Massachusetts Daily Collegian: March 31, 2014

Columnist Zac Bears:

GAINING AN EDGE

Voting Rights Act renewal imperative

A.J. Doyle picking up new offense in spring camp Page 4

Tinariwen rocks Pearl St Page 5

Page 8

THE MASSACHUSETTS

A free and responsible press

DAILY COLLEGIAN DailyCollegian.com

Monday, March 31, 2014

Serving the UMass community since 1890

News@DailyCollegian.com

O’Hill area govt. resigns for ‘academic reasons’

Perkins and cabinet leave their positions

By Patrick Hoff Collegian Staff

The Orchard Hill Area Government has stepped down from their positions shortly before they were scheduled to testify before the Student Government Senate for an impeachment hearing, according to a high-ranking SGA official.

The impeachment procedures were scheduled to move forward on Monday, but because Governor Seth Perkins, Lieutenant Governor Isilda Gjata, Treasurer Victor Paduchak and Secretary Cameron Locke “respectfully stepped down,” according to Secretary of Finance Lindsay Vitale, there is no longer an impeachment process. Perkins, Gjata and Locke resigned on Friday, while Paduchak resigned earlier in the week. All resigned due to academic reasons.

According to an SGA senator,

normal proceedings would allow the government 30 days before appointing a new person to the position but since the entire government needs to be replaced, different measures will be taken.

Vitale added that because the entire OHAG had resigned, she will be unfreezing the government’s accounts this week.

The audit and freezing of accounts raised questions about whether Bowl Weekend was still possible given the fact that the government was not able to spend money for the past couple weeks.

Perkins had previously told the Massachusetts Daily Collegian that the frozen accounts were “a bit of a setback” because he was struggling to begin renting inflatables and other necessities for the event.

Vitale is now working with Dylan Larke, a residence director of Orchard Hill, SGA Secretary of Registry Ellie Miske, a former OHAG governor, Lloyd Henley at the Center for Student Development and two other residents of Orchard Hill to make sure that Bowl Weekend

Problems with Ukraine are discussed by US

By Paul ricHter Tribune Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — In speeches and remarks last week in Europe, President Barack Obama made clear that he considers Russia’s annexation of Crimea a very big deal. But he also defined what it’s not: an overwhelming national security threat, such as the U.S.-Soviet rivalry in the Cold War, that would trump all other foreign policy priorities.

In appearances before European Union leaders, Obama called for a sustained effort to isolate Russia to discourage further encroachments on its neighbors, but emphasized that Russia is not the West’s top geopolitical challenge.

The p re s i d e n t ’ s approach to the Ukraine

can continue as scheduled. Larke has the signature responsibility to sign off on transactions and purchase requests for the event according to Vitale.

Vitale said that the SGA and the CSD are working together to make new requirements in all RSOs next year, including monthly budget updates from groups. The SGA is also looking into recruiting a set of auditors to make sure that campus groups are using funds properly and effectively.

“It is with great sorrow and frustration that I resign the office of governorship at Orchard Hill,” Perkins said in a statement to the Collegian Sunday night. “Over the past year, my administration and I have held the needs of our constituents dear to our hearts. It was through this good natured attempt to provide for those we see daily that we have been hung out to dry. Essentially, it is our belief, that the bylaws of the SGA are more concerned with bureaucratic power then the legitimate concerns of its governed.”

Perkins added, “The issue arose

SHANNON BRODERICK/COLLEGIAN

Seth Perkins resigned from his position as O’Hill area governor last week. from the fact that I did not consider myself beholden to the SGA, rather, to my constituents. It is with great appreciation for my dorm, my residents and the integrity of Orchard Hill Area Government that I resign.

My hope is that with my administration’s passing, that the work may continue towards Bowl Weekend.”

In an interview with Perkins before spring break, Perkins said that he has not given full thought to his future plans but running for the Senate could be among them.

Patrick Hoff can be reached at pphoff@umass. edu and followed on Twitter @Hoff_Patrick16.

blarney brings on discussion

crisis has sparked a debate among foreign policy experts, including his current and former advisers, on how aggressively to counter Russia’s resurgent ambitions.

One group, which includes Obama’s former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, and his former Defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, urges a more confrontational approach. McFaul calls for the U.S. to end a “drift of disengagement” from world affairs and to “lead the free world in a new struggle.” Gates wants to roll back last year’s defense cuts.

At the other end of the spectrum is AnneMarie Slaughter, the State Department’s planning chief in Obama’s first see

UKRAINE on page 3

CADE BELISLE/COLLEGIAN

Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy sat down with students on Thursday at a Public Accountability Forum. Check out DailyCollegian.com for the full story.

Apple vs. Samsung patent Searchers find no sign dispute faces second trial of plane, only garbage

By HowarD mintz San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The two warring titans of the smartphone and tablet industry will be back in federal court on Monday, squaring off in another trial involving Apple’s claims that Samsung’s smartphones and tablets continue to trample on the patented features of the iPhone and iPad. The case will begin with jury selection, and the legal teams for the two companies -ware expected to make their opening statements on Tuesday.

With billions of dollars at stake, as well as bragging

rights to technology that has transformed everyday life, legal experts and market watchers expect close attention on the trial, albeit perhaps with less zeal than the first showdown between them in 2012. That first round went to Apple, which secured a jury verdict finding that Samsung violated its patents on older lines of devices and owed nearly $1 billion in damages.

“I guess they feel like they have to finish what they started,” said William Stofega, an analyst with the International Data Corp.

The second trial centers on Apple’s claims that more recent lines of Samsung products, such as the

Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy Tab 2, violate five of Apple’s patents, including the Siri voice and slide-to-unlock features. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has already sided with Apple on one of the patents, the auto-complete text feature, so that claim will just boil down to damages.

As with the first trial, Apple’s pursuit of Samsung and claims of patent infringement are well behind the South Korean company’s release of even newer product lines.

Samsung is expected to release its Galaxy S5 smartphone sometime in April, see

APPLE on page 2

By BarBara Demick Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — The search and rescue teams working off the west coast of Australia seeking the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 discovered what oceanographers have been warning – that even the most farflung stretches of ocean are full of garbage.

For the first time since the search focused on the south Indian Ocean 10 days ago, the sky was were clear enough and the sea was calm, allowing ships to retrieve the “suspicious items” spotted by planes and on satellite imagery.

But examined on board,

none of them proved to be debris from the missing plane, just the ordinary garbage swirling around the ocean.

The disappointing results demonstrated the difficulty the search teams face trying to find out what happened to the Boeing 777 and its 239 passengers and crew. The plane disappeared March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Australian authorities said Sunday that a naval support ship, the ADV Ocean Shield, will leave Perth on Monday with a “black box detector” supplied by the U.S. Navy. The Towered Pinger Locator 24 is towed

behind the ship and carries a listening device that should be able to detect the flight data recorder from the plane up to 20,000 feet below the ocean surface..

The search team is in a race against time because the recorder battery lasts only 30 to 45 days. The odds are stacked against finding it in time without a trail of debris to guide them. Investigators are merely surmising that the flight crashed into the Indian Ocean, based on an analysis of the flight’s path from engine data transmitted via satellite.

The most famous precsee

AIRPLANE on page 2

2

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

Monday, March 31, 2014

THE RUNDOWN ON THIS DAY...

In 1909, construction of the RMS Titanic began in Belfast Harbor in Northern Ireland. The Titanic would infamously strike an iceberg and sink in 1912.

WEEKEND B OX O F F I C E LOS ANGELES — Director Darren Aronofsky’s biblical epic “Noah” sailed at the weekend box office as the film opened at No. 1 with an estimated $44 million in ticket sales, while “Divergent” dropped off sharply and “Cesar Chavez” got off to a slow start.

“Noah,” which cost about $130 million to make, solidly met expectations, according to Paramount Pictures, which had initially forecast a $30 million opening weekend. “Noah” already has generated about $95 million overseas.

“Noah” far outdistanced “Divergent,” which generated $26.5 million in its second weekend – a 51 percent decline from its opening but still good enough for No. 2 on the box-office list. Based on a young adult novel series, the Lionsgate film, directed by Neil Burger and starring Shailene Woodley, tells the story of a young woman fighting for freedom and survival in a dystopian society.

Though the new biopic “Cesar Chavez” received an A grade from filmgoers, according to the polling firm CinemaScore, the film generated only $3 million in its opening weekend, good for 12th place. Its per-screen average of about $4,500 was little more than one-third of that for “Noah.”

Disney’s “Muppets Most Wanted” finished third, generating $11.4 million, and “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” finished fourth with $9.5 million. But delivering a bigger surprise - again - was “God’s Not Dead,” which with about $9.1 million finished fifth for the second week in a row. The faith-based film, about a college student defending his beliefs against a professor, features Kevin Sorbo, Dean Cain, the popular Christian rock group Newsboys, and Willie and Korie Robertson from the “Duck Dynasty” television show as themselves.

Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” expanded to 977 theaters from about 300 theaters and saw its weekend box office rise 30 percent. With a weekend take of $8.8 million, the film has brought in $24.5 million during its slow rollout.

“Many moviegoers are finding out about Wes Anderson for the first time,” said Frank Rodriguez, Fox Searchlight head of distribution, who added that strong word of mouth has been helping the comedy.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new crime thriller, “Sabotage,” finished seventh with $5.3 million in its opening weekend. The picture, which cost about $35 million to make, received negative reviews from critics and could become Schwarzenegger’s lowest-grossing movie in more than two decades.

Other milestones: Disney’s “Frozen” passed “Toy Story 3” to become the No. 1 animated film ever, with an estimated gross of more than $1.072 billion worldwide. And in its eighth weekend, “The Lego Movie” eclipsed the $400 million mark in worldwide box office receipts.

APPLE

AIRPLANE

continued from page 1

just as the jury continues to hear evidence of copying in older Galaxy smartphones that will soon be near-obsolete on the U.S. market.

Legal experts say that continues to diminish the impact of Apple’s legal assault on Samsung, particularly because the company was unable to obtain a permanent injunction after the first trial to remove dozens of older Samsung smartphones and tablets from the American market.

“This case does point up the fact that technology and the law move at very different speeds,” said Mark Lemley, a Stanford University tech law scholar. “As a result, I think this trial, like the last one, will be about money–a lot of money by the standards of us ordinary mortals, but not nearly enough to make or break Apple or Samsung.”

To Apple, however, the case against Samsung continues to be about trying to punish what it considers unrepentant copying of technology, this time in signature favorites such as

the iPhone 5, iPad mini and the MacBook Pro. Apple officials declined comment on the trial, as did Samsung’s lawyers.

Apple will present many of the same witnesses as in the first trial, but many of the revelations about the secretive inner workings of developing iPad and iPhone technology will not carry the same sizzle. Yet the theme will be the same–that Apple engineers spent years creating unprecedented breakthroughs in phones and tablets that Samsung simply copied, stealing market share in the process.

For Samsung, meanwhile, the trial will be another opportunity to cast Apple as a company trying to stifle competition in the supercharged smartphone and tablet markets. Apple and Samsung have solidified their positions at the top of the heap in those products worldwide, and market watchers say that has only stabilized as the legal battle has unfolded.

In this trial, Apple’s par-

allel feud with Google and its Android operating system will perhaps play more of a central role than the first trial. To many in the industry, Apple’s patent fight with Samsung has always been as much about the late Steve Jobs’ grievance with what he considered Android’s duplication of Apple technology (he once promised “thermonuclear war” with Google); Samsung until recently has relied heavily on Android in its smartphones and tablets.

Samsung’s witness list includes several Google executives who are expected to testify about the search giant’s Android developments, presumably to rebut Apple’s patent claims, according to court papers.

The trial, expected to last until May, will likely not be the last word in the patent spat. Samsung has appealed the first jury verdict, and Apple has appealed Judge Koh’s refusal to block the sales of Samsung products that violated its patents

Fighting for the Affordable Care Act through cancer Patient influences Obamacare changes

By Christi Parsons Tribune Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — Michael Robertson put the bag of chemicals in an inside pocket of his sport coat, the pump in the other.

He snaked the tubes between the buttons of his shirt to the port in his chest. He adjusted his tie to cover them.

Then he sat down in a cavernous room in the White House complex and pulled his chair close to the table, hiding the bulges.

Robertson, an aide to President Barack Obama, was meeting with top officials from federal agencies working to implement the Affordable Care Act. He was also in treatment for stage IV colorectal cancer.

A soft “bzzt” every 90 seconds alerted him to another dose and another wave of nausea. He timed the cadence of his questions and comments to the ebb and flow of the chemo.

No one seemed to notice, and that’s how he wanted it.

As deputy Cabinet secretary, Robertson, 37, helps coordinate the president’s dealings with his department heads and top advisers.

It’s the sort of high-pressure, behind-the-scenes job on which White Houses depend.

An adept multitasker who lines his bookshelves with white binders devoted to projects, he was perfectly cast for this role as the administration grappled with the complicated rollout of the healthcare law.

And for most of his tenure, he did so with determined anonymity, only to emerge from his silence in December after he saw a Senate debate over the law and was stunned by the ferocity of the opposition.

“It was personal against me now, and against all those people I met and saw throughout,” he said.

Robertson wrote a passionate account of his cancer and posted it on the White House web site to illustrate how important insurance is even for young people.

Noting that he had paid just 1 percent of the $900,000 cost for five surgeries, radiation and chemo, he wrote, “Without that, I would have bankrupted my family just to stay alive.”

And without Obamacare’s guarantee that he could buy affordable insurance despite

his pre-existing medical condition, he wrote, “there’s no telling what life would have been like for us moving forward.”

Since then, he has become a symbol to colleagues at the White House of determination to carry out the law.

Robertson’s role in the healthcare overhaul – he insists it was a “bit part” – began early last year, just a week after his wedding, when he was still recovering from surgery and hooked to monitors at Georgetown University Hospital. His wife, Sahar Wali, checked his e-mail and then, wordlessly, turned Robertson’s iPhone toward him, displaying a job offer from the White House.

He hesitated. People don’t go to work at the White House to get healthy. They leave to get healthy.

He wasn’t finished with his treatments. But he was an Obama lifer. Robertson had joined Obama’s team after graduating from Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco; he had gone to Illinois to help get the young state senator elected to the U.S. Senate.

He had more treatment to do. He wasn’t finished with his treatments.

But he was an Obama lifer.

He Robertson had joined Obama’s team after graduating been with him since he had graduated from Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco; he had and gone to Illinois to help get elect the young state senator elected to the U.S. Senate.

Robertson glanced at Wali.

“What do you want to say 50 years from now?” she asked.

“I decided to do it,” he recalled. “Just take it a day at a time.”

Robertson, who grew up in Fresno, Calif., in a family of school teachers and administrators, had started in Obama’s Senate office coordinating requests for appropriations, then rounded up superdelegate votes during the primary campaign in 2008. After the election, he landed at the General Services Administration, the government’s landlord.

In the summer of 2012, however, he had been feeling tired. His doctor sent him to an oncologist who told him he had Stage IV cancer.

Robertson asked about the fifth stage. “There are only four,” the oncologist told him.

By the time he moved to the White House, he had sur-

DailyCollegian.com

vived radiation, chemotherapy and three surgeries.

Three weeks after he began the job, Robertson started a new round of chemo that took him to the hospital every other Thursday, where drugs flowed slowly into his veins all day. He would remain attached to a chemo bag through the weekend.

Just thinking of the word “Thursday” made him gag.

The nausea grew worse. He dropped 15 pounds, beyond the 35 he’d already lost. He normally weighed close to 190. The chemo straightened the wave in his black hair.

As Robertson finished his chemotherapy, the Obama administration prepared to unveil HealthCare.gov, the web site people in 36 states would use to buy insurance online. It was a debacle.

For weeks, the site barely worked.

The law’s opponents cast Obamacare as a failure.

Dispirited after one Senate debate, Robertson sat down on his couch and started to write. Over the next week, he relived his experience in a raw way, describing fear he hadn’t acknowledged.

His essay appeared on the White House blog, where bland policy updates are more typical. The president tweeted it.

Robertson was flooded with e-mails, Facebook mentions and phone calls from friends - many shocked to learn he was ill.

“One thing that you start to realize when you talk about serious health complications, the kind so serious that people usually keep to themselves, is that everyone has been touched by something,” he said.

As the enrollment period moved toward its March 31 deadline, Robertson’s official role diminished. He had another surgery - his sixth - to remove a spot from his lung. He’s back to full workdays now.

At night, he often heads to a nonprofit set up to help uninsured Americans sign up for policies. There, he works the phones.

“I had health insurance when I needed it,” he said.

“If I can help one other person have what I have, I want to try.”

edent is the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed over the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009. It took two years to find the body of the aircraft and the recorder, even though pieces of debris were found within five days.

The south Indian Ocean is one of the most remote places on the planet, far from any islands, shipping lanes or flight paths. But the area accumulates surprisingly large amounts of garbage, trapped in the gyre of slowly rotating currents.

“In addition to foul weather, administrative bungling and the vastness of the search area, the search for MH 370 has been compounded by one other factor: the incredible amount of garbage already floating in the search area - and in oceans worldwide,” Marc Lallanilla wrote on the website livescience. com, where he referred to the search for Flight 370 as a “needle in a garbage

continued from page 1

patch.”

The lack of confirmed debris has prevented families from achieving any kind of closure over the deaths of their relatives. Chinese families, in particular, have rejected the assertion of the Malaysian government that the plane crashed with no survivors.

“We want evidence, truth and dignity,” read banners that Chinese relatives held at an impromptu demonstration at a Kuala Lumpur hotel on Sunday.

Malaysia Airlines said Sunday that it will fly families of passengers to Perth and will set up a family assistance center to providing counseling and logistical support, but will do so “only once it has been authoritatively confirmed that they physical wreckage found is that of MH370.”

Mudslide death toll rises to 18 anD

By Paresh Dave Molly hennessy-Fiske Los Angeles Times

ARLINGTON, Wash.— As they began a second week searching for victims of a deadly mudslide, officials on Saturday night dramatically lowered their count of the missing from 90 to 30.

Eighteen people have been confirmed dead by the Snohomish County Medical Examiner, up from 17, a county emergency program manager, Jason Biermann, told reporters. Additional remains were found in the debris field Saturday, but had not been recovered or identified, he said.

The county said in a later statement that the remains were those of an additional victim and had been transported to the medical examiner’s office.

Identifying victims has been made especially challenging because of the state of the remains found, the county acknowledged Saturday. “The slide hit with such force that often rescuers are not recovering whole victims,” Biermann said.

The drop in the number of missing brought some

clarity to a question that has confounded the small cities of Oso, Darrington and Arlington this week.

At one point, officials had collected more than 200 reports of people missing.

They had emphasized that the number would likely diminish as duplicates were sorted out.

Officials were still holding out hope of finding victims alive on Saturday, calling their efforts a rescue and recovery mission.

Workers Saturday were bagging belongings recovered from the tangle of brush and debris, shipping them out to be decontaminated, sorted, and returned to their owners if possible.

They have found classical music records, gun safes, wallets, ATVs and snapshots.

Hundreds of photographs salvaged from the mud were assembled on a table, shielded from the rain by a white tent. More than an inch of rain had fallen in the area between 5 p.m. Friday and 5 p.m.

Saturday, the National Weather Service said, adding difficulty to the digging and sifting.

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

DailyCollegian.com

UKRAINE

continued from page 1

term. She warns that an overreaction could serve “military and defense interests too well” and that, in sharpening East-West tensions, become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Obama, in his tour of Europe last week, showed that he’s straddling the middle - for now at least.

Russia, he said, is a declining “regional power” whose armed seizure of Crimea exposes its weakness, as it has lost influence in Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

He called for a modest increase in U.S. military rotations into Eastern Europe but no interruption in his administration’s plans to shrink defense spending.

Obama threatened to aim sanctions at whole sectors of the Russian economy, such as energy, banking or arms sales, a step that could potentially inflict grave damage. But that would happen only if Russia seized territory in eastern Ukraine or took other steps to escalate the situation, he said.

The Ukraine crisis “worries them – it’s keeping them awake at night,” said Julianne Smith, a White House foreign policy adviser in Obama’s first term.

“But this is not going to be an all-consuming foreign policy priority.”

Although Ukraine is on the “top 10 list” of priorities, along with Iran’s nuclear program and China’s territorial disputes with its neighbors, “there’s a scale here,” she said. “Compared to some other things on the list, this still isn’t as threatening to core U.S. security interests.”

Asked whether the Russian move would force an end to the administration’s long-desired foreign policy “pivot to Asia,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes pointed out that Obama has scheduled two trips to East Asia this year and promised that they would not be canceled because of turmoil in Europe.

“We’ve got a significant agenda in Asia that we’re going to continue to pursue that’s not going to be impacted by what we’re doing in Europe,” Rhodes said.

Nevertheless, aware that his presidency will be judged in part on his handling of this crisis, Obama has also sought to show that he intends to continue America’s role as the leader of the U.S.–European security alliance. He continues to play the leading role in seeking a resolution, talking Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who agreed that their top diplomats should meet.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov plan a session Sunday evening in Paris.

Yet he also gave heavy emphasis to how much of the onus is on Europe - to spend more to support the NATO alliance, to slap economic sanctions on Russia, and to play a central role in guiding and paying for the rebuilding of the bankrupt and historically corrupt government of Ukraine.

“If we’ve got collective defense, everybody’s got to chip in,” Obama said in Brussels on Wednesday.

Gates, Obama’s former

secretary of Defense, is urging the administration to restore the defense budget to the 2014 level.

And R. Nicholas Burns, a former top diplomat in Democratic and Republican administrations, citing in particular the dwindling U.S. Army presence in Europe, said, “We should completely redraw that budget.”

But Obama’s defense officials, under heavy pressure to reduce spending, say they won’t rethink the numbers unless the situation in Ukraine becomes far more dire.

The growing threat in Europe didn’t figure into the military strategy laid out in the recently released Pentagon planning blueprint called the Quadrennial Defense Review, nor is it likely to change the outlines of an upcoming White House policy statement, the National Security Strategy, said Smith, who is now with the Center for a New American Security.

Obama insisted last week that the United States would not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea. But administration officials acknowledge privately that they’re not going to try to take it back, either.

U.S. officials also aren’t talking about permanently stationing NATO troops near the Russian border, which has been considered a “red line” since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, U.S. officials see their maneuvering room as limited.

For now, they have ruled out providing arms to the Ukrainian army, in part because of concerns that

the Russians could see it as a provocation and escalate their military involvement.

In their use of sanctions, U.S. officials are limited by their dependence on European governments to follow suit, but the Europeans are more economically intertwined with Moscow and more reluctant to hit it with economic penalties.

U.S. officials say they may go further than Europe would with sanctions. But because of the limited American trade and investment with Russia, “you’ve got to ask yourself, would Russia care?” Smith asked.

Obama administration officials say they’re rethinking the entire U.S.-Russian relationship and are planning to halt activities - such as joint programs on military cooperation, economics and trade - that the Russians liked. But these were relatively insignificant, and the relationship has been stagnating, so there’s not much to end.

And U.S. officials, who want to continue cooperation with Russia on Iran’s nuclear program, Syria’s chemical weapons disarmament and other issues, say they will remain open to collaboration on other areas, if Moscow is serious.

Still, though U.S. officials have planned a limited role, they acknowledge that they may be forced to quickly expand it if Russia makes more aggressive moves, such as seizing eastern Ukraine – an action that Lavrov on Saturday reiterated Russia does not intend to undertake.

“That could be a bit of a game changer,” Smith said.

Monday, March 31, 2014

3

Israel delays release of prisoners and freezes peace talks

By Batsheva soBelman Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM — A delay in the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel is the latest disruption to the U.S.brokered peace talks.

When the negotiations resumed in July, Israel agreed to release 104 longserving Palestinians in four stages throughout the talks. In exchange, the Palestinians agreed to refrain from seeking U.N. actions backing their position for the duration of the negotiations.

Three groups of prisoners have been freed but Israel has yet to convene the relevant government committee to approve the final group slated for release at the end of March.

The nine months allotted by U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry for the current format for negotiations have yielded little agreement.

The reported U.S. plan to draft an agreed framework to continue the talks beyond the initial period have not succeeded. Alternative efforts to extend the talks past April are tangled in the prisoner release.

Israel will free no more prisoners without a Palestinian commitment to extend the talks. Until it becomes clear what Israel will get in return,

“there will be no deal,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunda. He also said any proposal for extending the talks would be subject to Cabinet approval.

M e a n wh i l e, the Palestinians reportedly refuse to consider any proposals for extending the talks until Israel goes ahead with the promised release, although chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said in a statement Sunday that “sensitive talks” were ongoing with the U.S. and Israel in attempts to resolve the issue.

Over the weekend, Israeli media reported that an emerging deal for extending the talks involved the release of an additional 400 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki denied on Saturday that any deal had been made.

Kerry has already interrupted a working trip to Europe once to fly to Jordan for a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, while U.S. officials continue efforts to salvage the talks.

Opinion Editorial THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

“Audentes fortuna iuvat.” - Virgil

Monday, March 31, 2014

Editorial@DailyCollegian.com

A global case to be more healthy Globally, America is characterized as a country of abundance.

Unfortunately with abundance comes indulgence. In wake of

David Blake Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign and Barack Obama’s health care reforms pushing for more preventative health measures, an emphasis on the food that goes into our body is making its way into society. I personally believe from the information that I’m about to present to you there is a good case to be made about cutting back. My view isn’t solely based on a health perspective, but on an economic and environmental one as well.

Many of us have probably heard the old adage “you are what you eat.” This saying isn’t entirely wrong. The proteins you get from your cheeseburger or chicken fingers get broken down and reassembled into proteins your body can use to build and communicate. The same can be said for the fats that we get as well. Fats are incorporated into specific cells to insulate our bodies and even help form cell membranes.

Obviously this is simplified but you can see what I mean. Now, food isn’t bad on its own, but when you overindulge, it can be. In America this seems to be the problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 36 percent of our adult population, people

would save in health insurance premiums and companies would make more from a more productive workforce. I admit I am by no means an expert on economics but being a consumer economy an increase in money could lead to more buying and thus a better economy. Perhaps with companies saving money they would even have enough funds to hire more people and this in return could lower unemployment.

Our poor diets also have an environmental impact. In a world with a growing population and shrinking natural resources we can’t afford to be wasting valuable assets. Yet many Americans do just that every day. It’s estimated that we throw away 90 billion pounds of food a year. This is a huge waste of land space, water and electricity. In addition to wastefulness all this food presents a problem after it’s thrown away. When all this food begins to decompose it releases methane, a gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its contributions towards global warming.

When you think about it you have to burn fossil fuels to ship the food, the electricity used to make the food might come from fossil fuel sources and the food release greenhouse gases as it decomposes. As a fun fact, in addition to this it’s also estimated that in America obesity contributes to an extra $3.4 billion dollars being spent on fuel cost to transport people of a heavier set.

If we were to cut out all this wasted food and trim down you could potentially be looking a decent impact on our carbon footprint. At the very least it’d be a step in the right direction.

What makes matters worse about wasting all this food is the fact that one in six Americans go hungry a day. To me this is just simply unacceptable. Going back to economics: if we weren’t wasting so much then food prices could potentially become a little bit cheaper; supply and demand. This may put them in the realm of affordability for some of these hungry Americans.

For the Americans who aren’t going hungry, though reducing how much they buy in groceries pays of for them as well. About 21 percent of the food Americans buys ends up in the trash, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s 21 percent of all the money you spend on food you could be saving.

I’m not necessarily saying that diet and exercise alone will solve all of the world’s woes. However there is a case to be made that it could make the world a little bit of a better place. It wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.

“Here is a case to be made that it could make the world a little bit of a better place. It wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.”

more than 20 years old, is obese. For children and adolescents, six to 19 years old, the obesity rate is right around 18 percent. Along with over indulgence, poor nutrition is also a big problem.

Four of the top 10 most expensive medical costs and conditions can be directly related to poor nutrition and lack of exercise. Heart conditions, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol cost a combined total of $238.6 billion a year.

Obesity itself comes with some of its own staggering numbers as well.

It’s estimated that obesity costs American businesses $164 billion dollars in lost worker productivity.

This affects all of us.

The higher health care costs are the higher health insurance premiums become. The reverse could also be said. If we were to exercise more and eat healthier we could potentially lower the amount spent on the above four conditions. Economically you could also argue that lowering the obesity rate would increase worker productivity, increasing profits for companies. In general here we would be seeing an increase David Blake is a Collegian contributor and can be in money for the masses. Individuals reached at dmblake@umass.edu.

Voting Rights Act: 2006 vs. 2013 In 2006, the Voting Rights Act Roberts states that Congress (VRA) was reauthorized for 25 “may draft another formula years by a massive majority of based on current conditions.” both the House and the Senate.

Congress in 2006 had no problem reauthorizing the VRA Zac Bears with its 1965 formula intact, but Congress in 2013 is different In fact, the Senate reauthofrom Congress in 2006. rized the bill unanimously by VRA reauthorization a vote of 98 to 0. In June 2013, occurred before the 2006 electhe Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder found that Congressional reauthorization by mass majority was not enough to uphold the 48-year-old formula in Section 4(b) of the VRA. Section 4(b) of the VRA tions when Democrats took back is the formula by which states Congress from the Republicans. that townships or counties are Where the Democratic minority placed under the jurisdiction had been relatively docile and and require the consent of the willing to compromise to do the Department of Justice regardbusiness of the country in 2006, ing any changes to electoral law. we now find a Republican Senate This is called “preclearance,” a minority and House majority power defined in the VRA’s subentirely unwilling to comprosequent Section 5.

While progressives and lib- mise for the good of the United erals across the United States States. Recall the 98 to 0 Senate are now up-in-arms over this vote on VRA reauthorization; decision, the truth is that the that vote included senators from Supreme Court acted with due every state affected by Section deference towards the issue of 4(b) and preclearance. Not one institutional racism and voting of them voted no, and many of discrimination. Chief Justice them advocated for reauthorizaRoberts was very clear regard- tion based on the struggles faced ing this issue. His opinion states, by their constituents during the “At the same time, voting dis- Civil Rights Movement.

Fast-forward to 2014 and those crimination still exists; no one same leaders are now arguing doubts that.” As Roberts states that this decision is a victory in the majority opinion, the major problem is that, “the Act for the South. Texas instituted imposes current burdens and its Voter ID law one day after must be justified by current Justice Department preclearneeds.” The Supreme Court also ance ended, and many formeragrees that Section 2 of the 15th ly covered states followed suit; Amendment provides Congress those states must be covered with the authority to legislate under a newly written Section 4(b). against such discrimination.

There has been little substanThat is the crux of the probtive progress towards rewriting lem: Congress.

Section 4(b) in Congress since The Shelby County decision is clear about the next steps the June 2013, and with good reaU.S. government must take to son. What incentive does the ensure continued enforcement House GOP have to implement of the VRA. While not implor- a formula that would reduce its ing or mandating that Congress Congressional majority?

Still, some grassroots agents do anything (which the Supreme Court has no power to do), continue to push for action.

“Moral Monday” events, where progressives gather at state capitols to protest immoral policies and laws, have gained steam, particularly in the South. At the ninth “Moral Monday” in Georgia, on March 20, three hundred people gathered in the GA Capitol rotunda to hear civil rights leaders explain the VRA

“Congress in 2006 had no problem reauthorizing the VRA with its 1965 formula intact, but Congress in 2013 is different from Congress in 2006.” and its importance.

The Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, proposed by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-AL) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), establishes a rolling formula that includes all states and finds them subject to preclearance “if they have committed five voting violations in the last 15 years.”

Sensenbrenner has no cognitive dissonance about his support for the VRA and for Voter ID laws, which discriminate against the poor, elderly and minority groups. He does include a transparency policy to avoid discrimination and believes that states should provide free photo ID to those who cannot afford it.

Those provisions must be uniform and national.

The Supreme Court was not wrong in overturning Section 4(b); populations have shifted, and cities that barely existed in 1965, such as Phoenix, are now among the largest in the country. However, a politically polarized Congress will be at fault if it does not address the creation of a new Section 4(b) formula immediately. Congress must do the work of this country, and fighting voting discrimination is a cause held by all Americans: Republican, Democrat, conservative or liberal.

Zac Bears is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at ibears@umass.edu.

t h e m a s s a c h u s e t t s D a i ly C o l l e g i a n

NEWS

News Editor - Patrick Hoff News Producer - Conor Snell

NEWS ASSISTANTS Katrina Borofski Catherine Ferris Kate Leddy Aviva Luttrell

GRAPHICS

EDITOR IN CHIEF - Stephen Hewitt MANAGING EDITOR - Malea Ritz MANAGING EDITOR/DAILYCOLLEGIAN.COM - Maria Uminski

Business Manager - Omer Sander Advertising Manager - Andrew Carr Distribution Manager - Henry Liu Advertising Production - Molly Couto

Production Manager - Gabe Scarbrough Special Issues Manager - James Desjardin

PRODUCTION CREW on staff for this issue NIGHT EDITOR - Malea Ritz COPY EDITOR - Justin Surgent

OPINION & EDITORIAL

ARTS & LIVING

SPORTS

PHOTOGRAPHY

COMICS

Op/Ed Editor - Hannah Sparks Op/Ed Producer - Zac Bears

Arts Editor - Tommy Verdone Arts Producer - Shaina Mishkin

Sports Editor - Nick Canelas Sports Producer - Jesse Mayfield

Photo Editor - Justin Surgent

Comics Editor - Tracy Krug

O p /E d ASSISTANTS

ARTS ASSISTANTS

SPORTS ASSISTANTS

PHOTO ASSISTANTS

GRAPHICS ASSISTANTS

Jillian Correira Maral Margossian Brandon Sides

Emily Brightman Jackson Maxwell Jake Reed Cory Willey

Mark Chiarelli Cameron McDonough Patrick Strohecker

Cade Belisle Shaina Mishkin Robert Rigo

Randy Crandon Idriss Jebir Taylor Smaldone

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian is published Monday through Thursday during the University of Massachusetts calendar semester. The Collegian is independently funded, operating on advertising revenue. Founded in 1890, the paper began as Aggie Life, became the College Signal in 1901, the Weekly Collegian in 1914 and the Tri–Weekly Collegian in 1956. Published daily from 1967 to 2013, The Collegian has been broadsheet since January 1994. For advertising rates and information, call 413-545-3500.

WEB PRODUCTION MANAGER - Zac Bears NEWS DESK EDITOR - Katrina Borofski O p /E d DESK EDITOR - Brandon Sides ARTS DESK EDITOR - Jackson Maxwell SPORTS DESK EDITOR - Nick Canelas COMICS DESK EDITOR - Tracy Krug

GRAPHICS DESK EDITOR - James Desjardin

Arts Living THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

Monday, March 31, 2014

“Great supine, protoplasmic invertebrate jellies.”- Boris Johnson

Arts@DailyCollegian.com

CONCERT REVIEW

Desert rock band Tinariwen delivers stunning performance Grammy winners bring their A game

By Jackson Maxwell Collegian Staff

Last Thursday, the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton played host to desert rock band Tinariwen as they continued to tour the United States in support of their new album, “Emmaar.” Hypnotizing the packed crowd with their otherworldly mix of western rock, Arabic pop and radical North African protest music, Tinariwen truly put on a show for the ages.

Before Tinariwen took to the stage, London-based quintet, The Melodic, began the evening’s proceedings.

Playing light but brisk folkpop in a style more than a little reminiscent of fellow English folkies Stornoway, The Melodic easily won over the excited crowd. Songs like opener “On My Way” were light but played with a sturdy determination. Their songs played like folk dances, provoking a couple of the crowd’s more energetic members to turn the standing room only section of the Iron Horse into their own personal dance floor.

Although they did not exactly steal the show, The Melodic established themselves as solid openers with fluid, well-played tracks like “Plunge” and beauti-

STEVE TERRELL/FLICKR

Tinariwen perform live at the Santa Fe Brewing Company in April 2009. ful acoustic ballads. As is typically the case at the Iron Horse, the audience was incredibly enthusiastic and encouraging towards the Melodic, establishing the show’s communal, pleasant atmosphere right from the get go. Over their 40 minute set, The Melodic never put a foot wrong, and helped energize the crowd for Tinariwen.

Once the Malian sextet walked on stage at around 8 p.m., it was clear just whose show this was. In their dramatic, long and multi-colored robes, the bandmates were quite a sight to behold.

The assembled crowd, by this time completely packed into the small venue, was eagerly awaiting the band’s arrival, and greeted their taking of the stage with a rapturous ovation. From there, the band began a simply staggering set that lasted over an hour.

Backed by the incredible rhythm section of bassist Eyadou Ag Leche and percussionist Said Ag Ayad, and guitarist Elaga Ag Hamid, Tinariwen’s three lead vocalists all traded the spotlight throughout the set.

Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Hassan Ag Touhami and Abdallah

ALBUM REVIEW

Ag Alhousseyni all sang lead and played guitar on their own songs. When one was signing lead and playing lead guitar, the other two would stand to the right, providing stunning harmonies and backing vocals.

The most incredible aspect of this triple front-man approach was the virtuosic guitar playing of all three singers. Alhabib, Touhami and Alhoussyeni were all in complete control of their songs, anchoring them with droning, hypnotic riffs that were simply mesmerizing.

Due to their lack of speak-

ing English, the members of Tinariwen rarely spoke to the audience other than an occasional, brief “thank you.” This lack of interruption allowed for Tinariwen to really get into the zone of their set, building the momentum of the set to a hurricane-level force by concert’s end.

The material from the band’s most recent album, “Emmaar,” was undeniably impressive in live performance. Album highlights like “Toumast Tincha,” “Timadrit in Sahara” and “Imdiwanin ahi Tifhamam” came to life in concert in a way that could never be captured on record. The twisty riffs reverberated commandingly throughout the hall, the collective’s powerful vocals nailing the songs home.

Despite the group’s lack of English speech, their connection with the audience was obvious. Alhoussyeni and Alhabib especially took great joy in dancing when they weren’t unleashing sublime guitar riffs, and they often looked towards the audience, many of whom were dancing along with them.

Tinariwen’s set was not just limited to their more recent material. The band delved into a couple highlights off of their back catalog, most notably a remarkable version of “Arawan,” off of their 2004 album,

“Amassakoul.” But the cherry on top of it all was their closing, 10 minute rendition of “Emmaar” highlight “Chaghaybou.”

Letting the song’s droneheavy riff completely captivate the audience, the band kicked into high gear for the final song of their 90 minute set. Gradually picking up speed as it went on, the song sent various members of the audience into a state of ecstasy, dancing all around the crowded floor, completely absorbed into the music. The final chords of “Chaghaybou” were greeted with a standing ovation that must have reverberated through the entire town of Northampton.

Tinariwen brought 35 years of music to the Iron Horse on Thursday night, and commanded all of it with mastery. The band was air tight, not making a single mistake for the entirety of their 90 minute set. The band’s music, coming from such a distant, unknown land, can seem incredibly foreign to some at first listen. But, on Thursday night, the entire audience at the Iron Horse was able to connect with, and truly experience the music of Tinariwen, with a magical set from across the globe.

Jackson Maxwell can be reached at jlmaxwell@umass.edu.

TV REVIEW

The Hold Steady return ‘How I Met Your Mother’ ends hit with solid sixth album ‘Legendary’ show calls it a day

By Jackson Maxwell Collegian Staff

Writing about “Teeth Dreams” for the AV Club, Jason Heller said that the Hold Steady’s sixth album marked “a new band for a new world” and that it “might as well be a debut.” Indeed, this is a new Hold Steady than has previously not been heard on record. Almost four years removed from their last album, the dry, cold “Heaven Is Whenever,” the Hold Steady has returned to the studio with a new, additional guitarist in Steve Selvidge. In some ways, this is a whole new Hold Steady. Ybor City is gone, as are the breathtakingly jubilant “woah ohh ohh” choruses and anthemic, piano-driven bridges of the Franz Nicolay era. The only difference is that on “Heaven Is Whenever,” the absence of Nicolay, the band’s mustachioed keyboardist, was painfully obvious. Its 10 songs were filled with the band’s unmistakable chunky riffs and Craig Finn’s equally unmistakable nasal delivery and let’s-takeon-the-night lyrics. But for the first time, the band sounded tired. Their soul seemed to have left with Nicolay, leaving the Hold Steady, the ultimate feel-good bar-band, sounding like they had woken up in the early afternoon with a terrible hangover.

On “Teeth Dreams,” released on March 25, some of the old Hold Steady spirit undoubtedly remains. But instead of attempting to redo “Boys and Girls In America,” the band has obviously moved on. Selvidge fills in many of the sonic gaps left by Nicolay with his rock solid playing.

Like Mick Taylor did 45 years ago for the Rolling Stones, the addition of Selvidge gives the

band’s other guitarist, Tad Kubler, someone to work off of. The interplay they demonstrate brings back to life a band that seemed dead on “Heaven Is Whenever.”

Reacting to the band’s musical movement, Craig Finn has also changed. Lyrics are not tumbling out of his mouth at 100 miles an hour anymore. Heck, at some points on the record he does some actual singing. Finn strikes the perfect balance of lyrically maturing, inevitable as he grows older, while holding his razor-sharp wit in place.

The band makes a concerted effort not to sound too different on opening track and lead single “I Hope This Whole Thing Didn’t Frighten You.” When Finn snarls “There was a side of this city I didn’t want you to see/there’s just these cats that I know and we go back pretty deep” in the song’s first chorus, it is a wonderful reminder of what made the Hold Steady so great. For the first time in years, the band sounds energized and ready to take on the world again.

“Spinners” is simply an epic. Careening from section to section over the course of fiveplus minutes, and highlighted by some particularly beautiful verses in the early part of the song, it brings back to the forefront the Hold Steady’s intrinsic gift for dynamics. It seems that Selvidge has not only filled in the sonic gap left by Nicolay; he’s recovered some of the band’s tightness and flair for the dramatic.

“The Only Thing” and “The Ambassador” are both wonderfully well written and tightly played, continuing the album’s opening hot streak.

With its larger than life riffing and cocky rhythmic strut, “Big Cig” convincingly brings

some of the old Hold Steady back. A classic Finn character, who “started smoking when she was seven,” gives the song a humorous, endlessly amusing edge.

“Runner’s High” also shares some DNA with Hold Steady songs from an earlier era. Only the riff on this song bites hard, and perfectly interacts with Finn’s vocals. The acoustic “Almost Everything” is a bit of a departure for the band, hinting more towards the directions Finn traveled down on his excellent 2012 solo debut “Clear Heart Full Eyes.”

Regardless, it is a surprisingly affecting ballad that manages to throw a few curveballs at the listener. The nine-minute closer, “Oaks,” manages to somehow not feel its length.

Epic and beautiful, it will make you want to, wherever you are, grab the nearest lighter and wave it in the air. Like a truly great album closer, it puts a perfectly ambitious coda on the album it ends.

This is not the same band that made “Boys and Girls In America” or “Stay Positive.”

Those who are expecting “Teeth Dreams” to be a carbon copy of either of those albums will come away sorely disappointed. This is a new Hold Steady, one that is a little more mature, a little less inebriated, and more focused on musical depth than on a huge chorus. But “Teeth Dreams” has served to demonstrate that second lives do exist even for the most raucous of bar bands. There might not be any cold hard classics here, but “Teeth Dreams” shows the Hold Steady rejuvenated and is as energetic as ever. It’s great to have them back.

Jackson Maxwell can be reached at jlmaxwell@umass.edu.

By Rick Bentley The Fresno Bee

LOS ANGELES — It took nine years, but the – wait for it – legendary tale of “How I Met Your Mother” comes to an end Monday when the comedy takes a final bow.

Fans of the show have known since the end of last season who Ted (Josh Radnor) would finally settle down with, but it all becomes official with the one-hour finale.

The wild antics of five close friends – played by Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan – that’s been wrapped inside the long narration of the story provided by Bob Saget has been one of the big comedy hits for CBS with more episodes than network classics such as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda” or “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

The end of the show will be a big change for Hannigan, who has played Lily in the 208 episodes. She came to the comedy after a seven-year run of 144 episodes on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which means she’s had a steady job for almost two decades. After two long-running hits, Hannigan has a little concern for about what will come next.

“Because ‘Buffy’ was my first successful show, I think creatively it will always me by first love. That’s why I was afraid I would not find another great series after ‘Buffy’ ended,” Hannigan says during an interview on the set of “How I Met Your Mother.”

“But, I was so blessed that I found this. Now, I’m hoping for a hat trick with a third series.”

One of the reasons she’ll miss “How I Met your Mother” is that each episode was a

surprise. During its run, the actors have seen their characters bounce through different time periods, break into song, be part of weird fantasies and tell stories from a variety of perspectives. It rarely adhered to the basic rules of a traditional half-hour TV comedy.

Because of that off-beat perspective, Hannigan describes the scripts for the series as getting a gift every week.

Although CBS stuck with the series from the start, Hannigan wasn’t certain until season three that there were any fans of the show. Because the series doesn’t shoot in front of a studio audience, there was no immediate feedback each week. It wasn’t until the cast made an appearance in San Diego for Comic-Con – and she saw people waiting in line for hours for their panel – that Hannigan finally appreciated how much the show was liked.

Hannigan hopes her next project is a comedy that’s shot in front of an audience. That way she’ll get immediate feedback.

Segel came to the show after being on two highly touted series – “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared” – that didn’t last a full season. That made him a little cautious about the future of the show.

“I was always ready for the show to be canceled,” Segel says. “And then, the fact that we got along so well made it almost a sure thing to be canceled. It’s just the best gift ever that it stuck around for so long. We lucked out. It’s been like a dream experience.”

Harris – who played the woman-crazy Barney Stinson until the character’s wedding to Robin Scherbatsky (Smulders) this year – wasn’t certain the show was a hit until the fourth season. That’s when it became available in reruns through syndication.

“The first two seasons

seemed very on the bubble the entire time, which actually I thought was good for us and for the show. It gave us the opportunity to come up with our own sense of humor, and sometimes when a show is thrust into success right away, then there’s high expectations for them to come up with terrific stuff superfast,” Harris says. “We got to develop a great vocabulary and weird little inside jokes so that by the time fans – Netflix-style and syndication-style – started watching it, it had found its own voice.”

No cast member has been as connected to the show’s specific vocabulary more than Harris. Barney became a walking catch phrase, from “legendary” to “suit up.”

Radnor knew there was something special in the writing that gave the series an edge over other TV comedies.

As soon as he started reading Ted’s lines, what he was saying felt real. And that never changed for him during all nine seasons.

The only major cast change for the show came at the end of the eighth season when Cristin Milioti, who plays the mother that everyone has been waiting for Ted to meet, was cast. The producers had seen her on stage in “Once” and on an episode of “30 Rock.” That was enough to bring her to Hollywood to test with Radnor.

She was a little nervous about joining the show because the core group had been together so long. She had little time to think about joining the show because she ended a two-year run in “Once” and 24 hours later was filming the eighth season finale where fans finally saw her character.

As for how the cast looks at the show, Smulders sums it up best: “This is a good gig. This is a great gig.”

6

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

Monday, March 31, 2014

Comics Happy

T he N ews

aNd

last day of

MarcH

DailyCollegian.com

WE WANT YOUR COMICS! Put your comics in front of thousands of readers.

Questions? Comments? Email us: comics@dailycollegian.com

nerds!

h uey L ewis

P oorLy d rawN L iNes

B y i aN F aria

B y r eza F arazmaNd CLASSIFIEDS Brandywine Apts. Now Leasing, 1&2 bedroom apts. Leases begin Jun, July, Aug or Sep. First come, first serve. Get them while they last. www.brandywine-apts. com stop by or call 5490600 Ian’s first big comic!!!

aquarius

HOROSCOPES Jan. 20 - Feb. 18

Lemons?

pisces

leo

Jul. 23 - aug. 22

Take your hat off immediately.

Feb. 19 - Mar. 20

virgo

aug. 23 - Sept. 22

Though it might sound a like a good idea, but That moment when you realize your tuition is a key–ring ring is really uncomforable and will paying for you to play Jeopardy in class. hurt more than it will help you.

aries

Mar. 21 - apr. 19

taurus

apr. 20 - May. 20

As the temperatures climb, spend the next week in ample sunshine to ensure that you defrost all the way through.

Beware of the enticing aroma of the chalupa.

gemini

May. 21 - Jun. 21

sagittarius

You like chickpeas and you like strawberries?

Suprisingly, strawberry hummus is nutritious and very tasty. Not to be nauseating.

libra

Sept. 23 - Oct. 22

scorpio

Oct. 23 - nOv. 21

Adulthood means that watching a movie in lecture is a waste of your time and deeply dredded.

nOv. 22 - Dec. 21

When in doubt, drink a stout.

If you don’t follow the advice given to Taurus, you will still be cold in the middle and not cook efficiently enough to be eaten.

cancer

capricorn

Jun. 22 - Jul. 22

Save today’s sudoku for another day. Maybe a rainy day. Or Tuesday. I can’t control your life.

Dec. 22 - Jan. 19

Unlike Cancer, Capricorn: Horoscopes are actually a window into your future and should be read with great examination and closeness.

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

DailyCollegian.com

DOYLE

BASEBALL

continued from page 8

anybody to do, but especially at quarterback,” Coen said of learning a new offensive scheme. “We’re asking a lot of (Doyle) in a short period of time and from a completely different place. Being under center, as opposed to being in the shotgun, is a lot different. From that standpoint he’s done a great job just transitioning and not turning the ball over, not a lot of exchange bobbles with the center.

“He’s really just learning right now how to take a snap and run a run play. It sounds so elementary, but it’s not. It’s really important, and he’s done a really great job. He’s working at it.

It’s definitely a transition, but it’s not hindering his progress at all.”

Despite such progress, Doyle’s starting job for UMass’ Aug. 30 season opener against Boston College is far from secure.

The Minutemen will welcome three new quarterbacks this summer – the most anticipated being Marshall transfer Blake Frohnapfel – to compete with Doyle for the coveted No. 1 position.

The 6-foot-6, 225-pound Frohnapfel announced his

decision to come to UMass in February and will have two years of eligibility left starting this season due to NCAA rules that allow players to play immediately upon transferring if they’ve completed their degree.

Frohnapfel excelled at times for the Thundering Herd, but spent the bulk of his three years – he redshirted as a freshman – at Marshall stuck behind AllConference USA quarterback Rakeem Cato. Now he’ll come to Amherst with the expectation of being a starter.

Frohnapfel told the Daily Hampshire Gazette on Thursday that he received a lifting and conditioning program from UMass strength coach Mike Golden and a playbook from Coen. He also watches video of practice online.

“I’ll watch the play develop and try to study the quarterback’s reads on each situation, try to see what he saw,” Frohnapfel, who worked primarily out of the shotgun at Marshall, told the Gazette.

Doyle, however, has had the advantage of learning this system in person with the coaches, which could

give him an advantage come training camp. But he’s also aware of the talent coming in and knows he has to earn his spot.

“With (Frohnapfel) coming in, he’s an experienced guy, and then the other freshmen coming in, it’ll be a battle,” Doyle said. “But at the same time, I gotta work and put myself that much further ahead of them.

“I’m out here with the guys right now and throwing,” he added. “I’m getting used to all the reads, all the routes, all the drops. But at the same time, I’m gonna have to work even harder when they get here.”

Coen, on the other hand, looks forward to the competition.

“Every position is gonna compete when the time comes, but specifically at this position we want to have the most competition that we can,” he said. “Right now, (Doyle is) doing a great job for us. This is gonna help him tremendously to have this experience in the spring in this system moving forward.”

Nick Canelas can be reached at ncanelas@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @NickCanelas.

Monday, March 31, 2014

7

continued from page 8

Southpaw Aaron Plunkett had a solid start on the mound for UMass. He pitched into the sixth, allowing three earned runs while walking only one.

Minutemen rocked to end twin bill After a back and forth game to start the series, UMass was destroyed in the second half of Friday’s action, falling 10-1 to Richmond.

“We beat ourselves.”

Stone said. “We just gave them too many extra outs and took too many bad at bats.”

Zak Sterling threw a gem for the Spiders, going 71/3 innings and striking out 6 while walking none and allowing only three hits. He improved to 3-1 on the season.

The Minutemen were limited to three hits and only six total base runners.

It was their sixth time being held to one run or fewer this season.

Richmond had a host of players fuel the offensive outburst. Lead-off man Tanner Stanley was 4-for5 and scored three runs, cleanup hitter Matt Dacey had three hits and four

SOFTBALL “We’re pretty scrappy and we can look to capitalize on speed,” Stefanoni said. “Our short game has come along really well. We’re going to take it one pitch at a time, one at bat at a time and we’ll take it any way we can get it.”

UMass enters this game having lost five straight and nine out

COLLEGIAN FILE PHOTO

The UMass baseball team was swept by Richmond this weekend.

RBIs and first baseman Kraeger added three more RBIs. “I’m surprised it has been this difficult for us to win games with this club.”

Stone said “But we have a lot of season left.”

UMass loses opener A pair of rallies weren’t enough as the Minutemen dropped the series opener against Richmond, 6-4.

The Spiders opened a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning on a Matt Dacey RBI single. UMass answered in the top of the second after Walsh drove in a runner with his first hit of the day and Nik Campero’s

RBI double tied the game in the fifth.

But Richmond had an answer for every rally. Two unearned runs in the bottom of the fifth allowed it to regain a 4-2 advantage.

When UMass scored in the seventh and eighth innings to make it 5-4, the Spiders answered again with an insurance run off the bat of Kraeger.

Ryan Cook pitched a perfect ninth to complete a multi-inning save for the Spiders. It was his fourth save of the year,.

Ross Gienieczko can be reached at rgieniec@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @RossCollegian.

continued from page 8

of its last 11. Coming off a 2013 campaign in which the Minutewomen suffered their first losing season since 1976, Stefanoni stresses the importance of staying in the present to her team.

“Stay in the process,” said Stefanoni. “Every single day. We don’t talk about records. We don’t talk about last season.

The team is still healing and they’re trying to learn how to win again.

We’re trying to stay very process-oriented and not so result-oriented and I think that’s what’s going to help us get through the next two months.”

Marc Jean-Louis can be reached at mjeanlou@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @marc_jean93.

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

Monday, March 31, 2014

@MDC_SPORTS

BASEBALL

FOOTBALL

Minutemen swept by Spiders

Sports@DailyCollegian.com

UPPER HAND

SOFTBALL

UMass to battle BC, elements

UM momentum halted with losses at Richmond

UMass has not played a

By Ross Gienieczko

B y MaRc Jean -L ouis

After taking two of three games from La Salle to open Atlantic 10 play, the Massachusetts baseball team seemed like it was rounding into shape.

Looking to put an ugly start behind them, the Minutemen won back to back games for the first time all season, including a come-frombehind 7-6 win over the Explorers in extra innings.

The momentum from their first series win did not carry over; however, as UMass lost all three games against host Richmond this weekend, capped off by an 8-5 letdown Saturday afternoon.

The Minutemen (3-16, 2-4 A-10) had a chance to salvage one win from the weekend series in the finale.

After trailing 4-0, UMass rallied to take a 5-4 lead in the top of the eighth, fueled by a two-run home run from freshman Mike Geannelis in the sixth and an RBI double from Dylan Begin in the eighth.

But Richmond (11-12-1, 4-2 A10) responded with four more runs in the bottom of the frame, taking an 8-5 lead it would hold for good. Three of the Spiders runs in the inning were unearned, and the biggest salvo came from catcher Cory Moheit, whose two run double provided Richmond with all the insurance it needed.

Dan Martinson picked up his second save of the season for the Spiders, throwing a hitless ninth.

The Minutemen looked poised to end the weekend on a good note before the disastrous bottom of the eighth. Doug Kraeger reached on an error and advanced to third to start the inning, and the next batter, Matt Dacey, drove him in to tie the game.

Later in the inning, the Spiders used a double steal to move runners on to second and third, where they were promptly doubled home by Moheit.

“It shows some good character that we were able to come back and take the lead, but we gave them extra outs.” UMass coach Mike Stone said.

“That can’t happen when you’re up 5-4 with six outs to go.”

The sixth inning home run from Geannelis was the first of his college career. Stone said he has been impressed with his approach at the plate this season.

“He’s got good pop in his bat, is well balanced and selective,” he said of Geannelis. “Overall, he’s a much more mature hitter than we expected him to be (as a freshman).”

Driving 425 miles to the nation’s capital wasn’t enough for the Massachusetts softball team to escape from Mother Nature.

UMass hopes the rain won’t cancel its first home game of the season Monday at 4 p.m. against Boston College after the weather washed away a doubleheader at George Washington on Sunday.

Senior Caroline Raymond will start for the Minutewomen against the Eagles (15-11, 2-5 Atlantic Coast Conference), who are second in the ACC in on-base percentage and walks. After suffering a concussion early in the season, Raymond has compiled a 2-7 record and a 3.98 earned run average while allowing 44 walks as opposed to 17 strikeouts. Despite her struggles, UMass coach Kristi Stefanoni still looks to her ace to as the go-to woman in the circle.

“Caroline has gotten better each game that we’ve had. She’s extremely tenacious,” Stefanoni said. “Since conference play has started, she’s on a mission. Her workouts, mindset and attitude have been different. Since Florida, she’s stepped up.”

For Raymond, the slow start hasn’t distracted her focus on the mound and keeps the well-being of the team as her top priority.

“We have a lot more season to play so I’m not really too concerned about my stats,” Raymond said. “I think we’re going to be excited to actually be able to get on the field and play.”

UMass (3-14, 0-2 Atlantic 10) has had eight games canceled so far this season and last played on March 22, but Stefanoni does not use the weather as an excuse for the slow start to the season.

“The obvious challenge is not playing a game in a while or not being on dirt for a while,” she said.

“But when I coach them or when we talk at practice, it’s never an issue. That never comes up and we just try to look forward to what we’re going to do.”

Freshman catcher Tatiana Cortez (seven home runs, 28 runs batted in) and senior outfielder Tory Speer (.358, six home runs, 21 RBIs) lead the Eagles offense.

In the circle, Nicole D’Argento has an ERA of 2.15 to go with her 9-4 record. Stefanoni’s keys against BC are speed and getting on base.

game since March 22

Collegian Staff

see

Collegian Staff

BASEBALL on page 7

CADE BELISLE/COLLEGIAN

Quarterback A.J. Doyle speaks with UMass coach Mark Whipple after practice on Saturday.

Doyle adapting to new system By nick caneLas Collegian Staff

A.J. Doyle knows what it’s like be challenged.

For the last two years, he’s battled injury, superior defenses and, most notably, for the Massachusetts football team’s starting quarterback job, none of which were immediate successes.

Doyle entered the 2013 season as the backup after being outplayed by Mike Wegzyn in both the spring and summer. The sophomore won the starting spot in Week 3 after a pair of dreadful performances by Wegzyn, but inconsistent play – he completed 54.5 percent of his passes for 1,274 yards and six touchdowns to go with 11 interceptions – and a nagging ankle injury left Doyle’s job in question each week as the Minutemen were on their way to a second straight 1-11 season.

This spring, Doyle is facing his biggest test

yet.

After spending the last two years in Charley Molnar’s spread offense, where he was taking snaps from the shotgun and seeing plays develop right from the pocket, Doyle is taking snaps under center and dropping into the pocket for the first time since high school as he tries to learn Mark Whipple’s pro-style offense in a condensed time period.

Everything from learning a seven-step drop, to making the reads and executing a simple run play from under center is new for Doyle. But he said the coaches have made an effort to not overwhelm him and backups Todd Stafford and Andrew Verboys.

“I ran an offense for two years, and now I’m running a completely new one, but the coaches are taking it the right way,” Doyle said. “They’re letting us learn. They’re not throwing too much

CADE BELISLE/COLLEGIAN

A.J. Doyle has been the No. 1 quarterback in spring practice. at us but at the same time they’re giving us enough.”

Making the transition easier for Doyle is quarterbacks coach Liam Coen.

Coen started at UMass from 2005-08 and holds nearly every career Minutemen passing record. He’s mentored Doyle through a difficult learning process and his accomplishments are enough to inspire the current UMass signal caller.

“He knows what it’s like to be here, he knows what it’s like to be a quarterback, he knows what it’s like to play in this system. You can’t ask for anything better than that,” Doyle said of Coen.

Coen has been impressed with what he’s seen from Doyle as well, particularly in how quickly he’s adapting to the offense.

“It’s very hard for see

DOYLE on page 7

see

SOFTBALL on page 7

MARCH MADNESS

Kentucky punches ticket to Final Four Sunday UConn, Wisconsin, Florida also advance

By Matthew zackMan Collegian Staff

With three seconds left in the Midwest Regional Final, Kentucky freshman Aaron Harrison knocked down a game-winning 3-pointer to give the eighth-seeded Wildcats a 75-72 upset victory over No. 2 seed Michigan on Sunday to advance to the Final Four to take on Wisconsin.

The Wildcats’victory was propelled by a balanced effort from their starters and bench. No player scored more than 16 points and Kentucky had four players in double figures, with three others scoring eight

points each. Kentucky shot over 60 percent from behind the arc with Harrison and James Young combining for seven made shots on 10 total attempts. Trailing by as many as 10 points in the first half, Kentucky worked its way back and only lost its lead once before the final buzzer sounded. Nik Stauskas shined for the Wolverines with 24 points while making 10-of-11free throw attempts.

Kaminsky spearheads Wisconsin in OT Frank Kaminsky was everything that Wisconsin needed and more as he led the Badgers to a 64-63 overtime victory over Arizona in the Elite Eight.

Kaminsky led all scorers with 28 points, including six in overtime and collected

seven offensive rebounds to go along with one turnover in 37 minutes of play.

The Wildcats trailed by two points with less than 40 seconds left in the game and evened the score after Rondae HollisJefferson grabbed the offensive rebound from Nick Johnson’s missed jump shot and dunked the ball to tie the game at 54.

With 30 seconds left to play in a back-and-forth overtime, Arizona had two opportunities to either win the game off attempts by T.J. McConnell.

Florida ends Dayton’s run

to the Final Four. Scottie Wilbekin led the with 23 points and three steals.

Dayton got within eight points with three minutes remaining in the game, but was unable to complete the rally. Florida sealed the win at the free-throw line, making five of its last six shots from the charity stripe.

Dyshawn Pierce of the Flyers scored 18 points, and five assists in only 28 minutes of play.

Florida will take on the Connecticut in the Final Four on Saturday following the seventh-seeded Huskies’ 60-54 win over Michigan State on Sunday.

The Huskies defeated the Gators on a last second shot earlier this season.

On Saturday evening, Florida, the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, beat 11-seed- Matthew Zackman can be reached at ed Dayton 62-52 to advance mzackman@umass.edu.

MCT

Former UMass coach John Calipari celebrates his return to the Final Four with Kentucky after its 75-72 win over Michigan on Sunday.