The Fordham Ram Volume 106, Issue 4
Serving The Fordham University Community Since 1918 TheFordhamRam.com
February 14, 2024
Fordham Alum Runs for General Assembly
Fordham Introduces Humanities Ambassadors Club
By NORA MALONE
By JULIANNA MORALES FEATURES EDITOR
NEWS EDITOR
Jonathan Soto, a Fordham University Alumnus, is currently running for the 82nd State Assembly district of New York on a Democratic platform. Soto graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 2009 after attending the night school. Michael Benedetto has been the assemblyman of the 82nd district for almost 20 years. Soto first challenged him in 2022, gaining 36% of the vote. “Now we’re running again because he supported the devastating budget cuts that the mayor inflicted on public schools, which I think people are aware of at a time when we see mass illiteracy,” said Soto. “[Benedetto] takes money from real estate lobby and luxury developers, he doesn’t support important tenants’ protections like good cause evictions, which is something I’m fighting for along with a large group of tenant organizations, and Benedetto is out of step with the needs [of] the community.” One of the main attributes SEE SOTO, PAGE 4
COURTESY OF ALBERT BARTOSIC FOR THE FORDHAM RAM
Both students and alumni are welcome to submit their pitches to the Pitch Challenge.
Fordham Foundry Pitch Challenge Begins By NORA MALONE NEWS EDITOR
The applications for the Fordham Pitch Challenge, run by Fordham Foundry, have recently closed. The challenge is an opportunity for current students and alumni to win money for their business ideas and ventures. This year, 186 teams applied; they will meet with Foundry members to workshop their ideas to prepare for the challenge on April 11. “When we started, it was very much a small program with a
focused number of students, and over the past five to six years, we’ve made an effort to open up to the entire Fordham community,” said Albert Bartosic, executive director of Fordham Foundry. The program started eight years ago, with the majority of the applicants being Gabelli School of Business undergraduates. This year, the applicants are from all undergraduate and graduate schools within Fordham, and most applicants are non-Gabelli students.
“We’ve now got a record number of students to deal with, and it’s a very personalized experience for all of them, so we’re trying to make sure we resource it enough so that we can get around and get everybody the help and attention they want and deserve,” said Bartosic. Submissions to the program can be anything from streetwear with a social justice message to an app that can detect allergens at restaurants. SEE FOUNDRY, PAGE 5
New Exhibit Comes to Walsh Library By JULIANNA MORALES FEATURES EDITOR
and adjustments in working conditions. FFU was initially formed in 2016 despite substantial opposition from the university. Fordham eventually approved the union, which then went on to pass their first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in six months — a considerably rapid timeframe. Their first CBA came with significant improvements
A new exhibit was unveiled in the O’Hare Special Collections Room of Walsh Family Library on Thursday, Feb. 8. The exhibit will remain open for viewing until May 20. “Knife/Paint/Words: The Art of Deborah Ugoretz” features the artwork of Deborah Ugoretz, who attended the opening event to speak about her pieces and her inspiration. Fordham News describes Ugoretz’s artwork as, “Inspired by the written word, Ugoretz takes texts—poems, prayers, and ancient writings—and translates them into a visual language that infuses those words with deeper meaning because visual language can touch on a richer emotional and intellectual.” Ugoretz’s
SEE FACULTY, PAGE 5
SEE EXHIBIT, PAGE 4
COURTESY OF MARY HAWTHORN/THE FORDHAM RAM
Negotiations have continued after the contract changes that averted the strike.
Fordham Faculty United Update By ADITHI VIMALANTHAN ASST. NEWS EDITOR
At the beginning of the 2023 spring semester, Fordham Faculty United (FFU), the union representing over 600 contingent faculty at Fordham University, nearly went on strike ahead of the tenacious approval of their second collective bargaining agreement.
The strike was scheduled to occur on Jan. 30 and would result in the disruption of over 1,500 classes, but was avoided after Fordham agreed to all of the terms of FFU’s proposal. One year since the nearstrike, FFU continues to bargain and organize for adjunct faculty and lecturers in Fordham to secure salary increases, healthcare
Fordham University Rose Hill’s collection of over 170 clubs recently gained a new addition. The formation of the new club, Humanities Student Ambassadors (HSA), was announced by the Fordham Career Center, which works closely with HSA. The announcement explained the goal of the HSA is to connect Fordham humanities students with various opportunities for professional development, aiding the skills they learn for classroom success in translating to professional insights. Leah Langhoff, FRCH ’24, one of HSA’s co-presidents, explained that the club originated as an initiative by Dr. Brenna Moore in the theology department. Langhoff explained that Moore “was interested in beginning a club centered around humanities majors and creating a community for such.” She then explained that she and fellow Co-President Mari Apazidis, FCRH ’24, were recruited by word of mouth among professors. The two then collaborated with the Career Center to get the club going. “Mari and I were both inspired to get the club off of the ground because we both understand very well that there is a notion surrounding humanities majors, like ourselves, that you will not be able to get a job and basically that our degree is useless. We wanted to refute these ideas and create a community for students like ourselves that provided postgraduation career guidance, as well as large-scale events that are marketed towards humanities majors and their career interests,” Langhoff explained. Apazidis expressed similar motivations for her drive to get the club started. She explained that their first event, hosted last semester, was focused on success stories within the humanities, SEE HUMANITIES, PAGE 4
in this issue
Opinion
Page 9
Culture
Page 14
Sports
Page 16
Evaluating Pennsylvania Museum’s Handling of Black Remains Columbia Greenmarket Takes Grocery Shopping to the Next Level
Softball Opens 2024 Season
NEWS
Page 2
PUBLIC SAFETY BRIEFS
Meet Three of Fordham University’s Administration Cabinet Members
Feb. 8 On Campus 12:35 p.m. On Thursday, a facilities employee inadvertently activated the fire alarm pull station in the lobby of Finlay Hall. The supervisor and FDNY responded and evacuated the building. The supervisor reset the alarm panel and the building was reoccupied. The supervisor prepared a work order to install a protective cover to prevent future accidental activations of the alarms. Feb. 10 On Campus 12:05 p.m. On Saturday, the Office of Residential Life emailed Public Safety regarding a complaint made by a student. The student reported that on Friday at 10:08 a.m., they observed a male looking at Loyola Hall with binoculars. The student took a photo of the male. The supervisor conducted a video review and identified the male as an authorized contractor. Feb. 11 On Campus 3:40 p.m. On Sunday, a student reported to Public Safety that their cellphone was stolen from Ram Fit. The reporter said while they were working out in Ram Fit, they left their cell phone nearby while listening to music wearing headphones that were connected to the phone via bluetooth. The phone was disconnected and when they looked the cellphone was gone. The supervisor conducted a video review, identified the offender and returned the phone to the reporter. The reporter declined the NYPD.
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February 14, 2024
COURTESY OF CRISTINA STEFANIZZI/THE FORDHAM RAM
Cunniffe House is the location for the university’s administrative offices.
By ADITHI VIMALANATHAN ASST. NEWS EDITOR
Justin Bell serves as the current vice president for University Marketing and Communications (UMC) and serves as a member of the President’s Cabinet. He arrived in August 2023 ahead of the current academic year. Prior to joining Fordham University, Bell served as associate vice president for Brand Marketing at Ohio State University. As the vice president of UMC, Bell oversees the division which is responsible for spreading awareness and advertisements about Fordham. As Bell explained, “the University Marketing and Communications (UMC) division is comprised of teams working across advertising and marketing, news and media relations, creative and multimedia and enterpriseowned channels such as social media, email marketing and web.” Through the use of advertising, Fordham reaches target audiences including prospective students, alumni and the wider area. Currently, Bell is focusing on launching a brand platform for Fordham that highlights
its unique strengths. “As I listen to various stories about what makes Fordham different — it’s clear Fordham has a special sauce,” said Bell. “Why? We can’t tell our audiences everything about us all at once — brand is a shorthand for those things. It tells people what we aspire to, and what we value. That exercise will give us a clearer understanding of our brand strengths, and help us tell our story consistently.” As part of the platform launch, UMC will launch an audience research project to pinpoint key details about the audiences, their perceptions and reach. UMC is open to student collaboration and feedback, particularly in social media, photography and videography and audience research. Interested students can reach out to marketing@fordham.edu. John W. Buckley currently serves as the university’s vice president for Enrollment, where he oversees the university’s Enrollment Group and serves as a member of the President’s Cabinet. Buckley has been at Fordham since 1984, beginning initially as an admissions counselor and later serving as associate director of admissions at both
Rose Hill and the Dean of Admissions before arriving at his current role. The Enrollment Group provides resources to current and prospective undergraduate and graduate students, and has over 110 employees. It oversees an extensive list of departments, including undergraduate admission, student financial services, academic records, enrollment research, enrollment technology and enrollment operations and services. “Core responsibilities for our undergraduate admission team include recruitment, selection and programming of/ for new students,” said Buckley. Key services available to students include Student Financial Services, which guides students through financial aid, billing and employment, and Academic Records, which oversees grading, transcripts and graduation certification. Additionally, the Enrollment Group is currently working on improvements to make the various processes more available to students. “We are routinely involved in projects and initiatives that involve collaboration with many other staff and faculty across campus, including more recently the development of the Student Hub to provide greater ease of access to information for staff and students, the expansion of our international student recruiting efforts, the planning of new summer programming for prospective students and the explanation of ways in which AI [artificial intelligence] may allow us to be more efficient and productive,” he said. Furthermore, the enrollment group is addressing challenges brought about by COVID-19 and the FAFSA changes. In response to COVID-19, the Enrollment Group is pursuing virtual recruitment and remote work patterns. The Enrollment Group is open to student feedback,
which can be addressed to the group’s various divisions as listed online. Beth Fagin currently serves as the university’s interim vice president and general counsel, and serves as a member of the President’s Cabinet. She initially joined Fordham’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2015 and became deputy general counsel in 2019. Before coming to Fordham, Fagin worked in employment law and has experience in training and shaping workforce culture. As interim general counsel, Fagin oversees the Office of Legal Counsel, and , in turn, all of Fordham’s legal situations. “I am focusing a lot of my time to ensure legal compliance,” she explained. “My position is interesting because I get to work collaboratively with all of Fordham’s various departments. No two days are ever the same.” In her job, Fagin oversees contract review, negotiating collective bargaining agreements with unions, the Middle States accreditation, university committees and giving legal advice in the advent of new legal developments. Additionally, Fagin is responsible for the drafting and revising of university policy, an important task that protects the university legally. “I have to be very precise in the language I choose and try to anticipate how various areas of the university will be impacted by a new or revised policy,” said Fagin. “I like to make sure that the policies will serve our community well and are flexible enough to address evolving legal trends. Drafting policies is an important aspect of my job because it reduces the university’s legal risks.” Fagin recommends that students reach out via the United Student Government, the Dean of Students or through their Academic Dean. Contact information for employees of the Office of Legal Counsel can be found on their page on the Fordham website.
This Week at Fordham Wednesday Feb. 14
Wednesday Feb. 14
Thursday Feb. 15
Friday Feb. 16
Saturday Feb. 17
Spend Valentine’s Day with MBB
Ash Wednesday at Rose Hill
Java with the Jesuits
Jazz Concert at Rod’s
Commuters Take on Ice Skating
Rose Hill Gymnasium 7 p.m.
Great Hall & University Church 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
McShane Campus Center 9:30-11:30 a.m.
Rodrigue’s Coffee House 8 p.m.
Brookfield Place 1-2 p.m.
Cheer on the men’s basketball team as they compete against the St. Bonaventure University Bonnies. Tip off is at 7 p.m. in the Rose Hill Gymnasium. Be sure to fill the hill and be loud!
Campus Ministry is having prayer services with the distribution of ashes at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. in the Great Hall. Mass will be held at the University Church at 12 p.m., 5:15 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Stop by the McShane Campus Center to enjoy free coffee and converse with the Jesuits of the Fordham community. This event is every Thursday at both Rose Hill and Lincoln Center.
Rodrigue’s Coffee House is hosting their very first jazz concert night on Friday. Admission is free and the show starts at 8 p.m. Stop by for some coffee and smooth jazz tunes.
Join the Office of Student Involvement & Commuter Student Services for ice skating. Sign up on Instagram at @fordhamcommutes. Transportation will be provided.
NEWS
February 14, 2024
Page 3
Fordham Students Apply to Integrated Living Communities By EVA ELIZONDO
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Applications to live in Fordham University’s Integrated Learning Communities (ILC) closed on Monday, Feb. 12. These communities offer a unique opportunity for students to live and learn together, fostering collaboration and academic engagement within a supportive residential environment. An ILC is an intentionally developed living-learning environment that provides a great framework for creating more meaningful relationships with students’ fellow residents, extending the academic environment into the residence halls and further developing the students’ own identity,
as expressed by Steven Najdzionek, assistant dean of the Gabelli School of Business. According to Fordham’s website, there are three first-year programs: Loyola Residential College and the Manresa Program, Queen’s Court Residential College and the Science Integrated Learning Community (SILC). Stella Franizia, FCRH ’27, lives in the Queen’s Court ILC and said, “We’re all really close — there are only 140 of us, and I feel like I know everyone… [It’s a] smaller community — there is always someone to check on you.” There are also weekly resident assistant programs and
special events like field trips or free tickets to the theater. “Partying is not as normalized as in [Alumni Court] South or Loschert [Hall],” said Franizia. This fosters a sense of community due to the “common interests and even ethics with the people in the building.” There are also ILCs in upperclassmen dorms, such as the Global Business ILC located on the third floor of O’Hare Hall, the SILC ILC on the fourth floor and the Wellness ILC on the fifth floor which are designed for sophomore students. “The [Global Business] ILC typically meets [weekly]
on Wednesdays from 5:20-7 p.m. At the core of this ILC is an Alumni Leadership Series that brings successful alumni to the ILC to present to our students in a comfortable and informal setting in the ILC classroom on the third floor of O’Hare Hall,” said Najdzionek. The Global Business ILC offers a variety of events, from Q&A’s with rising seniors currently participating in internships and keynote speakers who’ve worked in the financial industry to baseball games and visits to the New York Stock Exchange. Andres Bustos, GSB ’26, a member of the Global
Business ILC, said, “[I] would definitely recommend students to take this opportunity because it helps participants navigate the internship process with ease.” Students in Fordham College Rose Hill are also welcome to join the Global Business ILC. There are a variety of ILCs available to students based on their interests and needs. They provide resources such as oneon-one tutoring, ILC-specific programs, events and/or retreats. Students who applied to live in an ILC for the 2024-25 school year will hear back by Feb. 16.
STEM Students Experience Lack of Resources and Support
COURTESY OF INSTAGRAM
STEM students find themselves needing more support from the university.
By CAITLIN WONG
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Fordham University has established itself as a liberal arts school, working a variety of areas of study into its core curriculum with required courses in humanities such as English and philosophy throughout the students’ years at the university. Susan Mun, senior research analyst at Fordham’s Office of Institutional Research, reports that around an average of 18% entered Fordham with the intention of declaring a major in STEM throughout the past five years. With numbers like these at a liberal arts school, it is important
that the university attempts to ensure their STEM students are not overlooked and are able to get a quality education for their desired field of study. One of those STEM students is Ziyu Tian, FCRH ’27, who intends to be a math major and reports that during her time at Fordham, she has found the Fordham Math Help Room to be a great resource for her: “I really love the energy of the Math Help Room… You can just pop in and ask any professor who’s not busy for homework help,” Tian said. “The best resource offered to me was literally the Math Help
Room because there’s almost always a professor in there to help me so I’m not stuck on a problem for days on end,” said Rocio Diaz, FCRH ’27, an intended math and economics major with a concentration in math. “I also had the SILC [Science Integrated Learning Community] tutors offered to me, but I could barely make it to the available times because of my schedule.” “I have been deeply impressed with the commitment of [the] STEM faculty to students, teaching and research at Fordham, especially in the chemistry and biochemistry department,” said Mary Biggs, FCRH ’25. “Unfortunately, I have found myself somewhat disappointed by the university’s STEM infrastructure. For example, STEM students competing for undergraduate research grants are evaluated by humanities professors who are not able to fully contextualize their work, making it difficult to acknowledge the technicality required of STEM research. The inverse is also true in that STEM professors often end up reviewing humanities proposals that they lack the expertise to evaluate fairly. STEM departments
are also understaffed, with one lab technician running fourplus labs a semester without help.” Integrative neuroscience major Sophia Frantzeskos, FCRH ’25, expressed similar frustrations with the allocation of focus given to STEM needs by the university. “The university clearly does not prioritize it [STEM needs]. Our labs are lacking basic necessities like working microscopes and grants for STEM research, which oftentimes need to have funding to be completed, and have to compete with non-STEM fields that do not need the same level of funding,” Frantzeskos said. “It is frustrating when there are students conducting important research like cancer research, but the university does not seem to reward that work. I think that science at Fordham is really special, but as of right now, I have not felt much support from the university for students.” Frantzeskos clarifies in her statement that this lack of support does not come from the faculty within her field of study. “I teach first-year students, and possibly having a component in their orientation
on the academic transition to college might be helpful on what it means to study in college versus high school. Understanding versus memorizing... The challenge can be having the students spend the time reviewing the information on the study strategies,” said Fordham biology lecturer William Gault, Ph.D. “I would also add that awareness of careers outside of being a medical doctor is not always obvious in our bio students. I try to mention additional careers from my own professional and personal experiences. I think more diverse career options might stimulate more of our students to find their specific passions and a more goal-directed approach to their studying.” The university has plans to build a new STEM lab in order to improve undergraduate students’ access to research, and with the addition of a biochemistry major this semester, the department seems likely to expand in the future. “Fordham is an outstanding university, but it has room to grow in STEM to compete with its peers, and I hope to see some of that growth while I’m a student here,” said Biggs.
Students Enjoy Snow Day After Stormy Weather
By CRISTINA STEFANIZZI ASST. NEWS EDITOR
Fresh white snow blanketed campus Monday night into Tuesday morning which gave students across the Fordham University Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses a snow day. All in-person classes were canceled for the day, with some classes pushed to Zoom. Some students spent their free time huddled up in their dorms and apartments, watching movies, spending time with friends and studying. “My snow day was spent rather bleakly indoors due to the Zoom calls that took up the day. However, there is no doubt in my mind of a certain joyful chaos in the air,” said Lauren McNamara, FCRH ’27. Throughout the day, Edward’s Parade was filled with students creating snow sculptures, having snowball fights and making snow
angels. “I went outside and looked at the snowmen on Eddie’s, and I took a picture with every single one,” said Veronica Acevedo, FCRH ’27. Due to the inclement weather, which covered the Fordham area in 2.2 inches of snow, numerous dining locations across campus were closed, including Dagger John’s and Cosi. “I eat pretty much all my meals there [Cosi] so it’s annoying having to go to other places to eat,” said Abby D’Angelo, FCRH ’26. “I wish Fordham could come up with better dining options considering we knew it was going to be a snow day. I literally DoorDashed dinner today because Cosi is the only place I eat.” The snow also led to the cancellation of the university’s Mardi Gras celebration which included a parade around Eddie’s. “I was
looking forward to the Mardi Gras parade on campus, so I’m kind of bummed that the snow canceled that,” said Juliana Duarte, FCRH ’27. “But I’m glad we got a snow day today and I was able to spend time indoors with my friends and finish up some homework.” Although the snow disrupted travel, activities and classes on campus, the weather allowed students to take breaks from their online classes and studying to spend time outdoors with friends. “There were so many people building snowmen and playing on Eddies,” said Payton Weller, GSB ’27. “I think that snow days are so fun and spontaneous, they let us have a day to let out our inner child.” Sanya Singh, GSB ’27, said, “I loved getting to play in the snow after my Zoom classes! It
COURTESY OF MARY HAWTHORN/ THE FORDHAM RAM
Students woke up to a snow covered campus on Tuesday morning. was the perfect way to de-stress right before midterms. I think snow days are beneficial because they are a spontaneous break from our day-to-day routine
and let us feel like kids again. I loved having a snowball fight with my friends and making a snowman on Eddie’s.”
NEWS
Page 4
February 14, 2024
New Club Sponsors Humanities Initatives FROM HUMANITIES, PAGE 1
saying, “That was the idea behind Humanities Day: to show examples of successful humanities majors in the workforce with jobs they are passionate about.” Apazidis explained that the first event this semester was a HSA Kick-Off Event where the club introduced their ambassadors and the e-board and launched their first round of applications for the HSA. She then elaborated on their other plans for the semester, saying, “In terms of events, we want to host our first HSA-sponsored resume review and another networking event with alumni and employers. In terms of club goals, we want to set a solid foundation for the HSA e-board and new HSA members so that they can continue to grow as the years pass.” The club can be beneficial to students, whether or not they
become members. Langhoff explained that the benefits of being an HSA expand beyond being able to join the community of fellow humanities majors, stating that “[Members] are also able to build their professional network (with such benefits as having first priority in speaking to employers at Career Fairs), and you are also able to receive specialized attention from the Career Center team, who can help you with your specific career goals.” However, she also mentioned that anyone attending HSA’s events would be able to hear from interesting speakers from different backgrounds and gain insight about numerous career paths. The club’s events are not limited to just FCRH students. Those enrolled in Fordham College Lincoln Center, Gabelli
School of Business, School of Professional and Continuing Studies and Fordham Graduate School are welcome as well. Langhoff and Apazidis wish to extend their gratitude to Allyson Blatz in the Career Center, with Apazidis saying, “Her advising and support throughout building the HSA have been unbelievably helpful.” Since the initial launch, the club has announced that their meetings take place from 12-1 p.m. on Thursdays at the Career Center. Students that are interested in becoming a HSA member or attending an upcoming event can look for updates on the Fordham Career Center webpage or the Fordham Humanities Instagram page (@fordham_humanities). If students would like to join the HSA email list, they can reach out to rhhsa@fordham.edu.
COURTESY OF MARI APAZIDIS FOR THE FORDHAM RAM
The club works alongside the Career Center to plan events.
Jonathan Soto Runs for 82nd District
FROM SOTO, PAGE 1
of Soto’s platform is funding and improving public schooling in the Bronx, especially in regards to literacy rates, since the Bronx has the lowest of the five boroughs. “It’s a domain of the public sphere that we should fight for, and not allow it to be defunded or be privatized,” said Soto. “The special education system in the Bronx is devastatingly broken, we have the highest amount of need for children with special needs accommodations yet the lowest referral rates.” Soto attended Brooklyn Law School after graduating from Fordham and has worked in the mayor’s office at the municipal level, most recently, he was a
political organizer for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC) run for Congress. “She’s my congresswoman, and even though I am running in the East Bronx, which people say is more sleepy and conservative, AOC winning was inspiring for me, and that inspired me to support the movement that she’s in,” said Soto. “I was endorsed by the congresswoman last time and expect to be endorsed again.” Soto has also been endorsed by the Fordham chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, who recently held a postcard writing event. “What I like about Soto is his support for morally decent causes — TOPA, a ceasefire, ending mayoral control of
school funding,” said William Lee, FCLC ’27. “Benedetto has been in that office since before I was born; and in all that time, he’s barely done anything. In fact, his recent support for Adams has, if anything, worsened childcare policy in NYS and NYC.” The Fordham Ram reached out to the Fordham College Republicans and Fordham Politcal Union for a comment and did not receive a response. The 82nd district includes City Island, a coastal area that has been affected by pollution and high flood risk. “We need public power and green 100% publicly funded energy and it needs to be built by Bronx residents for Bronx residents,” said Soto. “My background
is in law and urban planning so I have an urban planning perspective on how we should think about mitigation in places like City Island, which is a coastal area where we have oyster reefs and pollution to deal with.” Soto hopes to unite the Bronx into an intergenerational, multiracial, working-class community in order to overcome the alienation that residents may feel politically. Currently, his campaign is doing monthly community events and community service, such as providing free tutoring services. “The door to door is important, that’s where we have dialogue with our neighbors and where we break the atomized individualist culture and engagement,” said Soto. “We share our
name and platform, and connect people to resources and ask them to share our vision.” Soto credits Fordham with the beginning of his political inklings: “I took a lot of philosophy and world religion courses, and being able to mix that with the Bronx progressive faith community that I connected with here at Fordham was instrumental for my development and my political consciousness.” The election will take place on June 25 and Soto has high hopes for the upcoming year. “What we’re trying to let people know is that we have leaders in the Bronx and there is a lot of power in here. The Bronx shall lead the way for the city, for the state and for the movement,” said Soto.
“Knife/Paint/Words: The Art of Deborah Ugoretz” FROM EXHIBIT, PAGE 1
work has been featured in museums such as the Milwaukee Jewish Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art and the Museum of Biblical Art. Ugoretz has been recognized as a master cut-paper artist by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Ugoretz is a Brooklyn-based artist from Milwaukee, Ugoretz has her Bachelor of Science in Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her works deal with profound issues such as feminism, diversity and social issues. She has been a master artist and teacher of cut-paper since 1978. The exhibit was organized by the Jewish studies department. Magda Teter, the Shvidler chair in Judaic studies, explained that her hope for the exhibit is that “students will appreciate the beauty of contemporary Jewish art and the long historical connections between the themes the artists engage with and Jewish history and tradition. That’s why we always put the two in conversation.” Teter explained how the Judaic studies department and the Walsh Family Library has worked since the fall of 2022 to display the art of modern Jewish artists and
provoke conversation among the Fordham community about the art and its themes. Throughout the last few semesters, the Judaic studies department has showcased a variety of different styles of art from Jewish artists and wanted to continue this with Ugoretz’s exhibit. “The art of Deborah Ugoretz showcases the combination of the traditional technique of papercutting with modern aesthetics and engagement with issues pertinent to our own lives,” stated Teter. Ugoretz attended the opening of the exhibit to give a presentation on the history of Jewish papercuts and her background with the art form. She explained the importance of art, saying, “We are raised to believe there is an injunction against Jewish art but it’s so untrue because when you look at the Bible, when you go back to the sources, you see that it [the writing] is infused with visual imagery. The sense of the importance of aesthetics in Jewish life has been there from day one.” Ugoretz also discussed the two main sources of her inspiration to work on Jewish papercut pieces. The first was when she was introduced to the papercut art style: “I saw Jewish papercuts and I was
totally amazed that this kind of artform existed in Jewish life.” She admitted that she is unsure of where she was introduced to the art, whether it be during her trip to Israel or at the Jewish History Museum. Ugoretz’s second source of inspiration came from a lifestyle and cultural movement prominent in the 1970s. She stated that, “People were doing things that infused their lives with deeper meaning that were very much related to the arts, and I was totally swept up in that as well.” It was an era of people deeply connecting with aspects of their history and exploring the rich cultures related to their background. At the time, Ugoretz partook in this and has not stopped since. Ugoretz discussed a saying in Judaism that she finds important in expressing the importance of art forms: “You should elevate your religious practice through the creation of beautiful things.” As Urgoretz hopes her work can inspire others, students and Fordham community members are encouraged to view the art in the O’Hare Special Collections Room in the Walsh Family Library.
COURTESY OF INSTAGRAM
Ugoretz’s art is primarily inspired by her Jewish heritage.
COURTESY OF JULIANNA MORALES/THE FORDHAM RAM
The exhibit had a mix of art and the texts they were inspired by.
NEWS
February 14, 2024
Page 5
Adjunct Faculty Union Continues Negotiations FROM FACULTY, PAGE 1
with significant improvements for both adjunct faculty and lecturers. Adjunct faculty and adjunct lecturers are contingent faculty who primarily teach (as opposed to conducting research) at Fordham and are not on tenure-track, which means that they are not guaranteed job security. Lecturers instead work on a contract basis that lasts a few years. Prior to the first CBA, lecturers had two titles, short and senior lecturers, with no pay differences. The pattern is consistent through higher education. As Kari Evanson, FFU co-chair, notes, “I think this is a problem that’s endemic to higher education. In general right now, that’s the use of contract labor, whether that be adjunct or instructional lecturers [or] the undermining of tenure.” Evanson explained, “With the first CBA, there’s now three different levels. There’s a
lecturer that starts out with oneyear contracts. And after that, they move into production of reemployment and job security, and then moving towards two year contracts. If you get promoted to advanced lecturer, that moves to a three-year contract, and senior lecturer after at least five years, you move to a five-year contract.” Adjuncts, on the other hand, are hired on a course by course basis. They primarily teach with a two course maximum per semester — a restriction that prevents adjuncts from making a living wage. Diane George, FFU co-chair, explains, “One of the things we’ve been fighting with the administration about for six… seven years, is to lift the two course cap on adjuncts. So we are not allowed to teach more than two courses a semester. And that keeps us at a wage. So if you were making the top adjunct salary right now, you would be at about $35,000 a year, which is not livable in New York City.” Additionally, the restriction prevents them from being
classified as full-time faculty who can qualify for health benefits, as full-time contingent faculty teach a maximum of three courses. “They are deliberately suppressing the number of courses we can teach so that they don’t have to give us benefits,” said George. Negotiations for the second collective bargaining agreement, whose contentious passage was the reason for the near-strike, began in January 2022. After the pandemic, new conversations were necessary about the workload and conditions of faculty. Adjuncts and lecturers wanted compensation and recognition for their online teaching during COVID-19 — especially in view of the fact that they had just agreed to a salary freeze. “We had agreed to take a salary freeze during [COVID-19],” said George. “We had just worked like crazy to transform our classes from in-person to online classes, which was an immense amount of work... and we thought we
should get, if not a significant raise, because of that, at least a bonus, some kind of financial recognition of it. And the response of one of the administrators was, ‘Well, we said thank you.’” In response to requests for healthcare, the administration offered $100 gift cards, which union members nicknamed the “Red Lobster gift cards.” Evanson and George both characterized the administration as severely out of touch with the realities of teaching. Evanson recalled that the administration began suggesting one percent raises: “If you’re making $100,000, that is a raise, but if you are making $7,000, of course, 1% of that [is nothing].” Neither Joseph M. McShane, president emeritus, nor President Tania Tetlow directly reached out to FFU in the process of negotiations. The union decided eventually to go on strike in early December of 2022 after a very strong majority vote. In the spring semester, rallies were held and the strike
was announced to students and alumni. Suddenly, the night before the first rally, the administration reached out and agreed to their most recent proposal. “I think they were panicked,” said George. “They realized we were gonna go through with it. And they actually contacted us and put, I guess that was when they put the FSA on the table. And then, the night before the first rally, they contacted us and said that they would accept our last proposal.” Currently, FFU is planning on new negotiations in the spring of 2025 and are focusing on new initiatives such as recognition for senior lecturers with extensive experience and removal of the two course maximum for adjunct faculty. For students who are looking to stay involved, Evanson and George recommend staying informed with FFU accounts on Instagram (@fordhamfacultyunited) and X, formerly known as Twitter (@fordhamfacultyu).
Eighth Annual Pitch Challenge Begins FROM FOUNDRY, PAGE 1
“We got support throughout the whole process until the pitch. Being able to learn what goes into a pitch,” said Tijana Buric, GSB ’15 graduate student and three-time participant. “The Foundry introduced me to the concept of startups and what you need to have in mind when you’re developing something. The level of support and learning the process was very valuable.” The program has separate tracks and prize money for students whose programs have a social impact.
“We always have those areas where we specifically lift up the social impact competitors and have them participate in a way that hopefully is more meaningful to them,” said Bartosic. To enter the program, competitors had to submit a one to two sentence description of their idea; the idea can either be fully fleshed out, or just a vague plan. The program helps students build out their ideas through one-one-one mentorship. “What we try to encourage is for people to not have preconceived notions, because what we
really are challenging you to do is to really think about your audience or think about your target market and who this product and service is going to be useful for, then test that and improve that,” said Bartosic. The Foundry itself offers a variety of programs, including an Angel Fund, where alums can apply for funding quickly, and Ram’s Den, Fordham’s version of “Shark Tank” where startups can compete for additional funding. “Fordham has been a big catalyst to help me start my business,” said Buric, who was
in the final of Ram’s Den. “This is very much the experience that is going to help you craft your idea and be challenged.” During the Pitch Challenge, competitors will have one-onone meetings and be given the opportunity to survey potential audiences. “A lot of entrepreneurship is oxymoronic; you need a powerful vision, but you also need to be adaptable. You need to be a strong leader, but you need to be a good teammate. There’s all these things that are seemingly contradictory, but a good entre-
preneur has both,” said Bartosic. The final competition will take place at Rose Hill on April 11 from 6-8 p.m. in the McShane Campus Center. “If you’ve got an idea, come and talk to us, and don’t ever say to yourself, ‘Oh I don’t know anything about business; I can’t be an entrepreneur’ because the creativity and the problemsolving part is really what’s important,” said Bartosic. “We can help you with the financial nuts and bolts but you having the idea and the spark is what we try to nurture. The Foundry is for everybody.”
OMA and ASILI Sponsor Black History Month Events By ANGEL MADERA
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
As February unfolds, the opportunity arises to reflect on the profound contributions and rich heritage of Black individuals throughout history. Black History Month serves as a poignant reminder of the struggles, triumphs and enduring legacy of the Black community, inviting everyone to celebrate diversity and promote understanding within institutions. This month provides a platform to amplify marginalized and overlooked voices, shedding light on the countless achievements and milestones attained despite systemic barriers. From civil rights activists and trailblazing leaders to artists, scientists and scholars, Black individuals have played pivotal roles in shaping society and advancing progress in various fields. However, the significance of Black History Month extends beyond mere acknowledgment of past accomplishments; it underscores the ongoing journey toward racial equity and social justice. It prompts others to
confront uncomfortable truths about the nation’s history of slavery, segregation and discrimination, acknowledging the enduring effects of systemic racism that continue to permeate institutions and communities. “The only real way to ensure any kind of change in a meaningful capacity is to effectuate it yourself. Black history is not confined to four weeks in a year, and neither are the sociopolitical obstacles stemming from that history that Africandescended people are currently facing globally on a daily basis,” said Tylese Rideout, FCRH ’25, secretary of ASILI: Black Student Alliance. To kick off the celebration of Black culture, ASILI started with a Black History Month bingo and curl talk to highlight the importance of loving and owning one’s hair; they also tested the knowledge of those who attended. On the day of love, ASILI will be hosting its monthly general meeting, and the theme is “Black Love." On Feb. 20, ASILI welcomes keynote speaker Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter. Shabazz’s lecture, “Empowering
Voices: a Legacy of Inclusion Within the Youth,” will explore the theme of empowering the voices of youth and fostering inclusion. ASILI will end their celebrations with a Black History Month reception dinner. Russian Adams, a graduate intern for the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), said, “Institutions of higher education like Fordham have the responsibility to preserve and spread knowledge. Preserving Black history at institutions is extremely important due to the uneven and sometimes untrue teachings of history students may come into universities with.” The OMA Black History Committee kicked off the month by having interactive tabling at both Rose Hill and Lincoln Center, a fun “Eats and Beats” event at Lincoln Center and a successful Art Night in collaboration with the Campus Activities Board at Rose Hill. OMA has a multitude of other events throughout the month that are worth taking a look at. They will be hosting a “Black Love Lunch” on Valentine’s Day and a “Love Your Skin Tabling”
the next day. Everyone is invited to attend the “Black History Month Art Showcase” on Feb. 22, and students are encouraged to sign up for their excursion to the MoCada Museum Outing, sponsored by OMA. In collaboration with the Lincoln Center Black Student Alliance, Caribbean Students Club, OMA and the Career Center, alumni and undergraduate students are invited to attend the “Black History Month Alumni Panel and Reception Dinner” on Feb. 26.
These events provide opportunities to engage with the Fordham community, gain insights and demonstrate solidarity and inclusivity. Stay on the lookout for more information regarding all events for this month, and feel free to contact OMA (teamoma@fordham.edu) and ASILI (asili@fordham.edu) regarding any questions! Those interested in staying updated on ASILI’s Black History Month events can follow the club on their Instagram (@asili_fu.)
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ASILI is hosting workshops, events and a guest speaker.
OPINION
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R
Serving the Fordham University campus and community since 1918 The Fordham Ram is the university journal of record. The mission of The Fordham Ram is to provide a forum for the free and open exchange of ideas in service to the community and to act as a student advocate. The Fordham Ram is published every Wednesday during the academic year to all campuses.
Website TheFordhamRam.com Email Address theram@fordham.edu Editor in Chief Sofia Donohue Managing Editor Allison Schneider Editorial Director Evan McManus Production Editor Hannah Boring Multimedia Director Grace Campbell Business Director Grace Miller Copy Chief Cailee Zeraat News Editor Nora Malone Features Editor Julianna Morales Assistant News Editors Cristina Stefanizzi Adithi Vimalanathan Opinion Editor Saisha Islam Assistant Opinion Editors Zachary Badalamenti Eleanor Smith Culture Editors Claire Krieger Caleb Stine Assistant Culture Editor Isabella DeRosa Sports Editor Jonah Ring Assistant Sports Editors Griffin Stevenson Noah Hoffman Social Media Director Alexis Hurchalla Digital Producers Sophie Maselli Sarah Urbano Haniyyah Usmani Photo Editor Mary Hawthorn Advertising Directors Katriina Fiedler Kathleen Hollinger Diana Juarez Emily Roe Faculty Advisor Qun Wang Editorial Policy The Fordham Ram’s editorial reflects the editorial board’s opinions or views. Opinion Policy The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of The Fordham Ram. Submissions Policy The Fordham Ram reserves the right to reject or edit any submission for any reason, without notice. Submissions become the exclusive property of The Fordham Ram. No part of The Fordham Ram may be reproduced without written consent.
February 14, 2024
From the Desk | Eleanor Smith
Paywalls and Open Information Access
I have loved to read for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I knew that I could always find something to read at the library. I tore through all 24 “Warriors” books plus the spinoffs in a few months because all I had to do to get a new book was place a hold on it at the St. Paul Public Library. In a matter of days, the book would appear at my local branch like magic — for free! As I lost interest in the social and political drama of anthropomorphic cats, I found that I could get pretty much any book under the sun from my local library if I was patient enough to wait for it. When I entered high school and had to write my first research paper, I was shocked to find that, frequently, one has to pay to access information. I felt like the universe was conspiring against me when I found the perfect source for my mind-numbingly dull paper about Otto the Great and the formation of the Holy Roman Empire, but it was locked behind a paywall and I would have to pay $40 if I wanted to read it. When I asked my teacher what I should do, he told me to email the person who wrote the article and ask if they could send it to me for free. I didn’t have much faith in this plan. Why would someone who worked hard on a paper give it to me for free instead of making me pay to access it? Academics do research and give it to publishers for free, and the publishers sell journal subscriptions and articles back
to institutional and university libraries to be read by the very group of people who created the research in the first place. Some journals even require that authors pay a publication fee to have their articles published, and if an academic wants their article to be open access (which means it will not be behind a paywall when it is published), they have to pay a fee anywhere between $500 and $5,000. This system definitely does not benefit academics or the public — it only serves the academic publishing industry, which, globally, makes $19 billion each year. In the U.S., taxpayers pay $140 billion each year to research and development, and 50% of the research done by U.S. colleges and universities is paid for by the federal government. Taxpayers give billions of dollars to research each year, but most of that information is not available to the American public because of paywalls. Paywalls negatively affect the public, academics and even research itself. When scholars don’t have access to the latest research, it “hinders the research they can do, and slows down the progress of humanity,” according to Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, head of campus libraries at University of California Berkeley. What are researchers doing to solve this problem? They are calling for open access, creating their own open access journals and are more frequently than ever before
publishing preprints, which are pre-publication versions of research papers. While preprints often have not yet been peer-reviewed, advocates say they are beneficial to different fields of research because they encourage public discussion of papers, which could be considered a type of peer review. And then there’s pirating. Sci-Hub is a database of almost 90 million scientific papers that was founded by Alexandra Elbakyan when she was a university student in Kazakhstan. Sci-Hub has been involved in multiple high-profile legal cases, as it is illegal to distribute copyrighted material without permission from the owner. Sci-Hub is currently blocked in India, and although its domains are frequently seized, the latest links to Sci-Hub are always at the top of their information page. A legal alternative to Sci-Hub is Unpaywall, which brings together open access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories.
There has been a lot of recent discussion about whether the academic publishing industry is a bubble and when the industry could collapse, leading to more equitable information access. In May 2023, European Union officials called for open access to publicly funded research, and the Biden administration created a new policy that will fully be in place by 2026 which requires academic journals to provide immediate access to papers that were publicly funded. However, these measures only affect publicly funded research, and they do not solve the underlying issues with the academic publishing industry — that it takes advantage of academics and does not facilitate the free exchange of information. The academic publishing industry’s focus on making a profit comes at the cost of information exchange and academic progress, which should be the true mission of academia.
Editorial | Guest Policy
Heaven Forbid They Stay for Breakfast On Jan. 24, The Fordham Ram published an article about Fordham University’s pending new policy of allowing overnight guests of the opposite gender in residence halls. Currently, the guest pass policy allows two same-gender guests per night for up to two nights in a row. The new policy would eliminate the opposite gender restriction and allow guests between the ages of 16 and 23 to stay for up to two nights with the permission of the residence hall’s Resident Director and the consent of the individual’s roommate. Although The Fordham Ram has reported on this proposal, there has yet to be an official announcement from the school. We think Fordham’s current guest policy and its reasoning are unclear, and wan update to the rules would signal a shift away from antiquated ways of thinking. There is a double standard with Fordham’s current guest policy. By only allowing samegendered guests, Fordham seems to assume that men and women can’t be trusted to stay overnight with each other. But when further researching the rules, some absurdities arise. The Fordham Residence Life Handbook states that guests
of both genders can remain in someone’s room until 3:30 a.m. So, a guest of the opposite gender is allowed to stay over through the early hours of the morning, but they can’t stay over until breakfast? Why does Fordham have its current guest policy in place? The Residence Hall Agreement does not state an explicit reason. However, there seems to be a general assumption from students that it is related to the university’s Catholic culture. Many of Fordham’s more conservative policies, like the contraception policy, can be linked to Catholic doctrine. As President Tania Tetlow stated herself during an interview with the Ram, published on March 8, 2023, when it comes to Catholic doctrine, “they are bound to it.” However, it does not seem like other Jesuit universities are “bound” to this rule. Some Jesuit universities, like Georgetown University along with Loyola Marymount University, allow oppositegender guests in their residential policy handbooks. With no stated reason why the policy exists here while other Jesuit schools don’t have the same standards, students are left wondering why the policy still
stands. Students have raised some good points as to why the policy should change. One is that it would treat Fordham students like adults. They would be allowed to invite friends of the opposite gender to stay overnight, and they would not need to leave at the arbitrary deadline of 3:30 a.m. It would also allow siblings of the opposite gender to stay overnight and get a chance to know the school better. These changes also make it safer for guests to visit Fordham without worrying about their safety overnight since they will have a definitive place to stay. Most importantly, it would signal to both the student body and the outside world that Fordham does not need to be tied down to traditional views of gender and can evolve as many other universities have. Beginning the process of changing a longstanding policy is never simple. In fact, the conversation about changing the guest policy speaks to a greater challenge that Jesuit schools have had to face. Do they stick to the old traditional values they were founded on, or do they evolve to a modern and secular era? Even Tetlow has
publicly debated this question. During the aforementioned press conference, Tetlow announced that she openly disagreed with the church’s doctrine on contraceptives, yet it is still a policy they are “bound” to uphold. That’s why it’s so refreshing that the conversation about changing the guest policy is being held. It shows that despite certain constraints placed upon Jesuit universities, there is a will on the part of the school to evolve with the times. However, there may be backlash from certain parts of the school community who are afraid to make this change. They may say that letting other-gendered guests stay overnight violates Catholic values. In response to that argument, we disagree. In the past, Fordham has shown that it can evolve and stay true to its Jesuit values. Fordham was not a coeducational institution until 1974, but it changed with the times because it was the right thing to do. It is possible to keep traditional values and look to the future, which is why opposite-gendered guests should be allowed to stay overnight in Fordham residence halls.
OPINION The Right’s Strange Polarization of Taylor Swift and the NFL
February 14, 2024
By ANDREW MCDONALD CONTRIBUTING WRITER
On Jan. 9, 2024, Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” discussed the possibility that Taylor Swift is in cahoots with the Pentagon. Personally, I’d say that’s pretty unlikely, but that doesn’t mean Swift, one of the most influential celebrities globally and TIME magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year, is in any way separated from our country’s obnoxious political culture wars. Nor is she spared from becoming at least tangentially related to the upcoming 2024 election media cycle. In 2023, Fox News continued its reign as the mostwatched cable channel for an impressive eighth year. The network garnered an average of over 1.2 million viewers across their 24-hour day. According to Deadline, January 2024 saw Jesse Watters’ show on Fox News take the number two spot for the most-watched news program in the U.S., coming in second only behind another program produced by Fox News, “The Five.” “Jesse Watters Primetime” replaced the primetime 8 p.m. slot for “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” However large of an audience Fox News has, its viewership still has nothing on
Deadline’s count of nearly 113 million viewers on Fox who tuned in to see the Kansas City Chiefs win their fourth Super Bowl versus the San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas this past Sunday at the most televised and marketed event of the year in the U.S. If you’re someone who really cares about Swift and the Kansas City Chiefs, this year’s Super Bowl probably marked a good moment for you in the extremely publicized relationship between Swift and the Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce. The relationship between these two has had more eyes on it than probably any other celebrity relationship in January 2024, which makes perfect sense given the intersection of these two at some of the most profitable heights of American entertainment: football and pop music. And it’s the fact that football and Swift are so ubiquitously popular in the United States that makes it strange that the right-wing American political establishment has been trying to make a blonde-haired and blue-eyed woman and her football-playing boyfriend “liberal-coded.” Charlie Kirk, founder of the right-wing group Turning Point USA, and Ben Shapiro,
founder of and contributor to the Daily Wire, along with many others in the conservative media sphere, have all clipped together dozens of videos of stories like Watters’ Fox News segment. Most of these pundits have cited how many allies of former President Donald Trump are wondering about Swift’s media presence. Former Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller wrote last month, “What’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic,” Jeffrey Clark, a defendant along with Trump in the racketeering case in Georgia, called the musician a “Trojan horse” and responded affirmatively to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by far-right commentator Jack Posobiec that said, “Swift’s girlboss psyop has been fully activated.” On his show “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Watters noted a video posted by Jeffery Clark on X in which he claimed that “the Pentagon psychological operations unit float [is] turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting.” William Vaillancourt of The Daily Beast said that the video was “an excerpt from the 2019 International Conference on Cyber Conflict, which was held in Estonia and was organized by the NATO Coop-
erative Cyber Defense Centre. The speaker is Alicia Marie Bargar, a research engineer at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, who appears to simply mention Swift as an example of the power of influencers with large followings.” Watters, at the end of his segment, rhetorically asked the audience, “So is Swift a front for a covert political agenda? Primetime obviously has no evidence — if we did, we’d share it. But we’re curious.” For the record, I neither care about nor dislike Swift. I’m generally indifferent to her, but even for someone like me, who’s never actively listened to her music, it’s impossible to understate her absolutely absurd global prominence over the last few years. Swift’s “Eras Tour” has become the highest-grossing music tour in history and the first tour to make more than $1 billion. It’s also impossible to deny the amount of influence she has. In 2018, Swift sparked a flood of new voter registrations after posting on Instagram urging her 112 million followers to register to vote ahead of upcoming elections. In an article from Jan. 29, 2024, titled “Inside Biden’s Anti-Trump Battle
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Plan (and Where Taylor Swift Fits In),” the New York Times floats that Biden aides are drafting wish lists of potential endorsements from elected officials, union organizers and celebrities and influencers. Why wouldn’t the Biden admin want the endorsement of the globe’s foremost celebrity, Taylor Swift? However, just because she endorsed Biden in 2020 doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll endorse the president again, or that Biden is going to appear at an “Eras Tour” stop. So, is the government doing an arranged courtship of Swift and Kelce to induce mass psychosis in the American people to promote Biden in 2024 because Swift got people registered to vote and Kelce did an advertisement for the Pfizer vaccine? I don’t think so, but it would be really funny. But as long as there are eyes on Swift, people will make content about her, and maybe the conservative media in this country has decided that outrage over Swift is better than any kind of praise.
Andrew McDonald, FCRH ’26, is a history and political science major from Sacramento, Calif.
The Effective Legalization of Marijuana in NYC By ZACHARY BADALAMENTI ASST. OPINION EDITOR
When the state of New York opted to legalize the use of recreational marijuana and the opening of state-approved recreational dispensaries in March 2021, regulations were imposed to advance social equity for members of marginalized communities. To achieve this goal, the New York Office of Cannabis Management prioritized approving licenses to open legal recreational dispensaries to people who qualify for the social and economic equity (SEE) program. By doing so, the state is taking steps towards advancing the socioeconomic standing of historically disadvantaged groups when they are entering into burgeoning industries. The state of New York says the following groups fall within the SEE program: minorityowned businesses, womenowned businesses, distressed and service-disabled farmers and individuals from a community that has been unfairly affected by cannabis-related charges. By including clauses rooted in social equity, New York not only became the 15th state to legalize recreational marijuana, but also one of the few states that has tied in social equity. Although we are now nearly three years removed from the initial date of legalization, the illegal marijuana market still
accounts for the overwhelming majority of the drug’s sales. In November, CBS News reported, “City records show there are about 1,500 illegal marijuana shops and 11 legal ones in the five boroughs.” That said, in reality, the number could be much more significant as New York City Council member Lynn Shulman stated in August that there were “approximately 8,000 illegal, unlicensed smoke shops.” Given the fact that virtually every smoke shop in New York City sells weed under the table, the previously quoted number of 1,500 illegal marijuana shops feels like a drastic underestimation of the size of the illegal market. As the process of legalization continues to show statistical failure in establishing the legal marijuana industry in New York, many have pointed to the clauses aimed at social equity as the reason for the illegal market remaining so prevalent. As of Jan. 24, 2024, a lawsuit was filed against the New York Office of Cannabis Management that claimed “the preference or priority given to women and minorities, over white men, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.” These social equity programs did hinder the rate of growth of the legal marijuana industry in New York in the
years following the state’s legalization of recreational cannabis, but they are essential to restoring communities that have been marginalized by cannabis prohibition. Throughout the history of cannabis prohibition in the U.S., minority communities have been disproportionately impacted by the criminalization of cannabis. Between the years 2001 and 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union found that charges related to marijuana accounted for “more than half of all drug arrests in the United States.” Of those arrests, there were 3.73 charges given to Black individuals for every charge given to a white individual despite the relatively equal use of marijuana. Additionally, as shown by data gathered in 2022 by the United States Census Bureau, Black or African American individuals only account for 13.6% of the total U.S. population, whereas white individuals accounted for 75.5% of the total U.S. population. It is undeniable that the war on drugs has been disproportionately felt by individuals from historically marginalized communities. To legalize recreational cannabis without advancing the interests of such individuals should be seen as unjust. Many other states, like Colorado and California, have legalized recreational
COURTESY OF TWITTER
New York laws related to marijuana are attempting to right historic wrongs.
marijuana without including plans to advance social equity for members of marginalized communities. This has resulted in the legal cannabis industry in such states being dominated by large marijuana conglomerates and hedge funds able to front the large sums of money required to clear state regulations. In California, the process by which the state has legalized recreational marijuana completely priced out small business owners and members of marginalized communities as they are unable to afford the taxes that come along with running a legal business. The sale of marijuana and other drugs has historically been concentrated in impoverished urban communities. With that in mind, to legalize the sale of recreational weed without focusing on growing the social equity of these
communities is to ignore and disregard the very people who have felt the brunt of cannabis prohibition and the war on drugs. These communities have been unjustly set back both socially and economically as a result of cannabis prohibition, so it only makes sense that the process of securing permits and licenses to sell recreational marijuana legally is more difficult for these communities. Without the social equity clauses, the people who would benefit most from marijuana legalization are the same people who were never truly impacted by the effects of cannabis prohibition.
Zachary Badalamenti, FCRH ’25, is a journalism major from Oakland, Calif.
OPINION
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February 14, 2024
Brushes vs Binary: The Bridge Between Human and Machine
COURTESY OF TWITTER
The role of AI in modern art production should be reevaluated.
By FLORA DEDVUKAJ CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Amid the chaos caused by ChatGPT’s release in late 2022, the discourse about artificial intelligence’s (AI) influence on creativity has heightened astronomically, especially since Refik Anadol’s exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) titled “Unsupervised” in his Machine Hallucinations series was unveiled. In the exhibit, he uses AI to bridge the gap between memories and the future. Garnering over 100,000 pieces of metadata from MoMA’s archives, it displays a hallucinogenic, surrealist motion through the pieces on a large LED screen. The display dreamily flows through this collection of the MoMA’s artwork, but critically acclaimed art commentators called this piece merely “a screensaver” or
“a massive techno lava lamp.” However, I firmly believe that Anadol’s “Unsupervised” transcends these reductive labels and stands as a pioneering piece of artwork deserving recognition. Let’s be clear: my support for this work stems not from blindly accepting AI-generated art, but from a nuanced understanding of its potential and its execution in Anadol’s hands. Firstly, artwork as a solitary endeavor needs to be updated. Technology is a part of our daily lives now. It has been for at least the past 20 years. So, in the art world, we must accept technology as a driving force of innovation, which is an essential element in producing transformative artwork. Artists seek inspiration in all places, from graffiti on the side of a truck to the angle and lighting of an Instagram post. The art
world sometimes gets stuck in its ivory tower, clinging to traditional methods. This is in spite of the fact that art thrives on evolution, on embracing new tools and perspectives. Just like how artists once incorporated new paints and printing techniques, Anadol uses AI as a brush, pushing the boundaries of expression. Is it a threat to traditional art? Absolutely not. It’s simply another voice in the ever-growing conversation. And it’s honestly a thrilling conversation to have. Just as artists find inspiration in diverse sources, Anadol utilizes technology to reinterpret existing art, adding a new layer to an ongoing conversation. Consider the countless reinterpretations of the Mona Lisa, from playful pastiches to digital manipulations. Are these exploitative? Or do they contribute to the ever-evolving nature of art? On a larger scale, what does it mean to be creative in a world shaped by algorithms? A real visionary, like Anadol, propels artistic expression forward. The idea behind Anadol’s work was not to exploit these pieces of art but to use them to convey a particular message. The true essence of art here does not lie in the 180,000 media used but in the emotional resonance it invokes and the conversations it ignites. A combination of neural networks can interpret artwork in the same way that a regular human can. But it also shows that AI cannot
see artwork and its progression in the same way. I mean, it is still just a machine at the end of the day. However, it invites viewers to see this artwork in a different light. Giving a machine-learning model a dataset of artwork, the output is something dreamy and beautiful and synthesizes these pieces ranging from hundreds of years in ways that maybe the human brain wouldn’t think to do. The line between the physical and digital world gets more fuzzy each day, and arguably, art is one of the only aspects of life that cannot be reinvented through AI. Arguably, it takes sentience for creativity. Nevertheless, Anadol is sentient. And his work reflects his ideologies. It exhibits what the sentience of a machine could potentially look like. “Unsupervised” is not solely the work of AI alone. It is a dreamy landscape imagined by AI. It is the digitalization of sentience in the eyes of a computerized being. It is a commentary on the closing gap between computers and humans. It is quite literally the lens through which the world as we know it should be viewed to gain a complete and cohesive understanding of the future of machines. Anadol’s work has been viewed by critics as a tacky exhibit with little to no artistic value, some even going so far as to say it’s a shame to the pieces that are labeled as art. However, the nature of art is inherently iterative. Drawing sources of
inspiration from predecessors, many world-renowned pieces of artwork have Easter eggs inspired by art in different eras before them. Whether it is conscious or unconscious, viewing Anadol as just an exploitative programmer completely diminishes his talent and many talented artists before him. As the art world grapples with the changing landscape of creativity and technology, the evolution of AI stands as a talking point in this discourse. The tasteful exhibit from Anadol serves as a poignant reminder of AI’s relevance and its importance in being at the forefront of all aspects of life. It’s a call to embrace the future, to acknowledge the potential of AI as a tool for artistic expression and to keep the dialogue about art open and evolving. The real problems arise from the denial of AI and its potential benefits to our everyday lives. Anadol’s pioneering work challenges these traditional notions of ownership, artistic value, and technology as a villain. It’s time to acknowledge the artistic merit of “Unsupervised” and engage in a productive dialogue about AI’s role in shaping the future of art. By doing so, we can ensure that creativity continues to thrive and inspire in a world that is constantly changing. Flora Dedvukaj, FCRH ’25, is a math and computer science major from Allendale, N.J.
The MTA’s Shiny New Band Aid By INDIRA KAR CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Worldwide, open gangway metro cars are the way to travel. Lauded as the “future of the New York subway,” Governor Kathy Hochul launched one of the first few R211 cars on the C Line on Feb. 1, 2024, as part of a 2018 purchase of new subway cars. These new trains allow riders to walk the length of the train as there are no interior doors. Nevertheless, the new cars pose many challenges, as this leap into the future is a shiny new band aid to cover up a medley of the City’s issues. Following several issues and delays in manufacturing, the
R211s had their first trial run in October 2023, when a majority were pulled from service following faulty gearboxes, flat wheels and a graffiti incident. The February launch of these cars comes amid recent lawsuits surrounding congestion pricing, which ties in with the funding and subsequent rollout of these new trains. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is securing funds through initiatives like the Central Business District (CBD) Tolling Program, also known as congestion pricing, which aims to improve the public transit system and reduce the flow of traffic in more populated areas of Manhattan
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New York City unveils new remodeled subway cars.
through tolls on drivers and price hikes on subway and bus fares. Congestion pricing is bothersome and disproportionately impacts lowerincome families. However, the funding supports the MTA and combats the amount of thoroughfare, which offers benefits like reducing air pollution and traffic caused by buses and emergency vehicles. The funding also addresses climate change and public health. The MTA is in its era of modernization, looking for ways to revolutionize its outdated system. With initiatives like congestion pricing, the MTA plans to improve current subway conditions; however, its priorities are all over the place. Considering the average subway car age ranges from about 30 to 40 years, it is about time for a change as the outdated signaling system of the current set of subway cars accounted for 25% of train delays in recent years. Delays contribute to crowded trains and longer wait times. This issue has led the MTA to consider weeklong train shutdowns as they update the signal operating system, inconveniencing many. The MTA’s cost to replace 3,900 subway cars over the next 20 years is about $15 billion. Outdated signaling, aging, dirty cars and
track-related problems contribute to a poor commuting experience and need to be addressed. The city should hire more subway cleaners with higher, liveable wages. Funding needs to be allocated to address these issues rather than introducing another fun, shiny thing, with a slowed rollout, to New York Public Transit, as the R211 trains are not a promised fix to the pre-existing issues of the subway system. The R211 trains have been advertised as offering faster boarding times, security cameras, bright lights and the ability to easily move from one car to the next. This pilot program of new R211 subway cars presents New York with an opportunity to fall in line with mass transit systems seen across Asia and Europe, similar to that seen in what is known as the London Underground. With more accessible seating and wider doors, the trains offer more accommodations than before at the expense of addressing issues with the current set of trains. Public opinion on the new subway cars is mixed. Other than the open gangway layout, most enjoyed the updates of wider doors and bright lights. Some believe the bright lights and open car layout promote
a more spacious, safer feel and familiar environment to what they have experienced abroad. The open layout permits riders to view threats, occurrences and performances from throughout the car without obstruction from the doors. Others do not share this sentiment. With concerns about safety, some subway riders believed the new layout made them feel more “vulnerable.” The absence of the doors removes the metal barriers that contain perceived threats, horrifying odors and unidentified liquids in one car, allowing passengers to switch cars if needed to escape their current situation. Change is a part of life, and this rollout is slow, so why not take the chance to consider major updates to our public transport system? The R211 cars might be the future of New York as the city catches up to the mass transit system of other major cities across the globe. However, these cars should not be prioritized over the necessary updates to the current cars that are already traveling through the city.
Indira Kar, FCRH ’25, is an international studies major from St. Louis, Mo.
OPINION
February 14, 2024
Page 9
Evaluating Pennsylvania Museum’s Handling of Black Remains By ZOË CHAPITAL CONTRIBUTING WRITER
On Jan. 22, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology buried the 19 unidentified remains of Black people kept by the Samuel G. Morton Cranial Collection. Morton was a physician and professor at the University of Pennsylvania during the 1830s. He was known for collecting crania to advance racist pseudoscience regarding the superiority of the white race. The way Penn Museum has handled these remains has come at the cost of the voices of community activists and Black Philadelphians, specifically the group known as Finding Ceremony. The reality is that community care and grassroots organizations against historical anti-Blackness and racism will consistently be more effective than the efforts of institutions, as across the country, racism is ingrained into every gear of the institutional machinery. Considering all of this, Penn Museum has failed to repatriate these remains properly and has continued a legacy of anti-Blackness and racism. One of the first red flags of this particular moment is that the burial of the remains happened with a small group in secret on Jan. 22 because they wanted to skirt opponents who planned to prevent the burial of the 19. The interfaith ceremony took place the following weekend on Saturday. Penn Museum’s decision to
do the active burial in secret is further evidence that the center of their concern is not with correcting their history of anti-Blackness, medical racism or giving proper reverence to the remains of these 19 individuals. Furthermore, the mishandling of these unidentified Black remains predates the physical burial and further proves that the University of Pennsylvania Museum has failed to act accordingly. It is important to discuss the group Finding Ceremony within this conversation as it is at the center of the disagreement with the Penn Museum. The group’s mission statement follows: “Finding Ceremony is a descendant communitycontrolled process, restoring the lineages of care, reverence and spiritual memory to the work of caring for our dead.” Considering the history of slavery, medical racism and the numerous anti-Black atrocities that institutions across America enact upon Black people, it is fitting that Penn Museum not only hears the demands and concerns of Finding Ceremony, but that they respond accordingly and defer to their expertise. Continually ignoring the wishes of Finding Ceremony further perpetuates modes of anti-Blackness, and the Penn Museum has ignored the wishes of the Black community members who are deeply concerned with this issue. aAliy Muhammad, one of the leaders of Finding Ceremony, is a Black community leader
with deep roots in Philadelphia. Muhammad has been a large proponent for these remains to be repatriated with proper care. When Muhammad petitioned the court so their group could gain control over the repatriation of the remains, the court ruled in favor of the museum. According to the Associated Press reporters, “In cases like that between the University of Pennsylvania and Black Philadelphians, institutions maintain control over the collections and how they are returned.” However, sources like the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out that “the current best practice for repatriation is giving descendants control over any burial or research decisions.” The deferment of authority given to Penn is quite disconcerting and most likely due to their status as an established and influential institution. Furthermore, the New York Times stated, “A spokesperson for the museum said that archival research into the identities was continuing and that the museum was working with an independent genealogy expert.” It’s incredibly telling that the information about how the continued research will be conducted is scarce. It leaves us with more questions than answers. How much time and funding is being provided for this effort? How many Black people are being consulted and considered? It is easy for institutions to save face with fake promises and statements that claim proper action will
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University of Pennsylvania’s recent actions are under criticism
be taken. The Penn Museum has consistently failed to defer to community organizers and Black Philadelphians who are deeply dedicated to giving time and resources to handle these remains properly. The Associated Press reported that Christopher Woods, the Penn Museum Director, stated, “If future research allows any remains to be identified and a claim is made, they can be ‘easily retrieved and entrusted to descendants.’” While this statement is arguably positive, this, in conjunction with the information provided by the NYT and all other instances, suggests an emptiness to Woods’ statement. Woods has been the director of the Penn Museum since 2021 and is the first Black museum director; however, the full scope and impact of this moment should not be trivialized or reduced by idealization of diversity within potions of
power. Especially positions of institutional power, leaders speak from the place of the institution. Woods is one of many people who are involved in the way these 19 Black remains have been handled, and the right thing for the institution to do is to provide the descendant community with funds and support to do the work that Penn Museum cannot and will not do transparently. The Finding Ceremony is clear and true intentions as a descendant community, but the intentions and efforts of an institution as large and powerful as Penn will never be as transparent as needed for such a sensitive issue. If you want to support or learn more information about Finding Ceremony, I encourage you to visit their website. Zoë Chapital, FCRH ’24, is an English major from Walnut Creek, Calif.
The Shifting Global Film Industry By ALEXA CARLIATTA CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Globally, there has been a shift in the tides when it comes to which country dominates the cinematic universe. China is outracing the United States in producing new quality films that are worthy of winning prestigious awards and gaining viewers attention. Hollywood seems to have grown tired when it comes to inventing new storylines that haven’t already been portrayed. I personally have always had a love for classic stories, and don’t mind the presence of their remakes in the film scene, but often, a remake is a disservice that will never compare with the original. Currently, every popular franchised movie in the United States is a formulaic repetition of tired narratives, relying on nostalgic reboots that lack the creativity and originality that once defined the industry. Meanwhile, China’s film industry is experiencing a revival, taking risks into exploring diverse genres and untold stories. Chinese filmmakers are currently pushing boundaries and delivering
more and more cinematic masterpieces that captivate global audiences with their unique storylines and bold stylistic approaches. Similarly, the number of songs from the United States that sample ones produced years ago is rapidly increasing. It is estimated that nowadays “20 to 25% of the songs on the Hot 100” had some level of interpolation. Artists believe in order to get traction for their music, sampling is necessary to establish a level of familiarity. In the movie industry, familiarity is utilized, but it doesn’t work like it does in the music industry. Movies need a sense of uniqueness and differentiation. No one wants to watch the same two-hour story done over and over again and it creates this divide in what repetition works and what doesn’t. Conversations that concern the United States’ position in the film industry didn’t arise out of nowhere. According to data from the consultancy Artisan Gateway, Hollywood films amassed a 48.2% share of China’s box office revenue in 2012, but slipped to just 12.3% in
2021. This downward trend creates the misguided belief that American media is not appealing to China’s population. However, it could equally mean that Chinese audiences are finding a stronger connection with new Chinese films due to China’s recently launched campaign to begin its own culture of cinema. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tensions have grown worldwide. That said, it’s not surprising that China has begun to invest inwards, including their film industry. China has plans to construct thousands of new movie screens to circulate movies that exhibit Chinese spirit. They have started funding domestic filmmakers and increasing the visual quality and entertainment level of movies. As a result, the American film industry is no longer gaining billions of dollars in profits and future film investments from Chinese audiences. On Netflix, the amount of shows and movies that are produced internationally has increased considerably. For individuals who dislike dealing with the subtitles, Netflix has also provided English voice overs
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The global film inudstry is shifting away from U.S. films.
for shows that are in other languages. This has made almost all foreign shows easy to watch and understand, allowing Americans to reconsider viewing content that had a language barrier. As the quality and accessibility of foreign media increases, audiences will extend their film tastes. If the United States wasn’t a nation so fixated on economic status, I don’t believe there would be an issue with other nations sharing the industry. Film production is a form of art and shouldn’t be pursued for greed. The best films come out of authenticity and hours of work put into them by editors, actors, designers, directors and writers who care intensely for the stories they are telling.
Cinema can continue to be the cherished industry it always has been if the goal is creating empowering and entertaining films that provide humans with an escape from reality. Movies help individuals know they are not alone in their struggles and help people better understand the world. The film industry gaining higher quality relatable content can never be seen as a disadvantage, but as a pathway to allowing more individuals to connect with narratives that resonate with their personal experiences and ultimately bring them joy and fulfillment. Alexa Carliatta, FCRH ’26, is a biological sciences major from Eastchester, N.Y.
OPINION
Page 10
February 14, 2024
Current Outdoor Dining is Distasteful By MIKE ANGELO RODRIGUEZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER
I hate the outdoor dining fixtures that exist all around New York City. You know — the ones that look like dilapidated sheds when you walk on the sidewalks of New York City or maybe even your own hometown. These structures were erected during the pandemic when people started to feel comfortable enough to leave isolation and enjoy a nice meal at their favorite restaurant. Whether it be at a well-known fine dining establishment or a local taqueria, in the beginning, these structures were an amazing idea. They were groundbreaking and some could even be considered works of art. However, as a result of poor maintenance and failing the test of time, they are now horrendous eye sores. Eye sores which, personally, give me a headache every time I walk by one of them. Oftentimes, you can see the once clear plastic that was supposed to be a nice sunroof become yellow-tinted and barely translucent. You might see or smell a pool of stagnant brown water that a LifeStraw probably wouldn’t even filter. They’re overall unhygienic. For this reason, I’m ecstatic that the new NYC regulations about outdoor dining structures are being released. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, New York City has recently released new
regulations for outdoor dining structures. The updates were recently rolled out in the hopes of improving and alleviating some of the criticisms of these disgusting sheds. The new regulations provide specific guidelines on how outdoor dining structures are to look if they are going to exist. They command that all structures be designed with an open air concept, provide adequate drainage, pest management barriers and are visually appealing and hygienic. Looking through the lens of a restaurant owner, these regulations seem awful. Redesigning an outdoor dining structure seems like a terrible financial decision. The winters in New York are cold, and most people would choose to not eat outside. Nonetheless, the weather is beautiful and allows for outdoor dining for about five months a year. This is why the regulations encourage structures that can be easily dismantled and stored away during the cold winter months, providing an opportunity to allow the structures to last longer than they would if they were unnecessarily exposed to the harsh winter elements. They also maintain the clean and visual appeal the city is looking for. Apart from investing in something that is only used about half the year, owners are dreading the idea of throwing out an initial investment and
spending money on something completely new. Restaurant owner Dino Redzic, who owns Uncle Paul’s Pizza in Midtown Manhattan, spent $36,000 on his outdoor dining structure during the initial emergence of the sheds post-lockdown. He properly created his shed and actively maintains it. Regardless of the proper maintenance, his shed would not adhere to today’s regulations. He’s decided that the fines he would accumulate for violating the regulations would be cheaper than constructing a whole new structure. If profitable establishments are able to afford and ignore the fines, will the new regulations actually change anything? I think this is a negative outlook for restaurants. Suppose outdoor dining can be beautified and improved as an experience. In that case, it doesn’t only heighten the visually appealing aspect of these outdoor dining fixtures, but it also enhances the outdoor dining culture in New York City. New York City is not an ideal place to eat outside. The sidewalks are usually crowded; people are pushing each other to get places and getting from point A to point B is the only priority. Promoting an outdoor dining culture can promote a shift in the overall culture of New York City. In other major cities like Paris, outdoor dining is a part of the overall culture. Going to the café and enjoying a meal is
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Many current outdoor dining structures are dirty and an eyesore.
normal, allowing for a place to relax outside of where people live or work — a point C, commonly known as a third place. Not only can outdoor dining promote a cultural change, but it also allows for inclusivity. Redesigning the structures can allow for wheelchair accessibility to be in the designs. Among other ideas, establishing an outdoor dining culture allows for relaxation while embracing the environment, which can mitigate stress from the daily hustle and bustle and improve public health. I’m excited to see how the new NYC outdoor dining regulations will play out. I think this is an opportunity for a new chapter to be written. Restoring the aesthetics of the streets in New York City permits further appreciation from tourists. Additionally, restoration is beneficial for the people who live in the city while allowing restaurants to play a role in the
potential culture shift that can and should happen. The regulations show that the city administration is actively trying to find ways to improve public health, provide decluttered streets, reduce pest infestations and promote an overall cleaner city. The new regulations will be a great start to walking in the right direction in building a more inclusive and beautiful culture in New York. Eliminating the shed structures and replacing them with more openair structures will allow for inclusion. Wheelchair accessibility can be applied in the planning, and proper drainage and barriers will be implemented to further promote positive public health.
Mike Angelo Rodriguez, FCRH ’27, is a political science major from Atlantic City, N.J.
Nationalist Leadership Isn’t a Fix-All By NORA MALONE NEWS EDITOR
While it cannot be denied, by any means, that Michelle O’Neill being named First Minister of Northern Ireland is a good thing, it is nowhere near as dramatic as some people are making it out to be. O’Neill was Deputy First Minister from January 2020 to June 2021, and the two roles are practically identical; the only change is that she greets official visitors first in her current role. Truly, it is ridiculous that it is only now that an Irish Nationalist will serve as First Minister if they are technically equal to Unionists. Still, it is emblematic of how the interactions between English and Irish politicians have worked for the past few centuries. The English have justified their dominion over Ireland for the same reason since the country’s beginning. The island is too close to allow another country the opportunity to take it over, and if any other nation gets control of Ireland, they could easily invade England. Their method to stop this from happening is to limit Ireland’s control over itself; by dividing the country, England keeps the power. The entire point of the Good
Friday Agreement was to give the Nationalists of Northern Ireland a say in its governance. It gave the Unionists and Nationalists equal power and control over legislation. The inclusion of the term “deputy” is just to delineate the difference between the two; in terms of power, they are equal. Having an Irish Nationalist First Minister does not mean all of politics will be Nationalist, as O’Neill must still work with Deputy Emma Little-Pengelly. However, having O’Neill as First Minister means everything symbolically. When the Good Friday Agreement was decided, it is not unreasonable to assume that England saw itself as the de facto First Minister. The reason O’Neill’s appointment has been so dramatic is not because of anything political beyond the return of a working government. It is true: the fact that Nationalists holding a larger number of seats in the assembly is not insubstantial, but they still cannot pass legislation without the agreement of Little-Pengelly. The biggest impact of O’Neill’s appointment is that it symbolizes a change in the status quo, a potentially powerful United
Ireland. O’Neill is unlikely to actually change much that wouldn’t have been changed with a Unionist First Minister, but it doesn’t matter what she does. It matters that it’s her who does it. Since the Good Friday Agreement, Unionist power has decreased in Northern Ireland, and Unionists feel they’ve gotten the short end of the stick. Their feeling of being cheated does stem from inequality, but when you used to have all the power, sharing it feels like nothing. It’s no surprise the government is jumping in and out of gridlock. No matter how confident a leader they have, there is no denying the dysfunction of the Northern Irish government. If one party refuses to govern, the entire system can fall. Veto power can be easily exploited, and it leaves the region reeling. When the Unionist Party opted to use its veto power, the government stopped working in 2022. This same power could be used to halt O’Neill’s political aspirations in office. Unionist displeasure with O’Neill’s new role is why it’s so important that she has it. Her being First Minister isn’t going to unite Ireland in two months, and it isn’t going to
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The election of O’Neill is more symbolically than politically important.
fix Northern Ireland’s dysfunctional government. That said, it is a rallying cry that has been long awaited. For those waiting for a United Ireland, a Nationalist leader means everything. However, it’s never as easy as it seems. While O’Neill may want to fight for the unification of Ireland, not all of the Nationalists in Northern Ireland does. In fact, as time goes on, people in Northern Ireland have become increasingly unsure of what end goal they want. It is no longer the days of stark opposition, and the younger generations are still working for peace. In Northern Ireland, a large portion of both Unionists and Nationalists are unsure if they would vote for a united Ireland if given the option. This starkly contrasts with O’Neill’s belief that a unification vote is possible in the
next 10 years. Ireland is divided in more ways than one, and like the division of many countries, the root cause can be linked back to England. Ireland has been forced to fight itself for years, and it barely survived. While the appointment of O’Neill doesn’t mean a perfect solution, it does show a new era for the country. Her role is more than just a new title. It shows a change in the relationship between the leaders of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, they both agree that a United Ireland is needed. To have the leaders of 26 and six willing to make one means everything to the future of a United Ireland.
Nora Malone, FCRH ’27, is a medieval studies major from Alexandria, Va.
CULTURE
Feburary 14, 2024
Page 11
A Code Of Conduct Everyone’s Gonna Want To Listen By JULIA CHORUN
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
“Can we get Ryan on the drums please? Ryan with the sunglasses? Where’s our drummer?” Barnyard BBQ might not be where you’d expect to find a live concert on a Friday night. Luckily, the newly formed band, Code of Conduct, is gaining momentum in the entertainment scene and since their journey started right here at Fordham University, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them at your favorite campus spots. If you have ever been to Rodrigue’s Coffee House’s (Rod’s) battle of the bands, you know that Fordham is no stranger to musically passionate students with a knack for performance. But few bands, even outside of the college community, have six members each specializing in a different instrument and able to play by ear on the spot. In a pre-concert interview with the band, Bryce Vitale, FCRH ’25, said, “On our Instagram, one of our bio captions is ‘just a bunch of dudes playing some music,’ and it’s just who we are. We like to play the role of the entertainer. We’re there to entertain the crowd, but we’re also there to entertain ourselves.” “We were looking for a certain sound, and we wanted to be different,” said Vitale. “We have a saxophone player. What band has a saxophone player that’s our age? I don’t really know a lot of them.” Saxophone player Sam Hoch, FCRH ’25, or Saxxy Sam, as the band refers to him, is studying
abroad this semester and was only able to make their first performance. Sam Scriven, FCRH ‘25, Code of Conduct’s keyboardist, has been filling in the saxophone notes in his absence. “I definitely didn’t expect us to start gigging as soon as we did,” said Scriven. The band began practicing together in September, but Vitale booked their first gig at Mugz’s bar less than two months after their first rehearsal. “‘How?’ is the question,” added Scriven. “We just kind of cramped together and got pushed around by the people in the crowd. But the vibes made it worth it.” “It was awesome though, to be able to actually play for that many people,” said drummer Ryan Davis, GSB ’26. Their first performance, cramped as it was in Mugz’s one-room bar, made such a good impression on the large turnout that it brought the newest band member into the group. “I actually turned out first,” said Jojo Onorato, FCRH ’26, bassist of Code of Conduct. “When I wasn’t in the band, I actually went to the first show, and I was kind of impressed. I was not expecting how good these guys sounded, especially Saxxy Sam.” Onorato, like his bandmates, has a background in music, but almost no experience playing bass prior to his time in the group. Onorato’s excitement to join the group is evident on stage a semester later, as he smiled and nodded to the beat during every song at the band’s Barnyard performance. Usually, when the band isn’t
entertaining publicly, they are writing pieces in their dorms, looking for gigs or rehearsing in music program band rooms. Once Vitale started taking up the role of band manager and the gigs started rolling in, the band started practicing four to five times a week. Guitarist Anthony Satrohan, GSB ’25, says the band has been compatible and reliable since their very first practice session. “The chemistry was right off the bat, it was pretty immediate,” he says. Satrohan, who had never played an electric guitar before the band practices, now brings both an acoustic and electric guitar to every performance, switching up the tunes for the crowd’s mood and allowing himself a full range of song material. Their go-to sets are singalongs, relatable tunes, on-site requests and any song that gets you up dancing. But don’t be surprised if they throw in a few originals! Vitale is currently sitting on six unreleased originals to add to “Baby Blues,” the only original song the band has co-written and sung publicly. Yet, what seems like an exclusive session of musical talent is actually closer to a Fordham community club. Scriven said, “It’s not just one person doing it. Everyone is pitching into it. A lot of teamwork.” Friends and volunteers make up the majority of the band’s team, all of whom helped book their first two concerts at Mugz’s, manage the band’s social media and set up their equipment for
every performance. “We would not be here without the moving group, that’s for sure,” said Onorato. According to Scriven, the audience is more than just a participant in the concerts. “They feel like an extension of the band, too,” he said. “We can count on a lot of people to back us up and hype us up.” The band isn’t just adding an activity to your weekend calendar; they’re also bringing a new type of culture to Fordham’s nightlife. Friday’s concert was a pivotal move for the band and the bars, according to Onorato. “I know a lot of friends that miss going to Barnyard,” he said. With all the instrument changes, practices on top of school commitments and gigbooking, one thing that has
been important for every band member is following the music. Vitale says they’re troubleshooting as they go, trying to plan ahead of time who’s graduating when, who’s staying in New York and who’s going abroad. “Regardless, I don’t really see a definite end to the band and I don’t see that it’ll fall apart,” he said. “We’re all never going to stop doing music. That’s something that we can’t really get off of our backs there. It’s kind of ingrained in us.” Their short-term goals are to perform at Rod’s Battle of the Bands, and potentially even Spring Weekend. Next year, keep an eye out for Code of Conduct in the city, as Vitale says they’d love to line up city gigs in the near future.
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Student band Code of Conduct is taking the Bronx by storm.
By GRACE GALBREATH ASST. NEWS EDITOR EMERITUS
ACROSS 1. 6. 7. 8.
Spoon, scoop, dipper Drew Barrymore's infamous co-star Opposite of sit Often added to food to improve the taste
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DOWN 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Scottish slang used to refer to a young woman Small arctic town in Norway known to be a great location to view the Northern Lights ____ Drunk, Noah Kahan’s 2022 collab with Post Malone Waiting period leading up to the important Catholic holiday Last word in Phoebe Bridgers’ 2020 hit song
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Instructions Use the clues to the left to fill out the boxes above.
Find the answer key on www.thefordhamram.com!
CULTURE
Page 12
February 14, 2024
Study Abroad | Granada
Reverting to Visual Learning Abroad By LUSA HOLMSTROM CONTRIBUTING WRITER
I’ve noticed Granada to be full of two things: pomegranates and heartfelt graffiti. Often, these two are distinct from one another, while other times, the graffiti may be superimposed on the red fruit. A post-arrival discovery for many of us was the significance of the city’s name; Granada being the Spanish word for pomegranate, and the granadinos have taken that and run with it. Pomegranates are incorporated into every aspect of the region, turning the city center into a life-size treasure hunt of hidden fruits. As an avid photo album curator, my newest one has been a collection of the many pomegranates I’ve stumbled upon, like I’m a little kid in Trader Joe’s with my mom again, looking for the hidden stuffed seal to get a roll of stickers. This new game takes me back to the only thing I remembered from my high school psych class — the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or the frequency illusion, through which learning about something for the first time makes you feel like it is everywhere as a result of your individual knowledge of its existence. I have collected photos of pomegranates spouting water in fountains, painted onto exteriors of hotels and on the crest of every street sign and address label. The pomegranate stands almost as an artist’s signature would in the corner of a painting, adorning each
blue and white painted tile with the city’s unique brand. Most are depicted with an S-shaped slice, revealing the pearly seeds inside. Below walls the color of strawberry ice cream, pomegranates act as dividers between street and sidewalk, the only buffer separating me from the cars that hurtle through streets they should never fit down. Instead of cobblestone, streets are littered with stone mosaics, many of which are formed in the shape of pomegranates, complete with their fruity crowns. Little trinket shops are filled with pomegranate memorabilia, from tiles and vases to paperweights and stuffed animals. One day, Alice and I returned to our apartment to find a crate full of rosy pomegranates from our host family’s farm in Güéjar. Trinidad, who her family affectionately calls “Trini,” taught us how to cut the pomegranates without causing vibrant (and permanent) juice disasters and our salads are now decorated with the seeds. While you might be imagining a dark, wine-red seed, the ones here are much more translucent, with a light pink center that shines through. While most graffiti in New York, or in my hometown of Los Angeles, can be crude or unintelligible, graffiti here is high in volume and sentiment. Side streets and main throughways alike are scattered with short messages without signatures. Naturally, I also have an album
of street art that I’ve been collecting for years. Pre-Granada additions included inspirational scribbles of “send feet pics or ask for advice (or both!)” and “King Charles Murdering Noble Bloodline by Light Radiation.” Here, I’ve been snapping photos of messages that exhibit a love for the city and its people. A wall on the way to a lookout point said, “contigo en cualquier lugar del mundo se siente como en casa” (anywhere in the world with you feels like home), “quería morirme joven, contigo lo quiero tarde” (I wanted to die young, with you I want to live long) and “la vida es bonita si sabes vivirla” (life is beautiful if you know how to live it). The artists are neither picky nor extravagant, their notes written without any flourish, in black pen and placed anywhere. All of this seems to contradict the idea of the “malafollá,” a negative characteristic attributed to the people of Granada. In place of the performative niceties of American service workers angling for tips, a Spanish clerk might snappily ask what you want as soon as you enter their establishment. While this may be a generalization, I’ve found the community of Granada to be very welcoming. I notice that what they lack in passing head nods and soft smiles, they make up for on their walls romanticized by a simple black ink and their genuine expressions of personality and kindness. In a coffee shop we found along a quiet side street (turn right at the Zara Home), the owner of
the shop sat us at a table and described everything about her little store, La Qarmita. She sells used books, offers drawing materials (and lets you sell your art there if you finish), card games, and after a certain time, she turns the café into a live music venue complete with drinks and tapas that flow until 2 a.m. Running her shop appeared to be a one-woman show that she performed with gusto, personally greeting, seating and serving every group of customers that came in, giving all of us the same spiel. At one point, she asked us to translate when a group of customers came in that did not speak Spanish. Though her words were conveyed by the two of us, her excitement and generosity were universally understood. My grandma told me studying abroad would be as much of an education “out
of school” as it is in the classroom — though I didn’t predict I’d have fruit and spray paint to thank. Having things to look out for allows me to be a more conscious newcomer. While much is still being lost in translation at the dinner table (lots of “ohhh, sí,” context clues and Alice and I “mhm-ing” in unison), I’m picking up on slang from graffiti and street signs and constantly keeping my head up on the hunt for my next pomegranate. Two of my professors told us on the first day that the best way to blend into Spanish language and culture was a Spanish “novio,” something that unfortunately isn’t at the top of my hit-list, though Chip, a selfdescribed (retired) voice actor in my class, shared that dating a Spaniard means you could get free Spanish practice “all night long.” Thanks, Chip.
COURTESY OF LUSA HOLMSTROM FOR THE FORDHAM RAM
Granada is full of charm and opportunity.
Rick Riordan Can Be Proud Of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” By LILLIAN VERDI
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
There’s nothing like seeing your favorite childhood book series turned into a well-done TV series. For fans of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” by Rick Riordan, our dreams have come true. And yes, there was the “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief” movie from 2010, but it was so inaccurate to the book that many fans see it as its own movie, not an adaptation. Since 2005, kids and teens have had a special connection with Riordan’s series about a dyslexic boy with ADHD named Percy Jackson, played in the series by Walker Scobell. The series follows Percy after abruptly finding out he is a demigod — half-human and half-god — in his quest to return the Greek god Zeus’ master lightning bolt. The series begins with Percy traveling to Camp Half-Blood after being expelled, losing his mother, Sally (Virginia Kull), in the process. His best friend and satyr protector, Grover Underwood (Aryan Simhadri), introduces Percy to the camp. Once Percy settles
into Camp, he is claimed as Poseidon’s son after a game of capture the flag. Almost immediately, Percy, Grover and Annabeth Chase (daughter of Athena, played by Leah Sava Jeffries) are sent on a quest to find Zeus’ bolt. Right away, Scobell steps effortlessly into the role of Percy Jackson. He brings boyish humor to the character while giving Percy excellent character depth, ensuring both Percy’s charm and troubled feelings are highlighted. At first, many book fans were skeptical about Scobell’s casting, as he has blonde hair instead of book Percy’s jet black hair. Now, viewers can’t wait to see him back for season two. Many fans share this thought on social media: “It’s like the casting director shook the book really hard, and Scobell, Jeffries and Simhadri fell out.” Though Jeffries and Simhadri have a few flat scenes, they ran with their script, fleshing out their characters more than the past adaption. For instance, Jeffries brings another element into the character when dealing with racism from a
train conductor, reflecting the struggles she herself continues to deal with after being cast into the role of an originally white character. A proper adaptation has been a long time coming, and something must be said about the effort put into the set and design of the series. Careful thought and attention to detail were put into each episode, from the lifelike statues in Medusa’s garden to Hades’ palace in the underworld. My favorite set was Camp Half-Blood; as a kid, I dreamed of playing capture the flag with other campers, wearing a bright orange t-shirt while carrying a heavy metal sword and shield. The creators of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” set out to make many kids’ dreams tangible and succeeded without a doubt. This is not to say the series does not have its faults. The most significant complaint from viewers was that the overall pacing seemed rushed. Conversations between Percy and his mother presented a sense of urgency, but Percy, Annabeth and Grover seemed to take their
time completing the quest in moments when they should have been in a hurry. Fans also disliked the Lotus Casino scene. Riordan knew this was coming, putting out a statement in preparation for impending backlash. While I can agree that the movie was extraordinarily inaccurate, not hearing “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga, which the movie iconically had in that scene, was disheartening.
Besides the rushed pacing of the series, I enjoyed “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” and can’t wait for the second season. This first season is a charming adaptation that viewers can quickly sink into, full of heartfelt moments and thrilling action sequences. Hopefully, Scobell and his castmates will come back better than ever in their new quest to save the camp by braving the Sea of Monsters.
COURTESY OF INSTAGRAM
Walker Scobell leads the next generation of demigods.
CULTURE
February 14, 2024
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Glamor, Girl Power and the Grammys By MARY HAWTHORN PHOTO EDITOR
After the year of Barbie, Taylor Swift and “What Was I Made For?” it is refreshing to see that girl power will remain the theme of 2024. The 66th Annual Grammy Awards took place on Feb. 4, 2024, at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Some of the biggest names in music were in attendance, such as Swift, Lana Del Rey, Lenny Kravitz, Billie Eilish, Lionel Richie, SZA and Olivia Rodrigo. This year’s Grammys were unlike any other due to the fact that women dominated almost every category. In fact, six out of the seven nominees for “Album of the Year,” one of the most competitive awards at the Grammys, were women. Firstly, Trevor Noah did an excellent job hosting. He was respectful and did not rudely criticize or cross personal boundaries with any audience members (unlike many other hosts, cough, Jo Koy). His sincerity and admiration for all of the artists kept the show lighthearted. In fact, Noah even took the opportunity to stand up for Swift after she received backlash for her screen time during NFL games. “I’m gonna get revenge. Every time someone says Taylor Swift, I’m going to cut the cameras to someone who plays football,” he remarked, before the camera cut to former NFL legend and actor Terry Crews. This was just one example of how Noah used his platform to create a
humorous, yet upbeat and fun atmosphere for the show. The glamor and fashion was certainly on point for the musical artists in attendance. The runway was one of my favorite parts of the Grammys, and that was before it even started. Rodrigo walked the carpet in a vintage Versace gown, embellished with red beads and clear gems. This is not the first time this dress has been put on display, as it was previously worn by Linda Evangelista on the runway in spring 1995. Superstar Christina Aguliera also dressed to impress, as she wore a light blue long-sleeve gown with a train. This minimalist yet incredibly chic look certainly embodied the “clean girl aesthetic.” Further, this sky blue color really popped onstage when she presented the Best Música Urbana Album as well. Finally, my third favorite Grammys look was from Victoria Monét, who wore a bronze satin gown with a “ribbed, strapless bodice, ruched details along the sides, and a silky skirt with a long train,” according to Harper’s Bazaar. The best part about this look was that she matched with her two-year-old daughter Hazel, who made her first red carpet debut. Swift made history as the first artist to win Album of The Year four times. Swift has won the prestigious award for her albums “Fearless,” “1989,” “Folklore” and now “Midnights.” The most recent TIME Person of The Year is well
deserving of this honor, as all 20 songs from “Midnights” charted on the Billboard Hot 100. In addition to that unbelievable accomplishment, the album also broke three Spotify records: most streamed album on Spotify in 24 hours (184.6 million streams), most day-one streams of an album on Spotify (184.6 million streams) and most streamed act on Spotify in 24 hours (228 million streams). “All I want to do is keep doing this. So thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to do what I love so much,” Swift remarked. In addition to this honor, Swift also won Best Pop Vocal Album. During this acceptance speech, she announced her 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department.” After leaving clues about finally dropping “Reputation (Taylor’s Version),” fans, including myself, were certain that is what she would be announcing at the Grammys. However, like she always does, Swift pulls a surprise from out of nowhere, keeping fans on the edge of their seats. The other major awards went to a variety of incredibly talented and deserving artists. Miley Cyrus won Record of the Year for “Flowers,” Eilish won Song of the Year for “What Was I Made For?,” Boygenius won Best Rock Song for “Not Strong Enough” and Victoria Monét won Best New Artist. Additionally, Jay Z won the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award,
and brought his daughter, Blue Ivy, on stage. Although this is an incredible accomplishment, audiences were confused when his acceptance speech morphed into criticism of the Recording Academy. The musician pointed out the many times his wife, Beyoncé, did not receive the recognition she deserved, stating that “she has more Grammys than everyone and never won album of the year — that doesn’t work.” Finally, many legendary musicians performed at the show, ranging from Billy Joel to Eilish. However, the
one performance that was especially moving was by Joni Mitchell, the CanadianAmerican musical icon. At the Grammys, she performed her song, “Both Sides Now,” which she won a Grammy for in 1970, and received the award for Best Folk Album. Siobhan Rushin, FCRH ’26, shared, “Joni Mitchell’s performance brought me to tears and was by far the highlight of the night.” Overall, the Grammys were an entertaining event that was reflective of the remarkably talented artists that are the pillars of the music industry today.
COURTESY OF INSTAGRAM
Taylor Swift won a fourth Album of The Year award at the Grammys.
Editor’s Pick | Film
The Best Nostalgic Disney Film is “Hannah Montana: The Movie”
By DIANA JUAREZ
ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
If you are in need of a fun, colorful movie filled with nostalgia and songs you cannot resist singing, I suggest “Hannah Montana: The Movie.” Not only does the movie have cringe-worthy Disney dialogue, but it also has iconic scenes from 2009. The opening scene of Hannah trying to get into her own concert is one that will go down in history. Miley Stewart has to be the only pop star who cannot get into her own concert. The montage of her getting ready made every girl jealous. She had the perfect makeup box that every girl begged their moms for. And her rainbow sequin dress is such a staple that people still buy it as a Halloween costume 15 years later. One of the subplots in the movie is Hannah being confronted by a tabloid reporter hoping to find some dirt on the pop star. For the entirety of the movie, a grown man named Oswald Granger, with two teenage daughters of his own, follows the 16-year-old to her hometown to find something that could ruin her career. Oswald begins to follow her, where he covers a fight between Hannah and Tyra Banks over a
pair of heels. He then follows Hannah from the mall to Lilly’s birthday party. Scared of letting her secret out, Miley decides to stay as Hannah, which causes a huge commotion. Hannah steals the party’s attention from Lilly and performs one of Hannah’s hit songs, “Let’s Get Crazy.” While mad, Oswald approached Lilly, hoping to get some information on Hannah’s secret. Lilly decides to tell him where she is from, so Oswald follows Hannah all the way to Tennessee. Her father Robby Ray becomes angry that Miley missed saying goodbye to her brother Jackson before he went to college and Miley realizes that she prioritizes being Hannah over her friends and family. After being a reckless teen pop star, Miley’s dad takes her to spend some quality family time in her small town, Crowley Crows, Tenn., for her grandmother’s birthday. Blindsided, Miley thinks she’s going to New York and arrives on the flat plains of Tennessee. Miley refuses to keep going and gets out of the truck, still wearing her Hannah wig. In classic Disney fashion, Miley removes her wig. She attempts to ride her old horse, but the horse runs away. Here, she meets her dashing cowboy
after he saves her horse, Blue Jeans. He becomes her knight in shining denim. The cowboy’s name is Travis Brody, played by Lucas Till, who gave me my obsession with country boys. His dazzling smile, bright blue eyes and dimples can make any city girl turn rustic. Another memorable scene is when Robby breaks all of Grandma’s collectible plates. This happens after Robby meets Lorelai, a beautiful country woman who, for some reason, lives on the same ranch. Even though Robby is only staying in Tennessee for two weeks, he still flirts with her, showing men never mature and just want one thing. In an attempt to impress her, Robby fumbles and manages to shatter every single one of this poor lady’s priceless rare plates — even the Elvis one. Despite this, Lorelai, being a 40-year-old single woman, is still willing to give this man a chance even though he has a goatee. After spending some time with her grandmother, Miley learns that the town is trying to raise money to avoid building a shopping mall and stripping the town of its charm. During her stay, Miley reconnects with her town and performs “Hoedown Throwdown.” The choreography is still engraved
in my head. Mr. Bradley, the mall developer, tells the whole town that they will never raise enough money to stop “progress.” Miley is then forced to admit that she knows Hannah Montana and that a concert from her will raise enough money. In a last-minute attempt to save her old town charm, Miley has Lilly fly in as Hannah. While preparing for the concert, Miley and Travis spend time together building a chicken coop, and Travis eventually asks her out. In predictable Disney fashion, Travis’ date is at the exact same time as a mayor’s lunch, which Hannah has to attend. For some reason, Miley couldn’t have rescheduled her date an hour later. In this back-and-forth, Travis becomes annoyed at Miley’s flakiness and goes to look for her. He finds Hannah taking off her wig to reveal her true identity. He becomes angry at her and accuses her of mocking him the entire time. Afterwards, Miley spent the entire night finishing the chicken coop she was working on with Travis. Touched by the effort, Travis goes to the concert to cheer Hannah on. During the concert, Hannah sees
Travis and her dad and stops mid-song to remove her wig, declaring she can no longer live in a lie when the crowd promises that they will keep her secret. Realistically, her secret would’ve been revealed long ago, but Disney needed more seasons. Hannah’s publicist has Oswald’s daughters flown in for the concert, and they convince him not to expose Hannah’s secret. The movie is filled with a lot of Disney magic; a lot happens, but nothing is resolved or talked about again. However, it is a fun girly movie that gifts us songs like “The Climb,” “Butterfly Fly Away” and “Hoedown Throwdown.” I suggest that every girl rewatches this with her friends to remember that it is okay just to be a girl and that the climb is an adventure and we should enjoy it.
COURTESY OF TWITTER
Hannah Montana still shines.
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February 14, 2024
Columbia Greenmarket Takes Grocery Shopping To The Next Level By MAEVE HAMILL
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Every Sunday and Thursday year-round, there is a greenmarket right outside Columbia University that has fresh produce, dairy, baked goods and more. This market and others in all five boroughs are sponsored by Grow NYC, an environmental nonprofit that was founded in 1970. This past Sunday, I traveled to the market to see if it was worth the trek and the price. Being a Fordham Rose Hill student, the fastest way to get to the market is by taking the Bx12 bus to
Inwood and transferring to the 1 train. When I emerged from the 116th St. station, the market was across the street. In total, the one-way trip to Columbia cost me $5.80 and took me about 45 minutes. While it requires a transfer, it does help tremendously that the train and bus drop you off exactly at your destination. My trip to the Columbia Greenmarket was my first time seeing Columbia’s campus. I was blown away by the architecture of the campus and of Morningside Heights. What surprised me when I
COURTESY OF GREENMARKET PLACE INSTAGRAM
The Greenmarket features varieties of fresh produce.
saw the market was that the stands were not in a park or square as I envisioned it, but on the sidewalk from 116th St. to 114th St. Luckily, the street and sidewalk are very wide, so there was no problem with foot traffic at the market. My only criticism with this setup was that I had to walk up and down the two blocks a couple of times before I knew what stands I wanted to purchase from. The options were just too hard to choose from, with 14 local farm stands selling a wide variety of fresh and delicious food. I started by purchasing a San Francisco sourdough loaf and cheese from the Breeze Hill Orchard and Knoll Krest Farm. It felt good to be outside, handing my cash over to a local farmer in exchange for freshly baked bread and cheese which he cut in front of me. I felt much better than I would walking back and forth between the aisles in a grocery store, not knowing from whom or where the food came from. After my first purchase, I got the bug. I went to the next stand and handpicked some exotic cultivated mushrooms from Dan Madura Jr. Farms. I do not know anything about mushrooms, but I asked the farmer at the stand a few questions. She was happy to help and tell me about her family’s 300-acre vegetable farm in Orange County, N.Y. She explained that the extremely fertile land in
the black dirt region allows them to grow a wide variety of exotic mushrooms. Next, I got brussel sprouts and kale from Nolasco’s Farm and stopped at Samascott Orchards, where I encountered apple varieties I had never heard of, like crimson gold and candycrisp. I chose four different kinds to try because they were all the same price per pound. Items I reluctantly missed out on included muffins, scones, fresh eggs, fish, meat, pasta and cider. For everything I got, I was pleasantly surprised with how affordable the market was. I was fearful I was going to have to face the steep prices of the Upper West Side, but the produce was fairly priced — some items even cheaper than what you’d see at a grocery store! The most expensive thing I bought was the sourdough bread and cheese which ran me about $21. All of my other purchases were well under $10, so the total for my trip was around $35 which was worth it for the quality of food I got and the fulfilling experience. If I had any advice for next time, it would be to bring cash. While most of the stands accept cards or cash, there were a few (like the mushroom farmer) who were cash only. If you forget cash like I did, it is not a problem because there are a ton of banks along Broadway right by the market. Again, cash is not necessary for shopping at the
market, but it is much more convenient, and you avoid that pesky card fee. Plus, if you have cash left over after your shopping, you can stop at Absolute Bagels, which is also cash-only and delicious, though the line for handmade New York bagels on a Sunday can get quite long. Another recommendation I have is to make a day out of it. For the long commute, it is definitely worth it to add something to your itinerary and explore the variety of things the neighborhood has to offer. There are loads of places to eat lunch, some sitdown restaurants and others takeout only. If you’re in the mood for takeout, I would recommend bringing your food to Riverside Park for a picnic and people-watching. You could also visit the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and see its iconic stained glass windows up close. If you don’t have the leisure time to explore the neighborhood, go to the New York Public Library only two blocks away from the market to do some homework before you shop. The neighborhood has a great atmosphere and something for everyone. If you are interested in buying fresh groceries from local farmers or exploring a new spot, check out the Columbia Greenmarket from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Sunday or Thursday. If you don’t want to make the trek or you’re busy on those days, go to Grow NYC’s website to look at the 18 other greenmarkets open year round in NYC!
The Met’s New Facade Unveiled By CLARE HANNON CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The annual facade commission outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fifth Avenue entrance has been installed and will remain in place until May. Iranian-German artist Nairy Baghramian created four vibrant aluminum-based sculptures that seem to spill out of the niches that line the Met’s front entrance. These statues are no exception to Baghramian’s usual artistic specialty: abstract and modern art, a style that might seem at odds with the 19th-century Beaux-Arts architectural style of the Met. However, the striking colors and fluid shapes presented by the sculptures mesh well and add a pop of color to the museum’s facade. Baghramian took inspiration from several sources when designing her installation. First is the fragmented antique statues in the Met’s collection. The Classical Greek and Roman wing of the Met boasts thousands of statues, but given the nature of time many have been broken and are displayed in only pieces of their original selves. Baghramian wanted to evoke this fractured, delicate
nature of sculpture when designing her installation. The pieces on the Met’s facade appear fractured and disparate, each an amalgamation of movement and color that somehow comes together to portray a seemingly incomplete but beautiful and distinctive piece. These ideas of the incomplete and fragmented also come to fruition in Baghramian’s sculptures through the themes of flotsam and jetsam washed up on the beach. Flotsam and jetsam are much like the incomplete classical sculptures in the Met’s collection: fragmented but still beautiful and able to tell at least part of their story. Baghramian’s statues outside the Met offer a similar feeling to viewers at flotsam and jetsam. They are fragmented and abstract; their whole story cannot be told, but they are beautiful and inspiring nonetheless. A third place from which Baghramian took inspiration is the panoramic nature from which statues are supposed to be viewed. In a video interview posted on the Met’s website, Baghramian mentions that in order to truly know a
three-dimensional piece like a sculpture, you must view it from all angles. This notion is presented with her new pieces because they could be viewed from any position; there is no front or back of them. This idea is where she got the name of the exhibit, “Scratching the Back,” a play on the phrase “scratching the surface.” Baghramian was also intrigued by this notion of front versus back since the Met’s current Fifth Avenue entrance used to be the back of the museum. The entrance to the museum used to face Central Park, but in 1902 was shifted to face Fifth Avenue. All of these factors together prompted Baghramian to create the unique and dynamic pieces on display. The sculptures are small and difficult to see from certain angles, but walking back and forth in front of the facade offers a wonderful, more comprehensive view of the art. To view the sculptures, I took the Ram Van from Rose Hill to Lincoln Center, walked through Central Park, enjoyed last weekend’s sunshine and took in the bustle of visitors to the Met and the vibrancy of
Fifth Avenue. Since the installation is public, you can view it for free, but it can add to your understanding of the pieces if you order a paywhat-you-wish student ticket (online or in-person) and
explore the classical Greek and Roman wing. Baghramian’s sculptures are a beautiful addition to the Met’s facade, and are well worth the visit to their Fifth Avenue location.
COURTESY OF MARY HAWTHORN/THE FORDHAM RAM
The new facade featured statues that brightened the entrance.
CULTURE
February 14, 2024
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Who’s That Kid | Haley Gregoire, FCRH ’24
Senior Turns Passion For Sports Into Career By ZACHARY BADALAMENTI ASST. OPINION EDITOR
When embarking on the journey of establishing a career in sports journalism, Haley Gregoire, FCRH ’24, is strategically navigating her path with determination and ambition. Gregoire is a professional task juggler. On top of pursuing a double major in Spanish and communications along with a minor in sports journalism, she has positioned herself as a digital production intern at Sirius XM Radio, showcasing her commitment to kickstarting her professional trajectory. Reflecting on her experience at Sirius XM Radio, Gregoire expresses profound satisfaction, deeming it an absolute dream come true. Immersed in an environment characterized by a warm and welcoming atmosphere, she finds joy in her role, contributing to the success of a company that has, since its inception in June 2000, evolved into the foremost audio entertainment entity in North America. The opportunity to intern at Sirius XM Radio is not merely a job for Gregoire but a pivotal step toward a promising future in sports broadcasting, given the network’s
status as the standard in the audio entertainment industry. Gregoire’s desire to work in the world of sports journalism did not materialize in the last couple of years. In fact, Gregoire says that her absolute obsession with football and tuning into the NFL began when she was in elementary school. When reflecting on the origins of her love for sports and, in particular, football, she said, “I’m the youngest in my family, and there’s no boys. So, once I was born and [my father] realized he probably wasn’t going to have a boy, I think he just decided that I was going to be the one to love football as much as him.” Although unable to participate on a football team growing up, Gregoire’s love of the game was never deterred. Similar to many football lovers, she remembers fondly playing games of backyard football with her family over the years. While she could not play the game of football competitively, Gregoire instead focused her athletic talents on dance and has practiced several different styles over the years. That said, in the event of needing to break out a touchdown dance celebration, Gregoire says she would pull
out a pretty slick moonwalk. Originally from Baton Rouge, La., Gregoire did not predict she would end up at Fordham University. For Gregoire, the decision to come to Fordham was not as simple as it was for the majority of other Fordham students who are typically from New York and the surrounding Northeastern region of states. When asked why she chose to move over 1,300 miles away from home, Gregoire says she wanted to be in the fast-paced media environment of New York City. Staying true to the reason she came to Fordham in the first place, Gregoire is now a part of the industry she has always wanted to join. Gregoire’s passion for the NFL infuses a distinctive voice into the realm of sports broadcasting, a perspective often overshadowed. In an industry where sports analytics and broadcasting positions are predominantly occupied by male pundits, statistical data reveals that only approximately 12.1% of these roles are held by females. Undeterred by these numbers, Gregoire exudes confidence, asserting her ability to command attention in a room filled with diverse personalities. Her self-assured demeanor is complemented by a genu-
ine love for sports, a quality that sets her apart and propels her toward breaking barriers in an industry where female representation is not as prevalent. Haley Gregoire stands as a testament to resilience, challenging stereotypes and making her mark in the com-
petitive field of sports journalism. Her journey at Sirius XM Radio not only signifies personal growth but also symbolizes a larger movement towards inclusivity and diversity in the traditionally male-dominated landscape of sports broadcasting.
COURTESY OF ZACHARY BADALAMENTI/THE FORDHAM RAM
Senior Haley Gregoire expressed her profound love of sports.
A Trip To Moscow For Only $15.99 By LUSA HOLMSTROM CONTRIBUTING WRITER
My favorite book of all time is Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief.” I first read it in middle school, then again during the COVID-19 shutdown and am now rereading it in Spain as it is (somehow) the only book my host family has in English. Ever since that first read, I have been desperately searching for a book that holds a candle to Death’s own diary. After unintentionally putting it off for over a year, I finally listened to a friend’s recommendation to read “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. Perhaps an odd introduction to a review for a different book, but “Gentleman” is the closest a book has ever come to my admiration for “The Book Thief.” In the book’s chapters, I found myself deeply engaged with the life of the Count, a man sentenced to house arrest in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel as punishment for a revolutionary poem written under his name in the time of the Tsarist regime. Opening with Alexander Rostov’s trial and condemnation in 1922, the novel details careers, lovers and friends across three decades under the same roof. The reader is with him as he crosses the threshold into his first day of confinement and redefines
the idea of house arrest across its 400 pages. Never once does Rostov complain about his situation, taking each day in stride without the mindset of a prisoner. Written by Towles, a Yale and Stanford University graduate who turned to writing after an illustrious career in investment — perhaps post-Goldman Sachs for our Gabelli School of Business grads — the pages nearly turn themselves. While many books may travel across countries or bounce between characters, “A Gentleman in Moscow” readers will find that during their time in the Metropol’s four walls, the Count becomes as intimate as family and the hotel feels like home. The Metropol is described in great detail, creating a robust mental image of each step and corner of wallpaper that makes up this novel’s world. The central staircase is home to rendezvous and first impressions, while the grand ballroom hosts foreign language lessons and candlelit movie viewings. Labyrinths of hidden staircases create hiding places for girls in yellow dresses and boiler rooms of confinement. The Count spends his evenings tilted on the back legs of his chair in his room in the attic reading Montaigne essays, walking back and forth between a Narnia-like coat closet. Throughout the years,
Rostov integrates himself completely into the community of the hotel, which serves as a centerpiece of old Russian culture for Moscow natives. Now a man with ample time on his hands, the Count employs himself as head waiter at the hotel’s renowned Boyarsky restaurant, during a time of intense rationing and “property of the People.” He keeps his routines from “before” that are within the hotel like his weekly hair appointments — though his barber notes that not much changes in that timespan — and his nightly aperitif at the bar. His friendship with a young girl growing up without friends in the hotel turns into the gift of a lifetime, though you’ll have to read for yourself to find out. The Metropol played host to one-time visitors and longterm tenants alike, each with their own relationship with and draw to its unique history and the grand piano that sits in one of its great halls, calling out to players of all caliber. From the Count’s perspective, “There would be songs that emptied your glass and called you to your feet. Songs that led you to leap and alight in a manner that belie your age. Songs that made you reel and spin until you lost your bearings not only between the parlor and the salon, but between heaven and earth.” With every turn of phrase
and intentionally unreliable narrating, “Gentleman” is absolutely perfect for fans of Erin Morgenstern’s supple and magnificently descriptive prose of “The Night Circus,” or (and I may be biased) the innovative approach to historical fiction in “The Book Thief.” Unique narration styles in novels are what stand out most to me when reading, even if they are often difficult to explain in detail without giving away key plot points. Towles includes footnotes and direct references to the reader that pull you in even more and some-
how titles every single chapter with “A” alliterations. This was the first book I’ve wanted to reread as I was already actively reading it. I wrote, “at the same time that I was itching to finish it, I never wanted it to end,” in my little book journal. There is nothing quite like the feeling of finishing a book you immediately realize you will be thinking about for years, just sitting there with it in your hands in silence. What do we have to do to find our next great read? Apparently, you just need listen to your friends.
COURTESY OF INSTAGRAM
The novel transports readers to Russia through its craftful writing.
Page 16
Women’s Tennis Opens A-10 Play with Two Wins
SPORTS Softball Opens 2024 Season By MADDIE BIMONTE SPORTS EDITOR EMERITUS
By JOE HENRY STAFF WRITER
The collegiate tennis season can best be analogized as a tense, back-and-forth rally, with Fordham Women’s Tennis starting their rally on the back foot, dropping two straight matches. Since then, they’ve regained leverage in the rally with three consecutive wins, re-establishing their dominant standing among Atlantic 10 competition. The team enjoyed a nearly twoweek-long break before stepping on the court in Olean, N.Y., to face off with St. Bonaventure University on the morning of Sunday, Feb. 11. In their first taste of A-10 competition against the Bonnies, the Rams reminded their opponents of their identity as reigning conference champs. In doubles, Fordham struggled mightily in their first three matches, the team swept all three matches without dropping a set. It was a similar story in singles, where the club took #1-5 singles, headlined by a hardfought, three-set victory at #1 by graduate student Raffaela Alhach. Alhach dropped the initial set, 4-6, only to bounce back and serve up both 7-6 and 6-3 winning sets against the bonnies’ Cirkeline Lundberg. Freshman Cindy Xhou snagged a three-set win at #3 as well, while senior Rose Hu and freshmen Anlin Xie and Julianne Nguyen each won in straight sets. Behind these efforts, the Rams cruised to a 6-1 win, starting A-10 play 1-0. A mere 24 hours later, the squad began their match against Duquesne — the match took place at St. Bonaventure’s home courts in Olean, making it a neutral site for the Rams and Dukes. The match was
full of unfamiliar foes for each side, with the two squads last facing off in 2018. Historically, Duquesne has bested Fordham in women’s tennis, posting a 13-5 head-to-head all-time record. On Sunday, however, the Rams showed the Dukes that their days of dominion were done with. However, that wasn’t clear at first. While graduate student Demi Jhaveri and junior Lorraine Bergmann took #3 doubles, the Rams lost their other two matches, giving the Dukes the doubles point. Fordham displayed impressive resolve in singles, though, rallying back to seize yet another 6-1 victory. In #1-3 singles, Alhach, Hu and Zhou steamrolled their opponents — not a single player needed a third set to earn the Rams a point. Senior Eleni Fasoula clinched the win for the Rams at #4 singles, giving them their fourth point by way of a 6-0 third-set win over Mila Badics. At #6 singles, Sofie Siem got the Rams another point, triumphing 8-5 in the lone-set matchup. With the win in hand, Franny Shea gave onlookers a show, turning in one of the performances of the year in #5 singles. She took set one 6-1, only to lose a back-breaker in set two, 7-6. With the momentum in the direction of Duquesne’s Taisia Yakunina, Shea bore down and snatched a 10-7 thirdset win. The now 3-2 Rams (2-0 in conference) will look to keep things rolling this weekend when they travel to Kansas to face Kansas State and Wichita State. These out-of-conference affairs will test Fordham, as both of their opponents boast winning records and will carry a major home-court advantage. While the Rams have their work cut out for them, they’ll enter play in a familiar spot: on top of the A-10.
After going 20-28 last season, the Fordham softball team is back in 2024. Undertaking 55 games, they kicked off the first of those games with five going on in Jacksonville, Fla., this past weekend. Participating in the River City Leadoff Tournament, the Rams fell short of making it a winning weekend, yet racked up two wins against the University of Southern Mississippi. The Rams came into this season being ranked fifth in the Atlantic 10 Preseason Polls, a drop after being selected number one in 2023. This season, they added new assistant coach Mackenzie Swinehart after two years as an assistant coach at the University of Notre Dame. But there are a ton of familiar faces across the roster, such as sophomore Neleh Nogay who hit .397 in 44 starts last season, leading the team across hits. Similarly, on the pitching front, graduate student Devon Miller is back for a fifth year, as well as sophomore Holly Beeman who, across 22 starts, recorded a teamhigh 109.1 innings pitched. In 2023, she put eight wins under her belt, finishing with a 1.89 ERA, ranking her among the top 20 players in the nation. Starting off in the first game of the season against Southern Mississippi, Nogay highlighted the offensive strengths of the Rams squad, driving in three runs in the second inning off of a triple. Miller took to the mound for the first game, pitching all seven innings as well as performing strong, conceding just one run on four hits. After the third inning, neither squad was able to tally on more runs to the final score, giving the Rams their opening season win, 3-1. In the second matchup of the day, the Rams did not fare as lucky. The University of North Florida came out swinging against
Athletes of the Week Just a week removed from his victory in the men’s 1000-meter run at the Metropolitan Championship, the junior distance runner ran what was probably his best race of the year this past weekend at the Boston University David Hemery Valentine Invitational: a record-breaking 8:05.24 mark in the men’s 3000-meter run.
Rodolfo Sanchez
Raffaela Alhach Graduate Student Women’s Tennis
The graduate student once again proved why she is the highest-ranked singles player for the Rams over the weekend, winning two absolutely crucial Atlantic 10 singles matches — a hardfought 4-6, 7-6, 6-3 victory against St. Bonaventure University and a straightset steamrolling against Duquesne University — in the short span of 24 hours. Each week, The Fordham Ram’s Sports section honors two athletes for their on-field performances as their “Athletes of the Week.”
Fordham senior Bailey Enoch. The utility player who started every game for the Rams last season gave up nine runs across 3.2 innings, giving a monumental lead to North Florida. The Rams’ offense could not get going as they only managed to scrape two runs by North Florida’s Allison Benning. They would concede the matchup 10-2 with another three games in the tournament left to play. First, on Saturday, the Rams battled back against Southern Mississippi in a rematch game to snag the win out from under them. In the bottom of the seventh, the Rams had one last chance to make an impact. Two walks to start things off for the Rams to seniors Julia Petrovich and Bella Ayala allowed the tying runs to be on base. Adding on a single by sophomore Eva Korastsis, the bases were loaded for the Rams. The Rams were fired up at this point, as sophomore Kate McGuire hit a heater to the third base side to score a run and make the score 1-2, Southern Mississippi. Trying to hold on to their lead, Southern Mississippi decided to pull starting pitcher BrookLynn White and replace her with a fresh arm in Jana Lee. However, next up in the order was freshman Mikayla Swan who drove in the tying run off of a single. With just one out recorded by Southern Mississippi, the Rams still had leverage as they tried to pull through with a win. Star hitter Nogay once again came through for the Rams, dropping a base hit into left field, scoring McGuire at third and winning the game 3-2. However, the Rams were not able to end the day with a sweep because in the second game, the Rams had a trickier time against Jacksonville University. Hitting for Fordham went dry as they could not put up a run across five innings. For the Rams’ pitching, freshman Olivia Simcoe got her first starting pitching moment after closing out an
inning against North Florida. Simcoe just couldn’t get into the groove at first, giving up a two-run home run in the first and eight hits across four innings. Miler came out to close things for the Rams, but the Rams would be shut out for the first time this year. With one last game left, the Rams offense made a surging return, yet just fell short of Ball State University on Sunday. Each team recorded four runs in each of their first innings, highlighted by offensive efforts from junior catcher Sydney Wells as well as Miller, who hit and pitched this game. Wells went 2-for-4 drilling a two-run home run and recording a pair of RBIs as well as one run. Miller threw five innings, conceding six hits and recording three strikeouts. She drove in two runs, showing her multifaceted talents on the diamond. In total, seven Rams scored a run and a hit in that game, and five different Rams recorded an RBI: graduate student Michela Carter, junior Allie Clark, Nogay, Petrovich and Wells. With both teams sitting at 4-4, Ball State pulled away first in the third, hitting a solo home run. Fordham responded quickly, tacking on a pair of runs. Now, the score refused to stay in the Rams favor for long as Ball State answered back with four runs in the sixth, making it 6-10 in favor of the Cardinals. This marked Wells’ two-run home run, narrowing the Ball State lead to two, yet they could not close the gap entirely, dropping the last game of the tournament, 8-10. The Rams ended the weekend’s tournament with a record of 2-3, recording 16 runs across five games. Next, they travel to the west coast for the Silicon Valley Classic in California, squaring up against four teams, University of Nevada, Reno, Santa Clara University, San Jose State University and Portland State. University.
Varsity Calendar HOME AWAY
Wednesday Thursday Feb. 14 Feb. 15
Friday Feb. 16
Saturday Feb. 17
Sunday Feb. 18
Squash
CSA Team Championship
Men’s Tennis
Fairfield 6 p.m.
Men’s and Women’s Track and Field
Junior Men’s Track
February 14, 2024
Men’s Basketball
Baseball Women’s Tennis
Tuesday Feb. 20
Terrier DMR Challenge St. Bonaventure 7 p.m.
Dayton 1:30 p.m.
Davidson 7 p.m. St. Bonaventure 1 p.m.
Women’s Basketball Softball
Monday Feb. 19
Silicon Valley Classic Wake Forest Wichita State 5 p.m. 10 a.m. Akron 4 p.m.
Illinois 10 a.m. Kansas State 2 p.m.
SPORTS
February 14, 2024
Men’s Tennis Loses Two on the Road By NOAH HOFFMAN ASST. SPORTS EDITOR
The Fordham men’s tennis team played two matches this past weekend, dropping both of them. The Rams started off the weekend with a 6-1 loss to St. Bonaventure University on Saturday. Like Fordham’s first match of the season, after taking the doubles point to open up the day, they followed it up with six straight singles losses. The day began with senior Giorgio Soemarno and graduate student Nick Mueller handily beating the Bonnie duo of Rasmus Egehus and Archi Graham by a score of 6-1. The Rams followed up the opening win with another, this time in a much closer match with senior Nicholas Kanazirev and Fordham sophomore Dhillon Virdee-Oakley outlasting Connor Turner and Hugo Cochlin by a score of 7-6. With the doubles point already secured before the final match, the Rams, with some breathing room, sent sophomore John Mascone and senior Bingru Chen to face Jean Marrero and Anargha Ganguly. The pair fell to Marrero and Ganguly by a score of 4-6. The first singles competition had St. Bonaventure’s Graham face Fordham’s Mueller in a backand-forth contest. Graham took the first set by a score of 6-2, but Mueller fought back in the second to win the set 6-4 and tie the match up at one set apiece. In the deciding set, Graham edged out Mueller in a close battle, winning by a score of 6-4 to take the first singles point and knot the score up at one for the day. In the second singles match, the Bonnies sent Egehus to play the Rams’ Kanazirev. It was another close match between these two, with two sets played, but Egehus came out on top in both of them. Egehus won the first set by a score of 6-3 before finishing off the match with a 6-4 win in the second set to sweep the match and give St. Bonaventure a 2-1 lead after the day finished.
For the their competition of the day. Turner competed against Virdee-Oakley in another backand-forth match. Turner outlasted Virdee-Oakley in the first set, narrowly beating him by a score of 6-4. In the second set, VirdeeOakley took handily in blowout fashion by a score of 6-1, setting up a match-deciding set for the second of three singles matches. In the set, Turner defeated VirdeeOakley by a score of 6-2, giving St. Bonaventure another win and a 3-1 lead. In the fourth match, Cochlin for St. Bonaventure dueled Mascone of Fordham in another closely contested match-up. This match saw Cochlin barely overmatch Mascone in back-to-back sets, with Cochlin winning both sets by a score of 6-4. The Bonnie win was the fourth for them on the day, securing them the win with still two more matches to play. The fifth and sixth matches of the day also went to St. Bonaventure. First was Ganguly defeating Chen in consecutive sets, 6-1 and then 6-3, for the fifth straight Bonnie win. In the final match, Marrero beat Stefan Stojanovic, also in straight sets. However, the Rams did not go down without a fight, as after Stojanovic lost to Marrero in the first set by a score of 6-2, the second set was much closer but still went to Marrero 6-4. The Marrero win completed the sweep for the Bonnies in the singles competition. The day ended for the Rams with a 6-1 loss. It was a quick turnaround for Fordham as they played against Duquesne University the next day. The day started with a doubles match win as the duo of Mueller and Soemarno defeated Tamirlan Teberikov and Bode Vance 6-4. Two consecutive losses followed the win. The first was at the hands of Kaipo Marshall and Jin Dassanayake, beating Kanazirev and Virdee-Oakley 4-6. The second was another 4-6 loss after Keita Duclos and Alfrendo Vogelaar beat Chen and Mascone. The Rams didn’t fare any
better in the singles matches, losing all six in a sweep. The first match was Marshall facing off against Mueller. The first set went to Marshall easily, winning 6-1. Mueller bounced back in the second set to knot the match up at one set apiece and send it to a match-deciding third set. Marshall barely won the last set, winning 6-4 after a tough battle. The second match was almost identical to the first one as Teberikov defeated Kanazirev, also in three sets. The first set went to Teberikov by a score of 6-3. The second set also ended in a 6-3 score, this time to Kanazirev. The third and final set, once again, was a 6-3 finish, with Teberikov winning once again to take the match. In the third match of the day, the Fordham representative also lost in three close sets. Duclos and Virdee-Oakley faced off, with Duclos getting the best of him. The first set went to Virdee-Oakley by a score of 6-4. Duclos, however, went on to win the following two sets, by a score of 6-3 and 6-2, to take the match, the third singles win in a row for Duquesne. The last three matches all went to the Dukes, and all in sweeps. The first of the three was between Vogelaar and Mascone. Vogelaar won first 6-3 and then again in quicker fashion, 6-0. The second to last match saw Dassanayake defeat Chen, first by a score of 6-1 and then in a closer set 6-4. In the final match of the day, Vance and Stojanovic faced off in a singleset match that ended in an 8-4 final. The two losses put the team at a record of 0-3 overall for the season after losing last week against the Boston University Terriers. They’ll hope to get on the right track and get their first win of the season in their next matchup against Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn., on Saturday, Feb. 17. .
Page 17
Varsity Scores & Stats Women’s Basketball Fordham 64 UMass 50
Men’s and Women’s Track and Field Valentine Invitational (No Team Scoring) Big Apple Invitational (No Team Scoring) Millrose Games 2nd (4x400m)
Fordham Dayton
70 48
Women’s Tennis Fordham St. Bonaventure
6 1
Fordham Duquesne
6 1
1 6 0 7
Softball Fordham Southern Miss
3 1
Fordham North Florida
2 10
Men’s Tennis Fordham St. Bonaventure
Fordham Southern Miss
3 2
Fordham Duquesne
Fordham Jacksonville
0 9
Women’s Swimming Fordham 159 Wagner 75
Fordham Ball State
8 10
-Compiled by Griffin Stevenson
Men’s Swimming Fordham 133 Wagner 98
News & Notes Two Rams Honored in Weekly Atlantic 10 Swimming Awards: The men’s and women’s swimming & diving teams continued to earn their laurels this past week, as not only did freshman Jesse Abramson win the title of the Atlantic 10 Men’s Swimming & Diving Rookie of the Week, but sophomore diver Mya Bokerman was also named the A-10’s Women’s Swimming & Diving Performer of the Week.
In International Waters: One of Fordham’s very own recently received the highest honor there is in the world of swimming: an international team callup. Junior Alex Shah was once again selected to compete for his home country of Nepal on the world stage, being asked to swim under the Nepalese flag this summer at the 2024 World Aquatics Championship in Doha, Qatar.
Swimming and Diving Sweep Wagner By NOAH HOFFMAN ASST. SPORTS EDITOR
Last week marked a historic moment for Fordham University’s Swimming and Diving, with both the men’s and women’s teams securing victories over Wagner University in a dual sweep to end two dominant seasons. The 159-75 win extends the women’s undefeated streak and puts them at 9-0 for the regular season, their third straight undefeated regular season. They are the first Fordham team in the school’s history to have three consecutive undefeated seasons in any sport. For the men’s team, the 133-98 win rounds out their season at 8-1, the same record they ended the season with last year. Themeetstartedandended,asthey always do, with the two relay events. First was the 200 medley relay. The women’s team, composed of juniors Leire Martin, Emma Shaughnessy, and Jessica Zebrowski and graduate student Allison Lin, finished in first place, winning by just under a
second. Meanwhile, the men’s team, represented by sophomore Christian Taylor, freshman David Topi, junior Vitalis Onu and senior Noah Althoff, just missed out on the first position, losing by two one-hundredths of a second. Fordham did, however, take home both top finishes in each of the 200 freestyle relays that finished out the day. The team of graduate student Jane Brown, junior Zoei Howard, Lin and Zebrowski had the best time for the women. The men’s team of graduate student Guy Gropper, Onu, Althoff and senior Alex Wilhelm also finished first with the top time. In the individual events, the women dominated, with Fordham only coming in second in one event, the 50 freestyle, making it a total of 12 wins out of the 13 events, including both relays. Junior Ainhoa Martin and sophomore Mya Bokerman led the way by winning two events each. Ainhoa claimed first in the 200 freestyle and 100 butterfly. Bokerman won both of the diving
events, the one-meter and the threemeter. The Other wins came from sophomore Ellen Brooks in the 1000 freestyle, Leire in the 200 individual medley, Zebrowski in the 100 freestyle, Brown in the 100 backstroke, junior Emilie Korg in the 500 freestyle and Shaughnessy in the 100 breaststroke. The men’s team won a total of eight events on the day, including the relay win. They were led by Taylor and sophomore Marco Petit, who each won two events. Taylor took first in the 50 freestyle and the 100 backstroke, while Petit won the 1-meter and 3-meter dives to sweep that category. Other contributors on the men’s side included Wilhelm in the 200 freestyle, Althoff in the 200 individual medley and Alexander Shah in the 100 freestyle. Next up for the Rams is the 2024 Atlantic 10 Swimming and Diving Championships, which will take place from Feb. 21-24 at the Hampton Aquaplex in Hampton, Va.
COURTESY OF FORDHAM ATHLETICS
Fordham pulled off the sweep against the Wagner Seahawks.
SPORTS
Page 18
February 14, 2024
Track and Field Competes at Three Separate Meets By JONAH RING SPORTS EDITOR
It was more of the same this past weekend for Fordham’s track and field teams, as both the men’s and women’s squads found themselves competing under a strenuous and chaotic schedule: one that demanded the teams be split up across three separate meets on three separate days. The first competition of this trifecta marked yet another trip to Boston University for the Rams, the team heading into the enemies Terrier-country to compete in the BU David Hemery Valentine Invitational. Fordham’s stint in Beantown was marked by some high highs and low lows; while a select few athletes found themselves conquering prior school records or personal bests, many Rams put in performances that produced times well below their season averages. The first of these standalone strong outings belonged to sophomore sprinter Christian “C.J.” Weddington, who, for the second time in as many weeks, broke the school record in the men’s 60-meter dash, running a blistering time of 6.89 seconds — good enough for an extremely strong seventh-place finish. Next was junior Nathaniel Bezuneh’s performance in the men’s 1000-meter run. While his amazing time of 2:26.20 only netted him 27th place in an extremely crowded field, it crucially qualified him for the all-important Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America Championships that are soon. Finally, for the men in
Boston, Rodolfo Sanchez continued his stellar junior campaign by breaking the school record in the men’s 3000-meter run, running an extremely impressive mark of 8:05.24. On the women’s side of the meet, graduate student Kyla Hill would join Sanchez and Weddington in donning the title of “record breaker,” adding yet another school record to her already-full list of accolades by running a stellar time of 55.93 seconds in the women’s 400-meter dash. Hill’s day would not end there, however, as she would also go on to produce an astounding fourth-place finish in the women’s 60-meter dash, registering another blistering time of 7.75 seconds. Moreover, also finishing alongside her in the top 20 of the event was her sophomore teammate Dillyn Green, whose time of 8.10 seconds placed her firmly in 18th place. While it was individual performances like these for Fordham’s first meet of the weekend, it was team-wide consistency that would go on to define the Rams’ time defending their home turf at the Big Apple Invitational. Kevin Callaghan began these team-wide efforts by running a strong race in the men’s 200-meter dash, the sophomore sprinter following up his incredible showing last weekend with an impressive seventh-place finish and a blistering time of 22.42 seconds this time around. Also joining him in the top 25 of the event was a pair of his freshman teammates, the duo of Dakota Strain and Sam Freeman, with Strain finishing in 20th and
Freeman in 21st. In the men’s 500-meter dash junior Chris Martinez notched what was the Ram’s best finish of the day, as he managed to bring home a silver medal by running a stellar mark of 1:06.33. Also representing Fordham atop the event’s field was freshman Jake Frayler, whose strong time of 1:13.80 propelled him into 11th place. In terms of the women’s collective efforts at the meet, they started their day off very strong in the 800-meter run, with the duo of freshman Kate Meeks (2:21.01) and senior Molly Mulvaney (2:21.80) both managing to record top-10 finishes in the event: sixth and ninth respectively. They were not alone in the upper ranks of the event’s crowded field, however, as also joining the two in the top 25 of the event was their senior teammate Abigail Llach, whose time of 2:26.45 in the event put her squarely in 22nd. The Rams immediately saw a second trio of competitors net top-25 finishes, with the three sophomores Alexandra Williams, Nicole Lytle and Kylie Ritz finishing in 11th, 17th and 18th, respectively, in the women’s 200-meter dash. This trend of multiple top25 finishes for the Rams only continued to repeat itself in the women’s 400-meters, as freshman Anna Maria Ivits finished in 17th in the event behind a strong time of 1:01.35, while senior Sophia Crucs came squarely in 22nd with a 1:02.04 performance. The Rams kept momentum rolling into and through the women’s mile run, as not only was graduate student
Alexandra Thomas able to claim eighth place in the event on the back of her impressive 5:17.04 mark, but senior Clodagh McGroary also managed to finish just behind her in 15th with a time of 5:20.97. This amazing success in distance races for the Rams was replicated just minutes later, moreover, as Sarah Zahaykevich continued her strong freshman year by recording an impressive time of 10:24.35 in the women’s 3000-meter run — a performance that was good enough for 10th place. In the women’s 60-meter dash, freshman Caroline Fallona used her performance — a strong ninth-place finish behind an extremely impressive time of 8.14 seconds — to continue to ensure that the Rams had a presence at the top of every event. Finally, in the women’s 60-meter hurdles, the Rams again saw a pair of top-10 finishes, as sophomore Kylie Ritz’s time of 9.17 seconds propelled her into eighth place, while Lytle’s mark of 9.28 put her in 10th place for her second top-20 finish of the day. On the field side of things, the women of Fordham put in their typical stellar performances in the high jump, as four Rams managed to finish in the top-15 of the event. It was sophomore Leia Ruvo who led this impressive charge, her mark of 5’4.5” being good enough for a fourth-place finish. Just behind her in ninth was not only junior Anya Alfonsetti-Terry, but also sophomore Alexandra Manetovic, as the pair finished tied with marks of 5’1”. Finally rounding out the impressive performances for the Rams in
the event was sophomore Zoe Arakelian, who managed to put together a day worthy of a 13thplace finish. However, despite this strong showing in the high jump, the Rams, unfortunately, fared worse in the women’s long jump and the women’s pole vault, recording only a singular top-15 finish in each: senior Skylar Harris’ 10th-place finish in the long jump (17’5.5”) and freshman Michaela Gier’s 13thplace finish in the pole vault (10’10”). Finally, at the last meet of the weekend, the famed Millrose Games, the Rams once again made their presence felt despite fielding only two 4x400 relay teams on the day. On the men’s side of this singular event, the team of graduate student Erik Brown and the aforementioned sprinters Freeman, Strain and Callaghan all combined to run an impressive time of 3:19.71, good enough for second place at the meet. The women’s side matched this energy, likewise bringing home a silver medal on the heels of a 3:45.72 performance by the team of Hill, Grween, Williams and senior Michele Daye. In terms of what is next for the Rams, their chaotic schedule is slated to slow down a bit this coming weekend, the team is only being asked to compete in a singular meet: the Terrier DMR Challenge hosted by Boston University.
Mahomes, Kelce and Swift are Special. Embrace It. By COLIN LOUGHRAN STAFF WRITER
It never ceases to amaze me how many sports fans hate greatness. For as many fans as the New York Yankees, Golden State Warriors, Chicago Bulls and New England Patriots had during their incredible runs, there were just as many detractors who whined for something different in the name of “parity.” For some reason, these folks could not appreciate the artistry of players like Derek Jeter, Steph Curry, Michael Jordan or Tom Brady, and instead chose to be bitter during some truly special runs. Don’t make the same mistake with the Kansas City Chiefs. It will be a long time until we see anything quite this special again. This past Sunday, the Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII, their second straught, 25-22 over the San Francisco 49ers in an overtime thriller. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes rose to
the occasion and took home MVP honors after completing 34 of 46 pass attempts, compiling 333 yards through the air and slinging three touchdowns. Tight end Travis Kelce caught nine passes, earned 93 receiving yards and celebrated the big win with romantic partner and pop megastar Taylor Swift after the game. “The Kansas City Chiefs are never underdogs,” Mahomes said after the victory. “Just know that.” The win marked Kansas City’s second straight Super Bowl win and their third in the past five seasons, and with all of the commotion surrounding this year’s team, many have claimed it’s all “too much.” Mahomes and Kelce seem to constantly win. Swift has been on every possible TV screen and radio due to her prolific music career, and Mahomes’ wife, Brittany, recently made her debut as a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition model. Connections to the Chiefs
are everywhere. Social media, advertisements among other endorsement deals that have only increased the dynasty’s cultural reach. This sort of fatigue is a known risk associated with dynasties. After a certain point, most were fed up with seeing the workmanlike Patriots win titles and the clean-cut New York Yankees glide towards many pennants. Even dynasties with colorful characters such as the 2010s Warriors and the ’90s Bulls seemed to frustrate fans after the initial novelty wore off. Of course, fandom will keep many from appreciating the Chiefs’ unique dynasty. But, for one moment, consider the possibility that they are the most compelling dynasty to ever exist. Have we ever seen sports and pop culture intersect the way it has with Kelce and Swift? People have always cared about the athletes on the playing surface, but this fascination has taken on a new level with their budding,
very public, romance. Have we ever seen a quarterback with Mahomes’ talent? Probably not. Brady holds the record for the most Super Bowl wins, and is currently considered the “GOAT” by the vast majority of pundits, but Mahomes may have already proven he is the most gifted QB to ever grace the gridiron. This postseason saw him guide a rather underwhelming wide receiver corps to the promised land. Outside of Kelce, a tight-end by trade, not many of the Chiefs’ receivers offer the sort of pop that strikes fear into opposing defenses. Indeed, Kansas City boasted a top-flight defense this season, but if Mahomes failed to make key plays, they most likely would have been bounced earlier in the playoffs. Prior to Super Bowl LVIII, renowned sportscaster Bob Costas claimed that the Chiefs had officially taken the Dallas Cowboys’ title as “America’s Team.” He, of course, cited the greatness of Mahomes
and head coach Andy Reid, but also hinted at something much more intriguing. “They’ve got Travis Kelce and his romance with Taylor Swift, and it’s a big deal to begin with. And now it blows up bigger,” Costas told CNN. “Plus, the State Farm commercials. Yes, you don’t have to know a screen pass from a field goal to know something about the Kansas City Chiefs. So they’re America’s Team.” Whether or not you watch football, there is aw chance you recognize the Chiefs’ “principle characters.” Has any other dynasty done this with as many individual icons? Mahomes, Kelce and Swift each have their own brands that are recognizable to average consumers who may not be NFL diehards. This, combined with Kansas City’s blend of personality and skill, has made for a winning recipe that should be cherished. The Chiefs have built something monumental that could last for years. Enjoy the ride while it lasts.
SPORTS
February 14, 2024
Page 19
Overtime: Delacroix to Burrow, Cassatt to Clark By JONAH RING SPORTS EDITOR
Art has sadly lost all its social capital. Crowds simply no longer flock to the halls of salons to see the most recent masterpieces, and the days of crowding under café awnings to discuss the validity of a newcomer’s radical style have seemingly come and gone. Even the very idea of an “art of our time” has been condemned to the deep recesses of contemporary social consciousness, with any debates about what sort of works best embody the current zeitgeist having died out and disappeared long ago. However, despite all this, the very basic tenets, ideas and roles of art have not totally evaporated into the cold and unforgiving air of obscurity. Instead, they have rather managed to persist, finding a surprising new medium through which they can continue to live: sports. While this may seem like a radical and rather “out there” idea, I would like to suggest that the world of sports, despite being ostensibly rough and low-brow in nature, and therefore seemingly far removed from the “high culture” that art supposedly is, has effectively filled the hole left by the fall of art, doing everything it once did and potentially more. In essence, sports, like art once was, has become the world’s primary source of popular narratives, social critique and cultural heroes. Looking at the first of these ideas, the visual arts once served a quasi-literary function, often presenting viewers with larger-than-life narratives they could get lost in: the sprawling history paintings of Jacques-Louis David invited onlookers into dramatic moments of pregnant tension; the flowing and ephemeral landscapes of J.M.W. Turner threw individuals directly into the throes of struggles
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The world of sports has seemingly filled the void left by art following its recent decline in social status. between man and the extremes of nature; and the formally radical works of Gustave Moreau beckoned their viewers into fantastical tales pulled straight from a young child’s imagination. In short, the visual arts worked to provide narratives that so often transcended the banality and mundanity that define our lives. However, it is actually the world of sports that has begun to act as the primary source of these escapist tales, with millions, if not billions, of people tuning in every day to games that ultimately function as dramatic narratives: stories full of herculean triumph and devastating loss, heroes and villains of the highest order and something wholly ineffable that causes one to get lost in something more profound. We have effectively replaced canvases and sculptures full of myths
and moments of historical import with fourth and goal snaps from the one-yard line, potential game-winning kicks that seem to cascade through the air forever and playoff games ripe with such hatred and emotion that they seem more like a war between two feuding cities. In essence, the emotion and beauty of the stories of the sports world now give us what art once did: something wholly engaging to get lost in. Art, in its heyday, was also not only just a vessel for escapism, but it additionally acted as a site of social critique. For instance, the colorful and flat paintings of Faith Ringold acted as spaces reserved for meditations on the Black experience in America; the pieces of melancholic sublimity ushered into existence by the brush of Caspar David Friedrich functioned as commentaries on the loss
of religion amidst modernity; and the grittyblack-and-white photos of Nakahira Takuma were meant to actively peel back the “detritus” of postmodern society. Sports have once again taken up this torch in art’s steed, with athletes turning those fields, courts, diamonds and tracks they compete upon into spaces where social commentary flourishes. Most notably, athletes have chosen to kneel during pregame national anthems in order to level critiques on the prevalence of certain oppressive hegemonic structures; whole teams have forfeited games against the national teams of countries whose governments have acted in morally reprehensible manners; and players have worn clothing that bore radical, politically-charged messages. Thus, like artists did with their creative expressions, athletes have turned
their manners of participation into acts of damning social critique. Finally, art, prior to its recent fall, was also once the wellspring from which the world garnered its heroes. It was through perusing the walls of the Louvre that society came to pedestalize the transcendent brilliance of Théodore Géricault; it was the monuments along the eternal streets of Paris that taught the masses to worship the greatness of Auguste Rodin; and the decrepit billboards and walls of New York City were those means by which society became enamored with the striking minimalism of Keith Haring. Once again, the world of sports has taken over this role, filling the void left by art and becoming the fount of our contemporary cultural heroes — those beautiful Bernabéu nights taught everyone Cristiano Ronaldo’s name; a short nine-second sprint made a number of Jamaican men immortal in popular culture; and decades of utter domination rendered the Williams sisters totally ubiquitous. Having said all this, it certainly seems that, for better or for worse, this is the cultural space that we irrevocably exist in now, the brush and chisel having been undoubtedly replaced by the racquet and ball. What remains to be seen, however, is if sports will truly transform and evolve like art did when it was atop the social food chain. Will we end up seeing more radical means of self-expression in sports as time marches on? Should we expect entirely new sports to eventually emerge as people begin to increasingly find the current ones monotonous and unexciting? Surely only time will tell, but if the present moment is showing us anything at all, it is the fact that the world of sports’ emulation of the visual arts runs rather deep.
The Rock: The People’s Champion No Longer By WILLIAM JING CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A few years ago, no one would have believed you if you told them Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would be the most hated man in the wrestling world, especially when seemingly pitted against his distant cousin Roman Reigns, one of the biggest villains in the wrestling world himself. Yet here we are, in February 2024, and that is the exact scenario we have come to. Let’s take a deeper dive into why. On the Feb. 2 edition of WWE Friday Night SmackDown, Cody Rhodes, the first back-to-back Royal Rumble match winner in a full quarter century, confronted Reigns in the final segment of the show. Every year, the winner of the Royal Rumble match gets to take on the champion of their choosing in the main event: WrestleMania. Over the past few years, Rhodes has made it clear that he wants to do what his father, Dusty Rhodes, was never able to do: win the WWE Championship. Last year, Rhodes failed to take the title from Reigns after Reigns’ cousin Solo Sikoa interfered to help him win. Ever since, it seemed like Rhodes, arguably the biggest babyface (a “good guy” in wrestling
terms) in the company, would finally get to “finish the story” and defeat Reigns in his second try. When he won the Rumble match, he pointed to Reigns during his celebration and alluded to wanting to fight him once more in the press conference afterward. That is why when Rhodes went on SmackDown and said, “I’m coming for you, Roman Reigns… just not at WrestleMania,” only for The Rock to come out as his opponent, the fans felt like they had been spit on. The fans who had invested a lot of time and energy into Rhodes’ story were disappointed that it ended because Johnson, a movie star who is also often regarded as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, might bring more eyes to WrestleMania. To put the cherry on top, as Rhodes stepped out of the ring to let Reigns and The Rock have the ring to themselves, his efforts to keep a straight face were not enough to hide his sadness. He looked like his heart had just dropped to the floor. So how did The Rock get there? On Jan. 3, 2024, The Rock joined the board of directors of TKO, the parent company of both the WWE and UFC. He received $30 million in TKO stock and a WrestleMania match against
Reigns in the future as part of the deal, according to famous wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer. That would mean that the WWE had Rhodes win the Royal Rumble despite this important fact. This conflicts with other reports that claimed Rhodes against Reigns for the Undisputed Championship and Seth Rollins against CM Punk in the Heavyweight Championship was the plan just days before Feb. 2. Either way, logic is lacking here. Why would Rhodes remain booked as the Rumble winner if he was never going to fight Reigns, and if the plans changed, why, storyline-wise, would Rhodes challenge Rollins instead? He could only challenge either Reigns or Rollins. Moments before he said he was handing over the Reigns match to The Rock, Reigns had been diminishing the value of the World Heavyweight Championship and making fun of Rollins’ injury. In addition, Rhodes is 3-0 against Rollins since returning to the WWE, including a match where he won inside Hell in a Cell with a torn pectoral muscle. So, is Rhodes giving up his dream title and a match for the top prize in WWE to opt for a B-level title against a man who has never beaten him? Outside of storylines, reports
say that Johnson pushed strongly for a match against Reigns to distract fans and media from the Vince McMahon sex scandal and to “save WrestleMania” after Punk got injured and Brock Lesnar was ruled out due to his part in the scandal. However, this only shows an abuse of power and distrust in the rest of the roster to carry out a good show. Immediately after SmackDown went off the air on Feb. 2, angry fans took to social media to voice their displeasure. #WeWantCody quickly began trending and even became the number one trending hashtag on X, formerly known as Twitter. Fans began questioning if the whole situation was a work (a planned storyline, in wrestling terminology), but the lack of logic makes that highly doubtful. Wrestlers both inside (Ricochet) and outside (Matt Cardona) of the WWE began tweeting #WeWantCody. When the segment was played at a live event the next day, the fans booed loudly. WWE had only a few days to correct their mistakes if they so wished. The Rock versus Roman Reigns was seemingly supposed to be made official at the Feb. 8 press conference in Las Vegas, but the fans forced WWE’s hand. At the
press conference, Johnson called many fans “Cody crybabies” and tried, along with Reigns, to force their way into a match between families. Rhodes then came out and changed his mind, to the fans’ delight. This whole fiasco reminded fans of when WWE had previously tried to underhand Daniel Bryan a decade ago with the return of another former superstar turned actor, Dave Bautista. Furthermore, a not insignificant number of Philadelphia fans booed The Rock and Reigns out of the building back when The Rock helped Reigns win the Rumble match in 2015. Considering WrestleMania will be at an even bigger venue and knowing how wild fans in Philly can get, Johnson may not have wanted to push his luck. The WWE has now pivoted to a storyline where Triple H, the Chief Creative Officer, has been trying to halt The Rock and Reigns’ power trip and where Reigns and The Rock are seemingly working together to make life very difficult for Rhodes. Now, to tie it all together, the WWE just simply has to explain the following fact: why Rhodes has seemingly had a totally baffling and wholly nonsensical change of heart twice up until now.
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February 14, 2024
Women’s Basketball Makes Up Ground with Pair of Wins By LOU ORLANDO ASST. SPORTS EDITOR EMERITUS
Sadly for Fordham Women’s Basketball, the general theme of the new year has been one step forward, two steps back. When the flashes of brilliance came, they wouldn’t stay long enough to build meaningful momentum. That theme went out the window this past week. For the first time since Nov. 28, head coach Bridgette Mitchell’s squad won back-to-back games, not only gaining some confidence, but also closing the gap in the Atlantic 10 standings in the process. The Rams entered this week with a 2-9 conference record and reeling from two tough losses against a pair of elite A-10 opponents. But a return home didn’t just bring the luxury of playing in the comforts of the Rose Hill Gym — it also brought forth an exciting opportunity to execute one final run. Wednesday’s game against the 10-12 University of Dayton marked the start of a noteworthy stretch. Of the seven games remaining until the start of the A-10 tournament, five would come against opponents with a sub-.500 conference record. With the first-round bye still attainable, Fordham could make some headway in the standings despite their early conference struggles. If such a run were to take place, it needed to happen immediately. For the Fordham Rams, there were no more games left to waste. It was now or never. That sense of urgency transferred over to the court as Fordham put together one of their most complete games of the year, defeating Dayton 70-48 in their largest margin of victory in A-10 play to date. The Rams entered halftime with a six-point lead, but it wasn’t per the usual game plan. Senior Taylor Donaldson, the A-10’s leading scorer and Fordham’s primary source of offense, was held to just two points. Instead, graduate student
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Women’s Basketball gained some serious momentum this past week, winning two straight conference matchups.
Amina Ly led the first-half charge with eight points accompanied by six apiece from graduate student Emy Hayford and junior Taya Davis. Fordham may have had a lead, but it was certainly not a comfortable one. Dayton had cut the lead to as little as four with a late secondhalf surge that saw the Rams held scoreless for over three minutes. Add to that Fordham’s second-half struggles, both recently and in the season as a whole, and there was understandably cause for concern. The Rams quickly alleviated any concerns, putting together one of their best second halves of the year as they outscored the Flyers 43-27 and ran away with the game in convincing fashion. “I gave it to the girls at halftime,” said Mitchell with a laugh. “I asked them ‘Do you really want to do this again?’ and they responded.” The 22-point victory was a statement on multiple fronts. Featuring a tall frontcourt led by Arianna Smith, whose 11.2 rebounds per game rank ninth in the NCAA, Dayton is a force on a glass. Yet Fordham stayed right with them physically, marginally losing the rebound battle 40-37 while getting over half of their offense from inside with 40 points in the paint. On the defensive end, the Rams held Ivy Wolf, Dayton’s leading scorer at 12.2 PPG, to just three points
and the reigning A-10 Rookie of the Week Eve Fiala to just four. Arguably most impressive was Fordham’s balanced offensive attack. One of the major criticisms of this team has been the overreliance on Donaldson and Hayford for the team’s offensive production. For instance, just two games ago against George Mason University, Donaldson incredibly accounted for over half of Fordham’s total points. However, while Donaldson again reached double figures with an eight-point second half, but she was far from the only Ram to do so: four different Rams recorded double figures, the most since five different players did it on Nov. 25 against the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Hayford led the way with 16, while Donaldson, Ly and Davis all recorded 10. Not far behind were graduate student Mandy McGurk and senior Matilda Flood with nine each. Mitchell confirmed after the game that it was the most balanced her offense had looked in conference play, believing it to be one of their most complete games of the season. The Rams then stayed at Rose Hill for a Saturday matchup against 3-21 University of Massachusetts. UMass, like Fordham, was under new leadership after its all-time winningest head coach Tory Verdi accepted the head coaching position at the University of Pittsburgh.
Without last year’s A-10 Player of the Year Sam Breen and their three all-conference selections, the Minutewomen had fallen on hard times, returning just three players from last season’s 26-6 team. At 1-11 in conference play and in the midst of a 10-game losing streak, UMass provided the perfect opportunity for Fordham to stack wins. Fordham didn’t take it for granted. Thanks to a second quarter that saw UMass outscored 20-6, the Rams took a commanding 21-point lead into halftime. The lead would grow to 29 by the third quarter. In the final frame, the Minutewomen showed some life when Kristin Williams led 24-9 fourth quarter charge, but it was too little too late. Despite a 3-11 fourth quarter, Fordham still managed a highly efficient 49% from the field, knocking down buckets in bunches to put the game out of reach early. For the second game in a row, it was Hayford who led the offensive attack with 17 points, followed closely behind by Donaldson’s 15. With the exception of freshman Cassidy Mahaney, who logged just four minutes of action, every single player recorded at least three points in the contest. It was a big week for Ly, who has emphatically returned to form. Missing over a month with a concussion in late November, it took quite a while for the 6-foot-4
center to work back into game shape. “It was a difficult recovery process for Mina,” noted Mitchell. “She didn’t just have to work to get back to 100% physically. She had to earn her way back into the starting lineup.” Ly has done just that, starting the last six games. With 10 points and seven rebounds versus Dayton and six points and eight rebounds versus UMass, Ly is playing her best basketball since the head injury. Similar praises go to sophomore Rose Nelson, who is arguably playing the best basketball of her young career. Averaging 6.0 PPG in her last four games and blocking shots at the seventh-best rate in the A-10, Nelson’s confidence is showing on both sides of the court. It may not have been the smoothest road getting there, but it does seem as if things are finally clicking for Fordham. With the wins, the Rams improves to 4-9 in conference. They didn’t technically jump any spots, as they are still tied for 11th place in the A-10 with Dayton However, they have significantly cut down the gap ahead of them. The Rams sit a half game back from 4-8 La Salle University in 10th place and just one game back from 5-8 Saint Louis University in ninth place. Ninth place is the golden number as the top nine teams in the A-10 earn a first-round bye in tournament play. With one game separating the quartet of Fordham, St. Louis, La Salle and Dayton, it’s shaping up to be a tight race for the ninth seed. Luckily for the Rams, they hold a tiebreaker over Dayton and will play St. Louis and La Salle in the upcoming weeks. Fordham will enjoy a full week off following the UMass game. When they return, they’ll look to grab their first road win of the season as they take on a 4-19 St. Bonaventure University team that they defeated by eight earlier in the year. With the Bonnies riding an 11-game losing streak, the Rams have a chance to keep the good times rolling and continue their A-10 climb.
Men’s Basketball Falls to High-Powered VCU By COLIN LOUGHRAN STAFF WRITER
Just about every coach preaches the importance of playing a “full 40-minute game,” and Fordham Men’s Basketball learned again that this sentiment carries more weight than a typical sports cliché. Fordham fell to a 4-6 Atlantic 10 record following a 75-60 home loss against the Rams of the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) last Wednesday night. Despite a strong first half, the boys from the Bronx could not carry their efforts over to the final 20 minutes, and were outplayed by a team with legitimate championship aspirations. “They were very physical,” head coach Keith Urgo said of VCU after the game. “They guard the ball really well. We hit shots in the first half and we didn’t hit them in the second.” Entering the contest, VCU held a 6-3 record and was coming off of a home win against the Flyers of the University of Dayton. The men in maroon played an inspired first half and only trailed by one at the break. As a team, they shot roughly 47% from range in the
first half while attempting to keep the other Rams from finding their offensive footing on the other end. Senior Japhet Medor and sophomore Will Richardson led the Fordham offense for the duration of the game. Medor scored a team-high 17 points in his first double-figure scoring outing since Jan. 13., while Richardson provided 13 points on a 5-9 shooting clip. However the visiting Rams scored the first nine points of the second half to take a 41-31 lead 3:44 into the frame. VCU played a tremendous team game. They shot around 57% from the field across the final 20 minutes and made nine total three-pointers. Graduate student Sean Bairstow and seniors Joe Bamisile and Max Shulga were particularly effective. In what was his first contest since Jan. 27, Bairstow collected 12 points and eight rebounds, Bamisile spaced the floor elegantly while notching 13 points and Shulga put up 13 points with a teamhigh 10 rebounds and seven assists. “They played tougher than us in the second half,” said Urgo. “We have to work on not allowing the offensive
end to affect the defensive end.” Senior Kyle Rose and sophomores Elijah Gray and Josh Rivera struggled to score. They combined for only 13 points on a 6-23 shooting night. Additionally, senior Antrell Charlton was held scoreless and only provided two assists. Fordham struggled to recapture their first-half energy. Following an Abdou Tsimbila dunk that drew the home team within eight points with 14:44 to play, the visitors scored nine unanswered points to take a dominant 52-35 lead. Fordham would only ever cut the lead to 12 points from this moment on, and could generate a legitimate comeback. An optimist would surely give the men in maroon credit for hanging around in the first half. A pessimist would harp on their lackluster second half. A realist would understand that until Fordham is able to consistently offer 40 minutes of intense play on both ends of the court, the outcomes may simply continue to vary. “We have to be able to play a full 40 minutes as we move forward here,” said Urgo after the game. “Because it doesn’t get any easier.”
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Men’s Basketball continued to struggle in conference play, falling to VCU.