MQ Issue 1 October 2019

ISSUE 1

FA L L 2 0 1 9

M I A M I Q UA RTE R LY

HAUNTED CAMPUS

Haunted Miami Lore A photo exploration of some of Miami’s most haunted places

The Mystery of the Missing Painting and the Legend of Oxford A quest to find a long-lost painting turns into a portrait of an artist

A New Gateway Into Esports Uptown has a new esports arcade and internet cafe

Covering a Crisis

Young Miami journalists face challenges and learn lessons while covering Dayton shooting

30

21 22 24 26 30 32 34

26

36

37 38

People of MQ: Dania Puente Covering A Crisis: Young Journalists Undertake Heavy Reporting on the Dayton Shooting Exploring Food in Florence Taking a Trip Down Memory Hall The Mystery of the Missing Painting and the Legend of Oxford

SCENE Day Trip: An Afternoon at Butterfield Farms From the Staff A New Gateway Into Esports Photo Story: Haunted Miami Lore

SPORTS Jack Herceg: A Red-Shirt Roller Coaster Ride Gabbert Makes History As First Starting Freshman Quarterback Is This the Real Game? Or Is This Just Fantasy (Football)?

OPINION From Teddy Bears To Tablets: YouTube As A New-Age Comfort Object History, Knowledge, and Learning— The Dangers of Mythologizing The Past Empathy’s Importance in a Moral Argument

CONTENTS

21

5 6 10 12 14

table of

FEATURE

PEOPLE OF MQ

THE BOX Editor-in-Chief Kelly McKewin

story: Mady Neal photography: Laura Dudones

T

here was a momentary silence and all eyes darted uncomfortably to Dania Puente’s face.

Puente was uncomfortable but not necessarily surprised. She often heard similar variations of the phrase just uttered by a fellow RedHawk: That Mexicans were uneducated drug dealers who were taking American jobs. The other three study buddies shifted uncomfortably and the silence seemed to stretch longer as each waited for what Puente would say.

Business Manager Hannah Meyer Art Director Brittany Meister Photo Editor Jugal Jain Feature Editor Leanne Stahulak Scene Editor Sam Cioffi Sports Editor Massillon Myers Copy Editor I. O’Brien-Scheffer Writers Patrick Geshan Peyton Gigante Paige Hartenburg Nick Miller Mady Neal Emily Scott Maya Stoffer Zachary Strauss

Hello again readers!

This issue has been a good start to that goal.

I’m back for round two of MQ as your Editor-inChief—and I’ve come at this issue with all the excitement of last year, but way more experience than I had last October.

Being more experienced is pretty nice—it’s made the process of putting together a magazine much easier.

But I’m honestly more relieved that the excitement has stuck around than I am happy about the newfound magazine-editing experience points.

On page 6, we have a story about the tragic shooting that happened in Dayton in August, and the journalists who were there to cover it. Each of the women featured in the story both inspire and awe me with their journalistic talent and drive every day, but it’s even more so true in the face of such a difficult and tragic situation. Leanne’s storytelling in the piece is so captivating, though, you don’t have to be a journalist to enjoy it.

On page 10, one writer explains his newfound passion for home-cooking after a study abroad trip to Italy. And on page 12, read about two alumni who are still so passionate about Miami, they’re writing a book about it.

Designers Brea Frey Hanna Polisini Emily Scott Maggie Walkoff

The story that I wrote for this issue is about a man named Crossan Hays Curry. He was a former Miami art professor, but more than that, he was “a guy who lived it” according to many of the people I spoke to about him. He lived and breathed art, and when he was passionate about something, he would dive into it with everything he had. There are a lot of interesting things to say about Crossan (and you can read more of them starting on page 14), but it was hearing about this effervescent, vivacious passion he had for art and nature and life that kept me coming back to his story over and over again as I was writing it.

Photographers Laura Dudones Emma Roane

I think everyone should be a little more like Crossan in that way—being excited and passionate and driven about the things you do day-to-day seems like the best way to make the most out of life.

I, meanwhile, am excited to share every single story in this issue with all of our readers—I thoroughly believe there’s something for everyone in MQ and I can’t wait to share another year of stories with you all.

Faculty Advisor Patricia Gallagher Newberry

I’m hopeful that this year, I can use MQ to share stories of people who exude that same kind of passion about the things they care about.

Sincerely,

There was no way to take back the ignorant microaggression hurled Puente’s way, but Puente decided it was better to let this one slide. Afterall, it was more important to study for her exam (and thereby prove she was anything but uneducated) than correct what at times seemed to be insurmountable stereotypes. Unfortunately, as a Mexican woman, comments about her background and the awkward justifications that follow are something that she has gotten used to after moving to the Midwestern United States. But now, as a college senior, she knows how to handle these situations.

“I’ve had different and more diverse opportunities than a lot of people. And so I will always face ignorance but the only way to fix that is to teach,” Puente says. “If you don’t tell people when they are saying something wrong, they’ll just keep saying it all their lives.” Puente explained that it is also important to be kind and compassionate toward these people, who probably don’t mean to be insensitive but don’t necessarily know any better.

Communication of all kinds is at the forefront of Puente’s life. As a strategic communications major who will begin working with JP Morgan next fall,she has learned a lot about dealing with people.

“Strategic communication is a combination of public relations and learning how to communicate in and of itself. [This major] prepared me in a different way for my job,” Puente says. “I think socially, and I’m not only focused on profits and revenue, I’m focused on making clients happy, which naturally leads to higher revenue. ”In addition to her major, which Puente describes as a hybrid that focuses on creativity, business, and community, Puente credits her transfer to Miami in 2017 as playing a big part in her success.

“I went to Michigan State University before, and it was so big; my classes could be anywhere from 100-400 students. I fell in love with Miami after visiting and loved the personalized learning experience here,” Puente says.

The hands-on professors and small, tailored classes provided a basis for her well-rounded resume that eventually caught the interest of corporate giant JP Morgan. Puente is an advocate for anyone who wants to pursue acareer like hers.

“Many people are still surprised to meet a young, Mexican woman in a professional position but JP Morgan is working a lot to emphasize diversity. That said, I still feel the surprise when people realize I’m not

American,” Puente says.Surprisingly, she encounters a lot of people who begin long conversations about where she is really from.

“Many people almost don’t want to believe that I’m from Mexico. People assume I’m from the US and then when I tell them I’m not, they immediately suggest that I must have lived here since I was a child because my accent isn’t very strong.” Puente says.

It is almost as if the strangers she meets attempt to justify her identity in ways that they are comfortable with, in ways that are familiar. But she has learned to develop a thick skin.

According to Puente, regardless of one’s background, anyone can succeed with motivation and hard-work.

“Definitely go to career and success services, and talk to anyone you know who has a job and who has gonethrough what you’re going through. Work hard and pay attention to detail, and apply to as many places as you can,” Puente says.

Dania Puente is living proof that despite many stereotypes that dominate American society today, there is still hope that one can succeed. At first glance, Puente may appear to be an underdog; as a woman of color who only moved to America as a senior in highschool and will not have a business degree when she graduates in May 2020, she has experienced many culture shocks and several critiques along the way. But ultimately, Puente is poised to climb the corporate ladder and demonstrate that what should ultimately matter is how you do the work.

Our sports section, like sports themselves, is filled with stories about passion. From a life-long golfer’s journey to get back into the swing of his game (page 30) to the tale of two business majors who like fantasy football so much they built their own platform for it (page 34), we cover the passion of athletes and fans alike.

Kelly McKewin Feature | 5

know how to pull up the proper programs on her computer. She didn’t even know how to turn on her computer. But she pushed all that aside and got to work.

story: Leanne Stahulak photography: Rachel Berry & Maddie Mitchell When intern Ceili Doyle got the call, she was only half an hour away from Columbus. But it didn’t matter—her editor at the Columbus Dispatch needed to know how quickly she could get to Dayton.

Ceili had read the news. She knew why he wanted her to go. But she couldn’t help feeling nervous and unsure about how she was going to cover the mass shooting.

Only a few hours earlier, just after 1 a.m. on that Sunday, August 4, a masked and armored gunman opened fire on civilians in the popular Oregon District in Dayton. Nine people died in under 25 seconds, including the gunman’s sister. Another 27 were injured. Police shot and killed the gunman in less than a minute after he started shooting.

Pulling over at a Dollar Tree on the side of I-75, Ceili stocked up on pens, notepads, Cheez-Its and Gatorade. She changed out of her pajamas and into her clothes from the day before—she’d been helping a friend move into her apartment in Cincinnati— and rushed back to her car to turn around and head back to Dayton.

Adrenaline overcame sleep deprivation, and for the rest of the day Ceili concentrated on the task at hand. She talked to the distraught and shell-shocked citizens milling around the Oregon District. She attended four out of the five press conferences held in the wake of the shooting. And she let the business of writing and reporting on the tragedy occupy her mind, instead of the shock she was still trying to process.

Fifty-four miles away, at the Cincinnati Enquirer newsroom, breaking news intern Rachel Berry also watched those press conferences. Her editor had been awake since 3 a.m., calling and reaching out to

6 | Feature

reporters to see if anyone could get up to Dayton and cover the shooting. He got ahold of Rachel at 9 a.m., and by 10, she was in the office.

“What’s the tipping point?”

Rachel spent the day researching and recording notes from the live-streamed press conferences. She scoured social media and other news outlets for updates on the event, compiling information and helping with breaking news coverage. She was the only intern in the office.

Maddie Mitchell’s Sunday afternoon didn’t go much better.

For Rachel, the first day covering the shooting didn’t hit her as hard emotionally. That would come later, after reporting on and, to an extent, reliving those 24 seconds over and over and over again.

But when Erin Glynn first heard about the shooting, her initial thought was that maybe this time politicians would finally enact some legislation.

Maybe people would stop thinking, “Again?” when they heard about another mass shooting.

Over the summer, Erin worked in an Amazon warehouse in northern Kentucky. While taking her break on Saturday, August 3, she read about the El Paso, Texas, shooting. During her break on Sunday, she read about Dayton.

In two days, she was supposed to start her fall internship at the Cincinnati Enquirer. She was supposed to be running the election guide and working under the politics editor. But, after reading the news, Erin knew her first few days would follow a different trajectory.

Throughout the rest of that Sunday shift, her mind whirled with question after pointed question: “Are we gonna do something about this?”

“Is two in one weekend enough?”

Initially on that Sunday, Maddie was ecstatic. After graduating from Miami in the spring, she’d applied for afull-time position at the Cincinnati Enquirer, where she’d interned last summer.

She found out in mid-July that she’d gotten the job, and within the week had upended her life in Chicago to move out to the Queen City.

As she was moving into her new apartment, she kept getting notifications on her phone about a mass shooting. She didn’t have time to sit down and read about it until she was sitting in the car with her dad. They’d just left an antique mall, brand new table in tow, when Maddie started reading up on the Enquirer’s coverage of the Dayton shooting.

Within minutes, she started sobbing. Her dad turned down the radio immediately, asking her what was wrong, what was going on. She just started reading the articles aloud to him.

In the back of her mind, the same throbbing thought beat around her head: Tomorrow was her first day at her first full-time job. And she would have to cover one of the most horrific incidents to ever hit her this close to home. *** Fewer reporters bustled around the newsroom than Maddie expected on her first day at the Enquirer. But she quickly realized that most of them had already been sent up to Dayton.

As soon as she walked in, Maddie’s editor directed her towards a table of other reporters and interns.

He handed them a list of all of the victims from the shooting and directed them to start calling the families to gather information. They needed to learn more about the victims, start writing obituaries and find out when funeral services would take place.

Before jumping in, Maddie paused to consider her situation. She didn’t have an email address. She didn’t

“It was very bizarre. That first day, I felt kind of useless, because there was so much going on and this is such a huge event that the whole newsroom was on Dayton,” Maddie said. “I remember calling my mom on the way home and just being kind of frustrated because it was such a weird environment to walk into.”

Over the next week, Maddie continued cold calling various people related to the victims. She combed through Facebook, looking for mutual friends and other connected parties who were willing to talk about their lost loved ones. Eventually, she wrote a story about a fundraiser for two baby girls who’d lost their mother during the shooting. Despite how emotional her conversations were with the cousin and mother of the victim, Maddie just reminded herself that she was on the job, and that she had a task to accomplish.

“I’d be at work and I’d come home, and those were separate things. I felt pretty emotionless at work about the whole thing because it’s a job, and it’s processing information, and I don’t think I allowed myself to really process anything emotionally or mentally on a personal level,” Maddie said.

Her breaking point didn’t come until the end of the week. On Friday night, she sat at her brand new kitchen table, eating a home cooked meal and scrolling through Twitter on her phone. A video popped up o a little girl crying for her father, and at that point, Maddie gave in to the emotions she’d been holding back all week.

“I had not cried that hard since my friend Audrey passed away in December. I mean I just completelylost it and had to lie down. My entire body was exhausted,” Maddie said. “And I don’t know why that video triggered everything, but it did.

I saw that one thing, and it was like everything that I’d been dealing with all week, all of a sudden I had to face that.”

Feature | 7

Facing tough situations was all in a day’s work for Rachel. As a breaking news intern, she had to cover countless crime stories over the summer, reading in-depth police reports and court documents, and even attending crime scenes by herself. But those experiences paled in comparison to the trials of covering a mass shooting.

“I was doing so much research on the victims that I felt like I kind of knew them, in a way,” Rachel said.

“I spent so much time digging through Facebook pages; another one of my jobs was to call their family members. I spent a lot of time calling the victims’ family members.”

For three days straight, Rachel tried to balance her empathy and compassion for the victims with her responsibilities and duties as a journalist. No matter how she felt, she still had to get the facts.

“It was really hard—honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I don’t think there’s anything that can prepare you for something like that,” Rachel said.

On Wednesday, she finally got out of the newsroom and traveled to Dayton. It was time for Rachel to walk around and observe for herself the grieving Oregon District—but planted among the grief were several seeds of hope.

“For me, at least, going up there on Wednesday was actually kind of freeing. There were so many memorials, so many flowers—just seeing all the hope and watching that community come together and stay strong in spite of this tragedy kind of showed that there is still good in the world,” Rachel said.

“Even though this did happen and this was a terrible thing, they’re still coming together, they’re still staying strong. I feel like it got me out of thinking just in those seconds right after the shooting happened. It showed how they can try to move on.”

Enquirer story Erin wrote on the shooting was about this experience, but she was glad to report on at least one happy outcome from the horrific event.

“It was really touching and not as sad as it could’ve been, because you could see all these people trying to help each other through it,” Erin said. “And I think whether you’re reporting on something like this or just living through it, you need to find something to cling to so you don’t get bogged down the entire time, so that’s really what I was trying to focus on.”

Overnight, at least one resilient Dayton resident had gone around the Oregon District and put up several Post-It notes on the windows and walls of the buildings. They contained encouraging messages such as “The world is a better place with you in it,” and “We rise by lifting others.”

While wandering around and interviewing the protesters and ralliers lining the streets, the one source who stuck out to her the most was a woman named Anette. Anette didn’t come to the Oregon District to see Trump or talk politics. She told Erin that she’d come to fix up the flowers and memorials that were threatened to be trampled by the increasing crowds.

Rachel had traveled with Erin to Dayton that Wednesday morning. President Trump was due to visit the city, and Erin was responsible for liveTweeting the event for the politics section of the Enquirer.

One by one, she shifted every flower that rested in front of Ned Pepper’s Bar, where the shooting had taken place.

But as she walked around the “ghost town” with Rachel, reading these notes and seeing rows of flowers lining the curbside, she started tearing up. The only

“She said that the reason she moved the flowers was she didn’t want any mothers to feel like their loss had been overshadowed by anything else, and I thought that was the right mindset,” Erin said.

Anette knew how those mothers felt, having lost her son when he was shot in a homicide.

Erin’s conversation with Anette reminded her of the burden journalists’ carry—the burden of telling stories of other people’s pain.

“The people in this community have had hopefully the worst thing that is ever gonna happen to them has just happened, and it was definitely a moment of thinking, ‘Can I do this professionally? Talk to people who are in pain all of the time?’” Erin said.

“But it was in some ways a relief to know that their voices were being heard, and I could be a part of that.”

Ceili listened to several voices as she sat and nursed her Coke at the bar of Blind Bob’s tavern. She watched the patrons embrace one another, leaning up against bar stools and letting themselves cry. The man sitting to her left barely touched his White Claw, holding his head in his hands as if the weight of his thoughts were too heavy to keep upright.

8 | Feature

After spending most of Sunday in Dayton talking to people on the streets, Ceili returned to the Oregon District on Monday to talk with those who lived on Fifth Street and witnessed the fatal event. Blind Bob’s sits less than 100 feet away from where the shooting took place.

For 45 minutes, Ceili sat at that bar and let the man get used to her presence. She talked to the man on her right and the bartender, making it known that she was a journalist but not pushing anybody to talk.

Finally, she turned to the other man and asked if he had anything to say.

Ceili wrote an entire story for the Columbus Dispatch based on the conversation she had with that man and several others at Blind Bob’s. She listened to people who were there the night of the shooting, unharmed but not unscarred. She heard them describe the bodies and the bullets and the blood on the ground, taking notes and giving them her undivided attention.

She hoped that talking through the event helped the witnesses process what they experienced rather than make them relive it.

“I feel like that’s a question that a lot of journalists are asking each other right now in a national context: How much of this bombardment and making you relive your experience is actually worthwhile? Like is any of this helpful or is all of this just hurtful, and what is our role and what is our ethical responsibility [in] that?” Ceili said.

On Tuesday, Ceili spent a lot of time thinking about journalists’ ethical responsibility in covering traumatic events like the Dayton shooting.

Eventually, she poured these thoughts into a column for the Dispatch, calling on other journalists to remember that the people they talked to were human beings, not fodder for quotes or sound bites.

“After spending three days talking to people in a grieving city during the aftermath of a mass shooting, I have seen first-hand how desperately we need heart in this industry,” Ceili wrote in the article.

“As reporters, it’s our job to inform our communities about what is happening, but sharing someone’s story is a privilege, not a right.”

Ceili’s spent years cultivating her journalistic skills and talents, but during that week, she learned a valuable lesson in approaching distraught sources with the utmost respect and compassion.

“The way you approach people matters, and the way you tell your stories [matters],” Ceili said. “Whether you’re just trying to get a quick soundbite, or you [actually] care about and you’re trying to empathize with these people, and why they are the way they are.” *** Despite the shock, the horror, the weeping, the stress and the heartbreak of covering the Dayton shooting, all four journalists agree: They wouldn’t give up this job for the world.

“I think it’s a really controversial and difficult thing to do right now, but I can’t imagine being in any other job, because I can’t imagine doing something that I didn’t love doing,” Ceili said.

These four women represent only a fraction of the journalists out there who report on and write about appalling affairs everyday.

Rain or shine, happy stories or troubling truths, journalists are bound by the same code of ethics that has defined the industry for more than one hundred years: Duty to tell the truth. Duty to be transparent and accountable.. Duty to share others’ stories—even if those stories are painful and difficult to share.

“As a journalist you can’t really run from danger— you have to run towards it,” Rachel said. “But I feel like it also kind of taught me it’s okay to get emotional at this kind of stuff. It’s human if you have to work through it, [because] you have to do your job, in the midst of all of that.”

Journalists are human beings. Period. They just

channel their humanity through their words, shifting and adapting themselves to fit the tone of their stories—because the best stories are told from the heart, by people who care about who and what they’re writing about.

Ceili, Rachel, Erin and Maddie may have learned this lesson the hard way this summer, but it’s still a lesson that they’ll carry with them throughout the rest of their journalistic careers. In the event that they have to cover a traumatic circumstance again, they’ll go into it knowing that it’s okay to feel affected by what happened. It’s okay to connect with people over shared pain. It’s okay to remind society that behind every newspaper column, every magazine article, every broadcast clip, is a person who put his or her heart and soul into sharing that story with the world.

Feature | 9

EXPLORING

food IN

FLORENCE story: Nick Miller photography: Nick Miller & permisson from Pexels

V

ia Giraldi 4, my apartment for the next five weeks, didn’t feel like home when I first arrived in Florence, Italy. Fifty-one stone stairs circled in an upward spiral that never seemed to end. The ceilings stretched 15 to 20 feet high, the walls an eggshell white. The floors weren’t carpeted.

Instead, tile stretched through the long halls.

The lack of sleep on both flights to get to my final destination didn’t help as I tried to glean some basic information from the American Institute for Foreign Study (AIFS) student advisor, Nick Stahl, who helped me move in. He presented me with a file containing basic local information and a tiny Samsung cell phone with calling capabilities. The phone felt like a toy in my hand compared to my smartphone. The apartment had no air conditioning.

After the advisor left, I flopped down onto the bed and tried to watch some YouTube. And I started to cry.

Arrival What surprised me the most about my negative reaction to this new country was how strong it felt. “I shouldn’t be feeling like this,” I told myself. After all, traveling to new places wasn’t exactly foreign to me (pun intended).

I have been blessed with parents who absolutely adore traveling to new places and exploring landmarks, national parks, local food, and taking more family pictures than I’d like to be in.

Every summer we’d go on a family vacation, about half via my mom’s van and half via plane and rental car.

I’ve traveled to a number of different places across North 10 | Feature

America, going as far north as Toronto, Canada, as far south as Texas, as far west as Hawaii and as far east as New York. I’ve flown to Europe twice before this trip, so why did I feel so out of place?

The most likely reason I can think of, looking back on it all, was the lack of connection and sense of awareness of my surroundings. As the only guy on the trip, I found it difficult to connect with the women and relax. I also didn’t have access to my smartphone in the way I would back home, since I didn’t have location services provided by an international phone plan, I was severely limited in my navigational awareness.

Cultural Navigation via Food and Friends Luckily for me, after a couple of days, a group of students from a community college in California arrived in Florence and four other guys stayed in my apartment for the duration of their trip. In between classes, I started to hang out with these new people from the other side of the United States. My social isolation forced me to interact with people I’d never thought I’d connect with—both Italian locals and California natives.

It was through these interactions that I discovered the importance of food as a source of bonding and as a source of cultural routine. Italians value the practice of eating and enjoying food as a group. Almost every business when you travel around the country (outside of restaurants) is closed between noon and 2 p.m., and dinners typically don’t start until 8 p.m. at the earliest.

Because all food in Italy is manufactured without high fructose corn syrup and preservatives, things tend to go bad quickly,

and since residences were well within walking distance of the local grocery store, Conad, I implemented a daily shopping routine.

Conad reminded me of Kroger and Wal-Mart rolled into one small package. It had only a few full-sized shopping carts, so most shoppers picked up orange baskets with the ability to convert into rolling baskets as they made their way through the closely-packed aisles. If you ever go Italy, I highly recommend trying paprika flavored Pringles at least once— they’re a European regional flavor you can’t buy in the States.

I can’t recommend trying local food enough when you travel.

One of the most striking things about my trip to Italy was my reaction to the food. During the first week, I didn’t have one single negative food experience, and it actually made me mad.

I almost couldn’t believe it; it was like I went to food heaven where nothing ever tasted terrible. Even the Italian version of cheese puffs tasted better than the American Cheetos I was used to.

A guilty pleasure of mine was trying variants of spaghetti carbonara. The best way to describe the food is breakfast spaghetti, as weird as it sounds. The pasta is cooked in an egg-based sauce and dusted with cheese, black pepper, and guanciale, an Italian section of pork that tastes like bacon.

Depending on where you go, the consistency, texture and overall taste sensation was noticeable but pleasurable.

If you’re feeling more adventurous and budget isn’t a primary concern, I highly recommend trying a Florentine steak at least once. The meat is aged for a minimum of two weeks and is sourced exclusively from the Tuscany region in Italy. In the last week of my trip, I ate cheaply so I could afford one (mine was 45 euro), and enjoyed it immensely.

On that note, if your budget is a primary concern (like it was mine), I’ve found cooking at home to be a solid replacement.

Clint, my 27-year-old roommate, became a good friend of mine. He hosted group dinner cooking events at my apartment for the rest of the people on his trip and because of this, I wanted to start cooking more things on my own.

You can buy fresh, incredible cheese and crackers for next to nothing, and I remember having many meat and cheese plates for impromptu meals. I’d go to the Conad to pick up CocaCola and a couple 1.5 liter bottles of water, and then walk to the convenience store near my apartment to pick up some cheese and meat. I’d then slice the Swiss and Gouda cheese into cubes, and fresh mozzarella into thick cuts, and place a number of crackers next to them accordingly.

Pasta is also extremely cheap. I’d buy a 500-gram bag of pasta rotini at the Conad for 31 cents, and parmesan cheese was always the most expensive item on my list. I became a fan of

cooking tortellini filled with prosciutto crudo and topping it with some fresh bolognese sauce.

Gelato is another fantastic treat to have on a hot summer’s day, and you can regularly find gelaterias selling cones for as little as one euro. In the middle of most of my film classes, my professor would give us a 15-minute break, and I’d find myself routinely leaving the study center to visit the Gelateria LaCarraia to pick up a tiny cone. Chocolate was my flavor of choice after sampling a couple of their other flavors.

Final Thoughts The first week of my study abroad trip was, arguably, the hardest transition for me, and it felt remarkably similar to the first week of college (moving into a new space, navigating a foreign environment, social isolation and feeling homesick).

However, the trip helped me further my personal growth, improved my proficiency in a foreign language (even though I spoke extremely limited Italian at the time), and made me notice how fast American society moves (especially the meals).

I still occasionally keep in contact with Clint, my friend I mentioned earlier, and I’m working on expanding my current cooking skills further (so far I’ve made amazing cheddar omelets and steak for the first time). This experience has not only prepared me for life, but also for the next couple of trips.

This coming winter, I’ll be studying Mayan ruins in Mexico, and then augmented reality, virtual reality and special effects in New Zealand.

The number one thing my Florence trip taught me was how to savor the little things. With extended meal periods and the combined forces of limited cell service and lack of Wi-Fi, it guided people to put down their phones and have genuine conversations across delicious, slow food.

Feature | 11

1873:

according to ohiohistoricalcenter.org

1788:

John Cleves Symmes received a land grant approved by George Washington for 330,000 ares of land in Ohio.

Miami was forced to close its doors during the Civil War due to a lacks of funds. Support to end slavery was brewing on campus, but many Ohioans did not want to get involved in the conflict.

1885:

story: Emily Scott photography: Provided by Scott Crooke

S

1809:

ince opening its doors to students in 1823, Miami University has been home to millions of students. Current students and alumni can join in a community boasting a former Speaker of the House and former president, NFL and NHL stars and coaches—all of whom can confirm that Miami made a difference in their lives.

a bar in Hamilton. They dated from then until the moment Scott, ‘94, and Tessa, ‘96, became Miami Mergers on July 12 1997. Scott studied finance and went into sales for 23 years. The last two years, he has worked in wealth management. Tessa became a kindergarten teacher and just retired in the spring of 2019 after 20 years on the job.

One alumni couple,Scott and Tessa Crooke,have recognized Miami’s impact and aim to write and bind the stories of the past and present students together as they relate to the halls on campus. They plan to write and publish a book that does this, titled “The Sacred Halls of Miami.”

But it is the beauty and rich history of Miami that Scott and Tessa hope to share in their book. What began as a simple way to look back on the good times alumni had at Miami and has now evolved into something bigger.

The couple originally intended the book to include their time on campus, the couple pictures of as many halls on campus as they could get, accompanied by quotes from alumni about their favorite memories involving those “Miamians share an unusually strong sense of halls. But after exchanging community, especially for a public university. It sounds as though Scott’s book will offer alumni ideas with each other and other alumni, they decided yet another opportunity to share in each other’s memories and love of our alma mater.” to change the structure of the book for what they believe is the better result.

Looking back at realized how “tremendous” of an impact Miami had on their lives and shaping who they are as people.

Scott grew up just outside of campus and knew he would attend the school from an early age. He believes that Miami truly changed his life in ways he did not realize or anticipate as a student at the school. Tessa had a similar experience.

“Miami makes you think differently than before. You don’t learn the answers, you learn the questions,” Tessa said.

Scott and Tessa met over twenty years ago, when a mutual friend introduced them and Scott invited Tessa to his graduation party. She didn’t go, but they were later introduced by another mutual friend at

12 | Feature

Scott said it has become less of a photograph book filled with old pictures and now includes the history of the university, as well as the history of each individual hall that was ever built and still stands today. Scott and Tessa plans to include when each hall was built, if it has ever changed names, if it was torn down or remains on campus, and other fun facts on the buildings. They then want to focus on 30 life-changing halls to tell the stories of alumni, as well as current students. The book might also include a general memories section if they receive too many stories they cannot categorize.

“Exploring the history and traditions of Miami has

When Symmes did not constuct a school like he was expected to do, the residents of southeastern Ohio took it into their own hands.

Miami University was chartered just west of Symme’s land and was named after the Native Americans who once resided in the area.

With $20,000 of help from the Ohio State Legislature, Miami was able to open its doors again.

1996:

The Miami Tribe sends a resolution to Miami University that says they “can no longer support the use of the nickname Redskins and suggest that the Board of Trustees discontinue the use of Redskins and other Indian related names.”

Scott and Tessa began by finding as much history on Miami as they could, starting with how and when the university was founded and continuing on to the present day. They did research online, took notes and printed out countless articles in hopes of creating a complete picture of what Miami was and what it is now. Tessa took on the planning role and did most of the information gathering. The couple then went to campus to take pictures of all the buildings on campus and began to think about which ones would earn a more prominent role in the book.

“I had my headphones in and my playlist going. I was walking around uptown and reading the paper, and it just hit me how beautiful the fall day was. The trees changing, the bricks, all the old buildings with so much history. I grew up so close to campus which allowed it to really change my life and appreciate how beautiful the campus really is,” Scott said.

In December 2018, Scott reached out to Donna Boen, the editor for the quarterly alumni magazine, Miamian. He asked her to add an announcement about their book in the Class Notes section of the magazine. In this section, alumni can share announcements with their past classmates on things like promotions, weddings and children. Boen could tell how passionate Scott was about this book when he reached out to her. She said the halls of Miami“represent so much more than mortar and red brick to him.”The Crooke’s announcement appeared in the Winter 2018 issue.

“Having gone to school here for four years and then worked [at Miami] for another 35, I love hearing others’ memories and stories relating to Miami’s campuses and buildings. I’m so pleased that Scott and his wife decided to ask other Miamians to share their stories about the halls at Miami,” Boen said.

Scott took the opportunity to reach out to the 180,000 alumni readers of the magazine to ask for their favorite

1823:

Miami opened its doors to students and quickly grew in popularity and prestige. It became known as the “Yale of the West.”

1839:

Beta Theta Pi’s first chapter was founded at Miami. Pi Delta Theta’s first chapter followed in 1848. Finally, Sigma Chi was founded at Miami in 1855.

memories from their time at Miami. Because of this, the Crookes have spoken to around 20 alumni to gather their stories, but the Crookes still want more.

Scott said their goal is to talk to anywhere from 50 to 100 alumni and current students of Miami. Still far off their goal, the couple has realized they must reach out to people and ask for their stories, instead of waiting for alumni to come to them. This has proven to be the Crookes’ biggest challenge to date in putting together their book. Scott admits he thought it would be easier to reach out to fellow alumni, because he thought more people would be eager to share their stories. Scott and Tessa have thought about also including their own stories, but have not made up their minds yet.

The couple also plans to get stories from current Miami students by coming to campus and interviewing students walking along the streets. They hope this will tie the book together by incorporating the past and the present.

“This book is a hobby. It is not our job. It grew from something fun to do, to something my wife and I wanted to see through to the end product,” Scott said.

The Crookes have been working on the book for a year, but do not currently have a planned release date, as they just began focusing heavily on it this past summer. They also do not yet have a publisher. Their plan is to finish the book and print it themselves, then give it to Miami as a gift. After that, they want to find a publisher who will help them circulate their final product.

“Miamians share an unusually strong sense of community, especially for a public university. It sounds as though Scott’s book will offer alumni yet another opportunity to share in each other’s memories and love of our alma mater,” Boen said.

1998:

Out of respect for the Miami Tribe, Miami University changes its mascot from the redskins to the Redhawks. The process began in 1997 and concluded in 1998.

2018:

Scott and Tessa Crooke begin writing a book on the history of Miami and the memories of its former and current students. They continue working on it currently.

Scott and Tessa Crooke, married couple of 22 years, are writing a book on the history of the halls at their alma matter, Miami University. The couple has reached out and will continue to reach out to their fellow alumni to collect memories that relate to the buildings on campus to add to the book. They also plan on visiting Miami to talk to current students about their memories in hopes of including those as well. Anyone who wishes to reach out to share can do so by emailing Scott at scottcrooke@yahoo.com.

Feature | 13

The Mystery of the Missing Painting

& the “Legend of Oxford” story: Kelly McKewin photography: Laura Dudones

S e p t e m b e r 2 018

T

he only thing I know as I sit down with Alex Zomchekon a bright Sunday in September is that I’d been promised by a member of the bee club that whatever we had to talk about was “not just some crazy conspiracy theory.”

Zomchek is in a sunny corner of Armstrong, already seated at a table next to Miami Ice. A medium-sized piece of poster board is leaning against the wall next to him, its front away from us. We exchange pleasantries as I pull up a seat at the table, but I waste little time diving into the reason I’m here. The page in my reporter’s notebook that would normally be filled with questions is empty. There’s only one question I came here to ask: “So, what is this missing bee painting?”

interest in Langstroth’s life, was delighted to take part in the celebration. He completed hisoil painting—a portrait featuring Langstroth, his hive and his cottage—and asked that it hang in the cottage for a short time following the dedication of the building.

However, Curry also made it clear that he wanted the painting back at some point: Langstroth’s life was one of Curry’s biggest passions, and he’d grown very attached to his oil painting. It could hang in Langstroth’s cottage, he had said, but it was not a gift to the university, and it was to be returned to him someday. *** Unfortunately, the Langstroth portrait was never returned to Curry.Even towards the end of his life, Crossan did not forget his request.

*** Through prior conversations with Zomchek and other members of the bee club, I was alreadyfamiliar with the story of Lorenzo Langstroth, a long-ago Oxford resident who is known as the “Father of Beekeeping” today.

Langstroth was a clergyman and beekeeper who lived during the mid-1800’s. Originally from Philadelphia, Langstroth moved to Ohio as an adult and spent 30 years living in Oxford. He was a passionate beekeeper who planted fields of wildflowers and imported thousands of Italian honeybees each year to keep his hives going. He is most remembered in modern times for his invention of the moveable frame beehive,a design still used by beekeepers around the world today.

Langstroth’s cottage still stands on Patterson Avenue, just to the side of Bachelor Hall. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. As part of the dedication ceremony, a Miami art professor named Crossan Hays Curry was commissioned to create a painting that would commemorate the event.

Curry, a beekeeper himself who had fostered an 14 | Feature

“I had gotten a call from Lucy Curry about eight or nine years ago,” Zomchek says as we sit in Armstrong.

“She had said that as (Crossan) comes in and out of his dementia, he keeps questioning what happened to this painting, because it’s one of the few passions he still remembers.”

The painting, Zomchek tells me, hung in the Langstroth cottage for years after it was commissioned, even as the building itself transitioned to hold different spaces—it stored university archives at one point, was storage space for the bookstore, held the offices for the international studies program and other Miami departments. Eventually, it was loaned to the Butler County Regional Transit Authority, and is currently being used as the BCRTA’s office space.

No one is really quite sure when the painting went missing—we’d likely know where it is if we knew for certain when it disappeared—but it’s suspected thatit happened sometime during one of the many changes that the Langstroth house underwent.

It was sometime in the late 1990’s or early 2000’s that it came to Lucy and Crossan’s attention that the painting was gone, andLucy didn’t contact Zomchek about it until a few years after that. However, upon

hearing the news of the disappearance, Zomchek immediately became interested in finding the painting. He had taken a photo of it years before and been enamored with the art ever since.

“I use this painting yearlyin my lectures,” Zomchek says. “We also use it at state conventions simply for its historical significance. This is a painting that means a lot to the beekeeping community.”

Zomchek pulls out the poster board he’s brought along and places it on the tableagainst the wall, looking at it proudly. It’s Curry’s painting—a portrait of Lorenzo Langstroth holding his movable hives, with a smaller portrait of his cottage in the bottom right corner. The painting is stunning, and unlike anything I’d expected to see. It’s colorful and abstract, with layers of blue and red and brown paint bringing the portrait to life and adding a certain complexity to it that makes me notice something new the longer that I stare at it. There’s an anatomical sketch of a bee on Langstroth’s shirt, and the words “Affectionately, LLL” float above his right shoulder, blended in with the layered and multi-colored background. Zomchek and I both stare at it for a few moments, and it’s clear immediately why this matters to the beekeeping community so much.

Despite his best intentions, Zomchek’s search has been on-and-off over the years. He tells me he’s spoken with the director of the art museum and the archivists at the library to no avail, and hasn’t been sure where to look since. Additionally, he says it’s easy to just forget to look for a painting in the middle of everyday life.

“There will be some interest and we’ll look for it, but it eventually falls off until inevitably Lucy sends me a Christmas card or something and I’m reminded that I dropped the ball on that,” Zomchek says. “It would really close an amazing chapter of their lives to get it back. This was one of the magnum opus’s of his life and I think he was truly disappointed when it disappeared.”

O c t o b e r 2 018 Zomchek’s original idea was to have the bee club look for the missing painting, but like many wellintentioned plans, nothing really came of it. The “this-is-not-a-conspiracy-theory” text I received was a part of their efforts, but otherwise, there were many a meeting where it would be mentioned in passing, but nothing concrete ever happened.

Finding the painting would take a lot of talking, but not a lot of searching. As a result, I don’t think the bee club knew exactly where or how to start on a search for lost artwork. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure myself either.

I started attending bee club meetings regularly, hoping that a plan might collectively be made to find the painting. At the first meeting I went to, the president at the time, Riley, pointed me out in the back of the room.

“Hey everyone, this is Kelly, she’s going to be helping with the search for the Langstroth painting, if anyone wants to get involved with that,” Riley said.

At the end of the meeting, I approached him to ask if they had a plan already prepared.

“No, we don’t really have a plan yet, or anyone who’s been leading it. We’ve thought about it a lot though,” Riley said.

I attended more meetings throughout the rest of the semester, and it soon became clear that there wasn’ta dedicated task force of bee club members out looking for the painting on a regular basis.

It was understandable why. Based on the wayit was talked about, I think most people had a grandiose idea of what finding the painting would be like.

The conversations made it sound like they expected to plan some kind of Indiana Jones-style break-in to the Miami library archives or an underground vault hidden under Armstrong, where the bee club would run around with flashlights looking at old artifacts until someone stumbled upon the painting in a corner.

The reality, of course, was far less exciting. The painting was more likely to have been placed in an old office,taken home when a professor retired or was sitting in an antique shop or basement somewhere— Zomchek liked to imagine it hanging unassumingly on a wall next to a portrait of dogs playing poker.

Feature | 15

F e b r u a r y 2 019 As Zomchek had told me on the first day, looking for a lost painting is not something you remember to do in your day-to-day life. My dedication to finding the painting dropped off for a few months. But despite all the unproductive meetings and uncertainty about it, I was still wildly curious and found myself thinking about the painting often. In February, I decided to take another shot at finding it myself.

On a chilly Wednesday afternoon, I set out for the Miami Art Museum to speak to Robert Wicks, the museum’s director.

Wicks’s office is right inside the entrance to the art museum, off to the side. I check in with the receptionist, but he comes outside to greet me before she has a chance to phone him.

“How are you today?” he asks as he ushers me into his office. I go to sit down in the chair directly in front of his desk, buthe quickly pulls it back towards the front of the office and places it in front of the wall. “Sit here, you’ve got to see the paintings.”

Wicks pulls up a second chair next to me and points at the two pieces of art on his wall. He explains that they are both Crossan Curry works. One is a large linotype print, featuring the black silhouettes of birds taking flight. The other is a smaller painted piece of a man in a beekeeping hat, and I recognize the style immediately: the brush strokes and abstract style are reminiscent of the Langstroth painting. This one is equally as enrapturing, and I wish I could see the two paintings side by side. Wicks tells me that this painting is a self-portrait of Curry, and I study it even closer.

It’s incredibly similar to thepainting of Langstroth, to the point where it looks like they could belong in a collection or series of works together. The similarities between Curry’s rendition of Langstroth and his representation of himself are so striking I can’t help but wonder whatwent through his head as he painted them both.“ Did you know him personally?” I ask.

“Oh yes,” Wicks replies. “He had already been teaching here for years when I came to Miami. I’ve been a big admirer of his work.”

I ask Wicks what he knows about the missing painting. Having arrived at Miami in the 1980’s, he wasn’t in Oxford for the Langstroth Cottage dedication or the painting’s unveiling, but he’s seen Zomchek’s photograph and has been aware of the disappearance for about a decade.

16 | Feature

“Every year someone asks about it,” Wicks says. “I’ll get an email asking if it’s turned up yet or if I’ve heard of it.”

There have been flickers of hope over the years—a few times Wicks has received emails from people who have Curry prints or paintings to donate, but they never turn out to be the missing artwork.

“So have you been through the university archives or the storage areas where a lost painting like this might be?” I ask. “That seems to be the likely answer, that the painting was moved into storage when the Cottage was cleared out for the BCRTA.” “We have been through the university archives and the university storage spaces multiple times,” Wicks replies. “It hasn’t been there any of the times we’ve looked.”

“Have you personally been down there? Is it possible thatthe people searching just haven’t known what to look for?” I ask.

“I have not personally been through the entire archives, but I know we have nothing like that there. I would know a Crossan Curry piece if I saw it,” Wicks says, gesturing at his wall. “Werecently went through and logged all the artwork by giving it a number and putting a label on the back that it’s property of the Miami University Art Museum. We did it to every piece in the archives and in storage, so it would have been caught when we did that sweep if it was there.”

He also assures me there’s no way the painting could have been given away or destroyed, at least by the art museum.

“I’m the one contacted whenever a piece of art is going to be discarded. There’s no way we gave it away or loaned it out,” Wicks says.

However, the problem, Wicks tells me, is that he can only be assured of what the art museum has done.

Miami has a number of informal art collections around campus, housed in different academic buildings and departments or collected by professors.

While the art museum would love to catalog all of these works too, and include them in a list of pieces the university owns or houses, he says they currently don’t have the resources to do a thorough sweep of the whole university to lookat every painting hanging in every building.

Unfortunately, this is also not the first or only

painting to ever be lost. It’s a common occurrence for artwork to be misplaced in museums in general, and this isn’t the first painting to disappear at Miami either.

“A while back, there was a painting of President Pearson that used to hang in Pearson Hall that disappeared. We looked for it and it never turned up. In that case, we recommissioned the artist to do another painting, but that’s not exactly possible in this case,” Wicks says.

Wicks mentions a number of former colleagues and Oxford residents throughout our discussion, all of whom he believes might have a recollection of seeing the Langstroth portrait. He offers to call them at the end of our interview.

Behind his desk, Wicks pulls out an address book and looks up a few phone numbers. First on his list is Don Nelson, a former Miami employee who worked with student affairs and had an office in the Langstroth Cottage around the time the painting would have been hanging there.

*** Missing, lost and stolen artwork is an enigma in the art world—if every missing painting in the world suddenly turned up, entire new museums could be built to house them. And though that’s unlikely to ever happen, there’sstill enough stories about old paintings being recovered in unexpected ways to leave the imagination wondering about the possibility of stumbling upon one of these paintings yourself.

In 2005, a priceless Leonardo da Vinci painting turned up for the first time in 100 years when it went on sale in a Louisiana auction house. In 2016, a French family in Toulouse came across a long-lost Caravaggio painting in their attic when they went to have their roof fixed. In 2018, a Marc Chagall painting was found in the attic of a man associated with the Bulgarian mafia. There’s countless other stories out there similar to these—and every time one makes the news, the art world is stunned. How could this priceless painting have just been sitting in someone’s attic for decades? Are all lost works just under our noses?

Crossan Hays Curry may not have been a da Vinci or Caravaggio of his time, but he was well-regarded in Oxford and the southern Ohio area. And with his Langstroth painting likely still somewhere in Oxford, it’s clear how easy it is to get carried away thinking about the recovery of the painting, even if it isn’t in some Indiana Jones raid of the library. It’s all too easy to imagine a student employee in King stumbling across the piece in a closet somewhere, or a local Oxford resident having it in their living room, just waiting for the right person to see it and recognize it. *** Wicks is thoroughly convinced that the painting either has to be in Oxford or that it was taken out of Oxford by a professor or student when they left the school. In any case, someone related to the town or to Miami is most likely to have it.

He types the number into his phone, and from my seat across the desk, I can hear it ringing on the other end. A few more seconds go by and I hear the beep of a voicemail inbox.

“Hey Don, it’s Robert, I’m calling because I have someone here who’s asking about the Langstroth painting and I wanted to ask if you recall seeing it when you worked in the cottage,” Wicks says.

Wicks calls a second person, Hugh Morgan, a former professor who has a fascination with local artwork.

This time, Morgan picks up the other end of the line.

“Have you ever had a recollection of seeing this painting?” Wicks asks. This time, I can’t hear anything on the other end of the line, but the answer must be a negative, because Wicks thanks him, chats for a few minutes about how they’ve both been, and then hangs up.

“He doesn’t remember it,” Wicks says. “Finding this painting is a lot of running into brick walls.

We’re at the point where the people who were here at that time are gone or dead or just don’t remember anything.” *** I quickly learn that Wicks is correct in his assessment—finding a missing painting is exactly like running into a brick wall, and there are a lot of brick walls in Oxford. I do eventually get in touch with Don Nelson, who tells me he hasn’t ever seen the painting, nor did he even know the Curry painting existed. He had always assumed people were talking about a separate painting of the Langstroth cottage he had once seen.

Robert Robbins, from the art department, had never met Curry or been familiar with the painting either, though he does put me in touch with a current Miami professor who took classes with Curry in the 1970’s.

The library archives are similarly unhelpful—I Feature | 17

am assured, just as Zomchek was, that there is no missing painting hanging out anywhere around the libraries or library collections on campus.

I even try Mike Smith, an Oxford councilman, who at one point had access to the Langstroth cottage, even after the BCRTA moved in. While I’m not exactly expecting the painting to be sitting on the wall where it was last seen in the 90’s, I still want to see the cottage—unfortunately, Smith no longer has access to the house.

I’m running out of places to look and people to speak with, and the painting is as elusive as ever.

March & A p r i l 2 019 I did still have other avenues to explore when it came to learning more about Crossan’s life, who had fascinated me more and more since I saw the selfportrait that so resembled the Langstroth painting.

I reached out to Ann Taulbee, a current professor in the art department, who once studied with Crossan when she herself was a student at Miami.

She didn’t know much about the painting, other than to say she was disturbed one of his works has been gone for so long, but Taulbee did have a solid sense for what Crossan was like as a professor.

“He was a very eclectic but very lively person,” Taulbee says. “He had this booming voice and he helped give all of his students a sense of freedom in their work.”

Crossan and Lucy lived on a farm outside of Oxford, supposedly with a menagerie of animals, including Crossan’s beloved bees. They had a pair of Afghan hounds as well as a number of goats, chickens, donkeys, mules and peacocks. Crossan would often bring the dogs and goats into his drawing and painting classes for his students to practice sketching, and occasionally brought his class to the rest of his animals at home—he didn’t want to offer his students a typicalclass, filled with still-life or professional figure-posed drawings, and instead tried to bring experiences to his students.

“He had a very faithful following. I only worked with him a couple semesters, but he had students that took him every semester. He had that kind of personality that was very gregarious and sort of cultlike. I don’t want to say that because that doesn’t sound good, but he had a true following of people who appreciated how he approached making work 18 | Feature

and living life,” Taulbee says.

Crossan’s work as a professor had a mythologically inspired atmosphere to it—as Taulbee describes him, he loved Greek myths and dancing and storytelling, and he tried to incorporate as much of this into his work as possible, whether literally (by often including words and letters in his paintings) or just thematically.

“He was a prolific artist and his life was all about surrounding himself with that world and animals and good food and flowers and trees. He had his own mythology in regards to who he was,” Taulbee says. *** Crossan was an animal lover, through and through.

As his numerous pets and farm animals attested to, he had afascination and deep appreciation for nature and the wilderness. His love of beekeeping was the prime example of this, and certainly the root of his obsession with Langstroth, but his friends and colleagues were well aware of how much he enjoyed animals in general.

At one point in the late 1970’s, a stray chicken found its way into the garage at Lewis Place. It was a very sickly chicken, as it had been stuck in the garage throughout the winter and had gotten so cold at one point that its feet froze and broke off, leaving small frozen stubs in its place.

Philip Shriver, Miami’s president at the time, was trying to get the chicken removed from the garage and mentioned his dilemma to the provost.

The provost joked that someone should see if Crossan Curry wanted the chicken. Though the suggestion wasn’t serious at first, it only took a few short discussions for Crossan to become the new owner of a no-legged chicken, which he promptly christened “Peggity.”

“Whenever you went over to the house, you had to deal with this peg-legged, no-legged chicken hopping around,” James Killy, a former colleague of Crossan’s, says. “They ended up with it for years and years. It was so typical of Crossan. He had all the animals no one knew what to do with.” *** Of all the animals on his farm, however, it was bees that Crossan was the most passionate about. He cared deeply for the environment and began beekeeping as a way to help support the environment.

Crossan had always had a casual interest in getting to know the local history of whatever place he happened to be living in. When he first moved to

Oxford to teach at Miami, he indulged this interest by researching Lorenzo Langstroth. His interest originally began due to his love of bees and ecology, but his fascination with Langstroth deepened the more that he learned about the man himself. As a preacher, Langstroth was known for his modesty and humbleness, and his invention of the modern beehive was nevermeant to be a commercial enterprise; he simply wanted to find a better way to support his many colonies of bees. Curry was attracted to the quiet nature of Langstroth’s passion, and took it upon himself to learn as much as possible about the original bee man of Oxford. “(Curry) had fallen in love and lore with the entire Langstroth story,” Zomchek told me. “What he liked was that Langstroth did not do this for money or self-glorification. He did it for his passion and his zeal for beekeeping, and that spoke to Curry.”

Curry’s interest in Langstroth led to years of research into the man, during which Curry published a short book on Langstroth’s life and contributions to beekeeping. Through his research, Curry became the new “bee man” of Oxford, nearly a century after Langstroth’s time—this ultimately led to him being commissioned to paint the portrait of Langstroth for the dedication ceremony, a task he took on with great pride. *** James Killy, a sculpture professor of 34 years, arrived at Miami in 1976, just a few months after Crossan painted the Langstroth portrait. He never did care much about the painting or Langstroth and has no clue what could have happened to it, but he did have a long professional relationship and friendship with Crossan himself.

“He was a prolific maker. He was always doing something in the arts. He really lived the part. He wasn’t just coming to school and teaching art; he lived it. That was one of the things I always respected about him,” Killy says.

Many of Curry’s students and other colleagues felt the same way about him—he was in his element when he was in his studio working on something, but he also had an uncanny way of tying his art to bigger issues he believed in. At one point in late 1997, when Oxford’s city council was preparing to tear down the water tower in Uptown park due to safety concerns, Curry created a series of wood prints advocating to keep the tower standing, which he distributed around town. Killy still owns six of them today.

Though his effort with the water tower was unsuccessful, Curry led similar efforts in other cases.

Each time a significant Miami building was slated to be demolished or updated, he protested, often using his art as a medium for it. Because Curry enjoyed immersing himself in local history whenever possible, preserving or capturing that history through his art became an important theme in his work over the years.

“He was very much into the history of wherever he was. It’s why he did the Langstroth painting. He was also kind of an activist. Every time they’d tear down an old historic building, he was on the front lines to tell them they shouldn’t be tearing them down,” Killy says.

Despite his prolific output of art and the admiration of his students and colleagues in the art department, Curry was not interested in academics. He taught art because he liked art and he liked sharing in the process of making art with other people, but he had little interest in keeping up with conventions or the things usually expected of professors. Killy was always shocked he ended up as a professor in the first place—Crossan was completely against all details and practices related to academia.

“He didn’t give a shit about it,” Killy says. “It’s hard to say this in a way that makes sense, but I don’t think heever fit into academia. He was a great colleague, he was a real artist, a guy who lived it, but he didn’t have the...I wouldn’t say aptitude, as he was incredibly intelligent, but he didn’t have the will to involve himself in the minutiae of academia. He spent his whole life as an assistant professor and he couldn’t care less.”

June to S e p t e m b e r 2 019 Art was just as important in Crossan’s personal life as it was in his professional life. One of his five grandchildren, Emma Hildenbrand, remembers going over to Crossan and Lucy’s house once a week as a child. Crossan would usually be working on art when she arrived, though the nature of his work varied—sometimes it was painting, sometimes it was sculpture-making, sometimes he was simply using colored pencils or chalk to sketch.

Hildenbrand sometimes brought friends over to her grandparent’s house. She says they’d often comment on the art they saw there, wondering why there was a random sculpture of a dog or other creature just sitting in the house or yard.

She always had the same reply: “If you know my Feature | 19

grandpa, that’s a masterpiece to him.”

Creating art out of ordinary, everyday subjects was Crossan’s style.

“He always created what was him. It was nothing that you’d ever seen before. The people that call themselves artists these days don’t always go natural.

People might want to go and paint the same thing,but my grandpa would never paint the Eiffel Tower, he’d paint a truck on the side of the road because it spoke to him at the time. He didn’t fit the norm,” Hildenbrand said.

Despite the occasionally unconventional subjects of his artwork though, Hildenbrand thought Crossan always found a way to make the beauty shine through.

“My grandpa always pulled the beautiful parts out, whether it was an animal or a woman, he’d bring it to life,” Hildenbrand said.

Hildenbrand helped out at Crossan’s art shows up until she was 15-years-old. Growing up, she knew Crossan was famous around the Oxford area for his art, which she thought was cool. However, while she admired him for his art, at home, Crossan was still her grandpa.

homemade birthday cards with sketches on the front that described the age of the recipient or a memorable moment from the year—Hildenbrand remembers a memorable one from the year she turned 21, when Crossan drew her first car, which she had purchased that year. They shared meals together and talked often, especially during the few years in her late teens and early 20’s when Hildenbrand moved in with her grandparents.And after becoming a parent herself, Hildenbrand started bringing her young daughter to Crossan and Lucy’s home every Christmas Eve, where he would read “The Night Before Christmas” out loud. *** Unfortunately, Crossan Hays Curry passed away at the age 94 on June 26, 2019. Though the missing Langstroth painting was not found and returned to him before his death, he left behind a vast collection of other art, and more importantly, a legacy in the minds of those who knew him.

“I just hope in years to come he’s remembered at Miami and in Oxford. A lot of people at the funeral called him ‘The Legend of Oxford’ and I hope that never fades. Twenty,thirty years down the road, I hope that’s still the image of him,” Hildenbrand said. ***

As a child, Hildenbrand would go on weekly grocery shopping trips with Crossan, and help out on the Curry’s farm. On birthdays,Crossan wouldmake

easy to continue a search for something when you hit dead ends over and over, and have no leads, only speculations about what might have happened. And though the reality is unfortunate, it gets harder to find the painting with each year that goes by. As Robert Wicks told me, the more time that passes, the more likely it is that anyone with pertinent information will have died or forgotten about it.

And yet, I’m still not done with this quest. Fifty years ago, Crossan was obsessed with the lore surrounding Lorenzo Langstroth. Today, there’s a lore surrounding Crossan Curry, the twentieth century resident bee lover of Oxford, and I’ve been obsessed with it for months.

DAY TRIP

An Afternoon at

Butterfield Farms M story: Maya Stoffer

It’s impossible now to ask Crossan about any of this now, but if it were possible to speak with him, it would be interesting to know what parallels he saw between himself and Langstroth. His self-portrait and his painting of Langstroth are eerily similar. Looking at them, it’s impossible to miss that there’s some kind of connection between their stories, even if you didn’t know anything about Langstroth or Crossan.

y friends and I arrived at Butterfield Farms at approximately 3 p.m. It The farm is located off campus, but it’s not so far that it requires the whole day.

Upon arriving, we were greeted by large letters spelling out “Butterfield Farms”, and an open sign before we even got out of the car. There were two other cars parked in the free parking lot. We went through the main building before getting to the specialized fall activities.

Two friendly staff members welcomed us to Butterfield Farms and told us to ask if we had any questions.

The first thing we did was go on the hayride.

The ride allowed me to see the whole farmland in the bright sun. The tractor stopped at the back of the acres where there were cows and corn to feed them. The cows must’ve known they would get an extra treat when the tractor pulled up because once it was in sight, the cows, including the small calves, ran up to it.

A Butterfield staff member told my friends and I some interesting facts about the cows, like there were four calves and they were born a few months back. I have never fed cows, so this was a new, exciting experience. It is definitely a cute spot to take photos with your friends if you are looking for that. Also, if you have a large group, you are able to go on the hayride with just your group. I would rate this aspect of Butterfield Farms 10/10 because it wasn’t an aspect that I have experienced at any other farm I have gone to, and the cows were friendly and fun to feed.

In any case, while the mystery might always remain—we may never know what happened to the painting and we may never have the full story of Crossan’s life—the details we do have paint a portrait of the man himself.

A year later, I occasionally wonder whether it’s worth continuing to look for the painting. It’s not

After the tractor ride, we wanted to go through the corn maze. One of the kind staff members provided us with a map so we wouldn’t get lost in the vast fields of corn. She also said that there were clues hidden within the maze, and that if we found all of them, we could get a small pumpkin free. My friends and I were determined to find all of the clues to get some free pumpkins. However, the corn maze took longer than we expected due to the fact that we got lost. Eventually, we did find the emergency exit that led to the road. We ran into some other people inside the corn maze, but it wasn’t crowded at all. I would give the corn maze a rating of 8/10 because, even with the map, it was confusing to figure out how to get out.

But, it did have adorable Disney-themed clues, which I enjoyed.

12 | Feature

While the tractor hayride and the corn maze are the two main fall-themed activities, the farm also had multiple other features about it. One was the greenhouse, which had perennials and mums for sale. There was a multitude of options to pick from, all vibrant and spry looking.

Afterwards, my friends and I returned back to the main building to look at the merchandise.

While the building looked small from the outside, there was a diverse range of items.

There were fresh fruits and vegetables: apples, zucchini, tomatoes, squash, peppers, and corn.

In addition, Butterfield offered classic farm items, such as jams, jelly, apple cider, and maple syrup. Goat milk soap, a mixture of packaged candies, and jewelry were some items that I was surprised to see being sold. Nevertheless, the packaged candies looked unique and delicious.

The soaps and jewelry appeared to be of high quality, something parents or grandparents of college students may be interested in purchasing.

However, the diversity of the items was a little overwhelming, which is why I rate them a 9/10.

Butterfield Farms also had a vast assortment of pumpkins and gourds. While they had the traditional, bright-orange pumpkins, they also offered small, white pumpkins, textured pumpkins with warts, gigantic orange ones, and spiralling gourds. Green, twisted gourds and multi-colored ones were the most interesting ones to see and touch. Since my friends and I did find all of the clues in the corn maze, we were all able to pick out a small pumpkin. I chose a hand-sized, white one so that I could paint it one weekend. Like many others, I consider pumpkins to be a crucial part of fall.

Butterfield Farms had an impressive assortment of pumpkins, differing in both size and shape, earning them a 10/10 rating.

After averaging all of my ratings for the individual aspects of the farm, I concluded that the whole farm deserved a 9.25/10. With cow feeding, corn mazes, apple cider, and pumpkin picking, Butterfield Farms does not lack in the main attractions I look for during the fall season. However, if you are not a big fall person, the location still offers various things for you, too. There are several photo opportunities for friends and family members, as well as a variety of food items for all to munch on. Overall, Butterfield Farms is a fantastic local place for college students!

Scene Scene||17 21

FROM THE

STAFF:

Kelly McKewin Editor-in-Chief

You’re being haunted by a ghost! But this is no regular ghost—this is a 21st century ghost. What kind of “modern” ways does it try to spook you?

Brittany Meister

Massillon Myers

Art Director

Sports Editor

My ghost would wait until I’m signed into Netflix, ready to watch a relaxing episode of “The Great British Baking Show,” before logging me out. No matter what email I try or which password I guess, I can’t get in.

Invalid login, invalid login, invalid login—it haunts me to this day.

My ghost haunts me by stealing all the Halloween candy I go buy for myself.

That’s right, I buy candy for myself.

The absolute spookiest thing in the world would be for a ghost to take away Buffalo Wild Wings from Oxford. Terrifying.

Jugal Jain

Maddy Neal

Maya Stoffer

Photo Editor

Staff Writer

Staff Writer

*passes by an elevator* Hey you, come in the elevator ... I will lift up your spirit and take your mind off all the college stress you have.

My ghost probably sneaks up behind me when I’m in the kitchen for a midnight snack...then again, maybe it’s just an angry roommate woken up by the sound of the microwave...

22 | Scene

I want to think my ghost would be friendly so would somehow put songs on my phone that I actually like. I would think it’s just my parents’ old music, but it’s really my ghost providing me some good bops.

Peyton Gigante

Paige Hartenburg

Staff Writer

Staff Writer

I have a really weird phobia of mayonnaise. First, the ghost would send me pictures of mayonnaise - if they were gifs it would actually be my living nightmare. Then, I would start seeing mayonnaise everywhere. And finally, (I’m actually gagging writing this), I would wake up to tubs of mayonnaise all over the floor in my room and I’d have to move them and touch them to get out. I’d actually throw up. Ew.

I probably wouldn’t even notice it’s there.

Like it would try to corrupt my files or take photos of me and I would probably think “oh boy look at the cRaZy technology”.

I feel like the ghost would get really frustrated with me and leave, maybe befriend the FBI agent that watches us through our computer cameras. That would be fun.

Leanne Stahulak

Nick Miller

Feature Editor

Staff Writer

My 21st century ghost, being a Vine connoisseur, would wait until the opportune moment—just as I’m turning the corner, they spook me into almost dropping my croissants. The horror! The terror! The lost croissants!

I’m super into horror movies, so my ghost wouldn’t try to scare me traditionally.

Instead, as a minor inconvenience, it would randomly shuffle Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” into any of my Spotify playlists. Now that’s scary.

Scene | 23

a new gateway into esports story: Sam Cioffi

I

t’s a Thursday evening in Oxford. Some “I can barely call myself a gamer. I play one or two students are still wrapping up their classes for games a day,” Li said. the day. Some are working, and some are doing homework.

Over the course of 20 years, he’s only been to an esports arcade once or twice. But, by no means was However, for one senior economics major, he’s this type of business unfamiliar to him. spending his evening in another world.

“We have this kind of thing in China like everywhere,” That world is virtual.

Li said, “I feel like esports is kind of a new trend for college students and is growing bigger and bigger.”

He’s able to play in this unique universe with the help of Newgate Arena E-Sport Center.

So, Li jumped in head first and opened the store here in the United States. He chose the name “My laptop can play [games], but it’s kind of old.

“Newgate” from the license plate on his car, which bears the same name. It also happens to be the name of an anime character.

“But here [the] experience is better than my own room”

This esports arcade, located Uptown, opened recently in April 2019. It allows people all across campus to come together and enjoy their favorite games. Customers are given the opportunity to play games, hang out and meet new people who share the same interest.

The owner, Ambrose Li, opened the arcade here due to the popularity of esports in China, where he is originally from. He decided to see if the trend would catch on with Miami students.

Despite the popularity of esports where Li is from, he himself does not participate in the trend.

24 | Scene

“Basically [Newgate] is the old type of internet cafe.

Basically you can do anything here,” Li said.

gaming set at home. Others are there because they’re looking to make friends.

This not only includes playing games, but also completing homework. However, the majority of the customers are there to play videogames.

Li explained that there is a mixture of different gamer types that come to the arcade. Some customers are experienced in video games, and others play more for fun.

Once customers come to the arcade, they are given the freedom to play whatever game they choose.

As long as customers have their own account for whichever game they choose, they will have access to it.

All players have to do is pay $5 per hour on what Li calls the “High End” computers, or $6 per hour for the “World Class.” During the week, there are specials where the price drops to $3 for the “High End” and $4 for the “World Class.” The PCs are the same, but the main difference is the type of monitor, keyboard, mouse and headset available for each.

The setup for the arcade is unlike any other in Uptown. From the outside, it could be difficult to tell what the place is. The storefront features all black windows, so if you’re standing outside, you can’t just peek through the windows to see what the inside contains.

As for the types of games that are most popular, Li said that League of Legends, Overwatch, World Once you walk inside, you’re greeted by a large, dark of Warcraft and Fortnite were among those most room. The arcade is filled with rows and rows of favored by customers. Newgate Arena has all of computers, each fit with a desk chair, keyboard and the major tournament games available and ready headset. The floor is made of black, foam puzzle for play. pieces, similar to the kind children typically play with. In the very back, there’s a small well-lit room People come to Newgate Arena to play games for a that features multiple tables to play mahjong, a tile- variety of reasons. There are customers that come based game. because they like to play, but don’t have their own

“I would say [the customers are] between a casual gamer and a pro gamer,” Li said. “It’s very hard to get pro pro-gamers in here. They often prefer their own gaming set. They prefer to stay at home alone.”

Li, who is in Newgate Arena every day for two to three hours, and sometimes longer, gets to know most of his customers.

“After they come here one or two times, we know each other,” Li said.

In the store, Li has two people on his staff to help him with the day-to-day activities. He typically hires Miami students, so that they can inform other university friends of the store.

One of those workers is Silvia Shi. She takes control of the store when Li isn’t there. Shi will check on customers, see if customers need to “recharge” (pay more money for additional time on the computer) and clean the equipment after the customer leaves.

She has been working at Newgate since last semester. While she doesn’t play video games, she will sometimes use the computers in the store for other uses.

“Sometimes when I come here, I watch movies or do homework because the screen is bigger,” Shi said.

Although it can be a challenge to market a new business Uptown, Li uses different techniques to attract large groups of students on Friday nights.

He takes advantage of social media. Li utilizes something called WeChat, where he can reach Chinese students, as well as Instagram. He also works with the Miami Esports Club to try to gain a following for Newgate Arena. Li reached out to the organization over the summer, and even occasionally hosts tournaments for members to participate in.

He also wants Newgate to become more multicultural.

“I can have an American player and a Chinese player sit together and become friends,” Li said.

By hosting more tournaments, Li hopes to make esports more well known across campus. Also through continued collaboration with the Miami Esports Club, he hopes to draw more people in.

Whether you’re a professional gamer or a novice, you can still come out to Newgate Arena. Even if you’re just looking for something new to do late on a Friday night, this new environment just might be the place for you.

So, wander past the shop with the all-black windows, and discover something new.

On Sept. 21, Miami Esports Club had a League of Legends tournament held at Newgate. “[Miami Esports members] like it because this is just a good place for gamers to play and my setup is really close to what they want,” Li said.

As for future plans for the business, Li hopes to have more tournaments for people to come and participate in. He wants gamers to come and be able to play with their friends.

Scene | 25

HAUNTED

M I AM I

LORE photography: Jugal Jain

PEABODY HALL Perhaps the most famous of Miami’s ghost stories, Peabody Hall is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of Helen Peabody. Peabody, the 1850’s president of the Western Female Seminary, a women’s college that used to be located on what today is Western Campus, was vehemently opposed to co-education and was often upset at male students from Miami’s campus who wandered over to Western to meet with girls. She went so far as to ban unsupervised contact between the male and female students on the two campuses.

The Western Female Seminary was eventually bought out by Miami, and with the purchase, Peabody Hall became Miami’s property. It’s rumored that Helen’s ghost, upset at the building’s use as a co-ed dorm, still haunts its halls, watching over the women who live there and haunting the men. A portrait of Helen also hangs in the building—some have reported that its eyes follow those who walk past it.

26 | Scene

Scene | 27

KING LIBRARY Two ghost stories haunt the area around King Library.

The first is the tale surrounding the suspicious death of a Miami professor. In the 1880’s and 1890’s, a chemistry professor named Henry Snyder was one of Miami’s most popular faculty members. He often hosted “Lecture-Recitals” with his wife, Minnie, in which he would give a lecture for an hour, and Minnie would sing and perform with her band afterwards. The performances were popular with students and faculty alike.

In 1898, however, Snyder became ill. About a month after the illness set in, he was found dead in his laboratory in Brice Hall, where King Library stands today. The coroner found that Snyder had ingested a fatal dose potassium cyanide—many people, Minnie included, insisted he must have committed suicide. However, shortly after Snyder’s death, Minnie remarried his lab assistant, William Pugh, who also frequently played guitar for her during her performances.

Minnie and William moved to Columbus and remained married for another two decades, until 1919, when William supposedly left Minnie—however, he was never seen or heard from again. Since then, speculation surrounding Snyder’s death has swirled: was it really a suicide, as suggested at the time, or did something more sinister occur—and did it have any ties to William Pugh’s eventual disappearance?

The second tale concerns that of a more friendly ghost—that of the original Miami sports superfan, Harry Thobe. Thobe attended many of Miami’s football games over the course of his life, always dressed in a white suit and carrying an umbrella and megaphone, which he would use to shout out gameday predictions to the crowd.

Thobe also built Miami a fountain in the early 1900’s, in order to leave a lasting legacy at the school. While the fountain fell into disrepair after his death in 1950, it was replaced with a plaque and monument, which still stands today, between King Library and Harrison Hall. It’s said that Thobe is still willing to greet all passerby who walk by the former site of his fountain and that if you stand west, facing the closest oak tree and call out his name, he will reply.

28 | Scene

Scene | 29

Jack Herceg:

A red-shirt roller coaster ride

“Everything about this place felt awesome,” he added.

tournaments. He finished 85th out of 90 at one of them.

“If you work hard, are confident, and carry faith, those results will follow,” he said.

Hungry to bounce back during his junior season in high school, Herceg found himself in a new role. He was the number one guy -- and that brought pressure.

His golf game in disrepair, he hadn’t struggled this long, ever.

His head coach has high praise too.

He was also coming off a pretty impressive win at The Hudson, a renowned junior-am tournament in Northeast Ohio. Herceg calls it the biggest win of his career.

The season ended on a sour note, however, with the team finishing in second place at the Ohio State Tournament behind Cincinnati powerhouse St. Xavier. Herceg didn’t perform as well as he wanted -- nerves got in the way.

A junior’s quest to get his

“I’ve proven to myself that I could play well, so it’s a matter of letting yourself execute. You have to trust what you’ve got,” he said.

golf game out of the valley and back on the tracks.

Herceg’s senior high school season produced a 3rd place finish at state. Instead of always being the youngest on the team, he was now the elder. With his past teammates and good friends moving on, it taught a lesson he can take with him anywhere.

story: Patrick Geshan photography: Emma Roane

I

t was the winter of his freshman year. He just finished a career-worst performance at a Jacksonville, Florida tournament. Nothing was going Jack Herceg’s way.

slump settled into not only him, but the entire team. Jerome failed to even qualify for the state tournament after the three-peat.

It taught him an important lesson.

“My senior year was when I realized the value of working with people who are different than you,” he said. “My younger teammates were a little immature and it bugged me. I learned how to adapt. I learned how to change my ways. It turned out to be an awesome year.”

“I never shoot in the 80’s,” he said wryly.

“In golf, you can never take anything for granted,” he said. “There are too many good players out there.

You can’t underestimate anyone.”

It was tough trying to diagnose what went wrong.

“I kept working but nothing was improving. I knew I was gonna have to change something or else I wasn’t ever going to play again.”

Herceg doesn’t remember the first time he touched a golf club. He tried every sport as a kid. But after the Dublin, Ohio native won his first ever golf tournament in 6th grade, Herceg figured the sport was something he should invest in.

“I started that tournament terribly,” he mumbled between bites of a Chipotle burrito.

On a hot summer day at Bent Tree Golf Club, 6th grader Herceg started off with a 47 on the front 9.

Everything was going bad.

“My dad was on the bag caddieing for me and that just gave me a lot of confidence,” Herceg said.

The next major stop on the train was Dublin Jerome High School, known for its pedigree of exceptional golfers. He gave up high school basketball to focus on golf.

It was Herceg’s goal to make the top Varsity team the summer leading into 9th grade.

“I’ve never been more nervous than I was standing on the first tee to start off tryouts,” he recalls.

Herceg shot a 69 during that first round on a blistering hot August day at Golf Club of Dublin, beating everybody. He called it “even unbelievable for me.”

He finished the back with a 35. It was good enough for the victory in a field of rising players.

He passed the test with flying colors, making the A team after a 3rd place finish in tryouts. After finishing 20th out of 70 in the State Tournament, his team took home the Ohio title for its 3rd straight year.

“That’s when I really fell in love with the game,” he said.

But despite the instant success of Herceg’s freshman campaign at Dublin Jerome, a sophomore

30 | Sports

The summer between sophomore and junior year was important for Herceg. He worked hard, trying to get his game back into peak shape after a disappointing sophomore season. And with the rest of his teammates selecting their colleges, it’s also when he decided to commit to Miami for golf.

“I looked at a lot of Power 5 schools and towards the end of the process it was either here or Ohio State. I grew up a Buckeye fan, but when I visited Miami it felt like home.”

What sold him?

“I think the thing that stuck out between here and everywhere else was that the team was so closely bonded,” he explained. “The guys [at Miami] put their teammates before themselves. Everywhere else it was golf before teammates, and the idea of having good friends on the team is pretty attractive to me.”

He also cited the good business school (Herceg is an accounting and finance double-major) and the excellent treatment from Golf Head Coach Zac Zedrick for choosing Miami.

That summer between high school and college, Herceg prepared for the next level of the game by playing as often as he could. Now with a fall and spring season, it was important to remain sharp the entire year.

The fall of his first season started well. Herceg got to play in every event as an individual, getting called to the lineup late in the season. A 4th place finish at the Flyer Invitational in Dayton gave him plenty of confidence moving forward.

But, Herceg admitted, the college game was different.

And much more difficult.

“You have the best of the best going at it and playing well every day,” he explained. “The greater intensity was noticeable.”

By the time his freshman spring campaign rolled around, the “golf gods” were messing with Herceg.

Irons began hooking left and slicing right. Hitting a fairway was almost non-existent. Putting was off. His confidence was dropping.

That’s when Jacksonville happened. Shooting in the 80’s was alarming.

Coach Zedrick proposed something one day after practice.

“He wanted me to consider red-shirting,” Herceg said. “So I did.”

Herceg worked with renowned swing coach Kevin Jones at Moraine Country Club in Cincinnati at the beginning of his sophomore year. Anything to give him a fresh outlook.

The sessions gave him a revamped swing for November and December. He took the club back differently. There was more focus on pelvic and shoulder rotation. Everything got fine-tuned. But as everyone who has picked up a golf club knows, those changes take time.

December to April was a hard time. He wasn’t seeing any initial improvement. By February and March, Herceg felt he was falling behind.

He told himself to trust the process. The goal was to get better at one thing--just something-- every day.

“When Jack made the decision to redshirt last season, there was no doubt in mind at that time that he’d be at least where he is today,” Zedrick said. “He’s coachable, has a strong work ethic, and is incredibly resilient. All 2018 did was motivate him to level up and get better.”

Herceg would like to pursue pro golf after college.

He has a lot of former teammates and friends on mini-tours who are trying to climb their way up to “the show”. If golf doesn’t work out, he’s thinking about financial planning. He likes both money and talking to people.

Excited for the season ahead, Herceg claims he wouldn’t trade anything for the ride he’s been on.

“For whatever comes in the future, I’ll be ready,” he echoed.

Hopefully, that’s opening the clubface for a fade toward the fairway, rather than opening the door to a financial office. But Jack Herceg wouldn’t mind either.

Coach Zedrick and his teammates were overly patient and helpful.

This past June, Herceg was about to start his first round at the Northeast Ohio Amateur. His only expectation was to have fun and try his best.

He shot a first round 68. And won the tournament.

A few weeks later, he finished 15th in the Ohio Amateur.

By the time for qualifying rounds back at Miami, Herceg was ready and confident. He tied for 3rd on the team. And got his spot back.

The now-junior earned a 29th place overall finish in early September at Wisconsin’s Badger Invitational, with the team finishing 8th.

“You learn a lot of life lessons through golf,” he said. “I need to be more attentive to details now.

Be smarter in my prep. When I’m on the range it’s about exaggerating those cuts in the swing. When putting it’s about rhythm and contact. You have to test yourself.”

Herceg’s key to success is using the confidence this journey has instilled in him.

February and March brought much of the same story. Over the summer, he missed the cut in three Sports | 27

Gabbert FRESHMAN QUARTERBACK MAKES HISTORY AS FIRST STARTING

W

Gabbert became the first true freshman quarterback in Miami history to start in a season opener.

“Going out there on my first drive, not going to lie, I was pretty nervous,” Gabbert said. “But after I got a feel for it, made a throw, got hit, then I was locked in. ”For the first half, the RedHawks were competitive against a physical Iowa team. The RedHawks took a 7-3 lead in the second quarter and trailed by just three at halftime, before the Hawkeyes pulled away late in the game. Gabbert completed 17 of 27 passes for 186 yards as well as two touchdowns and one interception.

“That’s an experience of a lifetime,” Gabbert said.

“With all of those fans and being out there with all of my guys was extremely fun. ”Miami head coach Chuck Martin felt good about Gabbert’s performance in the season opener.

“He’s very poised and confident,” Martin said the Tuesday following the Iowa game after practice at the Dauch Indoor Sports Center. “When he decides he’s going to throw it, he has a really quick release, was very accurate, and made some really nice throws. Like you’d expect from a true freshman, he made some really good decisions, some mental errors, but overall everybody was pretty impressed.”

The decision to start the six-foot, 207-pound Gabbert came after a six-month, three-way quarterback competition between Gabbert, redshirt sophomore Jackson Williamson and redshirt freshman A.J. Mayer. Redshirting is a term used in college sports that describes delaying 32 | Sports

The true freshman got his shot at Ohio State, leading a couple of nice drives to start the first quarter. On the second drive of the first quarter, Gabbert led the RedHawks on a 14 play drive, including a fourth-down conversion early on. The Buckeyes held the RedHawks out of the endzone before Sam Sloman kicked a 21-yard field goal to put the RedHawks up 5-0.

From then on, it was all Buckeyes. They scored 76 unanswered points to win 76-5.

story: Massillon Myers photography: Laura Dudones hen Brett Gabbert walked out onto the University of Iowa’s Kinnick Field on Aug. 31, he did something that no Miami University quarterback had ever done before — not even two-time Super Bowl champion Ben Roethlisberger.

points, Miami became the first team to hold a lead on Ohio State this season.

an athlete’s participation for a year to lengthen their period of eligibility.

“He’s been poised and confident in practice, maybe that’s just who he is. So, he earned the right,” Martin said. “It was a tough battle, the two other guys played well in camp, butwe felt like he had the best camp and I believe that you should go with the guy that earned it, so he got the first opportunity and did very well for himself.”

Cincinnati, the RedHawks had a challenge ahead of them in traveling to Ohio State to play the Buckeyes on Sept. 21. They came in as 40-point underdogs.

With Ohio State pinned on their own two-yard line, Myles Reid forced a fumble on Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields which then went out the back of the endzone for a safety. With those two

”Yeah, I’d like to talk about the first quarter for the next half hour,” Martin said at the beginning of his postgame press conference. “It was 76-5,” Martin said. “If you have an ounce of competitiveness in your body, it’ll be tough to sleep tonight. Again, I don’t discount who the hell we played. They’re a great football team, but I didn’t discount that, if you told me we were going to turn the ball over that many times, I was going to say they’re going to short-circuit the scoreboard like they did.”

Gabbert has started every game since, including

a 34-20 win at home against the University at Buffalo on Sept. 26. The win put the RedHawks in a tie for first place in the Mid-American Conference east division.

The key to beating Buffalo was the defenseand special teams who showed up big after struggling against Ohio State. Punter Kyle Kramer had seven punts for an average of 48 yards and kicker Sam Sloman added two field goals, including a career-long 53-yard kick which was good for third-longest in Miami history.

The return game showed up strong in the form of Maurice Thomas who had six kickoff and punt returns averaging 21 yards per attempt.

themselves a hole early in the game.

“One of the better team victories and really from Sunday to today, it’s really as proud a week as I’ve had coaching,” said Martin. “I love these guys, I love this coaching staff. People showed up today.”

With games coming up against MAC opponents like Kent State (away on Oct. 26), Ohio (away on Nov. 6), Bowling Green (home on Nov. 13), Akron (home on Nov. 20), and Ball State (away on Nov. 29), the MAC is far from settled. Gabbert will look to lead the team to its first MAC title since 2010.

“We kept telling them ‘look in each others eyes, look at your teammates’ eyes’, the eyes weren’t good at 14-3,” Martin said, “There was a lot of deer in headlights and if you don’t like your teammates eyes, we gotta do something about it together, we gotta fight together.”

Miami was down 14-3 early on before scoring 31 unanswered points to come back to win 3420. Martin was proud of his team after they dug

“Gabbert did something th at not even Roethlisberg er did when h e was at Miami from 2 001-2003.”

After arriving on campus in 2000, Roethlisberger was redshirted his freshman year before earning the starting spot the following year. After his junior year, Roethlisberger was drafted 11th overall by the Pittsburgh Steelers. In 15 years as a pro, he has wontwo Super Bowls and been named to six Pro Bowls.

A year ago, Gabbert led his high school — Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis —to its second straight Missouri state championship. When he arrived in Oxford, Gabbert impressed his new teammates early on.

“When he got on campus, I had a feeling he was going to be good,” senior placekicker Sam Sloman said. “Gabbs is a stud.”

The next weekend, Miami beat Tennessee Tech 48-17. The game after that, Miami traveled to Cincinnati to take on the Bearcats. After a tough 35-13 loss that saw Miami take a 10-0 lead at

Sports | 33

Is This The Real Game?

Or Is This Just Fantasy (Football)? story: Peyton Gigante

The NFL has quite a few connections to Miami University. Sean McVay, Joe Novak, and John Harbaugh are only a few of the numerous coaches from Miami with success in the NFL. But a new connection the NFL has made at Miami is that of the Fantasy Football League at Miami (FFAM).

Fantasy football swept the nation after its creation in the 1960’s, and has since kept football fans entertained and engrossed in the NFL’s draft and games.

With its comradery, public and private made leagues, and prizes, it has inspired football fans all over the country to participate in the NFL in a way they never could before.

FFAM had its start as a regular fantasy football league, but has grown over the past few years. What started out as a mission to unite Miami students with a common interest in fantasy football, has become something even larger.

When juniors Adam Wise and Ben Rinsma arrived at Miami as freshmen, they had a goal: start a Fantasy Football club. With the help of their friend, junior Marc Davis, the three friends have built their club from the ground up.

30 | Opinion

“We started off as a club to bring together people on campus that have a common interest in fantasy football,” says Adam Wise, President of FFAM. The first step for Wise, Rinsma and Davis was to establish the club. But that goal of just starting a club has now morphed into something much larger.

The club started off using ESPN’s fantasy leagues to host their games, and divided students into different leagues based on their football knowledge and skill level.

After a while though, they realized that it was time to try something different.

Though they kept holding weekly meetings, they decided to change one key thing about their club.

The three founders realized that there was a need in their club for more interactions among members, and that more relationships could be made. But they also realized that that need had to be filled by a new platform and a new place to build leagues.

“It got to the point where Adam realized that it wasn’t working, and wanted to build his own platform,” says Rinsma, FFAM’s Vice President of Operations.

And that’s what he did.

“We had a meeting I’ll never forget, December of sophomore year,” said Wise. “One night at club, we realized that ESPN wasn’t working. So, we were like, what if we just made a website?”

This meeting snowballed into Wise’s development of the FFAM’s brand new website, “Banter.” At banterfootball.co, a progressive web app, members of the club have access to their fantasy players, can alter their team, make trades, and see and communicate with the other students that they’re in the club with.

“My freshman year, I took Business 104, the coding class, and realized that was my passion and through that learned web development on the side,” says Wise.

He took that knowledge and passion and used it to create the new site for FFAM. Wise woke up at 5 A.M. every morning this past summer, just to work and code Banter for the upcoming school year. With the help and guidance of his friends, Davis and Rinsma, they were able to complete the website for the enjoyment of their club members.

“This is my motivator,” says Wise. “I’m pretty obsessed with it. The fantasy football market right now is lacking, and we’re fixing that problem. The idea that I could have an impact – that the website could have an impact – makes me so excited because maybe we could change Fantasy Football and make it better.”

Building and implementing a website successfully is a challenge on its own.

But the fact that it’s proven to be better and even more enjoyable for their club members is something that could change their club forever.

“We weren’t really bringing people together. In one sense, we were through the leagues,” says Davis, FFAM’s Vice President of Recruitment. “But friendships weren’t being built through the NFL’s old style of league. This new platform, you’re face to face to the kids every week, seeing their names.”

Since the club’s start two years ago, the following and participation in fantasy football at Miami has grown immensely.

There are now 139 students using the new website, which has made it easier for the club to be more social and has opened up a better way for club members to get to know one another.

Rinsma, Davis, and Wise see an opportunity to bring Banter to other schools, which could then expand their website and allow different schools to have different Banter leagues.

“What we’ve discovered is that what we’ve built here, can really be transferred and implemented into other schools,” says Rinsma. “We’ve looked it up, they don’t exist.”

And why the name “Banter?”

“The idea with Banter came because it’s light, it’s witty, and it’s back and forth discussion,” says Rinsma, who came up with the name. “We talked about it this summer and it was one of the first things we came up with.”

The three friends did all they could at the beginning to grow FFAM, which entailed telling everyone they knew about their club, and establishing relationships with other organizations on campus.

the things on their goal list.

“Freshman year, we wanted to build this community,” says Wise. “Which has really come to fruition this fall. We’ve gotten to know the guys, hang out with them outside of club, and now we’re trying to find people passionate about FFAM who can carry on what we built.”

One of the most important things? Finding students who are serious about fantasy

“Freshman year, in my business frat, I would put our fliers for our B-Dubs watch parties every week in our Facebook group,” says Davis.

“We would get like 30 kids maybe. Bothering people and putting them in our ESPN leagues has taught us so much. Now, I’m looking up things about investors and copyright.”

From weekly watch parties and a partnership with Buffalo Wild Wings Uptown, to their annual “NFL on the Lawn,” at Oxford Memorial Park, the club and the men in charge have hustled to grow their meetings to now accommodate more than 50 students.

“We’ve realized that what we do outside of the coding, takes really no skill,” says Davis. “Anyone can do it, they just have to grind. We hang up two posters outside of every dorm each week. It takes hours, but we get it done.”

So, what’s next for Davis, Wise, and Rinsma? They are shifting their focus to what’s going to happen to their club after they graduate in 2021. Growing and improving their club, finding people to take care of it after they’re gone, and leaving a lasting legacy are just some of

football, who are passionate about it, and who can take over their positions and keep it running after they’re graduated.

“It’s about us showing them how serious we are about it,” says Rinsma.

“If we show them how much we love it, they’re going to have more of an obligation to keep it going. We want to be able to keep what we’ve built and give other people the opportunity to enjoy it and grow it.”

The fantasy football market right now is lacking, and we’re fixing that problem.”

Sports | 35

From Teddy Bears to Tablets: YouTube As New-Age Comfort Object G story: Paige Hartenburg

rowing up I was attached at the nose to my comfort object: a fabric doll’s hat that I would smell throughout the day. Bears, blankets and binkies are all standard symbols of childhood, playing an essential role in early development. These comfort objects become a stand-in for a parent figure for many children when they are away from their main guardian, serving as a constant in their developing understanding of the world. These items become an extension of their self-identity and are often connected to one’s ability to self-regulate and soothe.

However, at a certain age, these items, once holding so much importance, are discarded and replaced. Our selfsoothing and de-stressing patterns become increasingly based in other relationships. Through friendships and romantic partners, we find other outlets to relax, gain community, and perspective.

This is incredibly important in our current culture, as technology sometimes allows for social relationships to move beyond the physical world and exist online. This places certain online entities, such as Youtube, in a powerful position.

By fostering emotional connections with their viewers, creators and their fan bases form one-sided relationships known as parasocial relationships.

Utilizing these bonds, Youtubers form a unique connection among their fan bases, serving as a new-aged comfort object for many outside the early years of development.

Youtubers offers a style of content that lends itself perfectly to becoming a comfort object. Due to the large number of personality-driven videos supported 36 | Opinion

by individual branding, a consistent style and frequent uploads, the platform encourages a pseudo-object relationship aided by the “branded” personality made by creators.

For example, you watch Pewdiepie not for Felix Kjellberg as a person, but for the sarcastic commentary, self-aware humor and Minecraft “Let’s Plays”. You subscribe to the exaggerated personality, not the holistic individual, as personal intricacies and details of his life are not necessarily known to the public.

This is then furthered by the parasocial relationship that develops. The bond that is created is that of an individual and a branded persona, which unknowingly separates the individual from the reality of the creator. The YouTuber’s personality becomes akin to an object that viewers interact with.

This is aided by the ability to replay certain videos for free on command, which mimics the repetitive nature of self-soothing behavior. This is, in part, the basis of YouTube fandom. Through the act of subscribing and watching, an individual integrates the enjoyment of a YouTuber, and subsequently a brand, into their sense of self. They are no longer just an individual but a member of a community, sporting the merch and spouting the slang to match their favorite creators.

This relationship mirrors that of a child and their comfort object, serving as a constant, an identification of self, and as a way to understand the world. This is exhibited through thousands of fan letters and comments that praise the support provided through a Youtuber’s content, often to the initial shock of the creator.

This is where the dangers of this relationship can take effect. While other forms of celebrity create clear divisions between creators and fans, YouTube prides itself on a lack of formalized production, which blurs these lines, leading to potentially harmful behavior.

An example of this can be seen in the 2016 incident where YouTuber Christina Grimmie was fatally shot by an obsessed fan. Though this is an extreme instance, both the negative and the positive power of the comfort object relationship needs to be recognized to assure the safety of both viewer and creator.

Personally, as someone who is diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a learning disability that complicates my ability to connect with those around me, YouTube has been an instrumental way for me to learn and adjust to social patterns.

Growing up, I would repeatedly watch specific videos as a way to learn speaking habits and understand trendy topics my peers seemed so infatuated with. I would develop fascinations with specific videos, rewatching them countless times to the point where I could retell the jokes in time with the speaker. The constant, predictable, and informative nature of this content provided me with the security I needed in a social world I didn’t always understand.

It is common for older generations to discredit this relationship as silly or fake, however, by ignoring the impacts of these connections, it not only doesn’t acknowledge the dangerous aspects of the negatives, but belittle the positives, too. We must respect the legitimacy of these new-aged comfort objects or we will fall dangerously short of defending the development of the human psyche.

HISTORY, KNOWLEDGE, AND LEARNING — The Dangers of Mythologizing The Past story: Zachary Strauss

T

here is a famous term—which many of you might be familiar with—that goes, “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it,” or some mixture of that. It seems to change based on whoever is saying it for whatever pursue they are saying it for. The quote is originally from a philosopher named George Santayana, who I had never heard of. Yet the quote attributed to him reaches far beyond where he probably expected it to go if he expected it to go anywhere. Santayana also coined the aphorism “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” which is often misattributed to the Athenian philosopher Plato (such as on Call of Duty death screens). If you have taken a history class on campus, odds are that someone has brought it up. Why are people thinking about this? People want to predict the future, to avoid harm to themselves or those they care about.

The past is full of horrific things—war, plague, famine, genocide—so it is good to want to avoid these trappings, but how do people do it? They look to history.

If a person does not learn history, are they more likely to repeat it? Let us go straight to something most people imagine themselves unable to do: evil. All throughout history people have committed what is commonly thought of as evil. Did the average German know they were participating in evil?

They were most likely not thinking that they were. Yet, they were most likely aware of some evil event in the past. People who are clinically sane (that is psychologically determined to be sane) will try to rationalize most things they participate in. They will use anything to make themselves feel like they are doing the right thing.

There is a belief in something which can also bolster the belief to righteousness of a cause, regardless of how evil or cruel it might be. Mythology can play a substantive role

in justifications, and it is important when we look back on history, and how it can be avoided from happening again. The past can seem distant but it is not. Memory can be a confusing thing and it is not always right, and it can make history seem like it is something that we need not worry about; however, this is wrong. History is close, and mythologizing makes it closer. Myths can be an immensely valuable thing for really anyone. Myths often cloud the past, making it hard to see what the truth is, and people go to the past for justification. And myths still serve as a boulder for nationalists to bolster around—the myth of the “Lost Cause,” for the Civil War; the myth of “Blood and Soil,” for the modern white nationalism; the myth of Aryanism and Judeo-Bolshevism for Nazism; and the myth of the glorious and inscrutable founding fathers for American history.

These terms are not important for this, only to show that mythologizing the past can be very dangerous.

If we recognize the dangers of mythology in history, can we separate what actually happened and what we mythologized what happened? Yes, although it is difficult. It helps recognize when we might be falling the same trajectory.

When the past becomes a subject without criticism and with adoration of figures lacking any nuance or inspection it can become romantic and worshipped. I am guilty of this, and I think we all are, especially when a certain history impacts us. Being too close to something can often impact the way we think about them and this is no different for history. I think when a person is able to recognize in themselves the contradictions of their history and the history close to them they can move in a more progressive direction. This starts by ridding ourselves of historical mythologizing and seeing the past for what it is, and it is the primary way we can prevent the past from becoming the future.

Opinion | 37

A moral complex.

story: I.O’Brien-Scheffer

I

was a high schooler in 2016, at a public school in Northeast Ohio.

During that time, friends made statements about Trump and his supporters, seemingly assuming their friends all agreed—claims of racism, sexism, and other -isms’. Most reiterated those remarks, while others who supported Trump or were against the Democratic candidates kept quiet or faced nasty looks, insults, and more from their “tolerant” opponents who suddenly viewed them with disappointment or even disgust. Rather than promoting a narrative of understanding, stations like CNN covered almost only negatives about their political opposition and continue to do so. Some Republicans also took to painting Hillary Clinton as the Devil, and harshly criticized the behavior and beliefs of their left-wing opponents. The fact that someone can disregard the shameful treatment of Trump supporters, children and adults alike, as justified without a fraction of a doubt, likewise the characterization of Hillary supporters, is evidence that these last couple decades and especially 2016 marked a turning point in our country’s overall culture, that being the idea that “if you disagree with me, you are a bad person.”

38 | Opinion

superiority/inferiority This development in mindset, of what we deem as good and desirable, LaBier says, “promotes increasing There is a shocking lack and loss of vanity and self-importance… you empathy in today’s society. Note: become increasingly alienated from a lack of empathy can sometimes your own heart… you’re now ripe be neutral in effect. For anyone, with delusion that you’re completely neurotypical or not, it is our choices independent and self-sufficient.” and the way we treat others that defines us in accordance to the This reminds me of what my dad, outside world. a Venezuelan immigrant, told me about the state of parenthood in the To quote New York House U.S. Here, there is a cultural idea that representative Alexandria Ocasio- once a child turns 18, they are on their Cortez in an interview with Anderson own. This promise of disconnect is Cooper on 60 Minutes, from this alienating in practice and encourages year, “I think that there’s a lot of the children that hear it to be people more concerned about being completely independent to survive. precisely, factually, and semantically It is also isolating when parents correct than about being morally and educators place an exorbitant right.” Though she went on to say that amount of importance upon a child’s facts are important, emphasizing that individual feelings and desires, one’s morals are of greater importance while not properly encouraging the than factual accuracy is problematic. importance of everyone else’s feelings How can one make correct moral to that same individual. Empathy—to judgements if they do not know the feel another’s emotions for oneself— facts? To feel morally superior is all is just as much a part of our brains as that really matters; to feed one’s ego. it is a practice.

Ocasio-Cortez is wrong, but if her feelings are “right,” then she is still No matter the catalysts of egotism, more correct than those with whom be it upbringing or political she disagrees. reinforcement, the results are the same. People will be stigmatised, The belief that others are morally rejected by their peers, go untreated inferior creates a scapegoat: reason for genuine mental health issues that to disregard differing views; are little addressed in society, and discouragement of self-reflection, build a deeper hatred for those that and an excuse for one’s own hatred they feel did them wrong, which may and disgust. Natural antecedents to in turn lead to overwhelming hatred diminished empathy. and disdain toward those that either hurt them or did nothing to help Douglas LaBier wrote in November them. To refuse to open oneself to 17, 2011, in his article, “America’s others and seek mutual understanding Continuing Empathy Deficit is a plaque on this country, rotting out Disorder” for HuffPost, that the bone to create a cavity in what was “empathy deficit disorder” is a result once discourse. It exposes the nerve to of the social focus on obtaining righteous bigotry and violence that, if wealth, power, status, and sufferers left untreated, misdiagnosed by the end up equating mental health with sugars that helped form it, will one “success and maturity.” day require a root canal.

GOT A STORY

YOU’RE DYING

TO TELL?

Maybe you just really want Miami to know you’re out there.

Maybe you have an amazing secret talent no one knows about.

Maybe you’re shocked no one has written about your (fill in the blank).

Maybe you have an incredible photo essay idea.

Maybe you just want to get published.

Whatever your maybe, let the team of MQ know!

We love hearing all the different stories tucked around Miami’s campus.

Email mqmagazine@gmail.com for any inquiries.

MQ