Massachusetts Daily Collegian: Dec. 8, 2015

BEING BLACK

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THE MASSACHUSETTS

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Tuesday, December 8, 2015

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Students push for more divestment Campus members to lobby trustees

By Anthony Rentsch Collegian Staff

U n iv e r s i t y of Massachusetts community members are planning on lobbying the Board of Trustees to continue divesting from the fossil fuel industry at its meeting at UMass Lowell on Wednesday.

Last week, the UMass Foundation, which oversees the University’s $770 million in endowment assets, made headlines when it announced it would divest from direct investments in coal companies. The decision was made based on recommendations from the Foundation’s Socially Responsible Investing Advisory Committee, who met with the student-led UMass Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign and researched the issue for

several months, according to a news release.

In March, the UMass Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign submitted a formal petition to the Foundation, per the release.

“While we commend the board for listening to the voices of the UMass community and taking a crucial step in the right direction, we must emphasize that coal divestment is only the beginning,” the UMass Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign said in a statement.

UMass student Kristie Herman is on the agenda to speak in front of the board on Wednesday on behalf of the UMass Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign. The agenda also calls for a vote on the board’s statement on fossil fuel divestment.

Nina Hazelton, who graduated from UMass in the spring and still works with Divest UMass, said stusee

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SHANNON BRODERICK/COLLEGIAN

UMass graduate and Divest UMass activist Nina Hazelton talks about the University’s decision to divest from the fossil fuel industry.

SGA passes motion condemning Baker’s refugee statement Previous letter was voted down in Nov.

By Stuart Foster Collegian Staff

The University of Massachusetts Student Government Association’s Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass a motion condemning Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s statements expressing disinterest in allowing Syrian refugees to resettle in the state of Massachusetts during their Monday meeting.

While the Senate voted against passing a similar motion on Nov. 23 due to concerns over language in a

letter written on behalf of the UMass student body to Baker, which was considered by undergraduate senators to be overly dramatic and confrontational, the more mild language in this incarnation of the motion was not seen as an issue by senators.

“We’ve sat down with the committee that originally wrote this letter, and we’re supporting this version,” said Tristan LaLiberte, the governor of the Orchard Hill Residential Area. LaLiberte had urged the SGA senate not to support the motion on Nov. 23, but said he was comfortable and supportive of the new version.

The only major source of disagreement regarding the

motion was over an amendment to the letter that would have added U.S. Reps. Stephen Lynch and Bill Keating as recipients of the letter. Lynch and Keating, both Democrats, voted in favor of the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act of 2015, which requires the secretary of Homeland Security, the director of the FBI, and the director of national intelligence to sign off on every refugee from Iraq and Syria to confirm they are not a security threat.

The American SAFE Act of 2015, which was primarily supported by Republicans, passed in the House of Representatives 289-137 on Nov. 18.

The SGA’s Secretary of Finance, Anthony Vitale, raised the idea of adding Lynch and Keating as recipients of the letter over concerns that the SGA was singling out Baker for partisan reasons.

“It seems like you’re targeting Governor Baker just because he’s a Republican and not the two Democratic representatives who can effect federal policy,” Vitale said.

A proposed amendment to the SGA’s motion would have addressed Lynch and Keating directly and changed pronouns in the letter to refer to the three politicians, rather than just Baker.

Opponents of the amend-

ment said that Lynch and Keating’s actions would require an entirely different letter to be written, which they did not oppose the idea of, while maintaining that the motion being voted on was more relevant to Baker specifically.

“Human rights aren’t partisan, and I think having two letters isn’t a bad thing,” said Aliza Abolafia, chairwoman of the Social Justice and Empowerment Committee.

Abolafia made it clear, however, that Baker’s role as governor makes him a spokesperson for the people of the state of Massachusetts and that his comments needed to be specifically opposed.

“That’s something our

leader said and that’s really important,” she said.

The amendment to address Lynch and Keating did not pass the SGA Senate. After the amendment failed, there were no further questions, and the main motion passed the Senate overwhelmingly.

Roughly 14 people were present during the SGA meeting demonstrating in support of the motion. The demonstrators held signs with messages such as “Will trade 1 Gov. Baker for 10,000 refugees,” and “Refugees are welcome here.”

Stuart Foster can be reached at stuartfoster@umass.edu or followed on Twitter @Stuart_C_Foster

‘Victim Paradox’ talk covers Steven Kassels gives lecture empathy, sympathy and pity on national heroin epidemic Assistant professor gave lecture Mon.

By Rachel Walman Collegian Correspondent U n ive r s i t y of Massachusetts assistant professor Seth Goldman discussed intergroup contact and the theoretical stakes for empathy, sympathy and pity in his talk Monday afternoon, titled “The Victim Paradox” as part of the Center for Public Policy & Administration’s Colloquium Series.

Goldman holds a joint appointment in the department of communication and in the Commonwealth Honors College, and focused his talk on his current research, which looks into the effects of mass media and political communication on stereotyping and prejudice with respect to race and sexual orienta-

tion. He is one of the first people to investigate this in earnest.

He began his lecture with a question for his audience members to ponder.

“In the world of research on prejudice reduction, empathy is one of the big issues that people are interested in, and belief is potentially hugely important as a mechanism for efforts to reduce stereotyping and prejudice. But part of the problem is … what is empathy? It’s one of these concepts that is massively important to everyone who wants to use it and talk about it, but it’s very hard to define,” he said.

Goldman explained how he is attempting to break down and disentangle the definition of empathy, starting his argument with the concept of perspective taking. He said this is the idea of trying to imagine what it is like to walk in

someone else’s shoes and seeing the world through their eyes. He said this can also can be called sympathy, or, “feeling compassion for someone else who is going through a difficult situation.”

Empathy and sympathy, though they have general positive connotations, are often accompanied by the feeling or action of pity, according to Goldman. He is also investigating whether humans can empirically disentangle these three feelings.

His research regarding media in today’s world has led him to believe that people usually have greater exposure to people from different groups by means of media than they do in their daily lives.

Goldman decided to study anti-gay bullying, focusing on different types see

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Addiction expert spoke at the ILC

By Tanaya M. Asnani Collegian Staff

Dr. Steven Kassels, a board certified physician and medical director at Community Substance Abuse Centers in New England, spoke about the current heroin epidemic sweeping the nation Monday night in a talk at the University of Massachusetts.

“The Heroin Epidemic in America – Why Now?” was organized and sponsored by the School of Public Health and Sciences, UMass Hillel, and the Five College Culture, Health and Science program. About 100 people attended the talk, held in the Integrative Learning Center.

Kassels shed light on the pressing issue of drug use

and addiction in America, specifically heroin and other strong pain relieving drugs and opiates. He said he first became interested in addiction when he saw that 50 percent of the patients being treated at an emergency medical center were on addiction medicine, ranging from heroin to alcohol.

He touched upon various significant causes that have contributed to the recent epidemic across the country, such as “injudicious rescrubbing by medical doctors”, which has caused many patients to be addicted to opiates in situations that physicians are believed to be over-prescribing them the required drug.

He also cited the weakness of physician training in which individuals with less than 10 hours of informal training are allowed to treat patients suffering addiction.

Kassels mentioned the powerful opiate oxycontin, which can influence people to shift to heroin use.

“When pharmaceutical companies tested the component of the drug, it was difficult for people to snort, inject or inhale the drug, making people shift to heroin,” he said.

Heroin became prevalent in western markets, creating a large supply and demand, and making the drug affordable to many, due to the war in Afghanistan that allowed farmers to grow and sell opium when their subsidies The addiction epidemic persists because the “Not In My Backyard” effect allows each community to accept that the problem of addiction does not exist within itself, leading to other communities to also denying the problem.

“In addition, with cuts see

HEROIN on page 2

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THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

THE RUNDOWN

DIVEST

Police respond to three incidents at Craig’s Place

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ON THIS DAY...

In 1980, John Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman in front of The Dakota apartment building in New York City.

APD Police Log: Dec. 4 to Dec. 7

By Patricia LeBoeuf Collegian Staff

AROUND THE WORLD

Fox News contributors suspended after using profanity to refer to Obama NEW YORK — Two Fox News contributors were yanked off the air Monday after some coarse discourse about President Barack Obama.

Stacey Dash, the actress best known for known for her role in the movie “Clueless,” used a profanity in discussing the president’s Sunday night Oval Office speech on the terrorism threat in the aftermath of the shooting rampage in San Bernardino, Calif.

Dash made the remark during the Fox News panel show “Outnumbered,” where she sits in one week a month. She will not appear for the rest of the week.

Earlier on Fox Business Network, Lt. Ralph Peters used a profane term to describe Obama as being weak on the terrorism issue. Program host Stuart Varney told Peters his language was inappropriate and told him to apologize to the audience, which he did.

Peters is a frequent guest on national security issues on Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network.

Los Angeles Times

Biden says ‘illegal’ Russian occupation of Crimea must end KIEV, Ukraine — Vice President Joe Biden said that Russia’s occupation of Crimea was an “illegal invasion” that will never be recognized by the U.S., after a meeting with Ukraine’s president in Kiev on Monday.

“Moscow eventually has to end” its occupation of the peninsula, Biden said, calling it part of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. His remarks reaffirmed the administration’s position that the U.S. won’t bend on Ukraine even as its trying to win Russian cooperation in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

Biden is on a two-day visit to Ukraine to show U.S. support for the country’s struggling government, elected after an uprising by democracy activists last year. Since then, the country has seen Russia invade and annex Crimea, while its military is in a standoff with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Biden announced $190 million in new aid for Ukraine contingent on the government continuing to make progress rooting out corruption.

The separatists, Ukraine and Russia must continue to respect a cease-fire signed earlier this year in Minsk, Belarus, Biden said.

“Both sides need to hold up that bargain,” he said, echoing the position of U.S. allies in Europe.

Bloomberg News Distributed by MCT Information Services

Thursday

COLLEGIAN FILE PHOTO

The Divest UMass group rallies for a fossil-free future in Dec. 2014. dents, faculty and alumni would also be at the gathering to lobby board members before and after the meeting.

Hazelton said the campaign seeks to get the University to divest from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies in order to make a political statement, as well as to stigmatize these companies.

The UMass Foundation said its decision to divest is “consistent with the leading role the University has played in addressing climate change through research, academic programs, student engagement and its own energy policies” in a statement.

“If you are going to make that claim and build your image around that, your actions as a University need to be in line with what you want your image to be,” Hazelton said. “We see the investment in these industries as being socially immoral, environmentally immoral and on all levels unjust. We see the need for UMass to divest because we can’t continue our dependence on these destructive and oppressive industries.”

She added that divesting in the fossil fuel industry – which she called a “dying

PARADOX of media portrayal and the emotional effects they may have, after noticing the issues and questions about public opinion and media surrounding LGBT people and rights. “(We can look at) changing attitudes. In this way we might understand why public acceptance has grown towards LGBT people over the last few decades,” he said.

“Perhaps one mechanism among others is a growing sense of empathy or sympathy towards LGBT (people) in their lives and communities.”

Goldman’s study examined the effects of a “victim” narrative, a “hero” narrative and a “times have changed” narrative on heterosexual Americans’ attitudes towards gay people and gay rights, trying to disentangle the effects of and the nature of empathy. In particular, he was attempting to see if the effects of these portrayals may depend upon the emotional reactions people have when being exposed to the different narratives.

Since there is still disagreement about what a positive portrayal of someone who identifies as LGBT is, Goldman is attempting to test the effects of differing stories and narratives, to find a solution to what makes a portrayal positive or not.

His independent variable was the extent of suffering that’s portrayed – the degree to which someone is portrayed as suffering and unable to control their situation. His dependent variable, on the other hand, was the extent to which people took on the

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industry” - would be a fiscally smart decision for the University.

Investing in renewable energy industries will provide a higher return over the long run, according to Hazelton.

She also said many schools choose to divest from coal first because it doesn’t have a high return.

UMass Foundation spokesperson Pamela Jonah said in an email that direct coal investments represented a small portion of the Foundation’s investment portfolio. Charlie Pagnam, executive vice president of the UMass Foundation announced that investments in coal totaled $400,000 at an administration and finance committee meeting on Dec. 2, according to the statement from UMass Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign.

The meeting’s minutes were not available online at the time of publishing.

Hazelton estimated that the UMass Foundation has $3 million directly invested in fossil fuels, although said it was difficult to be exact because of the complexity of the portfolio.

Anthony Rentsch can be reached at arentsch@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @Anthony_Rentsch.

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perspective of the subject of the narrative.

For his research, 1,400 heterosexual American adults were tested, using data from Timeshare and the Experiments for the Social Sciences, a National Science Foundation funded organization.

His three different narratives concerned Ashley, a lesbian who was first portrayed as the victim, secondly as a hero and thirdly as a “normal” girl.

The results of the test were as Goldman had hypothesized: empathy, sympathy and pity increased, starting at its lowest in the “normal girl” narrative, moving up to the hero story and finally escalating with the victim narrative, validating Goldman’s belief that the more “victim” the portrayal is, the more people are inclined to be empathetic, sympathetic and pity them.

Other “victim” storylines (which represent real life cases) may involve HIV problems or rampant bullying, and are often thought of as deserving attention and raising awareness. But Goldman says that “good” portrayals may be simply seeing LGBT people as leading normal, productive lives, with nothing about their sexual orientation being portrayed as an extreme character trait.

He countered that idea with the argument that even that portrayal would not include the suffering and problems that are actually occurring.

Rachel Walman can be reached at rwalman@umass.edu

6:23 p.m. – A man reported that he struck a deer that had run out in front of his vehicle in front of 739 N. Pleasant St. The deer caused damage to the hood and headlights. The deer was gone on arrival.

11:07 p.m. – An individual reported that a female wearing a black shirt fell out of a tree at the Boulders Apartments at 188 E. Hadley Road. The woman indicated that she was fine and refused medical assistance.

11:49 p.m. – An individual reported a large group of people in the front yard being loud at 816 N. Pleasant St. A warning was issued to the residents.

Farm, 150 Sunderland Rd. The goats were being monitored by the owner.

10:42 p.m. – A woman was reported screaming and yelling in the bathroom at Craig’s Place homeless shelter, 434 N. Pleasant St. Two females were separated. As one of the women was being escorted out, she tried to kick the glass door open and she cracked it. She will be summoned for destruction of property.

Saturday 12:39 a.m. – Two college-age white males wearing hats and dark clothing were reported engaging in a verbal altercation by the gas pumps at Cumberland Farms, 35 Belchertown Rd. The two parties were gone on arrival.

1:00 a.m. – A vehicle was stopped for failure to yield to an oncoming ambulance at 32 College St. Katherine B. Aguilar, 21, of 212 Vernon St., Apt #2, Worcester, was Friday charged with operating under the influence of liquor, 2:27 a.m. – A male was report- obstruction of an emergency ed jumping into traffic near vehicle, operating a motor 739 N. Pleasant St. He was vehicle to endanger, negligent gone on arrival. operation of a motor vehicle, speeding, operating an unreg3:33 a.m. – Individuals report- istered motor vehicle and posed vandalism upon returning session of an open container to their home at 15 Fearing of alcohol in a motor vehicle.

St., Apt #1. They found multiple windows smashed and 2:14 a.m. – Police responded observed that some buck- to a report of vandalism at ets of salt that were outside Amherst Market, 29 Triangle the house were emptied and St. A man noticed approxistrewn around. There were mately four small dents and no witnesses and there are a small scratch on his vehicle. currently no suspects.

He believed the vandalism was done during his shift as 1:54 p.m. – An individual there were several underage reported goats close to the college students attempting to side of Route 116 at Leonard buy alcohol who were turned

HEROIN

away. He did not wish to pursue the incident.

2:51 a.m. – A motor vehicle was stopped at 787 Main St. for failing to stop at a red light. Field sobriety tests of the driver indicated impairment. Venetia Fotopulos, 22, of 302 Mystic St., Arlington, was charged with operating under the influence of liquor, operating a motor vehicle to endanger, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and failure to stop/yield.

9:38 p.m. – Police responded to a disturbance at Craig’s Place homeless shelter at 434 N. Pleasant St. A man in his 60s was reported insulting others and causing altercations over a person cutting in line. The issue was resolved without incident.

Sunday 1:32 a.m. – An individual reported an individual refusing to leave Craig’s Place homeless shelter at 434 N. Pleasant St. and being verbally abusive. The person was agitated upon arrival but left when instructed to.

12:37 p.m. – An individual reported goats close to the side of the road at Leonard Farm, 150 Sunderland Rd. The individual said they were heading north and were about half a mile from the Sunderland town line. The goats were in the field nowhere near the road.

Patricia LeBoeuf can be reached at patricialebo@umass.edu.

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in mental health funding, there is an increased amount of individuals diagnosed with depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder who self-medicate on heroin, alcohol and cocaine,” he said, mentioning that this is further amplified by the availability of these drugs through internet sales.

“The prescription of these drugs kill an average of 44 people per day as well as 259 million prescription for pain have been recorded,” he said.

White, black and Hispanic individuals had the same use of heroin in 2002, according to Kassels.

In a decade, it has become apparent as a Caucasian illness, with the epidemic migrating from inner city minority communities to primarily white men and

women in their late 20s.

He also read excerpts from his recent book, “Addiction on Trial: Tragedy in Downeast Maine”. The talk promoted strategies to educate the masses about addictive substances and understanding the consequences and costs for not treating opioid dependency addiction. The need for discussion on bias and the need to expand medical training and education were also discussed.

The different treatments for drug addiction were also mentioned, specifically treatments using methodone and suboxone that do not make patients feel ‘high’ and do not trade one addiction for another.

Kassels compared the dramatic reduction in crime rates before and after treat-

ment, reporting that there are 91 percent less arrests, employment goes up by 27 percent and medical visits reduce by 59 percent.

Lastly, he discussed current efforts within New England aimed to reduce the intensity of the epidemic. Vermont State Police, under Gov. Peter Shumlin, have realized that arrests are not the best way to handle crimes committed by addicts. Instead, these people are often referred to treatment.

The New Hampshire Medicine Board is also creating rules about drug prescription. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has also been putting forward the controversies of the issue.

Tanaya M. Asnani can be reached at tasnani@umass.edu.

Arts Living THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

“A drean’s only a dream if work don’t follow it.” - Kendrick Lamar, “To Pimp a Butterfly”

Arts@DailyCollegian.com

LIFESTYLE

Black on a white campus: Fearful now and for the future Student on racism, alternative activism

By Sarah Gamard Collegian Staff

Junior Adrianne Smith had desperately wanted to be a vet since she was five years old. She came to UMass her freshman year on the preveterinary track. Then, the fall semester of her sophomore year, in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting, she took a weekend-long seminar on racism.

Being a person of color in the midst of the reemerging anti-racism movement, she said, was emotionally draining.

“I’d hear things of killings and stuff prior on the TV all the time and it never made a connection to me, but this case … I think it’s the blowup of it that really affected me. I remember hearing the verdict, being in my dorm room, and just crying about the Michael Brown case – for hours, just on and off. I felt so hurt,” she said. “I think that’s when it hit me that I am a person of color and that is how I’m viewed in this world and how, because of the color of my skin, I’m not guaranteed justice.”

The “weight of it all,” she said, became real after that, and she decided to take more classes. From there, she was engulfed in the topic.

Racism, the color of her skin, white privilege, being mixed race – these things were all she could think and talk about. She began asking questions she had never asked herself before: What are white people thinking about these things? What are black people thinking? What do her parents think? What does it mean to be a black man in America? A black woman?

Her local non-denominational church, the Chicopee Church of Christ, held a few forums last year to help people talk about the issues in the shadow of the brutality. Smith attended one and said it was a good conversation, but she was the only college student there and left wanting more.

“I just remember being very angry,” she said. She had to remind herself that it was not that the church did not want to help in some way, but their education and knowledge on the subject was wanting. “Like, how do you facilitate something like this?”

She also felt, after taking these classes surrounding social and racial issues, that the Christian part of her identity was not welcome in the social justice world she became engulfed in, and vice versa. The Christian in her wanted peace, but the girl in the classroom wanted change.

At the time, there did not seem to be a bridge between that gap.

Then she realized that she needed to become that bridge – through her career. Being a vet, she decided, was not an option anymore. While passionate about animals, she decided she wanted to work with people instead, particularly regarding racial issues.

After some “major shopping,” Smith found the sociology major to be a perfect fit.

Her future career, however, is still unclear. She is currently thinking about social work with children regarding identity and race.

“I will never be able to fully imagine what I’ll be getting in store for,” she said about social work. “I’m excited to be there for these kids, but I’m just also scared of the legal aspects of what my job will require me to do versus what I actually think is right.”

This is very different than

the original, vet-set path she was on: Smith was a vegetarian for a long time and worked at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo from eighth to eleventh grade.

Her favorite animals to work with were the primates.

Her favorite one, by far, was a mandrill, similar to Rafiki from “The Lion King,” that would put its hand against hers through the glass barrier and mimic her every move.

But there is no protective glass barrier for Smith’s new future – in fact, the now-ubiquitous documentation of brutality against black people has exposed her and every other person of color in America to one of the most uncivilized, nefarious faces of their country, putting her in a cage of her own.

Like all American college students of color in 2015, Smith has been forced at the forefront of the social issue that the United States has dealt with since its inception: blatant and, so far, unstoppable discrimination.

Foresight Smith is ambitious and hopeful for her career, but scared nonetheless for herself and her future family. In the wake of all of these murders, Smith said, she has realized that, not only is she a person of color, but her children will be as well.

“I have nightmares of my unborn, nonexistent son getting shot and getting murdered and killed,” she said.

The pain in these nightmares is very real for her – so real, in fact, that she often wakes up crying “as if it’s happening in the moment.”

As someone who believes in the teachings of the Bible, she is conflicted with adhering to the Christian teaching of forgiveness when it comes to forgiving the murderer of her own child and trying to find peace.

“But where do you find peace in something that is not peaceful at all?” she said.

Just keeping up with news or going outside, the world can already be scary for black people in America. The future, for Smith, is just another layer of fear.

“Things like that are just terrifying. The idea that, when I raise my son, there will be people who will just think he’s good for nothing other than entertainment or sports, and that’s what he’s useful for. My son has less of a chance to be a doctor – anything that he might want to aspire to be,” she said. “Or all these thoughts like, ‘Wow. He has to fight.’”

She thinks about these things even when she sees children today.

“It’s so scary seeing little people of color running around and it’s like, ‘Dang.

People look at you now and think you’re an enemy. They think you’re evil.’ Someone’s going to look at my child one day and, just based off the color of his skin, because of the genes he inherited from his parents, he’s evil because of that. Like, his heart, his intention, his education – none of those things will matter. He is an evil being just because of the pigment in his skin.”

She added, “It’s scary that that has been existing for so long.”

Smith notices she connects more thinking about the struggles of this future child than those same struggles she has had to face herself in reality.

But that does not mean she forgets.

“It’s scary that there’s people that think of me like that,” she said. “I think of jokes people would tell me in high

SARAH GAMARD/COLLEGIAN

Adrianne Smith, junior, lives in a world most students on UMass’ predominantly white campus do not: one defined by the harsh, arbitrary lines of race. school of when they met me, like ‘Ha, when I first met you, I thought you were a bully and mean’ and I’m like, ‘What on earth? I graduated high school winning Best Personality, and at one point someone thought I was a bully?’ Like, what made them think that? How can this person who I’ve never talked to before think I’m a bully?”

Smith, who has an immediately warm and unintimidating presence, believes these biases may be a result of racial profiling.

Black on a white campus Though she now lives in Taunton on the south shore of Boston, Smith lived most of her life in Dorchester. She came from what she considers to be a very diverse neighborhood: many of her neighbors were people of color. Coming to UMass, she said, was a different experience. She lived in the Central Residential Area her first two years, where there are not a lot of people of color.

“You feel the difference,” she said. The first time she went to the Southwest Residential Area, she said, she could not immediately place why things felt different from Central, or the rest of campus. She said she realized, “Oh wow. I can count five black people in a matter of 10 seconds.”

That disturbed her.

“I remember I hadn’t seen a black person on campus in a really long time before that.

I remember sitting in Frank with the open windows: you can just see different parts of campus. And, just looking out, I could see a black person and just be amazed.”

She remembers once seeing a group of 15 or 20 black people walking together. “And I was like, ‘This shouldn’t look so weird to me!’”

Now that she has more friends of color, she notices it less. She said she now feels she has a mixed group of friends, white and non-white, and her “little UMass” that she has created is more diverse than the one she began with as a freshman.

In reality, she said, UMass’ campus is not diverse.

However, she said, many people believe it to be.

But diversity is subjective.

“Everyone has their own definition of what diverse means.

Like, you have a white student that grew up in a predominantly white institution, (with) maybe one or two black kids or people of color, and then they come here and they see more black people than that,

so they think, ‘Wow, UMass is diverse!’”

Conversations arise often, she said, where people are upset and confused at the idea that UMass is not as diverse.

She said they argue, “This is diverse! How are you saying this is not diverse?

“And it’s sad because … you can’t call them wrong,” she said. “For them, and their life experience, this place is so diverse. We’ve made diversity a relative thing. It’s hard to put a number on it.”

She said since UMass publicizes the statistics of the racial makeup of campus, those people would reconsider their own definition of diversity if they took time to look at it.

“And it’d be hard because you’re literally fighting what you’ve learned your whole life.

Which is why racism and all these topics are so difficult – because it requires fighting everything. Like, everything you’ve learned: institutionally, socially. Everything you’ve learned has been geared toward keeping this structure in place,” she said.

“I’ve learned that people gravitate towards what they feel comfortable with. A lot of people of color gravitate toward Southwest because that’s where most of the people of color on this campus are.”

The two main things you hear about Southwest, she said, are “party” and “diverse.”

She said that fact alone is frustrating because Southwest, which carries UMass’ notorious “party scene” culture, is also predominantly where people of color congregate.

“And they are connected. I can’t pretend they’re not.”

Smith recalled a disturbing – but not uncommon – instance this year: she came into class the first day and scanned the room, looking for a place to sit. She saw one other person of color beside herself in the lecture, a girl, near the front corner.

“And I’m just like, ‘I’m going to sit there. Maybe we’ll meet and talk,’” said Smith. “‘Like, she’s someone I think I’ll be comfortable with.’ I don’t know.” Smith recognizes that, while certainly prevalent, the human instinct to gravitate toward the familiar is not necessarily logical.

So Smith sat down with her.

After that, another black girl walked in and did the exact same thing: she gravitated toward the same corner. This happened another time, totaling four black girls in a corner next to each other in a room full of white people.

While Smith was conscious

of her decision to sit next to another person of color, she wondered whether the other girls subconsciously gravitated toward each other.

Despite how weird the situation struck her, Smith said she actually made friends within that group of girls from the lecture hall.

She also made friends with people of color at her church.

It was the black girls, she said, that she became friends with first in her church. They are now the girls that she lives with. While she said she could live with anyone in her church, which is by no means segregated, the likeness of culture (food, cleanliness, et cetera) made it easy for Smith and her apartment-mates to adapt to living together.

And as a black person at UMass, she said, she does feel comfortable.

“I just don’t feel like I’m black and alone,” she said. “I feel that I have other people that I can share my blackness with and talk about things. I have people around me.”

BSU and why anger is necessary There is in fact community on campus, for Smith and other students. And the social justice movement in the United States sometimes seems to be working at the speed and sound of a bullet train. But there is still a very long way to go.

“I think black rage is totally necessary,” said Smith.

But sometimes, she said, that rage can be misinterpreted as ignorance.

“But it’s what it is – it’s rage. And there’s a reason for that rage. We’re not just angry because we’re angry. Like, we’re angry because of the situations we’re living in.”

Smith is not a part of the Black Student Union (BSU), though she has friends in it.

“I appreciate everything they do and I appreciate their sentiment in this movement,” she said.

The Black Student Union is an activist group, and Smith said she could not fully judge them as an outsider because she does not see everything they do. There very well may be a place for her, she said, but it is still not the be-all endall for justice: the movement needs more than just activists and protesters.

“We need so many different types of people. We need people that show their rage in many different ways. We need writers, we need reporters, people that can tell our story accurately,” she said, along with the need for black people

in education, social work, and government.

“We need black people managing things so people can see, ‘Oh, I can be a person of color and not be low. … I can be something.’”

Not that Smith has never been pressured to join BSU. Once, Smith was near the library, inviting people to attend her church, when one invitee, a black woman, asked, “How have I never met you before?”

Indeed, on a campus of around 30,000 students, there are lots of people that never meet. But Smith speculated it was because they were both of color, further showing how small the black community at UMass is.

To further perpetuate stereotypes, the woman falsely assumed she lived in Southwest. Smith corrected her. “And she was like, ‘Hm. You need to join BSU.’” They exchanged information and texted a couple of times, but Smith never attended a meeting.

What struck Smith about the situation was the woman’s attitude: just because Smith was a person of color, she was expected to join.

She has nothing against the organization.

“It’s just not the place for me,” she said. “I feel like there’s a lot that I can do to help with this movement that doesn’t mean I have to be a part of BSU.” Smith added, “They need the support from the black community overall to really be able to work. I want to be that support for them.”

Smith has a lot of friends of color both in and out of BSU. One of her friends from high school is on the executive board. On the other side of the spectrum, she said, she has friends of color that do not care about these topics at all.

But most people do care.

And with booming protests like the recent ones on UMass’ own campus, it is arguably hard not to.

No justice, no peace of mind: #StudentBlackOut The Student BlackOut, was one such protest, a class walkout that began at Roots Café in solidarity with the students at the University of Missouri and other college campuses across the country that, according to the Black Student Union’s official Facebook page, are “uncommitted to the recruitment, retention and safety of see

SMITH on page 4

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Tuesday, December 8, 2015

SMITH

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

continued from page 3

SARAH GAMARD/COLLEGIAN

Smith is biracial and wears a ring she inherited from her paternal grandmother, who was born and raised in Trinidad.

Black Students.”

The protest was a success: a mass of students charged through campus with megaphones and chanted like thunder. But what affected Smith most was a chant: “If we don’t get no justice, we don’t get no peace.”

The original chant is “No justice, no peace,” which Smith interprets as justice and peace being directly correlated. But the slight change in the wording concerned her because it implied a threat.

“I remember being like, ‘What does that mean? I’m not going to do anything to destruct the peace of others. I just want peace for myself.’”

It made her feel very misrepresented as a person of color.

Smith actually was caught up in the march by accident, but she was not completely caught off guard when she was buying a meal in the Student Union and the march came through.

“Some days before, some friends in a class were just kind of like, ‘Look out for Wednesday. Like, that’s all I’m going to say. Just look out for Wednesday.’”

She could not initially make out what the crowd was chanting. The march stopped, formed a circle and people took turns shouting into a microphone. Smith watched and listened, agreeing with many of the things being said.

Then the march continued from where she was standing, putting her inadvertently at its front.

So began an internal battle for Smith.

“It was just weird,” she said. “I was like, ‘Alright, I was fine just listening but I don’t know if I want to march.’ I remember feeling conflicted,” she said. “Like, if I just stay still and let them pass me, will they judge me? Like, ‘Why isn’t she walking, too?’”

So she chose to walk with them.

“I was like, I’ll just walk with them until we get to the exit and I’ll leave.”

As she walked, she felt conflicted again, this time on whether or not to chant. The protesters began chanting, “If we don’t get no justice, we

don’t get no peace.”

So, at first, Smith joined in.

“And I’m like, ‘I don’t believe this. I don’t agree with this.’ And I stopped.”

She repeatedly started and stopped chanting, deciding finally to only chant the phrase “If we don’t get no justice,” leaving out the “no peace” part. She pointed out that even the first half of the chant still contains the slightly threatening “if.”

When the march left after continuing through Blue Wall, Smith said she sat down.

She thought to herself, “What just happened?” and ran the chant over again in her head.

She speculated that it might have merely meant that, if black people did not get justice, people could not peacefully eat in Blue Wall.

But maybe it was more than that.

“It’s a violent phrase. It’s angry. The tone was angry.

Everything about it just felt very violent to me. And it’s not my nature.”

But she still empathized with those who were chanting without holding back. “It’s so complicated. I understand that, to a degree, that work is necessary.”

Again, the anger is warranted. Racism is more violent than people may see on the surface, and it affects people beyond just physically, such as with the brutality seen on the media: it is also mental and emotional.

But should violence be met with violence?

“It was a two-minute walk that just messed with me so much,” she said.

Smith said there is a common mindset that, if one is not actively fighting against racism, they are passively going along with it.

“I feel like that idea is being thrown at people in so many different ways,” she said. Protests and “big action things” like the BSU Student BlackOut are the most obvious cases of anti-discrimination movements, even in the media. Therefore, people could falsely believe protesting is the only way they can participate in the movement and thus will feel pressure to join.

The protests are important – “Presence is such an important thing,” Smith said. But sometimes they can be misdirected. While being unified and having bodies to protest is amazing, education is lacking.

Rallies and protests, she said, need to come after education.

“There’s people that literally go to these protests and don’t educate themselves on the matter. And that’s scary that they’re just there. And they’re feeling enraged and they don’t know what they’re enraged about,” Smith said.

She remembers watching a “random protest” on the Internet within the last year, in light of the Michael Brown shooting, where interviewees were “saying the most ignorant things.” Smith said many people, despite their intense anger, do not understand where their oppression comes from. She compared the whole instance to a herd of “black sheep” blindly following the movement, which disturbs her.

“If they don’t really know what’s going on, they can’t really deconstruct anything,” she said. “They’re just a body.”

Mixed family, mixed identity Smith is straddling multiple worlds: a Bostonian in western Massachusetts, a Christian passionate about social justice, a racial minority on a white campus, a black person not in the Black Student Union, a protestor only chanting the first half of the chant.

Being caught between two worlds is nothing new to her.

Smith is also biracial.

“I had my white mom, and I had my black dad. So a bunch of things clashed,” she said.

For one, she does not look like either of them.

“I’m significantly lighter than my father and significantly darker than my mother. And just everything about me was just a spectacle growing up.”

For example, her mother’s side of her family would compliment her on her dark skin and thick hair. With her

father’s family, it would be the same compliments, except switched: now, it was how fair her skin and not kinky her hair was.

Smith remembers being in grocery stores with her mother as a child: the young, light-skinned, curly-haired girl would get approached by strangers who thought she was lost, even when her mother was by her side.

“She would get angry,” said Smith. I remember seeing her angry.”

Smith believes her mother’s anger was warranted because she dealt with her own adversity. “Even just choosing to be with my father meant getting kicked out of her house because her parents were racist and didn’t approve,” she said. She has never met her maternal grandfather. “He never held me or my sister, ever.”

Smith said her mother, however, sees her children differently than other people of color. “It’s like I’m not ‘one of them.’ Whoever ‘one of them’ is. She treats me a certain way and then goes out into the world and sees other people of color, and it’s like she hadn’t gone through all those things.

It’s just she just forgets what she went through to have this colored family.”

She added, “It’s just sad because racism is such a tricky thing in that it changes and evolves in so many different ways in that, if you don’t actively keep up with it, it can really get ingrained into you.”

That is the original image Smith has had of her mother.

But, as she has grown up, that image has changed.

“She just doesn’t go after it anymore. She’s learned all she has to learn about racism. She’s already married to this black man, her kids are already adults … it’s not her problem anymore.”

Not uncommon in mixed families, Smith’s skin tone versus her older sister has also shaped her upbringing and identity.

“It’s interesting, she’s actually significantly lighter than me,” said Smith. Growing up, her sister was often made fun of for being “white.”

DailyCollegian.com She thinks their difference in skin tones have affected them.

“Our skin tones are constantly commented in a pair.

Like, ‘Adrianne’s dark and Makayla’s light.’” Even activities like going to the beach remind her of this, when Smith turns much darker than her sister in the sun.

Growing up, they also had very different social circles.

Smith attributes this to their different environments: Smith went to a public high school in Boston where most of her friends were mix-gendered people of color. Her sister went to a private, all female, predominantly white Catholic high school, where a lot of her friends were white women.

However, people falsely attributed the different friends groups to the sisters’ respective skin tones. “It was literally just our circumstances that put us there, but it was almost accredited to the fact that she was lighter than I was,” said Smith.

All this has affected her outlook on racism.

“I don’t believe racism will ever really go away,” said Smith. Despite progress due to the current Black Lives Matter movements, she believes society is too selfish, competitive and focused on comparison, and there will always be some form of discrimination.

“If you want to be the best, there has to be something that’s lower. So there’s always going to be a different standard.” Smith mentioned colorism, which is the discrimination of people of color amongst themselves. She said the common idea of a future where everyone will eventually interbreed and be some shade of brown would not eradicate racism.

“So you hear these things, and you’re like, ‘Hm, okay.

So when we get there, then what? Is that the standard of racism is over?’ No. That’s just when other things kick in. Then it’s literally all about shades. We have all these arbitrary lines of what is black and what is white and what is other. Obviously, those are all

shady,” she said. And if skin color is not the basis for discrimination, she said, it would be something else, like hair type or eye color.

“For most people they can seem like gray lines, which they are. For others, it’s just hardened fact.”

‘Talitha koum’ Besides attending Church of Christ in Chicopee on Sundays, Smith is also an alto singer and vice president of the UMass Gospel Choir.

“I don’t think I’m good, I just like to sing,” she said.

She also attends Bible study on weeknights with the Cornerstone Christian Fellowship Club on campus.

To still get her “fix” of being around animals, she works at the barn for a few hours a week. It is goats and sheep instead of primates, but she said, “It’s enough.”

Smith’s family is not devoutly religious, so her relationship with God came her sophomore year of high school when she began reading the Bible on her own. One of her favorite books is John.

Her favorite story, which she wants to base her future tattoo on, is in Mark when Jesus raises a girl from the dead.

As the (abbreviated) story goes, Jesus is travelling and comes to the house of a man desperate for a miracle. The man’s daughter is dead, but Jesus says, “The child is not dead but asleep.”

Jesus says to the seemingly dead girl, “Talitha koum!” which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” This is what Smith wants her tattoo to say.

“When I think of that story, I think of me as a little girl and how there are times when I can be spiritually dead,” she said. When things seem hopeless, Jesus still cares and insists, “She’s only sleeping.”

The full story is available at www. dailycollegian.com.

Sarah Gamard can be reached at sgamard@umass.edu or on Twitter @SarahGamard.

SARAH GAMARD/COLLEGIAN

Despite progress in the Black Lives Matter movement, Smith predicts racism will never truly go away.

THEATER REVIEW

Mt. Holyoke’s ‘No Exit’ gives new twist on existentialism

By Rachel Ravelli Collegian Staff

Who knew we could apply Sartre’s theory of existentialism and the depths of hell to social media?

This past weekend, the Mt. Holyoke Theatre Department performed Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 four-person play “No Exit” at Rooke Theatre. This one-act, one-hour, studentperformed play was arguably the clearest metaphor for existentialism, a philosophy popularized by Sartre and Camus in 1940s France. It proposes that the individual is capable of freeing their own will from others’ expectations.

Although the play follows Sartre’s script, which does not imagine any of today’s technology, Sartre’s idea of the self as defined by others is applicable to the motives of social media.

The director, Laura Donovan, challenges the audience to consider Sartre’s message in the context of their own lives, using memorable lines such as, “I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”

The stage is Sartre’s “drawing room,” a windowless, mirror-less room in Hell.

Within this room are three chairs and an abstruse centerpiece of pipes stretching in every direction. The drawing room exemplifies how the three “damned” characters illustrate one another, defining the outlines of their being within a blank, confined space as limited as their own minds.

This interpretation included a fast-clicking noise throughout the play. This fast-clicking sound is similar to a computer’s mouse and

keyboard, and occurs at each moment a character is defined through the perspective of another, intertwining Sartre’s philosophy with the twentyfirst century’s – the individual is validated through each click within a confined screen much like Sartre’s drawing room.

The increasing intensity synchronized between Joseph (Laakan McHardy), Inez (Jenny Daniels) and Estelle (Caledonia Wilson) is a preoccupied love and, therefore, hate for one another, demonstrating Sartre’s philosophy that other people are hell.

One by one the characters are introduced throughout the first 25 minutes of the play. The large door, resembling a mattress, roars open and a bright blue light pours into the white drawing room.

Each of the three characters, damned to hell, walks around

the steps and down into the room.

As they walk, they let out a menacing laugh unique to Donovan’s production versus the original text. The frightening pitch of this laugh again arrests the audience toward the end of the play, when the characters understand that they have been brought to Hell, this absurdity, by the perspectives of one another.

This laughter is one example of Donovan’s unique portrayal of Sartre’s existentialism.

Donovan also used dance as a captivating motif, further synchronizing each mind as it is folded between and defined by the other. Whenever there was dance, the lights changed to a neon color and the characters locked eyes with one another. One particularly moving configuration of dance was during Estelle’s daydream of waltzing with a

man who has forgotten her since her death. Reddish spotlights gathered around Estelle as she glided around the room while Joseph and Inez looked on. “Carnivalse,” a piano solo by Canadian pianist Chilly Gonzales, is an archaic, creepy piece carefully selected by Donovan to invite the audience into Estelle’s retreat. Estelle’s lost space uses escape to extinguish Hell, yet, through desire and loss, empowered it for those mesmerized by her movement. Wilson’s graceful dance performance gripped the audience’s attention and, most evidently, herself.

The most powerful performance was Jenny Daniels as Inez. She is a strong-willed, masculine female in tattoos, baggy clothes and black makeup, particularly contrasting Wilson’s Estelle, a beautiful, Parisian blonde in a sparkling

blue dress and bright silver heels. Inez, in any adaptation, is the play’s most honest and dramatic character; Daniels fearlessly propelled her voice, foolishly danced around, and expressed in both her face and gestures an anger genuine to the character and to the complex lines she is prescribed: “I prefer to choose my Hell. I prefer to look you in the eyes and fight it out face to face.”

Next semester, Rooke Theatre will be staging “Fefu and Her Friends,” a play by Maria Irene Fornés, directed

by Mount Holyoke student Noah Tuleja from Feb. 25-28.

Tickets are sold at the Rooke Theatre box office. More information can be found at the Mount Holyoke Theatre Department website.

Rachel Ravelli can be reached at rravelli@umass.edu.

Opinion Editorial THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

“I am your father.” - Darth Vader

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Editorial@DailyCollegian.com

Give me Berk or give me death You might think the most cream. Like, let’s calm down. I’m important part of your life is a college student, not a 40-yearschool, work or partying, but old woman on a diet.

Third place, as we all know, Gabby Vacarelo is dear old Franklin Dining let’s be real: it’s food. Here at Commons. I rarely go there the University of Massachusetts, because it’s out of my way; there are four dining commons. my trips to Frank are usually Only two of them really matter, self-rewards after picking up a and you all know which ones I’m prescription at the University talking about.

Health Services pharmacy or Okay, I might be exaggeratjust when I feel like taking a ing a bit; I have to admit that Berkshire, Hampshire, Franklin trek to the other side of campus. and Worcester all have their own My favorite thing about these rare visits to Frank isn’t the food perks.

Let’s start with Berkshire – though it is adequate – but Dining Commons, the pride and rather the environment. While joy of the UMass culinary expeI adore the beautiful chaos of rience. It may be difficult to find Berk, the calmness of Frank fills seating during peak times (trying to snag one of the comfy me with serenity. I especially booths is like the Hunger Games love the huge windows with the 2.0), but we all know it’s worth it. colorful pull-down shades and Pasta Pronto, the quesadillas, the the large tables that are perfect vegetarian station, the pancake for groups. Frank’s whole vibe bar – what’s not to love? While reminds me of that one friend all the other DCs tend to be hit or you really like but don’t hang out miss, Berk appeals to everyone, besides possibly Satan. Not to with much, and when you get mention that the Berk dishwash- together you’re reminded of just ers are the kings of this school. If how awesome they are. you ever want good party jams, I Last, and definitely least, is

Rhetoric not to be blamed for acts of violence In the wake of the shooting at Giffords. the Planned Parenthood clinic in Every public tragedy is a Colorado Springs, there was a con- Rorschach test in which partisan people see their own biases conLucas Coughlin firmed in an inkblot of insanity and evil. Unless there is evidence of concerted effort among liberal media spiracy behind the attacks or specific and politicians to pin the attack on cases where speakers directly called two things. for violence against a certain target, One of them, predictably, was observers should refrain from blaminsufficient restriction of Second ing large groups, social movements, Amendment rights. religions, et cetera, for the actions of The other alleged cause of the an individual. shooting is incendiary right-wing The left’s collective indictment of rhetoric, especially related to the certain speech as the impetus for the dissemination of videos highlight- Colorado Springs attack is unsuring the grisly practices of certain prising; the Second Amendment is Planned Parenthood clinics. Bernie not the only item in the Bill of Rights Sanders, in relation to the attacks, they oppose. said in a press release that he hopes, Progressives have long envied the “people realize that bitter rhetoric can have unintended consequences.”

This line of reasoning is referred to colloquially as the “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” argument, and “hate-speech” laws on the books in its implication is that those who Europe, and the campaign to outengage in polemics are essentially law unsavory speech is often tied to liable when someone commits an the threat of precipitant violence. In act of violence in the name of the fact, the “fire in a crowded theater” canard comes directly from a line speaker’s cause.

Sanders is, of course, not the only in Oliver Wendell Holmes’ majority politician to use this kind of logic. opinion in the 1919 Supreme Court Chris Christie was one of many case Schenck v. United States. This conservatives to suggest that Black ruling upheld Woodrow Wilson’s exeLives Matter was at least partially crable Espionage Act of 1917, which responsible for various police mur- allowed for the jailing of anti-war ders during 2015. Politicians of both activists, most of who were socialleft and right blamed overheated ists like plaintiff Charles Schenck partisanship for the 2011 shooting and famed activist and presidenof then-Congresswoman Gabby tial candidate Eugene Debs. For a

“Pasta Pronto, the quesadillas, the vegetarian station, the pancake bar – what’s not to love?”

self-declared socialist like Bernie Sanders to be applauding this same line of thinking is a revealing bit of historical irony.

Progressives today seem to believe that humans are essentially malleable, and as such must be protected from bad influences.

The censorious impulse that once sought to ban novels like “Ulysses” and “Lolita” is evident now in the demand to prevent people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Christina Hoff Summers from speaking on college campuses.

It is also evident in the infamous “Citizens United” case, the controversial campaign-finance decision that at its heart is actually about the right of a group to air a film criticizing Hillary Clinton. Really, the clamoring over SuperPacs and “dark money” is just another example of the left’s condescending attitude towards the average American, as if one too many Koch-sponsored ads will flip votes from Hillary to Trump (not that the Koch brothers would ever support Trump).

From decrying offensive or “problematic” television to suggesting that speech is violence per se, it is the goal of the paternal state and its supporters to keep its children-citizens from being exposed to naughty ideas. We will have to think for ourselves or elect the new censors to do our thinking for us.

strongly recommend hitting up the dish room for their playlist.

Plus, Late Night at Berk is always on point.

However, we should definitely talk about what’s up with the fries now. I’m interested in the soft golden potato goodness that Berk previously provided on a daily basis, not the knock-off Hamp fries they’re trying to poison us with now. I’ll keep eating them since Berk is my religion, but I just want some answers here.

The runner-up is Hampshire Dining Commons, obviously.

This is the option for all the health fanatics and sustainability majors. My best friend and I constantly find ourselves bullying our eco-friendly, physically fit pals into walking the extra two minutes to Berk simply because we like to rebel against anything that is ultimately good for us.

But the truth is, I’m a sucker for Hamp’s breakfast on weekdays, their smoothies and juices are to die for, and they have the perfect seating arrangement. Hamp may not be my favorite DC, but I have to admit it’s the perfect sanctuary for alone time and quiet meals by yourself. Besides, where else can you find a place that not only allows, but encourages you to hurl knives down a chute? In all honesty, I don’t have any complaints besides the presence of frozen yogurt over ice

“Every public tragedy is a Rorschach test in which partisan people see their own biases confirmed in an inkblot of insanity and evil.”

Lucas Coughlin is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at lmcoughl@umass.edu.

Worcester Dining Commons. I must say, it’s the perfect place for crying. I’ve taken my fair share of rainy walks to Northeast to sob into my food in peace, because public crying is more fun when everyone else is just as alone and sad. On a positive note, my sources tell me that sometimes they don’t lock the doors after midnight because, let’s be real, who would ever go to Worcester, let alone after it has closed? The staff probably double checks the locks now but, hey, if you’re ever up for an adventure and a bowl of 2 a.m. cereal, Worcester could be the place for you.

As we all know, these are just my personal opinions as a diehard Berk girl. You might find yourself a Hamp hippie, a passionate supporter of Worcester’s mood-killing essence or a worshipper of Frank’s mediocrity.

Whatever dining hall you choose to align your beliefs with, stand proud. UMass Dining is a beautiful gift that we should all learn to appreciate a little more, except for when they play live music when you’re fighting a hangover.

Gabby Vacarelo is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at gvacarelo@umass. edu.

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Tuesday, December 8, 2015

TACKO

By Mollie Walker Collegian Staff

Bria Stallworth’s impressive high school career foreshadowed the great attributes that she was going to bring to the UMass women’s basketball team. Just six games into the season, she has quickly become a standout player that shows promising contributions to her new team for the next three years.

Stallworth was a leading player at her high school for four years between Homewood-Flossmoor and Marist High School, earning varsity letters in all four basketball seasons she played.

“I started real organized basketball, around the third grade. I used to watch my dad play in his league and he kind of put me around it and then he finally put me in recreational basketball, so that’s really how I got started,” Stallworth said.

Her senior year, she earned the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Fourth Team All-State honors as well as being ranked the No. 33 point guard nationally according to ESPN. Although the distance from her hometown of Chicago, Illinois,

caused her to be hesitant about attending UMass, Stallworth believes it was the perfect choice for her in the end.

“When I came on my visit, it just felt right for me. I saw the team and how much we had going for us and what the future could be like,” Stallworth said. “And on top of that it had good academics so it was a good fit for me.”

In the freshman’s collegiate debut, Stallworth dropped 19 points and six assists while playing 38 of 40 minutes for the Minutewomen. On the season, she is leading the team in scoring, averaging 13.5 points per game, and has shot 90 percent from the free-throw line.

In November, Stallworth was honored as the Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Week for the week ending Nov. 16.

The point guard is a psychology major and plans to use her degree for her life after college if basketball doesn’t work out.

But it is apparent that basketball is her number one aspiration in life.

“I want every year to be better and better, I want to be able to prove people wrong with the team.”

Mollie Walker can be reached at molliewalker@umass.edu.

7

continued from page 8

sible when UMass is on defense.

Although Kellogg had nothing but praise for Fall, like any other freshman he’s still learning the style and tempo of playing college basketball, much like his own frontcourt of Holloway and Hines.

“He’s still learning how to play at the college level obviously being six games in for them. I think he’s still learning positioning, and how the refs are calling the game and things of that nature,” Kellogg said.

Kellogg added: “I’d say his best attribute is on the defensive end of the floor in the middle of that zone and just staying big and blocking shots. But if you can get to the rim, quite frequently he’s out

of position because he’s trying to block everything and that should be an opportunity for the other guys to clean up and get some easy ones.”

While no one on the Minutemen roster stands above 6-feet-11, in preparation for Fall they had Zach Turcotte (6-foot-7) stand on top of a onefoot box to simulate the size and presence of the Knight’s center.

“He kind of just had to stand there because I didn’t want him to fall on anyone or get hurt,” Kellogg said with a laugh.

“He was moving pretty good though for a fourfoot square.”

Andrew Cyr can be reached at arcyr@umass.edu, and followed on Twitter @Andrew_Cyr.

HOCKEY EAST

UNH tops rival Maine, NU takes No. 3 BC to OT

Wildcats top Black Bears, BC ties NU

By Thomas Johnston Collegian Correspondent

After a 3-3 tie in the opening game of their weekend series with New Hampshire, Maine traveled to Durham Saturday night for game two of the rivalry, but the Black Bears were bested by the Wildcats in a 5-2 defeat.

Andrew Poturalski and Maxim Gaudreault had huge nights for UNH (5-6-4, 2-1-4 Hockey East), each finishing with two goals. Gaudreault also added an assist.

Poturalski, the nation’s leading scorer with 14 goals and 16 assists in just 15 games, got the scoring started for the Wildcats just three minutes, 29 seconds into the contest.

Gaudreault followed this with another goal shortly after to put UNH up 2-0. Maine (4-9-4, 2-5-1 HEA) was able to answer with a goal from Cedric

Lecroix to cut the lead to 2-1 after the first period.

The Wildcats made the most of their scoring opportunities in the second period.

Gaudreault got his second goal of the contest 13 minutes into the period. Ara Nazarian scored on a power play two minutes later, giving UNH a 4-1 lead.

Maine wasn’t able to generate much offense in the third – their lone goal came with just three minutes to play from Steven Swaverly. Poturalski’s second goal came with under a minute to go to provide the 5-2 final.

As is typical with rivalry contests, there were multiple points where this game got very physical. A scrum at the end of the first period sent four players to the penalty box for a combined 16 minutes of penalty time.

New Hampshire will look to build off the win Friday night when they take on Dartmouth. Maine will have

to wait over three weeks before their next game, where they will take on UNH in hopes of avenging Saturdays loss.

Huskies force OT Saturday night Northeastern gave No. 3 Boston College all it could handle Saturday night, taking them to overtime where the game finished in a 3-3 tie.

The Eagles (13-1-1, 6-0-1 Hockey East) got out to a hot start, taking a two goal lead by the midway point of the first period on goals from Miles Wood and Alex Tuch.

It was looking like another BC blowout was about to take place, but Nolan Stevens found the back of the net for Northeastern (2-12-3, 0-8-3 Hockey East) just 30 seconds after the Eagles made it 2-0.

After a scoreless second period, Northeastern went on the attack in the third, and Lincoln Griffin tied the game for the Huskies with 11:28

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Four the perfect number for CFB playoff bracket

By Teddy Greenstein Chicago Tribune

Don’t you miss the BCS? The anger ... the controversy ... the threats of government intervention?

Nah, me neither.

College football’s selection Sunday was so clean, Larry David could not have complained. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would have offered their thumbs-up.

Every team is where it should be.

Michigan State skipped over Oklahoma into the No. 3 spot, a reward for a gamewinning, 22-play drive against Iowa in the Big Ten championship game that none other than Nick Saban termed “pretty awesome.”

Saban’s second-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide will be Michigan State’s opponent in the Cotton Bowl, providing a nice storyline. Saban coached in East Lansing from 1983-87 as an assistant and guided the program as head coach from 1995-99.

The secondary coach he hired? Mark Dantonio, who has turned Michigan State into an elite program, winning at least 11 games in five of the last six seasons.

“He’s certainly done a better job than I ever did there, I can tell you that,” said Saban, who went 34-24-1 at Michigan State and noted Sunday that the program was on probation when he arrived.

The matchup is also delectable because Alabama opened

as a nine-point favorite, perfect for Michigan State, a program that likes the underdog tag more than Rocky Balboa.

“We’re going to play on edge,” Dantonio said.

The other semifinal pits the nation’s top-ranked team (Clemson) against its hottest (Oklahoma) in the Orange Bowl. The Sooners have averaged 52 points in winning seven straight since falling to Texas on Oct. 10.

The selection committee also did right by Iowa, keeping the Hawkeyes ranked ahead of Ohio State. As a result, Iowa gets a date with Stanford in Pasadena.

The Rose Bowl might have preferred to welcome the Buckeyes, considering how they mauled Michigan in the Big House and have a fan base that did not shell out cash to travel to Indianapolis.

But right is right. Iowa missed out on a playoff spot by about the length of a football – Connor Cook’s fourth-and-2 option run with less than two minutes to play – and deserved to be rewarded with its first trip to the Granddaddy of Them All since 1991.

And how about a Fiesta Bowl pitting Notre Dame and Ohio State? Urban Meyer used to call Notre Dame, where he coached under Lou Holtz and Bob Davie, his “dream job.”

It’s all so perfect, it just doesn’t seem right for a sport in which fans and power brokers like Jim Delany could never agree on a postseason.

Longtime readers will recall that I used to be in the anti-playoff camp over concerns about damaging the value of the regular season, uneasiness about forcing nonpaid athletes (many of whom are legitimate students) to play 15 games and the concern that a four-team playoff would make fans thirst for an eightteamer.

Can we now all agree that four is the perfect number?

Check out the rankings: Iowa is No. 5, followed

by Stanford, Ohio State and Notre Dame. If you included those teams, you would have effectively rendered the Big Ten title game irrelevant. And Michigan State’s stunning victory in Columbus. And Notre Dame’s loss to Stanford.

And you’d still have No. 9 Florida State and No. 10 North Carolina, two-loss teams just like Notre Dame, howling over perceived injustice.

You’d also be demanding that some athletes suit up for 16 games, further blurring the line between college and professional sports, and you’d be asking fan bases to choose among traveling to a conference title game, quarterfinal playoff game and potential semifinal and championship game.

I’m a guy who’ll watch the Idaho Potato Bowl, but in this case, enough is enough.

The next time someone howls about the need for an eight-team playoff, remember this season.

remaining in the game.

The BC penalty kill unit had an excellent day, not allowing any goals on six Northeastern power plays.

They were tested, having to kill off a five-minute major in the second period as well as a 5-on-3 power play in the third period. The highlight of the penalty kill came with a shade under nine minutes to play, when Colin White stole the puck and scored the goahead goal on a breakaway.

This short-handed goal put the Eagles back on top, and seemed to take the steam out of the Northeastern attack.

The goal extended White’s

scoring streak to nine games.

Playing behind for most of the period, Northeastern was forced to put the puck on net as often as possible, outshooting the Eagles 15-4 in the third period. And with just 2:14 left in the game, Steven collected a rebound and put it into the net for his second goal of the game, tying the game 3-3 and forcing overtime. Neither team could find the net in the extra period, where the game finished in a tie.

In Sunday’s series finale between the two teams, Northeastern took a 3-1 lead into the third period, but three unanswered goals from BC

gave the Eagles a come from behind 4-3 victory. Matthew Gaudreau scored the game winning goal for BC at eight minutes, 22 seconds of the final frame to complete the comeback.

Northeastern will look to build on their near upsets next weekend when they face Michigan State at home.

Boston College takes on Notre Dame Thursday night for their final game before Christmas break.

Thomas Johnston can be reached at tjohnston@umass.edu

THE MASSACHUSETTS DAILY COLLEGIAN

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Sports@DailyCollegian.com

@MDC_SPORTS

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Youth at the forefront for Minutewomen Underclassmen fuel UM’s offensive fire

By Tom Mulherin Collegian Staff

The core make-up of the Massachusetts women’s basketball team isn’t the kind seen on a typical depth chart, where a squad is usually characterized by a stronger reliance on veteran players.

Instead, the Minutewomen (2-4) have taken a much different appearance, as many of the biggest contributions from the team have actually been from underclassmen.

Built around senior Rashida Timbilla, UMass’ starting lineup so far this season has featured three sophomores and a freshman at point guard. Outside of that group, only junior Kymber Hill joins Timbilla as an upperclassman to have logged at least 20 minutes in a game. Therefore, with so

many minutes being allotted to the youngsters, the stage is set for them to play a big part in each contest.

“They contribute a lot,” Timbilla said. “Their attitudes are great. They bring up scoring, they bring up defense. Every aspect of the basketball game, I think, is what our underclassmen give us.”

With that said, some of the veteran players have made their mark as well. Timbilla has been a key cog in the defensive system for a few years now, all while adding a team-leading 8.7 rebounds per game. Hill has made a similar impact, and junior Alyx Stiff has shown scoring abilities with an 11 point game against Ball State on Nov. 28.

The fact of the matter, however, is that the biggest performances have come from the sophomores, as well as freshman Bria Stallworth.

Stallworth currently leads

the team in scoring with 13.5 points per game. Returning starter Cierra Dillard has established herself as the leader of the offense in the meantime, as her 11.5 points and 3.5 assists per game set the pace for the Minutewomen’s balanced offensive approach.

Add red-shirt sophomore Alyssa Lawrence to the mix, and you’ll find the group’s top-three scorers to be underclassmen.

“The ability to score,” coach Sharon Dawley said when asked what the upsides of the younger players were.

“We’ve seen a lot of scoring punch from younger kids. I would say an upside is different people stepping up in a very early season. We’ve already seen several different people step up.”

Overall, the younger pieces of the rotation have been playing well for the Minutewomen. In the big picture, however, UMass

has a losing record entering its second home game on Wednesday. Faced with tough matchups on the road, the team has struggled to maintain consistent play throughout the early part of the season.

This led Dawley to address a few development issues that come with having a younger squad, making a point that the learning process takes longer than it does with the veterans.

“Sometimes it’s two steps forward, a step back,” she said. “We might only look like what we’ve been focusing at practice, and something else that we conquered a couple of weeks ago, it might not be up to that standard that we want. … It might take longer than we like, but we’re making strides.”

On top of the already apparent difficulties in learning on the go, such a slow start to a season can normally hinder the spirits

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Knight and day

SHANNON BRODERICK/COLLEGIAN

Cierra Dillard handles the ball in a game against Buffalo on Nov. 21. of a player of less experience. With the majority of the team made up of such athletes, staying positive is important to find success, and that’s the message Timbilla and the other veterans have relayed.

“It’s a long year,” she said.

“Obviously, we didn’t get off to the start we wanted to and

we took a couple losses early, but the main thing is to just stay positive each and every day and get better each and every day. They’re keeping their heads up.”

Tom Mulherin can be reached at tmulheri@umass.edu.

Big men face a tall task in Falls UCF led by seven foot six Tacko Falls

JUDITH GIBSON-OKUNIEFF/COLLEGIAN

Rashaan Holloway posts up against Boston University last Wednesday, a game UMass would go on to win 99-69 at the Mullins Center.

UMass hopes for bounce-back win

By Anthony Chiusano Collegian Staff

The first time the Massachusetts men’s basketball team suffered defeat this year, the Minutemen quickly rebounded with a 30-point victory over Boston University.

Now coming off its second loss to Mississippi last Saturday, UMass looks for a similar bounce back performance in Orlando, Florida.

The Minutemen (5-2) face Central Florida (3-3) Tuesday night in their first road game at a non-neutral site since Nov. 17 at Harvard. According to UMass coach Derek Kellogg, the team’s two-game road trip in the state of Florida will be an important test to see how the younger players respond to playing in a true road atmosphere.

“Every trip and every little stretch is important for this team. But coming off of a loss and having two games away from home, it will be (important) to play well on the road and come away with a victory or two obviously,” Kellogg told

reporters on Monday. “When you start playing higher-level teams like I mentioned going up against a team on the road that’s vastly improved quickly in Central Florida, you have to do the little things.”

After starting the year 0-2, the Knights have won three of their last four games to reach .500 for the season. They are led by sophomore guard Adonys Henriquez (11.5 points per game) and 7-foot-6 freshman center Tacko Fall (10.5 points per game, 6.3 rebounds per game, 2.8 blocks per game).

“I think they are starting to find their identity now. They struggled a bit early but they have found it now,” Kellogg said. “The big kid, Tacko, is starting to get better every game so I think it’s a combination of a different things and I think they are a much better team than maybe their opening two games where they didn’t play so well.

“They have size and they have a team identity, and they have a 7-foot-6 guy who can alter the game in a lot of different ways.”

Fall was granted an academic waiver and was cleared to play shortly before UCF’s

season opener. In charge of guarding Fall on Tuesday will be the tandem of Rashaan Holloway (6-foot-11), Malik Hines (6-foot-10) and Tyler Bergantino (6-foot-9).

“He’s tall and he appears thin but the kid is powerful, like 300 pounds I think. You really just have to use your body, got to try to outrun him, got to out-physical him,” said Bergantino, who pointed out the tallest guy he’s previously faced was a 7-foot-4 opponent in high school. “I think the important job for us is to be physical, make plays at the right time and get rebounds to help our guards out.

He added: “This guy, he’s just standing there and just dunking it. It’s almost comical when watching film. It’s unbelievable and I’ve never seen something like that before.”

For Bergantino, a senior from Springhill, Florida, Tuesday’s game serves as a homecoming. He said various family members will be in attendance for his first game in Florida since coming to UMass.

“I’m so thankful to be able to come back here,” Bergantino said. “I’ve been

here so many times. It’s really nostalgic I guess you can say.

It’s definitely a privilege and I’m really thankful for it.”

The Knights employ a 2-3 zone defense which is disguised well throughout the course of the game, according to Kellogg. The Minutemen are coming off a 74-64 loss to Ole Miss in which they struggled to attack against the Rebels’ 1-3-1 zone.

In the loss, UMass point guard Jabarie Hinds finished with one point on a second half free throw while finishing 0-of-5 from the field. He entered the game scoring a team-high 19.7 points per contest.

“Last game I was being a little passive. I have to get out there and be aggressive and try to make plays earlier,” Hinds said. “I just want to get back and be aggressive. Last game I just wasn’t feeling it and had a bad game but tomorrow I’m going to get back out there and get back on track.”

Tuesday’s game starts at 7 p.m. at CFE Arena and can be viewed on ESPN3.

Anthony Chiusano can be reached at achiusano@umass.edu and can be followed on Twitter @a_chiusano24.

ing for a kid who’s a freshman.”

Fall took home Atlantic Athletic Conference Rookie of the Week

By Andrew Cyr Collegian Staff Honors this past week which included a 23-point, Massachusetts men’s 11-rebound performance basketball head coach against Stetson in a 94-85 Derek Kellogg remembers win for the Knights. vividly his first encounter UMass (5-2) point guard with Central Florida cenJabarie Hinds said going ter Tacko Fall. up against someone Fall’s “I’ve watched this kid size is something that he’s in AAU ball and the Nike never seen before.

Circuit, and walked by “Nah, I never even seen him in the hallway and anyone 7-foot-6 in my I’ve never been around life, honestly. It’s crazy,” anyone that big,” Kellogg Hinds said. said. “This guy’s huge.”

Fall anchors the middle Standing 7-foot-6, 300 of the UCF defense as it pounds, Fall made his primarily features a 2-3 way to the United States zone that has held oppoafter growing up in Dakar, nents to an average of 68.7 Senegal, before the start points per game. Kellogg of his junior year of high said that he expects school. the Knights to primar Fall was in the national ily play zone against the news earlier this season Minutemen, especially not for his height, but his after they scored a seaeligibility status with the son-low 64 points against NCAA. Despite having a Ole Miss’ zone Saturday.

3.6 GPA in high school, Kellogg said that it wa s because of unclear if Fall’s size Fall was on the back going to end of UCF’s be cleared zone, the by the Knights are NCAA for able to gameligibility ble more on and even defense and threatened try a variety to sue had of different his wish things to Derek Kellog, not been slow down UMass coach granted. opposing offenses.

However days before the season “He’s tall and he started Fall was cleared appears thin but the kid is to play and has since powerful, like 300 pounds excelled for the Knights I think. You really just (3-3) averaging 10.5 points have to use your body, per game, 6.3 rebounds got to try to outrun him, and blocking a team- got to out-physical him. leading 17 shots. Fall has I think the important job started at center for all six for us is to be physical, make plays at the right of UCF’s games.

“The guy’s huge, he can time and get rebounds dunk without jumping. He to help our guards out,” really affects every aspect Tyler Bergantino said. said that of the game. I’m hoping Kellogg we can get him into some Bergantino, along with Rashaan foul trouble and get the f re s h m e n Holloway and Malik game going fast enough where his size isn’t com- Hines, will take turns ing into play as much as guarding Fall and plans it possibly can,” Kellogg on giving him as many said. “His averages, if you different looks as posplay him over a 40 minute game, are kind of stagger- see TACKO on page 7

“I’ve watched this kid... and walked by him in the hallway and I’ve never been around anyone that big.”