Spring 2019 Issue 5

The Campanil 04.23.19 // Student-run newspaper serving Mills College since 1917 //

News

Islamophobia workshop >> pg 2 The Muslim Student Alliance (MSA) held a workshop on the Islamophobia industry.

A&E

Common read >> pg 5 “The Hate U Give” was chosen for the upcoming common read book.

// Volume 104 // Issue 12//

Opinions

Sports & Health

The college admissions scandal reflects the barriers in higher education.

Going gluten-free is an important decision for some, but it is not for everyone.

Staff editorial>> pg 6

Gluten-free >> pg 8

Mills administration and Statement to the faculty join the conversation Mills community from the artist at ASMC open forum Jessica Gillespie Chief News Editor

On April 8, the Associated Students of Mills College (ASMC) held a second open forum at the Lorry I. Lokey School of Business and Public Policy. Attendees discussed the impact of on-campus incidences that brought up concerns of racism and also the succeeding responses from campus leadership.

Members of Mills administration and the art department were

present to address the questions and concerns of students, faculty and staff.

In the most recent incident, from Feb. 12, four pieces of rope, each ending in a loop with a running knot, hung from a tree near the Art Museum loading dock. No contextual signage existed and to members of the Mills community the cords appeared to be nooses.

Students reported the scene to campus authorities and the ropes were subsequently removed.

“I very much regret the harm that this incident caused to so many people on our campus and at the same time I welcome the

JESSICA GILLESPIE

ASMC held a second open forum to address the impact of a student’s unfinished art installation.

opportunity for learning and deeper understanding that this has brought for us,” President Elizabeth Hillman said. “We’re not done acknowledging the harms of the past or correcting the policies and practices.”

In addition to Hillman, the Provost and Dean of the Faculty Dr. Chinyere Oparah, Vice President of Student Life and Dean of Students Dr. Chicora Martin, Associate Provost for Recruitment and Student Success Dr. Margaret Hunter, Art Museum Director Stephanie Hanor and Assistant Professor of Studio Art Yulia Pinkusevich constituted the open forum’s panel.

Black Student Collective (BSC) president, Imani Smith, and Jocelyn Robinson represented the organization. Robinson is also the Mills graduate coordinator for Resident Life and part of the National Black Association.

Hanor said that the rope had been part of placing a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) student’s art installation in the area. The art proposal described a thin stainlesssteel hoop, 12 feet in diameter, suspended off the ground and supported by multiple trees. Strips of curtain-like material would then drape down from the metal circle.

see ASMC page 2

The installation outside of the museum was to be made of steel, cloth and blue powder. The four ropes were intended to pull cables up through the trees. These cables are to support the load of the steel and cloth. The project was just starting and delayed due to the storm. My intention was never to leave these out for view; the ropes were merely the first step to realize the installation.

To the Mills Community, I am thinking about the impacts of my decisions, and I have some deep regrets. I apologize for any pain and fear that my actions have caused. I will explain my intentions surrounding this project, and while I know it cannot change what happened, I hope that providing the sketches to the final installation will bring some clarity to what has transpired in the past few months.

I take these matters very seriously and please know that I did work through various channels at Mills before and after this incident.

Immediately after hearing of the recourse and response I began

meeting with Justice Resolution to participate in an ongoing series of healing circles. I have also met with the dean. I am open to listening, having conversations and being in dialogue. I hope for healing for those affected.

As for this art project, my intentions were to create a space of tranquility. Ropes were rigged as scaffolding in order to pull cables up through the trees. My intent was to create a space of solace and a sense of calm within nature as an offering for the community as a whole. see STATEMENT page 7

Mills joins higher education collaborative to prevent sexual harassment Jessica Gillespie Chief News Editor Mills College is teaming up to launch an Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education. This initiative is in partnership with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, as well as more than 40 other colleges and universities.

“It’s consistent with our historic mission and our goal of pursuing gender and racial equity, and we have to continue to recognize, work to prevent and respond to

stop sexual harassment,” President Elizabeth Hillman said.

Hillman is also a member of the action collaborative’s leadership group and of a preceding study committee that authored a 2018 report, titled “Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.”

The action collaborative aims to bring academic leaders and essential stakeholders across multiple disciplines together in a space to expand upon and create practices and policies that prevent all forms of sexual harassment in

higher education. Other damaging behaviors that sexual harassment encompasses, such as bullying and racial harassment, are also part of the collaborative’s purpose.

“I hope we can build a broader base of knowledge about what we understand about sexual harassment, because the Academies are really focused on evidence and what the data is telling us is working to stop it, to address it and then also better knowledge of what other institutions are doing,” Hillman said.

The action collaborative has four main goals: raising awareness about sexual harassment and its

effects, sharing and promoting institutional policies based on evidence, setting the research agenda and fulfilling the results across institutions, and finding a standard to measure progress.

To support and facilitate these goals, the National Academies will hold regular meetings for members, organize public workshops for the broader community and identify experts and evidence-based research to help advance the action collaborative’s work.

The action collaborative consists of working groups that will meet consistently over the course of four years to determine topics

and the necessary components, such as goals and benchmarks, to facilitate their work. Hillman said that she’ll represent Mills at the action collaborative’s meetings when possible, but she is also committed to having other engaged members of the administration and staff attend to learn and share.

The National Academies’ 2018 report found that the academic workplace has a sexual harassment rate of 58%, the second highest in the U.S. The military has the highest rate at 69%. see ACTION page 8

2

04.23.19

SAMEAPI Heritage Month workshop on Islamophobia Shirley Acuna Asst. News Editor

5000 MacArthur Blvd.

Rothwell 157 Oakland, CA 94613

Editorial Editor-in-Chief Marisa Tangeman eic@thecampanil.com Managing Editor Calli Storrs storrs@thecampanil.com Chief News Editor Jessica Gillespie gillespie@thecampanil.com Asst. News Editor Shirley Acuna acuna@thecampanil.com Arts & Entertainment Editor Jamie Logan logan@thecampanil.com

Sports & Health Editor Zee Celik celik@thecampanil.com

Opinions Editor Felicia Payomo payomo@thecampanil.com

On April 16, the Muslim Student Alliance (MSA) held a workshop on the Islamophobia industry, which is the financial system that benefits from creating fear based misinformation on Islam.

The event was from 6:00 p.m to 7:00 p.m in the Student Union in honor of Southeast Asian Middle Eastern Asian Pacific Islander (SAMEAPI) Heritage Month. It was supported in part by ethnic studies and the SAMEAPI planning committee, which is comprised of members from MSA, the Asian Pacific Islander Student Alliance (APISA) and other SAMEAPI identified students, faculty and staff on-campus.

The interactive workshop was led by Haleema Bharoocha, a gender justice activist & Malikah Bay Area director. Malikah is a grassroots self-defense organization for women that has evolved to encompass solidarity in sisterhood through healing, financial literacy, entrepreneurship and organizing.

Co-President of the Muslim Student Alliance Nadia Bourdoud shared that Co-President Samia Abbasi proposed Bharoocha as a speaker for SAMEAPI month planning. They decided upon the

Islamophobia Industry workshop from other workshops such as bystander intervention, allyship in the age of Islamophobia and technology policy to name a few offered by Bharoocha.

Bharoocha provided a content warning, which is used to alert the audience that material might illicit a strong negative emotional response, for the material that would be covered during the course of the workshop. She encouraged people to take care of their needs as they arose. Bharoocha grounded the workshop by holding a moment of silence for the lives lost in the Mali and New Zealand terrorist attacks to bring them in to the space.

The agenda for the workshop began by defining basic terms and concepts in relation to Islam, and using that shared understanding to build the framework to address the roots of Islamophobia, and the industry that profits more than $200 billion in promoting Islamophobia for political gain.

“I am a practicing Muslim but I never knew how much money was going into the [Islamophobic] industry, and if that doesn’t tell you something, I don’t know what does — that fact as a practicing Muslim that I didn’t know means that others might not have known as well,” Bourdoud said.

The Islamophobic Industry

happens through the philanthropic system, a small core of investors, scholars and advocates. The top funders listed were: Steven Emerson, Daniel Horowitz, Robert Spencer, David Yerushalmi, Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Paul Singer, Seth Klarman and former funder Richard Mellon Scaife.

Those funders support networks of nonprofit organizations. These nonprofits rely on bias experts that generate misinformation about Islam, and that information is shared through larger media and political networks.

“Islamophobia is not a natural occurrence in American or Western culture but is something that is institutionally funded and promoted but seeing people act in strength and unity by showing up

In response to the harmful impact the Mills community has been communicating, the art department implemented a specific signage form. Pinkusevich said that installations placed in public view need to include signage that contain, for example, the artist’s name, a description of the art and an image of its final intended outcome.

“We are recognizing the need for improvement in our curriculum to address these things in a more direct way,” said Pinkusevich.

“We now created a coalition of faculty members, both full time and adjuncts, to put our heads together and work on this, involving feedback from students…to try to implement curricular changes and specific things that would create more cultural competency and educate our students in a way that recognizes who the students of

Mills are and how to better address their own work and how it’s seen out in the world.”

In 2014, a purposefully racist message aimed at Black students on-campus had been posted to the then Mills Confessions Facebook page. The Black community at Mills ended up creating a list of 10 demands that year, updated in April 2016, that included calls for clear procedures on handling faculty, staff and students that demonstrate racism, faculty and staff racial bias training each semester, and guidance on institutionally supporting students of color before, during and after such incidences.

“After speaking with the Black community affected by the incident, including those on our board, we’ve determined that there is a lack of appropriate and timely information, lack of spaces for the Black community to express our feelings, and lack of clarity regarding the policies in place when incidents like these occur,” Smith said in a prepared statement.

Smith further said that, for the past three years, Mills administration has not updated them on the progress towards achieving the 2014 demands. She therefore called upon them to post an update to the new portal page by May 8, and communicate again, in fall 2019, on outstanding demands.

“I worked with the group who worked on the report to support and retain Black identified students.

So, I agree wholeheartedly that an update is warranted and needed and regardless of where we are with those, I think that’s an opportunity,”

[to the workshop] and participating in discussion was really energizing for me,” Mills student Imani Dawson said upon reflecting on the workshop.

Bharoocha shared the work of Dr. Maha Hilal, an inaugural Michael Ratner fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and among her many roles is a committee member of the Justice for Muslims organization. Hilal is an outspoken advocate for human rights, and works to dismantle the systems of Islamophobia through community engagement, coalition building and political organizing.

Read the full story online at the campanil.com

SHIRLEY ACUNA

H a l e e m a B h a ro o c h a l e d t h e i n t e r a c t i v e w o r ks h o p .

Online Online Editor Angel Fabre fabre@thecampanil.com

Copy Copy Chief Molly Stuart Copy Editors Dana Culpepper Lila Goehring

Art Design Editor Rebekah Raymon

Advising Faculty Adviser Achy Obejas The Campanil welcomes public commentary on subjects of interest to the campus community, as well as feedback on the paper itself. Letters to the Editor should be no more than 150 words. Submissions may be edited for length and clarity only.

All submissions must include the author’s name and contact information and may be submitted via e-mail or in typewritten form, accompanied by an electronic copy.

No anonymous submissions will be accepted. Submissions must be received one week before the publication date to appear in the next issue.

The Campanil reserves the right to upload all content published in print, in addition to original content, on our website, www.thecampanil.com.

The Campanil is published every other Tuesday.

Students interested in joining The Campanil staff should contact the Editor in Chief at eic@thecampanil.com.

from

ASMC page 1

“Her intention I think was really to create a kind of meditative contemplative space within that circle. Something that she would be interested in doing performances, working with graduate students from the dance department to interact with the piece during the run of her thesis show,” Hanor said. “She was interested in trying to figure out how to actually do that structurally.”

MFA students develop their thesis exhibition working with a faculty committee. Hanor helps these students think about space and placement, based on their art proposals, in and outside of the Art Museum. This specific MFA student had permission from facilities and the campus architect, in addition to Hanor.

JESSICA GILLESPIE

R o w e n a B ro w n f a c i l i t a t e d t h e f o r u m ’ s d i s c u s s i o n .

said Martin. “In fact, staff within the division are already working with the Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice Committee on that update so its our goal to provide some additional information before the end of the semester.”

Throughout the open forum, Mills administration shared examples, such as establishing the Mills Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice Committee, of their commitment to working on the college’s response to racism and the building of a more proactive campus culture. At the same time, they acknowledged that there are opportunities to continue building and refining these efforts.

ASMC has scheduled a Join All Mills (JAM) for April 30 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. To help address various on-campus tensions, Rowena Brown, ASMC vice president and diversity chair, is reaching out to Mills infinity groups to organize this event as a collaboration.

Student government has also affirmed their focus to follow up on getting the list of student’s demands met and to continue dialogue with campus authorities, such as the Board of Trustees and Mills administration.

Questions and comments can be emailed to them at asmcpresident@mills.edu and/or asmcvp@mills.edu.

“I’m personally committed to continuously improving Mills responses on this, and I pledge that we’ll keep trying to do that,” Hillman said. “I personally will keep trying to do better and that Mills will keep trying to do better.”

04.23.19 from

ACTION page 1

These statistics are based on meta-analysis from 2003.

Furthermore, the United States Department of Labor, reported that about 70% of employees who experience sexual harassment at work never complain.

The report also recommended practices for preventing sexual harassment, such as using bystander intervention and creating annual reports on the topic, to send a message that sexual harassment is taken seriously.

For purposes of this study, the National Academies defined sexual harassment to include “unwanted sexual advances and requests for sexual favors and other unwelcome conduct that is sexual in nature, as well as those situations in which the work or study environment is made intimidating or offensive as a result of actions that are gender-based and that interfere with an individual’s academic or work performance, opportunities for advancement, and morale.”

In response to this, and other report findings, the National Academies and contributing institutions, including Mills, formed the action collaborative to

institute the systems-wide changes needed to alter these statistics and outcomes.

“It’s unusual for the Academies to actually continue to support a project that they studied like this,” Hillman said. “They look at concrete issues, they publish a report and then they move on, but on this one they have not moved on. They actually decided that this required more emphasis.”

Mills joins other California institutions, such as University of California Berkeley, University of Southern California and Stanford University, in signing onto the action collaborative.

The National Academies is a collective of three academies — sciences, engineering and medicine — that provide independent analysis and recommendations to the nation.

The academies also work to answer complex problems, inform public policy decisions and educate the public.

“Achieving these goals is no small task, but we are confident that together we can make higher education a space where sexual harassment cannot and does not thrive, and where our students, faculty and staff are able to achieve their goals and ambitions, and reach their full potential,” read a collective statement of commitment from the action collaborative.

3

NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE.

T h e g r a p h i c i l l u s t r a t e s a n i c e b e rg o f s p e c i f i c s e x u a l h a r a s s m e n t b e h a v i o rs .

Social justice recess hosted in honor of Mills past President Mary Atkins Shirley Acuna Asst. News Editor

On March 21 the Associated Students of Mills College (ASMC) and the Center for Leadership,

Equity and Excellence hosted a social justice recess from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. on the patio behind the Mary Atkins Lounge.

The event was open to all Mills students and the tagline for

the event read: relax, unwind, hit a piñata!

There was lively music along with a spread of tortilla chips, salsa, lemonade, sparkling water, sliced fruit and even a berry chantilly

SHIRLEY ACUNA

Recess

festivities

included

a

bouncy

slide

and

ro c k

climbing

wall.

cake in honor of Mary Atkins, a social justice advocate.

“She [Atkins] was a feminist, an abolitionist, a world traveler; she was very opinionated, and she felt very strongly about women’s education,” special program manager at the Center Jillian Mosley said. “So I love to remind people of how incredible she was.”

Atkins graduated from Oberlin College, the first college to admit women, and left Ohio as a widow in 1853 to start a new chapter of her life in California. Atkins purchased a young ladies seminary school in Benicia, and as the principal recruited prospective students while riding by mule. Upon taking a sabbatical she encountered Cyrus and Susan Mills, who in 1865 would purchase the seminary and continue the educational legacy started by Atkins.

“After Atkins sold the school, she stayed on as an educator and was a big influence and that is where the Mary Atkins Lounge gets its namesake, because she was an adult while navigating through education,” ASMC Resumer Senator Brenda Miles said.

The recess was designed to include interactive complimentary activities such as kickball, and during the break provide information on a particular social justice issue.

“This event has been going on since before the Center was created. It was two offices called the Social Justice Resource Center

and the Office of Student Activities.

The Social Justice Center would hold events like the social justice recess,” Coordinator of Programs Sasha Brown said.

The timing of this social justice recess highlighted the near conclusion of midterms and celebrated the approach of spring break, with a reminder to incorporate play and self-care during times of stress.

“Social justice recess happens sporadically throughout the year, there will be another one on April 18, and we’re going to be out front by the solidarity lounge. We’ll have a bouncy house and a rock climbing wall,” Brown said. “Social Justice recess encourages people to come out to have fun but also to learn about resources that are available for them on-campus.”

The warm weather permitted this outdoor celebration to go on as planned. The gathering of students grew as the event went on, students lined up to be blindfolded as they tried to whack a variety of colorful piñatas ranging from a strawberry, a dinosaur and a star, all filled with candy and chocolate for them to enjoy.

“We wanted to have something that was celebratory, relaxing and ... behind the Mary Atkins lounge,” Mosley said. “I was a Mary Atkins student, and served as a the Mary Atkins peer adviser for a couple of years. I always love to find ways for us to remind ourselves of who really made Mills possible.”

4

04.23.19

France’s

artistic

symbol

of

national identity falls victim to fire

Book review: “Hunger” satisfies a bittersweet appetite Calli Storrs

managing editor

WIKIPEDIA

The cathedral’s s p i re and ri b b e d ro o f c o l l a p s e d , w h i l e t h e re s t o f t h e s t r u c t u re s u r v i v e d .

arts

Jamie Logan

& entertainment editor

A fire broke out within the confines of the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15. The fire consumed most of the roof, including its architecturally intricate spire, but most of the integrity of the cathedral has been maintained. The fire is currently thought to be accidental and a result of the construction that has been ongoing to update the cathedral’s infrastructure.

On the same day as Notre Dame, a fire broke out at the Al-Aqua Mosque in Jerusalem, considered to be one of the holiest Islamic sites, although the mosuqe suffered little damage.

There has been difference in the press coverage between these two fires.

Fires have recently affected the sites of sacred spaces on U.S. soil, too. On March 26, April 2 and April 4, three historically Black churches were burned down in Louisiana, and unlike Notre Dame, these were done purposefully.

Louisiana police allege that these were the results of a hate crime. Donald Trump has not made a public statement in support of the people who have lost a sacred religious space.

The cathedral was erected in 1345, where it came to be defined by many in the Western world as one of the greatest architectural feats in history. As one of one of the biggest tourist attractions in Paris, with as many as 30,000 people visiting its site each day, it has become one of the most beloved historical sites in Europe.

The cathedral held — and still holds, since some of the significant work has been saved — a multitude of artworks and relics, such as the crown of thorns that is been said to be Jesus Christ’s during his crucifixion, and its roof alone is made of 5,000 oak trees.

The now-destroyed spire was removed in 1786 because of stability reasons, then rebuilt during the 1860s.

However, the cathedral has fallen victim to a fire before in the 13th century, which led to more work on it between 1230 and 1240.

An interesting component is that many world leaders shared similar sentiments about the burning of the cathedral. It has appeared to make a deep impact on many people and

has permeated social media since it happened.

Hillary Clinton wrote on Twitter, “My heart goes out to Paris. Notre Dame is a symbol of our ability as human beings to unite for a higher purpose—to build breathtaking spaces of worship that no one person could have built on their own.”

In an address to the nation, France’s President Emmanuel Macron stated, “Notre Dame is our history, it’s our literature, it’s our imagery. It’s the place where we live our greatest moments, from wars to pandemics to liberations...I’m telling you all tonight—we will rebuild this cathedral together. This is probably part of the French destiny.”

In a statement from the White House, Donald Trump said, “We remember with grateful hearts the tolling of Notre Dame’s bells on September 12, 2001, in solemn recognition of the tragic September 11th attacks on American soil. Those bells will sound again.

We stand with France today and offer our assistance in the rehabilitation of this irreplaceable symbol of Western civilization. Vive la France!”

According to Laurent Ferri, curator of the pre-1800 Collections in the Rare Division and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University and a former curator at the French National Archives, the fire may be the worst disaster that the cathedral has experienced since the French Revolution, when anti-royalists stormed the cathedral and decapitated statues that were thought to represent French kings.

Meanwhile, donations coming in from French billionaires and corporations have reached 900 million euros and other U.S. conglomerates such as Apple and Disney have monetarily supported the cause as well, eliciting criticism regarding where hefty donations are ending up as opposed to other current issues the world is facing.

People on social media have taken to sharing the donation links to the less covered churches affected by fire in an effort to bring awareness to the other churches in more monetary need.

There are GoFundMe campaigns for the Seventh District Baptist Church fires and more awareness spreading about issues that have been grossly marginalized and are in dire need of public support.

Lan Samantha Chang’s book “Hunger” delivers her stories wrapped in words that whistle sideways through the air to cut to the core of your heart. They take you by surprise, startle and snatch your breath away, as they tell their rich and complex take on the human condition.

First published in 1998, “Hunger” is a collection of six stories: one novella length story and five short stories.

All of her stories are centered around Chinese or Chinese American protagonists. Some of the biggest themes running throughout the bittersweet collection of short stories were loss, duty, family, the pain of things unsaid — silence, generational misunderstandings and time.

The temporal nature of loss was tangible through all of her stories, whether they draw on things from the past or span years of a character’s life.

Loss shows up in all of the six stories in different ways.

Sometimes it is a loss of culture, other times it is a loss of a child and occasionally those are the one and the same. Sometimes it is loss of self: in the process of assimilation, the center of their souls are destabilized, lost somewhere in between their hazy memories of their past and their discarded hopes-turned-disappointments.

Sometimes the loss is physical: there are deaths sprinkled in and out of each story.

In half of the stories, there is the very tangible sense of loss that sits in the silence between the parents and their children. In “Hunger,” “The Unforgetting” and “The Eve of the Spirit Festival,” there is one child who leaves. Whether this is a leaving for school or a leaving for escape, or both, each parting tears something from the parents and children involved.

One of the characters has a physical reaction after traveling

beyond the village she grew up in, and consequently her mother’s domain of power.

“I realized that I had said goodbye to the last of the village, and to my mother. After years of avoiding her sight, I had gone to a place where she could not see me,” the narrator said. “Suddenly I was filled with an emotion so terrible that I turned and vomited at the side of the road.”

Leaving her mother, however much she may have longed for it, still strongly affects her. These paradoxes of love and independence, freedom and constriction, family and obligations is something Chang masterfully balances.

In “Hunger,” there is an erasure of all the family members, a disconnection that, once lost, was difficult to­­­­ — and often never — regained. Tian struggled to open himself up. Min was like a person watching a movie at times, distant in her own body as she witnessed her husband pushing their daughter farther and farther away. Lastly, Anna and Ruth experienced this distance themselves, struggling to break free from the only way their father could show his love, through rigorous musical training.

In “The Unforgetting,” Charles is a silent recipient of all his parents’ expectations, with little interaction, a passive absorption of the discomfort his parents have with his second generation identity.

He doesn’t understand the stories that his parents have tried to forget in an effort to assimilate and make his life easier, just as they don’t understand his baffling existence as he longs for things his parents never fathomed as options for him.

Similarly, in both “Hunger” and “The Eve of the Spirit Festival,” each tells the tales of second generation children, and in all three the theme of gaping rifts between the fathers and children especially are prominent.

The fathers fight strongly with the daughters in “Hunger” and “The Eve of the Spirit Festival.”

Both stories feature two daughters, while in “The Unforgetting” Charles is an only son. However, it is not for a lack of complicated love, bringing in immigrant family generational differences, as parents carry invisible volumes of baggage that their children cannot see for parental silence reigns and there is another loss: that of never knowing how much you were loved.

“When Emily turned eighteen and did leave home, a part of my father disappeared. I wondered sometimes: where did it go? Did she take it with her?” Chang wrote.

“What secret charm had she carried with her as she vanished down the tunnel to the jet that would take her to college in California, steadily and without looking back, while my father and I watched silently from the window at the gate?”

In “Hunger” and in “The Unforgetting,” the issue of language comes up, as teachers suggest that parents stop speaking to their children in their first languages.

In the title story, the narrator says “But none of the new words I learned seemed able to express my thoughts — I felt as if, in order to speak English, I would have to change the climate of my soul, the flavor of my tongue.”

There sits another loss in familial relationships.

Each of these losses takes varying amount of time to recover from, but even for the “small” things, a comment, a movement, an expression, the effects can be devastating and last years. Loss has no time limit.

The other themes were equally as deep and nuanced, and Chang draws upon many different situations and locations to explore the nature of duty, the pain of things unsaid, and complicated ways of expressing love through all of the above.

Somehow, through the multilayered pieces she weaves, each immense discussion is folded into paragraphs, expanding (sometimes painfully so) the reader’s mind and heart.

A SENIOR EXHIBITION BY DESIGN EDITOR REBEKAH RAYMON

APRIL 15–27 BOOK ART POCKET GALLERY CLOSING RECEPTION: APRIL 26, 6–8 P.M.

“Raise

the

Roof”

brings

LILA GOEHRING

Attendees had the opportunity to socialize, eat and look at books related to Jewish culture before the screening of “Raise the Roof.”

Lila Goehring copy editor

On Wednesday, April 16, members of the Mills Jewish community gathered in Lisser Hall to socialize, celebrate art and life and watch the documentary “Raise the Roof” about the wooden Gwoździec synagogue built almost entirely by hand in Poland. The event was also a chance for student Tal Mor to share her experiences on a recent trip to Poland, which centered around Jewish resilience.

Jewish Student Collective (JSC) President Ari Yovel, who uses they/ them pronouns, had a large role in planning the event and selecting the film, along with the Department of Spiritual and Religious Life (SRL).

“I watched it, and I was totally floored,” they said, describing the decision to share the film with the campus after it was donated

by Taube Foundation, which also sponsored Mor’s trip to Poland.

“As a Jewish person, a historical reenactor, as an artist, it’s something that hit really close to home for me.

I needed everybody to see it, and I’m so thrilled that more people are going to get the chance to see it now,” Yovel said.

Rev. Dara Olandt, the Mills chaplain and director of SRL who identifies as both Jewish and

Unitarian Universalist, also had a role in putting on the event.

“As I watched this particular film, I was struck by — in these incredibly politically polarizing times — how crucial it is to lift up stories of artistic resilience: stories in which people are coming together across differences in a shared, creative project that affirms beauty, power, memory, restoration of hope and restoration of memory in concretized forms,” she said to the audience before the film began.

“I hope that there will be something that you hear tonight that you can take with you that will effuse your life positively, that will stir your imagination, your heart, in connecting with your own history and with your own story.”

In the 17th and 18th centuries, around 200 wooden synagogues were built in Poland and by 1942, they had all been destroyed by the Nazi invasion. The Gwoździec Synagogue had been most thoroughly documented by photos, and over the course of 10 years, Handshouse Studio (led by Rick and Laura Brown) gathered hundreds of students from over a dozen countries to rebuild it using the same methods from the time it was built. In particular, the documentary showcased the creation of the intricate structure of the roof and the paintings on the inside of it — hence the title.

Jewish

But this project, this documentary and certainly this event at Mills were not focused on the end product, nor did they focus on the destruction of the original synagogue and all that had been lost. Rather, the focus was on community, the authentic creation of art and the celebration of Jewish life and resilience.

Rev. Olandt welcomed those who wanted a space to debrief and discuss the film and its ideas to stay afterwards.

“I love that they didn’t end on the grand reopening — they end on the people who worked on it lighting candles and silently and in awe beholding what they had helped create,” Yovel said after the film. “There wasn’t a need to talk about it, even, because their being together to look at it said everything that had to be said.”

“It was about that which was larger,” she said. “It didn’t even need to be expressed what the larger was other than the concrete shared project.” for the Jewish community to gather and reflect. Chaplaincy intern Hillary Sklar, who has been working with Rev. Olandt and the department of SRL remarked that seeing the film during this event was different than watching it on her computer recently.

“I had another experience this evening watching this very visceral experience, not just to see the film, but being in this space — it’s a physical, emotional and visceral [experience] seeing the vividness of the colors,” Sklar said, “seeing it large — but also being in this room of many Jews and having collective memory be part of what’s resonating in the room ... something very significant happens.”

Sklar had a chance to reflect with other members of the community. “[Mor] and I were talking about memory, and intergenerational memory — that’s also present in this room,” Sklar said.

Junior Tal Mor, who had a chance to see the featured synagogue during her recent educational trip, shared the highlights of the experience during

04.23.19

community

this same evening.

“My favorite aspect of the trip was the focus on Jewish resilience and revival in Poland,” she said.

“Its primary angle was about asking questions about how the echoes of the past impact the Jewish present and future in Poland and beyond. We were challenged to think critically about physical sites of memory, about what the appropriate ways are to honor the violence enacted and endured in certain locations, and about the potential to transform destroyed sacred spaces into spaces of healing.”

Creating spaces for collective healing is important to the Jewish community at Mills, and students discussed the need to balance grieving losses of life and tragedy with past and present vibrancy, creativity and resilience in Jewish communities.

Students were particularly moved by a statement in the film made by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who serves as the program director at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is where the synagogue can be viewed today.

“When people ask me, ‘What is the most important period in the history of Polish Jews?’ it’s usually because they already know. ‘Oh, yes. It’s the Holocaust.’ I have one answer,” she said in the film, “My answer is, ‘The most important period in the history of Polish Jews is 1,000 years.’”

This quote particularly resonated

5

together

with students, both Jewish and nonJewish, who expressed frustrations over mainstream education of Jewish history.

“In my imagination, Poland was part of a horrific Jewish past, though theoretically I knew there were still Jews in Poland, I don’t think I really believed it before being there and witnessing the incredibly brave work of healing and rebuilding that Jews in Poland are doing right now,” Mor said, reflecting on her trip.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett remarked that if all of the focus remains on the Holocaust and other tragedies, “then the world will know more about how Jews died than how they lived.”

The department of SRL and the JSC aim to celebrate Jewish art, culture and community through events like this one and hopefully more to come.

“My job is to help create events that promote spiritual health and wellness on-campus, because I think people oftentimes forget that part of social justice and part of any good activism is also nourishing the self and nourishing your spiritual well being,” Yovel said.

Besides serving as the president of the JSC, they work as a spirituality and social justice coordinator in the department of SRL.

Read the full story online at thecampanil.com

LILA GOEHRING

Mills student Tal Mor shared her experiences on a recent trip to Poland funded by the Taube Foundation.

“The Hate U Give” chosen as next year’s common read arts

Jamie Logan & entertainment editor

The choice of the Mills annual common read was announced in a schoolwide email on Tuesday afternoon, April 16.

The common read is a book given to all incoming Mills students with supplemental questions to foster discussion and provoke thought.

“The Hate U Give” is a 2017 fiction book written by Angie Thomas, wherein a 16 year old witnesses the police shooting her childhood best friend.

It has accrued multiple awards since its release, including the Coretta Scott King Honor, the National Book Award Longlist and became a #1 New York Times Bestseller. The book has been adapted into an award-winning movie starring Amandla Stenberg.

“‘The Hate U Give’ is an exploration of racial violence, youth activism, and the power of community,” read the email from the Provost’s office. “Through a fictional story of an unarmed African American teenager gunned down by police, Thomas engages themes that are all too real, including institutionalized racism, educational inequality, voice, silence, and power, all through the eyes of a teenage girl protagonist.”

This common read follows last year’s choice of “Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer” by Novella Carpenter, whose community discussion was met with criticism by Mills students. Some of the criticisms were Carpenter’s lack of focus on important issues like gentrification and privilege and using racialized words like “ghetto” to describe Oakland.

In the common read handout, the Mills Division of Student Life

wrote, “Having the common read as a shared intellectual experience with your cohort will allow for many stimulating discussions throughout the academic year as you engage with its themes of food and community, race and poverty, and social justice movements in Oakland.”

“Farm City” acted as Carpenter’s memoir as she moved to Oakland and used an abandoned lot next to her house to cultivate a farm.

“The issues around last year’s book prompted us to develop a more formalized book selection process with more student input than in the past,” Associate Provost for Recruitment and Student Success and Professor of Sociology Dr. Margaret Hunter said in an email. “We chose ‘The Hate U Give’ because it discusses important issues that we are all grappling with now.”

The email described the Common Read Selection Committee as comprising of three

first-year students, two faculty and one staff member. 27 book nominations were submitted by members of the student body, and the committee chose five books as semi-finalists to read over the winter holidays, culminating in “The Hate U Give” as the final choice.

The two-hour movie adaptation of the book was released in Oct. 2018 to positive reviews, in particular focusing on lead actor Amandla Stenberg’s performance.

Stenberg received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture, and the movie has received multiple nominations and awards as well, although it was not nominated for the Academy Awards, which disappointed many.

The discussion questions for the book were posted in the email, ranging from inquiries of “How is this novel, intended for young adults, an exploration of youth activism? Why is this issue

particularly important for young people today?” to “How does this story resemble real world events that have transpired in recent years?

How is this story different?”

In contrast, the discussion questions for last year’s “Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer” included “How does Carpenter’s description of her neighborhood challenge and/or reinforce common depictions of Oakland? What hidden aspects of life in Oakland are revealed in the book?” and “How can food justice and urban farming movements play a role in fighting inequality? How is food related to culture, community, and power?”

The common read is not intended to be reflective of Mills’ institutional ideologies and platforms.

“The book selection is not meant to be a statement of a campus position, but rather a jumping off point for a lively discussion about important issues of the day,”

6

04.23.19

Staff

Editorial:

The

college

Last month, the FBI charged 50 people for taking part in illegally securing admission into a handful of colleges and universities, making this one of the largest college admissions scams in the country.

Wealthy parents involved offered up millions of dollars to one man, William Singer, to falsify potential students’ information.

Singer owned a business called Edge College and Career Network along with a non-profit titled the Key Worldwide Foundation.

According to the New York Times, Singer was “behind an elaborate effort to bribe coaches and test monitors, falsify exam scores, and fabricate student biographies.”

Applications were fabricated to appear as if certain students were qualified athletes or that they had very high SAT scores.

His businesses, both for-profit and non-profit, dealt with guidance and mentorship for high school students moving toward college and higher education.

During his court hearing, in

which he plead guilty, Singer called his scam the “side door” into college. Many parents, including actress Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, engaged in this side door scam in order to guarantee their child’s acceptance into elite colleges.

While this college admission scandal is a large-scale scam, those who can afford it have been buying their way into college even before this scandal came into light.

All of these other methods are tied together by wealth or being born into wealth. For example, donating to a large college will give an applicant a leg-up against others. Wealth matters, and so does bloodline.

Things like legacy admissions give preference to students whose family members attended the college.

All of these alternative side door methods exclude those who are not born into an upper-class family.

These methods suggests that in order to stand out an applicant’s parents

should be wealthy enough to offer a large donation to the college. ­They also suggest that legacy admissions are correlated with wealth and perpetuate legacy admissions for wealthy families only.

The college admissions scandal is yet another example of class reinforcement and restriction.

In a recent tweet by Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, she references the college admission scandal in comparison to the current criminal justice system, saying “Our country has a ‘justice’ system that criminalizes poverty + disproportionately targets race, yet routinely pardons large-scale crimes of wealth and privilege.”

Race, class and wealth are major contributors to whether or not someone makes it into a college.

The admission scandal shows the depth to which class and race disparities are still present within college admission systems.

Those students whose parents buy their way into colleges take the place of those who may be

Angel Fabre Online Editor

bathroom at North Pole High School and when someone tried to leave, one of them blocked her from doing so. She felt threatened, rightfully, and kneed the boy blocking her in the groin.

According to the high school’s media statement, all people involved in the incident were punished, including the girl and the boys who were protesting. Due to student confidentiality, the information on exact discipline can’t be released but the tweet from the expelled student’s sister shows that she was punished much more than the true aggressors in the situation.

The school’s decision to punish the girl so harshly for protecting herself sends a harmful and sexist message to the other students; metaphorically saying that boys will be boys. North Pole High School has been handling the situation according to Fairbanks North Star Borough School District policy regarding student discipline.

They have not released the names of the students involved and have continued to reiterate their policy that discourages the use of force.

“In regards to transgender students, when a student identifies as transgender in our district, the student (and often the family) work with school counselors and administration to determine how to best meet that student’s educational needs. The conversation includes use of restrooms...,” the media statement from North Pole High School said. “Students are not permitted to determine which restroom facility is appropriate for other students. Students who use or attempt to use a restroom facility that a school administrator has determined is not appropriate for the student, could be subject to student discipline.”

The media statement seems more like a formality as Superintendent Dr. Karen Gaborik writes more about the student discipline policy rather than the fact there are a group of transphobic boys on the high school campus spreading their hate and physically acting upon it.

The issue is not people using the wrong bathrooms but the lack of education on gender and sexuality.

This situation is an example of how that evolves into teenage cisgender boys believing that identifying as a woman for a day and going into the women’s bathroom to take a selfie is a legitimate protest and simultaneously not discriminatory against transgender people.

Instead of focusing on the student’s use of “excessive force,” the school should have considered why she felt so threatened to do so in the first place. The motivation behind this incident was not discussed thoroughly in the media statement and the superintendent even legitimizes the boys’ actions by saying they went to the women’s bathroom “to take a Snapchat of their own, similar to what the transgender student did,” but it is not the same at all. The transgender student took a selfie for personal use while the cisgender boys’ intent was to intimidate and bully.

The focus is obvious from the school to initiate damage control instead of addressing the lack of education and safety for the transgender community oncampus. By expelling the girl who defended herself against the protest, that tells the community as a whole, especially the student who took the selfie, that they do not have power or support from the school to defend their presence.

Gaborik claims, in the media statement, that transgender

admission

marginalized or disadvantaged, not having other means of attending college without scholarships, or even more willing to dedicate themselves to school. Lori Loughlin’s daughter, Olivia Jade, admits to disinterest in college education on her YouTube channel despite her mother’s alleged actions to secure her and her sister’s place in a crew team for the University of Southern California.

These alternative methods of securing a place within a college come with a sense of desperation.

Why do people go through potentially illegal loopholes just to claim a spot in a college? It all stems from the amount of value society places on competitive colleges and higher education in general.

There are certain expectations in society when it comes to education.

In life, there is a general expectation for a person to go to high school, graduate, attend college, receive a diploma and to apply for a career under a similar field of study.

The elitist ivy league college

scandal

experience is highly idolized in movies, television and in college communities in general.

Students preparing to apply for colleges can state the name of their big dream school, like Harvard or Yale, but fail to think about a field of study to apply themselves to. College has become less of an opportunity for education and more of a fight to gain social mobility.

After the admissions scandal, it is vital to reevaluate what education means to us as a society.

The amount of importance we have given to the name of a college rather than the type of education a person will receive is unbalanced.

This imbalance builds a pressure in families to manipulate the system so that their child can receive a diploma while taking the opportunities from others who are more deserving.

Wealth and privilege should not be the determining factor in the decision of whether or not a potential student will be admitted into a school.

Protest mocks a student’s trans identity Last week, a student was reportedly suspended from North Pole High School in North Pole, Alaska when she used “excessive force” on a boy who was a part of a group of boys blocking her from exiting the women’s bathroom.

In actuality, the boys were staging a bogus protest by planning to march into the women’s bathroom, to which the student defended herself. The student’s sister later confirmed online that she was expelled from school.

The boys organized the protest in response to a transgender student posting a selfie of himself in the boys’ bathroom on Snapchat.

Even though none of them were present, these boys felt that the student was invading their privacy by taking the photo.

Their protest weaponized the right to have a voice and protest to mask their transphobia. They were fundamentally against the student’s right to identify with a gender they were not born with.

“Tomorrow identify as a women [sic]...use the girls’ bathroom we are set so let’s do it, don’t do it to be a asshole we are doing it to boycot [sic] this bullshit,” reads a line from a Snapchat post that is circulating the internet detailing the viewpoints of some of the boys involved.

It’s clear that the boys weren’t protesting an invasion of privacy but the existence of a transgender person at their school. Even in the Snapchat post, they ignore the student’s desired pronouns by calling him “she” and saying “she [identifies] as men.”

On April 4, the boys walked to the entrance of the women’s

SNAPCHAT

A b o v e , a s c re e n s h o t o f o n e s t u d e n t ’ s c a l l o n s o c i a l m e d i a t o i n t i m i d a t e a s t u d e n t ’ s t r a n s i d e n t i t y.

students are given special attention from school counselors and administration to better their education, but it is not only about their individual learning capabilities, but it’s also about making their environment safe enough for them to be able to get that education in the first place.

It concerns me that the school has not considered how the transgender student who took the selfie to begin with must feel. Even though he was not present at the protest, it was targeted against him and the community he is a part of. It cannot be easy to walk into school a couple of days later and know that

school-wide, people are talking about you, and probably not in a nice way. How can a productive discourse take place when most students are not properly informed on the subject in question?

While North Pole High school has a couple of gender neutral bathrooms on-campus, it seems that gender is generally approached as a complete binary. The use of language is important, and the school’s decision to suspend the girl in self-defense and reiterate their policy on violence rather than addressing the hateful intention of this protest shows where their views lie.

Editor’s note: With the exception of staff editorials, the views expressed in columns and the Opinions section do not necessarily reflect the views of The Campanil and are solely those of the author.

04.23.19 from

STATEMENT page 1

This space was made for a collaboration with dancers, musicians and other artists. I was thinking about the ropes through my own experiences, and I now see that in my attempts to create a “safe space,” I directly impacted the safe space of others.

Moving forward, I am thinking

about public space, public art, reparative processes and I am listening and learning in a new way. I greatly appreciate everyone who has taken the time to talk with me about this, and I welcome a continued dialogue. I will take what I have learned from this experience into my art practice and into my art communities.

Thank you for taking to time to consider my intentions.

Writing Healing

Felicia Payomo Opinions Editor

7

for The Womanist: generational trauma

The Womanist, a poetry, prose and visual art journal for women and femmes of color at Mills, has given me the opportunity to creatively process generational trauma in the form of poetry.

When I first saw the Womanist flyer requesting submissions for this semester’s edition, the theme of how we carry our ancestors, and how our stories collide with theirs, pulled me in. I was reminded of a story that my grandma, Justinana Nantona, told me when I was little.

Both of my father’s parents were born and raised in the Philippines, a place I have never been to. She would often tell me very short stories about her youth during the most random moments, usually over food. Her stories of her days in the Philippines, about my family that I never met, brought me closer to my mother land. She told me that

her family took her and her siblings to hide in the mountains, and for a while this was all the information I got about why they had to do that.

As I got older, that story stayed with me and my dad filled in the blanks. Between 1942 and 1945, the Philippines was occupied by Japan.

The occupation of the Philippines began after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Japan’s control lasted for three years. Many people lost their lives as Guerrilla fighters fought to reclaim their home. My grandma and her family were forced into hiding in the mountains within an abandoned coal mine.

This was a story for me as a child, but for my grandma, it was life or death.

This story inspired the poem I wrote for the 2019 Spring Edition of the Womanist. My poem “Justinana,” is one in which I climb the mountain to bring my grandma back down again. The main focus of my poem was to heal and understand

the sacrifices my grandma made before she even knew me.

The Womanist gave me the platform to do just that. I am thankful for that, since it brought me closer to understanding the lives my grandparents live, and the trauma we move through as a family.

Poetry is a very vulnerable art form. Poetry is often a form of emotional expression, and there is a rawness that comes with writing about such a certain personal topic or moment. But there is a calmness that follows after you share your truth. I was able to experience that catharsis while writing the poem for my grandma, sharing her truth and mine.

Giving women and femmes of color the opportunity to write in a safe, supportive environment allows us the chance share our stories, our grandparents’ stories and our ancestors’ stories. There is power and pride to reclaim in that.

being accepted as gay enough by the LGBTQ+ community. No one should feel pressured to prove their queerness to anyone, regardless of how big of a star they might be.

There is also a double-standard present regarding the sexuality of women versus men. Women with queer sexualities are often taken less seriously than their male counterparts, and women face more scrutiny.

For example, according to Elle, when Harry Styles made statements about “messing around” with both men and women, the public didn’t make a fuss about it. On the other hand, the internet did not leave actress Ashley Benson and model Cara Delevingne alone after rumors spread about a romance between them.

While labels can be helpful for many people when understanding their own sexuality, Grande should have the freedom to explore her sexuality without the pressure of a label if she chooses. According to the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity, labels can be harmful for a person’s development of their sexual identity.

“Labeling someone puts us at risk of ignoring the multitude of variables that play a part in sexual identity development,” Julia Sadusky of the Sexuality Institute said, as reported by Them. “Sexual behavior and experiences, sexual attractions and how to make sense of them, and sexual identity labels and their meaning are distinct and they all matter. To base identity solely on current strength of attractions,

especially for the youth, may not be helpful. Each person is a person to be engaged with, supported, and listened to rather than isolated, labeled, and spoken at.”

While it is exciting that another pop star might be bisexual/ pansexual/queer and provide us with more representation in the media, Grande was right when she tweeted that it is okay that she isn’t prescribing to any particular label.

While I am still uncomfortable with her instances of cultural appropriation, I respect her decision to forgo labels.

Sexuality is fluid, and if Grande rejects being labeled as straight, then we should accept and respect that. For now, all we know is that Grande can’t be labeled — and that is okay.

Ariana Grande rejects labels – and it’s okay Marisa Tangeman Editor-in-Chief According to Spotify, Ariana Grande is currently the number one artist in the world, and she just became the youngest person to ever headline Coachella. Everyone seems to have an opinion about Grande lately, and I recently wrote an article discussing her multiple instances of cultural appropriation.

Now the conversation has shifted to focus Grande’s sexuality.

Following the release of the music video for her song “Break up with your girlfriend, I’m bored,” Grande was accused of queerbaiting. In the video, she moves in to kiss model Ariel Yasmine just as the video ends.

Since the release of the video, Grande co-wrote and released a new song, “Monopoly,” with her best friend and artist Victoria Monet.

Both artists sing the lyric “I like women and men,” which sparked more controversy and questioning from fans about Grande’s sexuality.

At the end of Grande’s Coachella performance, she also displayed the rainbow flag behind the entire stage. It was also announced in February that Grande would be headlining Manchester Pride.

The announcement that Grande would be headlining Manchester Pride sparked controversy, as many people expressed that a straight artist should not be headlining a pride event. Between the accusations of queerbaiting and frustration that the headlining slot at Manchester Pride was not given to a queer artist, there has been little room to consider that Grande might not actually be straight.

While her fans have been

demanding to know what Grande’s sexual identity is following her lyrics in “Monopoly,” she responded on Twitter saying that she isn’t going to label herself.

“I haven’t before and still don’t feel the need to now,” Grande said in a tweet. “Which is okay.”

Queerbaiting is still a common and problematic issue for queer folks looking for representation in the media. Queerbaiting happens when authors, writers and artists hint at romance between same-sex characters or people for the sole purpose of attracting members of the LGBTQ+ community without properly representing them.

Grande does not have a good track record with appropriation, and queerbaiting can be seen as another form of that.

I brought up the accusations of queerbaiting in my previous article about Grande, and I will admit that my initial reaction to the almostkiss in her music video was shock.

After giving it more thought, I realized that I should give Grande the space to explore and understand her own sexuality that I want for myself.

If Grande were straight, then she could be rightfully accused of queerbaiting, but we don’t have enough information to make those accusations. Additionally, we are not entitled to even have that information. Grande doesn’t owe us an explanation of her sexuality.

The gate-keeping comments claiming that Grande is appropriating queerness based solely on the way she presents herself and her high-profile dating history with male celebrities are discouraging for people to hear.

Many bisexual/pansexual/queer women and people that feel like they can’t come out for fear of not

A ri a n a

Grande

re j e c t s

labeling

her

sexual

WIKIPEDIA

i d e n t i t y.

8 To

04.23.19

gluten

Zee Celik Sports & Health Editor In recent years the term gluten-free has become more well known than ever before.

From gluten-free goods becoming regularly available in grocery stores to glutenfree options being added to restaurant menus, what was once a costly, niche label has become widespread.

In the International Food Information Council Foundation’s 2018 Food and Health Survey, glutenfree eating ranked among the top three diets followed by respondents.

Globally, the gluten-free products market is expected to have a Compound annual growth rate of 7.5% from 2016 to 2022, according to Allied Market Research.

Part of the growth in market demand for gluten-free foods can be attributed to people who cannot eat wheat for health reasons, such as those with Celiac disease.

Celiac disease is “an inherited chronic inflammatory autoimmune disorder that is estimated to affect up to 3 million Americans,” according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).“For people who have

or

celiac disease, consumption of gluten results in the destruction of the lining of the small intestine and the risk of other serious health conditions.”

However, going gluten-free has been touted as a healthy diet change for people for whom gluten has no such negative effects. Proponents of clean eating claim it is simply healthier, or that humans are not designed to eat wheat. Others claim a gluten-free diet is a treatment for autism, fatigue or various medical conditions.

According to the Celiac Disease Foundation (CDF), gluten is a general name for proteins found various grains, such as wheat, barley and rye, which acts as a binding agent and helps foods maintain their shape.

Gluten-free usually refers to one of two things. First, some foods by their nature do not contain gluten, like rice, meat or vegetables. These foods are sometimes labeled as naturally gluten-free, because they simply exist as such but are not made specifically to be safe for people with celiac.

Rice, for example, is naturally gluten-free, and could be labeled as such to capitalize on the growing health food trend.

However, as of 2015, the

not

FDA requires all foods bearing the gluten-free label to be tested to contain less than 20 parts per million of gluten in the food.

This is the threshold amount that is generally safe for people with celiac.

The second type of gluten-free food is produced specifically to be a substitute for foods which typically contain the protein. These foods, which include gluten-free bread, breading and pastries, are manufactured with alternative flours and use various fillers and flavorings to replicate the taste and texture of the foods they are made to replace.

As a result, such foods are often higher in calories, carbohydrates, fats and sugars than their gluten filled counterparts.

While the rising popularity of gluten-free foods makes them cheaper and more accessible for people with celiacs or wheat allergies, most people driving the growth of this market do not have a health condition that requires them to stop eating gluten.

Some people may genuinely feel better after stopping gluten consumption. While this could be due to an undiagnosed gluten intolerance, it is also likely to be due to the fact that cutting out gluten also cuts out or reduces

to

gluten?

the intake of refined starches and sugary foods, such as white bread, cake and cereals.

The fact that eating less refined carbohydrates and more fruits and vegetables is healthier and can aid with weight loss is well known.

However, these dietary changes are not specific to gluten, they are about processed foods and carbohydrates.

Eating less sweets or white bread overall is one thing, replacing regular bread with gluten-free processed carbohydrates is another.

Currently there are no studies to support the fact that elimination of gluten alone has health benefits, or that it is beneficial for symptoms of autism or unrelated medical conditions.

According to the Celiac Disease Foundation, autistic people do have a higher rate of gluten sensitivity than the general population, however, so an autistic child who stops eating gluten may feel better due to an alleviation of unrecognized illness due to gluten sensitivity.

There is no definitive evidence that going glutenfree is beneficial to all autistic children, or people without celiacs. The reality is, unless you have an adverse reaction to gluten, eliminating it from your diet is more likely to cause

problems than solve anything.

Today’s wheat products are typically enriched with vitamins and nutrients, which their gluten-free counterparts are not. As a result, sudden removal of these vitamin sources on a gluten-free diet can lead to nutritional deficiencies, according to astudy published by the National Institute of Health (NIH).

The study found that glutenfree foods are lower in fiber and micronutrients, in particular Vitamin D, B12 and folate, and minerals such as iron, zinc, magnesium and calcium.

Such deficiencies can cause health problems both immediately and long term.

While they are avoidable or minimizable with supplements and careful attention to nutrition and diet, it is a noteworthy risk to gluten-free diets. While it is worth it for people who cannot eat wheat for health reasons, simply deciding to stop eating gluten independently is likely to have either no effect, or cause health problems long term.

Read the full story online at thecampanil.com

The Women’s World Cup is this summer: Here’s what you need to know Molly Stuart Copy Chief The eighth ever Women’s World Cup will start on June 7 — and unlike last summer, when the U.S. men’s team didn’t make it to the tournament, the United States women’s team not only qualified, they’re the reigning champions.

As one of the most successful women’s soccer teams in the world, the U.S. women’s national team is one to watch. They’ve won three World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals, among a heap of other wins at international championships.

In the past, the U.S. women’s national team (USWNT) has boasted players like Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and Abby Wambach.

In 2013, Wambach broke Hamm’s record and became the highest scoring international player of both men and women.

Her record stands at 184 international goals scored (as opposed to Christian Ronaldo’s 85 as one of the top international players in the men’s league, but who’s counting?) Wambach’s book “Wolfpack” came out April 9. It’s inspired by a commencement speech she gave at Barnard College in 2018.

Hamm played for the national team for 17 years and was the

first woman inducted into the World Football Hall of Fame in Mexico. Brandi Chastain famously won the penalty shootout in the 1999 World Cup against China and was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2017 and the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.

While the final roster hasn’t been announced for the 2019 World Cup, there are a few players on the current roster who are certain to make the cut.

First up will be co-captains Carli Lloyd and Alex Morgan, both who have over 100 international goals — a feat that Morgan reached in a match against Australia just earlier this month.

With only a three series send-off game standing between the USWNT and the start of World Cup, the crew going to France could be announced anytime. Favorites for the final list include forwards Megan Rapinoe and Tobin Heath, midfielders Lindsay Horan and Julie Ertz, and defenders Abby Dahlkemper and Crystal Dunn.

The team has made headlines for their work in advocating for equal pay. On International Women’s Day of this year, March 8, they filed a gender discrimination suit against the U.S. Soccer Federation (USF) with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

In 2016, the team made headlines when five of the top players first filed a wage discrimination action with the EEOC against U.S. Soccer.

This action was taken after the players submitted a proposal for equal pay in their new collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

In 2016, the players noted that, despite the women’s team bringing in $20 million more in revenue for U.S. Soccer, their compensation differed dramatically from the men’s team. For instance, the men’s team was awarded $9 million after reaching round 16 in the 2014 World Cup held in Brazil, while the women’s team earned $2 million for winning the entire tournament in 2015.

In 2016, Business Insider reported that the top earning potential for a player on the USMNT for 20 international friendlies won was $263,320, while the top earning potential for a player on the USWNT for the same achievement was $99,000.

In 2017, USF announced that it had reached a new CBA with the USWNT, ensuring a pay increase as well as increases to the bonuses and per diems that were also paid differently to the men’s team than the women’s team, although the CBA did not include equal pay for equal work.

This is what has lead to the most recent lawsuit, which was filed earlier this year by all 28 members of the USWNT. The lawsuit alleges institutional discrimination based on compensation, difference in playing, training and travel conditions. Developments on the lawsuit are not expected before the tournament begins.

The tournament will take place in France at stadiums all around the country, from Paris to Rennes to Marseilles and Lyon. Sales for the opening match, the semifinals and the final have sold out in record time.

The matches will be broadcast

U.S . victory

women’s in the

on FS1 in the U.S., and two great places to watch in the East Bay are Commonwealth Pub at 2882 Telegraph Ave. and the Athletic Club at 59 Grand Ave. and Webster St. You must be 21 or older to go into the Athletic Club past 7 p.m. Both places are a quick walk off the NL line from Mills.

Although the first part of the tournament, the group stages, is predicted to be an easy few wins for the U.S., the knockout stage is going to be a lot tougher.

Whatever the outcome, the tournament stands as another opportunity for the USWNT to bring their momentum to women’s sports.

team international

FLICKR

celebrates friendlies.