News: Macroeconomics students debate policy Page 3
Opinion: Fairness of election in Georgia falls under scrutiny Page 9
Sports: Deacon soccer faces UVA Page 11
Life: Movies to watch to get in the Halloween spirit Page 16
Old Gold&Black
WAKE FOREST’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1916 VOL. 104, NO. 8
T H U R S DAY, O C TO B E R 2 5 , 2 018 “Cover s the campus like the magnolias”
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Homecoming Court changes nomination process In the new system, any senior may be nominated and may choose to accept BY ETHAN HARRISON Staff Writer harrem18@wfu.edu
The first woman to take the microphone led the chant, “When women’s rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” Several other people took the microphone to read poetry, tell of their experiences with sexual assault at Wake Forest and express gratitude for everyone in attendance. Maggie Powell, a senior, said she felt like it was important to attend “to make visual the fact that people on campus care.” Although there are many people on campus and in the community who care, some feel that Wake Forest could do more. Sophomore Taylor Knupp expressed frustration with the campus, saying, “I feel like the Kavanaugh hearing and everything in Hollywood has basically been ignored in all of my classes.”
Wake Forest’s motto, “Pro Humanitate,” translated to “for humanity,” urges many to use their notable abilities as Wake Forest students to better the community and the lives of others. This year, the process for seniors to be voted into the Homecoming Court has been amended so that the court may better embrace the spirit of Pro Humanitate, opting for a more open application and nomination process as well as eliminating one of two rounds of voting. Student Union made the decision to change the Homecoming Court process because they think that the court should be better at presenting an accurate depiction of the student body and the university as a whole. “A change to emphasize Pro Humanitate in our Homecoming Court is to really make sure that our court this year was representative of Wake Forest and what our motto is as a school,” said senior Will Hargrove, the Student Government Speaker of the House. In the past, Homecoming Court nominations have taken place over two rounds of voting. First, organizations across campus would nominate somebody from within their organization to be on Homecoming Court. That list would then be compiled and uploaded to Wake Information Network (WIN), and the student body would vote on the nominees. Then, the top ten nominees would be welcomed onto that year’s Homecoming Court. After that, a second round of voting would take place to decide on the Homecoming King and Queen. Students would vote from a group of ten men to be king and a separate group of ten women to be queen. This year, the application process is more accessible, and anyone can nominate any other student.
See Walkout, Page 6
See Homecoming, Page 4
Becky Swig/Old Gold & Black
Seniors Alexus Jordan and Leeden Rukstalis hold signs in support of victims of sexual assault at the walk-out on campus on Oct. 19, which was organized by junior Catherine Mizzi.
Students protest sexual assault Students staged a walk-out in Benson-Tribble Courtyard to raise community awareness on Friday BY KRISTIN KNIGHT Contributing Writer knigkc16@wfu.edu The decision of the Brett Kavanaugh hearing and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s story inspired a walk-out in support of sexual assault survivors last Friday, Oct. 19. Wake Forest junior Catherine Mizzi hosted the walk-out to call attention to the continued growth of rape culture on Wake Forest’s campus. According to the National Sexual Violence Research Center, 20 to 25 percent of college women and 15 percent of college men are sexually assaulted during their college career. Mizzi hopes that the walk-out creates awareness and a sense of community and also sparks action. “Believing survivors requires more than just words — it requires action,”
Mizzi said in a petition she drafted with the help of friends. At the beginning of the event, Mizzi invited people to sign the petition, which calls for eight institutional changes. Some of these changes include increasing funding for the Safe Office and University Counseling Center, expanding medical amnesty available to students and improving related firstyear orientation events. Mizzi hopes to build “a campus where we believe survivors and acknowledge their presence on campus.” Safety was Mizzi’s biggest priority when picking where to attend college. Three years later, she sees Wake Forest as a campus fraught with microaggressions. A large group of people attended the event in Benson-Tribble Courtyard, which lasted about an hour. People were invited to make supportive posters, sign the petition and share their stories with the crowd.
OGB
“ Register for classes outside of your comfort zone This column represents the views of the Old Gold & Black Editorial Board.
Starting this week and next week, students will begin to meet with their advisors and register for classes. To some students, this may be a daunting and overwhelming process due to the sheer wealth of courses offered at Wake Forest; to others, it is simply an exercise in checking boxes for major, minor and divisional requirements. The Editorial Board of the Old Gold & Black urges the student body — particularly freshman who may not have found their academic passion yet — to consider taking a class outside of their comfort zone, perhaps in a discipline in which they have limited familiarity. While it is important to ensure that major, minor and divisional require-
... part of the beauty of a liberal potential major or minor) while checkarts education is expanding one's ing off required boxes. horizons in a myriad of scholarly However, we recognize that some divisional courses are more difficult than directions." ments are filled, part of the beauty of a liberal arts education is expanding one's horizons in a myriad of scholarly directions. There is no such thing as being too well-rounded in your education, and college is likely the only time in your life when you will have access to courses from women's & gender studies to cultural anthropology at your fingertips. Luckily, many of these classes fulfill divisional requirements, and in many cases, students can find a new interest (or
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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF WAKE FOREST UNIVERSIT Y SINCE 1916 JULIA HAINES
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one might expect. It is the opinion of the Editorial Board that introductory classes in departments across campus should prioritize class discussion and engagement over "weeding" students out of a major through rigorous courseloads and excessively difficult exams and harsh grading. Students should have the opportunity to learn for the sake of learning more often, without facing the consequences associated with exploring outside of your field of study. Ideally, divisional classes should be opportunities for students to dip their toes
into unfamiliar academic waters. No student is gifted in every subject, so students in divisional classes should not feel the need to avoid an unfamiliar subject area for fear of earning a subpar grade. It is unfortunate that GPA and grading fears often encourage students to avoid classes wherein they may experience failure, an uncomfortable and often unfamiliar, infrequent feeling for many at Wake Forest. Under the right circumstances, overcoming or recovering from failure can be a valuable tool to improve self-confidence and selfawareness, so if we never put ourselves in positions where failure is a possibility, we may never realize that we are ultimately more than our successes.
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News | Old Gold & Black
Thursday, October 25, 2018 | Page 3
Deacon Profile: College Fed Challenge
BY CAROLINE WALKER Contributing Writer walkct18@wfu.edu
On Saturday, Oct. 20, the Wake Forest College Fed Challenge Team hosted and competed in the Richmond Fed Challenge in Kirby Hall. This is an academic competition in which teams consisting of five to six members model the Federal Open Market Committee’s deliberations while presenting a recommendation for the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy and engaging in a question-and-answer session with the judges. This tests the team’s comprehension of the current state of the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate of maximum sustainable employment and price stability, as well as the students' ability to articulate an economically reasonable recommendation for monetary policy. The Wake Forest College Fed Challenge Team is coached by economics professors Dr. Sandeep Mazumder and Dr. Andrew Graczyk and consists of senior Paul Douglas, senior Avery McClure, junior Amanda Wilcox, junior James Lee, junior Brandon Schmetterer, junior Caroline Dai and sophomore Andrew Logan. The team began practicing during the last academic year, meeting every Monday at 4 p.m. in the Kirby Economics Conference Room during the school year and meeting online through Skype during the summer for a 10-month period lasting from January to October. Starting from ground zero with a “monetary policy boot camp” and later building towards a discussion and analysis of overarching economic trends and data, the College Fed Challenge Team prepared extensively for the competition and grasped a more profound understanding of monetary policy and macroeconomic theory. These weekly meetings prepared the team for the formulation and delivery of a 20-minute presentation assessing the current state of the U.S. economy and
Photo courtesy of Joanna Hamilton
From left to right: junior Caroline Dai, senior Avery McClure, Dr. Andrew Graczyk, sophomore Andrew Logan, junior Amanda Wilcox, junior James Lee, junior Brandon Schmetterer and senior Paul Douglas at the Oct. 20 competition.
recommending a specific monetary policy action. The discussions during these meetings also honed members’ public speaking and analytical thinking skills, which were applicable in the questionand-answer session with the judges following the team’s presentation. Logan commented on the importance of these meetings and the formulation of the presentation. “Every second of those twenty minutes must be refined and accurate, and that takes not only a great degree of practice, but also a willingness to admit when your analysis might be off the mark and [to] take constructive feedback from teammates," he said. "We all work hard to hold one another accountable to our arguments and presentation style.” Furthermore, current developments in the U.S. economy impacted the team’s evaluation of the economy and recommendation in real time, increasing each member’s awareness and understanding of modern economic issues. For instance, the team evaluated the possible impacts of tariffs in the agricultural and industrial sectors on the labor market. Wilcox said, “The dilemmas that we
faced while formulating our monetary policy recommendation, such as fluctuations in patterns of global trade, for example, were the same ones that real Federal Reserve policymakers are weighing right now as they decide exactly how they should approach tightening monetary policy.” During the regional competition on Saturday, the team was finally able to showcase their months of hard work and dedicated practice. For the presentation, the team decided to make a split-vote recommendation to illustrate an accurate model of the Federal Open Market Committee, whose members sometimes disagree upon the best possible course of monetary policy action. Thus, three members of the team voted to raise the federal funds rate (the interest rate targeted by the Federal Reserve) by 25 basis points and two members voted for the maintenance of the federal funds rate within its current target range. After the presentation, they collaborated to effectively articulate answers to the judges’ questions regarding the team’s presentation and comprehension of monetary policy.
Although the team from UNC-Chapel Hill was ultimately chosen to advance to the next level of competition at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the Wake Forest team said that they were pleased with their strong performance. “I believe we did exceptionally well and will come back strong next year,” Lee said. Meanwhile, team members said that the skills they gained through their participation in College Fed Challenge will prove invaluable in later years. When asked about her favorite part of the team, Dai said, “The mentorship is really valuable. Having consistently met with the head of the Department of Economics every week for the last year, I gained a well-rounded understanding of our macroeconomic condition and was also supported by the professors and team members.” Applications for next year’s team are currently available. Contact economics professor Dr. Andrew Gracyzk at graczy@wfu.edu for more information. The team looks forward to welcoming new members and improving for next year’s competition.
POLICE BEAT
Larceny • Subject stole a scooter from the Miller Center. The report was filed on Oct. 9 at 5:37 p.m. • Subject broke into a restaurant and stole from its safe in Reynolda Village. The report was filed on Oct. 15 at 7:00 a.m. • Subject signed for and took another person's package from the Benson Post Office. The report was filed on Oct. 15 at 9:39 a.m. • Subject stole a laptop and book bag from the seventh-floor study area of ZSR Library. The report was filed on Oct. 15 at 10:59 p.m. • Subject(s) stole a white bag containing two books from a vehicle in Lot N. The report was filed on Oct. 19 at 3:37 p.m. • Subject stole items from the P.O.D. The report was filed on Oct. 21 at 3:12 a.m Underage Consumption • Eleven students held an unauthorized party on the roof deck of the A-wing of Bostwick. Six students admitted to Underage Consumption and all students were ID'd. The report was filed on Oct. 10 at 12:29 a.m. • Subjects found with marijuana, paraphernalia and alcohol underage in Lot J. The report was filed on Oct. 11 at 11:08 a.m. • Subject passed out twice from underage consumption at the Last Resort and was transported to Student Health. The report was filed on Oct. 19 at 1:43 a.m.
• Subjects cited with underage consumption on Long Dr. and Polo Rd. The report was filed on Oct. 20 at 11:59 p.m. • Subject in South consumed alcohol underage and needed medical attention. The report was filed on Oct. 20 at 1:28 a.m. • Subject in Johnson consumed alochol underage and needed medical attention. The report was filed on Oct. 20 at 2:16 a.m. • Subject consumed alochol underage at an off-campus party. The report was filed on Oct. 20 at 3:52 a.m. • Subject consumed a pot brownie and punch and needed medical attention. The report was filed on Oct. 21 at 12:04 a.m. • Subject in Bostwick consumed alcohol underage and needed medical attention. The report was filed on Oct. 21 at 1:04 a.m. The report was filed on Oct. 21 at 1:29 a.m. Miscellaneous • Subjects fought in Luter. The report was filed on Oct. 8 at 2:05 p.m. • Subjects damaged Angelou's elevator by jumping. The report was filed on Oct. 10 at 12:03 a.m. • Offender struck a victim in the face during an argument on Long Dr. The report was filed on Oct. 20 at 11:00 p.m.
Page 4 |Thursday, October 25, 2018
Old Gold & Black | News
Homecoming: Process focuses on Pro Humanitate
Continued from Page 1
If a senior is nominated for the Homecoming Court, it is up to their individual discretion whether or not they would like to be on the court and accept their nomination. If they do, they must fill out an application that asks about their commitment towards Pro Humanitate. The application is then submitted to Student Union and undergoes a thorough review process. Applications are made up of three to five questions and are read by five judges. Questions included: “What have you done in your time at Wake Forest that made a positive impact on our community?” “What does Wake Forest mean to you?” and “How are you a good representation of Wake Forest?” A judge rates the answers of each question on a scale of 1-5 and then averages the scores of each question for a single score. That process is repeated for each judge, and a student’s final score is the average of the individual scores awarded by the separate judges. From there, the students with the highest final scores are accepted into the Homecoming Court.
The new voting process hopes to open the opportunity to be on the Homecoming Court to many more people in the community. With the old system, students in larger, more popular organizations were more likely to end up on the court than others. Junior Keara Halpern, Student Union Homecoming Chair, said, “It has been really exciting for people who did not think they would get the opportunity to even be on the court.” Since the change, Student Union has seen a much more diverse range of applicants when compared to previous years. For example, Halpern said that she spoke with someone not involved with Greek life who is still involved on campus in several other ways such as being a tour guide and volunteering with Project Pumpkin. Even though the student may be a great example of what it means to adopt Pro Humanitate, they would have been less likely to be considered for court using the past system. “The hope is that this year the people that are on the court truly exemplify what Wake Forest stands for,” Halpern said.
With these new advantages to potentially being on the court, more students are able to get their name on the ballot. In the old process, “the list could range from 20 to 50 people,” Hargrove said. This year Halpern said there have been hundreds of nominations and 60 to 70 applications. Many students have been pleased with the changes, and have been able to easily adhere to the new voting methods. Maddy Burrows, a senior who applied to be on the court, said, “The application process went very smoothly. It was only three questions about my involvement on campus and what I have given back to Wake Forest community during my time here.” Overall, the amendments to the Homecoming Court process have made it easier for some to celebrate Homecoming by proudly celebrating Wake Forest with alumni and people of the greater community. “It is the time of year that we can celebrate being a part of the Wake Forest community,” Hargrove said. “I think it is a great week that our school gets to celebrate, and I am really excited to see what is going to come of it next week.”
Local project fights immigration detention 34,000 Pillows Project raised money to provide services for immigrants BY ELIZABETH MALINE Staff Writer malied17@wfu.edu The bustling of sewing machines, murmurs of Spanish, throwing of colorful clothing and kneading of pillow fluff made for more than an ordinary Thursday afternoon at the Forsyth County Public Library. For several days, Cuban artists Cara Lewis and Alejandro Diaz worked alongside local organizations to raise awareness for immigrant detention centers across the United States. How? By hand-crafting pillows throughout a series of workshops, made from clothing donated by undocumented immigrants and their allies. The pillows will be sold for a donation of $159, the amount of money the government spends each night to detain an immigrant. “The money we make from the purchase of the pillows will be directly donated to El Buen Pastor, an organization that provides services to immigrants and Latino families in Winston-Salem,” said Dr. Linda Howe, a professor of Spanish at Wake Forest. She also noted that her students will build pop-up installations around cam-
pus as will Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) at their location downtown using the pillows they make. Howe was instrumental in facilitating university involvement in the project by utilizing her many contacts in Cuba to recruit volunteers. This summer, sophomores Annie Cohen, Lydia Millhon and Rachel Norotsky studied abroad in Cuba with Howe. They now take a class with her that focuses on community service and outreach. For this event, they set up clothing donation boxes on campus and volunteered at the sewing workshops. “Our hard work is going to people who don’t get to live to their fullest potential while we take things for granted,” Millhon said. “Most people don’t know the United States government mandates that 34,000 ‘beds’ must be inhabited by immigrant detainees at all times,” Diaz said. Immigration is a theme throughout Diaz’s art because he is an immigrant himself. He and Cara Lewis researched detention centers, commonly referred to as “family residential centers,” and found that around 70 percent are run by private organizations that profit from immigrant detention. “When we found out about this, we had to do something about it,” Diaz said. “Our hope is that it will bring awareness to how legislation affects people in the local community,” Lewis said.
Elizabeth Maline/Old Gold & Black
On campus temporary installation of pillows made during various workshops by Wake Forest students and local organizations Residents of Forsyth County play a role in detaining immigrants whether they realize it or not. The detention center at Forsyth County Jail detains 200 immigrants and is funded by taxpayer money. “Everyone has a role in the larger system,” Lewis said. Nury Anton, who works for the local YMCA, said that she feels personally connected to the project through her Cuban ancestry and her passion for art.
“America was built on immigrants, and that’s why it’s so great,” she said. Volunteers made their messages to proponents of immigrant detainment clear. “The government is detaining the wrong people for the wrong reasons because they are not a threat to society. They need to get over their biases,” said Norotsky. Cohen added, “They are people just like us, and the deserve for their side of the story to be heard.”
WAKE IN A WEEK Homecoming Battle of the Bands and Food Trucks Time: Monday, Oct. 29 at 6:00 p.m. Location: Davis Field The first event of Homecoming week will kick off with a battle of the bands and food trucks out on Davis Field, sponsored by Student Union.
Mary Shelley’s Monster: 200 Years of Frankenstein Time: Tuesday, Oct. 30 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Location: Special Collections, ZSR 625 A first edition of Frankenstein will be on exhibit as Special Collections & Archives celebrates the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s classic novel.
Haunted Tunnels Time: Tuesday, Oct. 30 starting at 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Location: Courtyard between Luter and Babcock The Anthony Aston Players will take guests through a haunted journey of the underground tunnels.
News | Old Gold & Black
Thursday, October 25, 2018 |Page 5
Walkout: Students demand action on campus Continued from Page 1
On the other hand, sophomore Sarah Graham said that these topics weren’t discussed in her classes either, but she’s not in classes in which they would be applicable to talk about. However, Wake Forest’s Strategic Plan says becoming “a crossroads of discussion on the important national and international issues of our time” is a key part of their vision. “Nationally, there is a trend of survivors speaking out about their experiences and advocating for change,” said Sarah Broadhurst, a Safe Officer Counselor and Advocate. “The Wake Forest community is affected by events happening outside the university just as much as the events happening on campus.” Brett Kavanaugh, Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar are all public figures who are currently being discussed on Wake Forest’s campus. Many feel these issues are difficult to talk about, but without conversation, students fear that nothing will change. Mizzi asks Wake Forest’s community
to respect the stories of all people on campus, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race or for any other reason. She’s not alone in this request. Mizzi described the experience as heartwarming and was impressed by how many people showed up. Wake Forest offers numerous resources through the Safe Office, the University Counseling Center, the Title IX Office, and many other offices and organizations on campus. However, there’s a sense among Mizzi and several other students that the support could be stronger. The organizers of the walkout said they hoped to increase awareness, support and action on campus. Broadhurst commended Mizzi and her friends for creating a space for survivors and allies to advocate for positive change. “Having conversations is one of the most effective ways of helping people understand how many people have had this experience and how deeply impacted they are by it,” Broadhurst said. “With that being said, it can’t just be survivors having this conversation.”
Riley Herriman/Old Gold & Black
Students gathered on Friday, Oct. 19 to bring attention to the national sexual assault problems that also exist on Wake Forest’s campus.
Students hope to increase millennial turnout With midterm elections nearing, millennials take to social media to encourage voter registration BY BAILEY WINIARSKI Contributing Writer winibr17@wfu.edu
Midterm elections are quickly approaching and voter registration is coming to a close. In years past, that has meant that young people are neither registered nor interested in voting. To many, things seem different this time. Millennials, specifically those aged 18 to 34, represent almost 50 percent of the voter population in the country and encompass all of the students here on campus. When Taylor Swift, a pop sensation with over 112 million followers on Instagram, decided to use the app to express her political views and encourage people to vote, a response was inevitable. “The more conversation there is surrounding the elections, the more likely people are to get informed and exercise their right,” said sophomore Addison Collins. “And Instagram, especially on a college campus, was definitely the right way, if not the only way to do it.” Millennials make up almost 60 percent of Instagram’s total user population of one billion people, according to an analysis done by Statista in 2018 of the app’s age distribution, and spend 53 hours per week on social media. On the other hand, the Pew Research Center found that on average only about
20 percent of millennial voters turn out for midterm elections. The 2014 midterm elections were historically low, with 21 million fewer people in the younger generation voting than adults. This generation is the most diverse and is quickly surpassing the Baby Boomers in size, so having the motivation to vote will be necessary for milennials to influence the issues that will affect their lives in the future. The elections represent the midway point of Donald Trump’s presidency and will reflect the country’s response to his policies. Thirty- five out of the 100 Senate seats are up for election and Republicans also control the House, where the Democrats need 23 seats to change the majority. Women’s rights and equality are two key topics driving tension among voters, and specific issues like gun control and universal healthcare are subject to change. Professor Michael Pisapia, an expert in political participation, said that although in the past young voters have been “less reliable,” the severity of the issues at stake should be enough to increase milennial voter turnout. “Young voters are going to be more likely to turnout when the candidates explicitly target them,” Pisapia said. Swift did exactly that. Although reluctant in the past when it came to expressing her political opinion, Swift said that she felt that due to recent events in the past two years, now was the time. The New York Times reported that less than 48 hours after Swift’s post, 200,000 people registered between the ages of 18-34, which is right in Swift’s
“wheelhouse.” Twenty percent of advertisements feature a celebrity, according to Statista. When combined with politics, celebrities have started to become more outspoken, which could increase turnout. Professor Katy Harriger, an expert in political participation among college- age voters, defined turnout as “a function of if people are paying attention.” She said that there is a lot of positive potential for celebrities to bring people together, just like their music and talents do, and that can enable them to span the partisan divide to give their opinion and encourage others to as well. An NBC News survey found that 55 percent of millennials said that they are going to vote in this year’s elections compared to 26 percent in 2014, and that their desired quality in a candidate is someone who can bring about change.
Young voters want to make a difference, NBC reported, and are supporting candidates who will allow them to do so. Using social media to demonstrate the impact of voting may just have been the platform that young people needed to mobilize and exercise their right, which usually goes unexercised in most elections, midterms, or otherwise. Swift asked her followers to educate themselves on the candidates and to vote with who aligns with their values. She stressed that even if there is not a candidate who matches one’s views exactly, voting should not be avoided, especially in the midterm elections. “We have the right and privilege to make our vote count,” Swift wrote on Instagram. “We have to vote.”
Carolina Hidalgo/Tampa Bay Times/TNS
Various movements on social media have attempted to reduce the negative stigma surrounding voting by encouraging young voters to register.
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OLD GOLD & BLACK
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Remembering this article: how to improve memory Understanding memory from a neuroscience perspective can shed light on how to improve it. BY JONATHAN TRATTNER Associate Science &Technology Editor tratjd17@wfu.edu As a college student, I’ve noticed there seems to be a correlation between having a better memory and having a better GPA, and, since I’m always trying to improve my GPA, I decided to see what I could do to improve my memory. Since I’m fascinated by neuroscience, I started doing some research which led me to the real question: Is it possible to improve your memory, and if so, how? Let’s start by examining two types of memory: long-term memory, which is the way our brain stores, manages and retrieves information; and short-term, or “working” memory, which is the ‘holding’ place for information the brain is using. Most of us use our short-term memory when we cram for a test. It’s our short-term memory that gives us the ability to access information we’ve just learned — but only for a few minutes. Because of its limited duration, we must ‘reactivate’ the information if we are to retain it. For instance, when taking my last Calculus exam, I looked over my derivative equations, constantly repeating them in my head before writing them at the top of my test. Once I wrote them down, I didn’t have to keep repeating them, which allowed me to jettison that information and focus on something else. Long-term memory entails retaining in-
formation in a more permanent form of storage for days, weeks or even a lifetime. This is something that results from active learning, like practicing Spanish vocabulary terms for many days in a row, eventually incorporating them into your lexicon. Through a process broadly referred to as memory consolidation, short-term memory can be converted into long-term memory when there is sufficient activation in the synapse (a connection between two neurons, which are a type of cell in the brain) where a memory’s information is encoded. For example, repeating the dates of the Civil War fifty times triggers a physiological response in our neurons, allowing neurotransmitters — chemical messengers that communicate information — to propagate between cells.
More specifically, this leads to longterm potentiation (LTP) — essentially the strengthening of the synapse where a memory is encoded. During LTP the number of neurotransmitters released by the leading neuron increases and the subsequent neuron becomes more sensitive to those neurotransmitters. Thus, that memory is more easily activated. Another important concept when exploring memory is knowing that our brains don’t remember all types of information equally well; biologically, we are pre-disposed to remember things using the “visual-spatial memory” which helped our ancestors survive by visualizing where to find food and resources, the route home, and if a plant was edible or poisonous. I was subtly hoping there would be a ‘Miracle Memory Drug,’ and was surprised to learn that taking advantage of our evolutionary adaptations is the best way to improve our memory. An early book about memory, Rhetorica Ad Herennium, written sometime between 86 and 82 B.C.E, makes a distinction between natural memory and artificial memory: “the natural memory is that memory which is embedded in our minds, born simultaneously with thought. The artificial memory is that memory which is strengthened by a kind of training and system of discipline.” As scientific journalist Joshua Foer wrote in his book, Moonwalking with Einstein, “natural memory is the hardware you’re born with. Artificial memory is the software you run on your hardware.” Both sources agree that artificial memory consists of two basic components: imR. Scott Horner / The Sun-Sentinel /TNS ages, which represent the contents of what Cartoon rendering of a synapse one wishes to remember, and places, which at the terminals of two neurons are where those images are stored.
This culminates in an idea called the “memory palace” technique where one creates a space in the mind’s eye, somewhere well-known and easily visualized that can be populated with images representing what you want to remember. These places can be big or small, real or imaginary. As long as there is a logical progression linking one image to the next, your memory palace can be anything from the route to the gym from Johnson Hall, or the inside of Farrell Hall. The memory palace purpose is to use one’s visual-spatial memory to structure and store information whose order comes less naturally, like your shopping list. The more senses you incorporate into your images, the better. For instance, imagine you are walking through the front door of the library and at the welcome desk you smell a waft of cinnamon. You walk a little further and, sure enough, right by the printers you see a cinnamon stick in an animated battle with an angry spoon. To me, that means I need to pick up cinnamon crisp Kashi cereal. Walking a little further, I see an opaque waterfall, reminiscent of milk pouring into my cereal bowl. Two items down, twelve to go. The beauty of this technique is its translatability to a wide array of memory requirements, such as a shopping or to-do list, phone numbers, or Spanish vocabulary terms. This technique is one of many employed by world-class mnemonists. If you’re interested in learning more about techniques to improve your memory, Google the World Memory Championships or, better yet, (if you remember the name!) read Moonwalking with Einstein. It’s a great book.
Wake Forest physics professor shares research Wake Forest physics professor shares research on fibrin, a key fiber in blood clot formation BY TAYLOR ORDINES Contributing Writer bilosm15@wfu.edu Dr. Martin Guthold, professor at Wake Forest Department of Physics, spoke for the WFU Department of Physics weekly Colloquium series on Wednesday, Oct. 17, in Olin Hall. His talk, titled “The Mechanical and Structural Properties of Fibrin Fibers,” focused on his research on fibrin, the key fibers in blood clot formation. Guthold began by enthusing over global advancements in health in the year 2017. “We usually only hear the bad news,” he confessed, “but the good is much more.” He cited that since 1991, the death rate due to cancer has dropped by 25 percent, with breast cancer dropping by 39 percent. The World Health Organization announced a new vaccine to eliminate Cholera, as well as Zika entirely disappearing thanks to medical achievement. Annual premature deaths due to the four largest killers — cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease — since 2000 have declined by 10 percent, or fifty million lives. Guthold said, “Biomed and biophysics are improving lives on a massive scale — let’s keep it going.”
Today, the biggest killer in the world is something small in the body — a blood clot. Guthold cited that one third of all deaths globally are caused by blood clots, many of which are premature. Blood clots cause heart attacks and strokes, which are the main cause of death in cardiovascular disease, from coronary heart disease to deep vein thrombosis. Despite medical breakthroughs, the number one prevention, Guthold said, is lifestyle. “I am not wagging my finger at you … that’s not my talk,” Guthold joked, insisting that he
was going to talk about biophysics and not about motivating the audience to exercise. Guthold then dove into his research, explaining that blood clots are necessary for survival. When we are cut, blood clots perform hemostasis, the act of stopping blood flow. The clot forms when fibrin fibers and platelets pile up in a mesh on the wound, blocking blood flow. When a blood clot forms inside a vein or artery, a condition called thrombosis, the blockage can cause heart attack or stroke. Despite being the number one killers, blood
Melissa Healy/Los Angeles Times/TNS
Above is a blood clot diagram. Blood clots cause one third of all deaths globally, according to Professor Dr. Martin Guthold.
clots and more specifically fibrin fibers are not well understood. Guthold studies the mechanical properties of fibrin so that scientists and doctors can better model and treat blood clots. His lab uses an atomic force microscopic, referred to as an AFM, to probe the physical properties of fibrin. A single fibrin fiber is mounted across a microscopic gap, and the AFM cantilever — a tiny, bendable probe — stretches the fiber perpendicular to its length, measuring the amount of force exerted. A camera also captures visual images of the fiber as it is stretched. Guthold reported that fibrin have similar elasticity to a rubber band. Additionally, the more the fiber is stretched, the tenser it becomes, like a muscle tensing up when suddenly overextended. When the AFM held the stretch static, Guthold found that the fiber actually began to relax. He also determined that internal structure of the fibers is more dense toward the center of the strand — a previously unknown fact. Finally, Guthold talked about his findings on the relationship between fibrin mechanics and health. In a study performed in testing the elasticity of fibrin fibers from older individuals with cardiovascular disease and both young and old individuals without it, he discovered that individuals with a disease had more elastic fibring. “It’s a correlation… we aren’t sure whether it is a cause of the disease or an effect,” he said. In either case, he says that the discovery could play a key part as a marker for diagnosing cardiovascular disease.
Science and Technology | Old Gold & Black
Thursday, October 25, 2018 |Page 7
Plant biologist visits to deliver seminar Washington University of St. Louis professor of biology discusses plant hormones BY STEPHANIE BILODEAU Contributing Writer bilosm13@wfu.edu Plant biologist Dr. Lucia Strader delivered her seminar “Condensation of the ARF19 transcription factor regulates its activity” to about fourty faculty members and students in Winston Hall on Monday, Oct. 22. Strader started in the field of agronomy (soil and crop science) and is now an Associate Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, where her lab studies the regulation and various roles of plant hormones in Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant in the mustard family. The focus of Strader’s talk was auxin, the first plant hormone ever discovered, which is responsible for regulating growth.
“Auxin is an essential integrator of nearly any signaling we can think of,” Strader explained. “It controls every aspect of growth.” Given how many diverse systems this hormone interacts with, it is amazing that auxin can function so precisely, without accidentally activating processes in the wrong time or place. Strader wants to understand how that works. One of the things that auxin controls in plants is a series of transcription factors called auxin response factors (ARFs). Transcription factors are proteins that control the rate at which the information stored in DNA is transcribed and the genes encoded in that DNA are expressed. Transcription factors like ARFs’ turn genes on and off in specific cells to make sure that those genes are only expressed when and where the organism needs them. ARFs, as their name implies, respond to auxin and only activate to control DNA transcription when auxin is present.
Transcription factors are typically found in the nucleus, the dense structure near the center of most cells which stores the cell’s DNA. In the growing root tip of plants like Arabidopsis, ARFs are indeed found in the nucleus. Strader showed images in which ARF19, one member of the ARF family, is visibly concentrated in the nucleus of root tip cells, a region with high levels of auxin. However, older plant cells farther up the root (closer to the stem and leaves of the plant) do not have such clear clusters of ARF19 in the nucleus. Instead, the ARF19 signature is scattered all over the cell in smaller dots or filaments. Strader believes that some ARFs, including ARF19, are intrinsically disordered proteins, meaning that they shift in structure and can concentrate and come out of solution, which could lead to the strange, scattered and non-nuclear pattern of ARF19 observed in the upper root cells. This ability may help to explain how auxin, the hormone which activates them, works so specifically to
regulate so many different processes. Although her seminar focused on one highly specific process, Strader pointed out that the field of research surrounding auxin as a hormone is very broad, in part because of the many different processes and pathways that auxin is involved in. Even with its narrow topic, her seminar was engaging to audience members with a variety of research interests outside of plant hormones. “I thought her presentation was welldelivered,” wrote Elizabeth Black, an undergraduate researcher in the Zhang lab. Throughout her talk, Strader took time to interact with the many undergraduate students in the audience, explaining specific methods and processes and asking questions to ensure that everyone understood. She also focused heavily on the work that students in her own lab have done to contribute to this project. “Her research is very exciting,” Black wrote. “It could help answer many unknown questions about plant developmental biology.”
Professor speaks on importance of the Amazon Biology professor Miles Silman discussed his research and its implications for climate change BY LILLIAN JOHNSON News Editor johnlg16@wfu.edu The Amazon basin is one of the wildest and most remote places left on Earth; not many people travel into its depths. Yet, Wake Forest biology professor Miles Silman has dedicated his life and his professional career to studying this area. On Monday, Oct. 22, Silman presented some of his research and discussed its larger implications for climate change as a part of the Lifelong Learning annual lecture. When Silman took the stage in front of a crowded audience in Porter B. Byrum Welcome Center, he promised to take the audience down to his research sites in South America. But first, Silman set those locations in context of the larger world. “This is the Earth the way I want you to think about it — an incredibly dynamic place,” Silman said as he projected images of carbon dioxide cycles across the world. Carbon levels in the atmosphere are rapidly increasing, which in turn has been affecting the earth’s overall temperature. It is widely accepted in many climate projections that the earth must stay within a limit of increasing two degrees Celsius by the end of the century, as set by the 2016 Paris Agreement. An increase of more than two degrees Celsius could be potentially catastrophic. “If my kids, who were born here in Winston-Salem, live here all their life, they will die in the climate of northern Florida,” Silman said.
Silman stressed that climate change is a pressing issue now for the global community. Moving away from the global perspective, Silman discussed the Amazon and the Andes. The Amazon is an extremely biodiverse area: about one of every nine species of birds is found there and there are, according to Silman, “as many trees in the Amazon as there are stars in the Milky Way.” It also plays an important functional role in helping to control the earth’s climate. The estimated 16,000 species of trees in the Amazon help to draw carbon out of the atmosphere. Further, the Amazon sends out mass amounts of water and energy into the global ecosystem. As the climate warms, species must move up in elevation to stay within their thermal tolerance, but some might not adapt fast enough or the landscape the species are moving into might not be suited for the species. Silman sees this firsthand on a gradient along the Trocha Union, a ridge in the Andes that descends about 2,300 meters. “Silman and his team have been establishing an unappreciated fact: tropical forests are fighting to adapt to steadily warming temperatures and that a number of species in these jungles are not adapting quickly enough to survive the warming temperatures coming in the years ahead,” said journalism professor Justin Catanoso, who reports on environmental issues and has traveled with Silman to his research sites in Peru. But the Amazon is under its own threats in addition to climate change. Vast swaths of the Amazon are unprotected and subject to being negatively altered for agricultural or mining purposes. The patches of forest that are
protected do not have the force to do everything that it needs to do, including keeping biodiversity levels high and mitigating the effects of carbon. In addition to his role as the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation Professor of Conservation Biology, Silman also serves as the director for the Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability (CEES) and works closely with the Centro de Innovación Cientifíca Amazónica (CINCIA) to help preserve these areas. The work that CINCIA is doing leaves Silman hopeful. Partnered with Wake Forest, they focus on restoration and remediation of the environment as well as studying the effects of mercury, a byproduct of gold mining prevalent in southeastern Peru. Further, Silman noted that there is so much about the Amazon that is still
unknown. Four to five thousand of the estimated 16,000 species of trees there are so rare they may never be found. “We are still in the era of discovery on this planet,” Silman said. Silman’s lecture, which appeared to captivate and educate the audience, ended by returning to the concept that the Amazon has a greater effect on the future of the global environment and humanity. “Forests are more than just trees,” read one of his last presentation slides. “Most of us have no concept of the ecosystem services we depend on dayto-day that are provided to us in North America from the tropical forests of Central and Latin America,” Catanoso said. “Essentially, if we don’t understand how nature works and impacts our lives, we can’t take the steps necessary to protect and preserve it.”
Sam Schwartz/Old Gold & Black
Biology professor Miles Silman presented some of his Amazonian research as a part of Wake Forest’s annual Lifelong Learning lecture.
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“ of the Southern accent A defense Southern Living
Although most people try to evade the accent, I have always adored it Natalie Alms
Staff Columnist almsnj16@wfu.edu
When I was growing up, all I wanted was a Southern accent. I am from a small town in Western North Carolina, so I figured I was all set. By and large, though, my parents’ past in Chicago ruined my chances, and my accent is limited to certain words and phrases. As I have grown up, this personal desire for a Southern accent has cut sharply against the realization that many other people do not share my longing. Instead, on campus and outside of the rural South more generally, vaguely rude comments such as “How could anyone ever live here?” are more common than you might ex-
My Southern friends have mentioned to me ... that they actively try to lose their accents on campus.” pect once you start paying attention to them. I mostly hear comments about my small town. Although many come from a place of genuine curiosity, the ones that rub me the wrong way seem to insinuate that there is something wrong with the people in my town, that this is not the correct way to live a modern life or just generally imply a sense of less-than. The small accent that I do have tends to only really come out at home, and I am sure that part of this is a response to the strong accents around me. However, code-switching is also an acknowledgement of the comments I mentioned briefly above. Southern accents have long been viewed as markers of class and intelligence. My Southern friends have mentioned to me how people remark on their accent and many
have told me they actively try to lose the accent on campus. It is easier to be perceived as competent without it. And honestly, these sorts of phenomena make me a little peeved. They taint something I have always considered cool, even beautiful. In the South, accents vary regionally and tie people together in how they talk. In a way, people with accents literally carry where they are from and the people that raised them with them in the very words that they say. I think that Southern accents and people’s reactions to them are a small part of the rural-urban divide in the U.S., which is perhaps a small part of the polarization we see in our politics. Maybe changing how we think and talk about rural places in the South and the people that live in them can be a part of the solution. When people from different places converse, Southern accents and people with them have the potential to catch others off guard sometimes in a wonderful
way. They can turn any sort of stereotype about the rural South on its head. However, people also need to be willing to listen. You don’t have to love my town or want to live there. Maybe parts of my life there baffle you or seem so out of touch with what you are used to. But the realization that a Southern accent is not indicative of lower intelligence or a certain political stance, and is not grounds for condescension, is a starting point to better conversations. When everyone feels respected, we can really talk about issues. It’s a small place to start in the face of seemingly insurmountable political and cultural polarization, but isn’t at least some of what we argue about based on misperceptions, or feeling misunderstood? The commonplace of the victim narrative for all sorts of people on both sides of the aisle certainly suggests so. And if people are willing to look past the accent, not that they should have to, maybe they will be surprised or at least learn something.
“ Grappling with the fundamental desire to create Notes from Abroad
Searching for a means to sate my will to be more than a minor character in others’ lives Kyle Ferrer
Staff Columnist ferrka16@wfu.edu
There is, I think, a fundamental desire in man to create, to not only base knowledge or profession solely off of an expert-tolearner basis, but to contribute something new, catalyze change, proffer novelty. I wrestle with this desire when I prospect possible careers for myself, because to act cog-like seems almost inevitable, but to create is a necessity. “Man hopes, genius creates,” Emerson said, and I think this aphorism can even be panned to a wider audience. It is the statistical inevitability of middling natures
Our desire to create something of worth, something noticed and praised, something affecting, is at once selfish and healthy.” that leads humans to mimic, or idly hope, or passively float through life waiting for things to fall their way, but at our core, humans, no matter their predisposition, burn to create. “Genius,” to me, and perhaps to Emerson, too, seems to imply a sort of tapped-into consciousness, unflattened by society’s mechanisms. There is, I think, a fundamental anxiety in man that, when gone untended for a time, surfaces as domestic or professional unrest. This anxiety comes in the form of mid-life crises or shake-ups, or more commonly in the form of an undefinable feeling of discomfort towards life, a perceived ennui or indolence whose source is inside, internal, but whose culprit is misapprehended as some sort of materialistic lack. Sometimes the unrest is so general-seeming as to appear and disappear, over and over, like a haunting ghost. But when we create, it is, in a way, self-
ish, individuated altruism. Our desire to create something of worth, something noticed and praised, something affecting, is at once selfish and healthy. To think one a minor character in one’s own life, in the lives of others, and in the greater concerns of the cosmos, is a debasing, depressing feeling only combatted by feelings of real, active contribution. The always-biting aphorisms of Nietzsche seem apt here, specifically this one: “Cynicism is the only available honesty to mediocre souls.” When we perceive our lives as inconsequential, as sieves time conveniently passes through, seeing the world through only cynical eyes is the logical option. What Nietzsche says, is this cynicism belongs to the mediocre souls, those destined to consignment in the world-atlarge, to passively float or impersonally keep the machinery of humanity moving forward. These cynics are the practical fodder greater men stand atop. The greatest men use the cynics as links in the chain to greatness, but consider them as simple means. The cynics, once they perceive this,
bury their innate, human desire to create and paper over the first layers of cognition with a thick skin of cynicism. Although this is all true, that many men live lives of great doubt and bitterness, I think there still lies, even in the deepest recesses of the highly cynical and victimized soul, an impetus towards creation, and a genuine, almost chaste craving towards the good. The good here, I’ll define as a positive contribution to the discourse, or the mechanics of society, or really any and every thing that can warrant innovation and originality. But this realization is a painful one for most, a reaching down into the absurd that can be ugly. As Nietzsche says, the abyss gazes back, and from that hopeless void man can either resign himself to his “unfair life,” or wrest himself from this seductive gaze and wade into the world as a positive creator, as a creature of great effort and trial, as one who continues onward. It is difficult to do this; so many do not. My advice: stare into the abyss, yes, but battle the monsters, too, before you simply become one.
Opinion | Old Gold & Black
Thursday, October 25, 2018 | Page 9
“ Free and fair elections are under fire in GA Georgia Election
Tactics of Republican candidate for Georgia's governor are indicative of lingering voter suppression
Amanda Wilcox Staff Columnist wilcaf16@wfu.edu
Scarcely 53 years ago — well within the lifetimes of many of our parents — now-Congressman John Lewis tossed an orange, an apple, a toothbrush, some toothpaste and two books into his backpack and prepared to lead a fifty-four mile march from Selma to Montgomery, AL. The march was organized to call attention to de facto and de jure voter suppression that impeded thousands of African-Americans from casting ballots in the Deep South. By the end, Alabama state troopers had fractured Lewis’s skull and trampled his fellow marchers with their horses and subdued them with tear gas. “Bloody Sunday,” as it became known, took place a full hundred years after the Civil War — long, long after the right to vote had technically been granted to African-Americans by the U.S. Constitution. Obviously, it wasn’t enough; literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses and racist election officials were so effective in carry-
If the likes of Kemp feel like they must lie, cheat and con voters in order to be elected, their grasp on power must be pretty tenuous." ing out their oppressive objective that at the time of Bloody Sunday, only 383 of the 15,000 African-Americans in Selma’s Dallas County were registered to vote. Great progress was made just eight days later when President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to a joint session of Congress; the new law eliminated many unfair voting practices and Lewis remarked that Johnson “helped free and liberate all of us.” But it still isn’t enough. On one hand, we certainly should be worried about Russia’s continued active measures to probe state election systems, sow divisions within the electorate on social media and stand in the way of our democratic processes. But on the other hand, an internal enemy lingers — one that is equally as threatening and much closer to home. Since the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court case Shelby County vs. Holder took the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act, voter suppression has advanced with a virulence that should give us all pause. Particularly flagrant and alarming cases have already come to fruition as the country gears up for the 2018 midterm elections. Right in Congressman Lewis’s home
state of Georgia, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also currently the Republican candidate for governor, has stalled 53,000 new voter registrations, 70 percent of whom are black, because of alleged problems with their voter registration information. Kemp was the architect of Georgia’s “exact match” law, which requires voter information to be identical to other state records, or else the voter is moved to a pending list. As a candidate, he has not recused himself from oversight of his own election. Statistically speaking, many of the voters whose applications are currently pending are likely backers of Kemp’s opponent, Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams. Considering this overwhelming conflict of interest, perhaps the United Nations should monitor Georgia’s elections — the state, not the former Soviet-bloc country. The egregious breach of power in Georgia is far from the only example of voter suppression taking root this very minute; it is merely an illuminating case study. But all acts of voter suppression have a commonality — they are based on a lie, justified by “voter fraud” that simply doesn’t exist. Kemp’s crusade for the “integrity of elections” is a farce. Of a sample of 23.5 million votes cast in 42 jurisdictions nationwide in 2016 — including eight of the 10 with the highest concentration of noncitizens nationally — only 30 were flagged for fraud investigation or prosecution, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
That’s 0.0001 percent. But the largelyRepublican attempt to squelch voting goes on. Often, these efforts are targeted at minority communities with “surgical precision” (according to a federal appeals court that ruled some North Carolina voting laws unconstitutional). The fight that Lewis fought on Bloody Sunday is far from over. As a country that prides itself on its proclaimed principle of “one person, one vote,” we know that simply holding elections is not enough for a fair democratic process. To be sure, Iraq under Saddam Hussein had “elections” every four years wherein Hussein won 98 percent of the vote. Similarly, opposition candidates in Russia’s elections are regularly disqualified on politically-motivated charges. In order to protect our legitimate democratic system — which we must remember is not a given in the rest of the world — we must do more than merely protect, we must revere the “free and fair” aspect of the elections that define a democratic society. So, if the likes of Kemp feel like they must lie, cheat and con voters in order to be elected, their grasp on power must be pretty tenuous. It’s certainly going to be another long, hard march to unwind the many ways in which he and his contemporaries have damaged the freeness and fairness of our elections. We can start by sending them home packing in November.
against women. How can it be? How can a man with such a tainted and contradictory reputation be appointed to the highest court in the land; the pinnacle of what it means to be an arbiter of justice and morality? These are the questions the attendants of the walkout found themselves asking. These were the sentiments of their doubt and distrust in what they believe is a failing system. But we can’t just look at what they are explicitly saying and asking. After all, wouldn’t it be seemingly pointless to organize a movement just to ask questions where the answer to them has so often been, “If you want the ability to influence to the courts, you have to first gain the legislative power to do so?” I say no, it’s not pointless to ask the important and hard questions over and over again. When you pair these questions with actions as large as forming a united front, it’s never just about what you are asking. The conversation doesn’t just end where it began, with the Kavanaugh appointment and what he accusedly did. It doesn’t even end with how we, as a nation, view violence against women. Where the conversation ends is with what we are willing to tolerate and accept in our nation and the sacrifices that we are willing to make in the pursuit of fulfilling a long-term goal. The conversation is much larger than
what is happening right now and it applies to more than just the Kavanaugh appointment. With the teleological view of our own ethics and morality as a nation, we are driven by how we can acquire the power to achieve specific outcomes because we believe it is the end goal which will be the justification of our morality. We begin to make sacrifices to gain power instead of considering how our current power defines what our duties are. I don’t think we will ever know what really happened between Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh. But we need to make sure that our desire for dialogue doesn’t stay within the cave of the things that currently enrage us. We can’t just speak out and show up when the things that offend our values are right in front of our faces. Don’t stop the conversation at the surface of the case you feel needs to be heard. If you feel empowered enough to use actions as a means of getting your words heard, make sure you understand the true size of the argument you want to present and what it roots itself in. The picture is always much bigger than the latest atrocity. When you come to realize this, you will no longer find yourself sporadically motivated to act because of the latest headlines but you will find that you are already asking the right questions and engaging in the right actions to effect change.
“ Sexual assault walkout defines the importance of dialogue Dialogue
We should express beliefs via action, not solely through words in the heat of passion
Mary Costanza
Guest Columnist costml17@wfu.edu
Our time here at Wake Forest comes with an incredible privilege. A university is one of the only discourse communities in the world where you have the most comprehensive right granted to you by the First Amendment — you have the nearlyabsolute right to freedom of speech and expression. Not only are you encouraged to speak up, but if you chose to raise your voice, chances are there are others just as passionate as you are, willing to stand behind you. The academic setting is the perfect forum for active critiques of opposing sets of values. It is a safe space to stand up for what you believe in, and if you believe that door is not open to you, all you have to do is make a little noise and someone will show you the way. On college campuses, young people are encouraged to engage in open and challenging discourse on subjects that create large amounts of tension in the public
We need to make sure that our desire for dialogue doesn't stay within the cave of the things that currently enrage us. " sphere. Often, that tension comes with negative punishments when coupled with struggling power dynamics. In the real world, you can be met with public stigma, monetary losses or alienation. But here, we are tasked with pursuing dialogue as the source of academic inquiry and maintaining a balance of civility and respect for the dissenting party’s right to disagree and be just as vocal as we are about their disagreement. Students from both sides of the political spectrum do an incredible job of speaking against that which outrages them. But the most marked and conspicuous telltales of public opinion are when students and citizens express their beliefs through their actions. As important as it is to be able to say what you care about, there is a special kind of liberty in being able to freely show and act on it. On Oct. 19, Wake Forest students came together in their own show of unity on the lower Quad to demonstrate their protestations against the appointment of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court and the issue of violence
“ There is a gap between prices and values of meal plans
Page 10 | Thursday, October 25, 2018
Old Gold & Black | Opinion
Food
A cost analysis of campus meal plans and how much you are actually getting for your money
Maggie Powell
Staff Columnist powemr15@wfu.edu
Have you ever wondered what your meal plan is really worth? Would you be better off not getting a meal plan at all? The price of Deacon Dining meal plans is not worth the value students get in return. When buying the Base Plan — which is the minimum-priced meal plan first-year students are allowed to purchase — students are given 175 meal swipes (including 35 Old Golds) and 400 food dollars for a price of $2,567. Subtracting the 400 food dollars from the price, students pay $2,167 for 175 meal swipes, pricing each swipe at $12.38.
It is clear, when prices are broken down, that a Deacon Dining meal plan is not worth its price.” Each Base Plan student pays $12.38 for each Pit, New Pit and Old Gold swipe, assuming different types of swipes are valued equally. On the Black Plan each swipe costs $10.99; on the Gold Plan $12.73; on the Screamin’ Plan $12.46; on the Apartment-Style Plan $13.44; and on the Commuter Plan $11.93. Meanwhile, access to the Pit costs between $8.00 and $13.00 when paying in cash, depending on the time of day (less expensive at breakfast, more expensive at lunch). Additionally, every Old Gold option is priced below the minimum swipe price of $10.99 in cash. Old Gold swipe values vary greatly between venues. A Moe’s burrito bowl Old Gold (burrito bowl, chips, drink) is priced at about $9.80, while a Star-
bucks Old Gold (tall coffee, pastry) is priced at about $4.60. If someone on the Base Plan were to use a Starbucks Old Gold for all 35 Old Gold swipes, they would spend approximately an extra $272.40 on Starbucks that semester by purchasing a meal plan. For additional perspective, the Village Juice Miso Grain Bowl Old Gold is priced at $8.95, the Subway 6-inch sub with chips and a drink Old Gold is priced at $7.45, and the Moe’s Homewrecker Jr., chips, and drink Old Gold is priced at $8.05. The meal swipes are not the only overpriced aspect of the Deacon Dining meal plans. Products in the P.O.D. are priced significantly higher than in off-campus grocers. In the Subway POD, Oreos are priced at $5.29 when the same pack is priced at $2.99 at Target. A box of Subway P.O.D. Apple Jacks is priced at $5.69 when you can buy the same box at Target for $2.50. Most shockingly to me, Top Ramen costs $0.79 at the Subway P.O.D. when you can buy it at Target for $0.29, a 172.4 percent price increase.
I encourage the reader to compare the price of any P.O.D. good to its same price off-campus. Depending on what you buy, food dollars spent at P.O.D.s are worth about half the value of cash if you buy groceries off campus. It is clear, when prices are broken down, that a Deacon Dining meal plan is not worth its price. However, it would be negligent to overlook the convenience and riskreduction value of a meal plan. Meal plans give students the luxury of not having to worry about budgeting for food. Students’ meal budgets are already set and no matter how much cash they spend on other items, they have the security of their meal plans. So, is this luxury of not having to worry about budgeting for food worth the money lost in the overpriced nature of campus meal plans? Surely the answer depends on the individual, but for me and my preferences the answer is no. I would rather keep my money and decide to spend it on the same food for a lower price.
or a young child rings the bell and selling starts. For the next three hours, thousands of local residents visit for a multitude of reasons. While some come right at 9 a.m. ready to buy, others mingle in to casually explore the market. Often, a local musician is playing some smooth morning tunes and people walk around sipping their kombucha and biting into the pastries from Camino, Kranckies or Lavender & Honey. By 12 p.m., the vendors are packing up and produce is dwindling. The bell rings once again and everyone cleans up yet another market. Vendors socialize and talk of the day as they briskly pack their vehicles. Now, we wait yet another week for another eventful morning spent being connected to our fellow people. I was introduced to the market through
volunteering with Campus Kitchen on campus. From there, I got to know both the vendors and the market staff. I am truly lucky to consider many of them friends and a couple of them close friends. I look forward to updating Ariana with one of my many crushes or snacking on pickled goods with Niki. The market is more than a “market” to me; it is a way for me to connect with the community. It is a way for me to get off campus, and volunteering for a great market has made the Winston-Salem community closer. Farmers markets do this; they enable us as people to socialize and get to know our fellow people. Next Saturday, think about driving down to Old Salem. Think about not just getting into the Winston-Salem community, but connecting with the people in it.
“ Everyone should visit their local farmers market Farmers Markets
Visiting your local farmers enables a stronger bond with the community
The market is more than a “market” to me, it is a way for me to connect with the community.”
David Ajamy
Staff Columnist ajamdg15@wfu.edu
When most people think of Saturday, they think of Moe’s Southwest Grill or juuling. I think of the Cobblestone Farmers Market. Every week, I look forward to two major events: one being the legendary Thirsty Thursday at Last Resort and the other being
the farmers market. While there is slightly less dancing and music at the market, there is just as much joy and love, as well as some beautiful produce and the amazing Updog Kombucha. I wake up every Saturday around 8:30 a.m., maybe later depending on the previous night’s activities, but sooner or later I find myself in Old Salem surrounded by smiles and dogs. The market goes on year-round, rain or shine, and all sorts of Winston-Salemites find their way there. Right at 9 a.m., either the market manager
Word on the Quad
What is your favorite flavor of pie during the fall?
“Apple pie!” Henry Berck (‘21)
“Oreo pie!” Abby Dollus (‘21)
“Pumpkin pie!” Haley Benz (‘19)
“Chocolate chess pie!” John Prillaman (‘22)
SPORTS OLD GOLD & BLACK
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Online at: www.wfuogb.com Twitter: @sports_ogb Editor: Will May, mayws16@wfu.edu Asst. Editor: Samantha Wexler, wexlsn17@wfu.edu
Deacon Soccer faces UVA, winning the ACC titles The Deacs took home the regular season ACC title for the fourth consecutive year BY MELINA JORIZZO Staff Writer jorimm15@wfu.edu
The Wake Forest men’s soccer team clinched their fourth-straight ACC Atlantic Division crown after a thrilling 3-2 victory over No. 6 UVA on Saturday afternoon. This action-packed game on the road was extremely back-and-forth for the entire 90 minutes of play, leaving all of the fans back in Winston-Salem unable to turn their eyes away from their television and computer screens. “UVA is a great team and a team that doesn’t concede many goals,” said Head Coach Bobby Muuss. “I could not be more proud of the effort and resilience of this group today.” The Deacs immediately jumped out to a 1-0 lead when Machop Chol scored in the 14th minute. This goal began with Omir Fernandez, who swiped the ball away from a UVA defender’s foot and fired a shot on the goal. Cavalier goalkeeper Colin Shutler,was able to make an initial save; however, that was not enough. Chol was in the right place at the right time and was easily able to tap the ball right into the back of the net. This was Chol’s fourth goal of the season and Fernandez’s fifth assist. While Wake Forest fans thought this moment guaranteed a relaxed remainder of play
for the Deacs, the Cavaliers refused to give up this easily on their home turf. The first half ended 1-0 with both teams going into the locker rooms having no idea what they were about to be in for. The second half was madness. Four goals were scored in only 15 minutes, and everyone watching was on edge. This madness began in the 63rd minute when Cavalier forward Irakoze Donasiyano scored the equalizer. Donasiyano fired a shot into the upper 90’s that Cases-Mundet could not reach. Now, UVA was hungry. They scored another goal just 10 minutes later to take the lead. Klockner Stadium was roaring. But the Deacs were not done fighting. Syracuse had given them a taste of what defeat felt like two weeks prior, and they were not going to let that happen again against Virginia. Senior Logan Gdula put the Demon Deacons right back into the game in the 77th minute when he chipped the ball right over Shutler’s head and sent it soaring into the goal just under the crossbar. Not only did this play tie the game, but it provided the Deacs with the exact momentum they needed. Players, fans and coaches alike thought that this match was guaranteed to be finished out in overtime. The 11 Demon Deacons on the field, however, now had other plans. Justin McMaster, just back from injury, netted the game-winning goal less than two minutes after Gdula’s. McMaster, on a mission, beat two UVA defenders and aimed his shot for the goal’s far post. Shutler was able to save this shot, but he was not able to hold
onto it. McMaster followed the loose ball and was successfully able to sneak it right past Shutler on the rebound. “To come back on the road in this conference — never mind against Virginia — is an incredible accomplishment,” said Muuss. “We have so much to get better at to reach our goals, but I am more than proud of these guys today.” The Deacs will take on No. 10 Louisville
on Friday night at home to conclude their regular season play. They are ready to continue the fun and the energy into the tournament play that follows. They look forward to use this week of practice and their game against Louisville to keep getting better in order for them to reach the goals set in the beginning of the season.
Photo Courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications
After clinching their fourth consecutive ACC regular season title, the Deacs return to close the regular season at home against Louisville on Friday, Oct. 26.
NHL is off to a roaring start this season The competition looks to be heating up even at the beginning of the season BY SAMANTHA WEXLER Asst. Sports Editor wexlsn17@wfu.edu It’s officially the best time of the year. It’s the middle of the NFL season, college football is at its most tumultuous, playoff baseball is in full swing and we have NHL games on top of that. My ESPN app simply can’t keep up. If you’ve been too focused on baseball and football to catch the first handful of games in the NHL, don’t fret; that’s what this article is for. Let's take a look both in the East and West at which teams have started out with a bang. West Prior to this season, the biggest question coming out of the Western Conference was that of the Las Vegas Golden Knights and how their sophomore season would go. So far, it seems to be a sophomore slump. After eight games, the Golden Knights were sitting at 4-4 and in fifth place in the Pacific Division, definitely not what they were hoping for. In the Pacific, the
Anaheim Ducks got off to a roaring start, going 5-2-1 in their first eight games played. The Vancouver Canucks and San Jose Sharks were close in pursuit, with 10 and nine points respectively through eight games. In the Central Division,the Nashville Predators lead the division with a league-high 14 points. The Colorado Avalanche weren’t far behind, with 12 points through eight games, going 5-1-2 in their opening stretch. As always, this is a conference to watch this year.
playoff season. On the heels of the Leafs are the Montreal Canadians and Boston Bruins, who both hold 10 points through the first games of the season. In all of the divisions, conferences and league as a whole it looks to be a great year of hockey. This is obviously a very small sample size that
no one will look to come May and June, but it will be interesting to see which teams continue to rise and which teams fall short after starting well. Good thing my Athletic subscription covers MLB, NHL, NFL, and college football, because there is so much going on right now. There’s nothing better!
East In an exciting moment for the Carolinas, the Carolina Hurricanes over in Raleigh are leading the Metropolitan Division with nine points through eight games, going 4-3-1 in their opening stretch. A retooled team seems to be working for them so far this year. Their lead is on edge with the New Jersey Devils, Pittsburgh Penguins, Columbus Blue Jackets, Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers all tied behind them with eight points each. In the Atlantic Division, the Toronto Maple Leafs are living up to expectations of success so far. Through nine games, they held twelve points, with a record of 6-3-0. Based on their play so far this season, this will be a team to watch throughout the whole year and into the
Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/TNS
After a tragic season last year that saw the Chicago Blackhawks miss the post season just a few years after winning three Stanley Cups, they seem to be on the right track.
Old Gold & Black | Sports
Page 12 | Thursday, October 25, 2018
Women’s Volleyball falls to Duke and Virginia Tech Both games came down to the wire, but the Deacs ultimately lost them both 3-2 BY NICK LALLI Staff Writer lalldp18@wfu.edu
Wake Forest welcomed two of its ACC rivals to town this week, playing Duke 11-8 (5-5) on Wednesday and Virginia Tech 13-9 (4-6) on Friday. The Blue Devils entered Wednesday’s match coming off a 3-1 loss at the hands of Georgia Tech. Duke reversed its fate in Reynolds Gym, winning a back and forth match 17-25, 26-14, 20-25, 25-18 and 15-5. Junior middle blocker Caitlyn Della led the Deacons with 14 kills followed by 12 kills apiece from sophomore outside hitter Myca Mitchell and sophomore middle blocker Caroline Kuhn. Sophomore setter Madeline Holt posted her second double-double of the season with 42 assists and 19 digs. Sophomore outside hitter Payton Schwantz led the Blue Devils with 14 kills while freshman setter Alex Sprin-
gate finished with 21 assists. The Deacon offense started strong with a 42.3 hitting percentage off 14 kills in 26 attempts to take a 1-0 match lead. Despite a match-high 17kill performance from Wake Forest in the second set, Duke battled its way to a 26-24 victory to knot the score at 1-1. Wake Forest found its groove and pulled ahead in the third set, defeating the Blue Devils 25-20 behind four kills and a 50.0 hitting percentage from Mitchell. Duke took an early lead, but the Deacons strung together a 6-0 run to take a 7-2 advantage. Duke answered back with a few runs of its own, but back-to-back Blue Devil attack errors sealed the win for the Deacons in the second set. Duke's offense came to life in the fourth and fifth sets of the match with 20 kills while holding the Deacons to just 12 kills. The Blue Devils rallied again to tie the game at 2-2 with a 25-18 set four victory and kept the momentum rolling with a 47.1 hitting percentage in the final set of the match to clinch the five-set victory. Wake Forest then travelled to Cassell
Coliseum in Blacksburg to play a Virginia Tech team in desperate need of a win. The Hokies came in to play Friday night struggling mightily, having lost nine straight sets during a three-match losing streak against Clemson, Louis-
ville and Notre Dame. In another grueling match, Virginia Tech pulled out a 25-21, 19-25, 25-23, 28-30, 15-9 victory. See Deacons, Page 14
Photo Courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications
Sophomore Myca Mitchell spikes the ball against Virginia Tech, a game which WFU lost 3-2. On Friday, Oct. 26 they'll play at home vs Pittsburgh.
NBA beginning of the season recap and review Faster pace, worse defense? That's what it seems like the season is looking like through the start of the year BY RENTING CAI Contributing Writer cair17@wfu.edu The new NBA season is finally back with several rule changes, but one has made apparent impacts on the pace of the game. Starting from the 2018-19 season, the shot clock will reset to 14 seconds instead of 24 seconds after an offensive rebound. Quicker pace is dominating the NBA league now. With the new rule change, the NBA is expected to have even more possessions in the new season. According to ESPN, the average team possessions per game were 99.6 last season. For comparison, the 200405 Suns led the NBA in possessions with 98.6 back in the day. Although it has only been about two weeks since the start of the new season, the possessions per game per team are raising. The Los Angeles Lakers leads the league with 115.3 possessions per game, and none of the other teams are below 100 possessions per game. Let’s take a look at some key matches in the new season that have high scores and quick pace.
“small ball” trend in the league. However, he struggled a bit to fit in the team, scoring only nine points and four rebounds in 27 minutes he played. As for the Pelicans, they lost their starting point guard Rajon Rondo and starting center DeMarcus Cousins, who were two important members that helped them reach the second round of the playoffs last season. Nevertheless, the Pelicans quickly obtained two quali-
ty players who also made their debut, point guard Elfrid Payton and forward Julius Randle. They both had solid performances in the first game, helping the team have a big win over the Rockets. Payton had a triple-double with 10 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists, and Randle scored 25 points and eight rebounds off the bench.
See NBA, Page 15
New Orleans Pelicans versus Houston Rockets Game Date: October 17, 2018 Final Score: Pelicans 131 – 112 Rockets Former All-Star forward Carmelo Anthony made his Rocket debut in New Orleans, but he was off the bench for the first time of his entire career of 1054 games. Playing for coach Mike D’Antoni for the second time Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times/TNS in his career, Anthony was expected to play center, a The Houston Rockets are led by Wake Forest alum Chris Paul and James Harden. They look position he had never played before, under the current to make major improvements this season, despite the rigorous difficulty of the conference.
Sports | Old Gold & Black
Thursday, October 25, 2018 | Page 13
Spotlight: Mitchell Day BY WILL MAY Sports Editor mayws16@wfu.edu Mitchell Day is a Wake Forest sophomore from Alpena, MI. His cross country career took off while in high school, when he finished second in the Michigan state championship during his junior and senior years. His success continued into his freshman year at Wake Forest, during which he was named ACC Male Freshman of the Year. He ran a season-best 8k time of 23:56.2 at the ACC Championships, a feat that earned him All-ACC honors. He has continued to help lead the Demon Deacons throughout the fall season. He finished in 58th place at the 2018 Wisconsin PreNationals. He will be back in action when the Deacs travel to Boston on Oct 26 for the ACC Championships. Will May: Would you say that the WFU cross country and track programs have changed significantly in any way since your freshman year? Mitchell Day: Both the cross country and track programs have undergone positive changes in the one year I have been here. Simply put, it has been an overall change in our team’s attitude when it comes to training and competing. We are raising our expectations of what being competitive means and how we need to go there. WM: What has been the greatest challenge you’ve had to face as an athlete or student at Wake Forest? Do you have any tips for freshman student athletes? MD: By far it has been managing my time well. By this I mean how I structure my days, weeks and even months productively so I can complete my coursework and athletic work in the most stressless way possible. My greatest advice would be to find the best way to organize yourself and stick with it, whether it is writing everything down in a student-athlete planner or on a calendar or using a mental checklist. WM: Do you have any role models? If so, how have they affected your athletic career? MD: Two of the biggest role models in my life have been my mother and father, Scott and Jodi Day. They have taught me pretty much everything and continue to motivate me in anything I do. An important impact my
mother has had on my athletic career has been her knowledge of nutrition and it has certainly translated over to my athletic performance. WM: You had a considerable amount of success during your freshman year. How would you say this has affected how you went about training for this season? MD: It encourages me to keep pressing forward. Having some success last year has motivated me to find what else I can accomplish individually, but more importantly, what I can help our team accomplish in the coming years. My expectations are now higher, which has placed a bit more pressure on how I perform in competitions but my training and mindset for this season have stayed pretty much the same.
ran many many many more miles and I added strength training almost everyday into training. WM: You have a lot of new recruits to the team this year. Have you seen any standouts? How are they contributing? MD: We have a lot of new faces that are motivated and eager to help the team take care of our goals. We have a couple freshman that have stepped up and made it into our top seven and continue to push everyone. They bring a fresh new excitement to the team, as they are still figuring out the ins and outs of the student-athlete experience. WM: How do you feel about yours and the team’s performance during last weekend’s pre-nationals tournament in Madison?
WM: Do you have any favorite memories from this season or previous seasons of Wake Forest cross country?
MD: With a year of college running under me, I used all that I had learned and incorporated it into this year’s preseason training. The two most important things were I simply
Hometown: Alpena, MI Class: Sophomore Accolades: - Named 2017 ACC Male Freshman of the Year -Part of 2017 All-ACC Team -Finished 13th at ACC Championships
MD: We were not satisfied with our performance as a team, as we thought there was more we could have gotten out of ourselves, but like any competition, it gave us more experience as we head into the championship season. Individually it was the same story, as I thought I could have ran a tactically better race looking back at it. But it was a season first for me and it was a great way to get back into competing.
MD: Traveling and competing at Louisville for last year’s ACC championship. The race itself was spectacular but also the time we were able to spend experiencing downtown Louisville. WM: What were some of the most important things you did during the preseason to prepare for the season?
Personal Profile
WM: Do you have any major goals or plans for the ACC championships on October 26th? MD: My only goal for the ACC championship is to help my team to the best of my abilities by running as fast and smart as I possibly can.
Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications
Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications
Deac Notes WFU Women’s Basketball senior earns preseason honors
WFU Mens Basketball Team attends ACC Media Day
Elisa Penna, a senior on the women’s basketball team, was named to the Preseason All-ACC Team. The Atlantic Coast Conference announced the preseason accolades and preseason rankings for all 15 teams in the league on Tuesday, Oct. 23. The Deacs were picked to finish 12th out of the 15-team league.
Senior Brandon Childress, sophomore Chaundee Brown and Coach Danny Manning of Wake Forest Men’s Basketball attended the preseason ACC media day event at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte on Wednesday, Oct. 24. The Deacs talked to various reporters, competed in fun events, and got to interact with other ACC teams, coaches and reporters.
Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications
Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Athletic Communications
Page 14 | Thursday, October 25, 2018
Old Gold & Black | Sports
Baseball’s revolution draws misguided criticism While the aging generation shakes its collective fist, baseball continues to adapt and improve BY REN SCHMITT News Editor schmwm16@wfu.edu Though the postseason should be an opportunity for baseball to celebrate transcendent play on the field and attract new fans, the joys of October baseball in 2018 have been consistently marred by the grouchiness of old-school baseball fans. In many ways, it is a tale as old as time; aging generations cannot help but bemoan changes to the things they once loved, be it baseball or otherwise. This “back in my day” attitude, however, will not help baseball reach younger audiences. This pattern of frustration among announcers and older former players is troubling. Would a prospective baseball fan become more interested or less interested in the sport if he or she heard announcers constantly criticize the way the game is played today? To whom are these grumpy pundits pandering? One frequent target for vilification is “the shift,” which adjusts the traditional setup of the infield depending on the tendency of a given batter to pull groundballs. When players hit into the shift, old-school pundits complain that players should be able to adjust. When players beat the shift, these same individuals immediately jump on the opportunity to entirely dismiss the strat-
egy behind the defensive alignment. Pleasing the complainers proves impossible. In reality, the shift should be seen as a triumph of the advancement of the game. Baseball, historically one of the
slowest sports to accept change, embraced statistical analysis and concluded that putting fielders where the ball gets hit would be a good way to get outs: straightforward enough, right? Somehow, though, even logical changes like
Dick Druckman/ZUMA Wire
Andrew Benintendi of the Boston Red Sox hits a double in an 8-4 win against the Los Angeles Dodgers earlier this season.
these infuriate groups of traditionalists who would die defending their conception of the “right way” to play. The uptick in home runs and strikeouts also draw the ire of those who seemingly look only for opportunities to criticize baseball. It is statistically accurate that there are fewer balls in play per game than there were during other eras, but it seems possible that fans would trade watching routine grounders for home runs 10 times out of 10. Sacrifice bunts and slap hitters are not the backbone of what makes baseball special. If MLB wants to encourage a younger generation to embrace the game, emphasizing the players who hit 450-foot home and throw 100-mph fastballs seems like a smart route. In a sports landscape dominated by the fastpaced, high-action play in the NBA and NFL, displays of elite athleticism like the home run and the strikeout are what will excite new fans, not pitchouts and groundball pitchers. While there is a time and place for these somewhat unexciting plays, they are not the moments that make highlight reels or etch a place into sports history. With change comes a nostalgia for the “good old days,” and some complaints held by traditionalists are valid. The decline of the stolen base, for example, does not help the game, but on the whole, baseball has morphed into a game that reflects the all-or-nothing mood of a generation. If these trends go too far, baseball will self-correct, or rule changes could eventually resolve issues, but for now, baseball has become something slightly different, and in some ways, it’s better.
Deacons: Volleyball team continues to struggle Continued from Page 12
Playing at home, where the Hokies are 7-3 compared to 3-4 on the road, proved beneficial for Virginia Tech as they rolled to a match-high 37.5 hitting percentage and held the Deacons to just four kills to take the final frame.
Up next, Wake Forest will return home on Friday to host the sixth-ranked Pittsburgh Panthers, who are a perfect 22-0 this year, at 5:30 p.m on ACC Network Extra. The Deacons will then welcome Virginia 6-14 (2-8) to town on Sunday at 1 p.m.
Wake Forest was more efficient at the net with 52 kills on 161 attempts for a 14.9 hitting percentage and seven fewer errors than the Hokies. Virginia Tech posted an 11.6 hitting percentage. However, the Hokies were able to make timely plays to take the five-set victory. Mitchell posted a team-high 17 kills for the Deacs, just one off her career-high of 18. Kuhn and Rassenfoss combined for 17 kills, while Holt recorded her third consecutive double-double with 11 digs and 39 assists. Senior outside hitter Jalia Tolbert and sophomore outside hitter Kaity Smith led the Hokies respectively with 16 and 14 kills and senior setter Rhegan Mitchell finished with 36 assists. Both teams went back and forth in the first set, with Virginia Tech taking a 25-21 lead. Then, the Deacons fought to even the match at 1-1 with a 2519 decision in the second frame. After posting 10 kills and a subpar 9.1 hitting percentage in the first set, Wake Forest recorded its best set of the match with 13 kills, only 3 errors, and a 38.5 attack percentage in the second set. The Hokies jumped back in front with a narrow 25-23 win in the third set. The Deacons answered back with a 30-28 comeback win in the fourth to send the match to a winner-take-all fifth frame. In the fourth set, the Hokies went on several runs, but a late five-point run from the Deacons pulled Wake Forest within two. The Deacons took a 24-23 advantage following a few Hokie errors and a kill from Mitchell. Virginia Tech continued to answer back until a kill from Kuhn and an error from Virginia Photo Courtesy of Wake Forest Athletics Communications Tech clinched the fourth set win for the Deacons at Sophomore Madeline Holt prepares to serve in the team’s loss to Duke on Wednesday, October 17. The team has struggled so far this season, losing to Virginia Tech shortly after this game. 30-28.
Thursday, October 25, 2018 | Page 15
Old Gold & Black | Sports
NFL: What’s new in week seven
The playoffs heated up this week with three electrifying matchups BY DANIEL PACHINO Senior Writer pachdb15@wfu.edu
No. 1 scoring defense and having not allowed a second half touchdown all season. The Saints ended that streak though, coming back from a 17-7 third quarter deficit to take a 24-17 lead in the second half
Through seven weeks of the NFL season, the standings are truly starting to take place. With a number of matchups this past week between playoff contenders, there was no shortage of exciting playoff drama. Carolina Panthers vs. Philadelphia Eagles In this game in Philadelphia, the reigning Super Bowl champion Eagles jumped out to a commanding 17-0 lead after three quarters. With such a large lead at home, it seemed almost certain the Eagles would close it out to get back on the winning track. Cam Newton and the Panthers, however, had different plans, scoring 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter. Following this 17-point collapse at home, the Eagles are now 3-4 and two games out in NFC East following their dominant campaign a year ago. It will be interesting to see how this unbelievably talented team bounces back, especially as division play heats up. Meanwhile, the Panthers are now 4-2 and just a game back of the Saints. New Orleans Saints vs. Baltimore Ravens This game was dubbed the game of the week entering Sunday, and it undoubtedly lived up to the hype. The Saints entered the game with the league’s No. 1 scoring offense and the Ravens entered with the
with just two minutes to go. Joe Flacco and the Ravens were able to march right down the field and score the would-be game tying touchdown on a Flacco pass down the sideline to John Brown with
about 20 seconds remaining. Trailing 24-23, the Ravens only needed an extra point by Justin Tucker to tie the game and force overtime. Tucker, the greatest kicker statistically in NFL history, missed the first extra point of his seven-year career to lose the game for Baltimore. New Orleans now sits atop the NFC South at 5-1, meanwhile the Ravens fell to 4-3 and in a tie for second place with the Bengals behind the Steelers in the AFC North. Minnesota Vikings vs. New York Jets
After starting the season on a rough note, the Vikings appear to have righted the ship after pounding the Jets this past weekend 37-17 in New York. The Vikings’ offense is firing on all cylinders behind the connection between Kirk Cousins and Adam Thielen which has resulted in seven consecutive games with 100 yards receiving by Thielen to start the season. Latavius Murray has also filled in nicely in Dalvin Cook’s absence, and he rushed for 69 yards and two touchdowns against the Jets. It should be interesting to see how the Vikings continue to play as their schedule heats up with upcoming games against Saints, Bears, Packers and Patriots in their next five games. If their defense continues to improve and hopefully return to last year’s form, the Vikings should be a force to be reckoned with amongst the likes of the NFC giants in the Rams and Saints. This upcoming week has some pivotal games with major playoff implications. In particular, the Rams take on the Packers in Los Angeles, the Ravens and Panthers Brian Peterson/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS face off in Charlotte and the Saints and Minnesota Vikings’ offensemen Kirk Cousins and Stefon Diggs have Vikings face off in Minneapolis in a rebeen putting in the work, defeating the Jets last weekend 35-17. match of last year’s Minnesota Miracle.
NBA: 2018-2019 season recap and review Continued from Page 15 Note that the Pelicans scored over 30 points every quarter in this game. One of the reasons was that they had apparent advantages inside as the Rockets always played a “small ball” lineup, which did not require a solid seven-foot center on the court. This gave the All-Star power forward of the Pelicans Anthony Davis a lot of opportunities to attack inside and to make easy baskets. Another reason, however, was possibly the quicker pace current league played. Los Angeles Lakers versus Portland Trail Blazers Game Date: October 18, 2018 Final Score: Lakers 119 – 128 Trail Blazers The King made his Lakers debut away from home. Arguably the biggest free agent signed last summer, LeBron James was in the purple and gold jersey for the
first time in regular season. James scored the first point as a Laker with his signature dunk – and immediately in the next possession, he made another dunk after a solid defense play. However, newly signed guard from Trail Blazers Nik Stauskas had a hot hand coming off the bench. He was substituted in the game late in the first quarter, making three three-pointers in a row for the Trail Blazers. His hot hand helped the team eventually win over Lakers. For the full game, Stauskas scored 24 points with seven shots out of 11, including five three-pointers. Here is a fun fact: the previous record of the debut game James played for a new team was zero wins and three losses. Looked like he had not gone out of this “karma,” even having a solid performance with 26 points, 12 rebounds and 6 assists. Another small detail of this game: each team scored over 30 points almost every quarter. Was this because of quicker game pace, or worse defense?
Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS
Lebron James made his debut on the Los Angeles Lakers against the Trail Blazers last weekend. He was unable to propel the team to victory.
LIFE
T H U R S D AY, O C T O B E R 2 5 , 2 0 1 8
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O n l i n e at : w w w. w f u o g b. co m e d i t o r s : Emily Beauchamp, beauea17@wfu.edu Olivia Field, fielor17@wfu.edu
OLD GOLD & BLACK
Embrace the spirit of Halloween with these films Filled with witches, creepy characters and ghosts, these frightening features include all of the quintessential elements to get in the Halloween mood. called “Ghostbusters,” that will be stuck in your head well past Halloween.
BY CECILE PAQUETTE Contributing Writer paqucm17@wfu.edu
With Halloween approaching, what better way to get into the spirit than with binge-watching some classic spooky films? Whether it’s horror movies or the Charlie Brown Halloween Special, everyone has their own personal favorites that make them think back to walking block-by-block in their neighborhood, dressed as something their mom bought them from Party City. Here are a few classics that get everyone ready for an all-time favorite holiday. Hocus Pocus Hocus Pocus is a childhood classic for many college students. Growing up, there was nothing more terrifying than watching the Sanderson witch sisters from Salem, Massachusetts attempt to suck the souls of young children for eternal youth. Throughout Halloween night, these three witch sisters are resurrected from the dead and run loose in a modern-day Salem while two teenagers (Max and Allison) try their best to protect the neighborhood children. Between the Sanderson sisters’ sinister nature and Max sacrificing himself to save his little sister, you will find yourself scared of how much you love this movie. This movie is a must-watch during the Halloween season. Ghostbusters For a change of pace from the eerie and the unsettling, Ghostbusters is the comedy that everyone needs to watch before Halloween. Even if ghosts or the paranormal is not your thing, Bill Murray’s role as a ghost “investigator” and “eliminator” is enough to make anyone fall in love with this classic movie. Besides, the movie comes with a great song, also
Halloweentown 1, 2, 3 & 4 The Halloweentown series is some of Disney Channel’s best work by far. It’s safe to say that every child wanted to take a trip to Halloweentown and hang out with Grandma Aggie Cromwell. Sophomore Kaveri Reddy said that the Halloweentown movies “were childhood classics.” “Every time you went on Disney Channel during October, Halloweentown would be on and would put me in the perfect Halloween mood,” Reddy said. No movie has been able to romanticize Halloween quite the way Disney Channel did in this series. Halloweentown captured the spirit of Halloween within four movies, therefore creating timeless classics perfect for October. The Harry Potter Series Another great way to get in the Halloween spirit is binge-watching all eight Harry Potter movies. There really is nothing spookier than the antics that occur at Hogwarts. Headless ghosts, moving staircases, three-headed dogs and an evil lord with no nose out to take over the wizarding world — the Harry Potter series really covers it all. Only one movie in, you’ll wish you were a part of the heroic trio of Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. By Deathly Hallows Part II, you will find yourself in full denial that you were born a Muggle and do not have the ability to attend Hogwarts. Not only will these movies get you ready for Halloween, but you may find yourself rewatching each movie multiple times — even after Halloween. The Addams Family There is nothing better than spending a few hours watching the creepiest family on TV. Between Wednesday Addams’ affinity for homicide, Minerva and Gomez’ twisted romance and Cousin It, no part of this family makes sense. Completely enthralled by evil, the Addams’ strange values will leave you feeling unsettled and maybe a little confused, but ready for Halloween. And if you find yourself wanting more of the Addams family, you could watch The Addams Family Values for more dark, even homicidal, antics. Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas
Photo courtesy of imdb.com
While this could technically be a Christmas movie too, Tim Burton’s classic musical is perfect for Halloween.
Photo courtesy of imdb.com
The story revolves around Jack Skeleton, the local celebrity of Halloween Town due to his success at scaring humans everywhere on Halloween night. The movie’s plot ends up following Jack’s obsession with Christmas, but the movie remains pretty uncanny. The beginning song itself, “This is Halloween,” will give you goosebumps — and that’s before meeting the monsters that occupy Halloween Town (including a mad scientist, a bogeyman and sociopathic trick-or-treaters). This film truly lives up to its name and will give you nightmares from Halloween to Christmas. The Silence of the Lambs Last but not least, if you really want to be afraid to sleep the night before Halloween, watch Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. Out of all the horror movies to watch before Halloween, this one has to be the winner. Hopkins’ role as Hannibal the cannibal is incredibly thrilling and well-played, but also downright creepy. “He never ceases to give me the heebie-jeebies,” sophomore Mariana Trabanino said. Watch this movie once, and you will be able to hear Hannibal murmuring “Clarice” in your nightmares. After watching this movie, there is a guarantee you will be spooked for Halloween and probably locking your doors at night.
Thursday, October 25, 2018 | Page 17
Life | Old Gold & Black
Advice Column | Touching Tips
THE HOT An easy way to dress to impress LIST Follow S.A.C. and there’s no way anyone can go wrong with their wardrobe BY PETER SCHLACHTE Contributing Writer schlpj15@wfu.edu Nik S asks, “How do I dress to impress at Wake Forest?” Dear Nik, As my lawyer frequently reminds me, there isn’t much that you can (legally) do while naked. Going to class is one of those things. So, to dress to impress, my first tip is to wear clothes -– literally any clothes. That might seem basic, but you didn’t witness Jimmy pee on Patricia’s Hello Kitty backpack in seventh grade. At Wake Forest, everyone but the DKE brothers are pretty good at not being naked in class. Our problem: by mid-semester, students begin to stagnate stylistically — Mike is sporting his baggy sweatpants with at least two questionable stains and Rachel’s rocking her oversized sorority shirt that makes her look naked from the waist down. But we, an institution ranked 2007’s eighth-hottest student body by workhardplayhard.net, deserve better. So, how do we find that sweet spot between flaunting our figure and accidentally being added to the National Nudist Registry? The answer:
always strive for S.A.C. — Style, Accessory, Confidence. The most important part of Style is your fit. Most style guides recommend slim fits, but slim fits are also 60 percent more likely to be made using exploitative labor practices. Here at Touching Tips, we don’t support exploitative capitalism. That’s why I suggest that you learn to sew all of your clothes by hand. The DIY aesthetic is en vogue right now, so even if the clothes look atrocious, you can still brag about your artistic integrity and strong moral fiber. Beyond fit, every individual should curate a personalized style. That’s why I strongly urge you set up a fashionista meeting with me at the cheap rate of $20.99 per meeting. Remember, if you’re not paying for advice, it’s probably bad advice. Second: Accessories. Just as the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, accessories are the powerhouse of the outfit. You want each outfit to pop, so always accessorize with bold colors. If the color’s name doesn’t sound like a new La Croix flavor, it’s not bold enough — instead of red earrings, wear amaranth ones. A gold watch? That’s amateur compared to a sarcoline one. With accessories like those, you’ll be strutting through the Pit pasta line like it’s your runway. Finally, Confidence. In my early thirties, I spent two years too nervous to step outside. Now I leave my house wearing slim-fit dresses hand-woven from the finest Persian silks (reader, I tell you, every
fiber of these silks is softer than a baby angel’s left butt cheek). The difference? I believe in myself. If you’re confident, you can break every fashion rule. Dare I say, you can even show up to class naked. That’s why I suggest that on the first day of spring semester, every Wake Forest student arrives at class, strips nude, and flaunts our collective confidence for the whole world. Hopefully you’re prepared to dress to impress. To be featured in the next biweekly issue of Touching Tips, email schlpj15@wfu.edu with any pressing questions! XOXO, Peter
Top 10 classes you wish you could
In light of registration, here are a few classes that everyone wishes they could take By Caroline Walker
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WIN Stalking Rolling the Quad 101
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Napping 280 Quad Botany HES: Bird Scooters Climbing: Wait Chapel
Ross Hailey/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/TNS
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Anyone can dress to impress so long as they wear clothes to class.
Movie Review | Malevolent
New horror movie sends chills
Navigating Tribble for Seniors The Business of Benson
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Demon Deacon Anatomy Patagonia Weaving
DRINK OF THE WEEK
Malevolent has many of the same elements as other horror films BY KATE TENDER Contributing Writer tendke18@wfu.edu In order to properly prepare for Halloween, scary movies are a must in October. They not only allow you to get into the spooky spirit, but also get your blood pumping. This year, Netflix released five new horror movies as a part of their “Netflix and Chills” promotion. One of these was Malevolent, a Netflix original film, released on Oct 5. This movie offered a couple good scares, an unsettling plot and an ominous ending that makes it a potential option if you’re looking for something in the horror genre. It is the type of movie you can watch for a free night in with your friends instead of going to a theater. The plot centers around a brother-sister duo, Angela (Florence Pugh) and Jackson (Ben Lloyd Hughes), who pose as paranormal investigators solely for a profit. They are accompanied by Elliot (Scott Chambers), the camera man, and Jackson’s girlfriend Beth (Georgina Bevan). The main storyline begins when they are called for a consult at a haunted estate that is also a former foster home by the elderly owner, Mrs. Green (Celia Imrie), who claims to hear screams from three girls that were brutally murdered with
Photo courtesy of imdb.com
Two siblings pose as paranornal investigators, but when they are called to investigate a haunted estate, everything goes south. their mouths stitched shut. However, the real threat doesn’t lie in the paranormal occurrences. At the beginning of the movie, I was anticipating how the plot would play out; most horror movies follow similar ideas, especially with the paranormal aspect. While it did follow some of these same trends, such as having a love component and predictable deaths to further the plot, it also had a twist I honestly wasn’t expecting. The ending was quite unsettling, and although the movie is not graphicly gory, there are some scenes where it is explicitly implied, even if you can’t see it on screen. There were only a couple pop-out scares that I legitimately jumped at, but I was entertained all the way through. Having the two main characters as siblings added another element to the plot, and while
it wasn’t explored too deeply, it increased the complexity of the characters. This was especially true for Jackson, who was an unlikable character at first. The family aspect gave him more depth and made him more relatable. In addition, the backstory was drawn off their family, since Jackson and Angela’s mother committed suicide and was a medium. While I wouldn’t say this movie is one of my favorites, nor will I probably watch it again after seeing it once, I would recommend Malevolent as a starter for a spooky weekend (or weekday if you’re feeling it). For people who don’t love jump scares, this movie is definitely manageable and will still offer suspense. However, if you are looking for a solid scare to make your heart race and lead you to contemplate sleeping with the lights on, I would pass.
• 2 cups milk • 1/2 cup hot chocolate mix • 6 Oreo cookies • Whipped Cream for garnish Heat milk, add ingredients to a blender and pulse until cookies are completley ground. Pour and add whipped cream to garnish.
Courtesy of Sprinkles Some Sugar
Page 18 | Thursday, October 25, 2018
Old Gold & Black | Life
Fashion Column | Fall Wardrobe
Layers, thrifting characterize this season While it feels like fall in the mornings, by lunch time the weather is warm and students must shed their layers
BY ANDY KILLEBREW Staff Writer killae17@wfu.edu
Finally, after a North Carolina summer that seemed to never end, a second hurricane rolled around and with it came fall weather! Everyone can enjoy the wonderful Southern tradition of layering up for the frigid mornings, only to end up stripping most of their clothes for the inevitable warmth that waits in the afternoon. For me personally, that includes approximately two undershirts, a sweatshirt, a heavy jacket and gloves if I’m feeling particularly risqué on that particular day. This usually devolves into a bloated bookbag for the afternoon filled with my discarded clothes, but it at least spares me from having to do laundry every other day. However, for that hour of prime time in the early hours of the morning, I am afforded the luxury of being able to convince my parents that the jacket I got for my February birthday ended up being worth the price almost a year later. Along with the turning of the leaves and the chilling of the air, my Goodwill runs have become another seasonal inevitability. With my extra $10 a week from writing Old Gold & Black articles buoying my paperthin checking account, I can stock up on at least two
Jack Portman/Old Gold & Black
As fall approaches, making a quick trip to Goodwill for flannels could be beneficial for the cold weather.
grimy flannels from the depths of local thrift stores. It makes it all worth it when I can stroll around campus with an increased air of self-righteousness and suave at
having complimented the pretentious hipster aesthetic that I try so ardently to cultivate. So, if you need fashion tips from me, look no further than your local second-hand shop and the sale section of Clarks! In no time, your entire upper body can be itchy and your feet can be covered in blisters, but you can submit your status as an unapologetic geek for putting in the extra effort. Trust me, it’s quite a rewarding feeling. At this point, I could see you wondering: “But Andy, why don’t you just throw in the towel and wear tennis shoes, sweatpants and a sweatshirt like every other normally functioning individual at this school?” I wish I could provide a solid answer to such a question, but the honest truth is that I have no idea. Maybe it lends me the pretense of originality, but even my fits (as stylish and inspiring as they are) have yet to give me anything but some sarcastic asides from my friends and a more colorful laundry hamper. But alas, here I am, standing in front of my $5 mirror from Target contemplating which of my three pairs of brown boots would go better with my uniform jeans and button-up. In other words, happy fall! It’s a wonderful time of year at Wake Forest, and the sweaters spilling out of my wooden wardrobe are a perfect symbol for my eagerness. Unfortunately, this also means that we’re only a few months away from some regularly scheduled seasonal depression, but that can wait for another “fashion” column in February. For now, I’ll be perfectly content to stroll around campus in whatever assembly I’ve managed to rustle up for the day and enjoy the 30-minute sweet spot of genuine fall weather.
YouTube Series Review | The Mind of Jake Paul
New series laced with drama, controversy Shane Dawson has released an eightepisode series about the dramatic life ofYouTuber Jake Paul
BY CATHERINE REGEN Contributing Writer regecl17@wfu.edu For those of us whose middle-school amusements are a thing of the past, the name Shane Dawson might not mean anything. However, for those of us still deep in the throes of YouTube and YouTuber drama, Shane Dawson and his videos are common fodder. Popular for his conspiracy videos, and a longtime member of the YouTube creator community, Dawson is known as a reliable source on anything he chooses to cover. He made a three-episode series examining the dumpster fire chaos that was Tanacon. He then did a five-episode series entitled The Secret World of Jeffree Star that looked into how the beauty magnate made his fortune. Most recently, however, Dawson sparked controversy with his eight-episode series entitled The Mind of Jake Paul. His first series, not nearly as publicized as the others, examined how the YouTuber Grav3YardGirl was losing viewership and subscribers on her channel. The Tanacon videos were the first that truly gained a following across multiple platforms. Tanacon was the failed YouTube convention (Who knew people would pay money to meet YouTubers they can watch for free online?) named after its creator, Tana Mongeau. The enterprise failed after the first day, surrounded by accusations of being a scam. Dawson, who is close with Mongeau and was one of the featured creators intended to appear at the event, decided to look into the allegations and provide an unbiased account of how the convention fell apart. Those three videos have amassed 46,624,912 views collectively. His next series, about one Jeffree Star, took an in-depth look at the mogul’s wealth, business and personal life. This series, a total of five videos, had a combined 100,973,087 views.
His most recent series has slowly been released over the past two weeks, with the finale being posted on Oct. 8. Although all of his series so far have received some criticism and have been controversial in the YouTube community, this series, The Mind of Jake Paul, has been the most controversial to date. The controversy had less to do with Dawson, and more to do with the subject himself, Jake Paul. Jake is the younger brother of the infamous Logan Paul, a YouTuber known and condemned for a video wherein he found a dead body in the “Suicide Forest” in Japan. Logan Paul has been noticeably absent from YouTube after this video was widely condemned and eventually removed. It is very common for people, myself included, to confuse the two tall blonde brothers for each other, or merely assume they’re the same person. However, Jake Paul has his own entirely separate channel, audience and scandals. Dawson attempts in his series to first see if Jake Paul’s problems are the result of being a sociopath or having sociopathic tendencies. He then delves deeper into the life of Jake and his entourage, including both current and ex members of his ‘squad’ Team 10. Jake Paul doesn’t appear in the series in person (although clips from his own videos are shown) until the fifth episode. I was familiar with Dawson’s previous series and their subjects; however, I knew nothing of Jake Paul when I began watching. The discussions of the series on social media were growing more hostile — most of the conversations stemmed from members of Shane’s audience who did not want to see Paul given a platform or a chance at redemption. The series delves deeper and deeper into all of Jake Paul’s scandals including physical abuse of his ex-girlfriend, mistreatment of other members of his team and his property. As I watched the first half of the series, I was convinced of Jake Paul’s certain evil. But, as Jake Paul himself was featured and asked directly about everything, I found myself sympathizing with him and all of his personal turmoil. I could empathize with a young boy brought up in an atmosphere of competition, a family divided by divorce and a brother stealing his girlfriend and publicizing it. With the constant drama, backstabbing and he said-she said, I found myself, like Shane, spiraling further into this world of absurd wealth, fame and scandal.
Photo Courtesy of amazon.com
This photo is taken from the front cover of Jake Paul’s motivational book, You Gotta Want It Should you watch this series? If you like copious amounts of drama served through mockumentary-style (motionsickness inducing) camera work, a seemingly unbiased narrator (who, by the way, is just as terrified of the truth as you are) and a misunderstood villain who might turn out to be a flawed hero, then yes. Grab the popcorn and settle in for the next six hours, 26 minutes and 49 seconds of hearing ‘like’ every other word. In total, The Mind of Jake Paul has over 138,542,059 views and counting. This of course isn’t including the spin-off videos recorded by Jake, Logan, Erika Costell (Jake’s current girlfriend), Alissa Violet (Jake’s ex-girlfriend) and anyone else who has an opinion. This is the Internet after all, and more importantly, a business. In total of all the mind-numbing videos I’ve watched to get the fullest picture, I am left wondering if I played right into the hands of an industry just trying to get more views. Did I allow myself, an educated person, to waste a good portion of my time on the lives of people completely inconsequential to my own? I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Life | Old Gold & Black
Thursday, October 25, 2018 | Page 19
Private Life locks you in an intimate experience New film is filled with the contextual riches of relationships, tragedy and humor
BY KYLE FERRER Staff Writer ferrka16@wfu.edu
Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Richard (Paul Giamatti), the 40-something, art-urbanites at the center of Private Life, could have reached Sartre’s final waiting room. They find themselves squeezed and hunched in so many of them that their existence has been reduced, it seems, to waiting with hundredyard stares. Simultaneously embarrassed, bored and exhausted by the fraying monotony of extra-sexual fertilization, the couple’s life-consuming project of in vitro fertilization (IVF) occurs mostly in the frustrating false starts of failed IVFs and adoption scams. And although this may be a not-so-unusual tale, we are absorbed so quickly into Richard and Rachel’s idiosyncratic despair that there is soon no other option but to lock in. Soon, though, the couple is shown a glint of hope among their countless indignities, when their niece Sadie (Kayli Carter), drops out of college at Bard to try to live in New York City as an artist. Sadie comes to live with Richard and Rachel, whose fate now lies only, and squarely, in the use of an egg donor. The couple asks Sadie if she would consider donating, and she quickly consents, claiming Richard and Rachel as her “artistic parents” whom she likes better than her own. Carter plays Sadie with a combination of artistic zeal and sensitive despair and charmingly epitomizes the uncertainties of early adulthood through the young artist’s jaded, fragile psyche. Sadie consents to donating the egg partly because her mother (Molly Shannon) harps on her about finding purpose, and so what could be better, she thinks, than giving the gift of life to people she cares most about?
Photo courtesy of imdb.com
Photo courtesy of imdb.com
The ensuing process has its humorous parts, as when Richard administers Rachel and Sadie’s hormone shots and Sadie comments that the process is “so romantic, like we’re in Drugstore Cowboy.” These situational comments do the film a great deed, namely that of saving us from only moving through it in emotional fifth-gear. The humor provides respites to hang onto, at least for a second, and executes on a level that brings the deadly serious nature of Private Life back down to earth. Private Life gains its intimacy through its setting, New York City, and the locale time and again proves itself to be a great place to capture the seasons. Woody Allen established a genre through the it, and in Private Life we get the witticisms of an Annie Hall, or even When Harry Met Sally. In these films, like in Private Life, the city’s built-in intellectualism (Richard and Rachel are both playwrights) is both pretentious and undeniably cable-knit. Not that it isn’t exclusive, but there is a beatnik-genuineness to it that gives it an approachable touch, almost like a cheat-code to intimacy. In Private Life, we get a similar conception of New York, but not only are the seasons themselves there, the people living in them seem equally as seasoned, and the film is suffused with a tawny, warm, yet never raging air of people’s gleams. It is a granular imagining, characterized by warmth and company, people and their personalities. Private Life makes Kramer vs. Kramer look over-the-top, and all other movies look hard and jaded, insecure and showy. And although New York City contributes to the film’s likeability a great deal, the specific admiration and enjoyment stems from the fine acting of Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti. In performances as densely situated and packed as their New York City loft, the two both define themselves as multi-faceted individuals and as a synergistic coupling. They stay, for the film’s entirety, in their livable, loveable glow. There is not a climax, per se, in Private Life, only the bumbling revelations that go along with life it-
self. We end up right where we started, and we’re moved and touched. We’ve been shown life exactly as it is — with all its ups and downs, as if told beauty arrives in the mini-bloom of small moments, not in wallops of crisis or tragedy. The reward of Private Life is the intangible, almost novelistic feeling of intimate time spent with a character, a movingthrough-the-life-of absorption that yields diverse feelings. This jazz-like, lived-in pace and style allows both the humor and drama to mix, and the fruits of the minutia come to us through small lines and looks that seem to portend the crux of human experience. Private Life, like any intimate portrait, is a film of contextual riches, of life and relationships, tragedy and humor, living and love. It’s not only the cardigans and molded leather jackets that make you want to enmesh yourself in Richard and Rachel’s life, it is the impressionistic, improvisational glances and gestures that metamorphose into mussed-up beauty. Early on, there is a scene that takes place as Richard and Rachel walk and talk in the city after being told that their only chance at conception is likely through a donor egg. It captures the vacillations of the intellect and the heart in a single instance, and a slowly unfolding, mobile conversation. The two have a tête-à-tête that both rages and simmers, joins and separates, like an unstable wave. “Man is a creature who cannot stand still under blows,” Saul Bellow said in Henderson the Rain King, but Giamatti and Hahn stand resolutely still in their desperate attempt to start a family. They seem to take the innumerable blows dealt to them and shudder with absorption. And while they deal these blows back out in tiny, potent doses of humor and loss, ultimately all is reinvested into their meaty performances. The two are so brilliantly battered, so genuine, that they erase the screen to simply look at you and shrug, and the beauty comes not when the two spin the darkness thrown at them to gold; they never do. It comes when they spin it into life.
Page 20 | Thursday, October 25, 2018
Old Gold & Black | Life
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5. The newly-renovated academic building that hosts the chemistry department 7. The student-run coffee shop located in Taylor Residence Hall 9. The marching band is known as ... 13. The school’s colors and the name of the newspaper 15. The building that recently transitioned to LED lights, and is the most notable building on campus 17. This was Wake Forest’s original mascot until it was replaced by the Demon Deacon in 1923 18. The school’s alma mater, it is sung at the end of most sporting events 19. Before Thanksgiving break, the Pit hosts this event 20. The type of tree that covers the campus, also featured in the Old Gold & Black’s motto
1. An event hosted around Halloween every year when children from the community come to trick-or-treat 2. The main cafeteria on campus 3. The Business School’s nickname 4. The Wake Forest motto 6. A Moravian traditional event that is held in Wait Chapel every Winter 8. A Wake Forest Alum professional golfer and a delicious beverage 10. Following major events and wins, students run to the quad to do this 11. The original location of the university 12. The new building that hosts the Biomedical Sciences and Engineering programs 14. A Wake Forest Alum that played football, he died of cancer at the age of 26 16. The core classes every student must take