Candia.

“I think there was a lot of special highlights that we’ve had throughout the course of my career there,” MacWilliams said. “Just basically, the day-to-day interaction with student-athletes, teaching the game or trying to educate players on the game and just in general trying to shape them as young men.”

MacWilliams wants to get back into col-

my jersey for the last time, I am full of many emotions. After finishing in the top three every year of the conference standings that I have been a Temple Owl, the 2017 team qualified for a postseason tournament for the first time in 15 years.

The National Invitational Volleyball Championship represented our hard work and tenacity finally paying off, and for that, I am so thankful.

We proudly wear that Temple name on our chest, and I hope that you wear No. 2 proudly, too. Looking ahead to my life after volleyball, I am grateful for all of the opportunities that I have received from this sport and this university.

Thank you to my No. 1 fan, my mom. Thank you to my teammates, coaches, professors, advisers, trainers, family and everyone who has helped to make this fouryear rollercoaster surpass even my wildest dreams.

I am not sure of my post-graduation plans, but I know that my experiences at Temple have prepared me for anything life throws at me. My hope is you will have an even more amazing four-year experience. Go Owls. janine.simmons@temple.edu

lege coaching, but no other schools had expressed interest as of Thursday.

He feels the program is in “pretty good shape” with returning players. He had four players committed to play next season, including Santiago Majewski, a senior midfielder from Torrey Pines High School in San Diego.

He isn’t sure if those players will still come to Temple now that he won’t be there.

“We had a good nucleus,” he said. “I think we were building for the future and coming up.” evan.easterling@temple.edu @Evan_Easterling

sports@temple-news.com @TTN_Sports

S P O RT S PAGE 18

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Tough teams to come to North Philadelphia Temple will face two ranked teams in its next four games.

BY KEVIN SCHAEFFER Women’s Basketball Beat Reporter

To close its seven-game homestand, Temple will play two teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll and two teams that played in the NCAA Tournament last season.

Temple, which received five top25 votes in the USA Today preseason coaches’ poll, has started the season with a 6-2 record after Saturday’s 86-64 victory against Harvard University at McGonigle Hall.

Against Harvard, the Owls made 10 3-pointers and shot 45.5 percent from behind the 3-point line.

“When you make those first couple of threes, it changes your mindset and not just for that one person, but for the next guy,” coach Tonya Cardoza said. “That’s just how we are.

We feed off of one another.”

After Saturday’s win against Harvard, four more games remain in Temple’s seven-game homestand.

The Owls will face Hampton University, which reached the NCAA Tournament last season, on Thursday.

The two ranked teams the Owls will play are AP No. 25 Villanova and defending Division I champion University of South Carolina, which is ranked No. 5 and started the season with six wins in a row. Each team provides different challenges for the Owls.

When the Owls play Villanova

on Dec. 10 in their third Big 5 game of the season, they’ll face one of the best defenses in Division I. Villanova has the 23rd-best scoring defense, allowing just 54.3 points per game.

The Wildcats’ stout defense starts in the middle. Both senior center Megan Quinn and sophomore forward Mary Gedaka are averaging more than a block per game, and the team is ninth in Division I with 6.3 blocks per game.

Because the Wildcats affect many of their opponents’ shots at the rim, they only allow teams to shoot 33.3 percent from the field, which ranks 24th in Division I. From behind the 3-point line, Villanova’s opponents shoot just 20.9 percent.

Temple will rely on senior guard Tanaya Atkinson to continue her hot start to the season. Atkinson’s 23.6 points per game leads the American Athletic Conference and ranks fifth in Division I. “I’m just trying to play as hard as I can play, all the time,” Atkinson said. “I always tell the younger players, ‘You should never want a coach to come to you after the game and tell you that you didn’t play hard.’ So I’m just playing as hard as I can every time.”

After Atkinson, freshman forward Mia Davis and freshman guards Desiree Oliver and Emani Mayo are the next leading scorers.

But against St. Joseph’s on Nov. 29, junior guard Deja Reynolds broke out. She scored a career-high 12 points, including the free throws that sealed the game.

“I just wanted to be aggressive and bring my style of play to the game,” Reynolds said. “It was just like

practice out there on the court, and I’m just gaining more confidence the more I get out on the floor.”

When the Owls play South Carolina 11 days after their matchup with Villanova, their defense will be tested. South Carolina has the 14thbest scoring offense in Division I at 85 points per game.

South Carolina’s leading scorer is senior forward A’ja Wilson, who ranks fourth in Division I with 23.8 points per game.

The Gamecocks’ second-leading scorer is redshirt-senior guard Lindsey Spann. She is a transfer from Penn State and is averaging 13.6 points per game.

Cardoza, who signed a contract extension that will keep her at Temple through the 2021-22 season, is confident in Mayo on the defensive end.

“Defensively, some of our young players are really growing,” Cardoza said. “Emani’s shooting percentage the last couple of games hasn’t been great, but I keep her on the floor because I trust her guarding just about anyone. She’s a smart kid, and she works her butt off and knows her assignments.”

Before the Owls’ matchups with Villanova and South Carolina, they are focused squarely on Hampton, which is coming off a six-point loss to Quinnipiac University on Sunday.

“All we know is we’re playing next, we never look ahead of any opponent,” Cardoza said. kevinschaeffer@temple.edu @_kevinschaeffer

MIKE NGUYEN / THE TEMPLE NEWS Senior guard Tanaya Atkinson (right) attempts a jump shot during the Owls’ 6448 loss to the University of Mississippi on Nov. 25 at McGonigle Hall.

OFFENSE SCORES MORE POINTS WITH NUTILE AT QB Temple averaged 19.9 points per game in redshirt sophomore Logan Marchi’s seven starts, and the team has scored 31.8 points per game in redshirt junior Frank Nutile’s five starts.

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / FILE PHOTO Redshirt-sophomore quarterback Logan Marchi attempts a pass against UMass in Temple’s 29-21 victory at Lincoln Financial Field on Sept. 15.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20

UNCERTAINTY school.

Regardless of whether one transfers, Temple’s quarterback competition will likely mirror this season’s battle. Collins didn’t announce a starter prior to Temple’s season opener against the University of Notre Dame on Sept. 2.

He said up to three quarterbacks could play in the game but afterward admitted there was some “gamesmanship” and he “probably carried a little too far” with the quarterback battle. Marchi took every offensive snap.

In year two, Collins’ game management will also have to improve. He said being on the sideline as a coach rather than a coordinator was an adjustment after Temple’s 49-16 loss to the Fighting Irish.

When the Owls lost, 31-28, to Army West Point on Oct. 21, time management cost them points.

Sophomore kicker Aaron Boumerhi drilled a 51-yard field goal through the uprights, but it got negated by a delay of game penalty.

After the game, Collins said he didn’t try to call a timeout. Temple’s missed opportunity to take a two-possession lead wasn’t the only variable that went into Temple losing a winnable game, but it would’ve made it harder for the Black

sports@temple-news.com @TTN_Sports

HOJUN YU / FILE PHOTO Redshirt-junior quarterback Frank Nutile looks to pass in Temple’s 34-26 victory against Navy at Lincoln Financial Field on Nov. 2.

Knights to make a comeback.

What should fans expect next year?

Again, regardless of who starts at quarterback, Temple will have weapons on offense. The main question is will those players stay healthy?

Temple’s leading returning rusher and receiver — junior running back Ryquell Armstead and redshirt junior Ventell Bryant — had off seasons. Toe and hamstring injuries hindered Armstead’s ability. Injuries also hurt Bryant, and he missed a game for an undisclosed reason.

After he posted career-best numbers during the 2016 season, Bryant received buzz as a potential 2018 NFL Draft prospect. So far, he has barely matched half of last season’s production, hauling in 28 receptions for 273 yards and zero touchdowns.

On the bright side, sophomore wideout Isaiah Wright blossomed in several roles this season. He led the Owls in receiving with 41 catches for 595 yards and three touchdowns. He also had 194 rushing yards and a touchdown and contributed two more scores on special teams.

With senior wideout Adonis Jennings and redshirt-senior wideout Keith Kirkwood graduating after the season, the Owls will need the same production out of Wright next season.

Junior safety Delvon Randall’s game took a significant jump from last season.

The American named Randall to the All-

Conference First Team. He finished the regular season with a career-high 76 tackles and a team-high four interceptions.

Temple replaced seven starters on the defensive side of the ball. The Owls will be faced with a similar task in 2018 when they’ll replace three defensive linemen and three defensive backs.

Sophomore defensive back Linwood Crump has started six of the past eight games and will most likely start at one of the two cornerback positions.

Redshirt-freshman defensive lineman Quincy Roche ranked third on the team with six sacks and fourth with 9.5 tackles for loss. His role could increase next season with Temple losing senior defensive lineman Jacob Martin and redshirt-senior defensive lineman Sharif Finch, who lead the team in sacks and tackles for loss and earned second-team selection in The American.

In his weekly press conference before Temple’s victory against Tulsa, Collins said he wanted to send the senior class off the right way with a bowl game. And he will.

But Temple will still have to answer similar questions at the quarterback position and defensive side of the ball as Collins enters year two on North Broad.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20

NIVC in the second round and Wichita State advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Temple stayed competitive against West Virginia in a close first set, but it couldn’t come away with the win. Ganesharatnam said losing the first set gave the Mountaineers an imposing confidence for the rest of the match.

The matchup between Temple and West Virginia was the only second-round match between two teams that ranked in the top 10 of the Ratings Percentage Index of the teams in the NIVC. Temple had the seventh-highest RPI of the 32 teams in the NIVC at No. 76. West Virginia had the fifth-highest RPI at No. 72.

Senior middle blocker Janine Simmons, who had eight kills and a block in the loss to West Virginia, said the team felt confident about playing in the tournament.

“We knew going in we would be one of the top seeds, so we theoretically had a good chance,” Simmons said.

The University of North Texas had the highest RPI in the NIVC at No. 47. Alabama A&M University held the lowest RPI at No. 312.

Despite Temple’s high RPI ranking compared to the rest of the field, Ganesharatnam stressed from the beginning of play that Temple should take the tournament one match at a time.

“There are some really good teams in the NIVC with some really good RPIs and really good coaches,” Ganesharatnam said. “It really shows you the depth of this tournament.”

Although the Owls couldn’t advance past the second round of the NIVC, Ganesharatnam said he is proud of the season’s outcome.

Temple won 20 matches or more for the fourth season in a row and reached a postseason tournament for the first time since 2002. Ganesharatnam hopes to continue the positive trend for the coming years.

“For the last four years, [the seniors] have been a constant part of the progression of this program and for them to finish their college career with postseason play, it’s the greatest reward that we could’ve possibly given them,” Ganesharatnam said.

“The goal is to be in postseason play on a regular basis and to have the opportunity to host and bring postseason play on campus,” he added. austin.ampeloquio@temple.edu @AustinPaulAmp

thomas.ignudo@temple.edu @TomIgnudo

temple-news.com @thetemplenews

S P O RT S TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 19

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Alston: ‘We got NCAA Tournament hopes’ Temple has a chance for two quality wins during its four-game home stretch.

BY EVAN EASTERLING Sports Editor La Salle coach John Giannini tells his players if his team can win three or four games in the Big 5, it will be good enough to reach the NCAA Tournament.

The Explorers are halfway there after their win against Temple on Nov. 26, but they have yet to play Villanova, which is ranked No. 4 in the Associated Press Top 25.

The Owls (4-2) will face Villanova on Dec. 13 when they’ll play the third game of a four-game homestand. They’ll open their home slate on Wednesday against the University of Wisconsin after six games either on the road or at neutral sites.

“It’s always nice to get to the Liacouras Center and play, but that’s the way the schedule worked out,” coach Fran Dunphy said after Sunday’s 71-67 loss to George Washington University. “Scheduling is very difficult at this level, but we had a wonderful opportunity to be in New York City Thursday, a great opportunity to be in D.C. at a professional arena playing a good basketball team. So we’re excited by that, and whenever we can go play, we should be unbelievably excited.”

George Washington shot 60 percent from the field and 9-for16 from 3-point range on Sunday.

Temple trailed by 15 at halftime before it tied the game twice in the second half.

“Our play the other night [against the University of South Carolina], we were good defensively,” Dunphy said. “[Sunday], we weren’t nearly as good.”

“We just had a tough loss to La Salle last Sunday, and I told the guys, ‘We got NCAA Tournament hopes, and we can’t have losses like this on our resume,’” junior guard Shizz Alston Jr. said after Sunday’s loss. “So we just tried to pick it up.”

The Owls faced a tough forward during their win against South Carolina in junior Chris Silva, who scored in double figures in all five NCAA Tournament games to help the Gamecocks in their run to the Final Four last season. He entered the game as South Carolina’s leading scorer, but Temple held him to just five points.

On Wednesday, Temple will face Wisconsin redshirt-junior forward Ethan Happ, the reigning Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year.

He is nearly averaging a doubledouble with 16.3 points and 8.8 rebounds per game.

After their game against the Badgers, Temple will play back-toback Big 5 opponents. St. Joseph’s will come to the Liacouras Center on Saturday with an injury-affected roster.

St. Joseph’s sophomore forward Charlie Brown Jr., who averaged 12.8 points per game as a freshman, has yet to play this season because he fractured his left wrist in October.

Junior guard Lamarr Kimble is out for the season after re-injuring his left foot during the Hawks’ season-opening loss to the University of Toledo on Nov. 11. The injury kept him out of the final seven games of the 2016-17 season.

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS Junior guard Shizz Alston Jr. makes a bounce pass during the Owls’ 76-60 win against the University of South Carolina on Thursday at Madison Square Garden in New York.

St. Joseph’s has benefited from the return of senior guard Shavar Newkirk, who tore his ACL on Dec. 30, 2016. He is averaging 16.5 points per game.

After its game against Villanova, Temple will close the homestand against Drexel on Dec. 16.

Temple started the season with six games away from home for the first time since the 2007-08 season.

Temple came out of that stretch with a 2-4 record, but it went 14-7 at home on its way to winning the Atlantic 10 Conference title and reaching its first NCAA Tournament since the 2000-01 season.

As Temple tries to continue to build its NCAA Tournament resume early in the season during the nonconference stretch, it has a chance to earn two quality wins during its four-game homestand.

Villanova is tied for No. 14 in the Ratings Percentage Index, and Wisconsin is 53rd in ESPN’s Basketball Power Index and has the 24th-toughest strength of schedule out of 351 Division I teams as of Monday.

The Owls reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament during the 2000-01 season, which is the last time Temple has ad-

vanced to the second weekend of the tournament.

“It’s easy to say we’re not going to talk about that, but it’s on all of our minds,” senior forward Obi Enechionyia said at American Athletic Conference media day on Oct. 16. “Obviously getting to the tournament, I’ve been there once.

I know what it feels like to play in the tournament, and it’s something that we all want to get back to.” evan.easterling@temple.edu @Evan_Easterling

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Twin sisters have a piece of home in each other Freshman guards Emani and Nicolette Mayo live together and play for the Owls.

BY MAURA RAZANAUSKAS Women’s Basketball Beat Reporter Emani Mayo is right-handed, and Nicolette Mayo is left-handed. Nicolette is outgoing while Emani is shy. Emani is a scorer, while Nicolette focuses more on defense.

When it comes to the twin freshman guards, the list of differences between Emani and Nicolette may be shorter to write out since the two have so much in common.

“We’ve always been together our whole lives, since we were born,” Nicolette said.

“There’s nothing she hasn’t done that I haven’t done.”

Emani and Nicolette both started playing basketball at age 5. They also both tried softball and track together. They even finished next to each other in their high school’s graduating class of 2017. By the end of the year, Emani was the valedictorian and Nicolette was second in the class.

Now, the Mayo sisters are living and playing basketball together at Temple. Nicolette Mayo joined the team as a walk-on, while Emani is on scholarship.

The two grew up in Hephzibah, Georgia, a town of 4,000 people. Because their hometown is so far away — about a 12-hour drive — having each other at Temple has made their transition to college more comfortable.

JAMIE COTTRELL / THE TEMPLE NEWS Freshman guard Emani Mayo (left) high-fives her twin sister and freshman guard Nicolette Mayo as she steps off the court during the Owls’ 86-64 win against Harvard University at McGonigle Hall on Saturday.

“It’s like home, coming to Philadelphia,” Emani said. “We’ve been together for 18 years, so it’s really nice to have her here.”

Growing up playing basketball together, the twins pushed each other to be their best.

During their senior seasons, both were captains for Hephzibah High School. On their own time, the sisters practiced together and challenged each other.

“When we would play one-on-one, she knew some of my moves, I knew some of her moves,” Emani said. “It’s kind of fun to be competitive and push each other to work harder and get better.”

Since the start of the season, Emani has played in every game and has started the past four. She averages seven points and 3.4 rebounds per game.

“I’m really happy with how I’ve been playing,” Emani said. “I’ve been struggling offensively, but I’m going to pick it up later on. But for now, I’m going to keep playing defense.”

In Temple’s game against Harvard University on Saturday, Emani set new seasonhighs with seven rebounds and five assists.

Coach Tonya Cardoza is excited by the growth she has seen in her through the first eight games.

“Emani is one of the most coachable players on the team,” Cardoza said. “She understands, she grasps things, she listens.”

Together, Nicolette and Emani bring a lot of energy to the team as well as a strong work ethic, Cardoza said. They stayed after practice shooting around after other players had started to file off the court on Friday.

Because Nicolette is a walk-on, she has not had as much playing time as her sister.

Nicolette has seen action in three games and nabbed a rebound in Temple’s win against Harvard.

Even though Nicolette’s stat line doesn’t show it, she has made an invaluable impact

on the team and her sister in particular, Cardoza said.

“I think for E, it was the best thing because I don’t know if her transition from home to here would’ve been as well as it has been if her sister hadn’t been here,” Cardoza said. “I don’t know if E would be blossoming the way that she is. I really don’t.”

Emani and Nicolette are in an uncommon situation, as there are only 18 other sets of sisters and only three other sets of twins in Division I women’s basketball.

After Emani committed to Temple, Nicolette wasn’t sure if she was going to join her. Cardoza told Nicolette she could be a walk-on, but Nicolette could’ve played more for another school.

Even though there was some doubt in Nicolette’s mind, Emani was confident she knew what her sister’s decision would be.

“At first, we weren’t sure, but I kind of always knew, though,” Emani said. “She can’t leave me, you know, she has to come.”

The decision has proven to be a good one for both, as they are enjoying their time at Temple and on the team. Even though the two spend a lot of time together and argue like any siblings would, the bond between them is still strong.

“They say this is like the best time of your life, so I wouldn’t want to spend it with anybody else,” Nicolette said. “You’ve got to enjoy the time that you have together, because you never know how everything’s going to come into place as time goes on.” maura.razanauskas@temple.edu @CaptainAMAURAca

sports@temple-news.com @TTN_Sports

SPORTS

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017

PAGE 20

FOOTBALL

2017 ends with bowl, but what about 2018?

N

early one year ago, Temple introduced Geoff Collins as its new football coach after Matt Rhule departed for Baylor Uni-

SYDNEY SCHAEFER / THE TEMPLE NEWS Sophomore cornerback Linwood Crump (left) listens to coach Geoff Collins during the Owls’ 28-24 loss to Connecticut on Oct. 14 at Lincoln Financial Field.

versity.

Running off Diet Mountain Dews, seated between President Richard Englert and Athletic Director Pat Kraft in the Liacouras Center, Collins talked about the pressure he faced by inheriting a program in the midst of back-to-back 10 win seasons for the first time in school history.

In his southern twang, Collins said he thrives on the pressure.

During his first year as coach, Collins’ team hit a roadblock. Temple needed to win three of its last four games to become bowl eligible for the fourth straight season.

The Owls (6-6, 4-4 American Athletic Conference) TOM IGNUDO ASSISTANT SPORTS delivered and will face EDITOR Florida International University in the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl on Dec. 21.

But even with Collins and the Owls salvaging their season with a bowl game,

the regular season ended with questions surrounding the program’s future.

First, who will be the starting quarterback in Collins’ second season?

Redshirt-junior quarterback Frank Nutile performed well at the end of the season after redshirt-sophomore quarterback Logan Marchi suffered a foot injury.

Despite solid play, neither Nutile nor Marchi sticks out as the quarterback of the future. Temple’s quarterback room will also be more crowded next season.

Freshman quarterback Todd Centeio, who was withheld from action after Sept.

21 in hopes of getting a redshirt year, will be in the mix for the starting job. Redshirtfreshman quarterback Anthony Russo, who only held field goal and extra point attempts this season, will also compete for a spot.

Then there’s Trad Beatty — an incoming freshman from South Carolina who will enroll in January and is the first quarterback recruited by Collins’ staff. Because the Owls will be overcrowded with candidates for quarterback, there’s a legitimate chance one could transfer to another

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MEN’S SOCCER

After MacWilliams’ 18 seasons, Temple moves in ‘ different direction’ Temple decided not to renew former coach David MacWilliams’ contract.

BY EVAN EASTERLING Sports Editor Temple entered its American Athletic Conference tournament semifinal match on Nov. 10 with the possibility of extending one of two streaks.

With a win, Temple would have recorded its third 10-win season in a row and the fifth since finishing 9-10 in 2011.

Instead, the Owls (9-8-1, 4-3 The American) lost, 4-0, to eventual conference champion Southern Methodist in Dallas and extended their losing streak in conference tournament games to eight.

Five days after the Owls’ loss to the Mustangs, the university announced it would not renew coach David MacWilliams’ contract. He

compiled a 140-164-34 record during his 18-year tenure. MacWilliams’ assistant coaches also will not be retained, he said.

Athletic Director Pat Kraft said he is looking for “a fresh voice leading us forward” in a university release. A national search has begun for a new coach.

“They said they wanted to move in a different direction,” MacWilliams said.

“It was a surprise to me and kind of a shock,” he added. “So trying to deal with all that...it’s been a tough couple of weeks.”

Senior midfielder and forward Joonas Jokinen said the team learned MacWilliams had goals to meet for the season that could result in his tenure ending if not met.

“We had an idea, but we weren’t exactly sure what those expectations were for the season,” Jokinen said. “When we made the conference tournament, we assumed that was what was basically

asked of him, so we were a little bit surprised in the end.”

MacWilliams had his share of success at Temple. He won 10 games or more in seven seasons, including the 2015 campaign. After Temple started with a 4-0-1 record, the Owls earned their first national ranking in 18 years at No. 23 in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America poll. The team peaked at No. 17 before a loss to Cincinnati started a stretch of going 0-3-1.

Two years prior, in Temple’s first season in The American, the Owls went 10-4-4 and 3-1-4 in the league to place fourth, despite being picked to finish last in the preseason poll. MacWilliams and his staff won the Coaching Staff of the Year.

“You’re coming into a new conference with a lot of teams from the Big East that knew each other,” said

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DON OTTO / FILE PHOTO Former coach David MacWilliams watches from the sideline during Temple’s 2-2 draw with La Salle on Sept. 13, 2014, at La Salle’s McCarthy Stadium.

VOLLEYBALL

Season ends in second round of playoff tournament West Virginia University swept Temple last week.

BY AUSTIN AMPELOQUIO Volleyball Beat Reporter Coach Bakeer Ganesharatnam said he could feel a different kind of energy from the team going into Temple’s second-round match in the National Invitational Volleyball Championship.

Temple was preparing to take on host school West Virginia University last Wednesday night. The tournament field was already down to 26 MIKE NGUYEN / THE TEMPLE NEWS Temple huddles during the Owls’ four-set win against Southern Methodist on Oct. 22 at McGonigle Hall.

teams from the original 32 after play on Nov. 28.

“We were very excited to be in the second round,” Ganesharatnam said. “If you want to compare it to the NCAAs, it’s like being in the Sweet 16. So that was a great accomplishment for the team and the program.”

But the Owls’ emotions may have gotten the best of them. The Owls were eliminated from the NIVC after losing to the Mountaineers in three sets.

Temple (20-10, 15-5 American Athletic Conference) got swept for the fourth time this season.

“The team really wanted to do well, and I think they wanted to work hard to win,” Ganesharatnam said. “Sometimes when you want something too bad, you can tighten up a little bit and maybe not perform at the highest ability.

The willingness to perform well was there and the team never gave up, but I think that’s what happened.”

The three other teams that swept Temple — Colgate University, Central Florida and Wichita State — also earned postseason bids. Colgate lost in the first round of the NIVC, Central Florida lost

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After six games, Temple will play its first home game on Wednesday against the University of Wisconsin to start a four-game home stand.

Nicolette Mayo, a freshman walk-on guard, was initially unsure if she’d join her twin sister at Temple. “She can’t leave me,” Emani Mayo said.

Senior sprinter Re’ona Pettway wrote about walking onto the track and field team last season but struggling to feel like she belonged.

Senior middle blocker Janine Simmons wrote a letter to the player who will succeed her as the bearer of jersey No. 2 after her final season.