Puzzles and Games

BUZZSAW APRIL 2016

Keep Your Laws Off My Body pg. 7

EVERYONE’S A LOSER

Stateless Societies pg. 26

Take One Down, Pass It Around pg. 31

Buzzsaw presents...

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

EDITORS’ COMMENT

The Puzzles & Games Issue Words with friends.

It’s all fun and games until Buzzsaw gets involved. Life is full of puzzles, tests and trials for us to conquer — or be defeated by. So join us for another rousing round of journalistic integrity and general shenanigans.

For once a corporation is on the right side, as Apple faces of with the FBI. (Apple vs. the FBI p. 6) Have you ever met people whose sports team is everything to them? Sports fandom can be a replacement for religion when ardent supporters base their life around their favorite team. (The Idolatry of Sports, p. 20) A puzzle in and of itself. Creative Control is a piece that just doesn’t fit. (Creative Control review, p. 34)

BUZZSAW News & Views Upfront Ministry of Cool Prose & Cons Sawdust Seesaw

Alexa Salvato Michele Hau Evan Popp Sophie Israelsohn Lexie Farabaugh Grace Rychwalski Elena Piech Julia Tricolla

Layout Marissa Booker Art Lizzie Cox Website Christian Cassidy-Amstutz Social Media John Jacobson Senior Editor-at-Large Katelyn Harrop Production

Advisor

Sophia Hebert Celisa Calacal Miranda Ella Jeff Cohen

Founders

Abby Bertumen Kelly Burdick Bryan Chambala Sam Costello Thom Denick Cole Louison James Sigman

Buzzsaw is published with support from Generation Progress / Center for American Progress (online at GenProgress.org).

Buzzsaw is also funded by the Ithaca College Student Government Association and the Park School of Communications.

Vanguard Printing is our press. (Ithaca, N.Y.)

Divider and Table of Contents photography

By Alessia Di Nunno Alessia Di Nunno is a freshman cinema and photography major.

Though all my photos here are digital, I take each photo as if they are shot on film and I only have a certain number of frames. My subjects are people I hold very closely to my heart. They are my friends, family members, roommates, and anyone willing to deal with my multistep process I use for snapping a photo.

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Buzzsaw uses student-generated art and photography and royalty-free images.

Views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editorial staff or of Ithaca College.

Feedback and contributions should be sent to buzzsawmag@gmail.com.

Front and back cover art by Lizzie Cox Center

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 ..........................................................5 Print media is dead, check out multimedia on the web.

News & Views .................................................6 Current events, local news & quasi-educated opinions.

Upfront ........................................................16 Selected dis-education of the month.

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

Prose & Cons .............................................38 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

buzzcuts

Win, Lose, Draw People been playing Mancala since around 3000 years ago in Egypt, although back then the boards were probably made of stone or ivory instead of wood.

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

Terni Lapilli was an ancient Roman game that supposedly had the rules of Tic-Tac-Toe. Blank Terni Lapilli boards have been found etched on roofs, walls and floors by archaeologists studying Rome.

The World Youth Scrabble Championships have occurred every year since 2006. Participants need to be 17 or younger to qualify.

According to InsiderMonkey.com, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Monopoly, Checkers and Chess are the most popular board games of all time, with Chess coming in at number one.

As of March 26, 2016, the best-selling board game on Amazon.com was Hasbro’s Pie Face!, where the players cover a hand mechanism with whipped cream or a wet sponge that could splat them in the face at any moment.

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Puzzles and Games: Photos and Videos “Childhood Games” — Julia Tricolla, freshman “The Front Bottoms” — Sam Fuller, freshman

(From Left to Right) “Homeless”— Sam Fuller, freshman “Dragon Day” — Elena Piech, freshman News & Views

Subscribe: www.vimeo.com/buzzsawmag www.youtube.com/buzzsawmag 5

Apple vs. the FBI

When government and technology intersect dangerously

By Sara Belcher, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

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n Dec. 2, 2015, 14 were killed and 22 injured in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. The act was cited as terrorism after CNN reported that ISIS claimed the shooters were their supporters. After the shooting, according to NPR, the FBI obtained an iPhone used by the male attacker, Syed Rizwan Farook, and has struggled to unlock the phone since. The agency has yet to unlock the system, as Apple’s security features prevent it from easily breaking in.

Fast forward to Feb. 16, 2016: a California court orders Apple to comply with the FBI, citing the All Writs Act of 1789. The act can only be cited in a situation where there is no previous law applicable, there are extraordinary circumstances — connecting the business and the investigation — and there is no unreasonable burden to the company. The FBI claims that this act requires Apple to create what would be considered a back door to the iPhone, allowing the use of “brute force,” or the input of millions of possible passcode combinations at a fast pace until the iPhone is unlocked. While Apple is capable of creating such a program, The Daily Dot says the request doesn’t fit the final criteria for the All Writs Act; creating such a program is considered an unreasonable burden because of the amount of security needed to protect such information, and it is too risky for its consumers and the safety of their data. In a statement released

by Apple on its website, it claims that it has done everything it can to help, and that while it has “no sympathy for terrorists,” it won’t create a program with these abilities.

By creating such a system, Apple fears that the information could fall into the wrong hands, leading to phones of innocent people being hacked and jeopardizing the safety of the information people store on their phones. There’s also talk of whether or not the government should be able to force this on Apple, as it would extend the power of the government further than it already is — calling into question what is considered too far.

Allowing the government the capability to break into this one phone

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would give it no reason to be denied access to any other phone. CNN Money reports that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance would authorize this technology to be used on 175 other phones; Vance strongly believes that the recent enhanced security of smartphones is what causes many cases to “go cold,” and is pushing for a federal law that would ban a company from selling a smartphone in the United States unless the government can unlock it.

This is concerning, as it looks like there are no lines being drawn as to what types of instances this software would be accessible to the government.

Cases like child pornography and drug dealing could follow as the next reasonings for the government to break into smartphones. The Media Institute also believes that if this capability is available under a stricter government rule, it could allow the access to the phones of journalists, The New York Times reported. This not only creates a breach of citizens’ privacy, but could also call into question freedom of speech.

There have been many sides taken on this argument. Social media and large technology companies — Google, Amazon, Facebook and more than 40 others — have signed briefs supporting Apple and their decision to put the consumer first. Law enforcement groups and family members of the shooting victims support the government and their wishes. Robert Velasco, who lost his daughter Yvette Velasco in the shooting, sides with the government, saying, “I am seeking justice for my daughter,” CBS reported.

However, not all family members of the victims support the government.

Anies Kondoker’s husband Salihin Kondoker believes that “Apple’s fight was about something bigger than one

phone,” sharing the fear of government overreach and invasion of privacy. Anies was shot during the attack, but survived, The New York Times reported.

Less than 24 hours before the March 22, 2016 court hearing, the government requested that the hearing be put on hold, as it claims there is a third party that could break into the phone, The Washington Post reported.

This still is troublesome, as it means that there are other ways for hackers to break into phones and access the information on them.

The idea that the government can break into anyone’s phone with just a warrant is more than a small violation.

There are no lines drawn as to where it can and can’t use this technology, and if a company with the intelligence and power of Apple believes it will be difficult and dangerous to create and destroy such a program, then it shouldn’t be done. Apple has proven that it is constantly making their systems more secure for its customers, as they know that people use their phones in many aspects of their lives.

The stance Apple is continuing to take against the government in the interest of the people allows those who use iPhones to place faith in the company.

Everyday people will continue to feel safe about what information they are storing on their phones, knowing it is safe from any potential hackers. ________________________________________ Sara Belcher is a first-year journalism major who doesn’t want anyone breaking her passcode, thank you very much. You can email her at sbelcher@ ithaca.edu.

“The idea that the government can break into anyone’s phone with just a warrant is more than a small violation.”

Keep Your Laws Off My Body

What Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt means for reproductive rights

By Elena Piech, Seesaw Editor

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that these laws don’t protect women’s health, but rather they inhibit women from receiving protection.

Texas has enacted HB2 to place specific health and safety requirements on abortion clinics in order for them to function. These requirements involve making clinics have the same standards as surgical centers, regulating staffing, requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at hospitals that are in a 30-mile radius — even if the doctor never plans to work at that hospital — and more hard to follow regulations.

These regulations are not what abortion clinics need. According to a US News article published on Jan. 11, 2016, Whole Woman’s Health brought their grievances with the defendant to the courts because HB2 “isn’t medically necessary, is demanding and expensive, and interferes with women’s health care.”

Instead of “helping,” the case could lead to the clinic closing down. Since less women can seek abortions, more women are in danger.

For those who believe that having an abortion has negative health consequences for women, they’re wrong. In fact, there is more risk in carrying through with a pregnancy than having an abortion. Research published in a 2012 study in the Obstetrics and Gynecology medical journal stated, “The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion.” On Feb. 21, comedian John Oliver ran a special on HBO’s Last Week Tonight about the closure of abortion clinics in the United States. When it comes to women’s health, Oliver sums up the information regarding safety when he says “legal abortions have a mortality rate of 0.00073 percent. That is nearly 10 times less than what one study found was the risk of dying as the result of a colonoscopy.”

Texas and other states have also

enabled Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws that are presented as though their goal is to “protect” women’s health.

Newsflash: they don’t. Instead, these TRAP laws have led to rapid closure rates of abortion clinics around the country.

In the past six years, states have passed more than 280 different TRAP laws that have led to the closure of nearly 70 abortion clinics across the country. With Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the Supreme Court has the ability to determine if states have the constitutional right to enforce these type of regulations. This is the first abortion case the court has heard in over 20 years.

The previous two cases relating to abortion were Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.

In the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade, Jane Roe sought to terminate her pregnancy, but Texas law strictly prohibited abortions except in instances where the woman’s life was in danger. In a 7—2 decision, the court ruled in favor of Roe. OYEZ, a resource with information Supreme Court case law run by the Illinois Institute of Technology, explained the reasoning behind the seven justices’ decisions: “The Court held that a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy (recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut) protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The decision gave a woman total autonomy over her pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters.”

Unfortunately, in 1992, the second major abortion case, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, worked to create House Bill 2 and other TRAP laws.

In the late 1980s, the Pennsylvania legislature added new provisions to abortion procedures. The provisions required a 24 hour wait-

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News & Views

ftentimes Americans view abortion as a taboo topic.

People seem willing to acknowledge that it can happen, but they might not feel comfortable thinking about it happening in practice. Yet according to the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that advances sexual and reproductive health globally, every three in 10 women will have an abortion by age 45. Even if you don’t think you know someone who has had an abortion, you probably do.

Controversy about abortion mostly derives from other people’s opinions regarding the legality and morality of abortion. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, only 19 percent of U.S. participants believe that abortion should be completely illegal. This means that a far larger majority of those in the United States believe that abortion should be legal or at least legal in some instances. With these poll results in mind, Americans should pay attention to the outcome of one case currently on the United States Supreme Court docket.

On March 2, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. This challenges House Bill 2, which imposes standards on the ability that states have with enacting legislation that sets standards for abortion clinics and abortion seekers in Texas. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill July 7, 2013.

John Hellerstedt, current commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, and Mari Robinson, executive director of the Texas Medical Board are defending the lawsuit. They believe the Texas legislation works to protect women’s health.

Whole Woman’s Health, a private gynecology and abortion care clinic for women in Texas, argues

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

ing period prior to all procedures minors to have the consent of one parent and married women to have the consent of their husband. In a 5—4 decision, the court ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood, but according to OYEZ, “the Justices imposed a new standard to determine the validity of laws restricting abortions.”

The new standard asks whether a state abortion regulation has the purpose or effect of imposing an “undue burden,” which is defined as a “substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.” The lack of a specific standard for an undue burden is what enabled conservative states to form TRAP laws and other regulations.

These regulations can come in two different forms: regulations that can be imposed upon the clinic or regulations imposed upon the person seeking the procedure.

Aside from the fact that limiting a woman’s right to choose is ridiculous, and some of requirements are even more outlandish. In 2013, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed legislation that required abortion clinics to have the standards as ambulatory surgical centers.

In a March 2016 article from the Lawyer Herald, a news organization that provides news relating to legislation and law enforcement, found that abortion rights supporters claim that these regulations are “intended to cause the closure of clinics by forcing them to construct costly and unnecessary facilities that ultimately serves no public health purpose.”

Some of the so-called unnecessary standards listed by the Lawyer Herald include “spacing of beds, the number of parking spaces, minimum corridor width, building ventilation, electrical wiring, elevator size, floor tiling, the size of patient recovery rooms, the availability of foam or liquid soap dispensers, and hand-washing fixtures in bathrooms.” These requirements do not work to protect the safety of women. Instead, they add additional financial costs to the clinic, which could ultimately lead to closure. In a March 2016 report titled “Targeted Regulation

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Image by Grace Rychwalski

of Abortion Providers” published by the Guttmacher Institute, “24 states have laws or policies that regulate abortion providers and go beyond what is necessary to ensure patients’ safety; all apply to clinics that perform surgical abortion.” Oliver’s HBO segment even includes an interview with Dalton Johnson, the owner of Alabama Women’s Center. Johnson said he’s spent close to a million dollars to meet these state requirements.

For the individual, some laws aim to discourage or shame a woman

for wanting to have an abortion and instead aim to have her carry through with her pregnancy. Near the start of March, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed House Bill 1337, that reinforces this type of shaming. The bill states that “a pregnant woman considering an abortion must be given the opportunity to view the fetal ultrasound imaging and hear the auscultation of the fetal heart tone at least 18 hours before the abortion is performed and at the same time that informed consent is obtained.” The

ibly difficult — a clear undue burden for Texas women.

Ferrigno has spoken about how incredibly hard it has become for Texas women to seek an abortion after the numbers shifted from 42 to 19.

“I think about the woman that on the phone begged me to see her even though our clinic was shut down by this law, I still hear her desperation telling me: “Please, please, I won’t tell anyone. Why won’t you help me, please?!’”

HB2 and TRAP laws impose obstacles on women who feel they are not prepared for pregnancy from seeking abortions. These regulations also impact women who want an abortion because of health and safety concerns. Ferrigno wrote about this issue as well.

“Or the woman that became pregnant while starting her [chemotherapy] treatment for ovarian cancer,” she wrote in her March 8 blog post.

“Her own physician refused to help her terminate the pregnancy because of fear of repercussion from the anti-choice board members of his hospital. She came to us the day HB2 was enacted and we couldn’t see her.”

Imagine how much tougher it would be for women if they could only find nine places, in their large state, to get an abortion. Often times, this would affect minority groups of women. When discussing the case, Amy Hagstrom Miller, president, founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, said: “This is the real world and these laws have real implications on real women’s lives. Unfortunately, it is our low-income women, women of color and rural women that bear the brunt of these harsh laws.”

The importance of this case lies behind the fact that it could set precedents and increase or shrink the role states have in giving women the ability to terminate their pregnancy.

The Supreme Court has the ability to decide what can happen next with women’s bodies. This is important, and hopefully a majority of the Supreme Court will side with Whole Woman’s Health. Unfortunately, abortion is a topic that is highly

controversial, and something that might be harder to win over the hearts and minds of the older male justices. Drawbacks of gerontocracy, a form of oligarchy where the entitled leaders are those that are members of an older population, might be noticed with current justices. This isn’t to hate on old people — Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of the most badass females out there — but when the Supreme Court of the United States consist of a majority of older men, problem might arise when it comes to deciding monumental cases concerning women’s rights.

If the court rules against Whole Woman’s Health, as predicted, there could be a domino effect of closures for additional abortion care providers. Favoring the HB2 laws in Texas, would mean that abortion, technically, would not be illegal. But it would be damn hard for a woman to receive one.

Miller discussed the hardships these women could face: “For thousands of Texans, access to safe abortion care is a right on paper but no longer actually accessible. Texans are now forced to undertake multiple, unnecessary visits to clinics that are now farther away; they take more days off of work, lose income, have to find childcare, and arrange and pay for transportation for hundreds of miles.”

Miller’s statement reflects the hardships women could face as they attempt to visit a new clinic.

Oftentimes for poor women, women of color and rural women, it is nearly impossible to travel through the hoops and hurdles that HB2 and other TRAP laws impose. As Oliver said in his segment, “Abortion cannot just be theoretically legal — it has to be literally accessible.” _______________________________________ Elena Piech is a freshman journalism major who wishes the Supreme Court was just nine Ruth Bader Ginsburgs. You can email her at epiech@ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

Indiana law includes additional regulations, and March 25 article from The Huffington Post summarize the bill with the headline “New Indiana Law Makes Getting an Abortion Nearly Impossible.”

Andrea Ferrigno, the corporate vice president for Whole Woman’s Health, spoke on her company’s blog about the unfairness and uselessness of HB2 and TRAP Regulations have on the clinics. In a March 8 post, Ferrigno said, “I have also seen firsthand how laws like HB2 can force clinics to shut down. I’ve had to sign the construction orders for costly work to comply with medically unnecessary TRAP regulations.”

She also discussed how these regulations impact patients: “Not only have they tried to shut down our clinics, they’ve tried to stop us from creating the warm and friendly atmosphere our patients deserve. They want to make our spaces cold, sterile, and scary. I watched with sadness as they told us we could no longer provide the soothing space our patients are grateful for. Again, there is no medical reason for these rules.”

Although most of the elder, conservative males in the Supreme Court may not care about what happens to women’s bodies, for the sake and sanctity of those 30 percent of women women, the outcome of this case is extremely important.

With only eight Justices on the court as of March 2016, if the Supreme Court rules against Whole Woman’s Health or splits on a 4—4 vote, abortion clinics will continue to close in Texas. The Center for Reproductive Rights reported in an Oct. 2015 study titled “Research Reveals Devastating Impact of Clinic Shut Down Laws on Texas Women” that if Whole Woman’s Health does not win, the state would have as little as just nine abortion clinics. Currently, the state has 19 abortion clinics in operation. This is substantially fewer clinics than the 42 that were open before the 2013 HB2 law was first enacted.

In a state that’s the second-most populous in the nation, having just nine places where women could seek an abortion would be incred-

Infectious Competition

Zika as a threat to 2016 female Olympic athletes and tourists

By Madeline Mathers, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

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ccording to The New York Times, an estimated 500,000 people will be traveling to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games this summer.

This year, researchers are looking into how much of an effect, if any, the Zika virus will have on travelers and if this could lead to Zika spreading within the United States.

As of March 23, 2016, according to the CDC, 273 cases of Zika have been reported in the United States.

Of those, none were locally originated, but six were sexually transmitted. The biggest previous Zika virus was detected in a 2013 outbreak in Polynesia. It has been determined that as the Zika virus has spread there have been many as 1.5 million people that have contracted the virus since, and investigators are linking this virus to the possible cause of several birth defects found in newborns, including microcephaly — a defect where the infant is born with an abnormally smaller brain and head, inhibiting brain development. This disease has little to no effect on the person who has contracted it. Many have reported mild flu-like symptoms if anything.

The infection, however, which can be sexually transmitted, results in the passing on of this birth defect to the fetus. Brazil’s warm climate, efficient vectors and geographics create a perfect breeding ground for Zika.

“According to the latest data from the Ministry of Health, Brazil recorded 462 cases of microcephaly between October [2015] and February [2016], compared with an annual average of 150 cases,” according to Jamaica Observer. 41 of the cases have a confirmed link to the Zika virus.

Fear of Zika spreading at an international event was seen previously at the 2014 World Cup,where the virus posed a threat when hundreds of thousands of visitors flowed into Brazil. According to Herald Scotland, it has been determined that the virus was brought to the World Cup by French Polynesian visitors who had just experienced their own Zika outbreak.

Many hyped Americans and trav-

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elers from all around the world are now questioning their safety, as they have planned to travel to the summer Olympics this year. Researchers believe the likelihood of an outbreak in the U.S. is quite low. However, there is a possibility of Zika being transmitted through mosquito bites while in Brazil and through sexual contact back in the United States. The stakes are higher for athletes. According to USA Today, all this hub-bub about the virus has many athletes concerned.

Though the athletes headed to the Olympics have trained for the games their entire lives, for some, it just isn’t worth it. This includes U.S. Women’s soccer goalie, Hope Solo. Solo told Sports Illustrated that if she had to “make the choice today, [she] wouldn’t go.” Solo plans to start a family in the future with her husband, Jerramy Stevens, former tight end for the Seattle Seahawks. Solo, like many other female athletes, has a serious decision to make about the games.

These women are essentially being forced to choose the games over a healthy newborn baby, should these women so choose to have a

family later in life. This is not an easy choice.

As of March 2016, the Brazilian government l claims the Zika virus has taken three lives, and there is currently no vaccine or cure for this disease, ; however, there are many precautions to try and prevent the Zika virus.

According to ABC, Brazil’s President Rousseff continues to send troops knocking door to door to inform everyone of the disease and plans necessary during the Olympics. As important as personal health is, with the Olympics less than six months away, it is very unlikely at this point that the Olympics will be canceled. The Brazilian government is taking action to make sure the people of Brazil and all other travelers are informed.

With the conscious effort of the international community, hopefully this summer’s Olympics can be a safe one for all attendees. _______________________________________ Madeline Mathers is a first-year televisionradio major who isn’t planning to take a trip to Brazil any time soon. You can email her at mmathers@ithaca.edu.

Image by Ariana del Grosso

The Academy Awards’ Aftermath It’s an industry problem

By Tyler Obropta, Staff Writer

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Image by Elizabeth Stillwagon

even the best part of Creed, and the other best part of Creed was the sadly forgotten director Ryan Coogler.

Will Smith? His performance was the best element of Concussion and the rest of the movie was resoundingly mediocre. The same can be said for Trumbo, though Bryan Cranston, one could argue, deserved the nomination far more for Trumbo than Will Smith for Concussion.

What does the Academy look for in a black actor’s performance? The New York Times recently published an article that sought to discover just that. “All 10 performances for which black women have received bestactress nominations involve poor or lower-income characters, and half of those are penniless mothers,” Brandon K. Thorp writes.

Of the male nominees, most of their characters were imprisoned in their films. “It is not entirely surprising that so many of these nominees have portrayed the poor, imprisoned, great or tragic,” Thorp said. “The history of African-Americans contains many such people, and the academy loves history.”

The Academy is overly vulnerable to white guilt. Just look at how many categories 12 Years a Slave was nominated for in 2014. And it took home Best Picture too, which is wholly unsurprising because watching 12 Years a Slave feels like admiring a manufactured item that was produced on an assembly line with the sole objective of winning as many awards as possible.

Though diversity is a problem within the Academy itself, I think the members try their best to nominate the best performances. Many would argue — and I would agree — that race should not be a consideration when Academy members are nominating actors and directors. That means that, if I’m a voter and I write in my ballot only to discover that there are no black actors on the list, I’m not going to remove a better performance simply because I believe black actors need more awards recognition. It’s about the performances.

Speaking of black performances, of the top 100 films of 2014, about

12.5 percent of the characters are black. This figure has just about remained the same since 2007. The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism conducted a study of those top 100 films, analyzing the people on and off-screen for their gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity, concluding that yes, Hollywood is still a white boys’ club.

“Across the 100 top films of 2014, only 5 of the 107 directors (4.7 percent) were Black,” the study, which was released in 2014, states. “One Black director helmed two pictures and only one was female. Only 45 Black directors have been attached to the 700 top-grossing films [between 2007 and 2014].”

It’s not an Academy problem. It’s an industry problem. “The prequel to OscarsSoWhite is HollywoodSoWhite,” Annenberg associate professor and co-author of the study, Stacy Smith, said. “We don’t have a diversity problem. We have an inclusion crisis.”

Of the top 100 highest-grossing movies of 2014, 24 featured 6 percent or fewer black characters, while an astounding 17 percent of the films failed to represent blacks at all in their speaking or named characters.

The industry needs to be more welcoming to minority filmmakers so that their voices can be heard and representation boosted for people of color. Boycotting the Academy Awards for not recognizing black performances is not going to help.

It’s equivalent to boycotting a supermarket for holding chicken nuggets from a company known for abusing its animals: you can boycott the supermarket, but it’s not going to solve the root of the problem. A solution needs to be taken up at the industry level.

Or, you can be like Spike Lee and continue to write angry letters to your local ShopRite. _______________________________________ Tyler Obropta is a first-year film, photography and visual art major who would never ever be willing to boycott chicken nuggets.

You can email him at cobropta@ithaca.edu.

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’m not entirely sure why people are suddenly up in arms about the 2016 Academy Awards’ lack of racial inclusivity. Sure, the proof is the most visible this year, with Alejandro G. Inarritu being the racial outlier in otherwise all-white major categories — including all of the acting categories. But four years ago, the Los Angeles Times sampled over 5,000 of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 5,765 members and concluded that the Academy in 2012 was 94 percent white, 77 percent male, 86 percent age 50 or older and had a median age of 62.

“Academy voters are overwhelmingly white and male,” the headline read.

As someone who inhales movies like infants inhale things you leave on your kitchen floor, I’m happy with the acting nominees this year.

I would have liked to see Benicio Del Toro get credit for his chilling performance in Sicario, or Idris Elba for his disturbing role in Netflix’s Beasts of No Nation, but looking at the list of nominees, I also want each of those men to be nominated for their work. I wouldn’t know who to knock out to make room for Del Toro or Elba.

(Maybe Stallone.

Sorry, Sly.) But then again, I too am a white male.

Now, who is it that people were itching to see nominated?

Michael B. Jordan?

Jordan wasn’t

Contamination Abomination Clean water is a human right

By Alexa Salvato, News and Views Editor

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

“

Clean water is a human right!”

Nia Nunn taught this chant to young Ithacans when it was announced in January 2016 that the water, especially in the Ithaca City School District’s more rural schools, had dangerous amounts of lead particles. At Caroline Elementary School, 56 percent of the building’s water sources are above the EPA-deemed level at which remedial action is expected. Nunn added, laughing, how afraid her father, active community member Fe Nunn, was that her not-so-subtle act of rebellious education would get her into trouble.

Inability to access clean water doesn’t sound like something that would happen here in Ithaca. That’s a struggle of the enigmatic Africa we learn about in elementary school, modern-day military dysentery and poor inner cities with dark brown water spurting out of their faucets.

They all seem worlds away. But even in a community like ours, one that’s quick to call Flint’s toxic water a human rights abuse, kids have been using toxic water in their public schools for months.

The World Health Organization explains that lead has no known health risks for healthy adults, it can affect children particularly negatively.

“Lead accumulates in the bones and lead poisoning may be diagnosed from a blue line around the gums.

Lead is especially harmful to the developing brains of fetuses and young children and to pregnant women … High blood lead levels in children can cause consequences which may be irreversible including learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and mental retardation.”

Having lead abundantly present in our schools’ water, of all places, is a particularly painful irony due to its harmful impacts on children’s brains and learning abilities.

Understandably, parents were enraged as soon as they found out about the state of the water. But they were even more upset when

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they learned that some officials in the district had known about the contamination since August 2015.

Parents weren’t informed until January 2016.

Nunn is an assistant professor of education at Ithaca College, a former school psychologist at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School in downtown Ithaca, as well as an Ithaca native who attended that same elementary school and whose two younger sons go there now. These intersecting identities create her passion for the safety of Ithaca’s youngest residents, a group she universally calls “our babies.”

“Before I saw it in the paper, people were talking,” she said. “I was at a community event and some folks were brainstorming. In fact, it was kind of immediately presented as critiquing and challenging, but also making fun of the district, with all the money that’s been spent on Chromebooks.” Currently, every fourth through 12th grader in the Ithaca Central School District, or ICSD, has their own Google Chromebook laptop provided by the district.

“Meanwhile, our babies and their basic human rights are being violated,” Nunn continues.

The Ithaca Voice has been closely reporting parents’ and educators’ reactions at school meetings, particularly at Newfield Central School and Caroline Elementary Schools,

where the lead content has been marked the highest. One parent with a daughter at Caroline Elementary School spoke at a public meeting on Feb. 10, upset that her daughter had been drinking water from “Room 27, which tested at 120 parts per billion in August. Re-testing in January showed that the water from the drinking fountain was at 21 ppb, which is above the action level. “Action level,” as defined by MerriamWebster, is “the level of concentration of a harmful or toxic substance or contaminant … that when exceeded is considered sufficient to warrant regulatory or remedial action.” The Tompkins County Health Department has said that the action level is 15 ppb.

Rebecca Sue Schillenback was one of these parents. She is the mother of a pre-Kindergarten student and second grade student at Caroline Elementary School, and said her husband attended the initial meeting quoted above. Like many other parents have articulated in local media, she was surprised to hear about this situation now since testing had been done six months previously and results were not reported to parents.

Due to issues with the initial testing, the water was re-tested in January, which is when parents were finally informed. The most recent updated results were released midFebruary 2016. According to the

“It’s a real opportunity for learning for everyone …

This is a reminder that clean water should not be taken for granted. Everyone needs to collectively and individually preserve something that is necessary for life.”

Pink summed this up in our February issue: “According to The Huffington Post, the issue started after Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder switched residents from their water source in Lake Huron, the third largest body of fresh water in the world, to the Flint River in order to cut costs. Since that move, residents have been exposed to discolored, putrid-smelling water with dangerously high levels of lead.”

Schillenback connected Flint to Ithaca from a historical perspective.

“I think that this aging infrastructure has been shown to be linked with contaminants that are found in water and it shouldn’t be surprising to us — infrastructure needs to be maintained,” she said. “It’s a real opportunity for learning for everyone … This is a reminder that clean water should not be taken for granted. Everyone needs to collectively and individually preserve something that is necessary for life.”

Nunn, however, broadened the connection between the two water sources, saying that it’s not just about infrastructure, but the systemic social structures that lie beneath: namely, environmental classism and racism. Environmental classism, according to Nunn, is the aspect of environmental justice that is particularly present in Ithaca.

“Here are two fairly low-income poor white communities,” she said. “And it wasn’t until the more wealthy white parents and families took a stand and said, ‘No. This is absolutely not okay.’ But had they not done that, then what?”

These concepts fall under the umbrella of environmental justice.

Robert L. Copeland, Jr., associate professor and director of informatics in the Department of Pharmacology at Howard University, wrote about this in his presentation “Environmental Justice? Not in my backyard,” the slides of which are on a collaborative governmental website for the National Library of Medicine.

“Environmental justice has been broadly defined as ‘the pursuit of equal justice and equal protection under the law for all environmental statutes and regulations without discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and/or socioeconomic sta-

tus’ and also as one of four related concepts including environmental equity, environmental racism, and environmental classism,” the presentation states.

Nunn said: “It’s the environmental -isms. And we dealt with this at [Beverly J. Martin Elementary School.] There was tar — there was this disgusting tar under the ground that our babies were breathing at school. And how long did it take us to do something about it? Environmental racism and classism are central to the conversation, and a lot of people are afraid to go there.”

Schillenback’s statements were less political, but she had similar goals. “One of [parents’ priorities] is creating a positive learning environment and community, [asking] ‘So how do we want to handle this crisis together in solidarity?’”

Central to that identity is the basic advocacy by parents for their children.

“The strategy is empowering kids and families, and being explicit about their basic human right: having clean water in schools,” Nunn said. “And I don’t know if anyone has had that explicit conversation [with the kids] yet.” _______________________________________ Alexa Salvato is a junior journalism major who can’t believe that shit like this still happens. You can email her at asalvat1@ ithaca.edu.

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News & Views

Ithaca Voice, “The expanded report includes classroom sinks that tested at 940, 1,000, 2,200 and 5,000 ppb. 5,000 ppb is the level at which the EPA considers water to be ‘toxic waste,’ according to a Washington Post report.”

These results led the community to outrage that their children could be washing their hands (and potentially drinking) from a claimed toxic waste source. But still, these results are in question, as it has been claimed that the school didn’t follow typical processes immediately before the testing.

Elizabeth Cameron, the director of environmental health for the Tompkins County Health Department, noted this occurrence in a letter published by the Ithaca Voice on March 3. “Cameron notes that the testers shut off the water system in Caroline the night before the test. She calls this a ‘significant departure’ from the usual testing procedures. She also notes that there was a leak in the Caroline water system that may have depressurized the system,” the paper stated.

It seems incredibly negligent that the district would not follow proper testing procedure considering that they had already had the results of the previous testing put into question.

Fear for their children’s safety has brought the parents at Caroline Elementary together, Schillenback said.

She elaborated: “[Parents] have been very involved as much as we can. A group of concerned parents got together right away, it might have been the week after or the weekend after the initial meeting where the parents were informed of what happened. And that was a pretty contentious meeting and feelings were running very high.”

She said that the “frenzy” being created by local media didn’t help matters and added to parents’ stress.

Schillenback also noted links between what’s happening in Ithaca and what’s happening in Flint, Michigan. Although the people of Flint have been struggling with their water since early 2014, it wasn’t until this fall that their crisis made national news.

Buzzsaw contributing writer Tyla

Constant Stimulation

How pop culture and social media serve as a distraction

By Emma Lewis, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

O

ver the last couple of years, the society we live in has become dependent on our electronic and mobile devices. We are constantly checking our phones every time they buzz and liking pictures on Instagram the second after they are posted. The constant use of these devices helps us keep up with what is going on at all times.

Cell phones provide us with instant gratification, efficiently transmitting messages, pictures, tweets, statuses — the list goes on. The accessibility of social media applications like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram provide us with a way of connecting ourselves with celebrities and other people around the world, whereas before these sites that was never even a possibility.

However, this becomes a disadvantage because we often find ourselves more focused with the trivial occurrences happening on these social media outlets rather than what is happening in our country and other nations around the world.

This reliance on social media, and how it plays into an obsession with pop culture, has become a way for society to obtain information. “Pop culture” is a term that has gained popularity in the last few years and is simply a set of modern values and ideas that are broadcasted through the use of the media. In an article by psychologist Tim Delaney, he states that pop culture varies from the clothing people wear to the slang and dialect with which people speak to the foods that people consume.

Pop culture is used in society as a way to keep up with trends and stay connected with what’s going on. It is a way for people to follow stories and hear about the latest news. However, this causes people to miss things, civil trial attorney Scott Piekarsky, who has written about the topic of social media, said.

“If you just rely upon social me-

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dia, you’re really only getting a small snippet about what is happening,” he added.

Only listening to what certain media sites are saying and focusing on certain aspects of culture does not give the full idea of the extent of a given situation. This reliance on the media and pop culture neglects the truth and creates a gap between what is actually happening and what the media wants its audience to believe.

We follow these trends because of the people we surround ourselves with and the constant everyday interactions we have with others. In some cases, it even extends to the celebrities we look up to and follow on different social media outlets.

Psychologist Debra Gold said one of the appeals of pop culture is that it can often bring people together.

“Pop culture makes you feel included,” she said. “People identify with each other through similar ideas and interests. This way you feel part of something, and close to people.”

However, it also leads to distraction. As a whole, we are a very distracted group of individuals. Sam Amer, a retired pharmacologist, sees the United States as one of the most distracted societies. While we find it easy to keep up with what’s going on in the social world, real-world issues that are threatening our country every single day are often neglected.

Social media can serve as a mechanism for organizing activism, but it is instead often a vehicle for focusing on the trivial. Many of us are unconcerned with matters like climate change and income inequality and many people do not even take the time to educate themselves on these matters because it’s easier to log on to Twitter than it is to read a newspaper article.

Amer said this contributes to a switch of priorities.

“Most Americans today care less about our national purpose, our

commitment to equality and our basic democratic systems than they do about their Facebook updates,” he said.

We are flooded with the constant thought of what is going on in our lives online, while forgetting about what’s happening to our lives on a large scale. Amer said most of these distractions society faces are not new.

“But they have acquired increased vigor and intensity and ubiquity,” he said. “It is eroding our ability to pay much attention to the problems that we must address as a nation.”

Since social media has been playing an increasingly intricate role in the way people live, it has changed the scale of what people consider to be issues. For instance, Gold said Twitter causes focus on the minutiae of people’s lives.

“It distracts people from some of the real issues such as war, hunger, social injustice,” she said. “People are focusing on how they just broke their fingernail, which elevates the smaller things and compares them to the real life issues.”

One example of when pop culture distracted attention from a real issue was during the Ebola scare, when the crisis spread through the media rapidly. The Ebola crisis was an awful epidemic that affected many all over West Africa. In March of 2014, when the Ebola outbreak was first reported, people were frantic and concerned about what could potentially happen in the U.S. as a result of this disease. After a few people were victims of this disease in a variety of states across the U.S., people took strong precautions.

Meanwhile in West Africa, BBC reported that the fatalities from Ebola ended in a total death toll of approximately 11,315 people in countries such as Mali, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.

However, amid the fright and terror this episode caused, a Halloween costume idea came out mimicking

greatly influenced what we eat and eating has provided people with a way to keep up with pop culture. It is enjoyable to go to fancy restaurants and go out with friends, which often is a reason why pictures of our food are posted to social media outlets.

Posting these pictures of our food is a way of showing our friends and family the food we consume. Writer Joe Pinsker said food is now used as a way to show wealth and luxury because instead of just eating a simple meal, we allow ourselves to eat elaborate meals.

Food is used as a way of showing off and it is constantly broadcasted on different social media. Giving attention to the luxurious aspect of food while ignoring the fact that some people do not even have access to food is a direct result of the constant involvement of people in popular culture. We have become so self absorbed regarding what we consume that we are oblivious to the problems and lack of food that others around the world face. There are approximately 795 million people in the world who are chronically malnourished, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. The Stop Hunger Now organization reported that in places like sub-Saharan Africa, about 23.2 percent of the population is hungry.

Additionally, pop culture affects the way we eat.

“Many teen girls desire to emulate unhealthy images of models or celebrities in popular culture,” writer Jody Braverman suggested in a blog post.

Eating the newest food and being on the newest diet fad is something we value greatly.

Continuously, pop culture has taken a toll on the way we think and act. The issues that actually pose a threat or have immediate relevance to our life are being disregarded because we are so focused on being a part of this culture. Whether it’s what we say, wear or eat, pop culture has consumed so much of our attention that we are distracted and cannot focus on the real issues occurring. ____________________________________ Emma Lewis is a freshman sociology major who doesn’t have to pick up her phone every second of every day. You can email her at elewis3@ithaca.edu.

Image by Molly McGill

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News & Views

the hazmat suits that doctors treating Ebola had to wear when in contact with victims. Johnathon Weeks, the man who created the Ebola costume, stated that this costume would be “the most ‘viral’ costume of the year.” While this illness was acknowledged and talked about almost everyday, this costume idea twisted the focus of a serious matter and turned it into a humorous occasion.

Polly Mosendz of The Atlantic found that this created controversy among costume sellers and some businesses refused to carry this costume in their stores with the concern that it may be “crossing a line.” Pictures of this costume emerged on Twitter and spread quickly. Once people saw the costume, their focus altered from being concerned about this life threatening disease to the humor of this costume and the debate about whether it should be sold in stores.

This kind of situation has started to become a common occurrence.

March 8 is International Women’s Day, a day dedicated to celebrating women around the world for their accomplishments socially, economically and politically. Although the United States is still a very patriarchal society, this is a day to acknowledge the progress women have made in trying to dismantle that patriarchy.

Amongst the amazing women that should have been the focus of the day, acknowledgement was instead shifted to a celebrity, Kim Kardashian, who decided to use International Women’s Day to feel “liberated” by posting a naked picture of herself on Instagram.

Considering Kardashian has not accomplished anything, socially or politically, many people felt offended by the way she went about showing she’s a woman. Many were opposed to this post because her post detracted from the obstacles that women face everyday. Instead, her post focused on the physical aspects of being a woman. This post forms an idea that women are what their physical assets allow them to be.

Once a certain message is created, it can be easily accepted by people that follow media.

The distraction created by pop culture even extends to a necessity, such as eating. Pop culture has

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

UPFRONT. UPFRONT. UPFRON

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Absent Consent

Indicting inaction against sexual assult in universities

By Celisa Calacal, Staff Writer

T

“Numbers from the 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Study show that 89 percent of assaults occur when the survivor is incapacitated as a result of consuming alcohol.”

texts in which consent is expressed or not expressed becomes incredibly complex.

As was the case with Enriquez, the addition of alcohol into a sexual encounter can make it more difficult to discern if a sexual interaction constitutes “rape.” Alcohol is widely considered by doctors to be the most common date rape drug. Because of alcohol’s inebriating effect and its ability to lower inhibitions, many perpetrators invoke alcohol when pursuing a woman to make the prospect of sex more likely. In fact, numbers from the 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Study show that 89 percent of assaults occur when the survivor is incapacitated as a result of consuming alcohol. And in a college setting, with the bevy of frat parties and house parties happening during weekends, alcohol only becomes more accessible.

Enriquez believes consent acts as a foundation for healthy relationships, a building block that makes sure people are consistently respected. She said understanding consent — that people have a choice to say yes to engaging in sexual activity — can improve how society treats survivors of sexual assault.

“When people understand consent and understand what it means to give and not give consent, I think that that will play into the big picture of how we treat victims of sexu-

al assault, because right now I think people don’t understand what consent is in general,” she said.

Before the rape, Enriquez said no one had discussed the concept of consent with her. While she doesn’t believe that knowing about consent at the time would have changed the outcome of her situation, she said if more people were educated about consent, then the number of people who believed her may have been higher.

Another difficulty behind consent can be traced back to the vicious cycle of rape culture and victim blaming. Oftentimes, when instances of sexual assault occur, victims become the subjects of scrutiny more often than assaulters. Enriquez said this attitude about rape and consent stems from the lack of understanding people have for victims of sexual assault and an apathetic attitude toward marginalized groups in society.

“I think a lot of times it comes back to the fact that we devalue women and minorities and people that don’t have power or privilege,” she said.

Instances of rape are often seen as encounters that occur in the dead of night between strangers, Enriquez said. However, this is not the reality, as 90 percent of rapes were committed by someone known to the victim.

According to the 2000 report by the National Institute of Justice, “The Sexual Victimization of College Wom-

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Upfront

he year is 2009. Jasmin Enriquez is in the midst of her first year of college at Pennsylvania State University, and in the thick of juggling classes and schoolwork, she has also started seeing someone. One night, the two find themselves at a frat party, where alcohol is abundant and the atmosphere is buzzing. He hands her drink after drink and she takes each drink without giving it a second thought. It was in the name of having fun, she thought. After all, she trusted him.

That night, he raped her while she was sleeping.

Unfortunately, Enriquez’s story is not an uncommon one — in fact, according to the Association of American Universities’ 2015 study “Report on the AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct,” one in five women experience rape or attempted rape on college campuses every year. Every year, hundreds of thousands of women share a strikingly similar experience to Enriquez’s — one in which they find themselves in an unwanted sexual encounter with another person, be it a complete stranger, or, more often that not, a trusted friend.

Kylie Angell is another woman who was sexually assaulted as a college student. During her time at the University of Connecticut as a nursing student, she was sexually assaulted in her dorm by a friend. What followed was a tumultuous experience in which her assailant was first expelled but then allowed back on campus, despite the charges made against him.

Both Enriquez’s and Angell’s stories are indicative of the culture of rape and sexual violence present on college campuses throughout the country.

There are a plethora of factors that lead to instances of rape and sexual assault, but the absence of consent is ultimately the deciding detail.

During sexual encounters, consent is manifested through the verbal affirmation of “yes.” But despite a seemingly simple definition, the con-

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

en,” 90 percent of sexual assault survivors knew their offender. In both Enriquez’s and Angell’s experiences, the perpetrator was someone they both knew and trusted. This type of rape is more commonly referred to as acquaintance rape, in which the survivor is familiar with the assaulter.

This misconception that rape only occurs with a stranger, Angell said, can make it difficult for the survivor of acquaintance rape to come to terms with the fact that they were sexually violated by a person they thought they could trust.

“If society tells them that the only way to be raped is in a dark alley by stranger at gunpoint then they’re not going to … believe themselves when they are raped by somebody they know in their dorm room, for example, by someone that they’ve been friends with for two years,” Angell said.

Both Enriquez and Angell note the distinct trauma that accompanies acquaintance rape, and the psychological factors that accompany the emotional pain. At the time, Enriquez said, she did not know that what had happened to her classified as rape because she didn’t think rape could occur between people who are dating.

“I desperately wanted to believe that it didn’t happen because I didn’t want to believe that someone who I thought cared about me could do something so mean and gross,” she said.

Angell said acquaintance rape is especially confusing and disorienting because not only is there a violation of the body involved, but also a violation of trust as well.

“You have someone that you thought you could trust and then they violate your body and they do one of the most horrible things someone can do to another person and they rape you and they take away your security and that really is very confusing,” she said.

The issue of sexual assault and rape on college campuses is one that has dominated public discourse in the past few years. Several high-profile cases regarding sexual assault on a college campus have fallen under the national spotlight, such as Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz’s project of carrying a

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“If they’re open as an institution, then it’s their responsibility to take care of these things, just as a hospital is responsible for taking care of its patients, just as a car mechanic is responsible for taking care of the cars that come in there,”

mattress around campus to symbolize her experience with rape on the university’s campus.

Because more victims have come forward about their experiences with sexual violence, many institutions have taken steps to provide more resources to help sexual assault survivors, as well as more sexual assault prevention measures. However, Angell said the only reason colleges have begun to discuss issues of consent and sexual violence is because of the work of many young activists who are refusing to stay silent about their experiences.

Despite these illusions of progress, Angell said one of the explanations for this increased focus on rape and sexual assault is because money has gotten involved and lawsuits have been filed against universities and school districts across the country. The fear of dealing with a high-profile rape case and a tarnished reputation Angell said, has also influenced colleges to start paying attention to rape and sexual assault on their campuses.

“I think that unfortunately our society is clearly capitalistic and you know when the money gets on the table then people are gonna listen,” she said.

Although more survivors are coming forward to share their stories, most women continue to remain silent about their experiences, often not reporting their cases to the au-

thorities or their college. According to the 2000 study, “The Sexual Victimization of College Women,” fewer than 5 percent of victims report to law enforcement. Enriquez is one of the many survivors of rape and sexual assault who chose not to report what had happened to her. She said she did not do so because she was afraid that nobody would believe her.

And for the cases that are reported, many are bungled by the university. This presents a puzzling conundrum: how is it that colleges continue to mishandle cases of rape and sexual assault despite wanting to further address this very real and pervasive problem? Angell said the answer lies in the misguided intent of the colleges.

“A lot of sexual assault cases are mishandled because schools are trying to cover it up. So their intent is not to help the victim, it’s to protect the school which inadvertently protects the perpetrator and releases that perpetrator to go and do it again to other people,” she said.

Although schools may be sincerely trying to address the problem, Angell said mishandling the cases they receive from their students consequently damages the survivor even more. Angell is one of the few women who reported her case to the university. However she said the handling of the case — in which her perpetrator was expelled but then allowed back on campus — felt like

consent and further feed into rape culture.

“I definitely think that there is this misconception that if someone shows interest in you via a dating app, then that you have the right to do whatever you want, which is obviously not the case at all but I think people tell themselves that it is,” she said.

In addition, the rise of the popular phrase “Netflix and chill” — which signifies when two parties get together upon the premise of watching Netflix but then end up hooking up or having sex — has created a sense of expectations among young adults, Enriquez said.

“Just because someone says they want to come over and watch Netflix with you doesn’t mean they want to have sex with you,” she said. “No, it doesn’t mean they want to kiss you or anything — it means they want to watch Netflix with you.”

As the conversations on rape, sexual assault, abuse and sexual violence continue in society, both Angell and Enriquez believe that to successfully dismantle rape culture, education must start at an early age. Both women work in nonprofit organizations dedicated to educating people about sexual assault — Enriquez is the founder of Only With Consent, and Angell has recently began work with Stop Sexual Assault in School, along with having her story told in the documentary, “It Happened Here.” Angell said one of the first steps in addressing sexual assault is facing the problem head on.

“Prevention for sexual assault and for a brighter future is recognizing one that we have a problem, that violence against women and violence in general is very pervasive in our society and then once we recognize that we can start to address the problems at its core,” she said.

Despite widely regarded beliefs that young children should not be exposed to sex in an effort to preserve childhood innocence, both women advocate for teaching children early on and introducing them to the topics of rape and sexual violence. Angell said the concept of consent is difficult for college students to understand because of the lack of education on the topic during their adolescent years.

“So by avoiding these conversa-

tions and not talking about it in sex ed and having inadequate health classes when kids are young, it sets up college kids for failure in terms of obtaining consent when it comes to relationships or encounters,” she said.

By knowing about consent at an early age, Angell said, children can be better prepared when they get older if they happen upon a situation where sexual consent becomes murky. Enriquez also said no true progress will be made until rape culture and the facts that influence it are dismantled. An advocate for building consent culture from the ground up, she said it will take an entire shift in mindset where people are open and believe in the concept of consent and preventing sexual violence.

“That’s how a full consent culture is gonna happen — when everyone jumps on board,” she said. “And it’s up to all of us to see it as valuable and important and a very critical part of our culture for change to happen.” ___________________________________ Celisa Calacal is a sophomore journalism major who is skeptical of what the academy calls the “truth.” You can reach her at ccalacal@ithaca.edu.

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Upfront

a betrayal. Angell said schools have a responsibility to be prepared and open when dealing with incidents of sexual violence.

“If they’re open as an institution, then it’s their responsibility to take care of these things, just as a hospital is responsible for taking care of its patients, just as a car mechanic is responsible for taking care of the cars that come in there,” she said.

The complications behind rape and sexual assault on campus seem to spike when the alleged perpetrator is an athlete. The tightly woven fabric of sports culture in the college environment can make it even more difficult for the survivors to receive justice. The most recent of these cases involves NFL superstar Peyton Manning during his college football stint at the University of Tennessee. Revealing that the case was continuously buried by the university athletics department has only highlighted the power of the sports empire to cover up cases of sexual assault for the sake of protecting reputation and prestige.

When sexual assault survivors come forward and say they were sexually assaulted by an athlete, Angell said it is the immense social pressure from teammates, coaches, trainers and athletic directors that influences the attempts to cover up the story.

“There’s like this huge impetus for them to discourage the victim or survivor from reporting,” she said.

Angell also said when team members side with their fellow athletes, it is because of a dual combination of not wanting to be associated with the incident and not wanting to admit that rape and sexual assault happens.

“Just like so many people in our society, they don’t wanna admit that rape and sexual assault happens so often,” Angell said. “And that’s why they end up blaming victims or discrediting them or saying their stories aren’t true and not listening to them.”

Angell said the onslaught of social media can further contribute to rape culture among young people. Dating apps like Tinder, which is most popular among the college-aged crowd, could lead to a budding relationship or a hookup. Enriquez said these apps only fuel misconceptions about

The Idolatry of Sports

When rooting for a team becomes a religion

By M.N. Hornick, Contributing Writer

I

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

have been known to say, in a joking manner, that the number one religion in the state of Texas is football, specifically high school football. This joke, and slightly genuine belief, probably originated from the book and film Friday Night Lights, which tells the tale of a high school football team in a small city in West Texas called Odessa and how this team is the most important thing to everyone in this town. In Odessa, some people have a connection with God, but everyone has a connection with the Permian High Panthers.

While this might be true about Texas, it is also a microcosm of a greater phenomenon that is thoroughly present throughout the rest of the United States and the world.

Where there are sports, there are fans and where there are fans, there are those who take their fandom to a level that could be considered religious and makes some of us uncomfortable. Face-paint, costumes, signs, chants, season-ticket plans

and enough merchandise and memorabilia to fill up an entire room in someone’s house are some of the characteristics that are associated with superfans — the people we have all seen at sporting events that are so devoted to their team they make us wonder, “Is there anything else going on in their lives?”

A 2015 Gallup poll found that 59 percent of Americans identify as sports fans in some capacity. Stephen Mosher, a professor in the Department of Sport Management and Media at Ithaca College, said the reasons people attach themselves to sports are the same as why someone would take an interest in any form of culture.

“It’s not any different from good music or good film or good television,” Mosher said. “People who enjoy sport, and think they know it, like watching other people do it at the best of human capacity.”

Robert Montenegro, a writer for Crooked Scoreboard — a site that aims to approach sports writing by

“A 2015 Gallup poll found that 59 percent of Americans identify as sports fans in some capacity.

Stephen Mosher, a professor in the Department of Sport Management and Media at Ithaca College, said the reasons people attach themselves to sports are the same as why someone would take an interest in any form of culture.”

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providing different angles on sports stories than other media outlets — said part of the appeal of sports is that it contains some of the same storylines that appear in other forms of media. Montenegro said one example of this is the inherent attraction of humans toward having allegiances — which in the case of sports fans manifests itself in attaching themselves to teams — and creating a narrative of a battle between good and evil, a storyline that is often present in sports as well as in other forms of entertainment.

While 59 percent of Americans may enjoy watching sports played at their highest level, the faction within this 59 percent whose lives are fueled by a passion for their favorite team are an enigma. As an avid sports fan myself, and one who is incredibly passionate about sports and his favorite teams, it is difficult to understand that next level where fandom bears a stronger resemblance to religious devotion than a hobby.

This type of fandom is stronger than an obsession. I have been known to show obsessive qualities when following my favorite teams, but I would never cover myself in paint, make signs or wear a costume to a game. However, Michael Serazio, a professor in the Department of Communications at Boston College who has researched the psychological impact of a team on a city, said this type of expression is a way for people to unite as fans and is a necessary part of this level of devotion.

“Visible symbols that identify people as members of a tribe have always been necessary throughout human history,” Serazio said. “Some of the more outlandish versions of that speak to a human need to sometimes defy what is considered normal in the day-to-day.”

An additional impact this type of

come a part of who someone is.

“After a certain point of showing allegiance to a team, people will start to build their identity around that team and that’s when it becomes personal,” Montenegro said. “When someone insults the Yankees, and you’ve made the Yankees a part of your identity, they are now insulting you and people will take that personally.”

A particularly tragic example of when sports fandom has gone wrong was when a Los Angeles Dodgers fan savagely assaulted a San Francisco

Image by Lizzie Cox Giants fan outside of Dodgers Stadium in 2011.

“Being a seriously devoted sports fan isn’t necessarily bad, but when fandom leads someone to get in the way of other social issues or instigate violence on another person, that is when fandom can take things too far,” Montenegro said.

However, for the most part, sports fandom is a relatively harmless way

to occupy one’s time, unless someone makes decisions because of their sports fandom that they would normally not make.

And while some might make the argument there are much bigger issues impacting society that should be receiving more focus, and although there are circumstances when this is valid, sports are important for how they impact us culturally and socially. Sporting events are some of the biggest displays of culture in the world — the Olympics, the World Cup and the Super Bowl are all grand events that involve sport at the highest stage. Sports can also be used to bring people together in a variety of ways, whether through playing or spectating.

“Sports provide such an important cultural glue that binds people together,” Serazio said. “What sports provides in terms of a communal identity is the same as how any other social vehicle creates unity within a group of people. Sports are the vehicle that many of us use to temporarily forget about those other more serious problems.”

Although it may be hard to completely understand how or why people devote themselves to their favorite teams in a pseudo-religious fashion, it’s difficult not to respect the way they are able to connect with something on such a deep level. Some people need their family, others need their faith and others — like sports fanatics — just need their team. And in a hilariously ironic turn of events, there are some people who need both their faith and their team, such as a convent of nuns in San Antonio who are incredibly devoted to both God and their hometown San Antonio Spurs.

Google it. ___________________________________ M.N. Hornick is a sophomore journalism major who once lost a bare-knuckle boxing match to Bernie Sanders. You can email him at mhornick@ithaca.edu.

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fandom can have was demonstrated when National Basketball Association superstar LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010 and became public enemy number one in the state of Ohio. He was verbally attacked by throngs of fans — there were public burnings of his jerseys and fans wore shirts that said “Quitness,” parodying his Nike slogan of “Witness” to name just a few ways people reacted. It’s difficult to imagine a situation where one would feel compelled to do any of this, no matter how angry they were at any athlete, but Mosher said this is simply another way of showing passion.

“People cry at movies, people cry when they listen to songs,” he said.

“If you invest your emotions in an activity, particularly a good activity, and there’s a lot of passion involved, you are going to feel the highs of highs and the lows of lows.”

Serazio said this type of devotion toward a sports team stems from people’s basic need to relate to each other.

“There’s something fundamental about the human need for community,” he said. “And for millennia, one of the things religion has provided was community. This is a huge reason for the appeal of sports because as human beings we need reasons to connect with each other and sports provides a visible manifestation of something that we can collectively believe in. Someone who is not religiously inclined could find in sports a suitable alternative for those same existential needs.”

Montenegro agreed, saying a positive aspect of sports fandom is that sport can be what people find solidarity in to keep their lives stable.

“Everybody needs something to believe in, latch onto or perhaps something to find meaning in their life,” he said. “And for some people it’s their job or their family, but for many people it’s their fandom.”

Montenegro said becoming enthralled with a sports team takes time, but once a person becomes attached, the team can start to be-

Monopolizing Society

How the game of capitalism creates winners and losers

By Ana Borruto, Contributing Writer

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hink of the game Monopoly.

The goal of the game is for one player to accumulate the most wealth and property, while the other players have to pay off their debt by selling their properties, which often eventually leads to them losing everything. However, Monopoly is not just a long board game to play on a lazy day at home, but actually an illustrative example of the capitalist system our society has today.

The original idea for the game, before Charles Darrow claimed he invented it and sold it to Parker Brothers, was actually from the anti-capitalist Elizabeth Magie.

Her “Landlord’s Game,” which she patented in 1903, showed the income inequalities and power of the monopolists at the time. According to a New York Times article from 2015, Magie “created two sets of rules for her game: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents.

Her dualistic approach was a teaching tool meant to demonstrate that the first set of rules was morally superior.” However, the monopolist version of the game caught on and Darrow claimed a version of it and became rich as a result.

An article by The Guardian from April 2015 titled “The secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game’s left-wing origins,” quotes Magie as saying the game contained “all the elements of success and failure in the real world, and the object is the same as the human race in general seem[s] to have, ie, the accumulation of wealth.”

This desire for the accumulation of wealth has led to capitalism becoming ingrained in our society.

And like Monopoly, capitalism is a game with winners and losers, creating social stratification and the idea of meritocracy. The history of capitalism dates back to Western

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“This desire for the accumulation of wealth has led to capitalism becoming ingrained in our society. And like Monopoly, capitalism is a game with winners and losers, creating social stratification and the idea of meritocracy.”

Europe during the Middle Ages, but today it has evolved into a farreaching global system.

Capitalism.org defines capitalism as a “social system based on the principle of individual rights.” The website writes that “Politically, it is a system of laissez-faire (freedom).”

Legally, it is a system of objective laws, meaning capitalism’s purpose is to protect the rights of the individual, with the economic aspect of the system being its commitment to having free markets.

John Plender, a senior editorial writer and columnist for the Financial Times, defines capitalism as “a business cycle.” He said this cycle was unknown before the Industrial Revolution and it is made volatile by an unstable banking system.

“The dynamic of capitalism inflicts constant change as whole industries rise and fall as a result of technological advance,” Plender said.

“So working people are subjected to wrenching swings in the level of employment, communities are disrupted and beautiful countryside in the early stages of capitalism is made ugly by industrialisation.”

Within a capitalist society, social stratification — how society groups people into different categories based on their social status, wealth and occupation — is usually prevalent and Plender said classes tend to be split by wealth and income.

“Capitalism has a built-in tendency to create inequalities of income and wealth and has no means of addressing global problems that require collective solutions such as environmental pollution,” Plender said.

He said historically, capitalism resorts to old class hierarchies that made wealth independent of land ownership.

“But the new hierarchies depend on the particular model of capitalism that countries pursue,” Plender said. “In many countries, crony capitalism grants monopolies to oligarchs. And that includes the United States, where politicians on Capitol Hill have been systematically bought by Wall Street and the Business Roundtable through campaign finance and heavy-duty lobbying.”

Meritocracy, which is the idea that power should be held by individuals with ability, talent and levels of achievement, is also common within a capitalist society. This pertains to capitalism in that those who are the most successful tend to be treated as superior in a capitalistic society.

However, there are advantages to the system of capitalism, Plender said. He said he believes that capitalism works for our society.

Capitalism as a system brings people out of poverty, Plender said, mentioning as an example how China decided to adopt the

“[The capitalists] are the ones who enforce it and everybody else loses, because it is the few who are profiting from the backs of the many,” McMillan said. “While there might be relative differences in the many different ways people lose ... we are all still losing, and the capitalists themselves are the only ones taking everything. I wouldn’t even call it winning because eventually they are going to destroy their own habitat as well.”

In contrast, Plender believes there is merit in having a capitalist system because it raises living standards in countries that embrace it. While Plender said capitalism has led to a lot of damage throughout history, he said the government has learned how to lessen the severity of the damage through different forms of economic intervention, such as being involved in the free market process. Plender said an example of this is how after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the U.S. did not suffer a huge loss of output like it did in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

However, Plender acknowledged that capitalism is by no means a perfect system.

“While the losers lose less today than they did in the nineteenth century, an increasingly narrow group of big winners are scooping an astonishingly large amount of income and wealth,” Plender said. “The structure of newer high-tech and financial industries seems to create a winner-takes-all environment in which inequality has become more extreme than at any time since the 1920s, another period of financial excess.”

Some people argue that capitalism cannot be fixed and say society should instead move to a system of socialism, which they believe would create equality for all.

Doug Barnes is the national secretary of the Freedom Socialist Party, a socialist and feminist organization that has been in the United States for 50 years. The organization is active in different social movements and one of the goals of this group is to overthrow the capitalist system.

“I think socialism is essentially shared equality and by doing that, by redistributing wealth so that everyone’s basic needs are met,

it brings everyone up to a level of ending mass starvation, mass deaths and wars that are going on,” Barnes said. “So by collaboration and cooperation we can end a lot of the ills of this current economic system.”

Barnes describes the capitalist system as a “dog-eat-dog” system.

He said by sharing the wealth of the world, everyone can gain a decent standard of living, education and healthcare — all the basic needs Barnes said are human rights not respected by the capitalist system.

Instead of this however, Barnes said people like Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump are creating hatred and waging war on the poor and lower classes. The organization Barnes is part of wants to end the oppression of marginalized people in society.

“The increased disparity within groups, between men and women, between people of color and between people of different sexes and sexual orientation — it’s criminal,” Barnes said. “And it’s creating these divisions. We want to see an end to that and also the ability to creatively work with each other to solve the world’s problems.”

According to an article written in January by The Fiscal Times titled, “Bernie Sanders Says He’s a Democratic Socialist. Here’s What That Means,” socialism is a smoother system, while capitalism has booms and busts.

“By [capitalism’s] very nature, it is built to increase profits for those that profit,” Barnes said. “Some billionaires own more than a lot of countries in the world, gazillionaires, whatever you call them. It’s an incredible, unequal, unfair ... damaging and dangerous system that’s plunging us towards economic and environmental suicide.”

The capitalist system, as Plender puts it, is essentially a paradox. It increases productivity in our society, which generates wealth. However, the system itself is unstable because of the inequalities it creates. ___________________________________ Ana Borruto is a sophomore journalism major who will kick your ass at Monopoly. You can email her at aborruto@ithaca.edu.

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capitalist model of urbanization and industrialization in 1978. Plender said the country then saw an eightfold increase in per capita gross domestic product over the next three decades.

“If you look more widely, the number of people living at or below $1.25 a day, after adjusting for the purchasing power of the dollar in different countries, fell from 52 percent in 1981 to 21 percent in 2010, according to the World Bank,” Plender said. “That is a transformation in living standards that has no precedent in human history. Before capitalism there was, for centuries, scarcely any rise in living standards.”

However, there are those who believe the system of capitalism is more destructive than it is beneficial.

Stephanie McMillan is a cartoonist who is opposed to the capitalist system. Through her cartoons, she advocates against different aspects of capitalism in order to inform the public about what she sees as an unfair system. McMillan said she believes the capitalist system is exploitative and oppressive and that it cannot be any other way.

“The way that profit is generated is through the production of surplus value and the production of commodity, and that can only be done by exploiting workers and selling the commodities for higher prices than our workers are paid for their labor power,” McMillan said.

“So exploitation is inherent in the process.”

McMillan also said the system is ecocidal, which means that it is leading to the destruction of the natural environment. “[Capitalism] requires potential growth, which means that ecocide is also inherent in the process because it [capitalism] constantly has to be increasing the amount of natural resources that it’s putting into production,” she said. “For me, it’s a nightmare system that we need to get rid of.”

In the metaphorical sense that capitalism is a “game,” there are clear winners and losers. McMillan said she sees the wealthy capitalists as the ones who clearly benefit the most from the system, while she believes that most people within the system are losing.

The Sport of Stadium Building

How new venues hurt cities and taxpayers in the long run

By Anna Lamb, Staff Writer

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n 2013, Pacific Standard Magazine reported that “over the past 20 years, 101 new sports facilities have opened in the United States — a 90 percent replacement rate — and almost all of them have received direct public funding.” What we’ve seen in recent history is that taxpayers have been fed the myth that in addition to the pride a team brings its hometown, a new stadium will also bring with it new jobs and economic growth. However, this is often not the case.

Roger Noll, an economist at Stanford University, said the economic effects of building a new stadium for a National Football League team have been determined.

“One settled issue in economics is that a professional football team produces no measurable benefit to the local economy,” Noll said.

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Noll explained that stadiums employ fewer than 100 full time employees, along with hundreds of seasonal employees who work fewer than 100 hours. Additionally, Noll explained that there is little evidence to suggest that any “spill over foot traffic” exists in areas with major stadiums. When a fan is going from a busy parking lot to view a game, they are not likely to stop and window shop or grab a bite to eat in that 500 foot distance.

A new stadium is more likely to actually take away business from the area, as going to a game serves as a replacement for spending on other items, Noll said. When a consumer spends their $50 on a nosebleed seat to see a football game, they are not spending that money on a nice dinner at a local restaurant.

“Hence, spending on sports substitutes for spending on other things,” Noll said. “The trouble with sports is that a relatively small number of people earn very high salaries that account for almost all of the money that a team generates.

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Hence, spending substitution [spending money elsewhere] shifts income from a larger number of middle income jobs to a small number of jobs paying millions plus another small number of low-pay, part-time jobs.”

Essentially, my spending at and going to a Patriots game creates a massive profit. But only a small amount of money goes toward repaying the $72 million that taxpayers paid in 2007 for the building project that was Patriot Place, which cost a total of $350 million.

As Jeffrey Dorfman explains in his 2015 Forbes article: “Some of that tax revenue has to go toward government costs associated with the holding of sports events: extra police, traffic control, perhaps more public transit, etc. At the end of the day, only a very small fraction of total spending associated with stadium events is left over to help pay back the taxpayers for building a stadium.”

This can result in residents of a city being saddled with incredibly expensive sums of money. According to a 2013 article published in The Atlantic, the Washington Redskins got $4 million from taxpayers to update a workout facility while the Cincinnati Bengals, as well as the city’s Major League Baseball team the Reds, received $33 million of Ohio taxpayers’ money to renovate their own stadium. Additionally, after vague threats to relocate, the Minnesota Vikings got $506 million from the taxpayers to pay for a new stadium.

A 2015 Huffpost Sports article explains that the price of stadiums that teams advertise does not include “subtle costs that fall to taxpayers, like property and sales tax exemptions, the loss of stadiumrelated revenue to teams, and other forms of indirect support.” As a result, taxpayers end up paying

more than they think.

Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross, said stadiums can be subsidized in a multitude of ways.

“The most obvious way is simply to have the taxpayer build the stadium, but then let the team use the stadium rent-free and let the team keep all of the money from events held at the stadium and for naming rights,” Matheson said. “Over the past 25 years, the taxpayer has paid for roughly 65 percent of the costs of new NFL stadiums.”

Sports teams — and games — have long been an integral part of American tradition and society. If recent history is anything to go by, because teams know that cities are usually willing to build bigger and better stadiums, they aren’t afraid to ask for them. But is the public willing to give into those same pressures?

Bruce K. Johnson, professor of economics at Centre College, conducted studies in the early 2000s in various cities and found overwhelmingly that citizens were willing to pay far less than the typical subsidy for stadiums built in their cities. On average, taxpayers were only willing to pay one fifth of the average subsidy asked of them to build their team a new stadium.

However, moving to another city, or threatening to move to another city, has proven to be a useful strategy for sports teams to get their way, even when the taxpayers are reluctant. One example of this was when the Buffalo Bills threatened to move to Seattle in 1971 after the late owner, Ralph Wilson Jr., demanded a new stadium. Twenty two million dollars in public funding — $118 million in today’s dollars — got him just that. And in return, according to a 2014 report in The Guardian, the city saw “basically zero to negative economic impact to the area.”

Matheson said teams threatening

to leave cities if they don’t get what they want is quite common in the NFL. “In Minneapolis, taxpayers coughed up about $500 million after the owner threatened to move the team to LA.,” he said. “Currently, the St. Louis Rams, Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers are all under threat of relocation, and the Rams are actually moving next year. In each case, the current owners used the threat to try to leverage a new stadium out of local governments.”

Stadiums aren’t the only sports related thing that cities sometimes come to regret. Economic downfalls similar to those of building a new sports stadium for a professional team often accompany those cities that host the Olympic Games.

Matheson said although at first it

the long term impacts of hosting something like the Olympics can be quite negative.

“Civic pride aroused from such an endeavor is fleeting and the monuments built for the spectacle in the form of stadiums and sporting venues shortly become little more than ghostly reminders of once glorious days,” he wrote.

Examples of these long term costs are easy to see. Montreal’s 1976 Olympics began with a hope for long-term tourism and ended with $1.5 billion in debt. Canada overbuilt in terms of hotels and other accommodations, buying into the thought that the games would pay for the facilities and more.

Barcelona, Sydney and Atlanta all broke even in terms of short term costs, but ultimately incurred long term public debt. Andrew Zimbalist writes in the New York Times “an econometric study using monthly data found that there was insignificant change in retail sales, hotel occupancy and airport traffic during the games.”

Many cities have found hosting these games and accommodating their professional sports team to be a losing proposition. With the average lifespan of a new stadium having dropped to just around 30 years, according to Al Jazeera, and the median age of stadiums at 31 years with 10 new stadiums having been built in the past 12 years, according to CNN Money, by the time the bonds are paid off for that new stadium, the sports team using it may be in need of a newer one.

Sports franchises have created a vicious cycle. Threaten to leave, get more funding to build a new stadium and repeat when it becomes outdated. So don’t buy into false campaigns of job creation or economic growth. And cheer on your favorite team from the comfort of your couch. ___________________________________ Anna Lamb is a freshman journalism major who has turned down several offers to be the lead architect in charge of building a new sports stadium. You can email her at alamb@ithaca.edu.

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Illustration by Lizzie Cox

may seem that hosting an event as massive as the Olympics would bring increased commerce, there is “very little evidence to suggest hosting the Olympics provides much of an economic benefit.”

In a New York Times blog piece economists Andrew Zimbalist and Robert K. Barney write that, as with the construction of sports stadiums, proponents of the Olympics claim the games increase economic growth in an area by upping consumer spending and tourism. But just as with NFL games, fans come to see the event and leave. They tend not to stick around and spend in and around stadiums. The Olympics are more of a tool for boosting patriotism and advertising a country’s strength, just as Beijing did in 2008.

Additionally, Barney writes that

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BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

Stateless Societies Uncovering the ideological enigma of Anarchy

By Evan Popp, Upfront Editor

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BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

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n the 2014 movie “The Purge: Anarchy,” for 12 hours the government suspends all services and crime is legal. The film depicts people using the temporary lack of a government to commit acts of violence. The movie is centered around the common assumption that an absence of government — anarchy — would lead to chaos and destruction. However, in actuality, anarchism as a political philosophy is far more complicated and nuanced than portrayed in the movie.

Anarchism has deep roots in the United States, with famous early Americans such as transcendentalist author, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau in the 1800s and activist, writer and orator Emma Goldman in the early 1900s espousing forms of anarchist ideology. But along with many other political philosophies that vary from the established order, anarchism is poorly understood.

David Friedman, a professor of Law at Santa Clara University, said the combination of the violent actions of a few people who called themselves anarchists, and the general perception of anarchy as being chaotic, has led to a negative connotation with the word.

One such action that has caused people to associate anarchism with violence was the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. But despite the violence of some anarchists throughout history, there have been many anarchists who disavowed the use of violence. One such thinker was radical journalist and activist Dorothy Day — considered an anarchist — who helped found the Catholic Worker Movement, a cause that has championed nonviolent resistance.

Gary Chartier, associate dean and professor of law and business ethics at La Sierra University, said the actions of a small number of anarchists have been used to make a sweeping generalization about anarchism. However, Chartier said those perceptions don’t reflect the reality of the political philosophy.

“It is not chaotic violence, which is what so many commentators and pundits and people on the street say,” he said. “Anarchy means a social order without rulers … that is top down authority figures who exercise their control without consent of those whose lives they seek to manage.”

Jake Tompkins, a member of the Workers Solidarity Alliance — an anarchist activist group — said anarchism has been deprecated

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by the elites in society because the introduction of anarchy into society would threaten those elites’ status and way of life.

Noam Chomsky, a well known progressive activist, critic of the U.S. government and proponent of anarchist thought, wrote in an email that anarchism forces hierarchical structures to prove why they are needed in society. Chomsky said while he is skeptical of commitment to one specific ideology, he does see merit in anarchist philosophy.

“There are, I think, some sensible guidelines for political thought and action,” he said. “That includes what I think has been the driving principle of anarchism as of its classical liberal antecedents: that relations of hierarchy, domination, subordination must demonstrate their legitimacy, and if they cannot (which is quite common), they should be dismantled in favor of structures that are more free and just.”

Chomsky said the challenge is applying these ideas to the real world. However, he said anarchism is possible within society, citing Russian revolutionary anarchist Mikhail Bakunin who advocated creating the institutions of the future within the reality of the present.

“That is happening all the time, for example, with community control, worker-owned and managed enterprises, cooperatives, and other forms of mutual aid and popular decision-making, not forgetting advances in civil and human rights that dismantle illegitimate authority,” Chomsky said. “With sufficient scale, such initiatives can become the foundation of a new society that approaches anarchist ideals.”

In addition to being misunderstood as a political philosophy synonymous with chaos and violence, anarchism is also often inaccurately perceived to be one specific ideology. While it is true that most anarchists would say anarchism simply means the absence of government, the means taken to abolish the government — as well as what society would look like after — varies widely based on the anarchists one speaks with. As a result, anarchism contains many different ideologies within it, with some on the left wing of the political spectrum, others on the right wing and still others rejecting both ends of the spectrum.

Approaching anarchism from the left are Tompkins and the Workers Solidarity Alliance, proponents of what is known as anarchosyndicalism.

Tompkins said anarcho-syndicalism is an anticapitalist form of anarchism that

seeks to take the power and the means of production out of the hands of the government and wealthy elite and give it to the workers.

Tompkins said the goal of anarchosyndicalists is to promote a mass unionism of workers.

“We’re anarchists with a specific kind of strategy, and that strategy is one that people call revolutionary unionism, which is where workers unions organize to not only get concessions from bosses, owners and companies, but also to bring the means of production — factories and things like that — under the control of the workers themselves,” Tompkins said.

Anarcho-syndicalists believe that capitalism creates a society in which the means of production are owned by only a few powerful people and that this creates an untenable situation for the workers, Tompkins said. He said historically, it has been the state that has protected the interests of the powerful and the upper class, instead of looking out for the workers.

Tompkins said this creates a top-down, authoritarian structure to society and is why anarchosyndicalists advocate the absence of the state and oppose electoral politics.

“We fundamentally think that the state should be abolished in favor of … more worker control, a horizontal organization of society,” Tompkins said.

The Workers Solidarity Alliance has started an initiative to build the anarcho-syndicalist movement in North America, Tompkins said.

He said the idea is to involve more anarcho-syndicalists in social struggles and to try to shift the labor movement in a direction that is comparable with anarchosyndicalist viewpoints.

Tompkins said this can be achieved in a couple ways, such as getting anarcho-syndicalists involved in organizing workers or getting involved in environmental activism. The ultimate goal, he said, is to further the push for liberation from oppressive structures.

“An authoritarian relationship doesn’t promote liberty for workers … and so we’re trying to build a movement that can have the critical mass support to change that structure of society,” Tompkins said.

Another form of anarchism is postleft anarchist perspective. Lawrence Jarach, co-editor of the magazine Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, said traditionally, anarchists have been linked to left-wing ideology.

“A post-left anarchist perspective

system of anarcho-capitalism, there would be private firms that would sell the services of protecting people’s rights and settling disputes.

The firms, Friedman said, would realize there may be conflict between them if there is conflict between their customers, and they would agree on a private arbitration court to settle any disputes between their customers.

Friedman said the best case scenario for this form of anarchism is a slow, continuous process in which more things are done by the market so when the last bit of government disappears, no one notices.

Anarcho-capitalism is somewhat similar to libertarianism but not synonymous, Friedman said. He said the difference is libertarianism describes an outcome while anarcho-capitalism describes a set of institutions. However, Friedman said he believes these institutions are relatively likely to produce libertarian outcomes.

Friedman said the reason this system would be preferable to having a government is that in a market situation — for the most part — each person pays most of the cost of what they do and also gets most of the benefit. This rational individual behavior usually leads to rational group behavior, Friedman said.

However, he said this is not the case when it comes to the government.

“If you think about the political system, it’s almost never the case that individual actors are actually bearing the cost and receiving the benefit of their actions,” he said.

“Hence, they very rarely have an incentive to take those actions, and only those actions that produce net benefits. That’s sort of an economist’s view of why we don’t expect government to work.”

Also centered around marketbased ideas, but very different from anarcho-capitalism, is left-market anarchism.

“Market anarchy involves the view that a peaceful society is one in which people enjoy robust possessory rights and can exchange in voluntary exchanges,” Chartier said.

Chartier said left-market anarchism emphasizes the central cultural and economic priorities of the traditional left.

“With things like war and civil liberties and privacy, inclusiveness and race and ethnicity, these kinds of concerns that you might associate with the left need not be embraced as somehow requiring either topdown control and regulation of the state or indeed the absence of robust possessory rights and market exchange,” Chartier said.

Left-market anarchism is an anticapitalist ideology, Chartier said.

He acknowledged this might sound contradictory given the presence of the word “market,” but he said it all depends on what one means by capitalism. He said when most people use the term capitalism, they are usually simply referring to market exchange. However, he said many left-market anarchists understand capitalism to mean the set of economic arrangements currently in place.

“Those arrangements are certainly not ones in which market exchange and legitimate possessory claims are consistently respected,” he said. “Rather, the system we have now is one in which well-connected individuals and groups use state power to gain privileges ... at the expense of the public and also at the expense of workers.”

This is why Chartier said leftmarket anarchists advocate for a “freed market” instead of a “free market.” He said they want to emphasize that in a world of leftmarket anarchism, the market would have been liberated from the privileges that currently dominate it.

Additionally, Chartier said one of his other reasons for not trusting the state is that the people who run for elected office are not randomly selected citizens, but instead people who crave and seek power. Chartier said this power comes with a lot of internal and external pressures that can make even the most moral of people use power in harmful ways.

There are other forms of anarchism besides the philosophies discussed, as the goal of the abdication of government leaves a myriad of ways to make that a reality and continue as a society afterward. Ultimately, however, what all forms of anarchism seek is the removal of the privileges enjoyed by the state, such as the government’s right to enter into people’s lives, enact laws that sometimes curb personal freedoms and prop up the elites in society at the expense of the oppressed.

“The government is an organization that people treat as if it has special rights,” Friedman said. “People think it has the right to decide whether you work for it, the right to provide you services and make you pay for it whether you want them or not. Anarchy is a society with no organization that acts like that.” ___________________________________ Evan Popp is a sophomore journalism major who can distinguish method over madness. You can reach him at epopp@ithaca.edu

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is one that tries to get back to a principled, anti-bureaucratic way of engaging theory and practices,” Jarach said.

“Most post-left anarchists would reject the idea of any kind of representation or delegate model for decision making.”

Jarach said one of the main critiques post-left anarchists have of left anarchists is that they may become involved in formal organizational projects, such as organizing in the workplace or through independent meetings.

“And it often slides into — especially this year — a kind of soft on electoralism, let’s play footsies with the pro-Sanders crowd or the Green Party or things like that,” Jarach said.

He said the more left anarchists go, the more they seem to be drawn into the realm of electoral politics, which anarchists have historically rejected. Instead of electoral politics, anarchists prefer to organize through direct action, which Jarach said involves organizing yourself with others to further your views without using any sort of representational politics.

Another distinction between left anarchists and post-left anarchist perspective is that Jarach said leftist anarchists seem to believe that if people knew the truth about anarchism, instead of perceiving it as chaotic and violent, there would be a far greater number of people interested in the movement.

However, Jarach said he doesn’t believe that’s the case, suggesting if people were aware of the nuance within anarchy, many would still not be attracted to it as an ideology because people don’t always want high degrees of autonomy.

Despite this perception of anarchism as violent, Jarach said, much like the term “queer,” anarchism has been reappropriated by those who identify with it and is used as a badge of honor among those who oppose the control of the government.

Still others have taken a different approach to anarchism, such as Friedman, who is an anarchocapitalist, an ideology that advocates the elimination of the government in favor of privatization and the free market. Friedman said his philosophy constitutes an extreme version of classical liberalism.

“The idea is to consider a society where you’ve privatized everything government does that’s worth doing,” Friedman said. “So you have a society which, like ours, has private property and voluntary exchange but in which there is no government.”

Friedman added that in this

OL. MINISTRYofCOOL. MI BUZZSAW:Puzzles and Games Issue

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Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Take One Down, Pass it Around The origins of the classic college drinking game

By Julia Tricolla, Seesaw Editor

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is held with over 1,000 participants playing to win. The winning team receives 65 thousand dollars and the title of beer pong king or queen.

In a study published by the Journal of American College Health titled “Self-Reported Drinking-game Participation of Incoming College Students,” 1,252 students were questioned about their experiences with drinking games. The study cites another finding that drinking games were played by 65 percent of males and 61 percent of females on college campuses. Women were also reported to drink about the same as males during drinking games which leads to higher blood-alcohol contents because of biological differences in intoxication levels.

Although the percentage is less than half at 21 percent of students reporting that they play drinking games to get another person drunk, the intoxication for females can lead to increased sexual contact. The

Image by Elena Haskins

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) expresses that binge-drinking can lead to blackouts, health problems and even death.

Drinking games can be a great way to socialize and have some friendly competition with peers; it might even give someone the courage to talk to the person they’ve been infatuated with since their freshman seminar.

But behind all the excitement can be the destructive side of bingedrinking. ___________________________________ Julia Tricolla is a freshman cinema and photography major who has absolutely no first-hand experience with beer pong. You can email her at jtricolla@ithaca.edu.

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Ministry of Cool

eer pong: a traditional game played by college students across universities nationwide that tests a person’s skills and alcohol consumption. Beer pong is one of the many drinking games that are played in college.

It is not uncommon to walk into a pregame — an event where alcohol is consumed before going out — and find people playing card games and skill games revolving around alcohol. There are a few reasons why people play drinking games, but the most common is to ensure quick intoxication.

Common drinking games include flip cup, quarters and civil war.

However with over 500 variations of drinking games, beer pong is the most traditional and well-known on college campuses.

Crispus Knight, a writer from Dartmouth College and author of the book Three For Ship: A Swan Song to Dartmouth Beer Pong, brags how beer pong originated in the basements of Dartmouth’s fraternities. However, many other fraternities across the nation disagree and claim that their fraternities’ ancestors created beer pong. Knight says that Dartmouth Pong was originally played with paddles and a maximum of three cups. Beer pong, and its earlier equivalent Beirut, is traditionally played with 10 alcohol-filled cups at each end of a table into which players try to toss a ping pong ball.

The idea of the game stays true to Beirut: players have to get the ping pong ball into the opposing player’s cup to make them drink the contents. The winning team stays on the table until they are defeated by another pair of players.

Winning a game of beer pong is similar to being crowned homecoming queen in an early 2000s Disney movie and the competition can become as intense as the 2016 presidential election. At Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino in Nevada, an annual beer pong tournament

RAW SAW

BUZZSAW:Puzzles and Games Issue

Sophie’s Quick & Dirty

Thao & The Get Down Stay Down

FROM THE

A Man Alive

Album Review Alexa Salvato

News and Views Editor

Listening to Thao & The Get Down Stay Down’s newest release, A Man Alive, the listener is immediately struck by juxtaposition. The music is chirpy and fun, full of harmonious jingles resonating behind Thao’s voice, but the lyrics are deep and painful. From the bluesy track “Guts” to tUnE-yArDs-style discordant “Meticulous Bird” to central jam-tune “Nobody Dies,” an emotional backbone unites the whole album into one work of art.

The jarring discordance present throughout this album isn’t a surprise, as it was produced by Merrill Garbus, aka tUnE-yArDs. A Man Alive draws comparisons to various other contemporary artists, of those, mostly women. The guitar riffs are very St. Vincent, and the intimate first-person narrative is reminiscent of Courtney Barnett’s acclaimed 2015 release, Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit. For a first-time listener, the emotional intimacy of the words mixed with the catchiness of the tunes are what warrant multiple listen-throughs.

With her fourth release, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down (aka Thao Nguyen) had a motive of deep emotion. As Pitchfork wrote in its March 7 review of the album,

“[L]yrically, Nguyen is grappling with absence — specifically, that of her father, who abandoned her family at a young age.” Nowhere is this clearer than on the refrain of the album’s sixth track: “I’ve got the guts/ Don’t need my blood.” “Nobody Dies,” the track before, echoes the same sentiment of abandonment, this time about the concept of love: “I sent all of it and then you send it all back to me/...Oh my life, won’t you come for me?”

“Nobody Dies” acts as the single of this album (albeit a rather jarring one), the song with the most radio-friendly repetition, as much as “Holy Roller” was on We the Common (2013). Yet “Holy Roller” begins with the line, “I am a woman of leisure,”— on this album, Thao couldn’t give off less of a leisurely vibe.

The album ties up with “Endless Love,” a proclamation of the singer’s persistence for joy. “I’ve got an endless love no one can starve/ I’ve got an endless love,” and, “I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna carve it all out of me,” echoes endlessly throughout the final song. It’s clear that despite the negativity and abandonment she’s dealt with for years, Thao’s inner love prevails.

Bump This: More album recs hand-picked by the Minister of Cool

Places to Go, People to See: There are only a few weeks left of the semester, why not spend them standing in near-darkness watching cool people make music? Here are some upcoming concerts that you’ll probably see me at:

Lucius released their sophomore album Good Grief earlier this month and though it is significantly more electronic than Wildewoman (2013) their familiar folksy Sophie Israelsohn lyricism makes a welcome comeback in Ministry of Cool Editor tracks like “What We Have (To Change)” and “Dusty Trails.”

Andrew Bird’s new album Are You Serious? is slowly, but surely making its way from NPR First Listen to Spotify and hopefully your personal collection. Bird even joins forces with fellow ’90s artist Fiona Apple in the track “Left Handed Kisses.”

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April 7 The Oh Hellos

7pm The Haunt April 8 Wavves

7:30pm Bailey Hall April 13 San Fermin w/ Esmé Patterson

7:30pm The Haunt

Santigold 99¢ Album Review Tyler Obropta

Embrace of the Serpent

Staff Writer

Film Review Tyler Obropta Staff Writer

here, move it, make it happen.”

Apart from those two missteps, Santigold includes some thrilling tracks, particularly in her Rihanna-esque “Banshee,” a song injected with a wavy, exciting synthetic orchestration. This boarders “SOS”-era Rihanna: aggressive and pounding, yet relentlessly high-energy.

“Walking in a Circle” — not to be confused with Buzzsaw favorite “Throw That Ass in a Circle” — is hippier and hoppier than the rest, with an intimidating beat, as slick as it is hypnotic, and an emphasis on the robotically droning vocals.

The best pieces on the album are “Rendezvous Girl” and the ending track, “Who I Thought You Were.” “Rendezvous Girl” is “Call Me”-era Blondie with a swaggering (albeit nearly incomprehensible) ’80s hook and infectious dance beats, while “Who I Thought You Were” is a enlivening, energized indie number that further shows off Santigold’s vocal diversity and ability to craft songs to imitate the 80s.

In an album filled with summery pop, Santigold’s talent as a singer/songwriter shines through, particularly in the exciting dance tracks. Those dance songs, whether mock-Rihanna or mock-Blondie, are the most memorable takeaways from 99¢. And, man, am I ever ready for summer to come.

Rare is the moment when I frantically confront my friends and tell them that the movie they all need to see is a Colombian black and white adventure-drama about Amazonian plants and culture. Yet, in Embrace of the Serpent, director Ciro Guerra has crafted a singular experience, something you have to see on the biggest screen possible.

Jan Bijvoet plays the ethnographer Theodor, and Brionne Davis plays the botanist Evan. Both men arrive in the Amazon in different eras, though they consult the same man to lead them to the rare and valuable yakruna plant. This man is Karamakate, the sole survivor of his tribe. The younger is played by Nilbio Torres, while the older is played by Antonio Bolivar. Karamakate and his fellow Amazon natives are unaccustomed and often vehemently opposed to the ways of “white men” like Theo and Evan.

While, yes, the plot can be boiled down to two men searching for a flower, to say that Embrace of the Serpent is about some bearded white guys looking for a plant is to say that 2001: A Space Odyssey is about some people in space with a killer robot. Not only is each about so much more than can be summarized in eight words, but each film also remains engaging and interesting only as long as the audience is looking for deeper meanings and hidden themes.

When each man sets out looking for the plant, they encounter far more in the

murky, uncertain waters of the river, meeting barbaric cults, crazed God-worshippers and the horrifying aftermath of the rubber barons. Frequent mention is made to these rubber barons: they are the white men who enslaved Amazonian people and forced them to harvest rubber from their trees. The only worker we ever see is a man with one arm who begs Theo and Karamakate to kill him and end his suffering. Shots of the man bending down to retrieve rubber-filled containers call to mind that shot from the Omaha Beach sequence of Saving Private Ryan. In that harrowing sequence, Tom Hanks witnesses a delimbed soldier reaching down into the sand to pick up his bloody, detached arm.

Because of Guerra’s confident direction and pinhole focus on the main cast, Embrace of the Serpent is relentlessly engaging and wholly immersive, so much so that I kept forgetting I was watching a fictional film instead of a documentary.

Great care is taken to preserve Amazonian culture on film. Characters speak their native tribal languages and explain their ancient beliefs and traditions. Where some films like Dances with Wolves casually play fast-andloose with their cultural accuracy, Embrace of the Serpent takes the extra effort to educate as well as entertain and, really, that’s all I can ask for when I go to see a movie about some white dudes cruising down the Amazon looking for plants.

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Ministry of Cool

On her third studio album 99¢, Santigold’s peppy, “genreless” style prevails yet again with light electric pop tunes that simultaneously animate the body to dance and herald in the warm, liberating days of summer. The album opens with “Can’t Get Enough of Myself,” letting Santigold demonstrate her beautiful mezzo-soprano in a catchy introduction. The keyboard adds a bizarre, bouncing energy to the song and carries Santigold’s voice like a beach ball.

The album’s summertime, beach groove remains consistent throughout, with occasional dips into an island mix of dance and pop on tracks like “Big Boss Big Time Business” that, despite their interesting sound, get bogged down by annoyingly repetitive lyrics and odd vocal choices.

“Who Be Lovin Me,” a track featuring hip-hop artist iLoveMakonnen, is completely ruined by his supremely irritating, sleazy and half-baked vocals.

The man’s voice sounds like an outof-tune violin that just wants to die.

The lyrics don’t help either, especially when they’re as unfortunate as, “I had to swerve on little mama cause she out here with that llama/Alpaca on my arm, I’m stayin’ warm in any storm/A super chef with the snow captain/Out

Creative Control

Film Review Tyler Obropta

BUZZSAW:Puzzles and Games Issue

Staff Writer

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Spike Jonze is a genius, because only a genius could pull off a funny, heartfelt romance about a guy who falls in love with his operating system. There are a million moments in Her in which the movie could have fallen apart completely, namely during the sex scene. Certainly, a less-experienced director would have made all of these mistakes, and the movie would have failed. That inexperienced director is Benjamin Dickinson, and the movie that fails is Creative Control.

Dickinson is also the film’s writer and star, a lonely ad developer named David.

The film is set in near-future New York, where people still smoke cigarettes, use loud construction machines and take yoga classes. It’s a future very similar to our present.

David is working on ads for an augmented reality system called Augmenta, a program that allows the user to do anything — which is to say that the film never bothers to tell us what exactly Augmenta does. When somebody puts on the Augmenta glasses, they can look through photo collections, make a video call and sometimes just use the glasses’ interface like a laptop screen.

David, however, uses the glasses to fantasize about Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), the girlfriend of his best friend Wim (Dan Gill). David’s weird sexual fascination with Sophie is complicated further by his marriage to Juliette (Nora Zehetner), a yoga instructor. Is it still cheating if the other woman is a hologram?

If you thought that sex with a hologram sounds creepy and awkward, you’d be right. Where Her struck a perfectly light and whimsical tone, the romantic situations of Creative Control never become anything that isn’t profoundly creepy and sad. Not to mention the performances: Dickinson’s character is thoroughly unlikeable and every decision he makes against Juliette is one that sinks him deeper into the audience’s contempt.

Oh, and then there’s Reggie Watts! In the world’s most baffling, superfluous subplot, David’s ad company decides to consult Watts to be the spokesperson for Augmenta, as if Reggie Watts is a household name and possesses the same star power as Alec Baldwin or Jeff Goldblum.

Watts’ very existence in this movie is a puzzle to be solved, and his function as a character is completely lost on me.

His performance is so strange, so out of left field, that it completely clashes with the rest of the film. It feels like Watts was acting in a different movie entirely. He spends every one of his scenes pawing around the set like a big, innocent cat, putting out creepy vibes and never leaving his mellow, introspective monotone regardless of subject matter.

It’s even more upsetting because Watts was so heavily promoted in ads for this movie, yet even David and his coworkers treat Watts as a joke. They don’t take him seriously, and Watts isn’t even given that much to do.

Much of Creative Control feels like it’s tearing itself apart at the seams. The script is that of a comedy, but every other element of the film insists that it’s a drama.

And, when characters try and tell jokes or Watts does something wacky, I was unsure of whether I should be laughing or analyzing it to see what it had to say about the human condition. Though, in retrospect, I think Creative Control probably has as much to say about the human condition as a can of tuna fish (and tuna can’t comprehend human philosophy).

Apart from the comedic banter and whatever Watts was doing, Creative Control has a surplus of darker, deeper areas that it tries to explore including drugs, withdrawal, betrayal, sex and a collapsing marriage.

It overreaches and consequently winds up not paying enough attention to any of its themes.

Still, the film’s portrayals of intimacy are something to be admired. Dickinson has a good sense of the dialogue in these close romantic exchanges. A scene in which two characters’ conversation evolves into a kiss feels natural, realistic. Sex scenes feel true to life — now, I’ve never made love to a bearded hippie yoga instructor before, but the way that scene plays out is delightfully void of all the schmaltz and sexiness typical not just of big Hollywood films, but also of most indies.

But Creative Control’s unlikeable main character, convoluted plot, creepy relationship and cynical future are all enough to make one long for the odd, colorful fashion and simple love story of Her. At least Her has 100% less Reggie Watts.

Fuller House Television Review Grace Rychwalski Sawdust Editor

Using footage from the original series, the cast reenacted some iconic scenes — the old and new appearing side-by-side on the screen. It was somewhat forced but overall sweet; seeing the characters together again so many years later was sure to hit any old fan.

Yet those same fans could also notice the glaring hole in the premiere episode: Michelle Tanner, originally played by twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

In fact, the show itself addresses this when Danny said, “Michelle sends her love, but she’s too busy in New York running her fashion empire,” which is immediately followed by a pointed stare into the camera by the entire cast.

The insults against the Olsen twins continue throughout the series. The second most notable comment occurs in episode 13, when Ramona is given some Olsendesigned clothing for her birthday. Kimmy comments, “At these prices, no wonder they don’t have to act anymore!”

The cast bashing Mary-Kate and Ashley became a serious eye-roller. Did they really have to waste screen time to be petty about the fashion moguls (who, it’s important to note, have done minimal acting since they were teenagers) saying no to the spinoff?

Obviously, a show that takes time to insult old cast members doesn’t take itself too seriously. From making a few tonguein-cheek jokes at the show’s expense to using an abundance of Full House footage as flashbacks, the show’s quirks attempt to be endearing — but end up falling short.

For instance, when DJ is tasked with choosing between her first love Steve Hale (Scott Weigner) and her new co-worker Matt Harmon (John Brotherton), the characters are literally green-screened into the memories of each couple’s first kiss, commenting on them as they occur. Fuller House takes you out of the show in these moments — by trying to play up its campiness, it ultimately alienates the viewers.

And as the show tries to bring itself into the modern era with new technology and product placement galore (Target, Beats, Apple and many others making appearances), it misses its mark. While it may be believable that Stephanie gets a gig DJing at Coachella, it certainly isn’t that she gets a crowd of thousands to cheer for her nephew Max’s mediocre trumpet playing when she misses his big recital.

Although Fuller House brings back the characters we know and love, it becomes clear just how hard it’s trying to bring the original’s flavor into a modern setting. And as it tries to preserve that old Full House magic, Fuller House ultimately trips over its own feet, leaving us with something that’s just beyond loving ironically.

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Ministry of Cool

Being a lifelong fan of Full House doesn’t mean taking it seriously. In fact, part of the fun of loving it means hating it at the same time: the campiness, the catchphrases and especially the iconic music while Danny Tanner lays down some mediocre fatherly wisdom.

But what happens when the show you love for its clumsiness becomes overly self-aware?

Fuller House made its debut on Netflix on Feb. 26, 2016 to eagerly awaiting — and, in my case, somewhat skeptical — fans. While I could rest easy knowing that Jeff Franklin, creator and director of the original Full House, was back with the new series, simply having the same director doesn’t always guarantee success.

The spinoff, set in present-day San Francisco, picks up a whopping 21 years after the finale of Full House in 1995.

The first episode, entitled “Our Very First Show, Again” (an homage to Full House’s debut episode), is nothing if not nostalgic.

It was clear that the audience needed to not only be caught up with the Tanners/Katsopolises two decades later, but also to be reminded of why we loved Full House — and, more importantly, why we should love Fuller House.

Fuller House is essentially a reversed version of the original: DJ (Candace Cameron Bure), having recently lost her husband Tommy Fuller (yes, that’s really their last name) in a firefighting accident, returns to her childhood home with her three sons, Jackson, Max and Tommy Jr., for a going away party.

From there, we discover that Danny and his new wife (who appears for mere seconds and is only referred to as “Mrs. Tanner”), Jesse and Rebecca Katsopolis (John Stamos and Lori Loughlin) and Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) have all become wildly successful and are moving out of San Francisco for their careers.

Meanwhile, Stephanie Tanner (Jodie Sweetin) has become a world-traveling party girl who has gone by the name “DJ Tanner” (major groan), a club DJ and music producer.

We also see the return of Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber), the universallyhated girl next door and DJ’s best friend, raising her teenage daughter, Ramona (Soni Bringas).

Realizing that DJ needs help raising her sons, Stephanie steps in to help — as does Kimmy, unsolicited. Throughout the season, we see the independent, fly-by-night Stephanie become emotionally tied down by her nephews and the quirky, nonsensical Kimmy become the comic relief, mirroring Uncle Jesse’s and Joey’s roles from the original.

Street Fighter V

Film Review Will Uhl,

Staff Writer

Undeniably Street Fighter’s strongest entry so far, Street Fighter V makes its rapid-paced mind games more accessible without compromising its depth.

However, a thick layer of unpolished and altogether lacking features line the solid core. To what degree this is a problem depends on your experience level with Street Fighter.

If you’ve never tried a fighting game before, you may want to hold off until the impending March update. The beginning tutorial prepares you as much as algebra does for a calculus exam. The coming patch is supposed to add an in-depth tutorial for each fighter, but it’s unknown how thoroughly it will prepare players.

Aside from tossing oneself to the wolves by diving straight into online play, the three options for practice are terribly limited. Story mode gives each character two or three uselessly easy fights sandwiched between laughably bad dialogue. Training mode gives fighters a flexible and informational punching bag, but beginners looking for guidance will have to use fanmade websites.

Survival mode is the third and final single player mode, and without a doubt Capcom’s biggest design flaw. Players must fight computer opponents of escalating difficulty without falling—not

a bad idea. But lazy AI programming, too many fights and a lack of any compensation for failures make the fanbase’s constant complaints about Survival mode entirely justified.

For players at least roughly familiar with Street Fighter, V’s lack of overly-confusing mechanics is a welcome change from IV. Everything not immediately familiar should fall into place after watching a few online primers, and players can practice in training mode while they queue into the matchmaking system. However, online play is somewhere between slightly and very broken for everyone, and there’s no official word on upcoming fixes.

Ultimately, it’s less of a different game than a refinement of what Street Fighter has always tried to be. It begins with a seemingly-Sisyphean climb to learn from the many losses that likely lie in front of new players. But as beginners bloom into intermediate players, tight, satisfying matches become more and more common as they learn to match wits at high speed.

Street Fighter is not a game made to be won and then put away — it is meant to be mastered after travelling a rough road of hard knocks. If the sweet taste of victory is worth losing and learning, Street Fighter V is a mountain worth climbing.

National Poetry Month Scramble Unscramble these rad poets’ names for National Poetry Month this April! (If you put them all together, does it make a poem? Probably.)

BUZZSAW:Puzzles and Games Issue

RUADE OLRED _ ERTROB RSOTF _ YAAM OULENAG _ GSANNLOT HHSEUG _ IVASYL TAPLH _ TWLA ITWNAMH _ YOLGEWNDN OROSKB _

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_ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ __

__ __

__

_

_

___ ___ ___ _ ___ ___ __

__ __ _ _ __ ______ __ ____ ______

Ministry of Cool

37

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issues

OSE&CONS. PROSE&CONS. PR

Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

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A Letter for My Ex- Lover

I Am Your Yesterdays, Not Your Todays Or Tomorrows Dear Ex-Lover who is miles away by now, I never wanted you to leave me.

Here I am, drowning in my own misery like I swore I’d never do.

I’m turning into one of them. One of those women who start counting the clock’s ticking to remind herself that time moves forward. Always.

Because I feel like I’ve fallen so far behind that I can’t seem to pinpoint who I was before you.

Before you, I was a woman who liked the movies and lists and scarves even in the summer’s miserable heat. I liked collecting buttons left astray like loose change. I liked cheap wine and those cookie cakes meant for tenyear-olds’ birthday parties. I liked many things. But it wasn’t until I met you that I learned to love.

I loved the way the peachsaturated clouds hovered like whispers above the city at dusk before falling between the buildings, setting every office window ablaze.

I loved mornings. I loved listening to music with you even though your taste was less than subpar.

Christ — you wanted to walk down the aisle to Kiss’s “I Was Made For Loving You.” I loved the satisfaction of brushing out knots in my hair.

Loved a lot of things because being in love with you turned my preferences into desires. Turned the things I liked into the things I loved.

But being in love with you also turned my dislikes into things I

hated. I hated the rain. I hated how not one of the city’s thousands of Chinese food places had fortune cookies with good fortunes. Not one. I hated the way you constantly checked your watch, like your time spent with me was hindering you from spending time with someone else. From doing something else.

From doing someone else. I hated winter because your body heat would smother me and make my thoughts spill out of my ears and crawl under the sheets with us and onto my skin like fleas I couldn’t shake. I hated your mouth. The way it contorted itself with words my mind heard but heart tried so intently to disregard.

I miss fighting with you. My favorite part was the steady calm that would pound the tension flat until it dissolved away like an exhaled breath fading into the cold. I miss when your lips would apologize.

I wish our love hadn’t been ours.

I wish it had been that of strangers so that we could just shake our heads at them in quiet sadness. As we’d pass them on the street, we’d search desperately for each other’s hands, clinging to one another like frightened children. And we would observe the very thing we wished not to be. Couldn’t be. Wouldn’t be. Because that love would seem strange to us. In a perfect world, that love — that wicked, twisted love — wouldn’t be ours at all. In a perfect world, by now, I’d have stopped counting time.

Sincerely,

Me

By Samantha Brodsky

Prose & Cons

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Micro/Macro

BUZZSAW: Roots Issue

By Gavin DuBois

I can’t seem to keep my mind away from the ballpark.

Not because I’m one of those kids that was bred on movies like Angels in the Outfield. Not because my mother ever had to call me in for dinner far past the sun’s au revoir from the sky.

Those were the kids that never bothered wondering weather or not one of the thousands of the black holes careening through the universe would swallow us all up. We wouldn’t make a peep, we wouldn’t have a chance to think: Oh shit. We just wouldn’t be. While all those kids played, making graceful twists to send a small white sphere careening into the distance, while they scrambled around the diamond kicking up chalky yellow dirt, I would sit in the farthest reaches of the outfield staring at the grass.

I could never stop the urge.

In the throes of boredom, the composed, grandmotherly timbre of Elizabeth Ainsworth would creep into my mind. Time passes differently in this world…

As I looked into the grass — disengaging mind from eye and letting the space behind my head take over — I saw swaths of color moving within earth.

Insects would try to navigate crisscrossing blades of grass, which provided a shield from searing rays of sunlight. I felt

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drops of sweat collect on the tip of my nose; the distant cheers for the game yards away left little impression. If the ball ever came close by, I would scramble up from my microcosmic diorama and heave the ball as far as I could. Often times, other players would sprint off into the outfield anyway, relieving me of my obligation.

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, he finally decided to end it. And yes, by “it” I mean his life.

He never ascribed to the concept of suicide notes — a final sort of narcissistic jab into the guts of family and loved ones. He thought, rather, that it would be appropriate to leave me behind to relay what has happened. As if I had the capacity to explain. The webs of energy that undulated within his skull, that used to travel down his brain stem and spark awake their corresponding receptors, that used to compel his body into action, are broken. The strands of his being have spilled out into the space. Anything you remember of him is sacred. Keep it close. I want you to know that, because he cannot know. Those same strands that once held memories have rarefied and no longer evoke anything. They still exist, surely. They will always exist, along with the strands of everyone, threats intertwined

and woven into a collective consciousness that cannot know itself. But those strands that have left us, they are gone. They are not anyone anymore. They have cycled back to the trickling beginnings of the river. They were lost in the torrent of millions of years.

I know him, because I was him.

Now I’m nothing in particular, closer to a ghost, shifting in shape and age. Memories flow through me like rain, and not just my own, but the memories of his parents, his children, his friends. We miss him. I miss what we were.

Sometimes, he comes back to me, in flashes, like a half-remembered dream, or a childhood memory long discarded. Other times, odd visions befall me, blurry orbs of light that dance within a void.

They call out to me in strange tongues and I feel afraid. I see the smiling faces of strangers. I feel the warmth of an unfamiliar lover’s embrace. I feel my own memories of him slip away. I feel motion; though I have no body, I feel the centripetal motion of time pulling me close to where space now rests. He felt the grass of the old town baseball field during his end. What, if anything, will I feel during my beginning?

The Hairdresser Said

By Grace Rychwalski

“You need layers – Let’s thin The thick underside So it won’t tangle.

Maybe you should try Some mousse, Some spray, Or wax – It’s always worked For your grandmother.”

The next summer, I buzzed my head In defiance of my responsibility As a woman To wear long hair Which can be grabbed When I resist.

Prose & Cons

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O n V a c a t i o n i n AbytJoseph h eHeiland ns You ask me: Do you think it’s going to fall?

No, I say.

I rub goose-bumps from my arm. Candy wine stains my throat and teeth. I take a swig and set the bottle down. Pink liquid cascades up the glass neck and sloshes back down.

Somewhere near, a dog barks three times. We go rigid. Shrieking wind circles the building. In my head the breeze takes form—ever-loosening tendrils that move through the air, whistling through cracks in bricks and gaps in fences like breath through exposed teeth. Always searching for a tune.

After a moment, we relax.

You’re kneeling on the balcony, arms raised overhead. You’re holding a Nikon D3100.

You lean it this way and then that way, searching for balance on the corner railing. You fidget with the angle of the shot. You twist the lens and peer through the eyepiece. (Something’s off — either ISO or aperture.) You try again. I look over the railing at the street below. The road is narrow and full of cracks. They run like ripples all throughout, congregating in a small valley at the base of a hill. On either side, narrow buildings rise up and are eaten by clouds. When I close my eyes I can hear a conversation taking place around the corner. I focus on their articulated babble, trying to make sense of the language. Too many consonants, I think.

Okay, you say. I’m ready.

I take another drink. The same dog barks, but this time we’re prepared. You press the shutter release and throw your hands up. For ten seconds we hold our breath, hoping to still

BUZZSAW: Roots Issue

the rustling leaves. Everything quiets. Your hair (which had been dancing all night) falls to

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your shoulders. The sky tenses up. The clouds freeze, half-lit by a yellow moon.

The shutter clicks, and we release. I take another drink and offer you the bottle.

Beginning, Middle & End

By Alexis Morillo I can remember what you were wearing the first time we ever talked a blue button up, ill-fitting khakis, Adidas, and fabricated confidence.

I can’t remember what you were wearing the last time we ever talked and even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to.

It’s too hard to remember the in-between there’s no point in remembering it now.

The in-between is what most sad stories forget to cover I don’t blame them for skipping that part anymore.

But they never forget to mention the importance of timing It wasn’t fate or coincidence, it was too late.

Nothing can explain how time stopped with you and me I am thankful for our stop-motion friendship (and whatever else it was).

The timeless scent of your sweatshirt’s neck: so familiar, so fleeting I could still recognize that smell in an overcrowded room.

Or the small gap between your teeth that held everything you should have said earlier I’ve sifted through my mind trying to determine the exact moment it all changed.

Then time restarted, I turned seventeen, now eighteen, writing about a “first heart-break” It doesn’t have to be love to break your heart.

You were the ink in my favorite pen: a muse I never asked for But I no longer see you as a metaphor.

Maybe in the next life things could work out I’ve never been keen on second chances, though.

At least I do not say your name with venom on my tongue anymore In fact, I do not say your name at all.

Prose & Cons

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To B e Ke p t

by Erika Walsh

BUZZSAW: Roots Issue

Otto has had too much to drink.

He is cradling a white bunny in his arms. Her nose is twitching and she is nibbling at his fingers. If this were a piece of classic literature, the bunny would symbolize something — like purity, or loss of innocence.

Otto whispers, I will never hurt you like I hurt them. The bunny doesn’t know what he means. Otto touches the side of his face, only to find that it is not quite solid. He cannot remember how many (now empty) bottles it took for his blood to bend into ice and now slush, but there must be a number. The bunny has small black buttons for eyes that see everything. It makes Otto nervous to look at her.

Somewhere far away (or is it very close?) two people who may or may not be in love are sitting across the table from each other, an empty vase between them. The man used to fill the vase with flowers once a week, but now he does not, and so it is empty. Chloe, his supposed lover, rubs his ankles shyly with the toe of her foot. The man is slightly annoyed by this. His arms are crossed. He tells her, the vase is empty for a reason. One day, if there are any more days, she will forget about all of this (until it happens again).

Otto is crying into the bunny’s fur.

He is thinking about his parents’ empty graves, about how they were rumored to have escaped on the backs of two grey hippopotamuses.

But how can we be sure of anything?

Otto wishes he knew how to pray.

Whatever do you mean by that, darling? She knows. Of course she knows that he does not love her.

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But how can she admit that she knows? He says, You know. Chloe whispers, But this cannot happen.

Then she says it louder: This cannot happen. Her hands cradle the weight of her decision inside of them. Her belly is bursting, the half-life inside of her clenching its fists. She cannot quite decipher whether or not it is sobbing, the almost-child. She will never know, or care. Her baby’s first words will be look at me.

Otto presses his hands together and bows his head, chunks of skin dripping onto the kitchen floor. Otto thinks: now I will have to clean that up. He mutters under his breath: Our Father who art in heaven.

He pictures a mustachioed God, drinking whiskey for inspiration, mixing red and yellow paint together and scribbling anxiety-ridden lyrics on the back of a torn napkin. God, our Father, is praying (to himself) that one day he will finally be depressed enough to call himself an artist.

Chloe is remembering her first date with the man. Did you hear about the two psychos who ran away on the backs of hippopotamuses? He had said. They’re probably drowning in the Amazon right now. Fucking psychos. Chloe had said, I don’t think there’s anything psycho about it. I think it’s romantic. If this were a piece of classic literature, all of the woman would symbolize something — like purity, or loss of innocence.

The man she might have loved pressed his knuckles against her chin and whispered, I’d like to keep you. Now, Chloe always feels a slight chill, no matter how warm the room is, because she is kept.

Satire threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

Sawdust

AWDUST. SAWDUST. SAWDUST

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Is It Too Late Now to Play Sorry?

Justin Beiber reveals true meaning behind song

By Rachel Mucha, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

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n a dramatic new interview, Justin Bieber has revealed that his big hit “Sorry” is actually about a game night gone horribly wrong. “Sorry” was originally believed to be about Bieber’s breakup with Selena Gomez.

“In a way, that’s true,” Bieber said, choking back tears. “Selena was at that game night. But she’s only one of the people I want to apologize to.”

A few months ago, Bieber challenged his friends to a game of Sorry and that was when he allegedly crushed them.

“Justin was taking our spots and putting pieces back to home without even saying sorry. It was disgusting, really,” Usher said. The singer was among the three other players during that fateful night.

“That was the night Justin and I were over for good,” Gomez shared.

“I mean, who plays Sorry without apologizing when they send someone back to start?!” After making her statement, Gomez became visibly upset, and couldn’t continue the interview.

“I hurt a lot of people that night, and I need to change my game strategy. ‘Sorry’ goes out to them,” Bieber said. “I hope it’s not too late to say sorry.”

Jaden Smith was the final participant of the game night.

Though he declined a full interview, Smith shared one thought.

“Your mind has a duality to it. So when one thought goes into your mind, it’s not just one thought, it has to bounce off both hemispheres of the brain. When you’re thinking about something happy, you’re thinking about something sad.

When you think about an apple, you also think about the opposite of an apple. It’s a tool for understanding mathematics and things with two separate realities,” Smith said.

Bieber went on to say that he was shocked people didn’t realize what the song was really about.

“I thought it was pretty obvious,” he said, referencing lines like, “I hope I don’t run out of time, could someone call the referee?” and “But you know that there is no innocent one in this game for two.” With words such as “referee,” “game” and “piece,” Bieber thought it was clear this song was about a board game, and not something as trivial and everyday as love.

“I’m a true artist, you know? I write about deep, unexpected stuff, so in a way, fans should have seen this coming.”

Bieber admitted that he does hope this song will help him get back with Gomez, noticeably in the line “’Cause I’m missing more than just

your body.”

“I’m also missing Selena’s amazing Sorry skills,” Bieber clarified. “She’s got a hot bod and a strategic mind. She’s the whole package.”

Bieber hopes he, Usher, Smith and Gomez can all get together again one day and play Sorry.

Next time, Bieber swears, it will be different.

“I’ll take every single piece of the blame if you want me to,” Bieber said. “So let me, oh let me redeem, oh redeem, oh myself tonight.” __________________________________ Rachel Mucha is a junior journalism major who knows that Jaden Smith is nothing less than a modern prophet. You can email her at rmucha1@ithaca.edu.

Image by Courtney Yule

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War Games

Convention decrees alternative conflict resolution

By Hale Douthit, Staff Writer

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Conservative lawmakers are perturbed that the measure means there would not be anymore conventional wars.

Senator Chuck Todd Jr. (R-NC) said, “We ain’t gonna have no more good old fashioned wars. Ya know, the kind where people get all blown up like that one scene in Saving Private Ryan were the dude is holdin’ his arm. Cool stuff like that.”

Even liberal lawmakers are speaking out against it, citing the unjust loss of long-winded, pointless negotiations.

Representative Diana Goldstein (D-NY) lamented, “Gone will be the days of sitting in a large conference room with ruthless dictators arguing for days about small regime changes that ultimately lead to nothing.” She wiped a tear. “What a shame.”

In response to the new treaty, many nations are reworking their militaries to prepare for these new games.

According to Ramon Estevez, war minister of Venezuela, infantry divisions are being traded for Scrabble divisions. Soldiers are being given dictionaries and thesauruses instead of military manuals.

West Point, the elite United States military academy, has begun to offer classes in Jenga, chess and even Life.

Luis Armas, a United States military doctor who has traded his

scalpel for the tweezers in Operation said that he welcomes the change.

“After seeing what war can do to our soldiers, I knew a change had to be made. And while before [the Convention] I had never seen combat myself, now I truly feel like I can put myself on the front lines to defend my country,” he said.

Despite the intended purpose of reducing global tensions, many analysts fear the impending showdown between China and the United States.

One such analyst, Paksima Gill, voiced her concerns.

“This brings a whole new strategy to the idea of global power structures. Who will choose the inevitable game between the United States and China and what are their interests? Will they intentionally sabotage one country over the other by choosing a game one is inexperienced with?”

John McCain, United States Foreign Policy analyst, agreed with Gill about the War Games Convention.

“How can anyone relax with the fate of the world being decided over a game of Yahtzee?” ___________________________________ Hale Douthit is a sophomore writing for film, TV and emerging media major who’s in favor of using Candyland to solve world hunger. You can email him at hdouthit@ithaca.edu.

“Kim Jung Un flipped the table over, called the South Koreans ‘dirty capitalists,’ and demanded they play his board game called ‘Kim Jung Un Wins Everything and You Give Everything to Him.’” Sawdust

ew York, USA — The United Nations Security Council approved a new resolution demanding that all conflicts between nations be settled using any variety of board games — including but not limited to Jenga, Monopoly, Risk and Boggle.

The resolution, titled “The War Games Convention” was heavily backed by the Obama administration.

Samantha Power, the United States Ambassador to the UN, heavily supported the measure.

“It’s our last hope to get all of these stupid wars over with and end on a high note,” she said.

Despite the popularity of the measure with numerous Western European states such as Great Britain and France, other countries such as Russia and China objected.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov decried the measure.

“It restricts my country’s ability to invade and take whatever we want! Imagine a Russia that can’t constantly humiliate the West by intervening whenever we feel like it.

I certainly can’t,” he said.

The Chinese were equally as upset; now they would have to settle their island disputes through hundreds of different games of Mahjong.

The discomfort of many nations has been worsened by the relative failures of the resolution in practice.

During a game of Monopoly, the North Koreans landed on the South Korean-owned Boardwalk. Kim Jung Un flipped the table over, called the South Koreans “dirty capitalists,” and demanded they play his board game called “Kim Jung Un Wins Everything and You Give Everything to Him.” It is currently being published by Milton Bradley.

American congressmen have also voiced their concerns.

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Cards Against Candidacy

2016 election to be decided by card game

By Laura Miller, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

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n a shocking turn of events, an insider source has discovered something incredible about this year’s presidential race — it is not to be decided by voters, but instead by a rousing game of Cards Against Humanity.

The race has already been getting hot and heavy, but our source tells us that everything American citizens have viewed on television, the internet, and the news has been nothing but a ruse to cover up the true nature of this election.

The source was able to get access inside one of the games. Here is their direct account.

Scene: a dimly lit room, likely the basement of a dive bar. Light streams in from a window, illuminating the dust and smoke that fills the air.

The room seems quite empty except for a round table in the back corner.

Seated at the table are Mr. Trump, Secretary Clinton, Senator Sanders and Governor Kasich.

Suddenly, a creaking noise. A slim figure stands in the open doorway, hat shadowing his eyes and a cigarette burning away between his fingers. As he emerges from the shadows, his identity is revealed: Anderson Cooper.

Dear god, is he handsome.

He approaches the table, and tensions are high as the candidates look hopefully — but not directly — into those mysterious, piercing blue eyes. Cooper wordlessly produces a pack of black and white cards from his coat pocket. He places them firmly on the table, and a shiver runs down all of our spines as Cooper asserts his physical, intellectual and sexual

dominance over the entire room.

The cards are dealt, the rules are explained, and the candidates begin.

First round, Trump puts down a distasteful joke about the Oedipus complex in regard to his daughter.

The other candidates groan in disgust. Cooper shakes his head disappointedly and banishes Trump to the losers’ quarters, where he finds none other than Sad Turtle Man Jeb Bush.

Of course, Jeb is delighted to have a friend and meets Trump with open arms, assuring him, “Slow and steady wins the race!”

Little does he know, the race is over for them both.

Back in the room, it’s round two.

Sanders leads with a tasteful yet amusing joke about Keanu Reeves’s shiny thighs. Cooper chuckles lightly

Image by Lizzie Cox

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to himself, then turns to Clinton as she reveals her own cards.

Somehow, an exact copy of Sanders’ Keanu Reeves joke is written on her cards as well. She claims the joke to be her own as Sanders begins wagging his finger ferociously, voicing his dissent at her trickery.

This creates a large argument, and Cooper sighs and drags the two of them, bickering, out of the room.

A grin begins to spread across Kasich’s face. It’s all over. He’s won.

But just as the first tear of victory begins to run down his cheek, a cloaked figure emerges from the shadows and silently looms over him from behind. The figure beneath the hood shows his face — it’s none other than Ted Cruz, Zodiac Killer.

He swiftly pulls a knife from beneath his robes and does his work, fleeing before Cooper strides back into the room.

A wave of relief washes over Cooper’s face upon spotting the mortally wounded Kasich.

“One less contestant to eliminate,” Cooper mutters to himself in his beautiful, sultry voice.

There is now only one true victor — Anderson Cooper, the next and undoubtedly most handsome President of the United States of America. ___________________________________ Laura Miller is a freshman history major who thinks #BirdieSanders is the best fit for this country. You can email her at lmiller@ithaca.edu.

Solving the Puzzle

Crossword maker searches for missing daughter

By Michele Hau, Upfront Editor

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plight, others are less enthusiastic.

“He’s a dirty thief! The Funday Crossword is a sacred space where I would prove my intellectual superiority over my wife. It’s supposed to tear families apart, not bring them together. Not cool!”

Jason Palmer, 45, said.

“I always wondered about the clues that were often very personal like, ‘my favorite season to eat ice cream’ or ‘the type of meat that makes you nauseous and cranky’... seriously, how would anyone know this?” Belisa Middleton, 37, said.

Jeffrey Le, 27, was able to complete all the weekly Funday Crosswords consistently for the last nine years.

Coincidentally, when Jeffrey turned 18, he had found out through a blood test that he had been adopted by his parents, both nurses.

“Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out who I really am. The Funday Crossword has really helped with that. I figured out what meat makes me nauseous, what my favorite color is, the time of day I like to sing... among other things,” Le said.

After establishing a weekly habit of doing the Funday Crossword, Le said that over time he had developed a personal attachment to the puzzle.

“I had a feeling that the puzzle was trying to communicate to me. But I didn’t want to act on it because I wasn’t sure. I knew I had to visit when the answer for question five across, ‘something that I think we both would like to do,’ was ‘Meet’.”

Le said he was so moved after finishing the puzzle that he knew for sure his father was trying to communicate with him. Le was

ultimately the unfamiliar face outside the Cross household last Sunday evening.

Unfortunately, Cross had been trying to communicate to a lost daughter, rather than a son. After realizing this, as well as the fact that that the Crosses are half Haitian and not half Chinese, it became clear to Le that Albert was not his father.

“I was so excited. But then almost instantaneously so disappointed,” Cross said.

“It was very awkward,” Le said.

After all is said and done, the fate of the Funday Crossword remains unclear. The Springfield Times put out an official statement, vowing to make the Funday Puzzle less cryptic and more accessible. Cross has begun searching for his lost daughter through more conventional means.

“I just found out that Craigslist has a whole section to help people reconnect. And you can use Google to find the exact whereabouts of anyone. I can’t believe it took me this long!” he said. _____________________________________ Michele Hau is a sophomore culture and communications major who knows that newspaper puzzles will live on even after print media is dead. You can email her at mhau@ithaca.edu.

Sawdust

ocal puzzle maker Albert Cross was greeted at his humble home in Springfield by an unfamiliar guest late Sunday night. Hearing rustling from the bushes outside the house, Cross grabbed his metal baseball bat from the garage and proceeded to open his front door. It was then that he heard the word that seemed to make his career worth it: “Dad?!”

Unbeknownst to the townspeople of Springfield, Albert Cross had been using the “Funday Crossword” to communicate clues in order to locate his long-lost daughter. Formerly a computer scientist, Cross left his senior position at Microsoft ten years ago to become the Springfield Puzzlemaster.

“I had a realization that life wasn’t a game and she wasn’t going to magically show up if I kept working at Microsoft. I had to take life into my own hands if I really wanted to find her. I saw the Puzzlemaster opening in the paper and decided that the Funday Crossword would be the perfect medium for that. It’s very popular,” Cross said.

Elaine Cross, Albert’s wife, said their biological daughter had been switched at birth due to nurse malpractice. Elaine was adamant that even though their daughter Jessica was not their birth child, she is still their only daughter. Jessica is 35 now.

“I honestly forget that we technically have another daughter out there somewhere,” Elaine said.

Responses to the news has been mixed. While some people relish in the romantic nature of Cross’s

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Pun and Games

Buzzsaw’s take on some old favorites

By Grace Rychwalski, Sawdust Editor with art by Claire McClusky

BUZZSAW ASKS WHY…

People act like social justice is a game.

“I get that you’re passionate, but why do you have to be so emotional about it?”

For die-hard fans of Pretty Pretty Princess, consider playing the newest sensation — Pretty Pretty Patriarchy! Not only must you perform femininity, as the original required, but now you must also cook, clean and shave — all for the viewing ­ pleasure of men!

Wow, it must be nice to say that from your place of privilege, which allows you to separate yourself from these issues! Unfortunately, those of us who experience them on a daily basis can’t.

And while it’s all fine and good to talk about the rampant racism, sexism and phobias that plague our society today, you can’t act like they’re abstract concepts that don’t affect anyone — even if they don’t affect you.

For your party needs, try this new spin on an old classic! Whether you have serious personal space issues or just hate physical contact, nothing will send you spiraling into an anxiety attack quite like Please Don’t Touch Me!

And it goes beyond an issue just being “personal” — when your entire life is shaped by the injustices dealt to you by outside forces, it’s impossible not to have a stake in its debate.

Now, that’s not to say that someone who has no experience with a certain topic should act like they do in order to talk about it. But that’s where a very simple thing called “sympathy” comes into play.

BUZZSAW: Puzzles and Games Issue

I know it might sound crazy to some but — believe it or not — you can actually try to understand the feelings and perspectives of others without having had those feelings and perspectives yourself! Wild, right?

If you just can’t get enough of colonization, dictatorship and destroying the lives of native citizens, you’ll love this! Not only can you compete against your friends to see who can gobble up the most non-renewable resources, but you can also destroy native cultures and languages while doing it!

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Acting like social justice is just a game we play we for funsies only speaks to how truly disconnected and apathetic you are to the plight of others.

So, next time, instead of asking someone why they’re getting so worked up about North Carolina passing discrimination laws against its LGBT citizens, consider why you aren’t. Is it because those issues aren’t worth getting upset over or is it because you’re privileged enough not to have to worry about being discriminated against?

Your puzzled Sawdust Editor, Grace Rychwalski

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