Misc.02.10.22

The Miscellany News

Vassar College’s student newspaper of record since 1866

February 10, 2022

miscellanynews.org

Volume 157 | Issue 3

Jeh Charles Johnson chosen as 2022 Commencement Speaker Janet Song

Editor-in-Chief

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n Feb. 7, 2022, Vassar College announced Jeh Charles Johnson, former Secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama as the speaker for the 158th commencement ceremony on May 22, 2022. The son of Jeh Vincent Johnson, an architecture instructor at Vassar who designed several buildings on campus— including Jeh Vincent Johnson ALANA Cultural Center, named in his honor—the upcoming speaker held a variety of other positions in his life, including General Counsel for the Department of Defense,General Counsel for the US Air Force and Assistant United States Attorney.

The day I spoke with Johnson, he was driving from Washington D.C. back to his home in New Jersey, after just making an appearance in Meet the Press earlier that morning. Driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, Johnson recalled how trivia-savvy his late father was, saying, “[He] had a head for facts and figures for trivia. […] Right now [my father] can go off on a story about the origins of the New Jersey Turnpike. [He could] tell you stuff about Matthew Vassar [that you] never heard of.”

Born on Sept. 11, 1957, the former Secretary of Homeland Security grew up in Wappingers Falls and attended Roy C. Ketcham High School. “I was a very

lackadaisical student,” he said. “I did not have—with the exception of my immediate family—very strong role models. I lived in a predominantly white community. And I did not have anyone or anything that was particularly inspirational for me, except baseball.” At first, Johnson was convinced that he would become a left fielder for the New York Mets, which for him meant that he didn’t have to study. He had poor grades in high school; he never took a mathematics class beyond the 11th grade level, and he flunked the New York State Regents exam.

In 1975, Johnson attended Morehouse College, the only all-male HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in the country. “The inspiration and the energy there is contagious,” he told me. “I had a 1.8 GPA my freshman year, but then, dramatically, [in] sophomore year, I made the dean’s list. I had a 3.0 [GPA] my fall semester of sophomore year. And then I had a 3.5 [GPA] my spring semester and then I had a 4.0 GPA for the last two years I was in school.”

He attributed his academic success to Morehouse’s atmosphere, saying that he could feel the presence of Martin Luther King Jr., an alumnus of Morehouse, on campus. “There were members of the faculty who had been around so long,” he said.

“They taught him 30 years before. And I went to school with his son, Martin Luther King III. [Being] around so many other

black men, who were ambitious, studious, disciplined, was contagious. And the speeches and the sermons at Morehouse are highly motivational. They tell you, you’re a Morehouse man, you’re special and you’re destined to do great things. And then after about a year of that, you start to believe it.”

His interest in politics, public service and political science blossomed during his time there. In his sophomore year, he volunteered for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign, where he was able to attend the election night party and his inauguration.

His former dreams to play baseball, meanwhile, came to an abrupt halt when he injured his right arm during his freshman year after running and accidentally putting his right arm through a glass window.

His injury was a wake up call: “[I] realized if I was going to get anywhere I needed to study, I needed to get my GPA up, I wanted to go to law school.”

Eventually, Johnson attended Columbia Law School. “When I was at Columbia, the push-and-pull at an Ivy League law school [was] to go to a large firm. ‘Big law’ in New York or Washington. Back then, the starting salaries for first year associates was $43,000, which sounded like a lot of money and I hadn’t really focused on that,” Johnson recalled. “All of my classmates were summer associates at large law firms.

And I worked at the NAACP Legal Defense

Courtesy of Taylor Hooper.

And it wasn’t until [the] beginning of my third year that I researched about ‘big law.’”

Johnson applied to every law firm he could, receiving offers from all of them except Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, (also known as “Paul, Weiss”).

After being turned down by Paul,Weiss, he stayed in another firm for about a year and half, until he applied again and received an opportunity to work with them in 1984.

See Johnson on page 3

MODfest 2022 ALANA Center Black History Month events invite reflection, community support Julianna Aguja Guest reporter

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espite the slush and ice that covered the sidewalks and roads of campus on Friday, Feb. 4, crowds came out to Kenyon Hall’s Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater to see the only dance presentation of this year’s MODfest. The Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre (VRDT) shared the stage with Battery Dance Company, a dance troupe based in New York City. VRDT performed a condensed version of their fall 2021 program, presenting five dances that showcased the talent of the company.

The group of 37 dancers––under the direction of Dance Department faculty John Meehan, Leslie Partridge Sachs and Steve Rooks––moved together across the stage to music that ranged from swelling orchestral tracks and heavy percussion beats to jazzy hits by Billy Joel.

Due to the increased COVID-19 rates at Vassar this semester, VRDT’s dancers performed masked in Kenyon, unlike during their fall Final Showings. Another major impact of the pandemic on VRDT was a lack of rehearsal time, as VRDT dancer Helen Ambrose ’25 told me. VRDT’s first rehearsals for MODfest were delayed due to COVID-19, meaning that the company’s first run of the program since last semester See Arts on page 6

Jacques Abou-Rizk News Editor

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n recognition and celebration of Black history, culture and achievements, the Jeh Vincent Johnson African-American/ Black, Latino, Asian and Native American (ALANA) Center holds an annual series of events and presentations during Black History Month to educate students and faculty on how to support Black communities.

VSA

This year, in addition to the kick-off event this past Wednesday, Feb. 2, which featured several musical performances, speeches and other presentations by students, faculty and alumni, the ALANA Center is inviting author Jessica B. Harris on Feb. 15 and 16 for a virtual screening, discussion and Q&A on her Netflix series “High on the Hog.” Later this month, local artist Jean-Marc Superville Sovak will come to the Loeb on Feb. 24 to discuss Black art,

secures Will Sorge News Editor

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n Feb. 6, the VSA Senate passed the Vassar Washing Allocation for Student Health (V-Wash) Act, which will provide students with work-study in their financial aid package $66 per year to use on laundry within the dormitories and apartment areas. The bill was the culmination of several months of negotiations, which began last October, between the VSA, the College administration and the laundry service vendor to allocate the necessary funds.

The bill’s announcement comes after the

and two workshops on anti-racism will be held on Feb. 28 and March 1.

Director of the ALANA Center Nicole Beveridge said she hopes students and faculty attend multiple presentations. In a written correspondence, she stated, “I hope that as campus partners participate in all the events this month, that they will reflect on the lived and shared experiences of all African/Black Americans, high and low, See Black history on page 4

laundry

controversial increase in washer and dryer prices from $1.50 to $1.60 per cycle at the start of this semester. This increase was apparently meant to address a budgetary issue that the fund was projected to cause. As Joe Bolander, Vassar’s Director of Budgets and Planning, described, “The increase [in laundry] was not an administrative decision but based on a contract (effective 2018) with our laundry service vendor.” Still, to VSA Vice President Ryan Mazurkiewicz ‘22, the pros outweigh the cons. “It's more than a worthwhile trade,” he said.

The negotiators arrived at the $66 figure

by running a scale of the number of times that students would run laundry loads in a given year. Mazurkiewicz explained, “There are some people that spent like $3 over the course of the year. The most surprising one was that someone spent like $700-800 on laundry over the course of the year. But the vast majority of people were between $50 and $100. And so that was the negotiating range.” According to Mazurkiewicz, the VSA started at $96, the administration started at $40, and from there the two met at $66.

See Laundry on page 3

Inside this issue

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ARTS

Read Assistant Arts Editor Massimo Tarridas' article on PHOCUS and the organization's exhibit on land and identity.

8

FEATURES

Read about the new Linguistics Club at Vassar with Assistant Copy Editor Charlotte Robertson!

15 SPORTS

fund

Read Doug Cobb's thoughts on the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and the politics that complicate it.

February 10, 2022

Page 2

THE MISCELLANY NEWS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MANAGING EDITOR SENIOR EDITOR CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Janet Song Sawyer Bush Annabelle Wang Olivia Watson Dean Kopitsky Alex Eisert Lucille Brewster Caitlin Patterson Will Sorge NEWS EDITORS Jacques Abou-Rizk Ben Goth ASSISTANT OPINIONS EDITOR Ganesh Pillai ARTS EDITOR Massimo Tarridas ASSISTANT ARTS EDITOR Monika Sweeney FEATURES EDITOR Doug Cobb SPORTS EDITORS Jackie Molloy Madi Donat HUMOR EDITOR Alison Carranza SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR Acadia Case ASST. SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR Charlotte Robertson ASSISTANT COPY EDITORS Sashinka Poor Sandro Luis Lorenzo GRAPHICS EDITOR Seowon Back GRAPHIC ARTISTS Tori Kim Aryn Lee Ben Scharf LIVE EVENTS CHAIRPERSON ASST. LIVE EVENTS CHAIRPERSON Catherine Borthwick Will Hwang BUSINESS MANAGER Jack Rothenberg ASSISTANT BUSINESS MANAGER Chloe Gjoka WEBMASTERS Rohan Dutta Ian Herz VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER Grace Willoughby DESIGN EDITOR Danielle Recco COLUMNISTS Carly D’Antonio Arlene Chen Katie Gebbia Gwen Ma Sufana Noorwez Sam Patz Naima Saini Nicholas Tillinghast Anica Acuna COPY STAFF Glenna Gomez Jason Han Sophia Jahadhmy Tori Lubin Bryn Marling Claire Miller Melissa Roybal Emma San Filippo Hadley Sparks Mia Stein Simon Goldsmith Danny White Ruby Funfrock DESIGN STAFF Maryam Bacchus Reese Collins CROSSWORD

CORRECTION POLICY The Miscellany News will only accept corrections for any misquotes, misrepresentations or factual errors for an article within the semester it is printed.

The Miscellany News is not responsible for the views presented within its Opinions pages. Staff editorials are the only articles that reflect the opinion of a two-thirds majority of the Editorial Board.

Sandro Luis Lorenzo/The Miscellany News.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

February 10, 2022

NEWS

Page 3

Jeh Charles Johnson chosen as 2022 Commencement Speaker Continued from Johnson on page 1 But his interest in public service never dwindled. He soon left the firm and went on to become an assistant U.S. Attorney hired by Rudy Giuliani.

“The moral of that story,” Johnson went, “is sometimes you have to be prepared for unanticipated twists and turns in your career. And be prepared to entertain opportunities you didn’t quite expect. And it’s okay to want to do two things at once. I pursued corporate law for a while, but the ambition to go into public service never really left me. And so, very often when I interview law students for jobs, the first question I ask is: Why did you go to law school? Why did you want to become a lawyer? Don’t ever lose that ambition.”

As the years went on, Johnson found himself on various unanticipated paths, including General Counsel of the Air Force with the Clinton administration and Department of Defense General Counsel for the Obama administration. On being asked by then-president Obama in 2013 to return

as Secretary of Homeland Security, Johnson remarked, “[I] never anticipated that job coming my way. I never aspired to it.

When he asked me I fell off my chair. [My] first question was, ‘Am I qualified for this job to run this organization of 230,000?’

And it occurred to me, ‘Well, the President thinks you are, dummy, so maybe you are.’”

He added, “[S]o two of those two of those four jobs in government service, I didn’t see coming. That’s an advantage you have to have… you’ve got to be prepared to entertain ideas that you didn’t anticipate coming your way, and be open minded about opportunities that were not quite what you were hoping for. Maybe that’s your destiny.”

Later we spoke of Johnson’s memories of Vassar and his father. For Johnson, Vassar served as his first exposure to college. “I was seven years old when [my father] started teaching [at Vassar]. And I remember, I only visited his classroom maybe once or twice,” said Johnson. “But I remember, he used to bring me to Commencement.” He later added, “[I] think I was present for 1968

Jeh Charles Johnson with his mother, Norma Edelin Johnson, and father, Jeh Vincent Johnson. Courtesy of Jeh Charles Johnson.

In his free time, Johnson also enjoys serving as a radio show host at WBGO-FM. Courtesy of Jeh Charles Johnson.

and 1969 [for speakers] Arthur Goldberg and Gloria Steinem. And I was fascinated by commencements, the robes, the colors, the ceremony, the formality, the joy of the graduation. And I think that’s probably one of the reasons why I like to give commencement addresses.”

After his father passed away on Jan. 27, 2021, Johnson was moved by Vassar students who reached out to him to discuss the inspiration his father had on them. “I see much of that in my father’s work at Vassar,” he said. “And I’ll never forget some of the letters and I’ve read one or two of them.

One student said he was the first Black man [she] ever met. And he was such an inspiration.”

Last year, Johnson had the chance to meet Vassar students again for a senior seminar titled “Strategic Thinking and Global Affairs,” alongside public policy ex-

perts, President Bradley and Professor of History Robert Brigham. In the College’s Feb. 7, 2022 press release, Johnson stated, “[The students] were intelligent and inquisitive. They came prepared and forged ahead with their presentations as we tried to throw them off.”

Although he never became a left fielder for the Mets, Johnson’s story is a testimony to his ambition and ability to embrace the unexpected. As for the wisdom he wants Vassar students to take away with, Johnson referred to the words of civil rights activist Andrew Young, who had spoken at Johnson’s graduation from Columbia Law School: “From this moment forward, when you’re 22 years old, you’re going to see and do things beyond your current comprehension. Be excited about that. And you are smarter than you know, and stronger than you realize.”

VSA passes bill to cover some student laundry costs Continued from Laundry on page 1 Mazurkiewicz considered the funds an important step for the College to meet its goal of providing for students’ financial needs. He stated, “Vassar says that they’re going to meet 100 percent of your need to come here. And that's an admirable goal. But laundry is kind of this weird thing that existed for a long time outside of that framework where everyone's paying the same regardless of how much money they make.”

His sentiments were echoed by both Class Senator Faye Stevens ’25, who drafted the bill, and Bolander. Stevens expressed, “I feel really fortunate to have been a part of this laundry change that multiple students have fought for over the years. It feels rewarding to be able to say that I’ve written a bill that will benefit the students of Vassar and it’s made me excited to write the next one.” Bolander highlighted the practicality of the funds during the pandemic, saying, “The allocation will give aid where aid is needed and at a time when clean laundry is even more important with the COVID-19 pandemic—it made sense.”

Though she was not a part of the negotiations, Stevens was assigned the bill as a member of the Operations Committee. She said, “I did get to attend the final meeting where we discussed and agreed upon the decided fund-

ing…Speaking through the process with operations helped the bill come together over the course of a few weeks.”

Still, some students feel that the funds could have been better allocated. “It would probably be better to just add the money to our V-Bucks so we could either use it for laundry or for groceries and stuff,” expressed Hunter Grogan ’24. Other students consider it a worthwhile investment. “The price of laundry is too high and discriminates against poor students…Students who rely on work-study for all disposable income have to forgo other necessities,” said Marcus D’Agostino ’23, adding, “The fact that Vassar charges for laundry at all is classist and creates undue burdens.”

Mazurkiewicz expects the bill to have a tangible, positive impact on the Vassar community, saying, “It's a little bit more freedom, financial freedom for people to go to college, and if you need that money to spend [on] food or even just decorations for your room.” On a more concrete level, Mazurkiewicz believes it will boost campus hygiene, saying, “I do sincerely believe campus cleanliness is gonna go up a little bit. I know for a fact there are some people that don't wash their clothes because laundry is expensive.”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Annabelle Wang/The Miscellany News.

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NEWS

February 10, 2022

BHM celebrations encourage reflection, community uplift Continued from Black History on page 1 famous and obscure, and how these experiences have shaped, challenged and ultimately strengthened America.”

The kick-off event began with the theme “Black Is…” and participants were encouraged to fill in the phrase with symbolized meaning, according to Beveridge. She said, “Black is not a monolith. Black is HerStory.

Black is freedom. Black is equity. Black is antiracism. Black is faithful. We continue to reflect on our past, reaffirm our present, and rejoice in our future.”

ALANA Center Programming Intern Isabella Aleong ’22 said the kick-off event in the Villard Room was an amazing experience for all who attended. She said, “Upon leaving the event, we were left with the challenge of doing much more than just attending the events this month. We were encouraged to find ways to continue to support our Black community.”

Another Programming Intern at the ALANA Center, Carl Webster ’25, agreed, hoping the events later this month go as smoothly as the kick off. “There was beautiful Black music, poetry and food, with the focus on liberating Black people and celebrating our achievements,” Webster recalled.

Dean of College Carlos Alamo-Pastrana also enjoyed the first event. He said, “I was struck by how this was an important moment that showed how we've been able to take some of the lessons from the pandemic and use them to create some more dynamic programming for the future.”

While planning these events, organizers at the ALANA Center had to take into consideration COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines. Webster said, “We had to consider capacity at the events to stick to COVID-19 protocols.” He added, “This, along with providing grab-n-go meals since dining was initially restricted at events, has

now changed, so we look forward to seeing meals provided for in-event consumption.”

According to Beveridge, the kick-off event was held in a hybrid setting to account for COVID-19 guidelines, and all events have been restricted to the campus. She said, “They are not open to the wider community due to the COVID-19 protocols.”

The fluctuating protocols have proved difficult to create concrete plans, according to Aleong. She said, “COVID-19 restrictions have challenged us in terms of both planning and conducting the events, especially with the constant possibility of these restrictions changing. It’s also been a challenge to find the best ways of keeping people safe while still maintaining a community with one another. It is my hope that we all take an unvarnished look at the past so we can create a better future.”

Alamo-Pastrana praised the use of both in-person and virtual opportunities this month. While looking forward to all the future events, he said, “I am very excited about the Jessica B. Harris event. I am such a huge fan of ‘High on the Hog’ and I look forward to the lecture and the special lunch menu combination event that has been planned.”

Alamo-Pastrana said that one of the most important lessons of Black History Month is the recognition that we should be celebrating Black history and life on a regular basis. “We should especially strive to more fully understand the ways in which African Americans and the larger Black global diaspora have shaped the history of this country, the globe, and have radically transformed all of our lives,” he said, adding, “But we should approach this history fully aware that it is also defined by trauma, pain and structural failures. Black history means naming these injustices and reckoning with them in ways that are honest, transparent and transformative.”

Courtesy of the ALANA Center.

Grace Willoughby/The Miscellany News.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

February 10, 2022

NEWS

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Local redistricting may challenge gerrymandered campus Jyotsna Naidu Guest Reporter

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plit between three legislative districts, Vassar students vote in two locations for three legislators, which has, in part, lowered county voter turnout and gerrymandered one of the highest concentrations of Democratic voters in the county. But following the Dutchess County Independent Redistricting Commission’s (IRC) controversial disbandment in June 2021, a new IRC will be announced by Feb. 15. The first independent redrawing of county legislature lines could lead to the incorporation of Vassar into one district for the 2023 election cycle.

In regards to reduced turnout rates this past November, Professor of History and Minority Leader Rebecca Edwards, a former Dutchess County Legislator, said, “It's hard under those circumstances—when you've got three different legislators representing different parts of the campus—to help educate people about what the legislature does, why it's important [and] why people should come out to vote in local elections.” She added, “Persuading people that local elections matter is a larger issue and also getting people the information they need to feel like they can be informed voters.

A lot of people just don’t vote in local elections, particularly Democrats, particularly younger voters [and] more mobile voters.”

These are some of the challenges that Democracy Matters Co-President Sara Lawler ’23 works against with help from Vassar Votes through student-voter turnout efforts. The split campus further complicates the voting process, with Lawler receiving hundreds of emails with voting questions every year related to re-registering after moving or determining the correct polling location. According to Lawler, incorporating Vassar into one legislative district would make the efforts of Democracy Matters significantly easier, with the ability to streamline information, direct voters to a singular polling location and educate students about a single legislator who would represent all students and increase voter turnout.

“The concerns of the students may be magnified if their votes were unified versus being a smaller component in each of three districts,” Office of Community Engaged Learning Assistant Director and Chief Organizer of Vassar Votes Jean Hinkley said. “If countywide redistricting resulted in an easier process to register and to vote, democracy would be improved.”

Image courtesy of Jyotsna Naidu '25. that are not related to political parties or candidates.

“By dividing Vassar into three different districts, that enabled all of those districts to be a little more strongly blue. We had all three of those districts held by Democrats for two terms until I just lost my seat. So now only two of the three are held by Democrats,” said Edwards.

Approved by local voters in a 2020 ballot measure, Dutchess County’s IRC of seven members will independently redistrict 25 legislative districts. The Democratic majority had made a previous IRC effort in 2009, right before the 2010 census redistricting, but the effort was replaced by the following Republican administration with a Reapportionment Steering Commission to help the legislature draw the map themselves.

The current IRC is detached from the Legislature with the county Board of Elections

"The concerns of the students may be magnified if their votes were unified versus being a smaller component in each of three districts."

Regardless, Vassar’s gerrymandered campus has provided a historical electoral advantage to Democrats. The most recent redistricting for the 2010 census was not independent, which, at the time, allowed the Democrat-majority legislature to make adjustments to the commission’s maps and in the process creating Vassar’s gerrymandered campus. However, partisan gerrymandering was outlawed in New York through a 2014 voter referendum, ruling that district maps could not be drawn to benefit a political party or candidate and when possible, the IRC is required to draw lines around communities of interest, like Vassar, having similar interests

only able to make minor technical adjustments once the Legislature approves district lines. The committee is non-partisan in its redistricting process to earn public trust.

It is this non-partisan manner that was contested by Chief Assistant County Attorney Christian R. Cullen in July 2021, leading to the commission’s disbandment by the Legislature across partisan lines.

Democrat-appointed Commission Chair Richard Keller-Coffey was found to be on the Webutuck School Board. Per the IRC’s rules, elected officials are not permitted to serve on the commission within three years of their electoral service, as Cullen argued in a memo

ruling the IRC void. Cullen also cited that Keller-Coffey’s ineligibility could lead to the redrawn districts being challenged in court and make Keller-Coffey’s joint appointment of three members of the commission invalid—and thus render the entire IRC invalid.

The 10 democratic legislators, including Edwards, opposed this and staged a walkout.

In an article by The Highlands Current, Edwards commented, “[I]n the very extensive debate in the United States around legislative gerrymandering… I have not seen any commentary about the nefarious work of school board members in getting in the way of fair drawing of legislative districts.”

Five members of the now-disbanded commission have sued Dutchess County with the Dutchess County Citizen Volunteers for this decision questioning Cullen’s authority, calling for only Keller-Coffey to have been replaced, and emphasizing the partisan power grab of the Republican majority Legislature on the independent citizen's commission.

The suit has since been dismissed. Since then, the Dutchess County IRC has accepted new applications from the public and appointed four commissioners who will jointly appoint an additional three by Feb. 15.

“Gerrymandering is one of the most tangible and existential threats to democracy because there's so much power. A state can control how [its] representatives go. Gerrymandering has one of the greatest impacts aside from voting rights issues in skewing Congress, generally more Republican-leaning Congress,” Lawler said.

In New York State, however, the failure of the state’s IRC to come to a consensus across party lines transferred redistricting powers back to the Democratic supermajority state legislature. The county IRC, however, is incentivized to come to a consensus or risk disbandment. Congressional Republicans have criticized the transfer as the state district map drawn can potentially gain three seats from Republicans, further raising partisan tensions.

“There's a real profound need for federal intervention to insist on fair rules everywhere,”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Edwards said. “What's far more worrisome even than the gerrymandering is the threat to voting rights, and I think that is coloring Democrats' view of the situation because you've got large swathes of the United States where the Republican Party is busy trying to dismantle voting rights and block people's access. In that broader context, I think it's very hard for Democrats not to try to just protect whatever advantage they may have to protect voting rights.”

Edwards says these proposed federal measures, similar to the Voting Rights Act, to increase voting fairness have been vocalized by members of the congressional delegation such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Lawler, too, supports federal regulation, likening the scenario Democrats are faced with to a rock and a hard place, either drawing partial lines or remaining non-partisan at the risk of losing house seats to Republicans.

“Gerrymandering is never okay, but if all Republican states are gerrymandering, even those democratically leaning states and those with Democratic state legislatures are not going to want to draw independent commissions because they could lose so many seats in the house on a national level,” Lawler said.

Gerrymandered campus or not, Vassar Votes and Democracy Matters continue their efforts to engage and educate students in local politics in a non-partisan manner. Democracy Matters plans on attending legislature meetings to voice any upcoming concerns as they did before the pandemic. Vassar Votes continues to allow students to register locally while also updating them with changing deadlines and requirements for voting in their home state with the TurboVote.

“Part of the reason that Dutchess County politics aren’t active and not necessarily going the way Vassar students would want them to be is people don’t pay enough attention to these local issues. [Local politics] are the most feasible kind of politics for you to make a difference in and a lot of change comes from the ground up–so don’t discredit what you can do at your local level,” Lawler said.

ARTS

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February 10, 2022

MODfest 2022: A spotlight on student choreography Continued from Arts on page 1 was less than two weeks before the show.

Some dancers, like Ambrose, spend over ten hours a week on VRDT commitments during the semester, so getting back into the swing of things after the lengthy winter vacation was a significant adjustment.

Ambrose expressed that starting the semester with MODfest was a good transition back to dance for the company, stating, “It’s honestly nice to come back from break and have a sense of familiarity.

The program opened with “Untitled,” which was created by guest choreographer Jennifer Archibald. The piece’s powerfully eerie techno tracks led into soundbites from an interview where the influential performance artist Marina Abramović equates the artist’s need to create to their need to breathe. The audience was transfixed as the dancers, dressed in white and adorned with black armbands, moved to the booming bass of the opening number’s haunting music.

The next piece, “HOMES,” choreographed by student-choreographer and VRDT member Olivia Gotsch ’23, was a standout piece in Friday’s program. The only student-choreographed piece selected to be performed in MODfest, “HOMES” was inspired by Gotsch’s childhood and Midwestern roots.

Gotsch grew up reading Holling C. Holling’s children’s book “Paddle-to-the-Sea,” a favor-

ite from her parents’ childhoods, too. Gotsch said, “[The book] tells the story of this little kid who carves a toy canoe and puts it into the headwaters of Lake Superior. It follows the boat’s journey all the way through the Great Lakes and, finally, out to the Atlantic Ocean.” The music Gotsch used for “HOMES” was also influenced by the classic children’s book. Third Coast Percussion, a musical group based in Gotsch’s native Chicago, created a sound score inspired by a 1966 short film adaptation of “Paddle-to-theSea.” Third Coast Percussion’s “The Locks” is fast-paced and intensely rhythmic––the perfect backtrack for Gotsch’s beautifully choreographed piece. According to Gotsch, “A lot of the piece is about chaos and coming to terms with chaos, and being comfortable with not having to order the world according to what you think is best.”

Last semester, Gotsch spent every weekend working on “HOMES” with her cast of six dancers. Going into auditions, Gotsch had a certain type of dancer in mind for her piece: “I was looking for dancers who I felt were strong. Not just technically strong, but very powerful movers. I don’t really like delicate dancing. I don’t like wishy-washiness, so I wanted dancers who had some kind of attack, and I think I ended up with a really great cast.” An experienced choreographer, Gotsch used the Horton Technique, a mod-

ern dance technique practiced at prestigious dance institutions like Alvin Ailey, for her first piece of choreography at Vassar. She learned the Horton Technique as a student in Chicago, and she says of her lengthy experience as a dancer, “That training definitely played a huge role in the type of choreography I was working with.” Every weekend, she worked tirelessly with her cast, teaching them new phrases and moves as the semester progressed.

Ambrose, who danced in “HOMES,” described her experience dancing in a student-choreographed piece as incredibly positive. Ambrose said, “I have experience dancing with Olivia [in Professor Rooks’s piece, ‘Table and Chair’] so it was really cool to also watch her creative process and see how she translates her dance background into choreography.” Ambrose and Gotsch both told me how important dancer feedback was in the creation of “HOMES.” Ambrose noted that “Olivia was very open to student voice and what [the dancers] were capable of doing or thought would be a good transition.” Gotsch said, “Coming to it as someone who is also currently a dancer, it was important to me that [the dancers] felt comfortable with the dance, so we would talk through things a lot. I wanted to make sure they felt okay with certain moves to make sure that things felt good on their

bodies, because that’s important to me too.”

Watching Gotsch create “HOMES” over the course of the semester inspired Ambrose to consider choreographing a piece of her own in the future: “It’s definitely not something I had thought about previously, but I feel like it’s something I could do after seeing other students like Olivia attempt it and succeed,” she explained.

Friday’s program ended with a performance by New York City’s Battery Dance Company. Battery Dance performed one longer number, “Observatory,” which–– according to the MODfest program––“is named for the Cape Town neighborhood where its choreographer Theo Ndindwa resides.” The 5 dancers cascaded across the stage together to a lively mash-up of lighting and music. Prior to the performance, the group announced a new initiative to encourage dance education in Poughkeepsie Public Schools starting in the fall of 2022, an announcement received with much applause by the audience.

Last week’s MODfest performance is just the start of an exciting semester of dance for VRDT. Much of the company’s fall repertory will continue in the spring, along with new student choreography additions. There are a lot of long weeks of rehearsal ahead for VRDT, but as Gotsch told me and Ambrose echoed, “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it.”

The Cine-Files: Mani Ratnam's "O Kadhal Kanmani" Nandini Likki Columnist

A

h, love is in the air! If you’re anything like me, perhaps you’re looking for a cute little romcom to watch on Valentine’s Day while spaced out on your bed at two in the morning, covered in sticky popcorn and loneliness. Well! Look no further, because I have just the movie for you—Mani Ratnam’s 2015 Tamil romcom, “OK Kanmani.”

“OK Kanmani,” also known as “Apple of My Eye,” follows Aditya Varadarajan and Tara Kalingarayar, two Tamilian twenty-somethings who fall in love at first sight.

Adi is a video game designer who aspires to move to the United States, while Tara plans to study architecture in Paris. They realize that marriage will ultimately force them to settle down and give up their career plans, so they decide to start living together without getting married, a path that is typically frowned upon in Indian culture.

The love in “OK Kanmani” is beautifully simple. Adi and Tara tease and flirt with each other constantly, go on coffee dates and take train rides together all over the

“The love in 'OK Kanmani' is beautifully simple.” city. Their issues are down-to-earth and realistic: balancing careers and relationships, taking care of each other once they get older, raising children and so on. The film is colorful and light; the rooms that Adi and Tara live in are breezy and decorated with large, stained-glass windows.

Furthermore, P.C. Sreeram’s wonderful cinematography fully fleshes out the characters and makes them believable. When Adi explains the concept for his video game “Mumbai 2.0,” we get fast-paced zooms and animated sequences that place you inside the game. When Tara goes to Ahmedabad for an architecture project, we see sweep-

Tori Kim/The Miscellany News. ing overhead shots of the Jama Masjid and glimpses of her sketches. Their love mirrors that of older couple Ganapathy and Bhavani, Adi’s landlords. The parallels between old and young love, between tradition and change, are masterfully displayed in the film’s soundtrack (composed by the legendary A.R. Rahman), which blends traditional Carnatic music with contemporary, Indipop-style electronic beats.

The film as a whole also represents a shift from the melodramatic and over-the-top Indian romantic comedies from the 2000s into movies that properly depict millennials and their love stories. Mani Ratnam has always been specifically lauded for his

depiction of female characters, and “OK Kanmani” is no different; Tara is assertive, independent, mischievous and unflinching in her wants and desires. This might seem ubiquitous to you, but women in South Indian movies are often pushed aside in favor of promoting male protagonists. If women are prominently featured, they’re portrayed as silent, submissive and dutiful wives. It’s refreshing to see a woman like Tara, who separates herself financially from her domineering mother and playfully tells Adi that she might not be able to control herself if they spend the night together in a hotel room.

Finally, the chemistry between the lead

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

pair (Dulquer Salmaan and Nithya Menen, both of whom don’t speak Tamil as their first tongue yet did the dubbing for this movie) is absolutely dazzling. Everytime Adi calls Tara "kanmani," or darling, a piece of my heart melts.

Rating: 9/10 Perfect for: Whenever you’re feeling sad or tired, if you want to look at trains for two hours, if you only watch romantic movies where the two leads are white and you need to prove to yourself that you’re not racist Where to watch: Netflix

February 10, 2022

ARTS

Page 7

Vassar student reflections on land and identity at the Loeb Massimo Tarridas Assistant Arts Editor

L

ast semester, members from Vassar’s photography club PHOCUS approached the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center with a proposal for an exhibit of student work that would accompany the last stretch of “American Impressions: A Nation in Prints” (Oct. 9, 2021–Feb. 6, 2022). Co-curators Ida-Rose Chabon and Grace Rousell worked with the former Baldeck Photographic Center Advisor, Monica Church, and Jessica Brier, Deknatel Curatorial Fellow in Photography, to coordinate the show. As a whole, Chabon said, “The student work contends with current exhibitions at the Loeb with themes like climate change, American identity and land use,” explaining that “[The work] isn't a direct version of the art that’s in the exhibits in the Loeb, but it is totally riffing on a lot of the same scenes.”

The exhibit also includes the Loeb’s recent land acknowledgement plaque as an additional consideration amongst the show’s themes. The plaque and the show not only share a physical space––the glass hallway leading to the main galleries—but the unfortunate and ironic fact that the conversation they’re engaging with is largely made by and for non-Indigenous people.

In order to address this, Chabon spoke with Director of American Studies and Native American Studies advisor Molly McGlennen and came to the conclusion that participants should be directed to “Shoot and create pictures with your identity in mind” and “Be conscious of who you are when you are creating this work.” Artists were asked to consider their presence on Vassar’s campus, which was built on stolen Munsee Lenape land, in addition to the history of the rest of the United States. Co-curator

Haley Whetstone specified, “As an artist of Indigenous descent, places and their histories matter not only to the themes of my work, but also affect how much I want to work in a particular setting. Having helped create this exhibition, when I see other artists consider ‘place’ in a variety of ways, I feel a great sense of accomplishment.”

Some works deal in themes of Indigenous land more than others. Mareme Fall’s photograph is a clear example of this, as it depicts a tree growing on stolen Tunix land in Connecticut, the background littered with ubiquitous Northeastern neo-colonial houses. Chabon includes her own work, an image depicting the town of Sedgwick in Maine, as she documents an American town that has preserved its Indigenous nomenclature while otherwise lacking an Indigenous presence. Other works, like Chenkai Yu’s, instead focus on a Vassar landscape that lies precariously between nature and architecture, such as one shot of Sunset Lake and the surrounding forest taken through the dilapidated buttresses holding up a tent. Another shot frames a weeping tree against the waterfall that used to be walkable by bridge. “Some works highlight the great effects of industrialization, juxtaposing these with the natural elements to show what’s been replaced,” Whetstone said of the show’s ecological concerns.

Audience members may be surprised by the other themes present, such as food culture and hotels in America, but these are nonetheless involved in the conversation that current exhibitions, “Cryosphere: Humans and Climate in Art from the Loeb” and “Urban Sublime: Recent Acquisitions of Photography at the Loeb,” also present. The destruction of wildlife and wildlife without destruction, as well as art and visual

Head Study, (Martin Luther King Jr.), 2002,

by John Woodrow Wilson. Courtesy of The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. culture in the context of the climate crisis, are all occurring simultaneously. From all of this biological and historical chaos, the small collection of works in “Spaces: Vassar Student Reflections on Land and Identity” seeks to take a snapshot of photographers active on campus, and though the exhibit may not thoroughly analyze any one specif-

ic aspect about Vassar—such as the College’s incommensurate land acknowledgement arriving too late—it collectively holds a critical eye to many things most of us still take for granted.

The show was scheduled from Feb. 5 to Feb. 7, but has now been extended until Feb. 13.

Sandro Luis Lorenzo/The Miscellany News.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

FEATURES

Page 8

February 10, 2022

The talk of the town: Vassar’s new linguistics club Charlotte Robertson Assistant Copy Editor

I

n my favorite book, “The Idiot” by Elif Batuman, college freshman Selin explains her reasoning for becoming a linguistics major: “The highest law, higher than Holy Scripture, was ‘the intuition of a native speaker,’ a law you couldn’t find in any grammar book or program into any computer.” Aiming to better understand human communication, Selin studies the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that the way we perceive the world is determined by the structure of our native language. Since reading “The Idiot,” I’ve become totally bewildered by the formation of languages, the discrepancies within translation and verb tense and the innate human quality to talk, which brought me to the first meeting of Vassar’s brand-new Linguistics Club.

Vassar does not have a linguistics department, which is largely what pushed president Michael Pincus ’24 to start the club.

Pincus explained, “There’s not that linguistics major or linguistics correlate that a lot of people want. And this [Linguistics

"[Linguistics Club] kind of exists as a space for people to talk about linguistics and a space for people to talk about the stuff that they're passionate about..."

Club] kind of exists as a space for people to talk about linguistics and a space for people to talk about the stuff that they’re passionate about that maybe they don’t have that many opportunities to in classes.”

Pincus was sitting in front of a cheerful projector slideshow when I walked into Rocky 310. Scattered on the table in front of him were stickers with the Linguistics Club logo on them: “VC,” for Vassar College, written in the international phonetic alphabet. The room was crowded for an interest meeting, with high energy in the air as students around me babbled about what had brought them there. Pincus introduced himself and the other board members: Vice President Robert Downes ’22, Secretary Gioia Marchiano ’24, and Treasurer Francesca Lucchetti ’22.

The meeting began with an informative presentation outlining what the Linguistics Club has to offer and hopes to accomplish. Pincus intends to focus on multiple branches of linguistics. He began: “Historical linguistics is something that’s really interesting because you get to see language evolve over time. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those YouTube videos where it’s like, how far back can you go until English becomes unintelligible––it’s like that situation.” Historical linguistics is often concerned with etymology as well as the anthropologic estimations of the beginning of human language. Of comparative linguistics, Pincus said, “Comparative linguistics is also cool, you get to compare different languages. Spanish is related to Italian and French, German is related to Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian…if you want to become a person who learns a lot of languages, that stuff is interesting.” Drawing parallels between different languages makes the study of foreign languages much more accessible.

Michael Pincus '24 and Gioia Marchiano '24. Courtesy of Michael Pincus 24.

Linguistics is special because it is so multifaceted. As Downes put it: “Questions about linguistics come from this very interdisciplinary background, with English, anthropology and the social sciences. So the question of linguistics itself is kind of inescapable.” In terms of STEM fields, linguistics is on the up-and-coming, Lucchetti explained. “I joined this club because I want to expose people to computational linguistics. It’s like an emerging science right now, the science of natural language processing…[There are] tons of applications…that are now able to understand natural languages. I’m interested in the ethical side of it.” She mentioned leading the club in some game applications to demonstrate how AI exponentially generates cohesive sentences.

Once the slideshow concluded, Pincus invited us all to join a group Kahoot to test our knowledge on different aspects of

linguistics. As I have very limited experience within linguistics, I believe I came in 18th place, but the embarrassment was worth the knowledge I learned. Did you know that Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse place on the planet, with almost 850 different languages spoken throughout the island? Or the word sprachbund, which describes a geographical area of linguistic intersection?

The overall takeaway after attending the first Linguistics Club meeting was that this would be a space bubbling with intellectual passion and curiosity. Pincus told me: “One of the most important things, when you’re running a club, is to have the sort of environment where people are comfortable coming here…I really want to shape the club in that image.” I am eager to watch the Linguistics Club blossom over this next semester, and I encourage anyone interested in language to check it out.

Courtesy of Michael Pincus.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

HUMOR

February 10, 2022

Page 9

Breaking News

From the desk of Madi Donat, Humor Editor

Students often forget they are adults and must do adult activities such as apologizing and getting groceries, study finds The Nature Report: Emma and other former greenhouse pets Nicholas Tillinghast Interrogator

I

’ve been curious for a good while about the animals that were at the greenhouse before the beloved OB, the cockatiel and the recently passed lovebird Mel. This week on the Nature Report, I interviewed my boss, Jason Scism, about the past 18 years of pet birds, snakes, fish, turtles and everything in between.

There have been many birds kept at the greenhouse over the years—from cockatiels to zebra finches. At one point, the greenhouse even had a beautiful green parrot, lovingly named Emma. Jason recounted their history.

“Emma ended up being very vile. She wanted nothing to do with anybody.” Despite this aversion, George, one of the grounds staff members and certified parrot fan, eventually became quite close with Emma. “George, after very many months of getting torn apart—his hand, his nose—he finally developed a relationship with her. He would come up here and spend breaks with her and spend lunch with her…eventually she would kind of let him pet her and he would put his hand in and she would come out and sit on him for a while,” Jason said. Emma would become very close to someone else as well. Jason added,“I was taking [the birds] home over winter break because we were gone for two weeks… at that point I was still living with my mother and she ended up developing a relationship with the bird. She still has her.” She has stayed with Jason’s mother for the last eight years. Despite Emma having family ties, there’s still quite a bit of friction there. “Whenever she wants to be petted, she'll make her little weird sounds and my mother will pet her and her eyes dilate,” Jason said. “She's the devil, basically it's just pure evil… she'll sit there and scream at me if I don't come over to say hi to her whenever I go there.”

Birds aside, Jason has a 55 gallon fish tank

in his office with many brightly colored fish.

Before it had fish in it though, there was a snake in the tank that was found on a chilly November day. “It was a ball python... obviously pythons aren't native to New York so it was actually over at Dutchess Community College… there’s a lake with a waterfall and we just happened to go there one day and there was a ball python, all balled, coiled up on the ground.” Jason brought the snake to a few reptile rehabilitators without any luck and ended up keeping the snake for the greenhouse. One day, after being taken out of the tank, someone didn’t put the lid back on right, and the snake found a way to slither out. “We could not find the thing anywhere… four or five months later we started to smell something and I thought it was just a mouse. I couldn't really locate where the smell was coming from and then one day I finally found it and it ended up being the snake that got stuck in some sort of a little enclosure downstairs in the basement.”

After the snake parted ways and died in the basement, a turtle arrived, affectionately named Fluffy. How a turtle ended at the greenhouse though is a bit of an ordeal. The

story goes that one of Jason’s pet snakes at his home somehow got out of the enclosure and ate Jason’s pet ferret. “He was my baby. I loved that thing to pieces.” Jason brought all three of his snakes back to the pet store shortly thereafter, and traded them in for a Russian Tortoise (which is apparently something you could do). Fluffy was an excellent turtle. “We used to go around campus and get dandelion greens for him and give him a bath and all kinds of stuff. He was a pretty cool guy.” Fluffy stayed at the greenhouse for a few years before finding his way into a home. He passed away only a few years ago, having lived a simple, unproblematic life. Much respect to Fluffy.

Lastly, I learned that the greenhouse has a bird cemetery. Pepper, Sam, Bo and most recently Mel are buried in the ground between the greenhouse and the music hall. If you’ve been meaning to pay your respects to Mel, this would be the place to do it. My assumption is Emma will not be buried there (if she ever dies).

I didn’t have a lot of pets in my house growing up. We had a pair of cats for a few years when I was younger and a few fish (mine were all named Nemo). Pet birds to me are still for-

eign territory, but I think I'm coming around to pet birds. Although they are very weird, loud and shifty creatures, they can still make for solid pets. I also learned that turtles are excellent pets and are very underrated. Finally, I learned that you gotta keep your eyes glued on pet snakes or else they might eat a ferret or possibly die in your basement. Maybe just avoid snakes altogether.

Nicholas Tillinghast/The Miscellany News.

STICK FIGURES OF VASSAR

BY MORGAN MILLER

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

HOROSCOPES

HUMOR

Page 10

February 10, 2022

Madi Donat

Astral Projector

If you feel angrier than usual this week, use my favorite simple trick: Always be tired. If you ARIES are about to fall asleep at all times, there is no March 21 | way that your body will bother expending enApril 19 ergy on wishing you could kick someone in the shins. Get all cozy in bed and have angry dreams instead. Food for thought.

TAURUS

April 20 | May 20

GEMINI

May 21 | June 20

Wordle is cool and all, but I want to feel like an old man and play old man games. We should start playing stuff like Gin Rummy at parties, or Blackjack. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re good; it’s just the spirit that counts. We meet on Monday evenings in whatever room looks like it smells like smoke and scotch the most. See you then.

A fun fact about me is that I have the loudest laugh of anyone I know. And that’s okay, because being different is okay. I accept and love myself.

The lesson here is that if you’re insecure about something, don’t be. But if that’s hard, just tell yourself that at least you don’t have the loudest laugh of anyone you know.

Sometimes we feel judged for doing things that are mainstream, and that’s silly. Maybe I do CANCER like watching shows that are popular, probably June 21 | because they’re popular for a reason. This week, July 22 we should go on Netflix’s most watched list and pick something from there. And if it’s bad, then you’ve still learned something about yourself.

Everything in our life is a construction!! Buildings are fake. Money is fake. We made fake sun LEO by smashing metals together and now we’re July 23 | August 22 cursed with the Res. Life hospital lights. But we can find peace amidst this terror, because now we know about it. If this is the Matrix, it’s not too bad because there’s dogs.

If you feel like you’re flailing around in a pool VIRGO except the pool is filled with your feelings instead August 23 | of water, don’t worry. It happens to the best of us, September and by the best of us I mean me. First option is 22 to sink, but that’s no fun. Try calling for a lifeguard, though I’m not sure if there is one in this hypothetical metaphor. Good luck.

LIBRA

September 23 | October 22

SCORPIO

October 23 | November 21

SAGITTARIUS

November 22 | December 21

CAPRICORN

December 22 | January 19

AQUARIUS

January 20 | February 18

PISCES

February 19 | March 20

Poetry Corner Anna Kozloski

Dickle There once was a young man named Dickle Who betrothed himself to a pickle.

A couple days later He eloped with a ’tater; That dastardly man was quite fickle

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Sometimes life knocks us down. Sometimes we tell a joke and it doesn’t land. Sometimes hubris gets the better of us and we think the ice couldn’t possibly be that dangerous. But when you get knocked down, literally or figuratively, just figure out what you did wrong and do it differently next time. Or, idk, get better jokes.

Beginning to live by the mantra “It’s not that deep,” because it rarely is. Usually people don’t hate you, they’re just busy thinking about work or sex or the fact that we all really do live in a society. It’s probably a good idea to ask someone who you think is mad at you, “Hey, are you thinking about work or sex right now?” Normal and not awkward at all.

Technology can be wrong, and often is. For example, my phone thinks that I’m always writing in French except for why would I ever want to write in French. Life is too short to write in French. This week, purge your brain of unhelpful facts like verb conjugation or the existence of what is unarguably the most confusing language.

What’s in a name? A lot, usually. The bagpipes are called bagpipes because it’s a bag with pipes.

I’m called Madi because I’m suave and cool like Mary Magdalene. Investigate name histories this week and experience words anew. It’ll be an exciting bit of research to distract from the research you should actually be doing.

We should all get off the internet. I just saw a TikTok of a guy spray-painting a flower on a girl’s stomach and knew I was done for the day. Alternatives to seeing that awful video include: Literally anything. Take a walk. Make a grass whistle.

Lie on the floor and moan and groan in agony over the state of the world. Anything.

Have you been seeing premonitions lately?

I feel like these past few weeks have had much symbolism and other moments of the sort. Pay attention to everything, even if you think it’s boring. Take up journaling, or blogging or TikToking. Scrutinize every last detail. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

HUMOR

February 10, 2022

Why

does

everyone

think

Page 11

they

are

funny?

Carly D'Antonio Funny Friend

I

t's an age-old question that I find asking myself quite a bit recently. Why is it that everyone seems to think that they are comedians? I mean sure, everyone has their own sense of humor and loves to laugh. But why is it that most people I talk to bring up starting a podcast at least once in every conversation?

Yes, I understand that it is incredibly ironic considering that I am in fact a “humor” columnist critiquing people who think of themselves as funny. Yet, I must admit that I myself do not think I am that funny. Sure I get the occasional laugh with my friends and of course, I sparingly use our hangouts as my own little stand-up workshop, but that is different.

Never in my life have I ever recommended that someone should have a career in comedy. Okay, maybe that is a little bit of a lie, but seriously let's take a look at what differentiates a funny comedian from a funny friend.

My mother, a former professional comedian who did not laugh at any of my jokes during my entire childhood to ensure that I develop a good sense of humor, did not hold back when I was thinking about pursuing the comedic arts. She informed me that not only is the world of comedy cutthroat, it also has

Valentine’s Alyssa Willeford Romance Expert

W

ell, it’s February, and you know what that means: it’s just two more months until “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” comes out in theaters! And, uh, it’s also nearing Valentine’s Day. Love is in the air!

You see them everywhere these days: happy couples, hand in hand, walking happily towards the Deece for a romantic meal of hot dogs and Gatorade. If that’s you, congratulations; if not, well, maybe I can help.

And maybe the Earth will crash directly into the Sun next week. I would hardly call myself a dating expert, after all. My dating experience consists of inviting villagers into my home in Animal Crossing, and none of them were even good-looking except for Kyle. But when I’m not busy seducing cartoon wolves, I’ve been acquiring what might be academically referred to as a “strong theoretical basis” in the field of romantic relationships—in other words, I read a lot of young adult fiction (YA) back in the day. It is from this font of knowledge that I will pull my pearls of wisdom. Without further ado, here are some Frequently Asked Romance Questions, or FARQs: How should I choose a love interest?

Your chosen boy (and it should always be a boy, usually the one adorning the book cover) should be brooding, handsome, and broodingly handsome. He should

"Nice guys are forgettable, but a real jerk is sure to reform once you’re battling the dystopian government together."

Courtesy of MaxPixel. the great potential to suck all the joy and fun from your soul until you never find anything funny again. Okay, I am probably exaggerating and she definitely did not say that to me, but at the time I was 15 so she could have told me anything and that is what I would get from it. And now at the ripe old age of 20, about 90 percent of the jokes I make do not

Day

tips

land and I just act like they never happened.

Not that this is not to say that no one is funny. We all know that is not true. Even though college is a place to “study,” I find myself laughing a majority of the day. However, I would never in my life recommend that someone does stand up and/or improv unless they are ready to feel embarrassed. I mean,

for

who am I to say anyway? Not only have I never done either of those things, but I myself also am not the best critique considering that I laugh at literally anything.

I guess at the end of the day what I am trying to say is… find the joy in life and laugh whenever you can. But, please, and I beg you, do not start a podcast.

young

adults

be absurdly young, say fifteen­—an age at which most boys make Greg Heffley look like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson—and yet still be muscular, but not intimidatingly muscular. Most importantly, he should treat you like hot garbage. Nice guys are forgettable, but a real jerk is sure to reform once you’re battling the dystopian government together. You’ll fix him, honey!

What if we fight?

Fighting is a healthy part of any relationship, as can be seen on “Dr. Phil.”

Frankly, I wouldn’t worry about this too much—the strain of your shared struggle is just getting to your partner, and possibly also the enormous amount of sexual tension he must navigate at all times. It’s hard on a boy!

What if he dramatically betrays me?

This is what the kids call a “red flag.”

Other signs that your beautiful boy might not be The One include: being caught with another girl who is hotter than you but also extremely catty; having a temper tantrum and going off to brood by himself, returning only when he realizes he has no idea what to do with his life when he isn’t directly relevant to the plot; and turning out to be gay, unless you are also gay, as well as a man. Still, don’t give up right away! Your emotionally traumatizing inability to move on is very entertaining for readers.

Once you’ve found your man, congratulations! Have fun watching, aroused, while he writhes shirtlessly in the locker room or something. You can even take him on a date for Valentine’s Day, if you really want to, but your combined brooding energy should set the mood whether the two of you go out or not. As for me, well, do you really need to ask? I’ll be sitting here, in my dorm room, writing Misc columns…but romantically. Happy V-Day!

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Courtesy of MaxPixel.

Courtesy of Family Friend Poems.

Page 12

HUMOR

February 10, 2022

Vassar Bitch Chronicles

by Emily Lesorogol

Inquiry from an aspiring witch Dear Ilana, My friend and I discovered that we are in fact witches. We’ve been experimenting with witchcraft for sometime but mainly only crystals and energy work. Recently I’ve had some very frightening psychic and paranormal encounters in my dorm. I’m honestly kind of scared of how strong my powers feel (I sense a very dark energy coming out of Lathrop).

I’ve liked this guy since freshman year, but the issue is, he’s dating another girl. I’m concocting a love potion to cast on him, but I’m worried that it could totally backfire on me. I’m pretty confident in my abilities, and my friend is in support of my decision. Is it wrong to use my witch powers to get what I want? Otherwise, what’s the point of my clairvoyance?

-A Dear A, Be careful with your newfound witch powers. Consider every consequence of your hex, and remember that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. While I am not versed in the supernatural, it’s important to take into consideration each person's position in the situation. Have you considered casting a love spell on both your crush and his girlfriend? This could lead to a much more interesting outcome.

All is fair in love and war.

Warmest Regards, Ilana Tchaikovsky Have a problem? Need to settle a debate? Send inquiries to ilanatchaikovsky@gmail.com

Courtesy of Witchcraft District Bazaar.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Courtesy of Jose Calles '24.

February 10, 2022

I

can’t

hear

OPINIONS

you,

sorry…

Page 13

or

Ben Fikhman

A

fter years of using Zoom, I finally realized something. That “something” was about a sentence I regularly repeated, yet I never got around to comprehending the poor logic within its construction. I met with a colleague over Zoom recently. When she tried speaking to me and I couldn’t hear anything, I quickly noticed that same gray microphone with a red slash that confirmed the reason for her virtual silence. And so, unsurprisingly, I said, “Sorry, I can’t hear you. I think you’re on mute.”

“Sorry, can you speak up?”

“Sorry, you might be on mute.”

“Speak up? Sorry.”

“Excuse me, sorry, I can’t hear you.”

“Pardon, what was that?”

Diversity Ben Goth

Assistant Opinions Editor

F

ollowing Associate Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement, U.S. President Joe Biden can fulfill one of his campaign promises: nominating the first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since the announcement, various Republican commentators and lawmakers heavily criticized the President’s decision, with constitutional scholar Jonathon Turley calling it unprecedented and unnecessary. Among lawmakers making such claims is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, referring to Biden’s plan as “offensive” and “an insult to Black women.” Despite the wave of criticisms, U.S. presidents have historically considered the

I?

and professionals. Moreover, frequent apologies in situations where doing so isn’t socially necessary or logical, even within the realm of courtesy, can give the other person the impression that the apologizer fears retribution or judgment, according to NBC. While being self-aware and courteous is important, one must also be self-confident.

To be clear, I am not trying to eviscerate apologies from the nonstop currents of our shared linguistic consciousness. But to put logic at the forefront, the act of an apology may need some specific and contextual revision. Apologizing when asking somebody to repeat themselves even while actively listening feels ingrained in our vernacular, but it can be changed. A “sorry” can actually be replaced with a “thank you,” including when informing somebody that they were not heard due to being too quiet.

Contributing Columnist

At last, it dawned on me. Why do we apologize when we can’t hear somebody?

Unless we’re focusing on something else and need the other person to repeat themselves for that reason, why do we apologize for something that isn't our fault? It is the other person’s responsibility to speak up and unmute. They could also be soft-spoken without our knowledge.

I believe that as a society, we can improve the situation for both sides of the exchange: the speaker and the listener. The speaker may not always talk at a volume loud enough for a variety of reasons, whether it be exhaustion, soft-spokenness or fatigue.

We should reassure them that it’s not a nuisance or an inconvenience worth feeling bad about and that it is a common human occurrence. At the same time, however,

am

Courtesy of Karen Mogami '25. listeners should avoid apologetic language if they are truly unable to hear what the speaker is saying. After all, suggesting a repetition of the same statement if it’s said too quietly or under virtual silencew would actually help them get their message across.

It is not an inconvenience to be sorry about.

So how can we avoid apologetic speech?

Suppose you are on a video call where you can only hear muffled noise or indiscernible speech from the person you are talking to. Try saying, “Could you speak up?” Or “Do you mind speaking a bit louder?” Or “I can’t hear you.” Or “I didn’t catch that; can you talk a bit louder?” An apology does not exist anywhere in these responses; rather, they are clear and frank ways of communicating the desire to have the other person

on

speak up without meaning any disrespect or poor judgment.

Frequently apologizing in this context as well as during similar instances means suffering the consequences of over apologizing, which means claiming fault for minor disruptions in communication that are often nobody’s actual fault. If we continually apologize for not being able to hear someone despite actively listening, then what is stopping us from apologizing when sneezing, requesting that somebody blocking the way move over or correcting someone's spelling error when reviewing their paper?

Saying “sorry,” “excuse me” or “pardon” can often numb future apologies that would be valid and place the apologizer in a weaker communicative position among both peers

SCOTUS

demographics of prospective justices for decades—whether it is based on race, religion or sex-—to ensure that the Supreme Court represents multifaceted ways of American life.

One such nomination was Sandra Day O’Connor, whom President Ronald Reagan selected in 1981. Reagan made a campaign promise similar to Biden’s: “It is time for a woman to sit among our highest jurists.” Although one can argue that Reagan’s pledge was different because his list included men like former Justice Antonin Scalia, Reagan was steadfast by promising to nominate a woman and executing said promise.

It can also be argued that President Biden will be selecting his nominee from a smaller

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

is

set of individuals compared to Reagan when he nominated O’Connor. However, this argument does not account for the scarcity of female lawyers when Reagan made his decision. Historically speaking, the prime age of Supreme Court nominees is between 45 and 60 years old; this means that Reagan needed to choose a woman who entered law school between 1943 and 1958. According to a study referenced in The New York Times, only 3.1 percent of law school students were women in the latter year, compared with almost 54 percent in 2020. Even for the few female lawyers of the typical age for Supreme Court nominations in 1981, systemic sexism excluded them from other credentials held by previous nominees like law firm partnerships. Thus, to fulfill his campaign promise, Reagan intentionally expanded the backgrounds of his nominees to find the best woman. In doing so, he discovered Justice O’Connor, a woman who practiced at notable law firms while campaigning for Republicans with her young children in strollers, eventually becoming the majority leader of the Arizona State Senate.

Reagan’s and Biden’s fulfilled promises are not unusual. Since the establishment of the Supreme Court, presidents knew that justices representing various parts of the country were essential. In a 1986 article he wrote for VQR, Supreme Court scholar David O’Brien noted that from the nomination of Justice John Rutledge in 1789 to Hugo Black in 1971, a Southerner was always on the bench, with the exception of the Reconstruction Era. The practice of considering the demographic backgrounds of prospective justices is not some form of a quota

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of The Miscellany News as a whole.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

“Could you say that again? Thank you.”

“Thank you, but do you mind speaking up a bit? I didn’t catch some of what you said.”

A “thank you” may not always feel right, though. If we totally miss out on what somebody said if, for example, they were on virtual “mute,” why not just use the same polite language that is recycled in basic interactions? It includes “could you” or “may you” or “do you mind.” These avoid diminishing the logical and socially equivalent position of the listener while also preventing the speaker from feeling bad about what may be wrongfully perceived as a social error of neglecting to click “unmute.”

Y’all hear me?

essential for political constituencies; it stems from bedrock principles of governance. If the Supreme Court issues vital decisions that affect all Americans, its members must represent the country for Americans to continue placing faith in the court.

As Georgetown University history professor Thomas Zimmer said on Twitter, “Biden’s public pledge represents an affirmation of multiracial pluralism. That’s why it matters. It’s an acknowledgment that the traditional dominance of white men was never the result of meritocratic structures, but of a discriminatory system that needs to be dismantled.” President Biden could indeed have made a less categorical statement about his selection process. But that is not Joe Biden. Once he promised to name a Black woman, he knew the exemplary group he would choose from. He was aware of the possibility of a vacancy during his presidency so he, in his typical candor, said it directly.

There are incredibly accomplished lawyers of all demographics. However, more individuals in the American legal system are working hard to dissolve systemic discrimination that has impacted the profession; more women and racial minorities are earning judicial clerkships and working in prestigious governmental positions. The Black women President Biden is considering are all highly respected and qualified. Of the approximately 25,000 Black female attorneys in the United States, whoever is selected by President Biden will undoubtedly benefit by focusing on that extraordinary group for the next justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Page 14

OPINIONS

February 10, 2022

Letter to the Editor: A primer on vaccine hesitation Dear Miscellany News, On Feb. 3, 2022, an article was published in the Opinions section of The Miscellany News regarding vaccine hesitancy. The article’s author attempted to explicate and legitimize the views of anti-vaccination advocates. The publishing of this article by the Miscellany News seemed to be an attempt to open up the column to a wide variety of perspectives. Unfortunately, the article was rife with misinformation and half-truths regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines.

This letter is an attempt to respond to the points made by the author of “A primer on ‘vaccine hesitation’: It’s not so simple” and to correct the misinformation expressed in the article.

Early in the article, there is an attempt to “address moral and ethical issues” to “help contextualize scientific objections to the COVID-19 vaccine.” The author’s first point surrounding scientific objections begins with the issue of masking.

They accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s eminent scientific experts, of purposefully misleading the American public regarding the matter of masking as a measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and that masks were being stockpiled for healthcare workers instead of the public. As with any novel disease, very little was known about SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in its early days. However, scientists did know about SARS-CoV-2’s cousin SARS. According to the NIH, SARS, while very similar to COVID-19, is much less transmissible than COVID-19 ended up being, partially because transmission of SARS mostly occurred when a person was symptomatic, not before, which is a novel trait of COVID-19. In the early days of the pandemic, Fauci and other doctors did not yet have the data to know this and subsequently shaped guidelines to fit what they already knew about a genetically similar virus. Healthcare workers were in closer contact with those symptomatic with COVID-19, and were at a higher risk of contracting the virus, which is why face masks were needed for them. As our scientific understanding of COVID-19 changed, so too did public health guidelines.

Though it may have seemed like a deception, this fact is a basic tenet of the scientific method and not an elaborate scheme to trick citizens; suggesting otherwise erodes trust in public health experts.

Next, the author uses the opioid crisis as an example of the shady dealings of pharmaceutical companies, which is a false equivalence. The opioid crisis was the work of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, not Pfizer. In regard to the 2009 issue with Pfizer promoting Bextra for off-label uses, it occurred over ten years ago, and has little to do with their production of COVID-19 vaccines, which have been repeatedly shown to be safe and effective.

Furthermore, the FDA is unable to release the full safety data of the Pfizer vaccine because of simple bureaucratic incompetence, not a desire to lie to consumers about side effects. The FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to release all of the safety data is in good faith, and it is important that the public knows about the safety of a widely used product. However, according to Snopes, the FDA’s office which works to review and redact records (many of which contain sensitive personal information) is very small. According to the Washington Post, this office had 3,000 requests of different kinds by the end of 2020, and yet they continue to release 500 pages of safety information regarding the Pfizer vaccine every month. The full safety data is about 392,000 pages. The slow release of the full safety information is not malicious in any way, but rather a testament to the slow nature of many government processes.

Finally, the author attempts to debunk the efficacy of the vaccines in their article.

In doing so, they spread misinformation of the most sinister kind. First is the claim that the Pfizer vaccine is only 1.3% effective based on the use of absolute risk reduction (ARR) instead of relative risk reduction (RRR), the latter of which shows the vaccines to be 95% effective in protecting against COVID-19. This piece of misinformation has made the rounds on social media, and has been subsequently debunked by Reuters. In summary, the RRR shows the reduction in infection risk amongst the test vaccine group compared to a control group that did not receive a vaccine. This is pertinent information when it comes to determining the effectiveness of a vaccine. The ARR, while important, will always be very small, because it is only considering the rate at which infection occurs. Although the chances of catching COVID-19 might be relatively small to begin with, those who are vaccinated have an even smaller chance of catching it and suffering from severe disease. For a disease that is causing hospitalizations and deaths at such a great rate, even a small absolute reduction is important in ensuring that our healthcare system is not overwhelmed and as many lives are saved as possible.

As for the citation attributing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) using ARR instead of RRR to determine vaccine efficacy, the link leads to a random textbook found on PubMed. None of the authors of the article work for the NIH; thus, the claim that the NIH “recommends” using ARR instead of RRR is completely unfounded. One of the authors of the textbook is even cited to be a children’s songwriter, which further casts doubt upon the legitimacy or credibility of this claim.

Then there is the matter of the whistleblower in the British Medical Journal who claimed that poor laboratory practices were employed in the Phase III clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccine. The whistleblower’s reports come from one company, Ventavia, which was one out of 153 companies where Phase III trials were conducted. The whistleblower’s reports were of poorly discarded sharps, potentially unblinded participants and other generally poor laboratory practices. While these are not ideal, they definitely do not show that the vaccines are ineffective, especially when this issue was reported in only one site out of 153 by an employee who was at the company for two weeks.

The use of Maddie de Garay as an example of the negative effects of the vaccine is completely unacceptable, tragic as her case is. Nowhere has it been found or proven that the COVID-19 vaccine caused her mysterious symptoms. Furthermore, the claims attributing her symptoms to the COVID-19 vaccine are paid for and pushed by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, an anti-vaccine group founded by anti-vaxxer Steve Kirsch. Using this example as a way to cast doubt upon the safety of the COVID-19 vaccinations is exploitative of the very serious health conditions this girl faces and legitimizes the arguments often used by anti-vaxxers.

As for this author’s claims that natural immunity is just as effective in protecting against COVID-19, and that this pandemic is not “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” the evidence clearly displays the opposite. The vaccines were never touted as a panacea to the pandemic; they were created to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and lower risk of infection and hospitalization. They do this brilliantly, and denying this fact is a lie by omission. According to the CDC, “During October-November [of 2021], unvaccinated persons had 13.9 and 53.2 times the risks for infection and COVID-19 associated death, respectively, compared with fully vaccinated persons who received booster doses. While it is certainly true that vaccinated people are getting infected with COVID-19, they are not the ones who are overwhelmingly dying from the disease. The author’s failure to address this simple fact is a mistruth, and allowing this misinformation to spread is extremely irresponsible. Furthermore, about one-third of people who catch COVID-19 have “no apparent natural immunity” according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. Claiming that natural immunity is better than vaccination in every way is equally as irresponsible, especially when we know the destruction that COVID-19 has caused, particularly amongst immunocompromised individuals.

Finally, the author’s use of the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is irresponsible. While there are definitely negative risks associated with COVID-19 vaccines, the chances of these risks are miniscule compared to the risks of negative effects from the virus itself. Firstly, the report from Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare is over 10 years old, which is enough to question whether this report can still be applied to the current state of VAERS. Then there is the matter of the VAERS disclaimer. The VAERS website states, “VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable.” Believing this data to be completely accurate when it comes to determining negative effects of the COVID-19 vaccines is irresponsible and highly dangerous. While these negative effects must certainly be explored, blindly attributing them to COVID-19 vaccinations is completely unfounded. Additionally, the author’s use of the Cutter Incident is a complete false equivalence.

The Cutter Incident occurred because the poliovirus was not properly inactivated in a batch of vaccines. The American healthcare system learned from this incident, and vaccine practices have improved greatly since 1955. But even disregarding this simple fact, the technology of the polio vaccine and the COVID-19 vaccines is completely different. Most of the COVID-19 vaccines rely on mRNA technology, which makes it scientifically impossible for people to catch the disease from the vaccine. Comparing it to the polio vaccine, which used a weakened form of the virus, is fear-mongering and completely irrelevant to the question at hand.

Although the author states in the first paragraph that they are not supporting “anti-vaxxers,” the paragraphs that follow utilize the same arguments and misinformation spread by that very group. The author then concludes by claiming that the vaccines are a “miraculous accomplishment,” which they just spent the past 1,600 words trying their hardest to disprove. If they are truly ineffective, as stated earlier in the article, why is the author then doubling back and claiming that the vaccines are miraculous? The publishing of this article, with all of its flawed logic and misinformation, was a grave mistake, for it promotes misinformation on the platform. The vaccines have been proven again and again to be safe and effective, and to mislead the public into thinking otherwise is dangerous and irresponsible.

While I respect The Miscellany News’ efforts to broaden perspectives in the Opinions column, allowing misinformation to be published is unacceptable.

-Sufana Noorwez, ’24

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of The Miscellany News as a whole.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

February 10, 2022

SPORTS

Page 15

Could Brian Flores’ lawsuit actually bring about change?

Nick Villamil Guest Columnist

O

n Feb. 1st, the recently fired head coach of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, Brian Flores, sued the league, the Dolphins, the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos for discrimination against his Black identity.

Flores’ lawsuit alleges that he was treated within the Dolphins organization as someone who was difficult to work with after he refused to accept bribes from the Dolphins owner to lose as many games as possible during the 2019-20 season to improve the team’s draft position. The allegations against the Dolphins owner, Stephen Ross, also include an incident in which Ross pressured Flores to violate NFL tampering rules by recruiting a highly touted and desired quarterback.

The allegations against the Giants and Broncos are that both teams, New York in 2022 and Denver in 2019, interviewed Flores only so that they would be in compliance with the NFL’s “Rooney Rule”, which requires that teams interview minority candidates for their open positions. The most damning pieces of evidence that support the lawsuit’s allegations are text messages from New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick that revealed to Flores that the Giants had already decided who their next head coach would be before they had an interview scheduled with him. Flores was set to be interviewed on Jan. 27th, but by the start of that week, the Giants had already decided on who their head coach would be. The interview with Flores was a complete sham organized only to satisfy the Rooney Rule.

The major problem that is the lack of minority representation in the NFL can be seen

with a glance at the league wide coaching landscape. As the final open head coaching positions are filled, the 2022-2023 season is set to start with only two black head coaches.

In his pursuit of change, Flores has knowingly risked ever coaching in the NFL again.

Prior to the lawsuit, Flores was likely to be hired as a head coach by another organization, but his newly taken stance could subject him to the treatment that the NFL gives to those who challenge it. When Colin Kaepernick chose to use his platform as an NFL quarterback to protest racial inequality, he quickly found himself out of a job. Any argument that Kaepernick did not receive another contract to play quarterback in the NFL after beginning his protests strictly because of his play is laughable. The same goes for any reasoning that says that Flores was not hired in the most recent hiring cycle because of his abilities as a coach. Flores produced consecutive winning seasons in Miami for the first time since 2003; it is hard to find a head coach more proven than that available for hire.

But Flores accepts this reality and is willing to live with its consequences as he focuses on something bigger than winning football games. He may not go down in history as an accomplished and decorated coach, but he may go down as the one who started to turn the tide for minority coaches in the NFL and empowered a future generation of great minority coaches.

Such is the question that an analysis of his decision and stance should consider. Could Flores actually manage to incite change? Or will the NFL weather his allegations without having to reform its hiring processes? Will Flores’ potential martyrdom of his professional career be done in vain as far as the NFL actually changing is concerned?

I would argue that Flores should have optimism, albeit a cautious one, about the potential that the movement he is attempting to start has. The NFL has had a terrible year perception wise, even to their standards. One of the league’s most prominent head coaches, Jon Gruden, was outed as a racist and misogynist; the recently renamed Washington Commanders are under investigation for workplace misconduct and sexual harrrasment; and one of the league’s biggest stars, Aaron Rodgers, has taken a fierce stance as anti-vaccine and frankly anti-science.

With all of this considered, couldn’t reform of the Rooney Rule and the addition of new minority hiring initiatives possibly be in the works to avoid the Flores’ lawsuit becoming yet another stain on the NFL’s year? Flores is certainly not the first to reveal problems with the Rooney Rule and the NFL’s treatment of minorities, but maybe, even if it is only done to help restore an image of a league that has been dragged in the mud this year, this is the time the NFL chooses to do what is right.

It is not like Flores is asking for much. The NFL does not have to act in a manner that puts them on one side of an issue and risks isolating a demographic of viewers. All it has to do is ramp up its initiatives for its franchises to treat minorities fairly and view them as more than capable of being great football coaches.

But whatever the NFL decides to do in response to Flores’ lawsuit should not determine the value of his actions. Flores has taken a strong stance that has raised the conversation surrounding the treatment of minority coaches in the NFL to a level that it has never been at before.

Before Flores, the conversation surrounding minority representation in the NFL con-

sisted of other coaches lamenting that their minority counterparts were not being awarded the opportunities they deserved. Often, the dynamic became one of an empowered white coach vouching for their minority colleagues. An example of this is Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid unsuccessfully vouching for his offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy, who has been an integral part of multiple Super Bowl appearances, to be hired as a head coach. However, the conversation was superficial and did not result in any type of change. The lack of minority coaches was ultimately attributed to something that did not have anything more than football decisions behind it. Franchises were supposedly giving all candidates an equal opportunity and all that mattered was who could coach football best. Flores has given evidence that supports the suspicions that there might have been more to it than just football strategy.

Because of Flores, the NFL can no longer deny that it has a minority representation problem. The NFL can either deal with the problem on the front end and make Flores’ stance a fruitful one in its early stages. Or it can deny the allegations and push off change, allowing the bad treatment that Flores experienced continue to be how minority coaches are treated. The second option will only lead to more allegations and lawsuits like Flores’ which only further force the NFL’s hand towards change.

Either way, it is clear that Brian Flores’ stance and sacrifices can be already deemed impactful and significant. By having the bravery to speak out, Flores has moved the issue of changing how the NFL treats minorities forward to a point that only a coach with the first-hand experiences that he has possibly could.

The Winter Olympics have a troubling backdrop this year Doug Cobb

Sports Editor

I

t is once again time for the Winter Olympics. Although generally less popular than their summer counterpart, the Winter Olympics are still a huge spectacle, showcasing a wide variety of interesting sports, incredible athletes and intriguing storylines. The buzz and excitement surrounding the Olympics is heightened by their infrequency, but thus far, that buzz and excitement has been lacking, evidenced by the record-low ratings for the opening ceremonies. Reasons for this include Olympic fatigue with the summer Games having ended just this past August, audiences generally moving away from television and towards streaming/other types of coverage and the COVID restrictions that leave the Games with a very limited fan presence (which sucks a significant chunk of energy out of the Games). While these are all good explanations for the low ratings, there is one other reason that I think is far more important: China. Just 14 years after hosting the Summer Olympics, Beijing, China is now hosting the Winter Olympics. On the surface this may not seem like a big deal, since the Olympics are sometimes seen as an event that transcends global politics and unites the people of the world in good, old-fashioned, honest competition. However, the reality is (and always has been), that it is impossible to truly separate politics from sport. The Olympics especially have been used as a political tool or propaganda machine for some nations.

You could argue that the Olympics were one of the significant battlefields of the Cold War, featuring boycotts by both the Americans and Soviets at separate Games, and the legendary showdowns between the US and USSR in ice

hockey and basketball that left a huge cultural impact.

Coming back to 2022, China is embroiled in controversy and looking to clean up its image around the world. Obviously, the last few years have been spent dealing with a devastating pandemic that originated within China’s borders, and they were the target of much criticism from other countries for how they handled the situation, namely withholding information from the international community and not allowing World Health Organization inspectors into the country to study the origins of the virus. More recently, China has been imposing draconian restrictions to try and prevent the spread of COVID, including long quarantines, strict rules about moving between cities, locking down cities, forcibly removing citizens from their home to put them in quarantine, extreme surveillance and essentially keeping the entire country shut down. This strategy has worked quite effectively at containing the virus––according to China’s own data at least––but these measures are seen by some as too extreme and not worth the reduction in cases that they contribute to, especially by the Olympic athletes being forced to follow them. Polish speedskater Natalia Maliszewska said “I’ve been living in fear for over a week” in reference to the lack of clarity provided by Chinese officials when she was taken from her hotel room at 3am due to concern that she was COVID positive. The coach of Finland’s men’s ice hockey team went as far as to say that China was not respecting the human rights of his athlete Marko Anttila because he was “not getting good food” and was being put under tremendous amounts of mental stress.

Despite all that, COVID is not the biggest

storyline surrounding the Beijing Games. Not even close. That title goes to China’s ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people, a minority group of about 12 million people that are predominantly Muslim and live in the Xinjiang region in northwestern China. Human rights groups believe that China has detained over a million Uyghur people and sent them either to prisons or concentration camps (referred to in China as “re-education camps”). The identification of concentration camps is backed up by satellite images of the compounds and stories from people who managed to escape the facilities about the horrors they faced within. Not only has China sent over a million Uyghur people to concentration camps, but they have reportedly been conducting mass sterilization of Uyghur women, torturing and sexually abusing detainees at the camps and forcing detainees to do harsh labor, including picking cotton. China denies any allegations of human rights abuses, but the evidence is crystal clear to the outside world, with multiple nations, including the US and the UK, formally accusing China of genocide. Additionally, China has banned UN human rights officials from entering the region. Numerous countries, including the US, are staging a “diplomatic boycott” of the Games, meaning that although they are still sending their athletes to compete, they will not be sending any government officials, representatives or diplomats to the Games.

Many believe that President Xi Jinping is attempting to use the Olympics as a distraction from the atrocities being committed by his government and to repair China’s image around the world. Nothing is more evident of this than the stunt pulled by the Chinese government during the opening ceremonies

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Sandro Luis Lorenzo/The Miscellany News. of the Games. China used cross country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang as one of the cauldron lighters (the state run media reports that she has Uyghur heritage). This is blatant tokenism. The Chinese government used this young woman as a pawn to proclaim to the world that there is “nothing to see here” and that all is well in China. They may as well have said, “Everyone is safe here, there is no war in Ba Sing Se.” In spite of all this, China’s propaganda attempts with these Games may have backfired. Because of the Games, many people who otherwise wouldn’t be discussing China’s atrocities now are discussing them. Recently hashtags like #GenocideGames have been trending on Twitter and many activist groups are taking the opportunity to call for a boycott and attempt to educate people on what exactly is happening within the borders of the country hosting these Games. We can only hope that these Olympics will bring awareness about China’s genocide to people who would have otherwise never paid attention to it. The Chinese government’s genocide of the Uyghur people must not be ignored and they must be condemned, no matter what kind of sparkly propaganda they fly at us during these Games.

SPORTS

February 10, 2022

Page 16

Vassar Brewers Sports Roundup: Feb. 10 Squash

Women's Fencing

Feb. 5-6

Feb. 5

Liberty League Championships

NFC Multimeet #3

Vassar squash concluded conference play this past weekend, with the men’s side going 1-3 and the women’s side 1-2. For the men’s squad, the opening round match against Hobart showcased a tough loss for the Brewers, as the squad fell 0-9. The only victory of the weekend came versus Bard in the second match of the day, winning 8-1. Victories from senior captain Reese Collins ’22 (Disclaimer: Collins is the Crossword Writer of The Miscellany News), Liam Condon ’22 and Jarid Haslinger ’25 at positions two through four highlighted the win for the squad. Another heavy loss came during the Rochester match on Saturday, as the squad again fell 0-9. The women’s squad split the first day of action 1-1, also earning a victory versus Bard, but falling to William Smith. Against William Smith, the team shouldered a 0-9 concession, but rebounded for a sweep against Bard. Emma Adams ’25, Anna Lee ’24, Nicole Pihlstrom ’22 piloted the attack at the one through three spots as they dispatched their opponents with ease. Unfortunately, Sunday saw both teams close play with losses to Saint Lawrence University. The women’s team next plays Smith College and Mount Holyoke College on Feb. 19, while the men’s side now looks forward to College Squash Association (CSA) Team Nationals which take place from Feb. 18-20.

Women’s fencing capped their third weekend of Northeast Fencing Conference (NFC) action with a 4-2 record, notching wins over the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Sacred Heart, University of New Hampshire and Boston University, but lost to Tufts and Wellesley.

In the first round against Tufts, the team went 4-5 in foil, 0-9 in saber, and 3-6 at epee. Despite the tough loss, the Brewers rebounded in the second and third rounds, recording 22-5 victories over UMass and Sacred Heart. The Brewers kept their momentum into the fourth round as they dominated New Hampshire 26-1, dropping only one bout in foil. Boston University proved to be a tougher opponent, but Vassar still came out on top with a 17-10 win, with foil and saber triumphant. The squad proved unable to sustain their success against host Wellesley. Epee and foil both conceded 2-7, while foil fell 4-5. Despite the opening and concluding round losses, the 4-2 record elevated the squad to 18-13 on the year. Zoe Tolbert ’22 and Tori Lubin ’22 led the way for the Brewers, as Tolbert ended the day 17-1 in foil and Lubin went 153. Women’s fencing next faces Columbia and NYU at Columbia on Feb. 16 before hosting the Eastern Women’s Fencing Conference (EWFC) Championships.

Men's Fencing

Men's Volleyball

Feb. 5

Feb. 4-5

NFC Multimeet #3

Intl. VB HOF Morgan Classic

This past weekend, men’s fencing traveled to Wellesley, Massachusetts to compete in the third NFC multimeet of the season. After going 1-4 last time they had conference play, the squad bounced back to go 3-1. In their opening contest with a 22-5 win over UMass after going undefeated in foil, 7-2 in epee, and 6-3 in saber. Vassar’s only loss of the day came in the next round against Sacred Heart. The Brewers prevailed in saber and epee, but recorded a big loss in the foil. The Brewers easily handled New Hampshire in the third round, pulling off a 9-0 victory in epee and 8-1 victories in saber and foil. Vassar finished the day off with another easy win against Boston College, rolling over their opponent 23-4. A sweep from foil, and 7-2 victories from epee and saber concluded the widely successful day of competition for the fencing squad. Nishay Bhatnagar ’22 and Conor Travaglione ’23 were highlights as both went undefeated throughout the day. As the squad concludes their season, they will challenge Columbia and NYU before competing at the NEIFC Championships on Feb. 26.

Vassar went 1-1 this past weekend at the International Volleyball Hall of Fame Morgan Classic, falling to No. 1 Springfield on Friday, but overcoming No. 4 NYU on Saturday. The No. 3 ranked squad are now 4-1. The highly anticipated match with the top ranked Pride reached five sets before Springfield prevailed. After dropping the first set 15-25, the team rallied to take both the second and third sets 25-22. Despite capturing the lead, the Pride battled through the fourth and fifth sets to notch the win. The next day, Vassar bounced back from their earlier loss to sweep NYU. After easily clearing the Violets in the first set 25-15, Matt Usui ’22 and Adam Gulick ’23 led their squad to victory after two close sets. The second set saw the Brewers tie it up 22-22 after being down temporarily, but after allowing one NYU kill, they settled things down to end on a 3-0 run. NYU raced ahead in the third set to go up 7-0, but again, the team fired back to keep it close. After trading leads all set, the Brewers finally closed it out late to complete the sweep with a 26-24 win. Next up is MIT on Feb. 12.

The Miscellany Crossword “2000s Hits”

By Reese Collins

37. Band formed in Stockholm 40. Pride symbol 44. *"What kind of girl do you take me for?"

49. News agency competitor of AP 50. Plum leftover 51. Buy stuff, say 52. Stays alive in musical chairs 53. NY summer clock setting 54. *"¿Cómo se llama? (Sí), bonita (sí)" 58. Word after "long" or "many moons" 59. Singer DiFranco 60. Style of sunglasses 61. Band formed in Athens, GA 62. Director Spike 63. Entered 64. Multidisciplinary major 65. Acid 66. Healthy hues for foods

DOWN

ACROSS 1. Bucky Badger or Sparty 7. Concentration meas.

10. Pair in Buffalo?

13. Conductor Toscanini 14. ___ room 15. "Après ___, le déluge" 16. Made mad 17. 1998 Busta Rhymes album, or 'client' ender 18. "As needed," prescription abbr.

19. *"Gotta get that" 21. Spiny anteater creation, uniquely 22. Possesses 23. ____ good time (enjoys) 24. "Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-___" 25. Participated in a marathon 26. *"Most incredibly, it's ya girl, B" 30. Gave medical help to 32. Wonder Woman's enemy 33. Root beer brand 34. "Honey, I ____ Up the Kid" 1992 sequel

1. Seabiscuit's grandsire 2. Forest of intense WWI fighting 3. Floral parts 4. Street's edge 5. Double stuf cookie 6. ____ list 7. Give money ahead of time 8. House Speaker Nancy 9. "Atonement" author Ian 10. Largest type of penguin 11. Pardoned 12. People not celebrating Valentine's Day, or what 19-, 26-, 44-, & 54-across were in the aughts 16. Call off, as a mission 20. Unit of freq.

26. Letters for the "L" 27. Communist color 28. Annoying pop-ups on web pages 29. Domestic grass patch

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

31. Driver of "The Last Duel" 34. Frat guy 35. When repeated, a Hawaiian dish of pork and fish wrapped in taro leaves 36. Ice, in German 37. Seems 38. Jones with a diary (and a movie series) 39. Opposite of tops 41. Not not included 42. Choices 43. More sage 45. "______ return" (Douglas MacArthur’s prophecy) 46. Glistens 47. Duplicated 48. Brown truck company 52. Assert 55. Rapper Phife 56. Done 57. Who seven eight?

Answers to last week’s puzzle: "Crosswordle"

By Reese Collins