The Miscellany News miscellanynews.org
Vassar College’s student newspaper of record since 1866 Volume 155 | Issue 5
March 25, 2021
Jessica Matthews to be Commencement speaker Father Koi releases I new single Dean Kopitsky Senior Editor
n a matter of months, the class of 2021, a student body literally plagued by uncertainty, will set out for adulthood. One certainty, though, is that Poughkeepsie native and entrepreneur Jessica Matthews will deliver the 157th commencement address. Matthews is the founder and CEO of Uncharted Power, a technology firm based in Poughkeepsie, New York. With her company, Matthews is rewriting the definition of “renewable energy.” Her patented technology harnesses the kinetic energy produced by human-made movement. The implementation started out modest. Uncharted Power’s first product was an energy capturing soccer ball called the SOCCKET which produced enough electricity to power a lamp for a few hours. Her efforts were recognized by former President Barack Obama, who invited Matthews on a trip to Tanzania in 2013. “You can imagine this in villages all across the continent,” Obama said after kicking around the futuristic football. Matthews, the daughter of
Inside this issue
Lauren Showalter Guest Reporter
“D
Courtesy of Uncharted Power. immigrants, holds dual citizenship in the United States and her parents’ Nigeria. She grew up in the Town of Poughkeepsie and attended Our Lady of Lourdes High School, which neighbors the Vassar Farm. Her father owned several
News Editor
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so much—multiple higher education institutions, a train that got you directly from the city of Poughkeepsie to New York City…people who were both very much local and global in their perspective.” Matthews matricSee Matthews on page 3
Atlanta shooting impacts campus community Annabelle Wang
Did this years Grammys mark the start of a new, more inclusive ARTS future for the awards, or just more of the same? Guest Columnist Ilana Frost discusses.
businesses in the town and city of Poughkeepsie, but before college Matthews reasoned that she’d have to leave her home town. “It wasn't entirely clear to me why,” she said to me in a video call. “On paper,” reflected Matthews, “Poughkeepsie had
reamgirl” by Father Koi, also known as Kara Lu ’22, reached over 9,000 streams in 24 hours and has cumulatively reached nearly 60,000 at the time of writing this article. Originally from Queens, New York, Lu began writing songs around the age of 16. While she did not grow up in a particularly musical household, Lu spent the start of quarantine in 2020 traversing the steep learning curve of music production. Inspired by the Beatles and Mitski’s soft indie music, she released her first album, “Late Afternoon National Anthem,” in May 2020. The process of mixing and mastering her own album allowed Lu to see the album develop from incipient ideas to finished product. It provided her with a better understanding of the process to build upon in her See KOI on page 5
[CW: The article discusses racism and violence ] [Full Disclosure: The reporter for this article is a member of Vassar’s Asian American Studies Working group] n the wake of three shootings in Atlanta, GA, that killed eight people, six of them Asian women, and a national uptick in anti-Asian hate incidents, the Vassar
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Asian and Asian American Pacific Islander (AAAPI) community responded with hopes that conversations about and actions against Asian racism do not stop here. On Tuesday, March 16, a white gunman walked into three Atlanta-area spas and fatally shot eight people. Seven of the eight victims were women, six people were of Asian descent, two were white. The suspect has been charged with eight counts of murder and one
count of aggrevated assault. Authorities have identified those killed in the attacks as Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Yong Ae Yue, 63; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; and Paul Andre Michels, 54. Elcias R. Hernández-Ortiz, 30, was seriously injured. Over the past year, the United States has seen a nationwide uptick in anti-Asian racist incidents,
presumably inflamed by the xenophobic rhetoric that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic due to its origins in China. Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19, Asians and AAPI have been the target of derogatory language in both media reports and statements released by politicians. Former President Donald Trump often referred to COVID-19 during his presidency as the “Chinese virus,” which some See REACTS on page 4
Vassar's menu contains hint of racism Janet Song
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Dr. G is back, and this time he answers a question we all HUMOR have: What to do when you're in love with Hunor Editor Izzy Migani.
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Columnist Doug Cobb details the latest in a neverending series SPORTS of injustices perpetuated by the NCAA on its student-athletes.
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Features Editor
amaican Curry Rice, General Tso’s Chicken with Rice, Potato Vindaloo—these are some examples of Vassar Dining’s diverse menu options available for the students eating at Vassar, a predominantly white institution. The Gordon Commons staff aims to dismantle a typical white American-centric menu, highlighting different cultures’ cuisine across the globe. Yet the naming of foods such as Halal Chicken Bacon Pizza, Oriental Wild Rice and Oriental Chicken Dumplings reveal Vassar’s tendencies of cultural appropriation and a reflection of the institution’s attitude towards its BIPOC students. Before examining the issues of appropriation, it is important to examine the process of how foods at Vassar make their way onto the Vassar menu. Stephen Scardina,
Resident District Manager for Bon Appetit at Vassar College, explained that menu options do rely on student responses. “We rely on feedback from our students in the different types of cuisine that they would like to see offered in our operations,” he stated. After this, the Executive and Sous Chefs of Vassar’s kitchens begin research on the recipes. Scardina described this process as more of a science than an art, stating, “We engineer our menus so we can reach a broader spectrum of tastes and personal preferences ... Our Executive Chef will always start testing a dish with the authentic recipe for the first tasting. Based on feedback, he will then add his own twist to a menu item and also work with the culinary teams to do the same.” In other words, the food that arrives on Vassar student plates and meal See DINING on page 6
Juliette Pope/The Miscellany News.