The Miscellany News
miscellanynews.org
Vassar College’s student newspaper of record since 1866
September 19, 2024
Volume 162 | Issue 3
Off-campus incident results in police presence near TAs Maryam Bacchus, Nicolas Villamil Managing Editor, Senior Editor
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n the evening of Sept. 11, a traffic stop on Main Street in the city of Poughkeepsie spilled into Vassar’s campus when the car’s operator led police on a chase to Terrace Lane, according to a Sept. 17th memo from the New York State Police. According to the memo, Daquan Jahan Killian, 36, of Poughkeepsie, was driving a 2012 Toyota Highlander when New York State Police, in conjunction with Poughkeepsie and Dutchess County Police, initiated a traffic stop for violations of vehicle and traffic law. Upon arriving at Terrace Lane, Killian, as well as their passenger, an unnamed 16-year-old, fled on foot and were apprehended in the nearby area without incident, the memo read. Carrie Lewis ’26 was walking with a friend at around 6:40 p.m. near the Manchester Gate area when they paused to observe a family of deer. In a written correspondence, Lewis recalled, “Suddenly, the deer got very nervous and started to run away, causing us to move closer to the edge of the road, but not fully off it, and we were planning to start walking up toward the [Terrace Apartments (TAs)]. But then, we heard this really loud scraping noise coming from the Manchester Gate entrance, alerting us to a blue SUV that was barreling down the road right at us.” Lewis continued: “Immediately after this
occurred, another car passed us, a smaller gray one that also came speeding towards us, and followed the blue car that had gone up to the TAs.” Lewis and her friend safely avoided the vehicles, and upon hearing police sirens, returned to her dormitory. Police investigators later confirmed that the first car seen by Lewis was Killian’s Toyota, and that the second car was likely an undercover
Nicolas Villamil/The Miscellany News.
police car. The Miscellany News spoke with Anna Kozloski ’25 [Disclaimer: Kozloski is a columnist for The Misc] about her encounter with a suspect. “It was like around 6:40 and I was exiting out the lower entrance door of my TA,” Kozloski began. “I turned left onto the gravel path towards the TA bridge, I heard someone screaming at me behind me, and then I turned around and I took my headphones off, obviously, and then I realized it was a man with a gun who was screaming at me to get the f--- back inside,” she continued. Kozloski explained that she slowly retreated into her residence and alerted two of her housemates, Tianyu Xiong ’25 and Liam Hilton ’25. The person seen by Kozloski, however, is not confirmed to be a suspect. In a follow-up meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 17, Associate Dean of the College for Residential and Wellness Luis Inoa told Kozloski that the man she encountered was likely a plainclothes police officer, given the time at which she filed her report. In a written correspondence to The Misc, Kozloski wrote: “This was not at all clear to me at the time because he was not wearing a uniform and never announced to me that he was with the police.” The Misc also spoke with Xiong about his actions following Kozloski’s warning. “I remember basically saying, ‘Okay, so we should stay on the upper level of the house
and probably away from the windows.’” As they waited, Kozloski called Vassar’s Campus Response Center (CRC), and the respondent said the office had already been notified of the ongoing situation. Director of Campus Safety Arlene Sabo responded to a request for further information on the timeline of the events that unfolded. In an email correspondence, Sabo wrote, “Campus Safety was alerted to the police activity on campus at around 6:45 p.m. and immediately dispatched officers to the area. Calls from both the local police (Town of Poughkeepsie Police who were called to assist the New York State Police) and on campus witnesses came within seconds of each other.” Students were officially notified of police activity in the area via a phone call and email blast sent at 7:34 p.m. Describing the conclusion of the vehicular chase, Sabo wrote, “A specific fact that might be helpful for people to know is that the driver of the car was caught immediately and it wasn’t until a subsequent search of the car that a gun was found.” She continued, “The second individual police were searching for was located by police a distance from campus around 7:50 p.m. Once confirmation of this was certain, a second alert was sent notifying the campus and a summary was then emailed to the campus after that.” The alert was officially lifted via email and text at 8:06 p.m., and the follow See POLICE on page 3
Green New Deal policy architect delivers climate lecture Sydney Jones
Guest Columnist
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ast Thursday, Sept. 12, the folding seats of Rockefeller Hall 300 were filled to capacity by students and faculty members, including President Bradley, in eager anticipation of the evening’s speaker: nationally recognized climate policymaker and current senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, Rhiana Gunn-Wright. Her talk, “Why the Climate Movement Must be a Movement for Justice,” proved to be an assertive amalgamation of her years of experience addressing racial injustice alongside the effects of climate change. She focused on underserved communities across the U.S. and combating these issues through nationwide legislation. The event’s chief organizer, Professor Jeffrey Seidman of the Philosophy and Environmental Studies Departments, spoke first to the bustling audience. He outlined the breadth of Gunn-Wright’s accomplishments, including her work as a chief policy architect for the United States’ Green New Deal (GND). Seidman discussed GunnWright’s contributions and their impact, not only on national-level policies like the misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress in 2022, which included investments in areas such as clean energy and emissions reduction to fight climate change, but also at the state and lo-
Inside this issue
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NEWS
The first debate between Harris and Trump happened last week: What did Vassar students and professors think?
cal level. In New York, this influence can be found in New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Gunn-Wright took her place behind the podium and began with an acknowledgment of the “broad coalition” of people she collaborated with on the GND and the historical and international iterations that came before she led as chief architect. Gunn-Wright also acknowledged the political context in light of an election year, warning that the act of compromise, often fallen back on in her field, usually involves sacrifices that we as a nation cannot afford to make. These sacrifices, she continued, fuel systemic white supremacy and racism. In government, these harmful ideologies block policy makers’ ability to create laws that would help communities disproportionately impacted by a changing climate and lack of investment. With such complicated issues, she offered (and demonstrated in a following Q&A session with the audience) a relatively simple first step: conversation. Speak about injustices aloud as they appear, and do not take objectivity of those in power for granted. Growing up in Englewood, a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, GunnWright experienced first-hand impacts of environmental inequity. High levels of PM2.5, a particle released into the atmosphere by nearby fossil fuel combustion,
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made asthma common for kids in her community. Gunn-Wright developed the condition during childhood and continued experiencing ongoing health issues for the rest of her life. Englewood also suffered from major underinvestment in the wake of both the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, and white flight—the wide-scale emigration of white residents from the neighborhood. She described feeling a sense of “disposability,” no longer guaranteed her health and safety in the place where her mother grew up as a result of broken laws that prioritized business interests over the people in her community and chalked it up to the “greater good.”
Guest columnist Zahara Goldkin shares her experience FEATURES studying ecology in Panama.
“Having someone use you like that is no great honor,” said Gunn-Wright. Motivated by these childhood experiences and a feeling of disconnect she had when first learning about the climate crisis while in college, Gunn-Wright hoped to prove that dealing with climate change is not just a matter of far-off polar bears and coral reefs, and its solution can not simply be a reduction in emissions or changing energy sources. It is about making policy with the people who are most affected in mind, specifically African-American and other minority communities often overlooked by the government. See CLIMATE on page 6
Image courtesy of Sydney Jones ‘28.
14 SPORTS
NCAA DIII Track and Field national champion Haley Schoenegge discusses her rapid rise to athletic stardom.