The Heights, January 27, 2020

www.bcheights.com

Monday, January 27, 2020

Four Teams Running for UGBC President, VP The Diversity and Inclusion Debate will be held on Wednesday.

By Scott Baker News Editor The race for president and executive vice president of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College kicked off Thursday night, with four teams announcing their candidacy.

The election will take place on Feb. 11.

As was the case with last year’s UGBC executive election, there was overlap between the teams’ platforms.

Each team touched on a need for more diversity and inclusion, expanded funding for student support offices, and effective problem-solving.

The four teams’ platforms included many of the same policies, including advocacy for free distribution of menstrual products, the expansion of University Counseling Services, and the creation of an LGBTQ+ resource center—which the University has faced repeated criticism for not establishing in the past.

John Gehman, chair of the UGBC Intersectional Experience Committee and MCAS ’21, presented his platform first, along with his running mate Leonardo Escobar, a UGBC senator

and MCAS ’22.

Gehman and Escobar are running on the slogan “Envisioning a BC worth fighting for,” with three pillars to their campaign: universality, intersectionality, and boldness. In the team’s presentation, they placed much of their emphasis on making BC more inclusive, and Gehman pointed out his identity as a “queer student of color” while discussing diversity on campus.

Gehman and Escobar’s platform includes advocating for increased funding for the Montserrat Office, the establishment of an LGBTQ+ center, the hiring of a full-time Muslim chaplain hired in Campus Ministry, the creation of a full-time director for Transfer Student Affairs, increased financial aid, and BC’s divestment from fossil fuels.

UGB C presidential candidate Christian Guma, CSOM ’21, and vice presidential candidate Kevork Atinizian, UGBC senator and CSOM ’22, were the next team to present, kicking off with their slogan, “Make the Heights home.”

Guma and Atinizian are running on a three-pillar platform—accessibility, inclusion, and improvement. The pair announced that they would not be taking the personal stipends typically allocated to UGBC’s president

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Inyoung You Appears in Court for Pre-Trial Hearing You’s attorney filed a motion to remove the case’s protective order.

By Madeleine Romance Assoc. News Editor Inyoung You, the former Boston College student who is being charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of her boyfriend, Alexander Urtula, BC ’19, reappeared in Suffolk Superior Court on Tuesday morning for a pre-trial hearing.

You pleaded not guilty in November to the charges in connection with Urtula’s suicide.

You’s attorney, Steven Kim, filed a motion at Tuesday’s hearing to remove the case’s protective order, which limits the availability of the case’s evidence to the pub-

lic, according to WVCB. The order currently prohibits You’s legal representation from disclosing the text messages between You and Urtula with the public relations firm You hired, Rasky Partners. The protective order came after Kim and Rasky Partners’ disclosed texts to The Boston Globe one week prior to the arraignment.

Kim said in court that media attention has played a key role in such a high-profile case, according to the Boston Herald.

“These quotes were carried by The Associated Press, by Reuters, by the local press,” Kim said. “And within the span of a week, over 400 attributions of those quotes were quoted in all media outlets throughout the country. Within two weeks, it had circulated around the world.”

Kim criticized District Attorney Rachael

See You, A3

IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Eagles’ Defense Rallies in SecondHalf Comeback Against VTech Jairus Hamilton led the Eagles to a win, posting a career-high 23 points.

Newton Requires Charge on Paper Bags Customers are now required to pay at least 10 cents per paper bag.

By Lauren Wittenmyer Copy Editor In an attempt to expand upon the plastic bag reduction ordinance passed by Newton City Council in December of 2015, which banned the use of all single-use plastic bags in stores and restaurants, the City Council has now issued a new ordinance enacting a 10-cent charge on all single-use paper bags.

The new ordinance, which went into effect on Jan. 8, requires all establishments over 3,500 square feet to charge consumers 10 cents for every single-use paper bag provided by a store or restaurant, according to the Newton official city website.

After four years of banning all single-use plastic bags in stores and restaurants in Ne wton, the City

The texting service has hosted nearly 200 peerto-peer conversations.

Copy Editor

UPrising Hosts Fourth Annual ‘Waves’ Showcase

Hip-hop teams from BC and Boston performed.

The Boston College chapter of Lean On Me, the anonymous peer-to-peer texting mental health support network, has hosted nearly 200 conversations in the time since its launch on Jan. 21 of last year.

“Lean On Me has received overwhelmingly positive feedback, which has been awesome,” said Hugh McMahon, Lean On Me president and MCAS ’20, in an email to The Heights.

“I think people are excited that a mental health resource exists that has very low barriers to use.”

Reed Piercey, former president of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College and BC ’19, was a driving force in bringing the program

to BC. “My dream for [Lean On Me] is for it to be a go-to for anyone on campus who is feeling down, who feels like they don’t fit in, and who for whatever reason [doesn’t] think it’s appropriate to go to counseling,” said Piercey.

Lean On Me is an alternative mental health resource for college students, particularly aimed at those who may not feel comfortable attending counseling or do not feel that their issues are urgent enough to merit counseling. The program, which was launched at MIT in 2016, has grown into a national organization with branches at several colleges across the United States, including the University of Chicago, Northeastern University, and Vanderbilt University.

Michael Osaghae, UGBC president and MCAS ’20, and Tiffany Brooks, UGBC vice president and MCAS ’21, said in a joint statement to The Heights that Lean On Me has been an important resource at BC. “Lean On Me has been very effective in creating space for students

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DaniLeigh delivered a highenergy R&B performance at the first Boston City Limits.

Men’s hockey lost its second straight game Saturday, falling to Maine in overtime.

Three professors received grants to study psychology and philosophy questions......A4

to be supported in a meaningful and accessible way by their fellow peers,” they said. “Additionally, it serves as a key pillar of UGBC’s wider effort to both holistically support our student body as it pertains to mental health and engage the wider campus community on health and wellness. We are very excited about its growth so far and look forward to continuing to build Lean on Me so that the service can support even more students.”

The BC chapter of Lean On Me is housed under the Student Initiatives branch of UGBC. “I think it’s almost a trope at this point that University Counseling Services (UCS) is overstretched and understaffed,” said McMahon. “And, of course, any university is going to struggle with a huge pool of people who need emotional support, who need to talk to someone about what they’re going through. And it’s just hard to have the resources on hand.”

ARTS

SPORTS

FEATURES: Templeton Grant

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ward more environmentally conscious shopping, according to Leary.

“We hope that actually we will see fewer and fewer retailers collecting the 10 cents fee and more and more consumers bringing their own bags and understanding that connection between consumerism and plastic waste,” Leary said.

While it is too early to tell if the charge has effectively changed the way many Newton residents shop, Leary did note that there has been little backlash to the ordinance—saying she believes residents and businesses understand the need for the charge.

“I guess I think it’s pretty standard in Massachusetts,” said Newton resident Lisa Holtzman. “In theory, I think it’s a pretty good idea.”

Holtzman, who already brings her own reusable bags when shopping, said the 10-cent charge might just be the extra incentive needed to remind her to always bring her bags with her.

Lean On Me Reaches One Year at BC

By Rachel Phelan

IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Council looked to paper bags as the next step, according to Ward 1 Councilor-at-Large Alison Leary, who co-sponsored the ordinance.

“When we passed that four years ago, we were aware that people would likely switch to using paper bags, and, as you may know, paper has its own carbon footprint,” Leary said. “So, the reason why we didn’t add it right away is because politically it would have been difficult, and I wanted to get the plastic bag ordinance through quickly because we were using literally millions of bags. So we came back to it and added a fee, which has shown to be really effective in changing consumer behavior … ” Newton’s 10-cent charge is comparable to similar charges in parts of California and the city of Cambridge, where the charge is also 10 cents, and Boston, where the charge is 5 cents.

The charge is part of Newton’s efforts to reduce the city’s waste produced by single-use items, such as grocery bags, and move the city to-

FEATURES: Paul Lewis

BC English professor teaches students about Edgar Allan Poe’s dark humor........................... A8

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things to do on campus this week

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UGBC is hosting a Diversity and Inclusion Debate for its president and executive vice president candidates on Wednesday in the Heights Room at 6:30 p.m. Questions will be coming from the ALC, the GLC, and the Diversity and Inclusion Programming Board.

NEWS BRIEFS

BC Professor Wins Music Awards Boston College music professor Daniel Callahan recently received two awards from the American Musicological Society (AMS) for his essay “The Gay Divorce of Music and Dance: Choreomusicality and the Early Works of Cage-Cunningham.”

This is the first time that any single work of scholarship has been awarded both accolades—the 2019 Alfred Einstein Award and the 2019 Phillip Brett Award—from the AMS. The Brett Award honors exceptional musicological work in the field of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender or transsexual studies completed during the previous two calendar years, according to the AMS website.

The Einstein Award is presented to works authored in the “early stages” of an academic’s career, which is considered to mean no more than 10 years beyond completion of a doctorate, according to the AMS website.

“I am deeply grateful to be at an institution that supports me and my research materially, intellectually, and spiritually—support without which I would not have been able to complete my research and be so recognized,” Callahan said in a University release. “I hope that my work reflects well on the Music Department and Boston College.”

Currently on leave as a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard University, Callahan is working on his second book, Conducting Oneself: Choreography, Bodies, and Identities On and Off the Podium.

“Radcliffe will allow me precious time to devote to my research and writing while also challenging me to produce work that, without sacrificing rigor and depth of thought, can communicate to the widest possible audience,” Callahan said in the release.

SSW Holds Event on Economic Inequality The B oston College School of Social Work hosted Heather Boushey, president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, to discuss her new book, Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It. Boushey focused on how the Washington Center has been working to disprove the widely held belief that what is good for the economy is bad for people.

“There is this inherent tradeoff between, on one hand, what’s good for the economy, and on the other hand, what’s good for people and families,” she said. “When you start looking at the new research that is coming out of economics … you actually see a very different story emerging.”

Boushey highlighted her belief that economics is currently experiencing a major turning point, as modern data is allowing economists to analyze aspects of the economy that they couldn’t before.

This development, according to Boushey, is thanks to new technology and methods over the last 40 years.

“I argue that economics is on the cusp of … some sort of paradigm shift … there are a lot of scholars in economics who are working … at the boundaries of what is the realm of economics and finding anomalies, things that don’t really fit with our understanding of how the economy works,” she said.

Boushey described her book as a synthesis of what the Washington Center has learned in its first six years.

Though the book does not introduce any new data, it uses existing modern data to understand our current problems with inequality and how it negatively affects the economy, Boushey said.

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Thea L. James, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Boston Medical Center/Boston University School of Medicine, is visiting BC on Thursday. Her talk, titled “Medicine for Mission: Shifting the Paradigm,” will start at 7 p.m. in McGuinn 121.

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As part of its Do-It-Yourself event series, the McMullen Museum of Art is hosting an embroidery-art workshop on Thursday. Inspired

by Nicholas Hlobo’s work in McMullen’s Indian Ocean Current exhibit, the workshop will last from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Students Report Off-Campus Break-In Attempts

By Haley Hockin Copy Chief A man wearing a fluorescent yellow vest has been repeatedly knocking on doors at Boston College students’ off-campus houses in Brighton and falsely claiming to be a telephone company representative needing to do work in their houses, according to interviews with several BC students.

The man has been seen by neighboring students trying to open the door to enter houses in instances when no one answers.

Multiple students told The Heights that this man has attempted to gain access to at least four houses on Gerald Street. Police reports regarding any incidents from Bos-

ton Police Department District 14, which encompasses Brighton and Allston, are not immediately available.

This is not the first time BC residents have been affected by break-ins and robberies—in the first month and a half of 2018 alone, seven break-ins were reported to BCPD. The students had only seen the man knocking on doors in broad daylight. The students said they believe this is due to the fact that BC students are often on campus, and it is common that houses are empty throughout the day.

Abby Schlageter, MCAS ’21, first spoke with the man on Monday afternoon when she opened up the door after aggressive and repeated knocking, she said. Upon opening the door, the man told her he was

from Verizon and needed to do work on her house’s cable lines.

The man’s entrance into her and her roommates’ house triggered a beeping of their alarm, which caused him visible discomfort, she said. He slowly began moving out of the doorway and down the front porch steps.

At the bottom of the steps, the man pressed Schlageter about when he could come back to do “maintenance,” she said.

He repeatedly asked her whether any of her roommates would be home before 8 p.m.

When she responded yes, he left and did not return back to her house at any point throughout the day, Schlageter said.

Almost immediately after the incident, Schlageter and her roommates began receiving messages from other girls liv-

ing in off-campus housing who said they had had very similar experiences, though the man had been claiming to work for a different phone company each time, Schlageter said.

“I don’t think he was coming to try and hurt anyone,” Schlageter said. “I think he was coming to try and steal things, which is why he probably wanted to come in, scope out where things were, and then figure out when we weren’t going to be home.”

As awareness about this man’s presence around off-campus neighborhoods has grown, Schlageter said that she and her neighbors have become increasingly careful in locking their doors.

“Every time I go home now, it’s always locked,” Schlageter said. “Everyone is being a little extra careful.” n

Unity Breakfast Honors Martin Luther King Jr.

By Ben Chieng For The Heights The Black Faculty, Staff, and Administrators Association (BFSAA) hosted its annual Unity Breakfast celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. on Wednesday morning.

Rev. James Hairston, campus minister for Multi-Faith programs and co-chair of the BFSAA, provided opening marks and gave the invocation.

“Most gracious and everlasting God, thank you for blessing us with this time together,” Hairston said. “We thank you for allowing us to be together. We ask you now, your Holy Spirit, to flow upon us this morning as we celebrate and commemorate the legacy that is the Reverend Dr. MLK Jr., and as we continue to bond together here in this Boston College community, for us to keep his legacy forward and continue to bond with one another.”Hairston introduced Stacey Thompson, BC ’99, who in her speech described King as not only “a motivational person but a man of faith” and sang Richard Smallwood’s song “Total Praise.”

A “Call to Action” centerpiece on each of the breakfast tables described injustices and systemic inequalities plaguing the United States. Each plate was embellished with a paper detailing the life of a particular historical figure and his or her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement.The program continued with a spoken word poem by Miya Coleman, Lynch ’21. She described the importance of using one’s voice as “a way to make them listen, a way to bring oppressors to their knees.”

Judy Moore, co-chair of BFSAA and academic support assistant for the School

Aneesa Wermers / For the Heights

The BFSAA’s Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast featured several speakers, a poem, and a keynote address. of Social Work, presented the Living the Mission Award, which was renamed the “Dr. Charles F. Smith Jr. Award” at the breakfast. Smith, who died in August, was BC’s first tenured black faculty member.

Akua Sarr, vice provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs, was the recipient of the award, but she could not attend the breakfast. Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, a professor in Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African Diaspora Studies, accepted the award on behalf of Sarr.

Rhonda Frederick, an English professor at BC and the event’s keynote speaker, spoke next. Frederick, who specializes in

Anglophone Caribbean and African Diaspora literature, highlighted King’s rhetoric as an instrument of promoting activism.

She talked about how an ideal university would be “a place of refuge, a place where students could enjoy learning” that “would encourage new discussions.”

Jabril Robinson, membership outreach liaison of the BFSAA and assistant director at the Career Center, reflected afterward on Frederick’s words. He emphasized the importance of the “Call to Action” and thinking about what remains to be done to attain a more just society.

Hairston returned to the podium to give the benediction near the end of the cel-

ebration. He reminisced about times with Frederick when he was a student in her Afro-Caribbean literature class. Hairston then thanked Event Management, Dining Services, Human Relations, the Office for Institutional Diversity, and Frederick.

“The memory and legacy of the Reverend Dr. MLK Jr., as well as Dr. Charles F. Smith Jr., and all those who came before us who laid down the foundation, that path for us to continue to walk this day,” he said, coincides with the Jesuit value of being men and women for others.

After holding hands with one another and singing “We Shall Overcome,” the congregation dispersed. n

New Safety Application Includes Tracking Service

By Nadine Akkawi Editorial Assistant The Boston College Office of Public Safety launched the new BC Safe App, available on the App Store and Google Play Store, in November. Through its numerous features, the app is meant not only for Boston College students, but for faculty, staff, visitors, and nearby residents.

One security feature of the app is Friend Walk. This facet allows users to select a contact from their phone, either through a text message or email, and request that that friend or family member keep an eye on them for the amount of time it takes to walk across campus. The live location of the user is streamed to the contact until the final destination is reached. In a crisis, the user can simply click an emergency button to alert both the contact and the Boston College Police Department.

BC Safe was in the works for a year and a half and is meant to replace the Crisis

Manager app that BC had been using for the previous five years, according to John Tommaney, director of Emergency Management.

The objective in creating a new platform was to create an everyday app, rather than a simple reference.

“The goal behind this app is to make it a tool that people can use every day. … the Crisis Manager app was a good tool, but it was really only designed as a kind of electronic desk reference,” said Tommaney.

The layout of the app consists of a crime alert bulletin and nine tabs designed to promote both on- and off-campus safety as well as connect users to third-party resources, such as National Weather Service forecasts, Waze maps, and MBTA information.

“The idea was to try and make things a lot easier,” said Tommaney. “A lot of the things on the app are just links to websites, but people generally don’t know where to find them, so we’ve tried to create shortcuts

POLICE BLOTTER: 1/22/20 – 1/23/20 Wednesday, Jan. 22

and quick links for people to have access to the common tools they’re looking for.”

The links on the app take users across multiple BC website pages that outline restrictions, help with parking, and notify students of opportunities and information they may not have been aware of.

Pages for different training programs BC offers, such as CPR training and Resisting Aggression with Defense (RAD) for both men and women, are linked on the app. Like the TransLoc Rider app, BC Safe also gives students real-time locations and approximate arrival times of BC buses.

While the app is geared toward everyday life, its safety features take up a significant portion of its layout. The app connects users to multiple BC hotlines, online forms to report suspicious activity, and instructions for potential major crises.

The travel safety tab is entirely dedicated to helping students in any situation or issue that can arise during time abroad.

It provides students with BC travel con-

Thursday, Jan. 23

10:25 a.m. - An officer filed a report regarding a suspicious circumstance at Newton Roadways.

4:23 p.m. - An officer filed a report regarding a medical incident at Stuart Hall.

10:38 p.m. - An officer filed a report regarding a drug law violation at Walsh Hall.

10:52 a.m. - An officer filed a report regarding a traffic crash at Campanella Way.

10:22 p.m. - An officer filed a report regarding a medical incident at Alumni Stadium.

10:41 p.m. - An officer filed a report regarding an intoxicated person of legal age at Thomas More Apartments.

—Source: The Boston College Police Department

tacts, international emergency numbers, and U.S. embassy information. It also gives students the opportunity to partake in BC Safe Check-In, a program that will notify them of emergency situations and ask them to check in to ensure their safety.

Though it includes significant travel safety information, Tommaney hopes to develop the tab further.

“This particular section was really built for study-abroad students who are traveling to different areas,” said Tommaney. “We’re still working on this particular one, but it can be a really helpful thing when you’re traveling.”

The app’s flexibility has left an open window for any changes or improvements to be made, according to Tommaney.

It has already been updated around 25 times, and the Office of Public Safety is looking to continue developing the app as users’ needs change and the office develops ideas. n

CORRECTIONS Please send corrections to eic@bcheights.com with ‘correction’ in the subject line.

The Heights

Monday, January 27, 2020

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MAYA TAHA / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Lean On Me Sees Growth One Year After Launch Lean On Me, from A1 Currently, Lean On Me has 25 active supporters, who are BC undergraduate students trained to provide quality emotional support to those who text the Lean On Me hotline. Additional supporters will be recruited in the coming weeks.

“Right now we’re going through the process of honing the training to focus on BC-specific issues,” said McMahon. “We’ve been getting a lot of people texting in with feeling feelings of loneliness, feelings of extreme academic stress, and relationship problems.”

Lean On Me is constantly working to expand its outreach in the BC community, according to McMahon.

“I’d love everyone to have Lean

On Me’s number in their phone or on the back of their ID, just so they know they always have the resource when they’re going through a tough time,” McMahon said.

Lean On Me hopes to further improve its supporters’ skills in engaging in conversations on topics like loneliness and academic stress that have proven prevalent within the BC community in an effort to expand its reach and assist more students, said McMahon. Students who are interested can text the hotline to be anonymously connected with a supporter or apply to be supporters themselves.

“When people think about mental health resources at BC, I really want Lean On Me to be one of the first things that comes to mind,” said McMahon. n

You’s Lawyer Counters DA’s Portrayal of Case You, from A1 Rollins for her introduction of the order and defended his team’s disclosure of the texts to the media in November as being necessary to counter the global perception of You as a result of the prosecution’s prior public evidence, according to the Herald.

“The district attorney herself factually asserted many inaccuracies,” Kim said, according to WCVB. “This basically tainted the jury pool, judge, to demonize my client as being a monster.

We had to figure out how we are going to un-taint that massive damage that was done to the defense.”

Kim implored Superior Court Judge Christine Roach to recognize the importance of exculpatory text messages,

such as those right before Urtula died in which You tries to persuade him against it.

The prosecution countered that the order is imperative for a fair trial.

Prosecutor Caitlin Grasso said it would prevent the trial from being subjected to “the public arena,” according to the Herald, and urged Roach to uphold it.

Roach did not rule on the motion but commented that the order appeared “broad” in her view. She ordered both sides to specify their arguments in filings during the coming weeks.

You’s pretrial hearing will continue on Feb. 20. Though free on bail until then, You has been ordered to remain in Massachusetts and to attend all future hearings, unless otherwise stated. n

SCOTUS Justices Deny Michelle Carter’s Appeal

By Danny Flynn Assoc. Magazine Editor The Supreme Court decided two weeks ago not to take up an appeal by Michelle Carter, the Massachusetts woman convicted of involuntary manslaughter after she convinced her boyfriend to kill himself.

Carter was released from jail Thursday after earning back time for “good behavior,” according to Boston 25 News.

The appeal raised the legal question of whether her conviction violated the free speech clause of the First Amendment.

Carter’s lawyers argued that her speech, in the form of calls and texts, did not constitute “speech integral to unlawful conduct,” according to the petition to the Supreme Court. The appeal also challenged her conviction ruling on due process grounds, contending that there is insufficient legal guidance preventing arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.

The Court declined to review the case at all, meaning that her original conviction from 2017 stands.

Carter’s case recently reentered the news cycle following the charges brought against Inyoung You, the former Boston College student who pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter following the suicide of her boyfriend, Alexander Urtula, BC ’19.

You is accused of engaging in patterns of physical and mental abuse toward Urtula in the time leading up to his death, including encouraging him over text to kill himself.

You faces the same charge that Carter did, but there may be a stronger case for the charges that You faces due to the fact that she was present when Urtula jumped to his death from a parking garage—Urtula’s brother texted You the location after Urtula unshared his phone’s location with her.

“It’s a stronger case because there’s an issue in Carter, a lingering issue, about whether the prosecutors met what’s called the causation requirement, that they could

show that Carter caused Roy’s death, because, after all, he was alone in a car many miles away,” said Northeastern University law professor Daniel Medwed in an October interview with WGBH. “However, in this case, Ms. You was right there—a stronger case for causation.”

He added that the alleged history of physical and emotional abuse by You strengthened the argument for causation.

Medwed also helped draft a proposal that is up for debate in the Massachusetts State House called Conrad’s Law—named for Roy—which would explicitly criminalize the act of coercing someone into suicide through manipulation or encouragement.

Ken Kersch, a political science professor at BC, characterized the You case as coming down to a discussion of the difference between coercion and participation—a line that could be further blurred after the November revelation that You had sent over 110 texts in the hours leading to his death imploring him not to take his own life.

“They’re on a continuum of coercion and participation,” Kersch said in an interview with The Heights. “And I think that the different courts would judge that differently. The one thing they’re going to do is think of the consequences on other areas of holding. Like if you urge someone to do something and you’re guilty of participation or something like that, that’s going to have consequences outside of girlfriends persuading their friends to kill themselves.”

Both the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office and Steven Kim, You’s lawyer, did not respond to requests for comment.

You’s trial is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 9, 2020. In a pre-trial hearing Tuesday morning, Kim challenged the protective order on the case, which bars much of the evidence in the case from the public eye. The court did not rule on the request at the time—but the hearing will continue on Feb. 20. n

IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Presidential candidate John Gehman, MCAS ’21, discussing his platform with his running mate, Leonardo Escobar, MCAS ’22.

UGBC Executive Candidates Share Platforms UGBC, from A1 and executive vice president .

Guma is the only candidate not currently involved in UGBC. Among the initiatives in Guma and Atinizian’s platform are advocating for expanded financial aid, more funding for the Thea Bowman AHANA and Intercultural Center, the establishment of a space for LGBTQ+ students, the expansion of free menstrual products on campus, more popular artists at BC’s concerts, and a collaboration with rideshare companies such as Uber for discounted rides.

Dennis Wieboldt and Lorenzo Leo, both UGBC senators and MCAS ’23, were next to announce their candidacy for president and executive vice president, respectively.

Wieboldt—who presented alone, as Leo was in class—argued that the team’s youth was an advantage with their slogan, “It’s time for fresh energy on the Heights.” In particular, Wieboldt focused on restructuring UGBC. Wieboldt said that it is unusual for freshmen to seek positions as UGBC executives but said that he believes their “record of accomplishment poises [them] to be UGBC’s next best leaders.”

The pair listed three goals for UGBC in their presentation: changing the way the organization works internally, the way it works with the student body, and the way it works with the administration.

The Wieboldt-Leo platform in-

cludes a new UGBC constitution, new UGBC senate rules, and more transparency in UGBC funding.

Wieboldt particularly criticized the University-funded UGBC fall retreat, which cost over $12,000 in the 2017-2018 year.

Their platform also includes advocating for an LGBTQ+ resource center and the introduction of printers in all residential halls.

Czar Sepe, chair of the Institutional Innovations Committee and MCAS ’21, is also running for UGBC president, along with John Bracher, UGBC senator and MCAS ’22. The pair’s slogan is “To strive to greater Heights.”

Sepe opened with a personal story, talking about his Filipino ancestry and how his parents, who now work as nurses, immigrated to the United States in the ’90s.

“The two values that they’ve instilled in me would be doing what you love and serving others,” Sepe said.

Sepe and Bracher are also running on a three-point platform: working toward practical solutions with visible, effective impacts on campus; partnering with the Campus Activities Board (CAB), BC Athletics, and Campus Ministry to cultivate respect for all; and setting a precedent for UGBC to work effectively with administration.

The Sepe-Bracher platform includes initiatives for more studentadministrator forums , improved implementation of the menstrual product program, better Eagle Escort service, a MentalHealthEdu module for freshmen similar to DiversityEdu, better recycling practices in residential halls, and more collaboration with CAB. n

IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Christian Guma, CSOM ’21, announcing his candidacy for UGBC president.

ACLU Attorney Discusses Immigration

By Elizabeth Deese For The Heights The Center for Human Rights and International Justice hosted Staff Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts Dan McFadden, BC Law ’09, at a luncheon on Thursday. McFadden spoke about what he considers to be one of the most profound human rights violations perpetrated by the United States government—the unjust detention of immigrants and their families.

McFadden is a litigator of civil rights and civil liberties, particularly issues relating to immigrants’ rights.

Prior to working for the ACLU, he worked for seven years as a litigation attorney in private practice and also served as a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy.

Since September 2018, McFadden has been a staff attorney for the ACLU, working to protect the civil rights of people held in immigration detention, and also advocating for criminal defense reform and government transparency.

He has received several professional recognitions, including awards from the Political Asylum / Immigration Representation Project and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

McFadden described the challenges and successes of Pensamiento vs. McDonald (2018), a case he led concerning the issues at the center of the immigration detention debate, and what winning this case meant on a broader scale.

“This was a case about when does the government get to put somebody in jail?

Do they have to come forward with some evidence to show that there is a reason that that person should be in jail?” he

said. “Or can they put someone in jail by default?”

He said that, in the United States, there are currently about 35,000 to 50,000 people in immigration detention, many of whom were detained despite having no history of criminal activity nor any reason for the U.S. government to believe that they will flee. Separated from their families, they are held in detention for anywhere from months to years, while backlogged immigration courts slowly process their cases.

McFadden explained that in deciding Pensamiento, the court essentially ruled that immigrants have “due process” rights, meaning they cannot be held indefinitely and the burden lies on the government to prove that they belong in detention.

The government appealed this ruling, but later dismissed the appeal, prompting a number of subsequent cases to further clarify and resolve issues involving the due process rights of immigrants.

The ACLU later brought this issue forward as a class action, arguing that the existing court decisions that held it unconstitutional to put the burden on individuals should be expanded to encompass any immigrant who has been detained in Massachusetts or has come to the Boston immigration court, McFadden said.

In November, the court ruled that the Constitution does apply to people in this situation, and that the government cannot detain them unless it shows that there is clear and convincing evidence of dangerousness or likeliness to flee. The court also ruled that immigration courts must consider the individual’s financial resources when setting bail.

“This was a really important victory

for the rights of all Americans because we shouldn’t live in a country where anyone can be locked up by default, particularly people who find themselves in this situation,” McFadden said.

Despite this victory, McFadden stressed that there are still a large number of injustices both within the United States and globally regarding the human rights violations of immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of people are deported annually, and private immigration detention facilities have turned into businesses—earning profits in the billions of dollars.

McFadden argued that this system flips the Constitution on its head—the system, he argues, incentivizes detaining as many people as possible though the assumption of the Constitution is that as few people as possible should be detained.

Another injustice McFadden addressed is the current administration’s practice of separating families to deter legal immigration.

Separating children from their parents as a tactic to threaten and dissuade others from immigrating to the United States has become part of U.S. policy, McFadden said, and this policy inflicts emotional pain on children and their parents, and due to flawed processes and record-keeping, risks their permanent separation.

McFadden stressed to the audience members that they do not have to be attorneys to effect change on these matters, and he called for them to exercise advocacy in other ways, such as signing petitions on the ACLU website.

“There’s a tremendous opportunity for people to be engaged as citizens and activists and make a lot of positive change that way,” McFadden said. n

A4

The Heights

Monday, January 27, 2020

The Big Questions

B y M aeve R eilly

Magazine Editor

B

orn in Tennessee in 1912, the late Sir John Templeton was known for open-mindedness and an eagerness to learn. When the John Templeton Foundation was founded in 1987, it continued his work toward answering what the Foundation now calls “Big Questions,” according to its website.

This year, the John Templeton Foundation administered grants to three BC professors. Psychology professor Liane Young and her lab received the largest grant—at $2,743,961—to support her project, “Reasoning in Moral Thought and Action.”

“We’re really interested in the psychological processes that drive our moral thinking ,” Young said about her research. “So, how we make moral decisions ourselves in our daily lives, but also how we

grant from the John Templeton Foundation, which she used to look at the influence of people’s beliefs on moral behaviors. At the time, the Morality Lab consisted of just her, a full-time lab manager, and two graduate students.

Nine years and two more grants from the John Templeton Foundation later, Young and her team in the Morality Lab applied for their latest and largest grant. They wanted to figure out how humans understand and approach moral thinking—how people make moral decisions, how they evaluate other people’s moral behavior, and how relational and social context impacts judgment of others.

Young’s impact on the members of her lab is palpable, according to Minjae Kim, a graduate student who works under Young in the Morality Lab. Kim spoke to her distinct leadership style.

“She’s an incredible mentor. I

MAGGIE DIPATRI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

McKaughan studies faith alongside BC psychologists, philosophers, and theologists.

evaluate other people when they behave in certain ways that are morally relevant.”

Young’s fascination with human morality has taken her on an intricate, twisted path—one that started just across the Charles River.

Sp ending her underg raduate years at Harvard University, where she was a philosophy major, Young was originally intrigued by how so much of the world’s population could have differing opinions on moral questions, such as abortion and euthanasia, but all were convinced that they had the correct answer. Young said she initially hoped to go on to medical school but soon found herself veering further and further away from that plan. After deciding to go to grad school for psychology, she quickly realized that she didn’t need to limit herself to studying her interests through any specific academic scope.

“I’ve known for a while now that it’s less that I’ve been interested in psychology or philosophy but more that I’ve been interested in morality for a really long time,” Young said.

Young grew up in Boston, attended college and graduate school in the Boston area, and, after completing her postdoc at MIT, fell in love with BC’s psychology department.

“I didn’t plan to stay in Boston for all of these different phases,” Young said. “I thought for sure that at some point, I would be spending time somewhere else either for grad school or for my postdoc, or for my job, so I definitely feel really lucky that I’ve been able to stay.”

Young is now the principal investigator in BC ’s Morality Lab. Comprised of 16 members—researchers, lab assistants, graduate students, and one dog, Lindy, who the team has dubbed a “post-dogtoral researcher”—the Morality Lab has grown and shifted its focus since Young arrived at BC. The Morality Lab’s alumni include a quantitative researcher, assistant professors at a number of established universities, and postdocs at colleges across the country.

Young came to campus in 2011 after having just received her first

think something that we really appreciate about her is that she’s very enthusiastic about … [theoretically] oriented ideas,” Kim said. “Given her enthusiasm for taking these many different approaches and seeing what we can learn from a combination of approaches, I’m learning a lot about those different methods.”

For Young and her lab, morality spans a vast variety of topics.

Beliefs, behavior, and social interaction affects how we think about ourselves and others, she said, while neural mechanisms also play into these thought processes.

One of the most crucial parts of Young’s new project in the lab is right in the name: “Reasoning and Moral Thought and Action.” Amid collecting physical data to get to the core of the research, Young is also focusing on reintroducing a need for reason in moral reasoning.

“We wanted to push back against this idea that moral psychology is all intuitive and mostly irrational and [instead] think about the ways in which reason can make an impact and how to bring back a focus on moral reasoning,” Young said.

Th o u g h Yo u n g h a s w at c h e d her lab and its goals shift as young members come and go, she said that she is just as excited about BC’s psychology department and her fellow professors as she was when she first visited nine years ago.

“That’s sort of one thing that hasn’t changed, which is just … the sense of community in the department,” Young said. “I really enjoy coming to work.”

Young isn’t concerned by the Morality Lab’s large-scale changes in approach and aim—she feels prepared for whatever might be thrown her way.

“I think that the goal is to just grow the new generation of scholars who are interested in world psychology from this truly interdisciplinary perspective to become real experts in the methods that we use in neuroscience and psychology,” Young said. oung isn’t the only professor receiving a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to have strayed from her intended academic

Y

path. Now a faculty member in BC’s philosophy department, professor Daniel McKaughan spent his undergraduate years at the University of Oregon studying chemistry and biology.

Initially pursuing pre-med, McKaughan ran into a slight problem— he was squeamish around blood.

So he switched gears. Like Young, McKaughan found himself wanting to answer big-picture questions.

“I didn’t take a philosophy class until my senior year, and, in fact, it was a course called ‘Love and Personal and Political Life’,” he said.

“I was intrigued and impressed by philosophers’ ability to think clearly about sort of big questions and a topic like love.”

McKaughan has been at BC for 12 years, pursuing information on topics such as faith and trust. The philosophy department, he said, has an openness when it comes to exploring questions about religion and philosophy—the exact interests the John Templeton Foundation is allowing him to combine through the grant McKaughan and his team recently received for his project, “Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology of Christian Trust in God.” McKaughan said the process of applying for his largest grant yet was time consuming and risky.

“The amount of time that needs to go into writing a good proposal that’s … going to be compelling to funders is really comparable to what might go into writing academic articles or even writing a book proposal,” he said.

McKaughan’s project examines the concept of Christian trust in God through philosophical, theological, and psychological lenses.

M c K a u g h a n i s e x a m i n i n g w hy the word “faith” may have a negative connotation in Christian discourse—on account of the fact that faith is believing without having sufficient evidence.

But McKaughan is pushing people to step outside of a purely theological view of faith, he said.

“It was sort of recognizing that a lot of social relationships depend on us placing our trust or faith in others to come through for us in various ways,” McKaughan said.

“Then you can see why it would be considered virtuous for [someone] to be faithful or trustworthy and to actually come through.”

Like Young, McKaughan is embarking on redefining the way a popular topic in his field of work— philosophy—is viewed.

He’s asking the big-picture questions that the John Templeton Grant funds—what faith is; how it relates to topics such as belief, hope, and doubt; and in what ways they are different.

McKaughan speaks precisely and articulately, talking about his field of expertise with a relaxed air about him. Honing in on the idea that a person can have faith in God while still lacking full confidence in their belief in God, he compared faith to winning the lottery. Though there is only a one in 250 million chance of winning the lottery, he said, the hope of winning still drives people to buy tickets.

McKaughan’s team consists of philosophers, theologists, and psychologists. Each department uses their expertise to work towards the best final product.

“I think that’s one of the exciting things about the project,” McKaughan said. “ … [that] it is this sort of rich interdisciplinary interaction, but that also it takes some work.” he John Templeton Foundation also awarded the grant to professor Katherine McAuliffe, another member of the psychology department, for her lab’s project, “Building Virtue: Environmental and Social Influences on the De-

T

ANEESA WERMERS / HEIGHTS STAFF

Young focuses on morality and the reason behind why humans make certain choices. velopment of Fairness, Forgiveness, Honesty and Trustworthiness.”

Her journey to BC’s psychology department started at Dalhousie University and King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she took joint classes at both schools and eventually earned her bachelor’s degree in marine biology. Despite her degree centering around animal tendencies, McAuliffe tied in aspects of psychology to her studies, which would eventually lead to her career at BC. While in Halif a x , McAulif fe studied whale culture—or more specifically, the question of whether whales have something that looks like culture in the human sense.

After living in Nova Scotia, she continued on to a one-year program at the University of Cambridge, where she examined primate cooperation and the evolution of babysitting in primates. She said that this experience solidified her interest in the psychology of cooperation, noting that humans are much more likely to let a non-family member care for their child for an extended period of time than primates are.

Moving from studying whales to primates to dingoes and different species of fish, McAuliffe eventually honed in on whether animals care about being fair.

“And the answer that I got was basically that animals don’t really care about fairness in the way that humans do,” she said.

So McAuliffe switched gears. She began to apply the tests that she had been running on different animals to children.

Her basic finding was that kids as young as 4 had a solid grasp on fairness and that it played a large role in their decisions when it came to interactions in a group.

“How do children develop the

interest of a group versus self-interest, and how people reconcile the gap between their own interests and those of others.

Not only has McAuliffe transferred her initial interest in marine biolog y to the world of human psychology, but she’s taken strides to reassess the way psychologists approach their studies. The majority of psychological studies, McAuliffe said, are from what is known as the W.E.I.R.D. population—white, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic people.

“Not only does this represent one particular slice of the human population, it’s also probably not super representative of how humans have been existing for our history,” McAuliffe said. “And yet, often, we make claims in psychology papers that are very general about human development and human psychology.”

Her team transfers the goal of diversifying psychology studies that McAullife has in mind to the actual work it does in the lab.

Richard Ahl, a postdoctoral fellow in the Cooperation Lab, explained how widening the pool of subjects applies to the Cooperation Lab studying children. “[We are] looking at children, how children of different ages in different cultures behave fairly, honestly, and in a trustworthy and forgiving way—looking at how those behaviors develop as kids get older in different places,” Ahl said.

McAuliffe and her team have conducted the studies for the grant they received from the John Templeton Foundation in the United States, Canada, Ecuador, Peru, and Uganda, and they are currently in the process of planning a trip to India. They’re looking for information on how children perform

MAGGIE DIPATRI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

McAuliffe studies how children grapple with different ideas of fairness across cultures. concept of a group? How do those groups influence the way people think about fairness?,” McAuliffe asked herself and her colleagues.

Now in her four th ye ar at B C , McAuliffe and her team at the Cooperation Lab are working toward finding the answers.

The lab’s motto is “we study the forces that shape and sustain cooperative societies.” For McAuliffe and her team, this project involves working with both young children and adults.

She focuses on topics such as the

tasks based on their conceptions of fairness, forgiveness, honesty, and trustworthiness. McAuliffe said she hopes that in each place it visits, her team gathers a wide cultural scope that can give an answer to her questions.

“A lot of virtue development has to do with how people become good people … how do we become the best versions of ourselves?” McAuliffe said. “And I think that’s fully in line with this idea of character formation and the BC tradition and the Jesuit tradition.” n

The Heights

Monday, January 27, 2020

By Gavin Zhang Assoc. Metro Editor

People around the world celebrated the Lunar New Year on Saturday.

There is no reason, however, to fret if you have missed the first few days of celebration, because the festivities will last for more than two weeks. Boston College will be providing a taste of the festivities—this Saturday, the Asian caucus at BC will present a celebration at the McMullen Museum of Art. Nevertheless, the City of Boston has more—more restaurants, more events, and simply more festival

vibes to ring in the Lunar New Year.

Whether you have already failed in keeping your New Year’s resolution or not, hop on the inbound Green Line train and celebrate the beginning of the year once more.

Embrace the Year of the Rat at these venues this weekend: Lunar New Year Celebration at the Museum of Fine Arts Want to learn more about Asian cultures? The Lunar New Year Celebration at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) on Saturday is the spot.

Indulge your senses with performing arts from China, Korea, and Vietnam

and learn more about Asian arts with lectures.

If you are a hands-on learner, you can also learn what your zodiac sign is and paint it on an ink scroll. Create your own door guardians and spice up your dorm door—especially if you don’t like your new door decs.

The event lasts from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. More information can be found on the MFA website. All events are free.

Chinese New Year Parade in Boston’s Chinatown One of the few surviving Chinatown areas in New England, Boston’s

A5

Chinatown still greets its visitors with its unique culture—from Chinese delicacies to authentic Chinese signs.

Chinatown is most lively during the Lunar New Year: drums, cymbals and firecrackers herald a new year.

Find all of them at the Chinese New Year Parade in Boston’s Chinatown, where the lion dances, lively music, and the blast of firecrackers will lift your mood for the weekend.

If you have a chance, remember to buy some Chinese New Year decor for your dorm.

The parade starts at the Chinatown gate on Sunday at 11 a.m. Admission

is free. … And Places to Grab a Bite to Eat Before You Leave For the Chinese, dumplings are a staple on the Lunar New Year dinner table. Gourmet Dumpling House provides the authentic dumplings for a true New Year experience. Don’t forget to try the Shandong-style pan fried dumplings—which are priced at only $7.25 and a true northern Chinese dish that outshines B C Dining’s Peking ravioli. A cozy spot with its prized dim sum, Winsor Dim Sum Café is also a hit, and its shrimp dumplings are a must-try. n

Residents Respond to Bag Charge Move Over Dunkin’: Bag Charge, from A1 Some residents were surprised that a new charge applied to paper bags.

Newton resident Mike Zaccardo said he often repurposed paper bags for other uses and that the charge would make that harder to do now.

“Personally for me, I actually would recycle the bags in the sense that I don’t use plastic for my trash bags, I would use the paper bags from Whole Foods as my trash bags,” said Zaccardo, who opted not to use a bag at all, carrying his groceries in his hands at the local Whole Foods.

“It probably overall will reduce the waste because it will force people to bring cloth bags, for those that will take on that burden. How much of an effect it will really have, I’m not sure.”

Although many residents did say they saw the value in the new ordinance, Newton resident Kim Thurmond questioned the effectiveness it will have in reducing Newton’s waste production.

“I think at least we’ll get people to think about bringing reusable bags, so that’s good,” Thurmond said. “I don’t

know how much of an impact it will have, but at least we’ll get, you know, one piece of the puzzle solved, I guess.”

Whether the 10-cent charge will be a significant enough charge to deter residents from using the single-use paper bags in the future remains an area of uncertainty for many residents.

“I don’t know what other price you’d put on it,” Zaccardo said. “Anything more than that [is] probably too much.

Anything less would be like, ‘What’s the point?’”

Even before the 10-cent charge was announced, many Newton residents had noticed more and more of their fellow Newtonians using reusable bags in place of the single-use paper ones provided by stores.

Many cited the increase in environmental awareness in the city as one of the main factors of this trend.

“I think most people nowadays do have their own bags, and they get used to carrying them with them,” said Newton resident Debbie Winer. “That’s just one aspect of the waste that’s being generated, right? So there’s probably more waste in coffee cups.”

Others argued the charge might also be one more pressure on residents to make the switch to reusable bags.

“I think peer pressure will do that.

I think people [will] get embarrassed walking around with paper bags,” said Newton resident Kate Thibeault. “More and more people bring their bags, a lot more people do that. It’s the cool thing to do—is to be environmentally concerned [and] that’s why Newton would change—it isn’t about any savings.”

Leary said that she, along with the rest of the Newton City Council, hopes the 10-cent charge will change not only residents’ attitudes toward single-use bags and single-use items but also how their consumerism affects the city’s waste production.

“I’d like [for people] to start thinking about how many single-use items, especially single-use plastic, they use in a day and think about using real stuff—bringing reusable coffee cups, reusable water bottles, and getting away from single-use plastic entirely,” said Leary.

“There’s such a problem to recycle [single-use items], so many of them end up either littered or in the trash.” n

A Sweet Weekend in Harvard Square The 12th Annual Taste of Chocolate Festival could satisfy any sweet tooth with free chocolate samples from vendors such as J.P. Licks.

MAGGIE DIPATRI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Twin Donuts is Perfect for To-Go Breakfast

ALEXA SPITZ / HEIGHTS STAFF

With its neon sign and retro exterior, Twin Donuts embodies the decade it opened in.

Twin Donuts opens at 4 a.m. every morning to bake fresh donuts for loyal customers.

By Julia Remick Asst. Metro Editor

A neon red sign reading “Twin Donuts” at the intersection of Beacon Street and Cambridge Street entices donut lovers to take a step inside. The local donut place is a breath of fresh air amid the seemingly never-ending Dunkin’ Donuts locations in the area. The freshness of the food and comfortable feel of the diner does not compare to the industrial feel of a large donut chain.

Twin Donuts has been serving locals in Allston for over 60 years.

The exterior sports a 1950s theme with a neon sign, large windows, and pink and silver walls. The interior does not maintain the same theme. There are a few square tables with wooden chairs and a large circular table in the center of the diner, with an aluminum pole going through it, surrounded by maroon stools. The walls are white.

The traditional 1950s booths, breakfast counter, and vibrant colors that you would expect to find are not there. Yet Twin Donuts still feels welcoming with its fun exterior, its old-school letter board displaying the menu, and its regular customers.

Twin Donuts offers both table service and a counter for those who want to enjoy their breakfast to go. Customers include locals enjoying coffee with a friend or sitting alone browsing the morning paper, a mother ordering a

dozen donuts while pushing a baby in a stroller, regulars in a hurry grabbing a bite before work, and chattering college students looking for a fresh cup of coffee. In the morning on weekdays, the diner is not crowded. But on Saturday mornings, all the tables are filled, and there is a line at the to-go counter. With flexible hours and fast service, Twin Donuts—open 4 a.m. to 5 p.m.—works to accommodate its wide range of loyal customers.

The donuts are made from scratch each morning using Twin Donuts’ original recipes. Once you take a bite, the care and hard work that goes into each donut is clear. For only $1.50, you can enjoy the donut of your choosing from a wide selection of flavors—from chocolate dipped to Boston cream.

The honey-dipped donut is fluffy and tastes fresh.

And the delicious sweets don’t stop there. Twin Donuts also serves a variety of muffins, pancakes, croissants, and french toast.

For those who prefer salty to sweet, there are a variety of traditional breakfast foods to choose from, such as egg sandwiches and bagels. The bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, priced at $5, is the perfect breakfast meal to take on the go. The bacon is crunchy but not overcooked, and the melted cheese combined with the eggs is satisfying.

Twin Donuts serves large portions at an affordable price. The shop also has a full lunch menu with traditional dining food. This includes sandwiches, burgers, soups, and salads. All of the sandwiches are made to order.

If you are looking for a spot to grab a quick breakfast or to satisfy your donut craving, Twin Donuts beats Dunkin’ any day. n

The Heights

A6

Monday, January 27, 2020

Editorial

Newton Ordinance on Single-Use Bags Helps BC Students Be More Climate-Conscious

A City of Newton ordinance requiring businesses over 3,500 sq. ft. to provide paper bags to customers went into effect Jan. 8. The ordinance requires that businesses charge customers at least 10 cents per bag. In July, all Newton businesses regardless of size will be required to comply with the ordinance.

Eight states have banned single-use plastic bags entirely, as have hundreds of cities around the United States. Likewise, mandating that customers pay for bags at checkout is not a novel concept. The City of Boston has done the same, charging five cents per bag, since the summer of 2019. It is imperative that individuals, companies, and governments work together to protect

the climate, which Newton and Boston have done with this small step forward.

The most climate-friendly move consumers can do, as far as grocery bags are concerned, is to bring reusable bags, preventing new waste from entering the environment. Adding the charge to the paper bags encourages customers to bring their own. It’s a simple, eco-conscious alternative that BC students should treat as a small but far-reaching step in fighting climate change.

The ordinance comes into effect after Newton published its first Climate Action Plan in fall 2019. The plan lays out steps for the city to take in order to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Though the plan does not directly

call for a chagre on single-use bags, the new ordinance will help Newton meet its stated goal of encouraging “product re-use” outlined in the report.

Other steps Newton will take, per the report, to meet its carbon-neutral goal include constructing more electronic vehicle charging stations, encouraging residents to take bicycles and public transportation to work, and incentivizing businesses to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The recent ordinance is only a small part of Newton’s other plans to become more climatefriendly, helping to ensure that BC students and Newton residents are doing their part to combat climate change.

QUOTE OF THE week “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

- Les Brown

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down Rice Krispies Treats

Sunchips

Sour Patch Watermelons

Blackberry Margarita Recipe

Reduced-Fat Cape Cod Chips

Preparation: 1. Juice limes.

2. In a large glass, muddle blackberries.

3. Add large handful of ice on top of blackberries.

4. Add triple sec, tequila, and lime juice.

5. Stir lightly.

6. Drink.

Maggie DiPatri / Heights Editor Ingredients: - 1 part triple sec - 2 parts tequila - 1 lime - 5 blackberries - Ice

DAlia jeiroudi / For The heights

customer service Clarifications / Corrections

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by the Editorial Board. Comments on the editorial can be sent to opinions@bcheights.com.

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The Heights

Monday, January 27, 2020

LIBERAL

Republicans Hide Crucial Evidence three days to make their opening arguments, rather than the two-day cap he had earlier proposed. Senator Susan Collins (R - ME), who is up for re-election in 2020, stated her caution with McConnell’s proposed rule changes, arguing the rules for Trump’s impeachment trial should fol69

Brendan Ilnitzki The Senate began deliberating the rules that will guide the impeachment trial of President

low the precedent set in the impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton. The Senate should follow these rules that were established during the Clinton impeachment, because they allow for

Donald Trump on Jan. 25. Trump’s impeach-

a fair and unbiased trial. By not allowing for the

ment has been centered around the allegation

American public to hear what people with direct

that the Trump administration willingly withheld knowledge of the phone call made by Trump military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the

have to say and denying access to documents

Ukrainian government to investigate Democratic that may implicate Trump, a fair trial cannot be presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son. The conducted.

Senate heard arguments from both House man-

Senate Republicans voted to block a bid by

agers and Trump’s legal team in regard to Mitch

Democrats to subpoena memos, emails, and oth-

McConnell’s proposed rules for the trial.

er documents that may tie Trump and members

While Republicans and the president have

of the Trump administration to the withholding

claimed on a daily basis that the whole impeach-

of military aid to Ukraine. The Trump adminis-

ment process has been unfair and nontranspar-

tration has refused to turn over any documents,

ent, in reality, it has been the Trump adminis-

even while claiming that it wants a transparent

tration that has attempted in almost every way

trial and that it has nothing to hide. It is ironic to

possible to limit evidence and block people from hear Republicans and people within the Trump testifying, with Republican senators allowing

administration repeatedly argue that Democrats

them to do so. In doing this, they are intention-

have failed to reach the burden of proof, because

ally hiding potentially damning evidence against

they are the ones who have denied every attempt

Trump that the American public has a right to

made by Democrats to gather evidence and in-

know.

formation that could prove that Trump used the

The Senate majority leader changed a provi-

power of the presidency to benefit himself.

sion in the rules for impeachment, in an attempt

In the coming days, the Senate will vote

to require House prosecutors and Trump’s

on whether or not Democrats can call new

lawyers to make 24 hours of legal arguments in

witnesses to testify in front of the Senate. One

just two days. Abiding by this provision would

witness that Democrats have called to testify is

force arguments to be made after midnight, into

John Bolton, the former U.S. National Security

the late hours of the night, when a majority of

Advisor under the Trump administration. Sen-

Americans are asleep and unable to watch the

ate Democrats will need four votes from their

trial. While senators from both political sides

Republican colleagues in order to get Bolton to

have advocated for a public impeachment trial,

testify. Testimonies from Bolton and others who

these new proposed rule changes by Republi-

worked within the Trump administration are

cans have made many Americans—including myself— skeptical about why Republicans may

necessary to have a fair trial.

Even if four Republican senators vote to ap-

want to keep the trial unavailable to the majority

prove the resolution to allow new witnesses to

of the public.

testify, it is unlikely that McConnell will allow for

After backlash to this rule change, McConnell amended his proposition so both the prosecution and the defense each have up to

testify: he probably has firsthand knowledge of the Trump administration’s effort to force Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, and Bolton has already made it clear that he will testify if he is subpoenaed. It is hard to understand how people can agree with the Republicans’ tactics of repeatedly attempting to keep information about Trump’s conduct regarding Ukraine private.

If people actually believed that the president did nothing wrong and does not deserve to be removed from office, why are Republicans not allowing for witnesses to testify?

Why are Republicans not granting access to emails and memos from the White House?

While it is unlikely that Republicans will vote to allow Bolton and other new witnesses to testify before the Senate, if Bolton is forced to testify, there is the chance that Trump may assert executive privilege—a power that gives him the ability to conceal information for the “good of the public.”

Trump has already invoked executive privilege in order to block House Judiciary Committee Democrats from seeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s unredacted report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Invoking executive privilege during an impeachment trial would be unprecedented in American history, so it is difficult to predict how the Senate would deal with this.

While I would not be surprised if Trump did invoke executive privilege, I would be concerned about what that decision would mean for future American presidencies.

Trump would be setting a very dangerous precedent that would allow for future presidents to abuse their power of office with little repercussions. That is why this whole impeachment trial is so important: It is essential for the well-being of our democracy that the United States demonstrate that no man is above the law, not even the president.

these testimonies to be made public—yet another Brendan Ilnitzki is an op-ed columnist attempt to try to keep the trial hidden from the American public. It is imperative that Bolton

for The Heights. He can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

A7

To Be Pro-Life, Start With the Climate

Kyle Rosenthal To be pro-life is exactly as it sounds: to support living beings and, in turn, protect them from danger. Some people who claim to be part of the pro-life movement have advocated for anti-climate policies that directly threaten people’s lives. Political parties have co-opted pro-life values while simultaneously advocating for anti-life policies regarding climate.

The Catholic Church has increasingly recognized the environmental aspect of what it means to be pro-life, though not nearly at the speed or with the urgency neecessary to retain young people. There are many factors to religious decisions, but younger people are increasingly leaving the Church entirely as a result of its stance on environmental issues.

While I’m not interested in an extended debate on utilitarianism, it is important to note the sheer number of people affected by climate and environmental issues and disasters. For the Church to ignore such issues that have tangible solutions and are directly impacting people’s lives, it makes sense that people would not want to be affiliated with such an organization. Young people are feeling hurt and left out as the Church prioritizes abortion over their loud cries for action on climate.

According to a report by the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, co-authored by Boston College’s own Phillip Landrigan and other faculty members, 9 million people die prematurely every year as a result of pollution.

There were a little more than 600,000 abortions in the United States in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tools already exist to prevent pollution-related deaths. However, government and corporate inaction persist, as does skepticism of science. I am not necessarily telling pro-life indivdiuals to stop advocating against abortion, but why not first tackle a larger and more easily preventable life issue?

In only a decade, more than 26,000 lives were saved by the shift away from coal. There are still hundreds of coal plants in the United States and around the world. Communities built around coal, particularly in Appalachia, are exposed to significant local pollution that leads to heart and respiratory issues, as well as birth defects.

A common argument of the pro-life movement is that fetuses are unable to advocate for themselves. While true, and I again reiterate my intention not to discount certain pro-life policies, I ask: Who will advocate for the hundreds of thousands of climate refugees today, and those to come? Just two weeks ago, nearly 400,000 people were displaced in Indonesia as a result of unprecedented flooding. These numbers will only grow higher as the climate warms.

Considering the ability of society to prevent such displacement, injury, and death, I propose that the pro-life movement at least incorporate climate action into its advocacy, if not entirely shift its focus until these easily preventable threats to life are rectified. At that time, abortion could become the focus again.

While I have no intention of discounting or disregarding abortion as a pro-life issue, it baffles me that that seems to be the sole focus of the larger pro-life movement and certainly the focus of the Catholic Church, especially in the United States.

Further, one party claims to be pro-life while painting the other as antireligion. Meanwhile, though imperfect, Democrats are both against the death penalty (pro-life) and, unlike Republicans, advocate for pro-climate legislation. Interestingly, though, such divides between parties disappear among youth—a warning sign to faith-based institutions and political parties alike.

With a goal of maximizing lives and an assumption that life begins at conception, the ideal pro-life policy mix would be anti-abortion and pro-climate policies. Unfortunately, the current political system does not offer many avenues to carry out such policies. But rather than address this disparity, the U.S. Catholic Church and Catholic institutions such as BC have chosen one side and one party in about as explicit a way as they can without violating

Conservative

their tax-exempt status. BC has made its pro-life stance quite clear, rightfully

Democrat-Led Impeachment Aids Trump

so as a religious institution, though it has done little to address its climate impact.

To ban condoms and simultaneously undermine student climate activists, refuse to create a climate action plan, and laugh in the face of divestment is hypocritical. It certainly is not pro-life—and it is a clear and present danger to

Julia Canzano The Senate began the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, commencing long days of arguments from both Republicans and Democrats. But while the two parties have battled it out in the Senate chamber over whether or not to convict the president, a different battle lies outside of Congress—how this impeachment will affect the 2020 election.

No president has been without scandal during his administration. The difference with this scandal, however, lies in how the impeachment trial even came about. In comparison to former presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton—the only two other presidents to be impeached— Trump’s impeachment is earlier in his term. In the case of Trump, House Democrats have been looking for ways to impeach the president since his inauguration.

And while impeachment processes are highly political, unlike a judicial proceeding before a court, this impeachment has been a deliberate attempt by Democrats to undermine the results of the 2016 election.

Even among representatives, the vote for impeachment was highly partisan. On the Republican side, all but two voted no on both articles of impeachment. For Democrats, only two voted no the first article of impeachment, and on the second, only three. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi could be seen smiling as

she signed the articles of impeachment that were to be sent to the Senate. In the same video, Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) broke out into a large grin upon receiving her souvenir pen. If this was really a situation worthy of impeaching the president, then why such a partisan split on the vote? And if the situation is as serious of a threat to democracy and America’s political institutions as the Democrats have made it out to be, why all the celebration?

The investigation, impeachment, and now Senate trial have been nothing more than a Democrat-led attempt to remove the president from office. The first attempt at impeachment came in 2017 with the possible collusion between the president’s campaign and Russia. A letter from the attorney general stated that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Impeachment is another opportunity for the Democrats to bring down the president because they don’t agree with him, rather than respecting the results of the 2016 election and letting voters vote the president out of office come Election Day 2020.

For the 2020 election, the impeachment represents a larger issue: In a race where every vote counts and swing states could easily flip from the last presidential election, the Democrats are still not clearly understanding how Trump’s relationship with his supporters is only strengthened by his actions, rather than weakened.

Constant calls to defeat Donald Trump from primary candidates such Bernie Sanders during the Democratic debates might win some independent votes, but certainly not any Republican votes. The president has a 92 percent approval rating among Republicans, and a 94 percent disapproval rating among Democrats. Democrats and the media, day after day, have reported and hyper-focused on the negative aspects of Trump’s presidency, rather than bringing at least some attention to the good he has done in office over the last three years.

In the end, the whole impeachment process will end up benefiting Trump in his re-election campaign. While the Senate has been caught up in the impeachment proceedings, the president attended the World Economic Forum Summit in Davos and was the first president to attend the March for Life. The American people, particularly those on the right, would rather focus on these actions instead of hearing another update on how Democrats and Republicans are tearing each other to pieces in the Senate chamber.

In the end, the president most likely won’t be convicted by the Republicancontrolled Senate. Instead of the Senate deciding if the country should endure another Trump term, it should be up to the American people. Come election time, what will be on the forefront of voters’ minds will be the most recent acts of the Trump administration as well as the Democratic

Julia Canzano is an op-ed columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

The opinions and commentaries of the op-ed columnists appearing on this page represent the views of the author of that particular piece, and not necessarily the views of The Heights.

students and humanity.

I laugh as priests deny the Eucharist to politicians like Joe Biden for his pro-choice views. If the Church is truly pro-life, it would also deny the Eucharist to every climate change denier in addition to fossil fuel CEOs and politicians advocating against climate legislation, yet at times they are instead celebrated.

In an all-or-nothing political landscape, no party or person can claim to be part of something as broad as the “pro-life movement.” Candidates may accept that, but will the Church? Imagine if BC saw climate activists as part of the pro-life movement, treating their calls to action with the same urgency. I can assure you that our school would be a freer, safer, and more sustainable place than it is today.

As it does when called out like this in the past, BC will likely point to research that it does to address pollution, such as the work of Landrigan. But this level of research, though important, does nothing to address BC’s institutional actions and investments or its aggressive responses toward climate activists on campus.

BC has also been repeatedly called out for failure to address issues of race and diversity on and off campus. Of note, there are many racial factors underlying climate risk and inaction, as redlined areas have higher pollution rates and temperatures, leading to more injury and death. Therefore, climate justice sits at the intersection of racial equity, environmental protection, free speech, and pro-life values that extend beyond abortion—all issues that BC and the Catholic Church as a whole have struggled with.

There is so much to analyze, from politics to religion to race. Hence, the inherent intersectionality of climate justice. For those looking for an outlet for a combination of some of these views that do not seem to fit with any party or platform, there are options. For one thing, you’ll have to focus on each candidate and political race rather than simply voting along party lines (which I would recommend anyways).

There are also many liberal Catholics in the United States, found in groups such as Faithful America and Catholic Democrats. Catholic Democrats believes that Democratic policies will actually lead to fewer abortions than Republican ones, and it advocate for climate action. There are also organizations welcoming a mix of conservative ideals and climate action, such as RepublicEn and Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

Young people may or may not protest abortion, but their massive climate strikes demonstrate a necessary and more complete understanding of what it means to be pro-life. I hope that the pro-life movement incorporates these values and radically shifts its tactics toward these immediate and tangible issues and that in turn, religious institutions such as BC do the same.

Kyle Rosenthal is an op-ed columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at opinions@bcheights.com.

The Heights

A8

Monday, January 27 , 2020

Lewis Delves Into the Dark Humor of Boston Literature

By Adele Blanton For The Heights Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Henry David Thoreu. Boston’s snaking streets are riddled with the pasts of literary powerhouses. In their own time, each has given the city of Boston more depth, capturing a glimpse of its history. Born in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe’s dark, gothic words have captured the eyes of many—including Boston College’s professor Paul Lewis.

Lewis’ admiration of gothic literature started at a young age. Lewis grew up in the bustling borough of Manhattan, where his interests—in particular, studying Edgar Allan Poe—began to blossom. He said that his first exposure to Poe began when he was assigned to read The Tell-Tale Heart.

“As a teenager, I always had an interest in horror movies and gothic stories,” Lewis said. “I ran into Poe pretty early on, in what used to be called junior high, and just got fascinated with the dark side of literature.”

Lewis is known for his interest in gothic literature and humor, American literary history, and Edgar Allan Poe— as well as the interaction between those subjects and Boston’s history.

Lewis has served as president of the Poe Studies Association, and his interdisciplinary study of humor is particularly relevant in today’s politically charged climate.

While all his years of undergraduate and graduate schooling involved studying gothic literature, Lewis began really honing in on Poe’s writing and its impact on dark gothic literature toward the end of his graduate years, which he spent at the University of Manitoba and the University of New Hampshire.

“The work I did in grad school and the first three years at BC was very much [about] Poe’s place in the development of an evolving genre of gothic fiction—how he modified and adapted gothic formulas for future writers,” Lewis said.

After looking at Poe’s writing through a lens focused mainly on the horror and fear factor of his stories, Lewis began to notice the satirical and dark humor intertwined with the thrilling plots.

This discovery piqued his interest, leading him down a completely new branch of literature and language.

“I started to get interested in writing about that and why Poe, in particular, would have gone for this overlapping of

humor and fear so much,” Lewis said.

“That led me into thinking about how literary critics understand humor and how it functions in literature.”

In 1989, Lewis published a book about his newfound area of curiosity called Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Humor in Literature.

He focused on the study of humor, how it offers insight into a writer’s character, and how comedic professionals and authors using humor have more in common than generally perceived.

Through analyzing the relationship of humor and fear in gothic literature, Lewis was propelled into another section of interest. He examined humor’s role in American political culture from 1980, at the election of Ronald Reagan, to 2005, when George Bush was still in office.

Driven by this newfound interest, Lewis published his second book in October of 2006. Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict sheds light on humor’s role in dealing with current issues. Staying in line with a gothic theme, Lewis addressed how humor is used to make light of massive problems and how it has transformed the way people view dilemmas.

Lewis said that people tend to talk rather than actually taking action— which was exemplified by political parodies produced during the 2008 presidential race.

Lewis’ fascination with humor also translated to his teaching. He began teaching courses, such as “Writing Workshop: Creative Nonfiction,” that helped students understand humor then incorporate it into their own writing.

“I think that my research and my teaching have always gone hand in hand,” Lewis said.

Around the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth in 2009, Lewis began to transition from a study of dark humor to an interest in the literary history of the City of Boston. Poe was born in Boston, so Lewis began working to emphasize the writer’s connection with the city.

As the chair of the Edgar Allan Poe Foundation of Boston, Lewis worked on the Poe Statue Project, which added a bronze statue of Poe on Boylston Street near Charles Street South in 2014. He also curated an exhibition at the Boston Public Library called The Raven in the Frog Pond: Edgar Allan Poe and the City of Boston, which ran from December 2009 through March 2010. Alluding to Poe’s disdain for the

LEO WANG / HEIGHTS STAFF

Professor Paul Lewis blends humor and dark themes in literature to teach students about Edgar Allan Poe. Boston authors of his time and the way their poetry sounded to him like the “croaking of frogs,” the exhibit looked into Poe’s complex relationship with his birthplace and its writers.

As well as researching about Boston’s famous writers, Lewis has left his mark on BC through his teaching style .

“Along with being a warm, generous colleague and friend, Paul has shown a rare ability to continually reinvent himself as a scholar-teacher,” said fellow BC English professor Christopher Wilson.

“But what’s even more impressive, to my mind, is how Paul’s students have become genuine collaborators in the public scholarship he has modeled.”

Lewis also works with his students to uncover pieces of writing from authors and poets who may have been famous in their time, but whose names have been forgotten throughout history.

Lewis has amplified his impact on studying Boston in a literary sense by recognizing the potential of today’s technology.

“For all the strange craziness of the internet, it really is democratic in the way that it allows undergraduates to suddenly do research in days and hours that it would’ve taken a graduate student or professor years to do,” Lewis said. “So undergraduates can find really interesting stuff, and my teaching has changed around that.”

In 2016, Lewis collaborated with 17

BC English majors to publish a book called The Citizen Poets of Boston: A Collection of Forgotten Poems. He and his team read through thousands of poems related to Boston’s literary history in the process of curating the collection.

“Working with Professor Lewis is akin to working alongside an archaeologist,” said Kelsie Dorn, BC ’12, a member of the team handling the project. “He knows how gently we must treat our ‘subjects’—literally so in the case of handling the books at the Massachusetts Historical Society—but his excitement for the subject matter makes it difficult to not simply dive right in with both hands.”

Lewis’ students come to a more indepth understanding of Boston’s history from his courses, but Lewis also said he recognizes that he learns alongside his students.

“Paul was always more like a colleague to me than a superior, even though he started out an unseen force of nature behind things I revered as an underclassmen,” Dorn said. “I realized I viewed very few, if any, other teachers as colleagues, but Paul had always been just that—an equal—because that is how he had always treated both me and all of his other students.”

Though Lewis’ work has expanded over the years, he hasn’t stopped focusing his content on humor.

Recently, he published a humorous

piece about how the Longfellow Bridge should be renamed.

“The part coming into Boston should be named after Poe and the part going out to Cambridge where Longfellow lived should be named after him,” he said. “It’s a serious argument, but it’s pretty funny too.”

Though his interests have shifted over time, Poe and his presence in Boston have remained at the forefront of Lewis’ career. He curated an exhibition at BC in 2015 called Nathaniel Hawthorne and Fredrick Douglass: Texts and Contexts, which focused on the work of those famous writers but connected, again, back to Poe’s views of Bostonian literature.

“Boston was the center of American literary creativity up to about 1850,” Lewis said. “You had a literate English culture here from 1620 on when the Puritans came. They wrote poetry, they wrote journal entries, they wrote sermons. That goes back much further … here than in most parts of the United States.”

Boston is a treasure trove for Lewis, serving as both a birthplace of American literature and a breeding ground for some of his favorite writers. From his teenage years to today, Lewis’ passion for gothic literature has continued to show him new avenues of teaching and research he can embark on and share with Boston College. n

‘We All Fall Down’ Comically Portrays Family Dynamics

By Grace Yang For The Heights Traditions are nostalgic, unifying, and unique to the group that has them.

When it comes to holidays, all families have their own ways of celebrating. There are times when family holidays seem like a drag because there’s the repetitive explanation of what you’re doing with their life to that one aunt who makes an appearance once a year. Or your family still celebrates childhood traditions, but

as a college student they now seem a bit babyish.

But at the end of the day, holiday traditions are what bring families together and remind us of why family is so important.

We All Fall Down, written by Lila Rose Kaplan and performed at the Huntington Theatre Company, comically illustrates the importance of family connection and tradition.

The play takes the audience into the home of the Stein family, who is trying to

hold onto its family memories by getting the family together for a religious holiday.

The home of the Stein family is everything you’d expect from a family preparing for a holiday celebration: shouting across different rooms of the house, siblings bickering, and a long list of tasks waiting to get done before the guests begin to arrive. Center stage is a dining room table with the kitchen behind it. To the left of the table is a staircase, cluttered with ice skates and soccer cleats hanging on the railing, and pink and purple tutus

PHOTO COURTESY OF NILE HAWVER

Lila Rose Kaplan’s play ‘We All Fall Down’ is directed by Melia Bensussen and focuses on the Stein family’s first Passover.

draped on the rail posts. A waterfall of picture frames with family photos fill the backdrop of the Stein family home.

The play takes place in mid-April as the Steins are preparing for a Seder in their family home in Westchester, N.Y. However, the Stein family has never had a Seder before.

The Steins, a family of four with two Jewish parents, have celebrated Christmas, but they have never celebrated Passover.

Linda (Eleanor Reissa) is the matriarch of the family and a psychologist who just came out with a new book called Mothering Difficult Children. She has orchestrated the entire night with the help of her assistant, Ester—played

by Elle Borders—who joins the family for the Seder.

Throughout the play, we observe Linda’s matriarchal role in the home. She has two daughters: Ariel (Dana Stern), a 20-something training to become a yoga instructor, and Sammi (Liba Vaynberg), a history teacher at an all-girls charter school in San Francisco. The two are confused by their mother’s decision to host a Seder. But whatever mom says, goes.

Their father, Saul (Stephen Schnetzer), is a recently retired history professor who grew up celebrating Passover. He stopped, however, once he and Linda got married. His sister Nan (Phyllis Kay) and a former neighbor, Beverly (Sarah Newhouse), also join for the Seder and are also confused by Linda’s eagerness to celebrate the holiday.

For the Steins, this Seder is like the opening of Pandora’s Box. Throughout the play, the audience comes to understand the thread of plots that tie into the anticipated Seder: a lack of understanding of Sammi’s choice to live across the country, a big announcement from Ariel about an opportunity to train in Bali, a tension because Ester is new to the family

circle, and a strong concern for Saul’s fading memory. Yet, as the Seder plays out, the family members come to address and resolve their conflicts by recollecting their happy memories together. They are rarely all in the same room, and they realize that remembering their times together is healing and heartwarming.

As the family faces heavy grievances and frustrations, the play portrays them in a humorous way that follows with laughter from the audience.

The hysterics from the audience are so great that it is hard to hear the character’s lines. Nan and Linda’s characters carry most of the hilarity.

For instance, as everyone is seated at the table and the Seder is about to start, Nan is stalling by sitting on the toilet reading a magazine because she doesn’t want to participate in the elementary Passover celebration.

Likewise, as Linda lectures Sammi about why she needs to move away from California and go to graduate school in New York, she says, “You used to be an intellectual. Your brain is wilting.

You’ve gotten too much sun. You need cold weather to be an intellectual. Think about the Russians.” The humor feels like a blend between a sitcom and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and produces organic laughter from the audience.

We All Fall Down uses humor to portray the antics of the Stein family’s holiday. The show is also representative of how everyone’s family has its ups and downs, but the nostalgia of recalling memories of past family traditions can reinforce loving relationships. In the end, the play shows relatable aspects of a family gathering—encompassing sentimentality.

The run of We All Fall Down has been extended by popular demand until Feb. 16 at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA. n

The Heights

Monday, January 27, 2020

A9

DaniLeigh Brings R&B Sounds to Boston City Limits Hawke’s Eye for Emotion

By Tonie Chase

Heights Staff

Singer-dancer DaniLeigh kicked off the semester at Boston City Limits (BCL), presented by the Campus Activities Board (CAB), Saturday night. BCL, which took

place in the Margot Connell Recreation Center, is designed to be a successor to the former on-campus winter concert, Plexapalooza. This new concert attracted a crowd that might not have matched the size of previous years, but a difference in energy was undetectable.

TONIE CHASE / HEIGHTS STAFF

TONIE CHASE / HEIGHTS STAFF

DaniLeigh combined emotional slow jams with upbeat dance tracks at Boston City Limits.

The night’s theme, “Electric Soul,” married Plexapalooza’s traditional EDM-centric music with R&B and hip-hop. Alongside DaniLeigh, one of BC’s very own helped CAB to redefine the campus live music scene. Prince Lucas, MCAS ’22 opened the show, amping up and inspiring the crowd.

BCL’s “femcee,” Sherina Elibert, MCAS ’22, hopped on stage to hype up the crowd for BCL’s two artists. She then gave way for Prince Lucas to voice a message before beginning his set.

“There’s gonna be obstacles when you’re chasing your dream, and there’s one thing you’re never gonna do—never stop,” Lucas said.

Wasting no time, the beat dropped, segueing perfectly into Lucas’ performance of his 2018 single, “Never Gon Stop.” For the entire set, the crowd reciprocated the energy that emanated from the stage, which was exuberant and contagious. Lucas kept the mood going with his other singles, including “Drina.”

He lyrically paid homage to his Nigerian roots, incorporating Yoruba and inviting Elibert back on stage, where they both danced to his Afrobeat-inflected track, “Kind Love.”

DJ WattyJay kept the crowd dancing to popular national and international hits, including “Life is Good” by Future and Drake and Kehlani’s “Gangsta.”

Similar to Lucas, DaniLeigh’s setlist blended lively dance songs with slower, groovier jams. Her music is reflective of her Dominican-American ethnic background. As a dancer, she said she loves making music people can dance to, but she

also admitted she can “be in her feelings” sometimes. Her BCL set married in-yourfeels music with feel-good dance music.

Either way, audience members bopped their heads, two-stepped, and swayed to the music whether they were familiar with it or not.

WattyJay had day one DaniLeigh fans hold up number ones on their fingers as she came out to perform her first song, “All I Know.” She performed other songs from her first major-label EP, including, “Ex,” and BCL-exclusive previews of songs from her upcoming album—currently set to be released in May. Entertaining both sides of the stage throughout her performance, DaniLeigh took interaction a step further and picked out a BCL attendee from the audience to hop on stage as a dance partner. She kept the crowd on its toes even with new music. Bringing out her two brothers, Kevin DeWayne Jackson II and Brandon Bill$, who are also music recording artists, she had the crowd jumping and hyped.

The screens behind the DJ—which presented surreal visuals, such as movement through an active volcano—helped to create an immersive experience. DaniLeigh ended the night with a soulful, acoustic performance of “Easy,” showcasing her vocal range. She transitioned into the radio-released version, before ending the concert with a performance of “Lil Bebe.” Through both emotional slow jams and peppy dance music, BCL achieved its mission well with the help of DaniLeigh and Prince Lucas. The night highlighted the diversity in modern, electrifying music for the soul. n

Dance Showcase Displays Best of Boston Hip-Hop

By Jillian Ran Arts Editor

Boston College students are plenty familiar with the robust dance scene on campus, but on Saturday evening, they were introduced to faces they may not have seen before. BC dance group UPrising hosted its fourth annual Waves showcase Saturday evening, this year called Waves III, which brought together a selection of BC hip-hop groups as well as teams from across the greater Boston area, including a goofy all-male squad and a bold LGBTQ-focused group.

UPrising kicked off the show with a “Juke Jam,” a fun, vintage hip-hop-inspired routine that featured the eponymous jukebox front and center. As the music scrambled and switched, jumping from Biggie Smalls’ classic “Hypnotize” to “...Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears, the energy of the choreography shifted, but it always retained a loose, swaggering feel emphasized by the retro athletic get-ups the dancers wore.

All-female Phaymus elicited shrieks from the audience with a racy performance set to a selection of songs from confident female vocalists, from the Pussycat Dolls to Cardi B. When Cardi’s “Bodak Yellow” came on, Phaymus danced along for a few beats before the song morphed into a percussive remix and the group followed suit, hitting home each beat with sharp moves.

Synergy’s members were dressed up for the evening as aliens, but make no mistake, they didn’t come in peace.

A cosmic-themed playlist was interspersed with threatening Star Trek-es-

que messages promising imminent destruction, and Synergy certainly brought the same forceful energy to the stage through its choreography.

The senior members of UPrising showcased the rollercoaster of the college experience, from a steamy couples number that embodied the power of young love to a more energetic, crowd-pleasing performance set to Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow” that captured the atmosphere of a sweaty Mod party.

Movementality, an all-male group from MIT, entertained the crowd with equal parts slapstick humor and precise technique. Decked out in black from head to toe, the dancers led the audience through a silly, Mission: Impossible-themed story that found the protagonist infiltrating Doctor Evil’s lair only to fall madly in love with him.

The tone turned romantic, and Movementality gave Sexual Chocolate a run for its money with a provocative routine set to slow R&B. W!cked, Suffolk University’s one and only hip-hop group, matched the high energy and aggressive delivery of trap music, dancing to “Light It Up” by Marshmello, Cardi B’s “Press,” and Latin smash hit “China” by Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, Karol G, Ozuna, and J Balvin.

QWAM (Queens With a Mission), a Boston-based dance crew designed to support the LGBTQ community, brought tight, in-sync moves to the stage. Matching the bravado of rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat as their songs blasted through the speakers, QWAM’s unapologetic confidence was infectious.

IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Throughout the evening, UPrising performed all together and broke in smaller groups.

UPrising reconvened as a group for one final performance to wrap up Waves. The stage was filled with dancers who filed on and off throughout the routine, smoothly moving in and out of formations. Gentler R&B-inflected songs such as Usher’s “Confessions Part II” and “I Need It” by Johnny Balik

wound down the night.

Waves III was the fourth successful iteration of a wonderfully inclusive spirit on UPrising’s part. Not only did the group extend a welcome to other BC groups, they also brought exciting groups from beyond BC to showcase their talents. n

iEdit

The Playlist “Yamaha” Delta Spirit

Maggie DiPatri, Photo Editor

“Cherry” Harry Styles

By Meegan Minahan Visual Director

“10/10” Rex Orange County “seasonal depression” mxmtoon “The Middle” Jimmy Eat World “Hard Times” Paramore “Video Killed The Radio Star” The Buggles “Marlboro Nights” Lonely God “Gravy Train” Yung Gravy “Goodbye Stranger” Supertramp

IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

GRAPHICS BY MAYA TAHA AND IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITORS

When Maggie forced me to write this, I knew exactly what would be on her playlist before she even sent it to me. Maggie has a very particular taste in music, but once she finds a song she likes, she plays it constantly. As Maggie’s roommate, I have to bear the never-ending sounds of Rex Orange County, Yung Gravy, and any given TikTok-famous song on a daily basis.

The playlist starts with a knock-off Coldplay song called “Yamaha” by Delta Spirit, which is something that you might hear at a millennial megachurch’s Sunday concert service. I was a little worried for the rest of the playlist, but I was relieved that she included Harry Styles’ “Cherry”—setting a sad, melancholic tone for the next couple of

songs: “10/10” by Rex Orange County and “Seasonal Depression” by mxmtoon. The choice of “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World as a mid-playlist song seemed on the nose, and it was a relief after the cry fest that was the first four songs on the list. Maggie followed “The Middle” with another motivational bop—Paramore’s “Hard Times.” Things finally started looking up for Maggie’s emotional state with the dance tunes “Video Killed the Radio Star” and “Marlboro Nights.” Next was “Gravy Train” By Yung Gravy, which came as no surprise because, on many occasions, Maggie has said, “I would marry Yung Gravy!” The playlist concludes with “Goodbye Stranger,” a very fitting selection.

This playlist holds many fond memories of my time as Maggie’s roommate.

Hopefully you, stranger, will like it too.

Nathan Rhind It’s easy to make a bad movie. There are many pompous, self-absorbed actors who show up to work and go through the motions in a cheesy slapstick action flick or deliver hollow lines in cheaply made rom-coms. Some are simply there to collect their paycheck. But other actors are there because they can’t do anything else, because they believe in the power of performance, because they have dedicated their life to their craft. Actors like Ethan Hawke.

I first saw Hawke in Dead Poets Society on an outdated projector screen in my English class sophomore year of high school. For the teacher, it was a way to kill a couple of class periods before discussing books that no one had read.

For the other students, it was a relaxing three-day vacation from mental exertion that allowed them to finally win the game 2048. For me, it was my first introduction to an actor with an honest and admirable work ethic. It was a moment that still shapes how I watch movies and critique the merit of performances.

Hawke was only a teenager when he appeared in the film that chronicles the arrival of English teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) to a competitive, conservative preparatory school in New England. Keating encourages the students to be creative and express themselves, to break free from the mundane routines of the boarding school.

Hawke is captivating in his role as Todd Anderson. The character starts off as an introverted, shy student, and Hawke conveys a deep, mature understanding of his transformation into a confident, expressive individual. Whereas child actors often display potential, Hawke displays perfection. Even at a young age, he had the right stuff.

After such early success, he could have rested on his laurels and basked in the limelight. And who could blame him? But instead, he hunkered down and worked to master his craft, performing in films that stretched across a variety of genres, honing his experience. The perfect example of a professional, Hawke has never stopped seeking new opportunities and new roles. He even recently played a priest in the chilling film First Reformed that examines topics as pressing as the global climate crisis.

From all of his work, the performance that speaks to me most is Hawke’s role in Boyhood. Teaming up with a fellow Texas native—director Richard Linklater— Hawke plays a role so subtle and nuanced that you forget he is even there. Filmed over the course of 12 years, the film is a testament to Hawke’s remarkable commitment to his craft.

What awed me most about Hawke’s performance in Boyhood, however, was his portrayal of flawed humanity. He plays a flighty dad, Mason, who clearly loves his children yet isn’t always present in their lives. He imbues an incredible amount of warmth into his character.

His uncertain, tense conversations with his wife Olivia (Patricia Arquette) belie a tender love and compassion simmering beneath the surface yet unsure of how to manifest itself.

After we’ve been introduced to Mason, his exploits in the Alaskan wilderness, and the many mistakes that lead to his divorce with Olivia, we see him reunite with his children. In one scene that takes place in a bowling alley, Hawke sits casually on the floor. Full of youth and vigor in appearance, yet burdened with the wisdom of old age, he tells his son after he rolls a gutter ball, “You don’t want bumpers. Life doesn’t give you bumpers.”

It is a line delivered effortlessly, yet the subtext and references to other aspects of his character are so powerful.

Plainly stated, Hawke doesn’t seek the spotlight in his films. He lets out some line, sits, and waits. Eventually, he feels a small tug and nonchalantly begins to reel the catch in, slowly and with care. He doesn’t reach for a defining career moment or melodramatic monologue—he is open and receptive to the other actors he is working with and how their characters are affecting the emotions and inner lives of his.

Nathan Rhind is the assistant arts editor for The Heights. He can be reached on Twitter @NathanRhind24.

ARTS

A10

@BCHeightsArts

Monday, January 27, 2020

Boston College Dance Ensemble: The First of Its Kind Forty years ago, student dancers took matters into their own hands and formed BCDE, the original student-run dance group at Boston College.

By Grace Mayer

The 40th anniversary of Boston College Dance Ensemble carries with it history, traditions, and hundreds of alumni names, stories, and performances. The group’s passion

Although she admired the focus of these two groups, Kirkegaard said she wanted to reinvent BC’s dance scene.

“I really had a different vision: I wanted to create an extremely dynamic [dance] group, with both men and women, that was all aspects and disciplines of jazz, ballet, tap, [and] musical

“Based on how many people came to the auditions, there was definitely excitement and enthusiasm for a high-spirited form of dance [on BC’s campus],” Kirkegaard said.

BCDE emerged as a group created by and for students, but also as a team focused on perfecting its technique

for performance—specifically jazz and contemporary dance, with many members having honed their skills through backgrounds in ballet—remains a constant throughout BCDE’s long trajectory.

But this anniversary not only commemorates BCDE’s establishment, it also celebrates the emergence of the entire student-run dance scene at Boston College. Since 1980, the dance community on campus has expanded to 16 ensemble groups. “[The dance community] is such a hidden gem at BC—and I had no idea coming in,” said current director of BCDE Megan Laakso, CSOM ’20.

From Masti to Sexual Chocolate to Dance Organization of Boston College, the dance community at BC has grown to encompass groups that perform a wide variety of dance styles. But back then, BCDE was the only group of its kind.

Started by Laurie Del Guercio, née Kirkegaard, BC ’82, BCDE was the first student-run dance group on BC’s campus. Growing up with a dance background in ballet and jazz, Kirkegaard said that it only felt natural for her to perform at BC. After transferring into BC the second semester of her sophomore year, she noticed that although there were other student-run organizations on campus, none of them were devoted to dance.

comedy,” Kirkegaard said.

There was a need for an extensive dance program at BC, she said—one that fulfilled students’ wide-ranging interests and provided opportunities for them to choreograph pieces and assume leadership roles.

As the first director of BCDE, Kirkegaard and other appointed board members insisted the group would be a student-run and student-choreographed program—a system that requires a careful balance between artistic drive and fundraising. It became clear to Kirkegaard that she not only had a knack for dance, but for business too.

She would eventually integrate this medley of skills into her nonprofit consulting firm, NPL Impact Consulting.

Kierkegaard said she draws back on her dance roots for design concepts and her fundraising experience for promoting nonprofits.

But Kirkegaard still needed a student choreographer. By chance, Kirkegaard met L aurie Piro, née Rovtar, BC ’83, who had a background choreographing in New Jersey, in an acting class at BC. Rovtar became the first student choreographer for BCDE. Armed with an ambitious vision and a wide range of skills, Kirkegaard’s decision to create a dance group received strong support from BC administrators and students. Kirkegaard said

and performance, exposing dance to the BC community, and challenging students in the ensemble to diversify their skills and talents.

Assoc. Arts Editor

At the time, BC only had two dance groups, which were run by outside choreographers: the Boston Liturgical Dance Ensemble—which performed at University liturgy services, such as the Palm Sunday and Baccalaureate masses—and a modern dance group.

LEO WANG / HEIGHTS STAFF

board members. With practices in the Brighton Dance Studio three times a week, members dedicate roughly 12 hours each week to dance, not including additional hours of practice they hold when preparing for shows.

Members are not only devoted to the program, but to each other. Many of the dancers are roommates, and Laakso said BCDE prides themselves on the sisterhood they’ve created. BCDE’s current publicity director Isabel Garber, MCAS ’21, said it’s not lost on both current and former BCDE members that the 40th anniversary of BCDE is a huge milestone for the group.

In honor of the anniversary, Laakso said the current board members of BCDE wanted the theme of their annual spring show, set to take place on March 13 and 14, to reflect the significance of this event. As a symbol of their program’s legacy, they named their show Iconic. “[Iconic] is kind of open to interpretation because we just want to highlight how proud we are that [BCDE has] lasted this long,” Laakso said.

‘Iconic’ could also be a reference to BCDE’s steadfast traditions. Jazz and contemporary dance remain BCDE’s predominant dance styles, but they still experiment with other styles, such as hip-hop, from time to time. Most of their dancers grew up with competitive dance backgrounds, many in ballet.

BCDE still invites choreographers to teach classes, and Kirkegaard’s

LEO WANG / HEIGHTS STAFF

At its start, the club coordinated two annual on-campus performances, but they also performed at off-campus venues—in a nightclub across from Fenway Park and even at the Massa-

LEO WANG / HEIGHTS STAFF

the University president at the time, Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J., was also a major advocate for BCDE. When BCDE held its first auditions, over a hundred men and women tried out. The BCDE board accepted 37 members into the ensemble.

dance style.

Although the group’s dance style was based on jazz and ballet, two genres that remain the source of its identity today, Kirkegaard said BCDE also experimented with “stretch pieces”—punk-rock , modern, and avant garde themed dances , and crowd-pleaser productions that pulled inspiration from pop culture.

BCDE’s experimental dance style started to incorporate hip-hop elements in the early 2000s, a period when Karen Carberry, former director of BCDE and BC ’04, was involved with the ensemble. At the time, BCDE grew to 40 members, including a few men. “[BCDE] became more than about the dancing,” Carberry said. “It became ... a place to grow artistically.”

Before she knew of BCDE, Carberry was planning on taking dance classes in Boston to keep up with her training. She had grown up with a dance background in ballet, jazz, and tap.

But after discovering BCDE consisted of students who came from similar intensive dance backgrounds, she joined the ensemble instead. BCDE also gave her the opportunity to experiment with choreographing. “[BCDE] gave me a jumping board to really start to experiment, work with people, [and] choreograph,” Carberry said.

Although she attended BC to study finance, Carberry always wanted to

chusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk (MCI-Norfolk), where Kirkegaard was volunteering for PULSE at the time. BCDE also hired guest teachers and choreographers to teach technique classes to the group, as mastering fundamental skills was crucial to its

pursue dance, she said. After graduating in 2004, she paved her own path, moving to Los Angeles to begin her professional dance career. After dancing for two years in L.A., and then two years in New York City, she decided to move back to Massachusetts to work at her mother’s studio, Nancy Chippendale’s Dance Studio, which also celebrated its 40th anniversary this past year.

Carberry, whose first experience with choreographing was with BCDE, went from composing one or two pieces each semester to choreographing 50 to 75 pieces every year at Nancy Chippendale’s Dance Studios, as well as at American Dance Company and American Tap Company, both of which are based in Massachusetts.

Carberry taught three of BCDE’s current ensemble members when they were younger.

In the spirit of tradition, BCDE invited Carberry back to campus this past fall to teach a technique class—an experience that Carberry considers one of her top dance moments.

“It’s amazing to think about the decades that have passed and how the Dance Ensemble has withstood the test of time,” Carberry said. “I think that’s a testament to the bonds within the community.”

Today, Laakso serves as the director of BCDE, which continues to be completely student-run and student-choreographed. The all-female group consists of 28 members, including nine

fundraising principles have transitioned into an updated mission: All the proceeds from BCDE’s performances are now donated to the Boston College Campus School, a nonprofit day school for students ages 3 to 21 with multiple disabilities.

Laakso said current BCDE members are also close with BCDE alumni, and this anniversary welcomes the opportunity to connect with alumni from BCDE’s earliest days. Garber, who has been contacting BCDE alumni about the ensemble’s 40th anniversary, said she has realized that across the years, those involved with BCDE still recognize the impact the program had on their lives.

“I can see just how special the team has been to people since the very beginning,” Garber said. “It’s good to know that the original message [of BCDE] and the family it’s created continues each year.”

When BCDE was founded in 1980, it set a precedent for future dance groups at BC: It created a space for students to not only perform, but to choreograph.

Now with a litany of other dance groups on BC’s campus, the dance scene has shifted to include an even greater array of talented students, and recognizes diverse styles of dance, from step to Latin to swing.

“Dance is an escape,” Laakso said.

“It’s both an exercise and an art, and it’s the only thing I really know that’s like that.” n

The Heights

Monday, January 27, 2020

A11

Hamilton, Defense Lead Eagles to Victory Over Virginia Tech MBB, from A12 Hamilton hit 3-pointers, and the game went into the half with Virginia Tech’s lead cut to five, at 31-26.

The Eagles picked up just where they left off in the second half. Heath muscled to the basket for a tough shot over Hokies star forward Landers Nolley II to cut the deficit to one, flexing toward the bench as a nearly sold-out Conte Forum exploded with cheers.

Virginia Tech was able to maintain a slim lead until the 4:17 mark, when Jairus Hamilton hit a pair of free throws after being fouled on a fadeaway attempt off one leg. The two teams traded blows back and forth for the next several minutes until Hamilton sealed the game by hitting a pair of free throws with just 13 seconds to play.

The Hamilton brothers were the story of the night for the Eagles, with Jairus putting up a career-high 23 points on a clean 7-11 shooting.

Jared only had six points, but his three buckets came at critical moments down the stretch, including a beautiful pull-up baseline jumper after a pump fake sent a VT defender flying.

“I feel like I’ve really started to come into my own, figuring out the pace of the game, how to control my body more,” said Jairus Hamilton following the Eagles’ win.

Nolley led the Hokies with 15 points off an incredible 36 percent usage rate, a metric that counts how much of a team’s possession a player uses. Wabissa Bede and Nahiem Alleyne scored nine and 10 points respectively.

The only drawbacks of the night

for the Eagles were the struggles of center Nik Popovic. After returning from injury to play against Pitt, Popovic came off the bench but still played 30 minutes and collected 12 points.

He seemed poised to play a large role against Virginia Tech as well, replacing Jairus Hamilton with just over 14 minutes left in the first half. But the center was unable to get anything going, ending the game with three turnovers and just two points. He was doubled nearly every time he got the ball and never looked comfortable with his post moves.

Chris Herren Jr. put together a gutsy performance off the bench.

Although he only scored once, his aggressive offensive play created open looks for his teammates, and he guarded Nolley effectively despite the huge size discrepancy between the two players.

IKRAM ali / Heights editor

Steffon Mitchell went 2-6 from the field, collecting four points en route to the Eagles’ win.

While they will need more from Popovic going forward, the Eagles’ defensive success bodes well as they

enter a tough stretch of the schedule that includes games against No. 6 Louisville, UNC, and No. 8 Duke. n

Eagles’ Rotation Players Often Aren’t Used to Full Capacity Benchwarmers, from A12

Take the 2018 NBA Champion Golden State Warriors, for example.

Even though Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Kevin Durant garnered the Lion’s share of attention throughout the season, it was bench players including

Andre Iguodala, Zaza Pachulia, and Shaun Livingston who supported the headliners enough to maintain leads and establish an uncounterable offense even when the stars were resting.

In the NBA Finals that year, Iguodala recorded 20 points over two games off the bench. He also grabbed four

Maggie dipatri / heights editor

Milan Bolden-Morris dodges a Virginia defenseman during BC’s loss on Jan. 12.

rebounds and recorded a shooting percentage of over 50 percent in field goals, 3-pointers, and free throws.

As such, the most fitting comparison for Batts on the 2018 Warriors would be Iguodala. His numbers weren’t those of Durant, but without his consistent playmaking and eye for moving the ball in space, the Warriors wouldn’t have had a chance at the championship. The numbers all line up between the two players, so it would be to Bernabei-McNamee’s benefit to rely more heavily on Batts and other players like her.

Clara Ford has played a similar role to Batts over her two years on the Heights, though her numbers are not quite the same. Ford averaged 6.2 minutes over 22 games in her freshman season. She averaged 2.3 points and 2.0 rebounds per game last year, and she has worked to expand on her numbers this year. In the opener against UMass Lowell, Ford had an impressive three points, three rebounds, and two blocks in just eight minutes of play.

It’s impossible to understate the importance of a rotation of talented

players, particularly in a sport with as frequent injuries as basketball. With games multiple times a week, it doesn’t take much for players to get burnt out or suffer overuse injuries, so the rotation of players off the bench is of utmost importance.

With a talented new class of women’s basketball players who recently signed to attend BC next year, it’s important to recognize the benefit that a strong crowd of newcomers adds to the team. Back in early November, three players officially signed their National Letter of Intent to attend BC to play basketball with Bernabei-McNamee. The three signees included guards Kaylah Ivey and Jo Jo Lacey, as well as forward Sydney McQuietor.

Ivey is the No. 75 overall recruit in the class of 2020, and Lacey is No. 39, according to Blue Star Basketball, which based on numbers alone, is a good sign for the Eagles. Ivey shines from 3-point range, and Lacey adds depth on the defensive side. McQuietor’s ability under the rim and in the paint is unmatched, and her agility is unheard of for a 6-foot-2 guard.

Since Emma Guy will be the only

starter from the 2019-2020 team to graduate this year, the Eagles’ three new acquisitions are likely to play a similar role to Batts, at least in their first year at BC. The majority of the starters this year are sophomores, including Swartz, Dickens, Soule, and Garraud, which means that the lineup will most likely be set for the next few years. Even so, having an incredible amount of talent on the bench—as the Eagles do—will be the difference-maker in games against major ACC opponents.

Often, coaches will build a team around its few best players (see the Cavs’ LeBron James, Kevin Love, and Kyrie Irving in 2016), but unless you’ve got the league’s third all-time leading scorer on your side, it will take more than a few stars to build a championship team. The bench players often slide under the radar, but their impact is vitally important to the long-term success of a team and should be regarded as such.

Emma Healy is the sports editor for The Heights. She can be reached on Twitter @_EmmaHealy_

MEN’S HOCKEY

Eagles Upset by Maine in OT for the Second Night in a Row

By Michael Quain Heights Staff

Coming off a tough loss Friday against Maine (12-9-4, 6-7-2 Hockey East), Boston College men’s hockey looked to bounce back in the twogame series Maine 3 as it faced the Boston College 2 Black Bears again on Saturday night in Conte Forum. Heading into Friday night’s game, the Eagles (15-7, 9-5) were on a three-game winning streak, standing second in Hockey East behind No. 7 Massachusetts.

Both teams came out in Saturday’s match up playing pretty evenly. Neither team dominated possession early, but BC seemed to gain momentum late in the first on a powerplay opportunity due to a high sticking penalty. The Eagles moved the puck well and dominated possession, ultimately leading to a slapshot goal by senior Julius Mattila, finding the top right corner off a cross-ice assist from

Logan Hutsko with two minutes left on the clock.

Just a minute later, the Eagles found themselves on the defensive end, with Maine hammering shots on net.

After some great saves, goalie Spencer Knight found himself defending without his stick, having lost it to a defender’s skate. The Black Bears took advantage of this opportunity, with junior Veli-Matti Tiuraniemi slamming home a goal from just in front of the blue line. Head coach Jerry York argued with the refs, but the officials determined that the goal would stand.

The second period started off relatively slow, neither team getting many shots on net. Midway through the period, Hutsko had a nice wristshot opportunity, going off goalie Jeremy Swayman’s shoulder just above the crossbar. Neither team was able to gain possession for the majority of the period, and momentum remained fairly neutral.

With six minutes left in the second frame, Maine netted its second

goal of the game, forward Mitchell Fossier finding the top left corner of the net. The second period ended similarly to the way it had the night before, with the Eagles heading into the third having given up two unanswered goals. BC was going to need a major momentum swing to get itself back into this game.

After a back-and-forth start to the third period, the Eagles were finally able to get back on the scoreboard. Senior Graham McPhee found the back of the net with a powerful wrist shot, deflecting off a Maine defender before flying by the glove of Swayman with 11 minutes left in the third. The rest of the third period was a neck-and-neck battle between the two teams, both getting shots on net but neither able to score.

For the second night in a row, the Eagles were headed to overtime.

Despite BC’s aggressive play in overtime, the Eagles were unable to get the job done. With less than a minute left in the period, Maine’s

IKRAM ALI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

The Eagles fell to Maine in overtime after tying the game in the third period.

Patrick Shea put home the winning goal, upsetting the Eagles for the second night in a row.

With its second consecutive win and fifth straight series win over the Eagles, Maine advances to eighth place in the Hockey East standings, while

BC remains stagnant at second place.

The Eagles have the week off to look internally at what needs to change before they return next Friday to face Massachusetts in Amherst for the chance to take over first place in the conference. n

SPORTS in SHORT women’s basketball STANDINGS Conference overall Louisville 9-0 20-1 NC State 8-1 19-1 Florida State 6-3 17-3 Virginia Tech 5-3 15-4 Wake Forest 5-4 12-8 Duke 5-4 11-9 Georgia Tech 5-4 14-6 North Carolina 5-4 14-6 Boston College 3-5 10-9 Syracuse 3-5 9-10 Miami 3-6 11-9 Virginia 3-6 8-12 Clemson 3-6 7-13 Notre Dame 2-6 7-13 Pitt 0-8 3-16

Numbers to know

.927

Save percentage of BC men’s hockey goaltender Spencer Knight, who has lost only seven games in his 21 starts.

11

Wins by the men’s and women’s fencing teams during the Northeast Fencing Conference multi-meet on Saturday.

14th

BC women’s alpine skier Parker Biele’s place at the Harvard Carnival, the highest EISA finish in program history.

QUote of the week

“The [ACC] tests you more mentally than physically. … You have to fight for the next game.”

— Men’s basketball head coach Jim Christian, following the team’s win over Virginia Tech

A12 Monday, January 27, 2020

SPORTS

@HeightsSports

MEN’S BASKETBALL

FLIPPING THE SCRIPT

Hidden Figures Emma Healy

Ikram ali / Heights Editor

Lockdown defense and Jairus Hamilton’s career night led the Eagles to a comeback win over Virginia Tech, ending a four-game skid and earning BC its first win since Jan. 8.

By Asa Ackerly Asst. Sports Editor

With seven minutes to play in the first half, Saturday’s game seemed to be getting quickly out of hand for the Eagles. Boston College started the game up 5-0, but Virginia Tech stormed back to claim a commanding 22-12 lead through the strength of its outside shooting. The Hokies made more 3-pointers than all but two teams in the nation so far this season—and the

Eagles, unable to keep up with Virginia Tech’s speedy guards, seemed poised to be the next victim of the Hokies’ longrange prowess.

The rest of the game told a very different story, as the Eagles (10-10, 4-5 Atlantic Coast) flipped the script in the second half to edge out a 61-56 victory over Virginia Tech (14-6, 5-4). The gritty, come-from-behind performance ended BC’s four-game losing streak.

The E ag le s put to ge ther an incredible defensive performance, flying

at open Hokies shooters and blocking off passing lanes. Prior to this matchup, Virginia Tech turned the ball over an average of 9.5 times per game—a mark that ranked best in the country—but BC pressured them into coughing up the ball 14 times.

BC head coach Jim Christian praised his team’s defensive performance, particularly its ability to hold Virginia Tech far below its season offensive averages.

“I told our team after the game,

‘There’s a lot of ways to win,’” said Christian. “You can win on defense, and I thought we won the game on defense today.”

BC’s comeback began in the final stages of the first half. Virginia Tech’s early offensive success vanished as the Eagles began to click defensively, and the Hokies could hardly get a pass off without finding an Eagle’s hand in the way. Both Jay Heath and Jairus

See MBB, A11

When you’re walking from Gasson to Mac, through the expanse of the Quad and Stokes Lawn, it’s easy to overlook the freshmen as you pass.

Us first-years are generally smaller and more subconsciously afraid to make ourselves known on this campus, which makes it easy for everyone else to sort of skim right over us. The same can not be said, however, for Jaelyn Batts.

Standing squarely at 6 feet tall, Batts is not quite so easy to look past. But what makes her stand out the most at Boston College is not her stature but rather her impressive maturity and skill level on the basketball court as she plays under head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee.

Batts is averaging just under 17 minutes per game in the 12 appearances she’s had this season, seven of which were starts. She’s shooting at nearly a 50 percent clip, though she hasn’t attempted the most shots, with 37. Where she really shines is on the boards—Batts has recorded 34 rebound grabs, including 23 on defense, to stop opponents’ attacks and set up plenty of second-chance points for the Eagles.

In her college debut for the Eagles, she shot 4-of-4 from the floor for eight points, and she snagged three rebounds in the Eagles’ win over UMass Lowell back in early November.

Though her numbers aren’t yet that of a first-round WNBA draft pick, she shows immense potential for her next three years on the Heights.

Even so, Batts is often an underused weapon for the Eagles. BC stands by its steadfast superstars, including Cameron Swartz, Marnelle Garraud, Emma Guy, Taylor Soule, and Makayla Dickens, who are all consistent, aggressive, and older than Batts. The starters have earned their spots for good reason, but it’s nonetheless important to recognize the impact of bench players. And though the most familiar names are nearly always the ones that make the headlines, it’s often the bench or the rotating players that make the biggest difference in determining the winner and the loser.

See Benchwarmers, A11

WOMEN’S HOCKEY

Despite Penalty Kills, Eagles Fall to Providence, Split Weekend

By Emma Healy Sports Editor It’s an impressive feat to watch any time a hockey team kills off a power play, but it’s especially astounding when it’s on the back Boston College 2 of a seven-save Providence 5 performance by a goaltender in the two minutes that team is a man down.

That’s exactly what Maddy McArthur did to keep Boston College women’s hockey within closing distance of Providence in the second period on Saturday. Yet despite McArthur’s valiant effort, the Eagles entered the third period down by two and fell to the Friars in Rhode Island 5-2.

To get to that point, though, it took an eventful first 30 minutes. BC jumped to an early 1-0 lead as Delaney Belinskas powered through the Providence defensive line and tucked the puck in the back of the net. Belinskas made a statement with her 15th goal of the season, putting BC in a great spot early on.

The Friars, quick to react and hot off a narrow loss to the Eagles just one day earlier, responded with a goal of their own just 30 seconds later. A wrister from the left circle knotted the game up at one apiece.

It was a game of quick reactions from both teams, and Hadley Hartmetz notched a goal on a backhanded shot from the blue line that surprised Friars goaltender Sandra Abstreiter, and the

Eagles took the lead once again.

This time, it only took the Friars 20 seconds to respond, and the game was looking eerily similar to the Eagles’ 2-2 tie against Vermont exactly one week prior.

One minute into the second frame, Providence took its first lead of the game as Sara Hjalmarsson buried a rebound shot past McArthur’s left pad to bring the Friars to three.

About midway through the period, the game took a turn as both teams traded penalties and went to a fouron-four stretch for two minutes. Alexie Guay notched the best chance of that stretch for the Eagles, but Abstreiter denied the chance off the faceoff. This double penalty seemed to be the turning point for Providence, as the Friars began to open up their offense soon after.

Then it came time for Maddy McArthur to show off on the penalty kill. The sophomore stepped up big-time to prevent a runaway for the Friars, notching seven saves in the two-minute stretch while Providence had the advantage.

Despite McArthur’s best efforts, once the game returned to full strength, the Friars expanded their lead to two with just 24 seconds left in the second frame. The Eagles went into the break needing to regroup if they wanted to sweep the season series.

Entering the final period with the game on the line, the Eagles looked like a brand new team. They went over five minutes without a whistle, tiring out the

Irkam Ali / Heights Editor

Providence forward Meaghan Rickard evades Lindsay Agnew and Alexie Guay during the Friars’ 5-2 win over the Eagles.

first line. But Hannah Bilka put a shot on frame to bring the momentum back for the Eagles, even though Abstreiter got in front of it.

BC played an offense-heavy third quarter and continued to pepper Abstreiter with shots, but it seemed as though she couldn’t be broken. Even with a power play 12 minutes in, the Eagles couldn’t capitalize, and the game stayed well out of reach.

A loose puck at the right post gave

Providence’s Ciara Barone a chance to expand the Friars’ lead to three, and with that, BC’s fate was sealed.

Though BC will return to Chestnut Hill with another tally in the loss column, the team looked sharp in many aspects of its play. The penalty kill unit, one of the Eagles’ greatest strengths this season, has emerged as a powerhouse part of the defense once again. Particularly with McArthur at the net, the man advantage doesn’t seem to affect the

Eagles, as their stalwart defense kills off penalty after penalty.

The Eagles also jumped out to an early lead, which, particularly come tournament time, will make all the difference in swinging the momentum their way.

Even with Saturday’s loss, the Eagles won the season series against their nearby Hockey East foes 2-1, a good spot to be in in advance of the tournament. n