Washington Square News | May 6, 2019

5 CULTURE

9 OPINION

Sustainable Restaurants Persist, Despite Consumer Apathy

A Semester in Review

6 ARTS

The First Year Away

11 UNDER THE ARCH

‘Aamis’ Team on Their FleshEating Romance at Tribeca VOLUME LIII | ISSUE 14

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019

Use of Program for Food-Insecure Students Spikes This Academic Year

By VICTOR PORCELLI News Editor

JORENE HE | WSN

A plated meal from Harvest Table at Third Avenue North Residence Hall.

Last academic year, the Courtesy Meals Program — which provides 75 Dining Dollars to students unable to afford their next meal, no questions asked — was used by 30 to 40 students per semester, according to Senior Vice President of Student Affairs Marc Wais.

This year, that number has skyrocketed to 1,933 students across 11 New York campus locations.

The CMP is meant to provide short-term aid to those facing immediate financial stress.

It began in 2016, a product of the Food Insecurity Working Group, which consisted of students, faculty and administrators who hoped to solve student hunger on campus. In fall 2018, a website for the program was added, Resident Assistants were informed of the program and Welcome Week leaders were encouraged to tell incoming first-years about it.

Over the course of that semester, individual users reached a new high of 1,165 students.

Another 768 students used the program for the first time during this year’s J-Term and spring semester.

Newly elected chairperson of student government and Gallatin junior Jakiyah Bradley, who is a Senator at-Large for students experiencing food insecurity, told WSN that the numbers attest to the program’s success.

“I think the general takeaway is that the

program works,” Bradley said. “In 2016 [the Food Insecurity Working Group] identified the problem and now it shows that the work manifested into something students appreciate, as you can see by the numbers.”

Bradley attributes the large increase in usage to student government and others promoting it.

CAS sophomore Malak Enayetallah used the program after the family she usually babysits for went on vacation for three weeks, leaving her without a source of income. Although she had heard about the program through the Wellness Exchange, it was her roommate — who had used the program before — who convinced her to try it.

Enayetallah said she did not feel that it was widely publicized.

“I find it surprising that it wasn’t publicized,” Enayetallah said. “Even now, I don’t think it really is publicized; it’s mostly by word of mouth. That’s how I found out about it and that’s how I’ve been telling other people about it.”

Wais asked administrators in each school to send emails informing students of the program, but Enayetallah said that to effectively reach students, the administration should consider using social media. Still, she found the program to be helpful and easy to use at a time when she needed it.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Over 2,000 People Sign Petition Against Boycott of NYU Tel Aviv

By MEGHNA MAHARISHI and VICTOR PORCELLI News Editors A petition condemning the Social and Cultural Analysis Department’s resolution of noncooperation with NYU Tel Aviv has amassed over 2,000 signatures from students, alumni, faculty and others since it was published on Friday.

The petition, started by NYU Chaplain Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, said the SCA’s pledge of noncooperation with the global site alienates it and the faculty who teach there.

“Neither they nor any NYU faculty operating around the world should be

held accountable for government policies or actions in the countries where they reside,” the petition reads. “This principle extends to faculty residing in the United States of America.”

According to Sarna, the petition was put together by multiple faculty members. In a statement to WSN, Sarna condemned the SCA for publicizing the resolution on Holocaust Remembrance Day. “Making public this sort of academic boycott on Holocaust Remembrance Day meant that the people around the table either are ignorant of the history that such restrictions played in Nazi Germany, or they don’t care for the Holocaust survivor

community at NYU,” Sarna wrote.

On Thursday, SCA became the f irst department to announce it would pledge noncooperation with NYU Tel Aviv, citing Israel’s restrictive entry laws. The Entry to Israel Law prohibits entry to anyone who has publicly called for a boycott of the country, and the resolution says that the law directly affects students involved in groups such as NYU Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. Many students involved in these organizations on campus are also aff iliated with the SCA department, according to the resolution.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

MARISA LOPEZ | WSN

Twentysomethings Have Something to Say

READ MORE ON PAGE 4

Washington Square News

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MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019

NEWS

NEWS@NYUNEWS.COM

Edited by VICTOR PORCELLI and MEGHNA MAHARISHI

Use of Program for Food-Insecure Students Spikes This Academic Year CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

“It was really straightforward,” Enayetallah said. “I expected some sort of requirement, but there isn’t. You just have to be an NYU student [and] the fact that it isn’t just a one-time thing really saved me.”

At locations like the Kimmel Center for University Life and the Academic Resource Center that provide the cour-

tesy meals, a student simply has to ask to be given the 75 Dining Dollars. There is no limit on uses, although after two times the administration may try to connect students with other resources.

“After second use, we hope, and strongly encourage students to engage with Wellness and/or Financial Education so that the university can learn more about their situation and provide assistance going for-

ward,” Wais wrote in an email to WSN. Wais went on to say that the university has systems in place to work with those facing long-term food insecurity. In the past, he has cited connecting students with government programs as one such solution.

Bradley said that despite the program’s success, there are still improvements to be made. While working at the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs,

which is one location for the CMP, she said some students drop in after trying other locations where the staff authorized to dispense funds were unavailable.

Enayetallah hasn’t had problems using the program. Initially surprised that NYU would provide students with Dining Dollars, no questions asked, Enayetallah said she now sees the program that has been used almost 3,000 times this year

as a necessity.

“It shouldn’t be that surprising that they offer it, because why wouldn’t they help students stay afloat?” Enayetallah said. “Obviously the university’s not there to take care of you, but at the very least, you should be able to afford to eat.”

Email Victor Porcelli at vporcelli@nyunews.com.

Over 2,000 People Sign Petition Against Boycott of NYU Tel Aviv CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

No students or faculty have been denied entry to NYU Tel Aviv. However, Israel initially denied entry to the president of SJP at the University of Florida in October 2018, although she later won an appeal in Israel’s Supreme Court and was able to stay in Israel. A 2016 Independent article noted that over 100 British citizens were denied entry to Israel; human rights lawyer Emily Schaeffer OmerMan claimed those of Palestinian or Arab heritage were disproportionately targeted.

SCA’s boycott was a student-led initiative by SCA majors and CAS seniors Rose Asaf and Benjamin Zinevich. Asaf is the president of NYU JVP and Zinevich is a member of NYU SJP. Both have voiced support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which protests Israel due to human rights violations against Palestinians. Asaf and Zinevich supported a similar pledge by 30 student groups in October 2018.

The resolution states that the boycott of NYU Tel Aviv is not aff iliated with the BDS movement, as the global site does not receive any public support or funding from Israel. In a statement to WSN, SCA Professor Andrew Ross said the petition misconstrued the aims of the resolution.

“The wording of the petition is a misrepresentation of the resolution,” Ross wrote. “Those who actually read the resolution will see it is aimed at upholding NYU’s Policy on Ethical Conduct regarding nondiscrimination and equal opportunity. In light of that policy, depart-

ments have a moral obligation, and a right, to withdraw their cooperation from programs whose operations are tainted by racial, religious and political prof iling.”

While SCA is the f irst department to boycott NYU Tel Aviv, other departments have boycotted other global sites in the past. In 2017, NYU’s journalism department cut ties with NYU Abu Dhabi after professors in the department were denied visas due to what one professor claimed were discriminatory practices based on religion. SCA’s resolution states that it decided not to boycott NYUAD because, unlike Israel, the United Arab Emirates does not have any publicly written laws that discriminate against certain groups.

The petition does not seek any administrative action against SCA’s noncooperation with NYU Tel Aviv but is meant to publicly show that some members of the NYU community do not support the move, according to Sarna. The university did not support SCA’s resolution to boycott NYU Tel Aviv.

“With respect to this departmental vote: it’s a little puzzling as to what form [noncooperation] would take, as our Tel Aviv campus does not draw on the department of social and cultural analysis for its academic program,” university spokesperson John Beckman said in a statement to WSN. Stern professor Natalia Levina told WSN that she signed the petition because she believes that universities should be able to operate in other countries, regardless of their official political ideologies or beliefs. Levina

VIA NYU

The beach in Tel Aviv, Israel. Over 2,000 people have signed a petition against SCA’s boycott of NYU Tel Aviv.

also expressed support for the university’s operations in NYUAD. “Cross-pollinating ideas from diverse cultures and nations should foster diversity of thinking and enable change in [a] political institution,” Levina wrote. “I was for cooperating with [NYUAD] for the same reason I am against the notion of boycotting NYU Tel-Aviv.”

Realize Israel president and Stern

junior Ezra Cohen was also a signatory of the petition. While Cohen told WSN he does not always support Israel’s actions, he did not believe it was fair for the SCA department to single out NYU Tel Aviv in its boycott.

Cohen said that citing the fact that Israel has a written law that denies entry to certain people, while Abu Dhabi does not, is not a reason to solely boycott NYU Tel Aviv.

“How does that make it any better?” Cohen said. “If a country is still restricting people, does it matter if it’s in the law or not? I don’t think that it’s written in the law makes it any more condemnable. Abu Dhabi may not have a written policy about it, but they’re still rejecting students.”

Email Meghna Maharishi and Victor Porcelli at news@nyunews.com.

Student Files Lawsuit Against NYU Over Allegedly False Hazing Charges

By MEGHNA MAHARISHI News Editor

TONY WU | WSN

A fraternity member is suing NYU over what he claims are false hazing allegations.

A student filed a lawsuit against NYU last month alleging that the university wrongfully concluded that he was involved in a fraternity’s hazing incident that inflicted burns on multiple students.

The hazing incident took place during the fall 2018 semester and was part of an initiation ceremony for new pledges to the fraternity.

The student, who is not named in the lawsuit, claims that another student wrongfully accused him of hazing and that the Office of Student Conduct then intentionally tried to implicate him and several other fraternity members of misconduct. Following an OSC investigation, the fraternity was suspended on Feb. 25.

The student also claims that the other student that reported him for hazing her

partner threatened to stab him.

The lawsuit also says that the Assistant Director of Student Conduct and Operations Mathew Shepard — who handled the disciplinary procedures — had an “anti-heterosexual male fraternity bias” that he expressed while handling the case. The lawsuit then alleged that Shepard is “part of an unstated policy of NYU to eliminate fraternities entirely.”

Shepard did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.

The student also alleges that he was threatened with expulsion. After the investigation concluded in March, the fraternity involved in this lawsuit was permanently banned from campus due to hazing and underage drinking charges. The student and other fraternity members were additionally charged with physical violence and threatening behavior.

The pledges mentioned in the lawsuit that were part of this hazing incident al-

legedly did not file a complaint to the university against the fraternity. The lawsuit claims that Shepard told these pledges that they had to say they suffered burns or their “academic lives” at the university would be compromised.

In a statement to WSN, university spokesperson John Beckman said that the university’s approach to the disciplinary proceedings was standard, and the series of events alleged by the lawsuit did not match with reality.

“Everything has been handled professionally, dispassionately and by the book,” Beckman said. “The Court already denied the plaintiff’s attempt to halt the disciplinary proceedings, and we fully expect that this complaint — which offers a preposterous version of events — also will fail in court.”

Email Meghna Maharishi at mmaharishi@nyunews.com.

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019

Washington Square News | News

3

Survey Shows Men Outnumber Women More Than 2-to-1 Among Tenured Faculty

Missing Money in Palladium Hall

By CRIME BOT Robot Reporter From April 26 to May 3, the NYU Department of Public Safety received one report of criminal mischief, one report of drug law violation, two reports of harassment, 10 reports of larceny and three reports of trespassing.

Criminal Mischief On April 29 at 7:57 p.m., a student reported damaged property in Third Avenue North Residence Hall. Police notification was declined. The case is open and under investigation.

Drug Law Violation

VICTOR PORCELLI | WSN

By BETHANY ALLARD Deputy News Editor Nearly all full-time professors at NYU — over 90% — have tenure, but fewer than 30% of them are women, according to a nationwide survey released by the American Association of University Professors in April.

College of Dentistry Professor Nicola Partridge, who is tenured, said she has not witnessed fewer women receiving tenure compared to men, but believes the disparity in the number of tenured female faculty is indicative of a larger trend in the United States.

“I was chair [of the dental school’s Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology department] from 2009 to 2018, and in that time I put up five women for tenure and three men, and they all received tenure at the first submission,” Partridge said. “It’s definitely true that the number of women drop off as you get to higher levels. That has been where our hope falls, that will be reversed — as more women progress down the career track, the numbers will become even.”

The data collected for the survey came from more than 950 colleges and universities, from community colleges to private research universities, and surveyed more than 380,000 full-time faculty members, though this group makes up less than half of faculty employed by universities nationwide.

According to a 2016 study conducted by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, while diversity in academia overall is on the rise, women are still under-

represented on the tenure track. In 2013, women held nearly half of all faculty positions but only around 38% held tenured positions.

At NYU, about 39% of full-time faculty are women and fewer than one-third are tenured.

Similar private and urban campuses also have a significant gender disparity in their fulltime tenured faculty. Sitting slightly higher than NYU is American University with 33% of full-time tenured professors being women. Nearly the same as NYU is University of Southern California at 30% and Columbia University at around 27%. Lower is Boston University, with only 23%.

Women are more represented in associate professor and instructor positions at NYU, and actually make up the majority of associate professors. While full-time tenured professors at NYU who are women are paid only 90% the salary of men, this is greater than the national average of 82%.

Among professors, associate professors, assistant professors and instructors at NYU, the salaries between men and women at the associate professor level is most equitable, with women earning 97% of their male counterparts. Instructors experience the greatest disparity, with women’s salaries slightly below the national average of 81% of men’s salaries.

In a statement to WSN, NYU Vice Provost for Resource Planning Anthony Jiga said the university is continuing its efforts to increase female and minority representation in its faculty.

“We understand that the challenge of recruiting female faculty in the historically male dominated fields — and keeping them

in these positions — requires a more extensive approach than simply looking to fill faculty vacancies with more women,” Jiga said. “This approach involves developing a pipeline of potential hires, encouraging mentoring and leadership development, and ensuring other aspects of work life are conducive to female faculty feeling comfortable and valued within their respective departments.”

Jiga added that the university has a policy that allows tenure-track faculty who are also new parents to take time off work without having it affect their candidacy for tenure.

He attributed the majority of the gap in pay between female and male faculty to fields of study.

“The academic disciplines and areas that command the highest salaries, such as economics, business or the surgical areas of medicine have the highest concentrations of male faculty,” Jiga said. “Conversely, those that are generally less remunerative across higher education — for example French, social work, or pediatrics — are those in which women are more prevalent. As a result, while the gender pay disparity exists, it’s primarily not related to men being paid more for the same work.”

According to the survey, the mean salary for a full-time professor at NYU is $218,300.

On average, men make $225,200, while women make $202,000.

Additional reporting by Emily Mason.

On April 27 at midnight, a resident assistant reported illegal drug possession in Founders Residence Hall. Police notification was declined. The case is open and under investigation.

Harassment On April 29 at midnight, a student reported being harassed in University Residence Hall. Police notification was declined. The case was closed and referred to the Office of Community Standards.

On April 30 at 1:12 p.m., an NYU staff member reported that she was the victim of harassment in the College of Dentistry. A police report was filed. The case is open and under investigation.

Larceny On April 26 at 7:16 p.m., a student reported various personal items missing from her dorm in Lafayette Street Residence Hall. Police notification was declined. The case was closed and referred to the Office of Community Standards.

On April 27 at 5:29 p.m., a student reported a missing bag in 19 University Place. Police notification was declined. The case is open and under investigation.

On April 27 at 7:43 p.m., a student reported missing personal items in the Kimmel Center for University Life. A police report was filed. The case was closed and referred to NYPD.

On April 29 at 4:13 p.m., a student reported missing money in Palladium Residence Hall. Police notification was declined. The case is open and under investigation.

On April 29 at 4:54 p.m., a visitor reported missing personal items in Rogers Hall. Police notification was declined. The case is open and under investigation.

On April 29 at 5:31 p.m., a student reported missing laundry in University Hall. Police notification was declined. The case is open and under investigation.

On April 29 at 11:33 a.m., a community member reported missing headphones in 370 Jay Street. Police notification was declined. The case is open and under investigation.

On April 29 at 11:50 a.m., a community member reported missing headphones in 370 Jay Street. A police notification was declined. The case is open and under investigation.

On April 30 at 2 p.m., an NYU staff member reported witnessing the theft of a laptop in Rogers Hall.

The case is open and under investigation.

On April 30 at 4:45 p.m., an NYU staff member reported witnessing an attempted larceny in 721 Broadway. Police notification was declined. The case is open and under investigation.

Trespass On April 29, a student reported a trespass in Carlyle Court Residence Hall. The case is open and under investigation.

On May 1 at 11:34 a.m., an NYU staff member reported witnessing a trespass in 44 W. Fourth Street. A police report was filed. The case is open and under investigation.

On May 3 at 3:53 a.m., a public safety officer reported witnessing an attempted trespass at University Hall. Police notification was declined. The case was closed and referred to the Office of Community Standards.

Email Crime Bot at news@nyunews.com.

Email Bethany Allard at ballard@nyunews.com.

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@nyunews VICTOR PORCELLI | WSN

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MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019

CULTURE

CULTURE@NYUNEWS.COM

Edited by FAITH MARNECHECK

Twentysomethings Have Something to Say

By ANNA DE LA ROSA Deputy Culture Editor and MARISA LOPEZ

Staff Writer

“I like the gray area,” Elizabeth Hamilton said.

The CAS junior and the current president of 20s co-founded the storytelling platform to give writers, artists and creators leeway in the normally black-and-white world of journalism. In spirited celebration of the growing “outlet and community for 20-somethings,” Hamilton bounced around and filled in behind the bar as 20s hosted its first event on Friday.

The website is all about the individual, something she said she believes is easily lost in standard feature writing.

“You’re using an individual who’s facing [an] issue as a tool to tell the story instead of as a person,” Hamilton said. “I really, really hated that.”

Hamilton is trying to combat this issue by constructing her platform in a way that lets the subject’s voice shine. She says the most important section of the website is Dear 20s, a collection of first-person narra-

tives that allow those featured to write their own stories of transformation. The core team of writers and editors work to prioritize the subject’s voice. Those featured include models, photographers, activists, dancers and sugar babies, to name a few. “[The subjects] are completely in charge [of the story],” Hamilton said. “We help edit, but we also adjust our editing based on what the writer asks for.”

Divna Encheva, a coordinator for 20s, emphasized that the space is a forum for people to tell their own stories rather than having a hypothetical writer tell and possibly skew it.

“Any creatives are welcome,” Encheva said. “Fashion, photography, writing — really anything and everything.”

If artists or creators choose not to write, the 20s core team will interview them and post the Q&A under Voices. As a journalism major, Hamilton thinks traditional interviews are shaped by the interviewer and ensures that everything under Voices focuses more on the subject’s answers than the questions. The Videos section allows the subject to be captured visually.

In 20s fashion, the subject and videographer work closely together to produce the video. Hamilton admits that the Bounce

Cheap Birthday Celebrations in the City

Back section is the most “BuzzFeed-y” and composed of listicles, but she hopes that readers will enjoy these easy reads as a way to “recharge and bounce back.”

The creative team behind 20s is structured similarly to other editorial outlets, with writers, editors and people who specialize in social media management and video production. However, Hamilton isn’t stuck on labels — she calls herself the editor-in-chief “by default.” She says the 20s community is made up of everyone who has ever contributed to the site, underscoring her emphasis on individual voices and connection rather than designated positions.

The event in Williamsburg was in collaboration with The Canvas, an event space for a sustainable fashion collective called Querencia Studio founded by Gallatin first-year Devon Gilmartin. The Canvas creates a visual showcase for sustainable fashion and art. 20s hosts a platform for many writers, designers and artists concerned with sustainability — so Hamilton considers herself lucky to have such an intimate connection with Gilmartin and his creation.

One designer featured at the event was Cal Fish, a musician and designer. In true

free piece of chocolate or bowl of ice cream with your meal.

By HANNA MCNEILA Staff Writer

Let’s be honest — birthdays make for the best celebrations. They give you an opportunity to go out, have fun with your friends and appreciate the fact that you’ve managed another year of life. With the pricey restaurants and bars of New York City, it may seem like the cost of living today is higher than ever. Don’t let that put a damper on your special day, though. Check out some fun and cheap ways to celebrate a birthday that won’t make you wish for the time to stop passing.

St. Marks Karaoke Rihanna’s “Birthday Cake.” 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.” Katy Perry’s “Birthday.” So many iconic birthday songs to absolutely crush at St. Marks Karaoke for the affordable rate of $9 per person per hour for a minimum party of three. If you’re of age and willing to spend a little extra dough, they also have different party packages that include drinks and bottle service. It can get pretty busy on weekends, so I would recommend calling ahead and paying the reservation deposit.

A simple stroll through Washington Square Park makes it clear that NYU students reflect the fashion-conscious spirit New York City is known for. Classrooms contain an eclectic display of personal aesthetics and stylistic choices. But this phenomenon doesn’t just begin and end with students. In fact, many professors see their in-class style as another medium for teaching.

Senior Language Professor Bruce Bromley uses his style as an opportunity to broaden the perspectives of students, teaching them vital lessons that can’t be found in textbooks.

Bromley believes that his wardrobe can allow students to gain a wider perspective than the rigid mindset that many people have about gender norms.

“I’m working with mainly first- and second-year students here, whose experience of maleness and femaleness may be rather narrow,” Bromley said. “Since narrowness doesn’t interest me, I try to wear clothing that puts into motion the fact that there is more than one way of dressing as a man. I’m trying to expand some of their

Dessert Crawls Signing up to loyalty programs can take you a long way when it comes to free desserts. Program members at Au Bon Pain, Baskin Robbins, Dippin Dots, Sprinkles, IHOP and Pinkberry get a free dessert on their birthday. If the incessant mailing lists aren’t worth it for you, just inform a server beforehand at Max Brenner or the Cheesecake Factory and enjoy a

Beauty Bar For all those turning at least 21, Beauty Bar is the place to go for a truly unforgettable night of pampering and partying. Ten dollars for a martini and manicure, a disco ball, music and decor from the ’50s to the ’80s — great for the morning-after Instagram posts. What more could you need to channel your inner birthday dancing queen? Be sure to book ahead online for a party of six or more.

options for what they may want to do in their own lives over time.”

Bromley displays many aspects of his own life experiences in his clothing and sees his style as a reflection of himself.

“I’m wearing things that come from parts of the world where I have traveled and lived and that means a lot to me,” he said. “Often, this is not Western.”

He indicated that conformity is not his modus operandi.

“I don’t own a pair of jeans,” Bromley said. “I think if we as a species have to wear clothes, they should be interesting [...] I’m not going to wear those awful clunky shoes that a lot of straight white men wear. They just bring me to tears.”

Professor Kathleen Rizy, a French language lecturer, has a different relationship with her professional wardrobe. Rizy said she uses clothes to underscore her competence. Blazers, for example, boost her confidence.

“When I started teaching, I was pretty young, and so I wanted to have a more professional outfit to kind of convey that I knew what I was doing,” Rizy said. “I went to Catholic school and we would have to wear uniforms, so

Central Park To NYU students, it may seem far, cliche and touristy, but Central Park is actually pretty great for a low-key birthday picnic. Pack some snacks, cash, a blanket and a speaker and head uptown to enjoy the lush lawns and great views with your closest buds. Additionally, you can go boating on the park’s lake for $15 per hour or stage a birthday bike race with $15 bike rentals.

Email Ria Mittal at culture@nyunews.com.

MARISA LOPEZ | WSN

Elizabeth Hamilton co-founded storytelling platform 20s and hosted its first event on Friday.

Elizabeth Hamilton was a copy chief at WSN during the fall 2017 semester.

Email Anna de la Rosa and Marisa Lopez at culture@nyunews.com.

Blazers, Sneakers and Jeans: Behind the Fashion Choices of NYU Professors

By RIA MITTAL Staff Writer

99 Favor Taste New York City restaurants tend to be pretty expensive, but they also make up for it by treating you like true birthday royalty when the day comes. If you’re craving some classic Korean barbeque and you’ve got at least three friends to celebrate with, head straight to 99 Favor Taste on St. Marks Place. If you make it three days before or after your birthday and have a valid ID to confirm the date, the restaurant offers you a meal FOR FREE as long as you are in a party of at least four people. If you’re lucky, someone in a monkey suit will come out and sing you Happy Birthday. No, we’re not kidding.

millennial fashion, most of their clothes feature themes likes environmental concerns. Hamilton says many pieces are made out of repurposed plastic. Fish also emphasizes comfort in their creations.

“What you wear really affects your mood,” Fish said. “I want to create clothes that are comfortable and make you feel good.”

Steinhardt senior and founder of Reclaimed Womxn Vintage Tahia Islam is also part of the 20s community and displayed her curated collection of clothes at the event. Like Cal, Islam appreciates the opportunity 20s gives her to showcase her work.

To provide a fun and fulfilling night for the crowd beyond the art and fashion on display, Hamilton was adamant about including a DJ, drinks, tarot card readings and stick-and-poke tattoos in the back, creating fun memories while building her 20s community of passionate young adults. The turnout was larger than she expected, and she said she looks forward to hosting more events in the future.

“It’s really rare people our age get opportunities like this,” Hamilton said. “We can have a really fun time while bringing all of these communities together.”

SOPHIA DI IORIO | WSN

having my own kind of uniform makes me feel more prepared.”

Rizy also explained how being a female professor has influenced how she formulates her outfit choices when she’s at work.

“I try to cover up a little more when I teach,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of advice from older female perspectives to be conscientious of this.

Not to say that all women have to do this, but I guess that was something that was always present for me.”

On the other hand, Professor Isolde Brielmaier, assistant professor of Critical Studies in the Department of Photography, Imaging and Emerging Media, doesn’t like to separate her work and play outfits.

“I just am who I am. I don’t get dressed with a particular angle when I know that I’m going to teach,” Brielmaier said. “I understand that that’s my sort of professional space and so I hope that I carry myself as such, but I don’t really distinguish between what I’m wearing when I’m teaching and what I’m wearing when I’m just sort of moving through my day.”

Although she doesn’t compromise comfort for style and loves to run around the city in a reliable pair of sneakers, Brielmaier still likes to take her professionalism and the way that she influences students into consideration when picking out her clothes for the day.

“I would stress that I definitely think about the fact that I am in front of students, particularly at Tisch, where we’re not only focusing on critical thinking, but we’re also thinking about how to prepare our students to go out in the world, whether they are going to work in a creative or a non-creative space,” she said.

Like students, many professors make conscious decisions about their everyday outfits, even if their motives are a little different. Although what your professor is wearing may not be the first thing on your mind at your 8 a.m. lecture, it could have a larger impact on your education than you might have realized.

Email Hanna McNeila at bstyle@nyunews.com.

Washington Square News | Culture

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019

5

Gallatin Senior Pursues Passions in Both Fashion Design and Law

By BELLA GIL Staff Writer With her roommates frequently out of town, Gallatin senior Elizabeth Bellotti was free to transform her apartment into a repository of sewing machines, fabrics and materials as she prepared pieces for her final Gallatin Fashion Show. The theme was “Dreams and Dreamscapes,” and Bellotti had decided on the horizon as her inspiration. Silky textiles in sunset hues transformed into dresses and skirts that captured her vision of the sky. Bellotti experimented with silk painting and dip-dying for hours upon hours, developing her collection “Liminal Space — Colors on the Horizon.”

Her hard work paid off. The crowd’s applause was deafening as her creations flowed with the models down the runway. Bellotti beamed as she posed for pictures after the show. When explaining the source of her vision, she gave credit to her mother.

“My mother gave me this idea of the horizon as being something that is a dreamscape but is grounded in our reality,” Bellotti said. “I liked the dichotomy a lot of the ground versus the sky, and the ground signifying reality and being grounded, whereas the sky is more a limitless space for our dreams to exist.”

Growing up in the suburbs of Boston, the student designer was taught how to sew by her aunts at eight years old. She has been enthralled ever since.

Bellotti had always loved to draw, and

her aunts helped to guide that artistic affinity toward clothes as well. She continued to develop her skills, and once she got to NYU, she discovered a new platform on which to showcase her work.

“When I had just gotten into Gallatin and I was a senior in high school, I saw that the Gallatin Fashion Show was a thing and I was really excited to be a part of it,” Bellotti said. “My freshman year, I sent in a proposal and did a collection called ‘Raw Data.’ That ended up being the cover of the lookbook, and I was just so amazed at the response I got from my designs. That really empowered me as a designer.”

However, this early devotion to design and confirmation of her skills did not prevent the budding designer from developing other interests. Bellotti actually initially came to NYU to study journalism, and after joining the mock trial team as a sophomore, Bellotti discovered her passion for law and criminal justice reform. She adapted her concentration to focus on political narratives and their reconstruction. In her words, it’s essentially a “psycho-social study of politics.”

Once she graduates this spring, Bellotti plans to work as a paralegal and then attend law school. She’ll be working in public interest law and hopes to represent immigrants and other underserved communities.

“I am very passionate about immigration reform, especially considering recent events and the Trump presidency,

so I hope that in two or three years, I’ll be able to go to law school and actually become a lawyer and be able to pursue that as an attorney,” Bellotti said.

Although this is her current career path, Bellotti has no plans to abandon her original passion.

Once she has more disposable income, she hopes to start a fashion line or continue to pursue her designs. She also acknowledged the possibility of having to blaze her own path and synthesize her interests to develop a career path that doesn’t yet exist.

“I don’t want to lose any of my fashion sense when I’m stuck in a corporate office,” Bellotti said. “I think my hope is to have each of the parts of myself enhance the other so even if I am advocating as a criminal justice reformer as someone who works in law, I don’t think I have to sacrifice anything about the other parts of my personality or my femininity.”

Bellotti will have a lot on her plate in the future, and it couldn’t have been easy to execute design projects as a pre-law student. When describing her motivation, a specific mantra from her mother came to mind.

“If you don’t look in the front row, you’re never going to park there,” Bellotti said. “Just dream big and don’t be afraid of that, because the only people who get to where they are is because they dreamt of it.”

BELLA GIL | WSN

Emaill Bella Gil at bstyle@nyunews.com.

Elizabeth Bellotti is a fashion designer and Gallatin pre-law student.

Sustainable Restaurants Persist, Despite Some Consumer Apathy

By PAUL KIM Deputy Copy Chief The average customer walking into Bell Book & Candle in Greenwich Village will never know that the majority of the ingredients — 60%, according to executive chef John Mooney — used at the restaurant come from the rooftop aeroponic garden, which is a method of gardening that allows plants to grow without soil. Likewise, the average patron in a Think Coffee might be unaware of the many projects that the New York City-based coffee chain has implemented in the communities that it sources its coffee from.

Bell Book & Candle and Think Coffee are just two of a growing number of food establishments in New York City that use sustainable methods to feed their customers.

But it’s not easy being green.

“There’s no easy solution,” Think Coffee Brand Experience director Dylan Schultz said in an interview with WSN. “We’ve had to adapt and change over the years considerably just to try to keep at the point where we are confident we’re doing the best we can.”

Think Coffee’s approach to serving coffee attempts to tackle sustainability from production to disposal. On one end, it sources its coffee directly from communities in Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Mexico and Colombia. On the other end, all its materials — cups, napkins, bags — are compostable and its coffee grounds go to Grounded, a company founded by two NYU students that turns them into cosmetic products.

On the production side of its sustainability initiatives, Think Coffee, which formerly worked with Fair Trade — a

JULIA MCNEILL | WSN

The interior of Think Coffee, one of the many green coffee shops that started to use compostable to-go cups.

nonprofit organization that works with companies to improve the lives of farmers in developing countries through fair pricing — uses its own model for buying coffee beans, called Social Project Coffee.

This model is based around direct relationships with the farms and farmers that grow and pick the coffee.

It’s not just about the business interactions to Think Coffee. For example, the chain established a program in Kellensoo, Ethiopia where women can make their own pads since girls were previously forced to miss school for a week every month due to a lack of feminine hygiene products.

“Our focus is, of course, we want the highest quality coffee available,” Schultz said. “But we also want to improve working conditions and improve environmental conditions, improve conditions for the community in any way they see fit, or at least in a specific way that they see fit.”

With all these projects going on simultaneously, it’s hard to imagine someone going into Think Coffee unaware of these initiatives. But Schultz said that two years ago, this would’ve been the norm, and only more recently have consumers begun to hold businesses more accountable for their social projects and sustainability initiatives.

At Bell Book & Candle, Mooney faces a similar situation.

“Awareness has raised tremendously since the inception of this restaurant,” Mooney said. “But there’s a chunk of people that definitely come because they believe in what we do, they like to support it. And then there’s a whole chunk of people in New York that just want to go out for a birthday or an anniversary or a good time or whatever [who] don’t care at all.”

The rooftop aeroponic garden makes it possible for Mooney to source the majority of his ingredients right off his building. “The [vegetables] I grow, and

what I don’t grow, I buy local as possible,” Mooney said.

While the menus at Bell Book & Candle point out the rooftop garden, Mooney is of the opinion that caring about sustainability falls on the professionals rather than the consumers.

“As a professional in any industry, you have to be responsible and if you’re consuming something I’m providing, then I want to make sure it’s the best,” he said.

“There’s a lot of people out there that use these buzz phrases and trendy terms and all these things that don’t believe in it at all. And I think that’s bullsh-t.”

Like Mooney, Schultz and the owners of Think Coffee aren’t particularly heavy on marketing their sustainability initiatives.

“Honestly we’ve always kind of played it fast and loose,” Schultz said. “We kind of just do our thing, and we don’t like trumpeting it a lot, but we are trying to communicate what we’re doing a little more to our customers.”

Steinhardt junior Ellyson Beyer, a Nutrition and Food Studies major, says she likes that Bell Book & Candle and Think Coffee aren’t heavily marketing the fact that they’re sustainable.

“They don’t need to attract consumers through their sustainability,” Beyer said. “They are both profitable and sustainable and they have consumers in the door anyway. All companies should adopt sustainable practices because even if consumers don’t know about it, they’re making an impact and they’re still going to have loyal customers.”

Her main concern, however, is with waste management. Beyer says she’s bothered by the waste she and her roommate produce, especially because they don’t have a responsible way to dispose of it.

“We just have trash,” Beyer said.

“We don’t have compost or anything like that.”

While sustainability isn’t something that Beyer considers when she goes out to eat, it’s something she thinks about in other aspects of her life. She recounted her experience in Cape Town, South Africa last summer during a drought. While she was there, showers were limited to two to five minutes.

“That was just really eye-opening for me because when you’re in an environment where everyone is being sustainable, it’s not that hard,” Beyer said. “It just becomes the norm.”

In an effort to encourage more sustainability in the lives of its customers, Think Coffee is trying to increase awareness of its practices.

“People just don’t really know what we’re up to and they don’t know how Social Project Coffee is different than other types of coffee sort of scene,” Schultz said.

Beyer believes that Think Coffee can do this by working more closely with NYU. She talked about her own field trip to a coffee shop in Brooklyn called Devoción, where she learned about sustainable sourcing practices. She said Think Coffee could drastically increase awareness by reaching out to professors and offering interactive tours.

“All of a sudden you’re educating students who are going to spread the word about that and, I think, become loyal advocates of their sustainability practices,” Beyer said. Ultimately, she thinks that the best way to raise awareness is to show, not tell.

Whether or not Mooney or the owners of Think Coffee push more of their customers toward awareness seems almost immaterial. For them, what really matters is the intent behind the practices, the belief that what they’re doing is important.

“We just didn’t want to talk about it,” Schultz said. “We just wanted to do it.”

Email Paul Kim at pkim@nyunews.com.

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ARTS

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Edited by GURU RAMANATHAN

‘Aamis’ Team on Their Flesh-Eating Romance at Tribeca

Lima Das makes her feature debut in “Aamis.”

By GURU RAMANATHAN Arts Editor For all the surprises it holds, “Aamis,” writer and director Bhaskar Hazarika’s latest film, looks regrettably generic at first glance. A married clinician named Nirmali (Lima Das) and a younger man, Ph.D. scholar Sumon (Arghadeep Baruah), develop feelings for one another after a chance encounter. One would expect a cliched melodrama to follow, but instead, Hazarika’s film takes a bizarre turn halfway through: Sumon serves his own flesh for her to eat as a way for them to get physical without ever touching. Nirmali be-

VIA METANORMAL MOTION

comes obsessed and the two embark on a transgressive journey to maintain their relationship.

“The idea was always that: alternative ways of touching each other,” Hazarika told WSN. “It’s such a ridiculous and weird idea, so how to make it plausible and seem logical was a challenge in the scriptwriting process.”

The Indian film comes from Assam, a northeastern state in the country.

The romantic tale gets stranger by the minute but is held together by Hazarika’s confident direction and layered script. While the shocking subject matter could intrigue even the most skeptical viewer, Hazarika remained cogni-

zant of some of the stereotypes of the romantic drama genre that could have seeped into the script.

“Even the romance part, you know they will eventually kiss,” Hazarika said. “Here they don’t, they eat each other. We try to make it mainstream so people will get sucked into the film, so [with] what actually happens, the shock is that much more.”

Das, a formally trained dancer, boldly makes her feature film debut in “Aamis.” She felt no hesitation working with Hazarika, especially since he is also a family friend of the actress.

“When I saw the trailer of his first film ‘Kothanodi,’ I somehow had this feeling that I want to do something like that,” Das said.

Before commencing principal photography, the cast did a 10-day workshop, which Das cited as a great help.

She also appreciated Hazarika’s thorough approach to each scene and how he would help break down every moment before the camera rolled.

“I think all of us were very impressed with [Das] when we saw her in the workshop,” Hazarika said. “And for me, I was thinking of all the possibilities of how I can use this person [for my film]. I was really surprised by the potential she had.”

Another intriguing element of the film is its score by Toronto-based music duo Quan Bay, comprised of Aniruddha Borah and Tammy Nguyen. The duo took on the unique chal-

lenge of having to balance both the mainstream and alternative aspects of “Aamis” in every piece they composed.

“The idea of the movie is taking something beautiful and it becomes sick,” Borah said. “That was the guiding force behind the music.”

The artists intended for each track to be emotionally built so that it sounds heartwarming at the surface but has darker layers that reveal more discomforting sounds.

“One of the easter eggs that we kind of hid in the film a little bit is almost every chord or piece was actually referencing something most people were already familiar with,” Nguyen said. “We referenced one bar by Beethoven, but we changed the key and setting tone entirely so when the audience [hears] it they’d be like, ‘I heard this somewhere, but it’s familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.’”

Of the international features to premiere at Tribeca this year, “Aamis” is the only Indian film.

“This is my first film as producer,” Poonam Deol said. “In fact, this is my first film in any capacity. Getting here to Tribeca is a big, big ratification of what we did.”

Das, ecstatic about the opportunity, related how the team could not have asked for more from this opportunity, and the rest of the team agreed.

“It does feel like every opportunity is the last one,” Nguyen said. “It’s good because it keeps you really hungry and you

work really hard, but you know, we were also physically jumping up and down.”

While the team is likely to promote the film to more international festivals, it will eventually make its way to India, where Assamese films have always had trouble attracting audiences away from the commercially dominant Bollywood industry. Still, after the positive response at Tribeca, Deol is hopeful for the film’s future.

“If a film is getting good reviews overseas, that kind of gives it a direction to the reviews we will have in India,” Deol said. “I’m hoping [‘Aamis’ will] be received with more kindness.”

Hazarika is unconcerned about the film’s financial prospects despite the general approach to filmmaking in Assam.

“It’s not commerce-driven, it’s passion-driven,” Hazarika said. “People make films, they often lose money and they make more films. Somebody has to suffer, mostly the producers. The second producer, [Shyam Bora], on this film, wants a controversy because that’s good for sale. I don’t know about that.”

Regardless of how much money it may or may not make, Hazarika and his team have delivered a film that is self-assured on how unsettling and endearing it wants to be. “Aamis” stands as one of the most innovative films to premiere at Tribeca, and one of the most novel to come out of India in recent years.

Email Guru Ramanathan at gramanathan@nyunews.com.

‘One Punch Man’ Season 2 Pulls Its Punches for Now

By FAREID EL GAFY Staff Writer “One Punch Man” was an instant hit with anime fans in 2015, taking the internet by storm with memes and parodies featuring its dopey, bald star. A second season was soon announced, but in 2017, the series changed production houses entirely, delaying the release. Four years later, the yellowand-red-clad “hero for fun” has returned to television, though he isn’t packing quite the same power.

Saitama, the eponymous One Punch Man, adopts a daily routine of running, push-ups, sit-ups and squats that miraculously grants him the power to defeat any and all foes with a single punch — much to his dismay, as he finds superhero-fighting boring with no real threat. Constantly searching for a real fight, Saitama hopes to go from C rank to the high honor of government-sanctioned S rank, while the awe-struck, ultra-serious, S-rank cyborg Genos follows him around as his disciple. Though everyone, including prideful heroes, crazed monsters and calculating villains, seems to be out to get them, Saitama and Genos invariably save the day.

The first season of “One Punch Man” delivered on the premise well. Villains turn into sniveling wrecks upon witnessing Saitama’s power while he frets about a sale on groceries.

Numerous monsters end up decapitated by his fist. Season two, however, struggles to find the same thread.

First and foremost, action and comedy drive “One Punch Man,” and the series is able to emphasize the best of both when combining them. Saitama’s search for an enjoyable fight lampoons superheroes’ feats of valor. It’s not a story about an unbeatable hero meeting his match and surpassing it, but rather decking hulking, homicidal maniacs

and still searching for more. Though he is played off as a simple person, the layers to his motivation are interesting as his craving for an opponent is almost maniacal.

But if season two adheres to the 12-episode precedent of the first season, then we are already a third of the way into its run, and the One Punch Man has delivered woefully few punches. The entire first episode focuses on one gag — the truth behind a new hero, King. The second episode introduces yet another new hero, while the third focuses on monster man Garou, the season’s villain.

Much of these first episodes are dedicated to exposition in the form of lengthy conversations, and wastefully use the villain-of-theweek trope to give Saitama something to do.

Only the fourth episode delivers a satisfying action scene, as S-rank Metal Bat takes on giant centipedes. His cool-as-a-cucumber demeanor is instantly endearing and the CGI utilized to render the myriapod monsters is outstanding. One only wishes it centered around our main characters. The first few episodes have a woeful lack of action for Saitama and Genos outside of an amusing face-off with a dedicated assassin in episode two. After four years of waiting for the two parties to throw down once again, it’s disheartening, to say the least. But hope remains.

Saitama and Genos are hilarious when they’re allowed to be, and the world retains its goofy tone. Calm and collected, Garou seems to be more than another one-note abomination for Saitama to steamroll over, and a growing band of allies promise a satisfying season arc. In lieu of a string of one-punch baddies each episode, perhaps we’ll see a onepunch season with a big payoff. Here’s hoping for a knockout.

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Email Fareid El Gafy at film@nyunews.com.

The second season of One Punch Man is out now, but lacks the fun of the first season so far.

Washington Square News | Arts

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019

Brooklyn Duo Releases Debut EP at Strawberry Fest

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Poet Deborah Landau Targets the World’s Evils

By JULIE GOLDBERG Staff Writer

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Bathe, a Brooklyn-based duo, performed during Strawberry Fest.

By NICOLE ROSENTHAL Music Editor Brooklyn-based hip-hop group Bathe has been busy the past few days: not only did it warm up the stage for fellow Brooklynite and friend Triathlon at Strawberry Fest on Friday, but it also released its debut EP “I’ll Miss You” the same day.

Made up of rapper/singer Devin C. Hobdy and producer, guitarist and bassist Corey Smith-West, Bathe blends elements of rap, chillwave, jazz, funk and indie to create a unique and sonically satisfying listen. The release consists of seven beat-heavy songs chronicling the band’s first few months of living in New York City following their graduation from the University of Pennsylvania.

“The end of college was a big transition time,” Smith-West said. “Different relationships ended, different family members had gotten sick. We would stay up all night writing these songs, talking about our lives and just processing the things that were happening to us.”

The duo — which draws influence from artists ranging from D’Angelo to Solange — hasn’t always called Brooklyn home. Bathe formed five years ago when Hobdy and Smith-

West were in college.

After graduation, the duo moved to Brooklyn initially to pursue internships. Hobdy worked on producing music while Smith-West wrote for an esteemed music publication in Manhattan. However, it didn’t take long for him to realize that he would rather be performing his own work instead of writing about others’.

“The more I wrote, the more I wanted to be on stage,” Smith-West said. “The more I wrote, the more I wanted to produce.”

Smith-West now lives in the same neighborhood his parents grew up in — Bedford-Stuyvesant — a coincidence that brought him back to his roots. As his mother and father lived in Brooklyn during the advent of hip-hop, much of the soul and hip-hop music that Smith-West grew up listening to came directly from the borough.

“My mom was like, ‘Wow, I worked so hard for us to get out of Brooklyn just for you to move back in,’” he said with a laugh. “She didn’t see a problem with it, she was just trying to get that American Dream set up for us.”

During its formative years, Bathe went through several iterations and band members. Hobdy and SmithWest have a hard time putting their

fingers on exactly when Bathe as it is known today formed. Smith-West admits that being a musical collaborator with your best friend isn’t always the easiest job.

“Being straight up, there are some days when you have to stop being someone’s musical partner and start being their best friend,” Smith-West said. “Sometimes you have to take a breather. Hobdy has taught me to not be not be afraid — to be honest and vulnerable. There are days where you just have to be honest.”

The new EP, “I’ll Miss You,” is truly a memento for Bathe. It is a capsule of a transitional period of self-discovery, self-awareness and self-creation. Only time will tell how the band will grow. Yet, SmithWest says the band is not as interested in what could be as the present and relishing the moment.

“The EP name ‘I’ll Miss You’ is about being one step away from the present,” Smith-West said. “It’s not being able to embrace the moment because you’re thinking about the future. The EP is about being in the moment and finding beauty in the present.”

Email Nicole Rosenthal at nrosenthal@nyunews.com.

In her new collection “Soft Targets,” acclaimed poet and director of NYU’s Creative Writing Program Deborah Landau looks at the world’s problems and asks, “What do we do about this?”

While her past works deal principally with the vulnerability of the female body, “Soft Targets” extends from the individual to the political body to the “the global body / its infinite permutable softnesses.” Rather than offer a panacean way out of the chaos, she makes small suggestions, rendering the ordinary experiences of life miraculous, so we might see the miracle in them like she does.

The book began as “a response to what was in my face,” Landau told WSN. She was in Paris with NYU’s MFA program during the 2015 terror attacks. Landau said she was “celebrating Bastille Day out on the river, watching the fireworks — then, it’s on our phones, this guy had driven his truck into the crowds at Nice and everything changed; you find out right away.” The intensity of that experience moved her to write the poems that would come to comprise “Soft Targets.” She said she never thought she would write an overtly political book, but “reality became overwhelming.”

She describes Paris as a site of pure joie de vivre, rendering the terrible attacks that occurred there all the more world-altering and unsettling. “It’s gorgeous and there’s wine by the river and there’s people in the streets,” she said.

“But then people were in the cafes and they all got shot.”

Everything occurs in what she calls “mad simultaneity,” as “one person is mauled, / another eats a sandwich.”

“I read this wonderful book called ‘The White Hotel’ which has had a huge impact on me because it’s all about this,” she said. “The main character asks at one point ‘How can you ever be happy when at every moment the most horrible thing is happening elsewhere to someone else?’ It’s really perplexing.”

She said it can be difficult to read these poems for an audience on account of their lugubriousness. She describes an event hosted by the Los Angeles Times at which she was invited to read.

“It was a gorgeous day,” she said.

“The guy right before me was reading these poems about sex with young women and the audience was loving it because they were sexy and funny. So I was like, oh, here I am with poems about death and terror. But then I didn’t apologize. This is what feels true to me.”

Landau says she doesn’t have a desire

to write fiction. “I like to read fiction but I don’t think I’m a storyteller,” she said. “I don’t think I can sustain a narrative like that. I like poetry because it’s elliptical, associative; you don’t need to tell everything.”

Still, there is a sense of narrative in her poems, as we follow her through generations of mothers and daughters.

The book spans lifetimes, from the youth of her grandmother, taken by Nazis in 1938, to the birth of her own daughter, “bare and guileless, fair and free, / funneling forward without a helmet.” This anxiety about childbearing returns Landau to her meditations on the female body, as she writes, “Such a reckless act, to pop out a human / with the jaws of the world set to kill.”

These poems are concerned not only with how to exist ourselves, but how to cope with the awareness of the kind of world which we have left our children to inherit.

“My seven-year-old daughter overheard us talking about climate change the other day,” Landau said, shaking her head. “We didn’t know she was listening. She was so upset. She was like ‘The beaches are gonna disappear.’”

The poems largely meditate on the state of the world rather than directly condemn the players within it. This is not to say, however, that these poems are without rage, especially toward those in positions of unnerving power within the government. “Our kings are cranks, crooks, incongruous,” she writes, “they are improper, ill equipped / how is it we pushed the handle down and they popped out?”

Even amid the terror, however, Landau expresses loving attention to what persists, as “still there was bread on the plate, still wine.” Nature, in particular, sprouts up in spite of itself — “much trouble at hand, yet the lilies still.”

There is a persevering fondness for the small things that keep us sane, if only for a moment. “Eat Drink Breathe / and Kiss your favorite face,” she writes; and later, “O beautiful habit of living, let me dwell on you awhile.” If there cannot be redemption, there can be survival. “We carried on with our breathing—” she writes, “my father was still alive, my body kept aging, / the pills helped a little, not a lot.”

“I don’t feel better having written it all,” she said. “I probably feel worse. I was talking to someone else who’d written on the general same subject and she also feels horrible. But at least we got some poems out of it and maybe the poems are a way to press back.”

Email Julie Goldberg at books@nyunews.com.

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Deborah Landau, poet and director of NYU’s Creative Writing Program. Her new book, “Soft Targets,” is on sale now.

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MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019

Edited by HANNA KHOSRAVI and MELANIE PINEDA

UNIVERSITY LIFE

NYU Isn’t Taking Care of Its Students

By ABBY HOFSTETTER Instagram Editor TW: This article discusses suicide.

As my time as an NYU first-year comes to an end, I’ve been looking back on some of the year’s defining moments.

Losing myself in the crowd during Welcome Week, listening to my idols speak during MLK Week, watching the talented performers at UltraViolet Live and capping the year off with cake at Strawberry Fest have been undeniably

great. But as I think of these events, I cannot help but remind myself of other incidents that have occurred on campus this year: NYU lost two students, one in the fall and one in the spring, to suicide.

Welcome Week and the tragic deaths of two students seem to have nothing to do with one another. But the Center for Student Life, the Wasserman Center for Career Development, Residential Life and Housing Services and many more share their budget with the Wellness Exchange and the Student Health Center, making the picture unclear as to how much funding SHC actually receives.

Nevertheless, based on the information available, the SHC is inarguably understaffed, which raises questions about how effective it can be in meeting students’ needs. This ineffectiveness becomes even more apparent when NYU’s mental health service is juxtaposed with those of other universities.

I, like many other students, was shak-

en when a classmate died in October.

My fellow first-years and I had a violent awakening to what sophomores, juniors and seniors already knew: the Wellness Center might not be there for us when we need it the most. We learned about the true reason behind Bobst Library’s gilded architecture, and we found out that a meme page could provide more support than the Wellness Exchange.

I had assumed that since NYU prides itself on its facilities being state-of-theart, its mental health facilities would be top-notch as well — not to mention that NYU Langone has an excellent mental health department. But the SHC is grossly understaffed.

According to the SHC’s staff webpage, NYU’s New York campus currently employs 43 staff members in Counseling and Wellness. (Thirteen are listed as “social workers”; 10 are listed as “psychologists.” Only three are listed as “counselors.”) According to the most

recent data, NYU has a total enrollment of 51,123, meaning the SHC has approximately one wellness professional for every 1,189 students. If each staff member were to work for 24 hours straight, they would only be able to provide each student with eight minutes and 28.5 seconds of counseling per week. The American Psychological Association says that the average psychotherapy session typically lasts 45 to 50 minutes. Because the SHC is so understaffed, it is currently unable to provide NYU’s student body with what is deemed to be the bare minimum by national standards.

This inadequacy is reflected in the prolonged wait times that students face when seeking counseling at the SHC. Students usually experience three-week wait times for their first appointments — sometimes even between appointments — which is two weeks longer than the seven-day na-

tional average. “Many said the wait times were discouraging,” as reported in a recent WSN piece, “with some giving up on using NYU’s services because of them.” Feeling disheartened by the absurdly long wait times, many of these students turned to their families or friends as a source of therapy instead. The APA says it is both harmful and unethical to use one’s loved ones as therapists.

Understaffing the SHC has proven to render it entirely ineffective.

Because of this, students have been forced to try and help themselves in ways that are destructive to both themselves and their peers. An ineffective Student Health Center hurts all of NYU’s student body, and the administration has a responsibility to do better by its students.

Email Abby Hofstetter at ahofstetter@nyunews.com.

RACE

Black Women Are Human

By MILI MANSARAY Contributing Writer New York is exhausting, college is distressing and life is heartbreaking.

We all know this. Life’s highs and lows can bring you to the peak of ecstasy or drive you to the point of depression.

If Johnny doesn’t get his dream job, or if his sports team loses, we allow him to be upset.

But imagine a woman that is not in the business of smiling for strangers on the street. And if the woman conserving her emotional availability is black, the image is almost unfathomable. Black women being forced to repress their emotions reinforces a negative stereotype stemming from racism and sexism,

one that we need to dismantle.

Being regarded as a villain is an experience of mine as common as refilling money on a MetroCard. Whether in the gym locker room or waiting in line at Starbucks, if I am not visibly brimming with happiness, people interact with me as if I am going to attack them. White women scurry by me in fear, eyes wide and head down. If for any reason they need to speak up, maybe they need to get by, they utter “excuse me,” voices quivering.

And then they speed walk away, though some spend a few moments apologizing profusely first. Finally, the six-second interaction is over and I am now a monster.

Liberal Studies first-year Elohor, who is black and asked to go by just her first name for privacy reasons, deals with similar exchanges upon returning to her dorm. “I love my roommates, but I’m a very introverted person and sometimes I don’t want to talk,” she said. Once she says that she is not in the mood to chat, her roommates express a quiet offense, faces taken aback and shoulders slumped.

Of course, they try to hide this, “but I can tell,” she said.

While more than likely subconscious, this reaction is a form of internalized racism and policing of women’s emotions.

Women are not allowed to be assertive and self-prioritizing, lest we disrupt any notions of docility and limitless availability. If we do not fulfill the role of the nurturing matriarch, we receive backlash.

These sentiments of anti-black racism and its results are a sort of emotional confinement placed particularly hard on black women. In some instances, we’re superheroes, warriors in the front lines of battle shielding our men, who tolerate vast amounts of misery from the police. Or we’re the mammy caricature, enslaved mother figures who nursed their owner’s children and who were manufactured as justification that blacks were happy to be slaves.

In both instances, black women are in positions of servitude. It is this history that informs expectations of emotional servitude.

Elohor’s roommates may have viewed her as angry, similar to how people react to me, resulting in their feelings of discomfort. Black women are not allowed

to resist, or we’re deemed overbearing.

“Aggressive. Threatening. Loud,” law professor Trina Jones said to the BBC. The history of this stereotype comes from 19th-century minstrel shows, in which white male actors wore blackface, turning it into a popular and derogatory portrayal of African Americans. In their interpretations of black women, they would depict them as constantly screaming and fighting with the men around them, displaying their anger as irrational. This is the caricature of the sapphire, popularized by the “Amos n’ Andy” radio show, in which the character Sapphire regularly berated her husband. This is the “Angry Black Woman.”

Maybe Elohor wasn’t angry. Or maybe she was. Not necessarily at her suitemates, but in general. Anger is simply a reaction to stimuli. In the right time and place, anger is just as vital as any other emotion since it helps us recognize when we’ve been wronged. Every human being should be entitled to it — but for black women, our right to be angry is never justified to the world.

This continuous repression of emotion

affects black women’s health. Anxiety is more chronic and the symptoms more intense for black women than white women, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.

This decreases immunity and speeds up the aging process by accelerating strain on the body.

If, during her day, Elohor went through something that upset her, she should be able to embrace this emotion in order to move on from it. Let the black women in your lives prioritize themselves. And if I or any other black woman is standing in your way, don’t be afraid to say “excuse me.” Your head will not be bitten off.

We are not superheroes, we are not mammies, your mothers or your therapists. We do get angry, and with reason — there is a lot to be angry about for black women in the United States — but we are not always angry. We are simply human beings, and you should interact with us as such.

Email Mili Mansaray at opinion@nyunews.com.

POLITICS

Why Buttigieg Is Wrong for America

By JUN SUNG Contributing Writer Of the more than 20 individuals running for president, Pete Buttigieg has stood out among voters a top choice for the 2020 Democratic nomination. As the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he has largely run on a platform of bringing the Democratic Party back in touch with the rural and Midwestern

voters that it lost in 2016 to President Donald Trump. On his website, he emphasizes ideas of inclusion in order to “to secure a future in which every American has the freedom to live a life of their choosing.”

Speaking as a Hoosier, it’s refreshing to see someone from the Midwest actively trying to bring rural voters’ big issues into the mainstream. As mayor, he focused on using the justice system to combat the destructive actions of opioid companies, demonstrating how he has dealt with these problems as an executive. However, Buttigieg’s career has been problematic. Many of his actions as mayor have shown that he doesn’t understand the issues of people of color and doesn’t know how to see a situation through their eyes.

In 2012, Buttigieg fired South Bend’s black police chief after he taped white offi-

cers using racist language while keeping the offending officers on the force. By prioritizing the taping issue over the clear racial bigotry in the police department, Buttigieg displayed that his prime concern was preventing legal trouble over maintaining a non-discriminatory police force. In addition, his actions showed his failure to stand up against institutional racism and for the protection of black communities.

As mayor of South Bend, Buttigieg also tried to solve the epidemic of abandoned houses, a growing problem in the Midwest. He proposed the idea of repairing or demolishing 1,000 houses in under 1,000 days. Much of this process was done through data-driven operations, and as a result, was criticized as being devoid of human touch. Buttigieg’s work in solving this situation created the expected result

of rising housing prices in the area, gentrifying many parts of the black and Latine communities in South Bend.

The mayor’s work in the “1,000 houses in 1,000 days” campaign establishes a lack of understanding of marginalized communities, as well as an inability to communicate with these communities on issues.

The consequences of mass gentrification in South Bend show how a focus on data over human interaction would be catastrophic when applied nationwide. Buttigieg addressed the controversy of the program, saying, “you also need to acknowledge, from the get-go, that you might be wrong.”

Nevertheless, he claimed the program was “certainly a success.”

The situation with the police department and his solution for vacant housing show that Buttigieg clearly does not understand how

people of color live and interact in their own communities, nor is he willing to listen to them. He aims to solve issues without considering drastic consequences like gentrification.

Buttigieg claims that he stands for Midwestern values and protecting rural voters, and it is important that these ideas be brought to attention at the national level. His time as mayor of South Bend, however, shows that the values he aims to represent are specifically white Midwestern values, rather than those of the entire community. In order to be a successful Democratic candidate, he must acknowledge his past mistakes and propose racially sensitive solutions.

Otherwise, as president, he would only exacerbate the deep-rooted racial issues in the United States.

Email Jun Sung at opinion@nyunews.com.

Washington Square News

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019

9

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Self-Care or Self-Sabotage?

By HOPE RANGASWAMI Columnist On the surface, there’s a thin line between self-care and avoidance.

Distinguishing between the two can be difficult as they manifest themselves in similar ways. The crucial difference between the two is intention. Both are coping mechanisms, but their outcomes are vastly different. Avoidance often makes things worse, while self-care can make things better. Avoidance is a kind of escapism, conscious or unconscious, that serves to blot out difficult situations or emotions. Self-care is an intentional commitment to paying attention to the needs of your body and mind. Although the difference between the two seems clear in theory, it’s all too easy to mistake one for the other in practice. Both are coping mechanisms, but their outcomes are vastly different. Avoidance often makes things worse, while self-care can make things better. Treading the line between self-care and self-sabotage can seem tricky at first, but making that distinction is crucial for personal growth.

To figure out whether you’re practicing self-care or avoidance, you need to pay attention to your intentions. For instance, I’m a huge advocate for staying in on a Saturday night. Opting for a night-in over yet another trip to China Chalet can feel great; choosing TV and takeout over sweat and secondhand smoke makes sense to me. In this case, my intention seems to derive more from my personal dislike of stuffy clubs than from a deeper desire to avoid a difficult situation. But, as someone who struggles with social anxiety, I have to check myself. Is the real reason I’m staying in because the thought of meeting new people makes me feel anxious? When the answer to that question is yes, then I know I’m slipping into avoidance.

Facing what you’d rather avoid is no simple task, though. If you’re already feeling overwhelmed, the last thing you want to do is force yourself to face your fears. But avoidance isn’t the answer, either.

The key is to pay attention to your feelings and, above all, be honest with yourself. Acknowledging that you genuinely cannot deal with a difficult situation at that moment in time means that instead of ignoring your emotions, you’re at least aware of them. Having this awareness means that you can identify strategies to deal with these feelings

Submitting to

and address them as soon as you feel able. While this might appear to be avoidant behavior, recognizing that you’re not ready to face something in that moment and managing those emotions accordingly is actually a kind of self-care.

Even when you’re equipped to deal with a difficult situation, it’s tempting to stay in your comfort zone. Venturing beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone can feel unnerving, unnatural, uncomfortable. But a life lived within these confines is a boring one at best and an unhealthy one at worst. While avoidance provides short-term relief, the long-term consequences aren’t quite so inviting: magnified stress, reduced problem-solving skills, amplified anxiety. Compare these to the benefits of confronting your fears: increased productivity and creativity, improved ability to deal with new and unexpected changes and a greater capacity to continue pushing your boundaries.

If we continually avoid the hard parts of our lives, we deny ourselves the opportunity to address, accept and grow from these experiences.

The truth is that while avoidance can protect us from difficult things in the short term, it can make those difficult things even more difficult in the long term. Avoidance begets avoidance; the longer you put off addressing a stressful emotion or situation, the worse it’ll seem in your mind. In Carl Jung’s words, what you resist persists. Instead of trying to escape your emotions, let yourself feel what you’re feeling — be it through meditation or a long phone call with your mom.

Instead of always looking for a way out of an anxiety-inducing situation, challenge yourself to take a risk and say yes.

What looks like self-care can actually be self-sabotage. If we mistake our avoidant behaviors for acts of self-care, we risk exacerbating the very stresses we’re trying to avoid.

Recognizing when you’re taking care of yourself and when you’re avoiding something requires paying careful attention to your intentions and prioritizing long-term growth over short-term escapism. Once you find this difference, you open yourself up to living life to the fullest.

We hear the term “self-care” all the time, but what does it really mean?

To whom is it available and in what ways is it attainable? “The Pursuit of Happiness” will explore practical ways for NYU students to take care of themselves, proving that being broke and busy isn’t a barrier to self-care.

Hope Rangaswami is a sophomore in CAS majoring in English and Environmental Studies.

Email Hope Rangaswami at opinion@nyunews.com.

STAFF EDITORIAL

A Semester in Review This past semester, we’ve strived to accurately and critically cover the state of NYU. As the Editorial Board of WSN, we have a sense of responsibility to speak on issues that directly affect the student body. For the last editorial of the semester, we feel that it’s important to discuss the most important topics covered during spring 2019 that continue to influence our campus every day.

on campus and serving maggots to prisoners in other Aramark-supported facilities. The change to Chartwells has been met with skepticism; Compass Group, too, has connections to the prison industrial complex. As Chartwells prepares to fill Aramark’s shoes, one thing remains clear: more needs to be done to improve our community’s relationship to food, where it comes from and whom it goes to.

Student Health and Wellness at NYU The 2018-2019 school year saw a string of concerns in terms of health and wellness on campus.

In February, NYU’s decision to withhold information from the student body regarding its consolidation of the Graduate Student Health Insurance Plan with the Comprehensive Health Insurance caused controversy. NYU’s choice impacted 1,000 students, leading to higher copays and less coverage for all students who had used GSHIP, while NYU falsely claimed that New York State had required the consolidation. This was a failure in communication and transparency between the NYU administration and the students it serves.

In the last semester, WSN has also covered issues within the Student Health Center and the problems with NYU’s minimal funding of Counseling and Wellness Services. Students have recently spoken out about the lack of accessibility of mental health and wellness resources at NYU, which seems to derive from a lack of adequate prioritization of the issue. Many students have come forward to assert that they did not receive adequate and necessary care at the Student Health Center, citing month-long wait times, cursory responses and unprofessional counselors.

WSN would also like to recognize the tragic suicides of two students in this last school year. The students, which the NYU community lost in October and March, were both first-years.

NYU and Sexual Harassment This semester, prominent members of the NYU community have had credible allegations of harassment brought against them, only to have NYU fail to make a strong statement following the news. These allegations include several counts of harassment against Trustee Michael Steinhardt, for whom the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development is named.

This Editorial Board, along with other students, called for the renaming of the Steinhardt school.

NYU did little to condemn Steinhardt in the wake of these allegations, deferring to an unclear investigation.

Little time passed before once again, NYU missed an opportunity to take a strong stance against sexual assault when it failed to terminate Professor of German and Comparative Literature Avital Ronnell’s position at NYU after she was accused of sexual harrassment. After a semester-long suspension, NYU’s decision not to fire Ronnell directly contradicts its campus sexual harassment policy.

Food Insecurity, Aramark, Chartwells One of the biggest discussions on campus this semester was food insecurity. The problem has existed for quite some time, but awareness of the issue comes up when it is in the national spotlight as well. As reported in a Harvard study, about half of over 30,000 undergraduate students from all over the country reported experiencing food insecurity. In addition to who has access to food, another problem on campus is who provides it.

Aramark, NYU’s food service provider, was replaced with Chartwells — a subsidiary of Compass Group — after the expiration of their contract and months of pressure from the community following several controversies, including instances of racism

Attacks on the Faithful In the last three months, there have been three vigils to commemorate the lives of those lost while worshipping. Following the attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand multiple cities in Sri Lanka and San Diego, our university and the world has been paralyzed with grief. These attacks are horrific regardless of their context, but it is particularly painful to consider that they were intentionally perpetrated in spaces of spirituality. The individuals who committed these attacks represent the worst of us and are all ideologically united in their opposition to humanity. The evils of their actions should not be ignored but it is important to remember that the response to these attacks is just as defining.

Each time terror struck, we came together. The importance of solidarity during our most difficult times cannot be overstated. As student journalists, we would like to believe our words matter, but in times like these, it often feels as though none are adequate. We’ll still stand as one, though, because if it makes a tragedy even slightly easier to weather, it is worth it.

Email the Editorial Board at editboard@nyunews.com.

HANNA KHOSRAVI Chair MELANIE PINEDA Chair COLE STALLONE Co-chair SARAH JOHN Co-chair

SEND MAIL TO: 75 THIRD AVE. #SB07, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10003 OR EMAIL: OPINION@NYUNEWS.COM WSN welcomes letters to the editor, opinion pieces and articles relevant to the NYU community, or in response to articles. Letters should be less than 450 words. All submissions must be typed or emailed and must include the author’s name, address and phone number. Members of the NYU community must include a year and school or job title. WSN does not print unsigned letters or editorials. WSN reserves the right to reject any submission and edit accepted submissions in any and all ways. With the exception of the staff editorial, opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of WSN, and our publication of opinions is not an endorsement of them.

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SPORTS

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Edited by BRENDAN DUGGAN and ZACH HAN

THE SPORTS GIRL

Don’t Punish Female Athletes for Being Too Good

SOPHIA DI IORIO | WSN

By BELA KIRPALANI Deputy Managing Editor On Wednesday, the highest governing body in international sports, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, said that female track athletes with naturally high levels of testosterone could not compete as women in certain major competitions like the Olympics. This landmark ruling was a crushing defeat for Caster Semenya, a mid-distance runner from South Africa and Olympic gold medalist, who has elevated levels of testosterone and had challenged the original rule limiting women’s testosterone levels. The ruling also reaffirms popular beliefs about testosterone’s implications for gender while challenging society in a time when modern culture is moving toward gender-fluidity.

As a gay black female athlete, Semenya has faced countless roadblocks along the way to achieving unprecedented success and becoming a beacon for women like her around the world. After she burst onto the scene, winning gold at the world championships in Berlin in 2009, sports officials randomly forced her to undergo a sex test and people questioned her legitimacy as a woman.

Now, Semenya must use hormone-suppressing drugs in order to be eligible for competition on the world stage.

The International Association of Athletics Federation states that most women have natural testosterone levels of 0.12 to

1.79 nanomoles per liter, while the normal male range is much higher at 7.7 to 29.4 nanomoles per liter. According to the rule upheld by the CAS on Wednesday, no female athlete can have testosterone levels higher than 5.0 nanomoles per liter and be eligible to compete.

At a time when society is deconstructing sex and gender, track and field’s world governing body has placed restrictions on who can participate in women’s sports, again drawing a harsh line and excluding certain women on the basis that they are not woman enough.

So the question arises: how do we define who belongs in women’s sports?

The CAS and the IAAF have determined that women with naturally elevated levels of testosterone do not belong unless they medically alter their bodies to lower their levels.

The court admitted that the restrictions it imposed were discriminatory, but that such discrimination was a “necessary, reasonable and proportionate means” to preserve the integrity of female competition in track and field, the New York Times reported. It remains to be seen how this ruling will play into the decisions of other federations in sports like women’s boxing, weightlifting and wrestling.

It is not fair to the 28-year-old, who has been forced to fight time and again over something that she was simply born with. Semenya’s story is about the ongoing efforts by sports governing bodies to develop rules that are fair to all athletes.

But it’s also about what happens when an athlete — especially a black female athlete — doesn’t conform to traditional ideas of womanhood.

Many women’s sports advocates oppose the exclusion of female athletes with naturally high testosterone levels from competition. How can scientists accurately and confidently claim that having a naturally high level of testosterone is the sole cause of elevated performance when biological sex and athletic ability are both extremely complex? There’s also

the question of whether it is fair to punish athletes who possess certain genetic or natural qualities that may give them an upper hand in sport.

Testosterone certainly helps athletic performance, as it builds muscle and increases the number of red blood cells. Thus, hyperandrogenic women — women with naturally high levels of testosterone — have an advantage over athletes whose testosterone is deemed normal. But everyone is born with different genetic makeups, different body types and by default, different performative advantages.

When other elite athletes like Usain Bolt, Bo Jackson and Michael Phelps seemingly transcended natural human capabilities, they were celebrated for their physical gifts. Meanwhile, Semenya just won her 30th consecutive 800-meter race, and the world is talking about whether she is woman enough to compete in the first place.

At the end of the day, Semenya is being punished for not conforming to the typical idea of a woman. She is a woman and should be allowed to compete as one without having to take drugs to alter her body’s natural production of testosterone. The IAAF and CAS did what they thought was right, but ultimately they have fallen on the wrong side of history.

This decision highlights the need for a deeper understanding of gender in sports when more and more athletes are defying gender norms. The way we learn, talk and think about gender is changing, and the time will come when sports authorities will need to have a proper conversation about how all athletes — male, female, intersex, transgender, gender-nonconforming — can be treated fairly.

The Sports Girl is a weekly sports column that will feature a girl’s take on sports. Yes, a girl. Yes, on sports.

Email Bela Kirpalani at bkirpalani@nyunews.com.

Women’s Golf Captures Fifth Straight Liberty League Title

By BRENDAN DUGGAN Sports Editor Baseball After a dominant 16-1 victory over Baruch College on Tuesday, the NYU baseball team faced off against Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey City University and St. Joseph’s College of Brooklyn over three straight days.

Against Stevens, the Violets jumped to an early 9-0 lead. Although Stevens responded with five runs in the third inning, NYU kept the lead throughout all nine innings, winning 14-10. Gallatin senior Cooper Halpern contributed two hits, two runs and four RBIs. After suffering a 12-3 loss against New Jersey City University, the Violets bounced back with a 5-1 win over St. Joseph’s on Saturday. Stern junior and pitcher Sal Cammisuli allowed only four hits, struck out two and allowed no earned runs. With the game tied at

one going into the bottom of the eighth inning, the Violets scored four runs, capped off by an RBI double from SPS first-year Grant Berman.

The Violets now stand at 26-12 on the season and return to action Monday at Ramapo College.

Women’s Golf For the fifth year in a row, the NYU women’s golf team will be returning to the NCAA Division III National Championship. This past weekend, the Violets won the Liberty League Championship for the fifth straight year. As a team, the Violets shot a 317 on Friday, placing them in first place by 16 strokes.

On Saturday, the Violets shot even better, scoring a 307 to secure the title by 25 strokes over second-place Wellesley College. Stern sophomore Navika Kuchakulla shot a tournament-best 152. Coming in one stroke behind her and in second place was Stern first-year

Arshia Mahant, who shot a 153. The Violets also secured third place, as SPS senior Patty Treevichapan shot a 160.

The Violets return to action on May 14 at the NCAA National Championship in Houston, Texas.

Men’s Track and Field Two members of the NYU men’s track and field team participated in the Tom Farrell Classic hosted by St. John’s University this past Saturday. Stern first-year Chris Shirazi placed tenth out of 31 runners in the 1,500m with a time of 4:20.93. Additionally, first-year Michael Mangual came in fifth place out of 22 competitors in the shot put with a mark of 12.50m.

Several team members will return to action on Thursday for the West Point Twilight Meet in West Point, New York.

Email Brendan Duggan at bduggan@nyunews.com.

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UNDER THE ARCH

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THE FIRST YEAR

I spent my first year abroad in Paris through the Liberal Studies First-Year Away program. I called it an adventure. My brother called it a glorified holding tank.

ZOE OZOCHIAWAEZE | WSN

La Pietra sits at the center of NYU’s Florence campus, which hosts a Liberal Studies First Year Away program.

By NATALIE CHINN Under the Arch Editor I hated how much the comment got under my skin.

I loved studying in Paris, and I was excited about the person it was shaping me into. But every time I brought it up around my family, my brother called it a glorified holding tank. Sometimes, I wondered if he was right.

Was I just part of another NYU scheme to make more money? Was I not smart enough to get into “real NYU?” These are questions all First-Year Away students have considered on Reddit threads, Facebook pages and College Confidential posts and that will probably never be resolved.

Liberal Studies FYA is a year-long program that places first-year NYU students in one of four cities — London, Paris, Florence Washington, D.C. or, starting in 2020, Madrid. Fewer than 100 students comprise each FYA cohort. Their coursework is through Liberal Studies Core, a two-year program that consists of two semesters of writing classes and three semesters of both Cultural and Social Foundations, classes that teach history through literature and philosophy, respectively.

There are a couple of ways students are considered for FYA. When students apply to NYU, they’re asked to fill out the Common Application. On the NYU-specific section, it asks whether the applicant would be willing to study away their first year if accepted to NYU.

If checked, there’s an option to indicate preference for sites of interest.

“Students don’t remember [marking] that,” Liberal Studies Dean Julie Mostov said. “Here you are, a high school [senior], you’re pulling every drop-down you can imagine because you want to go to NYU — you don’t pay a lot of attention to it.”

Whether or not it actually increases applicants’ chances of getting into NYU is not publicly known, but Mostov believes it doesn’t hurt to indicate interest.

“This year [2019], was 16% accept[ance] rate, and every year it’s going to go down,” Mostov said. “So, it’s probably not a bad idea.”

While some well-researched applicants excitedly mark this option, others completely misunderstand the potential outcomes of checking the box.

“I thought it was like a survey question,” LS first-year Zoe Ozochiawaeze, who’s currently studying in Florence, said. “Like, ‘If you want to study abroad, where would you study abroad?’”

This isn’t the only way students are considered for the program. Some go into FYA as Global Liberal Studies majors, and some are given the choice to join FYA to get off the NYU waitlist.

In Tandon senior Nick Suri’s case, admissions offered him a deal after he was accepted into LS in New York.

“The way it worked for me, I could go to the main campus or I could get extra scholarship [money] if I go to DC,” Suri said. “I was like, ‘Well, I need the money,’ so I picked DC.”

Many students said it was a surprise to see that they were accepted to NYU on the condition that they start at one of the four away sites.

GLS senior David Baler skimmed over the line in his NYU acceptance letter that explained the circumstances of his acceptance. It wasn’t until his dad thoroughly read the letter that Baler realized he’d be starting in London. Almost immediately, his initial excitement dampened.

“I remember feeling like ‘Oh sh-t, this is less. What does this mean?’” Baler said.

Students are quick to look down on FYA students and the greater LS program, evident in NYU meme groups and college forums.

The university has been adopting more transition programs as its number of applicants increases. LS, Tandon School of Engineering and the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development have adopted spring admission programs and Steinhardt will send some Media, Culture and Communication majors to Paris this coming fall.

While programs like FYA are still relatively new, according to Mostov, students take a leap of faith and accept the offer to study away, despite the reputations.

“I [was] open to it,” Wagner junior Arn Khunpinit said. “But deep down, everyone wants to come to NYU [in] New York.”

Studying Abroad The FYA experience hardly parallels a normal first-year experience. Rather, students say it’s similar to something less exciting: high school.

“It was kind of like boarding school, to be honest — with less rules,” Khunpinit, who studied in D.C., where the FYA cohort never exceeds 50 students, said. “We got super close really, really fast and no one kept their doors locked.”

Dorming and classes are the primary way for students abroad to meet one another. Current London FYA student Addison Knies agrees that it’s hard to feel a part of something when there aren’t opportunities to get involved and meet new people. Knies says it’s been hard watching his high school friends go to parties and join clubs at their schools. When he shares his experience with them, they equate it with taking a gap year.

“I have serious FOMO,” Knies said.

“I got here and it was not at all what I expected. I wanted an engaging first year, I wanted to meet as many people as I possibly could, I wanted to be in a very energetic learning environment.”

NYU Paris Professor Marina Davies, who teaches all sections of Cultural Foundations at the site, said she wasn’t aware that some students find the FYA program to not be academically challenging.

“That’s not the sense I get at all from my students,” Davies said. “I’m so surprised that some may think that they’re not taking [academics] seriously. I think it’s the contrary. For my students, since they’re here all year, it seems quite easy and natural for them to prioritize academics.”

Knies does not regret his time in London — rather, it is the structure of the program that has been frustrating. Similarly, CAS sophomore Michaela Pasewark, who studied in London, notes that FYA students experience more changes and stress than they expect.

“I think freshman year is really hard in general — you’re going to a new school, you’re leaving all your friends and family behind,” Pasewark said.

“Trying to get comfortable in a completely new country and trying to make friends and trying to take advantage of being abroad and focus on school — it’s just a lot.”

It proved to be too much for some students. Katy Scott, a former Paris FYA student during the 2016-2017 academic year, ended up leaving NYU after her year in France. She now attends King’s College London in her hometown.

“I decided to leave as a result of the unhappiness I was feeling which I think in quite a large part — although not entirely — was the result of feeling isolated [in] a very small [program] and pretty uninspired by my studies,” Scott wrote in a Facebook message.

Returning to New York For most students, entering sophomore year with a group of familiar faces and close friends made all the difference in the transition.

“Being able to come back to New York with about 100 other students I had become fairly close with in London gave me some kind of security blanket,” Baler said. “Like, sure I don’t know where my classes are, but at least I know that four of my friends that are in that class also don’t know where classes are.”

However, not everyone had a smooth transition. CAS senior Salazar compared her sophomore year experience to that of

Edited by PAMELA JEW

a transfer student among other students who had established friend groups.

“I felt like I didn’t really know how to make friends here — and I’m sure a lot of the freshmen feel that way too,” Salazar said.

Academically, the FYA transition can be difficult — unless you’re in Global Liberal Studies. Some FYA students stay within the Liberal Studies college and major in its only program, GLS. The internationally-focused major requires students to study abroad in their junior year.

All non-GLS LS students are expected to internally transfer at the end of their sophomore year. However, FYA students don’t have as many opportunities to explore their options due to lack of access to non-LS classes at their away sites. For students who hope to transfer to schools like the Stern School of Business or Tandon, it can be easy to feel lost when things don’t go as planned.

CAS junior Sean Hwang had his sights set on Stern and said his advisor misled him to think his chances of getting in as a sophomore were high. When he didn’t get in, Hwang was forced to reevaluate his college career and settle on majoring in Economics, despite not liking it. A year later, Hwang has left his frustration in the past.

“At the time, when I did get rejected from Stern, LS was the prime suspect for me,” Hwang said. “I’m not angry at LS anymore. I think I did learn a lot from it, gained a lot of perspective, but there are a few things that I wish turned out differently.”

Not everyone makes it through the LS program after returning to New York.

Suri petitioned to leave the program after being accepted into Tandon’s Business and Technology major.

“Taking LS classes made me realize that I wanted to pursue a major where a lot of the things I’m learning are tangible, where there’s everyday application to the things that I’m learning,” Suri said. “[It] does a great job of forcing you to really find what you want to do.”

Email Natalie Chinn at nchinn@nyunews.com.

ANNA LETSON | WSN

The Eiffel Tower in Paris, where many Liberal Studies students spend their first year.

We are telling big stories — the Bling Ring, Venmo fraud, drug donkeys — ones that expanded past our print-standard 500 words, ones that paint pictures with words.

This magazine aims to be a platform where undergraduate and graduate students alike can mutter on about their love of the blue-seated MTA trains or put into words the flavor of their love of grandma’s dumplings.

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