The Miscellany News | Feb 11.

The Miscellany News Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com

February 11, 2010

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

Volume CXLIII | Issue 14

Class of 2012 to create 24-hour space in Library Aashim Usgaonkar

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flickr.com

The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne performs on stage. The band will perform at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center on April 17. The spring concert moved to the Civic Center to address concerns of space and to include the local community.

ViCE brings Flaming Lips Erik Lorenzsonn Arts Editor

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assar College Entertainment (ViCE) brought two big-time musical acts to campus last semester: the ambient melodies of Grizzly Bear and the poetic hiphop of Clipse. For their third major concert of the school year, ViCE will provide an evening of pop-rock with one of the most recognizable names in the industry: The Flaming Lips.

On Saturday, April 17 the Grammy-winning rockers will perform at the MidHudson Civic Center courtesy of ViCE. The band brings over two decades of experience, one of the most recognizable frontmen in indie-rock history (lead vocalist Wayne Coyne) and a penchant for elaborate live performances.

“I’m definitely a fan,” said ViCE Director Peter Denny ’10. “They have a very wide range of music that appeals to a lot of people.”

The Flaming Lips began recording psychedelic rock in 1986 with their debut album Hear It Is, but since then they have delved into pop, ambient and alternative rock. Their most recent and well-known work has been self-described as “space rock,” due to its lyrical and instrumental science-fiction undertones; this unique sound is particularly evident in their three highly celebrated albums Yoshimi See FLAMING LIPS on page 16

Guest Reporter

uring its fundraising event Sophomore Slumber Party, the Sophomore Class Gift Committee announced the gift: a 24-hour study space in Vassar’s Thompson Memorial Library.

The study space, to be made available in Fall 2010, will extend from the Library’s Chicago Hall entrance to the end of Library Classroom 160, including the Martha Rivers and E. Bronson Ingram Reading Room and the Reserve Room. During these extended hours, Vassar students will have access to a range of resources such as computers, printers and

lounge-style seating. “This is something a lot of students expressed a desire for when they responded to an e-mail sent out asking for possible gifts,” said Class of 2012 President Tanay Tatum, while explaining how the idea for the gift first emerged. “It’s a great idea, especially since a lot of the students work into the a.m., and we’re very happy that we can provide the funding for this project,” said Tatum.

Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs Rachel Kitzinger also shared Tatum’s enthusiasm for this “exciting” project, adding that, “Although I hope that students See LIBRARY on page 4

“The Library is at the center of intellectual life; a 24-hour study room will enhance the way the Library serves that function.”

Rachel Kitzinger Dean of Planning & Academic Affairs

New York Times’ Frank Rich talks ProHealth trip Peers cut no-loan policy news and theater to Haiti raises issues of travel S Molly Turpin Senior Editor

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Inside this issue

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FEATURES

Looking back at dating life at Vassar before coeducation

News Editor

tudent loans are a dreaded part of many college students’ education, and students may be seeing a lot more of them in the near future. In the wake of Williams College’s decision to cut back on its no-loan policy, many of Vassar’s peer institutions are considering similar alternatives to cope with their shrinking endowments.

On Jan. 31, Williams, which had a financial aid policy guaranteeing no loans for any student, announced that it would start replacing grants with loans in the financial aid packages of all students on financial aid with the exception of those whose family income falls in the lowest group, which is expected to be less than $40,000.

Dartmouth has followed suit, eliminating its no-loan policy for students whose parents earn $75,000 a year, according to a Dartmouth article, “Administration Announces 38 Layoffs, Reinstitution of Student Loans.”

Meanwhile, according to a Feb. 2 article from Inside Higher Ed entitled

“Pulling Back for ‘No Loans,’” Lafayette College maintained its no-loan policy for families earning under $50,000 a year, but raised the maximum loan requirement for families earning between $50,000 and $100,000 from $2,500 to $3,500 per year.

Many of Vassar’s other peer institutions also have no-loan policies, and, while they may not be replacing grants with loans, they are examining other ways of reducing financial aid spending. Some colleges might maintain their no-loan policies but raise the expected family contribution, meaning that they will give less aid in grants and expect families to pay more out of pocket, suggests the Inside Higher Ed article. Other colleges, such as Amherst College, require students receiving aid to earn a certain amount of money over the summer so that they can pay for a larger part of their education.

Dartmouth and Lafayette may only be the beginning for schools changing their financial aid policies. No one See NO-LOAN on page 5

“At present there is no plan whatsoever to cut financial aid funding. In fact, Vassar’s aid budget has increased substantially in recent years” — David Borus, Dean of Admissions

15 ARTS

FLLAC’s weekly Late Night honors three-year mark

Ruby Cramer Editor in Chief

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Kelly Stout

Features Editor

ew York Times Opinion Editorial Columnist Frank Rich, who gave Tuesday night’s Alex Krieger ’95 Memorial Lecture, may have left his post as chief drama critic for the Times in 1994, but he still has an eye for the spectacle in contemporary news media. In his lecture,

Rich aptly summarized the last two decades of news media through the lens of performance, truth and what he called the “mediathon,” or “a cult, an art form as indigenous to America as jazz or musical comedy.”

Rich began his analysis with the 1950s and 1960s, when “three networks and See RICH on page 3

Kelly Stout/The Miscellany News

he role of student travel in Vassar curriculum has been discussed at length since the beginning of the semester. Though the curricular importance of summer programs has been debated everywhere from the Committee on Curricular Policies to the Faculty Club, some student organizations have found ways to travel abroad for their own projects, creating their own opportunities for travel. This, however, raises questions about the College’s and the Vassar Student Association’s (VSA) structures for supporting non-academic international travel.

ProHealth’s trip to Haiti over Winter Break highlighted these issues. Four members of ProHealth went to Haiti in January to perform service work near Port-au-Prince, and they were in Haiti for the devastating earthquake on Jan. 12 (see “Vassar students witness Haiti,” 1.28.10.)

While international programs are not officially supported by the College, the size of a student-driven international project is nearly always too expensive for the VSA to support, leaving the ProHealth trip in limbo for funding.

Though ProHealth’s situation was unique, it See PROHEALTH on page 6

Matthew Brock

New York Times Columnist Frank Rich addresses Vassar community members at the annual Alex Krieger ’95 Memorial Lecture.

20 SPORTS

Squash places 2nd in Seven Sisters Tournament

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The Miscellany News

February 11, 2010

Editor in Chief Ruby Cramer Senior Editor Molly Turpin

Contributing Editors Caitlin Halasz Chloe McConnell Elizabeth Pacheco

Juliana Halpert/The Miscellany News

Photos of the Week: Performers at Holla for Haiti, a fundraiser sponsored by various campus organizations—including Hip Hop 101, the Vassar Haiti Project and the French Club—take the mic to show support for victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated parts of Haiti. Community members gathered in Ely Hall on Thursday, Feb. 4 from 8 to 10 p.m.

Staff Editorial | Following example of English Department, all chairs must inform students of changes to their major T

his Thursday, Feb. 11, at 7 p.m., the English Department is holding an open meeting on the future of their curriculum in Sanders Classroom’s Spitzer Auditorium. The purpose of the meeting is to inform English majors—and any other interested students— of the faculty and curriculum changes being made in the English Department for the 2010-2011 academic year. Due to the wishes of some English faculty members whose contracts were not renewed for next year, the Department will not release a complete list of the names of professors not returning to Vassar. Nonetheless, this meeting is an opportunity for the Department to communicate with those students who will be most affected by the changes. The Miscellany News believes that this meeting is an ideal example of the communication that needs to occur, in all of the College’s departments, between department faculty and those students—majors, correlates and others—who are directly invested in each department’s future.

The student response to the faculty cuts announced last December has been characterized by frustration over the lack of information available to students. While the administration has announced that 19 nontenure-track faculty members will not have their contracts renewed for the 2010-2011 academic year, information about which faculty members have been cut and how these cuts will affect Vassar’s curriculum has not been released—the administration has left the release of this information to the discretion of individual departments. The Miscellany News strongly supports this decision, as it allows professors who may be leaving the College to maintain an appropriate level of privacy, and it gives departments the opportunity to have a constructive, direct conversation about the future of their curricula with the students who are most affected by the changes. We urge all departments to have this conversation and inform their ma-

jors and correlates of the changes that will be made.

Some departments have already been having such discussions. The Religion Department, for example, released the names of the two affected adjunct Religion professors to majors soon after the Chair himself received news of the changes to his Department. In addition, the Religion Department plans to meet with majors in the coming weeks to discuss the curricular changes. The Environmental Studies Program will also be holding an open discussion on the program’s future next Wednesday, Feb. 17, and as stated before, at Thursday’s English Department meeting,

“Large and small, affected and unaffected, all departments need to openly discuss changes, or lack of changes, with students.”

Department Chair and Associate Professor of English Peter Antelyes will address why certain faculty reductions were necessary and how these reductions were implemented. Antelyes also told the Miscellany that “we will definitely be detailing which [course] offerings have been cut” (“College has no plans to release the names of cut faculty members,” 2.4.10). As a result of these meetings, students in the English and Religion Departments and the Environmental Studies Program will have more concrete information that can inform their discussions of curricular changes.

While we understand that students cannot be directly involved in important curricu-

lar decision-making processes, they should still be made aware of these decisions in a timely, appropriate and clear way. Other departments should fulfill these student needs by openly discussing changes with the students who are invested in their curricula, following the lead of the English and Religion Departments and the Environmental Studies Program. Large and small, affected and unaffected, all departments need to openly discuss changes, or lack of changes, with students. Students, in turn, must take advantage of these opportunities. If such opportunities do not yet exist, we urge students to ask department chairs and program directors to organize such meetings.

Large departments could follow the model of smaller multidisciplinary programs, which hold regular meetings with their majors.

While larger Departments could not regularly hold Department-wide meetings, they could take advantage of their Majors Committees for regular discussions, or, as the English Department is doing, hold one meeting at the beginning of each semester.

We realize that changes to Vassar’s curricula are still evolving, and that this past year has been a trial period in which all members of the community—students, professors and administrators—are grappling with how best to respond to these reductions. We at The Miscellany News believe that the English Department meeting this Thursday provides an apt option for English students to become informed in a setting that allows them to immediately have their questions answered.

We urge that other departments look to this model and recognize that they, not the administration, are now responsible for providing students with a clear picture of future of their education.

—The Staff Editorial reflects the opinion of at least two-thirds of the 20-member Editorial Board.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

News Matthew Brock Jillian Scharr Opinions Angela Aiuto Kelly Shortridge Features Kelly Stout Arts Carrie Hojnicki Erik Lorenzsonn Design Eric Estes Online Elizabeth Jordan Copy Katie Cornish Lila Teeters Photography Kathleen Mehocic Managing Eliza Hartley Assistant News Caitlin Clevenger Assistant Opinions Joshua Rosen Assistant Sports Mitchell Gilburne Andy Marmer Assistant Online Kara Voght Assistant Copy Katharine Austin Sarah Marco Assistant Photo Juliana Halpert Crossword Editor Jonathan Garfinkel Reporters Thea Ballard Matthew Bock Rachael Borné Esther Clowney Daniel Combs Mitchell Gilburne Wally Fisher Rose Hendricks David Lopez Christie Musket Danielle Nedivi Alexandra Sarrigorgiou Aashim Usgaonkar Columnists Martin Bergman Steve Keller Nate Silver Nik Trkulja Photographers Patricia Cruz Gabriel Kelly-Ramirez Jared Saunders LETTERS POLICY The Miscellany News is Vassar College’s weekly open forum for discussion of campus, local and national issues, and welcomes letters and opinions submissions from all readers.

Letters to the Editor should not exceed 450 words, and they usually respond to a particular item or debate from the previous week’s issue. Opinions articles are longer pieces, up to 800 words, and take the form of a longer column. No letter or opinions article may be printed anonymously. If you are interested in contributing, e-mail misc@vassar.edu.

The Editorial Board holds weekly meetings every Sunday at 9 p.m. in the Rose Parlor. All members of the Vassar community interested in joining the newspaper’s staff or in a critique of the current issue are welcome. The Miscellany News is not responsible for the views presented in the Opinions pages. The weekly staff editorial is the only article which reflects the opinion of the Editorial Board. The Miscellany News is published weekly by the students of Vassar College. The Miscellany News office is located in College Center Room 303, Vassar College.

February 11, 2010

NEWS

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VSA endorses resolution supporting summer study Caitlin Clevenger

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Assistant News Editor

n light of the College’s recent cancellation of its five summer study abroad programs, the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Council endorsed a resolution on Feb. 7 supporting the programs and urging administrators to develop alternatives for summer language study.

Endorsed unanimously by the Council, the resolution notes that immersion experiences are “the most effective avenue toward true fluency of a language” and recognizes that many Vassar students are unable to take advantage of opportunities outside of the United States during the academic year, given curricular requirements, commitments to campus organizations and athletic seasons. In addition, according to the resolution, “almost two-thirds of Vassar’s student body receives financial aid and many of these students are unable to fund summer travel experiences independently.”

In the past, such students had the opportunity to participate in Vassar’s summer programs, which were covered by financial aid proportionate to what the recipient received during the academic year. The five programs sent Vassar students and professors to Japan, China, Germany, Italy and Central America to study both the language and culture of the area. The programs, however, once profitable, have been operating on a growing deficit since the summer of 2005, when the Munster Germany program ran a $2,466 deficit. By 2009, all of the programs—save the one based in Sienna, Italy—spent more money than they earned, and the College lost a total of $149,950 on the programs.

The VSA Council has recognized the administration’s budgetary concerns, and the resolution is not directly critical of the decision to cut the programs. As VSA Vice President for Academics Stephanie DamonMoore ’11 wrote in an e-mailed statement, “With all due respect to the decision-mak-

ing process and serious consideration on the part of the senior officers who made the call to cancel the programs, we are charged with representing student interest and believe that the opportunities that the summer programs offered were a great asset for Vassar.” The resolution does not call for the summer programs to be restored as they were, but rather urges the administration to “develop cost-effective alternatives.”

One such alternative discussed in the Council meeting was the creation of more fellowships for summer language study.

Vassar currently offers one such fellowship, the Ann Cornelisen Fellowship for Language Study Abroad, to sophomores and juniors. Damon-Moore explained that she would support a VSA investigation into the creation of similar fellowships.

In response to the resolution, Dean of the College Christopher Roellke, in collaboration with Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs Rachel Kitzinger, wrote in an emailed statement that the “VSA resolution affirms the value of experiential learning— something that all of us at the College value.” “However… experiential learning is important to all areas of the curriculum and is not limited to language programs,” he continued.

Roellke and Kitzinger highlighted the continued availability of other Vassar-sponsored summer programs like the Undergraduate Research Summer Institute (URSI) and the Ford Scholars Program, as well as fellowships that provide for study abroad.

They also point out that similar language immersion programs—some with financial aid—are available at other institutions.

Nonetheless, Roellke and Kitzinger affirm that the College plans to further explore programs for experiential learning over the summer. “In short,” they wrote in their e-mail, “the VSA resolution is consistent with efforts we are already making to champion experiential learning and independent travel.”

Rich critiques ‘truthiness’ RICH continued from page 1 the local newspaper” were all the media available to American consumers. Rich cited ABC’s Roots and CNN’s War in the Gulf miniseries as dramatized news items that led to what he called “Baroque period mediathons” in the 1990s. Pointing to the examples of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, Rich was critical of the non-stop media frenzy that failed to communicate new information after the first few hours of coverage.

But “the moment when this [media] culture jumped the shark,” said Rich, was the news coverage of former President of the United States William Jefferson Clinton’s impeachment scandal. Rich was quick to note that the Clinton mediathon coincided with acquisition of news networks by entertainment corporations, such as Viacom and Time Warner. This became problematic because, according to Rich, values of entertainment don’t match up with those of news, which are “the very values of democracy.”

Enter the Bush administration. Rich’s attitude towards former President of the United States George W. Bush was a combination of horror and awe. He referred to the Bush media team’s manipulation of the Iraq War narrative as “brilliant,” but this was not necessarily meant as a compliment. While some critics viewed the lead up to the War as poorly planned and impulsive, Rich was careful to make clear that this was “not an improvised rush to war.” In fact, according to Rich, “it followed a script that was already written.”

It was at this point in his lecture that Rich the drama critic took over for the Rich the political commentator, admiring what many have called a low point in the Bush presidency, his 2003 “mission accomplished” speech, which Rich called a carefully orchestrated “production” that brought together theatrical elements in the same way a Broadway show might. According to Rich, Bush held

troops an extra day off the coast of San Diego to rehearse, changed troops’ dress to “colorcoordinated costumes,” perfected the set and scenery and waited for “the magic hour”— the hour of the day right before dusk that makes everyone look their best on camera.

Perhaps Rich moved from theater criticism to political criticism because the real theatre, he seemed to suggest, no longer takes place solely on raked stages with red velvet curtains. Instead, Rich suggested that Americans are audience to fiction on a much larger scale as spectacle continues to eclipse truth in news media.

In fact, Rich sees a “lag time” that exists in American theater that prevents it from achieving of-the-minute relevance the way news media can. “I don’t know if this is one of American theater’s biggest moments,” said Rich.

This is a moment for one of American media’s greatest hits—around-the-clock coverage of shocking and tragic disasters. Referring to the opportunistic media response to the 2005 crisis in New Orleans, Rich said, “when you have a hit, you want to replicate it.” Whether the coverage of the recent earthquake in Haiti will revive a timeless media “hit” is unclear. “The jury is still out,” said Rich.

He pointed out that particularly in times of crisis, it’s crucial to be an active and critical consumer of news media and spend more time amassing sources and weighing opinions. “We have to do it for ourselves,” said Rich. “If there’s e. coli in spinach people go berserk…people are too easily taken in” by theatrical media productions.

When it comes to the spectacle of contemporary news media, there’s an eerily fine line between truth and “truthiness,” a term Rich borrows from political satirist Stephen Colbert. But, concluded Rich, “if we can’t agree on the facts, then we’re in trouble.”

The Vassar Student Association Council’s resolution is not directly critical of the College’s decision to cut Vassar summer abroad programs. The Council passed the resolution at its weekly meeting on Feb. 7.

Poughkeepsie bus line may add Vassar campus to stops Elizabeth Shand

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Guest Reporter

n increasing number of students are exploring internships, volunteer work and recreation in the Poughkeepsie area due to initiatives such as the Poughkeepsie shuttle.

However, this is a difficult initiative to fund, particularly in the current economic climate; in past semesters, money for the Poughkeepsie Shuttle, or community shuttle, has come out of President of the College Catharine Bond Hill’s discretionary funds and the Vassar Student Association’s (VSA) budget. Therefore, the Campus-Community Advisory Committee (CCAC), co-chaired by Senior Lecturer in Science, Technology and Society James Challey and Director of Media Relations Jeffrey Kosmacher, are working with the Town of Poughkeepsie to run the Town’s bus lines through the Vassar campus.

VSA Vice President for Operations Brian Farkas ’10 is a sitting member on CCAC. He believes that public transportation through Vassar Campus “would be an incredible benefit to students, to the Town of Poughkeepsie and City of Poughkeepsie, and to the College.”

Concerning the student benefits, public bus lines would replace the Vassar-operated shuttle and the need for taxis to reach downtown Poughkeepsie or further areas. The shuttles do not always match the student’s location or timing needs, and taxi rides, despite the College’s subsidization, are an inefficient approach to what a solid system of public transportation can accomplish.

As Kosmacher recognized, “We have many students doing field work, internships and community service downtown, and it makes sense for them to have a transportation option that doesn’t require a personal car.” Furthermore, requests made by students to increase service cannot be met due to financial concerns.

While the Vassar Shuttle is a valuable resource, it is also financially demanding. The VSA has granted $10,000 of the Student Activities budget to the shuttle program, and this is only a portion of the program’s cost. Incorporating public transportation would relieve an economic burden to the College, then, as well as stimulate the Poughkeepsie economy.

“Over the past year, we’ve met with [Poughkeepsie Mayor John C.] Tkazyik and other city officials about what we’re accomplishing with the Poughkeepsie Shuttle, and they’ve been im-

pressed, especially with our volume of riders on a service that runs only four hours per day,” said Kosmacher. This volume of student usage, in addition to potential employee use of the buses, would increase revenue for the City of Poughkeepsie. Vassar students may not even have to pay for the town busses. Farkas mentioned that other colleges arrange free or subsidized bus passes for students, and expressed hope that a similar arrangement could be set up for Vassar students.

Vassar has been in negotiations with both the Town and City of Poughkeepsie for some time, but neither government was willing to negotiate until after the 2009 elections.

Bringing a new bus line to Vassar would have been a very unpopular choice and would have harmed officials’ reelection campaigns had they supported it, but now that they are secure in their positions they are willing to proceed.

Encouragement of college-town interaction, besides increasing the College’s potential to help the local community, serves the town and city’s economic needs as well. With increased travel throughout Poughkeepsie, Vassar students would increase revenue for local businesses. “The only thing impeding that potential for business growth is adequate transportation,” said Farkas.

Currently, the City of Poughkeepsie has a line that stops near campus, on the corner of Fulton and Raymond, across form Juliet Café. Additionally, a separate bus system is operated by the County and also stops near campus, but it follows a roundabout route.

The VSA-supported initiative, however, is not void of difficulties. Farkas commented, “Local politics surrounding transportation can be surprisingly difficult.” Before a new public route can be added to the bus line, the proposal must be cleared through the city government.

However, Challey said “the Campus-Community Advisory Committee is just that—advisory.

Any decisions about the shuttle, public transit, etc., will be made by the senior officers.” Currently, he continues, the current action being taken by the Committee is part of the information-gathering phase.

Despite the challenges it faces, the inclusion of Town and City bus lines on Vassar campus is a real possibility and another move toward more streamlined local transportation for students on campus.

“We have students doing field work, internships and community service downtown, and it makes sense to have a transportation op— Jeffrey Kosmacher tion that doesn’t require a personal car.”

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

NEWS

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February 11, 2010

New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief visits campus Jillian Scharr News Editor

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Sophomore Class Gift to be a 24-hour study space LIBRARY continued from page 1 are not frequently in a position to have to study throughout the night, it is sometimes the case that continuing to work on a paper or project without interruption into the early hours of the morning can be a powerful intellectual experience.”

The proposed space would be funded in part by the Class of 2012, who plans on collecting $7,000 in donations. Other contributors include the Class of 1987, which has pledged to donate an additional $7,000 if they reach 70 percent participation, and the Library itself.

“If 70 percent of our class is willing to donate, the cost per student would amount to $15.56; if, however, we get 100 percent participation, the cost per student would reduce to about $11,” said Tatum, who is optimistic that this goal will be reached in time to set up the space over the upcoming summer.

“We understand that we are living in hard times and people have little to spare, but we believe that the Class of 2012 can come together to make this goal a reality,” wrote co-Chair of the Sophomore Class Gift Committee Philani Mpofu ’12 in an e-mailed statement.

Because the gift doesn’t call for any new construction, the bulk of the cost will go towards the installation of enhanced security during the increased hours, explained Director of the Libraries Sabrina Pape.

“Security is one of our main concerns,” said Pape. “To make sure that students feel safe, we will be installing cameras throughout the space, and may even provide some staff support.”

“We will also need to install new monitors that sense unissued books, as well as modify the V-Card readers so

as to allow students to access the space in those hours during which the majority of the Library is closed,” said Pape, though she clarified that students will not be able to check out books from the Library during its extended hours.

Another concern Pape and her staff have is about the general up-keep of the space by students.

“We actually had a 24-hour study space much like the one that’s being planned right now, but had to close it down because students really mistreated it,” said Pape, adding that the area was strewn with “pizza boxes and cigarette burns,” and the furniture was “totally destroyed.”

“Because there wouldn’t be construction to make the space available, it would be very easy to take it away if it is mistreated,” said Pape, urging students to “police the space as though it were their own.”

Mpofu also shared this concern, but remains convinced that “Vassar students generally have a strong sense of their right to their Library…It is in this same light that we trust that students will respect this space once it opens overnight.”

“The Library is at the center of faculty and students’ intellectual lives, and a 24-hour study room will enhance the way the library serves that function.

Although some of the practical details of the arrangements have yet to be worked out, we are all confident that, with students’ commitment to support this initiative and to use the space appropriately, we can make it happen,” added Kitzinger, who is confident that the project will be implemented successfully, greatly benefiting the Vassar community.

“The Jews don’t want to be threatened the way they were threatened in the ’30s and ’40s.”

Bronner postulated that the current American administration was initially focused on increasing diplomatic relations with Iran, but that it has “drifted away” from that position.

According to him, Israel feels that “the American government has come to understand it much better than it did at the beginning of the Obama administration.”

Bronner then discussed the West Bank, and Israel’s “unrelenting determination to do what they want to do, which is to build more settlements in the West Bank. In my years as a reporter, one of the things that has struck me is… history is made by the people who never stop, and these people never stop…It’s important to understand that they’re not going to walk away because someone’s called a moratorium.”

Having been in the West Bank two weeks before the lecture, he observed, “You wonder if there’s really a moratorium at all.”

Israel wants to be a Jewish-democratic state, observed Bronner, but “they can’t have ‘Jewish’ and ‘democratic’ and hold on to the entire West Bank…There are some people in Israel who say, ‘I’ll take the Jewish part and I don’t care that much about democracy,’ but the bulk of people want to square the circle.”

He continued, “One of the things that has also struck me about the settlers [is] the incredible fervency that they feel to the land.”

Bronner concluded his talk with a discussion of his experience as a journalist in Israel. First, he addressed a question he is often asked: why the news media focuses so much on Israel and not on “places where people are really being tortured and destroyed…[like] Sudan and Guinea?”

“This land that the Jews consider holy is also considered holy by four billion other people— Christians and Muslims,” Bronner explained.

“What happens on it matters to them, which is not the case in Guinea. The other thing is that

Image courtesy of College Relations

he New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner spoke in Taylor Hall this past Wednesday, Feb. 3.

Bronner began by expressing the difficulty of representing Israeli-Palestinian events in the media, because the issue is highly nuanced and extremely divisive among disagreeing parties. Bronner himself has been accused of partisanship in favor of Israel in his writings, most recently because his son joined the Israeli Defense Force five weeks prior to the talk. Attempting to navigate the controversy that necessarily surrounds discussions and articles about Israel, Bronner defended his and The New York Times’ coverage.

He emphasized the inability to find objective truth in the Israel-Palestine conflict. “In a world which is typically black and white, I traffic in grey,” Bronner asserted.

“There’s another sort of contradictory weirdness that I face when I do this job,” he continued. “There are two completely opposite things that I hold to be true that I try to tell you in each story that I write. The first is… the people here [in Israel] are just like you and me…They care about their children, they cry when they are in pain, they like action movies, they like ice cream …The second thing I want to tell you [is that] if you think that by knowing that the people here actually love their children and feel pain and pleasure the way you and I do and like action movies and like ice cream that you understand them, you’re wrong.”

“I toggle between these two thoughts every time I write a story,” Bronner concluded.

Bronner specifically defended his coverage of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts by addressing what he perceives to be “a stronger sense [in the United States] that Israel gets a raw deal in the media.”

“Actually, everyone gets a raw deal in the media,” he said. “The media is about raw

deals. We deal with conflict and problems. We don’t actually write good news.”

One example of the media’s challenge to navigate various sides’ narratives was how to refer to “that thing snaking its way down [the West Bank].” According to Bronner, the Israelis call it a “fence” to make it sound nonconfrontational, and the Palestinians call it a “wall” to make it sound imposing. “The New York Times calls it a ‘barrier’ because we hope it doesn’t sound like anything,” he said to some laughter from the audience.

Bronner then moved into an analysis of the current political situation in Israel. “If you’re following the conflict,” said Bronner, “you know it’s not a moment of great optimism.”

He explained that it has been over a year since the last peace talks between Israel and Palestine, and that currently, “the thrust of the [Obama] administration’s efforts is to get the Palestinians back to the table.”

He went on to offer some insight into Israeli perspectives on the conflict. “It must seem to you that the Israeli military must be in some kind of funk…[but the Israeli military] actually feels very much on the horse…It’s one of the few institutions that functions very well in Israeli opinion.”

In 2006, Israel went to war with Lebanon to stop rocket attacks, and last year they went to war in Gaza for similar reasons. Now, for the most part, the rockets have stopped coming, and “the northern border is quieter and more peaceful than it has been since the 1960s,” Bronner observed. “From a narrow Israeli perspective, military action has worked.” Although, it has also, he observed, contributed to a global view that Israel’s actions are “too harsh, too brutal…Israel has never been more diplomatically isolated.”

Iran is a great source of anxiety in Israel, particularly the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. “From Israel’s perspective, this is as bad as things can get,” said Bronner.

Ethan Bronner is The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bronner spoke at Vassar on Feb. 3. the whole story of the Jews’ return…is an amazing tale…Here you have a people that was nearly decimated in the greatest form of human destruction that we know of in history…They go See BRONNER on page 5

This Week in Higher Ed

by Ruby Cramer, Editor in Chief Tufts University President to step down after 10 years in office At a Tufts University Board of Trustees meeting on Feb. 6, Tufts President Lawrence Bacow announced that he would step down from his post in June 2011 after 10 years of service. “I have often said that 10 years is about the right term for a university president,” wrote Bacow in a Feb. 8 letter to the Tufts community. “It is long enough for one individual to have a substantial impact but not so long that the institution (or the president) becomes uncomfortable.” Bacow went on to explain that following his resignation next year, he intends to return to teaching economics and environmental studies; “It was teaching,” he wrote, “that drew me to academic life, and as I get ready to turn 60, it is time for me to once again spend some time in the classroom. Candidly, I am looking forward to a quieter, simpler life.”

U. of Chicago President’s relationship with professor raises questions of privacy It was announced last week in Crain’s Chicago Business that University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer is dating Professor of Classics Shadi Bartsch after separating from his wife Terese in early September. University spokesman Steve Kloehn confirmed the report that week, and The Chicago Maroon later reported that Zimmer had also moved out of the presidential house on Chicago’s University Avenue. Kloehn told The Maroon that while Terese Zimmer would continue to live primarily in the president’s house, Robert Zimmer would still “conduct presidential business and host University events” in the house. While many newspapers and magazines inside and outside of Chicago have given coverage to the news of Zimmer’s relationship with Bartsch, some insist that the issue is strictly a private one; Chair of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees Andrew Alper released the following statement: “President Zimmer has been forthcoming with me and with the board regarding his family situation. We see this as a personal

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

matter, not an issue of university governance,” he said. Others, however, claim that while Zimmer’s separation from his wife and relationship with Bartsch are indeed personal, both nevertheless raise a score of questions regarding the future of Zimmer’s leadership at the University. A recent Inside Higher Ed article, for example, asks, “How will conflicts of interest be resolved? How long will Zimmer’s estranged wife remain in the presidential residence, where official university functions are still taking place? And, more broadly, how might Zimmer’s own credibility be affected by his decision to date a professor on the campus?”

College and university fundraising drops nationwide by 12 percent According to a new report by the Council for Aid to Education (CAE), charitable donations to colleges and universities across the United States fell in 2009 by an average 11.9 percent—a drop which the CAE calls “the greatest decline ever recorded.”

However, while the decline in actual fundraising dollars was unprecedented, the study found that alumnae/i participation in giving has actually only fallen by about one percent.

Colleges, universities begin to announce 2010 Commencement picks Just as The Miscellany News announced in its Feb. 4 issue that actress Lisa Kudrow ’85 would address Vassar graduates this spring, other colleges and universities are beginning to reveal who will grace the stages of their 2010 Commencement ceremonies. Middlebury College will host Pulitzer Prizewinning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Standford University will host U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice, University of Notre Dame will host NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and Franklin & Marshall College will host PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff. More announcements regarding 2010 Commencement speakers will continue to trickle in as the spring nears.

NEWS

February 11, 2010

Hacker steals $378,000 from Poughkeepsie bank accounts William Crane

A

Guest Reporter

hacker broke into a TD Bank account owned by the Town of Poughkeepsie on Jan. 12, stealing $378,000 by electronic transfers to accounts in Ukraine.

The Town kept the thefts secret until an announcement by Supervisor Patricia Myers on Feb. 3. According to a statement posted on the Town’s website, the theft comprised four separate unauthorized transfers to banks in Ukraine. Town Comptroller Jim Wojtowicz discovered them the next day, prompting an investigation by the Town Police that is receiving assistance from the FBI and the Secret Service.

While most details of the investigation are being kept confidential, a press release made by the Town states that $95,000 of the stolen money has already been recovered from a Ukrainian bank. “We…remain optimistic that we will be able to recover $283,000 in stolen funds, and will aggressively pursue all available avenues as the investigation unfolds,” reads the Town’s statement.

According to a Feb. 4 Poughkeepsie Journal article on the theft, no employees of the Town are currently suspected of involvement in the illegal transfers. Computer hacking is hard to trace, making it difficult for authorities to find those responsible. Town Police Chief Thomas Mauro told The Journal that “we’re not sure if we’ll ever know” how the theft occurred.

Recovery of funds in such cases is often complicated by the fact that hackers often transfer

the stolen funds to yet other banks in other countries after the initial transfers.

The Town of Poughkeepsie, meanwhile, has placed some of the blame on TD Bank for its lack of oversight. “We find it unacceptable that movement, or attempted movement, of money from a Town account to an account in Eastern Europe did not immediately raise a ‘red flag’ with the bank, was not questioned by anyone at the bank, but was simply processed,” stated the Town’s press release. It went on to express disappointment that no representative of TD Bank had visited Town Hall to discuss the issue.

The money was transferred from a cash disbursement account that the Town uses to pay bills. It remains unclear whether the Town will be able to seek compensation for the theft.

Myers told the Journal on Feb. 5 that although insurance could perhaps cover a portion of the theft, the Town’s coverage was “minimal in this sort of thing.”

Myers was unsure whether the Town has an insurance policy specifically covering incidents of data breach, in contrast to policies covering theft by Town employees, for instance. The stolen funds, however, represent only a fraction of the Town’s overall budget.

The theft is likely part of a trend of hackers breaking into municipality and school district accounts and transferring the money to accounts outside the United States. For example, hackers stole $3 million from the Schenectady County School District in New York in December.

Peer institutions consider retracting no-loan policies NO-LOAN continued from page 1 wanted to be the first school to cut back on noloan, but according to President of Macalester College Brian Rosenberg in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, “[While no-loan] is one of those decisions that once made is difficult to unmake, the financial pressures are severe enough that everyone has to look…Now that Williams has gone first, I would be surprised if we didn’t see, over the course of several months, other schools follow their example.”

Vassar currently has a no-loan policy for students whose parents make less than $60,000 a year, which is similar to Williams’ new policy that puts an income cap on eligibility, thus raising the question: What is the future of Vassar College’s no-loan policy?

“All financial policies of the College, including those regarding financial aid, are constantly under review…but at present there is no plan whatsoever in the works to cut financial aid funding,” wrote Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid David Borus in an emailed statement. “In fact, Vassar’s support for the financial aid budget has increased substantially in recent years, not decreased, despite difficult economic conditions.”

The increase in the financial aid budget was due to an increase in students request-

ing aid, in part because of the current financial crisis. Expenditures on financial aid make up a large portion of the College’s budget, and reducing the amount of aid paid by the College, through measures such as cutting need-blind admissions, is frequently discussed by senior officers, members of the Vassar Student Association and Vassar Union members, although it has not been explored officially.

Williams also increased spending on financial aid, with their financial aid budget increasing from $14.6 million in 2000-2001 to $43.7 million in 2009-2010, which became unsustainable, causing Williams to cut back on its no-loan policy.

“In the light of Williams’ announcement, I am sure that Vassar and all colleges and universities with reduced or no-loan policies will be taking another look at those plans,” wrote Borus.

Fortunately for current Williams students, Williams’ new policy will only apply to incoming students for the Class of 2014.

“It seems fair and reasonable that any such reformulation of the loan policies probably would not impact students who are currently at the College, as was the case with the change at Williams,” said Borus.

Page 5

Ethan Bronner examines news in Jerusalem BRONNER continued from page 4 back to a place that they feel roots in and they build an incredibly successful society.”

“These same people who were nearly destroyed…are also, it turns out, occupiers, doing terrible things to other people,” he said. “The victims have become victimizers…now that’s what we call a great story.”

Springing from this, Bronner observes “a growing movement to deligitimize the country” because the Zionist movement, he said, is “a difficult narrative to grasp,” while the Palestinian narrative seems much more straightforward and easy to understand.

However, it’s difficult to present the Palestinian side, Bronner explained, because, “I’m not creating investigations; I’m creaming off the conversation and presenting it to you, [but] there’s not much of a conversation to cream off on the Palestinian side. That makes for an imbalance in the coverage of the place which I regret and want to fix, but I can’t, because I can’t create a dialogue that isn’t there.”

Following the talk was a question and answer period, during which several members of the audience accused Bronner of pro-Israel sympathies because he himself is Jewish, and read aloud several quotes from Bronner’s articles that they felt betrayed his leanings.

It was also brought up that Bronner’s son had, five weeks prior to the lecture, joined the Israel Defense Force. This has caused a controversy to which The New York Times has not yet responded. Bronner, however, rejected claims that his articles are biased. He suggested that if readers disliked his articles, they should read other newspapers.

Bronner ended his talk by saying, “The situation is grim in that I see no clear horizon, [but] I’d love to be wrong. First of all, it’d be a better story.”

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MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

News Briefs The Writing On The Wall Some disturbing graffiti was discovered on the wall of a bathroom in the Library on Feb. 7. An investigation into the matter is under way, and Security requests that anyone with any information regarding the graffiti report it. Reports can be made anonymously on the Security website.

—Caitlin Clevenger, Assistant News Editor

Main Goes Batty On Tuesday, Feb. 2, a student found a live bat in Main Building. The student trapped the bat in a Tupperware container until pest control arrived. After examination, pest control specialists determined that the bat did not have rabies and released it outside.

—C.C.

Missing Gear The Vassar Bike Shop, located in the basement of Strong House, reported that some tools had gone missing on Feb. 3.

The approximately $100 worth of equipment has yet to be located.

—C.C.

Laptop Larceny A visitor to Vassar had her laptop stolen from the Library around 3:45 p.m. on Feb. 4. Security reminds students and other members of the Vassar community not to leave valuables unattended anywhere on campus.

—C.C.

So Long, Smirnoff A noise complaint led a Security officer to enter a room on the fourth floor of Lathrop early on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 6. The officer discovered bottles of alcohol on a table, but did not see the underage occupants of the room drinking anything. The vodka and rum were confiscated.

—C.C.

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Page 6

February 11, 2010

A backward glance at Vassar College dating culture Danielle Gensburg

D

Guest Reporter

Image courtesy of the Vassar Encyclopedia

ating life at Vassar College has come a long way since the 1960s and even farther since the 1860s.

Women seeking men, women seeking women, men seeking men and men seeking women all have a place in campus dating life, but students complaining of their single status on Valentine’s Day has a long and persistent history at the College. And for some lucky Vassar students, so has dating.

On Sept. 26, 1865, Vassar first opened its doors to a class of 353 women who were required to pay $350 for tuition and housing. Founded

by Matthew Vassar in 1861, the College’s mission, according to the Vassar website, “to give young women a liberal arts education equal to that of the best men’s colleges of the day” was an act of defiance towards conventional society at the time. Vassar offered women a full range of courses—including art history, astronomy, physical education, mathematics and chemistry—gaining itself a reputation for academic rigor and boldness. However, being a single-sex institution, Vassar women seeking romance with men, had to look beyond their campus. The male institution of choice, according to a Miscellany News article titled “The Misc’s Guide To Men’s Colleges” dated May 8, 1963, was Yale. According to the article, Vassar women were known to “date Yalies more than any other variety of college male.” In fact, before Vassar became coeducational in 1969, acting as the first of the Seven Sister colleges to do so, Vassar students would sponsor trips to colleges such as Yale University, Harvard University, Princeton University, the United States Military Academy at West Point, Williams College and Amherst College to meet men. Not only would

Vassar students gather with their dates in the Jetson Lounge of Emma Hartman Noyes House on the night of the Junior Prom in 1965. Men from other colleges and universities often stayed in the Alumnae House for weekend visits with Vassar women. these women sponsor trips to men’s colleges, but they would rate them as well. According to “The Misc’s Guide to Men’s Colleges,” the Yale male could be identified by his “madras jacket and his hair, which falls alluringly into his right eye.” There was also the “Princeton tiger,” who carried “an orange and black pocket flask;” the “superior” Harvard male; the “rowdy, animalistic and isolated” men at Dartmouth; and, finally, the cadet from West Point who was fond of walking. For those Vassar women who desired to remain near campus, always available were the recent college graduates who worked for IBM

VSA org. funds questioned PROHEALTH continued from page 1 may be symptomatic of both a rising interest and difficulty in finding an outlet for non-academic international opportunities.

The Vassarion Though it also fundraised on its own, ProHealth looked to some other student organizations and a few off-campus organizations to support their goal.

Perhaps the one that raised the most eyebrows was the Vassarion’s transfer of $3,400 from its budget to ProHealth to cover many of the costs of the trip, such as airfare, after Council Discretionary funding was denied.

According to Editor in Chief of the Vassarion Shannon Wilton ’10, “The staff thought about how we don’t get involved or do anything on campus— we print annually and that’s it.”

Though the Vassarion is funded independently, had an organization supported by the student activities fee transferred a large amount of their funding to another, VSA Vice President for Finance Scott Pascal ’10 said that the Finance Committee might consider See VASSARION on page 8

tention behind socializing with men beyond campus. Some women held certain expectations regarding what they would do after they graduated; for many, graduation meant immediate marriage. Others were more inclined towards graduate studies or the pursuit of a career. Kuretsky described dating at Vassar as formal and artificial. Said Kuretsky, students put each other “into boxes, and it was necessary to work your way through the boxes in order to get to know someone.”

There was a certain amount of blind dating in which “you would be taken out to dinner by a date, who

Prifti always last to leave the Library Matthew Bock Reporter

J

anitor Artur Prifti, who has been a Vassar employee for six years, works the night shift at the Thompson Memorial Library. He is responsible for ensuring that the campus Library is fit to close. Night after night, he rings the infamous Library closing bell to alert students that they must leave the building, checks to see that no stragglers are hanging around after 1:30 a.m., and, finally, locks the doors. Luckily, he says, the lights turn off by themselves.

Prifti changes light bulbs, fixes and cleans everything you can think of, and helps students with “whatever they might need” after other employees have left the building.

Usually his workday starts at 9 p.m. night and lasts until 2 a.m. Although if the College occasionally needs him during the day, he says, he is willing to work then, too. Indeed, Prifti is the Library’s last visitor. “After 1:30, I am the only person in the building,” he says. Prifti’s office is located in the elusive Library basement and is hidden from the visual radars of students preoccupied with their books and their visits to Matthew’s Bean.

Originally from Albania, Prifti came to Poughkeepsie with his wife and children 12 years ago. Working at Vassar alone isn’t enough to support the needs of his family, so as some other campus workers do, he works a second job. In addition to his evening employment at Vassar, he works in the home improvement and construction industry during the daytime–“heavy” work, he says, that often requires him to be outside in cold weather.

Whether he sees it as a perk or a drawback isn’t clear, but his work at Vassar certainly gives Prifti a chance to interact with the late-night bookworms at the Library.

Prifti reports that Vassar students are a surprisingly well-behaved bunch. He has “never seen any students” doing anything­­—he clears his throat—out of the ordinary at night in the Library. Not all, though, according to Prifti, are aware that the Library has a closing time.

He says, “I’ve seen students come really late, like around 2 a.m., and then turn around.” Then there are students who won’t leave. He remarks that he has found students sleeping and has needed to wake them up. “I just make

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

VSA Funding Policy As a certified VSA organization, ProHealth was entitled to apply for additional funding from the VSA Council for their trip or any other project.

Though their request was denied, the heated debate and close vote that resulted highlight the Council’s difficulty in establishing definitive policy for traveling student organizations.

“We had planned for VSA funding in our budget because we were basing our application on a previous application two years ago,” said President of ProHealth Jared Augenstein ’10. Two years ago, the Vassar Uganda Project was given funding by the VSA to travel to Uganda.

Augenstein’s assumption was not unfounded: The Council debated the allocation at length and ended up voting to allocate the funding with a majority of one vote, but this simple majority was not enough to send ProHealth to Haiti. “We were there for about three hours, and we pleaded our case, told everybody what was going on, and they debated for a long time,” said Augenstein. “They said it was the closest vote of the year.”

ProHealth came to Council after their fund recommendation had been reduced to zero by the VSA Finance Committee and the Executive Board.

“The VSA actually has a policy that we don’t fund international trips both because of the incredible expenses as-

sociated with going overseas and because there are so many opportunities in the United States that we hope organizations will utilize rather than travel abroad,” said VSA Vice President for Activities Aaron Grober ’11. The policy is relatively new, and it stemmed from a discussion among the Executive Board about the cost of international travel.

“We look at it [in the same way we would] a conference in VSA terms because it’s an educational experience,” said Augenstein. “We felt that going to Haiti would have given us the experience of doing international work, but wouldn’t have been as prohibitive cost-wise as going back to Uganda or going somewhere further away.”

in the Poughkeepsie area, whose “availability for weekend dating was their chief asset.”

Professor of Art Susan Kuretsky graduated from Vassar in 1963. Reflecting on the difference between the student atmosphere at Vassar in the ’60s and its atmosphere today, Kuretsky said, “There’s a complete ease of people dealing with one another today. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere in contrast to people getting dressed up and going somewhere else, getting out of their normal everyday lives.” Kuretsky expressed how for many of the women at Vassar in the ’60s, there was a clear in-

had met you at a mixer the weekend before, and you did not necessarily know the person,” said Kuretsky.

Vassar women would get dolled up for these dates and mixers at other schools, wearing stockings, high heels and makeup. Their hair would be curled after having rolled their hair in curlers the night before. In addition, Kuretsky described how it was fairly common to see Vassar women dating their professors, usually those who had recently graduated or were near them in age.

Vassar College Historian Elizabeth Daniels ’41 explained that many Vassar girls would go to New York City for the weekend and were required to sign out and then sign back in with the College. In a sense, Vassar acted as a parental unit. In addition to trips to the city and men’s colleges, Vassar women would sometimes invite men to spend the night at the Alumnae House since men were not allowed to stay overnight in the dorms. Daniels also described the tradition of the Junior Prom, an annual ball held in the All Campus Dining Center. Those not invited would come to watch the dancers from the balcony.“ Daniels exclaimed, “If you got invited to the Vassar junior prom, you’d reached the top.”

The restrictions placed on Vassar students and overall dynamics changed after the College went coed.

Daniels described this change as “a great deal of leveling and equality.”

Kuretsky said, “The precious relationship that men and women can have at Vassar today is a result of its background as an all-female institution.”

Vassar has long considered itself a bastion of independence and selfsufficiency. Perhaps in some ways, Vassar students of the 21st century, have this history to thank for Vassar’s eclectic social scene that it is today.

Janitor Artur Prifti works the night shift at the Thompson Memorial Library. Prifti has worked for the College for the past six years after coming to Poughkeepsie 12 years ago. noises,” he reports, laughing, “at least enough to make them hear the closing bell and let them know they need to get out.”

Prifti sees a lot in the fairly unique facet of Vassar nightlife that is the Thompson Library, but “never anything, you know, funny, though.” Prifti is a man of few, but well-chosen words, and he adds with a smile, “But then again, there are a lot of rooms in this building.”

FEATURES

February 11, 2010

Page 7

Falafel and yogurt a mid-winter, Middle Eastern treat Nate Silver

A

Columnist

Kelley Van Dilla/The Miscellany News

Falafel

Tabouleh

»» 4 c. chickpeas (canned, or dried, soaked overnight) »» 3/4 c. chopped fresh Italian parsley »» 1 small red onion »» 1 small yellow onion »» 1 t. baking powder »» 2 t. garlic powder »» 1 t. ground cumin »» 1 t. dried oregano »» 2 t. kosher salt »» 1/4 c. olive oil, for frying »» 5 pieces of pita bread Rinse the chickpeas well. In a food processor coarsely chop the chickpeas.

Though you will be chopping most of the ingredients in the food processor, it is important you do them each separately, or the mixture will become a mushy mess. Remove the chopped chickpeas and place in large mixing boll. Add the parsley to the food processor and finely chop. Add it to the chickpeas. Do the same with the red and yellow onions

(you want these very finely chopped).

Add the baking powder, garlic powder, cumin, oregano and salt. Combine well.

Let the falafel mixture rest for about 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

After resting, take the falafel mixture and form 1-inch balls (this recipe should yield 15-18 balls); pack them relatively tightly or they will fall apart when you fry them. Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan with high sides over medium heat.

When the oil is hot, add the falafel balls in the pan and brown 30-45 seconds on all sides, for a total of 2-3 minutes, until the balls are golden all over. If, for some reason, the falafel balls are too wet or fall apart when you fry them, try rolling them in a little all-purpose flour (not too much) before you fry them. When the falafels are browned remove them from the pan and set on some paper towels to drain. Serve with pita (and hummus, and yogurt sauce, etc.)

Roasted Garlic Hummus »» 2 c. chickpeas (canned, or dried, soaked overnight) »» 1 head garlic »» Juice from 1 lemon »» 2 T water »» 1/4 c. olive oil »» Salt and pepper, to taste 1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Take the head of garlic and cut off the top, so that the bottom 3/4 of each clove is exposed. Place the garlic on a small sheet of aluminum foil and drizzle with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Tightly wrap the foil around

the garlic and roast for 30-40 minutes, until the garlic is golden brown. Let cool. When cool enough to handle, gently squeeze the base of the garlic and the roasted cloves should easily come out. Set aside the roasted garlic in a small bowl.

2. In a food processor, chop the chickpeas. Add the lemon juice, water, olive oil, roasted garlic, salt and pepper.

Blend until very smooth. Depending on your preference, you can add more/less water or oil to make it smoother or chunkier.

»» »» »» »» »» »» »» »»

2 c. cooked bulgur (follow directions on package) 1/2 c. finely chopped plum tomato 1/2 c. finely chopped cucumber 1/2 c. finely chopped red onion 1 c. finely chopped parsley 3 T olive oil Juice from 1 lemon Salt and pepper to taste

1. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to allow the flavors to marry. Serve cold.

Cucumber Yogurt Sauce »» »» »» »» »» »»

1 c. Greek yogurt 2 T finely chopped fresh Italian parsley 2 T chopped cucumber 2 t. olive oil Juice from 1 lemon Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a small bowl, being sure to adjust the salt and pepper as needed. This sauce is also great with the addition of 1-2 T of mint and. Depending on your personal preference, you can also add a bit more lemon juice if you like a thinner sauce.

Israeli Salad »» 5 plum tomatoes, diced »» 1 large English cucumber (any seeds removed), diced »» 1/2 red onion, diced »» 1/4 c. chopped parsley »» 3 T olive oil »» Juice from 1 lemon »» Salt and pepper to taste 1. Combine all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Serve. Simple and delicious.

Grocery List Italian Parsley Bulgur Chickpeas Greek Yogurt Pita Red Onion Plum Tomatoes Yellow Onion Garlic Cucumber Lemons

$2.78 $2.19 $2.97 $1.79 $2.69 $0.49 $1.19 $0.20 $0.33 $1.99 $1.99

Total

$18.61

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Kelley Van Dilla/The Miscellany News

s someone who loves to cook virtually everything under the sun, one of my least favorite questions seems to be a favorite of just about everyone I encounter: “What’s your favorite thing to cook?” Though I used to answer this standoffishly, replying with “anything” or “I don’t know” or “something I’ve never made before,” I quickly learned that this rarely satisfies the inquirer. I needed an answer. After years of contemplation I can say, with no reservations, that my favorite genre of food to cook is Middle Eastern food. The emphasis on light, vibrant flavors and dynamic arrays of colors and condiments has made dishes like the ones in this recipe for falafel with roasted garlic hummus, tabouleh, cucumber yogurt sauce and Israeli salad, some of the most satisfying to prepare.

This cuisine is special to me for a couple of reasons. When I spent the summer after my sophomore year in London, I relied heavily on the city’s falafel stands to fulfill my late night cravings. I also spent two weeks in Israel with my family and had some of the most amazing gastronomic adventures of my life. After that, I just knew. Middle Eastern food is straight-up delicious.

The recipes this week are 100 percent vegetarian, and if you eliminate the yogurt sauce (and replace it with tahina, for example) they become totally vegan as well. These recipes are also fantastic for folks on a tight budget because of the heavy reliance on produce (no meat and few packaged items) and because each component uses only a few (and often, the same) ingredients. In fact, if you look at the recipes, you’ll see that with few exceptions, the only ingredients are tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, chickpeas, lemons and parsley. Those last two are prime examples of inexpensive ingredients that deliver huge flavor rewards.

Both work to brighten dishes and bring some tang to the palate.

With so much ingredient overlap, you may be wondering what the appeal is of recipes like this. The secret, my friends, is in the textural contrasts. Though lots of the ingredients are similar, the falafel and its accompaniments run the gamut of food textures. The falafel has a crispy outside and a tender melt-in-yourmouth interior, the hummus is creamy as can be, the raw vegetables of the salad pack a unique crunchiness, and the yogurt sauce and tabouleh have elements of both softness and bite. These contrasts, coupled with the fact that you can create your own sandwich, make this a fun meal—one well fit for sharing with friends. I’m also a big fan of making a simple red cabbage slaw to add some additional crunch on top of the sandwich, but $20 only takes you so far.

As is the case with so many of these recipes, the hummus is totally adaptable to your taste.

With this basic recipe, you can make it red pepper hummus by adding a few roasted reds, lemon hummus by squeezing in some extra juice and zest, olive hummus by blending in some green or Greek olives, or an herbed hummus by adding some chopped basil and parsley.

One last word of caution (I considered not mentioning this because it was a bit embarrassing to have such a snafu in front of the photographer, but I decided that you all have a right to know): My original intention was to deep-fry the falafel (go big or go home, right?) but as I dropped them into the 350 degree oil they absolutely disintegrated. I should have let the falafel mixture rest longer because it was a bit too loose, but in the interest of time I decided to just shallow-fry them instead. I realized this was probably a more feasible method of preparation for most people anyway, so it’s probably a happy accident. I mention this not because these would taste better deep-fried or because I want you to pity my unforeseen error. I think it’s important for you to know that my weekly culinary experiments never come out perfect; they’re always fraught with error.

Trial and error is perhaps the most important method for becoming a better home cook. It is the ability to adapt in the kitchen and to make the best of a bad situation that separates the people who will end up putting delicious food on the table from those who will just turn to the phonebook and order takeout.

FEATURES

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February 11, 2010

Poughkeepsie’s El Azteca: not your average grocery store Daniel Combs

S

Reporter

ometimes the process of getting to the restaurant may be as interesting as the food one eats once seated. That was every bit the case this week. Someone told me a couple weeks ago about this Mexican place that I absolutely had to try. The mystery place was called Tacocina, located on Route 9 in Poughkeepsie, and it’s supposed to be an incredible eating experience. Supposedly it’s a little Mexican grocery store with a taco stand in the back—the kind where grandma presses the masa into tortillas and fills them with pork face and beef tongue. Sounds like my kind of culinary adventure, and one that takes a lot of dishes to experience fully. So, with the enlisted help of about eight of my friends, we made our way to the vague direction of “somewhere on Route 9,” myself being too lazy to actually print a map. A little bit of 3G navigation led us to 1582 South Road. It turns out Tacocina is now a dry cleaner, one that unfortunately does not sell pig cheek tacos out of the back. Although something tells me that even if they did, I probably wouldn’t eat them. I don’t think dry cleaning chemicals and food complement each other well.

As I stood in the brutal wind with two cars of friends whom I felt I was letting down, my brain raced. How was I going to satiate the ravenous hunger of college students on a balls-to-the-wall taco bender? To be fair, I guess I can’t speak for everyone in our little group, but I needed me some tacos, and I needed them bad. Luckily, we actually had a Mexican guy with us—a chef in training at the Cullinary Institute of America to boot—and the priceless information stored away in his brain led six of us to El Azteca, that hole in the wall restaurant/grocery store right next to the train station on Main Street.

I was tentative about this. Didn’t I already review a small, authentic Mexican

place on Main Street last semester? I don’t want to turn into the dude that talks about burrito fillings each week. I take this restaurant thing kinda seriously…sorta. I needed to find some other dimension to explore within the Mexican eatery archetype.

Luckily for me and for this article, El Azteca delivered. I think that their business model is something as follows: Mother and daughter make and sell anything and everything food related that a Mexican food lover in Poughkeepsie could possibly want. These two ladies know a lot about selling stuff that tastes good. Delicious fruits and pastries are stacked against the walls for sale, including lots of mangos and avocados—my two personal favorites. Plus there were lots of creepylooking tentacle-type plants in jars that I’m guessing taste far better than they look, but made me want to buy them just to make my room look like a bio lab from a slasher film.

There is seating for probably about 15 people and a menu that’s large and dynamic. Here is where coming with a big group of people helps out. At our table we ended up with a plate of enchiladas with molé, two thick tortas, huevos rancheros, chili releno, tamales, and a big helping of chips and guac. Not to mention the homemade salsas verde and roja that were unlike any I’ve had before. For starters, the salsa verde was served warm, something that I had never even thought of before, but that somehow has the really nice effect of mellowing the spice, letting some extra dimensions of tomatillo taste get all up in your business.

Both of the tortas—a kind of Mexican sandwich—were phenomenal. Something about the mix of that semi-indescribable Mexican spice/flavor with two thick, soft hunks of bolilo bread really does something otherworldly. Like any sandwich, the bread is key for its soakability—how much flavor it can contain before it loses that structural integrity that makes it so good in the first place. And for

some reason, I really don’t know why, the Mexicans have perfected this art better than anyone else. Maybe it’s what they put in the sandwich, maybe it’s that the spicy toppings lend themselves to being sponged upon really well, but I really think that a torta, like any good sandwich, is bigger than the sum of its parts.

But I don’t want this monument to the bread world to eclipse the innards of the sandwich. Both tortas at the table, the Cubano and Milzchoriz, had good stuff crammed in there, and managed to cater to totally different flavor spectrums. The classic Cubano sandwich has eggs, ham and pork. It’s basically the best breakfast sandwich you could ever eat. The other was a wonderfully spicy, salty combination of chorizo and queso fresco, the unsung hero of the cheese world. People always talk about Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano or France’s Camembert, but the Mexicans have their own white gold, which they have unpretentiously titled “fresh cheese.” And this sublime substance was also found in perfectly abundant quantity atop my chicken enchiladas that were covered in an amazing molé sauce.

The enchiladas were great, but probably nothing to write home to mom about. The green quagmire of eggs, tortillas and salsa verde that made up the huevos rancheros however, is a must have. Needless to say, it puts the Retreat’s delicious, yet misguided, version to shame in an oh-so satisfying manner. Food that isn’t constructed, but is rather a celebration of a few key great ingredients will always, always, taste better, and this dish is an exemplary illustration of this point. Eat this, please, and taste a little bit of heaven on earth. It isn’t listed on the menu per se, but if you ask nicely, with a smile, who could refuse?

Chili releno—a stuffed poblano pepper with cheese, rice and beans, and then bat-

Emergency contact bylaws unclear VASSARION continued from page 6 “factoring it in somewhat” in deciding that organization’s budget for the subsequent year.

However, Pascal said, “most transfers are smaller amounts for things. There’s nothing illegal about transferring funds.”

Emergency contact forms The undefined position of international service groups in the College bureaucracy was further highlighted by the fact that ProHealth did not file emergency contact forms with the VSA and the Office of the Dean of the College, which are required of students going on international trips sponsored by either the VSA or the College.

Last semester, the VSA passed a new set of bylaws that clarified rules for student organizations that go for overnight trips off-campus, requiring them to fill out emergency contact forms. According to Grober, he sent an e-mail to all organization presidents alerting them to the change, though he acknowledged that the regulation may have been easily overlooked by ProHealth. “I haven’t spoken to anybody about that. I was not told by anybody that we needed to fill out an emergency contact form,” said Augenstein. “Different members of faculty knew we were there.”

Dean of Students David “D.B.” Brown also suggested that the organization did not have to fill out the forms because they did not receive VSA funds. “The clunkiness in this case is that because they weren’t funded by the VSA, I didn’t know they were there. They didn’t go through that process,” said Brown.

Even without funding from the VSA, a certified organization is required to fill out the forms whenever it goes off campus, though ProHealth was unaware of this technicality.

According to Brown, the lack of the contact information made contacting the organization after the earthquake somewhat more difficult and time-consuming. “Sometimes Murphy’s law informs us as to what kinds of nets there should be that we don’t know. In this case I just think more talk with any group that is going just so that they’re aware,” said Brown.

Increased interest in travel The fact that ProHealth planned a trip to Haiti at all is perhaps an indication of an increased student interest in service-oriented travel. Director of International Studies Andrew Meade discussed the emergence of international service-oriented groups such as the Vassar Haiti Project and the Uganda Project. “Those are new, so I think Vassar is still trying to understand or trying to figure out exactly how those relate to the College relative to how the longstanding [Junior Year Abroad] programs relate,” he said.

ProHealth’s situation has demonstrated a vacuum in the formal support of these trips.

Augenstein suggested that the VSA should take a more pronounced role in supporting international service efforts. “I think the VSA is in a unique position to fund these kinds of trips, especially trips that don’t have traditional funding from Vassar,” he said. “There’s really no outlet for doing this type of thing. I think it’s especially important since [the College] cancelled all the [summer abroad] foreign language programs.”

Grober wrote that it was not appropriate for the VSA to fill the gaps left by College cuts.

“It’s often the case when the administration cuts costs for something, that people turn to the VSA for support. The VSA will not be taking on the entirety of funding summer study abroad opportunities.”

However, Meade said the comparison of service-oriented trips to summer abroad programs was tenuous. “It’s apples and oranges,” he said. “The summer programs had a very different kind of focus.”

Though the roles of the programs and organizations differ, “it’s something that the College probably wants to look at because there are several of these organizations,” said Meade. According to Meade, while these organizations can apply for outside grants for travel, there is currently no formal financial support from the College.

ProHealth is planning a trip to Haiti in the summer, and the Vassar Haiti Project is tentatively planning to go to the country to participate in relief efforts.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

tered and fried—was a great approach to a dish that I’ve only ever had with couscous in bell peppers. Not that I have anything against a bell pepper—it happens to be my favorite vegetable actually—but the poblano, once it’s roasted, has such an intense, smoky flavor that you can’t even begin to have an argument about what lends itself better for stuffing. That smokiness, which licentiously infuses itself into the cheese, holds you in the moment and lightly caresses the taste and smell portions of your brain, letting you know that yes, you did make the right choice.

Sometimes vegetarians really do get it right.

Me being me, the beer and dessert portions of the meal were not forgotten. A bottle is pretty cheap at El Azteca and, in my opinion, is a necessary compliment to any Mexican meal.

El Azteca is also a grocery store after all, so boxes of cookies line the walls, and in the corner there is a decent sized candy collection. If you ever make it there, try the duvalin, a little packet of this strange frosting-type stuff that Mexican kids absolutely adore. It’s one of the weirdest but fbest things I’ve ever eaten. Marzipan, lollipops and mango candy are also found in plenty.

But if you really wanna do some justice to the dessert course, there is the fried ice cream, or heládo frito, which has a batter that can only be described as decadent and is served on an enormous buñello, a fried, sugary tortilla platter. It was a bit of a sugar overload, but with six people clawing at it, we managed to pack it in.

I feel bad telling you that there is yet another Mexican place on Main Street that you should try out if you’re going to live in Poughkeepsie with any sort of dignity. But when push comes to shove, this is a really fun place that I know I’ll be revisiting. It’s cheap, tastes great and is just plain fun. A word of warning, however—the whole store is cash only. So get some change and buy a torta already.

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OPINIONS

February 11, 2010

Cut to summer abroad programs flawed Chenxi Cai

Guest Columnist

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s a participant in the Japanese summer language program in 2008 as well as a double major in economics and Japanese, I have personally benefited from the program immensely. Imagine the surprise that I got from the rumor that all summer language programs will be suspended for a year, and, later, the formal decision that these programs will be suspended indefinitely.

To be fair, language programs could easily be viewed as a drain on the College’s already-deteriorating financial situation. However, they should not be cut simply because they cost money to run. The important question to ask is whether the costs outweigh the benefits. It is crucial to base the evaluation on the correct premises, and, unfortunately, we will see that this has not been the case here. Moreover, even if it is determined that the costs indeed eclipse the benefits, the resulting policy recommendation should exhaust all reasonable alternatives.

It should be noted that the principles of economies of scale dictate that summer language programs operated by a small liberal arts college such as Vassar will inevitably lead to a higher per capita cost and thus run a higher price tag than those operated by large universities and even a consortium of universities.

The rationale for the cut, according to a memorandum to the language department chairs excerpted from The Miscellany News (“College cancels summer abroad for 2010 season,” 01.28.10), is that “we could not...justify supporting the valuable experience of summer study abroad for language students without also offering support for other kinds of experiential learning in fields where those experiences would similarly enhance students’ academic programs at Vassar.”

So here is an argument for alleged equity between language and non-language students. But wait,

isn’t there a foreign language requirement that everyone needs to fulfill in order to graduate?

So, in a sense, all of us are “language students” at some point. Further given the fact that only the language department chairs are informed of the decision, we cannot but reason that the senior officers really meant language majors when they said “language students.”

Let’s be clear that the summer language programs are not just for language majors. Regardless of the huge impact of the cut on language majors, the impact on non-language majors is equally tremendous. Imagine an anthropology major interested in the indigenous cultures of Mexico, or an economics major interested in the Japanese economy, how much more would they have to gain from participating in the summer programs? In the case of the Japanese program I participated in, every student achieved something great made possible only by the program, regardless of whether he or she later declared a Japanese major or not (only a couple of us eventually did).

I remember that during my summer program experience, there was an independent research component for which Vassar students teamed up with Japanese students to conduct research in a field of their interest, and the topics were as diverse as you can think of: music, film, popular culture, education, social norms and, in my case, economics. Cutting the summer program will not only be a great loss to the language majors, but will generally be a great loss to all students who desire some level of immersion into a different culture (most of us, maybe?).

Junior Year Abroad (JYA) is hardly a substitute, partly because many of us are simply unable to go for various reasons, partly because the quality of many JYA programs is unpredictable at best and they often fail to provide the same level of support as Vassar faculty would do.

If the Senior Officers indeed think that the language programs should be intended for language majors, here is one easy way of cutting costs: Limit participation in these programs to language majors and offer only advanced language classes.

It sounds like a paradoxical solution because the decision to cut the programs has been based on the false premise that language programs provide some sort of unfair advantage for language majors over non-language majors. Only then will language majors finally realize some real advantage over non-language majors. Since both the number of participants and courses offered will be reduced, the programs will cost much less to run, and since only advanced language classes will be offered abroad, students will be encouraged to take lower-level language classes at home.

If the Senior Officers instead think that language programs should be for everyone, then why don’t we follow the model of the International Studies Trip, for which students have to apply for a limited number of spots and financial aid is still made available? Since the application process to current summer language programs is only nominal and unselective, this result in large turn-out and higher expenses, so making the application process a selective one and capping the number of participants would reduce the expenses overall. Furthermore, the programs in different countries could be rotated over four years so that each program would be preserved, and each student would have at least one chance to go to the country of their choice. The measures mentioned here should bring down the costs considerably, while maintaining the pivotal advantage these summer programs render to a Vassar education, namely international experience and cross-cultural awareness, which is also facilitated by availability of financial aid and academic credit.

Student Conduct N.Y. Tuition Assistance Program Panels increase needs voices from community self-governance Anne-Marie Alcantara Guest Columnist

Daniel Salton

Guest Columnist

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n recent weeks, a new addition to the disciplinary framework for students has been enacted. New forums for minor offenses, known as Student Conduct Panels, will be beginning this Friday, Feb. 12. As one of the coauthors of the new format, I feel that it is my duty to explain this new system to the student body, and to inform them of how it will fit into the current disciplinary system.

In the current system, all alleged infractions at the College are recounted in security reports, which then are funneled into the office of the Dean of Students. There they are divided and sent one of two ways. For minor infractions, the reports are sent to individual House Advisors, who then meet with the student in question and decide on an appropriate sanction if the student is found responsible. In the case of major disciplinary issues, a College Regulations Panel is formed to hold a hearing on the incident.

College Regulations Panels are formed of members of the Vassar College Judicial Board, elected by the students, and members of the faculty. Each panel is formed as cases are presented, and the utmost care is taken to prevent breaches in confidentiality and conflicts of interest. The Panels hold a full hearing, as detailed in Section J of the College Regulations, and then decide upon the responsibility of the accused.

In the case the student is found responsible, an appropriate sanction is determined and enacted.

All students have the right to ask for an appeal based upon grounds also outlined in Section J. These two branches form the current method of student conduct administration. The new Student Conduct Panels form a third branch in addition to the original two. Student Conduct Panels are designed to handle cases that, while not of sufficient severity to warrant a full College Regulations Panel, have meaningful impact or are particularly contentious. While they may handle some of the more mundane infractions See PANELS on page 11

W

hile I understand that Governor Paterson has had to make necessary cuts in New York State’s budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, these cuts could have been made in places other than the New York State Tuition Assistance Program (TAP). The proposed budget calls for a cut of more than $71 million from TAP. As a New York State resident, I am one of hundreds of thousands of students who benefit from this program. Students depend on TAP for the funds that they need to attend college. Yes, Vassar can make up for the money lost in my financial aid package from this proposed reduction, but that is not the point. I know that many students like myself decided to attend only New York State colleges and universities in large part due to the availability of TAP funds. We were capable of getting into other renowned out-of-state colleges, but staying in-state was less expensive. Now, Governor Paterson is removing our one reason for staying in New York and not attending an equally prestigious institution in another state.

There is growing dissent about this proposed cut from various coalitions, including the New York State Student Alliance, The New York Public Interest Research Group, United Federation of Teachers, The New York State United Teachers, United University Professionals and the Professional Staff Congress. Voices from across the state have expressed concerns over the cut, and have signed the online petition, which Vassar has also linked to on its website. According to the New York State Student Alliance website, reasons for cutting the amount of aid given to students leads to the decline of these key values, as defined by the New York Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities: “developing human capital, providing access and diversity, maximizing the higher education dollar, drawing students to New York State, powering the state’s economy, and providing jobs for New Yorkers.”

New York State educates more than 466,000 students, and more than 300,000 of those students are New York State residents. Also, it is important to recognize how TAP fosters access and

diversity in the New York educational system— one-third of the students who receive aid from TAP are students of color. Cutting the amount of aid that these students will receive is cutting their education short, and those who would otherwise attend college in New York State would feel deterred from studying here due to these cuts. New York State cannot afford to lose those students who choose to attend school here; otherwise, it will lead to a loss of education values and educated people in the workforce.

By offering the incentive of financial aid for continuing one’s education, TAP helps supply New Yorkers with the education they need to qualify for the jobs they want. Even more relevant than the possibility of future jobs is that New York State’s colleges and universities provide jobs to more than 180,000 individuals.

There is yet another way that New York State’s workforce will be affected. Adults who are pursing further education in graduate school will find that Governor Paterson’s proposal doesn’t simply reduce their TAP rewards, but entierly eliminates then. How does Governor Paterson expect these adults, many of whom are both working and attending school, to afford additional education? Many of these adults are still paying off debts from their undergraduate education, and adding on another loan to their expenses will only lead to a vicious cycle of borrowing and lending in these people’s lives.

Many of those who will be affected by the TAP cuts are teachers who balance their jobs with higher education. By preventing educators from pursuing higher levels of education, TAP will affect education in New York on all levels.

I have talked to several of my former teachers who are attending graduate school while working full-time as educators, and many have voiced their concerns over this proposed cut. Governor Paterson cannot afford to totally eliminate TAP aid to adults who need those funds to further their education so as to become better educators of future New Yorkers.

My final message is to the Vassar community.

The title of The Miscellany News article, “Changes to New York TAP Program will not affect Vassar” See TAP on page 12

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Page 9 Continued commentary on cancellation of summer abroad programs:

Letter: Senior officers did seek input I

am writing with regard to the three guest columns published in last week’s issue of The Miscellany News (02.04.2010) in reaction to the cancellation of Vassar’s summer language programs. First, I would like to thank the columnists for giving voice to the deep disappointment that many feel at the cancellation of these programs.

The effort that faculty have put into developing these progams—over the course of more than three decades, in the case of our department’s program in Münster, Germany—cannot be overestimated. Nor, as the columnists eloquently attest, can the educational experience of those students fortunate enough to have participated in these and comparable programs.

I would, however, also like to correct one impression given by these columns, namely, that the senior officers in the administration made the decision to terminate the summer language programs without proper consultation with faculty and students. My understanding is that discussions of the future of the programs began well over a year ago, with the onset of the financial crisis. These discussions intensified last semester when cost-cutting measures taken by the programs still left the summer 2009 programs running a substantial deficit after accounting for financial aid. During the fall, each language department submitted a plan for how to operate their programs on a more sustainable financial footing.

As a member of the Advisory Group on the Allocation of Faculty Resources (AGAFR) and a faculty member in a foreign language department, I was invited by the Dean of the Faculty to report to the Committee on Curricular Policy (CCP) in late November on the curricular rationales for the summer language programs. I compiled a list of rationales after consulting with the chairs of the relevant language departments, who gave me access to the sustainability plans that they had previously submitted to the Deans of the College and the Faculty. These rationales were discussed at some length at the next meeting of CCP in early December, and the results of this discussion then informed our deliberations in AGAFR. In addition to faculty representatives and senior administrative officers, elected student representatives (including one of the guest columnists) sit on CCP, and the Vassar Student Association Vice President for Academics Stephanie Damon-Moore ’11 sits on both CCP and AGAFR. When an important administrative decision does not turn out as one would have hoped, it is perhaps natural to blame the process for not being sufficiently consultative or deliberative.

While I share the guest columnists’ disappointment in the ultimate decision, I personally feel that students and faculty were encouraged to voice their views to the senior administrative officers regarding the continuation of the summer language programs. The arguments advanced by those of us in favor of these programs unfortunately did not hold sway, but they were certainly heard and, in my opinion, carefully weighed by the senior officers.

—Elliott Schreiber, Assistant Professor, Department of German Studies

OPINIONS

Page 10

February 11, 2010

Anthony DeNicola and the (White) Buffaloing of Vassar Richard Born

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Guest Columnist

ometimes the beginning of a column like this practically writes itself. A story in the Jan. 28, 2010 issue of The Miscellany News (“Deer culling elicits local controversy”) reports the laudatory (fawn-ing?) comments of Associate Professor of Biology Margaret Ronsheim, a member of the Farm and Ecological Preserve Oversight Committee, on the recent baiting and killing of 64 Farm deer by Anthony DeNicola, President of White Buffalo, Inc.: “...killing the deer this way is actually one of the most humane options...the sharpshooter only killed deer if he could kill an entire social group, leaving no fawns without their mothers and no one deer without the rest of its social group.”

Well, if you believe that Mr. DeNicola’s practice of allowing no social group member to escape with its life is a bona fide act of compassion, you probably won’t want to read any further. Otherwise, please continue.

64 dead deer may seem like a frightful number, but to members of the Oversight Committee it likely was just a good start. The widely reported goal of the Committee is to increase the total in the very near future to about 85 (Phase 2), and periodically thereafter kill any excess numbers that accrue through birth or net in-migration. Before the College can carry out Phase 2, it would be wise for all of us to consider just how it handled the decision to initiate Phase 1 and its subsequent actions. All the following is part of the public record, except for my observations concerning what has and has not been posted on the Main bulletin board.

The two most important sections of the Oversight Committee’s “Deer Management Memorandum” of June 12, 2009 are entitled “Supporting Documentation,” where the Committee lays out its rendition of the reputed problems caused

by Farm deer, and “Recommendations: Primary and Alternative Approaches,” where the case is made for professional sharp shooting as the only feasible short-term solution. In the latter section, virtually all supporting citations in the parenthetical footnotes are to White Buffalo, Inc. or to Anthony DeNicola. White Buffalo and DeNicola tell us that sharp shooting is “humane, safe and effective;” that sharp shooting will have to reoccur every two years to maintain desired population density; that amateur archery hunting is unlikely to achieve adequate initial reduction in numbers; and that neither contraception nor relocation is workable. So let me see if I have this right. The same organization cited for its presumably professional and research-driven judgments also stands to benefit financially if its presumably professional and research-driven judgments are embraced by Vassar. Many, including myself, would immediately sense a potential conflict of interest problem here. Was the Oversight Committee concerned with this potential conflict?

And, if White Buffalo’s analysis is merely representative of the analysis that financially disinterested researchers would likewise offer, then why didn’t the Committee substitute such disinterested analysis?

Besides its own Memorandum, the Oversight Committee urges the public to read other research materials at farm.vassar.edu/comittee/ deer-management/. Yes, please do—especially

the one page report entitled “White-tailed deer overabundance in the Northeastern US.” This document, which was written in 2008 or 2009, has six co-authors, three of whom overlap with the Oversight Committee membership. Check out the leftmost column, where an estimate is provided of approximately 27 deer per square km on the Vassar College Ecological Preserve (VCEP), which translates into approximately 70 deer per square mile. Now go back to page three of the Memorandum, which cites 125 deer per square mile as its VCEP estimate. Quite a discrepancy, almost on the order of 2:1. I am not merely playing a game of mathematical gotcha, since numbers have consequences concerning calculations of how serious any deer population problem is and how many deer to slaughter. What accounts for the wide discrepancy in the estimates? And if the lower estimate were to have been more accurate, doesn’t this mean that the killing of 64 deer overshot its mark, virtually extirpating the herd and thus rendering moot implementation of Phase 2 of the plan?

Leaving aside the research elements of the controversy, page seven of the Memorandum claims that in the Fall, 2009, “The deer committee will continue to interface with the Vassar and local communities, and a final forum will be held to discuss the approved management plan.” No evidence exists, however, that this forum ever took place. The Dec. 4 all-campus email message, which announced administration approval of the Committee’s recommendation to kill the deer over Winter Break, makes mention only of two earlier forums, held in January and April 2009. Given their timing prior to the

Valentine’s is commercial, an economy unto itself Michael Mestitz Guest Columnist

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alentine’s Day is this weekend, and although there’s a certain population of the world that descries it as a vacuous holiday invented to provide profit for florists, chocolatiers and greeting card producers worldwide, I’m inclined to think that they’re half-right. It’s a holiday that really has no business existing—if you’re in a healthy relationship, you should be nice to your significant other every day, not just one day out of the year–but as long as it does exist, the economic part of my heart (the coronary sinus, right atrium and tricuspid valve, to be precise) sings at how something so fanciful has become such a profitable endeavor. It’s not as if the Valentine’s Day celebration was born from a deeply significant tradition of chivalric romance, either.

In all probability, the Catholic Church chose to celebrate the feast day of Saint Valentine on Feb. 14 in order to Christianize the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia—Wikipedia tells us this, so we know it to be true. According to Plutarch, the festival consisted of “the noble youths and magistrates run[ning] up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they [met] with shaggy thongs.” Some things never change.

Presumably, the Church didn’t revise the behavioral expectations after Pope Gelasius I rebranded it in 496 AD because nobody knew what the heck Saint Valentine actually did, anyway; he was actually removed from the Roman Catholic calendar

of saints and banished to local calendars in 1969 because, according to Calendarium Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II Instauratum Auctoritate Pauli PP. VI Promulgatum, also known as “Vatican II” to those of us who prefer translations with our Latin, “Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14.” Embarrassing; may I suggest that, based on the festivities, Saint Valentine was probably some sort of lascivious monk who could turn loaves and fishes into little heart-shaped boxes of chocolate?

I could be wrong, though. According to Professor Jack Oruch of the University of Kansas, it was actually Chaucer who associated the Valentine’s feast with romance when he wrote in his 1328 work “Parlement of Foules,” “For this was on seynt Volantynys day/Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.” Why English professors love him so much is a mystery to me; every time I turn in an essay with spelling like that, I fail. In any case, scholars therefore suggest that Valentine’s Day proper should be the 2nd of May because the poem was written to commemorate the engagement of Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia. May 2, coincidentally, is the feast day in Genoa for a “Valentine” who died circa 307 AD and was the Bishop of Genoa. Oruch says that “the idea that Valentine’s Day customs perpetuated those of the

Roman Lupercalia has been accepted uncritically and repeated, in various forms, up to the present.”

The man is majorly cramping my style, so I will respectfully and academically point out that his name is a perfect anagram for “jk, a roach,” and move on.

This historical (mis)information is just a sidenote, anyway, to our modern celebration of the holiday. However exactly it came about, Valentine’s Day is a truly wonderful thing; a day when we as human beings can come together and commodify love. According to the National Retail Federation, U.S. romantics spent an estimated $16.90 billion for Valentine’s Day in 2008. $16.90 BILLION! For those of you keeping track at home, I pulled up some World Bank numbers and found that that’s roughly the nominal GDP of freaking BOLIVIA! There are 88 countries on the list with nominal GDPs less than the U.S. annual expenditure on Valentine’s Day-related goods.

In comparison, a 2009 New York Times article estimates that porn films earn as much as $13 billion annually in the United States (that’s the nominal GDP of Senegal, by the way–I like my GDP list). Turns out love really does make the world economy go ‘round!

So this Valentine’s Day, don’t skimp on the lace, flowers or chocolate! We have a global recession to dig our way out of, and consumer spending won’t rise on its own. Stimulate your partner! Stimulate yourself! Stimulate the economy! Because the only thing more beautiful than two people in love is two consecutive quarters of economic growth. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

June 12 Memorandum, both forums necessarily dealt with the prospect of deer slaughter purely in hypothetical terms. Unquestionably, a fall forum would have attracted a great deal more attendance and controversy, since the hypothetical by that point had turned into an actual plan. So why was the final forum not held? Was the prospective educational payoff of a forum in the fall—which is always supposed to be the ultimate reason for holding such an event—any less compelling than the payoff back in the spring term?

Because the fall forum never occurred, the first information received by the vast majority of the Vassar community that dozens of deer were about to be slaughtered came in the Dec. 4 e-mail.

At this late date, less than a week before the last day of courses, students and faculty were preoccupied with end-of-class business and pending final exams, papers and grading. Did it really take until Dec. 4 for College officials to approve the June 12 recommendation and to acquire the necessary permits? Or maybe, just maybe, was the Dec. 4 notification date chosen to minimize the possibility that organized opposition to the plan would materialize?

The Oversight Committee frequently has claimed that its membership was broad-based and representative of many constituencies. Over the break, one member of the Committee (Director of Media Relations Jeffrey Kosmacher) in a Jan. 13 WAMC radio interview said that “members of the general public” had served on it; three days later, a second member (Associate Dean of the Faculty and co-Chair Marianne Begemann) in a Poughkeepsie Journal letter to the editor said that See DEER on page 11

Brown good-

looking but bad senator Matthew Harvey Guest Columnist

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hen you stop to think about it, it’s no surprise that Massachusetts elected Scott Brown to fill Ted Kennedy’s senate seat. Our state is proud of its extremely liberal reputation, and after this election, we took the next step forward: We became so liberal, we’re actually conservative.

Electing another Democrat like Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley would have been cookie-cutter, bumper-sticker liberal stuff; just plain boring. Instead, Massachusetts took the bold step of electing the 41st Republican to the Senate, destroying the Democratic filibuster-proof majority. In doing so, we push President Barack Obama to be the best that he can be, assuring that passing a health care reform plan won’t be too easy—an ever-present danger in a political environment that might fairly be See BROWN on page 12

Letter: Lawmakers, society must address root issues of abortion I

n last week’s issue of The Miscellany News, Joe Coniglio ’12 wrote an article discussing the legality of abortion, concluding that Roe v. Wade is a flawed ruling. There is a larger issue at stake here— why are abortion rates so high and what can we, as a society, do to decrease abortion rates without impinging on women’s rights to their own bodies?

People make decisions everyday that result in lost lives. And yet, abortion stands out to much of the American public as an issue in desperate need of their attention. Billboards, news time, bumper stickers and newspapers are filled with choice versus life propaganda as if the issue boils down to the binary legality of abortion.

To be clear, I am pro-choice. Women absolutely do have the right to choices regarding their own bodies, and these choices should never be up for popular vote, denied by a governmental authority or picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church. I do be-

lieve, however, that decreasing the abortion rate is important, as abortion can have detrimental effects on women’s health, both physically and mentally.

Decreasing abortion rates may be achieved by making abortion illegal, but it does not address the true roots of the problem. As such, the discussion of abortion cannot end at the question of having the right to one. Pro-lifers should understand that making abortion illegal will not eradicate it.

Women will continue to seek methods of abortion, whether they are legal, regulated and safe, or illegal and potentially more damaging. And where should one draw the line in terms of who should have access to abortions and under what circumstances? At incest? At rape? At a threat to the mother’s health? What about the woman who failed to use birth control for lack of access to it?

Does she have the right to an abortion?

This issue spans across so many in our society.

Instead of focusing on whether or not abortion should be legal, we should be focusing on how to best support women who are facing an unwanted pregnancy. Mandatory unbiased counseling for women considering abortion would give them support. This is absolutely not meant to discourage women from getting an abortion, but rather to provide all of them support in making the decision that is right from them. Counselors can help provide tools, education and emotional support for women while they are making this difficult decision. After all, this is a personal and emotional decision that, no matter which outcome is chosen, will have great consequences for the woman.

And what about once the baby comes? Pro-lifers and pro-choicers, we need to unite to provide women better access to health care, adequate child support, welfare if needed, affordable housing and child care so that women who want to continue

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

the pregnancy are in a position where they will be able to do so. To these women, it is immoral not to provide such resources.

To decrease abortion rates, we need to provide easier access to these services. That’s why the Democrats have it (more) right: If we focus on providing a better standard of living to women, we increase the chance that they won’t have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy, and, should they have one, we provide them the tools to make the best decision for themselves. Women that, with these tools, want an abortion will have made an informed and rational decision; their choice is their own and not the result of desperation. Abortion is a public issue not because of a sterile debate on legality, but because it requires active participation to decrease abortion rates.

—Meghan Feldmeier ’13

OPINIONS

February 11, 2010

Sarah Palin, Tea Partiers lack grasp of reality S

arah Palin just doesn’t go away. It’s been a slow week, and I wasn’t sure what to write about. I was having a little bit of trouble finding something to get me so angry.

Truth is, I’ve become a little numb to politics lately. It’s strange, but with President Obama having been so ineffectual over these last couple months, the Republicans teabagging the country into oblivion and Congress in an unfathomable deadlock, everyone is pissing me off so much I’d lost the feeling for politics I once had.

But then, just to see if I was still alive—just as a little test, to gauge whether or not I still had a functioning, rational political consciousness—I typed in Sarah Palin. My thinking was, if I still had a brain, my mental sensibilities would be immediately offended upon hearing her speak—that is, if my brain didn’t shut down to avoid damage from ideological trauma.

Turns out I wasn’t the Scarecrow; I have a brain. And my brain was hurting. Being bombarded with the news that all the teabaggers in the United States were assembling together to discuss all things conservative was almost too much; I can only take so much teabaggery.

But one thing stuck out in my mind. In an interview with Fox News on the grounds of the teabagger convention in Nashville, Tenn., Sarah Palin said she would not rule out running for President, but that she wonders if President Barack Obama might, in the next three years of his first term, use what she called the “war card.”

Played the war card, Mrs. Palin? Played the war card? What is the war card? You immediately defined it as “declaring war” on Iran.

If Barack Obama declared war on Iran, there would be less of a desire among the voters to “make sure he doesn’t serve another four years.” What is especially ironic is that, in response to a query regarding which policies of his have been objectionable, you simply said his attitude towards the American people was “condescending” with his “general personality.”

Condescending, Ms. Palin? It’s not as though your personality makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I want to know, what could be more condescending than suggesting that the American people, who you apparently claim to speak for, would overlook their apparent dislike for President Obama if he would only declare war on another country to make the American people feel safe.

But to the more important point: The war card? There is no war card. You should know better, Ms. Palin. Before you quit as governor, you were responsible for the Alaska National Guard, which currently has soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq. You should know better than to suggest that our President—our Commander in Chief—might declare war on a country of 80 million in order to further his chances of being re-elected in 2012.

Maybe in your sick, twisted world, it is commonplace and just political gaming to declare

war on other nations to garner support for a domestic agenda. Fair enough, if you live in the Machiavellian world of Mussolini. But we’re not Fascist Italy here. This is America.

If you want to eventually become the President of the United States, you might want to learn something about the people you seek to govern. The American people hate war—unless they’re scared into it. Maybe you want to scare the American people into going to war, and maybe you don’t, but I think it’s obvious at this point that your party has already played the “fear card” enough on national security issues that it’s no wonder that Obama and the Democrats are, according to recent polls, more trusted on national security than the Republicans and the teabaggers.

You might also want to learn something about the American people. Most of the country holds a negative opinion of the far-right wing Tea Party protestors, if they even have an opinion at all. When you’re surrounded by like-minded people, the world looks pretty good. Everyone in your circle loves you. But outside that close circle, you are mostly reviled. If you want to get into the mainstream, Sarah, you can’t associate yourself with a group that believes that Barack Obama is a socialist simply because of his “general personality.” President Obama isn’t a socialist because he is firm in his convictions and is trying to get progressive legislation passed. Having an ideology does not an ideologue make.

Vassar disingenuous about deer culling

Panels allow officers and students to collaborate

DEER continued from page 10 “a member of the general public” had served. A quick look at the Dec. 4 e-mail reveals the names of the 18 Committee members, 17 of whom are Vassar employees. So any outside representation on the Committee could not have been plural. But who is member number 18? The sole non-Vassar employee is Maury Lacher, listed as President of the Waterman Bird Club. Vassar veterans like myself, however, will better remember Mr. Lacher as the longtime Director of Counseling Services at the College (1977-1990), followed by stints as a Counselor lasting until 2003. In no way do I wish to criticize Mr. Lacher; I have absolutely no knowledge whether he brought any prejudgments with him to service on the Committee or what positions he took in its deliberations. Instead, the onus falls upon the College to explain why, if broad-based representation was truly desired, the sole outsider spot went to someone with such long-standing and high-level ties to Vassar.

Very unexpectedly, the deer issue blew up into arguably the most widely publicized and contentious local story over the break. Far more controversy was generated, I promise you, than that suggested in The Miscellany News article that was mentioned at the start of this column. For a while, it seemed as if Vassar and NBC were sharing the same public relations firm. While Vassar students were away, The Poughkeepsie Journal published five front page articles containing a mixture of pro and con sentiments about the kill, an editorial taking Vassar to task for not providing homeowners in the immediate Farm area adequate advance notice, dozens of letters to the editor very evenly split in their viewpoints and a wholly supportive Jan. 14 column by The Journal’s fishing and hunting columnist. Once the College reopened on Jan. 4, the regular turnover of Vassar-related articles resumed on the Main bulletin board. But not until the afternoon of Jan. 14 did anything relating to the kill appear, despite the rule of thumb that almost anything involving even the slightest mention of Vassar gets posted. Wanna bet what finally claimed a spot on the board that afternoon? (An aside: For further evidence that killing deer has won Vassar new friends in strange places, see outdoorlife.com/ blogs/22389/Guns.) And wanna bet on the sentiments expressed by all five letters to the editor that were posted after Jan. 14? If Vassar is serious about development of critical thinking through the weighing of all sides to a controversy, why has it hampered access to information about the other side of the deer imbroglio?

I hope that the Oversight Committee and the College will be forthcoming in answering the questions I have posed. And I hope that members of the Vassar community will give serious consideration to these questions and responses before Mr. DeNicola sets out on any return journey to our campus.

—Richard Born, Professor of Political Science

PANELS continued from page 9 of the College, they are not designed to replace House Advisors or College Regulations Panels. They are an augment to the current system, and a way to provide greater flexibility in disciplinary response.

The Student Conduct Panels are formed of three students, all members of the Vassar College Judicial Board, who then act in lieu of a House Advisor, although the Advisor will be present to observe and advise. In each case, an accused student will meet with the panel, and a discussion about the alleged incident will take place. The student will have all the rights afforded during a traditional House Advisor meeting. After the discussion, the student will be temporarily excused while the three Judicial Board members deliberate. Then the student will re-enter and will be informed of the decision. As always, the student will have the right to appeal the decision according to the reasons outlined in Section J of the College Regulations.

There are several reasons why I have taken steps to support this measure and this new system. Most vitally, it will increase student selfgovernance. As the Chair of the Judicial Board, it is my job to represent those that arbitrate the college regulations as well as the student body.

In my opinion, students should act as a check on their own unmindful behaviors and, in doing so, set an example for what is best for the College. These new Student Conduct Panels provide an additional place for us to do that. The strength in student self-governance is that it represents an egalitarian and judicious method of self-control on the part of the student body, and I wish to encourage its expansion.

It is also important to note that while this expansion does increase student self-governance, it does not do so to the detriment of the administration. While I am aware of some of the tensions between the administration and the student body that have emerged during this recession, I have not once seen this issue arise between the Judicial Board, the faculty and the administration. In terms of matters of both disciplinary and academic integrity, I cannot praise the work of administrators and faculty highly enough. They have demonstrated a judicious and fair nature that should be envied by other collegiate institutions, and have done so while not sacrificing their duty to maintain order and honor within our community. Each decision they make is evaluated with measured tones, and consideration of the views of students remains central to the decision-making process.

The Student Conduct Panel provides another place where students and administrators can come together to ensure a more just and mindful campus, while still providing for greater student involvement in their college experience. In my mind, there can be no better reason to enact a policy.

The Student Conduct Panels will begin tomorrow a probationary period to make sure the new system is effective and to ensure that the panels operate at their best. I am always open to suggestion and comments by the greater student community, and would like to encourage anyone interested in the new panels, or the disciplinary system as a whole, to send questions or comments to dasalton@vassar.edu.

—Daniel Salton ’10 is the Chair of the Vassar College Judicial Board.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Page 11

Who is your secret Valentine’s Day crush?

“Cappy.”

Dan Flynn ’13

“Freddie Prinze Jr., a classic”

Lauren Chin ’13

“Lady Gaga”

Kevin Fulton ’12

“David Beckham”

Krystal Cashen ’13

“Sarah Palin.

She’s pretty hot. She kills wolves with a shotgun”

Tavish Pegram ’13

“Dairy Queen”

Arial Shogren ’13 —Angela Aiuto and Kelly Shortridge Opinions Editors

OPINIONS

Page 12

Coakley lacked basic charm

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BROWN continued from page 10 called grim. Len Nichols, a Clinton health budget aide, said, “If Bill Clinton couldn’t get it done, and Barack Obama can’t do it, no Democrat will ever try again.” Chris Jennings, Hillary Clinton’s congressional liaison, added, at a completely distinct and unrelated time—in fact, in an early ’90s debate—that, “History is written by the victors, not the vanquished.”

(Nick Hornby concludes, in his book A Long Way Down, “You’re fucked.”)

Brown has served three-and-a-half terms in the Massachusetts State Senate and three in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. For the latter seat, he represented Wrentham, Mass., a populous town of nearly 11,000 people. Two of his State Senate runs were unopposed, and he shows a modest record of legislative initiative. The highest praise for his time in the State Senate comes from his fellow State Senators, who allowed that he was a truly excellent advocate for veteran’s rights.

He skirts the issues of abortion and gay marriage by stating that Roe v. Wade and the in-state law, respectively, are “settled issues” (but he is against partial-birth abortion and supports civil unions, rather than gay marriage). He supports offshore drilling and opposes cap and trade. He also served in the National Guard and sometimes even plays sports, earning himself the name “Downtown Scotty Brown” for his wicked jump shot. He would, to summarize, make an inexpressibly poor liberal.

This is what makes him such a perfect candidate. That, and his perfect body, which earned him a spot on a Cosmopolitan centerfold in 1982 as America’s Sexiest Man. This leads me to propose we truncate his nickname to “Downtown Scotty.”

If you find the Cosmo pictures online, you’ll understand.

All kidding aside, I suppose his victory can only be chalked up to better campaigning, better advertising and an extraordinary

Crossword

by Jonathan Garfinkel ACROSS 1. Imbibe, slowly 4. Toothy, Greek sea monster 10. Establishment where one might sit and 1-across 13. Discomfort 15. Some apartments 16. Chicago-NYC direction 17. Radiant 19. Bedtime attire, perhaps 20. Tennis great Arthur ____ 22. 2001 Ludacris hit

physique. Massachusetts votes, in this case, seem to have responded to personality and persona rather than politics, eloquence or excellence as a legislator. Can you recall any recent politicians on a national stage for whom the same might have been said?

Clearly we’re going great places. Martha Coakley, for all her elegance as a speaker and obvious intelligence, lacks charm and simple appeal. It’s worth mentioning that in New York State a race not unlike this one is unfolding for the Governorship.

The equivalent figure to Brown is Rick Lazio ’80, a Vassar grad of similar politics who suffered a humbling defeat to Hillary Clinton in 2000. His alma mater aside, I can only hope New York sees more clearly than Massachusetts. They should have an easier time of it, as Lazio lacks Scotty’s bodacious figure.

The parallels between Brown and less attractive Republicans are apparent on even the most casual level: Brown, in an informal Jan. 8 debate: “I’m ready to go down there and hold the line on spending, reduce taxes, and try and make a difference.”

Former President George W. Bush, in the first Bush-Kerry presidential debate: “That’s why it’s essential that we hold the line.” Arizona Senator John McCain, in the second presidential debate: “We have to keep Americans’ taxes low. All Americans’ taxes low. Let’s not raise taxes on anybody today. We obviously have to stop this spending spree that’s going on in Washington.”

It is possible that Massachusetts won’t regret electing Senator Brown. It is possible he will fairly represent the desires of the state’s citizens, and help move our country forward through our economic, military and political difficulties. Better, and more likely, maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and this whole thing will have been a very vivid dream.

And for the record, I did not vote for Scott Brown. I sincerely hope you can say the same.

TAP will affect VC students TAP continued from page 9 (02.04.10), is a bit misleading. Though Vassar will adjust financial aid packages to account for the reduction in TAP awards, those who receive merit awards from TAP will see an increase in their student loans. Wake up! Vassar is already suffering from financial problems, as seen in the cuts in faculty, courses, summer abroad programs and so on. This TAP cut affects everyone, including those not from the state and not receiving TAP funds. If Vassar has to make up the TAP funds lost, it will affect the entire Vassar community­ —even if it doesn’t affect you, it could be affecting one of your friends. Many students describe feeling isolated from the community and the state where they go to school. This is the chance to get involved and voice your opinion, since it hits close to home.

Many Vassar students understand the value of education—just as New York State residents who attend instate schools do. Voicing your concern as an out-of-state resident will perhaps lend a greater value to those fighting for this cause. The link is on the Vassar homepage. The steps are simple: Sign your name, add a short message, and hit send—in just a matter of five minutes, you have helped support a cause that, as a student, you should be in favor of. The message is simple: Reducing aid leads to a reduction in the education of a student.

With a less educated generation, it hinders the betterment of our society and our generation. Plainly said, we will have less educated adults leading the world.

—Ann-Marie Alcántara ’13

This week’s puzzle is a “diagramless.” You must figure out where the black squares are based on your answers to the clues. The puzzle has regular crossword symmetry, meaning the black squares are in symmetrical positions diagonally across the center of the puzzle. The answer to 1-across begins in the first square of the top row (top left corner) and is three letters long. Good luck!

24. Less pleasant 26. ___ bind 27. Cauldrons 30. Some aquatic plants 31. When repeated, a directional aide 33. Complain 35. Camping accommodations 36. Spooky 38. Expressive 41. Do as a knave 43. Zero 44. Agcy. spending lots of time evaluating healthcare reform bills of late

Answers to last week’s puzzle

February 11, 2010

47. NY wintertime time 48. Selectively slaughter, as poultry 50. Brewers’ regulator, perhaps 52. Difficult, briefly 53. One before F 54. 1st (or 2nd, or 3rd) 56. Card game also known as “Queen of Spades” 58. Morning do 60. Kiln houses 61. Labor, for one 65. They’re stunning for some 67. Born (fr.)

68. Trap 69. Monstrous lizard found in the southwest 70. One saving your skin, briefly 72. Confidante 74. One on a throne, sometimes 78. Jaunt 79. Guided 83. 1989 Civil War flick 84. Class for intl.’s 85. Proverbial one in a coal mine 86. Wise one 87. Pronoun for Strong residents 88. Scornful expression 89. Partners of don’ts

DOWN 1. Fight for practice 2. Sinister Shakespearean schemer 3. Tablet 4. One from Inverness 5. Felon, briefly 6. chemical ending 7. Church with its HQ in SLC 8. Fertile areas 9. On a boat 10. John, Paul, George, or Ringo 11. Task with 12. Microwave, especially leftovers 14. Like some poker games 18. Was victorious 21. Poetic “befores” 23. Detroit grp.

25. Satisfy 27. Partner of vigor 28. Shortly, to 2-down 29. Grand Wyoming mountain 31. Not verbose 32. Do like Obama, maybe 34. Well-______ (moneyed) 36. Thin sword 37. “And so on” 39. Like an enigma’s output 40. Baby beef

42. Olympic sled 44. Pursue 45. Lite-_____ 46. Probability 49. “Chicago Hope” actress Christine _____ 51. Hubbub 55. Genuine 57. They are found above hearths 58. Weeks off for Giants

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

or Eagles 59. Blind ___ bat 61. Test for Jr.’s 62. Agassi and others 63. Steal 64. Possible freshman domicile 66. Band losing its religion 69. Pained sound 71. Efficiency measure

(abbr.)

73. Tolkien creatures 74. Ice cream brand 75. Carriage-way 76. Hurdle for aspiring MD’s 77. Old Overholt, and others 80. One for Giovanni 81. ___-Bo 82. Make an oops

HUMOR & SATIRE

February 11, 2010

Page 13

OPINIONS

Letter: Jewett’s potential as a ACDC: Poughkeepsie’s zombie refuge re-examined haute cuisine restaurant JIllian Scharr News Editor

I

applaud columnist Mitchell Gilburne ’12 for opening this crucial dialogue about zombie defense strategies. If and when the zombie apocalypse reaches the Vassar campus, each and every one of us should have a plan already formulated; pelting wildly through Blodgett Hall looking for an exit is not the time to be wondering “Cushing House or Joss House?” Gilburne’s article should force us all to critically reexamine our long-term plans and priorities.

However, Gilburne’s logic is inherently flawed; although I disagree with the criteria he uses to assess a building’s safety potential, the most important point he brings up is the question of what to do if a building is already compromised.

I had been operating under the assumption that any zombie attacks to a building would be entirely from without; therefore, I had been assessing buildings in terms of their exterior defensibility. Gilburne points out that in some theories of zombie infections, more than 24 hours can pass between the initial infection and the complete loss of human faculties. Therefore, no matter what dorm we choose, it seems, we will have to accept that there will be zombies inside.

I would then theorize that the many tiny Jewett House singles—for which reason Gilburne rejects Jewett—are indeed a reason to choose it above other dorms, as students without roommates may have less of a chance of becoming infected. However, Gilburne rejects Jewett because of the small size of its many singles. Having lived in one of the smallest singles Jewett has to offer, I can agree that, under normal conditions, Jewett singles are not the ideal place to live. But this is the hypothetical zombie apocalypse, people! Comfort is not one of our top priorities in choosing where to make Vassar’s stand.

Comfort is too often, however, one of Gilburne’s most emphasized criteria. It is for this reason that he rejects Lathrop, Raymond, Strong and Davison

Houses. However, I would reject these dorms because their first-floor windows are too low to the ground and their interiors offer no particular strategic advantages against hordes.

Jewett had always been my dorm of choice, however, for its high first-floor windows and small, easily-boarded basement windows. Jewett’s greatest weaknesses are the glass doors on either side of the tower, and its location on the border of the Vassar campus and Poughkeepsie, which puts it in danger of facing two waves of attacks. Gilburne rejected Joss for this reason, but didn’t consider it as a factor in Jewett’s potential.

In my choice of Jewett as my refuge, I had made the perhaps mistaken assumption that we could depend on eventual support from the government military forces. I thought the Jewett tower was an ideal place for helicopter evacuations. However, Gilburne’s article forced me to reassess that assumption. It all depends on the type of infection we see. Will it be a Shawn of the Dead-scale infection, intense in a small, controllable area and easily managed? Or will it be an I am Legend-scale infection, which so quickly compromised the entire human race that it took the isolated survivors years to regroup and rally?

If it is the latter, then expecting air support from Jewett tower is a nonissue. In this case, I would reexamine Gilburne’s suggestion that access to food and escapes are important. In this light, perhaps Jewett’s multiple exits are actually an advantage.

Remember, zombies are not problem-solving; they are usually attracted to noise, fire or the presence of humans in general. I think that, given time and a few well-laid strategies, we could force any zombie attacks to come at Jewett from the front entrance, where its high windows and three-sided courtyard layout would give defenders the advantage. The rear entrance is ideal for gathering food from the All Campus Dining Center and, eventually, escaping the campus to set off on a Zombieland-esque road trip across post-zombie apocalypse America.

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Martin Bergman Columnist

A

new bistro has opened up in Poughkeepsie, mixing all-you-caneat, buffet-style service with modern takes on classic cuisine. From the culinary minds that brought you The Retreat and Express Lunch comes the All Campus Dining Center (ACDC)—or “the deece,” to the hip youngsters—and its been turning heads in Poughkeepsie’s make-or-break restaurant scene.

Located in a stately building with academic architecture, ACDC serves three meals a day, offering almost every type of food imaginable—and some that are unimaginable. If you’re worried that ACDC’s array of options will lead to reduced quality overall, you’d be right.

Due to ACDC’s many dining options, I made three separate trips for each meal of the day. When first entering “the deece,” I noticed a group of young, fashionable, artsy-looking types, all smoking cigarettes, and realized they must represent “the deece’s” young, hip clientele. Putting this aside, I was stopped at the door and asked for a “V-Card.” Perplexed, I said I only had cash and was promptly charged nine dollars for breakfast.

ACDC’s layout confused me. Instead of finding a maitre d’ and a dining area, I found a buffet-like restaurant and what I believed to be a hibachi section.

I went to the hibachi section and waited for my chef to arrive, until I noticed a fellow patron cooking for himself next to me.

My second stop was a station featuring a sign labeled “eggs all day.” The cantankerous grill-master took my order for eggs over easy and asked, “You like cheese?” I asked who the executive chef was, and I was told that it was a Mister Aramark. After receiving my eggs, I scoured the restaurant for hash browns, finding none. In fact, I noticed several locations that seemed prime for serving food, but not one was open.

I went looking for a danish, only to find a fine selection of aged desserts. I grabbed a scone and bit into its crusty exterior, chewing on what I hoped were cranberries.

On my second visit, I decided to sample the lunch menu. I first went looking for a hamburger, and I eventually found what appeared to be a grill station. A young man with dread-locks took my order, gave me a quizzical

Weekly Calendar: 2/11 - 2/17 THURSDAY, 2/11

SATURDAY, 2/13

3 p.m. Tea. Instead of composing an original love poem for the readers of “The Weekly Calendar,” I’m gonna plagiarize from the legendary Brian McKnight this Valentine’s day: One, you’re like a dream come true. Rose Parlor.

12 p.m. Vassar Jewish Union Bagel Brunch. If I’m going to declare my love for anything this week, it’s going to be bagels. Bayit Multipurpose Room.

8 p.m. “The Vagina Monologues.” Not to be confused with last year’s less-than-successful “Vagina Dialogues” orgy that also took place in the Shiva Theater. Susan Stein Shiva Theater.

FRIDAY, 2/12 3 p.m. Tea. Two, just wanna be with you. Rose Parlor.

9 p.m. Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies. I’ll be rooting for Apolo Ohno this year, as every year. Apolo, if you’re reading this, I think we’d be perfect together. Students’ Building, 2nd Floor MPR. 10 p.m. Middle School Valentine’s Dance. Nothing like a good boner joke to make an awkward Valentine’s Day complete. The Mug.

9 p.m. 100 Nights Toast/After Party. If this is your first time drinking in the library, you’re not studying hard enough. Memorial Library/Villard Room.

SUNDAY, 2/14 All day. Continued coverage of the Olympic Games.

There’s no viewing experience more badass than illegally streaming NBC’s death-defying coverage of skeleton. Your computer.

All day. Valentine’s Day. Has the joke landed yet? The United States of America, others.

MONDAY, 2/15 3 p.m. Tea. Three, girl it’s plain to see that you’re the only one for me. Rose Parlor.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

look, and then proceeded to insult my sweater. Quite flustered, I repeated my order, and waited awkwardly for him to cook my burger. It was wonderful, so I went looking for more food. I saw a fine platter of pre-made panini sandwiches, only realizing later that there was no meat or cheese in between the bread, just a limp slice of cucumber.

There was also a station with a wide array of cold pizza, but no one to work the oven. Dejected, I found a seat in the larger of the two dining rooms.

The crowd was boisterous, to say the least. Loud conversations permeated the air, and on several occasions, I heard anecdotes involving alcohol, marijuana and general promiscuity. The banter made me feel uncomfortable, especially after a young man two tables over from me began questioning his own sexuality and those of others around him. I hastily finished my meal, running into the same group of artsy cigarette smokers on my way out. They, too, insulted my sweater.

On my third and final visit, I went for dinner. Unlike the previous two visits, the lines were extremely long, and the price for entering had been suddenly raised to 13 dollars. I started with the beef stroganoff; the egg noodles were overcooked, and the sauce had the color of fecal matter. Due to an overwhelming amount of salt in the dish, I could not discriminate between the chunks of beef and the mushrooms.

Feeling adventurous, I made my way over to the “vegan” section and served myself a heaping plate of what was called a “stir fry”­—a watery mixture of rice and vegetables which had a disconcerting red coloration to it. To my surprise, it tasted like nothing at all, making it significantly better than the stroganoff. To cap off my meal, I went for a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, there were no mugs left, so I drank my coffee from a cereal bowl. As I exited “the deece” I was affronted by an intrepid group of hunger strikers who were wholly unaware of the irony of their situation. They too insulted my sweater.

Overall, I did not see the appeal of the All Campus Dining Center, but its young patrons will certainly keep it afloat. Also, as a disclaimer, I must note that after every meal I was struck with severe diarrhea that lasted for several days.

by Kelly Stout 5:30 p.m. Tango Class. Just in case all my single ladies haven’t felt left out of enough couples activities this week.

Ely Hall Aula.

6 p.m. Hari Kunzru Reading and Discussion. Yeah, beezy. This is where I’ll be. Sanders Auditorium.

TUESDAY, 2/16 12 p.m. Math Colloquium. Come find out why You + Me ≠ Us. In fact, You + Me = this is irrational, like π, or e. Lost interest yet? Rocky 300.

3 p.m. Tea. Four, repeat steps one through three. Rose Parlor.

WEDNESDAY, 2/17 3 p.m. Tea. Five, make you fall in love with me. If ever I believe my work is done, then I’ll start back at one. Rose Parlor.

ARTS

Page 14

February 11, 2010

Late night pondering in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Thea Ballard

T

Reporter

Weekly FLLAC event celebrates its three-year anniversary

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

hursday nights at Vassar offer a wide range of illustrious options: One can experience the occasional blistering night of painfully hip noise/art/punk/shoegaze at a NoViCE show, or perhaps just lay incapacitated on a bench outside of Lathrop House, tomorrow’s Art 106 lecture but a half-formed thought in the back of your mind.

Some may simply be barricaded into their rooms, attempting to bang out a paper. But at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (FLLAC), the head of Merymose and Jackson Pollock’s abstract splatters await, providing a classy alternative to the usual evening entertainment, and a well-deserved and educational study break.

Celebrating its third anniversary this week, Late Night at the Lehman Loeb has become a cultural institution for students, faculty members and Hudson Valley art aficionados alike.

For those unfamiliar with the event, the FLLAC remains open until 9 p.m. each Thursday night, offering refreshments, guided tours of the collection and an ever-changing roster of entertainment, usually by student performers. Late Night was started in response to requests from students and faculty members who were unable to visit the FLLAC collection because of class and work schedules.

“We really were responding to a demand that we provide some opening hours that would be more conducive to student downtime, and would also at the same time offer an opportunity for people who work to drop in and experience the collection and various programs during their free time, their after-work time,” said the FLLAC’s Anne Hendricks Bass Director James Mundy. “So we struck on this idea of making it a weekly event where people could come relax, have a little snack, enjoy one another’s company casually, with the occasional extra programming element of music, film, lectures, all kinds of

Community members attend the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center’s Late Night at the Lehman Loeb. The weekly event, which highlights student and local musicians as well as the art of the museum’s collection, celebrates its three-year anniversary this year. options there.”

Added Office Specialist and Late Night Coordinator Francine Brown, “Other museums, we were noticing more and more, would be open one night a week.” So, in a nod to the once-a-week evening hours of larger collections like The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Late Night began in February of 2007.”

My own visit to last week’s Late Night, planned to coincide with the ongoing Modfest activities, got off to a slow start. Granted, I was a bit early to the party, as the week’s entertainment, violist and composer Adrienne Elisha, who had composed a piece inspired by Harry Roseman’s “Hole in the Wall” installation, was not slated to start until six. But groups

began to assemble nearby, basking in the jarring orange glow of Roseman’s installation as they snacked and socialized. I was surprised at the number of attendees who appeared not to be Vassar students or even faculty, though there were certainly familiar faces in attendance.

By Brown’s best approximation, the Late Night crowd comes from “mostly the Vassar community, a lot of Vassar students. We do have a significant following from the [outside] community; we have regulars who come at night and sketch. Marist and Bard students come and do research projects at night…and students come at night and work on their assignments.” But I was certainly refreshed by the variety of people congregated; art majors and cultured Hudson Val-

ley retired-artist types were grouped next to mother-daughter pairings.

The galleries still, from my vantage point, appeared mostly empty, largely thanks to the pull of the catering table as food is forbidden from the galleries themselves. But the focus was mostly on company, bringing the room a relaxed and warm atmosphere. And the food was absolutely a worthy distraction: toasted baguette with bruschetta, fresh mozzarella, rice fritters and creamy bitesize spinach mini-quiche. The free wine offered to the over-21 crowd was also a hit (and perhaps explained the high concentration of upperclassmen), causing one man ahead of me in line to joyfully throw up his hands in imitation of a statue situated next to the catering table, saying some-

thing along the lines of, “That’s what this wine is doing to me!”

The energy of the FLLAC noticeably changed as the crowd grew.

During the day, there’s a certain formality to the Art Center that, while not necessarily off-putting, makes it more difficult to motivate oneself to visit after a day of classes and work.

But there was something laid back and very inviting about the night’s setup. This is right in line with the event’s goals, according to The Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings Patricia Phagan.

“It brings a more casual atmosphere,” she said. “When [students are] here with other students, and music is playing, you have a more informal tone to the Art Center, and I think that is very conducive to conversation and to stimulating your imagination … To have your peers around you does help; socializing does help students, I think, connect more with the art and with the exhibitions.”

In order to actually get a sense for the collection in this new light, it was necessary to bravely venture beyond the hors d’oeuvres-intoxicated throngs congregated just outside the galleries. The galleries were, as it turned out, nearly as empty as they are when I stop in between classes or on a lazy Friday afternoon. Despite the joyous din of those mingling echoing just outside, there was something peaceful about having my quiet moments with Pollock, Rothko, Calder and the like. And the faces I encountered when I did cross paths with someone else were unlike those I’m accustomed to in this setting—a portly older man in flannel and suspenders may or may not have been whistling softly while crouched over the Egyptian art, and a girl who couldn’t have been older than 12 marched hurriedly from room to room.

The night’s music began as I relaxed on a bench in front of a pair of Boscarottis, a somewhat harsh surprise See FLLAC on page 16

Love Hurts band expo to address Valentine’s Day woes Esther Clowney Reporter

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when he started thinking about organizing an indie rock show.

Devin Therriault, of Devin and the Little Angels, describes his music as a synthesis of ’60s girl-group The Shangri-La’s and “the raw power of Iggy Pop on his finest death trip.” Pop music wouldn’t exist without heartbreak, and Therriault said that he and the Little Angels are the perfect fit for a concert whose theme is “Love Hurts.” “We’re singing all the sweetness of betrayal and true romance,” he said.

Mother Courage is a five-piece rock band from Brooklyn, and this is their first foray into academia. “We’ve never played a college before,” said Oliver Kalb, the group’s singer, songwriter and electric-acoustic guitar player.

“Usually we play in Bushwick. Sometimes we get a gig in Manhattan, if we’re lucky.”

Kalb is influenced by The Velvet Underground, Neil Young, The Beach Boys and Elliott Smith. “My goal is to write really excellent and memorable pop songs,” Kalb said. “I try to represent the tone of my life to other people through my songs, as honestly as I can. It gets complicated when you’re writing about other people. Keeping in touch with other people is even more difficult than keeping in touch with yourself.”

Kalb’s feelings about Valentine’s Day are ambivalent at best. “It’s a weird holiday,” he said.

“There’s so much obligation attached to it. If you have a lady, you’ve gotta take her out, pay attention to her. If you don’t have a lady, you better get a lady, or you’re just out in the cold.”

Goldman was more concise: “It’s a fucking Hallmark holiday, man,” he said. “If you’ve got people you love, you ought to tell them you love them every day.” “Love Hurts” will

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Image courtesy of Mother Courage

he music scene at Vassar is dominated by Vassar Student Association (VSA) organizations: ViCE, No-Vice, Vice Jazz and VCPunx all do a great job bringing a variety of bands to school. What’s missing, says Sam Caravaglia ’12, is the regular input of campus bands. Although some groups do facilitate student bands, such as VCPunx, the emphasis is largely on bringing outside artists to campus. “Getting shows together here is really hard because you have to work through campus organizations who don’t prioritize student musicians.”

Taking matters into his own hands, Caravaglia chose to try a different approach. “I decided to talk to the Lathrop House Team, and they were all very excited about hosting a dorm show in the [Multi-Purpose Room (MPR)],” he said. The product of the collaboration is “Love Hurts,” a pre-Valentine’s Day celebration of indie pop for the lovelorn.

“There are a lot of different shades of rock going on in the line-up,” Caravaglia said. Five groups are booked for the show, including student bands Bathtub Sailors and The Facts and Figures. Filling out the line-up are Devin and the Little Angels, Mother Courage (both from Brooklyn), and Jack and the Jaywalkers, who hail from State University of New York, Purchase.

The Facts and Figures is made up of Ben Conant ’12, Andy Dymond ’12, Rickie Goldman ’12, Erik Snow ’12 and Jackson Pynchon ’13. “Our sound is hard to pin down, since our influences range from classic rock to electronica to Modest Mouse,” said Goldman, who plays the saxophone and sings.

Four of the members contribute vocals, cre-

ating distinctive harmonization. “They’re very lyrically driven,” said Caravaglia.

“Most of us have been playing together for going on two years,” said Goldman. “We’ve just started recording some of our songs.”

Bathtub Sailors is composed of Caravaglia, Katie Lau ’12, Jared Kaner ’11 and James Logue ’12. “We’re going through a growth spurt right now,” said Caravaglia. “We’re transitioning from atmospheric indie to dancier music.”

Both groups are quite familiar with the location of their next show, as both use the basement of Lathrop as a practice space. It is not an ideal situation, according to Goldman: “The acoustics of the basement drastically distort our perception of our own sound. Every noise bounces back at you.”

Finding adequate practice space has been a challenge for the Bathtub Sailors and The Facts and Figures, both of whom used to regularly rehearse in Matthew’s Mug. With Aramark’s recent acquisition of the Mug, the future of this acoustically desirable practice space remains up in the air.

Still, Caravaglia and Goldman intend to continue their musical work with full force.

“We’re going to find a way to rehearse no matter what,” Caravaglia said. “But the Mug will just be going unused. It’s like having to beg for a loaf of bread when there’s a cake in the fridge.”

But for the moment, Caravaglia is focused on putting on a great concert.

Caravaglia came to Vassar from Brooklyn, where he was a member of a vibrant local music scene. He used to play in bands with members of Devin and the Little Angels as well as Mother Courage, and those two came to mind

Oliver Kalb, lead singer for the Brooklyn-based band Mother Courage, performs at a recent concert.

The band will perform in Lathrop House on Feb. 13. take place in the Lathrop MPR from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 13. Bring a date, dance out your loneliness or maybe find your 2010 valentine. For all their anti-Valentine’sDay rhetoric, musicians are old softies. Snatch one up before it’s too late.

February 11, 2010

ARTS Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

Members of FlyPeople rehearse on Tuesday, Feb. 9, The group is throwing the event Pour Some Sugar on Me to raise money for their upcoming trip to Disney World to learn and to perform.

FlyPeople to give sweet show Rachael Borné Reporter

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magine this: a lavish all-you-can-eat buffet of cheesecake, fruit tarts, decadent chocolates, delicious candies, mouthwatering brownies and heavenly raspberry-filled cakes.

Sounds like a dessert lover’s dream, right?

Well, on Feb. 12 at 7 p.m., FlyPeople will turn this fantasy into a reality with their annual fundraising event, Pour Some Sugar on Me, hosted in the College Center’s Villard Room.

The sweet treats will no doubt entice all attendees. However, they will certainly not be the only attraction. “It’s three hours of music, dancing and dessert,” said Sophie Laird ’10, a veteran member of FlyPeople.

A jazz duo will set the scene with some boogie tunes; The Vastards, The Minstrels and The Devils will each take the stage throughout the night; Vassar Ballroom will perform; and, of course, FlyPeople has a little something up their sleeve as well.

“This event is one of the few times we get to bring back dances from past years that fit the Valentine’s Day theme,” said Joey Army ’10, a member of FlyPeople. “We’ll be doing three or four dances that are already in our repertoire this year,” added Laird. “We’ll do the ‘Bad Romance’ piece we performed at the rave, we’ll do ‘Down,’ a happy hip-hop piece, and we’ll do a dance to a remix of Britney Spears’ song ‘Toxic,’” she said.

Laird choreographed “Toxic” herself. She describes it as “a thrashy, sexy ex-girlfriend sort of dance,” adding “the dance is about wanting someone in a really longing, kind of crazy way. It’s like the bad ending of something good on Valentine’s Day.” Although many of the dances may have romantic undertones, the event is definitely not just for lovebirds. “If you have a date, it’s fun to come and share a dessert. If you don’t, it’s

just as fun to come with your friends. It’s an event for everyone,” said Laird.

Pour Some Sugar on Me will be a night of entertainment, indulgence and fun, but it’s also an opportunity for FlyPeople to raise money and grow as a dance company. The event was started four years ago to raise money for FlyPeople members to attend workshops and perform at Disney World over Spring Break.

“We attend a three-hour workshop and learn routines that the professional dancers do in the Disney parks, then we have a mock audition,” said Laird. “The workshop teaches us a lot about how to go into an audition professionally, how to pick up choreography quicker and how to perform instead of just dancing,” she added. “We get experience and the opportunity to perform some of our dances on-stage in downtown Disney.”

The Disney trip is a testament to the fact that FlyPeople is constantly growing as a serious dance company. When FlyPeople started, they practiced in the Villard Room or Rockefeller Hall and performed in the second floor of the Students’ Building. Now they perform in the Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater and uses practice rooms in Kenyon Hall.

“Getting a theater space to perform in, combined with the dedication of our artistic directors and the talented people who dance, FlyPeople has come a long way. We’re definitely getting more serious,” said Army.

“The dancers keep getting better, the choreography keeps getting better, and the styles keep changing,” Laird added. “We do everything from jazz, hip-hop, modern, lyrical, ballet, point, tap and Broadway. We’ve done Irish hard-shoe, and we’re going to be doing some stepping this semester,” she said.

Clearly, FlyPeople is serious about dancing and perhaps just as serious about desserts.

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Musical unearths life of renowned paleontologist Alexandra Sarrigeorgiou

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Reporter

nce upon a time, people didn’t know much about the creatures of the earth.

They believed everything on the planet was original; everything that is now has been the same all along. They thought the earth was as old only in the Biblical sense. And then came Mary Anning.

Mary Anning was a poor, uneducated woman living in 19th century Lyme Regis, England. She was a fossil collector and a selfeducated paleontologist whose discoveries of species long extinct molded the study of prehistory. It is her life that the play “Blue Lias or The Fish Lizard’s Whore” chronicles.

Rather than focusing on scientific discoveries, the one-woman musical, to be performed

by Claudia Stevens ’69, touches on issues of gender, science, religion and class. The play will go up at Vassar on Friday, Feb. 12 at 7 p.m. in Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film 106 as a part of the Darwin Days event.

“Blue Lias” is the first of three plays that will be performed for the event Darwin Days.

Darwin Days will also include talks by several faculty and a tea offered by the Victorian Studies Department. Darwin Days started last year as a way to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species.

Administrative Assistant for the Earth Science Department Lois Horst, one of the organizers of Darwin Days, said of Mary Anning: “She’s such an interesting character. She obviously had an incredible intellect and a lot of curiosity about the things she was finding.”

Mary Anning’s discoveries raised real scientific questions and arguments. “People at that time didn’t have an understanding of things going extinct. When she started finding these fossils, they realized that these things were no longer on the planet. It expanded the time-

Visiting British writer discusses issues of race and immigration Danielle Nedivi

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Reporter

ow much would you pay for a story about a young half-Indian and halfEnglish vagabond in the early 20th Century? Plume Publishing happened to pay a record-breaking $1.8 million for the rights to such a story: Hari Kunzru’s 2001 novel The Impressionist. Kunzru will be at Vassar on Feb. 15 at 6 p.m. in Sanders Classroom’s Spitzer Auditorium rfor a reading and lecture entitled “Race, Writing and Literature.”

Kunzru studied English at Oxford University and the University of Warwick. His two books after The Impressionist, Transmission (2004) and My Revolutions (2008), received praise from The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the United Kingdom’s The Times.

Kunzru’s humorous yet poignant writing is often compared to that of contemporaries Zadie Smith, a personal friend of his, and Dave Eggers.

Kunzru has received a lot of positive attention from literary media, but he refused to accept one accolade in 2003—the John Llewellyn Rhys prize, the second-oldest lit-

erary prize in the United Kingdom. The paper sponsoring the prize was The Daily Mail, which Kunzru described as a mix between The New York Post and a trashy celebrity rag. “They hate immigrants and run stories on them stealing from the English,” he elaborated. “I find them a really negative influence on British lives. People don’t usually make a fuss about that.” He soon found that denouncing one newspaper made him very popular with the others. “The Guardian treated me like I was Nelson Mandela,” he chuckled.

Kunzru often focuses on issues of race and immigration in his novels. Transmission is about an Indian programmer who moves to California, and the subject of The Impressionist is an English-Indian young man drifting from one caste to another in 20th century India. He explained that he only writes about topics that absorb and confound him. “If you could paraphrase the point, then you probably don’t need to write the book,” he asserted. “It’s like an itch you have to scratch; a question for which you can’t quite get an answer.” The only way he can reach a conclusion is through a See Kunzru on page 16

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

line in people’s minds,” explained Horst.

The intriguing title of the play is a reference to Mary Anning’s findings. “Blue Lias” is the layer, or formation, where the fossils that she studied came from, while “Fish Lizard” is what some of the fossils were called.

As amazing as Mary Anning’s findings were, she wasn’t always the one to receive credit for them. “Because of the time period and being a woman, she really didn’t get much acclaim about what she did,” said Horst. “Scientists would hear about her discoveries, write papers about them and not credit her.”

For the past few years, interest in Mary Anning’s life has been growing significantly.

Laboratory Technician for the Earth Science Department Rick Jones, co-organizer of Darwin Days, said: “Two new books, The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World by Shelley Emling and Remarkable Creatures

by Tracy Chevalier are inspired by Mary Anning.” Horst spoke with much enthusiasm of Mary Anning’s accomplishments, “I got caught up with her in 2004 when one of the geology faculty mentioned her. I visited a museum that focuses on her in Lyme Regis.”

The Vassar National History Museum in Ely Hall also has a very interesting exhibit on Mary Anning and her findings.

Stevens became interested in Mary Anning and the world that she lived in, and has performed “Blue Lias or The Fish Lizard’s Whore” all over the country. In the play, Stevens alternates between playing the character of Mary Anning and that of herself as a narrator. However, the play is not just a biography. With music composed by Allen Shearer, and humor and social commentary cleverly blended, it should make for a fascinating performance. “We haven’t seen the play yet,” said Horst. “It should be very interesting, we are very excited.”

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ARTS

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February 11, 2010

Hari Kunzru blogs, tweets Nakano to showcase voice in recital his writing Wally Fisher

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here are plenty of artists around Vassar who have never set foot into a lab. Thus it may a great surprise to see Gail Nakano ’10, a chemistry major with a correlate sequence in mathematics, as Artist of the Week. But this budding chemist is not here for creating a solution with an oh-so-pretty hue, but instead for her singing prowess.

Next Saturday at 4 p.m., the mezzo-soprano will perform her senior recital, part of the culmination of her Vassar music career.

“I’ve been working really hard, taking lessons here at Vassar for four years, everything leading up to this recital,” said Nakano. “Every single song I sing I love. It’ll just be a really great experience to be able to share what I’ve been working on with friends and professors.”

During her 90-minute recital she will sing several pieces, including a duet and a trio from a Mozart opera with soprano Lauren Sherman ’10 and bass Andrew Gaines ’12, as well as music

by Schumann, Berlioz and Grieg.

Pianist Richard Mogavero will accompany Nakano on stage in the Mary Anna Fox Martel Recital Hall in Skinner Hall.

To prepare for this event, Nakano has been practicing non-stop. “Especially these days since I’m a senior with my recital coming up and I have a thesis

for chemistry, my time is split pretty evenly between chem and music,” said Nakano.

One of the senior’s fondest experiences singing was last May. when Nakano sang in Kansas City, Mo. with a professional group called The Simon Carrington Chamber Singers. Nakano described her experience with this group glowingly, “I had worked with [Carrington] in the past, and so he invited me to sing with them. So I stayed for a week in May. We rehearsed for a week and then had two concerts.

We were rehearsing all day, everyday for an entire week, but it was really fun. I really loved all of the other people who were singing.”

Nakano enjoys the diverse sounds each piece from her repertoire has to offer.

“The beauty of singing is that each piece is different, so you’re thinking of different things.

Sometimes you’re a character; sometimes you just have a feeling. And so with different songs, you can morph into different characters and personas.”

With her talent and passion, it should not be a surprise that Gail Nakano plans to continue singing in some form or another.

“Hopefully I’ll always be singing,” she said.

There might not be too many chemistry majors who sing Mozart, but Nakano melds the arts and sciences into the perfect alloy.

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

Kunzru continued from page 15 “piece of art”—a book. In many of his interviews Kunzru answers the common “What is your advice to aspiring writers?” question with, “Have the strength to kill your babies.”

The phrase is a metaphor meaning that a writer has to let go of writing that doesn’t work, even if he spent a long time on it. A recent example was when Kunzru wrote about the procedure of a legal fight between his characters. “I was thinking, ‘This is great stuff.’ I spent three weeks researching,” he recalled. “But it was dull. I had to move on. When you cling on just because it took a really long time, that’s not good.”

If he doesn’t self-critique, online critics will gladly come out of the woodwork to do it for him. Kunzru seems very web-savvy, continuously linking sites from Wonkette to The Daily Beast on his Twitter and blog. He is experienced enough to know not to take online comments too seriously: “Everyone says everything on the Internet. ‘This guy can’t write a sentence.

He should stay away from computers forever,’” he mimicked with his take on the angry commenter voice. He revealed that, unfortunately, many of his fellow authors read more online comments than people think. However, Kunzru sees the Internet as an overall positive development for writers: “It’s much easier for a writer to connect with readers now. You can actually build relations with them.”

Vassar English Professor Amitava Kumar, who was instrumental in bringing Kunzru to campus, is looking forward to an even closer encounter with the talented author next week. “I have taught [his] novels in my courses,” he said. “Kunzru writes about shifts in populations, but also in people’s lives. What especially impresses me about him is that he is keen about politics and at the same time [he is] witty and inventive.”

Reporter

Gail Nakano ’10 is currently preparing for her upcoming senior recital which will be held in Skinner Hall of Music this Saturday, Feb. 13 at 4 p.m.

Civic Center to host famed band FLLAC Late Night FLAMING LIPS continued from page 1 Battles the Pink Robots, At War With the Mystics and Embryonic.

“If you look at all of their albums, they’re all different,” said ViCE Music Committee Chair Christine Yu ’10. “Some are pop, some are experimental.”

The band is notorious for their entertaining live performances. Wigs, masks, sasquatch suits, giant colorful balloons, psychedelic light and video sequences, confetti guns and a giant hamster ball that Coyne rolls around in are just some of the ways they embellish their set. These offbeat antics complement other bizarre footnotes to Flaming Lips history. The group wrote, produced and starred in a 2008 independent science-fiction film called Christmas on Mars, based on their concept album of the same name, in which the band lives on a derelict space station on the red planet. An executive order passed in March of last year by Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry named the band’s single “Do You Realize,” as the official rock song of the state (The Flaming Lips originally herald from Oklahoma City.)

They also re-recorded the classic Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon in a collaborative project with a band of fellow Oklahomans called Star Death and White Dwarfs.

ViCE chose the colorful pop-rock band based on an offer received from the band and negotiated by an agent commissioned by the organization’s music committee.

Since they were slated to play at a nearby venue anyway on April 18, and the band had been brought up by committee members in the past, they were the natural choice.

“Most people were too expensive to be available,” said Denny. “When The Flam-

ing Lips gave us the offer, we were excited. They’re obviously a huge deal and have been around for a long time.”

The event will be a departure from ViCE’s previous concerts due to the off-campus venue. The 30-year-old Mid-Hudson Civic Center in the City of Poughkeepsie features a concert hall with the capacity to seat over 3,000 people, significantly more than any venue on campus can hold. ViCE decided to collaborate with the Civic Center because of the issue of capacity and to begin an overall shift in ViCE’s role.

“This whole year we’ve been trying to expand the role of ViCE, which means working with other organizations, especially non-profits and the local community,” said Denny.

The organization had been sitting on the idea of using the Civic Center as a venue for a while. “The [Vassar Student Association] approached us for doing this last year, but the timing just didn’t work out,” said Yu. “It’s been a goal of ours since then.”

This will mark the first time in recent history that a Vassar organization has collaborated with the Mid-Hudson Civic Center for an event such as this.

“When I was told that Vassar was looking to do an event with a larger name than they could accommodate in their own venues, I thought it was a fantastic idea,” said the Civic Center’s President Paul Lloyd. “I thought, ‘Why don’t other colleges in the area do that more often?’”

Denny hopes that the event will also encourage students to explore the downtown community surrounding the Civic Center. Free shuttles will be running for students on the day of the concert for transportation to the event itself, and also

to accommodate any pre-concert activity and after-parties in Poughkeepsie.

“We imagine it as a nighttime Meet Me In Poughkeepsie,” said Denny. “We want people to get into the community and visit things like the local restaurants, bars and art galleries.”

Although the logistics of ticket distribution have yet to be finalized, the concert will also mark a departure from past ViCE events as more tickets will be available to non-students. 1,400 tickets will be distributed to Vassar students at a discounted price at a time and place to be determined. Once those have been sold, the remaining tickets will be sold online to the public. These tickets will be marketed via college radio stations especially towards students at State University of New York at New Paltz, Marist College and Bard College.

“It’s fantastic that this is going to be open to the public,” said Lloyd. “When they have the ability to bring a show like that here, not only do the students benefit, but the community does as well.”

Tickets will be approximately $35 for non-students and $18 at the discount price. ViCE concerts have been free for students in the past, but the high cost of bringing The Flaming Lips to Poughkeepsie means that students will have to cover some of the bill. “It was a tough decision to decide whether students should pay for tickets or not,” said Yu. “But we decided that if students pay a price, it will pay for a bigger and better artist.”

Bigger and better is right: ViCE’s spring concert is one of the organization’s most ambitious projects to date. With Wayne Coyne and company providing the evening’s entertainment, this will be a difficult event for the organization to top.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

honors third year

FLLAC continued from page 14 that pulled me out of my zen-like state of art admiration. But as Elisha’s piece reverberated room to room, seeming as if it might animate figures in the works in front of me, I was thankful that it so brazenly broke the sterile stillness of my experience. Its addition to the event seemed to give permission to those enjoying the art in near-silence to raise their own voices and share their thoughts on the pieces they were viewing. It was clear that she, not the FLLAC collection, was the main event of the night, but that’s okay; Picasso and the gang will still be around 5 to 9 p.m. next week.

Late Night is an event that has evolved subtly with little fanfare or outside promotion. It relies on a simple, repeated concept, and aside from a steady increase in popularity, has not and likely will not see any drastic changes. As a weekly event, it doesn’t require much in the way of extravagance in order to draw an audience, but funding also plays some role in this. “It’s overtime for everybody,” said Mundy,” “and there are some attendant costs with keeping the lights on and offering refreshments, et cetera, so something we’ve had to do is seek out funding. Fortunately, the Jane W. Nuhn Foundation has risen to our aid, and is funding it for this year; what we do after those funds run out, we’re not sure.”

With roof repairs causing the Art Center to close for eight months starting in May, Late Night will, for the time being, lose its home. But the current plan is to continue holding the event elsewhere at least once a month during that time; said Mundy, “We’re searching for other locations to have art events on campus for the fall semester, for part of the summer…It will be kind of a moveable feast.”

And for those looking to get their fill of Late Night before it takes a break from the FLLAC, this week’s three-year anniversary party is as good a place as any to start. Featuring an all-a cappella musical line-up, both FLLAC novices and Late Night regulars alike will enjoy the opportunity, as described

by Phagan, “to come and have refreshments and let their hair down, enjoy an hour or two, enjoy the exhibitions that are on view, enjoy the music that’s being played…It’s a very nice moment to enjoy one another, to socialize and also to learn more about the Arts Center.”

February 11, 2010

ARTS

Page 17

The Wonder Years play addictive pop-punk The Upsides The Wonder Years [No Sleep Records]

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ometimes, an album just hits you. You don’t know why it happens, or how it happens, but you can’t deny it. It starts off slow and unassuming. You listen to it once through—maybe in your car while you’re driving around, or maybe on your iPod as you walk across campus—and you don’t think much of it. But you find yourself listening to it again and again. Before long, songs start to sound familiar, and you start to notice movements within the record.

Soon, you get to the point where you can hear the beginning of the next song in your head before the song you’re listening to has finished. You start putting the album on every chance you get, relishing the comfort of hearing the opening lyrics once more. Eventually, you become totally incapacitated, singing choruses out loud at random times, drumming violently on your desk along with the beat inside your head. It’s a rare occurrence—once every couple of years, maybe— but every so often it happens again. Every so often, an album lands in your lap and makes its presence known. The Upsides by The Wonder Years is one of those albums.

Before I go any further, let me make a disclaimer. The Wonder Years isn’t anything like the music I usually promote in this column. This isn’t an indie rock record or East Coast hip hop single. The Wonder Years is an unabashed, unashamed poppunk band. That’s right, pop-punk. Crunchy guitars; catchy choruses; high-pitched, fastpaced guitar licks; and vocals that don’t hold anything back. They’re fast, raw, angry and they don’t really give a shit what you think about them. I know what you’re

thinking, but trust me on this. Sometimes you have to forget all your pretensions, let go, and surrender yourself to the hook.

The Upsides is hands down the best record I’ve heard in a long time because it’s completely unafraid to be honest. You can tell from listening to this record that these aren’t the kind of guys who would nix a drum fill or a song lyric because they were worried about what other people think. The lyricism is almost frighteningly translucent, offering a surprisingly optimistic message about post-college life for generation Y: Yes, you’re tired, broke, lost and dejected, but don’t worry, things will get better. On several occasions throughout the album, frontman Dan “Soupy” Campbell sings the phrase “I’m not sad anymore” at the top of his lungs, presenting a terse, powerful summation of what The Upsides is all about. His voice is so tangible on the record, you can almost see him singing live in a basement somewhere in suburban Pennsylvania, held up by sweaty fans, mic held close to his mouth, his face scrunched up as his voice starts to run out of breath.

Your average, run-of-the-mill, commercial, pop-punk record has at least four or five songs with catchy choruses. The Upsides scoffs at this. Every section of this record is undeniably, unbelievably hooky. Every chorus, every verse and every bridge will get stuck in your head after four listens. There is not one wasted moment, not one lyric or guitar riff that doesn’t fit. The percussion is energetic, yet restrained. The bass makes itself known only when it has to. The guitars bite and squeal with the right amount of distortion, dropping out when you’d least expect them to and coming back in when you thought they would. And the vocals are superb—never whiney or screamy, always bursting with energy and conviction.

Campbell’s got a lot to say on the The Upsides, and not a lot of time or space to say it,

so he dispenses his brilliant nuggets faster than you can process them. He’s got a lot of grievances and a lot of axes to grind, but as I said before, this is a positive album. One minute he’s capturing that quintessential teenage angst with gems like “Suburbs have abandoned me/I’ve had the same best friend since ’93/I call he’s not answering, no/I can’t get comfortable on my own street.” The next minute, he’s voicing the frustrated interior monologue that goes through everyone’s head when they’re at a bad party, as he avoids “the girls-gone-wild B-team” and bemoans how he “ended up here again/While the kid with the dreads/Tells me he’s smarter on acid.”

The best moments are when Campbell stands against this anger, even offering a restrained hope. “I’m looking for the upsides/ To these panic attack nights,” he sings, admitting that even in the worst situations, there are things to look forward to. For all its depressing, post-adolescent themes, The Upsides is filled with images of spring arriving, fountains being turned on and friends finding comfort in their own company. Campbell is probably the only lyricist I know of who truly captures the feelings of people my age: the paradoxical mixture of ingrained cynicism and guarded optimism.

The Upsides opens and closes with near identical lyrics. On the first few seconds of the record, Campbell sings, “I’m not sad anymore/I’m just tired of this place.” And the last lyric of the record, repeated over and over by a chorus of voices, states “I’m not sad anymore/I’m just tired of this place/ If this year would just end/I think we’d all be ok.” Those last two lines, with their subtle positivity, are why I can’t stop listening to The Upsides. Pick up this record. You won’t regret it.

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Reporter

“N*Sync”

Travis Hungreder ’13

“Mini Daddy

by Adriansito.

Watch it on youtube. It’s Reggaeton.”

Adriana Pericchi ’13

“Frightened Rabbit”

Zoe Georgakis ’10

“Soul music.”

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

’m not going to lie: Walking into a screening room full of Trekkies is intimidating.

Trivia on Vulcans, the U.S.S. Enterprise crew and the villain Khan’s enormously buff chest filled the auditorium minutes before the screening of an old favorite. A screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was about to begin, and I had no idea what to expect.

Not being an avid fan made me skeptical of the Trekkie sub-culture, yet in the words of the director, Nicholas Meyer, who spoke after the screening, I had to release myself to his visionary art. “All art is manipulation. You must be willing to suspend disbelief and go with the flow,” said Meyer.

When Star Trek’s iconic emblem illuminated the Rosenwald screen, the audience burst into applause. I sank into my seat and let the opening credits transport me to another galaxy. Five minutes into the film, I was hooked. This was a movie about a sci-fi villain’s revenge against James T. Kirk, but it was also about universal themes common to anyone willing to look past the pointy ears: friendship, old age and death. The movie was also a hit for its more classic sci-fi elements; it elicited craned necks for epic space fights between the U.S.S. Enterprise and the Reliant, squeamish groans when leech-monsters burrowed into protagonists’ ears and laughs when William Shatner’s trademark inflections were audible. By the finale of the movie, I felt like I had been a full-blown Trekkie all my life. Nicholas Meyer had accomplished the bare task of any director: to tell a story and to make the audience take something away from the film. After the end credits, everybody was engaging in conversation with

others and swapping opinions, ideas and afterthoughts until the lecture began. What to expect from meeting a director? These men and women work with famous stars, attain important Hollywood connections and may be famous stars themselves. As it turned out, Nicholas Meyer was a down-to-Earth person with a charming personality and offbeat humor. The stereotype of the egocentric and pretentious artist went out the window for Meyers, who sat cross-legged on the table, tennis shoes and all.

“It’s like playing with a Rubix cube,” answered Meyer on his personal take on directing Star Trek II. The director elaborated that the bits and pieces of the film had to all be put together and the themes had to coalesce.

Meyer graciously answered questions and casually gave his insight on his career without sounding haughty. From the film students to the devoted Star Trek fans of the Hudson Valley, everyone was interested in Meyer’s feedback on his films and the knowledge he has acquired along the way. Nathan Hoston ’13 attended the film screening and Meyer lecture due to a family tie to Star Trek. “My grandfather‘s huge tower of Star Trek VHS recordings remind me of this. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see, in person, one of his heroes. I was very pleased with this event.

I am not a director or a screenwriter, but I did learn that Ricardo Montalbán’s chest was not a prosthetic, so it was totally worth it,” explained Hoston.

It definitely was worth it. The lecture was not only about Star Trek, but valuable expertise of screenwriting development, filmmaking intentions and all the subtle nuances one cannot learn from a textbook. By the time everyone was conversing over refreshments and cheese

Boyd Gardner ’12

—Martin Bergman ’12 is a Jewish studies major writing a bi-weekly column on recently released albums.

Down-to-earth director out of this world David Lopez

“The new Alicia Keys album.”

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is directed by Nicholas Meyer who visited campus to give a lecture after a screening of the classic film. cubes, Meyer had off-the-cuff advice for any young people on the precipice of taking life changing chances: “What in the world isn’t an uphill climb? Go on, take your best shot.”

I might not be entirely a Star Trek convert, but I do wish to live long, take chances and hopefully prosper.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Alex Goldberg ’11

“White Panda.

It’s so good it’s like a crime.”

Adam Steel ’12, CJ LeSueur ’12 and Tyler Blake ’12 —Carrie Hojnicki, Arts Editor

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SPORTS

February 11, 2010

Page 19

Squash places second in Seven Sisters Championship Molly Turpin

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Senior Editor

Parker in an e-mailed statement.

Though the teams fought hard on the court, the Seven Sisters Tournament was notable for its spirit of camaraderie among players because of their special relationship as students at Seven Sisters colleges. “It was a really friendly match,” said Kraft of the atmosphere of the Seven Sisters Tournament.

“It is also a small event—four teams of ten players a side, who get to know each other quite well over their four years of college squash.

It isn’t as frantic as other events,” wrote Parker. “The coaches are all good friends and also appreciate the opportunity to get together for a short time away from the competition scene.”

Both the men’s and women’s squads will return to the competition scene when they face Columbia University, Connecticut College and Wesleyan University in the Vassar Team Challenge on Saturday, Feb. 13.

Agarwala carves unique path Assistant Sports Editor

Image courtesy of Sports Information

quash is often thought of as a gentleman’s sport, but as Arjun Agarwala ’10 will attest, it is anything but gentle. “Squash is one of the fastest games in the world,” says Agarwala. Balls hurtle around the court at speeds upwards of 100 miles per hour, ricocheting off of pockmarked walls, leaving only a scuff to betray their aggressive impact. And in the middle of all of this action are two players fighting to make sure that their racket is the last to make contact. Agarwala is one such player, and his shots mimic lightening as they rip through the air and arc around the court. Anyone who can maintain his cool in this situation is impressive, but an individual such as Agarwala who can excel in the frenzied blitz is tremendous.

Agarwala began playing squash at Vassar.

He found that his previous experiences with badminton afforded him skills that were easily transferred onto a squash court. Agarwala believes that he is a perfect fit for the program, and describes his team as close-knit.

On the court, Agarwala is a potent force. He believes that a game is not truly played unless “you walk off the court completely tired.” He exhibits an unwavering focus and the drive of a dreadnought. “Any athlete wants to win,” Agarwala stated plainly. “I’m very competitive, and I am always trying to push myself to the brink.”

Agarwala has grown into an accomplished and inspiring team captain. His skill is not supernatural, but rather the product of long hours of perfecting his craft. Initially, Agarwala found himself in a reserve position on Vassar’s team. He explained this as an interim period during which he “got used to the rules and stroke play while improving fitness and stamina.” He added, “Unless you’re at your peak, you’re going to find it hard to compete.” It was this dedicated, patient, calculating attitude that allowed Argawala to blossom into the player he is today. A single game of squash can last up to 15 minutes. During this time Agarwala is running, swinging, smashing, diving and dodging, and that’s an easy game. Squash is an incredibly demanding sport, and Agarwala has grown to meet those demands.

Agarwala’s route to greatness has carved a unique, alternative path to a career in squash.

The Brewers have maintained a rivalry with Fordham University’s squash team since Agarwala’s junior year. Their first skirmish occurred during a home game on Dec. 3, 2008 during a midseason match. Fordham trounced Vassar 7-2. It was a defeat, but it was not disheartening. Rather than submit to

Alexa Lichtenstein ’13 wins her sixth consecutive match at the Seven Sisters Championship, hosted in Kenyon Hall. Vassar placed second for the fourth consecutive year.

B-ball gives glimpse at N. Korea W

Mitchell Gilburne

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Image courtesy of Sports Information

n a series of tough battles, the no.

2 seed Vassar women’s squash team fell to no. 1 seed Mount Holyoke College at the Seven Sisters Tournament on Feb. 6. After an early victory against Smith College, the Brewers came in second in the tournament for the fourth consecutive year.

The tournament started off with a bang for the no. 17-ranked Brewers in a decisive 9-0 win against Smith in the first semi-final match. This victory vaulted Vassar straight into the championship match later in the afternoon. Meanwhile, Mount Holyoke defeated Wellesley College in an equally impressive 9-0 bout. Smith then went on to defeat Wellesley 7-2 in the match to determine third place.

In the championship match, the Brewers fought hard to stop Mount Holyoke’s streak of Seven Sisters wins. Though the final score was

7-2, the individual game scores reveal just how close the match was.

“It was a close match game-pointwise,” said Captain Emilie Kraft ’10.

“I think it was a really hard fight.”

Vassar’s two wins came from Meg Taylor ’12 and Alexa Lichtenstein ’13.

Both victories were close. Taylor’s match went to four games with a final score of 3-1 (9-11, 11-4, 11-4, 118). After an initial setback against her opponent Paulina Rejek, Taylor made a forceful comeback with two clear wins leading to a tough final set. Lichtenstein’s match against Mount Holyoke’s Lila Khan went to five games. Though the final score was in her favor, the last game was especially close. The final score was 3-2 (5-11, 9-11, 11-6, 11-8, 12-10).

“The two Vassar victories from Meg Taylor, no. 6, and Alexa Lichtenstein, no. 7, showed the determination needed to conquer a team ranked quite a few notches above Vassar,” wrote Head Coach Jane

Ajun Agarwala ’10 came to the squash court after extensive experiense with badminton and has grown into the game and is now a captain. the superiority of their opponents, the Brewers gathered their resolve and intensified their focus. They realized that their previous faltering was not a measure of their skill, and that zest and mental strength were the only necessary components to procure future victories. The next time the Brewers met Fordham they would be ready. This long anticipated grudge match came up on Feb. 22, 2009 during the Serues Cup competition during the College Squash Association Team Championships, where the Brewers beat Fordham 5-4 and achieved a bronze medal, thanks in large part to a sweeping victory by Agarwala.. This triumph was all the more glorious due to the fact that the Brewers were playing with a reduced team, forcing a few of their players to work double-time. Not content to merely defeat Fordham, Agarwala led his team against them yet again during a home match on Nov. 18, 2009 and decidedly devastated them 8-1.

Arjun Agarwala is a team player, a focused mind and a polished body. However, he rises above these mere components; each and every time he steps onto the court he proves himself as an athlete worthy of the title “Of the Week.”

orldwide, February means basketball. In the United States, colleges fight to qualify for March Madness, while in Europe teams compete in the Euroleague’s Top 16 phase, fighting to get to the Final Four. Over the last two decades, basketball has erupted onto the global sports scene, now ranking as second in popularity only to football (or should I say soccer?), and at this time of year, that fact is especially well pronounced.

In one country in particular, basketball has slowly become a national obsession. Played almost everywhere and by everyone, the sport is so popular it has even become one of the defining symbols of the country’s president. It’s played daily in all schools, all the way from elementary to university, and in a distinguished professional league whose rules are different from those used anywhere else in the world. Sound familiar? Can you guess which country I’m talking about?

Time’s up: The answer is North Korea. That’s right, basketball has been the official sport of the “Hermit Kingdom” for years now, and no one definitively knows why. Suggestions abound, but there are only a few facts that we know about.

For starters, we know that basketball is heavily promoted by the government. Schools everywhere in the country are obliged to have basketball courts and provide instruction of the game to their students. Evidence of this can be seen through the North Korean government’s “Grow Tall Movement,” TV programs that promote the game to the country’s citizens, movies such as The Family Basketball Team, and the building of a major 12,300-seat basketball stadium in Pyongyang, estimated to have cost a country ravaged by famine over $57 million.

There is also evidence that Kim Jong Il, or the “Dear Leader” as he is better known in the country, is a serious basketball fan. In fact, when former Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited the country in 2000, the first ever time that such a high-ranking member of a U.S. administration visited North Korea, one of the many state gifts she brought Kim Jong Il was a basketball signed by Michael Jordan, according to the Chinese-American monthly magazine China Now. Kim’s passion for the game has been cited by many as the main engine behind the rise in popularity that the sport has enjoyed inside North Korea; however, while this cannot be verified, what is known is that Kim has left his mark on the game in a very profound way.

At present, North Korea is the only country apart from the United States that does not adhere to the rules set by the International Basketball Federation in domestic play. Instead, it uses the “Dear Leader’s” own interpretation.

According to articles in Chongnyon Jonwi, a daily newspaper published in Pyongyang by the youth wing of the North Korean communist

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

party, North Korea introduced its own rules in 1997. Now, dunks in North Korea are worth three points, three-pointers that touch “nothing but net” are worth a very confusing four points, and one point is not only awarded to each successful free throw, but one is deducted for every free throw missed. To make things even more interesting, any baskets made in the final two seconds are worth a staggering eight points.

This new form of basketball has worked other miracles too. According to official government propaganda pieces aimed at increasing interest in the sport, basketball stimulates “millions of brain cells,” and is a sure-fire way of growing taller. In its “Grow Tall Movement,” which was started in response to famines in the 1990s and to what some call a “stunted generation” of North Koreans (international studies claimed at the time that up to 62 percent of five- to seven-year-olds in the country suffered from stunted growth), the North Korean government used basketball as a way to get its population active, healthy and tall. State media claimed that boys playing the sport were on average between 1.2 and 1.9 inches taller than regular boys, according to China Now. They also used players like Ri Myung Hoon, the tallest ever basketball player at 7 feet 9 inches, to hammer the point home.

The result is that basketball has, for better or worse, become nationally accepted and widely played. And while the circumstances surrounding its ascendance to fame may be questionable and dark, its presence in the internationally cut-off country now is, nonetheless, a ray of hope. Basketball now serves as an intermediary, bringing North Korea closer to its neighbors and the outside world. While not regular, international basketball games between North and South Korea do happen, and they help to promote some sort of understanding and peace between the two countries. Even more importantly, tourists who go to North Korea on strictly guided tours have been known to play basketball against their guides and local people in Pyongyang. In a country where so much as talking to a foreigner can land you prison, the opportunity to interact and have fun with an internationalvisitor in a setting as innocent and pure as sport is priceless.

As basketball continues to spread around the world, stories like these illustrate both the game’s appeal and its potential. While we might have lost the opportunity to use a single sport as a global social bridge with soccer, now synonymous with sports violence worldwide, we still have the relatively much younger sport of basketball at our disposal, showing even the two most seemingly complete opposites, the United States and North Korea, just how similar they really are.

SPORTS

Page 20

February 11, 2010

SCOREBOARD February 3 Men’s Squash VASSAR Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

Teammates look on as libero Andre Posada ’10 digs an attempted kill sent by opponents. The men’s volleyball team has so far had a winning season with a 5-3 record. Despite a disappointing loss against NYU on Feb. 2, the Brewers came back strong in their Feb. 5 and 6 wins against Stevens and Endicott Colleges.

Brewers play valiantly against Violets Mitchell Gilburne

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Assistant Sports Editor

n Feb. 2, an event of cyclopean proportions began to unfurl in the outer reaches of Vassar’s campus. Kenyon Hall was abuzz with life. Devoted fans filled the stands, dedicated coaches prowled the sidelines and determined athletes went through their usual pre-game paces. The men’s volleyball team was up against its longtime rival, the New York University (NYU) Violets.

The Brewers have had their fair share of runins with the purple plague from the city, and Vassar’s ultimate defeat was in no part perpetuated by a lack of competitive verve from the rose and grey.

The first game of the match saw the Violets pull ahead to a considerable lead, which was swiftly closed by the persistent peppering of kills and aces from Brewer hands. Tension was palpable as the scrappy Brewers managed to create a tie at the 24-point mark. However, any lead achieved was quickly devoured by NYU’s ruthless recovery tactics. All of the Brewers’ finesse was not enough to stop the Violets from clutching a 32-30 victory over Vassar.

The Brewers were not so hot coming off of the heels of defeat, as the second game of the

match, while speckled with a few bright spots, was ultimately a fairly brutal defeat for Vassar.

The Violets took an early 8-2 lead that would persist and expand throughout the match, despite a heroic performance from Fredericksen, who delivered 16 kills throughout the match.

Another redeeming moment for the Brewers was a last second dive at a dug ball by Christian La Du ’13. Notwithstanding our few moments of glory, the Brewers fell to the Violets 30-21.

Coming into the third game, Vassar was on edge. They would need to win the next three games in order to take the match, a daunting task to say the least. Vassar opened strong, scoring the first two points. Although NYU pulled forward, Brewer resolve was high. The game played out with fierce competitiveness, as each team vied for the leading position. The tie persisted up through the first 25 points until NYU finally pulled ahead and sunk the nail into the coffin at 30-27. Head Coach Antonia Sweet said that the Brewers played well, despite their loss. “That’s what we needed to do: [play well] against a quality opponent,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “We needed to win the serve and pass, and we didn’t. Yet we hung tough.”

Defeated, but not extinguished, the Brewers held their heads high, reflected on the positives

and set their gaze towards what would prove to be a winning match against Stevens Institute of Technology on Feb. 5. “The Stevens win felt like it all came together at the right time,” wrote Sweet. “We got good things from everyone—total team effort, the opposite of the NYU match.”

Against Stevens, Tully delivered an impressive 18 kills, and Fredericksen proved just how consistent his offensive force is by racking up a total of 16 kills. The next day, the Brewers split a double-header against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Endicott College. The matches were close. The Brewers fell 3-1 (30-28, 28-30, 22-30, 19-30) against MIT, but their perseverance paid off in a 3-0 (30-25, 3026-30-24) match against Endicott. The squad’s winning record now sits at 5-3 for the season, and both the wins against Stevens and Endicott and the strong showings against MIT and NYU gave the Brewers a greater sense of confidence and drive. “If you look at our matches against Stevens or Springfield, it’s clear that we possess the individual talent to compete with the best teams in Division III,” wrote Fredericksen in an e-mailed statement. “We just need mental discipline to become consistent, and that should come from experience and the hard work that we put in during practice every day.”

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Sports Briefs Men’s basketball

Women’s swimming and diving Last Saturday, the women’s swimming and diving team took part in the Saratoga Springs Sprint Invitational. Though the squad finished third out of three teams, there were still a number of bright spots for the Brewers. Three Brewers emerged victorious in various events.

Jordana Jantze ’10 won both the 50 and 100 freestyle for Vassar. Shannon Sara ’13 proved victorious in three events, winning both the 200 and 500 freestyle as well as the 400 IM. Meanwhile, in diving, Christie Musket ’12 topped all others in the three-meter. While the victories were important for Vassar, the task that they have focused more on was preparing for the State Championships, which begin on Thursday, Feb. 18.

—A.M.

Women’s basketball After starting the weekend with a 3-4 conference record, in the heart of the Liberty League playoff picture, Vassar dropped a pair of conference match-ups and fell to a 3-6 record and sixth place in the conference. On Friday night, Vassar fell behind St. Lawrence University 44-23 at halftime, eventually losing 64-39. In the critical first half, Vassar turned the ball over 15 times, allowing St. Lawrence to establish their lead. Emily Haeuser ’10 and Tori Chaltain ’13 each led Vassar with 10 points. Haeuser added six rebounds in just 18 minutes due to foul trouble, while Chaltain contributed eight boards.

The Saints were led by Katherine Edgerton with 22 points and Casey Cappello with 19. The following afternoon, Vassar sought to right the ship against Clarkson. The game was evenly matched in the first half, and the teams went into the locker-room knotted at 26. Vassar started off with the first surge of the second half jumping out to a 38-30 lead behind two lay-ups from Brittany Parks ’12. But the Golden Knights answered back, going on a decisive 21-3 run. Lauren Pluchino ’11 keyed the run with eight points, while Carey Turner ’12 scored six. Pluchino and Turner scored 21 and 19, respectively, leading Clarkson. Vassar was led by Haeuser with 14 points.

The women’s basketball team continues its season this weekend, traveling to Union and Skidmore Colleges before returning home to conclude its season with a contest against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on Feb. 16 and two weekend matchups with Hamilton and Hobart Colleges Feb. 19 and 20. All remaining match-ups are league contests for the squad, which sits two games out of a playoff berth.

—A.M.

MISCELLANY NEWS | VASSAR COLLEGE

Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News

This past weekend the men’s basketball team dropped a pair of Liberty League contests at home. On Friday night, the squad lost to League-leading St. Lawrence University 82-60. The first half saw the teams frequently exchanging buckets, with each team shooting six three-pointers. Caleb McGraw ’12 was instrumental in Vassar’s side of the exchange, shooting three baskets from three-point range. Despite the equity in long-range shooting, Vassar found itself trailing by 14 points at the break due to the hot hands of the Saints, who shot 47 percent from the field in the half. McGraw led all scorers with 19 points, while Marvin Smith ’11 scored 10.

The following night, Vassar hosted the Golden Knights of Clarkson University. Seeking its first league win, Vassar jumped out to a 32-21 lead and finished the first half up 37-29. In the second half, Clarkson outscored Vassar 46-23, en route to a 75-60 victory. The Brewers began the game red-hot, making seven three-point shots in the first half. Ethan Shanley ’12 led the way, shooting a perfect four out of four attempts from the field and three out of three from the three-point range, all in the first half, for a career-high 11 points in just 10 minutes of play. Devon Luongo ’11 was also key for the Brewers, shooting three from the field. Clarkson’s Elson Pickering led all scorers with 18 points on four from the field, while shooting 10 from the free-throw line.

The men’s basketball team continues its season this weekend, traveling to Union and Skidmore Colleges before returning home to conclude its season with a contest against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on Feb. 16 and two weekend match-ups with Hamilton and Hobart Colleges on Feb. 19 and 20. Each game is a league contest, as Vassar strives to win their first league battle.

—Andy Marmer, Assistant Sports Editor

Carolyn Crampton ’11 dribbles down the court. The team will play Union and Skidmore Colleges this weekend.