Misc.05.20.21

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The Miscellany News May 20, 2021

miscellanynews.org

President Bradley reflects VSU on year of pandemic

launches

Annabelle Wang

Lucy Brewtser News Editor

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have to start by asking the question probably on most students' minds right now— will Vassar be following the CDC and Cuomo in lifting the mask mandate for fully vaccinated people this week? PB: We are meeting as a senior team to make decisions about masking outdoors, for instance. One of the pieces to this that we want to really keep in mind, is how to continue our approach to equity where people who are vaccinated or unvaccinated are treated similarly. So, we're balancing that with this new freedom that if you're vaccinated by CDC, in New York State rules, as of tomorrow, you don't need a mask outside. So we're still thinking it over exactly what we'll decide there. How did your public health background inform your leadership during this pandemic? PB: I think being a public health professional and scholar really helped me. It allowed me to read scientific literature particularly

Inside this issue

early. It also gave me a network of other public health professionals and public health scholars that I could draw on. I have also worked in places before that were in the midst of an epidemic. I have not lived through a pandemic like COVID-19, obviously, but I have been in parts of the globe when we've had cholera outbreaks and whatnot. So, I kind of have confidence, we could get through it, because it was familiar to me. However I don't want to overrate that background, because really, nobody has seen COVID-19 before. I think all of us had to learn constantly. I just feel like I maybe had the vocabulary earlier that helped me and some experience. But, you know, along with every other college president I was learning too. Amanita: I'll add to that, though, one of the things that having President Bradley at the helm during this particular time that put us in a good place was that she knew some systems that people who are college presidents may not really have used in their lives. They might be great colSee Interview on page 3

Assistant News Editor, Editor-in-chief

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hen Amy Huang ’23 went to put on her shoes, she didn’t expect to find three baby mice inside one of them. “I went to put on my sneakers only for my left foot to hit something soft, squishy, and squeaking inside my shoe. Turns out a mouse had made a nest inside it and had babies,” she recalled. Huang, who lives on the fourth floor of Strong, has been dealing with a recurring mice problem for

Former

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Are you an underclassman in a relationship with a senior? Dr. HUMOR G discusses how to navigate having your lover leave campus.

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Do you ever wonder what life on campus is like SPORTS for former student athletes? Check out Dean Kopitsky's article!

n Monday, May 17, a coalition of Vassar students called #VCStrike announced a tuition strike for the Fall 2021 semester. The move comes on the heels of a year full of student activism within the Vassar community, with movements such as the Nobody Fails Vassar College campaign and the more recent Vassar Leftist Union’s $15 minimum wage petition. Inspired by past efforts of the Columbia-Barnard Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) and students at the University of Chicago, the Vassar tuition strike is intended to protest the College Administration and Board of Trustees’ inaction on popular student demands. The core organizing group, #VCStrike, is an unofficial student organization composed of 10 members from a range of different student organizations, class years and personal backgrounds. Plans for the tuition strike were sparked by the administration’s inaction in the face of a series of student demands and petitionthat took place over the past 14 months as a response to the

Volume 155 | Issue 12

tuition

exacerbation of inequities caused by the coronavirus pandemic. #VCStrike cited these initiatives in a tuition strike pledge circulated amongst Vassar community members. “At the start of the COVID-19

strike

pandemic in March, students immediately denounced the injustice of the 4% tuition hike, a change which was announced on the heels of the move to online learning and at the onset of See Strike on page 4

Olivia Watson/The Miscellany News.

Mice infestations plague campus dorms Sara Lawler, Olivia Watson

Do you like Bladee's music? Check out Massimo ARTS Tarridas's article where he discusses why he finds Bladee's music to be addicitng.

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News Editor

Vassar College’s student newspaper of record since 1866

Dean Kopitsky

tape, hoping that would solve the problem. Huang’s plight is not unique; according to Director of the Residential Operations Center (ROC) Anna Belle Gadsden-Jones, there have always been problems with mice in various dorms. However, she noted: “This year [the mice problem] has been more than I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been working here for 32 years.” She explained that this increase in mice is due to campus social-distancing measures which have forced students to eat and keep food in their rooms.

student-athletes

Managing Editor

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months. Despite setting up multiple traps, she has had no success in fixing the problem. Huang explained that at night she can hear mice scurrying around, which has started to interfere with her sleep: “Once I left a fully-wrapped muffin on top of my desk overnight and woke up to find the plastic wrapper bitten through and about a fifth of the muffin gone, which isn't as bad as the time my friend down the hall woke up to find a mouse in bed with her” she described. Huang eventually found a hole in the wall behind her bed and plugged it with duct

ong ago, in a sepia-toned time, some of America’s most exclusive academic institutions were also its most athletically rigorous. Over time though, leather-headed powerhouses such as the University of Chicago and Yale shifted to investing more in recruiting America’s intellectual elite than the “infernal nuisance.” The NCAA’s Division-I has since developed collegiate athletics into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Some of the largest stadiums in the Western Hemisphere can be found in college towns like Tuscaloosa, AL and Ann Arbor, MI. Competing in quaint contrast are Division-III athletics, what my high school cross country

coach used to say was “the last bastion of amateurism in sport.” Schools like Vassar are a final holdout of the “student-athlete”; where the mantra means equal parts “student” and “athlete.” And yet, the student-athlete balance isn’t always desirable or even feasible for some. Vassar athletes occasionally burn out, lose their passion for their sport or feel trapped by the insular reflexes of team life. I spoke to a few former athletes about what compelled them to end their athletic careers and what campus life is like as born-again NARPs (Non-Athletic Regular Persons). In the quiet weeks before classes start, fall athletes have an empty campus all to themselves. It’s the preseason and during this time teams build up the rhythm

tell

Students also pointed out that food is a major factor in attracting mice into dorm rooms. This year Karina Carmona ’23 had mice in her Main dorm room. She purchased electric mice traps which caught six mice. She felt frustrated that she had to manage the situation mostly on her own: “We ended up just taking matters into our own hands and spending a total of $80 to get rid of the mice because the exterminator told us the mice problem wouldn’t be resolved on the second floor because we live above the Registrar’s office, See Mice on page 5

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of inseparability: a morning meeting, lunch with the team in a near empty Deece, afternoon practice, more meetings, dinner and evening shenanigans. It was in the first of these palmy weeks that Matthias Howley ’21 and Vidal Gutierrez ’21 met. “Concussion testing. Like the first day we got onto campus,” Vidal recalled. “You were sitting in the back and you had long hair. I thought you were a girl for a second.” Just a week into preseason, other teammates were taking notice of Vidal and Matthias’s fondness for each other: “I guess we just bonded. I remember I knew we were good friends when someone made a joke, oh, Matthias and Vidal are like a married couple.” Matthias is an uber-extravert-

stories

ed senior hailing from Greenwich, CT, the affluent New York City suburb. He followed in the footsteps of his two sisters, both highly accomplished runners in their own right. Vidal is from a working class Latinx neighborhood in Los Angeles. He started running to supplement soccer, and although he was an exceptional runner (he ran the Los Angeles Marathon at 15), he felt out of place on the team at Vassar. “I always felt like there was something missing there for me. I never felt fully connected with everyone, and I never felt like anyone fully understood me,” Vidal remembered. In high school, his cross-country team was made up of entirely Mexican runners, and showing up to See Athletes on page 12


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