“We Do Journalism”
the Quadrangle
Visit Our Website mcquad.org
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF MANHATTAN COLLEGE | SINCE 1924
Volume CIII, Issue 6
FREE
NEW YORK, MARCH 9, 2021
Jaspers Quarantined in Westchester Hotel as Horan Suites Reach Maximum Occupancy Maximum occupancy in designated quarantine suites has resulted in contact-traced and COVID-19 positive residents being sent to Springhill Suites in Westchester County. The process of notifying, housing, and transporting quarantine residents are creating what students call “unnecessary stress” for affected individuals. In an email addressed to the Manhattan College Community, the Steering Committee co-chairs Steven Schreiner, Richard Satterlee, and Tamara Britt request the college take a “Deep Breath Moment” as an influx of positive cases causes an increasing number of students to quarantine. “We need to address this increase now, before it becomes a major impediment to our ability to complete Spring semester without a pause,” the email stated. Threats of regressing to completely remote instruction, as the college implemented at the beginning of the virus last March, led administrators to “de-densify” Jasper Hall, where the majority of cases reside, due to communal bathrooms defining entire floors as “family units.” Jasper Hall residents, who typically reside with one other roommate and share a bathroom with 40+ students on the floor, received an email from Residence Life regarding an “urgent opportunity” to move into suites in Horan Hall. “In an effort to make living through the COVID era more manageable, comfortable, and safe, Residence Life is offering and strongly recommending you and your roommate a space in Horan Hall,” read the email sent by Micah Thomas, Area Coordinator for Residence Life. This offer was announced after numerous floors in Jas-
per Hall faced full-quarantine, some floors undergoing the process more than once. The use of communal bathrooms and showers orchestrate the need for all members of a floor to be contact-traced even if only one positive case is found. Students who are contact-traced and forced into quarantine typically reside in Horan Hall on designated quarantine floors. According to Residence Life Director Charles Clency, the college has designated 60 spaces in Horan Hall for quarantined and isolated students on campus. Since this number has been exceeded, students are now being transported via bus to the Springhill Suite in Westchester county, which Manhattan College has a contract with for the 2021 spring semester. “We have [Springhills Suites] on standby,” said Clency. “We have an open-ended contract to utilize them. We have an overflow.” Students shared concerns with the transportation system, sharing that residents being moved are not screened for COVID prior to entering the crowded bus. One student, freshman Emilia O’Neill, estimates the bus to have 20 seats, with 10 being occupied by residents. “They just grouped us onto this bus so it was just like a COVID bomb,” said O’Neill. “After we got to the hotel, several people on that bus tested positive.” O’Neill encourages Manhattan College faculty to administer COVID tests prior to transporting students, and transport positive cases separately from negative testing students. Springhill Suites is set to hold an additional 140 students in quarantine or isolation if and when Horan becomes over-occupied. These floors do not hold any additional security, such as resident assistants due to budget cuts, practicality and
IN A&E:
IN SPORTS:
Caroline McCarthy Asst. Features Editor
Quarantine Overflow As Horan Hall reaches its quarantine capacity, students are being sent to the Springhill Suites. MARRIOTT.COM / COURTESY
Quarantine Conditions Dire as Students Go 24+ Hours Without Food Jilleen Barrett & Lauren Raziano A&E Editor & Social Media Editor
As more students on campus are contact-traced and put into quarantine to prevent the spread of COVID-19, a growing number of complaints have arisen about quarantine living conditions on campus. Students feel the biggest issue is that the college seems to look at students as a statistic in their COVID case count, and their needs are not being adequately addressed. Students at Manhattan College are met with two options when they are instructed to isolate: they can quarantine off
IN NEWS:
Positive COVID Cases on the Rise on p. 3
campus or on campus in Horan Hall, where suites are reserved for exposed students. Individuals who are placed in quarantine are required to have their own room and bathroom, so students placed in Horan Hall are given their own suite. Due to safety and privacy concerns, the quarantine floors in Horan are not identified but there are 60 individual suites that are sanctioned by Manhattan College specifically for quarantine students. When these suites are at capacity, Manhattan has a contract with Springhill Suites by Marriott in Tuckahoe, NY that can house another 140 students in individual rooms. While students are in quarantine either in Horan or the
IN FEATURES: Jaspers Get the COVID Vaccine on p. 7
hotel, they rely on Dining Services and Residence Life to bring them three meals per day. Giuseppe Tumminello and Fred Cipriani are sophomores who live on campus in Jasper Hall, who were contact-traced due to a positive case on their floor. They explained how the food order form works. “We have a Google form that we are emailed the day before and it’s a new Google form everyday,” Tumminello said. “And it‘s very limited on food options and a lot of the food options are the same everyday.” If a student does not fill out this order form by 5 p.m., they do not receive food the next day, and they may not receive __________________________ CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
Richard Blanco at MARS on p. 9
Jasper Talk: Christina Katsamouri on p. 11
News
2
the Quadrangle Volume CIII, Issue 6 March 9, 2021
The Editorial Board Anna Woods Editor-in-Chief
Maria Thomas Managing Editor
Jilleen Barrett Managing Editor
Nicole Fitzsimmons News Editor
Kyla Guilfoil Asst. News Editor
Jilleen Barrett Arts & Entertainment Editor
Kelly Cwik Asst. Arts & Entertainment Editor
Christine Nappi Features Editor
Caroline McCarthy Asst. Features Editor
Pete Janny Sports Editor
Colleen McNamara Asst. Sports Editor
Lauren Raziano Social Media Editor
Kelly Kennedy Asst. Social Media Editor
Brian Asare Photography Editor
Emily Hollar Production Editor Asst. Photography Editor
Nicole Rodriguez Production Editor
Adrianne Hutto Jocelyn Visnov Asst. Production Editors
Madalyn Johnson Katherine Heneghan Web Editors Nicholas Gilewicz Faculty Advisor About The Quadrangle A tradition since 1924, The Quadrangle is a news or ganization run by the students of Manhattan College. We strive to cover news around campus and the greater community, publishing weekly in print and daily online. Our goal is always accuracy, relevancy and professionalism. The opinions expressed in The Quadrangle are those of the individual writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board, the College or the student body.
Join The Quadrangle The Quadrangle’s staff holds weekly open meetings on Tuesdays at 4 p.m. in Kelly Commons Room 412. All are welcome to come and join the club. Connect with The Quadrangle
mcquad.org @mcquad @mcquad mcquad
THE QUADRANGLE
Jaspers Quarantined in Westchester Hotel as Horan Suites Reach Maximum Occupancy __________________________ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 the pressing health risk. “Those floors are not designated as residentially occupied spaces,” Clency said. “The second thing is, we’re not trying to put any of our RAs, students, or staff in any kind of harm’s way. We can’t consciously place students there who are students first, although they work for the college and work for the Department.” Clency suggests Manhattan College faculty have stepped up in taking on the RA’s role in a virtual manner. Different departments, such as Health Services and other COVID departments aid student’s psychological and physical concerns. However, some students in these quarantined hotels claim it is “impossible” to get in contact with these resources. Alexandra Petrescu, a freshman currently quarantined in Springhill Suites, claims she attempted to contact numerous departments during her time in quarantine and received no response. “It’s impossible to contact them at all for anything. It’s really hard [to get a response]. I emailed them. I don’t know, I think they could be more, like, mindful, because we’re going through quarantine,” Petrescu said. O’Neill echoed Petrescu’s concern, claiming the disorganization of the quarantine process added unnecessary stress to all those involved. She believes that the lack of communication between departments causes information to be repeated, disproven and contradicted through the multiple emails sent to quarantined residents each day. “I would say the organization of the whole process was less than desirable. It was, it was a mess. It was very chaotic,” O’Neill said. She continued. “So Health Services is
emailing you at one point and then Residence Life and then the Counseling Center like everybody’s doing their own things so they’re kind of overlapping each other.” All interviewees agreed that the Counseling Center has made a strong attempt to reach out to quarantined students, prioritizing mental health during their stay. “In terms of, like, mental health I feel like they’ve been reaching out,” O’Neill said. “The Counseling Center reached out to us on the first day.” Petrescu has even shown gratitude for her quarantine, finding it as an escape from the stress on campus due to COVID-19. “I really needed some time for myself and away from the chaos on campus,” said Petrescu. “We have people in counseling services that that’s readily available at their discretion,” said Clency. “We encourage them to reach out to those kinds of service resources and utilize it to the best of their ability.” Students have also reported miscommunication and lack of communication between Health Services and potentially exposed individuals, claiming green passes were turned to red without any warning or explanation. Sophomore Isabelle Gutierrez stated when her floor of Jasper Hall was put into quarantine, the residents were given no notification of why their passes turned to red. “We [her roommates] all just individually got red passes, we didn’t know why,” said Gutierrez. Guitierrez, along with her 3 roommates Simona Graceffo, Ashley Danz and Grace Geckler challenged their quarantine mandate on account of living in a suite in Jasper, which has its own bathroom. Their appeal consisted of an email sent by Geckler to Contact Tracing, Residence
Life and Health Services. The email outlined the nature of their suite, use of an individual bathroom and the rules for Horan and Lee Halls where if a positive case is found, only that suite is required to quarantine. “Our dorm is right next to the exit stairs,” said Guitierrez. “We don’t really have to see that many people [on our floor].” The girls were racing against the clock trying to maintain their stay in Jasper Hall. The email received gave the girls three hours to pack before being transported to their quarantine facility. The girls credit Rose Gray, a Manhattan College library assistant currently making phone calls to each individual student placed in quarantine, for aiding them in their dispute. Despite not thinking their quarantine was necessary, the suite claimed their major reason for challenging the quarantine was Geckler’s recent stay in isolation and her desire to not have to go through that experience again. “I had literally just gotten out,” said Geckler. “The likelihood that I even talked to [the positive student] was very low so I really was like I can’t do this again.” Guitierrez, Graceffo, Danz and Geckler’s appeal was granted and the four were able to remain in their suite while the rest of the floor was quarantined in a hotel. Health services changed their red passes back to green after the case was rectified. Clency stated current quarantine operations will likely continue in the 2021 fall semester. “The reality is, although the vaccine is out there, we just don’t know who or when all of our students and employees and staff will actually have access to get it,” said Clency. “I don’t think we’re going to get out of wearing masks, I think masks, at the very least will still be around in the fall.”
SUBMIT YOUR OWN LETTER OR OP-ED Letters to the Editor or an op-ed may be submitted to thequad@manhattan.edu by Saturday at noon to be considered for publication. Profanity, vulgarity and hate will not be published. The Quadrangle reserves the right not to publish a letter.
News
MARCH 9, 2021
3
Manhattan Sees Steep Increase in Positive Coronavirus Cases Gabriella DePinho Senior Writer
As of Thursday, March 4, Manhattan College has recorded 74 positive cases of coronavirus on-campus in the past 14 days and the campus’ positive test average during that same timeframe is 3.1%, the highest it’s been all semester. This announcement comes just two days after the One Manhattan office made the decision to suspend indoor dining, along with other COVID-19-related policy changes. While Manhattan College has seen more cases in just the first six weeks of the spring semester than the campus saw all of the fall semester, the college still has some wiggle room before hitting the state threshold that would force a campus-wide shutdown. However, while that wiggle room exists, there is not much of it left. State-wide there is a directive to all higher education institutions that after hitting 100 cases or 5% of the in-person population, the institution would have to move to a temporary phase of remote learning and restrict conditions in on-campus living more drastically. The question for many is this: what’s Manhattan College’s threshold? According to Tamara Britt, the college’s general counsel and vice president for external and legal affairs, that threshold for the college is a window of approximately 130 positive on-campus cases. “Manhattan College falls into the latter category [the 5% of population category], as we are testing at least 25% of our in-person population (approximately 650 students and employees) each week,” Britt wrote in an email to The Quadrangle. “This means our transition would be mandated by the State if 5% (approximately 130 individuals) of our in-person population tested positive using the 14-day rolling average.”
This is because as of Feb. 19, 2021, the state directive was updated so that for institutions testing at least 25% of the population, the threshold would be whichever is greater between 100 cases or 5% of the population, not whichever is lesser. Britt also clarified in an interview that the rolling 14-day period that caseloads are counted by start from the date tests are conducted, not the date test results are received. Provost Steven Schreiner also clarified that those rolling 14-day periods “move every day.” In an email from the One Manhattan office on Tuesday, March 2, with the subject line of “Deep Breath Moment,” administrators warned students that “we have seen in recent weeks a significant increase in cases, which is causing concern about the number of students who have had to quarantine.” At the time the email was sent out, there were just 46 cases for the rolling 14-day period that ended on March 2. According to the Manhattan College COVID-19 Dashboard, for the 14-day window that ended on March 13, the college has consistently had over 100 people quarantined for a variety of reasons: close contact, recent travel or isolation due to symptoms or a positive test result. As a result of the strain on the campus quarantine capacity and the significant increase in positive cases, students are no longer allowed guests in the residence halls, bridge access to Lee Hall and Horan Hall is suspended, indoor dining — which had been at 35% capacity — has been suspended, Jasper Hall will be de-densified and testing requirements will remain unchanged. “This is preemptive, what we’re doing, so that we’re not hitting against state and city [caseload] limits, where we’re forced to do things that are even more draconian, are more unpleasant for the students and all of us,” Schreiner said to The Quadrangle. “So that’s the rationale. It’s preemptive.” As for right now, the re-
connect with
@mcquad
@mcquad
striction on the guest policy is without an end date in sight. “We don’t like to restrict guests, especially when they’re other Manhattan College students,” Richard Satterlee, the college’s vice president of student affairs, said in an interview. “We want to maintain a residence hall environment, even during COVID that provides an opportunity for safe and effective community building. I think that’s one of the reasons students like to be on campus, so we’re looking at this as a limited restriction, see how it goes, and hopefully it has an impact on positive cases and we’ll be able to return to the limited guest policy we had prior to this uptick.” The moves that will de-densify Jasper Hall are planned to be changes that will last for the rest of the semester. “I’ll give you an approximate number of 125 students at max in Jasper and we will be placing them in different vacancies,” Charles Clency, the director of residence life, said. “Our particular focus is Horan because we have more vacancies there than anywhere else but in order to meet that goal, we’re going to spread them out wherever we can.” When positive cases pop up in Jasper Hall, the entire floor has to move into quarantine, which you can read more about in “Jaspers Quarantined in Westchester Hotel as Horan Suites Reach Maximum Occupancy.” According to Britt, that’s because of how the “family unit” is defined. “It’s really that bathroom unit,” she said. “If there are communal bathrooms, that’s why we have to go into that deep quarantine, it affects the floor, so one of the things we’re trying to do is solve for that issue.” The “Deep Breath Moment” email also warned that any in-person student with an unaddressed orange pass — which means they are not in compliance with the biweekly testing directive — would be referred to the Dean of Students
office for sanctioning if the pass has not been addressed by Friday, March 12. Students were also reminded to fill out their symptom tracker properly and that “A new cough, cold-like symptoms, or mild fever should not be ignored and can be an indication of COVID-19.” Administrators also wrote in the March 2 email that “Our data tells us that the source of the spread is not the classroom, but rather a small minority of our students who are not following our health and safety guidelines.” Among the email’s reiteration that masks are mandatory and must be worn properly, the administrators wrote “Social events, both on and off-campus are causing the virus to spread” and that “We are aware that students are actively planning Manhatty’s Day. This movement – and any other attempts to organize events that flaunt CDC and Manhattan College directives – are irresponsible and will be dealt with as infractions according to the Student Code of Conduct.” Manhatty’s Day is a nonschool-sanctioned event where students usually host crowds and parties at off-campus locations to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day before spring break. Usually, St. Patrick’s day occurs during spring break, so students have historically squeezed the tradition in before mid-March. “This is a challenge for us, but it’s important to note that in our code of conduct, we’ve always had the ability to deal with off-campus conduct through the good neighbor policy,” Saterlee said in regards to off campus parties, which include Manhatty’s Day. “When we have documentable concerns with respect to the good neighbor policy we’ve adjudicated those consistently over the years through the Dean of Students Office. That coupled with the fact that we put interim measures in at the beginning of the year for the time of COVID, that really clearly articulate the
kind of potential conduct that you’re talking about, at certain off campus events, as being unhealthy for the community during this time of COVID, would suggest to us that students should be concerned about their behavior and what what that could possibly mean in terms of bringing that that or spreading the virus and bringing it back to the community.” While administrators have the authority to step in and adjudicate when necessary, administrators encourage students to hold each other accountable in regards to wearing masks appropriately and gathering safely. “The most ideal situation is trying to hold your friendship circle accountable,” Clency said. “We know you’re most effective with the circle of friends that you hang with.” Even with growing concern about social behaviour being a growing point of concern, the administrators do recognize that a large number of students are following the protocols properly. “We know that there is really a majority of students, maybe a vast majority of students, who really are following the rules and doing due diligence and really making the community safe and we appreciate that, we all appreciate that,” Schreiner said. “And I hope that, not just the actions that we have to take right now that we’re doing these changes rules, but hopefully that’s a bit of a wake up to those who are not thinking they need to follow the rules — the fact that they are affecting campus and it’s not like we’re making it up. The numbers are real. And that should be a wake up call to them.” Schreiner reiterated that the administration knows the spread is not coming from in-person learning. “It’s not coming from classrooms,” he said. “We know that and so we’re following the data and the data should wake up the community.”
the Quadrangle mcquad.org
The Quadrangle
mcquad
News
4
THE QUADRANGLE
Quarantine Condition More Than 24 Ho __________________________ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 the link to order food afterwards. Cipriani detailed how he went without a meal for two days. “I forgot [to fill it out] Sunday for Monday,” Cipriani said. “And I didn’t get food Monday or the link, so I didn’t get food either… once you fill it out, you continue to get the link.”
quarantine.” Martin wrote in an email to The Quadrangle. “Offering a variety of healthy meal options for students definitely contributes to their overall wellbeing during this time.” However, not everyone in isolation has been fortunate enough to receive meals that are healthy for them. Maddie Byrne and Jóhanna Runolfsson both reached out to the school about their dietary restrictions and were still given meals that
“Offering a variety of healthy meal options for students definitely contributes to their overall wellbeing during this time.” - Jacqueline Martin Sophomore Maura McCarthy was also in a 14-day quarantine in Horan and spoke about her experience, which demonstrated some consistencies with Cipriani and Tumminello’s. However, when she was not delivered a meal on her second day of quarantine, she called Residence Life and was delivered food shortly after. McCarthy noted that there was a point of contact during her time in isolation: Jacqueline Martin, coordinator of campus health and safety. According to McCarthy, Martin called her consistently throughout her time in isolation. “She actually called me one day– I didn’t even know she had my number– just to check in,” McCarthy said. “But I emailed her a couple times because I had packages coming that I needed. So I actually ordered some food through Amazon or other places and she was able to pick it up from the mailroom and bring it to me.” According to Martin, the school is attempting to make the quarantines go as smoothly as possible for students. She also said that students can reach out to her at jmartin02@ manhattan.edu if their meals are not delivered. “It is important to us that all of the students in quarantine have as positive of an experience as possible during their quarantine. We understand that it can be a very challenging experience for students in
included food they could not eat. Byrne, a sophomore who tested positive for COVID, has a gluten allergy and received several meals that included foods with gluten in them. “The first day I put [on the order form] that I was gluten free and they brought me a regular bagel which I cannot eat. A couple of days later, they sent me a sandwich with regular bread and a breaded chicken patty,” Byrne wrote in an Instagram direct message. “Things like this occurred a couple of times throughout my time in quarantine. But they also would just skip meals and not send me anything for lunch or dinner sometimes.” Runolffson is a freshman and requested a COVID test after showing symptoms during her isolation period in a room at the hotel. She had not yet been given a test when she spoke to The Quadrangle on her sixth full day in quarantine. She is a vegetarian and despite indicating her diet on the order form, she did not receive meatless meals. She was promised a vegetarian meal by multiple people, including Martin and Residence Life, on the night she was dropped off in quarantine. She did not receive any food until the following night. “They didn’t bring me something to eat until like six o’clock the next day so all I had was the bread off of the salami sandwich,” Runolffson said.
At this point, Runolffson decided to take to social media to advocate for herself. “I’m a vegetarian all I’ve had to eat in quarantine in the past 24 hours is the bread off a salami sandwich you gave me,” she commented on a recent post on the school’s Instagram page, @ manhattanedu. Runolfsson said that after that comment was made, “somebody immediately came here, and that was at nighttime, and they brought me a bag of [vegetarian] food that was from the dining hall.” Since then, she has been provided with both vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals. However, access to water became an issue as well. Students reported that upon their arrival they were only given two bottles of water. The lack of water prompted some to have to ration it. Alex Nieves explained the situation in a Letter to the Editor. “I have only been given 2 water bottles to drink over 48 hours,” wrote Nieves. Alex Nieves, who also serves as the vice president of finance for the Student Government Association, shared his complaints with his fellow board members, prompting the SGA to coordinate the distribution of water to every student in Horan quarantine. “Since we’ve identified that quarantine residents need to have access to water, we have purchased 180 gallons of water to be delivered directly to Horan Hall, where most quarantine students sit,” Nieves continued in his letter. “The school has responded in saying that they will not deliver this water as their policy states that they will only deliver what Aramark purchases.” Unfortunately, Runolfsson did not receive any of the gallons of Poland Spring water provided to the isolated students by the Student Government Association as she is staying in the hotel. Byrne had the same experience as Runolffson after alerting dining services to their allergy. They still received some gluten free meals and some non-gluten free meals, and none of them had enough sustenance or nutrition value to count as a full meal. “The other day they brought me a salad with croutons though and I obviously can’t eat that. It’s really just up
in the air,” they wrote. “I get a piece of fruit and a gluten free cookie but the actual meals themselves aren’t consistent. And they especially haven’t been consistently gluten free.” In terms of how they felt about the situation, Byrne admitted they were not surprised. “Would it be bad to say that I expected it?” they wrote. “I didn’t really expect the school to provide me consistent meals. I knew that quarantining in Horan meant I probably wasn’t going to be fed well. However, I didn’t have the option to go home and quarantine. This was my only option and I went in really expecting the worst.” After returning to their dorm, Byrne found that the lack of access they had to food during their isolation period had affected their physical health. “I just weighed myself today when I got back into my actual dorm room,” Byrne wrote. “I lost 6 pounds as of today. It’s an amalgamation of not being fed consistently and stress from being in quarantine.” Unfortunately, students do not have the option to reach out to a designated resident assistant as a resource. As a precaution there are no RAs living near isolated students and also because there are no permanent residents that are housed on the quarantine floors, which
ed floors.” The 10 to 14 days students spend in quarantine is an unfortunate time to lack the aid of an RA, especially when students need support. However, Clency defended the decision to station his staff separately from isolated students in an interview. “...first and foremost, that is not a designated residential spot where we assign people for the whole semester, and hypothetically if no one ever went into quarantine, quite honest with you, that means we would have our Ras who are not not busy, don’t have a population to serve. The second part is that we’re not trying to put any of our RAs, our students, staff in any kind of harm’s way. …..We can’t put them in an environment where we know that it’s a possibility that they can contract any unwarranted COVID virus, it’s a safety call on that notion in terms of taking care of our students.” Nieves also wrote about how many students, including himself, did not receive enough food on Saturday, Feb. 27. Since this event occurred during outof-office hours on the weekend, the administration reacted slowly to this alarming issue. “Me and others on my board have been emailing people trying to get a fix for today,” Nieves wrote. “Nobody is working, so nobody is helping. We’ve had one response, but I’ve yet to see any food yet. Since we’ve
“I just weighed myself today when I got back into my actual dorm room. I lost 6 pounds as of today. It’s an amalgamation of not being fed consistently and stress from being in quarantine.” -Maddie Byrne was confirmed by Clency in an email to The Quadrangle. “Residence Life does not have any Resident Assistants housed on any of the quarantine floors,” he wrote in an email. “Nevertheless, the RAs on-duty are required to implement duty tours 2-3 times daily, which includes these designat-
identified that quarantine residents need to have access to water, we have purchased 180 gallons of water to be delivered directly to Horan Hall, where most quarantine students sit. The school has responded in saying that they will not deliver this water as their policy states that they will only deliver what
MARCH 9, 2021
News
5
ns Dire as Students Go ours Without Food “I didn’t really expect the school to provide me consistent meals. I knew that quarantining in Horan meant I probably wasn’t going to be fed well... I went in really expecting the worst.” - Maddie Byrne
Aramark purchases. Student government was able to distribute 3 jugs of water to every quarantined student within an hour. This goes to show that if the administration wanted to, they could.” His letter also detailed how the SGA attempted to advocate for the quarantined students, but cannot do so without the school supporting them in their actions. In addition to food issues, some sources cited cleanliness problems. Tumminello recalled that his quarantine dorm in Horan was not properly cleaned and they felt uncomfortable as it felt as if someone was already there. “They did not give me any
An upset Jóhanna Runolfsson leaves comments on the Manhattan College Instagram page. @MANHATTANEDU / COURTESY cleaning supplies, I know they said that the rooms were supposed to be cleaned.” Tumminello said. “They did give me some toilet paper, which is great, but the roll that was in the bathroom was still half used and not replaced before I moved in.” During the public COVID-19 Town Hall meeting on Feb 23. 2021 that was shared with students, Residence Life director Charles Clency explained the process of cleaning the rooms before students move-in. “These rooms will already be pre-cleaned and sanitized, we have just under 60 room spaces,” he said. “In order to use these and rotate them, naturally it can get busy, but you can and should be assured that your room will be clean and sanitized prior to your arrival.” In an interview with The Quadrangle, Clency further described what a student should do if there is a maintenance issue when they arrive into their quarantine space. “If there’s a problem, let us know right away and we will make every attempt to get you another assignment,” Clency said. “We’ve had it
While the isolation suites in Horan Hall might be full, the stomachs of quarantined students remain empty. JILLEEN BARRETT / THE QUADRANGLE
happen… Fortunately, and I will tell you, out of the literal hundreds of people we’ve had go through quarantine since the beginning of the fall, I can count on one hand, how many times, somebody has went into a room where they have not had a functional toilet or that it wasn’t clean. I mean we’ve done our due diligence to try to fix that problem.” The effects of quarantine were summed up by Nieves in his letter. “It feels like a prison here,” he wrote. “We aren’t being fed. We aren’t being given water. We tried to help, but the school would rather enact policy changes over helping those in here. Common decency and humanity are only second to that of administrative ruling. As I sit here, I wonder why we are being treated like this, and how the school will make this better. I have to remind myself that this is not the fault of the people living in quarantine, though it becomes easy to blame yourself when you sit here. It’s difficult to distract yourself here – I can’t focus on my work because this injustice clouds my mind.”
“It feels like a prison here,” he wrote. “We aren’t being fed. We aren’t being given water.” - Alex Nieves
Features
6
THE QUADRANGLE
Slice of Social Justice: CMSA Facilitates a Workshop on Understanding the Racial Wealth and Income Gap Kyla Guilfoil
Asst. News Editor Returning with their Slice of Social Justice series, the Campus Ministry and Social Action suite led a workshop about the racial wealth and income gap on Wednesday, March 3. The workshop comes from a resource developed by Network, a Catholic advocacy organization, to show the policies that have contributed to the intentional structural racism and inequality in the United States. This event was interactive, inviting audience members to fill the shoes of those living through the systemic changes and laws enacted in the U.S. that have impacted the racial wealth and income gap since the Civil War. Kathleen Von Euw, Asst. Director of CMSA, stated at the beginning of the event that the workshop’s purpose was to educate, rather than address possible solutions for the gap. Casey Monroe, a graduate assistant for CMSA, describes how the purpose of the event was to give students a better understanding of the topic. “[The activity] is to show you an understanding of the creation and perpetuation of the racial wealth and income gap,” Monroe said. Von Euw told The Quadrangle that CMSA has run this workshop for years now, and it is part of their Social Justice Immersion Programs. However, the CMSA has also offered the workshop to different groups on campus and has used it in a multitude of programs within their office. Von Euw shared that using this workshop in a Slice of Social Justice event was inspired by the fact that many of their other programs and retreats are not possible this year due to the pandemic. By using it in the event on Wednesday, the office hoped the workshop would reach more of the MC community. At the event, the facilitators went through a number of agreements that established support and participation for all that were involved and encouraged members to embrace any discomfort that they may experience during the activity. Naouras Mousa Almatar, a graduate assistant for CMSA, also read a poem titled “An Invitation to Brave Space,” before the groups began. The groups each went through a simulation wherein some members were assigned a Black persona, and others a white persona. The facilitators led their group through 12 policies so that after each policy
every member could directly acknowledge the impact it had on their hypothetical family. This was done through distributing symbolic ‘cards’, including lost opportunity cards, money cards and land cards. After the completion of the 12 policies that stretched from 1619 (the beginning of slavery in America) to the present day, the first Black family had one money card, zero land cards and 26 lost opportunity cards; the second Black family had zero money cards, zero land cards and 26 lost opportunity cards; the first white family had 20 money cards, 14 land cards and 0 lost opportunity cards; and second white family had 15 money cards, nine land cards and two lost opportunity cards. “I knew there was inequality in just income and wealth, between Black families and white families, but just doing the activity and seeing the numbers, I was pretty surprised by how much Black families would lose money, and white families would just gain money for seemingly doing nothing,” said Johannah Dalo, a junior psychology major who attended the event. These results were based on the fact-driven data of American families over the last centuries due to actual American legislation and policy. Specifically, the policies covered were slave codes, the Fugitive Slave Act and American chattel slavery (1619-1865); Andrew Johnson’s land policies and sharecropping (1965-1880); land seizures (1865-1960s); the National Housing Act of 1934; the Wagner Act of 1935; the Social Security Act of 1935; the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938; the GI Bill of 1944; the end of the Separate But Equal Doctrine (1954-present day); the Federal Highway Act of 1956; subprime loans (1970s-present day); and the War on Drugs (1971-present day). Many participants were shocked after the activity since several of the earlier mentioned policies are taught and celebrated as cherished American legislature that was intended to help Americans, not hurt them. In regards to the Wagner Act of 1935, the Social Security Act of 1935, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the GI Bill of 1944 and the Federal Highway Act of 1956, American history books don’t teach us how specific the group of Americans who received full benefits actually was. In all of these cases, the workshop demonstrated how people of color were excluded and even targeted in these policies. “It’s really hard to explain systemic racism because peo-
ple tend to think of it as emotional animas, or something that’s really individual, and they never think of themselves as having it, because most people don’t have it, consciously, so this is a great way to explain structural embeddedness,” said Jonathan Keller, Ph.D, professor of political science at the event. “But also, all these programs, it struck me, going through that list, kind of New Deal [programs], are all framed as these great, universal, risingtide-lifts-all-boats programs, and they’re lauded that way, people love FDR, they love that about him, so it’s interesting.” The activity demonstrated that the largest single driver for the income and wealth gap comes from inequities in homeownership. Almatar further explained the earlier mentioned policies impacts on homeownership for people of color. “The influences of redlining [designating lower quality neighborhoods for people of color] on the housing landscape include intentionally segregated neighborhoods, under fullness goals in segregated neighborhoods, Black access to quality healthcare and nutrition, and adequate public transportation, limited economic opportunities, and non-traditional sources of income, and rampant gentrification,” Almatar said. The CMSA facilitators closed their presentation with statistics of homeownership, income and wealth gaps between racial lines. According to their graphics, D-rated neighborhoods in America that are considered ‘hazardous’ were found to be 40 percent Black in 2010, while A-rated neighborhoods with the ‘best’ quality were found to be only 10 percent Black the same year. Furthermore, the presentation showcased graphics that demonstrated homeownership rates by race from 1976-2016. The rates stayed relatively consistent throughout that period for all of the groups, with white family homeownership landing at 68 percent in 2016, Black families homeownership reported as 46 percent that year, and Hispanic families landing at 42 percent homeownership. In terms of net wealth, the CMSA offered a graph that demonstrated the gap in median net wealth between white families and Black and Hispanic families. For all non-white families in 1963, there was a $50,000 disparity between their median net wealth and that of white families. Shifting to the comparison of white and Black families, there was a nearly $100,000 disparity of median net wealth in 1983, and an approximately $150,000 disparity in 2016. For Hispanic families, there was also an approximate-
ly $100,000 disparity between their median net wealth and white families’ in 1983, and a $150,000 disparity between the groups in 2016. Hispanic families were reported to have about a $3,000 higher net wealth than Black families in 2016. These statistics are a direct result of the policies mentioned earlier, and furthered the explanation of systemic racism in America. Monroe has found this workshop to be very eye-opening, especially in regards to her own family. “The first time that I did the event, I kind of looked at it from the perspective of people that I knew in my family at the time were going through those different things, those moments of history,” Monroe said. “I have two uncles who were Black, who were fighting in the war, one fought in the Vietnam War, and then I believe the other one fought in the Korean War. The reason that I say that, is when we put the GI Bill in perspective, for example, knowing that they didn’t receive all of the benefits of that and knowing them as individual people was really interesting, because they were such good and kind-hearted people, and to see that from my perspective, and my own personal point of view, was very difficult to come to terms with.” Monroe also shared that her great-grandmother was half-white and half-Black, which Monroe feels had left her in a confusing position considering the two-sided rhetoric often used in American history. “I think that something that’s interesting to touch on is the lack of recognition of other communities besides White and Black, the lack of recognition for the Hispanic community, and the Asian community, and the Native American community, that they weren’t regarded in that conversation either, and they were just split between the two,” Monroe said. “There’s no acknowledgment of the multitude of diversity that we have in this country and not only diversity in race, but in gender and class and sexuality and all of these different things, so I find it interesting that so many things were just kind of split in two and you were either one or the other.” Monroe further elaborates that she finds the country to not be as inclusive as it appears to be. “We’re known as this melting pot of a country, and yet there are so many instances where we don’t make the country that we live in comfortable and adaptable for everyone that’s living it in,” Monroe said. Monroe believes that all races need to learn about these policies and structures.
“I think that comes from the perspective of all races having an understanding of racism at a systemic level, instead of just seeing it conceptually at face value is really important,” Monroe said. “You understand that it’s so much bigger than just a few instances that you see in the media, and that it’s something that’s been long-standing and prevalent in our nation in so many different capacities, and I think it’s so important, not only for people who don’t understand racism to be able to see this is something that is happening in our nation and within each and every space that I may potentially be entering, but also for people who do experience racism at any sort of level, to understand that the racism that is eventually going to be happening in my space is not just going to be something that’s happening at person-to-person contact, it’s something that can also happen in a way that I might not even notice it, because it’s a much more systemic issue.” Von Euw added to Monroe’s comment, and emphasized the importance of Americans unlearning false narratives in order to understand the real systems behind structural racism in our country. “I think that by helping people to understand how structurally racist policies were created, we can address that the racial wealth and income gap that we have was intentional,” Von Euw said. “The segregation of our neighborhoods and housing discrimination was intentional, and I think it’s important for people to understand that history so that we can work to dismantle those systems.” Von Euw explained that the CMSA office at MC has used resources from Network for years, and that they have very accessible educational resources online for everyone. “[Network] provides tons of workshops,” Von Euw said. “If you go on their website, you can download a lot of these educational resources, like, they make everything super accessible, so it’s not just them giving the workshops, but that other people can use it in their own communities, which forwards the education.” The CMSA will be offering more Slice of Social Justice events this semester to further education and discussion on social justice issues. The next event will be a discussion about violence against native women, led by guest speaker Sutton King of the Urban Indigenous Collective, in collaboration with MC’s Lasallian Women and Gender Resource Center on March 10 at 8 p.m. The CMSA will also host a discussion on the death penalty on March 24.
Features
MARCH 9, 2021
7
Jaspers Receive the COVID-19 Vaccine VOICES ON THE QUAD Interviews compiled by Kelly Kennedy & Maria Thomas.
Dylan Cabrita, Freshman
Shirali Patel, Sophomore
Michele Saracino
How was your experience being vaccinated? My experience was great overall. It is a very quick experience for each dose. The second dose provides most people with some side-effects, but it is nothing too bad. I simply had a very slight headache and a mild fever.
How was your experience being vaccinated? It was really good. All the workers were really nice. It was quick, efficient, and they’re really compliant with everything. I’ve qualified through working for the school gym, because it’s like a high exposure environment, and I just wanted to like, take that extra stride and like have that protection.
What courses are you currently teaching? RELS 110: The Nature and Experience of Religion RELS 216: Saints and the Catholic Imagination
Computer Science Major
Do you recommend your fellow Jasper community to get vaccinated? I would recommend that anyone get any of COVID-19 vaccines as soon as possible; With the recent rise in cases on campus and in the general area, it is becoming more and more difficult for the school to stay open as well as stressful for students and faculty to be here. Personally, the constant new measures taken by the school for our safety have added a great deal of additional stress on top of my normal challenges as a student. If everyone gets the vaccine, Manhattan College would become the fun, enlightening and special place that we all came here for. Do you believe that it is important to get the COVID-19 vaccine? If so, why? I believe it is very important to get the COVID-19 vaccine. It will protect you as well as all of the people around you that you love and care about. It is at no cost other than a mild headache and sleepiness for a little bit. It is definitely worth it to save yourself as well as those you love.
Computer Engineering Major
Do you recommend your fellow Jasper community to get vaccinated? I definitely recommend it, I feel like it’s good for yourself and protecting others like herd immunity? It’s a good thing to do for both yourself and the campus community as a whole. Do you believe that it is important to get the COVID-19 vaccine? If so, why? I think it’s really important to get the COVID-19 vaccine because not only are you protecting yourself, but you’re protecting people around you. And it could really save a life or a couple thousand lives by getting the vaccine.
Religious Studies Professor
How was your experience being vaccinated? I got vaccinated both times in the Bronx. It was well organized and for the most part people seemed really grateful for the opportunity. Standing on line was a communal event, which brought together people from all walks of life. I will always remember it. Do you recommend your fellow Jasper community get vaccinated? Yes, if their physicians deem it appropriate. Do you believe that it is important to get the COVID-19 vaccine? If so, why? Yes, so we can protect ourselves and others and get back to the business of our everyday lives--doing the things that make our lives meaningful and in some instances bring us joy. Our friends, families, colleagues, and most importantly here at MC, the students depend on a safe environment in which to live and learn.
Join the Quadrangle Open Meetings Tuesdays 4 p.m. via Google Meet
Features
8
THE QUADRANGLE
HERstory Event Inspires Activism Megan LaCreta Contributor
On Wednesday, Feb. 24, the Multicultural Center and the Lasallian Women and Gender Resource Center co-sponsored a “Black Women in Activism Panel Discussion,” as part of Intersectionality Week. Manhattan College welcomed Nadine Crammer who founded the Rohan Levy Foundation, a nonprofit organization combating gun violence, Kimberly Bernard, co-founder of the Black Womxn’s March, Oluwademilade “Olu” Ogunlade, member of Strategy for Black Lives and student at SUNY Old Westbury, and Bryna Jean-Marie, co-producer of the History Channel’s “Tuskegee Airmen: Legacy of Courage.” Micah Thomas, Residence Life Area Coordinator at Manhattan College, moderated the event. The panel began with a discussion of how activism has changed over the course of the pandemic. Crammer explained how while online activism has expanded her foundation’s platform, it has also been a struggle to combat the fatigue of online programming. “It’s difficult now to be a vis-
ible activism force online,” said Crammer. “However, you have a greater platform. So you have to balance a lot, like do you want to do another zoom thing? Or do you create a video that you just send out to everyone, so that people can do it on their own time?” The pandemic has also lent itself to activist movements. Bernard noted that without the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, which came into full swing following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, may not have been able to achieve the incredible momentum that they did. “I think the fact that [the BLM movement] happened in a pandemic was a two-edged sword,” Bernard said. “It meant that a lot of people were out because they were home, and they had the free time. But at the same time, it shows the commitment and dedication people had and how outraged they were, because people came out in the midst of a pandemic risking their life, safety, and health.” The panelists discussed the significance of being women in their respective fields. Jean-Marie noted that, while the production team of her
documentary, “Tuskegee Airmen” was all Black, she was the only woman. She was able to use her unique perspective to make sure women’s contributions were highlighted in the documentary. The panelists also expressed the unique struggles Black women face. Crammer noted that she feels like she has to hold back her emotions in order to avoid stereotyping, even in her advocacy following the loss of her son to gun violence. “I can’t be too angry because then I get cast as the angry Black woman as opposed to the mourning mother,” Crammer said. “And so, as an activist, I have to often temper how I engage.” Bernard also spoke on how the Black Lives Matter protests have encouraged Black men in particular to express their emotions, something that is societally discouraged. She attributes this to the leadership of Black women. “[The movement] is largely Black women-led, which I think is a breath of fresh air and a beautiful thing, and I have seen Black men more emotional than I’ve ever seen in my life when I think about it,” Bernard said. The panelists also went on to emphasize the value of youth
voices in activism. Ogunlade discussed how it is important to have adults who are willing to listen and uplift young people. She also expressed how she and other young people tend to be more outgoing in their activism. “One of the ways that I lead is I’m going to tell you what I think,” Ogunlade said. “And I care more about how I convey the message as opposed to how you receive the message. So, I feel like if I’m respectful, if I’m kind, how you get it is how you get it.” Jean-Marie applauded Ogunlade and the outspoken nature of youth activism. However, she also noted that older generations’ hesitancy to speak out comes from experience. “I’m not muting myself,” Jean-Marie said. “It’s just that I’ve been around a long time and I see how things work. And in order to get what I want, I’ve learned to play the game correctly.” Ogunlade also offered up advice to other college students looking to get involved in activism and politics. She said students should try to take advantage of every opportunity they can, and not be discouraged by any number of rejections they may face.
“I had a lot more experience than the average 17 or 18-yearold, and I think a part of it was because I just wanted to be in there,” Ogunlade said. “Just let me see, let me look, let me learn, teach me, and I took every, every opportunity I was presented with.” Crammer also emphasized the value of taking on any and all opportunities, no matter how small. “If you’re looking for opportunities in activism, you don’t have to start with being the face of the movement,” Crammer said. “You can start with volunteering with group activities which takes a lot of the pressure off you.” The panelists left off with a call to action. Bernard called on activists to not let up simply because a new administration has taken office. “We have to continue to go hard and make our voices heard,” Bernard said. “We can’t get comfortable because that’s one of the things that has derailed movements in the past.” Crammer left the audience with one final message of hope. “My parting words,” said Crammer. “The youth will lead the way.”
The Black Student Union Commits to Making Campus Inclusive, through Black History Month & More Zoe DeFazio Staff Writer
The Black Student Union is dedicated to advocating for all Black students to ensure their voices are heard on campus. The BSU strives to do this by empowering students, showcasing Black pride and embracing the history that makes Black beautiful. For Black History Month, the club was able to provide multiple events that illustrate the deep history and what it means to have Black pride. The BSU provides a safe space for Black students to voice their opinions, share intel and overall come together in unity. The BSU was created by Black students, for Black students to be able to discuss pressing issues, embrace their heritage, engage in a community of individuals with shared experiences and meet new friends. Alexandria Nyala Pendergrass, the BSU’s event coordinator explained the BSU’s long-term plans to assist Black students. “The BSU’s long-term goals are to be a hub where students of color turn when they are looking to meet new people, find resources catered to them, or just need an outlet to vent,” Pendergrass said. “We want
students of color to always feel welcomed and included on campus.” The BSU holds multiple events throughout the year for students to create a network of connections, have the ability to navigate career options, and even express political opinions. Events that are held often have guests of high influence, such as Misty Copeland. Pendergrass notes that despite the club working towards the inclusivity of Black students on campus, the club is open to all students regardless of race and ethnicity. “We at the BSU, are always working on reaching more of the student body,” Pendergrass said. “Our focus and events are catered to POC but we welcome all races and ethnicities to join us. We know the more diverse our members are the better the conversation, events and overall club experience will be.” Marshall Strawbridge, the co-Vice President of the BSU expressed how he wants to navigate the club going forward. Strawbridge discussed his advocacy towards Black students and how the BSU has the ability to create a change at MC. “I want the BSU to be a central driving force behind organizing and advocacy on campus,” Strawbridge said. “Yes,
for Black students on campus in particular, but I believe our work is crucial to enhancing the college experience for all students.” The changes that the BSU hopes to make are in line with the Lasallian values, such as an inclusive community and respect for all while providing an education. Strawbridge finds that the club is able to best accomplish this in a virtual format. “My primary contribution to the BSU has been getting our leadership to imagine what it means to be a club given the challenges presented by the pandemic,” Strawbridge said. “Fortunately for us, we don’t have to make a transition to a virtual format, so we really have had the freedom to pursue ideas that wouldn’t be possible in an in-person setting.” Ashley Baptiste, the coVice President of the BSU shared her feelings about how the BSU felt to make Black History month a priority and why the need for multiple virtual events to occur. “For BHM we wanted to make known the importance of the month and the contributions that we have made as a community,” Baptiste said. Black History Month is an important event for the Black community that exudes pride
and passion. This month is dedicated to the meaningful history behind what it is to be a Black person in the United States. It was important for the BSU to commemorate this month in order to make Black students feel welcomed at MC, and to display diversity on campus. Although Black History Month is in February which is the shortest month of the year, the time frame didn’t stop the BSU from putting their all into planning a month filled with activities and virtual events with notable guests for the campus community. Pendergrass explained the numerous opportunities the BSU was able to provide during Black History Month. The start of the Month, the BSU partnered with the Multicultural Center to hold the Black History Month Opening Ceremony. The ceremony included announcing Black excellence awards and listening to speaker Misty Copeland. Misty Copeland, the principal dancer from the American Ballet Theatre, discussed what it’s like to be a Black woman in the arts and was able to inspire Black students to chase their dreams. Pendergrass also mentioned the other events that had influential guests of Black
heritage, such as a virtual talk with New York State Representative Jamal Brown. Strawbridge also chimed in on how the BSU has been going through great lengths to ensure that Black History Month didn’t go overlooked. “We are also hosting an artist named Andrea Ballo who will share her journey as a Black creative all while doing a live illustration,” Strawbridge said. “We were very much looking forward to this. We’ll also be partnering with Just Peace to host a conversation on Racial Justice at Manhattan College.” The BSU’s mission is to provide a space that is inclusive, diverse, and caters to the Black students here at Manhattan College. Black History Month was a success here at MC all because of the great lengths the BSU went through. Although COVID may limit the club’s progress, they are still committed to bringing inclusivity to MC. “We want members of this club to have a safe space to converse and relax,” Baptiste said. “We are moving forward with this goal but it has become a prolonged process due to COVID precautions.”
MARCH 9, 2021
Arts & Entertainment
9
MARS Hosts Poet Richard Blanco Gabriella DePinho Senior Writer
The special thing about poetry is that no matter who you are, what your life story is, or where you’re going, poems hold a universal truth within them, which allows audiences across identity spectrums to connect with them. So when the English Department’s Major Author Reading Series (MARS) hosted Richard Blanco, a gay, Cuban-American poet, for a virtual reading on March 3, students and faculty of all walks of life attended and could connect with his poetry. Blanco was born in Spain to Cuban parents, and just 45 days after his birth, his family moved to America, eventually settling in Miami. At 27, after a short career in civil engineering, Blanco decided to try his hand at poetry and by 44, he was reading at President Obama’s second inauguration. His work largely deals with topical yet personal issues, such as the blending of cultures, family relationships, his queer identity, his sense of place within America, and how all of these things often meld together. Blanco was originally supposed to come to the college for a MARS event in April 2020, but due to the early stages of the pandemic, the event was canceled. However, he was able to make his way to the college virtually, and was still greeted with a sizable audience. The event had 90 attendees, which included faculty, staff, students and alumni, and all of whom stayed for the whole reading. Several of those attendees actually had groups of people gathered around a computer screen to share in the reading together. Dominika Wrozynski, an associate professor of English, introduced Blanco, narrating an instance in which she first heard him read at a writing conference, even though he wasn’t originally on the list of panelists. “He graciously agreed and read ‘Looking for the Gulf Motel’ and I sat and cried because as unique as that memory of the Gulf Motel and its retrieval is in Richard’s voice, that repetend of all the things that he should still be able to recollect and reconstruct,” Wrozynski said. “Richard’s masterful narratives do, of course, make us think about our own parents, siblings and that tricky and fraught thing — memory.” After she introduced him rattling off his works — The Prince of Los Cocuyos, Looking for the Gulf Motel, and How to Love a Country — she invited the audience to welcome him. “I hope tonight you insist on the beauty of this moment, albeit virtual and maybe seemingly far away,” she said, before handing the reins of the event off to Blanco.
After a brief round of silent applause, he thanked Wrozynski for the introduction, shared his own memory of that serendipitous reading, thanked the audience for being there and prefaced them on what to expect for the next hour. “I like to say that every poet is in some way writing one poem all their life, and by that I mean there’s some kind of central obsession that informs the work and usually some big question that’s never really answered and keeps on getting asked in different ways and for me that question is of course what is home?” he said. “That big word home and all that word calls into mind in terms of family, community, cultural heritage, even my sexuality, as I’ll talk about later. All that big word calls into mind. It’s like asking what is love to me? It’s inexhaustible for me. He started off the reading with “América,” which was one of his very first poems that he wrote during his master of fine arts after his professor assigned his students to write a poem about America. He wrote about “the most traumatic thing in most Cubans’ lives which is Thanksgiving.” In the poem, he tells the tale of his family, how he spoke English but his family didn’t, how his family figured out what to do with peanut butter and how in trying to please his childhood self by making “traditional” American food, his grandmother cooked the turkey “as if committing an act of treason.” The next poem he read was “Mother Country, Madre Patría” a poem about his mother, who left her entire family behind in Cuba while she was pregnant with him. “In a way, my mother is my lifeline or my storyline to Cuba because of the family belongs there but she’s also in a way, a very strong lifeline and storyline to the United States, to America because that act of faith, that leap of faith, that sacrifice she made quintessentially for the American dream makes her more of an American in my eyes than I could ever be,” he said. The poem asks the reader to step into his mother’s shoes and see the country through an immigrant’s eye, when many of those born in the country may take it for granted. The poem’s three stanzas all start with “To love a country as if you’ve lost one” and tells his mother’s story as he imagines it, and as he lived it with her. The poem ends, quietly and thoughtfully, with a quote from his mother, a moment in which she turned to him and said, “You know, mijo, / it isn’t where you’re born that matters, it’s where / you choose to die — that’s your country.” The next poem he read was “My Father in English” which Blanco said he wrote because
he wrote the one about his mother so he “had to throw dad in there.” “It’s a poem of thanks, of homage,” he said. “He didn’t leave his whole family behind but he gave up a lot too as an exile, a lot of dreams. He was a sailor in Cuba. I don’t think he really ever quite captured his spirit back, but anyway, a good father.” The poem narrates his father’s leaving Cuba behind and coming to learn the English word “indeed,” never quite knowing what it means, but using it to sound like he knew English better than he did. Indeed was “the word I most learned/ to love and know him through” and in this poem Blanco gets to say “what I always meant to tell him in both languages: / thank you/gracias for surrendering the past tense / of your life so that I might conjugate myself here / in the present of this country, in truth/así es, indeed.” Blanco then shifted gears a bit to talk about his sexuality before reading a poem entitled “Queer Theory: According to My Grandmother.” “I never really wrote about my sexuality until ‘Looking for the Gulf Motel’ until that book and it kind of really bothered me and I wasn’t sure why and then I realized, I wasn’t sure what the connection between my sexuality and that question, obsession of home was,” he said. “And then it was like ‘duh’ it hit me that there’s another kind of home that you long for, or I did as a gay kid. Home in another way, home as in a safe space.” It also occurred to him that his culture also informed a story that he had to tell about his sexualitty. His grandmother, who was truly one of his best friends and his primary caretaker, was also homophobic and xenophobic; if something was odd to her, she called it gay. “Oatmeal was gay, the Brady Bunch was gay, the Cub Scouts were gay, anything in English — gay, macaroni and cheese — gay,” Blanco joked before diving into the poem. The poem is a persona poem in the voice of his grandmother which, though it has some gravitas, is actually quite a humorous poem. As Blanco rattles off things that are or aren’t gay, there is an echoing and eerie refrain of “I’ve seen you…” throughout the poem. The next poem Blanco read seemed to be the crux of the event: Looking for The Gulf Motel. It was the poem that named one of his collections and that moved Wrozynski to tears the first time she heard it, was a poem that came from Blanco’s deep-seated obsession with home. So deeply missing Miami after leaving it, he moved back for the first time since leaving to find the Miami of his childhood had
Richard Blanco logs on for this virtual event. GABRIELLA DEPINHO/ THE QUADRANGLE changed, and so from it came this poem, ladened with rich imagery of his mother and father still deeply in love, his brother still 13 drawing women’s bodies in the sand, his father’s terry cloth jacket and cigars, his family lugging “smelly” Cuban food into the hotel because even on vacation they cannot afford to eat out. In the poem, there is the subtle refrain of “There should be nothing here I don’t remember…” except Blanco has found, at 38, looking for the Gulf Motel, there is nothing there he does remember. When he was livid to find the Miami of his childhood gone, his partner told Blanco that he sounded just like his mother. “First of all, wrong thing to say in any situation but I caught myself realizing that loss is universal,” Blanco said. Now Blanco lives between Miami and Maine, the two ends of I-95, which sounds as poetic as it could for a man obsessed with the idea of home. After learning to accept that he was going to “live in the question” of home, Obama called. Obama asked him to write a poem for and about America — which brought Blanco back to his first MFA assignment. As he was grappling with the task, Blanco was grappling with his own identity as a gay, Cuban American, wondering if he really did belong to the country. “I wasn’t sure I loved the country enough to write a poem and I wasn’t sure if this country loved me back enough to write a poem,” he said. “And there were points where, well I wasn’t really going to do this, but I thought I just gotta call ole Obama up and say ‘hey, I can’t do this buddy, how about I just read you a poem I’ve already written?’ but the poem I did write was a response to all of those questions. As I tell my creative writing students, the question is the poem. It’s what you find out by asking the poem. It’s like a crystal ball, you ask the poem what it is. And it was ‘no, dammit, I am part of this narrative.’ That little chubby gay kid from the working class family, that’s America.” Blanco, in 2013, along with other poets, knew that there were voices being left out of the narrative of America and saw
the opportunity before him as a chance to insert one person’s and one family’s voice back into the mainstream narrative. In fact, Blanco, half-joking, half-serious, said that the government should listen to poets more. “If they would just have a poet in chief, we’d be all set,” he said. “I’m going off tangent but dammit we need a cabinet administrator in the humanities.” So Blanco completed the task, and at 44, he was, at the time, the youngest inaugural poet to read at the event. He read excerpts from the memoir-ette “All of us, one today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey” and excerpts from the poem itself. Blanco’s experience, in which he realized “we’re a little baby country, we’re nothing,” helped inspire his next collection “How to Love A Country” a title he considers a question as much as he considers it a directive. From that collection, Blanco ended the reading with “The Declaration of Interdependence.” Explaining this poem’s inspiration, he said that it seems like the country is finally having a true reckoning with its history and is starting to understand and value the idea of interdependence. The poem takes excerpts from the text of the Declaration of Independence and builds around it. “I’m sick of the commodity of hope, this commodity of American hope, not sick of it, I get it, but let’s grow up, that idea we’re the best country, that whole nationalistic thing, especially in a century where those borders are becoming more and more artificial and absurd,” he said. “I think it’s keeping us from growing sometimes.” After the last poem ended, students and faculty had the chance to ask questions. Blanco doled out advice for young writers — practice! — and fielded a few questions from excited attendees about the issue of identity, place and culture — things that popped up in the work he shared with the audience. There is hope that in the future, in a post-COVID-19 world, Blanco can come to campus, and maybe even share a drink with professors at An Beal Bocht.
Arts & Entertainment
10
THE QUADRANGLE
Intersectionality Week Incorporates Stacy Abrams Documentary, “All In: The Fight For Democracy” Kelly Cwik
Asst. A&E Editor The Lasallian Women and Gender Resource Center, Campus Ministry and Social Action Suite and the Multicultural Center teamed up to have a watch party for Stacy Abrams Documentary, “All In: The Fight For Democracy” in honor of Intersectionality Week. Intersectionality Week happened between Black History Month and Women’s History Month and was one of many events focusing on the intersection of social and political identities. David Witzling, Ph.D. and program director of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Program, explained in an email to The Quadrangle the work that has been done to organize Intersectionality Week. “The groups organizing Intersectionality Week have been meeting throughout the school
year to coordinate events promoting antiracist practices and attitudes and the cause of racial justice,” Witzling wrote. “Stacey Abrams has been calling attention to attempts by many powerful politicians to restrict the voting rights of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities. Her organization, Fair Fight, is at the forefront of the movement to get people to vote and to push back against efforts to restrict the vote.” The documentary takes the viewer through the history of voter suppression involving many key activists, specifically Stacy Abrams. Witzling believed the documentary was a great way to encourage conversations about how race and gender play a role in the attempts to restrict voting rights. “The documentary is a great introduction not just to Abrams’ work, but to the history of racialized voter suppression in the U.S.” Witzling wrote. “As with many practices
in the contemporary U.S. that are, at best, neutral with regard to the problem of racial inequality, current attempts to restrict the vote have their origins in openly white supremacist practices that emerged after the emancipation of Black Americans. This is history that all of us need to know.” Ashley Cross, Ph.D. and faculty co-director of the LWGRC learned a lot from the documentary in regards to voter suppression and the racist history of finding ways to discourage people of color from voting. “The whole history of voter suppression, the racist history of disenfranchising Black people in particular from the vote, which goes [back to] reconstruction after the Civil War [which] was supposed to be this great moment of freedom and actually what we see there is the re-entrenchment of all these ways to disempower, the beginning of all these ways to disempower Black voters and Black politicians. So we saw the
voting purge, the Voter ID, the gerrymandering, all of those things that were shown there.” Naouras Mousa Almatar, Campus Ministry and Social Action Suite graduate assistant, believes this documentary was important to have to bring awareness of the events that have been happening in the United States, particularly the 2020 election. “As part of intersectionality week, and based on the previous events of this past election, this documentary shows how the voting process for different communities is impacted by institutional and governmental racism, such as the racist policies that took away voting rights from people of color,” Almatar wrote in an email to The Quadrangle. “It was important to show this documentary to shed a light on these issues, spread awareness, and educate our students/community members and help them understand the root of the problem.” Overall, Cross found the
documentary to be encouraging and eye-opening to the importance of the right to vote. “It is inspirational. It shows how important voting is right, and why it’s really important to work against things like voter purges and voter ID and gerrymandering and all those other kinds of things. I think, to me it was really inspirational about why votes, really, really, really matter.” Almatar is hopeful the watch-party was educational and that students left with a better understanding of the problems people of color encounter with the voting system. “I’m hoping that this event will have a good impact on our students, and help us all understand some of the deeper issues that are rooted within our voting system when it comes to people of color, and how we can all work together to maintain a decent display of democracy in the U.S,” Almatar wrote.
MC Singers Take the Virtual Stage for Another Remote Semester Jilleen Barrett & Caroline McCarthy A&E Editor & Asst. Features Editor
The MC Singers continue to harmonize their way through the year in a hybrid format. After transitioning from the group’s home in Thomas 517 to the COVID-accommodating chapel, they have found a way to make their challenges work for them. Maxwell Everett, a senior and the vice president of Singers, spoke about the attitude of the group despite rehearsals being different. “All singers are 12 feet apart, we all wear masks during rehearsal,” Everett said. “So there was a bit of a learning curve in that sense, just getting used to a new practice space and being able to hear each other while we’re so far apart. But I think that, you know, the board has done an excellent job in COVID safety, as well as making sure that everybody’s still getting to rehearsal, making sure attendance is high and that most of all everybody’s having a good time.” Marissa Forte is the treasurer of the club and feels that moving to the chapel for rehearsals was a good idea, for both safety and their singing. “I really like the chapel and I think that it has really good acoustics in there so I think
that’ll be like a positive thing that came out of it,” she said. A remote student this semester, Forte understands the experiences of remote students involved with the performing arts. In addition to being the treasurer, she is also the designated executive board member in charge of remote participation. “This semester, we wanted to have more interaction with the remote people,” she said. “So, now that I’m remote and I’m a board member I’m trying to run the virtual choir part. So basically we just do the same things that the in-person part does but we just do it in a virtual setting... so we’re kind of caught up and then when it’s time to like record it we’ll all be on the same page.” In lieu of in-person performances, Singers took initiative to pre-record songs for Manhattan College events they typically attend including Open Houses and Lessons and Carols, their annual Christmas event, which also took place online this year. “...They had helicopter-type drone things come in and recorded us really close up and they got helicopter view, it was really cool,” Forte said. “So I think that was a really nice thing that came out of it too because now we have this nice video that we wouldn’t have had if we had a concert like that.” Everett also discussed how
he hopes more people will get involved in Singers, particularly because there is a scholarship offered to incoming freshmen that he wants more Manhattan applicants to be aware of. “...It’s sort of hard to find on the Manhattan web page, but we offer a scholarship to those who are talented in music,” he said. “You have to be in two ensembles, so for me, I’m in Jazz Band and Singers and it’s just a great way to highlight the people who are really passionate about music.” A typical Spring semester would promise Singers a long-awaited opportunity to travel to another state, where
they would perform at other colleges and high schools. During the Canada trip of 2019, Singers also performed at a Canadian mass. Calista Baker, the secretary of Singers, recounts the trip was a great experience for the club’s members to perform in spaces outside of the Manhattan College campus. The 2020 Spring trip was cancelled due to COVID just weeks before the group was scheduled to leave. “Last year [2020] we were supposed to go to San Francisco,” said Baker. “But we got sent home right before Spring Break. Obviously travelling wouldn’t have been a safe option at that point last year or
again this year.” Though hopes for a trip this year are low, Baker remains hopeful to attend another trip with her Singers family before the conclusion of her senior year in 2022. “I’ve met like a lot of my really close friends from [Singers],” said Baker. “It’s not like a crazy commitment and the performances are always really fun. I look forward to [performances] at the end of each semester. It’s something I love doing.” For more information on Singers, or how to get involved visit the Clubs and Organizations page on Manhattan College’s website.
Forte explained that while the Singers cannot rehearse in person without masks, they have found larger masks that allow them to breathe better while they practice. MARISSA FORTE / COURTESY
Sports
MARCH 9, 2021
11
Catching up with Christina Katsamouri JASPER TALK Madalyn Johnson Web Editor
Christina Katsamouri is playing an important role for the Lady Jaspers in her sophomore year after arriving in Riverdale from Thessaloniki, Greece. By choosing basketball, Katsamouri has followed in the footsteps of her mother, Katrina Petachti, who is a former professional basketball player. Katsamouri scored her first basket against Siena on January 16, 2020 in a season in which she saw limited playing time. Even though the pandemic has carried over from last season, that hasn’t stopped Katsamouri from taking her game to a new level this season. In helping lead the Jaspers to the five seed in next week’s MAAC Tournament, Katsamouri notched two 14-point scoring performances this season which represents a career-high. The Quadrangle : When did you start playing and when do you first realize you wanted to become a Division One basketball player one day? Christina Katsamouri: My mom was a professional basketball player so I’ve been in the gym since I was born, so I grew up with a basketball. My experience started when I was eight years old and I was playing in a club because in Greece we don’t necessarily have school teams. I was going to one of them and I just started liking it a lot. I saw that I was good at it, and it probably was the family gene because my mom was playing and my sister
started with me and my brother. So it was a family thing. When I was 16 years old, I entered this huge team. It was like Division One in my country, I was playing professionally with foreign players that were coming from the United States that had graduated. Then I got invited into the Greek national team for under 16, following that I was in the under 18, and then under 20. I participated in the European Championship and we got third place. It was always a challenge for me because I was always playing with older and more experienced women. When the opportunity for me to come to the U.S. came, I knew one-hundred percent that that was for me, because that has been my life since I was born so that was just one more opportunity for me to explore my abilities in basketball a little more. It was even bigger because I would get a scholarship. I would be able to study at the same time for free and then the level of basketball here is so much higher. TQ: How different has your freshman year been compared to your sophomore year even as COVID-19 has carried over from one season to the next? CK: There is a big difference because it’s not guaranteed that you’re going to play this weekend or next, and that you’re going to play all the teams in your conference because you don’t know if one team is gonna go into quarantine. I was just talking about how you just don’t know what is going to be your next game, but we were lucky with that because we did not really go into
quarantine. We did last week, but that was towards the end of the season so it didn’t really affect us. Without the fans, obviously, we don’t really have the same energy to our games that helped a lot. I know that people say, “no you just play because you love it,” but it’s also the energy you get from people and that’s a big difference. TQ: How have you managed to focus on your academics and your basketball career? CK: This year is easier because, honestly, in order for us to have a season, we had to do some sacrifices. That means that I’m not going to go out as much because I’m just trying to stay as safe as possible. So, the team is safe as well and we can play. That made it easier for me to focus on my schoolwork, because my schedule has been the same from the day when I got back. I wake up in the morning, I do my classes and then I go to practice and come back. On the weekends, I have more free time to spend on my work and focus on what I want to do with my school and see other opportunities that I can do through my laptop. It’s my first time in New York, so I was more excited to see what it is. This year I was fortunate to have a schedule that allowed me to focus on both basketball and academics. TQ: What would you say have been your favorite moments and achievements since joining the team? CK: I would say this year that we got the first pick to win the MAAC, so that was a pretty big challenge for us to focus on.
Sophomore Christina Katsamouri from Thessaloniki, Greece has been involved with basketball almost her entire life with her mom, Katrina Petachti, having played professionally. GOJASPERS / COURTESY TQ: Finally, what has kept you motivated to continue your basketball career in the U.S. amidst a pandemic? CK: The fact that it is a challenge for me and that I’m not afraid to go outside of my comfort zone, I love exploring new things. I feel blessed to be honest, me being in New York, studying for free, being able to play with the team in this great
program where they take care of me. Knowing that my family wants me to succeed, further motivates me and I know COVID has been very hard but other people don’t even have the chance to go outside, go to the gym, go and travel to see another team. I know it’s overwhelming, but at the end of the day, I really feel like I’m very blessed.
Join the Quadrangle Looking for writers, photographers and graphic designers.
Open Meetings Tuesdays 4 p.m. via Google Meet
12
Sports
THE QUADRANGLE
Senior Spotlight: Bri DeLeo and Brendan Krebbs Lead Their Respective Programs into a Unique Spring Season In light of a tumultuous academic and athletic year, The Quadrangle is continuing to highlight the accomplishments of our student athletes, as a way to honor our seniors. This week we spoke to Bri DeLeo of women’s soccer and Brendan Krebs of men’s lacrosse. After a year-long hiatus, both teams will be returning to action in the next coming weeks. The last time either of the Manhattan soccer teams took the field was back in the Fall of 2019, while the lacrosse season was cancelled last March. Although the pandemic has dramatically affected their respective sports, DeLeo and Krebs are focusing on finishing their collegiate athletic careers strong Both teams have home games coming up. Women’s soccer will play Canisius in Gaelic Park on March 16 at 1 p.m. While men’s lacrosse will play Detroit Mercy on March 20 at 7 p.m. Interviews compiled by Jocelyn Visnov, Zoe DeFazio and Pete Janny.
Bri DeLeo, Senior, Women’s Soccer How weird will it feel going out there to compete with your teammates for the first time since Fall 2019? When the time finally comes where we get to be out there with each other again, I expect it’s going to feel like a very heavy weight has been lifted off our shoulders. I anticipate for a moment it won’t feel real, but just having the opportunity to competitively play the sport we love again will be liberating in itself. Back in the fall, how optimistic were you that the season would eventually be played in the spring? Back in the fall, I wasn’t fully convinced that we were actually playing in the Spring and knew that if we were, it wasn’t going to be anywhere near what we deem as a normal season. So, I wouldn’t say I was optimistic, I was more skeptical of the status of our careers being in the hands of people that may or may not actually try to fight for us. What have you done to stay in shape during the long layoff? During the long layoff period, I tried to stay in shape with our strength and conditioning coaches programs. He kept me in line and pushed me to stay motivated for whatever season we were going to end up getting. What has been the hardest part about being a student-athlete during the COVID-19 pandemic? The hardest part of being a student-athlete during the pandemic has been never really knowing what’s going to happen and where your season is going to land. For almost a year, our careers have been in the hands of committees and conferences that have tried to help get teams up and running, but have never, and will never truly understand the disappointment that student-athletes have felt. At times, that frustration has been overwhelming. Despite all the one-goal losses last couple of seasons, what will be the key to getting the team back to the MAAC Championship game for the first time since 2017?
Bri DeLeo is a senior midfielder for the Manhattan women’s soccer team. GOJASPERS / COURTESY
The most important thing for us right now is to take every practice and every game day by day. We all have seen how quickly plans can change, so taking every opportunity to get better, practicing as hard as we play and staying healthy is all we can do when game time comes around. If we do those things, then we have a good chance of being where we know we can be in the end.
Brenden Krebs, Senior, Men’s Lacrosse How weird will it feel going out there to compete with your teammates for the first time since Fall 2019? I’d say it’s more of a feeling of anticipation. We’ve been waiting almost a full year to get back on the field and compete against another team. Back in the fall, how optimistic were you that the season would eventually be played in the spring? We were very optimistic in the fall. Last semester, we were willing to make many sacrifices and control what we could to ensure we would have a season. What have you done to stay in shape during the long layoff? I tried to do the most I could to stay in shape by working out at home, jumping rope, and running. I also made sure to get my stick in my hands as much as possible. I would play wall ball or get shot on by some of my fellow teammates (socially distanced) that live close to me at home. What has been the hardest part about being a student-athlete during the COVID-19 pandemic? The hardest part of being a student-athlete during COVID-19 has been not being able to be with teammates as much as we usually would be. Not being able to be with teammates before and after practice in the locker room, or going to get food together has been difficult. How much does it mean to be named First Team All-MAAC at the goalkeeper position? What do you think the team will need to do to make good on and maybe even surpass the fifth-place prediction in the annual coaches poll? It’s nice to receive the award of First Team All-MAAC but I have to give all the credit to the defense in front of me. Without them giving me the shots I want to see, I would not be a First Team AllMAAC goalie. We need to focus on one game at a time and play for each other. If we work hard this season and do those things we can surpass much more than fifth place and compete for a MAAC championship.
Brendan Krebs is a senior goalkeeper for the Manhattan men’s lacrosse team. GOJASPERS / COURTESY