The Miscellany News
Volume CXLVI | Issue 8
November 15, 2012
Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com
Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY
Family Partnership to host prison conference
Chenette seeks new senior req
Rachael Borné
CoNtriButiNG editor
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Rachael Borné/The The Miscellany News
Wants all seniors to complete a capstone project Danielle Bukowski News editor
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t the Sunday Nov. 11 VSA Council meeting, Dean of the Faculty Jonathan Chenette presented an “Academic Update” from his office, which included more discussion on the proposed requirement of a senior project. Chenette is proposing the idea that a culminative senior project be a requirement for all Vassar students prior to graduation. This project would not necessarily be tied to a student’s major. “All Vassar students deserve our commitment to prepare them to accomplish something extraordinary as seniors,” Chenette wrote in his PowerPoint presentation, “The curricular proposal under consideration would extend the benefits of such transformative senior work to every Vassar student.” Chenette began his presentation on the senior project requirement by showing graphs illustrating the increase in majors awarded at Vassar since 1970. That year there were 29 departments with majors awarded, and the number has increased steadily since. In 2006 the number of majors peaked at 51, and with the consolidaSee ACADEMICS on page 3
End the New Jim Crow Action Network meets at the Family Partnership center to plan Saturday’s conference “Mass Incarceration: The Shame of Our Nation.”
n her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, author Michelle Alexander offers a hard-hitting critique of crime and punishment in America. She explains, “The fate of millions of people—indeed the future of the black community itself—may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.” This idea serves as the underlying premise of End the New Jim Crow Action Network (E.N.J.A.N.), a local community activist group organized against mass incarceration, racism and inequality in the criminal justice system. While the group started as a “Community Read” held at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library at the Family
Partnership Center. E.N.J.A.N. has grown to do local actions and offer educational literature to the community through public tabling . E.N.J.A.N. will be hosting a conference this Saturday, Nov. 17 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Family Partnership Center called “Mass Incarceration: The Shame of Our Nation.” The conference will take place in conjunction with an earlier film screening by Existence is Resistance and Nana Dankwa entitled Hip Hop Is Bigger Than The Occupation that will be happening tonight at 7 p.m. in the Spitzer Auditorium in Sanders Classroom and then again this Friday at 6 p.m. in the Family Partnership Center Auditorium. Both the screenings and the conference are intended to build solidarity for the E.N.J.A.N. movement and provide education for community members about injustices related to the Prison-Industrial Complex. See E.N.J.A.N. on page 6
Public library referendum splits Poughkeepsie Bethan Johnson and Carrie Plover
$6.5 mil. proposal would fund library move and expansion
assistaNt News editor aNd Guest reporter
W
hile the vast majority of the attention from last week’s election centered on the presidential and congressional races, Poughkeepsie residents have tentatively voted to approve a controversial referendum to a build a new library. The referendum, which will not be officially approved until all of the absentee ballots come in around Thanksgiving, proposed spending $6.55 million to move and expand its local library branch to Boardman
Street. The Poughkeepsie Public Library District, a special legislative district created to provide public library service to the residents of the City and Town of Poughkeepsie, believes the referendum will be approved. According to reports from the election commissions for the 68 voting districts, 9,682 resi-
dents cast assenting ballots while 9,292 voters said ‘no’; the vote is split 51% to 49% in favor of the referendum, pending absentee ballots. The Library District, advocates of the referendum, views its passage as the final phase of its improvement campaign. The Arlington Branch Library, located
on Haight Street, is complimented by the Adriance Memorial Library, which is across town on Market Street. In accordance with the District’s three-step plan, the Memorial Library has been under construction for several years. The move is described in the fall edition of the Library District’s newsletter, The Rotunda. It states, “The final phase of the overall plan, is the renovation and redevelopment of branch library services in the Town of Poughkeepsie.” This See TAXES on page 4
Four Pillars celebrates Men’s soccer season ends with all aspects of hip-hop loss to Brandeis at NCAA finals Queens rapper Action Bronson to headline HipHop 101 event Burcu Noyan
assistaNt arts editor
ip-hop is having its birthday this month once more—what better way to celebrate than a big, celebratory bash? And Hip Hop 101 is the host once more. The group is again throwing its annual Four Pillars showcase to mark November— Hip-Hop History Month—and the organization’s 10th anniversary. A performance by New York rapper Action Bronson, numerous Northeastern hip hop artists and locals will feature in the event, which will take place on Friday, Nov. 16 from 8 p.m. to midnight in the Villard Room. “Hip-hop is more than just the music. It’s a lifestyle, it’s art, it’s dance, it’s fashion, and it’s a culture,” explained Hip Hop 101 campus liaison and executive board member Tiarra Dickens
Inside this issue
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FEATURES
Vassar Haiti Project extends reach to Poughkeepsie
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courtesy of Alonso Nichols
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’14, in an emailed statement. In turn, the event takes up this wide range that makes up the culture. “Four Pillars” refers to the four key elements of hip-hop: MCing, DJing, break dancing, and graffiti. The headline act, Action Bronson, hails from Flushing, Queens. The artist used to cook in New York City, and his raps are known to be about food. “We’re really excited to get Action Bronson, who is actually a really big deal,” explained Reilly. “Luckily, the general body of Hip Hop 101 really wanted him and we went after him very aggressively, and ended up getting him.” Six emcees will trade off hosting the event. Chef TC Weaver, the familiar face behind the Grill station in ACDC, and MCs Grizz (Charles Hoffman ’14), Sik Nik (Nikolai Romanov ’15) and ATS (Aaron Steinberg ’13) are each Vassar community members in the emcee lineup. Weaver was one of the founding members of Hip Hop 101 in November 2002, and has since continued to be a key member of the organization. Local Poughkeepsie rappers D. Weathers and Fly Why make up the remaining two emcees. See HIP-HOP on page 16
The Men’s soccer team played in Waltham, Massachusetts last Saturday, where they ended their otherwise strong season. After last year’s win at the Liberty League Championships, they ended this season with a final record of 13-5-3. Meaghan Hughes reporter
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fter three months of practices and games, the Vassar men’s soccer season has come to a close. Though the team lost the Liberty League Championships last week, their terrific record qualified them
OPINIONS
Staff Editorial: Our thoughts on the social awareness requirement
for the NCAA Division III finals. They then advanced past the first round of the tournament for the first time in thirteen years. It may have taken more practices and a few extra workouts, but the players would certainly agree that it was worth it. The Brewers had a busy weekend
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in Waltham, Mass., where the NCAA finals were held. Their first game was on Saturday, Nov. 10 against Tufts University. Despite having to fight the initial intensity of Tufts, who had a strong game in the first half, Vassar came away with a shutout win in overtime. See NCAA FINALS on page 20
Students to perform play on CA’s Prop. 8
The Miscellany News
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November
Thursday
VISA Trivia Night
6:00pm | Faculty Commons | VISA
Part of the International Education Week program. “Hip Hop is Bigger Than the Occupation” Screening 7:00pm | Sanders Audit | Various
A documentary about a ten day journey of artists traveling through the West Bank, Palestine, teachinga nd performing Non Violent Resistance. Lecture by Writer Tao Lin 7:00pm | Taylor 203 |ViCE
Tao Lin discusses and reads from his book “Shoplifting From American Apparel.” Final Showings
8:00pm | Kenyon | VRDT
“Henry IV” Parts I and II
8:00pm | Chapel | Merely Players
“The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union” 8:00pm | Powerhouse Black Box Theater | Drama
Two forgotten spacemen, a Scottish couple, a Russian stripper and others all search for the same thing: a genuine human connection. “Sophistafunk”
10:00pm | Mug |ViCE
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November
Friday
Midnight Bowling
7:00pm | Off-campus | Prog. Board
Free bowling and transportation! “HEAR HERE”
8:00pm | RH200 | Unbound
A devised piece of experimental theater relating to the theme of REVOLUTION. Final Showings
8:00pm | Kenyon | VRDT
“Henry IV” Parts I and II
8:00pm | Chapel | Merely Players
“4 Pillars”
8:00pm | Villard | Hip Hop 101
(See this week’s Arts section for the full story!) “The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union” 8:00pm | Powerhouse Black Box Theater | Drama
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November
Saturday
8:00pm | Sanders Audit | Unbound
A staged reading detailing the events of the trial of Proposition 8. Britney Mug Night
10:00pm | Mug | Davison
Rocky Horror Picture Show Midnight | Sanders Audit | NSO
Sunday
Fencing (M/W); Hudson River Invititational
Squash (M); Liberty League Championships
“Mass Incarceration: The Shame of our Nation”
Rugby (M & W) Playoffs
9:00am | Walker | VC Athletics
10:00am | Family Partnership Center (off-campus) | ENJAN
Squash (M); Liberty League Championships Noon | Kenyon | VC Athletics
Basketball (M) Tournament
2:00pm | Fitness Center | VC Athletics
“Money in Politics” Teach-in
3:00pm | RH300 | Democracy Matters
Senior Recital
4:00pm | Skinner | Music
Michael Cristina, trumpet and guitar, assistated by Thomas Sauer, piano.
9:00am | Kenyon | VC Athletics
8:00pm | RH200 | Unbound 8:00pm | Kenyon | VRDT
“Henry IV” Parts I and II
8:00pm | Chapel | Merely Players
“The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union” 8:00pm | Powerhouse Black Box Theater | Drama
VC Orchestra
8:00pm | Skinner | Music
Directed by Eduardo Navega VCPUNX Turkey Chaos 9:30pm | Mug | VCPUNX
VC Madrigal Singers 3:00pm | Skinner | Music
“Eternal Light.” Songs about light and death by Purcell, Wood, Morales, Whitacre, Tavener, Byrd, Hancock and others directed by Drew Minter. VSA Council
7:00pm | Main MPR | VSA
“Henry IV” Parts I and II
8:00pm | Chapel | Merely Players
Paper Critique
9:00pm | Rose Parlor | The Misc
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Decades Dance Party
10:00pm | Villard | Cushing
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Sit back, relax and enjoy new weekly episodes of The Campus Current, Current the WVKR radio show hailed as “the NPR of Vassar.” A campus news and events program, the show consists of a diverse collection of segments that attempt to capture a glimpse of things happening at Vassar. This week, the show highlights the voices and experiences of international communities and individuals at Vassar. Be sure to check Main Circle and the Multimedia Page for Campus Current updates and listen in as multiple forms of media unite during the weekly segment rounding up Miscellany News headlines. —Stephanie Muier, WVKR News Director and Producer of the Campus Current
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
Editor-in-Chief
David Rosenkranz
Senior Editors
11:00am | Farm | VC Athletics
“HEAR HERE” Final Showings
“8”
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November
November 15, 2012
Yours, David
Hannah Blume Ruth Bolster
Contributing Editor Rachael Borné
News Danielle Bukowski Leighton Suen Features Jessica Tarantine Opinions Lane Kisonak Humor & Satire Jean-Luc Bouchard Arts Adam Buchsbaum Sports Tina Caso Photography Katie de Heras Online Nathan Tauger Copy Maxelle Neufville Assistant News Bethan Johnson Assistant Features Chris Gonzalez Marie Solis Assistant Opinions Gabe Dunsmith Assistant Arts Burcu Noyan Assistant Photo Jacob Gorski Jiajing Sun Assistant Online Alessandra Seiter Assistant Design Aja Brady-Saalfeld Crossword Editor Jack Mullan Reporters Amreen Bhasin Chris Brown Meaghan Hughes Bobbie Lucas Steven Williams Columnists Zoe Dostal Joshua Sherman Juan Thompson Photography Cassady Bergevin Spencer Davis Rachel Garbade Emily Lavieri-Scull Design Palak Patel Bethany Terry Copy Farah Aziz Sophia Gonsalvez-Brown Jacob ParkerBurgard
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November 15, 2012
NEWS
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Council, students push for social awareness requirement Leighton Suen News Editor
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he Vassar Student Association (VSA) Academics Committee, under the leadership of Vice President for Academics Matt Harvey ’13, is currently putting together the details for a new social awareness curriculum. Rather than the general education social consciousness requirement that has been suggested in the past, this new multifaceted plan will include both an enhanced course of study, as well as efforts to foster discussions on social issues outside of the classroom. Proposals of social consciousness requirements have been discussed on the Committee on Inclusion and Excellence (CIE) for the past four years. “The proposal drafts have not been the same but the principle of requiring Vassar students to critically and creatively engage with the history, present and future of social justice has been consistent,” wrote CIE Cochair and Associate Professor of English Kiese Laymon in an emailed statement. “The question really is how we best organize and deploy our resources around ‘social justice’ or ‘social consciousness’ to best serve the evolving principals of the institution and the needs of our incredible student body.” All previous proposals have faced staunch pushback from College administration, several of whom accentuate the positive aspects of Vassar’s low-requirement, open curriculum. “Requirements can backfire,” wrote Dean of the Faculty Jonathan Chenette in an emailed statement. “Is it certain that our quantitative requirement consistently promotes a more positive sense of the importance of quantita-
tive competency in life?” When asked about the renewed discussions of a social consciousness requirement, Chenette pointed to a 2008 study known as the “tagging exercise.” In this study, professors were asked to tag their courses with content emphases. It was found that Vassar students in the class of 2007 took an average of 5.5 courses with “issues of race, gender, class, and/or ethnicity” as one of the top three tags over the course of their time at Vassar. Additionally, these students took an average of 3.7 courses that identified “develop awareness of one’s own subjectivity as it is formed by categories such as class, race, gender, or nationality” as one of the top three learning outcomes. Only four percent of students in the study took no courses that heavily emphasized these issues. “Vassar students are already taking coursework emphasizing social consciousness in large numbers, so a more socially conscious campus community may depend more on stronger efforts to link classroom learning and the responsibilities of living in community,” continued Chenette. “Such steps as greater attention to social justice and consciousness in orientation and campus life programming seem likely to yield more than a requirement would, given that almost all students already take such coursework voluntarily.” Despite these concerns, the Academics committee is forging ahead with a proposal that differs from drafts of previous years in one significant aspect. Rather than requiring students to pick a class from a list that would discuss the aforementioned social issues, such as those that already exist in the Women’s Studies and
Africana Departments, the newly planned curriculum would necessitate all departments and programs to include a course on social awareness in their major requirements. “This process is all about figuring out what the basic objectives are and then just applying it—mapping it onto the major, mapping it onto content that is already interesting to the students,” said Harvey. “That’s the big change coming out of the traditional idea.” A recent Academics committee meeting was devoted to outlining what the required coursework would look like. “Any Vassar education must include at least the basic language and analytical framework to analyze and discuss power hierarchies, systems of oppression, and issues of difference both globally and in our own lives,” wrote Kaylee Knowles ’13 and Faren Tang ’13, who have both been involved in the discussions, in an emailed statement. “Especially in light of recent tensions on campus, it is clear that we must at least have the tools to engage with each other in respectful and productive ways around these issues. We believe that equipping all students with the ability to discuss social injustice in meaningful ways will have a positive impact both on the kinds of discourses that exist on this campus, and the ways in which all Vassar graduates engage with themselves and others in the wider world.” “Some departments already offer this course,” said Harvey. “Some departments would work to put a course together. Other majors would collaborate and offer one course that is required for all of the majors in those various departments and programs, especially if they share similar perspectives. So just as an
example, some of the hard sciences might share a course that is relevant to all of them.” Harvey acknowledged that he expects opposition from departments. However, he and others on the Academics Committee believe strongly in the curriculum’s ideals. “Social consciousness is something that isn’t specific to discipline. All academics, all study, all scholarship is in a social setting and in a social context, and it has social significant, because in some sense, it relates to the lives of people…and if you don’t ever in the course of your extraordinary rich Vassar education talk about these topics—especially talking about these topics as they’re specifically relevant to the learning you’re doing, to the field you’re starting to commit yourself to—then I think you’ve missed a critical part of a liberal arts education, because you don’t know where your field is going to fit into social issues at large.” The new curriculum will include numerous components outside of classes, as well. Ideas brainstormed during the meeting include student seminars in the spring, an annual lecture series, short events during freshman orientation, collaborative workshops with the Office of Residential Life on applying these ideas in everyday life, bystander intervention courses on social issues and student-led workshops for professors on incorporating social awareness when leading a classroom. In regards to the goals of these combined efforts, Harvey stated, “[We hope] that everyone on campus [will be] able to have productive conversations and to usefully engage with issues of discrimination and so on and so forth on campus.”
Chenette views senior projects as important capstones ACADEMICS continued from page 1
Spencer Davis/The Miscellany News
tion of Greek and Roman Studies, it now rests at 48. Departments didn’t offer correlates until 1988, when two were made available. This number jumped to 30 departments offering correlates by 1998, and now rests at 38. Although the number of available majors has increased, and the number of students obtaining more than one major has increased, there has not been an increase in number of majors that require seniors to complete a capstone project. Of the 29 departments/programs at Vassar in 1970, 21 required a senior project; of the 48 departments/programs today, only 18 majors require seniors to complete a project. Chenette noted that roughly 60% of students a year choose to or are required to do culminating senior work, but that his proposal would extend this opportunity for innovative work to all students as an intensively mentored senior project required for all graduating seniors. While one option would be to have each department require its majoring seniors to complete a cumulative senior project, Chenette believes another idea would allow students to be more creative. “I actually think [a cumulative senior project] would be more exciting as a requirement for every student to graduate,” Chenette said, “That way seniors could weave in whatever it makes sense for them to weave in to their final project, and have a much more flexible set of experiences, which is very much in keeping with Vassar’s multidisciplinary curriculum.” Chenette envisions seniors using their JYA experience, volunteer work, field work, or other campus responsibilities to illuminate what they choose to work on for their senior project. He gave the example of a drama major heavily involved with VAST, who chose as his/her senior project to develop a drama production for the students he/she tutored, as a possible way of combining academic and outside passions in an exciting senior project. “It couldn’t be totally void of academic connection, it should still be grounded somehow in the academic work you’ve done at Vassar,” Chenette continued. “But I find this way of conceiving of [the intensively mentored senior project] more liberating, stimulating, and individualized than one in which each department has a senior major requirement.” One of the concerns with this requirement, which was brought up by a member of VSA Council, is that this proposed requirement would also be very time-intensive for faculty members. With all Vassar seniors working on
Dean of Faculty Jonathan Chenette spoke to the VSA Council on Nov. 11. He clarified his vision for senior work by stating that students’ projects should not be limited to traditional academic theses. a culminating project one or both of the semesters, more faculty would have to work with more seniors, and the College is committed to keeping the faculty size in its current state for the next few years. Chenette said that the logistics of this would still need to be discussed by the faculty, but that he did imagine one could count working with a certain number of project advisees as a course in a faculty member’s five-course teaching load that year. Should this decreased course-load option be considered, it would be necessary to implement one or more of the ideas Chenette brought up earlier this year, like setting 4 or 4.5 courses per semester as standard or limiting the number of majors a student can accrue. Chenette did note, “Another nice thing about making [the capstone project] a senior overall requirement rather than a major-specific requirement is that conceivably, departments that have smaller numbers of majors could still be significantly involved in mentoring such projects,” Chenette said, as a student wouldn’t have to work specifically with a professor in their major department. Some of the Chairs of the departments that already require their majors to complete a culminating senior project reiterated the neces-
sity of this requirement specifically for those majors. “The chemistry faculty continue to feel strongly that our year-long senior thesis capstone experience in chemistry is a vital part of completing a major in chemistry. Chemistry is an experimental science, and in order to experience and demonstrate expertise in the field, completion of a thesis is a highly valued part of the curriculum leading to a bachelor’s degree in chemistry,” wrote Joseph Tanski, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Chair of Chemistry, in an emailed statement. Greek and Roman Studies also requires its majors to complete a senior project. “While there have been moments when we revisited our senior project requirement, we have always, ultimately, agreed that it is too important a part of our major to be eliminated,” said Rachel Friedman, Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Studies and Chair of Greek and Roman Studies. “Our feeling is that the senior project provides students in our department with a crucial opportunity to reflect on their intellectual development in their four years at Vassar and to do work that is truly meaningful to them before they graduate…No work on an assignment for a class compares to the experience of developing and completing your own project over the
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
course of a year.” A senior thesis was required of majors in the Philosophy department for decades, but in 2010-2011 was made optional. “The decision to make the senior thesis optional was the result of years of thoughtful and often passionate discussion,” wrote Bryan Van Norden, Professor and Chair of Philosophy in an emailed statement. “The majority of the philosophy faculty are pleased with the new policy, which we feel places students at the center of teaching and learning, by creating different avenues for intellectual and personal growth that are appropriate to the diverse learning styles that students bring to Vassar. However…[several] of our most experienced professors opposed the change and continue to believe that the most exciting work accomplished by seniors has always taken place in the senior theses, and that a required thesis challenges students to push beyond their previous limits.” Dean Chenette scheduled a discussion at the regular faculty meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 14 to further consider the proposition of required senior work. Discussions began at a faculty retreat on “Envisioning Exciting Senior Work” in May 2012, the earliest stage of more widespread faculty deliberations on the idea of required senior work. “This week’s meeting is the phase of ‘how desirable is this type of work;’ the third phase would be discussing practicalities involved, if it is determined to be a desirable route, and what do we need to restructure to make it possible that every senior is able to do extraordinary work.” Chenette continued, “Then there would be a fourth phase, of asking whether the positives and benefits are worth whatever changes that would be required.” The Wednesday meeting was just the beginning of the second stage, and Chenette imagines that this phase will continue into more discussions in the future. To stay informed on how other schools implement school-wide requirements for cumulative senior work, Chenette looked into reports from several institutions, including Reed and Allegheny, which already require seniors to complete culminate projects. However, he noted that Vassar’s proposed program is not based off of any one school’s implemented plan. “I think we would be doing something quite different; yet there are things we can learn [from other schools], such as the options they allow in senior work for double majors—for example, whether they ask students to merge their two majors in a single senior project.”
NEWS
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News Briefs To-Go Cup Program Ended, Cups Remain
Although reusable cups at ACDC will remain an option for students, they will no longer be part of the to-go program. The program was introduced in August 2011 in hopes of following the success of the reusable to-go container program, which, According to Laura Leone, Director of Operations was implemented “with tremendous success, exceeding all our expectations and becoming a model.” The to-go cup program, however, has not been as successful as the to-go containers. Few people use the to-go cups in comparison to the container; Leone attributes this to students having their own beverage container they prefer to use instead of taking one from the Dining Center. Currently, students may rent a container for a deposit of $5 and a cup for a deposit of $8. After they use the container or cup and return it to the Dining Center, students are given the deposit back. Arndy Walker, who swipes students in during the day shift, says she sees about “seventy-five students at least [use the program daily], most for the container.” In the spring semester the container program will continue as is, but the cup program conditions will be altered. “We decided to continue making the cup available for anyone who is in need of a to-go beverage container and to do so for the same price point as the previous deposit.” However, it will not be returnable at the end of the year. —Anna Iovine, Guest Reporter Outside the Bubble: Puerto Rico Votes to become a State
In a referendum issued on Nov. 4, Puerto Rico voted in favor of joining the Union to become the 51st state of the United States. Now that it has, the decision will go before Congress and the President, who will work to decide the future of the island. The vote was a two-part question on the ballot. The first asked voters whether or not they wanted to let Puerto Rico remain a semi-autonomous territory of the US. Regardless of their responses to the first question, voters were then asked to vote for one of three alternatives: statehood, independence, or “sovereign free association,” which would grant the island more freedoms while still keeping it under U.S. control. According to the Huffington Post (“Puerto Rico Considers Statehood,” 11.13.12), just over 1.8 million people (in a total population of 4 million) came out to vote. 54% of those voters answered the first question with “no”. In response to the second question, statehood won with about 61% of the vote. Only about 1.3 million people voted for the second question, however, meaning that although “statehood” won the vote by about 350,000 votes, 500,000 Puerto Ricans (about 28% or the original voting bloc) opted to forgo the second question entirely. Many argue that because of this voting disparity, statehood is not actually supported by the majority of Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rican student Cecilia Grana-Rosa ’15 explains the uncertainty in Puerto Rico’s decision: “The majority of people feel like it’s ‘too big a star for the American flag, and too small a star to be independent.’” She goes on to show how her views differ with the “pro-state” ideals: “I’m pro-independence of Puerto Rico… Although I recognize, obviously, that Puerto Rico is absurdly, overwhelmingly, and entirely dependent on the United States now, I think if we start moving forward to become more self-sufficient and better the nation in terms of education, economy, etc, then in an ideal world we could work towards independence.” —Noble Ingram, Guest Reporter
November 15, 2012
Noyes team wins Brewer Trivia Night, as Cup gains momentum among students Leighton Suen and Eloy Bleifuss Prados News Editor and Guest Reporter
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n Saturday, Nov. 10, nine teams of up to eight students each competed for VCash prizes and House Cup points in Trivia Night, the latest event in the Brewer House Cup competition. “I created [Brewer House Cup] last year for the fall semester as a way to combine some of the efforts we already had on campus in a way that would promote house pride,” said the night’s Quiz Master, House Advisor for Cushing and Noyes Houses and Assistant Director for Residential Wellness Programs Terrence Hanlon. “Last year we brought together serenading and other events like that and this year we have a much more robust calender of events.” In the first round of trivia, teams were required to guess the mascots of institutions of higher learning ranging from Marist College to the University of Pennsylvania. The questions in the following three rounds did not have a constant theme, however. The twelve questions asked during the second round were from fields as varied as physics and zoology. “Played with dice and pawns, what classic board game gets its name from a Hindi word meaning 25?” asked Hanlon as the round’s fifth question. The answer was “Parcheesi.” He continued, “What is the avian-inspired slang word Canadians use to refer to their one dollar coin?” The answer was a “Loonie.” In the third round, questions requiring familiarity with Biblical passages and restaurant lingo were asked. “Abbreviated ‘T.M.,’ what practice was founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to help people achieve a higher consciousness?” was the third question in this round. The answer was “Transcendental Meditation.” Following a fourth round of questions, in which topics ranged from satirical authors to the periodic table, Hanlon excitedly announced the results of Trivia Night. Twerk
Team 6, composed of seven Noyesians and one Cushing resident, won with 38 points in the game. Their prize was 150 Brewer House Cup points and $150 in VCash. Twerk Team 6 narrowly bested the Elevators, composed of one Raymond and four Main residents, who had amassed 37 points. This feat translated to 100 Brewer House Cup points and $100 in VCash split between the team members. A team of seven Cushing residents, the Bo’s, received third place, earning 50 Brewer House Cup points and $50 in VCash. “It was actually a lot of fun,” said Adit Vaddi ’16 who had rallied together his team, the Bo’s, on Facebook. “The environment was good, and they had interesting questions... We formed two groups in Cushing, and we came and participated, and it felt good to come away with something.” Niko Schonsheck ’15, a member of Twerk Team 6, was similarly pleased with the event. “Trivia Night was a lot of fun and a great time,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “Thanks to a clutch answer about an obscure Californian college from our bay-area friend, Daniel Killian, we were able to establish an early lead.” He also credited fellow team member Alex Voynow ’15 as an integral part of the team. “I’ve always been a huge trivia fan,” wrote Voynow in an emailed statement. “I love playing Trivial Pursuit, watching Jeopardy, and procrastinating on Sporcle (a trivia website)...It was a sweet victory, especially now that each of us are 18 dollars in VCash richer, and Noyes’ Brewer House Cup points are leaving all the other dorms in the dust.” Schonsheck added, “The last round was a real nail-biter, but by only missing one question, we were able to win by the skin of our teeth, and now hopefully have enough VCash to do laundry until the end of the semester!” Ben Parra ’15, another member of the Twerk Team 6, summarized the win in an emailed statement: “We were a rag-tag bunch of warriors with nothing left to lose.
The competition was fierce to say the least; we were going up against the finest brains Vassar has to offer, but we had something they didn’t: a never-say-die spirit and a borderline-maniacal taste for victory.” Trivia Night undoubtedly sustained students’ interest the Brewer House Cup competition. “I’d say I’m engaged in the Brewer House Cup, because I think it’s good,” said Vaddi. “You represent your house by proving yourself and doing well in the Cup. The people in the House get closer together, and competition is always good. Based on house participation and the number of points achieved during the trivia competition, Noyes House received 153 Brewer House Cup points. Main and Cushing Houses followed with 100 points and 89 points, respectively. As a result, Noyes is currently in the lead for Brewer House Cup. “I am really happy our house is really active in the Vassar community,” wrote Noyes House President Eunice Roh ’15, who hopes that her house will maintain the lead in the competition, in an emailed statement. “I think our community really encourages being active by participating in campus-wide events.” Hanlon agreed that the enthusiasm of House Teams contributes to how well they do in the Brewer House Cup competition. “The houses that have been doing really well have had a lot of House Team energy driving the support for it,” said Hanlon, “But also, Noyes has had members to step up and lead the charge.” Students can look forward to more Brewer House Cup events this semester. This Saturday, Nov. 17, an art contest will take place at the Decades Dance Revolution. The house that decorates the best banners will receive points. The Vassar First Year Film Festival is also on the horizon. Participants will receive a prompt on Friday, Nov. 30, and have until the screening on Sunday, Dec. 2 to write and direct a film.
Advocates view referendum as beneficial to community, others see as it as tax hike TAXES continued from page 1 referendum will mean closing the Arlington Branch upon the completion of the new building. The need for a new library stems from the belief that the current branch cannot accommodate the needs of its patrons. The Arlington Branch, opened in 1992, is located at the rear of an office building, and is only 6,500 square feet. The Library holds around 28,000 to 30,000 volumes and has only one small room for meetings. According to The Rotunda, the District considers it “inadequate to support both the demand for materials and the changing role of the public library as a cultural community center.” Having planned on relocating for a number of years, the Library District detailed both the proposed costs and benefits of the Boardman Street Branch prior to Election Day through its newsletter and public meetings. The dissemination of information arose out of hopes that if voters could see the results of their ballot and taxes, they may more fully support the project. The proposed site for the building is a sixacre plot of land owned by the Faith Assembly of God. Currently, the Boardman location is home to a closed IBM power plant that construction managers plan to demolish. Purchasing this land will cost the District $700,000, compared with the $125,000 the District pays each year to rent the Arlington site. The subsequent $5.85 million in the proposed budget will be allocated for the demolition portions of the site, the reconstruction of the power plant’s interior, the edition of 4,200 square feet, and preparations for other structures. The $6.55 million price tag comes at some
cost to the residents of Poughkeepsie, as locals across income levels will be subject to tax increases to afford the new library. According to Dutchess County Real Property Tax Service Agency data, homeowners in the city will be charged an increase of $19 per year, while town residents will pay $11. This rise in tax rates will continue for 20 years. However, the District believes that the communal improvements will outweigh the price of the project. The new library will stand at 22,200 square feet, with more space for books and three meeting rooms. According to a statement to The Poughkeepsie Journal, President of the Friends of the Poughkeepsie Public Library District Patricia Breen believes the Boardman location will hold more volumes while providing safer working conditions for employees and volunteers. Been wrote in The Rotunda, “This new facility will address the increasing demands for library services and give our community a facility to be proud of.” Despite the referendum’s foreseeable passage, many patrons of the Arlington Branch remain divided on the issue. Poughkeepsie residents concerned about the library’s move largely referenced financial concerns as a reason for their hesitance to support the future Boardman Road location. In initial debates regarding the proposed referendum, numerous residents wrote in to The Poughkeepsie Journal to debate the need for a new building. Barbara Fritz, a Poughkeepsie resident, objected to the proposition because she felt it was largely unnecessary improvement. She wrote, “They want to build this new an-
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
nex on Boardman Road when we have a perfectly good building, the old YWCA, which was renovated and used as a library when Adriance was being renovated. It is centrally located in a lovely area with plenty of parking.” Although the argument about the availability and reduced cost of the old YWCA building became popular among opponents of the referendum, the Library District refuted its long-term viability. Elizabeth, a patron of the library who declined to give her last name, lives within walking distance of the current Haight Avenue location. She said, “I guess I’m hesitant because of the economy. Is it really the best time to be spending a lot of money building a new location? I’m not enthusiastic about it.” However, others saw the construction plans as a net benefit to the Poughkeepsie community. Another patron of the Arlington Library supports the move, saying the additional space in the new location will be beneficial. “I think it’s a very good thing—a bigger space,” he said, noting the symbolic significance of the new library location in a time of recession, adding “I’m amazed that they’re able to do it at this time, with the funding, and I’m amazed that the people said yes. I think it’s a good sign for the future—that people have faith that things will get better. Libraries aren’t dead.” Overall, despite mixed responses from Poughkeepsie residents, plans for the library’s expansion will continue to move forward upon an official announcement of the referendum’s passage. The Library District anticipates the new branch library will open its doors by late 2014 to 2015.
November 15, 2012
FEATURES
Page 5
VSA Programming Board responds to student demand Lily Choi
Guest reporter
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Katie de Heras/The Miscellany News
ast April, through a Weekend Activities survey, students expressed their discontent with on-campus programming on the weekends. As a result, the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Council created the Programming Board, responsible for organizing more diverse events for student entertainment and interaction in place of music-based weekend events, such as Villard Room parties or Mug Nights Vice President of Activities Doug Greer ’14 oversees the Programming Board’s attempts to satisfy student desire for events, namely ones that create new possibilities for students to interact with each other in non-Villard Room settings. The Programming Board’s response to student desire for alternative programming is an ongoing process. “Activities Committee is currently discussing [its direction], as it doesn’t really have a clear answer,” Greer explained in an email. While the programming board develops its ideas for more varied events, organizations like CHOICE and dorms such as Raymond and Jewett have already hosted creative gatherings for students. CHOICE recently held “Meet Me in the Aula,” a “speed-friending” event. “The first one was about an hour and a half and included 72 participants,” wrote one of the Presidents of CHOICE, Mara Feingold-Link ’13 in an emailed statement. “The pairs get a couple minutes to talk and
get to know each other. Each participant is assigned a number for identification, and at the end of the event they can write down the individuals they are interested in meeting up with after the event. If two people write each other’s numbers down, they both get an email from CHOICE letting them know.” “The event was planned last year but only finally executed this semester,” Feingold-Link continued. “It was planned in an effort to help people meet each other in a comfortable and stressfree environment...We did want to offer an alternative to Villard Room and senior housing parties specifically for the purposes of students getting to know other students,” she finished. A few days before Halloween, Jewett House and Philaletheis hosted “Murder at Vassar Manor,” an interactive play based off of the Haunted House event that Raymond House hosted in previous years. “We planned this event because we knew that Raymond was not going to throw a Haunted House and we wanted to utilize the opportunity to collaborate with an [organization] on an event that had been successful in the past,” wrote Jewett House President Ben Morse ’14 in an email. The event was widely attended, with 40 groups of six to 12 students attending. Although Greer admits that the Programming Board does not often collaborate with other organizations in planning events in response to student dissatisfaction, he hopes to implement more of the Board’s ideas in terms of the types of events available to students in his role as VP for Activities.
Maggie Henkin ‘13 an Bobbie Lucas ’15 recently stepped into their roles as co-chairs of thenewly formed the Programming Board, which is now ramping up efforts to host more alternative programming. “I’m looking to plan two new large-scale events for the spring,” Greer wrote. “It’s not guaranteed that I’ll have the funds to do them, but I’m hoping to do a spirit week kind of like some high schools...culminating in a weekend of supporting our athletics at their home games where we have a lot of food, maybe sell Vassar apparel, have half time shows, etc. Then the second is tentatively titled ‘Meet Me in Man-
hattan,’ which is essentially Meet Me in Poughkeepsie but in New York City. Getting to New York City was something students said they wanted to see from programming.” Judging by the different types of events that the VSA, student-run organizations, and dorms have hosted just in the fall, students can expect to see more diverse and creative programming as the year goes on.
Vassar Haiti Project opens fundraising event to community Marie Solis
assistaNt Features editor
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courtesy of Vassar Haiti Project
or most, stepping outside of the Vassar bubble requires a good reason and maybe even a little persuasion. This week, Vassar Haiti Project’s event “Art and Soul” gives every student, and members of the surrounding community at least four good reasons to consider venturing out of their sphere of existence. On Nov. 15, great food, beautiful artwork, and the sounds of Vassar’s Jazz Ensemble and the Vassar Devils, along with the swanky atmosphere of Poughkeepsie restaurant Bull and Buddha’s lounge will be more than just something to do on a Thursday night—proceeds will go directly to VHP’s current health care initiative in Chermaitre, Haiti. Students still interested can purchase tickets at the door. Since its inception in 2001, the Vassar Haiti Project has worked alongside their partners in Haiti to help them recover from natural disasters as well as disparities in their education and health care systems. When Andrew Meade, Director of Vassar’s International Services, and his wife Lila Meade founded Vassar Haiti Project (VHP), its main goal was to provide a hot meal every day to each student attending Ecole St. Paul de Chermaitre, a primary school, educating students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Though the project is ongoing, Vassar Haiti Project has become increasingly ambitious in their initiatives, and after their fundraiser on Thursday, they hope to reach their newest goal—to supply and staff a medical clinic recently completed in Chermaitre. Lila Meade had the opportunity to see the progress of the clinic first-hand. She said, “It is hard to believe that just one year ago we were discussing the need for a new clinic. With a lot of help from our student and community volunteers, we worked furiously to raise the necessary funds. To actually come down and see the building is overwhelming!” Annie Massa ’13, director of the medical initiative said, “Most of the people in the village haven’t had any medical access for the entire lives. The goal of the clinic project is to build a permanent clinic building. Staff it, supply it, keep it running. It’s at the base of the mountain to provide med access to not only that community but also the surrounding villages. A large number of people coming to the clinic were receiving health care for the first time in their lives.” Last year VHP finished constructing the building using the $23,000 the organization raised through art sales, their primary mode of fundraising.
Vassar Haiti Project sets up shop showcasing Haitian art to raise money for hot school meals. All proceeds of this Thursday’s fundraising event at Bull and Buddha’s will go towards a medical clinic. “Basically our main mission is and has always been to buy art from Haiti, sell it here in the U.S. and use the proceeds to fund a number of initiatives in Northwestern Haiti. The main principle is Haiti helping Haiti, and it has remained consistent throughout even with the increased need based on the earthquake and [Hurricane] Sandy, we’ve always been committed to this goal of Haiti helping Haiti,” Massa said. VHP Vice President for Publicity Robyn Yzelman ’15 agreed that Haitians having the say in what their country needs is crucial in ensuring that the Vassar Haiti Project will be effective in their efforts. “It’s important that it’s not some kind of foreign agenda we impose on them especially since right now in Haiti there’s some number like one [non-governmental organization] for every 3000 Haitians, which is a ridiculously high number of these uncoordinated organizations who are just going in and setting up these projects which can be counterproductive,” said Yzelman. To avoid what she identifies as the common pitfalls of foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Vassar Haiti Project ensures they have open communication and a close relationship with the members of the village. “They tell us what they need. The village leaders told us they needed healthcare, that the students needed lunches for schools. Students
go to Chermaitre one to two times a year to be in direct contact with the people there,” Yzelman said. This year, one of those students was Lanbo Yang ’15, VHP’s Oversight Secretary and Print Manager. Yang said in an emailed statement, “In my recent October trip to Haiti, I saw the things I heard during VHP meetings crystallize in my mind—the school that we built, the clinic and the Haitian people…The upcoming Art & Soul Gala at Bull and Buddha will be pivotal to raising funds to finish the clinic and commence [the clinic’s operation.” Aside from admiring the success of VHP’s coalition with Haiti to realize their goals, Yang said he was equally admiring of the spirit of the Haitian people. “The villagers of Chermaitre welcomed us with happy faces and never-ending greetings. I learned that these Haitian people are rich in warmth and spirit, while we, as busy Americans obsessed with lists and what the next step is, seem to be quite poor in both of these qualities,” said Yang. Yzelman said she sees the same essence Yang described embodied in their artwork. “So often Haiti gets stereotyped as a failed state. The message that sends out is that Haiti is a failed project and that it requires outside intervention but that’s not true. Haitian culture is so
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
vibrant,” she said. This artwork will be on display during their reception on Thursday, an event which will be unlike anything VHP has hosted before in that it will be reaching out to the greater Poughkeepsie community. Among these community members and organizations are a number of doctors from Vassar Brothers Hospital, Children’s Medical Group, Dutchess Radiology Associates and Health Quest, which will make for a strong medical presence which was not prevalent in other events VHP has hosted in the past. “We’re accessing a different part of the community: we have sponsorships from hospitals in the surrounding area. We’ve got 120 RSVPs already. We’re calling it a ‘friendraiser,’” Massa explained, emphasizing one of the larger goals of the gala as being to make contacts and inspire people outside of Vassar and even Poughkeepsie to get involved. “In August, one really major step for us on the medical initiative was convening a medical advisory board chaired by Daniel Aronzon. He was the former CEO of Vassar Brothers and it is really exciting to have him on board. We have a little group of various types of doctors from the area who have gotten behind our project and are helping advise us as we proceed. That’s really exciting and they’ve been a huge help in getting the word out about the event to people in the community,” said Massa. Other members of the Medical Advisory Board also include David Cho, MD, Stuart Feinstein, MD, Richard Friedland, MD, Daniel Katz, MD, Lawrence Schaffer, MD, who are all distinguished specialists in their fields. Yzelman continued to say that the event also owes its success to the help of Vassar’s students: “There’s been an enormous amount of work to do including labeling, mailing 2000 invites, coming up with lists of RSVPs, visuals to display at the event. There will be a team of people hauling in art and setting it up the day of—the students have really rallied.” Both Yzelman and Massa are confident that their efforts will pay off. Massa said, “Our optimal goal is to raise $20,000 to make sure there can be a full-time nurse and four clinic days per month. We have a lot of confidence that we’ll make it there. And I think this is going to be a really big event and we’re having a lot of people from the community come. I think our fundraising efforts will go beyond Art and Soul. Once you buy a beautiful Haitian painting, you’ll want to buy another which will help us continue our initiatives.”
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Jarvis, Rubin respond to hate speech John Nguyen
Guest reporter
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Class engages in Alternate Reality Game Chris Gonzalez
assistaNt Features editor
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magine taking a class where homework might involve unscrambling codes and images, as well as searching for clues around campus. You now know what it’s like to take a media studies course taught by Post Doctoral Fellow of Media Studies Stephanie Boluk. For the last month, students of Boluk’s course titled “Digital Arts/ E-Poetry” have been engaged in Speculat1on, a community-based Alternate Reality Game (ARG) which plunges students into the precarious world of stock markets and Wall Street, and combines a literary narrative with digital engagement. “This isn’t the type of game where you’re like, ‘Ugh, I have to do this assignment for class’. This game will consume you if you let it,” said Reed Gaines ’13, a student in the class. Speculat1on requires its players to act as stock traders as they learn about the workings of finance capitalism and Wall Street to put them in the action. In doing so, they make decisions that will affect the nature and outcome of the game as it is played. “[This game] takes place in a literary form that matches its subject matter,” Boluk wrote in an emailed statement. He continued, “The narrative is distributed and hidden in a way that mirrors the inscrutability and fragmentation of financial derivatives and ultrafast algorithmic trading.” Speculat1on is a product of Duke University’s GreaterThanGames Humanities Lab. Boluk is a member of the GreaterThanGames lab, and he has been responsible for blending literary and digital concepts on many of the group’s projects.
This led to the idea for the ARG to be taught in their respective courses. “When we started imagining Speculat1on, we originally had in mind a learning game that would teach players about the culture of Wall Street investment banking and the 2008 financial crisis,” stated Jagoda in an emailed statement. Jagoda continued, explaining that the group did not stop there. “Instead of privileging information (e.g., the processes of the stock market, the status of algorithmic trading, the nature of a derivative, etc.), which still found its way into the final game, we wanted to create an interactive forum in which players could discuss, complicate, and imaginatively intervene in the problems of contemporary finance.” According to Boluk, the game is a fun and challenging way for her students to sharpen the skills they learned in class. “It’s more akin to the kind of writing you find in electronic literature, except it’s set in the context of a game that takes place across multiple platforms—there have been site-specific live events and geocaching and the game requires students become literate in a wide range of computer software from Audacity to SSTV,” wrote Boluk. “There’s just a lot of engagement with Internet culture that goes on in general. It kind of takes Internet culture and pushes it to the farthest extent we can imagine,” commented Gaines. Players must get through eight “Nexus”, or levels, by completing eight puzzles within each one. The purpose of completing one is to get a password in order to move on. These challenges force students to learn about the effect that surprising events, derivatives, micro-temporal computer operations, and flashcrashes have on finance capitalism. These features allows the game to be excit-
ing and dynamic. The game, which takes place in a futuristic setting where Metacorp, a coalition of corporations, has bailed out a collapsed Eurozone, and a “Nex” is created, which produces a temporarily distorted timeline, one that allows for both the future and present to change based on the actions of the players, is not only limited to online game play. There are moments when students must participate in real-life events around campus. Arianna Gass ’13, a student in the class and active player of the game, recounted one of those challenges. “There’s a task in one of the Nexus where we had to find a dead drop. We knew we were searching for something physical. We had a location: It was [Sanders Classroom]. And then we had a clue that led us to outside of Michael Joyce’s office,” Gass explained, describing her experience. “But the clue that also led you to Sanders, other than the geocaching, was ‘twelve blue follows you’,” continued Gass. “So...I left [the South Commons], and I kept counting blue things...really weird blue things I’d never noticed: blue tape wrapped around a pole, blue lights, a blue hubcap to a red fire hydrant,” she noted, adding that she did not know whether or not these images were a part of the gameplay. “We’re obsessed,” Gaines laughed about the dedication of himself and his classmates. This blurring of reality that occurs is quite common with ARGs. “This is the nature of an ARG—it makes you into a paranoid close reader of not only text but the entire worlds,” stated Boluk. Gaines concluded, “I feel way more apt to critique our financial system, now that I have played this game.” The class will complete Speculat1on later this month.
VC host events in solidarity with ENJAN E.N.J.A.N continued from page 1
E.N.J.A.N. was born after the police kicked the Occupy Poughkeepsie encampment out of Hulme Park during the fall of last year, and those involved in the movement needed a warm place to meet and organize. According to Associate Professor of German Studies Jeffrey Schneider, who has been heavily involved in the movement, “Odell Winfield, director of the African Roots Library, felt that Occupy needed to learn more about issues that people of color face.” Schneider attests to the connections E.N.J.A.N. has fostered between the Poughkeepsie and Vassar College community. “We organized a number of amazing experts to come lecture and lead us through an analysis of each chapter over the six sessions we had planned including two Vassar faculty members,” he explained, “Quincy Mills in History and Joe Nevins in Geography.” After finishing the book late last May, he said, “Most of the participants wanted to continue meeting in order to put our new knowledge into practice. So we formed the End the E.N.J.A.N., and we’ve been going ever since.” According to Kira Woodworth, a member of the International Socialist Organization and organizer for E.N.J.A.N, “With any conference, the goal is of course education. A lot of people don’t necessarily know what we mean by the New Jim Crow.” The conference is especially relevant to Poughkeepsie, a town highly segregated both racially and economically, where African Americans make up just 10% of the county population, but account for more than 50% of those sentenced in Dutchess County. Additionally, E.N.J.A.N. was fueled into action due to a recent proposal to expand and open more jails in the area. Woodworth explained, “They’ve shut down a public elementary school and cut the music programs from Poughkeepsie city schools, and yet they’re arguing that we need to expand the jail.” The general organizing principles of the group, explained Schneider, revolve around fighting the American policy of mass incarceration. “We have many goals,” he said,
courtesy of Family Partnership Center
s most members of the Vassar community are well aware, in October of this year, several incidents of hateful graffiti were discovered in bathroom stalls and dormitories on campus. These incidents gave rise to a variety of responses from the college designed to both assess the impact on the Vassar community and provide resources for those who were affected to express their feelings and seek support. Such measures included the creation of the moderated SpeakUpVC blog, and hosting a community discussion on the topic. Assistant Director for Campus Life and LGBTQ Programs Judy Jarvis said in an emailed statement, “It’s hard to measure the effectiveness of the blog and window display, but I felt that the combination of responses was important because it allowed students to engage in whatever ways they felt most comfortable.” However, Jarvis hopes that the responses have fostered greater awareness of sensitive issues targeted by hate speech. She additionally stated that the responsibility of continuing to take the lessons to heart now lies with the student community. “These initiatives will only stay relevant if the student body decides that talking about issues of hate and inclusion on this campus are important,” Jarvis stated. She continued, “I have already seen efforts by student organizations and student government to keep the conversation on the table, which is really heartening—in particular I’m really interested to see what happens with the various campus climate efforts that students are working on.” While some community members have been inclined to dismiss the incidents as the work of hoodlums with bad senses of humor looking to get a rise out the students, Jarvis argues that these incidents are examples of hate speech, and are symptomatic of larger problems in the Vassar community, and society at large. Jarvis cited the numerous programs which her office has put on to address such issues, and others which are upcoming, such as the Forum on Women’s Leadership and Empowerment put on by the Women’s Center; Sexual Assault Violence Prevention’s Climbing PoeTree, a forum for empowerment through poetry; and the LGBTQ Center’s upcoming event featuring activist Sherry Wolf on Nov. 28, which Jarvis says will proactively address various forms of oppression and help participants develop empowering tools and language. VSA President Jason Rubin ’13 applauded the all-campus initiatives addressing the graffiti, as well as other measures by student groups, citing the House discussion in Jewett. Rubin also said that the incidents were symptomatic of larger problems with the Vassar community, and that further action needed to be taken. On the views expressed at the open forums such as the community discussions, he stated, “Students who participated in the various conversations expressed the fact that they did not always feel safe or comfortable at Vassar and that needs to change. While these initial conversations were positive in raising these issues, conversations and efforts need to continue throughout the year if real progress is going to be made.” Measures which he mentioned to bring greater inclusion to Vassar’s campus included greater accessibility of campus spaces and infrastructure and encouraging greater numbers of women and minorities to run for offices in student government. While the graffiti itself is long gone, the marks which it has made upon the ways in which the Vassar community views and comports itself will remain longstanding. However, as administrators such as Jarvis and student leaders such as Rubin have explained, the student and faculty responses have been encouraging. Now according to student leaders, for the initiatives taken to counteract the hateful incidents to continue to have a positive impact upon Vassar, it is up to the students to maintain a continuing dialogue, and ultimately, foster a more tolerant and inclusive culture.
November 15, 2012
A Film Screening of Hip Hop is Bigger Than the Occupation, this Thursday at 7 in Sanders Classroom auditorium is part of an ongoing collaboration between Vassar and community organizers. “such as an end to the excessive use of force by the police, discriminatory sentencing, ‘Stop and Frisk’ and other forms of racial profiling.” These topics will be addressed in-depth at the conference this Saturday through a panel discussion, a workshop lead by the National Lawyer’s Guild entitled “Know Your Rights: Responding to Stop-and Frisk,” a conversation over lunch, and a presentation by the Youth Leadership Academy from Bronx, N.Y. The panel discussion will include a dialogue between the audience and three esteemed speakers: Dr. Alice Green, Executive Director of the center for Law and Justice in Albany, N.Y., Theo Harris, a Prison Partnership Associate at the Hudson River Presbytery, and Ernest Henry, the Director of Reentry Services for Exodus Transitional Community. In solidarity with the community organizers, Vassar orgs—including GAAP and VPI— are hosting a film screening of Hip Hop Is Bigger than the Occupation, a documentary that chronicles the ten day journey of hip-hop artists as they traveled through Palestine, teaching and performing non-violent resistance. Created by Existence is Resistance and Nana
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
Dankwa, the film features artists such as M1 of Dead Prez, Shadia Mansour, Lowkey, Marcel Acrtier, Mazzi of S.O.U.L. Purpose, and DJ Vega Benetton, among others. The conference and film screenings not only represent the growing strength of E.N.J.A.N. as a visible community organization, but also show a productive collaboration between students and those living and working outside the walls of Vassar. Student groups like Grass Roots Alliance for Alternative Politics, the Vassar Prison Initiative and Hip Hop 101 have all come together to raise funds and organize the event. Schneider noted, “Many of the older members, who have been fighting for changes for decades, get excited when they regularly see Vassar students and Dutchess Community College students at the meetings. They know that we need a new generation of activists!” The events are a testament to the power of solidarity and community activism in combating institutionalized systems of oppression. According to Woodworth, “We want to get more people involved in E.N.J.A.N. and join us in the struggle. To work against the criminal injustice system.”
November 15, 2012
FEATURES
ROC bridges gap between students, B&G
Katie de Heras/The Miscellany News
Residential Operations Center (ROC) Director Anna Belle Jones, pictured above, oversees all student requests for repairs, work requests, lockouts and safety regulations in residential halls. Jessica Tarantine Features editor
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rom an occasional squirrel in the parlor to broken showers in the bathroom, residential life at Vassar can be filled with quirks. To deal with these frustrations you might be tempted to call Buildings and Grounds (B&G) to fix a problem, but that wouldn’t get much accomplished—instead, you should turn to the ROC. There are a lot of misunderstandings about the procedure for navigating problems with residential life. “I’ve dealt with the ROC in lockout situations, but I’m not sure what else they do,” said Sophia Pitcaim ’16. “We act as a liaison between the students and B&G, regarding service requests; and by this I mean, we put tickets in for the students, we do not schedule repairs or have any control over them,” wrote ROC Attendant George Zervos in an emailed statement. A common source of confusion–and often frustration–is the procedure for filing work requests. “Service requests should first come through the [Residential Operation center (ROC)],” said ROC Director Anna Belle Jones. Even finding the ROC can be a challenge for some students. The ROC, which is con-
nected to both the Office of Residential Life and B&G, is located at the back of Olivia Josselyn House. For many students, the red tape can frustrating. “Things often take a while to be fixed,” said Colin Crilly ’15. ROC student worker Cory Wuenschell explained that the ROC did not control the service request, saying, “[Often the] blame for problems not being attended to promptly also falls on the ROC, when students need to realize that the ROC is a mere mediator between students and B&G and other services on campus.” Indeed, according to Jones and her experience with the campus, many students mistakenly contact B&G for service requests who will be unable to help. Instead, you should fill out a form online on the ResLife website. “If it is an emergency, you should call the ROC rather than submitting a request online,” said Jones. In addition to dealing with students’ requests for service and repairs, the Office more proactively looks for issues that need to be addressed by making rounds in the dorms daily. “A large part of what we do is inspecting the dorm buildings for damage (includ-
ing common area furniture), whether it be from wear and tear, or student damage,” wrote Zervos. The ROC also deals with fire violations. A common fire violation is failure to keep the path to exits clear. Such a violation would impede evacuation in a case of a fire. Students also often hang items from the sprinkler heads and place things too close to the ceiling. While these fire violations are more widely recognized, the ROC also often sees fire violations in the lobbies of the dorms. Jones explained, “If students want to put boxes for donations, they should be placed in the common room or the MPR.” “We did allow the R.E.V. Up boxes because they were temporary,” said Jones. “If you wish to place anything in the dorms, either in the lobby or the common room, you should talk to the Office of Residential Life.” Generally, anything that is cardboard can not be placed in the lobbies because it is highly flammable. According to Jones, many students also remain unsure of the correct procedure for lockouts. “If you come to the ROC office, you can sign out the key to your room as often as you like,” said Jones. If a student becomes locked out more than three times when the ROC is closed, they will have to pay a fine. “Dealing with students who have been locked out is not really Security’s job,” said Jones, who explained that students should also contact Security if they have any concerns about residential life and it is after 11 p.m. “I feel like it would be easy for students to undermine the variety of problems the ROC has to attend to on a daily basis; our job is not limited to lockouts. We deal with all problems concerning requests from students,” said Wuenschell. Just as the issues the ROC deals with are diverse, so its staff, with students making up a large percentage of its manpower. Former student employee Manola Fortun ’14 explained some of her duties. “I dealt with the locksmith on occasion. I stamped posters that needed to be hung in residential buildings. I put in service requests for students too,” said Fortun. While navigating the physical side of Residential Life can be challenging at first, with a bit of attention to the proper procedure, you are much more likely to see results—and a squirrel-less common room.
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GRST Majors’ Committee unites students Patty Walton
Guest reporter
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lthough recently reinstated, the Greek and Roman Studies (GRST) Majors’ Committee is attempting to shape the experience of GRST majors positively and engender community in the small department. While the Co-Chairs are energetic, logistically there are still some logical obstacles to overcome with being inactive for the past few years. Namely, without a reputation and established programming, it is difficult to gain active members. Committee Co-Chair Noah Cogan ’13 explained, “We are really still in the formative stages. I think there are multiple sides to it, it’s challenging not really having a blue print to help guide you along the way.” He continued, “It is exciting to be forging ahead and doing what it is you want to do. It’s not anything I have ever done before, so I am enjoying that challenge.” “Working closely with the faculty is rewarding, so I think its a little bit of both. At this point its a little more challenging than exciting but hopefully we will be seeing the fruits of our labor soon,” he finished. Among their ideas for potential department events is having a “GRSTea,” which would provide tea and a space for faculty and students to have discussions outside of the classroom, an idea that sparked from an exchange with the Classics Department at Bard. “I really enjoyed the idea of students and faculty having time to sit down and discuss things, because I feel that in our classes we get into a lot of really interesting discussions and I just wanted to continue that outside of the classrooms,” Cogan explains. Fellow GRST major Laura Naccarato ’13 offered her thoughts on the GRSTea. “We already all know each other and do see each other a fair amount,” she said. “But it could be fun to get together and talk about classics and generally hang out.” Peer Advising for prospective majors could also be of benefit. GRST Major Siddhartha Hayes ’14 explained, “It should be conveyed to students who want to pursue a GRST path that the language portion of their studies should be started ASAP. It opens up more classes earlier and is simply more beneficial to the student.” He continued, “It is also good for a student to try and plan ahead—if the next semester’s classes are available for viewing so that they may compare what is being offered and judge which courses they should take when.” This might be of use, as GRST majors often come to the department in a variety of ways. “My initial motivation for taking non-language GRST classes was that I knew I wanted to major in the subject, but since then I’ve taken courses beyond the requirements because I just enjoy the classes so much,” said Michelle Lessard ’13 of her experience in the department. Peer Advising might also provide an opportunity for both prospective and current majors to find out more about the classes outside their comfort zone. Cogan explained of the classes, “The Greek and Roman Studies department, while it does talk a lot about Greek and Roman culture, we do also cover a wide variety of topics because that in itself covers a wide spectrum of ideas because talking about a culture can mean a whole variety of things.” With only four full time faculty members, the small size of the Greek and Roman studies department allows for the students and faculty to develop an intimate relationship. Cogan appreciates the community that comes with this size. “[The department] is not very big, the students in the major are in the teens. Part of what makes it really great in my opinion is that its a very close knit small kind of community, at least in terms of faculty. There’s not that many faculty members and you get to know them pretty well if you take a variety of classes in the department.” Cogan said, “I feel like [Greek and Roman studies is] a lot more universal than people think it is, and that’s something I hope we can plug in our committee meeting.”
FEATURES
Page 8
November 15, 2012
On Thanksgiving, skip the turkey for this tasty vegan dish Alessandra Seiter
assistaNt oNliNe editor
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courtesy of Food Network
wo-and-a-half years ago, six months after first adopting a vegan lifestyle, I vehemently refused to attend our family’s Thanksgiving feast at my grandmother’s house, completely appalled by the prospect of sitting at a table with a dead turkey as the centerpiece. While this spark of activism effectively frustrated and isolated my extended family, it certainly did not allow for open conversation about the issues surrounding my decision and did not save a single bird’s life. The next year, after maturing and refining my activist practices, I hosted animal-friendly Thanksgiving for my family replete with a cornucopia of autumnal fruits and veggies featured in both savory and sweet preparations. Uniting my family to enjoy each other’s company and a gorgeous meal, the holiday revealed the deliciousness of vegan food and opened the hearts and minds of many family members. Far from laughing in the face of tradition— the first Thanksgiving feast may not have even included turkey—and depriving Thanksgiving enthusiasts of their childhood favorites—celebrating a healthy vegan harvest feast promises tantalizing autumnal dishes that won’t leave you loosening your belt or feeling sluggish after your last slice of pumpkin pie. While I would happily create an entire Thanksgiving meal based solely on vegetable-laden side dishes, don’t fret if you would feel strange not highlighting a main dish at your holiday table. Roasted acorn squash halves stuffed with quinoa, corn, and black beans; pumpkin-spinach lasagna oozing with vegan mozzarella;
This citrusy, spiced Wild Rice Pilaf with Sweet Potato, Cranberries and Pecans mixes bursts of tartness and sweetness. Include it as a part of a vegan spread at your Thanksgiving feast this year. Enjoy! cornmeal-crusted tofu or tempeh triangles—all will leave your guests wildly impressed and immensely satisfied. Many vegan food brands also offer hearty, turkey-friendly products to feature that far outshine the often belittled Tofurkey, such as Field Roast, which makes a drool-worthy sausage-style grain meat roast stuffed with butternut squash, mushrooms, rosemary, thyme, and sage. Infinite possibilities for familiar yet modern-
ized side dish favorites abound. Cranberry-apple relish, a creamy garlic potato-cauliflower mash, caramelized brussels sprouts, braised kale, mushroom gravy, jalapeño cornbread, and curried butternut squash soup all revitalize overdone Thanksgiving standbys and bring them into the 21st Century. While a comforting slice of vegan pumpkin pie requires nothing more than a pie crust— vegan versions are widely available in most grocery stores— pumpkin puree, silken tofu
or cashews, maple syrup, and pumpkin pie spice, why not expand your fall dessert repertoire with more creative sweet treats? Satisfy your holiday sweet tooth with delights such as chocolate-pumpkin cheesecake, pear and apple crumble, sticky toffee pudding, or gingerbread cake with spiced buttercream frosting. For an easy whipped cream, chill a can of coconut milk, spoon the top layer of cream into a bowl, and beat with a hand-mixer until fluffy. This citrusy, well-spiced wild rice pilaf studded with gems of sweet potato, bursts of tart sweetness from the cranberries, and crunches of toasty pecans can serve as either a main dish or a side dish, depending on the rest of your Thanksgiving menu. Wild Rice Pilaf with Sweet Potato, Cranber ries, and Pecans
Adapted from Cathy Elton. Serves 8. Ingredients: 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled, and cut into small cubes 2 cups wild rice, rinsed 6 cups vegetable broth 1 medium onion, diced 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 cup fruit-juice-sweetened dried cranberries ¼ cup warm water 2 tbsp red wine vinegar ¾ cup pecans, toasted and chopped 3 tbsp parsley, finely chopped 3 tbsp olive oil, divided Zest and juice of 1 lemon ¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
Poder Latino fosters conversation, creates familial bond Juan Bautista Dominguez Guest reporter
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Jiajing Sun/The Miscellany News
ith such diverse cultural perspectives meshing and blending, it can be easy to lose touch with your heritage at Vassar. To help preserve a sense of home for some students, Poder Latino (PL) celebrates Latino culture and serves as a community for students hailing from Latin America or Spain as well as Vassar students interested in all things Latino. “Its roots can be traced back to when James Montoya, then the Director of Admissions, launched a recruitment campaign of Latino students,” says President of Poder Latino Fernanda Martinez ’14. She continues, “Five years later, in 1989, SALSA (South American Latino Student Association) was founded...it wasn’t until 1991 that the organization underwent a change in name from SALSA to Poder Latino.” The organization normally meets on Thursday evenings in the ALANA Center to discuss issues surrounding Latino identity, such as sexuality, religion, representation, and their interaction with the media. Angélica Aurora Gutierrez ’13 says, “Besides being a place to speak Spanish and not feel judged, you get to meet people from the Latino diaspora with different and similar experiences.” Besides the weekly rudimentary gatherings that are the bread and butter of the group’s programming, the organization has also hosted/ co-hosted many well-attended events over the years. These events help to serve the group’s mission to educate the Vassar community. Martinez elaborates, “In 2010, Poder Latino came together with other ALANA Center organizations to host the first ALANA Jam, a celebration of music, dance and food which has, since then, become an annual event.” Last year, the group also did not fail to pay tribute to the departed as it co-hosted, with MEChA, an event for Dia de los Muertos in UpC. And apart from its Beginning and End of the Year BBQ , Poder Latino will be hosting its Family Dinner on Dec. 9 from 6-8 p.m., in the Villard Room. However, in addition to providing a space to satisfy desires for a spicy meal or sultry “Cumbia,” the organization has allowed many students to transition well to Vassar life from divergent backgrounds. Gutierrez joined Poder Latino her freshman year and cites her California heritage for being one of the main reasons for joining.
Members of Poder Latino meet on Thursdays in the ALANA Center to discuss issues surrounding Latino identity, including sexuality, religion and representation. But members of the organization say they bring different experiences and identities to the discussion, as they share a sense of community. She affirms, “I am a Chicana from South Central Los Angeles and during my first year, one of the exec members Keity was also from California and she really helped me get through the culture shock of being in the Northeast, especially for winter.” The harsh New England winters were also difficult for Salvador Salas ’13, also a Californian Mexican-American. She is currently on the executive board. “I joined PL to get involved with others who also identify as Latino and who like to discuss issues of race as it affects our society.” And besides deepening his knowledge of injustices in society caused by race, PL has allowed Salas to become more aware of other cultures within the Latino community. “Coming from Southern California where there is a higher Mexican-American population than any other Latino population, I learned a lot about Dominicans and Puerto-Ricans being a part of PL,” says Salas. Only recently joining PL and speaking to the organization’s familial atmosphere, a Mexican-American freshman, Alberto Wilson says,
“It was the right thing for me; when I stepped into the ALANA center I felt at home for the first time since I had left Denver, Colorado. The people there were my people, their struggle was my struggle, and their pain was my pain.” Daniel Dones ’16, of Puerto Rican and Honduran descent, describes PL as a supportive community. He elaborates, “The pros to joining are quite fundamentally the family sentiment that I experienced since joining. Despite the strong bonds within the organization, PL members are weary of being identified as exclusively part of this ethnically characterized group. Gutierrez claims, “Our identities are so multifaceted that just because I am part of Poder Latino does not mean that I cannot be part of other groups, such as the Council of Black Seniors. Ethnic-identity student groups on campus are always stigmatized as being limited because often the people making such broad assumptions have never attended a meeting. I have never felt like my interactions have been limited because I identify as Chicana and attend Poder Latino because it is only one part of my identity.”
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Salas confirms, “We have meetings on this exact topic and all of which are open to any Vassar student that wants to sit in and build solidarity or learn about issues that Latino students deal with.” If anything, joining the group has widened perspectives and allowed members to tap into heritages not explored before. Wilson admits that although he has always had close ties to his parents’ Mexican culture, his time at Vassar and nascent PL membership have made him appreciate his roots more. “I have embraced my heritage in ways I hadn’t before. Now preserving my parents’ native tongue is much more important to me than it was 3 months ago and I make the effort to leave campus and experience the Latino culture in Poughkeepsie,” says Wilson. Even more to the point, Done explains, “I was raised in a very whitewashed manner as a young Latino; in fact I never even learned the language growing up and so being a part of PL has brought me closer to my roots than I have ever felt in my life. It is the first time where I have had the opportunity to talk to other people my age about Latino culture.”
November 15, 2012
OPINIONS
Page 9
THE MISCELLANY NEWS STAFF EDITORIAL
VC must not limit social consciousness to classroom
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n ongoing discussion between students, faculty and administrators which has picked up momentum in recent weeks in the wake of hate-speech incidents in Jewett House and elsewhere centers around the implementation of a new academic requirement: social consciousness. The spirit behind such a measure being to improve the student body’s awareness of social issues such as those of race, gender, sexual orientation and socioeconomic disparities. As members of an institution that has historically prided itself on being progressive and socially aware, we at The Miscellany News agree that further measures should be taken to ensure that all students have the opportunity to expand their social and academic horizons. However, we believe that it would be a mistake to narrow the setting in which social consciousness is promoted exclusively to the classroom. Such a move would cheapen the effort and make it ineffective. Instead, the Vassar community must emphasize social consciousness by incorporating it into both academic and residential settings. At Vassar College, we cherish the freedom students have in selecting their courses. The College’s open curriculum and lack of core requirements is a major draw for many prospective students, and we feel that to impose a social awareness requirement in addition to the language, quantitative analysis, and freshman writing seminar graduation requirements would impede this crucial curricular flexibility. Additionally, we feel the College’s existing Course Catalog already offers a significant number of classes that cover a wide variety
of social issues ranging from race in literature to women domestic violence, women’s arts movements, the border wall and almost everything in-between. A topic as broad as “social awareness” could not be sufficiently covered in one or even several introductory courses, but is better absorbed in a variety of disciplinary contexts. The College currently requires that twenty-five percent of courses be taken outside a student’s major division. Students with majors outside of the Arts and Social Sciences curricular divisions—where courses discussing issues of social awareness, are most prevalent—should be encouraged to use this discipline distribution requirement to explore such classes. Perhaps the more subjective courses that cover issues relating to race, ethnicity, culture, gender, social and economic inequalities and oppressions (among many other topics) could be marked in the Ask Banner ‘Schedule of Classes’ page as satisfying the requirement. Additionally, more courses should be cross-listed so students can explore more theoretical courses that deal with issues of social consciousness while still filling their major requirements. For example, last semester a course entitled “The Political Economy of Gender” was offered through Women’s Studies and Asian Studies departments, but could not be counted towards Economics requirements. The sociological history of any discipline— even hard sciences, in which such abstract concepts are not so ostensible—is still crucial to improving a student’s knowledge of the subject. Advisors should encourage underclassmen to take introductory-level courses such
as those in the Sociology or Women’s Studies departments, as well as upper classmen to take upper-level courses. Most importantly, students should be made aware that the study of social consciousness is not one that can be mastered within one class. It is an exercise in tolerance, acceptance and comprehension that lasts a lifetime, one that will greatly enrich their time at Vassar and be a critical part of their life everyday after graduation. In addition to on-campus courses relating to social awareness, we also encourage students to take advantage of the fieldwork opportunities that Vassar offers. Spending time working with social service organizations within the community is perhaps the best way to grapple with the realities and histories of inequalities all around us. Fieldwork is also an excellent way to apply curricular knowledge in a real world setting, to break away from the highly theoretical real of college classrooms and experience that theory in action. In a campus where much emphasis is placed on learning from one’s peers, the Office of Residential Life should play a pivotal role in increasing social awareness among students. Student fellows should be trained in initiating discussions on and answering questions about social awareness issues, similar to the training they already receive on mental health and conflict resolution. Small group forums facilitated by Student Fellows and other members of Residential Life would enable students to share their own experiences and stories, voice their own opinions, and ask their own questions. The transition from high school, where many students are not exposed to the formal study of
social issues, to college can be difficult to navigate. Fellow groups already effectively serve to orient students with how life functions on Vassar’s campus, and could easily be expanded to orient students to how privilege and oppression function at Vassar and beyond. Student to student dialogue about difference is also a very productive way of addressing the endeavor of social awareness, and we encourage Student Fellows to help facilitate these types of conversations. Such small-scale discussions could be used in tandem with a sponsored lecture series, bringing in speakers from both inside and outside the Vassar community to discuss issues of social awareness in a more formal capacity. The important thing is that efforts to increase social awareness on campus not happen singularly, as an afterthought, or through one class or discussion. Vassar College prides itself on its diversity. We are home to a population of students and staff with a wide range of gender identities, ideologies, experiences, and ethnicities, and the College curriculum reflects this spectrum of difference. Social awareness can be increased simply by pushing oneself to interact with someone who holds a different set of ideologies or who comes from a different socioeconomic background. Whether this interaction takes place in a dorm common room or academic classroom, it will foster social consciousness, personal growth, and keep alive the legacy of Vassar College as a site of progress. —The Staff Editorial represents the opinion of at least two-thirds of the 14-member Miscellany News Editorial Board.
Obama’s victory gives hope GOP reflects on failures for peaceful Mideast solution as new electorate emerges Stacey Nieves
Guest ColumNist
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f you’re a conservative at Vassar, I’m sure you were disappointed on Tuesday. And if you were particularly vocal about your support for Mitt Romney, and how sure you were that he was going to win, you may even feel a little embarrassed. But look at it this way: You can’t possibly be as disappointed or as embarrassed as Benjamin Netanyahu is right now. After having put his hopes and his money (or, more accurately, the money of his biggest supporter and alleged financier, Sheldon Adelson) into the Romney campaign, Netanyahu faces the awkward prospect of more years of interaction with Barack Obama, and that’s assuming that Netanyahu can win his own re-election in January. But if you’re on the other side of our own political fence, and hoping that Obama’s re-election will mean substantial change in our country’s coddling policy toward Israel, you might end up disappointed too. Unlike Obama, many congresspersons still have re-election prospects to be concerned about, and so are unlikely to want to risk stepping on the toes of the large, well-funded Israel lobby. Not that Obama is likely to push them to do that. It is much more likely that he will refrain from making any attempt to reduce our country’s steady stream of fiscal and military support for Israel. And despite ruffling Netanyahu’s feathers with his refusal to declare a firm “red line” that, if crossed by Iran, would trigger military action, Obama has stated unequivocally that the U.S. will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, a position unlikely to change in his next term. Though I believe our material support for Israel will remain unchanged, I hold out hope that at least our diplomatic support can be used as leverage to finally push for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine problem that our country has quietly favored for some time. Obama made the bold move of announcing that goal out loud in May, in a speech that Israeli officials attempted to edit up to the very minute the president began speaking, because of its reference to the pre-1967 borders as a starting point for Israel-Palestine negotiations. Hopefully, now that the president no longer must worry about re-election, he can afford to push the two-state solution more often and forcefully, perhaps even to the point of not only threatening, but actually scaling back the U.S.’ un-
conditional diplomatic support for Israel. Given that Palestine’s latest push toward statehood—its developing request for recognition as a non-member observer state in the United Nations— cannot be vetoed by the United States because the vote takes place in the General Assembly, it is more likely to succeed than Palestine’s past attempts. Should it succeed, it would provide an opportunity for Obama to point out to both Israel and the U.S.’ populaces that if they continue to stubbornly deny Palestine’s right to existence, the rest of the international community will increasingly view them as obstructionist and not genuinely interested in peace.
“I hope that our diplomatic support can be used as leverage to push for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine problem.” sTaceY nieVes ’15 Whether Obama would actually take advantage of this opportunity, however, is unclear; in the past he has called Palestinian efforts for UN recognition merely “symbolic,” in usual lockstep with Israel. But because a second term may mean less obligation to be Israel’s unconditional supporter, it is not impossible that Obama will reverse this position and point to the UN vote as a sign of international support for Palestinian statehood. Whatever Obama does with his second term, it is important to remember that, though it may not always seem this way, there is a limit on what the a president can accomplish. Obama can pressure Israel to make a sincere effort to achieve peace with Palestine, but ultimately it is Israel and Palestine themselves who must decide whether and how that peace will occur. If Obama truly wants to play a role, he will again have to lead from behind. —Stacey Nieves ’15 is an English major.
Jack Mullan
Guest ColumNist
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he 2012 election is over, mercifully. The hollow, saccharine words from stump speeches and spin rooms have finally evaporated into nothingness, joining the stale ashes of the billions of dollars burned on political advertisements over the last two years. At last, we no longer have to listen to talking heads insincerely predict how the latest news stories will dramatically “change the race.” But no sooner did the political pundits retire this kind of petty prognosticating than they proceeded to entertain an equally dizzying series of questions: “What do the election results tell us? What does it all mean?” Following Nov. 6’s comprehensive victories for the Democrats many in the media have—depending on their perspective—heralded or lamented what they envision to be an impending era of liberal triumphalism. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat claimed that President Obama’s reelection signified a long-term “realignment” of political power in favor of those on the left. Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, authored an ostensibly prescient book in 2002 titled The Emerging Democratic Majority, which theorizes that demographic changes have granted Democrats a number of structural advantages in the composition of the electorate. Over at FOX News, Bill O’Reilly mourned the death of a “traditional America”—an uncomfortable reality for Bill, as it means that “the white establishment is now the minority.” The idea here is that since minorities are proportionally outgrowing the “white establishment” as a fraction of the overall population, they are beginning to vote in greater volume and with greater frequency. This will supposedly redound to Democrats’ benefit, since they are more attuned to the interests of these emerging voting blocs. As the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham bluntly put it last August, “[The GOP] isn’t generating enough angry white guys to stay in the business for the long term.”
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
Yet I’m not so sure I buy this theory. It is certainly true that a white populist ethos is very deeply ingrained in contemporary Republican ideology; the outdated provincialism of an “angry-whites-only” strategy clearly manifested itself in the damaged sustained by the Republican part last Tuesday. But as far as the long-term politics goes, I don’t believe that Republicans are willing to cloister themselves from the demographic realities much longer. The threat of losing will compel them to start to wake up. Hell, it took anti-Obama hack Sean Hannity less than a week to “evolve” and endorse a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
“The threat of losing elections will compel the GOP to wake up.” JacK muLLan ’14 Democracy is about the marketplace of ideas, and at the moment the top commodities are rapidly changing. The voices that have come to dominate the playing field are asking for immigration reform, marriage equality, civil liberty, equal access and equal pay. Despite America’s troubled history of disenfranchisement and discrimination, women and minorities now hold a historically high number of seats in Congress. And we just re-elected our first black president. I don’t know how the new faces of America will actually benefit or hurt Republicans over the next elections, because quite frankly I don’t care. Both parties will have to compete for a new, progressive class of Americans now. The real story here isn’t the realignment of political power, but the realignment of people power. You can hear it in O’Reilly’s racist paranoia, and it’s evident in Hannity’s reactionary genuflections. Being a part of this coming generation is a blessing, and it can only get better from here. —Jack Mullan ’14 is a Political Science major.
OPINIONS
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November 15, 2012
Vassar farm deer cull plan expensive and impractical Macrae Mullan Guest Columnist
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n January 2010, for the first time, Vassar performed a deer cull on the Vassar Farm and Ecological Preserve (VFEP). The Vassar Farm Oversight committee, the organization that deemed the deer cull necessary, cited a reduction of wolves and other natural predators as the reason behind the need for a deer cull. Wolves were virtually eliminated from the United States by 1950. It was not until 2009, however, that the Vassar Farm decided a deer cull was necessary. In 2004, the Vassar Farm used an infrared flyover to estimate the deer population. They found that there were 223 deer on the campus. In 2009, the same operation was conducted, finding that there were 115 deer on campus. The Vassar Farm Oversight Committee cited this as fact in a June 2009 report. This shows that there was a reduction of 108 deer (48%) in the five years between infrared flyovers, during which time no deer population control was implemented. In January 2010, Vassar hired a sharpshooter to kill 64 deer on the Vassar Farm, leaving 9. As the result of a 2012 infrared flyover, The Vassar Farm Oversight Committee estimates there to currently be between 39 and 50 deer per square mile (the Vassar Farm is .83 square miles, so one could expect there to be between 32 and 40). If we take the median of these estimates, we see an increase of 27 deer, or 300% over just two years. As managers of the Vassar Farm explained
at the deer cull information session on Monday, Nov. 5, this sudden increase in deer population is due to the fact that, when faced with a plentiful food supply, the deer population will expand exponentially due to migration onto the Vassar farm and increased birth rates. So, by performing a sharpshooting, Vassar has artificially created an opportunity for unhindered exponential growth. The Vassar Farm Oversight Committee’s response to this is to propose that we conduct another sharpshooting this winter break, once again reducing the deer population to no more than 10, and once again encouraging exponential growth with the idea that we will conduct a new cull every two to three years as a long-term solution. Sharpshooting is not economically viable. The deer cull in 2010 cost $12,992. This is approximately $203 per deer. We are experiencing a time of great economic difficulty. Can we afford to spend $10,000 every two or three years on a deer cull that only encourages population growth? According to the Vassar Farm Oversight Committee, there is no other option. Students and members of the local community have suggested a viable alternative. Immunocontraception has been tested and shown to effectively reduce deer population, most notably on Fire Island, N.Y., where PZP (an immunocontraceptive that is fired in a dart) was used to effectively reduce the deer population. In 2011, Dr. Allen Rutberg, previously a visiting professor at Vassar, now an assistant professor at Tufts University, wrote an article,
“PZP Immunocontraception in White-Tailed Deer” that summarized the effects of PZP use on deer since 1993. In that time, 2000 deer had been treated with PZP. With its use, deer populations were not only stabilized; the number of deer in certain areas was reduced by as much as 44% over five years. When students have suggested this to the Vassar Farm Oversight Committee, the committee has given four reasons this is not possible. I will summarize them and refute each one individually: 1. It is illegal. This is quite simply not true. While it may be illegal for me to purchase a dart gun and shoot local deer full of contraception in my free time between classes, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation, it is perfectly legal for a college such as Vassar to utilize dart-based immunocontraception and to study the results. 2. It is too expensive. Price estimates for using PZP range from $10-$75 per deer. This is vastly cheaper than the $156 per deer that Vassar pays to hire a sharpshooter. 3. It will not reduce the population fast enough, resulting in damage to the biological diversity of the Vassar Farm. While contraception may not decimate the population tomorrow, it will reduce the deer population to a long-term, sustainable level. Biennial sharpshooting results in a massive fluctuation in deer population every two to three years, which does not lead to a steady ecosystem with healthy biodiversity. 4. Contraception can leech into the environment. While contraception can leech into the environment if it is
put in the deer’s food, this is not what I or other students have proposed. A dart-based contraception does not create a risk of polluting the environment, as it goes directly into the deer. The darts are large and visible; if one were lost, it would be impossible for students to injure themselves. If anyone who has read this far still believes that sharpshooting is a more effective, more economically viable option than contraception, they must consider the moral implications of the biennial slaughter of over two thirds of our deer population. The cull begins by baiting the deer. Deer learn over a period of two weeks that they can expect to find food at a specific place on the farm every night. At the end of the two-week period, a sharpshooter kills most of the deer, with the intention of leaving no more than 10. The sharpshooter intentionally targets pregnant females and young deer; a single buck can impregnate many females. At the information session hosted by the managers of the Vassar Farm on Nov. 5, a number of hunters expressed their opinion that sharpshooting is inhumane. In this article, all of the figures that I cite are from the Vassar Farm website or from reports and lectures by the Vassar Farm’s officials. Their own numbers show that this cull does not make sense, whether one looks at it from an economic, scientific, or moral perspective. —Macrae Marran ’15 is a sophomore at Vassar College.
Proposed trade agreement Student gauges vote value imperils Internet freedoms after dissatisfying election Josh Sherman Columnist
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f you’ve been living under a rock and ignoring internet activism for the past year or so, you may have missed out on a pair of proposed laws called SOPA and PIPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Properties Act (PIPA), two bills that appeared in the House and Senate respectively late last year, stirred up a real commotion among millions of internet users as they removed rights to intellectual freedoms on the Internet, including the posting of content on various websites without explicit copyrights. People argued that this could potentially throw companies like Facebook and Google out of business. These bills, after an Internet outcry early this year from sites like Wikipedia and Reddit, were both shot down in Congress, and thus ended the crisis of Internet freedom in America. Well, at least that’s how the story seemed to end. These two bills and many others, such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), constantly appear in the legislatures in North America and the European Union as attempts to restrict intellectual properties more severely than they presently are. In Canada, yet another one of these bills has come forth, and it threatens (once again) our intellectual property rights. The bill is a potential agreement between Canada and the EU, and is called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). CETA comes in the wake of ACTA’s recent failure to succeed in EU Parliament, and is yet another attempt to restrict intellectual property rights across the world. This bill, like SOPA, PIPA, and other previous legislative reforms recently proposed, attempts to increase legal action against intellectual property violations and more rigidly define the concept of fair use on the Internet. The bill works by creating a much more rigid legal structure to enforce intellectual properties on the internet by request of the European Union, and for the sake of promoting free trade. Ironically, this agreement between Canada and the EU does the exact opposite for free trade, and could perhaps, like ACTA, SOPA, and PIPA, be detrimental for the entire world of internet freedom. The problem with intellectual properties on the internet is the sheer difficulty in enforcing the rights of those who create con-
tent online, as well as the difficulty of making a clear distinction between fair use and copyright infringement. International laws currently protect a creator’s content on the Internet, but also do not give the creator exclusive control of their content. Instead, a gray area is in place that clouds the degree to which a creator can control his content, and in what range it’s considered fair use for everyone. This is why we can often have samples of content, or use images with proper citations. It’s the foundation that our internet—a content network—is based on. The problem with CETA, and the many bills before it, is that it destroys this foundation by giving extreme power to the content creator and his or her ability to restrict their content’s usage on the internet. The current laws in place grant content owners the right to their content, but also requires them to go through a request process to have it removed, and give the site owner the chance to remove it without legal action. The new agreement, however, allows content owners to skip the middleman and request sites to be shut down or their domains to be seized until they follow through and remove all suspected content. The process removes many essential rights from the site owner and prevents many content-based websites like Facebook and YouTube from operating. The only solution would be to have a moderated environment, which is not feasible for many websites. As a result, CETA could potentially hurt intellectual property rights in the EU and Canada, and potentially in the United States as well. In the end the issue is that CETA, ACTA, SOPA, and PIPA all attempt to break the balance at work between fair copyright enforcement and excessive intellectual property protection. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is the current U.S. manner of enforcing copyright and effectively offers that balance between copyright enforcement and Internet fair use. While it may need some stronger provisions, the bills proposed have been proven to be far excessive, and until a fair balance is proposed the technology companies that dominate our world, as well as the individual users who benefit from them, will continue to oppose legislation like CETA in the United States. —Josh Sherman ’16 is a freshman at Vassar College.
Branden Densmore Guest Columnist
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his article is in response to Evan Seltzer’s piece entitled “Refusing to vote not a legitimate form of political protest” (10.25.12) which was a reply to my last piece, “Refuting Vassar’s get out the vote ethos” (10.04.12). To start, I would like to commend Evan Seltzer, and the executive committee of R.E.V. Up, for taking an interest in my article. Also, their dedication to the democratic ideal is well noted; I know you guys are trying to do the right thing. However, I feel that Seltzer has grossly misunderstood my position, which I will now clarify. Seltzer believes that I attempted to justify my “rejection of participating in our democracy.” While this might seem true at first, I wonder: Does participating in our democracy only consist in voting for president? At any rate, it might be more fair, and more accurate, to say that I have chosen not to participate in a certain aspect of our democracy at this particular time. In my home state I have been politically active in the State House, done much volunteer work in the community, and even participated as a constituent service representative for Congressman Mike Michaud. I am not, nor have I ever, rejected participating in our democracy in general. In my last article I chose to sacrifice my vote for president on the altar of public discourse in order to protest the following three things: 1) the insincerity of both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, 2) the absence of real debate and honest dialogue, 3) the incessant focus of the mainstream media on campaign politics at the expense of other important news, and 4) the American education system that, in general, does not teach students how to think philosophically or critically about political issues. In retrospect, I feel that I should have added 4) the killing of thousands of innocent individuals (men, women, and children) overseas. At any rate, Seltzer believes that this is not a legitimate form of political protest but rather “a hollow excuse to neglect…[my] own circumstances.” He challenges the legitimacy of my protest on the grounds that I should vote because the president has such a powerful influence on our lives, and he admonishes not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. However, it is not that I do not em-
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
phatically endorse either candidate; I reject them both outright. Hence, I did not choose to let the perfect be the enemy of the good but instead refused to support the lesser of two evils. According to Seltzer’s account, I have succumbed to the influence of social conformity; he relegates me to the demographic of nearly half the country who don’t vote in presidential elections. However, while Seltzer may try to put me in a box of statistical categories his efforts inevitably fail because I am a unique individual. Yes, I have many similarities with others, but no one has the past that I do; no one else has my body or my mind. How many people have challenged Vassar’s get-out-and-vote ethos in history? In my view it is Seltzer who has succumbed to social conformity; he has sided with the status quo, giving his allegiance to the executive through sanctioning its legitimacy. This, in my opinion, is only going to lead to more of the same—empty promises, overspending, taxing, killing, and the unilateral occupation of foreign lands. I wanted to demonstrate, in my last piece, that the non-voter stereotype of negligence is not applicable to every single individual who chooses not to vote in the presidential election. If I were politically negligent, I would not be writing these political articles to share my position with the Vassar community while I have deadlines waiting in the wings. Some would have us believe that voting makes us non-apathetic and politically involved, by necessity. However, while some presidential voters might feel politically interested and involved through their act of voting alone, I believe that my publicly refusing to vote for president is a greater proof of my authentic interest in politics because it took character and courage. I wonder how many presidential voters would flee from publicly exercising their free speech regarding such a highly controversial issue? In my mind, genuine participation in our democracy is far more complex than simply showing up at the ballot box once every four years. What about volunteering in the many disenfranchised communities throughout the country or going to State House meetings and speaking truth to power? —Branden Densmore ’13 is a Philosophy major.
November 15, 2012
OPINIONS
Page 11
Positivity should come with VC critiques Jean-Luc Bouchard Guest ColumNist
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his past Monday at a Town Hall meeting in the Jewett MPR, when asked about student representation and student voices on campus, Dean of the College Christopher Roellke expressed a desire to see more Vassar students openly discuss what they liked about life at Vassar. And after some thought, I decided that I agree with him. So allow me to help foment this discussion by saying that I enjoy a lot of things at Vassar. And as vague and simplistic as that statement is, I think that it is an important one nonetheless. Events, classes, friends, buildings—any and all of these things can make me happy to be at this college. At the same time, there are also plenty of things I dislike about Vassar that I am not afraid to bring up in the appropriate settings. As with almost anywhere I will go in life, Vassar has presented me with both positive and negative experiences that will influence me for the rest of my life. So why am I telling you this? What is the significance of these statements? What’s the big whoop? The big whoop, to be frank, is a lack of whoop. I believe that in our justifiable and ceaseless campaign to improve our lives and the lives of others at Vassar, it’s easy to forget that many of us also enjoy our time here. I believe that it can become too comfortable for cynicism to inject itself into our day-to-day interactions with each other and with our college. And I believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with maintaining a balance between publicly criticizing and publically applauding aspects of our life at Vassar. This philosophy relates to the classic argument over patriotism: who loves a nation more, the unabashed supporter or the critic? I have always believed that the critic is the more useful member of society, because he/ she works to improve. But, as Dean Roellke implied, this relationship can also be reflec-
tive of a void in positive dialogue as well. I don’t believe that you should feel ashamed or unproductive for occasionally taking a moment to celebrate aspects of this school. As the Humor & Satire Editor of this paper, as well as a performer of stand-up comedy, I constantly find myself walking the line between satire and cynicism, sarcasm and pessimism. As someone who enjoys mixing humor with social and political discourse, I continually find myself turning a critical eye on the topical issues of the week. As an amateur purveyor of comedy, my actions advocate the dissection and parody of the many admittedly hilarious problems of the average Vassar student. I make Deece jokes. I make TA bridge jokes. I even make jokes about curricular policy, though that may just be because I’m a gigantic nerd. But I also deeply, deeply love and admire the opportunities allotted to me as a Vassar student. And it took Dean Roellke’s comment this past Monday for me to realize that I don’t always voice this opinion. My criticisms and mockery are far more public than my squeals of glee or nods of approval. Sadly, that’s just how student newspapers and humor work for the most part. But thankfully, this student newspaper also has an Opinions section in which I can publicly discuss what I enjoy about life at Vassar. And so, here are some things I like: our financial aid program. The vast majority of my professors. The vast majority of my classes. My friends. Skinner Hall. LaundryView. Being able to do stand-up comedy on campus. Being able to write for a student newspaper. Meeting people from around the world. Meeting people who grew up fifteen minutes away from me. The incredible guest speakers this campus draws in each year. We have Steinway pianos in each dorm! Our lack of a core curriculum, which is the main reason I chose to attend this college. The custodial staff that I have met in my dorm,
who have never been anything short of extremely friendly and extremely competent. Thompson Memorial Library. Need-blind admissions. Can I say that again? Need blind admissions! The very friendly man who works in the dollar store on Raymond Avenue. The students who dedicate their time to our House Teams. The faculty and staff who dedicate their time to our safety, our mental and physical well-being, and our educational experience. Womp-womps. SayAnything. Yes, SayAnything. The opportunity to interact with members of the Poughkeepsie community. The Mug. Yes, the Mug. The Quad in spring, when everyone celebrates the much-anticipated arrival of warm weather. Founder’s Day. Many other things. I am now faced with two rather large questions: 1) Will I continue to make jokes that center on the critique of Vassar student life? Yes, because I think they are funny. And I believe that humor is an incredible medium for entertainment and discourse that I would not want to take for granted. I honestly think that humor can be a catalyst for further rumination. And 2) Will I continue to critique this college when I disagree with what I see? Yes, I still think it is my duty to improve my environment as best I can. But do I live my life solely engrossed by these criticisms? No. I still love this college that I so frequently bash for calling its minors “correlates.” I love this college, and I know that a lot of my fellow students do as well. I think we would all benefit from reminding ourselves of this fact more often, and from taking the time to declare what we are grateful for, what keeps us here at Vassar, and what motivates us to debate the criticisms that are a necessary part of building a stronger college.
What is your greatest fear?
“Zombies, by far.”
—Drew Nixon ’16
“Friday classes.”
—Eliot Gerson ’15
“The Scarie Movie series.”
—Jean-Luc Bouchard ’14 is Humor & Satire Editor of The Miscellany News.
Problems grip China despite power shift Phil Chen
Guest ColumNist
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he 18th Communist Party Congress that began on Nov. 8 in Beijing is perhaps not worth all the hype after all, especially when one is reminded that a Baidu search of “18th Party Congress” returns less than Chinese coverage of Herman Cain, let alone on Google, which was blocked in China at the start of the conference. While many see the Congress as more important than the two-man race that ended in President Obama’s favor last Tuesday, the quinquennial convention is little more than a stage for announcements—of predictable arrangements and statements of political agendas already familiar to Chinese and global ears. What is more important to the international audience is to identify the trends of the politically stagnant but economically dramatic last ten years and the ramifications of the Party’s plans for the future of this nouveau riche power, whose GDP is expected to overtake that of the United States within 13 years. While democracy and human rights dominate the headlines over articles about China in newspapers read by the typical American—Republican or Democrat—as shown by the tantalizing reports on Foxconn workers, this has never been an issue in Chinese politics and it will never be. Rather, the real issue is who gets how big a piece of the socio-economic pie. China has changed in obvious ways within the past 10 years—197,000 students are studying in the United States (up from 3,000 in the year 2000), per capita GDP has more than quadrupled, car ownership has more than quintupled, and a more assertive foreign policy has been implemented. In other areas, the changes have been subtle, but nevertheless crucial for the stability of the giant and the global balance of power. With the economy in recession, the Communist Party is losing big time the source of its legitimacy—the rapid creation of a bourgeoisie (“the Middle Class”). In fact, China is facing the exact socioeconomic problem that America is—a ridiculous disparity between the rich and the poor, with likelihood of a class warfare, highlighted by shrinking social mobility.
The danger could not be better illustrated than by the case of Bo Xilai. Bo Xilai, a charismatic “Western-style” leader, appealed at once to the old aristocratic elites of the Communist bureaucracy who no longer have access to power and bribes, and also to the currently immobile poor who desired equality; Bo rallied these disaffected groups against the mainstream capitalists under the rhetoric of a nostalgic Maoism. If it were not for the internal struggle between Bo and his police chief, Wang Lijun, Bo’s plan to challenge the Party’s central leadership may not have been revealed. Thus, the Communist Party scrambled to oust Bo, who has strong ties to the army. Bo’s temporary success showed that the socialism is enjoying a bigger market, perhaps even enough to start a movement.
“China is facing the exact socioeconomic problem that America is–a ridiculous disparity between the rich and the poor.” phiL chen ’16 This emergency episode illustrated how inflammatory socioeconomic disparity could be used to topple the neoliberal aspect of the Party. Whereas there are on average 500 protests every day, the very rich are voting with their feet, with 27 percent of those with at least $15 million in assets having emigrated and another 47 percent considering it, according to Reuters. Surely they are pursuing better education, environment, health care and food safety, but more importantly, they are worrying about the safety of their assets, in case of full-fledged class warfare. Thus, the only option left for the next generation leaders of the Communist Party is socioeconomic equality. This means ridding China
of corruption, instituting property taxes, and providing social security and welfare systems, among many others. These are intricate matters, however. Systematic corruption has been the grease that moves the business wheel, and even top leaders like Wen Jiabao have been haunted by the specter of corruption. Moreover, it is hard to imagine a system without corruption. There is no other way to reconcile the ostensible nouveau riche with the powerful yet moneyless bureaucrats unless the system could shed some of its authoritarianism and at the same time socioeconomically compress society. This means that the country must move away from the single-party system, and such departure can either come from the party’s self-dissolution or a class uprising. Meanwhile, the compressing measures, such as property tax, will likely result in disaffection among the rich. When the party has to juggle between the poor, the rich, and its own death, the good thing is that the top 1% are moving out—to America, for instance. If we think this way, the implications are discouraging for the neoliberal United States. If China implodes into an unstable mess where businesspeople are labeled criminals (not that they aren’t already, given the ubiquity of bribery), then unless its economy surges again, China’s leaders will face pressure from every class from inside and major countries from the outside. The only way for the survival of political China is to smooth it out. Its economy has to recover by turning China into a large consumer market while its society has to rid inequality by shared sacrifice. So in vague American terms, China might “democratize.” Regardless of all the scary talk in American media and politicians about China, that it will take over America and that it will be a maritime power, our worry should be whether or not it will implode. No one will want to lose their investments, and the U.S. will not want to lose its biggest creditor. Eight in ten Chinese citizens want political reform. However credible the statistics, there are strong voices. If they are credible, there better be some reforms soon. —Phil Chen ’16 is a student at Vassar.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
—Kevin Kee ’15
“All-nighters.”
—Lindsay Kantor ’14
“Drowning.”
—Lucas Amodio ’15
“That I’ll be reborn as one of the Vassar squirrels.”
—Michael Kim ’13 —Katie de Heras, Photo Editor Jean-Luc Bouchard, Humor & Satire
OPINIONS
Page 12
Americans deify figures, disregard flaws Juan Thompson Columnist
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onight is the release of Steven Spielberg’s much anticipated film Lincoln. The film is already the recipient of glowing reviews and critical acclaim. Unfortunately, most of those reviews failed to adequately address the sixteenth president’s racist attitudes, and that is because the movie itself does not. We will not see the Abraham Lincoln who told racist jokes or who, in his famous debates with Stephen Douglas, asked, “Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.” This remains a disturbing pattern in American literature and film. The public does not receive multi-dimensional pictures of prominent, historical figures and events; instead we are stuck with the work of slobbering sycophants who deify deeply flawed men. The biggest story this week, besides the re-election of Barack Obama, revolves around the resignation of CIA director David Petraeus. The former general retired after it was disclosed that he committed adultery with his official biographer, Paula Broadwell. We Americans are obsessed with political sex scandals. But the real scandal is the incessant praise that Petraeus received before his extracurricular activities were exposed. The man managed not one but two disastrous wars. He was at one point or another in charge of the Afghan and Iraq campaigns. The conflict is now over in Iraq after George W. Bush’s surge worked, or so we have been led to believe. Buzzfeed’s Michael Hastings, who spent considerable time in the Middle East, wrote, “He [Petraeus] convinced the entire Washington establishment that we won the war. He did it by papering over what the surge actually was: We took the Shiites’ side in a civil war, armed them to the teeth, and suckered the Sunnis into thinking we’d help
them out too. It was a brutal enterprise—over 800 Americans died during the surge, while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives during a sectarian conflict that Petraeus’ policies fueled.” After Petraeus helped wreak havoc in Iraq, President Obama foolishly appointed him top commander in Afghanistan. What did Petraeus do there? He naturally pushed for an Afghan surge, which, as you may know, has worked extremely well. With the exception of that single article on
“We Americans are obsessed with political sex scandals. But the real scandal is the incessant praise that Petraeus received before his extracurricular activities were exposed.” Juan Thompson ’13 Buzzfeed, do we hear any of this in the media? Are our elected officials calling Petraeus to the mat for his jingoism? No. The president, who promoted him to Director of the CIA after his stints in the Middle East, applauded the now-disgraced general for “leading our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end.” Senator Dianne Feinstein, who serves as chair of the Intelligence Committee, complained that she wished the President had not accepted the director’s resignation. Other
“Xchange” ACROSS
1 Prayer’s end 5 Authentic 9 Chute opening? 13 Spanish “but” 14 Roof’s edge 15 Bach’s instrument 16 Jack who preceded Johnny 17 Uno y dos 18 Country formerly called Zaire 19 Cat call 21 *2001 film about an FBI superdog 23 “If I ruled the world” rapper 26 ___−la−la 27 Founder’s Day month, sometimes 28 *Caught in a jam 30 Gluttony, e.g. 31 Unclear 32 Commonly torn knee piece
—Juan Thompson ’13 is a Political Science major.
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Letter to the Editor
n his column “Capitalist assumptions go unquestioned” (11.08.2012), Martin Man demonstrates a failure to understand the nature of capitalism. Capitalism and businessmen are products of the Enlightenment. What Man laments is that the “assumptions” of the Enlightenment go unquestioned, a belief in which he is mistaken. The United States of America is no longer the country of the Enlightenment, and it is certainly not a capitalist nation. As its Enlightenment foundations have been swept away by the philosophical descendants of Immanuel Kant, the United States has become a mixed economy. When Man laments the country’s bending to “the will of capitalism,” he laments “human reason,” because businessmen make economic decisions using their minds. Contrary to being a system of oppression and domination, capitalism is the only moral politico-economic system, since it is consonant with man’s nature as a rational being. Pure capitalism is the only system that leaves man’s mind free to function. It does so by banning the initiation of physical force in human relationships through a government monopoly on the use of force by an objective code of law. Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Force, not freedom, scares an individual’s mind into blindness, and we cannot flourish and live human lives without the products of thought: Farms, homes, vehicles, schools, laboratories, roads, computers, businesses, et cetera. By throwing out the political system of the Enlightenment, capitalism, we close the door on the human mind. Without the will of capitalism, Western civilization would collapse. Only the mind can solve the problems of poverty, natural disasters, and human error. The goal of this letter is to absolve your conscience if you have an independent mind. My goal is not to turn any liberals into pro-capitalists, but to request that liberals do no give up their capitalist assumptions. Do not give up the assumption that you have a mind that is capable of economic planning for itself. An Enlightened mind can induce these facts from reality, and so can you. —Julian Hassan ’14 studied capitalism at National University.
The Miscellany Crossword
33 Massage sounds 36 Treasure map phrase... or a hint to the answers of the starred clues 40 Orange potato 41 Unit of resistance 42 Reproductive body 44 Ab ___ (from the beginning) 45 *”That’s exactly what I needed!” 47 Bee: prefix 48 Other Gov’t Agency: Abbr. 49 Part of a G.I.’s address 50 *Snigger−inducing English pudding dish 54 Territory 56 Calendar that ends in 2012 57 “The Thin Man” pooch 59 Site of Vassar meals 63 “___ anything!”
Answers to last week’s puzzle
politicians and media types wistfully recalled the brief period last year when Petraeus was mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. The FBI has also been attacked for causing the downfall of the greatest general since MacArthur. Lost amidst all this repulsive idolizing are Petraeus’ failed stewardship of two wars and a frightening militarization of the CIA. Petraeus is not the only American god we are instructed to bow down to. This week author Jon Meacham published a new biography on Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power). I am presently reading the book, so I can say that I find that Meacham’s portrayal of Jefferson’s relationship with his slave Sally Hemings leaves much to be desired. Jill Abramson, who reviewed the book for the New York Times, summed it up best: “Sally Hemings has only a few walk-on scenes, leaving the reader hungry for more on this fascinating, and troubling, relationship.” Meacham, making the rounds promoting his book, has said that Jefferson loved his slave and that she may have reminded him of his dead wife, who was also her half-sister. What an offensively ignorant statement to make. Jefferson, who wrote eloquently about freedom and liberty, refused to free his own slaves or their children, even in death. Our third president was a hypocritical racist and rapist who more than earned those badges of dishonor. We all have the inclination to project greatness upon those we admire or idolize. Their flaws are jettisoned and their virtues held up. In a world with few heroes and heroines we reflexively manufacture them. But it does a great disservice to history and knowledge to whitewash the facts. We may only learn from history if we are truly aware of it.
November 15, 2012
by Jack Mullan, Crossword Editor 64 It’s sometimes proper 65 Archaeological site 66 Fr. holy women 67 Big brass 68 Tina Fey’s “___ Girls”
39 Astronominical red giant 43 Outer: Prefix 44 Offer one’s two cents 45 Jacuzzi
46 Creature with a dewlap 47 John or John Quincy 50 12/25 51 Sports division
DOWN
1 Smart phone download 2 ___ culpa 3 Period of time 4 Standard 5 Sharp comeback 6 Q−Tip target 7 “___ Maria” 8 More’s opposite 9 Stand−in 10 Agriculture & Nat. Res: Abbr. 11 Prego’s competition 12 SayAnything commenter title, perhaps 15 Atlantic or Pacific 20 Defunct anesthetic 22 French sociologist Durkheim 23 Maritime org. 24 Coordination loss: Var. 25 Standard deviation symbol 29 Acquisition of the U.S. in the Spanish−American War 30 Univ., e.g. 32 HSBC has one in Main 33 Date with a Dr. 34 Kerfuffle 35 Throat malady 37 “Born on the Fourth of July” hero Ron 38 “Dexter” and “Weeds” channel: Abbr.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
52 “Chitty Bang Bang” actor Dick Van __ 53 “Perpetual Peace” thinker 55 Agricultural locale
58 Bygone French coin 60 Pool tool 61 Calendario unit 62 Anderson Cooper’s home
November 15, 2012
HUMOR & SATIRE
Page 13
OPINIONS
Breaking News
From the desk of Jean-Luc Bouchard, Humor & Satire Editor
Health experts recommend increasing your dosage of shuffling to at least once a day, seven days a week An average Vassar weekday “As a Cappy upon a Hill”: schedule for eager Prospies A VC Puritan’s meditations Jean-Luc Bouchard
Humor & satire editor
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ecently, I was thinking back on my days as a prospie, choosing between Vassar, Oxford, and, let’s say, Harvard. While I found the info sessions and tours useful in making my final decision, I would have appreciated something else even more: an account of an average Vassar student’s weekday schedule. So, for the benefit of all future prospies, I made one: 9:13 a.m.: Wake up. Consider going to the
gym. Consider finishing homework. Consider bathing self. Consider a whole lot of things. Fall asleep right after you turn off your alarm. 11:57 a.m.: Wake up again. You have class at noon. Sprint to Sanders Classroom while you eat the dried remains of the green tray you had sitting on your desk. As you sloppily cross the campus, you will see everyone you have ever had a crush on staring at you disparagingly. This includes kids from middle school. 12:03 p.m.: Enter class. The professor isn’t there yet because God loves you today. The only seats left are next to the class’s token heavy smokers, leg shakers, and kids who speak way too informally to the professor. 12:49 p.m.: Waking up from your daydream, you suddenly cannot remember what class you are in. You keep hearing the words “postmodern” and “liminal,” but when you look at your textbook you realize that you’re in a bio seminar. You are not affected by the tragedy of this. 1:16 p.m.: You race to The Retreat to beat out the rest of the world getting out of class at this exact moment. Too lazy to wait in line, you buy four rice puddings and feel minimal shame. 3:42 p.m.: The professor in your next class has been talking about her kids for seventeen minutes. To kill time, you begin mentally pairing up the other students in mock battles/ hook-ups. Some students start to notice you staring at them. Class gets real awk real fast.
Josh Multer
5:13 p.m.: You show up to your org activity
of the day. That one really vocal member who always crosses her arms and has never actually shown up to an event is criticizing something unrelated to the org. Your friend who made you join in the first place is not at the meeting for the eighth time in a row. You weep silent tears and volunteer to make the posters. 6:30 p.m.: You think about doing homework but then remember Netflix exists. 7:45 p.m.: Oh no, oh dear God no, you forgot to get food earlier. You go to the Deece. You eat honeydew melon, turmeric, and a large uncooked portabella mushroom. As you pass by the empty food stations, you look through the back to the kitchen and see the staff eating steak and lobster on golden plates. 7:59 p.m.: You think about going to workstudy. You remember that money is a thing. You go. You are immensely proud of yourself. 9:53 p.m.: Your friend texts you that there’s a thing going on tonight in a suite in Main. You somehow do a day’s worth of homework in twelve minutes. Whether or not it’s good is super debatable. If fact, you’re kind of banking on the fact that it’s debatable. 10:34 p.m.: You show up to the suite. You know no one. Everyone keeps repeating the same inside joke involving the name Dennis, so you’re pretty sure this is a sports team party, or everyone except you has gone totally freakin’ bananas. There’s a kid who keeps talking to you who you’re pretty sure was in your Freshman Writing Seminar. You do not think that is a good enough reason to keep talking to him, and you tell him that you have irritable bowel syndrome so that you can leave. 11:47 p.m.: You eat UpC ice cream and people-watch in the 24-Hour Room. You contemplate why you’ve never seen Cappy in a baseball cap. This consumes you until you pass out.
Guest ColumNist
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ow that the two most important holidays of the year thus far have passed us by (Halloween and Wait-We-Almost-Elected-MittRomney Day), it is time to turn our attentions towards the home stretch. By the home stretch I mean Thanksgiving and Celebrate-American-Consumerism Week, but we’ll leave Jesus Claus and his magic Jewish candles for another time. So, what do we silly Americans think of when we hear Thanksgiving? Turkey! Ok, yes, but shut up and try a little harder. Puritans! Yes, the Puritans, with their cute little work ethics and moral codes and dying nearly all the time. I could write about them, but no, I’ll take it one step further…I will BECOME one of them, here and now at Vassar College!
1. (Showering)
There is no event we experience, no Ritual we enact which provides for us more goodliness of both Body and Spirit but in the shower. Oh! To rid ourselves of Parliament smoke and Mug sweat Sunday mornings and every other Thursday! To unclog our neighbor’s ‘leg’ hair from the Drain! The Good student knows that in the enclosed Booth, discourse takes place solely between himself, his most righteous God, and that curious man Carl in the adjacent stall. Only they are privy to his most inner Ponderings and awful renditions of Alicia Keys songs. He may wash away his Sin (of which Carl undoubtedly hath many) for His glory, he may find solitude and comfort in the shower of engineered rain, pissed forth by the great Architect of the Heavens, who apparently resides just above Mudd’s ceiling panels. 2. (Study)
A prudent Student will not burden himself all at once with a cumbersome scholarly schedule; he recognizes that he surely cannot divide his attentions evenly and thoroughly to all manners of Procrastination. For, surely he will break under the strain of more than five courses! He will instead utilize his Dean of the Faculty’s most just reason to divine that to which he is most apt and suited, for his Lordship bestows on each man only what abilities
He knows they will bear most assuredly. Large quantities of wit, diverse Knowledge, and mental endurance would certainly crush whoever deemed Chicago Hall aesthetically pleasing, and therefore does He only bestow on each of his children those talents that he knows they can handle with grace by name of Study Drugs. 3. (Campus)
Ineffable Lord, whose manifold achievements man can only strive toward in vain, what thinkest Thou of this our collegiate Landscape? Yes, I quite like the trees and buildings as well. But shall we ever become a Cappy upon a Hill? Methinks the liberal philosophy this Campus embodies hath brought upon your irksome wrath. I, a lone disciple lost amidst a Nile of savage Hipsters, pledge to keep our sacred covenant. Alas! We, the fruit of Thy labors, have spoiled and rotted, left to our own devices drunken on the over-ripened blood of Christ in a box! Get thee gone, Franzia, from this His Orchard, His second Eden! Have we overstepped our bounds? The name Babel more befits that of Jewett Tower, the name Semi-Circle of Satan that of Noyes. 4. (Exercise)
Must not the earnest labourer continually sharpen his Axe, lest it dull and hinder his efforts? And is not the farmer who toils all day in the Field rewarded by the ‘swoleness’ (in the parlance of my gymnasium brethren) he receives that night? He that works the field also works himself, shielding from both the afflictions of sluttishness and decay. Akin to the edification of the spirit is the edification of the body; just as there exists the Church of the Soul must there also exist the temple of protein shakes. In both places is the Spirit of the good Student sorely tried, but in the presence of the tight abs of the Lord he takes heart. As the burdensome weights strain the virtuous Student with grief and pain till his body becomes hardened, so does God deliver upon us many trials, till we, calloused yet strong like His own hands, are fit to enter his Crystal Palace. Look upon thyself, dost thou even hoist? 5. (The Mug on Weekend Nights)
Literally Hell.
Rachel Lenihan, Guest Cartoonist
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
ARTS
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November 15, 2012
Sol keyboardist Greenberg a lifelong composer, musician Yuhan Shui
Guest reporter
J
Cassady Bergevin/The Miscellany News
esse Greenberg ’13 listened to a CD with the works of Claude Debussy from his father’s music collection, and he found himself in awe. Greenberg is nothing if not a composer—and the director of Mahagonny Ensemble, timpani player in the Vassar College Orchestra, drummer for Vassar student bands and keyboardist for funk band Sol. He learned to play and write music at a very young age. “My first experience of playing music with someone else is with my dad in our basement. Me and my drum set and he with his guitar,” Greenberg said. “That’s the beginning of my learning how to interact with other musicians.” Greenberg thinks his father, a selftaught guitarist and songwriter, passed music down to him. The Debussy CD that entranced Greenberg is one CD of many in his father’s possession. “I’ve been composing since I was 7,” Greenberg said. “I started to get it very serious when I was 15, after being exposed to classical music and have become more and more serious since then.” Greenberg learned the drum and piano early on, which he later brought into his composition. His composition draws further influence from many genres, including jazz musician Thelonius Monk, folk musicians, classic composer Jean Sibelius and other contemporary composers as well. “Reckoning with all of these influences has been a challenge for developing my own voice, which has traces of minimalism, pop, the avant garde, and jazz,” wrote Greenberg in an emailed statement. He ultimately labels his music classic in style. After coming to Vassar, Greenberg used its artistic environment to develop his music work. As a music major, Greenberg learned a lot about composition. Composing for instruments he does not play poses a challenge and spurred him to further study composition. “Orchestration is like a subfield in composition, dealing with how to assign instruments different materials, how to decide what kind of sound you want to create through multiple instruments,” Greenberg explained.
“When I was composing pieces for Mahagonny [during my] sophomore year, I had to write for a lot of instruments that I had never written for before, like French horn, trumpet, alto and bass,” Greenberg said. “A lot of what I did is teaching myself and then deciding what kind of sound I wanted to create.” In order to make a harmonious piece, he needed to understand the physical and acoustical properties of instruments, and how they will sound in conversation with one another. “When we finally put the music in front of the players, I got to hear what it actually sounds like in real world. I need[ed] to go back and revise,” he said. Most recently, Greenberg has been influenced by a group of French contemporary composers, Tristan Murail, Gërard Grisey. “They have a concept of sound spectrum. They started with the idea of music as sound, as opposed with melody, notes,” Greenberg noted. These musicians, more concerned with acoustic principles and sound relationships, take sounds in laboratory, and use computer software to analyze the sound spectrum of different instruments. “I am influenced by their concept, starting with texture, starting with the idea of sound color, and then moving outward from there. This study has been both useful for the composition as well as the directing of the Mahagonny Ensemble,” Greenberg said. Besides composition, Greenberg has made strides in other fields of music. Without experience in either timpani or orchestra before, he joined the Vassar College Orchestra his freshman year, and has played timpani in the orchestra ever since. “I just started exploring it the summer before I came to Vassar, because I know I want to play percussion in the orchestra,” Greenberg said. “The experience in the orchestra has given me both a heightened appreciation for orchestral music as well as passion for the timpani.” He further explored and expanded his love for the drums at Vassar. “I played drum set in two pit bands for the FWA productions of 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and The Wild Party,” wrote Greenberg in an email state-
Jesse Greenberg ’13 poses for a photo in between classes, rehearsals, and preparations for his Senior Recital. Greenberg has been interested in music since childhood, and hopes to develop it into a career.. ment. “Last year, I played drums in a reggae/ dub band Eddie and the Asteroids, though all the other members have since graduated and therefore we have disbanded.” Greenberg even dabbled in film composing. “I scored two student films last year. One is for a friend studying film in Prague. And the other film I did is for a student film here at Vassar,” he said. “That I got more experimental and I had all the recordings on my own. The director of that film just said, ‘Do whatever you want. I trust you.’” Greenberg is also one of the original members, not just keyboardist, of Sol and contributed to the band’s accomplishments this year, including opening for Ra Ra Riot at the Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE) fall concert on Nov. 2. Now, Greenberg is busy preparing for his Senior Recital in April. “Half of the concert will be performing percussion and piano, some 20th Century music that I like,” Green-
berg said. “And the other half will be my original composition, which [my] friends and some professors [and I] will be performing.” Greenberg mainly works on percussion and pianos; the three original pieces include a wind trio, a solo piece for piano, and a programmatic chamber work loosely related to the story of the tower of Babel. Greenberg wants to pursue a music career after graduation. “I have recently been moving towards the decision to go into music education or music therapy,” he explained. Greenberg gave private lessons to children and adults over the past summers, but it is the experience of field work at the Institute for Music and Health that made Greenberg certain he wished to use music as a tool to help people with disabilities. “I had two students who had Down Syndrome, a kind of developmental disability. Music [has been] found recently to be a huge help,” Greenberg explained. He looks to apply to programs in New York after graduation.
Social activism guides Fox’s filmmaking, teaching career Steven Williams reporter
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I try to emphasize is that—more and more—is that the distinctions between documentary and narrative or even documentary and animation, any boundaries we set up are becoming more meaningless or arbitrary, especially as funding sources are becoming exponentially more diverse,” said Fox. He stressed the importance of funding in modern film-making but explained that it is, indeed, accessible. “As long as you know what you’re doing and what you want to do and you can articulate it and know who you’re trying to reach, you can always find a funder for your project,” he said. In fact, Fox explained that jobs in filmmaking are becoming increasingly fluid as compared to how they’ve been in the industry historically.
Jonah Bleckner/The Miscellany News
isiting Instructor in Film Jason Fox has always had approached film as a pragmatic medium, with the power to examine and explain the world around us. “Film is nothing more than a lens or a tool through which to organize our external realities and communicate them,” explained Fox, who almost exclusively teaches production. “For me personally, I’ve tended to make films about things that I don’t understand.” Coming to Vassar was a logical career progression for Fox. He has constantly combined his interest in film with his long-standing desire to educate society at large. “In my career thus far—I’m only 30 years old—I’ve always tried to figure out ways in which to tie my interest in film production with an interest in teaching,” said Fox. “One of the things that I did before I started teaching at Vassar is I was a director of a non-profit in Harlem,” Fox recalled. “We had set up both a documentary education program that we implemented in area high schools and we started a documentary cinema in central Harlem with an emphasis on using documentary as a teaching tool.” All of this he participated in simultaneously with his general career. “I was doing that as I was working as documentarian, cinematographer and producer,” he explained. Even before his work in New York, Fox actively pursued advocacy. “One of the first professional jobs I had when I first finished my undergrad at University of Colorado, I was doing a lot of media advocacy work for HIV/AIDS organizations in Austin,” he said. “And for me it’s the same dynamic, just thinking about the ways to integrate production and teaching or production and advocacy.” He has since carried that attitude with him throughout his budding career. “For me, teaching at the college level was a natural extension
of that sort of mindset of trying to bring the two together in a meaningful way,” he explained. Since Vassar does not offer a B.F.A. in Film, Fox approaches teaching his classes in the context of a B.A. program, which makes it more liberal-arts oriented and theoretical. “The production aspect is sort of a general approach to the students’ critical studies work, so I teach introductory and intermediate 16mm production,” he elaborated. “And I teach seniors screenwriting–learning how to write a short film—short documentary film production, and short narrative film production.” But Fox’s teaching expands beyond the process of film-making into instructing his students on the importance of understanding the milieu in which its set. “One of the things that
Visiting Instructor in Film Jason Fox challenges himself with projects based on unfamiliar ideas. His current film is a documentary examining the effects of American colonialism in the Philippines.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
“Once upon a time, where film production in the US meant the Hollywood Industrial System, not only are you within narrative your whole life, but you are a gaffer your whole life, or a cinematographer and that’s what you’re known as.” Fox’s own work is indicative of this current looseness in filmmaking he described. “I made an animation about three years ago called ‘Looking With Your Eyes Closed’ for gallery exhibition and it was [a] film I made with my partner dealing with my conversion to Islam,” recounted Fox, who converted about four years ago. “The animation I did and the next animation I’m trying to do came of trying to wrestle with why it seemed like the right thing to do,” Fox noted. Primarily a documentarian, his current project is a documentary he is shooting in the Philippines. “I’m working with [an] underground arms manufacturing community that counterfeit American military service weapons that have been in use for the last 100 years,” he said, explaining the basis of the film. “It looks at this community as a larger way of thinking about the lingering legacies of America’s colonial occupation of the Philippines.” His interest in such an issue stems from a curiosity in the political implications of American policy. “I have a lot of questions about American politics, about how certain issues are framed in the U.S. And I wanted to look at the way that they play out elsewhere,” said Fox. “We can see in the Philippines how some of these tropes of Americanism and ideas of democracy and political structure are still playing out in different ways than they do here.” Ultimately, Fox’s film-making promotes understanding, especially across national, religious, and cultural lines. “As a media-maker and Muslim that doesn’t fit maybe the typical image of what a Muslim looks like or acts like, I’m forced to always question popular representations of other cultures,” he said.
November 15, 2012
ARTS
In 80 pages, César Aria tackles the writing process in flawed, but brilliant metafiction Harrison Kesner Guest Columnist
The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira César Aira New Directions
C
ésar Aira’s job, one the strange Argentine author does in as obtuse a way as possible, is to make things disappear. In fact, he has made the central idea of a novel disappear. He does not allow characters to develop or create something resembling a realistic plot that is possible to follow: he mainly waxes poetic about the art of writing through abstract metaphors. He has also blurred the boundary between dead seriousness and absolutely rip-roaring humor. Often, the struggles of the artistic “creators” in his books are funny because they are sad. In his latest tiny novel to be translated into English, Aira (the protagonist AND the author) must dissolve medical maladies that are actually creative frustrations. In prior books, Aira has made the lives of a seamstress, mad scientist, hermaphroditic child, bank accountant, and landscape painter all resemble—you guessed it—the life of the persistent writer. He has made all the lives of his fictional characters resemble his own to an ambiguous yet eerily exacting degree. This book, like all his others, is an indefatigable triumph in that regard. Yet, like all his others, it is a failure just the same. Nothing really “happens” in this book—for sixty pages, we ride around in an ambulance and then sit in Aira’s study as he ponders. Dr. Aira, the infamous Argentine physician known primarily for his “miracle cures,” has been snatched up by two paramedics and placed in the backseat of an existential ambulance. They ask the esteemed doctor to cure a man on the brink of death. The patient is
an unknown man, the setting remains the inside of a quickly moving ambulance barreling down a never-ending suburban street. The patient’s illness: “an extreme case of doing something with words.” My apologies, that is actually the predicament of the man treating him, Dr. Aira. But the brilliant doctor refuses. Likewise, Aira, the author, refuses to write another word that might cure the poor suffering man. He turns those words toward having his fictional self recount his past encounters with the evil Dr. Actyn, a maniacal man who wishes to disgrace Dr. Aira in front of the entire medical community. Dr. Actyn threatens to prove his miracles to be nothing but a sham, to confirm Aira’s own suspicions that his efforts are “more of a sustained distractions than an actual cure.” A sustained distraction rather than an actual cure...goodness, this medical conundrum sure is seeming more and more like a brick with the word “WRITER” scrawled on it in wildly distressed letters (Get it? Writer’s block? Writ—fine, moving on). Yes, it seems that Dr. Aira’s lifelong profession is a sustained metaphor for the disturbing eccentricities of the creative process. Does this seem like a familiar idea to you? Then you have perhaps read several of his other eightyplus novels (Don’t have a heart attack! Only seven of them have been previously translated into English!), the vast majority of which do not clock in at more than eighty or ninety slim pages. This is a man that openly admits he does not revise his works and furthermore admits a good number of his efforts are subpar for it. Nevertheless, many of his teeny little books, more collectively than individually, end up magical because of this. Indeed, I have not and probably will not give any of this man’s books any more than an eight or nine out of ten, often because character development and plot twists never really come into play (and, as a result, no unique devices) in his books—because they do not have
time to come into play. Eighty small pages can go by pretty fast! Yes, such a shame we cannot have more time, more space for words—the eternal struggle of a writer, as well as an exact description of the predicament confronting Dr. Aira (just stay alive for another few minutes, I know for a fact this cure is the miracle you need to keep on living!). Aira excels at disappearing acts. But, as Aira will be the first to tell you, a fully formed “novel” is not what he has set out to write. Each novel he publishes is more a philosophical discourse on the art of writing and editing, creating and destroying words and lives, than a full-blown narrative. The magical realist settings and fantastically funny and nonsensical events that take place within that discourse are merely icing on the cake rather than fragments of an epic story that could have been.
“This book, like all his others, is an indefatigable triumph in that regard. Yet, like all his others, it is a failure just the same. Nothing really ‘happens.’” Harrison Kesner ’15 So congratulations, Dr. Aira. You have failed and you have succeeded. One wonders whether you being considered the national treasure of Argentina is due to your novelty act of a literary career, rather than the intrinsic value of your individual writings. Nevertheless, your library as a whole—whatever the individual scores and critiques each of its titles shall receive—merits a perfect score indeed.
Alum to direct production of ‘Lysistrata’ Adam Buchsbaum Arts Editor
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isiting Director Ianthe Demos ’00 began her Vassar education expecting to major in History. But Drama kept tugging at her. Soon enough, she found herself directing her first play during her sophomore year, Machinal by Sophie Treadwell. Then she went on to form the Shakespeare Troupe, an ensemble that still produces one Shakespeare play outdoors each spring semester. And she even was the president of Philaletheis her senior year, after all that time. Now, Demos is the Artistic Director of ensemble theater company One Year Lease (OYL), Vice President at a division of Columbia Artists Management, and directing the Drama department’s upcoming satirical comedy Lysistrata. Demos and some fellow Vassar grads began OYL out of New York City in 2001, after graduating, and it remains today. Demos meanwhile found a temp job at Columbia Artists—now, as a VP there, she arranges international bookings for dance companies and theater troupes. OYL was more of a side project than a source of income. “We wanted to do work we wanted to do, and it’s a great opportunity if you can, in the city, to produce your own work,” Demos said. “It gives you a lot more freedom.” Demos shared an apartment with Ari Barbanell ’00, who came up with the company name. “We had just signed our lease. And we were doing our first show outside of Vassar,” Demos explained. Late one night, they tossed around ideas—Demos admitted they were too dramatic at times—and Barbanell proposed the name One Year Lease. If it didn’t work in a year, Barbanell was out. For OYL’s first production, the group remounted a production of Miss Julie, which Demos did her sophomore year. Afterwards, they produced Antigone. OYL did mostly
classical adaptations at its beginnings. “It was about 2004 when things fell apart,” Demos said. “We all left college, but then life took over and everybody was going their own way, and we didn’t really know what we were doing. And the company searched in different ways.” OYL did not find it current, successful iteration until 2008, after a four-year search. OYL is now an ensemble company interested in three particular kinds of texts: those with heightened physicality, those with dark comedy and those with absurdism. This tends to means modernist, formally experimental works. Eight actors work with OYL on a consistent basis for their many plays; everyone trains together and it is rare OYL holds auditions to fill roles. As Artistic Director, Demos must identify and track the artistic aesthetic of the company, and its overall direction. OYL also runs a four-week theater apprenticeship program in Greece, which has hosted Vassar students and employed Drama professors in its history. This year, Demos is the Drama department’s Visiting Director. Demos has maintained close relationships with Professor of Drama Gabrielle Cody, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Drama Darrell James and Professor of Drama Christopher Grabowski, who invited her over. While at Vassar, Demos will teach some master classes for Drama majors—she will teach one on devising work as an ensemble, for example—and provide support for student directors. For instance, Demos recently advised Julia Anrather ’13, who is co-directing The Cosmonaut’s Last Message with Andrew Rovner ’13. On top of this, Demos is directing Lysistrata, written by comic ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. The department proposed Lysistrata to Demos. “And I said, ‘That sounds like a chal-
lenge. Yes,’” Demos said. “It’s a play about war and sex, I mean.” The farcical play is about its titular character, Lysistrata, banding with her fellow women to organize a sex strike—that is, withholding sex—against their husbands to force them to sign a peace treaty to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata is now often seen as a feminist text, though it was not written as such back in ancient Greece, which fascinates Demos. “My interpretation is that it is about the male and female sex, but that it is also about a line of progression of society from something very stoic to something very carnal, from war to very individual desire, and how one feeds into the other, and how one breeds the other,” Demos said. Lysistrata is now in rehearsal four days a week, for four hours each day. Demos has a particular approach to beginning the rehearsal process. “I spend the first week—I call it creating our bag of tricks. And what I mean by that is, I just work with a whole bunch of elements that I think could be possible interpretations of the mood and the atmosphere and what this world is, without trying to specifically designate them to parts of the script, or designate them to characters,” Demos explained. “I’m more interested in exploring what are the possibilities of this world.” In this beginning stage, Demos brought in Ethan Slater ’14 to wrestle with the actors for three hours, and an experienced choreographer from New York City to explain how to choreograph Lysistrata if it were a dance. She also brought in Professor James to discuss clowning, to cover the farcical side of the play. Currently, Demos wants to push through the first third of the show, using the bag of tricks. She splits her time between Vassar, where she has faculty housing, and New York City. The play Lysistrata will run from Dec. 6-8 at 8 p.m. in The Martel Theater.
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
Page 15
Irving’s strength is in technique Loney Leung
Guest Columnist
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uthor John Irving concludes his bestselling 1978 novel, The World According to Garp, with a memorable line: “In The World According to Garp, we are all terminal cases.” But what does Irving mean? One of our first hunches as readers—in our search for meaning, in our desire to understand—is to see what the plot of the book is. After reading it, however, you realize this an elementary, fruitless way of understanding its story. It was indeed the plot details that made Garp personally appealing to me in the first place. This would be a book, according to its blurb on Amazon, centered around “the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her time.” That brief description certainly stirred notice in me, an overly—eager student who had just been introduced to Women’s Studies. A quick Wikipedia search only further enticed me. Garp would also feature a former-linebacker-turned-transwoman, two Austrian prostitutes, and a sexual quadrangle between two married couples. These characters, deemed ‘sexual misfits’ by conventional society, were the very same people whose experiences I was taught to consider and sensitize myself to in class. Irving is a man. In fact, the Chicago Tribune calls Garp “the most powerful and profound novel about women written by a man in our generation…” But to agree with the Tribune is to ignore Irving’s artistic craftsmanship by putting undue focus on the mother of the book’s main character, Garp, named Jenny Fields, no matter how admirable a character Jenny proves to be. Certainly, Jenny’s strength of mind and independence will be approved by many feminists reading Garp. But that is no reason to glean over Irving’s elegance in nesting together several narratives within his main narrative. The book employs a frame narrative, with Garp’s first novella within the book, The Pension Grillparzer, alongside Garp’s second book, The World According to Benzenhaver, reflecting and revealing Garp’s own internal struggles and motivations for writing. The Pension Grillparzer is short story crafted with great imaginative precision, set in sharp contrast to the melodramatic, cheaply sensational Benzenhaver, Garp’s attempt at mainstream success. Together, the marked differences in styles between the two frame narratives and the book itself demonstrate Irving’s immense creative ability, his skillful manipulation of voice, and his ability to imbue Garp with realistic psychological depth. To think about Garp in terms of its main topics of discussion alone in the storyline— lust, love, sexuality, men and women—would be to discredit Irving’s painstaking efforts in preparing a story that, above all, demonstrates what, exactly, constitutes a work of fiction. In an interview with Irving provided in the book, he says that readers have “no business” asking what a book is about, and that an author’s biography is besides the point. Ironically, Garp’s covers are adorned with praise, many remarking upon the fact that Irving is a man writing about the opposite sex as an additional factor in the book’s genius. To what extent was the marketing of Garp controlled by Irving, and how does it affect the creative value of fiction? However, considering Garp’s wealth of insights about the writing profession and the questions it provokes, we may be sure some part of this novel was a translation of Irving’s own experiences as a writer in a harsh publishing world, no matter how he changed the details for a more interesting portrayal of T. S. Garp’s experiences. That’s what fiction is—the constant attempt to treat terminally ill cases—because true fiction is more imaginative, satisfying and enjoyable than the ills of reality, and in no better book can we learn this than from Garp.
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November 15, 2012
Women artists deserve inclusion in western art canon Zoe Dostal ColumNist
“W
hy Have There Been No Great Women Artists” was the essay renowned art historian Linda Nochlin penned while teaching at Vassar. The answer is that there have been great women artists, but the establishment simply does not recognize their work, neither during their own epochs nor today. This truth becomes more and more evident to me as I continue to study art history at Vassar, and am time and time again confronted with cases of complete neglect of women artists on the part of the Western art historical canon. An example I grappled with sophomore year was the 19th Century French realist artist Rosa Bonheur. While we had studied realism in my 19th Century Art History class, I never heard her name mentioned. When I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art to pick an object for my term paper, I found her enormous canvas “The Horse Fair” very compelling. Further research revealed that in her own time, Bonheur had actually been quite popular—her mastery of animals, especially horses, drew comparisons of her work to Théodore Gericault, the revered horse genius of Napoleonic France. A rare example of such an exceptional woman artist breaking into the male-dominated art world of Britain and France at this time surely merited mention at some point in my art historical education—yet aside from the paper I went out of my way to write, I have never heard a single reference to her work. The craziest part is that we refer to these artists as “women artists”—that we other them and separate them from the mainstream. And we of course do the same thing with “black artists” and “Indigenous artists.” This forces us to beg the question of how we should refer to the traditional (Western) art historical canon: “normal artists” or “white men artists?” In putting non-“white men artists” in separate categories, we innately label them as lesser,
and there is an implication that their physiognomy limits their artistic genius. While studying an artist’s upbringing and lived experience is critical to understanding the source material of their art, I think that it can also be highly damaging in that it limits our view and understanding of their capabilities. It is easy to use biographical assumptions to oversimplify the art or become a reductionist—such carelessness proliferates the popular media. Take the “Mona Lisa,” for example. How many people think that she is a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, dressed in drag because he was possibly homosexual? The short answer is just one person thinking that is too many—and there are millions. If too much biographical detail is attached to artistic production, we begin to strictly see illustrations of the artist’s life more than works of art—never is this truer than in the study of women artists. Take, for example, Camille Claudel. Most people associate her name as the mistress of Rodin—which, to be fair, she was. But that was hardly the most important or more interesting fact about her life. Claudel was an extraordinary sculptor herself. Unfortunately, her work was and is always—and I mean always—talked about in terms of her relationship with Rodin and his direct influence on her style. Which is complete horse hooey. Claudel’s sculptures are breathtakingly beautiful and completely arresting in a way that Rodin’s never were. Her most successful pieces are carved from onyx, which is deeply colored with unpredictable variation and creates smooth, dense forms. The work likely best known in this material is “The Wave,” which features three women (who are made of bronze) holding hands and playing in onyx green water, about to be engulfed in a wave. The joy of these women is palpable, and the moment caught by Claudel, just before the wave splashes down on them, is full of movement and anticipation. The viewer becomes
completely absorbed in her work, immune to time and space beyond this arresting sculpture. Her other work in onyx often features a group of women or a single women in a constructed space—walls and benches or an enormous fireplace. Unfortunately, not many of her works survive—she destroyed many of them late in her life. Even more unfortunately, I cannot find a single book or article that talks about her work outside of the context of Rodin. While I acknowledge that there are a great number of her works that do show his direct influence, there are also a number that are completely unlike anything he ever produced. Yet Rodin will always be known as the great bronze sculptor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and Claudel will be known as his somewhat talented mistress.
“If too much biographial detail is attached to artistic production, we begin to strictly see illustrations of the artist’s life more than works of art–never is this truer than in the study of women artists.” Zoe DosTaL ’13 We can’t imagine talking about van Gogh, Picasso, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and every other male artist strictly in terms of their love affairs. It certainly plays a role—an important one—to understand the relationship these men had with their mistresses or wives and
how it influenced their artistic production, but it is hardly the focus or only thing we examine because to so would be absurd. And yet, such is strictly the norm for women. Take Georgia O’Keeffe, arguably the most famous American woman artist of the twentieth century. Superficially, the average Joe might think of O’Keeffe and then remember her relationship to Alfred Stiegtliz. But in the field of art history, her work is often described in the terms of his influence and discovery of her talent. The reason that everyone associates her flowers with female anatomy in the first place is because of him, and it is a theme that proliferates the criticism of her work, both contemporary to O’Keeffe and today. To reduce all of O’Keeffe’s forms and subject matter to womb-like and vaginal imagery, describing it as the way only a woman can see the world, is completely unacceptable and an example of extreme gender bias. Any art historian that treated a male artist in such reductionist terms wouldn’t be taken seriously. Sure, there are phalluses and assertions of manhood across canvasses since the beginning of time, but the conversation never ends there—it is just one motif amongst many that creates a thought-provoking artwork. We talk a lot at Vassar about gender bias, and women’s equality was at the forefront of the election, but it is never so clear and concrete to me as when I make these discoveries in art history. The visual evidence is there, before our very eyes, begging to be taken seriously. There is progress being made—such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. But the very fact that a separate museum has to exist to recognize women’s contributions to the visual arts is in itself problematic and, frankly, mind-boggling. We must continue to pursue Nochlin’s line of questioning, and demand the inclusion of women artists to the canon if not a complete revision.
Hip-hop event to attract 300-400 attendees HIP-HOP continued from page 1
Galerie BMG
Now through Dec. 3 12 Tannery Brook Rd. , Woodstock
New York State Museum Through Dec. 31 260 Madison Ave., Albany While exploring the rest of the museum, be sure to see the juried exhibition “Focus on Nature XII,” which features worldwide artwork, before it passes by. Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Storm King Art Center Through Nov. 25 1 Museum Rd., Mountainville One of the world’s leading sculpture parks, Storm King Art Center, has a collection of more than 100 sculptures, many of which are large-scale. But go there soon; the center’s season ends Nov. 25. Park hours are Friday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Kleinert/James Center for the Arts Through Dec. 2 36 Tinker St., Woodstock The center’s new exhibition, “The Sky is Falling!” revolves around Dec. 21, 2012, the so-called date of the Mayan apocalypse. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
courtesy of Sienna Brown
Contemporary photo gallery Galeri BMG is featuring the dreamy, black-and-white photographs of Tami Bones in its new exhibit, “Mythos.” Gallery hours are Friday through Monday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
“We always try to incorporate the Poughkeepsie artists because as Hip Hop 101 we aim to bridge the gap between the Vassar community and the Poughkeepsie community,” Reilly noted. “We do so by creating spaces where Poughkeepsie musicians and artists can express themselves, and where [the Vassar community] can have this interaction with this community that seems to be so separate, but actually operates on a very similar wavelength.” Poughkeepsie artists also present a strain of hip-hop music that may be different from what Vassar students are used to listening. “At Vassar, people usually listen to intellectual hip-hop, lyrical hip-hop or to mainstream rappers,” Reilly said. “In Poughkeepsie, they engage in a very different kind of hip-hop—one that comes out of the inner cities, one that is more hyperbolic than the hip-hop that we’re listening to here.” The DJs for the night are DJ TGIF from Albany, N.Y., who performed at Hip Hop 101 events for the past two years, and DJ Steal Yo Girl (Dallas Robinson ’14). “I am really excited to be a part of this event, I love ‘Four Pillars’ so it is an honor to be a part of this celebration of hip hop,” wrote Robinson in an emailed statement. “I am a little nervous. DJing this event is not like DJing the Mug, so I am planning to be really sharp and in tune with the vibes of the crowd. I am definitely looking forward to playing some classic old school and I definitely want to throw some West Coast in there,” Robinson added. The festivities will also include a dance show by HYPE and live art performances by graffiti artists, including the local artist and break dancer Boogie Tochigi. “We incorporate live art at all of our showcase events, since graffiti is one of the ‘four pillars’ of hip hop that we are representing. The artists will be doing their art throughout the night as the performances are going on, so people can watch them in the process of creating their art,” explained PierceWright in an emailed statement. President of HYPE Sienna Brown ’13 thinks HYPE will deliver a performance to remember. “I have been in HYPE for the past couple of years and I have never seen as much dedication, practice, and planning than what we have been
Members of HYPE— a dance crew that is dedicated to creating a space on Vassar’s campus for hiphop dancing—poses at the Arlington Street fair. HYPE performs annually at the Four Pillars event. doing to get ready for our performance at ‘Four Pillars,’” Brown said. “Our group is bigger than ever and we have made a conscious effort to have the show be different than anything we’ve ever done before, incorporating many different styles of hip-hop, pushing both our choreographers and performance team. We’ve spent every day of the last three weeks in the studio excited and preparing for the show.” Repstyles, a Philadelphia rap group who performed at Hip Hop 101’s “Throwback Jam” show in Spring 2012, will also perform at the “Four Pillars.” Repstyles came to Vassar September 2012 as well to help with Hip Hop 101’s VANS event, where they taught students to breakdance. Steinberg will be performing in his first hip hop show; he will rap his debut song, “Catacombs.” Steinberg has previously only performed rock songs with his Vassar band Coax Rhino. Dickens feels Hip Hop 101 fills a much-needed gap in entertainment at Vassar. “At Vassar College there is a deficit in programs that ca-
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ter to the community of people who appreciate hip-hop,” Dickens said. “I think ViCE falls short in bringing hip-hop artists.” Reilley echoed Dickens’ sentiments. “We put on this event to bring the hip-hop culture into a space that’s not always creating hip-hop or engaging with it,” she said. But it is the bridge between the College and the community that Reilley particularly appreciates. “I think the most unique part of Hip Hop 101 is our ability to engage Vassar and Poughkeepsie,” Reilly said. “This artistic expression—hip hop—is so prevalent and important in the Poughkeepsie community. It is so important to the community that we’re able to give them this space to freely perform on campus and put on these shows, and provide free food at our events.” “This is an incredible place for people in Poughkeepsie to understand what we are doing here and for us to look and see their artistic expressions,” Reilly added. “This interaction is probably the most profound impact of these concerts.”
ARTS
November 15, 2012
Page 17
‘8’ reveals humanity behind political trial Adam Buchsbaum arts editor
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Campus Canvas
Katie de Heras/The Miscellany News
ctivist and writer Dustin Lance Black decided the trial of Proposition 8 must be seen. The California proposition, which specified that only man-woman marriage was legally valid, passed in November 2008. In response, two California couples sued the state for its repeal. But the resulting trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, was kept away from public broadcast. And so, Black went to the transcript, lifting exact words from it, interviewed the plaintiffs and with that wrote a play, “8,” that documents the trial. Now, “8” is coming to Vassar as a staged reading slated for Friday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m. in Room 212 of Sanders Classroom. The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), who filed the Prop 8 lawsuit, paired up with Broadway Impact this year to freely license “8.” And so, it is available as a one-night, staged reading followed by talkbacks for nationwide performance. This opening attracted the attention of “8” producer Julia Sharpe-Levine ’14, who proposed the idea to Angela Dumlao ’13. Dumlao joined as director, and brought aboard Bethan Johnson ’15 as her stage manager. (Disclosure: Johnson is Assistant News Editor for The Miscellany News.) “Marriage equality is very important to me. I’m from New York, and when marriage equality passed in my state it was very exciting,” said director Angela Dumlao ’13. “We do go to Vassar and it’s such a liberal environment, but I thought it was so fascinating that the show is based off the actual transcript from the trial...I think it’s very important for people to hear the actual words and the arguments on both sides.” Dumlao and Johnson wanted a balance of acting and activism while running auditions for “8.” In turn, they asked the auditioners to explain why they wished to act in “8” and explain its importance to them. Auditions resulted in a pool of actors. Rather than cast the actors into specific parts from the beginning, the cast read through the play in its entirety, and then determined who fit what part and casted the roles accordingly. Dumlao and Johnson then determined the roles in “8” without regard for gender nor race.
Jada Graves ’14, Deb Steinberg ’14, Angela Dumlao ’13 and Bethan Johnson ’15 rehearse this week’s performance of “8,” a dramatic compilation of testimonies from California’s Proposition 8 trial. Maggie Ginoza ’16, who plays a broadcast journalist who introduces and concludes the trial, found “8” a good play to initiate her theater career at Vassar. “I particularly connected to this show because, being from California, I experienced this first hand,” Ginoza wrote in an emailed statement. “There are some pieces of the show that come very close to home for me..” “In the show you see some examples of ads that were run by proponents of Prop 8 that shocked a lot of people when we first watched them in rehearsal,” continuned Ginoza. “I remember seeing those ads all the time before the election, and they make me just as passionate about the fight for marriage equality now as they did four years ago.” Francesca Calo ’13, who plays Theodore B. Olson, an attorney fighting Prop 8, thought the play being composed of transcripts was its most striking quality. “That aspect immediately intrigued me because it means that these arguments are fresh and sincere,” Calo
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wrote in an emailed statement. “It’s not just some playwright sitting down and writing a play about gay rights, hoping that it will speak to people; it’s a real life event with real consequences and real arguments. Shane Trujillo ’13, who plays social psychologist Dr. Ilan Meyer, considered the play’s indictment of the court system and contemporary patriarchal structures as particularly revealing. “The defense in Perry v. Schwarzenegger had no solid evidence to present yet this case is still bouncing around from court to court—how does this happen?” Trujillo wrote in an emailed statement. “How do we fix these broken aspects of our law systems? I kept wondering these questions throughout our rehearsals.” Dumlao appreciated the play’s ability to humanize the events of the trial. “It’s not just this big, scary trial. There are these real humans, like Sandy, Chris, and Paul and Jeff are all real people in California…it’s a very powerful play. I cried when I first read it.”
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“A school charter proposal.”
—Rebecca Bauer ’14
“Stereoptypes in blaxploitation films”
—Angel Michelle ’14
“Power and global capital.”
—Chloe Hallum ’16
“Interpersonal violence in relationships.”
—Shane Trujillo ’13
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he common practice of expression through words is flawed—stuck within the confines of alphabet, stuck within the confines of perspective. Each and every human being desires nothing more that to relate to one another. Our thoughts and intentions blossom with every moment and every moment we wish to share these flowers of brilliance with those around us. Unfortunately, our perspective is not the same as our fellow man’s and every connotation one ties to a word is not the same when relayed to another. Every lexicon of our world holds words capable of asserting the grandest of meanings, but only inside oneself. Sadly, I feel that true expression through words is next to impossible because of the natural personal bias language holds. Art is the only proper tool for authentic communication. Through my art, I deal with the belief that color juxtaposition, scale, and line along with the other elements and principles of art do meaning justice, properly relating humanity to each other. I deal with this belief in two major ways: art expressing frustrations with language and art criticizing the restriction of expression in fashion. —Sarah King ’16
“Resume for Goldman Sachs”
—Peter Yu ’15
“A fairy tale for my Composition class”
—Nana T. Baffour-Awuah ’14
—Adam Buchsbaum, Arts Editor Jiajing Sun, Assistant Photo Editor
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SPORTS
Page 18
November 15, 2012
Language fellow incorporates sports into VC experience Tina Caso
sports editor
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Cassady Bergevin/The Miscellany News
he rugby team, like all other Vassar sports, boasts a roster full of unique individuals. Unlike the other teams on this campus they have one athlete who stands out in a truly particular way, listed on the rugby roster as a “graduate student,” a rather mysterious title. That athlete is Hebrew Language Fellow Roman Kopit. Kopit was born in Moscow, Russia, and his family immigrated to Israel only four years after he was born. After he received his pre-college education in Israel, he decided to follow in his mother’s footsteps and attend college in Tel Aviv to study teaching. When he was a junior, he came across an opportunity to teach at Vassar. “My college offered a program for people who have degrees to acquire teacher certificates and so, since I was an English major—English as a foreign language–I met this woman who was in her thirties and she was doing this program to become an English teacher,” Kopit explained. “She was a language fellow [at Vassar] between 2005 and 2006 I think. She talked to me and introduced me to Vassar.” This is Kopit’s second time staying abroad in America. After serving in the military for two years and working for various air force bases in Israel, he came to the United States in 2007 in order to work and travel. Now that he has attended college, Kopit is back for a second time and is employed as a two-year Language Fellow to the Jewish Studies Department. His duties include helping out his designated professor, facilitating drill sessions, organizing department mixers and assisting students that want to learn Hebrew at any level. Kopit also dedicates time outside of the classroom to his work. “There are always sessions outside the classroom: extra help, sitting in the Retreat and going over the material. [Students] know that when they need me they can ask, and we sit down somewhere in a very comfortable area. Basically I’m very flexible with that, and some of them take advantage of that,” he said.
While many Language Fellows take advantage of Vassar’s academics, Israeli Language Fellow Roman Kopit has also focused on Vassar’s athletics. In addition to Rugby, he plays intramural volleyball. “I’m glad when they’re getting good results in their classes.” As for Kopit’s spare time, he is extremely invested in athletics. He joined the rugby team his first spring semester after never having played the sport before. “At the end of the first semester when I talked to a few people, they were very positive with me coming to the team. They were very excited,” Kopit said. “They are welcoming, and very supporting. It’s a very united bunch...that does help each other not only on the field, but off the field.” Rugby’s status as a club sport is what allows Kopit to be both a Language Fellow and a participating athlete. However, as a graduate student and employee, there are limitations to the level that he can participate in. Kopit is only allowed to play in the team’s “B” games, but not the “A” games. Despite this restriction, he still feels integrated with the entire team. “It’s
satisfying because this experience is already a bonus for me being here and doing my job, and being involved in athletics...I’m very happy with what I have,” he added. Though Kopit has learned to love rugby, he acknowledges that it is not easy to learn: “It’s an interesting game. It takes time to learn it,” he said. “I don’t think that its one or two semesters. It takes time to really control the knowledge of it, and the skills to acquire. Its not only if you are athletic, but if you understand what you need to do for each position. In rugby even though you are playing a position, it’s not necessarily that you’ll be in that position all the time.” Kopit also decided to take up squash after Helios Tavío Domínguez, the Spanish Language Fellow, introduced him to the sport. Around the same time he was learning rugby, he enrolled in a Vassar squash class in order to further learn
and improve his technique. Kopit truly enjoys the role that athletics can play in an education here. “Colleges or universities back home don’t have this incorporation of sports, and if there’s not incorporation then there’s no facilities to acquire them. So I’m just taking advantage of this great setting that I have.” He is also a member of a tennis class, another sport which he is just beginning to learn. Even though Kopit has tried many new sports during his time here, his main sport has always been volleyball. He played all throughout high school but it was not offered at his college in Tel Aviv, even as an intramural sport. “Here at Vassar from the beginning, I was asking if there was [intramural],” he said. “I joined this one senior team [that] saw me play and asked if I wanted to join them and I did. The organization of it was on and off–it began strong and kind of started declining. But in general, whoever came to play were the regulars. It was always fun to play. You had nice competition all in all.” He is now a member of the Thunder Dolphins. “Instinctively, I joined them because they’re good players, and I really wanted to have a good team.” Overall, Kopit is extremely thankful for the experience that he has had here thus far, both as an employee and as an athlete. “I feel that everybody can find their niche at Vassar if they want it to happen. You make it what you make it of,” he said. “If you have your interests and you engage with them, you’re going to have fun and fortunately, with all the organizations and all the things that Vassar has, you can make yourself.” Kopit’s job as a Hebrew Language Fellow will end after this Spring 2013 semester, and he plans on attending graduate school overseas in order to study Communication and Media. As for his time here, he stated that, “Vassar has definitely contributed to my memory bank. It made me acquire more friends, more experiences...But when you think about everything, everything has to end somewhere. Even if I stayed for another year, it would be the same kind of feeling. I’m collecting my memories in a way.”
Former competitor now a crucial asset to two Vassar teams Chris Brown reporter
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Jacob Gorski/The Miscellany News
ehind most head coaches there is an assistant coach, who puts in just as much of their time and effort to make sure that their team performs the best they can in games and matches. However, few assistant coaches take on such an important role and are considered total equals with the head coach. Jen Ascencio, who is an assistant coach for both women’s lacrosse and field hockey, proves that an assistant coach’s job is just as imperative to a team’s success as the head coach’s job. Ascencio, who has only been coaching at Vassar for two years now, has already helped improve the two programs. Field hockey Head Coach Cara Dunn expressed her happiness with having Ascencio as her coaching partner. “Jen is great. She’s out on the field early to help the team with specific skills,” said Dunn. “The team knows what to expect from her. She takes coaching very seriously.” Ascencio, who was a college athlete herself at Manhattanville University, played field hockey, lacrosse and ice hockey. With her previous athletic history at the high school and college level, Ascencio has been able to shape her coaching techniques based off of her previous coaches and her experiences with them. “As a college athlete for all four years, I’ve had a lot of younger coaches,” stated Ascencio. “I’ve been able to watch how they carry themselves and know how I perceive them as someone I look up to.” As a younger coach herself, Ascencio deals with being a coach to her teams while still maintaining a level of friendship with the women. “It’s something that a lot of young coaches struggle with,” said Ascencio. “I see myself as more of a coach, but if the girls need something, they can come to me for help. I’m always available, on and off the field.” Coach Dunn expressed that there was no real disadvantage with Ascencio being a younger coach. “Sometimes, younger coaches have a harder time conveying what they want
to get across to the team,” said Dunn. “Jen’s experience as a collegiate athlete has given her the confidence to do that really well, which is really impressive as a younger coach.” Jokingly, Dunn added, “She has a lot of energy.” Ascencio’s coaching style is one to be considered in high regard, according to Dunn. “She’s very vocal on the field. She’s very specific,” said Dunn. “She has a good eye for individual skills. If someone is struggling with something, she can pull them aside and help them fix it, which is very impressive.” Head Coach Dunn had seen Ascencio play field hockey during her college years, and knew how talented of a player she was before she started coaching at Vassar. “Her Junior year, she single-handedly defeated our team when we played her school,” Dunn stated. “When she came in for her interview, I instantly recognized her and knew she would be a strong coach.” Coaching at Vassar, however, was not a solid idea for Ascencio for a while. “I interviewed at a lot of places,” said Ascencio. “Vassar was close to home, which was nice, but it was always just sort of there. I didn’t real see it for what it was.” Yet after an interview with Coach Dunn, she seemed to have made up her mind. “As I was driving away after the interview, it just felt right,” stated Ascencio. “I was waiting on other offers, but Vassar felt like the right choice. And it was the right choice.” Now, as a second-year coaching member at Vassar, Ascencio loves the sports dynamic here, especially the relationship between head and assistant coach. “The two coaches work together as opposed to the assistant coach only listening to the head coach or being non existent,” said Ascencio. “When the girls see that, it shows them that we’re all in this together. It’s not a team plus the coaches, it’s everybody.” It’s clear that Ascencio has proven herself to be a valuable member of both teams to the
Members of the women’s field hockey and lacrosse teams remember competing against their new Assistant Coach Jen Ascencio when she was an undergraduate at Manhattanville University two years ago. head coaches as well as the players on each team. Haley Merritt ’16, a player on the women’s field hockey team, expressed her feelings towards Ascencio as a coach. “She really knows the game well. She helps with specifics on the field and general stuff about the game, too,” said Merritt. “She’s had so much experience with sports, so she gives tips that we didn’t know about on how to play against certain opponents.” Merritt also touched on Ascencio’s role off of the field. “She is really relatable to the players, and she is really easy to joke around with,” Merritt stated. “She’s a lot like a good friend to us, and she’s a lot of fun.” Merritt, however, emphasized how Ascencio is able to switch into coaching mode. Yet what really seems to push Jen Ascencio
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ahead and prove her uniqueness as a coach is her dedication to the teams she coaches for. Field Hockey co-captain Anna Schroeder ’14 is extremely impressed with Ascencio’s commitment to the team after only two years of coaching at Vassar College. “She took up more responsibility with drills, game-time analysis and individual work,” wrote Schroeder in an emailed statement. “I was very impressed with constructive criticism and ability to determine certain aspects of our game that we could improve upon. Jen was also a great person to go to for individual help on fitness and stick work. She would stay after practice to work on extra drills or talk strategy. As captain, it was always great going over team dynamic and strategy in meetings with her.”
November 15, 2012
SPORTS
On being a die-hard Celtics fan at Vassar Luka Ladan
Guest Columnist
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t’s 11:30 on a Wednesday night. Cushing House. I step outside of my room, ecstatic that the Boston Celtics have squeezed out a narrow, unimpressive victory over the Washington Wizards, only to glance over at the dorm’s Harry Potter-esque common area and find all of the tables filled with focused, diligent Vassar students learning their nights away. They don’t know that the Celtics closed out the game with stifling defense, pressuring the Wizards’ inexperienced guards into uncharacteristic mistakes. They don’t know that Boston’s star point guard, Rajon Rondo, controlled the tempo of the game with 14 assists and 3 steals. As the students in Cushing’s common area frantically type on their computers, hoping to hand in a better-than-average essay, cramming before a make-or-break exam, they are consumed with work. I’m sweating feverishly as I watch an uninvolved Jeff Green stand idly in the corner and all that my fellow students are worried about is their Biology homework. The guy is failing to live up to his potential (and hefty contract) and Vassar students are reading up on cell structures and asexual reproduction. There’s nothing like closely following a sports team. On a given night, I find myself planning my schedule around the upcoming Celtics game, while other Cushing residents scurry from one environmental club to another. I adore the Celtics, but they constantly piss me off. Paul Pierce can frustrate me with a string of poor outings, but then I fall in love with him again, as he hits yet another clutch jumper over an outstretched defender. I take it personally when Rondo plays lackadaisical pick-and-roll defense, but his final stat line
makes me forget all about it. The incredibly high highs and depressingly low lows that a typical die-hard sports fan experiences are incomparable. My roommate, a Buffalo, NY native, is too familiar with the recent struggles of the Buffalo Bills, but he fantasizes about the day that his team wins the Super Bowl. He is tortured by the Bills’ perpetual mediocrity, but he cannot wait to encounter greener pastures. Vassar students immersed in their schoolwork on game night just don’t understand the joys and struggles of professional sports. It’s almost surreal to imagine that I’m closely tracking every single possession of the Wizards game, while your average Vassar student couldn’t even say where the Celtics play their home games without consulting Google. Then, I realize that what the students in the common area are doing is far more beneficial, meaningful and financially rewarding in the long run. I’m concerned about Jeff Green’s production through three games, but I’m not going to become the next Doc Rivers. In the grand scheme of things, the fanatical sports fan is obsessed with the petty and trivial. Jeff Green’s efficiency rating against the Wizards on November 7th doesn’t really mean much down the road when you compare it to the algorithms and variables in a dedicated math student’s textbook, all of which will translate into high test scores if properly studied. I’m never going to become Doc Rivers. I’m not trying to be the next Danny Ainge. I’m a Vassar student interested in Political Science and Economics, two disciplines that have very little in common with the inconsistent regular season performances of the Boston Celtics. And, yet, I tune in whenever the
Celtics are playing. Rooting for a sports team is like being part of a tight-knit family. The man that Jared Sullinger is guarding doesn’t matter. He just has to be quicker on his feet and position himself more efficiently on the defensive end. It’s all up to him because he’s a Celtic. When the Ohio State product slipped in the draft and was selected by my favorite team, the general feeling in Boston was one of excitement, like the birth of a newborn family. Sullinger would join the family, beef up the frontline and eventually help deliver an NBA title. After I shower and brush my teeth, I walk past the studious crowd of Vassar kids on my way back to the room, where I promptly study the Celtics-Wizards box score and watch the game highlights (even after seeing every single quarter, which takes about three hours.) I check my Twitter page for some post-game analysis and talk to some of my high school friends about the team’s upcoming road schedule. The students in the common area are finishing their readings and writing assignments, while I prepare myself for bed, satisfied with a much-needed, albeit stressful, regular season victory. They’re already getting ready for their successful careers in government and medical practice, while I’m getting excited for the game against the Philadelphia 76ers. I’m concerned about what Jrue Holiday could do on offense and Cushing folk are concerned about which internship they can get their hands on this summer. Does The New York Times have an opening? How far away is it from my house? How much do I get paid for being exposed to some of the world’s best journalists? Such are the questions circulating in Cushing House.
Thoughts on changes to the L.A. Lakers Zach Rippe
Guest Columnist
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he NBA season was well underway, yet the Los Angeles Lakers were not. After signing Steve Nash, LA made the largest splash of the off-season by trading for Kobe, Dwight, Steve, and Pau. That is a lineup consisting of four future hall of famers. There is no way they could struggle. Right? Apparently not. The Lakers did indeed struggle in the pre-season, going 0-8. They then began their season 1-4 and added injury to insult when Steve Nash received a small fracture in his left leg. Suddenly, there was reason to panic. The Lakers thus promptly fired their coach Mike Brown. Oh no! How could this happen? The Lakers have been and always will be the toast of the town. There are four hall of famers in their starting lineup. They wouldn’t need time to mesh. Right, just like how the Miami Heat immediately began wreaking havoc when they were formed in 2010…For those who don’t remember, the Heat stumbled out to a 9-8 start that year. As much as the NBA has been individualized in regards to marketing and advertising, it still proves to be, at the end of the day, a game of familiarity. If Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant have never played together for an entire season, they will not play as if they have been balling together since their grade school days. New things take time (certainly more than 5 games) but nonetheless, Mike Brown was fired. No one is saying that he helped the situation though. Brown did have successful seasons in Cleveland with LeBron James and led the Lakers to yet another division title last season, but for a franchise like the Lakers, 1-4 is more than enough to cancel out those accomplishments. Also, Kobe Bryant has never even come close to a title without being coached by the Zen Master himself, Phil Jackson. Jackson is by far the most successful coach in the modern era of the NBA. Known for his quirky practices off the court, Jackson coached the Bulls from 1989-1998 and won six titles with the legendary Michael Jordan. He then moved to the Lakers, where he also won five titles. Naturally, Jackson was the logical choice to replace Brown. But was he the right one? Late this past Sunday night, the LA Lakers signed former Suns and Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni to become their new coach. What
happened? Why the stunning reversal from Jackson and his revered triangle offense? Surely Kobe has close ties with Phil. The two won five championships together. The fans wanted him too, chanting, “We want Phil!” at the past couple of Laker games. Who wouldn’t want the most successful coach of the modern era running their team? Sadly, many refuse to delve into the most upsetting aspect of professional sports, the corporate greed and preferences. Jackson has always had a rough relationship with team owner Jerry Buss. Buss, who constantly longs for a return to the fast paced, flashy nostalgia of the “ShowTime” era of Lakers basketball, does not believe that Jackson’s style of coaching fits this mold. Couple this with the fact that Jackson demanded a part in the team’s ownership and personnel decisions. On a side note, Jackson has also been dating Buss’s daughter Jeanie since 2001. Let’s just say that Buss might have had something to do with this. Jackson and the Lakers were close, yet not close enough.
“The Lakers have been and always will be the toast of the town. There are four hall of famers in their starting lineup. They wouldn’t need time to mesh. Right, just like the Miami Heat immediately began wreaking havok in 2010.” Zach Rippe ’16 Mike D’Antoni was hired late Sunday night and will now face a host of questions. His relationship with the Lakers’ stars is indeed something for Laker fans to drool over. Remember Steve Nash in MVP form? Mike D’Antoni sure does. He was running the ship over there when the Suns averaged 58 wins per season over a
four year period. The reunion in LA will perhaps again propel Nash and the Lakers as a whole. Sure, Kobe may have had a good relationship with Phil Jackson, but Mike D’Antoni is practically his uncle. While Bryant’s father was playing overseas in Italy, D’Antoni was also playing. The two were on the same team. Kobe met his new coach while he was still a child. The former Sun’s coach may have struggled in New York, but don’t expect the same here. Carmelo Anthony really is an egotistical head case. He may be the Knicks’ star player and a tremendous scorer, yet his slow paced, dribble isolation style of play is the antithesis of the type of offensive philosophy that D’Antoni lives by (although it is difficult to rag on the Knicks right now). Without a clog in his free flowing offense, D’Antoni should be the coach he was in Phoenix several years ago. Los Angeles has enough versatile talent and proven experience to make D’Antoni’s job easier. Considering he has also helped coach Team USA the past few years, D’Antoni also has a fairly good understanding of how Dwight Howard plays. If you have ever seen the United States play basketball in the Olympics, you will know that it is also an up-tempo game with plenty of fast break dunks and alley-oops. Considering LA has two of the probable starters for the United States (Howard was injured during this summer’s Olympics) don’t expect things to be too different. Given their coach’s reputation, expect LA to put up points, a lot of points. Jerry Buss will finally get his way. ShowTime will be back. It will be fun, it will put fans in the seats, it will make SportsCenter quite often, and it will win games. There will be high scores and blowouts. But how will this translate in the playoffs? D’Antoni was fairly successful with Phoenix, making it to the Western Conference finals twice, failing to the Spurs and Mavericks respectively. D’Antoni’s run-and-gun style will have to translate to LA and its players. Their defense will still be in question, but with superior offense to every team in the Western Conference, the Lakers have a good shot at reaching at least the Conference finals. Perhaps the only teams standing in their way are the aging Spurs and the youthful Thunder. Los Angeles probably will need at least this year to effectively develop the chemistry needed to win a title this season. But come on, do they really need another
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
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Predictions for basketball winter season Christian Ladu Guest Columnist
B
asketball returns to the AFC this Friday at 6 p.m. when the Vassar men take on Cazenovia College for their Tip-Off Tournament. The Vassar squad has been hard at work since October Break, and is ready for the season to start. Though a relatively young squad, hosting only one senior, the strong core of sophomores and juniors will assimilate freshmen faces and new additions to the coaching staff, priming this team to jump back into the playoff mix. Most of last year’s rotation has returned despite losing guard Nick Justiz ’12 and forward Ethan Shanley ’12 to graduation and with sophomore guard Johnny Mrlik, out from last year’s knee injury. Senior guard Jon Herzog and junior forward Evan Carberry co-captain this up-andcoming team and have earned strong preseason reviews from Head Coach Del Harris. “Our team chemistry is great and very important to our season’s success,” said Harris. “We are a very close group on and off the court. Our leadership has been outstanding.” Senior status brings an added sense of urgency for Herzog, who confessed that “There’s definitely a different feel to this season. I think the more we play the more I’m realizing just how fast the first three years went.” Coach Harris offered much praise on the senior point guard, and he shared that, “We will depend on him heavily. This is his team and we will go as far as he takes us! He has battled through injuries early in his career and now has the opportunity to show he is one of the best guards in the conference.” Herzog hopes to share the importance of each opportunity with the younger players, many of whom are being brought into featured roles. Herzog expects guard Curtis Smith to have a breakout sophomore campaign with his ball handling and aggressive pick and roll game, and Coach Harris specifically highlighted junior Sam Rappaport, and said that “We will be relying on him to make big shots for us.” Key to this years success will be new Assistant Coach B.J. Dunne’s work with Vassar’s competitive collection of big men. Coach Dunne is an alumnus of Bates College where he played forward for their nationally ranked Men’s Basketball team. Since graduating in 2010, he has garnered several years of collegiate coaching experience, and in the opinion of Herzog, “Coach Dunne brings energy and positivity to our team.” Carberry added that “he is also a former Division III player, so he understands as well as anyone the balancing act of athletics and academics.” Carberry also noted that the positional battles in practice with the big men have been particularly competitive. Incumbent starter sophomore Alex Snyder made the Liberty All-Rookie team last year but has had to deal with a rejuvenated John Donnelly ’14, a more polished Lucas Wager ’14 and a beefed-up Luka Ladan ’15, all jockeying for playing time and constantly pushing each other to improve. Herzog, Carberry, Coach Harris and the rest of the squad have their sights set on the Liberty League playoffs, with a commitment to a selfless brand of basketball. “I don’t have any specific individual statistical goals,” shared Herzog. “I don’t care how much I score as long as we are winning. Our goal is to make it into the Liberty League tournament by placing in the top four of the league.” Carberry seconded this idea and spoke about collective duty, saying, “[Having only one senior] means that we need to support his leadership. It is our responsibility as the junior class to step up and help lead the team. We all support each other which helps make for a good environment.” Coach Harris is “very excited about this year’s team; it will be an exciting group to watch. We will look to push the tempo and play pressure defense. We will be in a lot of close ball games this season and will have to be poised and able to execute down the stretch.” Everyone is invited to help the team start the season off right this Friday Nov. 16 in the AFC Gymnasium at 6 p.m. when the Vassar Brewers host the Cazenovia Wildcats.
SPORTS
Page 20
November 15, 2012
Strong individual performances outweigh team losses Kerrin Poole
Guest reporter Women’s Swimming & Diving
Men’s Swimming & Diving
The Vassar Men’s Swimming and Diving team lost their meet against the extremely competitive Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute team 177-99 on Saturday. Senior Mathue Duhaney placed first in the 100 Free (50.83) and second in the 100 Yard Butterfly (58.81), while senior Nick Veazie won the 100 Yard Butterfly (58.47) and freshman Greg Cristina placed second in the 50 Free (23.54). Sophomore Luc Amodio finished first in the 200 Yard IM (2:11.63) and placed second in the 100 Yard Backstroke (57.60) and 200 Yard Breaststroke (2:21.89). The team won first place in the 400 Yard Freestyle Relay (3:34.48) and third in the 200 Yard Medley (1:42.07). Their record now comes to 0-4. Next, the Brewers race at SUNY New Paltz at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 17. Women’s Volleyball
Senior Hilary Koenigs was recognized this week for her successful career as she was
courtesy of Vassar Athletics
The Vassar Women’s Swimming and Diving team lost their meet on Saturday 178-121 against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Kresge Pool. Their efforts were led by senior Shannon Sara, who had four first place finishes, those being as a member of the winning 200 Medley Relay team (1:57.08), winning the 200 Free (2:02.26), the 200 Breast (2:234.84) and the 200 IM (2:19.20). As a result, she was recognized by the league and was placed on Liberty League Honor Roll this week. Freshman Milee Nelson also had great success in the meet as she won the 100 Back (1:04.90) alongside senior Sydnie Alquist who placed second in the 100 Freestyle (57.70) and 200 IM (2:27.64). The team now stands at 2-2 for the season and next swims at SUNY New Paltz at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 17.
recently named to the American Volleyball Coaches Association Honorable Mention All-Regional Team. Koenigs has been Vassar’s all-time leader in assists with 4,112, a record which has stood since 1997. She has also been recently named First-Team All-Liberty League. Koenigs is the all-time leader in assists per set (9.04) and assist percentage (1.039), is ranked 20th all-time in service aces (151) and first in service (609), is third alltime in terms of her service percentage (.852) and is ranked seventh in total blocks with 171 and in block assist total with 141. Koenigs success is evident throughout her years at Vassar having earned Honorable Mention AVCA All-New York Region, Liberty League Rookie of the Year, Liberty League Performer of the Week, Liberty League Rookie of the Week, Liberty League All-Tournament Team, Vassar Invitational All-Tournament Team and West Conn. Invitational All-Tournament Team. She has also had over 1000 assists every season and has had double figure assists in all but two matches in her Vassar career.
Hillary Koenigs ’13 was recently named to the American Volleyball Coaches Association Honorable Mention All-Regional Team. In all but two matches at Vassar, she has had double figure assists.
Women’s Cross Country
On Saturday, the Vassar Women’s Cross Country team finished tenth amongst 39 teams at the NCAA Atlantic Regional Championship in Rochester, NY. Junior Aubree Piepmier qualified for the Division III National Championships at LaVerne Gibson Course in Terre Haute, Indiana on Saturday, Nov. 17 after having run a 22:20 6k race and placed tenth overall in a field of 277 runners. This will have been the third consecutive year that a Vassar women’s runner has qualified for the NCAA meet. St Lawrence won the title with a solid 49 points. They were followed by SUNY Geneseo (135 points), New York University (154), Rowan (182) and Ithaca (221). Vassar finished with 295 points. Other strong runners included senior Kelly Holmes who finished in 23:12 for 46th place and sophomore Cassidy
Carpenter who finished 23:48 for 75th overall. Men’s Cross Country
On Saturday, the Vassar Men’s Cross Country team finished their season with a ninth place finish out of 44 teams at the Atlantic Regional Championships. Having placed 13th at the championship last year, the Brewers improved with a final score of 277 points. NYU won the title with 50 points, followed by Geneseo (59 points), Cortland (94 points), University of Rochester (131 points) and St. Lawrence (146). The team was led by senior Sam Wagner who finished 26th in a field of 297 runners with a time of 26:07 in the 8k race but was unqualified to proceed to the NCAA Division III National Championship by a scant
Men’s soccer ends record-breaking season NCAA FINALS continued from page 1
On Sunday, their game against Brandeis University was also tightly played. The defense remained secure and Vassar’s offense had a few excellent chances to score. The game nearly went into overtime, with the game-winning goal for Brandeis being scored in the last 30 seconds of regulation time. All the work the team had done during the season prepared them for the NCAA finals. Overtimes are common during playoff games as the teams are more evenly matched. Though all the extra running might be a hindrance to other teams, it’s where the Brewers shine. Coach Andy Jennings wrote in an emailed statement that the conditioning the team has been doing all season gives them an advantage. “We have great fitness on this team and usually do better the longer the game goes on.” Senior captain Zander Mrlik credits Jennings with organizing postseason practices that are focused on refining the skills that work for them. He also values the attitude of his teammates. “Despite the cold conditions these past few weeks, the guys brought a collective focus to each practice. This focus translated into great success for us this season.” Goalkeeper Ryan Grimme ’14 echoes this sentiment. “Andy did his best to push each player to better themselves every day in practice. Not to mention we had a very talented team this year so practicing against one another daily prepared us to take on the best teams in the nation.” Both games were a chance for Vassar to prove themselves to be a powerful force. Despite losing in the final round of the Liberty League Championships, the team was chosen to compete in the NCAA tournament. Jennings highlights the importance of the Brewers’ being “selected by the NCAA committee (as opposed to winning the conference tournament) so [they] were considered a legitimate top national team.” The first game of the NCAA finals was a hard fought battle for Vassar. The Tuft University Jumbos were in a situation similar to Vassar’s after losing to Williams College in
the NESCAC semifinals. Though Tuft outshot the Brewers 16-8, the defense was able to shut them out for the duration of the game. Grimme had four saves and was vital in keeping Tufts scoreless. “We were on the back foot for most of the first half against Tufts,” Grimme said, “therefore, our defense really had to come together and stay focused to weather the storm of Tuft’s attack. As the game wore on we focused on team defending all over the pitch, it really was a great team effort in holding a shutout for the entire game.” Several Vassar players had scoring opportunities, but it wasn’t until overtime that the Brewers were able to get on the board. After a foul was committed on Dante Varotsis ’13, Mrlik stepped up to take the penalty kick. His shot went directly into the left corner of the goal, causing the stadium to erupt as Vassar fans swarmed the field. The win marked the first time the Brewers have advanced in the NCAA finals since 1999. “It was a great moment for Vassar soccer,” Mrlik said. “The athletic department was very supportive and sent a fan bus to the game for the second year in a row. We had great support all night from our fans.” Overall the game was indicative of the tough nature of the team and their ability to withstand great pressure. Mrlik felt that the competition tested the Brewers. “The Tufts game demonstrated the strong character of our squad. Tufts came at us hard and we weathered the first half storm and were able to pull out a victory in double overtime.” Sunday’s game against the Brandeis University Judges was another back and forth competition. Grimme had another strong game, this time with seven saves. Vassar’s best chance for a goal came in the first half with a throwin from Nick Hess ’16 that was headed into the net by Juliano Pereira ’14. As Pereira was called for offsides, the goal was not counted and the first half ended with a 0-0 tie. Tom Weichert ’15 almost found two breakaway goals early in the second half, but was stopped by Brandeis goalkeeper Blake Minchoff. The Judges were unable to score until the last 30 seconds with a
header from nine yards out. Both of the NCAA Division III finals that Vassar competed in saw similar styles of play. In both games, the Brewers were able to come out stronger in the second half. Tufts and Brandeis are notable teams with a vigorous offense. But Jennings said he and the team “felt Tufts [was] a better team than Brandeis but [we] were not able to finish some of the chances we created in the Brandeis game.” Grimme commented on the great work ethic his teammates displayed. “Brandeis was a much more physical team and our team really matched their physicality, even after playing a grueling 100+ minute game the night before. Although we didn’t get the result we desired against Brandeis, I couldn’t be more proud and privileged to be apart of a great group of teammates and friends.” Though the final game may not have been the outcome the team had hoped for, there is no doubt that they have had a solid and impressive season. The Brewers end the 2012 season with a 13-5-3 record–the best in quite a few years. Jennings believes one of their greatest strengths is their understanding of how they play as a team. They came into this season with a “great attitude with great leadership and a desire to improve on a successful season last year.” Even without a Liberty League Championship title, “overall we have had an excellent year and another step forward in terms of improvement,” he added. Being a part of a record breaking season has been an unforgettable experience for the Brewers. “It’s been a season to remember and we will definitely miss all of the seniors that are graduating, but this team has set a standard for coming years to follow,” Grimme said. Mrlik is extremely proud of his team and the incredible season they have had. This year is a great end to his college soccer career. “I will never forget the strong attitude and resilience of this team. Although our season is over, Vassar soccer has a very bright future. We have a lot of talented players coming back next year and I think that the team will continue to be a top Division III soccer program.”
MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE
two seconds. Sophomore William Barker also did well, having placed 40th overall with a time of 26:23. Women’s Fencing
On Sunday, the Vassar Women’s Fencing team went 3-4 at the Sacred Heart Invitational, with victories over West Point, Farleigh Dickinson, and Yeshiva. Highlights of the day included performances by senior captain Caitlin Clevenger in epee at 16-5, sophomore Megan Lewis at 10-11 in epee, senior captain Katie LeClair (7-8), senior Katharine Sweeney (8-9) in foil, and senior Tracy Bratt (9-10) in sabre. Next, the Brewers compete at the Hudson River Matt Lampell Invitational at Walker Field House on Saturday, Nov. 17.
SCOREBOARD MEN’S FENCING VASSAR
AT
2W
SACRED HEART INVITATIONAL
3L
WOMEN’S FENCING VASSAR
AT
3W
SACRED HEART INVITATIONAL
4L
MEN’S RUGBY FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY
19
AT
VASSAR
46