Spring 2017 - Issue 8

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WIKIPEDIA EDIT-A-THON KAHLO @ NEW COLLEGE

APRIL 19, 2017 VOLUME XXXV ISSUE VIII

New College of Florida's student-run newspaper

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Students go hungry for justice

Activists demand that Wendy’s come to the table with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers

BY KELLY WILSON For one week, four New College Students - and one student from Valencia College in Orlando - camped inside of a tent on Z-Green to support a nationwide boycott of Wendy’s called on by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in an attempt to get them to sign on to the Fair Food Program.

This tent was the site of a growing number of signs, made by students in support of their campaign demonstrations and a growing number of students who stopped by and spent time there throughout the week showing up to support for their fellow students. But most of all, the tent became home to third-year Alex Schelle, second-year Emily King, second-year Sara Friend, second-year Ximena Pedroza and Valencia College

Kelly Wilson/Catalyst

Third-year and activist, Alex Schelle, passes out filers at the Wendy's protest.

student Xavier Goud as they spent five days fasting for farm worker justice.

Background The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) was formed by farm workers in 1993 to fight unfair

treatment and modern day slavery conditions in the farm worker communities in Florida. By 1995, they organized, and eventually took part in, a 30 day hunger strike to fight injustices of farm workers. In 2001, they began to

involve students and people of faith in their movements to get big companies to sign on to the Fair Food Program.

“We realized that students had a lot of power [...] that’s why the campaign shifted and we demanded corporations come to the table with farm workers,” Leo Perez from the CIW said at a panel discussion on Tuesday, April 11, with a translation provided by a member of the Students for Fair Food.

The Coalition is now asking Wendy’s to join the 90 percent of farms in Florida that are part of the Fair Food Program, by paying one penny more per pound of tomatoes to provide better wages for farm workers.

Under the Fair Food Program, workers would also have access to things like clean water, clean bathrooms and a

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Operation Spring Smackdown responds to opioid crisis

BY JORDI GONZALEZ Since the beginning of 2017, there have been 71 reported heroin related overdoses in Sarasota County, including 32 in the month of March alone, resulting in 14 deaths. In response, Sarasota County Sheriff ’s Office launched an enforcement campaign called “Operation Spring Smackdown” with the hope of alleviating the opiate crisis striking the community and the nation at large.

It’s believed by the Sheriff ’s Office that, “...what once was an era of crack cocaine evolved into prescription pill abuse and now we’re battling opiate addiction,” Community Affairs Director and Media Liaison at the Sheriff ’s Office, Kaitlyn Perez, wrote in an e-mail interview. “This epidemic, while it’s technically a societal problem, has fallen into the lap of law enforcement and for that reason, we felt [it] needed a focused effort.”

The name for the campaign originates from the replacement name for heroin, which is commonly referred to as “smack,” and it was carried out throughout the month of March

WHAT’S INSIDE

dealing or using opiates or narcotics in March. These individuals have an accumulated 332 prior felony charges.

Following the four-pronged approach, it is believed that prevention is enhanced, “...by deploying resources to strategic locations in order to prevent overdoses and other crimes before they can occur,” as Sheriff Thomas Knight explained in a recent press conference.

The intelligence-led method of policing, known as Intelligence to Action (I2A), is utilized in order to identify the areas that need the most attention, which is where the resources would be deployed to.

By talking to the families, friends image courtesy of businessinsider.com and neighbors of abusive narcotic users, the police have hoped to educate the The graph above shows the increase in opioid pain relievers (such as fentanyl) and loved ones of the addicted in order for heroin overdoses that resulted in deaths in recent history. more interventions to occur amongst through a four-pronged approach of “We would like to remind the the community members, which is key enforcement, prevention, education community that this isn’t something for successful harm reduction take place. and treatment. With each portion of we can squash on our own…” Perez said In this attempt to give information the operation being executed using via e-mail interview. “We will do what on the substances, the aim is so that the available resources and efforts of we can, but we want the community to those most closely associated with the the law enforcement, the issue still know that we can’t do it alone.” overdose patients can understand what requires active participation from Representative of enforcement community members in order for it to aspect of the campaign, police have continued on p. 5 be successfully resolved. arrested 28 individuals involved with

2 Human Rights Vigil

6 New Prom

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Gardening with Diane

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Human Rights Vigil sends message to Representative Vern Buchanan

BY KELLY WILSON The words “Love Thy Neighbor” lit up the night at a human rights vigil organized by All of Us Sarasota on Thursday, April 13. The phrase was spelled out by large signs each with one letter in LED lights, all of which New College students held up while speakers talked to the crowd which gathered in front of them.

The organization, All of Us Sarasota, brings together people who are interested different issues, such as environmental issues and immigrants rights in our community. At this vigil, however, they came together to make a statement to Vern Buchanan through four key policy targets. To deny funding for President Trump’s mass deportation and detention plan, to deny funding for a border wall, to withdraw support for the sanctuary cities act and to condemn President Trump’s travel ban.

“We may or may not have voted for him, but we are his constituents,” Michelle Nungester of the Florida Nurses Association said to the crowd during a speech. This statement was

Kelly Wilson/Catalyst New College Professor Sara Hernandez speaks to the vigil attendees supported by New College students holding signs spelling out "Love Thy Neighbor."

met with applause from the crowd as she continued to speak to the group of people gathered on the steps of the federal building in front of a line of mostly New College students, each holding one letter of a sign which read “Love Thy Neighbor” in large LED

letters.

“I keep hearing the GOP and the president himself say that we are not a movement [...] I keep asking, why the harsh judgement for something so historical and American. Why are they insulting us, ignoring us refusing the

meet with us, threatening us, voting against us and calling us criminals and saying that we do not love our country. There is only one answer. They absolutely do comprehend the depth of revolt and resistance that is now driving all of us,” Nungester said.

New College Professor Sara Hernandez from New College also took to the microphone to speak at the vigil.

“We do not have to become inhuman to protect our human rights,” Hernandez said.

She then quoted article 23 of the Declaration of Human Rights, stating: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work. Everyone without any discrimination has the right to equal payment for equal work.”

The last speaker of the night, however, second-year New College student Ximena Pedroza gave an emotional account of a chilling day in her life.

“November 29, 2009 was meant

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All Power to the Imagination! celebrates tenth anniversary

BY CASSIE MANZ Many students may be unaware that the largest radical leftist conference in the South, and longest standing in the United States, takes place in their very own backyard. All Power to the Imagination!, a conference entirely organized and run by students, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year this weekend, April 21 to April 23. Along with this radical leftist conference, activists will be marching through the streets of downtown Sarasota to stand up for science, the “first step of a global movement to defend the vital role science plays in our health, safety, economies, and governments,” according to the official March for Science’s website.

The power behind All Power to the Imagination!

All Power to the Imagination! began as a conference organization tutorial taught by Professor of Sociology Sarah Hernandez. James Birmingham (‘06) and two other New College students, Kotu Baja and Jackie Wang, approached her after they attended the National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR). They

were inspired by the conference but wanted to do something regional to the Southeast and Florida. Thus, the students co-founded API! and the first conference was held in 2008.

Thesis student Sophia Schultz and third-year Ava Howard have been involved in organizing API! for the past three years. This year they have seven working groups, part of their consensus-based, decentralized organization process that means there is no majority-rule and no one allpowerful person. The groups are held accountable by each other rather than a president of the club, according to Howard. The working groups this year include orientation, food, community outreach, direct action planning, finance, accessibility and late night events.

The conference will be held from April 21 to April 23. The API! club began planning around January - it takes about a whole semester to prepare for.

Attendees and presenters have come from as far as Mexico and Washington State to participate in the conference.

Schultz and Howard are excited for the presenters who are coming to API!, many of whom have talked at the

"the sounds of her snorty-snort-snorts" © 2017 the Catalyst. All rights reserved.

The Catalyst is available online at www.ncfcatalyst.com, facebook.com/NCFcatalyst, @ncfcatalyst The Catalyst is an academic tutorial sponsored by Professor Maria Vesperi. It is developed in the New College Publications Lab using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign and printed at Sun Coast Press with funds provided by the New College Student Alliance.

conference before. Clarissa Rogers, who is returning this year, is an anarchist and educator from Philadelphia and received her Master’s degree in radical pedagogy and education. Last year she taught a workshop called “Activism thru Paolo Freire’s Education for Liberation.”

There is also a group from Miami who will give a workshop on D.I.Y (Do it Yourself) publishing as a form of empowerment. Schultz also mentioned that different groups will be tabling throughout the weekend, including an anti-fascist group from Savannah.

“It’s just a different method of education,” Howard said of the conference and why students should attend. “We get so much out of our classes but it’s never that radical but this is an active way to supplement what a lot of New College students are already looking into or are curious about and I think that’s why we do the conference is to fill that hole of knowledge and action that people don’t often get training in.”

Schultz added: “It’s really hard to learn a lot of these things so come if you want to learn something that you can't just easily find online or learn in a class.”

There will be several different

Pariesa Young General Editor Giulia Heyward Managing Editor Ryan Paice Copy Editor Magdalene Taylor & Jacob Wentz Online Editors Audrey Warne & Layout Editors Anya María Contreras-García Katelyn Grimmett, Staff Writers Jasmine Respess, Dylan Pryor, & Photographers Jordi Gonzalez, Jason D'Amours, Kelly Wilson, Cassandra Manz,

events throughout the weekend including an open mic night, a concert and queer safer space dance party at the Green Bean Coffee House, workshops and panels during the day and direct action. They will be marching along with the March for Science on Saturday, April 22 in support of freedom of knowledge, freedom of resource access and access to a good life.

“They're really open to having other groups be present and apply their own messages to the March for Science because March for Science doesn’t have any actual political leanings or statements besides like support for science but they’re welcoming to other groups who want to help out,” Howard said.

A March for Science Sarah Scully, a thesis student at New College, was in Washington D.C. when she heard of the March for Science happening.

“I texted my roommate Kayla Evans and was like, ‘Hey this is cool, we should organize a march here' and was like kind of joking but then she was like,

continued on p. 11 Direct submissions, letters, announcements and inquiries to: The Catalyst 5800 Bay Shore Road Sarasota, Florida 34243 ncfcatalyst@gmail.com The Catalyst reserves the right to edit all submissions for grammar, space and style.

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Friday for consideration in the next issue.

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The Activist Newsletter

BY ANYA MARÍA CONTRERAS-GARCÍA This week (4/19 – 4/27), activists have the opportunity to participate in marches, panel discussions, workshops, film screenings and meetings!

Read on if you want to get involved in the community regarding science, environmental issues, gun violence, healthcare or racial equality. Check out ncfcatalyst.com every week for an extended calendar of events!

Sat., April 22 Sarasota March for Science @ 10:30 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Five Points Park, 1 Central Ave, Sarasota, Florida 34236 The March for Science is a peaceful call to safeguard the scientific community in response to recent federal policies. Local activists will assemble at 5 Points Park and march to Hamel Park to save the planet, to stand for facts and to bring environmental issues to the forefront for Earth Day. For more information, check out the event page on Facebook.

Sat., April 22 Dancing for Parkinson's Performance and Panel Discussion @ 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.

College Hall Music Room, New College, 5800 Bay Shore Rd, Sarasota FL 34243 Embodied Cognition in (Inter) Action, a multiple-disciplinary event, will explore the intersections between movement therapy, art and cognition theory and research.

Dance classes offer a unique opportunity for philosophers and neuroscientists studying cognition while offering people with Parkinson’s Disease improved motor skills. To RSVP for this free event, check out the event page on Facebook.

Sun., April 23 Racism 102: Deconstructing & Addressing Racial Bias @ 2 – 5 p.m.

Allendale UMC, 3803 Haines Rd N, Saint Petersburg, Florida 33703 This workshop will be a racial justice solidarity training to provide skills and context to white folk who want to become allies and comrades towards the liberation

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of People of Color. Activists will discuss, deconstruct and address racial bias. To reserve your tickets, check out the event page on Facebook.

Mon., April 24 Newtown Film Screening & Panel Discussion @ 6 – 10 p.m.

Fogartyville Community Center, 525 Kumquat Ct, Rear, Sarasota, Florida 34236 A screening of the film "Newtown" will be followed by a discussion on gun violence led by panelists Professor Frank Alcock, Mayor Willie Shaw, Patti Thompson LMHC and SRQ School Safety Director Michael Andreas.

Filmed over the course of three years, the film weaves together testimonials from diverse community members to document a traumatized community seeking healing. Tickets are $5 in advance and $7 at the door. For more information, check out the event page on Facebook.

Tues., April 25 What the New Health Care Proposal Means For You @ 6:30 – 9 p.m.

Fogartyville Community Center, 525 Kumquat Ct, Rear, Sarasota, Florida 34236 This discussion is the first of three led by Becky Martin, an experienced community organizer who joined the National Physicians Alliance staff in 2009. Martin will guide a conversation examining the American Health Care Act and what it means for families and individuals across the US. For more information, check out the event page on Facebook.

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Art + Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-thon breeds C4 collaboration

BY MAGDALENE TAYLOR

Less than 10 percent of Wikipedia contributors identify as female. How might this lack of gender diversity impact the knowledge shared on the collaborative online encyclopedia? This is something Art + Feminism seeks to address - and something that the local academic community addressed this weekend.

Art + Feminism is an organization founded by four art historians who strove to make narratives of art and feminism more visible on the site. Since 2014, students, artists, librarians and more across the globe have gathered together to edit Wikipedia articles in groups. While the Edit-A-Thons as they’re called - are usually held in March, one was held in town on April 15 at Goldstein Library at Ringling College of Art and Design.

Though it happened on the Ringling campus, it was the collaborative creation of New College faculty and librarians.

The basic goal of an Art + Feminism Edit-A-Thon is to increase the diversity of voices contributing to public knowledge. The organization puts an emphasis on gender diversity, emphasizing an inclusivity toward all genders and a need for intersectional feminisms.

“We have different perspectives and practices but share the belief that art is fundamental to thriving societies and strive to make visible the lives and work of underrepresented artists,” Art + Feminism states on its website.

The local Edit-A-Thon was inspired by a new push to make connections between Ringling College and New College in the Colleges of the Creative Coast Consortium, or C4. Humanities Librarian Theresa Burress, Art History Professor Dr. Katherine Brion and Ringling Professor of Renaissance & Baroque Art & Architecture Dr. Chrystine Keener, along with other librarians and faculty from Ringling, gathered with their laptops to work together on the event.

Theresa Burress had previously gotten New College students involved in the practice of editing Wikipedia with a group Independent Study Project (ISP) in January she has organized and led for the last three years. Burress also serves as executive council of the Florida Digital Humanities Consortium.

With the help of Burress, Brion has also begun incorporating the digital humanities into her classes, including Wikipedia editing.

In order to edit Wikipedia, one must simply make an account with the website. The initiative is entirely volunteer based, but it’s often a great deal of work in order to do it well. Brion and the other librarians each had stacks of books next to them, researching details and citations in order to make

small edits on the pages of artists.

There’s various sources within Art + Feminism that suggest certain pages that require editing or further detail.

Brion, for example, noted that a section of African American artists’ Wikipedia pages needed contribution, and was making edits on the Wikipedia page of artist Renee Green and a project she did on racialized human display of the 19th century. This specific project focused Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman from what is now known as South Africa who was featured in circus-type shows in England by the name of Hottentot Venus. Her body was displayed as a spectacle to the British, and was further used in medical journals to assert scientific racism. Renee Green created various installations to reflect upon that history.

“I looked at her page, and there were various things on it, a list of her works. I noticed in the projects that are listed, that part of her work about those installations wasn’t included,” Brion said.

“So I thought, that’s a small piece that I can contribute and know sources for. So I’m adding that in her list of projects and am giving a brief description and then because I’m there, I’m editing more for stylistic things,” Brion said. “If you find typos, you can clean up some things and take a look at citations. It’s just a tiny piece because that’s just something that can fit within this time frame.

“There is something about adding and improving these entries and getting information out into this public space which is cool.”

The Edit-A-Thon this last weekend was a bit of a test-run for more events like it in the future. Scheduling between the two schools can often be difficult, with Ringling and New College running on entirely different schedules. However, partially with help of the Mellon Grant that New College received last year in order to bolster collaborations within the humanities, Ringling and New College professors may be the first to begin working together. Brion and Keener have created a proposal to use Mellon Grant funds for a faculty seminar on art history pedagogy and engagement.

The seminar would re-iterate many of the themes of Art + Feminism edit-a-thons, as well as the overall focus on the digital humanities that Burress and others have been creating at New College. There is furthermore an early initiative within the C4 on the topic of gender, which Keener is involved in. With this new push toward the humanities and collaborations between the C4 colleges, Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thons are a perfect fit.

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An expensive tourist: And that’s the way the The cost of Trump’s visits Cookie tumbles:10-yearto “winter White House” old pug falls into sinkhole BYJASON D'AMOURS Donald Trump has traveled to his so-called “winter White House” in Mar-a-Lago six times since being inaugurated, including this past weekend after announcing his authorization of the firing of missiles into Syria, playing his 15th and 16th round of golf. His frequent visits to Mar-a-Lago, however, don’t quite drive the economy like other Florida tourists do.

In February, the New York Times reported that Trump’s frequent visits to his private club in Palm Beach cause quite a toll on the town. They reported a $200,000 loss in fuel-sales at a local airport in just one four-day visit, $60,000 a day spent on paying overtime to sheriffs who guard the closed roads and provide added security - totalling close to $2 million since inauguration and 250 private flights prevented from flying daily.

Secret service regulations require that no private flights can take off within a 10-mile radius of the president and flights that are arriving must first stop somewhere else for security clearance. Many local business owners are unhappy, including the managers of the local airport, a nearby sightseeing

business, a flight school and a banneradvertising business.

“We are hoping his visits slow to once a month,” Jorge Gonzalez, the owner of the banner-advertising business SkyWords Advertising, said in an interview with the New York Times.

Gonzalez’s business lost $42,000 because of Trump’s visits.

The expensive costs of Trump’s vacations prompted county commissioners to consider issuing a special tax on the Mar-a-Lago property, especially if the federal government doesn’t reimburse any of the lost revenue.

“Whatever our priorities are, the taxpayers didn’t pay this money to us to protect the president,” County Commissioner Dave Kerner told Money magazine.

Some are hopeful that by designating the resort as a special taxing district and imposing a levy on the property, the costs of Trump’s visits will become balanced.

Information for this article was gathered from nytimes.org and apnews.com.

BYJASON D'AMOURS Ever found a cookie in a sinkhole?

No? Well, someone did. The University of Florida (UF) College of Veterinary Medicine and Gilchrist County Fire Rescue pulled Cookie, the 10-year-old pug, out of a 30-foot-deep sinkhole west of Gainesville on April 5.

The owner called the pug’s name, and when Cookie took a step, a sinkhole formed underneath her. The veterinary team and fire rescue arrived on scene and approached the situation just like any other sinkhole-rescue scenario.

“When the sounds of her snortysnort-snorts reached the humans above ground, they knew she was alive,” The Gainesville Sun reported.

But instead of harnessing down the sinkhole to rescue a human, Jennifer Groover, a fourth-year veterinary student, was hoisted down to rescue Cookie. The team successfully returned the pug to her owner.

“Sinkholes are a natural component of Florida’s landscape,” the Florida Geological Survey reported.

“In the simplest sense, sinkholes are depressions in the land surface resulting from the dissolution of underlying bedrock.”

Sinkholes in Florida commonly

form in limestone, a carbonate bedrock. When naturally occurring acidic rainwater filters through soil and through the limestone bedrock, a chemical reaction takes place. This dissolves small amounts of rock which are then carried away by the flow of the rainwater - overtime creating enlarged gaps and cracks in the limestone that sometimes lead to the enlarged cavities we call sinkholes.

Certain areas of Florida are more prone to sinkholes than others, simply due to the depth of sediment and the distance of carbonate bedrock from the surface. The area west of Gainesville in which this sinkhole was formed is considered an area in which broad and shallow sinkholes dominate because the carbonate rock is directly exposed or only thinly covered by other sediment.

Thankfully, Sarasota residents don’t have to worry too much about their own Cookie, because Sarasota and Manatee County are located in regions in which the carbonate bedrock is deeply buried, making sinkholes rather uncommon. But, rumor has it, you may not want to walk your dogs anywhere near Palmer E. Information from this article was gathered from gainesville.com and dep. state.fl.us/geology

Eureka! Life on Enceladus?

BYJASON D'AMOURS Over a month since scientists with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced the discovery of seven new Earth sized planets orbiting a dwarf star - three of which that are located in the habitable zone, or the zone around a parent star where rocky planets are most likely to contain water - NASA announced on April 13 that they have gathered evidence that there is chemical reaction taking place underneath the icy surface

of Saturn’s moon Enceladus that could provide some necessary conditions for life.

The spacecraft Cassini flew through the moon’s surface jets - areas in the icy surface where gasses escape - and identified molecular hydrogen. If any microbes exist, they could use the hydrogen and carbon dioxide absorbed in the subsurface water to create and obtain energy, a reaction called methanogenesis, the same reaction “at the root of the tree of life on Earth, and could even have been critical to the

origin of life on our planet,” NASA said in a press release.

Some astrobiologists and scientists with NASA are hopeful that at least bacteria is present. However, they are also skeptical because of the high levels of hydrogen and carbon dioxide detected. These gases essentially act as food for any presence of life on the moon. The high concentrations signal that a lot of food is not being used.

But again, scientists and NASA remain hopeful and hypothesize that this may just be because Enceladus is so young.

Similar surface jets were also detected on one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, influencing more hope among NASA scientists that the likely billionyears-older Jupiter moon will show signs of life.

Scientists will keep an eye on the young Enceladus, but focus efforts on Jupiter’s moon instead. An exploratory mission will launch to Europa in the 2020s.

Information for this article was gathered from npr.org and nasa.gov.

ACLU white paper addresses the “Bullies in Blue” BYJASON D'AMOURS The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently released a white paper titled, “Bullies in Blue: The Origins and Consequences of School Policing,” in an attempt to explain why children, particularly young children of color, are charged with crimes for the everyday misbehavior that typically would earn them the label of the “class clown.”

The new paper “examines the origins of school policing, which has been driven by the same punitive criminal justice policies and assumptions that drove the overcriminalization of Black and Latino communities and spawned

an era of mass incarceration,” the ACLU said in a statement about the white paper. “Tracing school policing back to civil rights struggles to end Jim Crow segregation, the report challenges assumptions that the function of police in schools is to protect children.”

The report begins by tracing the long history of police profiling and targeting of communities of color and their increased presence in schools throughout the 20th century. It identifies Richard M. Nixon’s War on Drugs as a campaign that justified police presence in neighborhoods of color and encouraged undercover police recruits to roam the halls of high schools in a

handful of states to purposefully arrest those with with typically minimal amounts of marijuana.

“These tactics were not an essential function of public safety, but rather a means to survey, catalogue, monitor, and control youth of color,” the white paper argues.

It continues by historically analyzing other policies and measures that only increased police presence in schools. The report argues that policies such as those pertaining to the identification of “pre-delinquent” youth, an emphasis on the “broken windows” policing strategy, the adoption of “zero-tolerance policies”

and even those that promised to expel students for anything deemed “gang or drug-related,” all target communities and students of color and led to an increase of police presence in schools.

“Today, 24 percent of elementary schools and 42 percent of high schools have police on campus,” the white paper said. “However, most schools still do not have police, and school policing continues to disproportionately impact young people of color. As of 2013, 51 percent of high schools with majority Black and Latino enrollment had law

continued on p. 11

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New U.S. foreign policy revealed explosively

BY RYAN PAICE After deploying 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to level a Syrian airfield on April 6 – spurring anger from both war-weary U.S. voters and Russian and Syrian diplomats – the U.S. military dropped a Massive Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB) on ISIS-occupied caves in Afghanistan on April 13 and committed the largest incident of friendly fire since the beginning of American conflict with ISIS on the same day, in a dronedeployed attack that resulted in the death of 18 members of allied Syrian forces in Tabqa, Syria.

These actions embody a more aggressive approach to foreign affairs that President Trump assured after the first Syrian missile strike, despite lively oppositional response. Regardless of Trump’s repeated promise regarding avoiding military involvement in Syria throughout his presidential campaign, U.S. military involvement across the globe is hanging in a precarious position between significant escalation and continued distanced involvement. As tensions rise in the Middle East, those in the Korean peninsula have seemingly followed suit, with troops lining the borders between China, North Korea and South Korea, as North Korean missile testing has been hastened to a newly-announced weekly basis as of April 18.

U.S. involvement in Syria After the suspected Syrian regimeled chemical attack on April 4 that resulted in the deaths of “at least 70 people” – including 10 children – and the resulting U.S. missile strike on the Syrian regime’s airfield suspected to be

responsible for Syria’s chemical weapons storage, global political entities have reached a tentative standstill while the country continues to be only further devastated by its civil war.

Conversation between the U.S. and Russia about Syria has been planned for April 24, in trilateral talks in Geneva with representatives from Russia, the U.S. and the United Nations (UN).

However, Russian state news agency TASS reported that the country is awaiting confirmation for the meeting from the U.S. While the countries support opposing sides in the Syrian conflict – with Russia embodying the primary supporter of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the U.S. minimally supporting the National Coalition – both agree upon the goal of bringing down ISIS. That common ground might not be enough, however, as the U.S. missile strike on the Syrian airfield brought about fiery response from both Russian and Syrian officials.

“We describe that attack as a flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression,” Russia’s deputy ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said in a U.N Security Council meeting April 7. “We strongly condemn the illegitimate actions by the U.S. The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious.”

Meanwhile, the United States remain insistent upon taking further action if found necessary.

“We are prepared to do more,” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warned on April 7, at a special UN session. “But we hope that will not

be necessary. It is time for all civilized nations to stop the horrors that are taking place in Syria and demand a political solution.

“Every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency, Russia has stood beside him,” Haley added.

For now, discussion and negotiation between countries rests in the hands of both diplomatic communications and an everdeveloping political landscape, dictated by the awful consequences of active civil warfare.

The situation with North Korea Tensions on the Korean peninsula are at a boiling point, with North Korean missile testing ramping up while the U.S. attempts to install the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea earlier than originally planned. The system could prove to be an effective deterrent against potential incoming ballistic missiles, with a range of 200km and the capability to intercept warheads midflight, destroying them before reaching its destination.

The system’s installation mirrors Mike Pence’s words of support for South Korea and warning for North Korea at a joint press conference alongside South Korea’s acting President Hwang Kyoahn on April 17.

“Just in the past two weeks, the world witnessed the strength and resolve of our new president in actions taken in Syria and Afghanistan,” Vice President Pence said. “North Korea would do well not to test his resolve or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region.”

Meanwhile, China – despite being

one of the few political supporters of North Korea – has been pressuring the nation to cease its nuclear development program, even meeting with President Trump to discuss the situation. While diplomatic approaches have been attempting to maintain the peace, exchanges in official statements have been progressively more and more aggressive.

“If the U.S. is reckless enough to use military means it would mean from that very day, an all-out war,” North Korean Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol told the BBC. “The army and people of the DPRK will as ever courageously counter those who encroach upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK and will always mercilessly ravage all provocative options of the U.S. with Korean-style toughest counteraction.”

Countries in the area have likewise been preparing for the possible consequences of conflict as its likelihood seemingly increases.

Japan has prepared itself to receive refugees displaced by what might occur. Nevertheless, conflict avoidance is paramount for global and regional stability, with the U.S. especially relying on Chinese influence upon North Korea to cease tensions without having to come into direct military involvement.

“China has great influence over North Korea,” Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times.

“And China will either decide to help us with North Korea or they won’t… If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you.”

All information gathered from CNN, nytimes.com and npr.org

Operation Smackdown CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2

heroin is doing to those around them in a deeper sense.

Our own New College Police Department (NCPD) Chief Michael Kessie agrees with the importance of education in the community as well.

“As a community, New College has always looked out for one another.

Now, more than ever, it is important to let someone know if a friend or fellow student needs help. Report it to an RA [Residential Assistant], faculty member, Student Affairs, the CWC [Counseling and Wellness Center], or Campus Police,” Kessie wrote in an e-mail interview.

Lastly, treatment is an essential aspect of this operation as it is the step that most directly affects damages done to individuals on themselves. Currently in the county jail, inmates are provided with Vivitrol, an antagonist or blocking medication that can help prevent relapses into alcohol and opioid abuse.

It’s a good choice because while some other medications to opioid abuse can be addictive themselves (causing further problems), Vivitrol is not.

Other treatment options include Naloxone which treats narcotic overdoses in emergency situations.

By giving the individual in need extra time, medical assistance can arrive in order to transport the individual to the hospital, hopefully in time. It is an injectable medication that can tear through clothing if need be and should be applied to the side of whichever thigh of the individual.

“Each officer is equipped with two doses of Naloxone. It is the exact drug that is carried by the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office,” Kessie wrote. “Campus Police and other Law Enforcement Agencies participate in the prescription drug take back program to help get excess medications of all types out of circulation.”

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) carries out the National Take-Back Initiative (that Kessie was mentioning). The next will be on Apr. 29, 2017 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It serves to, “...provide a safe, convenient and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse and medications,” according to the official site of the DEA. A real factor causing the destructive wave of the opiates is the

fact that fentanyl, an extremely lethal narcotic that has high risk for addiction and can easily result in death when mixed other substances like alcohol, has been “stamped to look like oxycodone,” Sheriff Knight mentioned in a press conference. The issue is that when users are taking their prescription pills they are taking the dose necessary if it were oxycodone, but fentanyl is up to 50 to 100 times more powerful and equally as lethal.

“The solution to the fentanyl issue is to have drug test kits and allow people to test the drugs they’re going to do,” member of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) and second-year Zachary Schoenblatt said. However, some may say that allowing people to have these kits would actually encourage them to take drugs. “People that are addicted to heroin are going to do heroin regardless. So, giving them a test kit doesn’t encourage them to do the drug, it encourages them to know what they’re taking,” Schoenblatt continued.

According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S., with 52,404 lethal drug overdoses in 2015.

Of those total deaths, 20,101 were related to prescription pain relievers making opioid addiction the driving force of the epidemic. Since then, the issue has only worsened.

With all this in mind, it’s imperative that we stay informed, supportive and positive in the midst of this crisis. It’s not easy losing loved ones, especially not in such a way. It is our duty in a way to help in getting rid of the epidemic, but most importantly we must keep each other safe and ready for any situation. Pairing medication with support programs generally has the most success and that’s why both the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office and Campus Police emphasize the importance of community member input.

“We continue to assist other Law Enforcement Agencies as requested and investigate violations of drug laws as we always have,” Chief Kessie wrote in an e-mail interview. “Education, friends and family who can identify the problem someone may be having and work to help them, and enforcement of current laws,” is the best way to solve the problem according to Chief Kessie.

AN ENCHANTED MASQUERADE: NEW PROM 2017

BY JACOB WENTZ Students started gathering at College Hall as the sun was setting to celebrate New Prom 2017 - Enchanted Masquerade.

New Prom is an annual Resident Advisor (RA) event. This year it was hosted by second-years Jennifer Ha, Devin Johnson Hogan, Mackenna Jensen, Riley Lewis, Eleni Spanolios and Hope Sparks, as well as thesis student Tessa Geier.

“There are a lot of other people involved too; EQTAs, Fire TA, Police Department, Admissions, Tara. It’s been a long process, and we’re really excited,” second-year RA Devin Johnson Hogan said.

The building was decorated to resemble an enchanted forest. Leafy vines lined the walls while flowers and flower petals covered the windowsills.

There were tea lights, fairy lights and colorful dance lights that projected from the front of the hall.

“We went through the cliche prom themes, and we didn’t want to do it too cliche, but it still fits the prom category,” second-year RA Hope Sparks said.

New Prom also offered various treats for students. Some of the

food included chicken, chocolate covered pretzel “wands,” Fruit Loop marshmallow treats, fruit and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. There were also a couple of bottles of sparkling grape juice and other beverage options.

On the walkway from College Hall to the bay, a fire pit gave students something to gather around, which inevitably led to smores-making.

Prom “Supremes” were also announced at the event. Contrasting most traditional proms, the system for choosing these supremes was based on a raffle rather than a vote. Two people from each year were chosen from a list of names that were put into jars.

Perhaps most important to the night, there was good music, good people and good dancing.

“I asked my mom to be my date to prom!” second-year Prom Supreme Ana Bez exclaimed.

Overall, New Prom was a lively occasion, especially for students who needed to dance away the stress of the preceding week. The work and preparation that went into this event produced a fun night, and it’s safe to say that students are thankful for this work and for their RAs.

Prom "Supremes" were chosen from a raffle; two from each year were represented.

all photos Jacob Wentz/Catalyst

There was also a fire pit that students roasted marshmallows in; perfect for s'mores.

Attendants voted for Prom "Supremes" by placing slips of paper into different jars for each year.

String lights and vines decorated one of the walls, creating an ideal spot for selfies.

New College's knitting club, Anarchy Deathsticks, came to the event as a group.

New Prom was organized by (left to right) RAs Hope Sparks, Riley Lewis, Jennifer Ha, Devin Powell, Tessa Geier, Eleni Spanolios and Mackenna Jensen.

New Prom took place at College Hall, where attendants could hang out at the bayfront from sunset to later on in the night.

College Hall was decorated with plants, vines, flower petals and lights to represent the theme of enchanted masquerade.

An array of snack foods lined the entrance tables, including veggies and chocolate pretzels.

FEATURES CATALYST “Frida Kahlo’s legacy: exploring gender in art and art history” @ Feminist Fridays WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2017 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst

BY AUDREY WARNE Assistant Professor of Art History Katherine Brion gave a talk entitled “Frida Kahlo’s legacy: Exploring gender in art and art history” during the Feminist Friday event on April 14. First given by Brion at the Dalí Museum of Art in St. Petersburg on March 1, the talk was organized to occur concurrently with a special retrospective exhibition of Kahlo’s life and work that ended on April 17.

The Dalí retrospective (covered in a previous Catalyst article entitled “Kahlo @ the Dalí: A biographical account of the artist through self-portraiture”) focused primarily on Kahlo’s identity and self-representation, featuring a collection of 60 paintings, photographs and journal entries that provide an extremely personal account of the artist’s highly stylized life.

Brion’s discussion considered the critical concept of ‘the gaze,’ an idea developed by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in her seminal essay “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema,” in relation to this highly stylized personal narrative. Mulvey puts her interest in binary conceptions

of active/passive (male/female) in relation to the cinematic notion of the audience, exploring the dichotomy between the individual viewer (who actively watches) and the object being viewed (which remains in a position of passivity that lacks agency). In Kahlo’s work, this notion of the gaze is utilized in a seemingly ambiguous way, simultaneously relying on an aestheticized and objectified gaze in her carefully managed self-representation while rejecting objectification and asserting her individuality through her often violent depictions of highly personal traumas and bodily functions.

“There is a way in which Kahlo seems so much like the epitome of a kind of female object, a victim, that’s not in control of her own destiny,” Brion said. “But when you look closer at her work – and this is the reason I think she was able to re-emerge as a kind of feminist icon in the 80s and 90s – you feel that, in spite of a lack of control, she displays this real self-possession and control through her imagery. Through these objects, these images of herself, she self-objectifies in a way. She turns herself into an image, but it’s an image in which she can really demonstrate

her self-possession and reflect on her experience and kind of encapsulate it.”

Kahlo’s ability to simultaneously serve as both a victim of a patriarchal society and a symbol of female empowerment and artistic genius reflects the ambiguous nature of her life and art – a theme Brion explores in her discussion of Kahlo’s use of doubling and duality in both her works and her self-presentation.

“On the one hand she seems like the ultimate example that helps us see the situation of woman as victim, but then she makes that also into her own kind of thing, her own identity,” Brion said.

One of Kahlo’s most famous pieces, The Two Fridas, utilizes this notion of doubling through its depiction of two distinct representations of the artist. One Frida wears a Victorianstyle gown, the dominant style of dress for Europeans from the period, her visage lightened to emphasize her father’s German heritage and Frida’s own identification with her European descent. The second Frida is adorned in the costume of a traditional Mexican Tehuana woman, representative of her mother’s Oaxacan ancestry and Frida’s

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interest in promoting the mexicanidad movement that developed with the Mexican revolution of the early 20th century.

“The more you look at her work it becomes more and more complex,” Brion said. “There are texts looking at her work in terms of her biography, and that biography still tends toward reading her works directly in terms of her life. So there’s a lot of works – like The Two Fridas for example – that were seen as being very much about her relationship with Rivera. There is more recent work that has revisited those same paintings and thought about how they were actually also related to these larger reflections about Mexican society, and the politics of indigeneity versus European heritage. Her work on a superficial view tends to be read as entirely about the personal but she was trying to giver her work – especially in some of the works she chose to exhibit publicly – a larger social resonance. I find that to be more compelling, the ways in which she was connecting this work that was very intensely personal on the one hand with the social movements and concerns that were going on in the period.”

New Diversity and Inclusion Project Assistant Paula Cooper highlights diversity

BY ANYA MARÍA CONTRERAS-GARCÍA Since spring semester 2017, when New College hired its first official Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Autumn Harrell, our campus community has made significant progress addressing diversity issues.

Another big step towards making New College more inclusive was the hiring of alum Paula Cooper (’13) as Diversity and Inclusion Project Assistant.

“Paula's specific position is unique in that this is the first time New has ever had a director for diversity and inclusion,” Courtney Hughes, associate director of the Center for Engagement and Opportunity, said. “I think it was imperative that our new director had the opportunity to work with a recent alum - to understand current and past campus culture, and to gain a better understanding of what our campus needs to be the best it can be for all of our students.”

Cooper, who graduated in May 2016 with a concentration in sociology, will serve as a temporary assistant to Harrell from April to June 2017 conceptualizing projects and collaborating with various groups to improve campus culture.

“One of my big interests is community organizing and I feel like this fits in with that interest,” Cooper

photo courtesy of Kaylie Stokes Paula Cooper ('13), the new Diversity and Inclusion Project Assistant, has begun working on improving the visibility of diverse backgrounds on campus.

said. “Community organizing means working with the community to figure out what they need, how to get those needs met for them and how to help them find resources, and that’s what I’m working on here.”

The many important projects Cooper will be working on includes re-vamping the Gender and Diversity Center (GDC), building a website for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and organizing a nature event for students

of marginalized identities.

“We’re going to send out a survey soon to gauge how students, faculty and staff feel about how the GDC is being used now and how they’d like to see it be used,” Cooper said. “We’re trying to figure out what resources are in there now and what we can add to that collection. It’s called the Gender and Diversity center so I felt it would be important for people to see themselves represented in the GDC, so I thought we

could have an art-making event where students could make self-portraits that we can display.”

The art-making event will be May 10 at 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the GDC. A follow-up event will take place in Ham during lunch time on May 1 and May 8 making even more art to use as decoration for the GDC. Another upcoming event will take place on Sunday, April 30 at Caples to engage students of marginalized identities in nature. The purpose of the event will be to bust myths about people of color and students of other marginalized identities engaging with vegetarianism, outdoor activities and similar interests. Students will enjoy the waterfront and garden area while engaging in activities on the intersection of marginalized identities and active, outdoor lifestyles. All are invited to attend.

Students should look forward to upcoming programming in the next few months as the Diversity and Inclusion team work to cultivate an even more safe and welcoming campus community for all.

“The work Paula is doing for Director Harrell is laying the foundation for programming and idea creation for next year,” Hughes said. “A great accomplishment indeed.”

CATALYST

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2017 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst

CONT'D

PAGE 9

Fair Food Week CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

24-hour complaint line which they can call to have access to people who will fight for their rights if they feel they are not being treated appropriately. This puts the responsibility of fair treatment into the hands of the workers, not the corporation, which created a bottomup approach to liability for farm worker safety.

In March, the CIW took part in a three mile march through Columbus, Ohio, to support Ohio State University (OSU) students who are asking their president to cut its contract with Wendy’s unless Wendy’s joins the Fair Food Program.

After the events of the protest, in which New College students traveled to Ohio to participate in, five students were inspired to participate in a rolling fast and create a week of events to support the CIW in their demand that Wendy’s join the Fair Food Program.

The Demonstration The first event of the week was a letter writing session where New College students wrote letters to OSU students showing their support for their movement to remove Wendy’s from their campus. They also wrote letters to the OSU president himself asking him to support his students and cut their contract with Wendy’s unless Wendy’s decides to participate in the Fair Foods Program.

The CIW believes that the OSU contract is the sweet spot of the campaign, as protests are bad press for Wendy’s and cutting this contract will cause a monetary loss for the company and inspire others to join the cause.

On the second day, there was a panel discussion with CIW member Leo, as well as some of the students who are participating in the fast.

On Wednesday, the fasting students asked the rest of the New College community to get involved in their movement. Over 80 students - more than 10 percent of the New College student population - signed a pledge card to fast for a day, including New College President Donald O’Shea.

“That pledge card is going to go on top of the stack when we send them to OSU,” thesis student Alex Schelle said.

At 10 a.m., students talked about their experiences and reasoning for wanting to participate in the day-long fast, and then, at 7 p.m. they walked down to the bay for sunset meditation.

“Sometimes us students focus on us. We focus on the fight for fifteen, we don’t really focus on the rights of farm workers,” second-year Ximena Pedroza said, explaining her motivation for participating in the week-long fast.

On Thursday, a Human Rights Vigil was held for the Sarasota Community.

Several New College students were in attendance, handing out pledge cards and explaining their efforts. Pedroza took the stage to discuss her experience as an immigrant, but began by making a statement about her involvement in the fast.

“Before I start, I want to apologize if I seem a little tired, I’m on my third

(Top) Students protest at the Sarasota Wendy's on Tamiami Trail. (Bottom) A banner at the tent on Z-Green.

day of fasting to support the [CIW] if anyone has any questions I’d be happy to answer them later,” Pedroza said before she began her speech.

At the vigil, New College students in the audience handed out fliers and offered pledge cards to audience members asking them to come to what they called “the finale” of this week of action a protest outside of a Sarasota Wendy’s.

The Protest Two New College students held a large banner in front of the Wendy’s, while other students and community members formed two circles on either side of the Wendy’s drive way and began to march. They shouted chants calling for anyone that could hear them to “boycott Wendy’s!” as well as chants directed at the cooperation itself such as “Wendy’s shame on you. Farm workers have families too!”

At the height of the protest, two vans of members of the CIW showed up to join in the protest as well, and the chants were repeated in English and Spanish as they joined the circles of students.

While the protest was going on, protesters also passed out fliers to cars stopped at red lights and explained the movement to them briefly before traffic picked up again.

After the protest, there was a ceremony held at the bay where four fasting students broke their fast

ceremoniously with a piece of bread.

“To sum up this whole week in one word it would be love. Throughout this whole week I saw so much love.

Not just on our campus but in our community,” Pedroza, one of the five day fasting students, said, reflecting on the experience.

After the breaking of the bread, New College students passed the fast on to University of South Florida (USF) Tampa and Eckerd students who would be picking up the rolling fast.

“This is a really great experience and we’ve gotten a lot of support on our campuses. We’re really excited that people are signing pledge cards to fast even if it’s just for one meal,” Holly Rutherford a second-year at Eckerd College who would be picking up the rolling fast said.

Wendy’s Response In response to the campaign to get Wendy’s to join the Fair Food Program, Wendy’s has had a couple of responses.

First, Wendy’s has notoriously moved their farms to Mexico to avoid joining the Fair Food Program. They have also published a Code of Conduct for their suppliers in order to keep their public image.

“What we see them doing is basically modifying little by little the code of conduct without actually implementing anything, or involving workers in the process, so that changes can be enforced,” Patricia Cipollitti

translated for Leo Perez.

“With regards to the students that have been fasting, Wendy's has said that it’s irresponsible for the CIW to encourage students to forego their nutrition to further our commercial interests,” Perez said.

In Sarasota, when students tried to deliver a letter to the Wendy's restaurant where they protested, they were refused entrance to the facility.

Unlike the previous times that students had protested at this Wendy’s when they were allowed to give the letter to a manager.

What’s next?

The New College fast is part of a rolling fast which will continue until Wendy’s decides to join the Fair Foods Program. Next week students from USF Tampa and Eckerd College will participate in the fast.

The CIW has a plan in the works to be able to infiltrate the Wendy’s board of trustee’s meeting on May 23, 2017.

Until then, the boycott of Wendy’s called on by the CIW will continue as will the protests, until Wendy’s comes to the table with farm workers.

As the protestors at the Wendy’s protest chanted, “We will be back!”

all photos Kelly Wilson/Catalyst

CATALYST

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2017 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst

Tips for Graduating with Less Debt SUBMITTED BY NEW COLLEGE OF FLORIDA'S FINANCIAL AID OFFICE

If you’ve determined that you need student loans to pay for school, there are things you can do to keep your student debt under control.

Know what you already owe • If you’ve already borrowed student loans, make sure to keep track of how much you owe. Contact your student loan servicer to review your account summary and estimate your monthly payments.

• Visit the National Student Loan Data System (nslds.ed.gov) to track the total amount you owe for all of your federal student loans.

• Find information about all of your loans, federal and private, on your credit report.

Apply for scholarships • Scholarships are free money that directly reduces your need for student loans. Check with your financial aid office for more tips on where to find scholarships.

Consider summer job, cooperative (co-op), or internship opportunities • If you work full-time during your break from classes, you can use that money towards education expenses, and avoid taking out too many student loans.

• Many co-ops and internships let you earn money to pay your way through college, while also giving you experience and skills that can help you find a job in the future. You can search for these opportunities online, or talk to your advisor at school for more resources.

Pay interest on your loans while in school • Interest accrues on some types of federal loans while you’re still in school.

Paying your student loan interest as it accrues will prevent it from being added to your total balance at repayment (capitalization).

Compare future payments to future income

• Make sure you’ll be able to afford your monthly payment after graduation. Estimate your monthly payments online, and compare that amount to the average salary for your field. Visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov) for salary information.

Live like a student • If you live like a student now, you won’t have to live like a student when you graduate. To keep your expenses down, try developing a budget, eating most of your meals at home, getting a roommate, or buying only the things you need.

Graduate on time • Staying in school longer means paying more in tuition, and could result in more loans. Try to focus on your studies so you don’t delay graduation.

Whatever path you choose, do graduate!

Full-time workers with bachelor’s degrees earn much more than workers without a degree.

Students "Passover" the bread for holiday festivities

BY DYLAN PRYOR The reporter who wrote this article is an active participant in Hillel and the primary host of the Matzah Bar event described below.

Matzah may have been the food of the week, but Passover celebrations at New College were anything but flat.

Last week included such festivities as two Seder dinners and a midweek Hillel Matzah Bar event where students had the opportunity to try different types of matzah. Even Metz joined in by serving kosher food for Passover for the first time.

The holiday and events throughout the week provided New College students Jewish students both an opportunity to gather together and commemorate the Jewish exodus from Egypt while also sharing a crucial part of their heritage with both Jewish and non-Jewish friends.

On Monday, students attended a Passover Seder at Ringling with new Director of Diversity and Inclusion Autumn Harrell, who drove students to the dinner so everyone interested would be able to attend.

On Tuesday, one of two Jewish community clubs on campus, Chaverim, hosted a second night Seder to provide student another opportunity to take part in the ritual dinner of Passover.

“Personally I wouldn't feel right not celebrating such an important holiday and it also wouldn't feel right only doing so by attending a Seder and not hosting one myself, since to me preparing for the Seder is as much a part of the celebration as the Seder itself,” Chaverim co-president and second-year

photo by Kelly Wilson/Catalyst

FEATURES

PAGE 10

Songs you should heAR CANDY EDITION

BY JASMINE RESPESS AND JORDI GONZALEZ Sweetness, it drives kids crazy. It’s found in delicacies such as chocolate, cake, maple syrup, fruits, cookies and candy. Yes candy, the hidden treasures we hunt for on Easter. The currency that is bartered on Halloween. The cure to any doctor’s appointment. Most importantly, the inspiration to these songs.

“Lollipop” by Lil Wayne It was not so long ago that Lil Wayne was everyone’s favorite rapper, somehow he is still Chance the Rapper’s.

I remember you were not cool unless you knew all the words and honestly that is still true.

“Laffy Taffy” by D4L A song that I downloaded on limewire, because my mom really hated it.

"Sugar" by Trick Daddy and Ludacris For some reason the 00s had a lot of song like this. Although this song is not actually title for candy lyrics such as, “goodie goodie gumdrop” qualify it and then some.

The Passover Seder officially begins with the physical event of lighting candles and saying a blessing over them.

Chelsea Miller said. “A good few people showed up and a few were at a Seder for the first time and one of them found the afikomen and I gave her a dollar for it and she was so excited.”

On Wednesday, this reporter hosted a Matzah Bar event for Hillel in Z-Kitchen, where students were able to sample many different types of Passover snacks, including pizza matzah and chocolate-covered matzah. First-year Eshel Rosen also assisted in planning the event and cleaning up afterwards.

“Helping throw the matzah bar event was fulfilling because it allowed me to discover interesting new ways to keep kosher on Passover,” Rosen said. “I was able to see both Jewish people and not Jewish people discover the joy of matzah pizza for the first time, one of my favorite dishes of Passover.”

Throughout the week, Metz also served kosher for Passover food for the first time during both lunch and dinner.

Options included garlic chicken, cod and even steak. In addition, Boar's Head offered matzah for celebrating students

who chose to order sandwiches.

The holiday itself recalls the story of how Egyptian Prince Moses led his fellow Jewish people out of slavery under the Egyptian Pharaoh with the help and guidance of G-d. Celebrating Jews eat unleavened matzah instead of bread to remember the experiences of their ancestors, specifically how they had no time to properly bake their bread when fleeing from the pursuit of the Pharaoh and his army. As a result, they subsisted off of matzah during their escape and subsequent journey.

The holiday lasted eight days from Monday, April 10, until Tuesday, April 18. Anyone interested in celebrating any of the Jewish holidays in the future with either Chaverim or Hillel, can email Chelsea Miller at chelsea.miller15@ncf.edu or any of the other Chaverim leadership, or Dylan Pryor at dylan.pryor13@ncf.edu and Elly Bovarnick at elly.bovarnick.14@ ncf.edu for Hillel. Chag sameach (happy holidays!)

“Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground The song has a definite 90s sound to it with a grungy feel like Nirvana instilled. What really draws me in is the ridiculously catchy lines and when the music stops just for the singer to sing a line, which is then immediately followed by the band jamming at the same time.

It really makes me wonder where this guy must have been straight from the first line, “I smell sex and candy here”.

“Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies This late 60s groove makes good use of keyboards and female backup vocals that add to the feel good style it gives off. Coming from a time where it seemed like all music was inherently good willed and inhumanely optimistic, the song radiates good vibes and could go well in any outdoor environment, like the beach. I remember listening to this a lot as a kid (who had and still does have the biggest sweet tooth) and getting pumped whenever it came on in my mom’s old school radio station.

CATALYST

CONT'D

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2017 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst

Human Rights Vigil

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 to be a day celebrating my amazing mother on her amazing birthday. What started out celebrating her turned into a nightmare for my whole family.

“Our first years in this country we often thought to ourselves, our lives couldn’t have been blessed enough. We did not think that anything could go wrong. We were living the dream, the American dream and we were in love with this new strange place we all called home. Then November 29, 2009 came along,” Pedroza said.

She then told the emotional tale of the day that her brother was detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents.

By the end of her story, many in the crowd were in tears, and Professor Hernandez held the microphone and wrapped an arm around Ximena for support as she asked the crowd to chant, “Not one more.”

Finally, volunteers in highlightergreen vests lit candles for the members of the crowd who shared the flames with their neighbors and there was a moment of silence for the cause before the vigil officially ended with a few words from the All of Us organization.

API!

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 'No, this is great' and ended up emailing a bunch of people and got it started.”

Along with the march in Sarasota, there are 425 satellite marches happening across the world on Earth Day in conjunction with the march in Washington D.C. Scully and Evans are core organizers of the march, as well as Blaise de Franco and Dr. Steven Shipman, professor of chemistry and gender studies at New College. As with API!, they have also organized working groups for the march including logistics, financial and fundraising, diversity and inclusion, public relations and outreach.

“Science is under attack right now,” Scully said. “There's no reason that it should be a political issue at all, but it is and so I figured we might as well counteract that and really show that there is support for science in our community and that people will be willing to step up.”

The march will start at Five Points Park at 10:30 a.m. and end at J.D. Hamel Park, where there will be speakers and different organizations tabling. Scully and the other organizers have released the march route and emphasize that anyone can join in the march at any time and wherever they want. There

will be water and shade stations along the route.

Having different local organizations at the march was a key point Scully wanted to include after attending and speaking at the Women’s March in Sarasota, in conjunction with the Women’s March in Washington following the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

“I think that was one of my biggest disappointments from the Women's March was that, you know it was great that there were so many people there and they were so energized but there was nothing to do after and not just immediately after but just like no next steps to take,” Scully said. “That's what we really wanted to emphasize with this march is that there will be local organizations there that will have ways that you can help them and in turn ways that you can help the local community.”

The march, like API!, is open to everyone.

“You don't have to be a scientist to come to this march,” Scully said. “This is for scientists, science enthusiasts, scientist supporters, things like that.

Anyone who wants to come and has been positively affected by science in their daily lives which hint is everyone.

PAGE 11

ACLU White Paper CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 enforcement officers on campus, and across the country, Black students were more than twice as likely as their white classmates to be referred to law enforcement or arrested at school.”

The report does not just address the disparity, but provides policy recommendations, as well. The ACLU calls for an end to routine policing of schools, emphasizing the development of explicit policies and protocols for when and how police should enter schools and interact with students.

Also, contributing to their own eighth call-of-action, they demand the regular collection, public analysis and representation of data that demonstrates the realities of police presence in schools, paying particular attention to racial disparities and the treatment of children with disabilities.

Information for this article was gathered from aclu.org.

Poetry month submissions Rotten Sister SUBMITTED BY SARA GREGORY Scooping up away like berries pieces of her face, Which I learned slowly the spaces inbetween what is left is the soil darkened, mussed-up a deep hole sharp white hands both, clasped just fit You, you who dislodges mud sucking away from me my digging You, who told me good morning, not my mother or my blood but half a sister yet Her, speaking good mornings which wade down thighs shell and salt and grit towards everywhere, Telling me blood orange is what I stain the sheets, thick slices Thunderstorms, tropical, during the day she rolls on top of me thunder, fills pockmarked earth, good morning

In honor of Poetry Month, a recommendation...

SUBMITTED BY SARA GREGORY Through my work with Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal founded in 1976, I’ve been lucky enough to encounter the works, poetry, and artistic energy of tatiana de la tierra. Born in Colombia and raised in Miami, tatiana was a bicultural and bilingual author, activist, and academic whose work explored issues of sexuality, womanhood, and latina identities and realities.

Through the founding of two Latina lesbian publication esto no tiene nombre and conmoción, tatiana spoke from the borderlands of language, culture, and existence. Her poetry is beautiful but not subtle. She spoke with humor, eroticism, wit, displaying not only a serious love of play and of words, but her deep commitment to expressions of self.

During Poetry Month, I encourage students to seek out the works of tatiana de la tierra (her website is delatierra. net). My favorite book of poetry is called For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology / Para las duras: Una fenomenología lesbian, which offers poems in both English and Spanish.

Language and Composition: Examination

BY JACOB WENTZ It’s a risky business; Demand so high, supply so scarce.

With the bulleting break of a plastic seal, The hunt is on!

A messenger frantically searches, sprinting through an untouched cobweb, designed with delicacy and attention to detail, leaving tattered silk slung across the courier’s empty bag.

The woodpecker’s steadied tempo hurries, his ticker taunts, time to think taken.

A messenger trips on a pile of letters heaped across the lowest of five ascending branches while Huginn and Muninn impatiently leave the treetop Analyze, but not to an extent where questioning pushes a messenger down.

Knowledge must be adequately displayed, nested in description and language.

It’s the reason I stumble my words.

BACK PAGE CATALYST Gardening through generations Newtown resident Diane Hicks cultivates history WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2017 www.ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst

BY KATELYN GRIMMETT Diane Hicks was born and raised in Newtown, and never left. She remembers when the neighborhood was a tangle of trees and it took just a short walk around the block for her and her sisters to come home with their hands full of mangoes and guavas.

“A neighbor back here – she has a mango but they’re not plentiful anymore,” Hicks said. “If you find a guava it’ll be in someone’s yard.”

Diane is one of those few with a guava tree in her yard. Two, actually.

One of them has been growing in her garden for a couple decades, fruiting spring through summer. Diane ritually gives the first guava of the season to her mother-in-law.

The other guava tree is a recent purchase from Lowes, a find that surprised her. She was there buying flowers and came home with the guava as a treasured addition to her yard.

“I remember when my momma had us go pick guava and she used to make a jelly. I said I’m gonna start canning because at Winn Dixie I found an eight ounce jar of guava jelly, was almost $3. That’s a lot of money.”

Any price is too much to pay when remembering how heavy the trees in Newtown’s neighborhoods used to grow with fruit. Trees don’t charge.

In all the time I’ve spent in Newtown, everyone I’ve met can speak to how lush the neighborhoods used to be. Everyone talks about picking guavas and fruits ripe from the trees. Dorothye Smith, a Newtown elder, tells how flowers used to grow in every crack and cranny. But no one can tell me just what happened to all the flora and fauna.

For many people, the flowers and fruit are a memory. With Diane, they are right in her front yard.

Standing outside of her home offers a real life glimpse into the nostalgic images every one of Newtown’s elders produces, including herself.

“We used to run around and eat mulberries and my momma or gramma make a mulberry dubie – like a cobbler,” Hicks said. “The blackberries, too, they used to grow wild here. All this was not here, there was just a lot of trees, all this is built up. Orange Ave never went this far, it ended up near 35th street,” she said, pointing south.

I asked how she came to live in this house after Orange stretched north.

“I used to walk by this house going to school. Somehow I always dreamed of having this house. I don’t know why.”

“Where’d you live before?”

“We lived in the projects, before the projects we lived in Blackbottom, where Salvation Army is now. My gramma – the Mayz – used to live there.

Gramma Louise. On Saturdays, I would go to gramma, see what she was doin’.

My gramma take a green pepper or tomato off her bush, clean it and just eat it.”

No doubt, Diane has done the same countless times. Her garden is astounding. It catches people's eyes walking through the neighborhood, or

drivers going down Orange. Her entire front yard has been landscaped into a garden bed for her vegetables and flowers and fruit trees.

“I’m getting into orchids, I gotta get myself some roses – I had just about every color of rose I could get. That first drought we had I lost a few. I planted some cotton plant and, after a while, the roses dried out. I found out that the cotton plant was getting to the roses at the root.”

At the expense of her roses, Diane’s cotton plants grew to be plentiful. She started saving the cotton for the kids over at Booker High School, right down the road from her house. They would walk down and take the fluffy piles she had stacked up waiting.

“I get excited just to see my flowers and vegetables just grow. It relaxes me a lot. When I got up in the morning – when I had a full garden – I’d walk around my garden to decide what vegetable I was cooking today.”

When she grows corn and okra and tomatoes, she cooks them all together with salt and pepper and maybe a little bacon grease. Serves them with biscuits.

“With the collard greens, it would be mainly greens with some meat, likely chicken.”

When I stopped by for our interview, Diane was in the midst of cooking and baking for the Easter holiday. Pineapple upside down cake was on the menu and a large, fresh pineapple was propped up on her table.

“My pineapples they just grow whenever. I gave some pineapple to my sister and friends. They all tell me how sweet it was. But I was never one to do gardening, I used to tell them all I would never play in the dirt. One of my twin sisters used to all the time. Growing up I never gardened.”

Then Diane’s first husband got diagnosed with sickle cell anemia.

“Once my husband got sick, I learned how to have patience. I started to fish.

It was so calming. It started the same way with the garden.”

Diane has several patches of aloe growing in the ground all around her yard and sprouting in pots on her porch. “I use it if I get any kind of burn.

I use it for my face because it gets the blackheads and spots out of it.”

I can attest to that: Diane has a noticeably bright and balanced skin tone. It is part of what defies her age, next to her easy movements in the garden; bending to pull out weeds or point out a flower.

“My older grandkids, a couple of ‘em has asthma and they’ll call me and say they need some aloe juice.”

I asked how she makes the aloe juice.

“Cut this off,” she said, grabbing the thick part of the aloe arm, “clean it, cut it into bite size pieces and boil it in water. Let it cool off. Put it in a container, add two tablespoons of pure honey and let it sit a few hours.”

Read the full version of this article online at ncfcatalyst.com.

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all photos by Katelyn Grimmett/Catalyst "My husband put this here about 15 years ago," Newtown resident Diane Hicks said. "It was growing up and I was steady cutting it down so I told him I wanted this."

“I rub on the plant on the leaves or whatever vegetable is there," she said. "Sometimes I’ll put the radio outside and have it on just lettin’ ‘em listen to music. I love my gospel.”

Standing outside of Diane's home offers a glimpse into the nostalgic images every one of Newtown’s elders produces, including herself.

In the short time I was there, two parrots flew down from the telephone wires to snack on her sunflowers. She smiled and said “they come over from the Jungle Gardens.”