Pumpkin Spice

BUZZSAW November 2016

Not Defeated pg. 5

DO YOU WANT WHIPPED CREAM ON TH

The Politics of Pumpkin Review: Spice A Seat at the Table pg. 26 pg. 34

Buzzsaw presents...

EDITORS’ COMMENT

The Pumpkin Spice Issue It’s that time of the year again.

Leaves turn auburn and yellow, the smell of wood-burning stoves grace our nostrils and the seasonal flavor of pumpkin spice floods the shelves and minds of America. But what is pumpkin spice? Until recently, Starbucks’ pumpkin spice lattes didn’t even contain any of the seasonal spice. But alas, it is a beloved symbol of consumer America: artificial, marketable, and oh so irresistible.

Ithaca College’s part-time professors, like much of higher-ed faculty in the U.S are unsatisfied with the pay and benefits given to them. Following protests from IC part-time faculty union members, we look at the reasons for strengthening union voices on campus as well as the ramifications of the contingent faculty’s demands. (Bogged Down in The Numbers, p. 14) and (Come Together, p.

16).

Consumerism, that holy order of acquisition, is a tempting short-term pleasure, but it sometimes falls flat when paired against our desire for human-to-human interaction. (The Creation of Consumerism, p.18) We also explore the sexualization of snapchat; beyond the puppy-face filter, it’s the little things that speak volumes about how we express our image to others. (Snap Judgement, p. 31).

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

Divider and Table of Contents Photography

By Hristina Tasheva Hristina Tasheva is a Cinema and Photography major at Ithaca College with a concentration in Still Photo. She creates images for a wide range of purposes, from portrait to photojournalism. She creates images both in digital and film formatsincluding medium and large format.

BUZZSAW Alexa Salvato Michele Hau Evan Popp Sophie Israelsohn Ministry of Cool Lexie Farabaugh Prose & Cons Tylor Colby Sawdust Elena Piech Seesaw Julia Tricolla Olivia Cross Layout Claire McClusky Art Megan Banning Christian Cassidy-Amstutz Website John Jacobson Social Media Tara Eng Production Brianna Pulver Alexis Morillo Jordan Aaron Tyler Obropta Catherine Colgan News & Views Upfront

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Front cover art by Claire McClusky Center art by Francesca Hodge Back cover art by Megan Banning

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Write Us

Our magazine exists to inspire thoughtful debate and open up the channels through which information is shared. Your comments and feedback are all a part of this process. Reach the editors by email at: buzzsawmag@gmail.com.

Table of Contents Seesaw ..........................................................4 Print media is dead, check out multimedia on the web.

News & Views .................................................5 Current events, local news & quasi-educated opinions.

Upfront ........................................................17 Selected dis-education of the month.

Ministry of Cool ........................................30 Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Prose & Cons .............................................39 Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

Satire threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

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BUZZSAW News & Views

Sawdust .......................................................45

BUZZSAW: Dunk Issue

Pumpkin Spice: Multimedia (Photos, Videos and Interviews)

Pictured: “Artificial Joy,” “Wizarding Weekend” and “Pumpkin Spice Taste Test.”

Not Pictured: “Confessions” Contributors: First-years — Julia Bergdoll, Peter Champelli, Andrew Hallenberg, Elise Korfonta, Mystikal Scalzi and Audrey Warner. Second-years — Elena Piech and Julia Tricolla.

Visit: buzzsawmag.org/see-saw Subscribe: www.vimeo.com/buzzsawmag www.youtube.com/buzzsawmag 4 www.soundcloud.com/buzzsawmag

Not Defeated

Colombia’s desire to re-negotiate with FARC is not failure

By Isabella Grullon Paz, Staff Writer

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make it seem as if the Colombian people were confused and disorganized, therefore deciding that war is better than peace. Surprise, surprise — Western media got it wrong. President Santos was not scrambling to save peace: He and FARC’s current president, Timoleón Jimenez, quickly agreed to sit back down and renegotiate the problematic points. Hope was not lost: Colombians are not defeated.

The five key points of the approximately 100-page agreement are a cease fire, the protection of victims rights, land restitution, the reintegration of FARC into civil society and an effort to combat narco-trafficking.

These sounds reasonable enough — but those who voted “NO” had some issues with the details of the agreement.

Colombia’s former President, Alvaro Uribe, is fixated on the fact that FARC members need to be punished for their crimes, and his influence on the Colombian people has pushed this view far and wide. Uribe is the sole reason FARC has been weakened militarily, and his amazing leadership got him re-elected twice.

However, it is time to let go of the guns. Many citizens believe that reinstating the 17,500 members of FARC into everyday Colombia with little to no punishment is unfair: “They’re terrorists,” and therefore should be punished as such. Many who voted “NO,” think the treaty was too lenient and should have harsher conditions for FARC members.

They want to renegotiate.

Others believe that allowing FARC to have a political party and giving them seats in Congress right away is an attack on democracy and will have Colombia turn into Venezuela and Cuba. Maybe that fear comes from the fact that there is so much economic inequality in Colombia the Colombian middle class, which is most of the population, opts for a system that would guarantee more equality.

Most of the country leans toward a leftist/welfare political view. FARC

does not have the best reputation for doing things peacefully, and many fear that they will exploit their political power to censor the media and become an autocratic government. Many who voted “NO” believe that giving FARC a political party with seats in Congress right off the bat is unfair to up-and-coming politicians. They want to renegotiate.

Some Colombians believe that the reparations for victims are not enough: 2,700 families are still looking for missing children and family members. There are no parts of the treaty that address bringing people back to their loved ones. Also, there seems to be a clear set plan on how to make FARC members adapt to everyday life, but there is no step-by-step plan for reparations themselves. The millions of people who were displaced have no guarantee of going home either. Many who voted “NO” believe that victims deserve more than a few lines in a peace treaty and a little more enforcement in guaranteeing reparations. They want to renegotiate.

It is disappointing that Colombia did not vote “YES” in the referendum, but saying that the Colombian people are an example of why democracy does not work — looking at you, New York Times — is unfair to those who simply want terms the entire country can get on board with.

You can only have peace if it’s unanimous, not when there is such a divide. Colombia did not reject peace: Colombia wants to renegotiate. ___________________________________ Isabella Grullon Paz is a thirdyear journalism major who never stops negotiating. You can email them at igrullon@ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

or 52 years, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia waged war against the Colombian people, bringing forth left-wing ideals.

Usually known by its Spanish acronym, FARC is a Leninist-Marxist militia group that opposes the privatization of natural resources and wishes to represent the rural poor against Colombia’s wealthy. According to the United States Developing Agency, 0.4 percent of the population owns 62 percent of Colombia’s best land, making it understandable that FARC would fight for the equality of the poor. But the means by which they have worked to reach those ends caused five decades of sorrow, pain, violence and fear.

The means included displacing five to seven million people, breeding child soldiers, installing landmines in crops and villages all around Colombia and kidnapping members of government and corporations.

FARC also financed their operations with drug money, making it impossible to combat narco-trafficking.

In 2012, peace talks between FARC and the Colombian government began in Havana, Cuba, to put an end to the war. The talks were emotional for the Colombian people. Many did not want to negotiate with terrorists, not trusting anything FARC had to contribute on the matter.

Others were ready to begin the healing process. The divide we see today has been brewing for four years.

On Oct. 3, 2016, Colombia rejected a peace treaty that would end the five-decade war with FARC: Colombia decided to go back to the drawing board and draft out a new treaty, but according to CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, Colombia gave up the opportunity for a peaceful future. Headlines such as “Colombia’s President Scrambles to Save Peace Accord with FARC Rebels” and “Colombia Peace Deal Is Defeated, Leaving a Nation in Shock”

Debates Don’t Delve Deep When debates stop asking the real questions

By Otto Bonk, Staff Writer

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wo candidates step into on complicated issues with any sub- tremely broad topic — he simply the Octagon. One wins, stantive information, and so they are went into a preplanned tirade about one loses, say the pun- forced to recite some general pre- jobs going to Mexico and China. dits. But in reality the planned speech about that topic withAs long as the candidates vaguely only losers in this fight out actually answering the question. talk about the subject at hand, and are the American people.

At one point in the first debate, the moderators refuse to call them The Vice Presidential debate on moderator Lester Holt asked, “Our in- on blatant lies. When asked about Oct. 4 showcased the failures of de- stitutions are under cyber attack, and taxes he vaguely mentioned them bates to provide substantive infor- our secrets are being stolen. So my before talking about how Clinton mation to the electorate. This debate question is, who’s behind it? And how has a plan to fight ISIS on her webmanaged to be even less informative do we fight it?” This question cannot site and how General MacArthur than the previous ones, which fea- be answered in two minutes, and so would feel about that, which is extured Donald Drumpf’s professional the debate quickly devolved into an tremely far off any coherent topic.

More recently in the second demeltdown, in which he ranted he argument about Russia,with Trump has “a winning temperament” and accusing Clinton of rigging the elec- bate, when asked if he ever groped told Hillary Clinton that she has tion, which he has now done in every women, Trump responded, after long been fighting ISIS her entire adult debate between them. Furthermore, equivocations, “No, I have not ... Othlife, despite ISIS’s 1999 creation. the two minutes is loosely enforced er nations are taking our jobs and they’re taking our wealth.” This We learned next to is such a non-sequinothing about the VP candidates. If the “At the end of every debate, the media spends tur that it is baffling that this was allowed point of the debate was to get to know hours and days arguing about who had won, to slide. He also, in about the VP candidates rather than discussing the implications of what ahis discussion “groping women” and their positions and abilities, then the candidates said and the policies that they tapes, somehow managed to get onto the this debate was an unqualified disas- proposed. This makes sense. If the debate is topic of telling Clinton ter. (It’s not just the marketed as some sort of massive end-all be- she would be in jail if he were President. debate; The entire The final debate election cycle has all of fights, and it progresses as such, then managed the rather been an unqualithere must have to be a winner.” amazing feat of stayfied disaster.) But ing more on topic in the VP debate, than the rest. Yet even a complete lack of fact checking allowed the soft spo- and in the first debate especially did so, it featured Trump saying that no ken candidate — Indiana Gov. Mike nothing to control the debate, which one respects women more than he Pence — to answer every question primarily consisted of the two candi- does, just minutes before he interand challenge with a lie and be called dates trying to talk over each other rupted Clinton to remark that she the winner. Of course, if the mod- and Lester Holt as he attempted to get was “a nasty woman,” as well as erator Elaine Quijano had actually back on topic. If the rule is just going the bizarre claim that “in the ninth asked about the VP candidates at to be ignored anyway, then perhaps month you can take the baby and all, then perhaps people might have the best thing to do is to do away with rip the baby out of the womb of the had a very different idea of who won. it and replace it with a model that will mother, just prior to the birth of the Broad questions and arbitrary give candidates a chance to actually baby.” Apparently, Trump confused speaking allotments were major answer a question or explain a policy. abortion and cesarean sections.

Of course, keeping the candidates problems that all four of the debates Of course, if the moderators resuffered. The first presidential de- fuse to enforce the answering of the on topic and focused is all well and bate was, out of the four we’ve had, questions or the accuracy of the an- good, but if the questions don’t the most coherent and on topic. swers, than the problem of the two support this, those things don’t reWhile the two-minute speaking rule minutes becomes irrelevant. Dur- ally matter. The questions were not was established for the purpose of ing the first debate, Trump, upon tailored for the purpose of a conpreventing the candidates from go- being asked about how he plans to structive conversation, but rather ing on and on forever, it is generally put money into the pockets of Ameri- for a back and forth reminiscent of ineffective. This rule prevents them can workers — which itself is an ex- a boxing match, and the entire affair is marketed as such. Leading from being able to answer questions

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sense. If the debate is marketed as some sort of massive end-all be-all of fights, and it progresses as such, then there must have to be a winner.

The problem specific to the vice presidential debates was the complete failure to provide information about the VP candidates and their views. The one thing that the three presidential debates have been able to show is the characters of the two candidates, even if they have failed to bring out a decent policy discussion. At the start of this debate, moderator Elaine Quijano quoted Lloyd Bensten, saying, “The vice presidential debate was not about the qualifications for the vice presidency, but about how if tragedy should occur, the vice president has to step in without any margin for error.” She followed up with a question central to the debate: “What about your qualities, your skills, and your temperament equip you to step into that role at a moment’s notice?” Despite this fair question, this debate also did not get to the real issues.

The questions once again focused on the current controversies and the old scandals that are no longer applicable. Mike Pence spent most of the night either denying that Trump said all of the things that he said, or attacking Hillary on every conflict in the world right now. Kaine for his part spent most of the night defending Clinton’s record, attacking Trump’s business acumen, or simply quoting what Trump actually said. We learned almost nothing about the candidates, except that both are religious and that Pence is slightly calmer.

As John Cassidy wrote in The New Yorker, we cannot ignore the possibility that the winner in November will serve a single term and then be succeeded by her or his VP: “When viewers tune in to the debate on Tuesday night, they should be asking whether Kaine and Pence have what it takes to be President.” This debate was in shambles. There were too many lies to even begin to fact check, and most of the debate was not about the people actually debating, or their beliefs, or even their past political history and positions. We already know about Clinton and Trump, none of that is new, and having two people go on TV and be their apologists is what they have surrogates for.

As tempting as it is, with the candidates that we have, to simply go on

and on about their scandals, gaffes and controversies, this simply will not do. The purpose of the debates must be more than to boost ratings and sell commercials. The reason we have a free press is to inform the electorate, but that is not what our free press is doing, they are simply using already divisive politics to boost ratings. Debates need to keep the candidates in check and on the issues, so that people can figure out where they stand and if they can defend their positions in an intellectual debate, not a shouting match. The only thing that the presidential debates managed to do is to showcase characters of the candidates, and the VP debate couldn’t even manage that. We cannot have a president who thinks that every issue can be solved with insults and shouting “wrong.” Debates need to have some sort of substantive content, or we should do away with them. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Otto Bonk is a third-year politics and English double major who thinks that those running for office never made it to civics class in the first place. You can reach them at obonk@ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

up to the debates, news organizations posted advertisements featuring the candidates facing each other across the screen, with captions like “The Gloves Are Off.” This is typical of most of the news organizations that promoted the debates, suggesting that for them this is much more about entertainment and ratings than it is about actually informing the electorate. They advertise a big, monumental showdown to their viewers, and so that is what they have to provide. As such, many of the questions that the candidates are asked have much more to do with the latest scandals than with their proposed policy and ideologies.

During the first debate, Trump once again raised the point of Hillary’s emails and then Lester Holt asked her about them. The Bush White House lost over 22 million emails and none of these people berating Clinton made any sort of a fuss, this entire issue is irrelevant, and opening it up to discussion only gives it credence. Additionally, in the third debate, a question was asked about taxes that included the phrase “fair share,” which was clearly an invitation for Trump and Clinton to start another back-andforth about Trump’s taxes, which is one of the popular discussion points in the media. While this is a somewhat significant issue, it is another example of the debates focussing on what is popular in the media, not what is important about the candidates’ positions. In the final debate, the issue of emails was once again raised, but nothing about climate change was mentioned, even though many see this as an important issue. Furthermore, some of the questions were just as irresponsible as the answers, such as Chris Wallace’s question in the final debate about partial-birth abortion, which is actually not a type of abortion.

The only redeeming moment of the third Presidential debate was when Wallace asked Trump about his position on election rigging and whether he would respect the democratic election, to which he responded that he’d keep viewers in suspense. At the end of every debate, the media spends hours and days arguing about who had won, rather than discussing the implications of what the candidates said and the policies that they proposed. This makes

Dissecting Debates

How debates (don’t) affect voter perception

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

By Mila Phelps-Friedl, Staff Writer The very first televised presidential debate took place on Sept. 26, 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon.

Famously, those who listened on the radio believed that Nixon had much better responses. However, those who watched it on television perceived Kennedy’s calm demeanor and honest responses the real winner of the debate in comparison to Nixon’s haggard appearance. While there have been important moments in debate history, do debates really have that much of an effect on how people perceive the candidates during the current election season?

Debates can represent how well a candidate responds under pressure.

However, both candidates actually do have ample time to prepare their responses, so the only real improvisation comes in lieu of direct attacks from the other presidential nominee.

Debates focus more on the ability to respond eloquently and quickly to a predictable question, perhaps cleverly rebutting the opponent in the process — but they don’t do much to expand the voter’s understanding of the candidate’s stance.

“Most people have already made up their mind on these candidates,” Alan Fisher writes for AlJazeera.

“The debates may provide a few more snippets of information to those wavering, but people tend to cheer their chosen candidate. And the candidates can largely control how they perform in the debates.

They can be prepared, organised and ready to handle any attack.”

A multifaceted approach is important this election season. Trump’s campaign has done a lot to push the image that he barely prepares for these debates, fueled by only his drive to “Make America Great Again,” while Clinton comes well equipped and ready to debate despite constant interruptions (51, to be exact, in their Sept. 26 debate) on Trump’s part. Fisher writes, “If you lower expectations and your candidate does as you expected, you

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can then spin that it was a ‘fantastic performance’ and the narrative that is created the day after the debate is almost as important as the event itself.” If you think logically about this tactic, Trump’s campaign depends on this narrative — that way, if he does better than expected, this will impress the audience more than if Clinton performs as well as is already expected of her.

Especially lately, the usefulness of presidential debates has been coming into the spotlight. Washington Monthly author John Sides writes, “Debates aren’t the only thing that voters are hearing and seeing in the weeks before the election. So even a careful comparison of polls before and after a debate assumes, perhaps incorrectly, that any change was due to the debate itself or to news coverage about the debate — and not to other events, television advertising, or the like.” Unless there is a major stumble or the candidate shows up obviously underprepared, it has been discovered that the people watching are not very likely to change their stance on who they are planning on voting for.

In that regard as well, one cannot assume that viewers of the televised debates are hanging onto every word. Sides reports that during the debate between George W. Bush and Michael Dukakis in 1988, Dukakis blundered so badly onstage that many people thought it would most definitely affect his standing in the campaign. When asked by moderator Bernard King if Dukakis would support the death penalty for someone who “raped and murdered” his wife, Kitty, Dukakis calmly responded that he would not before moving onto the next question. People present at the debate could not believe how unemotionally Dukakis had responded to such a polarizing question, and yet the voters barely remembered this moment. Therefore it did little to affect general opinion of Dukakis. Neither of the 1988 debates had much effect on voter preferences and George

W. Bush was already in the lead.

Scientist James Stinson did a study entitled “Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics” in which he found that “there is no case where we can trace a substantial shift to the debates.”

Stinson credits debates as maybe providing the slightest nudge in polls in the really close presidential races the likes of Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980, or the 2000 race between George W. Bush and Albert Gore Jr. Still in nearly all those races, the candidate who the debate helped was already leading in the election.

While debates may be a staple in the minds of voters, they are actually not a very comprehensive or effective way of showcasing a presidential candidate’s projected response to the role and demands of the job. If citizens want to really get to know their candidates, either they should know well enough not to base their final decision off the performances in the debates, or they should call for a restructuring of the way in which democratic society weighs debates and what occurs during them. Sides sums it up quite well: “What history can tell us is that presidential debates, while part of how the game is played, are rarely what decide the game itself.” ___________________________________ Mila Phelps-Friedl is a secondyear journalism major who’s totally over live-Tweeting childish arguments. You can email her

at

mphelpsfriedl@ithaca.edu.

From Birth Control to Mood Control Birth control’s mental health consequences are no joke

By Berellyn Alberca, Contributing Writer

pill, was rated 7.6/10 on drugs.com.

A majority of the low scorers claimed that pills heightened their depression and anxiety, one patient who took the pills for two to five years even revealed that they had suicidal thoughts and ignored their depression, thinking that it was perhaps just the way their life was supposed to go. Another comment on the review page claimed that they were severely depressed and developed social anxiety, but once they were off the pill, their mood significantly lifted.

In a list from the same website of different contraceptives, a majority of the birth control types listed mood swings, depression or mental depression as a side effect with the rating averaging at a 6.0/10.

Women being able to choose what do with their bodies, such as take birth control, is an undeniable sign of progress, and while a 40 percent increased risk of depression is not the majority, it is still significant and doctors still make sure to warn women of this side effect.

Despite there being more options for women, research and personal experiences have shown that it all boils down to an ultimatum, having to choose between two things that are not desirable: unwanted pregnancies versus mental illness or severe mood swings. What choice really is present? ___________________________________ Berellyn Alberca is a first-year chemistry major who always reads the side effects. You can email them at balberca@ithaca.edu.

Image by Alexa Salvato

on my final because I was trying so hard not to cry. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore and basically just ran out of the classroom to the bathrooms across the hall to let it all out…

I am not a person who cries easily.”

Birth control affects different people in different ways. Contreras believes that depression was not a specific issue for her despite the mood swings. “I would not say I felt depressed but it’s difficult for me to give a clear answer without the help of a medical professional because of my perceived attitude and personality,” Contreras said.

The connection between birth control and depression is even stronger when the patient has prior experience with mental illness. “Even before I got the birth control I was depressed but now it’s magnified and I don’t know if it’s the things at home or birth control or both,” Zulma Reza-Alarcón, a college student who is also currently on the Nexplanon implant, said.

“My emotions were everywhere,” Reza-Alarcón continued. “The strongest ones were the sad and angry feelings.

Everything irritated me, from the smallest push to an insult. I would get sad over everything and cry.”

While she is on her third and last year of Nexplanon, she claims the magnitude of the side effects of the Nexplanon has not decreased in any way.

As for the toll the birth control took on me, panic attacks had become more frequent, mood swings were undeniable and when they occurred, I would often ask myself why I felt the way I did — and remember the side effects of the birth control. Despite knowing and telling myself repeatedly that my feelings and thoughts were irrational before attempting to dismiss them, they were thoughts I had no control over. Upon the insertion of the implant, the nurse made sure that I was aware of the side effects and circled “St. John’s Wort” which is an antidepressant that Nexplanon users must avoid or else their birth control would be ineffective.

Ortho-Cyclen, a birth control

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News & Views

When I walked into the reproductive health nurse’s office in my high school, she introduced me to a variety of birth control making sure to mention their tendencies toward significant mood swings and depression, both of which I have experienced ever since my decision to receive the Nexplanon implant.

The Nexplanon implant is a type of birth control inserted through one’s arm and can last for three years.

A study conducted by Danish researchers found that more than a million women between ages 15 to 34 have a 40 percent increased risk of depression after four months of birth control use.

Birth control provided for women has significantly progressed since the pill was approved in 1960. A National Health Statistics report published by the CDC in 2012 revealed that 62 percent of women who are of reproductive age are on some type of birth control, ranging from pills to female sterilization.

Most birth control options for women function through the manipulation of hormones which can mess with the balance of the brain’s “feel-good” neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. This often influences the patient’s moods and can cause or magnify the effects of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. For pills and pill combinations such as Ortho Tri-Cyclen and Ortho-Cyclen, mental depression is a side effect often listed by physicians.

Brenda Contreras is a Colorado State University student who is currently on birth control and has experienced the mood changes it carries.

“It was the end of my senior year of high school and I had shown up to finish my final exam for my Calculus II class,” Contreras said. “I was under a lot of stress to finish high school with good grades. When the teacher came around to give me my test, I felt an extreme sense of shame and guilt, that I had let him down somehow.

And afterwards, I couldn’t even focus

Pro-Choice in Poland

The consequences of the Black Monday protests

By Christina Tudor, Staff Writer

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prosecutors in Indiana to persecute n Oct. 2, wom- The Guardian. “This is a chance women — and in both cases, those en across Po- for us to be seen, and to be heard.” women have been Asian American land started a naIf the proposed ban hadn’t been tionwide protest lifted, all abortions and potentially and/or immigrant women of colour.”

This is a reality when it comes to against government miscarriages would be seen as crimireproductive rights. Religious and plans to ban abor- nal and sentenced to prison for up to political ideologies are still a strong tion. According to The Indepen- five years. Any doctor who assisted force attempting to control womdent, about 6 million people went with or performed an abortion would on strike for reproductive rights. also face legal charges. Even women en’s bodies and decisions. Even in this protest, the heavily Catholic Thousands of women across Poland who have had miscarriages could state of Poland still sees abortion marched in black as a memoriam be accused of inducing an abortion. as acceptable only in certain cirto deteriorating reproductive rights.

Sadly, this is the status quo for cumstances and a personal choice.

This action was inspired by the pas- women in America as well. In 2015, Malgorzata Lodyga, a junior docsage of Roe v. Wade in the U.S. in Purvi Patel faced jail time for a self-intor who supports the strike, said: 1973 and a previous strike in Ice- duced abortion who was charged with “My mother is very Catholic, goes to land in 1975. According to BBC, feticide and child neglect. According church every Sunday, and is against women in Iceland refused to do any to Salon, “On March 30, 2015, Patel, abortion just because you might not domestic work for a day. The article convicted of both crimes, was senwant the child. But she is describes it as “a moment against this law, because that changed the if a woman is raped, she way women were seen in the coun“If the proposed ban hadn’t been lift- will be treated worse than man who raped her.” try and helped ed, all abortions and potentially miscar- theThe Independent put Iceland at the “Campaigners forefront of the riages would be seen as criminal and sen- writes: added that they wantfight for equality.”

Here we see his- tenced to prison for up to five years. Any ed as few abortions tory repeating itself. doctor who assisted with or performed an as possible in Poland, but this goal should be Reproductive rights in Poland have al- abortion would also face legal charges.” achieved with better sex education in schools ways been a proband easier access to lem. According to birth control, The New official figures on York Times reported.”

The Independent, Women in Poland still “around 1,000 lehave to deal with the role of the gal abortions are performed in Po- tenced to 20 consecutive years in religious right’s limits on bodily land every year.” It is also estimated prison. To date, she has served one autonomy. Slogans and banners that 150,000 women each year per- year and four months of that time.” may say things like “my body, my form abortions on themselves. Last Even though the decision was latchoice,” but they still impose reguJune, activists also used drones er overturned in Indiana’s appeals lations and ideologies on their citito fly abortion pills into Poland. court after feminist groups came to zens about why a woman can get For Black Monday, these women her defense, this says a lot about the an abortion. The argument isn’t refused to work in an attempt to slow state of abortion rights. It is also imthat women can choose no matter the economy. Official strikes called portant to note that she is a woman what. Instead the narrative is that the “black protest” took place in 60 of color in Indiana, a very conserwomen can get an abortion only undifferent Polish cities. Business- vative state, which played a role in der these specific circumstances. es and corporations also pledged her being criminalized and targeted. ___________________________________ to close their doors in solidarity.

According to Reappropriate, “Patel Christina Tudor is a fourth-year “A lot of women and girls in this was charged with feticide using laws writing and politics double major country have felt that they don’t originally written with the intention who doesn’t know where is safe have any power, that they are not of protecting battered women from from right-wing pro-lifers. You can equal, that they don’t have the physical abuse that leads to the loss email them at ctudor1@ithaca.edu. right to an opinion,” Magda Staro- of their fetus at the hands of their batszczyk, a strike coordinator, told terer; that law has been used twice by

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Hey, Hey, FDA

Let’s not list calories, okay?

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pathways that different foods go through, or the effects that foods have on our brain and hormones.”

Prevention’s blog — despite its pop-up ad for 14 free workouts to burn fat! — emphasizes a more holistic view of nutrition, but first discounts the biggest misconception of all: in some cases, decreasing calories can lead to gaining weight.

“If you starve yourself, your body slows down your metabolism and burns muscle rather than fat,” writes Jessica Girdwain. “Start eating normally again after a restrictive diet, and you’ll gain more weight because you have a pokey metabolism that can’t do its job.”

This could be confusing for anyone, but devastating for someone in recovery from an eating disorder — a group which includes more than 30 million Americans, according to the National Eating Disorders Foundation.

Anastasia Amour is a body image and self-esteem coach as well as author of Inside Out: A 14-Day Guide to Transform Your Mind-Body Relationship. She’s also a body-positive advocate on her popular Instagram account, often drawing on her own recovery from anorexia.

In an email interview, she discussed how learning to ignore calories is part of healing from most eating disorders.

“A crucial part of recovery from an eating disorder (particularly restrictivetype EDs) is learning to avoid focusing on the numbers and instead shift that focus to providing the body with ongoing and consistent nutrition,” she wrote.

She also noted that while she understands the FDA’s intention, its emphasis on calories can be damaging to those both with a history of eating disorders and those affected by the mentality that health is equivalent to thinness.

“Restrictive-type ED sufferers learn that the primary way to measure ‘health’ is by how little space a body can occupy,” she wrote. “... If we look at the $60 billion per year weight loss industry and we unpick diet culture, these messages (that less body mass equals greater worth as a person) are everywhere. So in that regard, this

forced in-your-face display of calorie counts is harmful to far more people than those medically diagnosed.”

Amour said disconnecting weight from health has been central to her recovery.

“Unlearning all of those toxic beliefs that I held was immensely difficult but self-acceptance has empowered me to learn more about my body and how I can take care of it, as well as how to look after myself mentally,” she wrote.

The FDA’s new regulation saddles it with the responsibility of informing the public what a calorie really is, the small role it plays in one’s health and why — or why not — people should pay attention to them. There is such thing as eating too many calories, but you can also eat too few. The amount your sister ate might not be the same amount you should, and the amount you ate on Monday doesn’t have to be the same as Tuesday. Health is fluid and individual. It can’t be mandated by the government.

But when you see new numbers popping up on your favorite menus, pretending they’re not there might be best for your health altogether. __________________________________ Alexa Salvato is a fourth-year journalism major who doesn’t think the government should tell you how much to eat. You can email them at asalvat1@ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

his summer, the Food and Drug Administration created a regulation mandating that chain restaurants post the calories for all the items on their menu. “Covered establishments will list calorie information for standard menu items on menus and menu boards and a succinct statement about suggested daily caloric intake,” the FDA explained.

But this regulation comes from a collection of incorrect assumptions that the medical industry and the media alike perpetuate about food, weight, calories and, holistically, health. Calories are such a small fraction of necessary nutrition information. There are the same amount of calories in a Peppermint Stick Luna Bar and an Angry Orchard hard cider, and although both are delicious, they make very different contributions to your body’s nutrition.

A calorie is a unit of energy, specifically how much it takes to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius.

Nutrition facts in the U.S. are based off a 2000-calorie daily diet, but 2000 calories isn’t the magic number for everyone. Instead, the best number of calories for one’s body is what makes them feel full and healthy, and this varies based on build, activity, genetics, age and many other factors.

Counting and then cutting calories, as if they’re a separate entity from food itself, is often touted as a method to lose weight. This can have some major flaws: It can lead to treating one’s body like a machine, it can become an obsession, or both.

Kris Gunners, a nutrition researcher, published “Why ‘Calories In, Calories Out’ Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story” to debunk the myth that all calories are created equal.

“Saying that weight (or health for that matter) is simply a function of ‘calories in, calories out’ is completely wrong,” he concludes. “It is a drastic oversimplification that doesn’t account for the complex metabolic

Image by Anastasia Amout

By Alexa Salvato, News and Views Editor

The Flaws of Free the Nipple Inequality among boobie pix

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

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reasts are not sex organs. They are not sexual until censored. In fact, my closest female friends and I send each other snapchats of our boobs almost daily. We’re cute and young.

We love our tits and each others’ tits. We are modern women, freeing the nipple and loving it.

The “Free the Nipple” movement stemmed from Lina Esco’s documentary film by the same name, which follows topless women taking to the streets of New York City to protest the censorship of female nipples.

According to the Free the Nipple website, the film — along with the movement itself — aims to “[explore] the contradictions in our media-dominated society, where acts of violence and killing are glorified, while images of a woman’s body are censored by the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] and the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America].”

There is an importance in reclaiming female sexuality from the men who typically use it to oppress women. There is an importance in the unity of females through our shared anatomy.

Whether we are of different races, classes or sexualities, all females are bonded by biology. And from our togetherness, we gain strength.

That being said, Free the Nipple really only seems to benefit young, able-bodied, cisgender, white women — women who have set the American beauty standard already, women who are less likely to be denounced while topless. The majority of photos I see of breasts on the feministwide-web are of white, 20-somethings flashing without a care. Even the movement’s advertising and website is made up almost entirely of photos of young, white women.

Zing Tsjeng, a journalist for Dazed magazine, covered the lack of diversity in the movement in a 2015 article entitled “What the Hell is #Freethe-

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nipple, Anyway?”

“Scrolling through the #freethenipple hashtag, you notice a few things: a lot of the posters are white, thin and able-bodied,” Tsjeng wrote.

“Many are conventionally attractive; most of them are young. In short: no old, flabby, lopsided or wrinkly tits here.”

And honestly, there are very few people who were ever averse to seeing a healthy, white, young woman’s breasts in the first place. Not many people are screaming, “Keep your top on!” And while, of course, this movement is not a sexual one — it is not meant to benefit those who are just eager to stare at healthy, white, young boobs. It seems like those who are taking part in the movement are comfortable doing so because there a lesser stigma toward them already.

Nonetheless, the movement does stand against slutshaming by encouraging women to feel proud of their bodies regardless of those who call them sleazy — a definite benefit to all women. The movement tells women to feel comfortable being natural and to disregard the men who holler on the street. It emphasizes that a woman’s body is her own.

Free the Nipple encourages women to stand up against media industries that sexualize female bodies in order to capitalize, to stand up against men that sexualize female bodies in order to dominate and suppress them, and to stand up against a society that sexualizes female bodies in order to diminish women to sex objects. Free the Nipple is a powerful movement — in theory.

While the movement’s message is a strong one, the problem is it really only represents a small sector of the entire population of women.

Feminism has a strong component of unity, and the core of the movement is all women standing to-

Image by Sam Fuller

By Lizzy Ring, Contributing Writer

gether and being liberated together.

So where are the old women, women who aren’t completely able-bodied, women of color, transgender women? I think that if an old lady were to free her nipple, everyone might be like, “Whoa … um, maybe we should repress the nipple a little bit.”

The 2015 article “Bringing Diversity to #FreeTheNipple with #LiberateAllNipples,” written for Wear Your Voice, an online intersectional feminist publication, points out the inequality in the movement. The article focuses in on the Daily Mail’s coverage of National Topless Day, in which only seven of the 60 topless women photographed were women of color. The article goes on to write, “#Freethenipple proclaims to end the objectification of women and rape culture, but if we consider that black women are at greater risk of being sexually assaulted than their white counterparts, why are the women who are most vulnerable eliminated from such a potentially powerful campaign?”

Women are not truly liberated until all women are liberated. Feminism is about unity and equality. While it really feels like modern feminism is moving in a positive direction, there needs to be wider and more inclusive representation. ___________________________________ Lizzy Ring is a first year writing for film, TV and emerging media major who wants you to keep your eyes up, buddy. You can reach them at ering@ithaca.edu.

The Problem with the Good Guys

What happens when police officers arent prosecuted

By Taylor Ford, Staff Writer

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of a larger problem. Criminologist John Crank was the first to describe police as being an institution which is “loosely coupling” with broader society. This imlplie the police don’t want to be interfered with or have their authority questioned. Since Crank wrote about this idea in 1994, it’s been supported by numerous others who study police culture.

We are starting to see much more evidence of police misconduct, in large part due to the increased prevalence of cell phone video recordings. It’s a mistake to think that these represent a new problem, though. Now is just the first time that we can see these events with our own eyes.

Our criminal justice system largely works to protect officers. For the most part, investigations into police misconduct are carried out by the same law enforcement agencies that are implicated. Even if a complaint is corroborated by the investigation, the decision about what the consequences should be are left up to the department, which is often biased toward its members.

Police unions fight to prevent civilian review boards from overseeing officers in a meaningful way.

There is one aspect of policing which is probably at the core of our national conversation more than any other: when police officers kill.

In these situations, officers argue they are legally justified not by the actual threat presented, but by their own fear. This is particularly problematic when we consider the implications of race. Throughout our history, people of color have been depicted in our culture as dangerous, criminal and brutish.

This racialized dynamic is also clearly present in this election. In 2015, Donald Trump said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In 1996, Hillary Clinton also used coded racial language, talking about a new class of juvenile “superpreda-

tors,” who must be “brought to heel.”

Though Clinton has said she regrets her words, the rhetoric of both of these politicians harkens back to the 1915 film Birth of a Nation and its depictions of Black men as subhuman, violent and threatening to white women.

Our society conditions police officers, and people in general, to be afraid of people of color and then justifies their use of force based upon this fear.

We must make radical change to the way that the police operate in this country. We can no longer allow officers to violate the law with impunity. While the DOJ can step in and intervene in some cases, this is a systemic problem and it seems that these systematic reviews only come after there have been gross, well-documented violations.

Carrying out this change requires more than simply passing a new regulation law. It requires a fundamental change in police culture, and the way that they relate to the people of this country. Police can often identify so strongly as “the good guys” that they begin to believe that their ends justify their means and that any regulation merely gets in the way. But by single-mindedly going after those we define as “criminals,” the police actually become them. ___________________________________ Taylor Ford is a fourth-year sociology major who does not want to be a police officer when they grow up. You can email them at tford1@ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

he city of Ferguson came to national and international attention after the killing of Michael Brown, a black teenager, by a police officer in 2014. While this shooting did not bring about a prosecution of this officer, it did spark a systematic review of the police by the Department of Justice. The final report from the DOJ, issued in 2015, is a blistering condemnation of the police department of Ferguson. It found that officers routinely, and as a matter of culture, “expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority.” It went on to say that the police “are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence.” It elaborates that police should take civilian complaints of officer misbehavior more seriously. Clearly, this kind of action by the state violates our most sacred laws, and so DOJ rightly used litigation to control the behavior of police in Ferguson, including independent monitoring in the future.

In 1994, criminologist William Chambliss conducted a study called by doing ride-alongs with police officers in the Washington, D.C. rapid deployment unit. Some of the things that police officers said to Chambliss and his assistants during these ridealongs were shocking. In one case, the police broke into the home of a young suspect without a warrant. When the researcher asked the officer about the constitutionality of this action, he responded: “This is Southeast [Washington] and the Supreme Court has little regard for little shit like busting in on someone who just committed a crime involving drugs… Who will argue for the juvenile in this case? No one can and no one will.” On another occasion, an officer said to a researcher: “This is the jungle… We rewrite the Constitution every day out here.”

These situations in Ferguson and Washington, separated by two decades and 800 miles, are not isolated incidents. Instead, they are emblematic

Bogged down in the numbers

Revealing the financial implications of union negotiations

By Justin Henry, Contributing Writer

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hen I asked a staff member of the union SEIU Local 200United about the implications of the faculty union’s proposed 1.2 million dollar expense increase for the college, he told me this wasn’t my story.

He said the real story was in how the administration was exploiting parttime contingent faculty at my own college.

But increasing the college’s salary expenses by this much is a very real story. Why? Because students have a right to know how a substantial increase in compensation affects them.

Let me be clear — I support the right of Ithaca College faculty to unionize, to speak freely and to challenge the institution’s practices. But they must be honest with students and with the campus community as a whole about the implications of their demands, instead of holding the college’s reputation hostage in order to threaten their student enrollment and funding.

“One of the best things we can do is to generate pressure, not just from within the school but from the outside as well and to make the college think, ‘This is going to threaten our enrollment and our bottom line and we need to make a change to avoid that,’” a member of Students of Labor Action said.

Lecturers, instructors and adjunct professors at the college have little job security, limited health benefits and are paid only by the credit hour.

If they have a part-time position, they can teach no more than 24 credits per academic year, which amounts to an annual salary of 16,800 dollars at best.

Let’s back it up a second here: Why would the administration pay some faculty 16,800 dollars per year to teach a limit of 24 credits?

The answer is because contingent

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positions were never intended to sustain long-term careers or compensate a living wage. They are a college’s solution to the ebbs and flows of student enrollment.

At a small private college like IC where tuition and student fees provides over 90 percent of the revenue, the budget must allocate money where the students enroll. You’d think with over 6000 students and a tuition of $41,776 the college would be swimming in cash. But with the current financial aid rate of 68 percent, the school loses almost of its tuition revenue.

When the college offers a class, it means enough tuition-paying students have enrolled for the college to support the class and the professor.

Similarly, if the college does not offer a course — and decides not to renew a professor’s contract — a reason for this could be the class was not demanded by students and the college can’t support the class.

“Corporatization” is a term used to describe the changing climate of the campus lately, as we have seen tuition rise. Yet, despite these changes adjunct professors still make much less than tenure track professors.

Ithaca College has no financial incen-

across the country are gradually depending more on part-time contingent professors and less on fulltime tenure track professors. The current nationwide average for part time faculty is at 49 percent of all faculty positions, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Ithaca College is currently at 39 percent.

Additionally, on October 18th, the Office of Human Resources at Ithaca College released a report on detailing the issues raised by the union.

After taking a survey of surrounding institutions, the office reported only two institutions paying part-time faculty at a higher rate than the college.

At $4,200 per three credit course, Ithaca College already pays parttime professors the same or far greater than institutions with faculty that have already reached a contract settlement. The College of St. Rose now receive $3,000 to 3,500 per three credit course, according to a report from SEIU Local 200United.

Another report from a different SEIU union shows part-time faculty at George Washington University with terminal degrees still make $600 less per four credit course than any part-time professor at Ithaca Col“...contingent postitions were nev- lege, prior to er intended to sustain long-term ca- as e t t lcontract ement reers or compensate a living wage. with the adThey are a college’s solution to the ministration.

Still the ebbs and flows of student enrollment.” union urges the college to be “trendsetters,” to tive to compensate its faculty at the reverse the 50-year trend of hiring cheapest cost in order to maximize faculty at lower compensation rates profits because accumulating profit at the teach-ins, despite the college is not the top priority at the college. already being ahead of the curve.

As the union points out in their But how much would this crusade teach-ins, colleges and universities cost and what would that mean for

the operating expenses of the college?

The faculty union says not to get “bogged down” with the estimated $1.2 million increase in yearly expenses because they were afraid it would prevent students from adequately understanding and spreading their cause.

“I think things are getting confusing with numbers, like, with the message we’re trying to get out,” one of the members said. “There’s too many numbers

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News & Views

comes close. Other colleges with larger endowments that receive more charitable donations can perhaps afford the union’s demands inhibits IC’s goal of remaining accessible to students of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

The aforementioned local SEIU organizer made things very simple and clear at the teach-ins when he said the administration is simply “unethical” for paying the faculty members at the current rate.

If this is a dis“At $4,200 per three credit course, Itha- cussion about ethics, it must ca College already pays part-time pro- be one of ethitrade-offs. fessors the same or far greater than cal Is it more ethiinstitutions with faculty that have al- cal to cut other like ready reached a contract settlement.” expenses academic programs or raise tuition in order to increase a and we need just like five bullet points.” part-time pay rate?

But let’s take a serious look at the Nothing in life is free. Every year, budget, which is made public on the colthe budget committee is burdened lege website. How would the $1.2 million with the near-impossible task of findsalary increase and benefits be funded? ing the delicate balance between the Cuts to civic engagement? Financial financial health of the institution and aid? Or thousands from all across the IC’s mission statement. Because as board?The union has offered a couple long as the college is working with sources of revenue to subsidize this sallimited resources, there will always be ary increase: The contingency fund. groups that feel the college has spent However, dipping too far into both of too much on one thing and doesn’t these funds would cause harrowing detsubstantially value another. But in riment to the long-term finances of the the game of budgeting, there are never college. The contingency fund is the colany final solutions, only trade-offs. lege’s safety net, the two percent of the ____________________________________ budget reserved only for when the col___ lege doesn’t bring in enough tuition revJustin Henry is a third-year Englush enue. At the end of the 2009 fiscal year, Major who loses sleep over thinking following the financial crash, the adminabout tuition rising. You can email istration had to use its contingency fund them at Jhenry@ithaca.edu when enrollment numbers dropped below their projected amount and the college’s endowment funds diminished in their market values by one-third. After all their expenses, the largest portion of which included financial aid, the college was left with only a couple million dollars above having no money.

In reality, meeting the union’s demands for parity would have to come from tuition increases, Nancy Pringle, senior vice president of Human and Legal resources, said. With over 90 percent dependency, tuition is the most abundant source of funds. Nothing else even

Come Together Unions will help, not hurt, at IC

By Evan Popp, Upfront Editor

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

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I am an IC contingent faculty member. I am on Medicaid.” These words, part of a photo campaign by the group IC Students for Labor Action, put a face on the financial position of many Ithaca College contingent faculty members.

To address these concerns, part-time faculty and full-time contingent faculty at the college have unionized. While progress has been made in negotiations with the administration, the part time–faculty union talks hit a snag on the issues of job security and compensation. The wages of part-time faculty seem to have become the bigger negotiating issue, however. Part-time faculty at the college are currently paid just $1,400 for each credit they teach and can teach up to 12 credits per year, The Ithacan reported, which comes out to just $16,800 of earnings a year at best.

The part-time faculty walked out of their bargaining session on Sept.

23 in response to an offer of a 2 percent pay increase per credit. That was the administration’s counter-offer to the union’s original proposal of a 42.8 percent pay increase per credit, which The Ithacan reported the union subsequently reduced by $275 per credit for professors who have been at the college one to three years. Contingent faculty and student activists then held a rally on Oct. 19 to protest the administration’s low-ball offer. The union has since had another negotiation session with the administration. But as of Oct. 28, the two sides had not come to an agreement.

There is a moral argument to be made in favor of increased pay for part-time contingent faculty, particularly when some faculty members are on Medicaid and another can’t afford to pay their student debt to Ithaca College with their college-provided compensation. But for those who may not be convinced by arguments of right and wrong, here are three reasons the college can and should provide parttimers with a substantial pay raise.

It’s not cost prohibitive The administration has pointed out that its part-time professors are among the best paid in the Northern region. But all that really proves is

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that many other colleges are also exploiting their part-time professors.

The administration has argued tuition for students will have to rise if part-timers are paid more. But there are other ways of funding a pay increase for part-timers, such as lowering the salaries of top administrators. President Tom Rochon made $458,318 in 2013, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the second-highest presidential salary among the college’s peer group.

Additionally, according to the college’s 2014 calendar year 990 form, the college paid Rochon, a few trustees and 10 top administrators and deans a total of $2,405,493, with most receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation. Those making that much money can afford to take a pay cut to allow for an increase in part-time faculty pay.

The college could also reduce the amount it spends on unnecessary luxuries. For example, The Ithacan reported the college’s 2016-17 budget included $2.6 million for meals and entertainment. Additionally, part-time faculty say the college has allocated $4.7 million to a contingency fund for cases of low enrollment or emergency. Tahlia Fischer, a part-time instructor of women and gender studies, told The Ithacan the increase in wages part-timers are asking for would only amount to 11.9 percent of the fund, leaving plenty left over.

It’s disingenuous for the administration to argue tuition would have to be raised to pay for the part-time faculty union’s demands. There is excess in the budget that could easily be used for such purposes. To link an increase in part-timers’ pay to a tuition hike is nothing more than a scare tactic designed to turn students against the union.

It’d be better for students Many part-time faculty work second jobs. “We’re dedicated to our students, and we love teaching. But we’re on Medicaid. We work other jobs to make ends meet,” Rachel Kaufman, a part-time writing instructor, told The Washington Post.

If part-time faculty members are constantly working other jobs, this reduces the amount of time they can spend working with students. Paying part-time faculty a decent wage would ensure that such faculty spend less time at other jobs and more time help-

ing students further their learning.

Additionally, the stress of working multiple jobs and living on such a paltry wage takes a toll. “Part-time faculty members ... find it near impossible to sustain themselves and often struggle to find dignity and stability in their own personal lives,” part-time sociology instructor Sarah Grunberg told The Ithaca Voice.

Part-timers facing such instability must experience a lot of stress, which cannot help but have an impact on their ability to teach and be there for their students. It would be better for both students and professors if parttime faculty were paid enough to reduce some of their financial stress.

Then, they could focus on the reason they are at the college: to teach.

It allows the next administration to have a fresh start With a new president on the way, there should be a clear motivation to resolve the faculty union negotiations. That means the administration must significantly increase its offer from its insulting pay raise proposal of 2 percent and actually negotiate in good faith with the union.

Solving the dispute this academic year would allow the next president to arrive with a clean slate. If a solution is not reached by the time the next president takes control, they will be left to deal with a multitude of faculty who are unhappy, and rightfully so.

Resolving the situation before then would allow the new president to move the college beyond the toxic years of Rochon’s presidency. And it would signal the beginning of a fresh start in the relationship between the power figures in the Peggy Ryan Williams Center and the rest of the college. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Evan Popp is a third-year journalism major who wrote this in the IBEW basement wearing an AFT t-shirt. You can reach them at epopp@ithaca.edu.

Editor’s Note: Writer has been involved with IC Students for Labor Action.

FRONT. UPFRONT. UPFRO

Upfront

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The Creation of Consumerism

How the ‘obsession with acquisition’ is built into our everyday existence

By Alexis Morillo, Staff Writer

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or basic human survival, air, water, food, clothing and shelter are the only necessities needed for metabolic processes and protection.

Besides that, there isn’t anything really required to be able to live. Still, humans are constantly finding things that they believe they need and these items usually come in the form of material goods. With the limited number of legitimate needs for survival and the large — although dwindling — amount of extra resources being used, it is hardly a surprise that consumerism has intergated itself into the modern human experience.

Consumerism is something many people engage in every day without even realizing it. Businesses often play off of it by using intrusive advertising strategies on television, billboards, in magazines and the like to convince people to spend money on their products. People are exposed to over 5,000 of these advertisements every day on television alone, a striking increase since the 1970s when people only encountered 500 per day, according to a CBS News story from 2006 titled, “Cutting Through Advertising Clutter.”

Obsession with material items is built into society through capitalism. But there is an important distinction between capitalism and consumerism, according to Amitai Etzioni, professor of sociology at George Washington University.

“What needs to be eradicated, or at least greatly tempered, is consumerism: the obsession with acquisition that has become the organizing principle of Amer-

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ican life. This is not the same thing as capitalism, nor is it the same thing as consumption,” Etzioni wrote in a 2012 Huffington Post piece titled, “The Crisis of American Consumerism.”

He expanded on the distinction between buying items in

“People feel empty, so they buy stuff. But that doesn’t fill their existential void.” a capitalistic society and consumerism. “Consumption can be good, because true needs need to be taken care of. But consumerism is an addiction.”

The U.S. system of capitalism could be a valid explanation for why consumerism is such a huge part of society. Capitalism is dependent on the buying and selling of goods; without this give-and-take there is no economy. Consuming is necessary to keep these economic processes going. But consumerism is doing more than what’s actually needed — buying unnecessary things just because the resources to do so are there.

The problem, according to Etzioni’s Huffington Post article, is not with the structure of capitalism in the United States but with the behavior of the American people themselves.

Etzioni referred to consumerism as a “social disease” in his article. In the piece he explored how consumerism dictates many individual’s day-to-day actions.

“Working slavish hours, behaving rapaciously in their business pursuits, and even bend-

ing the rules” are all examples of the sacrifices people make in order to have enough money to buy items they think they need.

Etzioni believes that the only way to begin to rid society of consumerism is by self-regulation, which he said comes from awareness of the problem.

“People need to understand how they are being affected by the things they see on television,” Etzioni said. “Knowing the difference between one’s real needs and their mere desires is a form of regulation that separates consumption from consumerism,” he added.

Psychologically, consumerism can be explained by the school of thought known as “existential psychology,” which strives to find meaning in life. Humans can find meaning through their possessions, but there will always be an “empty hole” that they will try to fill, Steven Schlozman — an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School — said.

“The problem with consumerism is that people don’t know how much is enough,” Schlozman said. “People feel empty, so they buy stuff. But that doesn’t fill their existential void.”

Schlozman noted that not all consumerism is harmful. He said it can actually be beneficial as long as people are consuming for the right reasons.

“I would like people to not consume mindlessly. I want people to want things because it feeds into who they are, into their identity,” Schlozman said.

Finding this happy medium can be difficult, especially with the number of choices we are faced with on a daily basis in our consumerist society. These choices lead people to fall into

Image by Claire McClusky for happiness, account for all the costs (including environmental) and lessen the wealth gap between the lower and upper classes, it is likely to be considered a game-changing solution. According to Leonard, these solutions are the only real way to break down the cycle of consumerism in modern American society.

However, while it is clear that consumerism in high doses is a serious issue, it is unlikely that it can be completely eradicated since it has become such an integral part of the human culture. Instead, it must be acknowledged by those who are affected by consumerist culture so they become aware of how they may be mindlessly consuming. The way that individuals are subconsciously taking in consumerist messages through advertisements and their peers is the first thing that consumers have to understand in order to not be so heavily influenced.

And at the end of the day, while material items will always be sought out, genuine humanto-human interaction is of more value to living a meaningful life.

“We’re always going to choose hanging out with each other over hanging out with our stuff because there are hundreds of years of human evolution backing that up,” Schlozman said. “But we still miss some important developmental milestones due to our preoccupation [with consumerism].” ___________________________________

Alexis Morillo is a second-year journalism major who was consumerism for Halloween. You can reach them at amorillo@ithaca.edu.

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Upfront

one of two categories, as explored in Carlin Flora’s Psychology Today article, “Consumerism: One Choice Too Many.”

These categories, coined by Barry Schwartz, author of the book The Paradox of Choice, are “maximizers” versus “satisficers.”

Maximizers are constantly looking at what other, better options are available to them while satisficers are content if something is “good enough.” It is thought that while maximizers may do better in the long run, satisficers are happier because they aren’t feeding into consumerism by wasting their resources on unnecessary, seemingly “better” items. By not continually seeking out the most novel items, satisficers rid themselves of the anxiety that maximizers feel from consuming.

Flora spoke of the strategies popular brands use to try and manipulate maximizers.

“They [big companies] introduce new products with not too many benefits, but just enough to make people think they have to have the latest one,” Flora said. “Comfort with the latest technologies conveys status in our tech-obsessed and youth-obsessed culture, so people aren’t just buying things to

have things, they are also trying to achieve more status and perceived power in the world.”

Flora’s idea is supported in activist Annie Leonard’s 2007 project, “The Story of Stuff.” In the 20 minute video, Leonard describes the true processes behind how Americans, as a culture, consume. The video explains the ideas of planned and perceived obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence is the term used to explain the way items are made not to last. These products are made to eventually stop working in order to get consumers to buy a newer version and, as a result, encourage consumerism.

In contrast, perceived obsolescence is the term for what Flora describes as the way that consumers convince themselves to throw away things that are still serving their purpose but are not the newest version of the item.

Since its origin in 2007, Leonard’s project has grown into a series of over 20 videos and short films that outline the problems with consumerism as a whole and focus on specific items and their direct harm to the environment. In a 2013 video, Leonard and her team offered some solutions to the consumerism problem they had been discussing in previous videos.

Like Etzioni, Leonard talked about the need for self-regulation, but she put a bigger emphasis on opening up community conversations about the systemic way consumerism is taking over the lives of the American people. She called such solutions, “game-changing solutions” and uses a set of four criteria to identify them.

If a solution to consumerism can give people more power rather than big corporations, open people’s eyes to the real needs

Media Malpractice

How journalism hinders women politicians

By Mila Phelps-Friedl, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

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ick up any major magazine or newspaper that houses a politics section and, if you look hard enough, you will notice a stark difference in the way that female politicians are covered by the news media in comparison to their male counterparts. It is undeniable how far society has come in accepting and even embracing more women becoming involved in the political sphere. However, one must consider the residual effects of the media’s biased coverage of womenpoliticians, not only in the narratives reinforced by blatant or subtly sexist reporting, but also in regards to the future of women in politics.

Let’s start with the very basics of media coverage: wording. While this may seem like a small piece of the coverage of women politicians, word choice makes a difference. In an Elle magazine article from April 2015, Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said “When the media talks about men and calls them ‘strong and assertive,’ that shows strength and that’s important. But when women are described in those same words, that can be very negative and very detrimental to them.”

Nichole Bauer, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alabama, expanded on this issue of wording in media campaign coverage. “Rather than talking about policy, the media talks about personality traits when a woman runs for office,” she said.

Articles about women candidates are more likely to discuss issues of temperament — or the health of the candidate — based off of their performances at rallies and in the debates, Bauer added.

“This is a problem because political leadership is defined through masculine characteristics, not stereo-

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typically feminine traits,” she said.

Bauer said if the media portrays a women candidate as having traditionally feminine traits, such as being caring, voters are less likely to think that candidate would be a good leader. However, she said the same does not apply to male politicians.

“If a male candidate is described as caring, he is still seen as a good political leader,” Bauer said.

As a result, women politicians, just like any woman perceived as being in a position of power, walk a very fine line when it comes to their image in the political arena.

Additionally, in one of her studies of media coverage, Bauer found that it matters how the media covers the physical characteristics of women running for office. She found that voters respond quite negatively to coverage that does not focus on the appearance of a women politician, actually counting it against the candidate.

Another problem with the media’s coverage of women politicians is that there often isn’t enough of it.

Erika Falk, author of the book Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns, studied the media coverage of the nine women who ran for

president before 2008. These women included Victoria Woodhull, Belva Lockwood, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Patricia Schroeder, Lenora Fulani, Elizabeth Dole, Carol Moseley Braun and Hillary Clinton.

Falk compared men and women who ran in the same races and found some startling differences.

For every article written about the woman’s campaign, there were two published about the men in the race.

Falk’s data also supported Bauer’s assertion that the media is less interested in women politicians’ policies, as only 16 percent of the text in the articles about women politicians had to do with their policies. In contrast, 27 percent of the text in the articles about men covered their policies. Along these same lines, Falk found that 40 percent of the text in the articles she examined contained some kind of physical description of women candidates. These kinds of descriptions were included in just 14 percent of the text in the articles Falk looked at about male candidates.

Due to the data she gathered, Falk expressed concern that while the press may not have a direct hand in preventing women from getting elected, the bias of

“If the media portrays a women candidate as having traditionally feminine traits, such as being caring, voters are less likely to think that candidate would be a good leader.”

“Until very, very recently in history, the default image of a U.S. president has been a white male. Women who have run for office have often faced attempts to trivialize their candidacies, often by stereotyping them or not taking them seriously enough.”

This has a demonstrable impact. A study done in 2010 by the organization Name It. Change It, whose goal is to “work to end sexist and misogynistic coverage of women candidates by all members of the press,” found that voters focused heavily on if women candidates were reported as likeable.

Clinton addressed the criticisms of her personality in an interview with Humans of New York author and photographer Brandon Stanton.

“I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional,” she said. “But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that’s a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time, you don’t want to seem ‘walled off.’”

However, Newly Paul, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Appalachian State University, argued there are a few more factors at play when it comes to coverage of Clinton.

“I don’t think we should consider Hillary Clinton as a representative of all women candidates,” Paul said.

“She is very different because she has been in the public eye for decades, has a lot of political baggage and is a very polarizing figure,” Paul said.

She explained that media criticism of politicians’ personalities isn’t limited to Clinton. While the press may be portraying Clinton as emotionally cold, Paul referenced times in 2008 when then Sen. Barack Obama was criticized for seeming too aloof.

“I think leaders in general are expected to be warm and mix easily with the public,” she said. “Those who do not fit this frame, regardless of their gender,

face some amount of criticism.”

So what will it take for there to be fair press coverage of all politicians without gender getting in the way of what they are standing for? Paul said one method is for journalists to “try to reduce the popular impression that politics is a gendered field.”

Times are changing, and how these political narratives are dealt with will have a significant impact on the future of politics and whether it can be redefined as an un-gendered field. It is important that voters recognize the implicit biases and antiquated stereotypes that are still prevalent in the coverage of women politicians. Awareness of these factors is important when voters decide what candidates to support.

Overall though, Bauer said the problem of the media’s coverage of women politicians will be a difficult one to solve.

“Journalists and news routines create a climate where it may be easy to fall back on implicit stereotypes about women when covering a female candidate’s campaign,” Bauer said. “And combating implicit bias is really hard.”

However, she said having knowledge of the problem is one way to begin addressing it.

“Being aware of the fact that there are implicit biases at all stages of the electoral process, including news coverage ... is a good start.” ___________________________________ Mila Phelps- Friedl is a second-year journalism major who doesn’t put up with the media’s crap. You can reach them at mphelpsfriedl@ithaca.edu.

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the media may discourage women from running in the first place.

Falk explained, “When women run for office, not at the presidential [level], at lower levels, they win as often as men do. And that’s not how people perceive it. My concern is that one of the reasons women don’t run as often is because of the press coverage.”

A specific example of the media travails women have to endure when running for political office, as cited by Political Parity — a “nonpartisan platform” that works to increase the number of women in political office — was when Elizabeth Dole ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.

“The amount of coverage she received failed to reflect her standing in the polls, disproportionately focused on her lack of funds, and treated her bid as a novelty,” the website noted.

Jean Sinzdak, associate director for the Center for American Women and Politics, theorized on where this media bias against female politicians originated.

“A big factor probably has to do with cultural expectations of what public leaders look like,” she said.

“Until very, very recently in history, the default image of a U.S. president has been a white male. Women who have run for office have often faced attempts to trivialize their candidacies, often by stereotyping them or not taking them seriously enough.”

In the current presidential race, Hillary Clinton is campaigning to be the very first woman to win the Oval Office. But rather than focusing on this potentially historic moment, much of the media coverage of Clinton has criticized her for being “too cold,” “unemotional” and “unrelatable.”

Appropriating Patriotism

How the conflation of patriotism and nationalism has militarized society

By Isabella Grullon Paz, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

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n 2008, a baseball fan in Yankee Stadium was forcibly ejected by an officer for trying to go to the bathroom while “God Bless America” was playing during the 7th inning stretch. The man was Bradford Campeau-Laurion, a Boston Red Sox fan living in New York City who wanted to watch his team beat the Yankees in their territory. According to The New York Times, when Campeau-Laurion told the officer that releasing his bladder was more important than the song, the officer proceeded to drag him out of the stadium while also asking him to leave the country.

The story broke after CampeauLaurion wrote a letter in which he talked about the expulsion. In the letter, he emphasized that “nowhere on the Yankee Stadium ticket policy nor on any posted sign does it say that forced patriotism is a required element to attend a baseball game.”

Patriotism has evolved to mean a lot of different things to a variety of people. David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association, defined patriotism as “fondness for your country and land with no implicit militarism and no specific attitude of superiority.”

An army recruiter, Lieutenant Benjamin Grove, said a patriot “is somebody who looks at the Unites States, or any country or organization they are a part of, and places that organization above [their wellbeing].”

And Kelly Dietz, a politics professor at Ithaca College, said “patriotism … welcomes critical reflection on the country and questions the privileging of military force as a solution to international problems.”

However, the consensus between Niose, Grove and Dietz is that, somewhere along the line, the distinction between patriotism and nationalism has been blurred. Nationalism is an extreme version of patriotism that calls for the use of force to protect a nation’s superiority, Niose said.

Being in a constant state of

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war is the reason the line between patriotism and nationalism has been blurred in the United States, because nationalism often creates a militaristic mood which leads to patriotic feelings about one’s country, Niose added.

This is what Dietz would call the “militarization of everyday life,” a term that she has explored in the

whether or not the cadet decides to become an officer or not. It also helps with the purchase of textbooks and provides a living stipend.

These benefits are also granted if someone gets contracted while doing the Reserve Officer Training Corps program or attends Senior Military Colleges. Allowing families to send their children to college in

“Here lies the danger of patriotism becoming militarism: substituting patriotism for an ism that uses the military to drive its superiority has allowed the U.S. to protect the military budget and market it.” classes she teaches at Ithaca College as well as in her fieldwork.

The militarization of everyday life can be seen in how military values have permeated American life under the guise of patriotism, the commercialization of American pride and in the overt corporate interest of the military industrial complex.

“For many Americans, their sense of national identity is strongly shaped by narratives of the U.S. military as a force for, and a source of, security, peace, democracy [and] freedom,” Dietz said.

There is a danger in the massive dependency on the military and one’s national identity being related to it, Noise said.

“We’re not so much a civilian culture anymore, but we’re a culture where all roads lead to the military for those who want to be successful,” he said.

The post 9/11 G.I. Bill is one example of this. It states that the military can cover up to 100 percent of student tuition, depending on the economic situation and

exchange for that child’s military service grants more opportunities to those who might not have them.

“For a lot of young people nowadays, joining the military is the only option … there is no affordable education by any other routes, there are no good jobs by any other route, so the system has kind of structured itself in a way that militarism is the only option,” Niose said.

However, Niose also said this dependency on the military for societal advancement could lead to a somewhat grim future. The reason he is not comfortable with militarism is that he doesn’t believe it encourages critical thinking.

“If we as a society are exalting militarism and basically criticizing anyone who questions the benevolence of American militarism and American foreign policy … what we’re really doing is saying that critical thinking is no longer a cultural value in this country,” Niose said.

Dietz shares the sentiment that this dependency on the military does not bode well. She said be-

. cause the military does not encourage critical thinking, “this often leads to an unreflective positive valuation of the use of military force — by the US, that is — as well as support for using national resources to sustain U.S. military power.”

Here lies the danger of patriotism becoming militarism: substituting patriotism for an ism that uses the military to drive its superiority has allowed the U.S. to protect the military budget and market it. It has created a situation that many groups have taken advantage of.

“Many of our largest corporations are military contractors,” Niose said when asked about how much corporate interest plays into the confusion of patriotism and militarism.

An article in the independent news source Truthout from 2015, emphasized how these military contractors need war to stay profitable.

For example, the National Priorities Project, a private defense contractor, made over $5.5 billion in profit in 2014 and was also able to pay its CEO over $34 million. If no wars are being fought, the National Priorities Project loses profits for the year.

The way that wars are perpetuated is through this conflation of patriotism and militarism, which often makes it seem like war is the only route to success in society.

“There are a lot of people that believe that to be a part of a nation like the United States, it should be the duty of the citizens to serve their country in some way, shape,

or form — to give [back] to the public,” Grove said. “Many people view that as military service.”

This understanding of civic duty and militarism is one of the reasons that the U.S. has not stopped fighting wars. Military contractors capitalize on the narrative of “serving your country,” in order to stay in business. The result is hyperpatriotic sentiments deeming the United States is the best country in the world being drilled into people’s heads over and over again.

On a smaller scale, nonmilitary related corporations also take advantage of this blind patriotism in other ways.

“Businesses are going to be businesses,” Grove said. “They exist to make money, so they are going to exploit different patriotic tendencies to make money.”

Grove said he feels that because of the rise of commercialization, people have forgotten what it means to be a patriot as well as how to create an “American” identity. Many commercials allude to the idea that the purchase of a certain car or a particular grill will make you more American than purchasing something else.

For example, Chevrolet’s slogan is “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet,” a list of things that harken to the “true” American patriot.

Niose said corporations have taken advantage of the conflation between patriotism and nationalism. This is why instead of being about the history of the holidays

“This understanding of civic duty and militarism is one of the reasons that the U.S. has not stopped fighting wars. Military contractors capitalize on the narrative of ‘serving your country,’ in order to stay in business.“

themselves, the Fourth of July and Memorial Day have become some of the biggest sales of the year.

“If the corporate interests realize that by fanning the flames of patriotism and nationalism, they are more likely to generate business themselves, then they’ll do it,” Niose said.

Military Contractors and corporations are not the only ones who do this; politicians also take advantage of these patriotic tendencies. Candidates almost always end speeches with “God Bless America,” or in this election, “Make America Great Again.”

“Politicians realize that the patriotic message is something that resonates, that it is something that is going to get them elected,” Niose said. “There are just a lot of interests that are benefited by the promotion of militarism or patriotism, so it’s not surprising that it resonates.”

But the problem becomes when patriotism is constructed as a nationalistic and militaristic ideology instead of as a feeling. As we see in the U.S. today, this mentality produces an overt and artificial excitement instead of a natural emotion. This accentuation of U.S. exceptionalism comes from the country’s violent history, and has created a culture of militarism and militaristic superiority. When militarism becomes confused with an intrinsic value, like the love of one’s country, it allows the country to be defined by its militaristic and capitalistic culture and not by constructive criticism. ___________________________________ Isabella Grullon Paz is a third-year journalism major who doesn’t like singing at baseball games. You can reach them at igrullon@ithaca.edu.

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Are You Really Rolling on the Floor?

The acceptable artificiality of fake laughter

By Ana Borruto, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

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OL! LAWL! ROFL! We all “laugh out loud,” and “roll on the floor laughing,” but do we really mean it?

We can “ah ha ha,” chortle, guffaw and “he he he” all we want, but laughs come off as artificial. Texting has become its own language, and while in our real-life social situations and in our digital reality we can text “LOLs, LAWLs and ROFLs,” it’s difficult to understand the true meaning behind the acronyms.

One must question why we feel the need to use these acronyms. Why do we even laugh? It might be more than finding something funny — there’s a psychological component to laughter that goes beyond humor.

Carolyn McGettigan, psychology professor at Royal Holloway University of London, said laughter is an important vocal signal in human interaction. She said our laughter begins in the early stages of our lives and is ever present in conversations and humorous situations.

“It plays a huge role in everyday conversation,” McGettigan said. “It is peppered throughout the speech that we use and it’s used as a signal of affiliation, a signal of positive experience and a signal of liking.”

McGettigan said we use laughter to show the person we are interacting with that this social experience is positive and enjoyable. However, through technology now, it is hard to differentiate if the enjoyment on one side is real. McGettigan said laughter is an affiliated signal, and fake laughter is being polite and a way of controlling our responses.

“The most extreme cases of laughter are cases that aren’t much under our control,” she said. “It can be argued, in some sense, we’re simulating this other, more intense, more spontaneous vocalization.”

For example, look at Jimmy Fallon’s infamous fake laughter on The Tonight Show. His forced laughter is meant to fill the room during awkward conversations with celebrities, but he has been criticized for not being genuine. McGettigan said fake laughter can be a form of social

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benefit. For example, Fallon could do it to form a better connection with their audience.

“We can fake laughter in order to smooth the social interaction,” McGettigan said.

“I have to be able to produce signs that are going to be convincing enough to the listeners in that group.”

Greg Bryant, associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at UCLA, said in a Washington Post article that it is easy for us to tell when someone is really laughing or not.

However, despite Bryant’s findings the normalization of fake laughter has pervaded other spheres of social life.

Examples of acceptable fake laughs can be found in television shows such as Friends and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. “Canned laughter,” or a laugh track is used as a social cue, forces the audience to know when to laugh at a joke McGettigan said.

Sarah Larson, a contributing writer for The New Yorker, said she thinks fake laughter stems from nervousness in awkward social situations. When we hear a corny joke, we laugh to be polite, not because the joke was actually funny, she said.

“In real life, people laugh because of tension of all kinds,” Larson said. “The tension that humor generates, tension being released and the many kinds of tension that arise from social anxiety or just interactions.”

Larson said laughing digitally is even more awkward, because it is hard to tell if the laughter is real. We type “LOL!” but are we really laughing out loud?

“It’s really weird, a lot of times I’m texting with my young step sister, and she types a ton of ‘ha’s’ and it’s awesome because I’m like ‘ah I’m so funny,’” she said. “But then I’m like, ‘is she really laughing her head off?’”

Despite the ways fake laughter evolves over time — the idea of sharing content has not changed and most have earned their hearty laughs from audiences.

Larson said online comedy shows like Billy On the Street, Difficult People, as well as comedy specials with Aziz Ansari,

Bo Burnham, and several others, have produced their share of authentic laughs.

“If you have a good voice and you’re funny, people will find you,” Larson said.

“That wasn’t always the case when power was just centralized for a few magazines, networks. It’s more democratic.”

The artificiality of laughter has evolved from laugh tracks, to comic strips, to LOLs and ROFLs, and is present in everyday conversation. It’s a way of breaking the ice, tip-toeing around awkwardness and it creates social benefit for oneself. Although fake laughter is pretty common, hearing a real, authentic chuckle makes conversations and social situations a whole lot better.

We’ve been laughing since the beginning of time, but before acronyms to convey laughter came about, Larson said we began to see laughter actually written out in the 1950s. For example, in the Peanuts comic, Charlie Brown and his friends would laugh, and it would be spelled out. Laughter could be spelled out in numerous ways, and Larson said each laughter onomatopoeia has a different meaning.

In Larson’s article, ‘ha ha’ is a “respectful laugh,” while ‘hehe’ is more cute and giddy. This can pertain to actual laughter or digital. Overall, the laughter you choose to express can give off a certain message. ___________________________________ Ana Borruto is a third-year journalism major who wants you to think twice the next time you type an initialism. You can email them at aborruto@ithaca.edu

The Illusion of the Century

What the hell happened to the American Dream?

By S. Makai Andrews, Contributing Writer

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hey immigrated from Poland in 1935. Came through Ellis Island from Italy. Caught a flight to the United States from Russia after Vladimir Putin’s election. People achieved college educations, found spouses and jobs and started families. Their houses grew in size and slowly they saw their kids get an education, houses, a job and start families of their own. This is what is called the American Dream. The dream that was taught in U.S. schools, the dream that stresses prosperity and accomplishment above all else.

Education and the American Dream Because of his father’s deportation, Ramos was unable to go to college — a large part of achieving the American Dream. But the pressure to achieve such success through education has taken a toll on the youth.

Psychologist Penelope Facher works with many adolescents in the Los Angeles area and has witnessed the beginnings of a startling pattern. “Ten or 15 years ago, adolescents who came to see me were primarily presenting with social challenges, family difficulties and maybe some depression and substance use,” Facher said. However, Facher said in the last five years, a vast majority of the adolescents who came to her practice have had issues around stress, anxiety about school, achievement and getting into college.

And according to an article published in The Atlantic from April 2014, getting into one’s favored college has become more of an uphill climb than it used to be. It is clear that the race to achieve the American Dream through educational advancement is having harmful impacts on many young people.

Final thoughts It becomes apparent then that the American Dream has become nothing more than a greasy taunt that America throws at its youth, and particularly at immigrants and people of color. Earlier generations have already fought, and often failed, to achieve this life. That’s why there are still so many fighting for their slice of the dream. But what happens when they get here and things aren’t as sweet as people once promised? Ramos and Alberca are testaments to the different harsh realities that many immigrant families and people of color are facing. *Source is a writer for Buzzsaw. ____________________________

S. Makai Andrews is a firstyear writing major who knows a false societal phenomena when she sees one. You can reach them at sandrews@ithaca.edu.

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People of color and the American Dream But where are the people of color in this scenario — the immigrants from Mexico, Venezuela, the Philippines? Their stories don’t seem to be included in this narrative.

If you Google “the American Dream,” you have to go through 62 images before seeing a person of color. Additionally, statistics show people of color have not been the beneficiaries of the American Dream. For example, in the 2013 U.S. Current Population Survey, black men still only made 75.1 percent of the dollar, while black women made 64 percent, Hispanic men made 67.2 percent and Hispanic women made 54 percent.

Additionally, in a recent study, John Hopkins Professor of Sociology Meredith Greif explained that the homeowner aspect of the American Dream is harder for people of color to achieve compared to their white neighbors. Greif found that not only do white Americans have higher rates of homeownership, they also tend to live in richer neighborhoods with more benefits and services Berellyn Alberca*, a first-year student at Ithaca College, immigrated from the Philippines when she was 11. She believes that the American Dream has never been an option for people of color, and still isn’t today.

“America is really good at pretending nothing’s wrong,” she said.

“The American Dream has never applied to undocumented immi-

grants and immigrants of color.

It is mostly associated with white immigrants who are more likely to be employed and trusted.”

Alberca isn’t shy when talking about her own experience as an immigrant. “My experience as an immigrant has been more of a competition with America trying to beat us down to the ground,” she said. “For this country to steal our achievements and write its name on them is complete bullshit.”

As an undocumented immigrant, Alberca doesn’t qualify for financial aid or scholarships. “I feel like a burden to my family being [at Ithaca College] when I could’ve chosen a cheaper school,” Alberca said.

This is not, however, the attitude of all immigrant families. David Rigoberto Ramos, an 18-year-old janitor from Inglewood, California said his father immigrated from Mexico before he was born. Ramos, along with his siblings, were all born in the states. In 2003, his father was arrested and served a single day in jail as his sentence. He never again committed a crime. But 12 years later, he was stopped outside his house in Inglewood by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and told his deportation had been ordered because of his crime all those years ago. Once transferred to the detention center, he told his family he would rather be deported than stay and fight in the terrifying conditions the detention center presented.

Ramos has become the provider for his two siblings and his daughter while also looking after his grandmother. “It’s been a lot,” he said.

“Some months we [barely] get by.”

And yet, he still believes in the idea of the American Dream.

“Growing up I’ve always heard of the American dream,” he said. “Everyone in my family [told] us to do better than they had. To go to school so we can own our house to earn a better education so we can move out of poverty to one day be able to step outside for a run without the worry of being hurt simply because we were outside at the wrong time.”

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The Politics of Pumpkin Spice An exploration of the treat we love to hate

By Michele Hau, Upfront Editor

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Upfront

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BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

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t’s time. Heaps of concentrated sugar delicately mixed with warm, frothy milk fat, topped with an enchantingly addictive blend of caffeine, cinnamon, salt, sugar and consumerism; the pumpkin spice latte has made its 13th annual appearance in Starbucks around the world this fall. Besides being characterized as the glimmering orange drink paying homage to the equally decorative gourd, the pumpkin spice latte (affectionately known as PSL) is Starbucks’ most effective contribution to the season of autumn, for better and for worse.

Beyond a medium, holding more than 40 percent of your daily saturated fat and 10 percent of your daily value of sodium, the infamous pumpkin spice latte is brightly touted as Starbucks’ “most popular beverage of all time,” establishing itself as a cultural touchstone in recent years.

Without much effort, the concept of “pumpkin spice” has infiltrated public consciousness, inspiring different products ranging from premium scented candles to craft beer.

The popularity of the pumpkin spice latte can be attributed to Starbucks’ savvy advertising that takes advantage of natural associations with autumn pleasures. Capitalizing on fashion and trends is what might be behind the infiltration of pumpkin spice in the last couple of years, said Michael Krondl, author of “Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert.”

“Foods go in and out of fashion and nailing down exactly why can be challenging,” he said. “My guess is that Starbucks and others were looking for a marketing gimmick for the fall and seeing the increased popularity of Halloween, looked for a flavor to complement the holiday.”

Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said food companies are desperate to get people to buy their products and are always trying to come up with something new that will sell.

“It’s the current fad,” she said. “I’m guessing it won’t last more than a year or two.”

Yet, the success of the PSL is not just indicative of its frank deliciousness and the brilliant advertising by Starbucks.

Part of its appeal has to do with the over-the-top embrace by its consum-

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ers, making it a cultural icon. The PSL’s success demonstrates collision between 21st century tools and the creeping entanglement between consumerism and identity, Katie Hoffman, founder of the lifestyle blog Sass & Balderdash, said.

“Pumpkin spice lattes are a representation of the cultural shift from quiet consumerism to celebrated consumerism … in many ways the pumpkin spice latte is the factor that defines pre-and post-Instagram eras,” she said.

Given that more technologies are available for individuals to share and be visible, social media has made the connection between consumer culture and identity more nuanced and difficult to separate.

“Before Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat, the notion of keeping up with the Joneses was a lot more ambiguous … speculation about what the Joneses had was based on our own insecurities, but now social media lets you see every aspect of the proverbial Joneses’ lives,” Hoffman said.

While consumer culture has been part of society previously, the PSL is an exceptional case of consumerism being adopted conspicuously to be showcased to others as an identity. In “The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins,” authors Lisa Jordan Powell and Elizabeth D. Engelhardt raise the question of the season: “Why did PSLs become the symbol of basic white girlness? Why did they stick even more than UGGs, yoga pants or scented candles?”

Powell and Engelhardt propose the use of pumpkins in popular culture reveals deep racial and class codes in the marketing of food and flavor. Specifically, they describe how the term “basic bitch” has been coined in the PSL cultural movement as a stereotype tethered to discussions about white female identity and consumerism.

A basic bitch is most often thought to be a white, middle-class woman, whose greatest cultural reproach is wearing leggings as pants, Hoffman said.

However, the term has deviated from its original derivation and has evolved through contemporary conversations, Emma Teitel — a columnist at the Toronto Star who specializes in writing about women and LGBTQ+ issues — said.

“The stereotypical basic bitch originated in hip-hop by black folks, but we now think of it in reference to white girls in cultural markers — UGG boots, high

waisted shorts, iPhones,” she said. “At its heart, basic bitches have an unapologetic embrace of mainstream culture and consumerism.”

However, this “unapologetic embrace” comes with overt messages of privilege.

Powell and Engelhardt write about how the pumpkin spice latte takes the evocative word “pumpkin,” and attaches it to something that is artificially constructed in its nature. They note that prior to Fall 2015, the PSL did not actually contain any pumpkin, a jarring contradiction considering the popularity of the beverage.

The result is that PSLs are an abstraction far beyond the original pumpkin. Often rationalized as an innocent celebration of fall, “basic bitches” perform their consumption through showcasing the artificially constructed PSL as a marker for the organic season. This action expands beyond highlighting an individual object, going one step further to validate a cultural attitude.

“Because we’re already so entangled in each other’s lives, liking pictures and tagging, wanting to be a part of something is more important to us than ever before — even if it can carry potentially negative connotations,” Hoffman said.

While the advent of pumpkin spice has been easily brushed off as a “basic” fad in recent years, it is more accurately a rebirth, as the pumpkin has a deeper symbolic history in mainstream culture. As a fruit, ingredient and a symbol, the pumpkin is meaningful in American culture, said Emily Contois, a PhD candidate in food studies at Brown University.

Perhaps the first mention of pumpkin spice was in what was widely considered to be the first cookbook in the United States. Published in 1796, American Cookery attempted to create a uniquely “American identity” through food. In it, the recipe for “pompkin pudding” mentions the same ingredients found in pumpkin spice: molasses, ginger and allspice. More importantly, though, its placement in the cookbook demonstrates that pumpkin spice since its inception has coincided with traditional American values.

“It’s linked to nostalgic notions and national values around nature, the agrarian dream and small family farms,” Contois said. “Pumpkin spice taps into this historical meaning — and its deep resonance might be part of why pumpkin spice products are so polar-

izing, so widely embraced and so vehemently abhorred.”

Whether consciously or unconsciously known, the prevalence and influence of the pumpkin in American food culture emphasizes the connection between tastes and the symbolic political nature of food. On a macro scale, food trends can serve as markers of identity, social group and status, Nestle said.

In a globalized world, what people choose to consume are specific to the cultures and subcultures that people live in and engage with, Krondl said. In short, “Tastes are never just tastes.”

With respect to pumpkin spice, the limited-time offer can mimic the pattern of rhythm and seasonal eating, Contois said. “Pumpkin spice products seek to reproduce the thrill and ritual of natural seasonality, but through the marketplace and broader rhythms of consumer culture,” she said.

However, the artificial nature of replicating such rhythm is amplified when our global food system often supplies us with whatever we want, when we want it. The thrill of seasonal eating is lost through the monotony of having ingredients readily available, she said.

“Even though many pumpkin spice products don’t contain pumpkin, it matters that pumpkin is in the name, as it conjures the natural bounty of the autumnal harvest and its connections to the land that are both nostalgic and nationalist,” Contois said.

The satisfaction that is gained from consuming and displaying a time-exclusive pumpkin spice latte as opposed to a year-round latte brings with it not only faux-synchronization, but also a status symbol for group identity.

By marketing the pumpkin spice latte as an urgent limited time only offer, consumers feel as though they are partaking in an exclusive act just by ordering one, Hoffman said.

Yet, there is a distinction between simply drinking a pumpkin spice latte because it tastes good, and buying one as a status symbol, said Sasanka Jinadasa, capacity building and resource manager at HIPS — a sexual violence reduction advocacy group — and writer for the literary and activist blog Black Girl Dangerous.

“It’s concerning if you get a pumpkin spice latte as a status symbol,” she said. “When this happens, it’s important to have conversations that integrate the class privileges that are inherent in this consumption.”

Starbucks’ products themselves are items of affordable luxury, communicating a specific class distinction. When a pumpkin spice latte costs at least $4, only some can justify spending so much money on a beverage, no matter how enticing.

When calling someone out as a basic bitch, one is alluding to perceived privilege, Hoffman said.

“She wears certain brands, shops certain places, buys certain special coffee drinks,” she said. “Pumpkin spice lattes and UGG boots are both things commonly associated with being a ‘basic bitch.’”

mode of cultural being. You can be basic on your own.”

The dismissive nature of calling someone basic prevents discussion of real cultural and societal issues, Hoffman said.

“Is there not something inherently misogynistic that a basic bitch commonly refers to a woman?” she said. “My own boyfriend enjoys pumpkin spice lattes, but even if he and his fellow male PSLenthusiasts descended upon Starbucks in droves, would the term ‘basic pricks’ become part of our language?”

Exploiting this inherent contradiction, the unapologetic character of the basic bitch has, in some circles, reclaimed the term as a means of empowerment against misogyny. Through the rise of social media and Internet culture, people have the opportunity to subvert structures in a new way, Teitel said.

“What the Internet has done has allowed things to be ironic, even the popular cheerleader type,” Teitel said. “What I like about [the basic bitch] is that she is trolling hipsters in a way through embracing her basicness. … She pokes fun at the trend and pushes back.”

Nevertheless, conflating pumpkin spice lattes with some level of seasonal superficiality is a genderless action, Hoffman said.

“No matter how delicious a pumpkin spice latte is on a cool October morning, we’re all being manipulated.” _______________________________________ Michele Hau is a third-year culture and communication major whose favorite drink to order at Starbucks is a water cup. They can be reached at mhau@ ithaca.edu.

“Often rationalized as an innocent celebration of fall, ‘basic bitches’ perform their consumption through showcasing the artificially constructed PSL as a marker for the organic season.”

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Upfront

Despite the entanglements of consumerism and identity in “basic bitches,” some argue that calling someone basic is a deflection from the fear of how capitalism begets conformity.

In her piece published by Buzzfeed in 2014, media studies scholar and cultural critic Anne Petersen writes about how the stereotype of the basic bitch has been used as a mechanism to divert attention from the creeping embrace of consumerism. She proposed that stereotypes are used with the most hostility when those wielding them are trying to distance themselves from the group they detest — even though they might be doing something similar.

Averting conversations about larger issues in favor of perpetuating another misguided stereotype is hypocritical.

“It’s not fair to deflect and criticize one person or a group of people when this is a problem that is much more widespread,” Teitel said. “Everyone adopts a

L. MINISTRYofCOOL. MI BUZZSAW: Dunk Issue

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Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Snap Judgement

Sexualizing Snapchat filters

By Catherine Colgan, Contributing Writer

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like the Meninist feed. This account posts tweets that revolve around the sexualization and objectification of females; the username alone is poking fun at women and feminist ideals.

Unfortunately, even as females use the filters specifically targeted towards them, Snapchat has unknowingly provided yet another set of means with which to degrade women.

Many of the aforementioned beauty filters have become less of a fun and harmless feature of Snapchat, and more of an instant retouch of the user’s face. Upon use, Elite Daily found that many filters will subtly modify the image taken: cheeks will be slimmed down, noses narrowed and eyes widened. Blemishes are smoothed out, as are freckles and any other facial marks deemed unsightly by modern society. The Independent, along with multiple other online publications, has also noted that many of Snapchat’s beautifying filters tend to lighten the user’s skin, inciting criticism that Snapchat is synonymizing beauty with white skin. Critics debate, yet one notion still stands: using the beautifying filters often confines women to one standard of beauty.

What’s most disturbing is that these modifications are so subtle that most are unaware of the changes being made to their appearance. Coming from an app originally desirable for its capture of the raw and unedited aspects of everyday life, the unconscious reworking of images allows further insecurities to develop among young women. Spending extensive time and extra effort applying special effects to one’s face also takes the user further from reality for a longer period of time, betraying the honesty the app originally intended to preserve. In addition, many celebrities like Ariana Grande and Kylie Jenner endlessly promote the filters, leaving the average user wondering why they cannot emulate the same presumed flawlessness in

their own lives. The normalization of “effortless” perfection when so much of Snapchat’s content has in fact been edited can promote dangerous ideas and expectations about body image. Besides the harmful mental effect, Eurekalert notes that such a process of disillusionment can lead to eating disorders and a bodily dissatisfaction across men and women alike. As a reinforcement of the legitimacy of this phenomenon, in 2011 the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a policy to reduce the retouching of images. With this in mind, it is surprising that in 2016, we are the ones editing now ourselves voluntarily, contradicting the body positive movements currently trending throughout the nation.

In the spirit of using Snapchat as an honest depiction of everyday experiences, users should consider the implications of the filters behind their daily selfies. Confidence is key in this generation, yet this does not negate the reluctance of many people to post any picture without some sort of edit, be it a lighting adjustment, cropped edges, and yes, now a Snapchat filter. Yet if external appearance continues to be voluntarily tweaked and edited, how is bodily acceptance ever to be achieved? Before Snapchat filters, the edits of images in the media were out of our control. Now, there is a choice. Perhaps after years of viewing idealistic images behind a filter, maybe humans should choose, finally, to allow themselves to exist without one. ___________________________________ Catherine Colgan is a first-year exploratory major who respects people who can give a silly face sans filter. You can reach them at ccolgan@ithaca.edu.

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Ministry of Cool

he popular picturesharing app, Snapchat, is rapidly becoming the answer to a number of existential questions.

Where am I? Say no more: there’s a geofilter for every remotely interesting landmark you care to document. What time is it? Don’t worry, Snapchat will boldly stamp your picture of a dark room with the time to let everyone know you have insomnia at 3 AM. What’s going on today? No problem, Snapchat will surely feature several celebrity stories to remind you that the VMAs are on later. How can I adhere myself to a conventional standard of beauty? Well, with its widely expanding set of filters, Snapchat again has your back!

Snapchat has quickly become a staple of communication and social media. Since its launch in 2011, it is now known as one of the most popular apps used today, sporting over 100 million active users and nine thousand snaps sent per second, according to Verily magazine. In 2015, Snapchat introduced Lenses.

Commonly referred to as “filters,” this feature allows the user to alter their image in numerous ways. When applying the filters, users can become a killer bunny, an adorable puppy, and now, thanks to a number of beautifying filters, a better version of themselves.

The use of specific Snapchat filters has invited many widespread instances of slut-shaming and mockery. In particular, Affinity magazine points out that use of the puppy or crown filters are often judged heavily by others, to the point of being deemed “hoe” filters. While this phenomenon is mostly covered by pop-culture publications without any scientific grounds, the negative mindset against these filters has been observed by both men and women.

Indeed, the filters conventionally used by women have been bashed by male-centric Twitter accounts,

PhotoSTOP

The media’s perpetually unhealthy obsession with whitewashing

By Maria Bushby, Contributing Writer

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It’s in people’s phones through apps such as Snapchat or Instagram in their “beauty features,” and with that, people are just a few swipes and taps away from bigger eyes, a clearer complexion, and lighter skin.

It is still hard to find a movie where the main character is dark skinned or portrayed as someone other than an aggressor. Even celebrities cannot escape from the media’s message. Kerry Washington and Beyoncé are examples of this sad truth, as Photoshop takes over the industry. The March 2015 cover of InStyle magazine features a photo of Washington. She looks happy as she beams into a camera. She also looks a few shades lighter than her natural skin tone. The same goes for Beyoncé in a L’Oreal ad released in Aug. 2008.

How the media portrays people who are dark-skinned bleeds into reality. Everyday objects such as makeup have just started to be made for darker skin tones. Until 2016, Neutrogena, a cosmetic company, did not have a shade of liquid makeup that would match a diverse range of skin tones. There were beiges and peaches, but nothing darker.

Washington realized this when she first began working with Neutrogena, and began to push for change.

Washington’s pushing worked as Neutrogena eventually added four news shades: honey, caramel, cocoa and chestnut. Positive feedback was received through Twitter when this occurred with words of praise such as “@kerrywashington so proud of you for helping @Neutrogena expand their color pallet. Now every girl can feel beautiful using this brand.” This transition is a sign that the public wants and knows they deserve better, and positive feedback from companies is appreciated and needed.

Improvements are being made in the media as well, specifically in magazines as more and more people of color are being used as models, but there is still a long way to go.

In 1996, Tyra Banks was the first black woman to be featured on the cover of the magazine, GQ, which had released its first issue in 1957.

In 2002, Halle Berry was only the person of color to be on the cover of Cosmopolitan. There are people of color being featured now, but the lack of representation is worrisome.

Yet there is hope. People are beginning to take the stand that no matter their color, they matter. Even through simple the action of not Photoshopping people, of giving more representation to people of color in magazines, and of having shades of makeup fitting for everyone and not just for those who are lighter skinned, could make a difference. _________________________________ Maria Bushby is a first-year English major who thinks whitewashing should only be in reference to laundry. You can reach them at mbushby@ithaca.edu.

Image by Courtney Yule

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or centuries, the world has looked at lighter skin as a sign of beauty, wealth and power. Although times are changing and people are realizing that the color of skin does not represent everything a person is, America is still a few steps behind. Whether it be Beyoncé on a billboard or an everyday person of color in a school poster, chances are, their skin has been lightened. Through this, the constant push of society’s idea that lighter is better is spread.

The belief that whiter skin, lighter skin, is the ticket to a better life is still believed around the world, including the United States. In an article published in 1997 from The Independent, a young black woman, Jessica, said, “It seems really silly now, but at the time I was obsessed with being pale and knew quite a few light-skinned black women who were always popular and successful and never had a shortage of boyfriends.” Another woman, Allison, at the time a black 20-yearold politics student, said, “A lot of black men like light-skinned girlfriends, because white is still seen as successful, and the closer you can be to that ideal, the better.”

Fast forward to 2016 and the belief that the lighter the skin, the easier life will be, is still around and well. Bill Duke, director of the documentary Light Girls, points out that about $10 billion is spent a year around the world to make a person’s skin lighter, and the demand for toxic lighteners is high. According to a study done by Jill Viglione, author of “The Impact of Light Skin on Prison Time for Black Female Offenders,” the lighter an inmate, the less time they would serve.

Although not all of American media has ignored this problem, many publications do not report it and keep silent about the issue. Its message that lighter is better is everywhere.

By Design

Fashion as a means for defining identity

By Alex Coburn, Staff Writer

F Image by Francesca Hodge

or teens and 20-somethings, it’s hard to think of a time when perceptions about identity weren’t tightly intertwined with social media usage. It’s incredibly easy to form an opinion about someone before even scrolling all the way through their Instagram profile; one picture of them wearing Vineyard Vines already has them pegged as a “preppy Republican.”

However, using fashion as a way to not only identify oneself, but also others, is not a concept unique to the social media age. It dates back to the “invention” of the teenager, a phrase first appearing in a 1944 Life article called “Teen-age Girls: They Live in a Wonderful World of Their Own.” This article chronicled the lives of a group of suburban teenagers, focusing heavily on what they wore.

In retrospect, the article seems fairly

“Social media is a new form of advertising,” Gonzalez said. “In the past, you went to a store and you liked something because you saw it on a mannequin, but now there are people dressed like you all across the world. It’s sort of globalized fashion.

Now, it’s much easier to get a look across.

And especially in recent years, outfits change and trends change so quickly.”

Judging someone based on their appearance is a fifth grade-level nono, but everyone does it anyway. The cliché “Don’t judge a book by its cover” has been said so many times that it’s probably lost all meaning. But to divorce someone’s outward appearance from their inner personality is almost impossible.

According to Leonard Mlodinow from Psychology Today, it is perfectly natural and innate to let someone’s appearance color perceptions of them, not only with romantic partners, but with every human interaction.

“In all our perceptions, from vision to hearing to the pictures we build of people’s character, our unconscious mind starts from whatever objective data is available to us — usually spotty — and helps to shape and construct the more complete picture we consciously perceive,” Mlodinow said.

So even though everyone is chided at some point in their lives for judging someone superficially, the reality is that it’s literally a neurological reflex. To stop it would be the same as trying to stop a knee from popping up when a doctor hits it with a rubber hammer. But while it’s a difficult habit to stop, it’s important to learn to work past it and give people chances beyond their first impression.

In reality, maybe it’s true that a guy in a Death Grips shirt and a guy wearing Sperrys might not get along. And having these fashion-based factions is actually a good way to identify people whose interests, at least superficially, align with one’s own.

But regardless of base human instincts, it’s important to try not to let assumptions stand in the way of human connection. It may not be all wearing poodle skirts and leather jackets and going to sock hops like it was at the time of the “invention of the teenager,” but even in the social media age, it’s possible to work past external differences and see that all young people are in this “being a millennial” thing together. _________________________________________

Alex Coburn is and photography is never without reach them at

a first-year cinema major whose book a cover. You can acoburn@ithaca.edu.

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Ministry of Cool

misogynistic, but it’s still important because it revolutionized the idea of what it meant to be a teenager. Before then, there was no separation between child and adult; now, there’s a space in between where it’s socially acceptable to be heavily concerned with appearance. For all young people, fashion seems like one of the few things they actually have control over.

Jennifer Baumgartner, Psy.D. from Psychology Today believes that that sense of control comes from the ability to choose how to present oneself to the world.

“Trends are not only a source of novelty but reinvention,” Baumgartner said. “Like painting the walls or changing the pillows of our home, an addition of a new and trendy item in our wardrobe allows for us to experience the excitement of self-reinvention.”

Nico Gonzalez, a theatrical arts production major with a concentration in costume design, agrees with Baumgartner that fashion is a conscious choice of self expression.

“Fashion is the most obvious way to get a first impression from someone, and fashion is a very personal thing,” Gonzalez said. “No matter if it’s a designer outfit worth thousands of dollars or sweatpants and a T-shirt, you obviously put that outfit on for a certain reason.”

With the invention of the teenager, fashion became a unifier. Young people felt connected to the people around them through what they wore. Whether it was the bobby soxers of the ‘50s, hippies of the ‘60s or disco pant-fanatics of the ‘70s, people formed ties easily based just on what was en vogue at the time. While subcultures existed, it took effort to seek them out, and it was much easier to just follow the current mainstream trend.

Today, while fashion can still unify, it can also divide. With social media, users are able to see things through a selective lens, ignoring certain groups of people while admiring others.

Communities are being formed not by proximity, but by fashion identification.

In a way, this gives young people a measure of autonomy they’ve never had before. They have the power to choose what to emulate and what to reject.

It’s no longer about what’s being worn in one’s town or school — it’s about finding trends with which to connect.

However, this “world-at-our-fingertips” mentality has also lead to a greater divide between different groups of people. People are categorized and written off based solely on how they dress. In the ‘50s when the teenager was a new concept, it was good to look like everyone else, to style hair the way everyone else was styling it. It indicated that one was part of a community. Today, it’s seen as “basic” to follow trends too closely.

The way that young people so strongly identify themselves by the way they dress is not a bad thing, but it’s something to be aware of. It colors their perceptions of the way they are in relation to people. According to Wendy Bendoni from the Woodbury University Fashion Marketing Department in an interview with Huffington Post, social media has definitely exacerbated this.

“There is so much data that you need to take a step back and listen,” Bendoni said. “For example, I search photos of girls at Coachella and look at the self-portraits they post on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest to imagine the story they are telling about themselves. It’s about lifestyle, conversation and monitoring.”

Gonzalez agrees with Bendoni’s assertion.

RAW SAW

Concert Review

FROM THE

Rooney Sophie Israelsohn

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

Ministry of Cool Editor

Cali-reppin’ alt. rock band Rooney made a stop at The Haunt on Oct. 28 during their first tour since 2010. The Haunt, aside from a few minimally obtrusive costumes and A Nightmare Before Christmas playing where sports usually do, had the same event-night vibe as always: relaxed, with the occasional waft of cigarette smoke and beer.

Rooney was joined by Austinbased band Swimming With Bears and Royal Teeth of New Orleans as co-openers for The Groundswell Tour. Swimming With Bears had a smaller crowd to start, as people were still trickling in during their set, but such a situation didn’t impose too greatly on their performance.

Lead singer and bassist Joe Perry has a vocal quality similar to that of Santigold in the freedom of his tenor range. He and the rest of the foursome played appropriately to their audience, gauging the level of participation during higher energy songs like “Do What You’re Told.”

The audience was invited to clap, though trusting them to uphold the responsibility through an entire song was, as always, a bit of a gamble.

Royal Teeth was next to take the stage. It took a few songs for the whole of the band to seem entirely comfortable, covering José

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González’s “Heartbeats” — a cover they had recorded in 2012 — early in their set as a familiar warm up.

Lead vocals by Nora Patterson were enough for her not to have to feel nervous. She hit all the right notes, literally, and her performance of “Kids Conspire” off of their upcoming EP, Amateurs, was full of seemingly effortless belts at the chorus.

Gary Larsen lent his vocals to harmony as well to lead in a few tracks, swapping between guitar, ukulele and floor tom in support of drummer John Hefner’s alreadyenergetic beat-keeping. Energy was definitely not lacking well into their set. Larsen spent any spare moment amping up the crowd which, at that point, really didn’t need any extra amping. The sphere of interaction between artist and concert-goer was so manifested that it was almost overdone. The audience seemed to be naturally enticed to such a degree that the extra designated clap-time and sing-along moments didn’t have much more of a pull.

Finally, after running around Ithaca promoting his directorial debut of the film Dreamland with a Q&A at Cinemapolis, Robert Schwartzman and the members of Rooney made it to their set.

Schwartzman, casual as ever in his trucker hat and jean jacket, made his way upstage, the California state flag–inspired banner, Rooney’s signature, hanging practically full-mast in the background.

Though Rooney has a different member lineup than when they originally formed, they didn’t leave out any of their old classics. They opened with “Blueside,” the first track of their self-titled album from 2003. And just like that, long-time listeners of the band were thrust back into the glory days of the early 2000s, recalling memories of the younger

Schwartzman featured in The O.C. and The Princess Diaries. Though in this setting, if he didn’t attempt to eat M&M’s off of his guitar, the audience would probably understand.

The entirety of Rooney’s set was in itself a tour of each of their four full-length albums, introducing the recently released album, Washed Away, in between old classics prehiatus, accessing a familiarity and quality identical to that of the studio recordings. Patterson of Royal Teeth joined Rooney on stage to perform “Why,” a duet originally recorded for the new album with French singer-songwriter Soko.

Rooney’s interaction with the audience was natural, an attitude they have had 10 years to perfect. During song transitions, Schwartzman wasn’t shy, and often got right up to the edge of the stage with his guitar.

By the end of the set, much of the audience had taken their phones out (#doitfortheinsta), capturing moments of the Washed Away single “My Heart Beats 4 U” as well as oldfavorites “I’m Shakin’” (Rooney) and “When Did Your Heart Go Missing” (Calling the World) as anticipated closers. Schwartzman at one point reached down and took hold of a frontrower’s iPhone, getting the closest close-up of himself for their video.

Rooney’s been around long enough to come back for the crowds that know them the best and maybe make a few new fans on the way. Whether a planned attendance or just a stop on the way to the rest of the weekend’s festivities, Rooney proved that even 10 years into the game, their sound is worth sticking around for.

Solange A Seat at the Table Album Review

John Jacobson

Bon Iver

Social Media Editor

22, A Million

Album Review Emily Ehranberg Contributing Writer

Solange’s third studio album came as a surprise to the music community. After her sister Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade made waves, Solange’s A Seat at the Table acted as a response to Lemonade’s ideas of blackness and womanhood in American music. A Seat at the Table is as much a sister to Lemonade as Solange is to Beyoncé, and that is clear both in its stunning musicality and its explicit representations of black subjectivities.

The album opens with the track “Rise.”

Solange sings a repetition of the phrase “Fall in your ways,” ending each chorus with, “Fall in your ways/ so you can wake up and rise.”

“Rise” positions A Seat at the Table as an album of empowerment. On this track, Solange’s voice seems to resonate in multiple waves.

Its harmonies are perfect, their repetition suggesting an empowering rise of a group, not just an individual. A sense is given that Solange is not only exploring her self-empowerment and her multiplicities of self, but that this empowerment has a resonance across a larger consciousness of black womanhood.

The album goes on to create haunting audiovisual representations of Solange’s self. She presents a journey of running away from her problems in “Cranes in the Sky,” utilizing its music video to express feelings of isolation.

“Mad” shows Solange embracing her ability to be angry, the phrase “I got a lot to be mad about (Be mad, be mad, be mad)” harkening back to a historical legacy of taking away black women’s emotional agency with their anger.

interspersing tranquil tones with more melodic mixtures of varied instruments and vocalizing. “____45____” highlights Vernon’s vocal talents the most and is a strong resolution for the album which closes with “00000 Million”.

While not lacking in vocal beauty, “00000 Million” is more repetitive and scaled back in a way that isn’t unappealing, but is somewhat boring. It continues with the same structural pattern until the last five seconds of the song, where it leaves the listener in total silence. However, Vernon’s final words on this track, “Well it harms me, it harms me, it harms/ I’ll let it in,” allow the song to end on a meditative note.

Overall, this album seems to be a complete aberration from Bon Iver’s typical solo style, but upon closer listening, it is clear that this is not the case. Vernon’s vocal style on 22, A Million remains similar to that of For Emma, Forever Ago (2007) and Bon Iver (2011). All three of these albums feature the unique acoustic vocal style. However, 22, A Million gives the band’s folksy singing and guitar a more modern update with the addition of electronic elements. For example, the vocals and backing instrumentals, notably the drums in “666+” sounds remarkably like “Perth” off off Bon Iver, but with the addition of distortion and auto tune that twists Vernon’s unmistakable voice just enough to give it a new edge without making it totally unrecognizable.

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Ministry of Cool

For the first time in five years, Bon Iver has released a new album. From the song titles and album cover alone it is clear that 22, A Million is an entirely different animal from what Bon Iver has typically produced. The titles contain cryptic words and symbols, and the cover art reflects this in the shapes and typography that are more akin to hieroglyphics than to the English alphabet. The surface detail serves as an appropriate preview for the strange, highly autotuned collection of songs that appeal to the senses through stimulating digital sounds.

22, A Million plays with the heavy use of autotune to create sounds that establish feelings of nostalgia or of being out in nature, and has the captivating lyricism of any of Bon Iver’s older albums. Vernon makes use of neologism and coins the word “paramind,” which seems to mean “beside the mind.” This evokes feelings that are nothing short of surreal, which plays further into Bon Iver’s liberal use of autotune to create sounds that sound real, but are not quite there.

“22 (OVER S∞∞N)” acts as an introduction to the second track, “10 d E A T h b R E s t,” that enters as a lively change compared to the mellow opener. This song is mostly autotuned, but the artificial sounds seem to mimic natural sounds, like raindrops and a crackling echo in Justin Vernon’s voice.“#29 Strafford APTS” is one of the least autotuned tracks, and is the most consistent with typical Bon Iver style. However, it is still consistent with the rest of the album, and features a scratching noise that is supposed to give the song an authentic, aged sound.

The rest of the album continues to flow through loftily tuned and altered melodies,

In “Mad,” we see those harmonious, melancholic vocals gain a sense of frustration, coupled with raw recollections of Lil Wayne.

We also have the track “F.U.B.U.” When Solange sings, “All my niggas let the whole world know/ Play this song and sing it on your terms/ For us, this shit is for us,” the purpose of A Seat at the Table is crystallized.

A Seat at the Table is an album that embraces black feminist thought through artistic selfexpression. Solange’s vocals are astounding — they’re full of emotional ghosts, the melancholy of remembering a deep and painful history.

They’re also studded with anger, joy and love.

From a track like “Mad,” the mood changes in “Junie,” which is an upbeat and foottapping collaboration with André 3000 that calls out people who claim to be allies without working to change systemic oppression.

Solange proves with this album that her artistry as a singer, writer, and producer is one that can be both intensely personal and political. There’s no distinction between the two. Rather, her self-understanding as a black woman in our world creates a tapestry for musical genius. A Seat at the Table is an album that cements Solange as an artist of the future, an artist who is unafraid to make an album for black people, black women, that the rest of us are privileged to listen to. A Seat at the Table is a momentous achievement in music, one that more than proves Solange deserves her own seat, and her own table, in this world.

Catherine Wells Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

The Dressmaker

Don’t Think Twice

Film Review

Film Review Kirsten Poulos

Contributing Writer

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Imagine going to the impossible improv show: funny, heartfelt and short. Mike Birbiglia’s latest poignant film, Don’t Think Twice, is about what happens to people who keep trying to say “yes” even when life is telling them “no.” Helmed by Gillian Jacobs as Samantha (Community, Love) and Keegan-Michael Key as Jack (Key & Peele), Don’t Think Twice relies on its ensemble cast as much as the fictional improv troupe The Commune, and is without a weak link in the group.

Each character feels fully realized and as painfully aware of their own inadequacies as the audience. The dynamics at play on and off stage are so deftly acted that the movie plays like a documentary about the improv scene, but not to its detriment: The audience learns the basic rules while getting to know all the players.

Glimpses of The Commune’s shows are sprinkled in expertly, and close-ups complement satisfying indie movie shots of New York City. The Commune is in trouble, its venue being sold, but the real drama quickly unfolds within its cast.

Weekend Live, the movie’s pitch-perfect version of SNL, could become a cliché cause for conflict in some screenplays.

Instead, the film examines the universal mixed feelings that arise around successful friends, exacerbated by the intense comedy scene. Miles (Birbiglia) The Dressmaker, directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, stars Kate Winslet and Liam Hemsworth. It’s about Tilly (Winslet), a woman who returns to her hometown in Australia after being run out by the accusation of murder. Returning as a talented seamstress, Tilly finds her purpose, but she is conflicted by her need for revenge.

While cinematically stunning, The Dressmaker’s plot proves distracting and takes away from the quality of the film. For one, the title is misleading, as dressmaking isn’t a huge part of the movie.

At first, it was entertaining, but as the plot continued to unravel, there were too many individual story lines for each character. A love story was added between Winslet and Hemsworth, as well as multiple subplots involving supporting characters.

The movie gets really busy and convoluted, and by the end, it’s too confusing to follow.

On a more positive note, the music and sound mixing are done brilliantly. Each sound is very deliberate and accentuated, making each moment stand out while also remaining well-done as a whole. In some cases, the sound is the main focus of a scene. For example, when Tilly is golfing, the audio is heightened. In other scenes, the sound serves as background noise to the dialogue and compliments the acting.

While the main plot is very dark

has been teaching improv for years and becomes the comedic version of a high school football coach who could have made it big, constantly talking about his own Weekend Live audition with an expert mixture of self-pity for his disappointment and self-hatred for still bringing it up.

When one member of The Commune gets cast, everyone’s own doubts about their path in comedy and life quickly come to a boiling point. Lindsay (Tami Sagher, who doesn’t waste a line of dialogue) grapples with her trust fund privilege (truly a first world problem) made worse by her friends playing the roles of struggling artists. Bill (Chris Gethard) and Allison (Kate Micucci) wonder if the dreams they’ve been chasing for so long are simply that, and if it’s delusional to keep going at this point.

In the end, Don’t Think Twice truly belongs to Gillian Jacobs and Keegan Michael-Key. Sam and Jack are funny during their onscreen romance without being an annoying, couple-y couple, a truly remarkable feat, and dramatic scenes are all the stronger because of their talent. Sam’s identity crisis is as painful to watch as your twenties are to live through, in the best possible way. Don’t Think Twice shows failure so much better than the usual Hollywood narrative, but the film itself is a triumph. and suspenseful, the cinematography is bright and happy, a contrast reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s films — both in visual sophistication and quirk.

The peak aspect of the film is the costuming. As a movie about a luxurious woman who has a talent for creating clothes, it seems fitting that the costumes are on par with the character. The pieces were exquisite. Even the dull townspeople clothes were impeccably made and chosen with care.

Much like the sounds, the clothes and their colors were deliberately chosen in relation to a scene’s mood or focus. One particular scene that stood out is one with two teams of men playing a game of football. One team is red, and one is blue. Their uniforms are muted but distinct. The crowd watching is clothed in muted shades of blue, green and neutral colors, the costumes all working together rather than clashing. They blend really well without looking extremely intentional, although it’s clear that a lot of thought went into the costuming. As the protagonist, Tilly is clothed in bright red, standing out from the muted tones surrounding her.

Overall, the film is beautiful, but overdone and exaggerated in terms of storytelling. Had the plot been toned down, the film — like the clothes in it — could have been practically seamless.

Hell or High Water

Film Review Tyler Obropta Staff Writer

swear Pine is using Hell or High Water as an audition tape for Indiana Jones.

Directing a film in the deserts of the South is always challenging, because such dry settings often make movies feel arid and lifeless. But Hell or High Water is saturated with excellent performances by veteran actors and stunning work in the bit parts, like a diner waitress who serves Pine and Foster’s bank-robbing brothers some steak and eggs and then refuses to give Bridges’ Texas Ranger the $200 tip as evidence.

As the ranger, Bridges is still doing that voice that sounds like he’s gargling marbles in every line — like you can hear his jowls flapping every time he speaks.

(He doesn’t always sound like that, by the way. He talks normally in interviews.)

There’s a lovely shot in Hell or High Water where Jeff Bridges crosses a motel parking lot in the earliest hours of the morning, his motel blanket wrapped around his bare shoulders and billowing behind him in the wind like he’s the Man of Steel. The cinematography in the film is especially impressive, transforming a climactic shootout into a tense, shocking confrontation. It’s a horrid surprise, then, that this same director of photography — Giles Nuttgens — is responsible for the clumsy and embarrassing turd-in-the-pantsof-cinema that was 2000’s Battlefield Earth.

Nuttgens extraordinarily creates this world through billboards on the side of the highway that read “Closing soon” and advertise debt relief, or graffiti that calls for a bailout for veterans of the Iraq War. There’s a sense of abandonment that pervades the picture, a feeling of lawlessness that travels with our main characters down the lonely stretches of Oklahoma highway and through the neon lights of a Native American casino. It’s this atmosphere that sticks with you when you leave Hell or High Water moreso than the slick crime or the terrific brutality of the shootouts.

With this tense, depressing atmosphere and slow-moving crime story, Hell or High Water feels like an abridged third season of True Detective, if the series moved to Oklahoma.

At times, the social commentary gets to be a little too on-the-nose, and it also often takes notes from No Country For Old Men’s playbook, but Hell or High Water is another laudable indie entry in the Western genre.

Though it may not focus on action and violence as much as most audiences would want, the film certainly has a long life ahead of itself for the devoted fans of Jeff Bridges’ unique talent for gargling marbles.

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Ministry of Cool

Hell or High Water is a stunning, modern Western that follows two brothers on a series of bank robberies, although the days are long gone when anyone can rob a bank and expect to live long enough to spend the money.

The Western genre has been on its deathbed for a while now, with the days of Clint Eastwood chewing a cigar far behind us. 2010’s True Grit and 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma offered a few bumps in the vital signs, and aside from those, the genre has mostly stuck to indie cinema with the likes of 2014’s The Rover and The Homesman. But several guntoting, cuss-heavy Tarantino films have revitalized the Western, and we now have big studio films like this year’s Jane Got a Gun and The Magnificent Seven, as well as a new HBO series based on Michael Crichton’s Westworld.

Hell or High Water is not the best of the Western New Wave — hell, it’s not even the best one starring Jeff Bridges. But it is one of the smartest ones — a Western noir that packs character, drama and humanity into the long, hushed breaths the film takes between car chases, robberies and shootouts.

David Mackenzie, who also helmed 2013’s darling British crime film Starred Up, directs a script from Sicario writer Taylor Sheridan that finds two brothers, played here by Chris Pine, Ben Foster and their mustaches, robbing banks to save their family’s Texas ranch from being repossessed by the big, evil bank.

Pine’s character Toby has morals, prospects and hopes for the future, while his brother Tanner, played by Foster, is the reckless, brash one with a jail record.

Bridges plays Marcus Hamilton, the Texas Ranger on the verge of retirement, who is determined to bring the brothers to justice.

Hell or High Water is a smooth, energetic purée of No Country For Old Men (2007), Heat (1995) and Killing Them Softly (2012), mixing more complicated themes of desolation and futility with intense heists and gunfights, beautiful character moments, and solid performances

by Pine and Foster. The two have previously worked together on Disney’s The Finest Hours — the most forgettable film of the year.

But in The Finest Hours, Pine proved that he’s more than just a leading man. He’s not a one-note actor, and he is more than capable of acting against typecast. His character of Bernie Webber in The Finest Hours is quiet, reserved and shy, a deep throw from his womanizing, swaggering Captain Kirk or the bombastic, shirt-tearing prince from 2014’s Into the Woods. Here, Pine isn’t playing the pretty boy. He’s a deeply conflicted, divorced husband who’s trying to do right by a family that doesn’t even want him around.

Plus, with his gnarly five o’clock shadow and deep V-neck shirt, you’d

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ONS. PROSE&CONS. PROS

BUZZSAW: Dunk Issues

Short fiction, personal essay, and other assorted lies.

Guiding Light

by Tylor Colby

Don’t test us on a triumph. Don’t assume dorsal fins where our appendages lay. Under a scrape of skin is a water mark of a lost civilization, the sum fortune of which we could not pay. Dialogues with our demons can only do so much, perhaps qualify that which we already knew. In times such as these when an aching for antiquity in me abounds, my instinct is to respond in one of two ways: Either throw the shadow on my back and let that be all the world can see of me, or sing my song to my idealized, ancient we.

My vessel is af lame with the night air. My heart beats too much. Maybe a torch in a dimly lit autumnal room should do for now, humming along to a jaunty tune we’ve all somehow, previously, unspokenly, known. Synchronicity is a holy virtue, but I am no believer in Christ, Allah, Krishna, Clinton, K anye. But where else can I round up the cries of my lost generation than in the dull mundanities of try try again? If I cease to be an image I cease to be a guiding light.

Prose & Cons

39

Thanksgiving’s Finest

by Sarah Noell

C

ramped in the back of Kelly’s car, we were on our way to a dinner party. I pulled at my black tights, making them see-through enough to be high-fashion. I reconsidered and decided corduroy was the farthest thing from highfashion and readjusted the mashed potato bowl that sat heavily on my ribbed skirt.

Pushed together, Tom’s leg was up against mine, his simple maroon complementing my multi-faceted try-hard Thanksgiving’s finest. His long arms rested on the giant salad bowl. He reached in every so often to pick out the tomatoes, sneaking them in the dark of the car. The dinner party was a potluck. Family-less, or with family too far, we made due in our displacement.

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

On the other side of Tom, Laura sat with her bangs on the window, sleepy from Saturdays, the garlic bread warming her bare thighs, her tall socks covering just past her knees. Kelly took the turns we were familiar with. Her boyfriend, nameless, sat in the front, carrying nothing with an eternity of leg room. The hill was steep and there may have been ice, but Kelly took that last corner like it was summer. My shoulder was pushed hard against the door, Tom’s weight pulling on my constructed hair. He leaned in to apologize for taking up such space, kissing me on the cheek. A simple kiss, a plucked up apology, a condolence from a lover lasting longer than it should have because at that moment Kelly screamed and swerved and Thanksgiving took flight in the boxy Toyota.

We were in the air, all five of us, spinning. Tom’s face still on mine, mashed potatoes taking Rorschach shape in the air, Lauren’s eyes wide among floating garlic bread. My knees neared my face, my tights, my corduroy, my pinned hair pleated with potatoes.

We landed on our heads and spun on the ice, Tom’s limp neck still draped on mine.

Lauren’s moans silenced by salad tossed. Kelly, asleep at the wheel, hair hanging towards the top of the car. Me, crushed in corduroy.

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I

f only everyone could die as gracefully as trees do.

They grip to life — tucking away green foliage for burly reds and golds, fading into speckled oranges before they fall and drop.

My mother always spoke to me about the trees when I was younger, holding my little hand in hers as we trudged along the crinkled path, beaten down by the wind and by a million and one other footsteps. She admired the way that they whispered and rolled in the gusts of wind, sang in the springtime and gracefully accepted change in the fall. For my mother, these walks were special. As we’d go along, we’d stop more than we would walk, kneeling down to snag the edges of leaves splashed in trickles of color. The shape or size didn’t matter; we’d find a way to carry them all in our mittened hands. When we got home, we’d pull large dictionaries off of the shelf, and using glossy waxed sheets of brown paper, we’d press the leaves inside their pages.

“I just want to be in the air. I just want to be a part of the wind.”

This is something my mother exclaimed the last time we took a walk together. She makes funny statements like this a lot. They’re metaphorical as fuck, but if you’ve ever met my mother, you’d understand that she genuinely means the things she says. If she could somehow shapeshift and suddenly become a part of something larger than herself, she would. While her human form confines her to a somewhat grounded existence, my mother still finds a way to live a life very free

of the worldly weight that many people seem to accrue as they grow older.

The last walk we took it was a breezy October day, and while I walked with the weight of the world stretched across my shoulder blades, she seemed to float above the sidewalk. The wind blustered around our necks, whipping her silver-streaked hair across her face in swirling, ursuline structures, strands tracing against her sun-worn skin like fine lines of graphite across the cusp of her ear. When I was younger, I could more easily accept my mother’s flighty existence, perhaps because I didn’t know any other way. I too could see the breathlessness in the pink abalone of the clam shells we’d collect at the beach, the perfect hum of birdsong and the silky smell of lilacs drifting on a crisp spring breeze. These are the things that my mother taught me how to notice. She figured that if I knew how to identify the good things, no matter how small, it would make all the difference in this big, bad world. But somehow, I grew up and forgot to do this. That’s when everything became so much heavier, when I stopped listening to my mother and forgot to look for the silver lining.

by Mila Phelps-Friedl

You can find the complete piece online at www.buzzsawmag.org.

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Prose & Cons

Pressing Leaves

IRRATIONAL FEARS I HAD AS A CHILD THAT I STILL HOLD TIGHT

by Alexa Salvato

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

that i’m going to get a tick bite that i can’t see and die from immediate fatal lyme disease that new york city will sink when i visit because it’s too full and we shouldn’t all rationally fit that when i’m scared someone’s going to grab me capitalize on my vulnerability that my mom is going to ruin my life by reading my diary that i’m going to bleed through my pants

when i’m at the board doing math that i’ll fall asleep and drown

while taking a bath that no one will really actually love me that i’ll never get to have a baby that i’m going to faint again but no one’s going to find me that there’s something wrong with my heart (how it skips beats so often) and i keep rescheduling my appointment to get an ekg that no one will ever call me

unless i call them first that i will have too many feelings

be too scared to share them

and burst

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after shower

by Hakeem Anthony

43

Prose & Cons

the showers provide deep thought we step out immediately go towards a towel

but what if that isn’t there we stand on cold floor frozen as water

slips down

damp skin & hair those deep thoughts that rivaled an Aristotle gone back to steam locked behind those curtains we can no longer work since we’ve left the waters

dripping & slipping still yet

we remain still wet on this floor

toes drowning nipples have become iceberg icebox hiding our hearts behind a fortress that was reinforced so even mario would have trouble forcing it open teeth use this time reconnect & leave reconnect & leave reconnect & leave like middle school prelationships relationships that was a shower topic a topic we’re too coward to talk of unless we’re alone or with people we hope to never see again

don’t make friends we try to be brave & bold

like a batman

these cartoons lie to us they make these things too easy it’s easy when they only last 30 minutes

cartoons control time we bet no one really noticed that we bet no one really noticed

how long we stand here contemplating the next decision deep thoughts hope to parallel matter we hope to control time like cartoons a foggy mirror misrepresenting our reflections locked phones on the other side of the locked door and we know that thoughts are timeless because they are absymal

I

’ve never felt entirely comfortable with calling myself a woman. When I was a kid, people described me as a “tomboy.” I literally rolled in mud and used to catch frogs, insects, toads, and snakes. I wasn’t squeamish and I cried in first grade because I didn’t want to wear a dress for picture day. I liked wrestling and playing tag with the boys. I found the girls boring unless they liked catching frogs with me.

I still wore pink and had plastic flowers braided into my hair, but I was happiest when my hair was wild and I could climb trees like Tarzan.

As I grew up, my dissatisfaction never quite left me. Sure, I was comfortable with wearing dresses and skirts to school, but I still liked wearing boy’s clothes too. I was thirteen when I finally had the guts to cut my hair short. My mother looked anxiously as my aunt sheared off my dirty blonde locks, her hand covering her mouth like she was watching something die.

BBUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

Since I lived in a small farmer’s town, cutting my hair short and wearing boy’s clothes was enough to be frequently mistaken for a guy.

It didn’t matter if I wore makeup or a bra. A few strangers, who were almost always women, would confuse me for a man.

One time, my father’s best friend met me for the first time in years. I answered the door and she shook my hand. She turned to my father and said, “You have a handsome son.” I beamed and my father frantically corrected her, saying I was Mikayla, not Malone. My father glanced at me and saw my look of joy. His cheeks reddened in embarrassment, polluting my excitement with something shameful.

But after years of these repeated antics, it became very clear to my family that my dissatisfaction with my gender wasn’t going away. Once in a while, I could sneak in a “I’m like a guy that way” joke. One of my biggest victories was convincing my parents to let me go to prom in a tux.

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My dad helped me pick it out. We went to the tux store together. I was nervous and half expecting the employees to be rude since I was a woman. But the nicest woman helped me every step of the way and my father made sure that everything was done right so that I would look my best. On the car ride home I thanked him profusely for accepting me as I was.

At prom I got my third pleasant surprise. No one at the dance was bothered by me. They all danced and laughed with me as normally as ever. I danced with girls and guys, strangers and friends alike. Not even the cheerleaders were disgusted by my clothes; instead, they were only impressed with my dancing.

My deviations have limits, though. I once tried to ask my family to occasionally call me “Mike/ Michael” instead of “Mikayla.” I had just gotten back from a LGBT club that I went to on Wednesday nights. We talked about gender fluidity and I confessed that I wanted to be called both “he” and “she.” That night I felt incredibly masculine, and one of my friends took notice, getting my attention by calling me “Mike.” I almost cried from happiness when she did that.

I didn’t want the feeling to end. So that night I asked my family when they were watching a movie, but I was immediately shut down with, “Your friends can do that.”

Gender

by Mikayla Mislak

You can find the complete piece online at www.buzzsawmag.org.

Sawdust

WDUST. SAWDUST. SAWDU

Satire threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

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The Grass is Always Greener

Researchers test, determine which campus has greenest grass

By Sarah Horbacewicz, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

B

reaking News: Cornell Scientists Report Grass Really Is Greener at Ithaca.

A year-long research project came to a close earlier this month as lead scientists at Cornell University concluded that the grass really is greener on the other side of Cayuga Lake.

After taking sample blades of grass from both Ithaca College’s campus and Cornell’s, it’s been proven that Ithaca’s grass is slightly greener.

Research Director for the project, Dr. Gerald Hoitz said, “It was a very close call, but ... Ithaca’s grass did come out on top, only slightly, proving to be a mere two shades greener.”

When asked if there was anything else he wanted to add, he shook her head no as his eyes began to tear, although Hoitz insisted he “just had some grass stuck in his eye.”

Samples were taken on IC’s campus from cracks in the Z lot, in front of East Tower and outside of campus center dining hall. On Cornell’s campus, the team retrieved samples from the Arts Quad, near the golf cart storage facilities and behind the Delta Chi house, but our male researchers did have to pay $5 to get the sample as the frat brothers explained that “it was darty season.”

The winning sample came from the academic quad on IC’s campus and was a “Mountain Meadow Green”: the most prestigious green on the Crayola Scale. Cornell’s greenest blade of grass was categorized as only a “Screamin’ Green,” exactly three shades below “Meadow Green.”

The complexity of the project isn’t to blame for its unnecessary length as it was a relatively simple procedure; instead, the length of the project stems from the poor morale of the Cornell researchers involved.

Climate Analyst Rebecca Davis shared why the project took nearly a

46

“...the IC public relations team quickly solved the issue, by designating a section of campus for every shade of grass, to ensure that all shades of grass, including Pine Green, Rainforest Green, and Fern, were represented equally.” year to complete. “I tried, okay?

I tried. It was just so hard to keep the group motivated to continue working as it started to become clear that everything really was greener at Ithaca,” whined Davis. “It’s just not fair.”

Cornell student Emma Fried’s jaw dropped when she heard the results.

“I can’t even begin to understand how Ithaca’s grass is greener after I worked so hard to go to a so-called ‘Ivy League School.’ Those IC kids don’t deserve it.”

However, sophomore exploratory student Logan Bigg had a different take on the news. Bigg described the grass quality on South Hill as “dope” and boasted that Ithaca “has that good kush.” We later clarified to Bigg that the article wasn’t about marijuana, but rather literal grass. Bigg quickly lost interest and declined to comment further.

Hoitz also reported to Buzzsaw that grass color is dependent on the friendliness of the community and overall happiness of students on campus. Hoitz admitted that while Cornell has no chance at beating Ithaca in that category, they sure can work to genetically modify their grass and make it at least appear greener to prospective students.

One category of the study that Cornell was more successful in was the variety in the shades of their grass.

Sure while Ithaca had the greenest grass, Cornell’s grass was definitely the most diverse.

However, Big Red couldn’t celebrate long, as the IC public relations team quickly solved the issue, by designating a section of campus for every shade of grass, to ensure that

all shades, including “Pine Green,” “Rainforest Green” and “Fern,” were represented equally.

Buzzsaw caught up with Hoitz and Davis a month after the initial interview, only to find that the scientists had quit their research on the topic altogether and instead decided to just buy turf. This would ensure that their grass was the greenest it could be.

When IC’s administration heard about Cornell looking into buying new turf, they immediately Googled where they could buy their own, (hopefully greener), turf. It’s anyone’s race now to see which campus can buy the greenest fake grass first and become the proud owners of “The Greenest Turf on Cayuga.” __________________________________ Sarah Horbacewicz is a first-year TVR major who actually prefers squash spice to pumpkin spice. You can email them at shorbacewicz@ ithaca.edu.

Gary Johnson Concession Speech Libertarian nominee gracefully accepts defeat

F

by Jordan Aaron, Sawdust Assistant Editor ellow Americans, this election has certainly been one of the most important ones our party has ever seen. Not only did we libertarians get a whopping seven percent of the vote, but we also managed to get out of this thing pretty clean.

I mean, yeah, sure, I didn’t know what Aleppo was but I’m fairly certain no one really knew what Aleppo was until I embarrassed myself on TV. In some ways, I’d even suggest that my taking the hit on that shows my service and responsibility for this country — but I digress.

Of course I have to congratulate my opponent, Hillary Clinton, who I once thought I met while waiting in line at Shake Fountain back in Santa Fe but actually have never met in person. Boy did she really pick the right guy to run against! Next to Donald J. Trump, a jar

of pickled eggslooks more presidential!

I also have to congratulate the totalitarian menace to what we libertarians like to call the eetsie beetsie teenie weenie yellow polka dot government, Trump, who also beat me. Yes, this means I have lost to two candidate two elections in a row. But hey, that’s fine, let Gary do Gary and I’ll let you do you.

And while I’ve come in third place once again, I can at least safely say that I am not Jill Stein, am I right guys? Like seriously, what’s going on there? The woman is crazy. She actually said we shouldn’t expose children to Wifi due to health concerns. I think we should rename the Libertarian party to the NotGreen-Party-Party.

Anyways, we need to continue this party’s progress. My current plan is to crawl back into my hole in New Mexico and keep trying to veto everything that comes my way: bills, clothing options, Corey Feldman albums, the whole

gambit, because that’s what we Libertarians do. We take progress and we tell it “No. Don’t do that.”

I’m also going to continue fighting to tear down the atrocities the federal government has imposed on us for so many years. This means all millitary programs, education, and local fire departments, I’m coming for you!

So we will stick out the next four years of stupid, old progress, and come 2020, the Libertarian party will rise and, so help me God, this will be the United States of Johnson. ___________________________________ Jordan is a third-year Writing for Film, TV, and Emerging Media major who spent mischief night this year smashing peoples’ decorative pumpkin spice lattes. You can email them at jaaron@ithaca.edu.

W.O.K.E. is No Joke

Services available for white men blind to own privilege

By Tylor Colby, Sawdust Editor

I

roughly 33 percent of the United States, is able to walk alone at night without the fear of being harassed by other cis white men, but that after the exercises and mindfulness tactics that he came up with, he can once again sleep comfortably at night.

“I had to learn [to say to] myself, ‘it’s okay because it’s not your fault,’” Weinheimer said. “But that can sometimes be the hardest part.”

The classes don’t officially begin until Dec. 5, but people, of really only one proverbial shape and size, are already pre-registering for sessions at W.O.K.E. in order to seek treatment for their privilege-induced sadness. At the end of the three-week course, participants are given their certificate of white innocence, ready to face the world, believing in their hearts it’s just not their fault.

One local, who chose to stay anonymous, said he is looking forward to be-

ing able to look women in the eye.

“I just want to be able to shake a woman’s hand and smile, confident that the fact she statistically makes less money than I do across the board has nothing to do with me.”

Weinheimer said he was careful to create a diverse curriculum that would “satisfy everyone’s needs.” Examples include “Women’s Rights: Why We Have It Hard Too,” and “Race Issues: How To Be An Embattled Leader.”

“We don’t want to leave anyone out,” Weinheimer said. “It’s important to keep inclusion in mind.” __________________________________ Tylor Colby is a fourth-year writing major who enjoyed drinking a pumpkin spice latte while writing this piece (no shame). You can email them at tcolby1@ithaca.edu.

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Sawdust

thaca, NY — The world can be a frightening place, full of violent crime, unequal pay and racial tension, all things that do not directly impact cisgender white men. But there may be a solution to all that inexplicable feeling of guilt kicking around in the minds of white male America.

Next month a new organization will open their doors for those having a hard time grasping the true depth of their own societal privilege. They call themselves Weinheimer’s Organization for Killing Egos — or W.O.K.E for short, and their mission statement is simple: to “ease the pain of white guilt” through “awareness-building exercises,” as well as “discussion-based seminars” on what to do when presented with one’s own privilege.

Evan Weinheimer said he once tragically lamented the fact that he, like

This Election is Punk’d!

2016 Presidential Campaign actual reboot of Kutcher’s reality show

By Alayna Vander Veer, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

A

nderson Cooper: “Welcome to the final 2016 Presidential Debate.

I’m Anderson Cooper, and I’ll be your moderator for this evening.

Let’s welcome Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton.”

Hillary Clinton: “Thank you for having me.”

Donald Trump: “Yeah, whatever.”

Cooper: “Okay, the first question is for Trump. There have been several comments toward your misogynistic ... *Trump interrupts* Trump: “I never said that.”

Cooper: “How do you explain...”

Trump: “This election is rigged!”

Cooper: “...comments referring to women, and your confessions about kissing and groping women without permission?”

Trump: “That’s a lie. That is Hillary and her lies” Clinton: “This demonstrates why Donald is unable to be president. I am way more suited to be president. Go to hillaryclinton.com to check out my hip new pant suit brand and my awesome vacation in Cedar Rapids.”

Cooper: “Next question. Concerning health care.”

Clinton: “This is why he cannot be president. He does not respect women. And this is not the first time he has said something degrading women. He has not supported women from the beginning. He would prefer that because I am a woman I—” Trump: “Oh, like Bill Clinton? *loud applause and clapping* Because he sure respected women, didn’t he Hillary. Why don’t we bring up how many women he screwed in the White House? In fact, I have brought them all here tonight! Wave ladies.”

Cooper: “Okay, we’re moving on to the next question...”

Clinton: “No, hold on.”

Cooper: “We’re moving on.”

Clinton: “Donald, you…”

Trump: “How ‘bout those emails.

Why doesn’t anyone ask about your emails? You are a puppet and you are

48

unfit to be president.”

Clinton: “NO! You are a puppet!”

Trump: “No, you are!”

Clinton: “No you are.” *Crowds cheer wildly* Cooper: “Audience, don’t make any noise. You are wasting time.” *Audience continues cheering* Cooper: “Hillary, what is your plan for decreasing the gap between the wealthy and the poor?”

Trump: “Can I just say that I am being attacked.”

Cooper: “No. Hillary?”

Clinton: “Well, I would start by, um, well I would reduce taxes, and instead of it going into the pockets of the wealthy, it will go toward the good of the public. When I was First Lady I single-handedly defeated…”

Trump: “This is unfair! I want a different debate leader, no offense to you Anderson, but you don’t know what you are doing, and I want a different opposing candidate because Hillary is just a big jerk… and a LIAR. She can’t be trusted!”

Cooper: “How do you plan to...?”

Trump: “RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISTS! Say that Hillary! SAY ITTTTT!” *Shouts from crowd* Cooper: “Please, can we get back to the question? Please. Pretty please?”

Cooper: “Hillary, what is your plan to reduce the cost of health care?” *Crickets and someone hacking* Clinton: …...

Cooper: …...

Trump: …...

Clinton: “Trump will destroy this country. Do you really want all of America to become like the Apprentice?”

Trump: “I never had that idea but I like it. It will definitely inforce Apprentice-like rules when I become president.”

Clinton: “I hate you sooo much! I hate you for running for president!”

Trump: “Really, I thought you would be glad because I make you look good. Which is pretty damn near impossible!” *Hillary and Trump begin to fight

Dragon Ball Z style. Hillary uses the Kamehameha and Trump tries to use his afterimage technique, which he claims he perfected solely because he wants to always be seen. The crowd goes wild and Anderson sobs. Amidst all this chaos, Ashton Kutcher prances on stage with a crew of cameramen and other politicians.* Ashton Kutcher: America, You just got Punk’d!

Cooper: “wha...wh…*sniffle*...what?!

Then who are the real candidates!?”

Kutcher: *laughs* “Oh, there are none, America is just going to become a dictatorship.” *Obama enters stage* Obama: “Good evening America. Are you ready for more of me? Well it doesn’t matter! ‘Cause Barry is here to stay! Suck on that losers. *Points to Hillary and Trump* Obama tears down the American flag and sets the stage on fire. “What?!”

Hillary and Trump exclaim enraged. *Ashton Kutcher laughs again* Kutcher: “Come on guys, you really didn’t see this coming? No one is idiotic enough to let you useless spectacles run for president. Anyway, tune in to our next episode Wednesday at eight, we will be pranking Queen Elizabeth about her grandson, Harry’s death. To recap, this has been Punk’d with Ashton Kutcher!” *Trump and Hillary fall upon Ashton Kutcher, tearing him to pieces and devouring his flesh, he screams but everyone is too mesmerized by the spectacle to do anything. Afterward, Obama has Trump and Hillary executed.* Everyone lives somewhat passively ever after. ___________________________________ Alayna Vander Veer is a first-year english major who is not a puppet.

You’re a puppet! You can email them at avanderveer@ithaca.edu.

Pumpkin Spice Girl

Sixth Spice Girl emerges to tell all

By Hale Douthit, staff writer

I

n the mid 1990s, the Spice Girls took the music world by storm with their insanely catchy dance-influenced pop songs that could appeal to nearly every demographic.

Here in their adopted homeland of the United States, Scary, Baby, Posh, Ginger, and Sporty Spice became household names that revolutionized pop music forever. However, what most people don’t know is that there was a sixth spice girl. To every Beatles, there is a Pete Best. To every Rolling Stones, there is an Ian Stewart. The proverbial one to miss the boat right as they sailed into infamy, cursed to be lost in the dull, dank water of obscurity, forever begging the eternal, unknowable question of “What if…?” The Spice Girls’ lost lamb is Pumpkin Spice. Born Josie Benjamin Atwater III, Pumpkin Spice was one of the group’s founding members when they were still playing bad karaoke bars and biker clubs. However, as the tide of fame swelled underneath their wings, Pumpkin, who was always recognized as the leader of the group, found herself ousted by an internal coup lead by Posh Spice, who would be remembered as the Beyoncé of the group. Today, we sit down with Pumpkin to see how the rest of her life has panned out.

SD: Yeah, this is just a small “Whatever happened to…” column.

PS: That’s it?

SD: Pretty much. I mean I only have like 600 words with this assignment.

PS: Please, give me more time. I’ll do anything! This is all I have left!

Anything. Just anything! I need the attention.

SD: No! Get off! What are you doing?

(Pumpkin grabs the recorder and starts to talk into it.)

PS: I’m an interesting person! I have so many thoughts and insights to provide like what if the moon is just a projection, or what if Obama is actually a Martian!

SD: Let go of my recorder!

PS: If I shave my head, will you pay attention? How about if I jump in front of that car? Will I be famous again?

SD: No! That’d just be…No! Oh my god! Someone call an ambulance!

Dedicated to the memory of Pumpkin Spice (1974-2016). __________________________________ Hale Douthit is a third-year Writing for Film, TV and Emerging Media major who made a curated playlist of Pumpkin Spice’s solo work. You can email them at hdouthit@ithaca. edu.

Sawdust

SD: So, Josie…

PS: Please, I prefer to be called Pumpkin if you don’t mind. I had it legally changed in 1999.

SD: Wait, weren’t you kicked out of the Spice Girls in 1994?

PS: I was.

SD: Uh …Ok. So, Pumpkin, what have you been up to recently?

PS: Well, I just released a big hit album called Pumpkin Pie that just went platinum in Trinidad and Tobago, maybe you’ve heard of it?

SD: No, can’t say that I have.

PS: Well, it just got nominated for a Grammy!

SD: Oh, really? Which one?

PS: Um ... Well … Most Pointless Comeback Album of the Year.

SD: Well, that’s something!

PS: That’s what my manager, Ricky, says.

SD: Isn’t Ricky your boyfriend’s name?

PS: That’s just ... a coincidence.

SD: So, why is it exactly that you were kicked out of the Spice Girls?

PS: Well, it was all Vicky. That bitch. She wanted control over the group, or well ... Symbolic control as the record company and manager had virtual control over all our images and our music. She wanted to be the hottest one!

SD: So, she kicked you out?

PS: Well, we had a model off. You see that’s where you pose the best you can for a number of publicity photographers, and whoever wins becomes the top dog. It’s a brutal physical and mental competition that requires every ounce of one’s energy.

I lost because I slipped on the stage and broke my heels and nails and started to cry. I think she greased the floor and cheated, but no one would listen to me.

SD: So, she became a massive celebrity, while you wallowed in obscurity.

PS: Exactly! I tried to make a comeback! But, no one would give me the time. I recorded some albums, but none of them took off. All the critics tore me apart.

SD: So, what have you been doing since then?

PS: Well, you see, I owned the trademark to the name “Pumpkin Spice.” So, when Starbucks wanted to start selling those Pumpkin Spice Lattes, they had to come to me and get the rights. For every one sold, I get about four cents.

SD: Well, at least that worked out!

PS: But, have you tried those things?

Truly dreadful, it’s like drinking pumpkin semen!

SD: Well, thank you for your time!

PS: Wait, is the interview over?

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Hiding in Plain Sight

Democratic frontrunner sleeping in parents’ basement

By Claire McClusky, Art Editor

BUZZSAW: Pumpkin Spice Issue

C

onfirmed: Hillary Clinton is a cheat and a freeloader.

The latest discovery about her corrupt nature is especially disturbing, sure to shake the current presidential campaign. She has been living in her parents basement since 2001, when her time as first lady came to an end. The snake of a woman is sucking everything she can from those who raised her, even after they’ve passed. This past week she was spotted washing dishes in the window of their home in DC. One may attribute this to Bill’s infidelity. Hillary couldn’t bear to live with him after keeping up appearances for so long. However, they are actually living in her parents’ basement together. Occasionally their daughter, Chelsea, joins them for a month or so at a time.

We thought their current situation was due to her parents’ diminishing health. Turns out they have been dead, probably spending eternity in hell for creating Hillary, since 1993 and 2011. Something is keeping this family from supporting themselves financially. By hiding this, Hillary is disrespecting the American people.

We deserve to know everything about her life if she is determining much about ours. A respectable woman doesn’t live in her parents’ home and hide it for years. She likely was trying to make good with her mother before she passed so she could get all of the profits. Perhaps she even killed her own mother for the inheritance.

Is this the kind of person Americans want in office? How can she take care of us if she can’t take care of herself without sucking the life out of others?

Hillary clearly doesn’t have the ability to manage money, let alone her personal life. The President of the United States needs to be a mature adult, capable of living in a

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large home, without their parents presence. She needs to be confident in herself and rightfully so. It’s all so immature of her, not to mention suspicious. A politician’s every move needs to be accessible to the public. It is also interesting that the public is just getting ahold of this information. Who is she blackmailing? What media outlets are keeping her safe this time? Why is no one covering this?

One of our interns thought to google this topic and found that in 2001, the Clintons declared bankruptcy. They were in so much debt after dealing with Bill’s affairs and impeachment. The situation does have to do with Bill’s infidelity, just not how one might expect. Do we want a president that is willing to take the fall for someone she loves?

Seems like a counter-productive quality for the leader of an entire population.

The major concern is that SHE IS POOR! This leaves us with a clear choice for our next president.

Donald Trump is definitely rich and definitely has his own home. These are qualities the U.S.A. needs in a president. Hillary doesn’t know how to let go of the past or how to sustain her lifestyle. We cannot trust her to lead this country. ___________________________________ Claire McClusky is a third-year film, photography & visual art major who is a real winner, making the best use of her $1,000,000 loan. You can email them at cmcclusky@ithaca.edu.

BUZZSAW ASKS WHY…

Do olives divide us so?

They’re salty, they’re chewy and they’re always kind of…wet? But everyday, hundreds of billions of people consume olives on salads, pizzas and more. Personally, I love the things, but don’t quite understand why. The taste is quickly identifiable and always stands out separately from the other flavors it is mixed with. Just today I ordered a Mediterranean grilled cheese from Waffle Frolic, and while the sandwich was well-made, all I could think was yes more olives plz. Even dunked into spicy tomato soup, the flavor of the brined (vegetable? Fruit?) reigned supreme.

Yet some hate the things. Ever ordered a large pizza entirely covered with green olives for a party? I certainly wouldn’t suggest it. My guests’ faces looked like I had just dunked their cheese slices in the dead sea, even as I handed the wonderful stuff to them with a smile on my face.

But what are olives and why do we like them? Let’s take a look at salads.

Onions have a natural flavor we all know and understand. Tomatoes, same deal. Even croutons are often a welcome addition. The adventurous at heart, like myself, have apple slices and maybe some fennel. But olives have no natural flavor worth eating.

The taste, as far as I’m concerned, is created through soaking the spheroids in salt and vinegar until proper zing is reached, rendering its original flavor (bitter and acrid) MIA. Perhaps this issue could have been called Green Olive, as well. After all, what other common food item is nearly as distorted from its original essence?

And I couldn’t be happier for it.

Your editor-in-culinary-oddities, Tylor Colby

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